Obama threatens to "fix our immigration system" on his own, without congress

Yesterday Obama gave a short speech about the newest wave of illegal immigrants pouring across the Mexican border.  Highlights:

We now have an actual humanitarian crisis on the border that only underscores the need to drop the politics and fix our immigration system once and for all.  In recent weeks, we’ve seen a surge of unaccompanied children arrive at the border... 

Yes.  Crisis caused by your declaring--by executive order and in direct violation of U.S. law--that the U.S. Border Patrol and related agencies were to cease deporting illegal immigrants whose only crime was entering the U.S. illegally.  In other words, this is the fault of your own violation of U.S. law.

[The children who have entered illegally] will be taken care of while they go through the legal process, but in most cases that process will lead to them being sent back home. 

No, you have directed federal agents to put these kids on planes or buses to cities where they have family--who often are also in the U.S. illegally.  Because you refuse to back off on your earlier, illegal executive order, none has been sent back home.  Nor are you likely to deport anyone from the current wave.  You're simply bullshitting us by saying something intended to soothe the public.

And understand [that] for the most part this is not a situation where these children are slipping through.  They’re being apprehended.  But the problem is, is that our system is so broken, so unclear, that folks don’t know what the rules are.

Nonsense.  It's NOT that our immigration system is broken or unclear--not remotely.  The illegals know quite well that sneaking across is against U.S. law.  But because you refuse to deport teenagers, they know they'll be allowed to stay.  In fact, they'll be free to go anywhere in the country.

I don’t prefer taking administrative action. *** There are a whole bunch of things where I would greatly prefer Congress actually do something.  I take executive action only when we have a serious problem, a serious issue, and Congress chooses to do nothing.   

Bullshit.  Your executive order instructing federal agents to stop deporting illegal immigrants who hadn't been found guilty of more serious crimes literally caused this problem.  Before your illegal order there was no substantive problem that your executive order was designed to fix.  You issued it knowing it was a violation of existing law.  So don't try telling us that you only use EOs when there's a "serious problem and congress chooses to do nothing."  You insult our intelligence.  Just because your supporters are idiots "low-information voters" doesn't mean all of us are that clueless.

So while I will continue to push House Republicans to drop the excuses and act...America cannot wait forever for them to act.  And that’s why today I’m beginning a new effort to fix as much of our immigration system as I can on my own, without Congress. 

Interesting:  You threaten to use unilateral action to "fix" a system that is suffering from your own previous executive orders.

As you should know--since you claim to have taught Constitutional law--the Constitution gives the power to make laws exclusively to congress.  The president is charged simply with "faithfully enforcing" those laws.  Which you clearly and obviously have refused to do.  I suspect if we had access to your hidden history we'd find that you've always believed you weren't subject to any laws or rules.

Issuing executive orders violating those laws violates the Constitution.  As you should also know, the Supreme Court has ruled on this exact issue.  But you've calculated that 1) Republicans in the House wouldn't risk trying to impeach you even if you were caught on video giving nuclear secrets to Putin; and 2) that even if they were to succeed, your Democratic-controlled senate would never vote to remove you from office.

Personally I think you're simply spouting off just to keep the support of illegal immigrants and the most politically active of your Dem supporters, or to bluff congress into caving.  Guess we'll see.

Oh, and for those readers who think the above quotes were lies posted by Faux News, think again:  They're direct quotes from whitehouse.gov.