“We make the rules, pal.”
—Michael Douglass as Gordon Gekko in Wall Street
Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced that he is unilaterally overriding the core requirement of the No Child Left Behind law, waiving the statute’s math proficiency requirements because Congress has failed to revise the law to his satisfaction.
I am no fan of No Child Left Behind, but this action ought to scare the bejeezus out of anyone who’s paying attention. The Administration, by the stroke of a pen fueled by agency fiat, is overruling an act of Congress. It’s essentially a retroactive line-item veto of a statute passed several Congresses and a Presidential Administration ago. There’s been no vote, no hearings, no debate.
This is yet another in a growing list of examples of this Administration’s total disregard for the Constitution. Obama will enforce what he wants, when he wants. It doesn’t matter what the Congress (or past Congresses) do, or even what the Courts say. He is the sole arbiter of what is right, just, fair, and Constitutional. It is not his to execute the laws duly passed by the Congress, but his to filter those laws according to his own whim.
Is anyone else tired of Obama playing judge, jury, and executioner?
It must be good to be the king.
"Mr Chavez approved 49 laws by decree during the first year of his previous term, after the assembly passed a similar "Enabling Law" in November 2000. Now the president says an Enabling Law is a key step in what he calls an accelerating march toward socialism. He has said he wants to see major Venezuelan power and telecoms companies come under state control." BBC reported.
ReplyDeleteThis sure sounds familiar. I believe Hilter passed an "Enabling Act of 1933" as well.