So what is one more statute-defying executive branch change (tip to Instapundit)?
This is not the first time the administration has suggested that it's going to go against the plain text of the law, either. Why is the administration taking such a careless attitude toward a law it spent a year crafting?
It’s hard to come up with a reason that bodes well. Lawsuits seem inevitable, and unwinnable. At best, the White House is buying some time to try to get things up and working; at worst, it hasn't even thought that far ahead.
This would seem to be almost a dream of Thomas Friedman, who joined the debate during the Congressional legislating phase of this drama:
Watching both the health care and climate/energy debates in Congress, it is hard not to draw the following conclusion: There is only one thing worse than one-party autocracy, and that is one-party democracy, which is what we have in America today.
One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks. But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today, it can also have great advantages.
Of course, even if you want to grant the "reasonably enlightened" part, President Obama is not an autocrat. He can go through the motions of simply issuing orders, but the courts are unlikely to support his broad interpretation of executive quasi-legislative powers.
On the bright side, President Obama has managed to get the level of trust in government statistics that China has! So that's progress, eh?
Of course, Tom's China crush didn't work out so well on the Green front, either.
Well, at least we don't have the autocrat who isn't close to being reasonably enlightened:
After months pressing Congress, Nicolás Maduro was granted emergency decree powers yesterday, immediately sparking celebrations at the Miraflores Presidential palace, and unease among Chavismo detractors.
"They [the bourgeoisie] underestimated me; they said Maduro was an amateur," the president called out to hundreds of red-clad supporters. "[But] what you've seen is little compared to what we're going to do."
Yeah, that's working out swell.
We do have the opposite of what Venezuela has, and not just the early stages of the same thing, don't we?
UPDATE: I may have been hasty. The Senate exercised the "nuclear option" to remove super-majority requirements to allow President Obama to pack the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, which has been a check on executive powers but which doesn't actually need more judges given its work load:
The Administrative Office ranks the twelve circuits using various caseload benchmarks: 2013 is the 17th straight year that the office has ranked the D.C. Circuit last on both appeals being filed and appeals being terminated. There simply is no need for more judges on the D.C. Circuit when those there now do not have enough to do — unless, of course, the aim is to have a bench more sympathetic to rule by presidential diktat, which may be precisely why Senator Reid wants to go nuclear.
This is how they want to play the game? Then that's how it will be played. Will the media condemn this move as they berated talk when Republicans were upset with Democrats blocking Bush 43's nominations? Or wait until a Republican-controlled Senate does the exact same thing in the future?
