“John Marshall has made his decision; let him enforce it now if he can.” ~President Andrew Jackson 1832
Not since President Andrew Jackson’s fight with the Cherokee Indian Tribe has a President so boldly defied the dictates of the Supreme Court. President Barrack Obama is holding himself above the Court and the Constitution of the United States in the case of Arizona vs United States, and immigration law in the United States.
Yesterday the Justices ruled unanimously that Arizona’s 2-year-old immigration law, SB 1070, allowed local law enforcement to inquire and investigate the legal residency status of an individual being held on suspicion of a crime. This is the heart of the law which the Obama Administration tried to have killed. They didn’t want local police and Sheriff’s departments picking up the phone and calling Federal officials asking them to come pick up an illegal alien they have in custody. They didn’t want to have to do what Federal law requires, deport the law breakers.
Like Andrew Jackson, Obama heard the Court and has figuratively given them his middle finger. Within hours of the Courts ruling the Obama Justice Department established a toll-free 800 hotline phone number and a website solely for the purpose of ferreting out any alleged racial profiling conducted by Arizona Law Enforcement. The Justice Department wants to burden our courts, our tax payers and the good people of Arizona with as much trouble as possible for having the audacity to actually enforce the law. It’s not hard, in fact its easy, to imagine Hispanics in Arizona being encouraged by Obama representatives to call the hotline and falsely report incidents of civil rights violations by Arizona police.
Also yesterday, Homeland Security Director Janet Napolitano
announced orders that bar ICE (Immigration Customs Enforcement) agents from cooperating with Arizona law enforcement in their inquiries into a criminal detainees legal residence status. In essence, in 49 other states police holding a jaywalker or a murderer can type a suspects name into a Federal database to check on outstanding warrants, past criminal history, and legal immigration status of a suspect being held in connection with a crime against local, or state law. But not in Arizona. That database report will not provide Arizona officials with the suspect’s legal residency status. So despite the Supreme Court’s Monday ruling that Arizona law enforcement can ask for a criminal suspect’s legal right to be in this country the Obama Administration chooses not to enforce that law.
Not since Andrew Jackson’s forced evacuation of Cherokee Indians from Georgia and other Southern states spawned the Trail of Tears has a President so willfully failed in his Presidential oath to “faithfully enforce and protect the Constitution of the United States” and its laws. Gold was discovered on Cherokee land in Western Georgia in the 1820s and the inconvenience of having native people inhabiting the land was problematic for gold seeking Georgians, Jackson, and the United States Congress. So in 1830 Congress passed and Jackson signed the “Indian Removal Act” in order to get the Native Americans off the land whites now coveted. However, in the case of Worcester vs. Georgia (1832) the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Cherokee. The Supreme Court ruled that the Cherokee Nation was sovereign thus making the removal laws invalid. The decision was written by Justice John Marshal. As in this current case with Obama, Jackson didn’t like the ruling and issued his now infamous challenge, “John Marshall has made his decision; let him enforce it now if he can.”
In 1838 the removal of the Cherokee began when General Winfield Scott, along with several thousand men, forcibly removed thousands of Cherokees from their homes and their land. The trip was brutal and about 4000 Cherokees died along the way on what became known as the “Trail Where They Cried” or the “Trail of Tears.” The fact that over 16,000 Cherokee signed a petition opposing the illegal removal didn’t move the Federal Government at all. The Cherokee were relocated to land in what is now Oklahoma.
The “Trail of Tears” tail is now taught in high school history classes as a shameful moment in American History. It not only displayed a brutal treatment of an indigenous people, it showed a President willing to snub the laws of the country in favor of what he personally deemed the proper action.
President Obama’s immediate and overt demonstration of his unwillingness to honor Arizona’s right to protect its people and to subvert the determination of the unanimous ruling of our nations highest court comes less than two weeks after he did likewise to other immigration laws by issuing a Presidential Executive Order prohibiting the deportation of children of illegal immigrants here in this country illegally. It comes three weeks after Obama’s stated support of same-sex marriage in violation of the Federal Defense of Marriage Act. DOMA was passed by both houses of Congress and signed into law in 1996 by Democratic President Bill Clinton. DOMA says the Federal Government and no state is required to recognize a same-sex marriage even if the marriage is licensed in another state. In 2011 the Obama Administration declared they would no longer defend the law in court.
It matters not whether an individual or a President agrees with a law. In the case of a President an oath was taken to defend our nations laws, and in at least these two instances Obama is clearly in violation of his oath. Failure for a President to enforce our laws leaves us not in a Democratic Republic as established by our Founding Fathers, but instead has us inhabiting a Dictatorship or a Monarch which leads to tyranny. Something countless Americans gave their lives to protect against.
Thanks for visiting. Comments are welcome.