| EDITOR'S NOTE: Jonah will be back with your favorite "news"letter next week. In the meantime, we editorial lackeys thought you'd thoroughly enjoy this instant-classic G-File from way back on November 22, 2014. It may be an oldie, but it sure is a goodie. Dear Reader (including those of you in the shadows), Like a cannibal in a coma ward, I have no idea where to begin. It is always remarkable to me — which is why I am remarking upon it — how the only way this president can be rescued from a bad news cycle is if an even worse one comes along. This is a source of frustration for many on the right who get outraged by the fact that "we" don't talk enough about Fast & Furious or Benghazi or the IRS scandal or the VA scandal or Ukraine/Syria/Islamic State/China/Libya/Gitmo . . . . etc. The reason some of these topics get pushed to the backburner, even on the right, is that another controversy or scandal suddenly eclipses the previous one. If I ask you to hold a bowling ball and then, five minutes later, I surprise you by throwing a second bowling ball at you and shouting "Catch!" it's sort of unfair for me to expect you not to drop the ball. ("That may be the worst thing you've ever written" — The Couch.) Phase One of Grubergate came to an end not because the White House or Jonathan Gruber or his legions of activist-journalist homunculi offered the necessary answers or contrition, but because a bigger mess came along. The current fight over Obama's immigration diktat will probably end when the White House throws Israel under the Mother of All Buses by striking a deal with Iran (already Bibi Netanyahu must feel like Joe Pesci as he walked into the room with plastic sheets on the floor in Goodfellas). The subsequent controversy over that will likely subside when the administration reveals it has been running an illegal dogfighting ring in the White House basement. That brouhaha will conclude when Biden lets it slip that he routinely hunts human beings for sport on the grounds of the Vice President's residence. It's My Way or My Way So let me bow to the power of this fully operational news cycle and talk about the immigration thing first. For the last several weeks, the White House's court spinners have been arguing that Republican inaction is forcing the president to act. Here's Eugene Robinson in a column titled "Boehner's immigration inertia forces Obama to act": Oh, please. All the melodramatic Republican outrage isn't fooling anybody. The only reason President Obama has to act on immigration reform is that House Speaker John Boehner won't. I repeat: That's the only reason. The issue could have been settled a year ago. It could be settled in an afternoon. The problem is that Boehner refuses to do his job, preferring instead to spend his time huffing and puffing in simulated indignation. That is some embarrassing twaddle right there. Even for a reliable Obama cheerleader, as a matter of political analysis, to gaze upon the grand and epochal pandering this move represents and completely discount any partisan motivations is like saying the Nazi invasion of France was solely attributable to a German fondness for runny cheese. No serious person believes — particularly in the wake of the midterms — that the Democrats don't have a strong partisan interest in this. That doesn't mean they don't believe in the merits of what Obama is doing. But please, we are not children. More to the point, the argument that Boehner's refusal to pass the bill Obama wanted justifies Obama issuing a diktat as an end-run around Congress is a travesty. Thankfully, it's only Gene Robinson making this argument and not the president of the United States. Oh wait. Here's Obama last night: And to those members of Congress who question my authority to make our immigration system work better or question the wisdom of me acting where Congress has failed, I have one answer: Pass a bill. I want to work with both parties to pass a more permanent legislative solution. And the day I sign that bill into law, the actions I take will no longer be necessary. By the power of greyskull, this is ridiculous. This guy is supposed to be a lawyer. The question of his authority to do X is independent of what Congress does. The executive branch may not write laws. You could look it up. Let's imagine China pulls a Pearl Harbor and sinks the Seventh Fleet. On the merits, the U.S. should declare war. Those merits do not entitle the Gary, Indiana Department of Motor Vehicles to usurp Congress's authority and declare war unilaterally. Obama is in effect saying, "If you don't want me to do something you believe to be illegal or unconstitutional (and I eloquently agreed with you not long ago), all you have to do to stop me is to do exactly what I want." Like Bill Clinton at an orgy, I don't know where to start with this. Placating Obama's wishes doesn't erase his lawless deed, it establishes a precedent for a new presidential power of lawless action. It's against the law for me to steal your car. If I do it anyway and then say, "Look, all you have to do to nullify my lawless action is sign over the title to me, that way it will all be nice and proper" does that really make it all better? Oath, Shmoath I've long argued that the only impeachable offense committed by George W. Bush was when he signed McCain–Feingold into law while admitting that he thought parts of it were unconstitutional. The president takes an oath to protect the Constitution every bit as binding as the one the Supreme Court Justices take. If you're president or a member of Congress it is a violation of your oath to green-light an unconstitutional act, whether or not you think the Supreme Court will fix it. For much of American history, Congress and the president frequently torpedoed legislation they considered unconstitutional without outsourcing the question to the courts. For vexatious reasons, we now think that the court isn't merely the final word on the Constitution, but the only word on the Constitution. It is a corruption of republican principles. What Obama is doing is different. He said over and over again that he doesn't have the constitutional authority to do what he is doing. Has he indicated even once that he changed his mind thanks to some new theory of the Constitution? Maybe he has and I missed it. But does anyone on God's green earth actually believe him? Not me. In his speech last night, he didn't invoke some novel interpretation of the president's constitutional authority. Rather he invoked, however obliquely, a higher authority: History. Read the whole thing, here. | 
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