{"id":7729,"date":"2014-11-20T17:55:54","date_gmt":"2014-11-20T17:55:54","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2014-11-20T17:55:54","modified_gmt":"2014-11-20T17:55:54","slug":"my_explanation_of_prosecutorial_discretion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2014\/11\/20\/my_explanation_of_prosecutorial_discretion\/","title":{"rendered":"My Explanation of Prosecutorial Discretion"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Listen<\/a><\/p>\n

RUSH: Now, I\u2019m gonna go back to the Constitution here for just a second. Before my detailed — and it won\u2019t take long — explanation of prosecutorial discretion, which (if everybody is right) is the legal, so-called legal underpinning for Obama\u2019s executive action tonight, let\u2019s start with the oath of office the president of the United States takes. <\/p>\n

In that oath, the president swears, he promises that to the best of his ability he will preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. That oath will be violated tonight, in plain view of however many millions of people all over the world watch it. That oath will be rendered meaningless. A promise, a sworn promise: laughed at, cast aside as meaningless as a piece of confetti at a parade. <\/p>\n

Also in the Constitution of the United States (I believe it\u2019s Article II ) the Constitution requires, instructs, demands, says the president of the United States shall faithfully execute, or see to it that the laws of the country are faithfully executed. That will be rendered meaningless tonight. Executive amnesty. What the president is actually going to instruct tonight, the actual result of his executive order or amnesty tonight is an order or an instruction to law enforcement officials to ignore the law. <\/line><\/p>\n

The law has not been changed. Congress has written no law that provides the president the power to enforce this aspect of it. He is simply going to tell everybody involved in law enforcement to ignore their duty. He is going to tell them to ignore crime when they come across it. He\u2019s going to tell them to not bother prosecuting violators of this particular law. That\u2019s what his going to do. Therefore, he\u2019s not only flouting the law, he\u2019s flouting the enforcement of the law. <\/p>\n

And if some of the things that I\u2019ve seen so far happen to be true, the president is going to demand that these violators of our law now will be fully ignored by law enforcement. They will also be given work documents. Under existing law, they are not allowed to hold work documents, because they are here illegally. So the president is not enforcing a law; he\u2019s not change, regulate, what. He\u2019s creating a new law out of thin air here. He is writing his own law. <\/p>\n

And there is no statutory foundation for what he\u2019s doing. They\u2019re running around… This was all over cable news last night, too, my comments yesterday about how these clowns claim that Reagan did it. Reagan did not do this. The Congress passed Simpson-Mazzoli in 1986 and Reagan signed it, and after that you\u2019ve got a statute as a law. You\u2019ve got a foundation, and Reagan then took some executive actions based on that statute, that the statute permitted. <\/p>\n

He didn\u2019t make it up out of thin air. He didn\u2019t write it on whole cloth like Obama is doing. Obama, though, however, is actually instructing law enforcement to not enforce the law! That gets us to prosecutorial discretion. More on that, I promise. He does not have the constitutional authority to do this. The president does not have the authority. Now, the executive branch does have the authority to prosecute, to determine when violators of the law are gonna be prosecuted. <\/p>\n

But here\u2019s the nub of it — and this really cuts to what prosecutorial discretion is and what Obama is doing. Prosecutorial discretion is exactly what it says. It\u2019s based on the fact that there\u2019s just too much law-breaking going on out there to enforce it all. There\u2019s just too much crime. We don\u2019t have the resources, we don\u2019t have the personnel, we don\u2019t have enough courts. We cannot enforce all of it, and so prosecutors determine which laws or crimes are going to be prosecuted based on severity, damage, any number of things. <\/p>\n

But it\u2019s what makes most sense to enforce. But just because prosecutors choose not to enforce a law doesn\u2019t mean the law becomes legal or the act becomes legal. Let\u2019s use robbing a bank, for example. Not robbing a bank. We talked about this the other day. Somebody called here and was complaining about how the Treasury investigates deposits of $10,000. Okay? Just because a prosecutor somewhere might ignore you if you deposit $10,000 in cash, it doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s legal to do it now.<\/p>\n

Just because a prosecutor chooses to ignore a particular act, just because a prosecutor decides not to go after a certain criminal, doesn\u2019t make that criminal act legal all of a sudden. What Obama is claiming here — there are too many illegals, and they\u2019re all over the place, and we can\u2019t find them — doesn\u2019t make them legal, which is what he is doing. If prosecutors — and he\u2019s the chief prosecutor — decides he\u2019s not gonna prosecute these crimes, it doesn\u2019t make the crimes legal. They are still illegal! <\/p>\n

And Obama is gonna essentially say that any crime he doesn\u2019t choose to prosecute is legal now. <\/p>\n

