The Law And The Lawless Part 3: New Excrescences

We really can't afford this any longer. If there's ever going to be a penalty for lawlessness imposed upon any element of the federal government, it has to happen now.

There is no imaginable rationale by which:

• Five senior Taliban commanders could be released from Camp X-Ray without Congressional notification,
• In exchange for the release of a pro-Taliban deserter,
• By the decree of a president who signed the very law that forbids him to do any such thing,

...but Congress nevertheless allows that president to remain in the Oval Office.

Yet there has been no call for the impeachment and trial of Barack Hussein Obama.

To be sure, Obama did make his intentions plain long ago:

The law requires the defense secretary to notify relevant congressional committees at least 30 days before making any transfers of prisoners, to explain the reason and to provide assurances that those released would not be in a position to reengage in activities that could threaten the United States or its interests.

Before the current law was enacted at the end of last year, the conditions were even more stringent. However, the administration and some Democrats had pressed for them to be loosened, in part to give them more flexibility to negotiate for Bergdahl’s release.

A senior administration official, agreeing to speak on the condition of anonymity to explain the timing of the congressional notification, acknowledged that the law was not followed. When he signed the law last year, Obama issued a signing statement contending that the notification requirement was an unconstitutional infringement on his powers as commander in chief and that he therefore could override it.

...so it's not as if we weren't warned.

Say, weren't the Democrats in high dudgeon about this "signing statements" business just a few years back? Oh, right: that was when a Republican held the White House. Forget I mentioned it.

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Way back in ancient history, before the Internet, before the iPod -- even before the CD! -- Congress impeached a president for violating the law:

• For Dismissing Edwin Stanton from office after the Senate had voted not to concur with his dismissal and had ordered him reinstated.
• For Appointing Thomas Secretary of War ad interim despite the lack of vacancy in the office, since the dismissal of Stanton had been invalid.
• For Appointing Thomas without the required advice and consent of the Senate.
• For Conspiring, with Thomas and "other persons to the House of Representatives unknown," to unlawfully prevent Stanton from continuing in office.
• For Conspiring to unlawfully curtail faithful execution of the Tenure of Office Act.
• For Conspiring to "seize, take, and possess the property of the United States in the Department of War."
• For Conspiring to "seize, take, and possess the property of the United States in the Department of War" with specific intent to violate the Tenure of Office Act.
• For Issuing to Thomas the authority of the office of Secretary of War with unlawful intent to "control the disbursements of the moneys appropriated for the military service and for the Department of War."
• For Issuing to Major General William H. Emory orders with unlawful intent to violate the Tenure of Office Act.
• For Making three speeches with intent to show disrespect for the Congress among the citizens of the United States.

Johnson remained in office, as the Senate failed by a single vote to muster the required two-third concurrence to his removal. Yet a precedent had been established: for a president to violate the standing law of the United States, regardless of his reasons for doing so, was sufficient cause to impeach him. Indeed, "showing disrespect for the Congress" was considered sufficient.

Why has the House of Representatives not acted? Are our Representatives entirely without self-respect? Has the leadership in the House been informed, sotto voce, that no Senate Democrat would vote to convict, despite Obama's blatant violation of a law that he signed, in a clear infringement of Congressional prerogatives? Would so blatant a violation of federal law be tolerated were the violator a private citizen -- or a Republican?

Provide your own answers. I have mine.

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It's impossible to evade the implications any longer. The Constitution is dead. Government by law is dead. Adherence to the law by those elected to make it is dead. Indeed, it's our elected officials who committed the murders -- while we sat and watched.

What remains is naked force: the Rods and the Axe, in whatever hand holds the preponderance of them.

A number of persons in the freedom movement have already proclaimed the necessity of an uprising. Yet nothing of significance has followed. That might be for the best, as the nation is so evenly divided, in defiance of all logic and evidence, that we'd likely be fighting one another rather than federal forces. The regime will remain in place until...whatever.

Don't expect the November elections to make much difference, now that it's plain that Obama considers himself, and by extension those around him, to be unbound by the law, whether statutory or Constitutional.

Come to think of it, just how much confidence can we have that Obama will step down on January 20, 2017? That's a mere clause on parchment, too. Why should that provision of the Constitution matter more than the ones he's already violated?

Various persons -- on both sides of the aisle -- have argued for the repeal of the Twenty-Second Amendment. During the Reagan years, it was Republicans; today it's Democrats. The rationale has always been the same -- "allow the people to have who they want!" -- but the covert agenda has had little to do with "the people's freedom of choice."

Perhaps the repeal of the Twenty-Second Amendment will be de facto, rather than by the Constitutional amendment procedure. It would be consistent, at least...and little more horrifying than the eviscerations of law we've already suffered in silence.

Pray.