My daughter has given me a delightful five-year old grandson.  He's exceptionally bright (and that's not just a doting grandfather's opinion) and almost every day he gives me new ways to look at the world, unencumbered by the dead weight of preconceptions and with absolutely no sense of what's politically correct.

As a case in point, consider the plight of my poor daughter when she decided it was time to start educating her son into the mysteries of religion.  She, being the kid she is, sat the boy down and started with an explanation of how God would always know what he was doing and what he had done. 

Pretty standard stuff.  Even the most radical Islamist would probably say "Yeah, OK, I can live with that, even if it's coming from an infidel." 

The boy's response was not what catechists of any religion would expect.  After asking his mother if she meant that God actually knew everything he'd done, and being told in response that "Yes, you've got the picture now", my daughter was completely nonplussed when, after he thought seriously about that for ten or fifteen seconds, the boy looked at her and summed up his reaction to this concept as "Well, that's inconvenient!"

After I finished laughing, I realized that my grandson had really hit on the key to Obama's relationship with the Constitution. 

It's really inconvenient.  It prevents him from doing anything he wants, any time he wants.  He has to be, like a naughty five-year old boy, be sort of sneaky about it. 

So we have a President, the leader of the most powerful nation on earth, head of the strongest military the world has ever seen, who apparently has the strength of character of a five-year old boy.

Any restraint on Obama that is embedded in the Constitution generates about the same response you'd get from a young child when they are told that, no, they can't have a cookie just before dinner.  "No? No!  You can't be serious!  I want a cookie, and if you don't give it to me, I'll get it some other way!"

Reading this, anyone might think that Barack Obama, the constitutional scholar (who has written not one scholarly article about said Constitution) is simply frustrated by the U.S. Constitution. One should note that he also appears to be against the constitution of any nation that is actually using its constitution as the basis for limiting government.

Witness the embarrassment of Obama insisting that the lawful ouster of Manuel Zelaya in 2009 was not legal, even though Zelaya's ouster was a direct result of his own attempt to overthrow the term-limit portion of the Honduran constitution.

Obama hasn't shown any problem with the assault on the Venezuelan Constitution that empowered Hugo Chavez as effectively President-for-Life.  In fact, he was in total agreement with President Chavez and Chavez's ally, Fidel Castro, that Zelaya should be reinstated immediately as president of Honduras. 

Obama was so insistent on this point that he cut off aid to Honduras because they wouldn't bow to his demands.  Since Honduras has a slightly smaller national population than the head count of New York City, that was a remarkably brave and principled response to our Thug-in-Chief and his foreign affairs consigliere, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who echoed Obama's demands for Zelaya's reinstatement.

Oddly, Obama doesn't seem to have any problem with the use of the Constitution of the People's Republic of China. (Yes, they actually have one.)  He even said he'd like to have the power the Chinese president possessed. 

The Islamic Republic of Iran also has a constitution that doesn't seem to raise Obama's ire.  So does North Korea.  (Yep, they have constitutions too, as does Russia.)

Perhaps there's a pattern emerging here. 

Apparently Mr. Obama thinks constitutions are just peachy - just as long as he is allowed to do exactly what he wants and gets exactly the outcome he desires.  Recess appointments when the Senate is not in official recess, naming executive branch czars without the advice and consent of the Senate, failing to enforce laws that have been passed by both the House and the Senate and signed (in accordance with the rules laid down in 1789) are all examples of how much Obama reveres the U.S. Constitution.

It seems my grandson actually did sum up Obama's view of the basic law of the land:

"Well, that's inconvenient!"

Jim Yardley is a retired financial controller, Vietnam veteran and an independent voter. Jim blogs at http://jimyardley.wordpress.com/, or he can be contacted directly at james.v.yardley@gmail.com