The two significant developments in the Fast and Furious investigation yesterday were 1) the invocation of executive privilege over the documents subpoenaed from the Justice Department by the House Oversight Committee; and 2) the vote by that committee to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt. It was a busy day for those of us who seek to master the intricacies of constitutional authority. Here’s what I’ve come to after reviewing a number of analyses.

First, executive privilege is only used in matters of national security or dealing with communications between the president and one of the members of his administration. The investigation into Fast and Furious is an attempt to get information from the Department of Justice to figure out who was responsible for this foolish policy of allowing guns to enter Mexico—guns that have led to countless deaths south of our border and the death of one of our own border agents. The Justice Department, while part of the executive branch, is a creation of the Congress. The department is not mentioned in the Constitution; it was created by legislation. If the Congress chose to do so, it could dismantle the department tomorrow. The Justice Department has an obligation to report to Congress and Congress has authority to oversee its actions. That’s all that is taking place in these committee hearings as they try to find the truth behind this failed policy. Yet Holder has stonewalled most requests for documents, and remains adamant even in the face of a rising tide of calls for his resignation.

He has kept Congress at bay for months, sometimes teasing with the promise of information but always drawing back at the last moment. He has proven himself arrogant and untrustworthy.

Second, if Obama is really invoking executive privilege, that invites questions about his involvement in this controversy. After all, if his basis for invoking the privilege is the protection of communication between the office of the president and his subordinates, he must be saying he’s had conversations about this. So now we get back to those age-old questions: what did this president know and when did he know it? Watergate, anyone?

Then there’s the contempt of Congress resolution. It is serious. It hasn’t been carried out often, but penalties do come with it. If the full House, which is planning to vote on it next week, agrees with the committee, Holder could potentially face jail time if he doesn’t cooperate with the investigation. The full House has the authority to call upon the federal judiciary to bring charges against the attorney general. Now, on the practical level, will a Democrat judge, for instance, do this, or will he/she instead follow the expected Obama line that this is a valid use of executive privilege?

Back in 2007, then-senator Barack Obama was quite vocal against President Bush’s use of executive privilege in the matter of dismissing certain attorneys in the Justice Department [a right, by the way, that all presidents have---this was a trumped-up charge with no basis]. At the time, Obama said it was an abuse of power and showed the president had something to hide. Oh, really? Then what does that mean for Mr. Obama now that he is president and is invoking the same privilege? Is this a double standard or is he doing another one of his evolutions in thought?

Unfortunately, most of his evolutions are in the wrong direction. We elected a president who is supposed to be answerable to the people, not a king who is above the law. Given his refusal to enforce the Defense of Marriage Act, his trampling of religious liberty via Obamacare, and his unilateral alteration of illegal immigration policy, we are much closer to a monarch who operates outside the law than we are to a constitutional presidency.

Reaction to the president’s usurpation of the legislative power of Congress continues. I wrote about this on Monday: the unilateral decision to alter illegal immigration enforcement and the political reason for doing so. The cartoonists are beginning to weigh in on this now, and they’re doing a pretty good job of identifying the underlying philosophy and reasoning of the president. For instance:

There have been other, less publicized uses of executive orders to accomplish what Obama wants, but what we see with this latest one is how he would govern in a second term with a completely Republican Congress. He would simply ignore Congress and do whatever he wants. His rationale would be that it “needs” to be done, Congress is delinquent in doing its job, and therefore he is justified in acting alone. This is disturbing; that is not supposed to happen in a constitutional republic.

In his announcement Monday, he concentrated on that very special word that all progressives use: fairness. Next to racism, it probably has the best results for stirring emotions. But what does he really mean by it?

Above all, though, this was a calculated political strategy aimed at reversing his poor polling numbers. In that respect, he may be successful; he certainly will energize that part of his base that desires this policy. And of course he hopes to sabotage Romney in the process:

Commentators have also noted this preemptive strike curbed Marco Rubio’s proposed legislation to deal with the same issue. For Obama, it’s a two-fer: keep the Latino vote from switching to Romney and undercut a Republican Cuban-American rising star. For someone who operates as an ideological progressive with no concern for constitutional authority, this was a no-brainer. It had to be done—his philosophy of life and politics demanded it.

