Letter: The president has no clothes | PostIndependent.com

Letter: The president has no clothes

Floyd Diemoz
Glenwood Springs

President Obama just announced his executive action overturning our country’s immigration laws by redefining the status of individuals who gained access to our country illegally. However, during two dozen past speeches, he forcefully insisted he has no constitutional authority to ignore or change our immigration laws. “That’s not how our Constitution is written,” he stated.

In 1828, Arthur J. Stansbury published an impressive 80-page textbook used in our country’s schools entitled “Elementary Catechism of the Constitution of the United States.” The book instilled in youngsters the knowledge of our founding Constitution created on September 17, 1787, and the freedom and liberty it bestows upon our country’s citizens.

Questions and answers from this book:

Q. Who executes the laws which Congress have made, that is, who takes care that everybody shall obey the laws?

A. The president of the United States.

Q. Can he (the president) make the law?

A. Not at all. These two powers, of making law and executing law, are kept by the Constitution, entirely separate; the power that makes the law cannot execute it, and the power that executes the law cannot make it. (The one of these powers is called the legislative, and the other is called the executive power.)

Q. Is there any advantage in this?

A. Certainly; it is the great safeguard of freedom; because, if the one (Congress) makes oppressive laws, the other may refuse to execute them; or, if the one (the president), wishes to do tyrannical acts, the other may refuse to make a law for them.

Barack Obama, who described his profession as a University of Chicago constitutional law professor, clearly knew he did not have presidential powers to change immigration law. He certified his previous verdict with two unforgettable declarations: “I am not the king.” “I am not the emperor of the United States.”

Was it the king or the emperor who was promised a new suit of clothes that were too invisible for the stupid to see?

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