Obama's Immigration Move Is Wrong; Just Ask ... Obama

But an election year changes everything, writes Charles Krauthammer
By John Johnson,  Newser Staff
Posted Jun 22, 2012 11:54 AM CDT
Obama's Immigration Move Is Wrong; Just Ask ... Obama
President Obama announces his new immigration police in the Rose Garden.   (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

President Obama calls his loosening of deportation rules on young illegal immigrants the "right thing to do," but Charles Krauthammer has another description: "naked lawlessness." To support his case in the Washington Post, Krauthammer quotes none other than President Obama. When the Dream Act failed to pass, Obama said this: “With respect to the notion that I can just suspend deportations [of immigrants brought here illegally as children] through executive order, that’s just not the case, because there are laws on the books that Congress has passed.”

Well guess what, writes Krauthammer: "Those laws remain on the books." Suddenly, however, Obama doesn't care about them. It's all about the election, of course, and Krauthammer concedes that the move is "smart politics" given the importance of the Latino vote. The problem is that politics shouldn't trump "constitutional order." We're a "nation of laws," the president said after the Dream Act floundered, but apparently that doesn't matter if re-election is at stake. Read Krauthammer's full column here. (More President Obama stories.)

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