Why Obama should be called, "Your Excellency"

An Occupy leader in Iowa thinks that President Obama should be called, "Your Excellency."

Well, there is good reason.

In November 2008, shortly after Barack Obama was elected president, Valerie Jarrett, co-chair of his transition team, appeared on "Meet the Press." She told host Tom Brokaw that "Obama is prepared to really take power and begin to rule day one."

Shouldn't someone who had reached the political heights that Jarrett had reached know that kings rule but presidents are elected to serve and are accountable to Congress, the courts and the voters? ...

A little more than three years after Jarrett declared Obama's majesty, his spokesman Jay Carney warned on the day of the Iowa caucuses that "if Republicans choose the path of obstruction rather than cooperation, then the president is not going to sit here . .. he's going to take the actions that he can take using his executive authority." ...

Clearly our American arrangement of checks and balances written into the Constitution is an impediment to this president. Before Carney made his statement Tuesday, Obama himself said in October that "we can no longer wait for Congress to do its job. ... So where Congress won't act, I will."

As the Cato Institute's Roger Pilon notes, "All of Obama’s appointments yesterday are illegal under the Constitution." Why?

But clear beyond the slightest doubt is the language of the statute (itself unconstitutional on any number of grounds not relevant here). As my colleague Mark Calabria wrote yesterday, “authorities under the Act remain with the Treasury Secretary until the Director is ‘confirmed by the Senate.’” A recess appointment, even if it were constitutional, is not a Senate confirmation. There is simply no wiggle room in that language that gives Cordray any authority, as litigation will soon make plain.

Except, of course, that we have a "living" Constitution, which means that you can use it to justify whatever you want to do. So Obama's actions were illegal? Sez who? Congress, especially the Senate, whose delegated powers Obama just usurped? That is to laugh. Congress, especially the Reid-led Senate, will not raise a whimper.