WHY IS OBAMA STILL NOT IN JAIL?
By the standard that a federal judge in Kentucky has used to imprison Kim Davis for almost a week, President Barack Obama should now be behind bars. He has been just as guilty of willfully refusing to obey the law.
I’m not talking about past examples, such as his refusal to enforce the Defense of Marriage Act, or the fact that he has allowed the so-called “sanctuary cities” to openly defy federal laws, or his refusal to enforce other immigration laws.
All of those are valid examples of how the president of the United States has refused to carry out his constitutional mandate to enforce legislation that has been duly enacted by Congress and signed into law by the president.
The latest example of Obama’s deliberate flouting of the law concerns his accord with Iran. I’ve written before about how Obama rigged the deal by calling it an “executive agreement” rather than a treaty, so he could avoid the constitutional requirement that two-thirds of the Senate would have to approve it before it could take effect.
When that happened, both branches of Congress voted overwhelmingly in favor of the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act, which demanded that Congress have an opportunity to pass judgment on the agreement. The vote in the Senate was a nearly unanimous 98-1. The measure was approved in the House by 400-25. I can’t remember any other legislation in recent years that had such strong bipartisan support.
But here’s my point: The act requires that Obama submit the whole deal — including any and all side agreements — to Congress for its review. The measure gave the president until Sept. 7 to comply with this requirement. Obama was well aware of this condition when he signed the measure into law. But now he has flatly refused to submit the side agreement between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency to Congress.
This is no small matter because it is allegedly this side agreement that will allow Iran to forbid outside inspectors to visit some of its nuclear facilities. Iran will conduct its own inspections to see if it is in compliance with the accord, and we’re supposed to meekly accept their conclusions.
Have you ever heard of anything so ridiculous? But that’s the deal John Kerry negotiated.
Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-Kan.), a member of the House Intelligence Committee, co-authored an op-ed about this absurd situation in The Washington Post over the weekend. He was joined by David B. Rivkin Jr., an expert on constitutional law.
In their article, the two contend that the House and Senate “should vote to register their view that the president has not complied with his obligations under the act … and that, as a result, the president remains unable to lift statutory sanctions against Iran.”
I don’t think there’s much chance of Congress’ issuing such a reprimand — or of Obama’s playing any attention if it did.
This is another outrageous example of Obama’s defiance of the law. The consequences of his dictatorial actions will be far more serious than a few days’ delay in issuing marriage licenses to gay couples in a county in Kentucky.
But in this topsy-turvy world, it is Davis who goes to jail for contempt while Democrats in the Senate meekly line up behind a law-defying president.
In a sane world — that is, a world where the members of Congress actually obeyed their oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States — the impeachment hearings would have already begun.
