Must even nuns pay for contraceptives?

As the facts presented in a Washington Post article, "Obama prepared to avoid Congress, go it alone on carrying out modest initiatives" suggest, President Obama has become the shadowy alter ego of Candidate Obama--exchanging promised presidential restraint for executive fiat, cooperation for partisanship and public priorities for ideological hobby horses.

Consider Mr. Obama's relentless campaign to round up everyone from elderly nuns to Mennonite small business owners and force them to obey his Obamacare contraceptives mandate. The issue served as a potent campaign tool to juice up his radical base about a fabricated "war on women." But continuing to push the controversial program on conscientious objectors serves no apparent purpose other than to assert executive power over individual religious freedom.

Targeted by contraceptives edict: Little Sisters of the Poor

Must even nuns pay for contraceptives? Even his own Supreme Court appointees balk at the president's aggression, slapping the administration with an injunction to stop their pursuit of the Little Sisters of the Poor and taking up two cases likely to overturn the administration's anti-religious overreach.

Gone are the president's optimistic rhetoric and soaring appeals to what Lincoln referred to as the "better angels of our nature." What remains is an alienated and isolated president combatively asserting raw executive power, Nixon-like, while his moral authority decays.