Liberal George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley believes that President Barack Obama’s forthcoming executive amnesty will be an “unprecedented” and “dangerous” overreach that will threaten America’s constitutional system of governance.
“This would be unprecedented and I think it would be an unprecedented threat to the balance of powers within our system,” Turley said on Friday’s edition of Fox News’ The Kelly File.
Turley noted that Obama is intent on going ahead with his executive amnesty that may “again violate separation of powers” even after the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that Obama did so while making unconstitutional recess appointments. He said that Obama “isn’t being particularly coy about” taking on legislative duties to “become a government of one.”
Reports have indicated that Obama will grant executive amnesty and temporary work permits to possibly five million illegal immigrants as early as this week. Turley, who has opposed presidents of both parties when they have acted unilaterally, has previously said the “framers would be horrified” by the executive actions that are putting constitutional system at its “tipping point.”
Turley added that Obama’s executive amnesty will be even more dangerous because Obama would be defying the will of Congress immediately after an election in which voters rejected Obama’s illegal immigration agenda.
“We have a Congress that is coming in with the full voice of the American people behind them,” Turley said. “That’s what an election is. Now, you may disagree with the outcome, but you have to respect the outcome.”
“We have a separation of powers that gives us balance,” he said. “And that doesn’t protect the branches. It’s not there to protect the executive branch or legislative branch. It’s to protect liberty. It’s to keep any branch from assuming so much control that they become a threat to liberty.”
He added that he tells “a lot of my friends on the Democratic side is that we will rue the day that you help create this uber presidency” that has “been developing a long time” because the next president can go it alone and act on environmental or anti-discrimination issues in a way that liberals may not like. Turley said this is a situation that the “the framers sought to avoid in our Constitution.”
Turley said that what Obama is suggesting he will do on executive amnesty “is tearing at the very fabric of the Constitution.”
“I hope that he does not get away with it if what we’re talking about is a circumvention of the separation of powers,” he said. “Because that is the very thumping heart of our constitutional system.”
Since Obama is making a “mockery of the power of the purse,” Turley urged Americans, even those who want illegal immigrants to be legalized, to “force this issue and say, ‘look, we may agree with you on what you’re trying to do. But we don’t agree how you’re trying to do it.'”
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