How may times has President Obama violated the Constitution?

Answer 1

It depends on who you talk to. Supporters of Obama would say that he has never or hardly ever violated it. Opponents would say that almost everything he does violates it. Personally, I'm not much of a fan but also don't strenuously oppose him.

A more neutral view would be that he probably has, but not as often as his opponents claim, and generally when he has, it's been doing things that previous presidents have done- so it may be wrong, but it's not unprecedented.

A few examples spring to mind- the killing of Anwar Al-Awlaki (a US citizen from New Mexico) and his teenaged son certainly violated their Constitutional rights (notably 5th, and possibly 8th Amendment rights); but since they were Al Qaeda operatives, we have largely ignored this. It can be argued that the NSA spying stuff is a violation of everyone's 4th Amendment rights, but this spying began initially under Obama's predecessor, and the US has a long history of spying on its own citizens (for example, look up COINTELPRO or the foundation of the NSA)- so it's wrong, but not unprecedented.

It should be noted that the Constitution makes the Supreme Court the final arbiter of what is or isn't Constitutional. The only time that I am aware when the Supreme Court has ruled one of Obama's presidential actions unconstitutional was when they did so in 2014 regarding his "recess appointments" of some Cabinet officials back in 2012.