@mikeazo, that question would indicate that the president either must take care to dutifully execute the law or that he believes deporting illegals is unconstitutional. I don't think either applies in this case.

@Bobson, with half the people upvoting and half downvoting, perhaps it isn't a problem? Keep in mind I pretty much kept your edit. The only issue I see here is that people don't like the fact that Obama flip-flopped his position.

@user1873 your last comment pretty much sums up the problem. You are simply trolling with questions like this. There are so many other sites better suited for political trolling.

@dA., you claim that, but you haven't pointed out why? If Obama claims by broadinging the DACA he is ignoring the law, why shouldn't I take him at his word. (Until provided evidence otherwise). This question is to solicit a legal answer on what reasoning would allow/not allow this.

@user1873 the 'legal question' is simply "can the president create executive orders". But you didn't ask that. You decided to create a long post with sarcastic and snide references to out-of-context quotes. Many people have explained why your question is poor. Several of us tried to salvage it with edits. 3 people voted to close. Yet you still play this coy "what? Innocent little me?" game. It's so tiring.

Granted, I'm the only one that bothered to even attempt an answer, so I guess I'm the sucker.

@DA. Other's have pointed out why the question was bad, and the question has been changed to reflect those criticisms. As to why the question cannot be generalized to "can the president create executive orders," that is quite obvious. That question is too simple to require an answer. My question is specifically about this executive order (the exact wording isn't known, but what the president claims it says is troubling). Whether he can ignore the laws and refuse to deport a class of people who might be as many as 5 million people, grant them work permits, etc. is a good question

No, it's not a good question. You're asking a question that can only be answered via debate. There's no answer to this until a court makes a decision. The only non-debatable part is what you call obvious "YES, of course he can refuse to deport a class of people because THE EXECUTIVE ORDER HE WROTE SAYS THAT"

Let me rephrase, it's not a good STACK EXCHANGE question. It's perhaps a fine question for a round table discussion, or series of editorials. But it simply has no place on a StackExchange site--because that's not what StackExchange sites are for.

Oh, @user1873 (I always forget that we need to @ in chat...)

My question for @user1873 is simply: Why does his position from 2008 matter to this question? If the question is about this new executive order, like you claim, then what does the previous quote add?

Many questions on many sites across the SE network are edited to remove extraneous information that doesn't contribute to describing the question being asked. That's the main part of what I did here, but then you edited it back in. So clearly there is significance to it, even if I can't see it.

So what is it?

@Bobson Simple really. You need X & !X to apply appeal to hypocrisy. If is was just X or if !X was someone else, this would fall through. Frankly I'm not sure why people want to the Win The Internet on stack exchange politics.se. We should be harvesting information, no more no less.

Yes, @LateralFractal is saying it much more eloquently than I. Yes, @user1873, we get it. In your opinion, Obama is hypocritical. But that's not a question. That's a statement. And this isn't the site for that. That's what a blog is for.

I also realize now, that one reason user1873 asks questions like this is to get a response, so that the point can be further made with more tangentially related citations in the comment thread. I'm so gullible.

@LateralFractal - I want to hear user1873's reasoning, since he's the one who claims it's a key part of the question.

Personally, I think you're both right that this is simply Obama-bashing rather than an attempt to actually get a real answer, for exactly that reason.

But I'm always willing to give the other side a chance to explain otherwise.

I'm tempted to re-edit the question, but I know it won't actually accomplish anything.