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Glenn Reynolds posted on the two Watergate-era heroes who died last week;
…Howard Baker, who famously asked “what did the President know and when did he know it?” and Johnnie Walters, the IRS Commissioner who refused to go along with Nixon’s efforts to target his enemies. Both were Republicans who stood up for the rule of law.
Where are the Democrats willing to stand up for it under this Administration?
More on Johnnie Walters from Jim Taranto.
In the scandal involving the Internal Revenue Service, the IRS commissioner refused to play along with a corrupt administration, the New York Times reports. A White House aide handed him a list of 200 political “enemies” the president wanted investigated. In response, the commissioner asked: “Do you realize what you’re doing?” Then, he answered his own rhetorical question: “If I did what you asked, it’d make Watergate look like a Sunday school picnic.”
The White House aide’s reply was “emphatic,” according to the Times: “”The man I work for doesn’t like somebody to say ‘no.’ ”
The commissioner went to his boss, the Treasury secretary, “showed him the list and recommended that the I.R.S. do nothing.” The secretary “told him to lock the list in his safe.” Later, he retrieved the list and turned it over to congressional investigators.
It’s enough to restore your trust in the government–except that it happened more than 40 years ago. The corrupt order was delivered by John Dean in September 1972. The commissioner, Johnnie Walters, eventually “testified to various committees investigating alleged Nixon misdeeds,” the Times reports. “He left office in April 1973.” He died Tuesday; the Times article we’ve been quoting is his obituary. …
… Four decades ago, during a Republican administration that was brought down by corruption, the IRS turned out to be a bulwark of government integrity. Today the possibility remains that the IRS itself is the source of the corruption. As we’ve repeatedly argued, that would be even worse than an IRS that follows corrupt orders from the president. A corrupt administration can be replaced, as Nixon’s was. It’s harder to see what can be done if a vital and permanent institution of the administrative state has been corrupted.
Even the liberals on the Supreme Court cannot countenance presidential power plays. John Fund posts on the 12th and 13th unanimous ruling in the last two and a half years.
Did you know the Obama administration’s position has been defeated in at least 13 – thirteen — cases before the Supreme Court since January 2012 that were unanimous decisions? It continued its abysmal record before the Supreme Court today with the announcement of two unanimous opinions against arguments the administration had supported. First, the Court rejected the administration’s power grab on recess appointments by making clear it could not decide when the Senate was in recess. Then it unanimously tossed out a law establishing abortion-clinic “buffer zones” against pro-life protests that the Obama administration argued on behalf of before the Court (though the case was led by Massachusetts attorney general Martha Coakley).
The tenure of both President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder has been marked by a dangerous push to legitimize a vast expansion of the power of the federal government that endangers the liberty and freedom of Americans. They have taken such extreme position on key issues that the Court has uncharacteristically slapped them down time and time again. Historically, the Justice Department has won about 70 percent of its cases before the high court. But in each of the last three terms, the Court has ruled against the administration a majority of the time. …
Kimberley Strassel writes on the president’s enablers.
… In the history of this country, there was one thing on which Republicans and Democrats, House and Senate, could regularly agree: Nobody messes with Congress’s powers. Political parties were happy to rally votes for a president’s agenda, to slam his opponents, to excuse his failings. But should that president step on Congress’s size 12 toes, all partisan bets were off. …
… Name a prominent Democrat—name any Democrat—who has said boo about the president’s 23 unilateral rewrites of ObamaCare. Or of immigration law. Name any who today are defending constituents in their districts against the abuses of the Obama IRS. A few congressional Democrats got their backs up with the White House over possible Syria action, but they are dwarfed by the majority who’ve gone silent over Mr. Obama’s national-security policies—which they once berated George W. Bush for pursuing as an “imperial” president.
The main culprits here are Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, and Ms. Pelosi, who’ve put themselves and their caucuses at the disposal of the White House. Winning political battles—sticking it to the GOP—is their priority, not constitutional balance. Mr. Reid has made himself White House gatekeeper, sitting on thorny votes, earning Congress public scorn for dysfunction. His members are meanwhile happy for Mr. Obama to pervert the law, since it saves them taking tough votes.
It hasn’t helped that much of the institutional memory of the Democratic Party has retired or died this past decade. Nearly half of today’s Democratic Senate was elected with or since Mr. Obama and has never known institutional leadership. …
Philip Klein explains how the recess appointments ruling bolsters Boehner’s suit for presidential usurpation.
A unanimous ruling by the Supreme Court on Thursday invalidating three of President Obama’s recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board bolsters House Speaker John Boehner’s effort to sue Obama over his abuse of executive power.
Liberals have consistently dismissed as political posturing any charges by Republicans that Obama has violated the U.S. Constitution by frequently bypassing Congress. But the decision in the NLRB v. Noel Canning case shows that there’s more to the GOP’s claims than liberals care to acknowledge.
The case goes back to January 2012 when Obama, frustrated by his inability to get his pro-union nominees to the NLRB confirmed, made three appointments to the board tasked with adjudicating labor disputes – even though the U.S. Senate said it was still in session.
In a 9-0 decision authored by liberal Justice Stephen Breyer, the court held that, “the Senate is in session when it says it is” and thus, Obama “lacked the power to make the recess appointments here at issue.” …
WSJ reports we’ve been voting for butter.
Changing views of nutrition are turning butter into one of the great comeback stories in U.S. food history.
Americans this year are expected to eat an average of 5.6 pounds of butter, according to U.S. government data—nearly 22.5 sticks for every man, woman and child. That translates to 892,000 total tons of butter consumed nationwide, an amount not seen since World War II.
Americans in 2013 for the third straight year bought more butter than margarine, spending $2 billion on products from Land O’Lakes Inc., OrganicValley and others, compared with $1.8 billion on spreads and margarines, according to IRI, a market-research firm.
The revival flows in part from new legions of home gourmets inspired by celebrity chefs and cooking shows with butter-rich recipes. Butter makers have encouraged the trend, using food channels and websites to promote what they say is their products’ natural simplicity. …