Abortion executive order today, states prepare to sue

Barack Obama will initiate his biggest kickback on health care reform today. The executive order clarifying that ObamaCare can't fund abortions will be signed by the president at a private ceremony this afternoon. Bart Stupak and other pro-life House Democrats will be reportedly be in attendance. The signing won't be open to the press, presumably so the feathers of Obama's pro-choice allies aren't ruffled any further.

Meanwhile immediately after Obama signed health care reform into law yesterday, attorney generals representing 13 different states filed a lawsuit.

"We are convinced that this legislation is fundamentally flawed as a matter of constitutional law, that it exceeds the scope of proper constitutional authority of the federal government and tramples upon the rights and prerogatives of states and their citizens," David Rivkin, Jr., an attorney representing 13 of the states, told ABC News.

The challenges to the legislation focus on the mandate that requires an individual to buy health insurance. The states are also worried about the extent to which the statute imposes a financial burden -- in resources and personnel -- on them.

The states headed to court are Alabama, Colorado, Idaho, Louisiana, Florida, Michigan, Nebraska, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah and Washington. Their case specifically focuses on the unconstitutional individual mandate, but their underlying concern may be something very different. If ObamaCare stays law, states will see their Medicaid bills skyrocket as people become eligible for subsidies. After health care reform was implemented in Massachusetts in 2006, the state was nearly driven to bankruptcy and was only saved by an injection of federal funds. The same could happen in every state across the nation if the attorneys general aren't successful.

The lawsuit represents the most significant challenge to the federal government by the states since the Civil War.

Obama in 2008: The president can't change bills passed by Congress

Some pretty grand hypocrisy from the president on his Stupak executive order.

"Congress' job is to pass legislation. The president can veto it or he can sign it. But what George Bush has been trying to do as part of his effort to accumulate more power in the presidency is he's been saying, well I can basically change what Congress passed by attaching a letter saying, I don't agree with this part or I don't agree with that part, I'm going to choose to interpret it this way or that way. That's not part of his power. But this is part of the whole theory of George Bush that he can make laws as he goes along. I disagree with that."

The president was talking then about signing statements, documents issued by the president to clarify how bills passed by Congress would be interpreted. What Obama is doing -- using a deceptive executive order -- is even more egregious and hypocritical. For the record, Obama was right back then. The president cannot constitutionally change a law once it's been passed by Congress; he can only veto it. Signing statements and "clarifying" executive orders are technically unconstitutional. Either Obama knows that and doesn't care, or he never intended to issue an executive order in the first place and Stupak was duped.

Obama threw everything and the kitchen sink into getting health care reform passed, including bribes, special deals, unconstitutional procedural rules, and a meaningless executive order.

Obama's abortion executive order is completely useless

Last night, ObamaCare passed the House of Representatives for the final time after the president persuaded Bart Stupak's pro-life Democrats to vote yes. Obama wooed Stupak with an executive order that will supposedly prevent taxpayer money from funding abortions. Unsurprisingly, the president hasn't signed the order yet, and it's just as well because it's total bunk. The text has been released already and the entire document is a big loophole.

The order would supposedly require insurance plans in the newly-created federal exchange to be segregated from private ones that provide abortions. This would prevent abortions from being funded by any public money. But the text never specifically establishes this segregation. Here's what it says instead:

"I hereby direct the Director of OMB and the Secretary of HHS to develop, within 180 days of the date of this Executive Order, a model set of segregation guidelines for state health insurance commissioners to use when determining whether exchange plans are complying with the Act's segregation requirements, established in Section 1303 of the Act, for enrollees receiving Federal financial assistance."

In other words, the executive order doesn't segregate the funds. It just asks OMB Director Peter Orszag and Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius to figure it out. Sebelius is stridently pro-choice and gained notoriety when she defended radical abortionist George Tiller in her home state of Kansas.

It would have been very easy for the president to simply type, "Under absolutely no circumstances shall federal funds be used for abortions except in the cases of rape and incest, and where the life of the mother is threatened." Instead we get this:

The Act maintains current Hyde Amendment restrictions governing abortion policy and extends those restrictions to the newly-created health insurance exchanges.

