Category Archives: Citizens Duty

Lerner’s Emails Are Here!

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After so much obstruction, so much testimony and delay, it has finally come to light that there is something called ‘disaster recovery tapes’ which for the most part every large entity has to guard against profound document loss. The IRS was no different yet no one seemed to be forthcoming with redundant systems.

Now since the mid-terms are over and scandals continue to mount, we have our work to do to go through documents to determine the names and connections of those in the Obama administration that have been covertly destroying the country.

30,000 missing emails from IRS’ Lerner recovered

Up to 30,000 missing emails sent by former Internal Revenue Service official Lois Lerner have been recovered by the IRS inspector general, five months after they were deemed lost forever.

The U.S. Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) informed congressional staffers from several committees on Friday that the emails were found among hundreds of “disaster recovery tapes” that were used to back up the IRS email system.

“They just said it took them several weeks and some forensic effort to get these emails off these tapes,” a congressional aide told the Washington Examiner.

Committees in the House and Senate are seeking the emails, which they believe could show Lerner was working in concert with Obama administration officials to target conservative and Tea Party groups seeking tax-exempt status before the 2012 presidential election.

The missing emails extend from 2009 to 2011, a period when Lerner headed the IRS’s exempt-organizations division. The emails were lost when Lerner’s computer crashed, IRS officials said earlier this year.

In June, IRS Administrator John Koskinen told Congress the emails were probably lost for good because the disaster recovery tape holds onto the data for only six months. He said even if the IRS had sought the emails within the six-month period, it would have been a complicated and difficult process to produce them from the tapes.

The IRS also lost the emails of several other employees who worked under Lerner during that period.

Lerner, who retired from the IRS, has refused to be questioned by Congress.

She provided a statement at a March hearing, but then clammed up, following the advice of her lawyer to avoid self-incrimination.

The House, led by Republicans, voted in May to hold Lerner in contempt of Congress.

Congressional aides said officials from the inspector general’s office said it could take weeks to get the recovered emails off the tape before sending them to lawmakers in Capitol Hill.

In all, investigators from the inspector general’s office combed through 744 disaster recovery tapes. They are not finished looking.

There are 250 million emails ion the tapes that will be reviewed. Officials said it is likely they will find missing emails from other IRS officials who worked under Lerner and who said they suffered computer crashes.

Investigators said the emails could include some overlapping information because it is not clear how many of them are duplicates or were already produced by Lerner to the congressional committees.

Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., said the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee he chairs will be one of the committees that will examine the emails.

“Though it is unclear whether TIGTA has found all of the missing Lois Lerner e-mails, there may be significant information in this discovery,” Issa told the Examiner. “The Oversight Committee will be looking for information about her mindset and who she was communicating with outside the IRS during a critical period of time when the IRS was targeting conservative groups. This discovery also underscores the lack of cooperation Congress has received from the IRS. The agency first failed to disclose the loss to Congress and then tried to declare Lerner’s e-mails gone and lost forever. Once again it appears the IRS hasn’t been straight with Congress and the American people.”

 

Boehner Files Lawsuit Against Obama Today

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After the immigration speech Barack Obama delivered on November 20, John Boehner today filed the House lawsuit against Treasury and Health and Human Services.

The full 38 page complaint is listed here.

The points of the lawsuit are:

THE BASICS OF THE HOUSE LITIGATION

  • The president’s unilateral actions on the health care law’s employer mandate in 2013 and 2014 will likely be the focus of the litigation brought by the House.  There are many examples of executive overreach by the president, but his actions on the health care law are arguably the ones that give the House the best chance of success in the courts.
  • The litigation will focus solely on the president’s unilateral changes to the health care law because that’s how the suit must be structured in order to maximize the House’s chances of being granted standing by the court.  Basing the litigation on a laundry list of grievances against the president would make standing more difficult.
  • In the case of the health care law’s employer mandate, the president twice changed the law without going through Congress, effectively creating his own law by literally waiving the mandate and the penalties for failing to comply with it.  He legislated without the Legislative Branch.  The Constitution doesn’t give presidents the power to do that.  No president should have such authority.  That’s what the House litigation will argue.

