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Air Date: March 20, 2012

Host: Vic Eliason

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An executive order is a directive that the President of the United States can bring into existence without an act of Congress.

On February 16th, President Obama signed one of these orders called the National Defense Resource Preparedness Order. Sounds fine, right? After all, who in America is against national defense?

This order pertains to certain national departments and agencies responsible for plans and programs that relate to national defense or for services and resources needed to support such efforts during the full gamut of emergencies. This includes providing for essential civilian and military demands.

The problem with this executive order is that it’s so sweeping. Under this order, a company could literally be co-opted by government officials to produce whatever goods are required with employees forced to work to produce the needed items.

Under this order, how will our leaders define an emergency or could this order be implemented even during times of non emergency conditions? Is this constitutional? These are just some of the questions you may have as you review this interesting edition of Crosstalk.