Yesterday, the House Judiciary Committee held a hearing on the President’s Constitutional Duty to Faithfully Execute the Laws. It was a case study in how what is already known can become more sobering if enunciated in the right forum and acknowledged by Constitutional law experts.

Rep. King: Reacts to idea of “Uber-Presidency”.

The four witnesses at the hearing were Jonathan Turley, Professor at the George Washington University Law School; Nicholas Rosenkranz, Professor at Georgetown University Law Center; Simon Lazarus, Senior Counsel at Constitutional Accountability Center; and Michael Cannon, Director of Health Policy Studies at the CATO Institute.

In this exchange between Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) – who looks good filling in for the chairman – and Lazarus (Gowdy later moves over to Turley), Gowdy carves up Lazarus, who is an obvious apologist for all things Obama. Turley, who is known to be a leftist professor, is refreshingly far more intellectually honest than is Lazarus when talking about matters like prosecutorial discretion. At issue in this clip is the ability of the President of the United States to selectively enforce laws enacted by Congress. In particular, Gowdy begins by talking about mandatory minimum sentences for criminals. He then talks about Obamacare, Immigration laws, and other infractions by Obama.

Though compelling to watch Gowdy make Lazarus look utterly foolish, keep watching as Turley gives Committee members some very sobering realities to think about, saying that:

“…the President is outside the line… we have the most serious Constitutional crisis I view, in my lifetime… this body (Congress) is becoming less and less relevant.”

Quite alarming statements coming from a left-leaning professor. Then again, Democrats are known to have extremely thick firewalls right behind their foreheads.

Via TGowdySC:

Rep. Steve King (R-IA), who also sits on the Committee, challenged Lazarus to explain how he thinks the President’s powers “are limited”, since Lazarus is obviously a kool-aid drinker. Lazarus fails. King then goes to Cannon and asks him about what recourse there would be to limit a president who has no regard for the Congressional check.

Pay close attention beginning at the 5:30 mark as Turley sounds the alarm again when he talks about having “great trepidation” with regard to where the country is headed and expresses grave concern that the “center of gravity is shifting” within the three co-equal branches of government. He then talks of an “uber-Presidency”, saying “there could be no greater danger for individual liberty”. Turley’s comments are so dire that King is visibly affected by what he’d just heard (6:00 mark), again, not because he didn’t know it already but having it said in a Congressional hearing by someone like Turley just seems to make it a bit more real.

Lazarus is perhaps at his most coherent and accurate, shortly after the 7:00 mark when talking about the power of Congress. While asserting that Congress “has lots of power” but that Congress isn’t “using” that power.

Via SteveKingIA:

If you believe that Obama’s is an ‘Uber-Presidency’, as Turley seems to, it is important to factor in two relationships in Obama’s past. Both of these relationships were with individuals / ideologies that sought the overthrow of the U.S. Government:

1. The Cloward-Piven model, which seeks to overthrow the U.S. Government by overloading its welfare rolls. In essence, this model, formulated by Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven, seeks to bankrupt the nation into anarchy. There is ample evidence to suggest Obama is implementing this strategy as well as some evidence that he knows Piven personally. Cloward and Piven devised it in the 1960’s while at Columbia, a school Obama later attended.
2. His relationship with Weather Underground founder Bill Ayers. It is much closer than Americans were led to believe. These two men didn’t just sit on Boards together; they shared an office for at least three years. There is simply no way Obama was not affected by the far left-wing ideology of Ayers.

In both cases, the endgame is the overthrow of the U.S. Government. Ayers is an unrepentant terrorist to this day. In 1982, the recently deceased Larry Grathwohl – the only man to successfully infiltrate the Weather Underground for the FBI – explained the ultimate objective of the now unrepentant Ayers: