White House: Obama didn't mean he 'changed the law' when he said he 'changed the law.'

Last week, Dan wrote about how President Obama told a gaggle of hecklers that he "just took an action to change the law" where illegal immigration is concerned. That's a problem. Obama has been relying on the idea that he has "broad prosecutorial discretion" in order to circumvent Congress and bypass any sort of Separation of Powers issue.

---

If he admits to unilaterally changing the law, that's clearly illegal and far exceeds his authority. Here's the original clip: As you can imagine, the claim did not go unnoticed. After all, if Barack Obama just admitted that his own executive actions altered an existing law, they're blatantly unconstitutional. ...So the administration has decided - retroactively - that he didn't do that. It seems that, according to the White House, President Obama was just speaking "colloquially." When he said, "I just took an action to change the law," he didn't mean "I just took an action to change the law." He meant something else. CBS News' Major Garrett asked White House spokesman Josh Earnest for clarification. The reply is laughable. As Earnest says:

I think he was speaking colloquially. What he has put in place -- meaning that obviously, well, no, meaning that the - it is the responsibility of the United States Congress to pass the laws. And it is the responsibility of the executive branch to implement and enforce them. So, my point is--

Uh-huh. Yeah. It makes about that much sense. Here's the exchange:

"Well I think the impact of the law certainly has been changed, on, in terms of the way that it effects the millions of people who are in this country. And I think that's what the president was alluding to. Again, I think that he was speaking colloquially -- say that five times fast!"

Apparently, words mean different things when Barack Obama says them.