Obama’s Malleable View of Constitutions

Obama’s defense of Ukraine’s constitutional authority would be equivalent to listening to Bill Clinton lecturing on the benefits of sexual abstinence

Obama’s Malleable View of Constitutions

Checking to make sure that there was an easily understandable definition of the word, the dictionary defines Constitution as “the fundamental political principles on which a nation-state is governed, especially when considered as embodying the rights of the subjects of that nation-state and the statute embodying such principles.”

One would think that the President of the first nation to create that very thing, a legal statute that embodied the fundamental political principles, and who also was a college level lecturer on the topic of the Constitution, would have absolutely no problem in dealing with the concept.

Unfortunately for us, and for several other nations, Mr. Obama seems to view constitution to be infinitely malleable, and are subject to change upon a change in his whims of the day.

As far back as 2001, Barack Obama said in a radio interview with Public Radio station WBEZ-FM that the U.S. Supreme Court (under Chief Justice Earl Warren)

“…didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution, at least as it’s been interpreted and Warren Court interpreted in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. Says what the states can’t do to you. Says what the Federal government can’t do to you, but doesn’t say what the Federal government or State government must do on your behalf…”

So even at that time, the President announced clearly that he disagreed with the judgments of the Founding Fathers and two centuries of successfully working within the framework of the U.S. Constitution.  He had a different view of how the Constitution should have been written, and that had he been alive in 1789, he would have made sure it was different.

Of course he would have been limited to having only a pen at that time, since his Blackberry wasn’t even a science fiction fantasy at that time.

Apparently Obama’s disdain for Constitutions is not limited to only home grown ones, or limited to only with regard to “negative liberties.”  Fast forward to June 2009 and look at Honduras.

Manuel Zelaya, who was then in his second term as president of Honduras, violated that country’s Constitution (specifically Article 239) which bans presidents from holding office if they even propose to alter the constitutional term limits for presidents.

Apparently Mr. Zelaya really liked being president of Honduras, and wanted to change his country’s Constitution so that he could continue in the job.  Note again that any president of Honduras loses the right to serve as president if he even proposes a change like that.  The Honduran Supreme Court, expressly had the right to remove the president for seeking to alter the constitutional term limit, under Article 272 of the Honduran Constitution.

But apparently this made Obama upset, so he declared the Constitutional crisis in Honduras to have been a “coup”.  It wasn’t, of course. Sadly, for Obama, if he were to snivel that he didn’t like that part of the Honduran Constitution it probably would have been a public relations nightmare for him.

One might infer that Obama personally wanted that presidential term limit article to be ignored by the citizens of Honduras because it might set a bad precedent if he wanted to run for a third term himself.  Then Senator (and now Secretary of State) John Kerry agreed with Obama’s idea that the removal of a president who had acted contrary to the clear language of his nation’s Constitution must have been a “coup.”  This view was vocally supported by the then Secretary of State, Hillary Rodham Clinton who lusts after the idea of being Obama’s replacement.

Mr. Obama’s disdain for the U.S. Constitution has been demonstrated on a continuing basis over the five years that he has been in office, with “recess appointments” to the NLRB when the Senate was not in recess, the innumerable delays, waivers, interpretations and so on related to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, and so on.

Given Obama’s disdain for any constitutional limits on doing whatever pops into his head at any time, his reaction to the situation in Ukraine becomes almost comical. Sadly, even the always irreverent magazine The Onion couldn’t have seen the idea that Obama would leap to the defense of Ukraine by saying that the Crimean referendum was illegitimate and (wait for it) unconstitutional.  Even Nancy Pelosi was probably tempted to ask “Are you serious?”

The idea that Barack Obama would demand deference to any nation’s constitution is on a par with, well, nothing readily comes to mind.
Well perhaps it would be like seeing Dr. Jack Kervorkian leading a Right-to-Life rally, or perhaps seeing Willy Sutton doing an infomercial telling people how safe banks are.
It’s possible I suppose that Obama’s defense of Ukraine’s constitutional authority would be equivalent to listening to Bill Clinton lecturing on the benefits of sexual abstinence.

But given his history on the subject of adherence to constitutional principles, is it any wonder that no one, anywhere in the world, believes one word of what the man is saying?