Liberals have shown a repeated tendency to simply not enforce laws they don’t like. In 2011, Obama’s Justice Department decided that it would effectively repeal the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act without the consent of Congress.
A year later, Politico was reporting that the Obama decision to not enforce the laws it didn’t like had expanded. The story began this way:
On issue after issue — gay rights, drug enforcement, Internet gambling, school achievement standards — the administration has chosen to achieve its goals by a method best described as passive-aggressive. Rather than pushing new laws through a divided Congress to enact his agenda, Obama is relying on federal agencies to ignore, or at least not defend, laws that some of his important supporters — like Hispanic voters and the gay community — don’t like. ‘If the president says we’re not going to enforce the law, there’s really nothing anyone can do about it,’ University of Pennsylvania constitutional law professor Kermit Roosevelt said. ‘It’s clearly a political calculation.’
Dangerous ground for our Republic – Leadership roles are watched and then emulated; when the President, when top Federal appointed officials, refuses to “faithfully execute the laws”, what to do? Certainly our “feckless” opposition (e.g., the GOP) seem to have no answer (mostly because they are too scared to hammer down and use their Constitutional powers (impeachment and/or power of the purse) because they are more willing to risk the Republic than to risk their seats. “But we’ll LOSE”, they whine. Well, what’s the difference when you fail to “win” with your asses in those seats? But that behavior is emulated and trickled down; Conservative Review continues:
This pattern is being picked up elsewhere. In 2013, after the Obama policy of not enforcing laws the enforcer does not like had made headlines, the Washington Post reported Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane was refusing to enforce a state law banning same-sex marriages.
Thus having sent a vividly clear message about the non-obligation of law enforcement to enforce the law – suddenly there is shock…shock!…that down there in Alabama the Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, Roy Moore, has signaled state probate judges are free to ignore a federal court ruling that has overturned a state law banning same-sex marriage.
How about immigration for another (i.e., piling on all of the privileges of citizenship upon illegals?); the list could go and on and on. Here in NH just take Voter Fraud for instance – we’ve written about it LOTS of time here on the ‘Grok – from the State AG’s office downward, laws are either just ignored or so mis-interpreted in word or intent, they’re useless.
When it continues and State level elected leaders, when ANYONE in government, refuses to “faithfully execute the laws”, what to do when the costs to citizens to take it upon themselves to remedy such situations and the on-going non-enforcement is even higher?
What we are seeing is a situation that the Founders NEVER thought would ever happen – they were men of honor and duty (“my word is my bond”) that felt their descendents would always be mindful of not just their Rights but also their Responsibilities before The Law. Sadly, we see allegiance and fealty, not to The Rule of Law and the Constitutions, to ideologies – especially the Progressive one that has been doing all that it can to deny that the Constitution has relevancy (either outright denigration or by a complete re-defining its words to no longer reflect their original intent).
