Oops, she did it again

Nancy Pelosi is "glad" that President Obama ignored the Advice and Consent requirement of the Constitution on his recent appointments to the National Labor Relations Board and the new bureaucratic beast, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Ms. Pelosi has shown her contempt for the Constitution before. When asked where in the Constitution she found the power to pass Obamacare, Pelosi said, "Are you serious?" President Obama shows a similar contempt about whether the Constitution constrains him.

As reported at The Daily Caller, even "Obama's Deputy Solicitor General Neal Katyal said before the Supreme Court, 'The recess appointment power can work in - in a recess. I think our office has opined the recess has to be longer than three days [to make an appointment].'"



Libertarian constitutional expert Roger Pilon of Cato called the appointments "illegal." Rush Limbaugh said yesterday that these appointments are "extra-constitutional" actions and "clearly lawless . . . if you regard the Constitution as law." That's not tough enough. The Constitution is law. In fact, it's our paramount law. Citizens do things every day that are "extra-constitutional," if by that one means "beyond" the Constitution. But that's because the Constitution isn't the law that was written to constrain citizens. It is the law written to govern government. There are laws written in accordance with the Constitution that we must obey. But if I were to rob a bank, surely the prosecutor would not say that I was acting in an "extra-bank-robbing law" way. If conservatives are really serious about dealing with the Obama/Pelosi world view, then we can't just say that political leaders act "lawlessly" or "extra-constitutionally" when they violate the Constitution. The remedies for constitutional lawbreaking are not the same as remedies for breaking society's other laws. However, we cannot adequately address the tyranny that comes with constitutional lawbreaking unless we start by calling elected officials who act with contempt for the Constitution what they are: lawbreakers. That's a starting point.