Executive Orders

It’s the Substance, Stupid. By Charles C. W. Cooke

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/444231/anthony-de-rosa-doesnt-understand-executive-power?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=170127_G-File&utm_term=GFile

Excerpt: As far as I can see, De Rosa’s contentions here are a) that conservatives deemed many of Obama’s executive orders to be illegal, b) that they have thus far been fine with Trump’s, and c) that they are therefore guilty of hypocrisy. But to arrive at this conclusion one has to be completely ignorant of the rationale on which many of Obama’s orders were critiqued. Outside of a few voices within the fever swamps, the conservative charge against the last president was not that executive orders were illegal per se, but that Obama used executive orders to wield power that he had not been accorded (i.e. ultra vires); to change the meaning of laws that had been passed by Congress (appropriation of legislative power); or to assert authority that the federal government does not enjoy. Or, put another way, the argument against Obama revolved around the substance of some of his orders, not around the orders themselves.