Last week, Fox News host Eric Bolling helped Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) fear monger about President Obama’s using executive actions to bypass Congress, and his bill to enable (junk) lawsuits to stop it. Predictably, no mention was made of how executive orders have been upheld by the Supreme Court and have been used for such actions as the emancipation of slavery.

Paul told an unchallenging Bolling, guest host of Your World:

We have something called the Restoration of Separation of Powers. Separation of Powers is something our founding fathers intended to have checks and balances, and the President seems to think not only is he President, he thinks he’s the Congress also. So our bill would give people standing, Congressmen as well as individual citizens, standing to sue the President and say look you’re not allowed to pass laws, you’re only supposed to execute the law.

But right now, it’s difficult to get standing in court to try to ask the Supreme Court their opinion on this, so my legislation would make it easier to sue the President over him basically trying to become a king and not just a President. …Harry Reid’s in charge over here, and he doesn’t like Republicans to get a vote on anything they’re in favor of.

Bolling’s only response: “Very good. Gotcha, gotcha.”

But while Bolling helped Paul promote the idea that President Obama was making some kind of unprecedented, unlawful power grab, that’s not at all the case:

According to CNBC:

Executive orders are as old as the U.S. Constitution itself and usually steeped in controversy.

Every president, from George Washington to Obama, has used them. More than 13,000, in one form or another, have been issued since 1789.

While there is no specific provision in the Constitution that permits them, there is a “grant of executive power” given in Article II of the Constitution,

…And they are legally binding—the U.S. Supreme Court has upheld all but two legal challenges to them.

CNBC also has a chart showing that President Obama has used fewer executive orders than other presidents. Though there are still three years left in his term, he is on track to have fewer executive orders than Presidents Nixon, Reagan and Clinton. He’s about on par with George W. Bush.

That was also not mentioned by Bolling.

Video below from the January 30, 2014 Your World.