In fact, the executive branch’s authority over fracking is rather profoundly limited by statute. Beginning in 2012, the Obama administration attempted to introduce “additional regulatory effort and oversight” of fracking by introducing new regulations through the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). In 2015, the states of Wyoming and Colorado filed petitions for judicial review of the Obama regulations, and on June 21, 2016, federal district court judge Scott Skavdahl (an Obama appointee) held that the fracking rule was “unlawful.”
His opinion hearkened back to the basic separation of powers that’s at the heart of our federal system. In 2005, Congress passed the Energy Policy Act, describing it as “a comprehensive energy bill addressing a wide range of domestic energy resources, with the purpose of ensuring jobs for the future ‘with secure, affordable, and reliable energy.” That bill quite specifically and intentionally granted fracking extraordinary protection from EPA regulation.
The Obama administration creatively attempted to circumvent limits on EPA jurisdiction by using the BLM to accomplish the same purpose. The judge wasn’t having it. His reasoning was sound: “If agency regulation is prohibited by a statute specifically directed at a particular activity, it cannot be reasonably concluded that Congress intended regulation of the same activity would be authorized under a more general statute administered by a different agency.”
In other words, say goodbye to President Warren’s unilateral fracking ban.
Sadly, proposing unconstitutional laws is a bad habit for Elizabeth Warren. Her crowning legislative achievement is the Obama-era creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a bureaucracy that was designed to exist outside our nation’s system of checks and balances. It’s now in the center of its own constitutional battle. In 2016, a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled that it was “unconstitutionally structured.” According to the court:
The CFPB’s concentration of enormous executive power in a single, unaccountable, unchecked Director not only departs from settled historical practice, but also poses a far greater risk of arbitrary decisionmaking and abuse of power, and a far greater threat to individual liberty, than does a multi-member independent agency.
Yes, the full D.C. Circuit later reversed this ruling, but it’s notable that the author of the original ruling was none other than Brett Kavanaugh, now an associate justice of the Supreme Court. And last June another federal court ruled it was unconstitutional, while just this Friday the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals issued an opinion in a separate case that also casts serious doubt on the constitutionality of the CFPB.
Warren’s most significant creation is on constitutional life support, and the prognosis is not good.
But that’s not all. How does Warren propose to regulate guns? In part by using unilateral executive action to enact background checks that would be constitutionally suspect even if enacted by statute. Moreover, she would unilaterally reinterpret the clear language of federal statutes to impose “all federal gun rules” even on those individuals who’ve not been traditionally deemed “engaged in the business” of dealing in firearms.
In fact, the entire plan relies time and again on Warren’s pledge to stretch and extend regulations far beyond the language and intent of their enabling statutes — a move sure to spawn a wave of litigation in front of rightly skeptical federal judges.
But let’s not forget Warren’s vaunted wealth tax. Unsurprisingly, it also has constitutional problems. While the Constitution plainly (thanks to the 16th Amendment) allows for taxes on income, any other form of “direct tax” must be “in Proportion to the Census or Enumeration.” There are thoughtful progressive law professors who believe the “spirit” of the 16th Amendment could make the tax constitutional, but I’m skeptical — and I’m hardly alone.
I could go on. I will go on. Her signature proposal for protecting Roe v. Wade is to propose federal legislation that would create a national statutory right to an abortion, overriding each and every contradictory state law in America and representing, and advancing an extraordinarily expansive view of the commerce clause, one inconsistent with the Supreme Court’s recent holding in the Obamacare case. As the Court noted, the Constitution gives Congress “the power to regulate commerce, not to compel it.”
Time and time again, the pattern is the same. She’ll push regulatory authority beyond the statutory limit. She’ll push statutory authority beyond the constitutional limit. In so doing, she’d represent the next stage in imperial presidential evolution — reaching beyond both President Obama and President Trump, two men who have had their own problems staying within their constitutional boundaries.