He doesn\u2019t have that authority.<\/p>\n

He doesn\u2019t have that power. <\/p>\n

The Constitution doesn\u2019t grant it. And that is not what prosecutorial discretion means, nor is it the way it was intended. I will still have more detail on this because there\u2019s much more to this as it relates to how Obama is gonna use it tonight, if the advance reports are true. <\/p>\n

Now, you probably know this. As a listener of this program I assume that most everybody here is up to speed on the Constitution. Article I clearly says: “The Congress shall have Power … to make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.”<\/line><\/p>\n

Only Congress is vested with the power to make new laws or amend or repeal existing laws. No president has that authority. And no president has the authority to tell law enforcement to simply ignore the enforcement of a law because he\u2019s violating that part of the Constitution that he swears to see to it that the laws are faithfully executed. He not even close to having the power that he is going to use tonight. And he\u2019s going to do it while the Democrat Party\u2019s in all this disarray, right? <\/p>\n

They just got creamed. They just lost an embarrassing landslide election. They\u2019re in disarray. They got people leaving the party left and right. Oh, my God, they\u2019re in such a mess, and the Constitution\u2019s gonna be shot full of holes nevertheless. <\/p>\n

Let\u2019s say… let\u2019s use marijuana. As you know, prosecutors less and less pursue marijuana crimes, but it doesn\u2019t mean that marijuana is thus legal. Just because a prosecutor decides “I got better things to do than go after” doesn\u2019t mean that the law has suddenly been changed and marijuana is legal. Well, by the same token, just because Obama says (imitating Obama), “You know what? I\u2019m not gonna enforce the law here. I\u2019m not gonna enforce the law on illegal immigrants,” it doesn\u2019t make immigration, as it\u2019s happened, legal all of a sudden. <\/p>\n

It does not make these people legal. And Obama is gonna try to tell you that his action tonight is making them legal. He doesn\u2019t have the power to do that. Only Congress can do that. He wants to confuse you and have you believe that because he\u2019s choosing not to enforce the law on 4.5, five million people, that that automatically confers legality on them, and it doesn\u2019t. <\/p>\n

He doesn\u2019t have the power and everybody involved in this knows it. Everybody on the left, they know it just as well as I know it. The difference is they are thrilled at the Constitution being violated. Because, to them, it\u2019s an obstacle. <\/p>\n

BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n

RUSH: So let me just sum up this pretty simply here, ladies and gentlemen. There is no way in hell that giving people who are here illegally work permits fits under the rubric of prosecutorial discretion. It has nothing to do with it and he cannot do it. But he\u2019s going to. <\/p>\n

So what the president is going to do tonight if it ends up being as it is thought to be, because they\u2019re giving signals of the direction they\u2019re gonna go here. And they\u2019re gonna try to fool everybody, particularly the low-information crowd. “It\u2019s not illegal. Right here, it\u2019s in the Constitution, prosecutorial discretion.” What Obama is going to claim is that he\u2019s got the power to declare which criminal acts he\u2019s gonna pursue and which he\u2019s going to ignore. And he\u2019s going to say that illegal aliens now have a right to be here because he has chosen not to prosecute them. <\/p>\n

So what he\u2019s going to say is, “Yes, they are illegal aliens, but I\u2019m gonna turn them legal by not prosecuting them,” and he doesn\u2019t have that power. Just because you choose not to prosecute somebody doesn\u2019t mean what they did to get in trouble in the first place is all of a sudden legal. Somebody robs a bank and for some reason you choose not to prosecute \u2019em doesn\u2019t mean that robbing banks has become legal. Prosecutorial discretion is standard operating procedure. It\u2019s been used for centuries because it\u2019s simply not efficient, affordable, any number of categories, to go after all crime. <\/line><\/p>\n

But just because a particular crime is pardoned, let\u2019s say, doesn\u2019t mean that that criminal activity all of a sudden becomes legal. And yet that\u2019s what Obama is gonna claim tonight. (imitating Obama) “Hey, you know what? I\u2019m ordering border patrol and everyone to stand down. There will not be prosecutions of these people here illegally. Therefore, they are legal.” No, they are not. They\u2019re still illegal, and just because you choose not to prosecute \u2019em doesn\u2019t make them legal. What he\u2019s doing is unconstitutional. He hasn\u2019t the power to do it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

RUSH: Now, I\u2019m gonna go back to the Constitution here for just a second. Before my detailed — and it won\u2019t take long — explanation of prosecutorial discretion, which (if everybody is right) is the legal, so-called legal underpinning for Obama\u2019s executive action tonight, let\u2019s start with the oath of office the president of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nMy Explanation of Prosecutorial Discretion - The Rush Limbaugh Show<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2014\/11\/20\/my_explanation_of_prosecutorial_discretion\/\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:title\" content=\"My Explanation of Prosecutorial Discretion - The Rush Limbaugh Show\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:description\" content=\"RUSH: Now, I\u2019m gonna go back to the Constitution here for just a second. 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