SO IT’S BASICALLY LIKE PIGFORD, ONLY FOR HEALTHCARE: Health insurance marketplaces will not be required to verify consumer claims. “The Obama administration announced Friday that it would significantly scale back the health law’s requirements that new insurance marketplaces verify consumers’ income and health insurance status. Instead, the federal government will rely more heavily on consumers’ self-reported information until 2015, when it plans to have stronger verification systems in place.”

Does the law actually give them the power to “scale back the health law’s requirements?” I’d like to see some pro-freedom monkeywrenchers tie them up in court on this stuff. You know it’s what the lefties would be doing if positions were reversed. . . .

Related: George Will: Obama’s Never-Mind Presidency.

Although the Constitution has no Article VIII, the administration acts as though there is one that reads: “Notwithstanding all that stuff in other articles about how laws are made, if a president finds a law politically inconvenient, he can simply post on the White House Web site a notice saying: Never mind.”

Never mind that the law stipulates 2014 as the year when employers with 50 full-time workers are mandated to offer them health-care coverage or pay fines. Instead, 2015 will be the year. Unless Democrats see a presidential election coming.

This lesson in the Obama administration’s approach to the rule of law is pertinent to the immigration bill, which at last count had 222 instances of a discretionary “may” and 153 of “waive.” Such language means that were the Senate bill to become law, the executive branch would be able to do pretty much as it pleases, even to the point of saying about almost anything: Never mind.

So much for Rule of Law.

UPDATE: “An Invitation To Fraud.” For the Obama administration, that’s not a bug, but a feature.