“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment
of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom
of speech or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble,
and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” – First Amendment;
United States Constitution
Three Strikes and Out – Obama’s Tickets to Impeachment
Commentary by Sanford D. Horn
May 24, 2013
Those are not just mere words found on some old decaying
piece of parchment. Those are the words that have great, unbending meaning –
deeply rooted in the history of the United States of America – then considered
a grand experiment in republican democracy. With little exception, a successful
experiment that continues to pay hefty dividends in these United States, but
also serving as a beacon for those nations and peoples seeking to emulate our
grand designs given us by the likes of John Adams, Ben Franklin, Alexander
Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, George Mason, Thomas Paine, and George
Washington.
And make no mistake, when the First Amendment fails, the
Second Amendment takes over.
And let Watergate remind Barack Obama and his
administration that no man is above the law. Obama’s righteous indignation,
feigned that it is, cannot shroud the facts that this administration is up to
its tuchus in a triumvirate of scandals, each smelling worse than the one
before it.
So often we quote the likes of Jefferson, Franklin,
Mason, and Madison who lived during those early days of the republic not
knowing whether it would survive beyond the drying of the ink on the Constitution,
let alone the 237 years we currently celebrate. Perhaps it is due to the
tenuousness of the era in which they lived did their words resonate so strongly
as to be recalled today.
“A government big enough to give you everything you want,
is big enough to take away everything you have.” – Thomas Jefferson
Jefferson’s wisdom and brilliance transcend time and
history. Yet, even Jefferson might not imagine the size and scope of the
federal government growing so out of control that more and more people, particularly
the younger generations, expect, nay, demand that government provide for them
from womb to tomb. Personal responsibility is non-existent. Taxes are used to
pay for the lives of the lazy, the obstreperous, and the illegal.
Yet simultaneously, this government, so large and out of
control, can hardly keep track of its own activities as the likes of Steven
Miller, Lois Lerner, Doug Shulman, Sara Hall Ingram and a cast of many more
unknowns continue to deny, claim the Fifth Amendment, pass the buck and
otherwise obfuscate the issues in the myriad scandals sure to bring down any
other administration. But not the Obama administration, for even after the
media is caught up in the quagmire, they are still fawning sycophants giving
their blinding support for this man who should be facing impeachment charges
for high crimes and misdemeanors making Richard M. Nixon look like a Boy Scout.
To be fair, both the New York Times and
The Washington Post have recently
begun to castigate the administration.
The slaughter of four Americans in Benghazi, the Internal
Revenue Service’s unbalanced scrutiny into conservative organizations’ non-profit
and/or tax-exempt status, and the Justice Department’s secretly rooting through
the phone records of members of the media are categorically worse than Nixon’s
Watergate and Warren Harding’s Teapot Dome scandals.
Under Obama there has been the abuse of power, political
corruption, arrogance, and stupidity rising to new levels of stench, especially
coming from the administration that claimed from day one it would be the most
transparent administration in American history. And before anyone starts clamoring
that other administrations have been guilty of their own share of dalliances with
the shady side of the law, I categorically aver that two wrongs do not a right
make. It’s time for Obama to put on his big boy pants (not his mom jeans) and
take ownership of his administration’s corrupt and illegal practices.
When Harry Truman was president, the sign on his desk in
the Oval Office read “The buck stops here.” President Truman took
responsibility for the actions, or inactions of his administration.
Fast forward 60 years after Truman’s departure from the
White House to the current occupant, Barack Obama and his scandal laden
administration. With Obama, the buck stops anywhere but with him – as the pile
under the bus grows on an almost daily basis.
In Benghazi, Libya, four members of the diplomatic
mission, Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, Navy SEALS Glen Doherty and Tyrone
Woods, along with information officer Sean Smith were slaughtered by Islamic
militant terrorists on September 11, 2012.
First under the bus was US Ambassador to the United
Nations Susan Rice, who was tasked with appearing on five Sunday talk shows regaling
all who would listen that the attack was not terrorist related, but an
impromptu riot against an anti-Muslim video. That story had the shelf life of
milk outdoors on the Equator as the video was nothing but a façade.
“No matter how imperfect things are, if you’ve got a free
press everything is correctable, and without it everything is concealable.” –
Tom Stoppard from his play Night and Day.
As in Watergate, the cover up was worse than the truth.
The truth is that more security was requested, begged for even, but was never
approved by then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. She subsequently suffered
a convenient concussion and then had the gall to shout during her testimony, “What
difference, at this point does it matter,” regarding the actual circumstances
behind the death of four Americans. Tell that to their families, who more than
eight months later are still demanding answers, and rightfully so. Tell that also
to Mark Basseley Youssef, a.k.a. Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, the filmmaker still
in an American prison for a film that was not the root cause of the Benghazi
terrorist attacks.
But there was Obama, in front of the cameras telling the
American people the Benghazi attacks were not terrorist attacks but motivated
by a film never seen by the terrorists – a word Obama opted not to use for
days. How could security be so lax and porous on September 11 of all days?
While the Benghazi scandal still reverberates around the
ether, the country has been shaken to its core as privacy rights and a free
press have been challenged by the Obama administration.
“The freedom of the press is one of the great bulwarks of
liberty, and can never be restrained but by despotic governments.” – George Mason;
Virginia Declaration of Rights, 1776
So bereft of scruples, the Obama administration has taken
to spying on the media – the very press that carried his water throughout two
presidential campaigns and elections to get him to the White House and keep him
there, when having served as a back bencher in the Illinois State Senate and
then as a US Senator for 147 days before announcing his intentions of “fundamentally
transforming the United States of America.”
