#604 (8/8) "Obama's Creeping Authoritarianism"

PRAISES AND PRAYER REQUESTS:

Congress to Investigate Planned Parenthood Abortion BusinessThe Government Accountability Office’s (GAO), a Congressional agency, has indicated it will conduct an investigation of the Planned Parenthood abortion, business, which was recently busted for millions of dollars of Medicaid fraud in Texas. The abortion giant has engaged in at least $12.5 million in fraud over multiple states — that has become public knowledge so far  .http://www.lifenews.com/2013/08/06/congress-to-investigate-planned-parenthood-[PRAY that this industry that destroys hundreds of thousands of lives of lives every year AND receives almost 1/2 billion dollars in taxpayer money while non-profits that ONLY help women and their unborn get none, that they will finally be FULLY investigated.]

"Angry Islamists Turn Wrath on Egypt's Christians,"  By George Thomas, CBN News Sr. Reporter http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/world/2013/July/Angry-Islamists-Turn-Wrath-on-Egypts-Christians/  Friday, July 12, 201 - "Egyptian Christians are facing growing retaliation by angry Islamists for opposing ousted President Moham3med Morsi. His supporters say Christian leaders were behind his removal from office....On Thursday, the body of a Christian merchant was found decapitated in a cemetery. Last Saturday, a Coptic Christian priest was shot by gunmen in an outdoor market. Also, days after the military coup that removed Morsi from office, Muslim extremists in southern Egypt burned dozens of Christian homes and stabbed four believers to death. "It's part of the Brotherhood's mobilization that they are targeting Christians, that they are renouncing them as behind this. If the Brotherhood is able to portray what happened as a Christian-dominated or Christian-driven protest, then they get to gain massive support in the streets," Tadros explained.PRAY for the nation of Egypt, as it faces a crucial  moment, 1) that the recent events would result in its becoming a true democracy and NOT an Islamic state; 2)  that the peoples' freedoms, in particular the religious freedom of its minorities (specifically its oppressed Christians) would be protected; 3) for peace and stability to return; 4) that the U.S. will effectively reach out to the new government, and 3) for safety for Americans living in Egypt.

"American Pastor Saeed: 300 Illegal Days in an Iranian Prison,"  - by Jordan Sekulow, July 23, 2013 http://aclj.org/iran/american-pastor-saeed-300-illegal-days-iranian-prison ''Today [7/23] is the 300th day of American Pastor Saeed Abedini’s illegal imprisonment in Iran – 300 days away from his wife and kids, 300 days of torment for his Christian faith, 300 days and counting...Pastor Saeed’s wife, Naghmeh Abedini, responded to this positive step:"Thank you to all of the individuals who have prayed, written letters, signed petitions, called government officials, run benefit races, tweeted, and shared Saeed’s story. Thank you to all the government officials from around the world who have stood for my husband.  Iran has listened to your pleas.  While I am encouraged that Saeed is finally getting medical care, the fight is not yet over.  It has been a difficult 300 days – 300 days of torment simply because Saeed loves Jesus Christ.  I am hopeful Iran will do the just and honorable thing and release Saeed.'' ...We continue to work in this country and in the international community to secure Pastor Saeed’s freedom.  And more than 600,000 people around the world now stand in solidarity with Pastor Saeed at SaveSaeed.org. [ I urge you to pray DAILY for this courageous brother in Christ and his family and the hundreds of thousands of other Christians worldwide suffering persecution for their faith. - Stan] 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Obama's Creeping Authoritarianism; Imposed Law Replaces Checks and Balances. July 31,2013, Daniel Henninger:  http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324136204578639953580480838.html

If we learned anything about Barack Obama in his first term it is that when he starts repeating the same idea over and over, what's on his mind is something else.

The first term's over-and-over subject was "the wealthiest 1%." Past some point, people wondered why he kept beating these half-dead horses. After the election, we knew. It was to propagandize the targeted voting base that would provide his 4% popular-vote margin of victory—very young voters and minorities. They believed. He won.

