Who Does Egypt’s President Think He Is to Declare Himself Above the Law?

(Thomas Mitchell/4TH ST8) Egypt’s President Mohamed Morsi effectively pulled off a one-man coup this week, declaring his edicts cannot be challenged by the courts or the legislature.

Critics called his decree an “unprecedented attack” on the judiciary and ”fascist and despotic.” People took to the streets in protest and editorials around the world condemned his action.

Obama’s State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland warned, “One of the aspirations of the revolution was to ensure that power would not be overly concentrated in the hands of any one person or institution. … The current constitutional vacuum in Egypt can only be resolved by the adoption of a constitution that includes checks and balances, and respects fundamental freedoms, individual rights, and the rule of law consistent with Egypt’s international commitments.”

These are principles fully understood by an administration that, when Congress failed to pass the DREAM Act, issued an executive order instead, and granted waivers to unions that balked at the cost of ObamaCare, and granted waivers to states to void the requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act, and ignored a federal court ruling against its Gulf oil drilling moratorium, and created a kill list of Americans overseas thought to be associated with terrorists, and told defense contractors to ignore a law requiring them to notify workers of pending layoffs, and denied to General Motors bondholders the assets they should’ve been awarded by a bankruptcy court, and defy for a year a law that requires details of pending regulations to be published every six months, and appoint czars without the advice and consent of the Senate, and spent money though the Senate has not passed a budget in nearly four years, and, when a federal judge permanently enjoined enforcement of the sweeping powers of the National Defense Authorization Act, said the ruling only applied to the plaintiffs in that one case, and sought to demand defense contractors reveal political donations, and ignored a federal judge who issued an injunction against enforcement of ObamaCare, and made recess appointments when the Senate was not in recess, and unilaterally deployed armed forces to aid the rebels in Libya, and failed to deploy forces to protect a consulate in Libya, and has a man jailed for probation violations after making an anti-Muslim movie, and defies a Supreme Court order against using GPS devices for surveillance without a warrant, and uses the EPA and other agencies to enact regulations Congress refused to pass.

Now, what was that about “checks and balances, and respects fundamental freedoms, individual rights, and the rule of law”?

Article II, Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution says the president “shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed …”

No riots, no editorials, no protests — not with a bang, but a whimper.