This is a good fact-check of President Obama’s attempt to wiggle out of his prior declarations that he lacks the powers of a king or emperor:

Politicians generally hate to say they have changed their minds about something. With President Obama poised to take executive action to address immigration, perhaps as early as this week, he was challenged by a reporter to explain why he believed he could take this action now, after years of saying his hands were tied. The president responded with a Pinocchio-laden straw man, saying that the questions had a distinct focus: “their interest was in me, through executive action, duplicating the legislation that was stalled in Congress.”
But as we shall see, the questions actually specifically addressed the sorts of actions that he is contemplating now.