The second-term over-and-over, elevated in his summer speech tour, is the shafting of the middle class. But the real purpose here isn't the speeches' parboiled proposals. It is what he says the shafting of the middle class is forcing him to do. It is forcing him to "act"—to undertake an unprecedented exercise of presidential power in domestic policy-making. ObamaCare was legislated. In the second term, new law will come from him.

Please don't complain later that you didn't see it coming. As always, Mr. Obama states publicly what his intentions are. He is doing that now. Toward the end of his speech last week in Jacksonville, Fla., he said: "So where I can act on my own, I'm going to act on my own. I won't wait for Congress." (Applause.)

The July 24 speech at Knox College in Galesburg, Ill., has at least four references to his intent to act on his own authority, as he interprets it: "That means whatever executive authority I have to help the middle class, I'll use it." (Applause.) And: "We're going to do everything we can, wherever we can, with or without Congress."

Every president since George Washington has felt frustration with the American system's impediments to change. This president is done with Congress.The political left, historically inclined by ideological belief to public policy that is imposed rather than legislated, will support Mr. Obama's expansion of authority. The rest of us should not.

The U.S. has a system of checks and balances. Mr. Obama is rebalancing the system toward a national-leader model that is alien to the American tradition. To create public support for so much unilateral authority, Mr. Obama needs to lessen support for the other two branches of government—Congress and the judiciary. He is doing that.

Mr. Obama and his supporters in the punditocracy are defending this escalation by arguing that Congress is "gridlocked." But don't overstate that low congressional approval rating. This is the one branch that represents the views of all Americans. It's gridlocked because voters are.

Related Video

Wonder Land columnist Dan Henninger on how President Obama and his predecessors have eroded America’s constitutional checks and balances. Photo: Associated Press

Take a closer look at the Galesburg and Jacksonville speeches. Mr. Obama doesn't merely criticize Congress. He mocks it repeatedly. Washington "ignored" problems. It "made things worse." It "manufactures" crises and "phony scandals." He is persuading his audiences to set Congress aside and let him act.

So too the judiciary. During his 2010 State of the Union speech, Mr. Obama denounced the Supreme Court Justices in front of him. The National Labor Relations Board has continued to issue orders despite two federal court rulings forbidding it to do so. Attorney General Eric Holder says he will use a different section of the Voting Rights Act to impose requirements on Southern states that the Supreme Court ruled illegal. Mr. Obama's repeated flouting of the judiciary and its decisions are undermining its institutional authority, as intended.

The three administration nominees enabled by the Senate's filibuster deal—Richard Cordray at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Thomas Perez at the Labor Department and EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy—open a vast swath of American life to executive authority on steroids. There won't be enough hours in the day for Mr. Obama to "act on my own."

In a recent Journal op-ed, "Obama Suspends the Law," former federal judge Michael McConnell noted there are few means to stop a president who decides he is not obligated to execute laws as passed by Congress. So there's little reason to doubt we'll see more Obamaesque dismissals of established law, as with ObamaCare's employer mandate. Mr. Obama is pushing in a direction that has the potential for a political crisis.

A principled opposition would speak out. Barack Obama is right that he isn't running again. But the Democratic Party is. Their Republican opponents should force the party's incumbents to defend the president's creeping authoritarianism.If Democratic Senate incumbents or candidates from Louisiana, Alaska, Missouri, Arkansas, North Carolina, Montana and Iowa think voters should accede to a new American system in which a president forces laws into place as his prerogative rather than first passing them through Congress, they should be made to say so.

And to be sure, the other purpose of the shafted middle-class tour is to demolish the GOP's standing with independent voters and take back the House in 2014. If that happens—and absent a more public, aggressive Republican voice it may—an unchecked, unbalanced presidential system will finally arrive.

A final quotation on America's system of government: "To ensure that no person or group would amass too much power, the founders established a government in which the powers to create, implement, and adjudicate laws were separated. Each branch of government is balanced by powers in the other two coequal branches." Source: The White House website of President Barack Obama.

[bold  and italics emphasis mine]