Republicans call Obama executive actions ‘damaging to presidency,’ file lawsuit over Obamacare

By Paul Kane

House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) launched a double-barreled response to President Obama’s recent executive actions on Friday, announcing a House lawsuit over unilateral changes to Obamacare and vowing to counter Obama’s move to protect millions of illegal immigrants from deportation with additional legislative action.

He warned that the executive action on immigration was “damaging the presidency” and that Congress will not let it stand without a fight.

“Time after time, the president has chosen to ignore the will of the American people and rewrite federal law on his own without a vote of Congress. That’s not the way our system of government was designed to work,” Boehner said.

The lawsuit, filed Friday against the Health and Human Services (HHS) and Treasury secretaries, challenges two of Obama’s executive actions: that his administration “unlawfully waived the employer mandate” and illegally transferred funds to insurance companies.

Obama’s executive actions twice delaying the employer mandate “directly contradict the clear and plain language of the health care law,” Boehner said in a statement.

Boehner also said that, according to the Congressional Budget Office, the administration will pay $3 billion to insurance companies this fiscal year, and will make payments of $175 billion over the next 10 years under an HHS-based cost-sharing program, even though Congress has never appropriated funds for the program.

Boehner declined to spell out how Republicans would counter the immigration executive actions, which extend protections to roughly 4 million undocumented parents of legal U.S. citizens and young immigrants brought here illegally when they were children.

“We’re working with our members and looking at the options available to us, but I will say to you the House will, in fact, act,” Boehner told reporters Friday morning, in the first televised Republican rebuttal to Obama’s prime-time address Thursday night.

He dodged a question about the assertion by one of his own leadership team members, House Appropriations Chairman Hal Rogers (R-Ky.), that there was little Congress could do to restrict funding for the new program. Rogers and his staff said Thursday that funding for the implementation of the new policy does not come from the annual spending bills approved by Congress but instead comes from border fees, placing it outside the reach of congressional Republicans.

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), the leading opponent of the president’s action, told reporters Thursday that he would support attaching a policy rider onto the government funding bills that simply forbid the federal workforce from implementing the new rules on immigration. Sessions is leading the effort to keep government funding to a short leash into the new year, when Republicans take over the Senate and control both chambers of Congress, making it easier to get clear majorities for his preferred line of attack.

Such a move would require a 60-vote super-majority in the Senate, and it would almost certainly draw a veto from Obama, which, critics say, would lead to a possible shutdown of some federal agencies.

Boehner deflected those questions and instead blamed Obama for issuing too many executive orders to modify the controversial new health law that took effect over the last year, which left his rank-and-file Republicans unwilling to trust the president and refusing to even consider a broad rewrite of immigration laws.

“He created an environment where the members could not trust him, and trying to find a way to work together was virtually impossible, and I had warned the president over and over that his actions were making it impossible for me to do what he wanted me to do,” the speaker said, explaining his inability to even consider smaller pieces of the 2013 Senate-approved legislation that revamped border and immigration laws.

“We have a broken immigration system, and the American people expect us to work together to fix it, and we ought to do it through the democratic process,” he said.

In his prime-time speech from the East Room of the White House, Obama blamed Republicans for forcing his hand by refusing to approve immigration reform and told them, “Pass a bill.”

Conservatives inside and outside Congress want to use the budget process as a battleground to wage war against Obama and his immigration program. The proposed gambit raises the specter of another government shutdown, akin to the one that damaged Republicans last year.

In a floor speech Thursday, soon-to-be Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) suggested that his preference would be for Republicans to avoid becoming mired in a fiscal clash during the lame-duck session, shortly before the GOP takes control of the Senate in January.

Many conservative lawmakers are shrugging off those pleas, however. Furious with the president, they are planning a series of immediate and hard-line actions that could have sweeping consequences. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) said Wednesday that Obama’s executive action should be met with a refusal to vote on any more of his nominees, and on Thursday, he compared the action with the ancient Catiline conspiracy, a plot to overthrow the Roman Republic.

Sessions (R-Ala.), likely the next chairman of the budget committee, has advocated for a series of stopgap spending bills with the intent of pressuring the president to relent. Sessions is the featured speaker at a Heritage Foundation event Friday morning in response to Obama’s moves.

And Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) — one of the loudest voices on the right — has hinted at bringing up impeachment measures. “We have constitutional authority to do a string of things. [Impeachment] would be the very last option, but I would not rule it out,” King said Thursday on CNN.

Robert A. Costa contributed to this report.

