Garnett on Immigration Reform

Cardinal Rick Garnett, the cardinale laico of Notre Dame, has also weighed in on the President's decision regarding immigration enforcement.

I agree entirely with Rick that presidents and others should abide by the Constitution. I will leave it to him and other lawyers to decide whether or not the President was acting within his discretionary authority or not. But, I will go further. I think if we are going to start worrying about presidential discretionary authority now, we must also look to Clio for some cautionary instruction. Certainly, if we were going to excoriate President Obama in this matter, as some at Fox News are doing in the most histrionic of terms, then we should expect that those same Fox News analysts will cease ever invoking the sainted memory of Ronald Reagan because the Iran-Contra policy made Obama's immgiration decision look like a piker in terms of exercising presidential discretionary authority. And, I seem to remember Vice President Cheney voicing some interesting interpretations of executive power that his boss, President Bush, followed. Remember all those signing statements!

As for my "gentle" elbows, I intend to keep throwing them at religious fellow travelers of either party, including Catholics and Evangelicals Together just as I have not been shy about throwing them at religious fellow travelers on the left. I look to my conservative friends to police their own as well.