Fits of whimsy

Apparently frustrated by no longer having his every childish whim treated as imperial demand by the House and Senate, The Worst President In History is now planning to increase his use of Executive Orders to implement his ludicrously unpopular policies.

So ... what does this mean?

First of all, the Supreme Court has ruled (in this case) the President can't use orders to create new law. Since that time, Presidents have typically noted some law they were abiding by when issuing an order, to give it at least a veneer of legality. Most orders aren't controversial, and it's worth noting only two have ever been overturned in court (the above case and one issued by Clinton in 1996).

That limitation, however, still leaves plenty of room for misuse and abuse. Perhaps the most infamous Executive Order in our history was #9066, which resulted in tens of thousands of Japanese-Americans (and German- and Italian-Americans as well) being rounded up after the US entry into WWII and spending years in internment camps.

Given this administration's history of ignoring constraints on its power, it's quite easy to envision scenarios where it issues Executive Orders privatizing social security, drilling in the ANWR, or whatever - pushing policies Bush knows he no longer has any chance at all of getting through Congress. As a practical matter, any order would be virtually impossible to overturn - lawsuits would be appealed past the end of his term of office, and any attempt to counter his order by passing a bill in Congress would be vetoed, said veto upheld by the Republican minority.

Something we won't see, however, is an Executive Order to attack Iran. The administration thinks it already has sufficient authority to do that, regardless of what the Constitution might actually say.