Eric Holder Needs To Go, Special Prosecutor Needed

May 16, 2013 Leave a comment

President Obama is just as outraged at the IRS abuses as the American people. See, he’s one of us! Except he’s the President and he alleges he found out about a scandal within his own executive branch at the same time the rest of us found out. He told the country last night he forced the resignation of acting IRS chief Steven Miller. Miller claims in an email to IRS employees he was leaving in June because that’s when his assignment was scheduled to end. Which version is correct? That’s anyone’s guess. We can bet that President Passive isn’t going to get to the bottom of it.

The White House released a bunch of Benghazi emails that they seem to think vindicates their position. It does no such thing. The emails prove Jay Carney was wrong in suggesting the White House had a limited role in creating the Benghazi talking points. The CIA wanted to scrap the talking points and the video didn’t become the focus of them until the very end. Of course Attorney General Eric Holder won’t be appointing a special prosecutor to investigate the deaths of four Americans, including an ambassador. If there was ever a case where a special prosecutor could actually help a President it’s this one. Unless the administration is afraid of a special prosecutor finding out what really happened in Benghazi.

At the center of all of these problems is Eric Holder. Holder claims that in the AP phone monitoring scandal he recused himself from the investigation of the original leak. There is no written evidence that Holder recused himself and he has no idea when he actually recused himself. He passed the matter off to one of his deputies in the Justice Department and if you were paying attention Holder suggested Congress couldn’t subpoena the deputy. If so, isn’t it convenient for Holder. Does anyone really believe that Holder wasn’t involved in the AP subpoenas? Doesn’t anyone believe that he didn’t at least know about them?

At yesterday’s Congressional hearing Eric Holder called Rep. Darrell Issa ”unacceptable and shameful.” This is a classic administration tactic. Rather than answering questions, tough though they may be, Holder is shifting focus away from himself and onto Issa. As though it’s outrageous that Issa is questioning the administration. Isolate and demonize, it’s straight out of the Saul Alinsky playbook.  Hillary Clinton did the same thing during her Benghazi testimony in January. What’s unacceptable and shameful is how little Holder seems to know about the Federal agency that he runs. Just like Obama, he seems to know nothing. Do we have a government managed by a President and his cabinet or is our government run by a cabal of bureaucrats who do whatever they please?

Eric Holder needs to be fired. Obama can easily make Holder the fall guy for all of his problems. One big head rolling is likely to calm most of these storms. Firing the temporary IRS chief isn’t good enough. If Obama wants to stop the bleeding, he takes out Holder. He won’t do it of course, Holder is to good at using the Justice Department in illegal ways while deflecting criticism with a torrent of “I don’t know’s.” Like Obama, Holder knows nothing about anything. Fast and Furious, AP phone tapping, denying a homeschool family asylum. Holder knows nothing and as such he’s valuable to Obama.

Beyond Holder, a special prosecutor needs to be appointed for all of these scandals. There are enough links between the Obama campaign and secret tax information of conservatives and their organizations that a special prosecutor should investigate. We should have an independent review of the AP phone subpoena. Benghazi needs a fresh set of eyes, free of the political eyes both sides of the aisle have on the matter. The American people have a right to know what’s going on within their government. A special prosecutor is the best way to find out. We shouldn’t count on it though. Obama and Holder have either too much to hide or don’t like the idea of outsiders snooping around.

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Is Obama Just A Figurehead?

May 15, 2013 4 Comments

Left-wing news outlet ProPublica acknowledges that it received secret tax information from IRS informants about conservatives. An Obama re-election co-chair used leaked IRS documents to attack Romney last year. The IRS spent most of the last three years asking conservative groups about speeches members made, offices members or their family have run for or may run for in the future, to say nothing of demands for Facebook and Twitter accounts. All while progressive groups were approved without scrutiny. Media members and other assorted troublemakers who have questioned the President in, public or otherwise embarrassing ways, have been subjected to IRS audits. We’re told Obama and the White House knew nothing about all of this.

Eric Holder’s Justice Department hacked the phone lines of 20 AP reporters after a security leak. Holder claims the leak was one of the top three most important, crucial leaks he’s seen since 1973. Holder has no idea how many journalists have been targeted over the last four years but we should trust him because it was an important leak that threatened national security. It makes one wonder why, if this was such an important leak, Obama knew nothing about the targeting of journalists. Did no one at the Justice Department bother to ask the President what his opinion was of wiretapping journalists? Are we to believe that Obama never asked anyone at the Justice Department “hey what’s going on with the investigation of that really important national security leak”?

