WHEN CHECKS AND BALANCES FAIL
On December 16, 2009, Barak Obama once more undermined the security, freedom and sovereignty of the United States, and had the audacity to claim Constitutional authority to do so.
At first blush the Executive Order he signed that day seemed innocent enough. He simply dropped some words and a semicolon from an Executive Order that President Ronald Reagan had signed some 26 years earlier.
In 1983, Pres. Reagan gave Interpol, an international police organization, formal recognition as an International Organization, but with certain controls to prevent it from becoming abusive towards U.S. citizens.
Specifically, Pres. Reagan made it clear that Interpol’s property and assets could be searched and confiscated. He said Interpol’s archives would be subject to American Freedom of Information Act requests as well as other legal inquiry and discovery. That’s how Reagan wanted to protect U.S. citizens under the Constitution from the potential tyrannical behavior of a foreign police power operating within our borders. Interpol went ahead and set up its U.S. headquarters in our own Justice Department buildings.
And then came December 16, 2009.
Obama’s Executive Order 13524 amended Pres. Reagan’s Executive Order 12425 to eliminate those controls. Interpol’s files are no longer open for search and seizure, and its archives may not be examined. It now has full diplomatic immunity.
In short, Obama gave the green light to Interpol to operate inside the U.S. without regard to our Constitution or American law.
Who is INTERPOL?
The International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol) was established in 1923 to help facilitate police investigation work across national borders. The 188 member nations finance it with about $60 million a year from membership fees. It is headquartered in Lyon, France.
Interpol’s governing rules forbid it from investigations that do not overlap the borders of several member countries. Nor may it investigate, so they claim, crimes of a political, military, religious, or racial nature.
Its declared purpose is to focus on a host of other problems: public safety, terrorism, organized crime, crimes against humanity, genocide, war crimes, piracy, illicit drug production and trafficking, weapons smuggling, human trafficking, money laundering, child pornography, white-collar crime, computer crime, intellectual property crime, and corruption.
Former U.S. presidents have been concerned that Interpol might be employed to charge, arrest, or otherwise harass members of America’s Armed Forces for war crimes or other issues as the result of American activities deemed unpopular around the world. That is one reason why the U.S. has not to this point put itself under the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (ICC).
Interpol is the investigative arm of the ICC in the same way our FBI is the investigative arm of the Federal government and its Justice Department.
Can the President Do That?
The genius of the Founders can be seen in their emphasis on checks and balances in the Constitution. They made departments separate as to their assigned functions but made them dependent upon one another to be fully operative.
In order for that balancing act to work efficiently, a system of checks and balances was necessary.
The 17th Principle in Dr. Skousen’s The Five Thousand Year Leap (30th Anniversary Edition), explains the origins and necessity of a system of checks and balances to keep our Federal government not only strong in its assigned duties, but also smart.
That system of checks and balances is failing us. If the other parts of government were doing their job, Obama’s Executive Order 13524 would have met a resounding “NO!” from the members of Congress and the Supreme Court.
Please read the entire article describing Principle 17 for a better understanding. This excerpt below gives the essence of how checks and balances should work. (please note #7 and #17 below)
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The Original Intent of the Founders
As it turned out, the American Founding Fathers achieved a system of checks and balances far more complex than those envisioned by Montesquieu. These included the following provisions:
1. The House of Representatives serves as a check on the Senate since no statute can become law without the approval of the House.
2. At the same time the Senate (representing the legislatures of the states before the 17th Amendment) serves as a check on the House of Representatives since no statute can become law without its approval.
3. A President can restrain both the House and the Senate by using his veto to send back any bill not meeting with his approval.
4. The Congress has, on the other hand, a check on the President by being able to pass a bill over the President’s veto with a two thirds majority of each house.
5. The legislature also has a further check on the President through its power of discrimination in appropriating funds for the operation of the executive branch.
6. The President must have the approval of the Senate in filling important offices of the executive branch.
7. The President must also have the approval of the Senate before any treaties with foreign nations can go into effect.
8. The Congress has the authority to conduct investigations of the executive branch to determine whether or not funds are being properly expended and the laws enforced.
9. The President has a certain amount of political influence on the legislature by letting it be known that he will not support the reelection of those who oppose his program.
10. The executive branch also has a further check on the Congress by using its discretionary powers in establishing military bases, building dams, improving navigable rivers, and building interstate highways so as to favor those areas from which the President feels he is getting support by their representatives.
11. The judiciary has a check on the legislature through its authority to review all laws and determine their constitutionality.
12. The Congress, on the other hand, has a restraining power over the judiciary by having the constitutional authority to restrict the extent of its jurisdiction.
13. The Congress also has the power to impeach any of the judges who are guilty of treason, high crimes, or misdemeanors.
14. The President also has a check on the judiciary by having the power to nominate new judges subject to the approval of the Senate.
15. The Congress has further restraining power over the judiciary by having the control of appropriations for the operation of the federal court system.
16. The Congress is able to initiate amendments to the Constitution which, if approved by three-fourths of the states, could seriously affect the operation of both the executive and judicial branches.
17. The Congress, by joint resolution, can terminate certain powers granted to the President (such as war powers) without his consent.
18. The people have a check on their Congressmen every two years; on their President every four years; and on their Senators every six years.
The Importance of Preserving the Founders’ System
President Washington felt that the separation of powers with its accompanying checks and balances was the genius of the American system of government. The task was to maintain it. In his Farewell Address he stated:
“It is important, likewise, that the habits of thinking in a free country should inspire caution in those entrusted with its administration to confine themselves within their respective constitutional spheres, avoiding in the exercise of the powers of one department to encroach upon another.
“The spirit of encroachment tends to consolidate the powers of all the departments in one and thus to create, whatever the form of government, a real despotism. A just estimate of that love of power and proneness to abuse it which predominates in the human heart is sufficient to satisfy us of the truth of this position.
“The necessity of reciprocal checks in the exercise of political power, by dividing and distributing it into different depositories and constituting each the guardian of the public weal against invasions by the others, has been evinced by experiments ancient and modern, some of them in our country and under our own eyes. To preserve them must be as necessary as to institute them. If, in the opinion of the people, the distribution or modification of the constitutional powers be in any particular wrong, let it be corrected by an amendment in the way which the Constitution designates. But let there be no change by usurpation; for though this, in one instance, may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed.” 9
The Founders’ Device for “Peaceful” Self-Repair
During nearly two centuries that the Constitution has been in operation, it has carried the nation through a series of traumatic crises. Not the least of these have been those occasions when some branch of government became arrogantly officious in the administration of its assigned task or flagrantly violated the restrictions which the Constitution placed upon it. As President Washington indicated, there is a tendency for some of this to occur continually, as is the case in our own day, but when it reaches a point of genuine crisis there is built-in Constitutional machinery to take care of it.
By way of contrast, we have scores of nations which claim to have copied the United States Constitution, but which failed to incorporate adequate checks and balances. In those countries, the only remedy, when elected presidents have suspended the constitution and used the army to stay in power, has been to resort to machine guns and bombs to oust the usurper. This occurs time after time. What the Founders wished to achieve in the Constitution of 1787 was machinery for the peaceful means of self-repair when the system went out of balance.
SO MR. OBAMA & INTERPOL – What are we to do? The horse (Executive Orders) was let out of the checks and balance barn long ago.
Coming soon – “The Imperial President and Executive Order History.”