 

Amnesty Speech Full of Lies

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If you think that Barack Obama is governing the United States in the best interest of the nation you would be wrong. If you think he is leading, you would be wrong. Barack Obama reacts to only pressure from special interest and none was more poignant that the 15 minute speech he gave on November 15, 2014. This speech not only was full of distortions and omissions but was driven by several factors including powerbrokers speaking on behalf of illegals. If there is any question about how the speech came to be that Obama delivered last night, then click here for who was behind the event.

The law of unintended consequences are still to be determined. Just one consequence of Obama’s action goes back to Jonathan Gruber. He has been fast at work for years giving opaque points on Obamacare, but here is how illegals will be part of the healthcare system on your tax dollars.

Now for the speech, even the Associated Press delivered the Pinocchio report.

FACT CHECK: Obama’s claims on illegal immigration

By ALICIA A. CALDWELL and ERICA WERNER
Associated PressWASHINGTON (AP) – President Barack Obama made some notable omissions Thursday night in his remarks about the unilateral actions he’s taking on immigration.

A look at his statements and how they compare with the facts:

OBAMA: “It does not grant citizenship, or the right to stay here permanently, or offer the same benefits that citizens receive – only Congress can do that. All we’re saying is we’re not going to deport you.”

THE FACTS: He’s saying, and doing, more than that. The changes also will make those covered eligible for work permits, allowing them to be employed in the country legally and compete with citizens and legal residents for better-paying jobs.

___

OBAMA: “Although this summer, there was a brief spike in unaccompanied children being apprehended at our border, the number of such children is now actually lower than it’s been in nearly two years.”

THE FACTS: The numbers certainly surged this year, but it was more than a “brief spike.” The number of unaccompanied children apprehended at the border has been on the rise since the 2011 budget year. That year about 16,000 children were found crossing the border alone. In 2012, the Border Patrol reported more than 24,000 children, followed by more than 38,800 in 2013. In the last budget year, more than 68,361 children were apprehended.

___

OBAMA: “Overall, the number of people trying to cross our border illegally is at its lowest level since the 1970s. Those are the facts.”

THE FACTS: Indeed, in the 2014 budget year the Border Patrol made 486,651 arrests of border crossers, among the fewest since the early 1970s. But border arrests have been on the rise since 2011.

The decline in crossings is not purely, or perhaps even primarily, due to the Obama administration. The deep economic recession early in his presidency and the shaky aftermath made the U.S. a less attractive place to come for work. The increase in arrests since 2011 also can be traced in part to the economy – as the recovery improved, more people came in search of opportunity.

___

OBAMA: “When I took office, I committed to fixing this broken immigration system. And I began by doing what I could to secure our borders.”

THE FACTS: He overlooked the fact that he promised as a candidate for president in 2008 to have an immigration bill during his first year in office and move forward on it quickly. He never kept that promise to the Latino community.

___

Associated Press writers Calvin Woodward and Jim Kuhnhenn contributed to this report.

EDITOR’S NOTE _ An occasional look at political claims that take shortcuts with the facts or don’t tell the full story.

Then the Wall Street Journal delivered their summary of the immigration speech. Obama centered the speech and actions only around himself.

I, Barack

The immigration order is an abuse of power that fails as a policy reform.

President Obama ’s decision to legalize millions of undocumented immigrants by his own decree is a sorry day for America’s republic. We say that even though we agree with the cause of immigration reform. But process matters to self-government—sometimes it is the only barrier to tyranny—and Mr. Obama’s policy by executive order is tearing at the fabric of national consent.

The first question to address is Mr. Obama’s legal rationale. At least he finally rolled out a memo from the experts on presidential power in the Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel, but it’s fair to wonder how much time he gave them. The OLC made its justification public about an hour before the speech.

The President’s rationale is “prosecutorial discretion,” but he is stretching that legal concept beyond normal understanding. The executive branch does have discretion about whom to prosecute. But this typically extends to individual cases, or to setting priorities due to limited resources such as prosecuting cocaine but not marijuana use.

Mr. Obama claims he is using his discretion to focus on such high deportation priorities as criminals, but he is going much further and is issuing an order exempting from deportation entire classes of people—as many as five million. Justice’s OLC memo claims there is no such categorical exemption, and that immigration officials can still deport someone if they want to, but the memo offers no measures by which to make that “complex judgment.” In practice it will almost never happen.

