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Sen. Rand Paul tried to convince America that Obama is committing a crime, but instead he fell flat on his face and showed the world that he doesn’t know what the president actually does.

Video from Fox News:

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Sen. Paul was trying to build the case that it is illegal for President Obama to delay parts of the ACA when his intellectual choo-choo went off the tracks. Paul said, “The way our country works is that legislation is written by Congress, passed by your representatives, the president doesn’t get to write legislation, and it’s illegal and unconstitutional for him to change legislation himself.”

Rand Paul doesn’t understand what the role of the president is. The Executive Branch is in charge of implementing the law. The whole problem with Sen. Paul’s argument is that he referred to the ACA as legislation, but it isn’t legislation. The Affordable Care Act is the law, and Executive Branch has been constitutionally given the power to implement the law. These sorts of delays in implementation are common. Both Democratic and Republican administrations have used them.

The Supreme Court has found that it is constitutional for the Executive Branch to delay the implementation of a law, “As held by former Chief Justice William Rehnquist in a leading case on this subject, Heckler v. Chaney, courts must respect an agency’s presumptively superior grasp of “the many variables involved in the proper ordering of its priorities.” Chief Justice Rehnquist suggested that courts could lose their deference to Executive Branch judgment if an “agency has consciously and expressly adopted a general policy that is so extreme as to amount to an abdication of its statutory responsibilities.” The Obama Administration has not and is not about to abdicate its responsibility to implement the statute on whose success his historical legacy will most centrally depend.”

This means that Rand Paul exhibited not only an ignorance of the constitution, but I think the Kentucky senator doesn’t know what the Executive Branch actually does. The president doesn’t write or change legislation. He implements the law. The law is not legislation. The Executive Branch can’t rewrite it. How can President Obama be both breaking the law, and rewriting legislation at the same time on the ACA? The ACA can’t be both legislation and a law, so which is it? As soon as President Obama signed it, the ACA was a law.

Rand Paul’s ignorance of the how the government that he is supposed to be serving in works is astounding. Rand Paul wants to be president. He will be running for the Republican nomination in 2016, and lots of Republicans will probably vote for him.

Paul symbolizes the ignorance of a political opposition that is completely clueless about how their government operates. Anybody who stands with Rand should be forced to wear an I’m With Stupid t-shirt.