Some Democrats, like Kevin Drum of Mother Jones, are so in the tank for President Obama that they will excuse any use of executive power no matter how badly it shreds the Constitution.
For example, last week after Obama again delayed Obamacare regulations on health insurance plans, Drum wrote, "As regular readers know, I don't have much patience with right-wing paranoia about how President Obama is ripping apart our democracy by relentlessly issuing executive orders and reinterpreting agency rules."
But other liberals, who have actually studied law, are beginning to develop their own "paranoia" about where Obama's "I will act on my own" strategy is headed.
George Washington University Law School professor and frequent Rachel Maddow Show guest Jonathan Turley, for example, wrote in this Sunday's Los Angeles Times:
The United States is at a constitutional tipping point: The rise of an uber presidency unchecked by the other two branches. This massive shift of authority threatens the stability and functionality of our tripartite system of checks and balances.Turley goes on to list a number of policy areas that Obama has exceeded his constitutional role, including immigration, education, energy, and drug policy....
Democrats better hope they win the White House forever. Because the next Republican president, whomever he or she is, is taking notes on Obama's executive power grabs now. And Democrats will not like how that president will uses them.
