By Tim Dunkin
The past week has been amazing for American political observers, and it probably has many Americans longing for the good ol' days of government transparency and impartiality that we saw during the Nixon administration. Though it has been long simmering, the scandals pot on the Obama administration's stovetop is finally starting to boil over, and there's little now that anyone in the executive branch can do about it. After many long months (and in some cases, years), the people of this nation are finally seeing the dirty laundry, the web of deceit, that Obama and his underlings have been hiding. For many conservatives in the "alternative" media and the blogosphere, there has to be a sense of vindication in the air, as their yeoman's work of keeping the various Obama scandals before their readers and not letting them be swept into the mainstream media's memory hole has finally paid off, and people are starting to realize that these conservative media sources were right all along.
Many Americans – often apolitical, or perhaps even leaning towards Obama and his ideology – are finally starting to see the Obama administration for what it really is: the most corrupt, deceitful, scandal-ridden presidential administration since Harding's. I'm sure, however, that the more radical and partisan Democrats and left-wingers out there will try to argue that it's much ado about nothing, that the Rethuglicans are just trying to stir up a tempest in a Teapot Dome.
Regardless of what the left-wing fringe thinks, recent revelations - as well as things that some of us have known about for years but which the media kept hidden from the general public – clearly indicate that the current administration, from top to bottom, cannot be allowed to continue in office. The level of corruption is astounding, even beyond what most conservative opponents of Obama thought would be possible. The only solution to what we're seeing in Washington DC is to impeach. Impeach Obama, impeach Hillary Clinton, impeach Tim Geithner, impeach Eric Holder, and from there, work down the food chain.
In American history there have only been two Presidents who were impeached by the US House – Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton (Richard Nixon was technically not impeached, since he resigned before the House could finish articles of impeachment against him). In both cases, they were acquitted by the U.S. Senate. Andrew Johnson was impeached, essentially, for working against Radical Republican efforts to make Reconstruction more painful for the defeated South after the Civil War. Richard Nixon, as we know, was going to be impeached for his part in covering up the break-in at the Watergate Hotel in which GOP operatives tried to spy on Democrat planners. Bill Clinton, for his part, was impeached for having sex…wait, that's not it, he was impeached for perjury and obstruction of justice (things that would have gotten any of us thrown in jail if we had done them).
The magnitude of the scandalous and illegal behavior of the Obama administration makes all of these prior impeachments, as well as the many other scandals that have plagued the American government of the last two and a quarter centuries, look like child's play.
Now that the lid has been blown off, I get a sense that the average low-information voter is even starting to become informed about what the executive branch has been doing, and is getting angry about it. At the end of last week, I had something unusual happen at work. One of my co-workers, an almost stereotypical "twenty-something" – unmarried, doesn't follow politics very much, socially liberal, supports gay marriage, probably voted for Obama, and so forth – started a completely unsolicited conversation with me about Benghazi. He was very angry about the way the administration allowed four Americans to die, about how they could have come to their rescue but didn't, and that they then tried to downplay, minimize, and cover it up. In fact, my co-worker had been listening to the Benghazi hearings live-streamed from C-Span – something I wouldn't have even thought of doing. I think he knew more about the scandal than I did. The coverage was having a very definite and negative effect on his opinions about the Obama administration.
Maybe Mike Huckabee was right when he said a couple of weeks ago that the Obama scandals were about to explode on the scene, and would result in impeachment. At the time, I sort of shrugged it off, figuring that the media was just going to keep covering up and word would never get out. Yet, it's starting to look like this might happen. I'm definitely hoping that it will.
So what are all the scandals that are finally seeing the light?
The most obvious one if Benghazi. Obama and his minions knew that our embassy was under attack by an organized terrorist group, they even watched the assault, and they stood by and did nothing as our ambassador, one of his aides, and two Navy SEALs were murdered by the terrorists. A rapid-reaction force was ready, and told to stand down. The general in charge of the units involved was relieved, apparently because he disagreed with the administration's decision. Obama and his lackies tried to claim that the assault was done by an unorganized crowd protesting some penny ante Youtube movie about Islam, and that there was nothing they could do. An innocent man who did nothing illegal – the guy who made the Youtube movie – was nevertheless jailed (and remains that way) so he could serve as a fall guy for the President and his crew. When called to account earlier, Hillary Clinton – the pinched, shrewish hag that she is – brushed it all off and asked, "What difference does it make?" To add insult to injury, the families of those lost have been condescended to by the administration, their questions about what really happened the day they lost their loved ones ignored by heartless hacks from the State Department.