Benghazi is much the same. Obama claimed to be friends with Ambassador Stevens. Yet on the night the consulate was under attack Obama went to bed without knowing what happened. Leon Panetta testified that he never spoke with anyone at the White House on the night of the attack nor for a couple days after. Did Obama really say “that’s a shame” then go to sleep when he found out about the attack? Why did he do nothing to save the ambassador? The coverup afterward is bad enough but there are legitimate questions regarding Obama’s whereabouts on the evening of the Benghazi attack. There are even more questions as to why Obama appears to be disinterested in the attack as it happened.

The White House response seems to be that the President is completely out of the loop when it comes to all the details of the Federal government. David Axlerod suggested the Federal government is so big that it’s impossible for the President to keep up with it all. Sort of a rich argument coming from the party and President of ever expansive government don’t you think? It seems almost unfathomable that the President wouldn’t know about the wiretapping of journalists after such an allegedly big security leak. It seems impossible to believe Obama didn’t have any idea that conservative groups were being targeted by the IRS. Especially so when there were media reports about it for years and his own campaign used leaked information. Did Obama really care so little about the Benghazi attack that he went to bed rather than orchestrate a response?

Maybe Obama will blame the IRS scandal on Senate Democrats who demanded Tea Party investigations for years. Maybe Obama will finally hang Hillary out to dry once and for all. Maybe he’ll blame the press phone tapping on career Justice Department lawyers. At the end of the day though Obama is the President of the United States. He’s the chief executive, the CEO if you will of the Federal government. He’s ultimately responsible for all of these problems, the buck stops in the Oval Office. Yet for Obama it’s always someone elses responsibility, he knows nothing. Is he so intellectually uncurious that he doesn’t bother to look into anything within his administration? The way the White House has responded to all of these scandals one might be led to think that Obama is nothing but a figurehead.

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Has Obama Committed An Impeachable Offense?

May 14, 2013 4 Comments

The President is currently mired in three major scandals. We all know about Benghazi and the IRS Scandal. The third involves the Justice Department secretly obtaining the phone records of journalists at the Associated Press, allegedly for the purposes of discovering a whistleblower. The White House of course has directed the media to the Justice Department, who will no doubt either refuse to comment or send the press back to the White House. This is an issue that won’t go away, largely because the press has a vested interest in protecting their sources. How can we have a free press when the government spies on members of the media?

The IRS Scandal is completely blowing up on Obama. At yesterday’s press conference Obama claimed he learned about it when the media reported it. How can it be that the chief executive of the government not know about this scandal? Especially so when there were press reports about it over two years ago and the American Center for Law and Justice served upon Obama’s Chief of Staff an official complaint three weeks ago? Jay Carney acknowledges the White House found out three weeks ago. How is it Obama didn’t find out until last Friday? He’s either lying or a completely incompetent manager. Perhaps Valerie Jarrett is protecting the President from bad news but it’s on him to get rid of someone like Jarrett if she’s doing that. The scandal also extends beyond Cincinnati. The targeting was agency wide.

Yesterday Obama claimed that he called Benghazi a terrorist attack the very next day after it happened. No one is buying it, not even the liberal Washington Post. There is video out there of the President as late as September 26th claiming the video caused a riot which led to four American deaths. Drudge is reporting that a fourth bombshell is about to hit, perhaps from the CIA. It’s the CIA that Obama is currently blaming for the revisions to the administration talking points. One suspects that the CIA doesn’t think very much of being hung out to dry and as such they may be planning their revenge. Whether they release information about gun or missile running to Syria or if they release more information about the revisions remains to be seen. If there is one arm of the Federal government a President would be wise not to toy with it’s the CIA.

The question here is whether any of this reaches the level of an impeachable offense. As it stands today, there is not an impeachable offense. There is complete and utter incompetence within the Obama administration. Obama appears to be completely incapable of managing the executive branch. Right now his best argument is his own incompetence, his own mistakes. If he must blame someone, he can blame other people’s mistakes. As it stands today, there is no direct link between the IRS and the White House and no direct evidence that information was exchanged. In Benghazi there is evidence of extreme incompetence from Obama and the State Department. However until a weapon running scheme can be identified with hard evidence there isn’t an impeachable offense. As it stands on May 14th, 2013 we don’t yet have evidence that Obama engaged in high crimes and misdemeanors.

We have two choices with Obama, neither of them very good. We either believe he’s grossly incompetent or grossly evil. Today the conclusion reached must be grossly incompetent and thus he must not be impeached. As time goes on, that analysis may change as we don’t know what will be released in the coming days, weeks and months. We may discover a widespread scheme to threaten and harass whistleblowers, which could rise to the level of impeachable offense. We have to let the investigations play out. What sad position this country is in. It’s one thing to disagree with the President politically, it’s one thing to question his political moves. It’s another thing entirely when we are presented with a choice between our President being profoundly incompetent at managing the executive branch or profoundly evil in how he wields his power.

