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Obama’s latest decrees show split from Constitution

President Barack Obama appears to believe he is the government. Never mind the Constitution vests law-making power solely in Congress. Obama seems to think his decrees are permanent. What one president does, another cannot reverse.

With less than a month left in his presidency, Obama has launched an initiative to wipe out coal mining and handicap offshore drilling for oil and natural gas. First, he ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to proceed with its controversial Stream Protection Rule. By one estimate, that would make mining so difficult it would make 85 percent of the nation’s coal reserves unrecoverable. Then Obama designated most government-owned areas in the Arctic Ocean and a large swath off the Atlantic Coast closed to drilling. That would prevent production of huge reserves of oil and gas. A 1953 law allows presidents to order such bans.

Some liberal leaders proclaimed the withdrawals permanent. They cannot be rescinded, some radical environmentalists proclaimed.

Any executive action taken by a president should be reversible by his successors. If the courts do not allow that in this case, Congress can step in and amend the 1953 law, which was not intended to give any human being permanent authority over anything.

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