If Warren does become president, she — and her voters — should prepare for profound disappointment. She has plans, but many of those plans won’t survive their first contact with the courts. Indeed, many of her plans are so politically and/or legally unrealistic that they represent a virtual political con job. That’s certainly par for the course for modern politics, but America needs to understand that the Democrats’ law professor-politician is making promises that the Constitution simply won’t let her keep.
Late last week CNN hosted ten back-to-back “climate crisis town halls” with Democratic presidential candidates, and while there is much to say about the candidates’ disputes (particularly about nuclear power), it was an Elizabeth Warren tweet the next day that truly caught my eye. Here she is, announcing yet another “plan” she has for “everything”:
Elizabeth Warren is hypocritical lying snake that will continue to manipulate her way on all issues, lying throughout her adult life using minority’s status excludes her from political office. DemocRats hypocrisy.
GET MARK LEVIN’S BOOK; UNFREEDOM OF THE PRESS – tells it like it is.
Get MICHELLE MALKINS BOOK; OPEN BORDERS INC. – reveals who is orchestrating all this immigration diabolical BS
ALL of these wanna be socialist presidential contenders are INSANE. The USA will NOT be led like lambs to the slaughter nor fall off a cliff like obedient lemmings. Wake up LIBERAL/PROGRESSIVES.
What has ANY democrat/progressive done for you except LIE about what they are going to do! Obama, Clinton, Johnson, FDR
Wake up or just get out of the way!
Trump for the USA!
God help us all if she becomes President.
Make her go away PLEASE
Warren is out of her fracking mind. She should go frack herself.
I don’t agree with Fauxcahontas on much but banning hydrofracking is something that every state should do post haste!!
Paraphrasing President Trump. they are not coming after me..they are coming after you. I’m just in the way. Americans had best wake up to the Democrat/Socialists wannabees, that nothing is free. A platform that punishes success and rewards failure off the backs of the working stiff, called the tax payer. Government dependence (control) vs. independence from Government (liberty)
She is the biggest “loon” who has been my home state of Massachusetts. She will take this country to hell. Given what the other “loons” are Trump will blast you out of your seats. Republicans vote straight party line. Otherwise we might as well move to Russia
Warren is a complete and total fraud who fraudulently used her fake status as a native American to advance her cause in life. She is typical of too many lawyers through time that have stirred the pot solely to their own advantage of gain. If any other person did this in any other profession, they would be removed. Where is the ethics with law ? For too long, in the toilet, yet they dominate and monopolize transactions of all types. Shame
The only good thing about Liawatha running for POTUS is that she’s out of MA while she’s on the warpath (um, I mean campaign trail).
Since she was paid #350K for teaching one class at Harvard and lives in a $2M + house in Cambridge, then she would be one of the people (i.e. ‘rich’) who would be paying for all her cockeyed programs.
Right, Lizzie? Right?
This current crop of democrat presidential candidates has no love for America! When they talk about radical change – transforming America- they’re not kidding! If they loved America, they would not want to change it so fundamentally. The America that we all grew up in is not what these radical democrats have in mind. These democrats are socialists to the third power!
She’s been a liar and uninformed for a long time. Surly America is smarter than to waste there vote on her. Typical liberal
May God help us because America has lost its mind
A typical socialist who does not know what she is talking about. This is another good reason to vote for Trump.
Everything the traitorous left, and every demo candidate proposes is unconstitutional! Worst group of outlaws since the mafia!
I cringe evertime I hear her speak and even more when I hear cheering at what she says. She will bring us back to the bread lines of 1929. Without energy this country won’t work. She is working against the American people. If we don’t get our energy from our own country, then we will be at the mercy of the Arabs and South America and China.
Chief spreading bull….AKA… lie-a-watha. Yeah we need her like we need another hole in our heads. Is there any doubt we need to get off our collective duffs and elect conservative constitutionalists? How about scotus? RBG is not long for this life.
Thank God for our Americans Constitution that holds wannabe dictators such as Warren at bay.
We as conservatives have got to vote for president Trump and get the word out. If the democrats take over again they will set our nation back 50 years. Dear God in heaven, please help us to remain “one nation under God”. Keep on fighting President Trump we are with you and for you!!!!! TRUMP 2020