It’s not news to anyone who isn’t sleeping 24/7 that President Barack Obama has little regard for the constitution, court orders, or laws of the land. It’s also not news that this president uses Executive Orders (EO) to bypass Congress and do whatever he pleases. Here, however, are two things that may be news to you.

1.White House guts the Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) in 2009

Don’t feel bad if you weren’t aware of this. The White House didn’t want to make a big deal out of it. It only came to light when Cause of Action, a watch dog group that monitors government transparency and accountability, got a hold of an April 15, 2009, memo from then-White House Counsel Greg Craig instructing the executive branch to let White House officials review any documents sought by FOIA requestors that involved “White House equities”.

What are “White House equities”? That’s a good question. Mr. Craig did not to define the term and you won’t find the term anywhere in the Freedom Of Information Act. As it turns out, a “White House equity” is anything of interest to the White House, which means all documents requested under FOIA must first go to the White House for review and redacting. Bruce McQuain of Questions and Observations writes:

What this effectively does is stop federal agencies from answering FOIA requests which might include “White House equities” within the 20 days required by law. There is no apparent limit to the review time the White House can take with its “review” of such requests. Since the White House gets to decide what are “White House equities” and how long it will take to review requests which include them, the change effectively neuters the intent of the FOIA law. This gives the White House the ability to delay release of such information until it is politically beneficial for them to do so (or, in reality, not at all):

The Washington Examiner chimes in with this:

The equities exception is breathtaking in its breadth. As the Greg memo put it, any document request is covered, including “congressional committee requests, GAO requests, judicial subpoenas and FOIA requests.” And it doesn’t matter what format the documents happen to be in because, according to Greg, the equities exception “applies to all documents and records, whether in oral, paper, or electronic form, that relate to communications to and from the White House, including preparations for such communications.”

So much for the Freedom of Information Act. So much for the most transparent administration ever! With the stroke of a White House pen, our rights under FOIA were nullified.

2. Obama usurps the power of the UN Security Council

I’m serious! How else do you explain the President’s most recent EO placing sanctions on eleven Russian citizens because they may have some how, some way had something to do with the people of Crimea voting to become part of Russia? Did the people of Crimea break some US law? Did Russian President Putin break some US law for accepting to take in the Crimea? Do the actions of the people of Crimea and Putin pose an imminent threat to the security of the United States? By what US law did President Obama justify this EO? Aren’t these kinds of sanctions usually authorized by the UN Security Council?

My good friend, 5etester, has a must read post up at his Spellchek blog on this latest Executive Branch overreach. He includes all of the pertinent sections of Mr. Obama’s EO titled “Blocking Property of Certain Persons Contributing to the Situation in Ukraine”. Please take time to read it. For now let me share with you a couple of excerpts.

Of course, all of this legalese wordsmithing had to come about because our President has no legal authority to seize private property from foreigners. Fact is, you won’t find any language in U.S. law outlining the fact that these 11 random individuals targeted by the Obama Administration are a threat to the interests of the United States and therefore we are justified in seizing their assets. This is important because an EO is supposed to clarify law in order to assist its execution. You can’t clarify what never existed, so in this case you just make it up. {…} Utilizing vested authority due to acts of war on our interests abroad could be extrapolated to anyone, anywhere. Same goes with national defense. Our “interests” can literally mean anything. We may view a referendum vote, such as in Crimea, as invalid. Yet these types of votes occur across the globe all the time. North Korea anyone? Venezuela? Cuba? Where are the EO’s condemning those votes? Why aren’t we seizing assets there? {…} The longer the Executive Branch goes unchecked, the greater the likelihood they will misuse that power. We’ve already extended the battlefield to include the entire globe. These types of EO’s extend our potential adversary’s to include all Americans as well. Russia may be employing Cold War tactics, but Obama is employing globalist new world order tactics. It is tyrannical.

The Emperor may have no clothes and the world may view President Obama as a wimp, but he has a mighty pen from which tyranny flows. He is but a more polished version of the president of the country where I live.

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. _Ronald Reagan

Well, that’s what I’m thinking. What are your thoughts?