King? Emperor? Oh, Pshaw, That's Tiny Taters for a POTUS With Super Powers

Here's Mark Steyn on the topic:

I'm getting weary of the monarchical comparisons, which are a bit of an insult to real monarchs. The Obama model seems to owe more to Judge Dredd, the popular comic-book figure with the power to arrest, convict, sentence and execute as he does what's necessary to bring hope and change to a dystopian megalopolis. Likewise, President Dredd: "He is the Law, and you'd better believe it!" A contempt for the people and for constitutional and legal restraints is what ties the President's actions on Thursday night to Eric Holder's corrupt justice department to Lois Lerner's corrupt revenue agency to Jonathan Gruber's corrupt health commissariat (merely to skim the surface of the most recent additions to the unending Obama-scandals document dump). 

To express common-or-garden contempt for the will of the people, Obama could have simply repealed another handful of inconvenient paragraphs from Obamacare or made Lois Lerner Attorney-General, but the form of contempt he chose is especially exquisite: "legalizing" millions of foreign law-breakers and setting them on the path to US citizenship. The chief of state has heard the voice of the people and his message to them is: "Yeah, whatever, I can always get another people. Hey, here comes five million or so right now, plus another ten million in chain-migration relatives down the road..."

To paraphrase a line from a 60s song: American voters fought the Law and the Law won.


Update: From the "You Can't Please All the People All the Time" Department: While thousands of undocumented immigrants celebrated the President Barack Obama's historic immigration plan, others were stunned and disappointed over being left out.

Update: Andrew McCarthy says that Obama is a disciple of Saul Alinsky. For someone of that bent, the end always justifies the means, even if the means include lying one's head off to the American people:

We’ve endured six years of “If you like your health-care plan, you can keep your health-care plan,” “How dare you call Obamacare a tax,” “The video did it in Benghazi,” “Of course we’d never let guns walk to Mexican gangs,” “Workplace violence,” “Kinetic military action,” “The IRS harassment is outrageous and intolerable,” and “not a smidgeon of corruption” from “the most transparent administration in history.” Yet what so astonished the commentariat about Obama’s decree of amnesty for illegal aliens was the sheer audacity of hoax. 

“I’m the president of the United States, not the emperor of the United States,” our would-be emperor repeatedly explained in the months and years before Thursday’s edict. Again and again, in more than two dozen recorded public statements, the president emphatically denied that he had the power to pronounce law unilaterally. “My job,” he huffed, “is to execute the laws that are passed.” His mere say-so could not suspend deportations or grant illegal aliens lawful status, he explained, because that would transgress “laws on the books that Congress has passed.” 

In fact, nearly two years ago, Obama said he and his subordinates had already “stretched our administrative flexibility as much as we can” for the benefit of unlawful immigrants. Yet this week, he abruptly discovered enough elasticity to dictate a new legal regime — actually, an illegal regime — for conferring lawful status on illegal aliens, a power our quaint Constitution vests in Congress. 

In Thursday’s speech, Obama was not just brazen but remorseless, not deigning to offer a word of explanation for his sudden 180. Another day, another story line in the soap opera, as if the prior episodes had never happened.

Somewhere down in Hades, Saul is shepping naches over his progeny's chutzpah.