RUTHFULLY YOURS

Pardon me if I couldn’t care less whether Jeffrey Toobinthinks President Obama  “clearly broke the law.” It is not at all clear that he did. Yes, it is clear that he ignored a statute that purports to trim his plenary commander-in-chief powers over the disposition of enemy combatants and his Article II supremacy over the conduct of foreign relations. But since a statute cannot amend the Constitution, it is not clear that the statute in question is constitutional.

But this is entirely beside the point.

The president has knowingly provided material support to terrorists. More importantly, he has replenished the enemy in wartime by giving the Taliban and Haqqanis back five senior, capable, rabidly anti-American commanders at a time when, as the president well knows, the Taliban and Haqqanis are still conducting violent jihadist operations to kill our troops. This is a shocking dereliction of duty.

Moreover, as I have been arguing, the Obama administration also flatly lied to Congress in representing last year that it would comply with the statute Obama has now flouted. A president has every right not to enforce a statute he believes in good faith is unconstitutional. He commits a profound breach of faith, however, when he announces he will comply with the statute and consult with Congress and then refuses to do so—precisely to deprive Congress and the public of the ability to mobilize against his objectionable policy of empowering our enemies.

In the IRS scandal, for nearly a year, the Obama administration was able to distract attention from its appalling abuse of power in harassing the president’s political opponents by encouraging an abstruse legal debate over whether Lois Lerner said enough in her opening statement to waive her Fifth Amendment privilege.

We’re now heading into the same feint. The president is recklessly derelict as commander-in-chief and studiously duplicitous in dealing with Congress. And we’re talking about a dubious 30-day notification statute? If you think Jeffrey Toobin has diagnosed to heart of the problem here, good luck.