Webber 1

John Webber
Lisa Cook
English 1201.501
7 July 2014
Our country was founded on a set of guidelines that grant its citizens rights and gives the
government its power. The guidelines that our country always uses to gage the legitimacy of a
law or peoples actions is our Constitution of the United States. More and more laws and action
of public officials are being reported in the news as unconstitutional. Holding public officials
more accountable for their actions will reduce the amount of reports of the Constitution and
current laws being violated by our public officials.
Public officials in the United States should be held to a high standard when it comes to
their official business. There has been numerous reports of public officials going outside of the
law when conducting their official business. These reports have been seen on Fox News Chanel,
in The New American and Forbes magazines. These officials are making laws and giving
directives that are in conflict with the current laws and the Constitution of the United Sates. The
continued abuse of power by our public officials has gone to the extent of assassinating
American Citizens. The level of accountability and the standards that our officials are held to
should be the same regardless of the political party. Many of the examples given focus on a
single political party, this is due to that party being in power and the current events.
Without good accountability our public officials will exceed their Constitutional limits.
An article published in Forbes Magazine by James Blumstein and Alex Tolbert discusses
changes made to the Affordable Care Act. Changes have been made by the President of the
Webber 2

United States to the Affordable Care Act that have not gone through Congress. In the
Constitution of The United States, Article 1, Section 1 All Legislative Powers herein granted
shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of
Representatives. The key word in the quote from the Constitution is legislative and is defined
by Merriam-Webster Dictionary as having the power to make laws. As for the law making
power of the President of the United States, it is given in Article 2 Section 3 He shall from time
to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their
Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient. The President has the
power only to request a law be written, the power to write the law is with Congress.
Being able to hold the President accountable for violating the Constitution is not as easy
as it seems. Blumstein and Tolbert explain some of what is needed to bring a lawsuit to address
the Presidents violation of the Constitution. To bring a law suit to force a change, that person
must have a Standing. Standing, as described by Blumstein and Tolbert, the actions have to
have an adverse effect that directly affect you. They bring up an important Supreme Court case
that makes a person be personally effected by the results of the trial and the grievance has to be
specific. The requirements of standing is the biggest hurdle to bringing the lawsuit against the
changes made to the Affordable Care Act by the President. The changes he has made have not
directly affected single people but groups of people. The effects of the changes have not always
been damaging, such as delaying the penalty against large businesses for not providing the
proper level of health insurance. If you are not able to show you have been directly damaged,
then you are not able to bring a lawsuit to force a change. The fact that no one is able to satisfy
the requirements of Standing does not justify breaking the Constitution.
Webber 3

With the complexity of our laws and the sheer number of laws on the books it is
conceivable for someone to make an error. It is not unrealistic to expect problems with
something as complicated as the Affordable Care Act. It is not only the president that is
violating the law with policies. The Internal Revenue Service is providing subsidies under the
Affordable Care Act that it is not allowed to provide. Blumstein and Tolbert detail some of the
different sections of this law and its ability to provide subsidies. Of the two parts that are
discussed only one is allowed to provide the subsidy. It has been argued that Congress intended
to provide subsidies for both sections of the law. Blumstein and Tolbert counter argument is but
the issue for the courts is not some abstraction about what Congress intended to do but what it, in
fact, did.
Whit our current level of accountability, our public officials are able to direct agencies to
operate in a way that appear to be beyond the limit of the law. A piece published in The New
American by Andy Ramirez discusses some of the ways laws are minimized by our public
officials. Andy Ramirez, a recognized expert on boarder security, reports that the President
received a letter of protest from Senators in regard to his immigration policies. These policies,
that are the focus of the letter of protest, prevent the immigration agent from being able to
enforce the law. The immigration policies that the immigration agents go by have been changed
through a series of memoranda and policy directives. Through these continually changing
guidelines towards immigration, the immigration laws become void.
As the effectiveness of our laws become minimized by the actions of our officials, their
actions may have more consequences. These consequences go beyond any one political party
getting favored votes from a segment of the population. The consequences go to the core of our
agencies that are directed and run by our public officials. Part of the report by Ramirez, there is
Webber 4

