Via Fox News this morning:

Via The Daily Caller:

[...] The House budget chairman spoke with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos on Sunday, with the reporter asking Ryan what he thought about the president’s promise during the State of the Union address to “take steps without legislation†� to achieve his agenda. Stephanopoulos questioned why Ryan and other Republicans are upset, since Obama has issued less executive orders than the previous administrations.

s not the number of executive orders; it’s the scope of executive orders,†� Ryan maintained. “It’s the fact that he’s actually contradicting law, like in healthcare, or proposing new laws without going through Congress, George. That’s the issue. So this is a big concern.

"We have an increasingly lawless presidency," Ryan continued. "We have an increasingly lawless presidency where he is actually doing the job of Congress, writing new policies and new laws without going through Congress. Presidents don't write laws, Congress does. And when he does things like what he did in healthcare, delaying mandates that the law said was supposed to occur when they were supposed to occur, that’s not his job. The job of Congress is to change laws if he doesn't like them, not the presidency."

Ryan laughed off Stephanopoulos' suggestion that if the president is truly so lawless, the GOP should move to impeach. "Some of these are gonna get fought out in court,†� he noted. “But I am concerned about this trend -- such as what he said at the State of the Union, that if Congress doesn't give me the law I want I’m gonna go do it myself, that’s effectively what he said. That's not the way our Constitution works†� I think these executive orders are creating a dangerous trend that is contrary to the Constitution."Here's Charles Krauthammer on the 'lawlessness' Of Obama's Executive Orders:

Although Barack Obama is not the first president to use executive orders, and he certainly won't be the last (Executive orders are fairly common and so far Obama has used executive orders less than other contemporary presidents)... the problem lies not in his use of executive orders or the number of them, it lies in the fact that many of his executive orders actually violate laws, override Congress, and takes actions that unquestionably require legislation under our Constitution.

However, as Richard Winchester aptly points out in his piece at The American Thinker, don't hold your breath waiting for impeachment and conviction. The best tactic for conservatives is to start decrying any Obama-issued EO, to make that strategy as politically costly as possible. (Democrat senators from "Red" states who are up for re-election next fall are already running away from Obama.) If we make enough noise, perhaps a few other Democrat pols will get the message. What might the Obamians do if they have no, or very few, political allies?

Meanwhile, according to a WaPo poll, a majority (52%) of Americans support Obama's use of executive orders. Although, as Ed Morrissey notes,if a pattern of dubious presidential action can be blithely dismissed with "well, the public's not too upset about it." that doesn't determine whether or not the president is or isn't a tyrant. Truth doesn't depend on polling.

We are, for sure, facing a bumpy ride ahead, and where we end up as a nation depends much on voters being better informed and more informed voters showing up at the polls than the Democrats' low information voters.