Krauthammer's astute observations can be found here.
My question: How can Congress and the courts allow Obama's actions to stand? The Constitution protects us against Dictatorship. If the Chief Executive is allowed to promulgate and execute laws on his own -- laws which Congress has refused to pass -- then this Republic has turned into a Dictatorship. Obama's action must be challenged. As Krauthammer explains:
Imagine: A Republican president submits to Congress a bill abolishing the capital gains tax. Congress rejects it. The president then orders the IRS to stop collecting capital gains taxes and declares that anyone refusing to pay them will suffer no fine, no penalty, no sanction whatsoever. . . . It would be a scandal, a constitutional crisis, a cause for impeachment. . . Capital gains is straightforward tax law. Just as Obama’s bombshell amnesty-by-fiat is a subversion of straightforward immigration law.
Sure it's smart politics. But smart politics does not justify assuming Dictatorial powers over the People. I agree with Krauthammer's further point:
The case for compassion and fairness is hardly as clear-cut as advertised. What about those who languish for years in godforsaken countries awaiting legal admission to America? Their scrupulousness about the law could easily cost their children the American future that illegal immigrants will have secured for theirs.
What about them indeed? Krauthammer again:
But whatever our honest and honorable disagreements about the policy, what holds us together is a shared allegiance to our constitutional order. That’s the fundamental issue here. As Obama himself argued in rejecting the executive action he has now undertaken, “America is a nation of laws, which means I, as the president, am obligated to enforce the law. I don’t have a choice about that.”
Except, apparently, when violating that solemn obligation serves his reelection needs.