A famous historian expresses fear that she may have to rewrite her
American government true-false test on which the correct answer is
“false” to the following statement: “Congress is the weakest of the
three branches of government.”
If Bill Clinton continues to have his way in the next two years,
there is no question the college exam answer will have to be reviewed.
The president has thrown down the gauntlet before a slumbering
Congress and has gone virtually unchallenged. He announced more than a
week ago that he was going over their heads — that he would begin a
full-fledged campaign of legislating from the Oval Office. The
Constitution strictly forbids such a thing, reserving that power
exclusively to Congress.
But there has been nary a protest of Clinton’s plans to use
“executive orders” to promote legislative goals he was unable to achieve
by working with Congress. I have yet to hear one member attack White
House aide Paul Begala’s outrageous, un-American, authoritarian comment:
“Stroke of the pen. Law of the land. Kinda cool.” Only today is there a
flurry of concern being expressed over sweeping Executive Order 13083,
issued last May, that represents a new power grab by the federal
government in general and the executive branch in particular.
In fact, the 104th Congress has often been complicit in setting the
stage for such actions.
As members are consumed by issues like new tobacco taxes, Clinton is
running away with the country, systematically transforming the way the
nation is governed, establishing for himself, or some future president,
nothing less than imperial powers.
Last week, we watched in disbelief as Speaker of the House Newt
Gingrich ambled up to the microphone with Clinton to announce more than
$1 billion more in taxpayer funds would be spent on anti-drug television
messages. Where did he find such money? Where was the public debate?
Where was the vote? Where is the justification? And why is Gingrich
bolstering Clinton’s image with such political posturing instead of
exposing him as the hypocrite he is — the man who pardoned his pal Dan
Lasater, an unrepentant Arkansas cocaine peddler and the man who told an
MTV audience his biggest regret was not inhaling?
We’re on the road to serfdom, indeed. It’s a road driven only by
those who carry national identification papers and who submit to the
will of all-knowing Washington officials on matters involving every
facet of life — from the most personal health-care decisions to opening
up a bank account.
There are so few who “get it.” We called several congressional
offices the other day to talk about executive orders. We were told by
one that the staff got most of its information on such matters from the
Website of a radio talk-show host. We were told by another office that
they were alerted to the dangers of 13083 by constituents armed with
printouts of WorldNetDaily stories. Others were still completely in the
dark about the nature of the threat, suggesting that executive orders
were really not important because they only govern the executive branch
of government.
While that may be constitutionally correct, that’s not reality in
1998. It’s not what Bill Clinton thinks. He is acting as if he has
discovered new-found authority in his use of executive orders. And,
unless Congress acts quickly and definitively, his assumption of power
will rule the day.
That’s why we are focusing so much attention on the critical issue of
presidential powers — both real and imagined. We’re clearly making
progress bringing this information to the attention of the American
people. Talk radio is abuzz with discussions of executive orders and
presidential decision directives since WorldNetDaily began exposing some
of the more recent and chilling actions of the White House. The
administration has stepped up monitoring of our site and begun obscuring
from public view some of its more controversial orders.
A few weeks ago, we zeroed in a horrendous journalistic scandal —
the CNN-Time Tailwind hoax. In no time, the network and the magazine
were forced to retract their “scoop” about the U.S. military’s use of
lethal nerve gas and murder of defectors during the Vietnam War.
Let’s hope and pray that we are as successful in our challenge of a
potentially more disastrous fraud — the stealing of the American system
of government and the unconstitutional and unprecedented centralization
of power in Washington.
