Obama Gives Ten State Waivers for NCLB On His Own Authority; The Law Does Not Include a Waiver Provision

Unconstitutional.

This depressive egomaniac arriviste is doing tremendous amounts of damage to a constitutional system which has kept us united for 240 years (apart from the Civil War period).

Even worse, nothing in federal law grants Obama the power to issue these conditional waivers. He is unilaterally rewriting federal education policy through selective enforcement. The American Enterprise Institute's Frederick Hess tells the Christian Science Monitor: "NCLB, for all its flaws, was crafted by the US Congress … [but] these waivers impose a a raft of new federal requirements that were never endorsed by the legislative branch. Once this administration opens this door, it’s hard to imagine future administrations not building on this precedent."

And last year The Brookings Institution wrote:

It is one thing for an administration to grant waivers to states to respond to unrealistic conditions on the ground or to allow experimentation and innovation. ... The NCLB waiver authority does not grant the secretary of education the right to impose any conditions he considers appropriate on states seeking waivers, nor is there any history of such a wholesale executive branch rewrite of federal law through use of the waiver authority.

That said, Conn Carroll has a sharp idea:

Considering how epically unpopular Obamacare is, this whole sale abuse of a waiver process to fundamentally rewrite federal policy may not be the precedent Obama wants to set.

I don't even want to think like this, but if we're playing Lord of the Flies like this, I can see a Republican president waiving compliance with the National Labor Relations Board too. And the EPA. And unilaterally offering a "waiver" permitting a company to drill in ANWR.

Apologies for the Second Day Off: This isn't an excuse, just an explanation. I drank like three drinks Sunday night after the Super Bowl, and the same three last night at the Breitbart Embassy.

This would not cause problems for most people, but I'm on klonopin, and even that much is now wiping me out the next day. It's like being drugged with a really bad drug that just makes your brain not work.

And last night it wasn't the drinking. It was the return of all-night acid reflux. I did not fall into a restful sleep until... like seven a.m. or eight. Before that, I was waking up every forty five minutes with acid reflux.

I'm sorry about that. I will knock off any drinking during the week at all. Apparently I just cant handle it any more.

posted by Ace at 04:36 PM

| Access Comments