UPDATE: There appears to be anti-conservative bias throughout the Obama administration. At the EPA 92% of liberal groups FOIA requests saw their FOIA fees waived while 92% of conservative groups saw their requests for fee waivers rejected. The same thing appears to be happening at the FCC, where it rejects conservative FIOA requests and grants liberal FOIA requests. How far this bias goes is unknown at this point. It makes the IRS scandal less surprising and more business as usual for the Obama administration.

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Team Obama’s Fundamental IRS Miscalculation

May 14, 2013 Leave a comment

Last Friday the Obama administration made one of the few tactical political errors they’ve made. They had an IRS executive causally acknowledge that the tax agency targeted conservative groups with terms like Tea Party and patriot in their names for additional scrutiny. The IRS also targeted Jewish groups and shifted their targeting terms so as to capture as many conservative groups as possible. The Obama administration has successfully shifted focus away from Benghazi but the IRS scandal isn’t quite as controlled as they expected. Information continues to leak out, including that top officials at the IRS knew about the targeting of conservative groups in 2010. One finds it difficult to believe an Inspectors General report with that sort of information didn’t make it to the White House.

In 1974 Article 2 of the proposed articles of impeachment against President Nixon focused on his abuses within the IRS. We are nowhere near that level with Obama yet, largely because we don’t know how deep Obama is personally into all of this. The information trickling out isn’t just that the IRS targeted conservative groups for additional scrutiny. The IRS also may have been involved in the leaking of information concerning donations made by Mitt Romney’s PAC. Last year Romney donor Frank VanderSloot was attacked by Obama’s campaign as a “wealthy individual with a less than reputable record.” He was then subjected to two IRS audits. So the question now is two fold. First, did the IRS provide VanderSloot’s tax information to the Obama campaign? Second, did the IRS respond to the Obama campaign’s accusation in deciding to audit VanderSloot or in the alternative did the administration order up an audit?

Team Obama didn’t think the IRS announcement would legitimize complaints made nearly a year ago about the IRS and its use of private tax information for the benefit of the President. Now that the agency has admitted to targeting conservatives, even the media is taking seriously the claims of conservatives which were summarily dismissed just a few weeks ago. That David Plouffe seems to be justifying the IRS actions certainly isn’t helping Obama’s case. We’ve know for a long time that Obama views Republicans as “the enemy.” Is it possible he really has an enemies list and uses the IRS to attack them?

Obama has, not surprisingly, called the IRS scandal “outrageous” and “concerning.” Nixon also claimed he wasn’t a crook, so Presidential shows of outrage over scandal isn’t exactly meaningful. Bringing this back to what really matters, Benghazi, Obama called the investigation a “sideshow.” In this we can see what the administration intended to do with the IRS scandal. Obama got to moralize and show indignation over the IRS scandal while dismissing out of hand the more important and more damning Benghazi scandal. We can see in his comments Monday what the administration really wanted to do with these two issues. The IRS is an outrage but don’t pay attention to that Republican sideshow in Benghazi. When a President plays that card, it’s usually time to pay attention to the sideshow.

The IRS scandal has snowballed out of control for the administration, which will result in the opposite of its intended effect. In Benghazi the administration is relying on the State Department investigation of Thomas Pickering. Pickering never bothered to depose Hillary Clinton or any of her immediate underlings. He claims he already determined she wasn’t involved, which is of course complete nonsense if one listens to Gregory Hicks testimony. The Pickering investigation is a sham, everyone knows it.  Yet Obama relies on it. Because the public is outraged over the IRS scandal and because it’s likely few believe the administration wasn’t somehow involved people are going to be more likely to believe the worst about Benghazi.

This is the miscalculation of Obama’s political team. They really thought the IRS scandal would give Obama the opportunity to stamp his feet in moral indignation while Republicans shifted focus from Benghazi to the IRS. Obama still has an amount of cover over at the IRS. What the politicos didn’t anticipate was a whole host of additional IRS charges, including leaks of financial information by the IRS and politically motivated audits, making its way into the mainstream press. They were slow to react, waiting until Monday for Obama to say anything. That would have been fine but for the snowball effect but once things got out of control Team Obama didn’t respond quickly enough. Now because people believe the administration is up to no good via the IRS, people are more willing to believe the worst about Benghazi.

