Scandal Smorgasbord

Hardly even into his second term and Obama has been beset by a bumper crop of scandals, any one of which would topple a Republican president.

 

Benghazi: Oh, look, it turns out that there wasn't a demonstration that got out of hand and that stupid video played no role in the attack.  Susan Rice's talking points had undergone a dozen revisions before she was sent to parrot the nonsense on 5 Sunday talk shows.  The White House knew that it was a terrorist attack while it was still in progress.  Moreover, they knew it was an Al Qaeda affiliate.  Gosh, lucky none of that came out during the campaign.

 

IRS: The IRS harassed conservative groups from 2010 through the 2012 election and the former acting commissioner brushed it off as 'bad customer service.'  Funny how only Tea Party groups suffered this bad service.  Back in 2009, people laughed when Obama playfully joked about auditing them for not giving him an honorary degree.  Well, it seems he wasn't joking.  Many will say that Obama never gave the order so he isn't to blame.  Hmm, I remember the Bush White House saying something like that with regard to Abu Graib but the press asserted that Bush had baked such into the culture of his administration.  Let's see, who said you should reward your friends and punish your enemies?  Obama.  Who attacked the Supreme Court for the Citizens United decision (the one that made these tax-exempt groups possible)?  Obama.  Sounds like the president gave some guidelines in his speeches.

 

AP Phone Records: The DOJ scooped up the phone records of a wide swath of AP reporters for two months to catch a leaker.  Hey, why not just get the phone records of every reporter so you don't miss something?

 

Fox News: AG Holder approved naming James Rosen as a co-conspirator in a leak investigation.  So, a reporter who gets a scoop is now to be a criminal.  Must not allow information to be released that the government doesn't want the people to know.  What Freedom of the Press?

 

Obamacare Donations: The Congress has not allocated sufficient funds to get all of the state exchanges up and running so HHS Secretary Sebelius has been making the rounds asking for 'donations.'  Sure, she is going to be regulating these companies once Obamacare is fully in force but don't think that a failure to offer a 'donation' will affect how stringently the rules are enforced.

 

Government Bullying: A couple in Texas sought to get tax-exempt status for a Tea Party related group and soon thereafter were interviewed by the FBI (multiple times), audited by the IRS, audited by ATF (twice), and had a visit from OSHA.  Somehow, that doesn't seem like a coincidence.

One Republican said that impeachment wasn't off the table; that Republican is a fool.  Short of being captured on camera killing someone (who is not a Republican), there is no way a Democrat Senate is going to convict a Democrat President in an impeachment trial.  It is an utter waste of time to go down that path, or even suggest that path is a possibility.  It didn't work out too well last time.

 

David Axelrod made a cogent point (accidentally, I suspect): he said that the government is too big for one man to control.  I am in complete agreement.  We need to shrink the government to a more manageable size.  When it gets down to a size where Obama isn't still claiming to be out of the loop, we will know we have reached the appropriate amount of government.  Oh happy day!