Half of them arise from the White House’s ongoing effort to rewrite the terms of ObamaCare on the fly without actually going back to ask Congress to change the law. [Ilya Shapiro, Forbes]

Incidentally, the Executive Branch’s claim of power to suspend various provisions of the ObamaCare law at its whim stands on quite a different and weaker footing, constitutionally, from the well-established tradition of prosecutorial discretion (or the even more well-established power to pardon individual violators). In requiring the president to take care that the laws are faithfully executed, the Constitution’s Take Care clause necessarily implies that not all aspects of law enforcement can be suspended at executive whim, and discretion is necessarily narrower when it comes to the enforcement of statutes creating general civil schemes of private rights and regulation than it is in the realm of criminal enforcement, which necessarily labors under a scarcity of investigative and correctional resources. English kings like James II long asserted a “dispensing power” to suspend the operation of otherwise applicable laws at the royal will, but civil libertarians fought for centuries (and with much success) to cabin and curtail that power. Zachary Price of Hastings recounts some of this history, as well as contemporary readings of the Take Care clause, in a new article that is getting a lot of attention.

While on the topic: ObamaCare’s corporatism is sacrificing both the rule of law and transparency, argues Mickey Kaus [first, second] The program’s atomistic individualism [David Boaz] And Megan McArdle on the Administration’s “willingness to take large risks with the program’s stability” by altering rules.

Filed under: Barack Obama, constitutional law, ObamaCare