Meanwhile, the media, that celebrated watchdog of liberty, continues to act as an arm of the Obama reelection campaign:

Americans who still believe in constitutionalism and responsible liberty—not license to do whatever one wants—must stand up and be counted this time around. If not, we will witness the beginning of the end of the rule of law and genuine liberty.

There’s a good reason why the Scriptures give so many warnings about the words that come out of our mouths. First, they reveal what is really in the heart; second, they often get us in trouble, even if our hearts are right, because we can be careless in what we say. Politicians are always talking; therefore, they have wonderful opportunities to get stuck in the rhetorical mud. And in this age of instant communications where almost everything we say in public becomes extremely public via YouTube and other avenues, we can never run away from what we’ve said.

Of course, that can be good. It will hold people accountable for the words they speak. For instance, as we approach this election cycle, President Obama has to face up to comments he has made—and he’s made a lot of them:

The one that’s coming to the forefront now, but which has been present his entire administration, is the claim that everything is Bush’s fault. When he says this, he refuses to take any responsibility for his own actions:

I agree that Bush ordered too large a steak dinner; he didn’t take the Constitution seriously enough on matters of federal government involvement. As a result, we went deeper into debt than ever before. However, Obama has surpassed the eight years of Bush debt in less than four years. So who’s more to blame?

His message is sometimes confused. But, again, perhaps this is not his fault:

Throughout our history, there have been some very inspiring speeches from presidents. Some lines have stood out. Now we can add President Obama’s rhetoric to that litany of great presidential phrases:

Truly inspiring.

Forget for just a moment the substance of the new illegal immigration policy President Obama announced on Friday. I’m not going to deal with that today. Instead, let’s concentrate on the constitutional and political angles. Last September, speaking to a Latino audience that wanted to know why he hadn’t done anything on the illegal immigration issue, Obama accurately noted that as president, he didn’t have the authority to unilaterally change immigration policy. He correctly stated that any policy change had to come from Congress. This was a remarkable statement from a man who normally couldn’t care less about the limits imposed on his office by the Constitution. But in this case, he was right.

Speed ahead to June 2012 and we now have a different story. Without any legislation, without any constitutional authority at all, the president has signed an executive order to alter how illegal immigration is handled. This move was a one-man show. It manifested blatant disregard for any constitutional restraint. He bypassed Congress entirely and simply announced that the policy was going to be different.

Frankly, this is how tyrants operate, outside the rule of law.

Not that there’s anything new about this. Consider one of Obama’s heroes, FDR. In the midst of the Great Depression, Roosevelt decided that every person in the country had to turn in all gold and currency backed by gold to the government. Just like Obama’s pronouncement last week, FDR simply signed an executive order—actually, a number of them—infamously ignoring the role of Congress in legislating, and forced everyone to turn over their gold. It all became government property. In exchange, citizens got federal reserve notes. FDR didn’t have to worry about congressional reaction; he owned Congress at that point. He set himself up as a petty dictator.

What will the current Congress do about Obama’s power play? We’ll have to wait and see if backbone still exists.

Why did he choose to do this at this time? That’s the political angle. Seeing how he is dropping in the polls, he saw this move as a way to shore up his Hispanic vote. In other words, he chose to shred the Constitution for his own political gain. I predict this is only the beginning of his pandering. He will offer goodies to other segments of the population in the coming weeks in an attempt to regain their support.

The real tragedy of this episode is that most Americans won’t even think about the unconstitutional nature of his action, and those groups he seeks to reward will gladly take the bribes without any regard to the rule of law or moral propriety. They will want what they consider to be “theirs.” As this dependent mentality spreads, we become less and less a nation with a moral foundation.

Can this descent into self-centered moral turpitude be arrested? Only if those of us who believe in moral foundations take a stand and continue to speak out and work for a reversal of the spiritual decline that has fed this destructive fever. Now is the time to show we still have spines.

