On Wednesday, V noted how President Obama set aside his own Obamacare law and decreed a delay to the “individual mandate”. (The mandate that he previously told the Supreme Court was an absolutely essential part of Obamacare.)

Thursday’s example was Obama’s plan to decree overtime pay for some 10 million who had willingly been working without it, because they are salaried employees.

It’s not a good thing. First of all, anytime the government mandates pay increases, it costs real people their jobs. While some people might get more pay, others’ pay goes to part-time, or to zero. When Obama proposed his minimum wage hike last month, even the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) agreed that it would cost 500,000 jobs.

But the deeper problem is that, in Barack H. Obama, we have a President who increasingly abandons constitutional, legislative and democratic processes. Throughout his administration, in issue after issue, he has declared that the rules are now different because he says so. Whether it’s ripping off honest GM bondholders, Fast and Furious, hiding information about corrupt federal prosecutors, Obamacare or countless other issues, you never can tell when this President will suddenly decide on different rules.

With this overtime change, there is serious debate about whether the President has the legal authority to do it. Some say he doesn’t; some say he does. But that means his move is dubious. And however that might be – and I say, even worse – Obama’s move makes the government interfere, once again, in arrangements that freely consenting adults had agreed on. (Liberals may want government out of the bedroom, but boy, do they want government in everything, everyone and everywhere else.)

This is one more, little thread in the tapestry of America’s decline: we have become a nation ruled by “men, not laws.” And if you think that arbitrary government doesn’t make for an atmosphere of fear and uncertainty that stifles the economy, think again.

UPDATE: Allahpundit has video, as he puts it, of Obama “in 2008 promising to roll back Bush’s executive overreach because he was a law professor and knew the Constitution ‘n stuff.”.

Rep. Trey Gowdy gives an appropriate response.