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Charles Krauthammer gets to the creator and cheerleader.
… Does the IRS scandal go all the way up to the top? As of now, doubtful. It’s nearly inconceivable that anyone would be stupid enough to have given such a politically fatal directive from the White House (although admittedly the bar is rapidly falling).
But when some bureaucrat is looking for cues from above, it matters when the president of the United States denounces the Supreme Court decision that allowed the proliferation of 501(c)(4)s and specifically calls the resulting “special interest groups” running ads to help Republicans “not just a threat to Democrats — that’s a threat to our democracy.” It’s especially telling when it comes amid letters from Democratic senators to the IRS urging aggressive scrutiny of 501(c)(4) applications.
A White House can powerfully shape other perceptions as well. For years the administration has conducted a concerted campaign to demonize Fox News (disclosure: for which I am a commentator), delegitimizing it as a news organization, even urging its ostracism. Then (surprise!) its own Justice Department takes the unprecedented step of naming a Fox reporteras a co-conspirator in a leak case — when no reporter has ever been prosecuted for merely soliciting information — in order to invade his and Fox’s private and journalistic communications.
No one goes to jail for creating such a climate of intolerance. Nor is it a crime to incessantly claim that those who offer this president opposition and push-back — Republicans, tea partyers, Fox News, whoever dares resist the sycophantic thrill-up-my-leg media adulation — do so only for “politics,” power and pure partisanship, while the Dear Leader devotes himself exclusively to the nation, the middle class, the good and just.
It’s not unlawful to run an ad hominem presidency. It’s merely shameful. The great rhetorical specialty of this president has been his unrelenting attribution of bad faith to those who disagree with him. He acts on principle; they from the basest of instincts.
Well then, why not harass them? Why not ask the content of their prayers? Why not read their e-mail? Why not give them especially horrible customer service? …
Jennifer Rubin knows the core problem.
… It is alarming to think that the government lawyers are apparently running the government, making new law (e.g. journalism is criminal) and shielding the president from knowledge of important matters so he later can’t be accused of wrongdoing. The notion expressed on behalf of the White House counsel that the president should be walled off from controversy sounds like the advice of a personal lawyer worried about his own liability, not a lawyer employed by the American people to ensure, among other things, that the laws are faithfully executed. (It also defies the first rule of any executive: No surprises. One can’t imagine a chief executive, the secretary of Treasury or any other boss saying, “Please let me be surprised about a huge controversy by the reading about it in the newspapers!”)
It is frightful to imagine that Obama has set up a system in which non-elected lawyers run the government. If that is what he’s done, it is both unprecedented and entirely unacceptable.
Kimberley Strassel says all this started right at the get-go with these creeps. These lawyers will be the end of our freedoms. Instead of a respect for the law, they abuse the law.
The White House insists President Obama is “outraged” by the “inappropriate” targeting and harassment of conservative groups. If true, it’s a remarkable turnaround for a man who helped pioneer those tactics.
On Aug. 21, 2008, the conservative American Issues Project ran an ad highlighting ties between candidate Obama and Bill Ayers, formerly of the Weather Underground. The Obama campaign and supporters were furious, and they pressured TV stations to pull the ad—a common-enough tactic in such ad spats.
What came next was not common. Bob Bauer, general counsel for the campaign (and later general counsel for the White House), on the same day wrote to the criminal division of the Justice Department, demanding an investigation into AIP, “its officers and directors,” and its “anonymous donors.” Mr. Bauer claimed that the nonprofit, as a 501(c)(4), was committing a “knowing and willful violation” of election law, and wanted “action to enforce against criminal violations.”
AIP gave Justice a full explanation as to why it was not in violation. It said that it operated exactly as liberal groups like Naral Pro-Choice did. It noted that it had disclosed its donor, Texas businessman Harold Simmons. Mr. Bauer’s response was a second letter to Justice calling for the prosecution of Mr. Simmons. He sent a third letter on Sept. 8, again smearing the “sham” AIP’s “illegal electoral purpose.”
