It is one thing to say a judgment fund should be “permanent” in the sense that litigation goes on every year and the government is bound to be on the losing end of some cases, so Congress should make an annual appropriation — just as it does for, say, FEMA, despite the absence of foreknowledge of what emergencies will arise. And it is one thing to say that particular pay-outs from this judgment fund are “indefinite” in the sense that Congress will not know when it passes the budget what specific judgment amounts will be during the coming year.

But a fund cannot constitutionally be “permanent and indefinite” in the sense of being an all-purpose, limitless reservoir of money that empowers the president to pay anything to anyone simply by orchestrating a lawsuit and then “settling” it. The Constitution requires definite appropriations. That is a key limitation on executive power without which the Constitution would not have been adopted in the first place.

And here, that’s not the half of it. Obama has not just orchestrated a king’s ransom — better, an ayatollah’s ransom — for the benefit of the Death to America regime in the absence of congressional authorization. He refuses to tell us how he transferred it to them.

Why not a single transfer? Why structure it with 13 payments just under $100 million? And what is the other $10 million about? Is that related to this deal? Did the administration have to pay people off, in addition to keeping their identities “confidential” in order to get this done? Were they worried that the next administration might prosecute them for providing material support to terrorists, as Obama is doing?