Then, of course, there is the recent revelation that from as far back as late 2010, the IRS was targeting Tea Party and other conservative groups, as well as Jewish pro-Israel groups. In essence, the administration was sicking the IRS on its political opponents, subjecting them to special scrutiny and dispreferential treatment in their applications for tax-exempt status. Keep in mind that one of the articles of impeachment that was being prepared for Nixon before he resigned was for using the IRS against his political opponents – so there's definitely precedent for going after Obama on this. This is a big deal – it cuts at the very heart of free speech, free association, and free thought. It's government overreach on a massive scale – using its own power to specifically attempt to limit and hinder the free ability of its opponents to participate in the political process. The fact that it was not just confined to "low level employees" in Cincinnati, but in fact goes all the way to "top officials" in Washington DC indicates that this was coming straight from the top. Some of these top officials even lied to Congress when asked if this type of activity was going on in 2011. Obama and the officials involved need to be removed from office.
Indeed, this IRS scandal further casts doubt on the legitimacy of Obama's election in November 2012. As I've pointed out previously, there are strong reasons to consider the results of last November's election to be fraudulent and illegitimate. The IRS scandal makes that case even further. Consider this – by systematically preventing or delaying Tea Party and other conservative groups from obtaining the same sort of tax exempt status that left-wing groups routinely obtain, the IRS was essentially helping to hinder the ability of these groups to participate and to deter donors from contributing to these groups. By doing so, the IRS was helping to depress the vote for Romney and Republicans, while commensurately tipping the field in favor of Obama and Democrats. That could certainly have helped to swing thousands of votes to the Democrats and away from Republicans in swing states that were especially competitive. Could these actions by the IRS have resulted in Obama winning states that he might otherwise not have won, had Tea Party and other conservative groups been able to direct more money, time, and organization into these states, but which they could not because of IRS hobbling?
But now it turns out that this isn't all there is to the scandal. It seems that one left-wing media "watchdog" group, ProPublica, was given confidential information regarding the applications for tax-exempt status of several Tea Party groups. This is, of course, quite illegal. It's also part of a disturbing trend on the part of the Left toward using left-wing organizations as legitimized bullies for harassing and attacking their political opponents, much the same way the US Department of Justice uses the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and other far-Left supporters of domestic terrorism as tools for attacking conservative groups.
Also not surprising are the revelations that other government agencies besides the IRS appear to have been involved in the official intimidation of conservative opponents of the government, including the FBI and BATFE.
There are other scandals that are not as generally well-known, but hopefully will be exposed to greater scrutiny as the heat is turned up on Obama and his cronies. For instance, you have Katherine Sebelius, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, essentially shaking down health care companies for funds, using the tremendous discretionary powers that she has been granted under ObamaCare to lean on them to "do the right thing," thus attempting to circumvent the funding limitations that Congress has imposed via its constitutional budgetary powers.
Then, there is the Fast and Furious / Operation Gunwalker scandal that the media have been able to largely hide so far. This one involves the Obama administration leaning on gun store owners to sell weapons to government straw purchasers, guns that were then transported into Mexico and given to drug gangs. These drug gangs have subsequently committed over 500 murders – including a US Border Patrol agent – using these guns. The purpose for all this? To give the Obama administration a "legitimate" reason to "crack down" on guns and call for more gun control legislation to solve the "problem" of gun violence in Mexico caused by guns purchased in America (this took place before the Sandy Hook and Aurora shootings gave him more convenient excuses to push for gun control).
There is, of course, the scandal over the Pigford Settlements – another one that hardly anyone has heard about, but which involves the misuse and misappropriation of public monies. Ostensibly these settlements were intended to be monetary remedies to black farmers who had supposedly been discriminated against in the allocation of government farm loans between 1983 and 1997, a result of a class action lawsuit filed against the US Department of Agriculture, Pigford v. Glickman. However, it has since been found that many of those who claimed "discrimination" and were collecting their $50,000 shares of the settlement were not farmers and had no actual claim on the money, but were apparently being encouraged to fraudulently claim discrimination in the giving of the loans. Multiple claims were often filed in the same handwriting, many of the addresses listed were in urban areas nowhere near farmland, and in several counties across several southern states, more discrimination claims were made than there were actual farms in the counties. In essence, it turned into a great big trough of government money that many black Americans, apparently encouraged and assisted by elements within the Obama administration, could use as a nozzle for tapping free government cash, using the charge of "racism" as a cover for their activities.