The Reagan and Bush precedents cited by the Obama lawyers are different in kind and degree. They involved far fewer people and they were intended to fulfill the policy set by Congress—not, as Mr. Obama intends, to defy Congress. That is why their actions were done with little controversy.

Mr. Obama is issuing his order amid furious political opposition and after his own multiple previous declarations that he lacks legal authority. “If we start broadening that [his 2012 order for undocumented children], then essentially I’ll be ignoring the law in a way that I think would be very difficult to defend legally,” Mr. Obama said on Telemundo in September 2013. Until now.

While we favor generous immigration, Mr. Obama’s order also fails as policy because it won’t reduce the economic incentive that drives illegal immigration. The only way to reduce the flow of illegal migrants is to offer enough legal ways to work in the U.S. and then return home.

His unilateral order will encourage more migrants to come in hope of a future amnesty, without matching the ebb and flow of migration to America’s changing labor market demands. His order also offers no prospect of future citizenship, creating a laboring class with less of a stake in American institutions—and less incentive to assimilate.

The politics of immigration is already fraught, and Mr. Obama’s order will make it worse. He is empowering the most extreme anti-immigrant voices on the Republican right, which may be part of his political calculation.

Mr. Obama wants Democrats to get political credit with Hispanics for legalization, while goading the GOP into again becoming the deportation party in 2016. Hillary Clinton would love that, which explains why Bill Clinton is already backing Mr. Obama’s order. Mark this down as one more way in which this President has become the Great Polarizer.

How should Republicans respond? They can use their own constitutional powers without falling into Mr. Obama’s political trap. Impeachment is a fool’s errand that would change the political subject and fail. The power of the purse is an obvious tool now that the GOP will soon control the Senate, but that will require patience and unity to prevail over Mr. Obama’s vetoes.

The best GOP revenge would be to trump him on immigration. Before Mr. Obama’s decree, smart Republicans were discussing a legislative strategy focusing on piecemeal immigration reforms. Separate bills addressing individual problems (border security, agriculture and tech visas) could pass with rotating majorities that show the GOP has immigration solutions of its own. Some bills might get to Mr. Obama’s desk, forcing him to reveal his cynical political hand if he uses his veto to block durable reform.

We realize this won’t be easy, especially as many on the anti-immigrant right will want an immediate strategy to defund the President’s order. But another Pickett’s charge up Shutdown Hill is exactly what Mr. Obama wants. Republicans need to keep the focus on Mr. Obama’s abuse of power while showing voters they have better immigration solutions.

***

The polls show the American people are uneasy about Mr. Obama’s unilateral law-making, and liberals should be too. Mr. Obama is setting a precedent that Republican Presidents could also use to overcome a Democratic majority. How about an order to the IRS not to collect capital-gains taxes on inflated gains from property held for more than a decade? That policy would be broadly popular and also address a basic lack of fairness.

Mr. Obama’s rule-by-regulation has already been rebuked more than once by the Supreme Court. His “I, Barack” immigration decree is another abuse that will roil American politics and erode public confidence in the basic precepts of self-government.

Why Keystone XL Failed

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The Keystone XL Pipeline vote passed by the House of Representatives failed in the Senate.

S.2280
Latest Title: A bill to approve the Keystone XL Pipeline.
Sponsor: Sen Hoeven, John [ND] (introduced 5/1/2014)      Cosponsors (55)
Related Bills: H.R.5682, S.2314, S.2554
Latest Major Action: 11/18/2014 Failed of passage/not agreed to in Senate. Status: Under the order of 11/12/14, not having achieved 60 votes in the affirmative, failed of passage in Senate by Yea-Nay Vote. 59 – 41. Record Vote Number: 280.

The full text of the bill is here. To find out which Democratic Senators voted no, click here.

We all want the Keystone XL pipeline for the sake of jobs even though they may be temporary and some interesting people will make lots of money, however it should also be noted that this oil will not be used domestically. It is also important to use the Keystone legislation to see the behind the curtains machinations and money that drives law from many lobby groups, corporations and special interest.

