Title: Executive Orders vs. Law - LewRockwell
Headings: 
Executive Orders and the Decline of Law
Bipartisan executive orders
Founding principles
Growth of executive orders

Content: The typical schoolroom civics class is taught that the U.S. government has three branches — Congress, the president or chief executive, and the U.S. Supreme Court. Congress, it is said, makes the laws, presidents enforce them, and the Court interprets the laws. Each branch has its own delegated powers, which creates a balance in which no entity gains power at the expense of another. While this makes for nice, tidy civics lessons, the truth is found elsewhere. The political reality of the 20th century, and now the 21st century, is that Congress has faded greatly in importance, with the executive branch gaining the most strength. ( Despite what many conservatives claim, the federal courts, while powerful, also have ceded some of their powers to the executive, as shall be later explained.) Furthermore, the executive branch has two powerful entities within it — the presidency itself and the bureaucracies, which in many ways wield more power than the president. One may speak of an “imperial presidency” but a more accurate description is that of an “imperial bureaucracy.” Bipartisan executive orders
The president of the United States wields the power to issue an “executive order,” which is an order supposedly based on current law. For example, near the end of his presidency, Bill Clinton issued an executive order greatly reducing the amount of arsenic (which often appears naturally in groundwater in Western communities) that was permitted in a municipal water supply.