Overreach

John Yoo is very serious about the constitutional limits on executive authority.

Those who believe Obama is going too far warn it is a dangerous precedent for future executives as well.

“Can a President who wants tax cuts that a recalcitrant Congress will not enact decline to enforce the income tax laws? Can a President effectively repeal the environmental laws by refusing to sue polluters, or workplace and labor laws by refusing to fine violators?” University of St. Thomas law professor Robert J. Delahunty and University of California at Berkeley law professor John C. Yoo wrote in the Texas Law Review.

You might remember John Yoo from such executive overreaches as...

Delahunty and Yoo served in the Justice Department during the George W. Bush administration. Back then, Yoo argued for an expansive definition of executive power, most famously in a series of memos maintaining that federal laws against assault, maiming and other crimes did not apply to interrogators dealing with al-Qaeda captives.

So the "reach" of the executive, ideally, goes only as far as it takes to attach the electrodes to the prisoner's genitals.  Anything beyond that is too far.