Now, we find out that the Justice Department illegally seized several months worth of telephone and other communication records from the Associated Press, even though there was no specific investigation that any of these applied to (which would normally be required to obtain the warrant necessary to grant access to these records). While there have been some claims that the government is investigating supposed media leaks of information regarding a foiled terrorist plot about a year ago, the use of subpoena's to obtain such a wide range of communications has been enough to even make the normally Obama-friendly ACLU call foul. In essence, the Justice Department overstepped its constitutional investigative powers and strong-armed information for which it had no legitimate need. While I think we can see the irony in a media outlet that has continually played the patsy for Obama finding itself on the receiving end of Obama administration overreach, the danger that this sort of behavior presents to anyone who might investigate the actions of or write against the Obama administration surely ought to bother us greatly. This is doubly so as we now have a reporter in St. Louis alleging that after he asked Obama some difficult questions last year, the IRS suddenly began pressuring him.
We've also found out, just today, that the EPA has made a routine practice out of charging prohibitively expensive fees to conservative groups that requested information from the agency, while waiving these same fees for "friendly" environmentalist groups. This is yet another example of politically-motivated disparate treatment by government (which is supposed to be neutral and impartial) designed to both hinder its political opponents while at the same time providing to itself the cover of bureaucratic opacity.
So much corruption from the administration of a President who once claimed he'd have the most transparent government ever. It's a good thing – a very good thing – that this is all coming out into the light of day, finally. I'm sure that Obama and his administration will always have its bevy of supporters, partisan hacks who will ignore even the most egregious misuse of government power if it provides them even the most transient political benefit, who will claim that Republican investigations into the many misdeeds of Obama and his underlings are just racist "witch hunts" designed to go after America's First Black President™. Regardless, anyone who actually cares about good government needs to support turning this entire crew – Obama, Holder, Sebelius, Clinton, Giethner, and the rest – out on their ears, and possibly into a federal penitentiary. Dereliction of duty, obstruction of justice, abuse of government power, conflict of interest, lying to Congress – these are all high crimes that can and should result in impeachment. It's time to direct the river of truth through the Augean stables of Washington, D.C.
The past week has been amazing for American political observers, and it probably has many Americans longing for the good ol' days of government transparency and impartiality that we saw during the Nixon administration. Though it has been long simmering, the scandals pot on the Obama administration's stovetop is finally starting to boil over, and there's little now that anyone in the executive branch can do about it. After many long months (and in some cases, years), the people of this nation are finally seeing the dirty laundry, the web of deceit, that Obama and his underlings have been hiding. For many conservatives in the "alternative" media and the blogosphere, there has to be a sense of vindication in the air, as their yeoman's work of keeping the various Obama scandals before their readers and not letting them be swept into the mainstream media's memory hole has finally paid off, and people are starting to realize that these conservative media sources were right all along.
Many Americans – often apolitical, or perhaps even leaning towards Obama and his ideology – are finally starting to see the Obama administration for what it really is: the most corrupt, deceitful, scandal-ridden presidential administration since Harding's. I'm sure, however, that the more radical and partisan Democrats and left-wingers out there will try to argue that it's much ado about nothing, that the Rethuglicans are just trying to stir up a tempest in a Teapot Dome.
Regardless of what the left-wing fringe thinks, recent revelations - as well as things that some of us have known about for years but which the media kept hidden from the general public – clearly indicate that the current administration, from top to bottom, cannot be allowed to continue in office. The level of corruption is astounding, even beyond what most conservative opponents of Obama thought would be possible. The only solution to what we're seeing in Washington DC is to impeach. Impeach Obama, impeach Hillary Clinton, impeach Tim Geithner, impeach Eric Holder, and from there, work down the food chain.
In American history there have only been two Presidents who were impeached by the US House – Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton (Richard Nixon was technically not impeached, since he resigned before the House could finish articles of impeachment against him). In both cases, they were acquitted by the U.S. Senate. Andrew Johnson was impeached, essentially, for working against Radical Republican efforts to make Reconstruction more painful for the defeated South after the Civil War. Richard Nixon, as we know, was going to be impeached for his part in covering up the break-in at the Watergate Hotel in which GOP operatives tried to spy on Democrat planners. Bill Clinton, for his part, was impeached for having sex…wait, that's not it, he was impeached for perjury and obstruction of justice (things that would have gotten any of us thrown in jail if we had done them).
