He targeted political opponents and their supporters for harassment using the FBI, CIA and the IRS.
I am talking about Richard Nixon, but one could easily be confused.
Richard Nixon is viewed widely as one of the most abusive Presidents in history because of Watergate. Nixon caused a Constitutional crisis when he fired an Attorney General and s Special Prosecutor. The press was all over Nixon once it was learned that Rosemary Woods saw her hard drive crash “accidentally” erased recorded tapes of Oval Office conversations.
How different things are today.
The press today is obsequious to Obama. They treat him as an Affirmative Action hire instead of the Chief Executive of the United States. The press has largely ignored the IRS scandal and the destruction of evidence. They have given Obama a pass on nearly everything, including assertion of imperial powers.
But Obama is worse than Nixon. Far worse. Nixon allowed the appointment of a Special Prosecutor. Yes, he fired him, but another was appointed and it ultimately led to Nixon’s downfall.
There have been calls for the appointment of a Special Prosecutor for the IRS scandal, even from democrats. Even Counsel to Bill Clinton Lanny Davis is calling for a Special Prosecutor.
“There’s no Democrat that I know of that wouldn’t be asking a Republican administration to conduct an independent investigation” if Republicans were in charge, Davis said Friday.
No kidding. How bad are things? Really, really bad. George Will:
President Obama’s increasingly grandiose claims for presidential power are inversely proportional to his shriveling presidency. Desperation fuels arrogance as, barely 200 days into the 1,462 days of his second term, his pantry of excuses for failure is bare, his domestic agenda is nonexistent and his foreign policy of empty rhetorical deadlines and red lines is floundering. And at last week’s news conference he offered inconvenience as a justification for illegality.
Explaining his decision to unilaterally rewrite the Affordable Care Act (ACA), he said: “I didn’t simply choose to” ignore the statutory requirement for beginning in 2014 the employer mandate to provide employees with health care. No, “this was in consultation with businesses.”
He continued: “In a normal political environment, it would have been easier for me to simply call up the speaker and say, you know what, this is a tweak that doesn’t go to the essence of the law. . . . It looks like there may be some better ways to do this, let’s make a technical change to the law. That would be the normal thing that I would prefer to do. But we’re not in a normal atmosphere around here when it comes to Obamacare. We did have the executive authority to do so, and we did so.”
Serving as props in the scripted charade of White House news conferences, journalists did not ask the pertinent question: “Where does the Constitution confer upon presidents the ‘executive authority’ to ignore the separation of powers by revising laws?” The question could have elicited an Obama rarity: brevity. Because there is no such authority.
This skullduggery began at the onset of the Obama Presidency. Jeff Shapiro:
Though President Obama vowed to run the most transparent administration in history, his White House has quietly empowered itself to censor or delay the release of information in ways that not even Richard Nixon envisioned during the Watergate scandal, according to federal workers on the front lines of processing open records requests.
The workers, who spoke to The Washington Times only on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal, said that an April 15, 2009, memo from White House Counsel Gregory Craig to all federal agencies has slowed, and in some cases nixed, the public release of government documents that would have been released under prior administrations.
It also has given the White House the ability to track in real time who is asking for derogatory information about the Obama administration, the workers said.
Mr. Craig’s memo instructed federal agencies that they no longer could release under the Freedom of Information Act documents that contained “White House equities” — essentially any information involving or referencing communications with the White House — without first clearing it with presidential attorneys.
Because the White House is not a federal agency, it is exempt under the FOIA law and, as a matter of general principle, is not supposed to interfere with agency reviews of FOIA requests or the release of federal agency documents, legal analysts say.
Obama will not allow the appointment of a Special Prosecutor. Not a chance. At least not until late 2016. He has neither the character nor the integrity of Richard Nixon. Bad as he was, Nixon finally put the country above himself. There’s not a chance of that with Obama.
Had Nixon taken Obama’s attitude and ignored the law he’d still be President today, dead or alive.
It’s got to stop.
DrJohn has been a health care professional for more than 30 years. In addition to clinical practice he has done extensive research and has published widely with over 70 original articles and abstracts in the peer-reviewed literature. DrJohn is well known in his field and has lectured on every continent except for Antarctica. He has been married to the same wonderful lady for over 30 years and has three kids- two sons, both of whom are attorneys and one daughter on her way into the field of education.
DrJohn was brought up with the concept that one can do well if one is prepared to work hard but nothing in life is guaranteed.
Except for liberals being foolish.