RUSH: Barack Obama, ladies and gentlemen, took an oath — not that that means anything — but he took an oath to faithfully execute his duties. And what he’s doing in this Defense of Marriage Act is abandoning the defense of the law which means there’s no one left to defend it. The president of the United States and his corrupt attorney general just decided that the law is unconstitutional, a law that dates all the way back to Bill Clinton. They just don’t like the law. So he’s gonna repeal the law, or part of it, by refusing to defend it. This is really extraordinary. We could apply the age-old test: Imagine if this were Richard Nixon. Imagine if this were George W. Bush and the law were abortion.
Jeff Lord at American Spectator has a funny piece today. Sarah Palin’s new attorney general, Mark Levin, has just decided that Roe v. Wade is unconstitutional. They’re just gonna decide not to defend abortion anymore, it’s silly, they’re just gonna effectively pretend it doesn’t exist. Can you imagine the outcry? Very extraordinary, and particularly from a liberty point of view. There’s a pattern of abuse here. Obama is encouraging lawlessness in Arizona. He is encouraging lawlessness in Wisconsin. He is undermining state governments everywhere he can, particularly if they’re battleground states, which Wisconsin is. He’s ordering his Justice Department not to defend a federal law. Nobody has said the law is unconstitutional other than Obama and Holder, and they don’t have the power to do that. Obama is ignoring court orders he doesn’t like, such as drilling moratorium laws in the Gulf of Mexico, and, of course, DOMA, Defense of Marriage Act.
Look, let’s not forget, Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency is in effect legislating now when it comes to carbon dioxide, imposing rules on citizens that Congress has not passed. In fact, rules that Congress has refused to pass. What we are witnessing here is a deterioration of our society, our norms, our systems. It’s what it is. Alexis de Tocqueville referred to this as soft tyranny. What is soft tyranny? Obama using executive orders, regulations, and now withholding the defense of laws he doesn’t like to run the government out of his office. These czars, as we have discussed on countless previous occasions, exist simply to bypass cabinet offices and they’re unaccountable, nobody knows who they are, nobody knows what they make, they’ve never been confirmed to anything.
As I said earlier, if Nixon or Reagan or Bush 43 had done this on a different issue such as abortion or whatever, what would the left say? For a president to ignore a federal law, I mean not just ignore it, but to announce he’s going to ignore it, to have a big ceremony essentially, a big press conference to announce he’s going to ignore the law, for him to act as legislature and court through the back door like this, this is troubling, folks, it is hugely troubling. There would be headlines blazing across every newspaper. Network news anchors would be jumping all over it. And if nothing were done about it, they’d be jumping out of windows. They’d be demanding impeachment! Dare I say, if a Bush 43, a Reagan or Nixon had done anything like this, the headlines today would be screaming for impeachment. So what has to be done is a continuing expose. Education of the public, continue to let people know what’s going on, because then they get it, they find out.
The media is all ecstatic today that General Motors is making a profit. The news is reported ceaselessly. Didn’t they get lots and lots of special favors from this government, tax breaks and so forth? So when General Motors reports a profit, the media is all excited, it’s the government reporting a profit. There are two words that define this president and his administration: reckless and lawless.