a shift in loyalties of the Custom and Border Patrol Agents. The older generation of agents
where loyal to the constitution and the newer generations of agents have loyalty to the agency.
We need to ask ourselves, if this is happening in one agency, could it be happening in other
agencies.
As our public officials continue to conduct their business in a manner that is beyond the
constitutional limits, this abuse of power will directly affect us Americans Citizens. In an article
published by The New American found on the Sinclair Library Database describes some of the
actions of a former CIA/NSA boss, Michael Hayden. The article titled We Kill People Based
on Metadata, details some of the constitutional violations being done. The US Government is
using metadata to target people for assassination. Metadata as defined by Merriam-Webster
Dictionary is data that provides information about other data. In essence, it is who you call,
when you call and where you go. This basic information is used by the CIA and the NSA to
make decisions on what action to take against people. If the metadata that is collected is from
people in other countries it does not violate our constitution. Only American Citizens are
granted writes by the Constitution of the United States. It is reported in this piece by The New
American that our government has collected metadata on hundreds of millions of Americans.
Their proof is documents that was leaked by a former NSA contractor named Edward Snowden.
Article 6 of the Bill of Rights, a part or our Constitution, protects us for warrantless search and
seizure. To be able to get a warrant, Article 6 says that there has to be probable cause, and the
metadata collected on Americans is done without any of this. In this same report by The New
American, an American was killed by drones without a conviction in a court of law.
A Fox News interview with Representative Marsha Blackburn, Congresswoman from
Tennessee, discusses problems with the prisoner swap that involved captured American solder
Webber 5

Bergdahl. Bergdahl was released to the US in exchange for prisoners from Gautama Bay. The
prisoner trade done by President Obama is deemed to be illegal by Rep. Blackburn. It is said I
the interview by Rep. Blackburn that the President must inform Congress before any such
prisoner exchange. As evidence that President Obama intentionally broke the law, President
Obama went to the Department of Justice for an opinion on going around Congress. In Rep.
Blackburns words, he knowingly, willingly and with effort circumvented Congress. There
needs to be a separation between the humanitarian portion of freeing one of our solders and the
intentional breaking of the law.
A question that needs to be asked is, when is a law so bad that it should be broken? In
Should We Ever Disobey the Law by Stephen Grant, the need for such actions arises when we
have a state in which the fundamental institutions embody just principles, but where there are
individual laws which do not reflect those principles. One of the best examples for this is also
mentioned in Stephen Grants article. That would be the laws from the 1960s that where part of
segregation. Segregation laws made it difficult or impossible for black people to register to vote
and segregated white and black children into different school systems. In Stephen Grants paper
it is argues that we have an obligation to follow the law and at the same time it is morally just to
disobey that law which is unjust. When we look at the Constitution of the United States it does
not have specific races of people excluded, it says We the People of the United States. As
described in Stephen Grants paper, breaking an unjust law would be civil disobedience. This
civil disobedience is done to bring a change to laws that are not in line with our society and our
constitution.
When we look at the immigration laws and some of the actions being taken, we need to
apply the same type of judgment. Are the laws just? Would breaking the immigration laws
Webber 6

bring a change to the current law? Is the current law not in line with the Constitution of the
United States? If there is not a clear injustice with a current law then breaking that law will not
bring about a needed change.
We rely on our public officials to run our government at many levels. Some of our public
officials are elected, such as the President of the United State and others are appointed by those
who we elect. The people who hold an office by election or appointment are duty bound to
follow the law. Our founding fathers, the framers of our Constitution, sought to protect us from
a lawless government. In the Constitution of the United State, Article 2 section 3, it states he
shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed. It was of such great importance at the time
of the birth of our country that our leaders fallow the law, that it was put into our Constitution. If
following the law is required of our president, how anything less could be expected of other
public officials is implausible. The American Bar Association published What is the Rule of
Law as part of their Rule of Law Initiative. In their writings is a quote from U.S. Supreme
Court Justice Felix Frankfurter and it reads There can be no free society without law
administered through an independent judiciary. If one man can be allowed to determine for
himself what is law, every man can. That means first chaos, then tyranny. If we allow our
public officials to determine for themselves what is law outside of our Constitution then we are
on the path of chaos. The only way to make our public officials fallow the law is to hold them
accountable for violating it.



Webber 7

Work Cited
Blumstein James, and Alex Tolbert. Why President Obama Can Break The Law With
Impunity. Forbes. 14 April 2014. Web. 5 May 2014.
Grant, Stephen. Should We Ever Disobey the Law. Richmond Journal of Philosophy 14
(2007). Web. 9 July 2014
Merriam-Webster/Dictionary. Merriam-Webster 2014. Web. 16 July 2014
Ramirez, Andy. DHS & Congress in Collusion for Amnesty: If You or I Were to Smuggle
More than Four Boxes of Cuban Cigars Into America, We Would Face Fines and Jail
Time, yet Our Government Aids Millions of Illegal Immigrants. The New American.
30.11 (2014): 17. The Sinclair Library Collections. Web. 04 July 2014.
Rep. Blackburn, Marsha. Interview. Obama Broke the Law With Bergdahl Swap. 16 June
2014. Fox News. Web. 5 July 2014.
United States of America. Federal Government. Constitution of the United States. July 2014.
Web. 5 July 2014.
"'We Kill People Based on Metadata,' Admits Former CIA/NSA Boss." The New American
2014: 8. The Sinclair Library Collections. Web. 4 July 2014.
What is the Rule of Law, Part I. Rule of Law Initiative. American Bar Association. Web. 9
July 2014.