In other words, if the Hyde Amendment is ever overturned -- certainly a possibility given how pro-abortion Obama is -- then this act enables federal funds galore to be used for abortions. When Massachusetts implemented its universal health care plan, abortions ultimately ended up being covered thanks to the bill's loose language. It will only be so long before the same thing happens here.

And of course, at the end of the document, we have the usual closing print that concludes all executive orders.

(c) This Executive Order is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity against the United States, its departments, agencies, entities, officers, employees or agents, or any other person.

The executive order isn't the law of the land. No executive order ever has been the law of the land. Bart Stupak held out for months on the principle that siphoning federal funds to abortion doctors is wrong. He wanted specific legal protections in ObamaCare to this effect. Instead he got a loosely-worded executive order that becomes irrelevant if the law is changed or if the president decides he doesn't like it anymore. When Stupak's deal was struck yesterday, the House Pro-Choice Caucus stayed silent. Later every one of them voted in favor of the bill. They understand what eluded Bart Stupak: this ultimately means nothing.

Obama creates another do-nothing expert panel

Whenever the president wants to pretend he's doing something, he fires off an executive order that creates a panel of experts to examine a particular issue. His latest is on exports.

The National Export Initiative (NEI) shall be an Administration initiative to improve conditions that directly affect the private sector's ability to export. The NEI will help meet my Administration's goal of doubling exports over the next 5 years by working to remove trade barriers abroad, by helping firms -- especially small businesses -- overcome the hurdles to entering new export markets, by assisting with financing, and in general by pursuing a Government-wide approach to export advocacy abroad, among other steps.

It sounds like this could go either way. The experts could shed crocodile tears about sweatshop workers abroad and demand new trade barriers, or they could honestly check for ways to make trade freer. As long as the government is going to be "assisting with financing," it sounds like a whole new round of subsidies could be in the mix. Thus far the president has set up panels to think about everything from the national debt to historically black colleges and universities, with little action taken on any of these issues.

Obama's affirmative action college scheme

As we've seen countless times, Obama views the world through race-tinted glasses. Now in another executive order dumped on a Friday afternoon, the president is showing just how obsessed he is with affirmative action schemes. He's willing to kick more federal aid to Historically Black Colleges and Universities, but exclude all others.

The executive order establishes the White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). As we've seen over and over, whenever Obama wants to grossly increase spending for something, he always appoints a commission first. The commission then always recommends increasing spending and Obama agrees. So when this long executive order says the commission will "identify Federal programs and initiatives in which HBCUs may be either underserved or underused as national resources," it means "find ways to spend more."

And it's not just racial ideology driving the president. Obama has many cronies in high places at HBCUs. One example is Howard University in Washington, DC, which is headed up by Barry Rand. Rand has strong connections to Obama and is also president of the AARP, which supported the health care reform bill at Obama's request. Rand took a lot of heat for supporting ObamaCare, so no doubt he'll appreciate the kickbacks to Howard U.

All colleges are suffering from the bad economy right now. If Obama is going to be a wild-eyed spender, why can't he appoint a commission to study all colleges, black, white, and everything in between?

Obama to write Congress out of the equation

Checks and balances? Congressional authority? Barack Obama doesn't have time for all that.

Mr. Obama has not given up hope of progress on Capitol Hill, aides said, and has scheduled a session with Republican leaders on health care later this month. But in the aftermath of a special election in Massachusetts that cost Democrats unilateral control of the Senate, the White House is getting ready to act on its own in the face of partisan gridlock heading into the midterm campaign.

“We are reviewing a list of presidential executive orders and directives to get the job done across a front of issues,” said Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff.

Obama is fed up with the fact that his legislation must go through an increasingly hostile Senate...you know, the way the Founding Fathers intended it so we wouldn't turn into a dictatorship overnight. He's already partway there. His EPA is imposing limits on so-called "pollutants" like carbon dioxide without consulting anyone. Regardless, it looks like we'll be seeing many more executives orders coming through. You'll read about them here first.