MOSCOW, September 21 (RIA Novosti) - US President Barack Obama has “usurped” his power, breaking laws and violating the Constitution, US Senator Rand Paul asserted in a keynote address at the Republican Party convention in California on Saturday.
The politician hailing from Kentucky recalled that the United States celebrated Constitution week mid-September, but he then said, “The president celebrated the Constitution by violating the Constitution. And this is not the first time, unfortunately.”
Rand Paul added that the worst thing Obama has done is abuse the separation of power. “It is his treading upon and obscuring the checks and balances that our Founding Fathers gave us.” He referred to it as a terrible tragedy and a danger to the very fabric of the Republic urging to “do everything we can to stop [Obama] from abusing our laws.”
Pauls’ concerns are understandable. Obama has repeatedly stated that he is willing to act without formal congressional approval. For instance, in his State of the Union address Obama said that he was eager to work with Congressmen “to speed up growth, strengthen the middle class, and build new ladders of opportunity into the middle class.” However, he warned then that “wherever and whenever I can take steps without legislation to expand opportunity for more American families, that’s what I’m going to do.”
More recently, Obama returned to the issue on Labor Day once again criticizing Republicans for not helping and promising to work without Congress if need be. “If we had a Congress that cared about policies that actually helped working people, I promise you we could get everything done that we’ve talked about doing. But until we have that Congress, it’s up to us to fight for these policies,” the US president said at the 2014 Milwaukee Laborfest.
Obama was not the only one Rand Paul targeted on Saturday. The Republican also criticized Hillary Clinton for her response to the deadly attack on the US Embassy in Benghazi, Libya on September 11, 2012 that left four Americans, including the US ambassador, tortured and then killed. Paul called it her “3 a.m. moment” referring to Clinton’s campaign ad aired during the Democratic primaries in 2008. The ad argued that Clinton was the one capable to handle a crisis by answering a phone ringing in the middle of the night. “I think she had a 3 a.m. moment. She didn’t answer the phone, and I think it absolutely should preclude her from being considered president,” Paul told a cheering crowd.
The senator drew parallels between Benghazi and the 1993 Black Hawk Down episode saying that in both instances the US government ignored pleas to provide more security to US personnel in Benghazi and Mogadishu, Somalia. Paul insisted that Clinton in her capacity as the Secretary of State was directly responsible for safeguarding the US embassy in the war-torn country. He observed then that if Hillary worked for Bill Clinton in 1993, the then US president would have surely fired her.
