Rich Zeoli Talks To Andrew Napolitano About President Obama's Executive Order
By Rich Zeoli
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- Former Judge and political analyst Andrew Napolitano voiced his opposition to President Obama's executive order dealing with the status of undocumented immigrants.
Napolitano told Rich Zeoli on Talk Radio 1210 WPHT that the President's action is wrong and will have far reaching implications.
"That constitutes a nullification of the statute. That constitutes a re-writing of the statute. So the President can exercise this prosecutorial discretion to make the government work better...But when the President exercise of prosecutorial discretion has the opposite outcome and the opposite effect of what the statute commands, a statute that he took a solemn oath to enforce, a statute that pre-existed his Presidency, then he's engaged in a radical assault on the Constitution as we know it and if this is unchecked, then President fill-in-the-blank five years from now, ten years, twenty years from now will use what he's going to do tonight and get away with as a precedent for what the future president will do."
He focused blame on Congress for doing nothing to stop the President's executive order.
"We have a sickness in the government. The sickness in the government is that the Congress doesn't do its job anymore, it lets the President declare war and after tonight it's going to let the President write the laws. When that happens, it assaults the balance of powers. Madison and the folks that wrote the Constitution intentionally created a three part government. The Congress writes the laws, the President enforces the laws, the Courts interpret the laws. But when the Congress lets the President write the laws or nullify the laws, that is, when the President takes the law into his own hands and the Congress does nothing about it, it is as much to blame as the President."
Napolitano also accused Democrats of hypocrisy for not standing up to the President after previously opposing such actions.
"The same Democrats who ranted and railed and yelled and screamed as you and I did when George W. Bush arguably violated the Constitution with spying and torturing and with undeclared wars are now remaining silent because they basically agree with the outcome here."