Obstructionism is patriotic
By Michelle Malkin
MichelleMalkin.com
Three cheers for right-wing obstructionism. Can we
have more, please, and louder?
This week’s
unanimous Supreme Court ruling on President
Obama’s illegal recess appointments is a double
smackdown. First, it’s a rebuke against arrogant
White House power-grabbers who thought they could
act with absolute impunity and interminable
immunity. Second, the ruling is a reproach of all
the establishment pushovers on Capitol Hill who put
comity above constitutional principle.
In a nutshell: The high court determined that Obama
lawlessly exceeded his executive authority when he
foisted three members onto the National Labor
Relations Board in 2012, during what Democrats
declared was a phony-baloney Senate “recess.” In
reality, the Senate was holding pro forma sessions
over winter break precisely to prevent such
circumvention. The ability to convene pro forma
sessions is a power retained in both the House and
Senate. It’s a time-honored, constitutionally
protected tradition.
No matter. Our imperial president and his crafty
lawyers declared that the Senate wasn’t in business
despite the Senate’s declaration that it was, and
the White House rammed through the appointments of
Terence Flynn, Richard Griffin and Sharon Block
while the Senate took a brief weekend break in
between the pro forma sessions. The steamrolling
gave the NLRB a quorum — and a green light to issue
hundreds and hundreds of legally suspect decisions.
But conservatives objected. Plaintiff
Noel Canning, the businessman who challenged the
legitimacy of NLRB decisions made by the shadily
packed panel, objected. And President
Rules-For-Thee-But-Not-For-Me got hoisted by his
own petard. The high court resoundingly rejected the
administration’s ploy to usurp “the Constitution’s
broad delegation of authority to the Senate to
determine how and when to conduct its business.”
The decision also vindicates conservative pushback
against Obama’s overreaching recess appointments of
radical SEIU lawyer Craig Becker in 2010 and
unfettered financial czar
Richard Cordray in 2012. As Carrie Severino,
chief counsel to the Judicial Crisis Network, put
it: “(T)he real victory goes to the Constitution’s
separation of powers. … By striking down these
appointments, the Supreme Court delivered a
much-needed bench-slap to the Obama administration’s
contempt for the Constitution.”
The Canning decision should embolden
“obstructionist” conservatives on Capitol Hill — led
by House Republicans — who have raised bloody hell
over Obama’s imperial governance in defiance of
establishment GOP go-along, get-alongism. Staunch
conservative Sen. Ted Cruz pointed out after the
NLRB ruling: “This marks
the 12th time since January 2012 that the Supreme
Court has unanimously rejected the Obama
administration’s calls for greater federal executive
power.”
Thanks to patriotic obstructionism, this should and
will be far from the last rebuke. Continued
accommodation of this control-freak president and
his cronies is suicide. There are only two
responsible replies to a Constitution-trampling,
end-run executive unilaterally declaring, “Yes, I
can”:
1) “No, you can’t.”
2) “Hell no, you can’t.”
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2014