The Constitution is dead.
Long live the executive dictatorship.
There is almost literally nothing that the President of the United States cannot do. This week, we found out that President Obama’s IRS not only targeted conservative non-profit applicants with impunity, it then destroyed the emails that could have illuminated the process behind such targeting. Meanwhile, the Attorney General – the executive officer charged with fighting government criminality – continues to stonewall an independent prosecutor, maintaining along with his boss that there is not a “smidgen of corruption” in the IRS.
On the southern border, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has been converted from a policing agency to a humanitarian aid agency as the Obama administration encourages thousands of unaccompanied minors to flood Texas and Arizona. Those illegal immigrants are being shuttled around the southwest, released into the general population, and told by activists that they are just months away from amnesty.
Across the seas, President Obama is unilaterally destroying America’s anti-terror infrastructure. Iraq has become the preserve of the al-Qaeda offshoot ISIS and the Iranian-connected Shiite government – the specific outcome the United States originally wanted to avoid in the country. Afghanistan will soon devolve back into a Taliban-led cesspool for terror. And the Obama administration continues to fund a Palestinian government that includes terrorist groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and which has now kidnapped an American citizen, along with two other Israeli boys.
Nobody in the executive branch has been punished for Benghazi, Fast and Furious, serious national security leaks to major news outlets, violations of civil rights by the National Security Agency, or any other major scandal. The Obama administration has seized authority to regulate health care, carbon emissions, and labor relations in unforeseen ways.
And no one will stop the executive branch. Impeachment will not solve the problem of a three-million strong regulatory branch in which accountability is a fantasy. The legislature has no interest in stopping the growth of the executive, given that legislators seek re-election by avoiding responsibility, and granting more power to the executive avoids such responsibility. And the judiciary seems unwilling to hem in the executive branch at all, given its decisions on the EPA and Obamacare.
So, what’s left? An elected tyranny, in which the whims of the president and all of his men decide the fate of millions. The founders would have fought such a government with every fiber of their being – and, in fact, they did fight such a government. The question now is whether state governments, elected officials, and the people themselves will be willing to take the measures necessary to do the same.
Ben Shapiro, 30, is a graduate of UCLA and Harvard Law School, a radio host on KTTH 770 Seattle and KRLA 870 Los Angeles, Editor-in-Chief of TruthRevolt.org, and Senior Editor-at-Large of Breitbart News. He is the New York Times bestselling author of “Bullies.” His latest book, “The People vs. Barack Obama: The Criminal Case Against the Obama Administration,” will be released on June 10. He lives with his wife and daughter in Los Angeles. To find out more about Ben Shapiro and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.
"The Constitution is dead. Long live the executive dictatorship."
The Constitution is dead.
Long live the executive dictatorship.
There is almost literally nothing that the President of the United States cannot do. This week, we found out that President Obama’s IRS not only targeted conservative non-profit applicants with impunity, it then destroyed the emails that could have illuminated the process behind such targeting. Meanwhile, the Attorney General – the executive officer charged with fighting government criminality – continues to stonewall an independent prosecutor, maintaining along with his boss that there is not a “smidgen of corruption” in the IRS.
On the southern border, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has been converted from a policing agency to a humanitarian aid agency as the Obama administration encourages thousands of unaccompanied minors to flood Texas and Arizona. Those illegal immigrants are being shuttled around the southwest, released into the general population, and told by activists that they are just months away from amnesty.
Across the seas, President Obama is unilaterally destroying America’s anti-terror infrastructure. Iraq has become the preserve of the al-Qaeda offshoot ISIS and the Iranian-connected Shiite government – the specific outcome the United States originally wanted to avoid in the country. Afghanistan will soon devolve back into a Taliban-led cesspool for terror. And the Obama administration continues to fund a Palestinian government that includes terrorist groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and which has now kidnapped an American citizen, along with two other Israeli boys.
Nobody in the executive branch has been punished for Benghazi, Fast and Furious, serious national security leaks to major news outlets, violations of civil rights by the National Security Agency, or any other major scandal. The Obama administration has seized authority to regulate health care, carbon emissions, and labor relations in unforeseen ways.
And no one will stop the executive branch. Impeachment will not solve the problem of a three-million strong regulatory branch in which accountability is a fantasy. The legislature has no interest in stopping the growth of the executive, given that legislators seek re-election by avoiding responsibility, and granting more power to the executive avoids such responsibility. And the judiciary seems unwilling to hem in the executive branch at all, given its decisions on the EPA and Obamacare.
So, what’s left? An elected tyranny, in which the whims of the president and all of his men decide the fate of millions. The founders would have fought such a government with every fiber of their being – and, in fact, they did fight such a government. The question now is whether state governments, elected officials, and the people themselves will be willing to take the measures necessary to do the same.
Ben Shapiro, 30, is a graduate of UCLA and Harvard Law School, a radio host on KTTH 770 Seattle and KRLA 870 Los Angeles, Editor-in-Chief of TruthRevolt.org, and Senior Editor-at-Large of Breitbart News. He is the New York Times bestselling author of “Bullies.” His latest book, “The People vs. Barack Obama: The Criminal Case Against the Obama Administration,” will be released on June 10. He lives with his wife and daughter in Los Angeles. To find out more about Ben Shapiro and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.
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