Every campaign wants to find good surrogates who can go out and deliver the message for the candidate. President Obama’s been having some trouble in that regard lately. Some of his surrogates have gone off the rails, contradicting the man they are supposed to be supporting. The most prominent of those off-message surrogates has been Bill Clinton. He’s praised Romney’s private sector work and plugged for a continuation of the Bush tax cuts even for the wealthiest. Now, on both points, he is on the right side. However, those comments put him at odds with the one for whom he is supposed to be shilling. He’s tried to walk back a few of the comments, but political observers don’t think he’s been entirely successful at doing so.

Underneath it all, some say, is a secret desire to torpedo the president’s reelection bid, motivated by a simmering resentment at how his wife was treated in the 2008 primaries. The one thing that is no secret to anyone in the know is that the Obama-Clinton relationship is, and always has been, rather awkward. One of the problems, of course, is that Bill Clinton doesn’t like to take a back seat to anyone. As much as Obama, he relishes the limelight:

The clashing of two massive egos makes for good drama. Even when Clinton is on message, it’s not hard to read between the lines:

I wouldn’t be surprised to see something like this show up sometime:

The real issue, though, is whether the electorate is savvy enough to see the shallowness of the president’s rhetoric and the failure of his policies. There certainly are indications we are in trouble in that respect:

This is why we need to be involved in a grassroots educational endeavor before November. I wish I could say I trust the American electorate, but I don’t feel secure about their knowledge base, their understanding of constitutionalism, or their spiritual grounding. The prayer really does need to be, “Lord, have mercy on us.”

It appears the president dug a pretty deep hole with his comment about how the private sector is doing fine. It always takes a few days for the cartoonists to catch up to events, but they’ve done so now. In one respect, President Obama is correct about the state of the private sector. These private sector cartoonists are doing quite well. Here’s a sampling:

Of course, the president tried to “walk it back” a few hours later, but wasn’t too successful:

Maybe that will teach him not to wing it. He definitely needs those teleprompters. The other theme he keeps stressing is that he’s not responsible for all the deficit spending the last three and one half years. He’s still blaming former President Bush. When does the statute of limitations run out on blaming others? For this president, apparently never.

I hear the word all the time: polarization. It’s always used disparagingly. I understand why. There’s a great desire for unity, as in “can’t we all just get along?” No less than anyone else, I would rejoice if unity prevailed, both culturally and politically. Yet one must always ask what the basis for that unity might be. A false, forced unity would be no unity at all. It must be voluntary, and it must be grounded in reality.

Is unity at any cost the goal? Or is truth the goal? I cannot be united with the sins of this culture, but am called by God to stand against them. If I do so, am I the cause of divisiveness or merely the one pointing out that a great divide exists? If I speak out against the policies of the Obama administration, am I an unpatriotic citizen who should keep his mouth shut for the sake of unity, or am I instead one who seeks to right a ship that is listing and in danger of sinking?

Rush Limbaugh, at the beginning of the Obama regime, made a statement that caused a considerable stir. He said he hoped Obama would fail. That brought down on him not only the wrath of the Left but criticism from the vast mass of so-called independents. Yet they didn’t grasp what he meant. He had familiarized himself with the Obama worldview and agenda, unlike so many that—starry-eyed and naïve—had hoped the political messiah had arrived. He realized that if Obama succeeded in taking the nation where he wanted it to go, we would no longer be the nation that was founded over two centuries ago. He was correct in his analysis. Now, more than ever, people are waking up to the shipwreck that is about to occur if we stay on the Obama path. Limbaugh was prescient in his view of our future if Obama were to make his plans reality.

Yes, we are a polarized nation.

But polarization is not always bad. When one side of that polarization leads to disaster, it is incumbent upon the other side to speak up forcefully and with conviction. Right now, polarization is the key to turning things around.

Interestingly, Jesus never said that His message would bring unity. Rather, He said it would divide families because some would reject His words. The same is applicable for all truthful messages. There will always be those who reject and resist the truth, but that doesn’t negate the truth. I am not divisive by nature; I like agreement. But I will never agree with sin or falsehoods. I must stand for truth and allow truth to penetrate the fog of sin and falsehood that threatens to overwhelm us. That is the calling for every Christian. We need to be faithful to it.