printMark Levin would be a powerful force for liberty were he libertarian. In one magnificent rant against the regime, Levin wanted to know why no Democrat had protested Obama’s overweening ways. This is not quite true. As this column often pointed out, the late, great, Democratic Senator Robert Byrd was driven to distraction by Big Man Obama and said as much. Byrd, RIP, was “a stern constitutional scholar who always stood up for the legislative branch in its role in checking the power of the White House.” This old Southern gentleman, whom Republicans continually berated for his past indiscretions, warned about Obama’s executive-branch power grab and the extra-constitutional creation of a number of new White-House fiefdoms: on health reform, urban affairs policy, and energy and climate change.
“I oppose using the budget reconciliation process to pass health care reform and climate change legislation…. As one of the authors of the reconciliation process, I can tell you that the ironclad parliamentary procedures it authorizes were never intended for this purpose.”
The frail senator had taken to the floor of the United States Senate on October 14, 2009, “to discuss the situation in Afghanistan and voice his concerns over the possibility of a major increase in U.S. forces into Afghanistan”:
“General McChrystal, our current military commander in Afghanistan, has requested 30,000-40,000 additional American troops to bolster the more than 65,000 American troops already there. I am not clear as to his reasons and I have many, many questions. What does General McChrystal actually aim to achieve?” “So I am compelled to ask: does it really, really take 100,000 U.S. troops to find Osama bin Laden?”
MORE.
Then there is WND columnist Nat Hentoff. I know not whether he is a Democrats, but Hentoff is something of a liberal, who has accused Obama of “an unprecedented abuse of powers,” calling him the “most un-American president in the nation’s history.”
… The journalist said he doesn’t think any other president has acted so lawlessly as a matter of habit.
“So, if this isn’t a reason for at least the start of an independent investigation that would lead to impeachment, what is?”
Hentoff is baffled that Obama should escape such scrutiny when former President Bill Clinton faced impeachment just for being “a lousy liar.”
President Bill Clinton
A big part of the problem, the journalist believes, is what he calls the utter ignorance of a huge portion of the population, which is not outraged at losing its basic right to be self-governing.
And Obama “doesn’t give a damn, because he can get away with whatever he wants.”
That’s why Hentoff called this the worst state the country has ever been in, “Even worse than Woodrow Wilson’s regime, when people could be arrested for speaking German.” …
UPDATE: Liberal constitutional scholar Jonathan Turley has also protested the emergence of the Über-Presidency in the person of BHO. MORE.