Executive Orders Compromise the Executive

James Madison, the Father of the Constitution, intended to disband factional power and channel human ambition with the United States Constitution. One of the most troubling developments which he noted in the history of devolving liberties in government occured every time a leader expanded his powers in response to national emergencies or during armed conflict.

In order to prevent executive order trumping liberities and limited governance, Madison and the other Framers at the Constitutional Convention required that the President seek authorization for war from Congress. In modern times, Americans have witnessed the diminution of Congress as Presidents expand military excursions throughout the world without Congressional approval.

President Obama has issued unconstituional executive orders relating to domestic policy, as well, from preventing the disbursment of federal funds for abortions, to recently streamlining the war powers of the President over state militias in the event of a military emergency. Whether this executive order is a routine formalty to elminite confusion or a subtle power grab, the rapidity and rapacity with which President Obama has taken and expanded federal power over the states and the American people is an alarming trend.

Presidential executive orders must fall within the scope of powers enumerated in the Constitution and expanded only at the discretion of  Congress. As an executive is elected to enforce the laws of the land, it follows reasonably that the President does very little outside of the purview of Congress, the people's direct and indirect representatives.

Voters have every cause to limit self-initiative executive power. No executive order created more shame and scandal than Exeuctive Order 9066 of 1942, which authorized the massive mobilization and resettlement of 110,000 Japanese-American citizens, along with residual numbers of citizens of German and Italian descent. Justified by the statist Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the sweeping directive uprooted patriotic, law-abiding Americans onto relocation camps, where they endured the offensive privation of military supervision without adequate resources and diminished dignity. Only recently have interned Americans come forward to relate the undeserved disrespect that the federal government imposed on them, which under the color of military authority arrogated to itself by executive order -- without Congressional approval -- to trample on the rights of a select population.

The unique and arbitrary power of an executive must be checked. We can no longer permit presidents, under the pretense of protection, to issue their own powers by legislative fiat, laws without legislators, as one may accurately describe these unconstitutional executive orders. If for not other reason than these unrelenting expansions of federal power -- and from a former constitutional law professsor, no less -- President Obama has not earned the respect of serving as this country's chief executive for another term.