Senate Keystone “Yea” Votes Took In Six Times More Oil & Gas Money Than Opponents

by

Senate Democrats successfully blocked a bill Tuesday that would have approved construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. The controversial measure fell one vote shy of overcoming a filibuster, with 59 senators supporting it and 41 opposing. The vote followed the bill’s approval in the House by a much wider margin, with 252 lawmakers voting to advance the pipeline.

The vote largely fell along party lines. All Senate Republicans supported construction of the pipeline but they were joined by 14 Democrats, including three of the four Democrat incumbents who lost their re-election bids earlier this month. For Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), the bill’s main sponsor, the vote was considered an important test of her effectiveness in advance of a Dec. 6 runoff that will determine whether she keeps her seat. In the House, 31 Democrats crossed the aisle to side with the Republican majority.

SVB

Construction of the pipeline has been decried by environmental groups and championed by heavyweights in the oil and gas industry. Both of these interests are no strangers to money in politics. The oil and gas industry has long been a generous donor to federal candidates and committees — and increased its donations in 2014 over 2010. In the environmental community, where the League of Conservation Voters has long been the lead player on this front, environmental activist Tom Steyer is 2014′s top overall donor.

Oil and Gas

The 59 senators who voted for the pipeline have received, on average, significantly more money from the oil and gas industry than those who voted against construction. Over the course of their careers, those 59 took in over $33 million in campaign donations from the industry, compared to the approximately $4.2 million received by the 41 who successfully blocked the bill’s approval. On average, those voting for Keystone have received $572,000 from oil and gas interests, compared with just $103,900 for those voting against it.

TAOG

Among the Democrats, the 39 “nay” votes received $4.2 million from oil and gas, while the 14 who voted with the Republicans received just under $4 million. On average, those voting no received about $108,000, while the Democratic supporters — who disproportionately represent states with strong oil and gas industry presence – received more than twice as much, about $284,000.

AAOG

But the amount taken in by Democratic Keystone supporters pales in comparison to that received by Republicans, who received $662,000, on average, from oil and gas interests. The 11 Republicans who will be joining the Senate in January have taken in $370,000 on average (likely an artificially small amount since most of these Republicans have had much shorter time periods in which to accrue this money).

In the House, the picture is even more stark. Keystone supporters have garnered $56.2 million from the oil and gas industry over the course of their careers, compared to the $5.2 million that opponents have brought in. On average, a “yea” vote took in around $223,000 over the course of his or her career, while a “nay” vote took in a paltry $32,200. For just the 31 Democrats voting in favor, the average oil and gas tally was $115,349 — slightly less than the Republicans were able to bring in, but much more than the Keystone opponents.

Environment

The environmental community has historically given much less to federal candidates than oil and gas interests have. One reason the tally is lower: We have no way of knowing which donors consider themselves environmentalists. We classify contributions according to donors’ employers, and far more donors work for oil and gas companies than work for environmental groups.

(Spending by the Tom Steyer-funded NextGen Climate Action super PAC, as well as that of other super PACs, is not reflected in these totals, which include only contributions directly to candidates.)

AAE

Environmental money largely followed the same pattern that oil and gas money took, but in reverse — Senate Republicans received far less than Senate Democrats (on average just under $11,000 compared to an average of $141,000 for Democrats). Among Democrats, those who voted to build the pipeline received less than those who voted not to: just over $98,000 on average, compared to the $183,000 that Democrats who wanted to deep-six the project raised.

TAE (1)

Similarly, in the House Republicans received far less than Democrats overall, but Keystone-supporting Democrats took in less from environmental groups and their employees than Keystone opponents. Keystone opponents received $6.2 million over the course of their careers, while Keystone proponents were only able to bring in $1.1 million, despite there being many more of them. On average, Keystone’s GOP supporters took in $2,932 from environmental interests while its Democratic cheerleaders brought in $14,196. Keystone opponents, all of them Democrats, took in $38,642 — more than twice as much as their nay-voting Democratic counterparts.

What does it mean?

It probably comes as no surprise that opponents of the pipeline — all Democrats — were more likely to be supported by environmental interests and that proponents were more likely to take in large sums from the oil and gas industry. Those Democrats who crossed party lines are a more interesting story: Although they more closely resemble their Democratic colleagues, they are far less likely to have received significant sums from environmental donors, but have received more from the oil and gas industry than those who voted against Keystone.