We know Benghazi goes all the way to the top as we know Obama was involved in the decision making. We obviously don’t know if Obama or any of his White House staff were involved in the IRS scandal. Presumably investigations will take place and we’ll find something out eventually. The question isn’t so much whether there’s an impeachable offense here, there isn’t right now. Incompetence yes but incompetence isn’t impeachable. The question is at what point do the Democrats cut and run from Obama? He’s a lame duck with no political future. If things begin to get out of control scandal wise look for Democrats to distance themselves. They will cut and run to save their own careers before sticking their neck out for a lame duck Obama. Right now, Obama risks losing the country on both of these issues because folks don’t buy that the IRS targeting wasn’t political in nature. Because they question the IRS scandal, they’re going to question Benghazi as well. Team Obama is in full on crisis mode and they should be.

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One Bad Week Could Derail Obama

May 13, 2013 2 Comments

The President’s Twitter feed declared Obama to be “Our North Star.” As absurd as that description of him is the White House doesn’t seem to be kidding around. Perhaps they’re dreaming of better times when the media treated him as the Savior of the nation, when Republicans were powerless and when Democrats loved him. After last week, the White House Twitter feed felt a lot like Hitler’s last days in the bunker. Dreaming of better days while bombs are exploding all around. It’s been a long time since the country saw its President have such a dreadful week. Last week is one for the history books. Benghazi is the obvious big scandal, it’s the one to really focus on. The IRS scandal, potentially more insidious, could do significant damage.

You know it’s been a bad week for Obama when Maureen Dowd turns on him. Even the New Yorker is finding Obama’s Benghazi lie difficult to believe. Meanwhile liberal Time columnist Joe Klein is highly disturbed about the IRS story that broke at the end of the week. Klein doesn’t buy that the targeting of conservative Tea Party and patriot groups wasn’t partisan in nature. While the IRS claims they didn’t know about the targeting until recently, as early as 2011 senior counsel at the IRS knew. Klein accuses Obama of heading into Richard Nixon territory. Article 2 of the proposed impeachment articles against Nixon included using the IRS for political purposes.

While the IRS scandal feels like bait, in other words a controlled scandal wherein Obama can blame a Bush appointee who headed the IRS through last year, it still speaks of Obama’s executive incompetence. If in 2011 senior counsel at the IRS knew the agency was targeting conservative groups (and apparently Jewish groups) for scrutiny why didn’t Obama know about it or why didn’t Obama do anything about it? He’s either incompetent in that he has no control over the executive branch or he didn’t care. The administration is making the same argument on Benghazi. They’re going with Obama’s incompetent rather than Obama’s involved in a coverup.

The Benghazi situation is only going to get worse. They’re going to have a tough time going after star witness Gregory Hicks, a lifelong Democrat who voted for Hillary and Obama twice. Now that the media is actually interested in the scandal, Obama can’t roll his eyes and mock scandal hungry Republicans. The IRS scandal, which could be a huge can of worms rather than the controlled scandal the administration hopes it will be, is going to cause scandal interested Republicans to go wild. The House Ways and Means Committee is already demanding all IRS communications involving this scandal by Wednesday. Perhaps the GOP will find a way to be interested in multiple scandals all at once.

In short, last week couldn’t have been any worse for Obama. With these scandals simmering and with the media sharks beginning to circle, the odds of Obama’s domestic agenda passing grow dimmer each day. Immigration reform is already a tough sell for Obama, these scandals are delaying this debate thus giving the opposition time to figure out there’s a biometric database of all Americans hidden in the gang of eight bill. The more time people have to figure out what’s in this bill the more likely opposition to it will grow. The longer Benghazi and the IRS scandals dominate the news the longer it will take for Congress to consider any of Obama’s agenda. Last week was a turning point in Obama administration, a turning point for Obama’s legacy. One bad week will cast a long shadow over the rest of his term.

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Don’t Take The IRS Scandal Bait

May 11, 2013 Leave a comment

Out of nowhere the IRS issued an apology to conservative groups for targeting them during the 2012 election. The IRS targeted for additional scrutiny groups that included the terms tea party and patriot. They asked all sorts of intrusive information from these groups, including demands for various direct and indirect communications with legislative bodies, contact with news media and information on members and their families. The IRS explanation is that underlings in Cincinnati were responsible. Yet there will be no discipline, no one is being fired. Obama had previously joked about targeting conservatives with the IRS. Yet we are to believe that politics wasn’t a motivation here. Not surprisingly the New York Times dismissed conservative complaints last year.