The magnitude of the scandalous and illegal behavior of the Obama administration makes all of these prior impeachments, as well as the many other scandals that have plagued the American government of the last two and a quarter centuries, look like child's play.
Now that the lid has been blown off, I get a sense that the average low-information voter is even starting to become informed about what the executive branch has been doing, and is getting angry about it. At the end of last week, I had something unusual happen at work. One of my co-workers, an almost stereotypical "twenty-something" – unmarried, doesn't follow politics very much, socially liberal, supports gay marriage, probably voted for Obama, and so forth – started a completely unsolicited conversation with me about Benghazi. He was very angry about the way the administration allowed four Americans to die, about how they could have come to their rescue but didn't, and that they then tried to downplay, minimize, and cover it up. In fact, my co-worker had been listening to the Benghazi hearings live-streamed from C-Span – something I wouldn't have even thought of doing. I think he knew more about the scandal than I did. The coverage was having a very definite and negative effect on his opinions about the Obama administration.
Maybe Mike Huckabee was right when he said a couple of weeks ago that the Obama scandals were about to explode on the scene, and would result in impeachment. At the time, I sort of shrugged it off, figuring that the media was just going to keep covering up and word would never get out. Yet, it's starting to look like this might happen. I'm definitely hoping that it will.
So what are all the scandals that are finally seeing the light?
The most obvious one if Benghazi. Obama and his minions knew that our embassy was under attack by an organized terrorist group, they even watched the assault, and they stood by and did nothing as our ambassador, one of his aides, and two Navy SEALs were murdered by the terrorists. A rapid-reaction force was ready, and told to stand down. The general in charge of the units involved was relieved, apparently because he disagreed with the administration's decision. Obama and his lackies tried to claim that the assault was done by an unorganized crowd protesting some penny ante Youtube movie about Islam, and that there was nothing they could do. An innocent man who did nothing illegal – the guy who made the Youtube movie – was nevertheless jailed (and remains that way) so he could serve as a fall guy for the President and his crew. When called to account earlier, Hillary Clinton – the pinched, shrewish hag that she is – brushed it all off and asked, "What difference does it make?" To add insult to injury, the families of those lost have been condescended to by the administration, their questions about what really happened the day they lost their loved ones ignored by heartless hacks from the State Department.
Then, of course, there is the recent revelation that from as far back as late 2010, the IRS was targeting Tea Party and other conservative groups, as well as Jewish pro-Israel groups. In essence, the administration was sicking the IRS on its political opponents, subjecting them to special scrutiny and dispreferential treatment in their applications for tax-exempt status. Keep in mind that one of the articles of impeachment that was being prepared for Nixon before he resigned was for using the IRS against his political opponents – so there's definitely precedent for going after Obama on this. This is a big deal – it cuts at the very heart of free speech, free association, and free thought. It's government overreach on a massive scale – using its own power to specifically attempt to limit and hinder the free ability of its opponents to participate in the political process. The fact that it was not just confined to "low level employees" in Cincinnati, but in fact goes all the way to "top officials" in Washington DC indicates that this was coming straight from the top. Some of these top officials even lied to Congress when asked if this type of activity was going on in 2011. Obama and the officials involved need to be removed from office.
Indeed, this IRS scandal further casts doubt on the legitimacy of Obama's election in November 2012. As I've pointed out previously, there are strong reasons to consider the results of last November's election to be fraudulent and illegitimate. The IRS scandal makes that case even further. Consider this – by systematically preventing or delaying Tea Party and other conservative groups from obtaining the same sort of tax exempt status that left-wing groups routinely obtain, the IRS was essentially helping to hinder the ability of these groups to participate and to deter donors from contributing to these groups. By doing so, the IRS was helping to depress the vote for Romney and Republicans, while commensurately tipping the field in favor of Obama and Democrats. That could certainly have helped to swing thousands of votes to the Democrats and away from Republicans in swing states that were especially competitive. Could these actions by the IRS have resulted in Obama winning states that he might otherwise not have won, had Tea Party and other conservative groups been able to direct more money, time, and organization into these states, but which they could not because of IRS hobbling?
But now it turns out that this isn't all there is to the scandal. It seems that one left-wing media "watchdog" group, ProPublica, was given confidential information regarding the applications for tax-exempt status of several Tea Party groups. This is, of course, quite illegal. It's also part of a disturbing trend on the part of the Left toward using left-wing organizations as legitimized bullies for harassing and attacking their political opponents, much the same way the US Department of Justice uses the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and other far-Left supporters of domestic terrorism as tools for attacking conservative groups.
