now a tableau spans

Part of me really hopes that President-Elect Barack Hussein Obama will be kept atrociously busy with the current American economic situation, the international emergencies going on around the world, the Russian threat of a new Cold War, the rising unemployment, and providing his promised flying unicorns and happy frakking bunnies to his adoring throngs… busy enough that he does not think about other things, like his promised “Assault Weapon Ban“, or his other anti-Second-Amendment promises and past activities. But then things like this just completely destroy that happy little fantasy I constructed for myself:

President-elect Obama plans to use his executive powers to make an immediate impact when he takes office, perhaps reversing Bush administration policies on stem cell research and domestic drilling for oil and natural gas.

John Podesta, Obama’s transition chief, said Sunday Obama is reviewing President Bush’s executive orders on those issues and others as he works to undo policies enacted during eight years of Republican rule. He said the president can use such orders to move quickly on his own.

“There’s a lot that the president can do using his executive authority without waiting for congressional action, and I think we’ll see the president do that,” Podesta said. “I think that he feels like he has a real mandate for change. We need to get off the course that the Bush administration has set.”

That is right, ladies and gentlemen… the great Obamamessiah does not need to wait around for the Congress to do its thing. He will simply take the reigns of America and lead it, himself, to a better and brighter future! No cumbersome checks. No outdated balances. No useless due process. One man. One vision. One nation. Right?
God help us.
You know, I remember four years ago, when President Bush’s use of executive orders came under some pretty heavy fire and scrutiny during his re-election campaign… the liberals were lambasting him left and right over his use, and possible misuse, of that strange and poorly-understood not-of-the-Constitution artifact. And here, we are, with (no doubt) those self-same liberals cheering on the next President and his already-compiled list of executive orders to be signed once he has the pen in his hands… For Heaven’s sake, folks, this man is not even President yet.
However, given the reference to the “Bush administration”, why do I get the eerie feeling that one thing was left out on the list published in that article… one thing that liberals still blame President Bush for. Sorry, folks, but President Bush had absolutely nothing to do with the expiration of the last “Assault Weapons Ban” – Congress did. You know, those folks you vote for periodically who are supposed to represent you and your state on the national level? Yeah, the people whose names you probably do not even know, much less care about? The folks who provide bills to the President to sign, not the other way around?
For some reason, though, something tells me that President-Elect Barack Hussein Obama will fix this time-consuming process with a sweep of his pen, and we law-abiding gun owners will be, once again, confronted with an “assault weapon” ban – or something as damn near close as he can get it – after all, he has already said he wants one (right before the webpage stating that disappeared, mind you).
And, what is worse is that the American populace will just stand by and let him do it… hell, some people will actually cheer him on for it, executive orders or not, abridgement of Constitutionally-protected rights or not. Robb has a great post up about his views of America and the people who seem to live in it now, and suffice to say that I agree with him thoroughly. We are not the country we once were, we are not the country we were wanted to be, and we are not the country we were founded as. And we are the worse for it, on all counts.