The timing of this is curious. The person who made this random announcement during a speech, Lois Lerner, isn’t exactly a top level IRS agent. It’s no surprise this came to light on the notoriously slow news day of Friday. Perhaps the administration is trying to shift conservative attention away from Benghazi. After all, the conservative press has been largely focused on this issue. Especially after ABC News reported that the administration went through 12 drafts of their Benghazi talking points, taking out terrorism in the process. We all know at this point the administration made up the video story, they did so to distract away from the true cause of the Benghazi attacks: Terrorism. Or if you’re Geraldo it’s missile running to Syria or if you’re Glenn Beck it’s gun running to Syria. (neither would surprise)

We cannot forget that for this administration everything is political. Thus when our consulate in Benghazi is attacked they view it as a political event to be spun. Likewise they view Republican responses to everything as political in nature. Thus you have the folks at MSNBC blaming the GOP for Obama’s Benghazi response because of course Republicans made Obama lie with their political attacks. As such, we have to analyze the IRS announcement yesterday in a purely political manner. What was the point of the announcement, why was it announced yesterday?

Once we start asking these questions we can piece together why the administration made the announcement yesterday. The conservative press has been hammering the administration to the point where the liberal mainstream press is beginning to get in on the action. The administration believes that by dangling a carrot they can shift the focus of the media away from the Benghazi coverup and onto an easily explained away IRS problem. After all, the administration can easily hide behind the fact that the head of the IRS last year was still a Bush appointee. Then they can claim politics wasn’t a factor while conservatives stamp their feet in outrage. Thus their goal is to control the scandal situation so that we either forget about Benghazi or stop paying so much attention to it.

Let’s not be sucked into this tomfoolery. Benghazi is important. It’s important because this administration failed to protect our Libyan ambassador. It’s important because it shows us that al Qaeda is alive and well. It’s important because to coverup their terrorism failure, the administration lied to the public about the cause of the attack. Playing in the background is potential gun running or weapons running to Muslim Brotherhood terrorist rebelling against the government in Syria. The IRS scandal is small potatoes in comparison, it’s a scandal that the administration can easily fob off on underlings in an agency headed by a Bush appointee. The Obama administration is playing politics with us, we ought to not get sucked in.

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In 20 Years Guns Double, Gun Crime Down 70%

May 10, 2013 Leave a comment

In the last twenty years the number of privately owned guns in the United States has roughly doubled. There are approximately 300 million privately held firearms in our nation today. Millions more are being purchased every month as Americans fear gun control regulations will limit their second amendment rights. If one were to listen to the hysterical Democrats and their surrogates in the media, one would think the doubling of guns in this country would equal a massive increase in the number of murders and other violent felonies. In fact 50% of the country thinks violent crime has increased over the last twenty years. In fact, it’s decreased dramatically.

In the last twenty years murders are down almost 40%. Gun murders are down almost 50%. Violent crimes involving guns are down around 70%. These are dramatic decreases in violent crimes committed with guns and yet our nation roughly doubled the number of privately held guns. How can it be that a nation which doubled its guns saw crime drop so much? Obviously there are a lot of factors in the decrease in the number of violent crimes committed. One of them undoubtedly is that a significant number of potential violent criminals are fearful that a potential victim is carrying a gun. That fear is a significant deterrent.

These numbers aren’t exactly surprising to those who believe in a robust second amendment. Since 1960 all of the mass public shootings in the US but one took place at a location where firearms were banned. You could probably throw in most of the European mass public shootings as well, they have these events just as much as we do despite severe firearm restrictions. When potential criminals aren’t afraid of their victims being able to defend themselves, they’re emboldened to commit crimes. There’s a reason why mass public shootings happen at government schools and movie theaters and malls which ban guns but not at NRA conventions.

In the 90′s it was popular for European visitors in Florida to put a NRA sticker on their rental car or wear a NRA hat. At the time, European travelers were targeted by criminals for muggings and car jackings because they were vulnerable targets. The NRA paraphernalia warded off potential attackers who were afraid these people might be packing a firearm. That they were not doesn’t really matter, it’s the fear a criminal has that is important. If a criminal fears violent retaliation they’re less likely to engage in a criminal act.

Yet the Democrats want to restrict access to firearms in this country. They want to ban certain kinds of guns and ban certain kinds of magazines or clips. They want to make it more difficult for law abiding citizens to obtain a firearm. Yet all of the evidence available to us indicates that more firearms aids in having less crime. We’ve doubled our guns in the United States and at the same time violent crime with a gun is down 70% and murders with a gun are down 50%. We have 300 million guns in the hands of private citizens, the government isn’t going to be able to confiscate all of these weapons. Rather than trying to restrict access to more firearms, we would be better off allowing American citizens to exercise their gun rights. Would it shock anyone if crime dropped as a result? Probably only Democrats.

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