Also not surprising are the revelations that other government agencies besides the IRS appear to have been involved in the official intimidation of conservative opponents of the government, including the FBI and BATFE.
There are other scandals that are not as generally well-known, but hopefully will be exposed to greater scrutiny as the heat is turned up on Obama and his cronies. For instance, you have Katherine Sebelius, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, essentially shaking down health care companies for funds, using the tremendous discretionary powers that she has been granted under ObamaCare to lean on them to "do the right thing," thus attempting to circumvent the funding limitations that Congress has imposed via its constitutional budgetary powers.
Then, there is the Fast and Furious / Operation Gunwalker scandal that the media have been able to largely hide so far. This one involves the Obama administration leaning on gun store owners to sell weapons to government straw purchasers, guns that were then transported into Mexico and given to drug gangs. These drug gangs have subsequently committed over 500 murders – including a US Border Patrol agent – using these guns. The purpose for all this? To give the Obama administration a "legitimate" reason to "crack down" on guns and call for more gun control legislation to solve the "problem" of gun violence in Mexico caused by guns purchased in America (this took place before the Sandy Hook and Aurora shootings gave him more convenient excuses to push for gun control).
There is, of course, the scandal over the Pigford Settlements – another one that hardly anyone has heard about, but which involves the misuse and misappropriation of public monies. Ostensibly these settlements were intended to be monetary remedies to black farmers who had supposedly been discriminated against in the allocation of government farm loans between 1983 and 1997, a result of a class action lawsuit filed against the US Department of Agriculture, Pigford v. Glickman. However, it has since been found that many of those who claimed "discrimination" and were collecting their $50,000 shares of the settlement were not farmers and had no actual claim on the money, but were apparently being encouraged to fraudulently claim discrimination in the giving of the loans. Multiple claims were often filed in the same handwriting, many of the addresses listed were in urban areas nowhere near farmland, and in several counties across several southern states, more discrimination claims were made than there were actual farms in the counties. In essence, it turned into a great big trough of government money that many black Americans, apparently encouraged and assisted by elements within the Obama administration, could use as a nozzle for tapping free government cash, using the charge of "racism" as a cover for their activities.
Now, we find out that the Justice Department illegally seized several months worth of telephone and other communication records from the Associated Press, even though there was no specific investigation that any of these applied to (which would normally be required to obtain the warrant necessary to grant access to these records). While there have been some claims that the government is investigating supposed media leaks of information regarding a foiled terrorist plot about a year ago, the use of subpoena's to obtain such a wide range of communications has been enough to even make the normally Obama-friendly ACLU call foul. In essence, the Justice Department overstepped its constitutional investigative powers and strong-armed information for which it had no legitimate need. While I think we can see the irony in a media outlet that has continually played the patsy for Obama finding itself on the receiving end of Obama administration overreach, the danger that this sort of behavior presents to anyone who might investigate the actions of or write against the Obama administration surely ought to bother us greatly. This is doubly so as we now have a reporter in St. Louis alleging that after he asked Obama some difficult questions last year, the IRS suddenly began pressuring him.
We've also found out, just today, that the EPA has made a routine practice out of charging prohibitively expensive fees to conservative groups that requested information from the agency, while waiving these same fees for "friendly" environmentalist groups. This is yet another example of politically-motivated disparate treatment by government (which is supposed to be neutral and impartial) designed to both hinder its political opponents while at the same time providing to itself the cover of bureaucratic opacity.
So much corruption from the administration of a President who once claimed he'd have the most transparent government ever. It's a good thing – a very good thing – that this is all coming out into the light of day, finally. I'm sure that Obama and his administration will always have its bevy of supporters, partisan hacks who will ignore even the most egregious misuse of government power if it provides them even the most transient political benefit, who will claim that Republican investigations into the many misdeeds of Obama and his underlings are just racist "witch hunts" designed to go after America's First Black President™. Regardless, anyone who actually cares about good government needs to support turning this entire crew – Obama, Holder, Sebelius, Clinton, Giethner, and the rest – out on their ears, and possibly into a federal penitentiary. Dereliction of duty, obstruction of justice, abuse of government power, conflict of interest, lying to Congress – these are all high crimes that can and should result in impeachment. It's time to direct the river of truth through the Augean stables of Washington, D.C.