From Townhall.com:

Department of Justice Tells Obama to Disregard U.S. Foreign Relations Law

From the New York Times of all places:

The Justice Department has declared that President Obama can disregard a law forbidding State Department officials from attending United Nations meetings led by representatives of nations considered to be sponsors of terrorism.

Based on that decision, which echoes Bush administration policy, the Obama administration sent State Department officials to the board meetings of the United Nations’ Development Program and Population Fund in late spring and this month, a department spokesman said. The bodies are presided over by Iran, which is on the department’s terror list, along with Cuba, Sudan and Syria…

In the new opinion, David Barron, the acting head of the Office of Legal Counsel, wrote that the statute — a restriction Congress imposed in the State Department’s annual budget bill — “unconstitutionally infringes on the president’s authority to conduct the nation’s diplomacy, and the State Department may disregard it.”

So apparently Obama is not the only president whose DoJ has placed above the law.  But obviously this policy doesn’t seem right.  Even Obama’s Demorat allies are uneasy about the president dodging established foreign relations law:

The chairwoman of the House appropriations subcommittee that oversees financing for the State Department, Representative Nita M. Lowey, Democrat of New York, strongly objected to the overriding of such statutes by the executive branch.

“This provision is law for a very good reason,” Ms. Lowey said. “There are consequences for being a state sponsor of terrorism. The decision of both the previous and current administrations to disregard this law is unacceptable.”

My question: If this or any other law is thought to be unconstitutional, wouldn’t the courts determine that the president didn’t have to abide by it?  How in the world is it possible a government bureaucrat can decide which laws the president will follow and those he will not?

Nothing in the Constitution explicitly says Congress cannot forbid using taxpayer money to send certain officials to diplomatic meetings that lawmakers find objectionable. The Supreme Court has never ruled on the question.

In addition to these legal questions, members of Congress are also upset the White House has decided to proceed in disregarding the law without notifying them in advance:

Ms. Lowey and Senator Patrick J. Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who is chairman of the Judiciary Committee and the Senate subcommittee that handles State Department appropriations, criticized the administration for not telling Congress about its plans.

In a statement, Mr. Leahy said he recognized that “the current and former administrations may have legitimate constitutional concerns about this provision.” But he added: “There is no excuse for the administration’s failure to inform Congress that steps would be and in fact have been taken in violation of this provision. I cannot accept this.”Justice Department officials pointed out that when Mr. Obama signed the legislation containing the provision in March, he issued a signing statement reserving a right to bypass any portions of the bill that restricted his power to conduct diplomacy.

In all my time studying politics and government, checks and balances and the constitutional separation of powers, I never thought it would be possible for a president to sign a law with provisions that specifically exempted him from the law if he deemed it necessary.  This entire practice boggles my mind.

From HumanEvents.com:

Obama Frees Prisoner He Thinks Is a Terrorist

People are again talking about fighting terrorism in the wake of Scotland freeing a man who murdered 180 Americans on Pam Am 103 over Lockerbie and Eric Holder’s criminal investigation of the CIA. In the midst of that discussion, Barack Obama has let a terrorist detainee go free.

Mohammed Jawad was released from Gitmo when a federal judge granted his habeas petition. President Obama could have appealed this ruling, but instead caved in, returning this terrorist to Afghanistan on August 24.

This situation springs from Boumediene v. Bush. On June 12, 2008, a narrowly-divided Supreme Court handed down Boumediene, extending the writ of habeas corpus to foreign terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba (Gitmo). Under habeas, American citizens or anyone detained on American soil can petition a judge to order their release if the judge finds their detention unjustified. It had never before been applied to foreigners on foreign soil.

The four conservatives on the Court passionately dissented in Boumediene. Justice Antonin Scalia wrote, “Today the Court warps our Constitution … It breaks a chain of precedent as old as the common law that prohibits judicial inquiry into detentions of aliens abroad absent statutory authorization. And, most tragically, it sets our military commanders the impossible task of proving in a civilian court, under whatever standards this Court devises in the future, that evidence supports the confinement of each and every enemy prisoner…. The Nation will live to regret what the Court has done today.”

Then on July 30, 2009, a federal judge granted habeas to Jawad, ordering him released because the evidence was legally insufficient to hold him.

This decision marks the first step toward fulfilling Justice Scalia’s prophecy. Whether or not Jawad returns to the battlefield, he is only the first to be released by a habeas petition; there will be others. Some will return to the battlefield. Sooner or later, one will kill an American. Heaven forbid that any of them carry out a major attack like 9/11.

Our civilian courts are designed to heavily favor defendants in domestic life, not a war on foreign soil. Courts use extremely restrictive rules of evidence and procedure. People can only be convicted in our court system if every element of a crime has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt. Guilty people go free all the time in America, because our system is based on the belief that it’s better for the guilty to be released than for the innocent to be condemned.

Any standard approaching our rights as American citizens creates an impossible task for our military. You can’t preserve evidence and make an airtight case or eliminate reasonable doubt about what happened on foreign battlefields.

We capture and hold terrorists all the time with evidence that wouldn’t hold up under the rigorous standards of an American court. You can’t win a war in a courtroom.

When Boumediene came down, then-candidate Obama praised it as a perfect display of America upholding its highest promises. Now he’s faced with the consequences of that decision, where people that our military knows are dangerous terrorists are released because we can’t prove it in court.

Obama has been quiet over this detainee’s release, maybe because he’s boxed himself in and can’t complain at this point. He can’t praise the Boumediene decision as exemplifying America’s best ideals, and then object when a federal judge follows the Boumediene decision. Either his grandiloquent praise of the Supreme Court’s decision was insincere and driven by far-left politics, or he’d be crying crocodile tears over this district court’s grant of habeas relief.

Even so, President Obama should have appealed this ruling to the D.C. Circuit appeals court. As commander-in-chief he owes it to our troops to support them against this terrorist. Instead Obama chose to give up the fight.

It’s a good thing that our troops don’t surrender as quickly as Barack Obama.

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3. On Obama’s Watch, Attempted Terrorist Attacks At All Time High
4. Obama: Attorney General goes to Eric Holder, who pardoned fugitives and terrorists
5. On Arizona and Immigration: Judge Ignores Rule of Law
6. Obama Downplays Terror Threat
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8. Barack Obama cancels meeting with Dalai Lama ‘to keep China happy’
9. Obama’s Public Option for Gitmo
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