Where the broad public is concerned, knowledge of Barack Obama's intimate relationship with corruption has flowered in recent weeks thanks to the MSM finally paying attention to a trio of particular scandals. Namely, those scandals are the dereliction of duty and subsequent cover-up regarding Benghazi; the IRS targeting people and groups who openly disagree with Obama; and the DOJ's unprecedented surveillance of journalists.
Because so much ink has been spilled elsewhere delving into the details of those items, there is little reason to rehash the minutiae here. But all of us would be well served to step back, recap, and consider what these scandals tell us about Obama & Co...and in order to do that we must look much further back than the past few weeks.
Many Americans raised questions about Obama's past during his first presidential campaign, only to find themselves drowned out by an adversarial press corps that dismissed them as an unsavory stew of kooks, conspiracy theorists, bigots, and retrogrades.
When some tried to point out that Obama is closely connected to known terrorist Bill Ayers, the press downplayed the story and gullibly accepted Obama's false claim to have known Ayers only in passing and only by virtue of him being "a guy from my neighborhood" in Chicago...When some people tried to say it was important to think about the fact that Obama still belonged to a church led by an obviously racist pastor, the press responded by accusing them of being racists...And when people voiced concern over the fact that Obama is a product of Chicago's famously thuggish and shady political machine, they were ignored by the same news organizations that were never shy about suggesting that George W. Bush must be trigger-happy because he hails from Texas.
There was a telling interview prior to the 2008 election, back when Candidate Obama was hyping his plan to "spread the wealth around" and saying that raising the capital gains tax rate was one of his preferred means of facilitating that plan. Charlie Gibson mentioned an inconvenient truth by telling Obama that all through history, increases in that tax's rate have been followed by reductions in the amount of revenue it raises, while reductions in its rate have been followed by increases in its revenue. In response, our future president showed his true colors by changing his tune and saying that such facts were irrelevant because he wanted to raise the rate "for purposes of fairness." Translation: What really excites Obama is the idea of dictating to people based on his whims, not the idea of effectively helping those who need it.
Post-2008 events have confirmed pretty much everything Obama's early critics feared about him. His first term was marked by many transgressions that were serious but not sensational, like making recess appointments for reasons not allowed under the Constitution. It was also marked by appalling transgressions like the Fast and Furious operation -- a stunningly horrible fiasco which resulted in deaths that were easy to predict, and ended with the administration flooding the public with a series of lies in a pathetic attempt to avoid being held accountable.
Obama's first term was also marked by him issuing strong and sharply critical pronouncements regarding things he knew little about (see: Skip Gates, Trayvon Martin)...And by him ordering a private business (BP) how to spend its own money, even though the Constitution does not permit him to do anything of the kind...It was also marked by him engaging in crony capitalism (see: GE, Solyndra) that would have inspired his liberal fans to storm the White House with pitchforks had a Republican ever dared to do anything similar...And only now am I getting around to Obamacare, over which El Presidente established a dangerous and foolish precedent by ramming it through Congress on a party-line vote despite admitting that neither he nor any of the "aye" voters had bothered to read it.
But all of that represents only a fraction of the first-term iceberg, for none of the "new" scandals that have started to dog Obama are really new. Each of them occurred during his first term, but remained out of public view until his reelection was secure. And they are so ghastly that they do outright violence to the foundation on which our country is built.
The character flaws revealed by Benghazi are multi-pronged. First the administration denied requests by their own people to beef up security due to credible threats of violence. Then, when that violence became reality and nearby military personnel were chomping at the bit to ride to the rescue, the administration ordered them not to. Then the administration covered up the fact that an al Quadea affiliate was responsible for the violence, apparently because that fact contradicted its campaign narrative that Obama had al Quadea on the run. And as if the cover-up was not already bad enough, the administration made it exponentially worse by targeting a patsy and jailing him in clear violation of the First Amendment.
The IRS's targeting of private citizens who disagree with Obama speaks for itself, especially when you consider that it is the only organ of government whose operations are governed by the principle that the people it investigates are guilty until proven innocent, rather than the other way around. Within my living memory, it used to be that any administration's use of the IRS to silence its critics would automatically lead to its undoing because even its biggest supporters would not stand for such a violation of the ethics of freedom.
Then there is the case of the Department of Justice spying on Associated Press journalists by wiretapping not only their work phone numbers, but their home phone numbers. This is yet another attack on the First Amendment, and in the grand scheme it might prove to be the most impactful of Obama's scandals because it has finally gotten the press's attention. It is hard not to laugh at the notion that the press itself needed to be targeted before its scruples were stirred, but then again, isn't that human nature, especially when the people involved are political animals?
These scandals are not the only ones, of course. Since they broke, it has been learned that the EPA has selected conservative groups for the same brand of "scrutiny" that the IRS selected them for. And there is the race-hustling shakedown known as Pigford, And Obama's old oath to bankrupt the coal industry.
No matter how you cut it, there is an overriding theme you cannot deny: The federal government under the direction of Barack Obama is an outlaw regime. It ignores the law both in letter and in spirit, and is hostile to the constraints placed on it by the Constitution. It considers anyone who disagrees with it to be be deserving of character assassination.
The regime is structured like a mid-century Mafia family. Its Don relays orders using intermediaries and without saying specific words in order to maintain a veneer of plausible deniability. Its hatchet men do not commit murder, but they are ruthless and relentless in their efforts to exerting the Don's will. Harassment and intimidation are the tools of their trade, and they do not hesitate to use them against innocent citizens.
The regime is structured like a mid-century Mafia family. Its Don relays orders using intermediaries and without saying specific words in order to maintain a veneer of plausible deniability. Its hatchet men do not commit murder, but they are ruthless and relentless in their efforts to exerting the Don's will. Harassment and intimidation are the tools of their trade, and they do not hesitate to use them against innocent citizens.
Because it operates under the faux legitimacy of having been elected, and because many of its constituents are ignorant where history and the Constitution are concerned, Obama & Co. just might represent the biggest threat our republic has ever faced.
