A professor at George Washington University School of Law, Jonathan Turley, who says he voted for President Obama and agrees with him on a lot of issues, is faulting Mr. Obama for taking the law into his own hands. From an interview Professor Turley gave to NPR's Here & Now:
I'm afraid I think he is violating the Constitution...the most serious violations, in my view, are various cases when he went to Congress, as in the immigration field, as in the healthcare field, as for very specific things, and was rejected, and then decided just to order those on his own. He's also been accused of shifting large amounts of money from their appointed or appropriated purpose to other purposes. ...what we're seeing with the Obama administration is really a systemic circumvention of Congress.
I agree with Professor Turley that this is troubling. Right now, with the Democrats in control of the Senate, Congress as a whole seems reluctant to challenge Mr. Obama on these matters. If the Republicans were to win control of the Senate in the 2014 elections and keep control of the House, they'd be in a stronger position to enact laws hemming in the president on some of these matters. Mr. Obama could attempt to veto those laws. At a certain point, though, if he is going to brazenly disregard the laws that are already on the books, Congress is going to hold hearings, it might try to sue, and, in an extreme case, it might try to impeach the president.
