I have successfully repressed the temptation to do what everyone else no doubt will do this week and revisit the past year and/or century. Despite the visceral satisfaction of recounting stories and issues the new media has dragged into the disinfectant sunlight (kicking and screaming despite the mainstream media's continued malfeasance), I refuse to rise to the bait.

Routinely and predictably, the attention of the masses has been distracted by threats "real and promulgated" pretty much as standing operating procedure for this corrupt, venial administration. Currently (in the wake of months of pooh-poohing warnings from WorldNetDaily and elsewhere) the latest implied threat is Y2K. Well, not really Y2K, but the tangential terrorists (foreign and domestic) which may seek to use Y2K as a catalyst for doing bad disruptive stuff.

Everyone is focused on terrorists sneaking into the country, and we are assured our government can prevent those unlawful entries. Sure, just look at the superb job our government has done in prohibiting illegal aliens from entering the country. Meanwhile as national attention is directed to the borders (too little and too late), desperately seek Osama bin Laden or Jane Doe No. 96, our president is doing what he does best -- abusing power under the color of authority.

The commander in sleaze has recently fired off a flurry of executive decisions. He has not been the No. 1 issuer of executive orders, but he seems to playing catch up to exceed President Ronald Reagan's 381 executive orders in two terms. So far Billy-Jeff has cranked out over 310 in seven years. However, the mere number of executive orders is less significant than the substance and intent of this abuse of power.

The framers established a republic, which consisted of three co-equal branches of government: executive; legislative; and judiciary. For a variety of reasons ranging from inertia, to malfeasance, and taking a left turn to hubris, the executive branch has assumed a position more equal that the other two branches. This current president, more so than others, has found, and used, "creative" ways to implement his policy without that annoying requirement of congressional approval.

• Last week the prez unveiled final regulations to force oil refiners to produce cleaner fuels. He added that mini-vans and the nefarious sport-utility vehicles must comply with these same strict emissions standards for cars.
• To enact what he called "the boldest steps in a generation to clean the air we breathe by improving the cars we drive," he stretched the authority granted to the Environmental Protection Agency by the 1990 Clean Air Act to a new limit. Even his own White House spokesman Jake Siewert conceded, "If you're a conservative, you would say this is above and beyond what the Clean Air Act was meant to do." Joe Lockhart could have said it but he is busy hiding from Southern Baptists.
• Once upon a time, presidential proclamations were insignificant public relations tools (like pardoning a Thanksgiving turkey ... even if it attacked the pardoner). However, this president has used proclamations (not like a scalpel but like a bludgeon) to establish the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Utah and to buy thousands of acres of wilderness, from California's deserts to Florida's Everglades.
• Back in October the Forest Service was directed (by the president) to ban roads in more than 50 million acres of pristine wilderness. He did so without either the approval of Congress, or the use of executive order.
• More recently he cranked out new regulations that reportedly are designed to reduce medical errors. Hospitals and doctors must comply with the new regulations to participate in the health insurance program for federal employees that covers 85-million Americans. How did he do that? Didn't his wife's overreaching on health care bomb? As his sycophant, Paul Begala, has said, "... stroke of the pen/law of the land ... pretty cool." The order came in the form of a memorandum to his cabinet.
• Since Congress won't quite give him everything he wants, the prez has challenged the tobacco industry with a federal lawsuit and is threatening the gun industry with another one.
• Spokesmouth Siewert admitted, "We've been fairly unapologetic about finding ways to act where we've found that Congress hasn't acted."

 

 

Republicans are especially PO'd (no, that doesn't mean "particularly ornery"). They are incensed by what they see as an end run around Congress. By the way, the reason they think the president's actions are an "end run around Congress" is because it IS. Sen. James Inhofe has announced he would block every administration nominee to the federal bench for the rest of Mr. Clinton's term to protest the recent reappointment of a member of the National Labor Relations Board without the Senate's consent. Presidential wannabe Sen. John McCain has promised to overturn Clinton's ban on new wilderness roads. Oddly, it was another wannabe GOP hopeful who hit the nail on the head. Gary Bauer encapsulated it by noting, "This president has abused that power."

Why are folks just now getting hip to the unbridled abuse of power of Bill Clinton?

• He has made a career of abusing power under the color of authority since his Arkansas days.
• He has routinely (albeit badly) lied to the American people, his cabinet, friends, sycophants and family.
• In March of 1993 he said, "We can't be so fixated on our desire to preserve the rights of ordinary Americans." BULLFEATHERS! That is his JOB.
• In March of 1994 on MTV's "Enough is Enough" he proclaimed for all to record and replay his contempt for the Constitution to which he swore a sacred oath when he said, "And so a lot of people say there's too much personal freedom. When personal freedom's being abused, you have to move to limit it. That's what we did in the announcement I made last weekend on the public housing projects, about how we're going to have weapon sweeps and more things like that to make people safer in their communities."

 

 

An anonymous author once wrote, "Patriots are not revolutionaries trying to overthrow government. Patriots are counter-revolutionaries trying to prevent government from overthrowing the U.S. Constitution."