Also on Sept. 8, Mr. Bauer complained to the Federal Election Commission about AIP and Mr. Simmons. He demanded that AIP turn over certain tax documents to his campaign (his right under IRS law), then sent a letter to AIP further hounding it for confidential information (to which he had no legal right).
The Bauer onslaught was a big part of a new liberal strategy to thwart the rise of conservative groups. …
Andrew Malcolm notices the attempt to make us look at the next “shiny thing.”
Nice try by President Obama to change the national subject of intense public discussion from his serial scandals to his war — no, wait — he prefers “fight” against terrorism.
In an hour-long speech of nearly 7,000 words, interrupted by a persistent heckler, the former Real Good Talker reminded his audience at the NationalDefenseUniversity, whose mission is to study war, that the United States has “constitutional principles” that have survived many wars during more than two centuries. No kidding.
And that ”having fought for our independence, we know a price must be paid for freedom.”
Strange words indeed coming out of the mouth of an alleged constitutional law lecturer and president whose Internal Revenue Service has been illegally targeting and intimidating Americans of a certain contrary political persuasion.
Or whose F.B.I. has been checking the communications of professional journalists despite the First Amendment and labeling one of them a criminal co-conspirator in order to access his private communications and his parents’ home phone.
None of which this chief executive admits to knowing anything about because he’s apparently out of the loop on everything except the successes of SEAL Team 6. …
Peter Wehner sees the irony.
What a perfect Barack Obama moment.
Yesterday in a major address the president said, “I am troubled by the possibility that leak investigations may chill the investigative journalism that holds government accountable. Journalists should not be at legal risk for doing their jobs.” He went on to say he was calling on Congress to pass a media shield law and had raised the issue with Attorney General Eric Holder, “who shares my concern.”
The very same day we learned, courtesy of NBC News, that the very same Attorney General Eric Holder signed off on a search warrant that identified Fox News reporter James Rosen as a “possible co-conspirator” in violations of the Espionage Act and authorized seizure of his private emails. Just a week ago the president expressed “complete confidence” in Mr. Holder.
So we have the president of the United States complaining about leak investigations that may chill investigative journalism at virtually the same moment we learned his attorney general decided to treat routine newsgathering efforts by a Fox News reporter as evidence of criminality. (For the record, the president has shown no concern over past leaks of far more sensitive intelligence information–but information that portrayed him in a flattering light.)
The president speaks as if he’s living in an alternate reality, expressing solidarity with the press even as his administration is engaging in Nixon-like actions against it.
You can’t make this stuff up.
And, Andy Borowitz at the New Yorker spotted this:
In a dramatic departure from existing White House procedures, President Obama requested today that his staff start cc’ing him on stuff.
“Look, I know a lot of you think I’m really busy and you don’t want to bother me,” the President reportedly told his staff in an Oval Office meeting. “But cc me anyway. It’s good for me to keep up on what’s going on around here.”
“It’s not good when I turn on the news and they’re talking about something at the White House and I’m like, whoa, when did that happen?” Mr. Obama added. “I think cc’ing me would go a long way toward fixing that.”
“Maybe put a Post-It note on your computer saying, ‘CC POTUS,’ so you don’t forget,” he said as the meeting broke up.
Afterward, the President told aides that he “felt really good” about the meeting and was “really looking forward to people looping me in on stuff.”
But Mr. Obama’s mood soured later in the day, sources say, when his e-mail address was left off a message bearing the subject line, “Things the Treasury Dept. Is Planning to Do.”
Mr. Obama hastily reconvened his staff, telling them, “Look, maybe I didn’t make myself clear. That’s just the kind of thing I should have been cc’d on. Even Biden got that one. Could one of you please forward it to me?”
As of press time, Mr. Obama had not yet received the e-mail.
Steve Hayward praises a slow learner.
There’s this much to be said in praise of Jonathan Turley, professor of “public interest law” at GeorgeWashingtonUniversityLawSchool, and frequent bobblehead on cable TV shows: at least he isn’t a supercilious smug-mugger like Jeffrey Toobin. In addition, unlike Toobin, Turley often gets things right.
But come on man, you’re only just discovering now that the federal administrative bureaucracy—the “fourth branch of government”—has become problematic? From Turley’s article today in the Washington Post: …