Under the guise of national security and the alleged
leadership of hopefully soon to be former Attorney General Eric Holder, the
Justice Department, unbeknownst to its victims, secured the phone records and
e-mails of not just members of the Associated Press, but Fox News, family of members
of the press, and potentially other media outlets yet to be discovered.
Naturally, Holder has denied any involvement in this
scandal, yet defended his department’s secret gathering of the phone records
claiming there was “a grave national security leak.” If such a leak occurred and
if such a potential national security issue existed, wouldn’t it behoove the AG
to be in the loop on such investigative activities? Holder can’t have it both
ways.
If there was a breach in national security and Holder was
unaware of it, he should be out and whoever unearthed such a breach should have
his post. If not, as is suspected, the Justice Department is guilty of
violating policy and procedure and possibly countless laws. When the government
seeks phone and e-mail records, it notifies the organizations first, even
secures subpoenas, not engage in cloak and dagger nonsense.
Holder and his Justice Department are more and more
culpable with the unearthing of the fact that Holder himself authorized the
investigation into Fox News reporter James Rosen’s e-mail – an investigation
that stretched to include that of Rosen’s parents as well. Yet the denials
continue. Even the liberal site Huffington Post has called for Holder’s ousting
as the Attorney General.
In order to capably do its job, the notion of a free
press should be sacrosanct. Having worked as a reporter for a number of years,
I fully understand and respect the notion of deep background, keeping pertinent
information out of a story when an ongoing investigation was the subject, as
well as what off the record means. Even in this day and age of the biased
media, a free press remains a cornerstone of the American democratic-republic.
“Without a free press there can be no free society.” –
Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, 1954
The American public needs more than just a modicum of
confidence that the media is working freely, independently, and unfettered,
even as biased as it is. Potential reliable sources need to feel protected or
unreliable sources will destroy the state of the media. News is factual and
must remain so – in spite of too many so-called reporters attempting to be the
next Woodward or Bernstein by injecting themselves into the news and opining
where is does not belong. Separate fact from fiction from opinion.
This scandal will not, nor should not, go quietly into
this good night.
“Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and
that cannot be limited without being lost.” –Thomas Jefferson, 1789
People’s liberty is also at stake when a behemoth government
organization, the IRS, recently charged with running Obamacare and needing to
hire 16,000 new agents to ensure it is being run properly, is also mired neck
high in a scandal.
Seems the IRS zealously audited and investigated an
enormously disproportionate number of conservative organizations with TEA
Party, liberty, freedom, other patriotic names as well as pro-Israel and
conservative Jewish organizations. Their 501(c)(3) status was held up for
months or downright denied unilaterally without explanation.
This harassment had been taking place since before the
2012 presidential campaign. These audits targeted organizations having a beef
with Obama or seen to run contrary to Obama’s beliefs or plans for winning reelection
and governing thereafter. Demands should be made for all the pertinent e-mail
communications just as the Nixon tapes had been subpoenaed during the Watergate
investigations.
Law abiding American citizens and organizations have the
Constitutional right to freely associate, freely worship, and freely contribute
to the candidates of their choosing without being harassed by the IRS or any
other government agency. The IRS does not have the right to ask members of an
organization to whom they contribute their money, how they pray, or even what
prayers they recite. This scurrilous behavior by the IRS and the Obama
administration at-large is tantamount to George Orwell’s 1984 becoming reality.
Pro-life organizations were delayed in achieving their
tax-exempt status or denied outright, while Planned Parenthood has enjoyed such
status for years. Conservative, patriotic, and pro-Israel organizations were
placed under a microscope so intrusive it made a prostate exam seem like a day
at the beach. Other groups crying out for investigation were simply given a
pass by the IRS, an arm of the government people fear on a good day.
“When people fear the government, there is tyranny. When
the government fears the people, there is liberty.” – Thomas Jefferson
Even US Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-NY), a loyal Obama supporter
and member of the House Ways and Means Committee, expressed his disgust with
the IRS. Having his own tax evasion issues, Rangel said he was offended by the
behavior of the IRS.
Replete with more “I don’t know” responses than Jeff
Spicoli in Fast Times at Ridgemont High,
and more claims of knowing nothing to make Sergeant Schultz of Hogan’s Heroes look like a Phi Beta
Kappa, those who testified before the House Ways and Means Committee as well as
the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee took poor counsel from the
pettifoggers advising them, making them look even more guilty, if that is at
all possible.
Miller, Lerner, and Shulman offered denials and took the
Fifth Amendment with derisive sneers and arrogance as though they had no
responsibility in these scandals. They should not be allowed to behave this
way. Are ordinary American citizens and organizations allowed to shun an IRS
audit? Are they allowed to not know things? Are they allowed to take the Fifth?
No, no, and no. Clearly there is yet another double standard in play here.
Keep them in their seats to testify the truth. Barring
that, cite them with Contempt of Congress. There have been some take charge
members on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, namely US Rep.
Trey Goudy (R-SC) who reminded the committee that witnesses can’t have it both
ways – provide statements to defend themselves, but then refuse to answer
questions from the members.
No one knew anything. No one did anything wrong. No one
knew anyone who knew anything. No one knew anyone who did anything wrong. Yet,
Obama himself said, “Let’s ensure this doesn’t happen again.”
I don’t want to say heads should roll for fear of being
called Islamophobic, especially with this administration, but not only do
people need to be fired, I support what House Speaker John Boehner asked. “My
question isn’t who’s going to resign… my question is who’s going to jail.” In
addition to jail, since the buck really does stop with Barack Obama, he should
be out of a job, and we the American people should not have to wait until January
20, 2017.
Sanford D. Horn is a writer and educator
living in Westfield, IN.