They are also less likely to be returning. Of the 14 Senate Democrats who sided with Republicans, four will be departing and many pollsters are speculating that Landrieu will not win her runoff. If she does not return, 65 percent of the Keystone-supporting Democrats will be members of the 114th Congress. Among the 39 Keystone opponents, however, five will not be returning — a yield of 87%. All of those five except for Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) will be replaced by Republicans.

Table

Though the 114th Congress will have more GOP senators, they will have, on average, received less from the oil and gas industry over the course of their careers than the Republicans currently in the Senate, but the difference is slight and probably explained by the incoming lawmakers having had shorter congressional careers than the senators they are replacing.  However, incoming Democratic senators will have received much less, on average, than the current Democratic class: A Democrat in the 114th Congress will have received $100,000 from the oil and gas industry, while a Democrat in the current Congress has received more $155,000.  It looks, therefore, like upcoming Congress’ Senate Democrats will not only be fewer in number, but will have a weaker connection to the oil and gas industry.

For the full data set showing how each member of the Senate voted and how much they received from oil and gas or environment, click here.

All numbers in this story reflect career (back to 1989 at the earliest) totals to members of Congress and are based on data collected from the Federal Election Commission on 11/17/2014. Only itemized contributions of greater than $200 are included in the industry totals.

 

U.S. Constant State of Emergency

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From the White House on National Security:

Progress

Guiding Principles

The President’s highest priority is to keep the American people safe. He is committed to ensuring the United States is true to our values and ideals while also protecting the American people. The President is committed to securing the homeland against 21st century threats by preventing terrorist attacks and other threats against our homeland, preparing and planning for emergencies, and investing in strong response and recovery capabilities. We will help ensure that the Federal Government works with states and local governments, and the private sector as close partners in a national approach to prevention, mitigation, and response.

The National Security Strategy, released May 27, 2010, lays out a strategic approach for advancing American interests, including the security of the American people, a growing U.S. economy, support for our values, and an international order that can address 21st century challenges.

But the last time a National Security strategy was addressed in total was 2010.

Meanwhile, see below.

The United States is in a state of emergency – 30 of them, in fact

By Christopher Ingraham

The United States has been in an uninterrupted state of national emergency since 1979. Here in 2014, we’re not dealing with just one emergency – there are currently 30 of them in effect.

That’s according to data on presidential declarations of emergency compiled by Gregory Korte of USA Today. “Those emergencies, declared by the president by proclamation or executive order, give the president extraordinary powers — to seize property, call up the National Guard and hire and fire military officers at will,” Korte writes.

President Obama has declared nine so far, eight of which are currently in effect — they primarily deal with preventing business with people or organizations involved in global conflicts or the drug trade. Obama has also renewed many of his predecessors’ orders — just last week he renewed our ongoing state of emergency with respect to Iran for its 36th straight year.

Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush took a light touch on declarations of emergency – they invoked only a handful, none of which remain in effect. But Bill Clinton proclaimed 16 emergencies and George W. Bush declared 14, 13 of which are still in effect today.

Blocking business transactions with various interests may not seem like national emergency material. But the language underlying these declarations is often nearly apocalyptic. Obama’s recent continuation of a Bush-era emergency relating to “the property of certain persons contributing to the conflict” in the Democratic Republic of the Congo states that “this situation continues to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the foreign policy of the United States.”

The Obama administration also maintains that “the actions and policies of certain members of the Government of Belarus and other persons continue to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States.”

You may wonder why the president needs to declare a state of emergency to deal with what appears to be fairly routine instances of corruption in far-flung corners of the world. Korte notes that Congress provides little oversight on emergency declarations, even through it’s mandated to do so by law. In an era when tussles over executive power are a near-daily occurrence, this is a strange incongruity.

“What the National Emergencies Act does is like a toggle switch, and when the president flips it, he gets new powers. It’s like a magic wand. and there are very few constraints about how he turns it on,” said Kim Lane Scheppele, a Princeton professor interviewed by Korte.

In the absence of a crisis, there’s little compelling reason for a government to adopt a permanent crisis stance. The danger is that a public desensitized to claims to extraordinary circumstances could be more likely to allow excesses of authority performed in the name of those circumstances.

As Korte writes, “A post-9/11 state of national emergency declared by President George W. Bush — and renewed six times by President Obama — forms the legal basis for much of the war on terror” — a war which has so far seen a rise in terrorism around the globe.