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	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; Impeachment</title>
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		<title>Obama: Troll Hard with a Vengeance</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/ben-shapiro/obama-troll-hard-with-a-vengeance/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obama-troll-hard-with-a-vengeance</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/ben-shapiro/obama-troll-hard-with-a-vengeance/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 30 Jul 2014 04:20:13 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ben Shapiro]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Amnesty]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Illegal Immigration]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Impeachment]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[troll]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=237379</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Obama's real objective in threatening amnesty. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/obama-deficit-reduction.gi_.top_.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-237380" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/obama-deficit-reduction.gi_.top_.jpg" alt="obama-deficit-reduction.gi.top" width="250" height="205" /></a>This week, as I have been predicting for months, President Barack Obama announced that he would be considering unprecedented executive action to provide legal status for millions of illegal immigrants. His goal is not to solve the immigration crisis — you don&#8217;t grant legal status to 5 million illegal immigrants, then leave the back door wide open if you&#8217;re interested in solving the problem. His goal is not to help illegal immigrants — he instead leaves them in limbo by granting them temporary work permits, rather than blanket amnesty.</p>
<p>His goal is trolling.</p>
<p>Trolling is a practice whereby a person takes a deliberately indefensible position simply to draw passionate excess from an opponent. That is Obama&#8217;s goal here: He hopes for extreme language, impassioned opposition and eventually, impeachment.</p>
<p>This administration is hungry for impeachment. While no Republican leader in Congress has given even a smidgen of credibility to impeachment talk, the Obama administration has been fundraising off impeachment rumors. Last Friday, the White House said that it was not dismissing the possibility of a House impeachment; senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer said that Obama &#8220;would not discount the possibility.&#8221; Two weeks ago, Obama brought up the possibility of impeachment in order to mock it to his supporters. As Politico noted, &#8220;Who&#8217;s talking about impeachment? Barack Obama.&#8221;</p>
<p>Joe Trippi, a Democratic consultant, explained why Democrats love impeachment talk: &#8220;The more they talk about it, the more it has a red hot effect on their base. So if you can get the temperature just right, you&#8217;re turning out all your base voters, and Democrats don&#8217;t take it seriously, and it&#8217;s a good year for you. If that stove gets just a little too hot, and you lose control of it, you&#8217;re going to have every Democrat on the planet turning out to stop it.&#8221;</p>
<p>Obama trolls because he recognizes that trends cut against Democrats in 2014. If he believed that Democrats were well-positioned to win back the House of Representatives, he would threaten executive action and then call on Americans to give his party a majority.</p>
<p>Instead, he seeks to gin up outrage on the right and enthusiasm on the left. And he&#8217;ll use the lives of millions of Americans and non-Americans to do it. It&#8217;s a desperation play, but it&#8217;s his only play.</p>
<p>That&#8217;s because Obama has no capacity for compromise. His strategy has always been simple: govern when you have a majority; campaign when you don&#8217;t. And so, for the last several years, he&#8217;s spent significantly more time doing fundraisers than being president — and even when he&#8217;s being president, he&#8217;s simply setting up the next stop in his endless campaign.</p>
<p>So what should conservatives do? First off, they should stop talking impeachment. It&#8217;s a waste of time and effort. It serves no purpose. It is not principled to talk impeachment; it is idiotic. There are zero Democrats in the Senate who would vote to convict Obama and few Republicans.</p>
<p>Second, conservatives should point out that Obama does not have the country&#8217;s best interests in mind. He does not care about the fate of illegal immigrants — if he did, he&#8217;d stop incentivizing children to travel thousands of miles in the hands of coyotes, then offering uncertainty as to their status, incentivizing thousands more to do the same. He obviously does not care about the political climate of the country — if he did, he&#8217;d stop manipulating and start governing.</p>
<p>Finally, conservatives should ignore Obama. His rhetoric is unimportant. It is a distraction. They should focus instead on his actions, which are deliberately designed to undermine the country for his own political gain.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Faithless Execution</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/jamie-glazov/faithless-execution/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=faithless-execution</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/jamie-glazov/faithless-execution/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 16 Jun 2014 04:18:02 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jamie Glazov]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Andrew C. McCarthy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[constitution]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Faithless Execution]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Impeachment]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Left]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=234115</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Andrew McCarthy builds the political case for Obama’s impeachment.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/er.png"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-234118" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/er-450x328.png" alt="er" width="331" height="241" /></a><strong><span class="summary">Andrew McCarthy will be speaking at the Freedom Center&#8217;s </span>Wednesday Morning Club in Los Angeles on June 18, 2014. For more info, <a href="http://www.eventbrite.com/e/wmc-andrew-mccarthy-tickets-11640000555">click here</a>.</strong></p>
<p>Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Andrew C. McCarthy, a policy fellow at the National Review Institute, a contributing editor at <em>National Review</em>, and a columnist for PJ Media. He was a top federal prosecutor involved in some of the most significant cases in recent history. Decorated with the Justice Department’s highest honors, he retired from government in 2003, after helping launch the 9/11 investigation. He is one of America’s most persuasive voices on national security issues and author of the bestsellers <em>Willful Blindness: A Memoir of the Jihad</em> and <em>The Grand Jihad: How Islam and the Left Sabotage America</em>. He is the author of the new book, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Faithless-Execution-Building-Political-Impeachment/dp/1594037760"><em>Faithless Execution: Building the Political Case for Obama’s Impeachment</em></a>.</p>
<p><strong>FP: </strong>Andrew C. McCarthy, welcome to Frontpage Interview.</p>
<p><strong>McCarthy: </strong>Jamie, it’s a pleasure to speak with you again.</p>
<p><strong>FP: </strong>Let’s begin with what inspired you to write this book.</p>
<p><strong>McCarthy: </strong>Presidential lawlessness and derelictions of duty. I guess that, in light of my background, it’s not surprising that I’m intrigued by how our Constitution deals with modern challenges—or, more accurately, modern iterations of eternal challenges like abuse of power. President Obama’s lawlessness is unprecedented in its scope, starkness, and purpose to undermine the separation-of-powers. The Framers rightly believed the latter was the key to safeguarding liberty—preventing the accumulation of too much power, and especially the joining of executive and legislative powers, in a single set of hands. Because they so worried about the specter of executive lawlessness and overreach, they gave Congress tools to address it decisively. But there are really only two of them: the power of the purse and impeachment.</p>
<p>So I wrote the book to say, “Look, presidential lawlessness is a significant threat to our liberties and to our aspiration to be a Republic under the rule of law. The system gives us weapons to combat it. If we don’t use them, that is a political choice that can be made, but let’s make it with our eyes open because it has serious consequences. I means we will no longer be the same kind of country.”</p>
<p><strong>FP: </strong>What exactly are “high crimes and misdemeanors” and can you give a few brief examples of how has Obama committed them?</p>
<p><strong>McCarthy: </strong>Thanks for asking that because it gets to another reason I wanted to write the book. There is mass confusion about what “high crimes and misdemeanors” means, which is somewhat surprising given that the Clinton impeachment happened less than a generation ago. But it does not refer to conventional “crimes” and “misdemeanors” that I prosecuted back when I was a government lawyer. It is a term of art borrowed from British law—in fact, the impeachment trial of Warren Hastings, who was charged in Parliament with “high crimes and misdemeanors” by Edmund Burke, was underway in England while our Constitution was being written, and the Framers were very engaged in such affairs. The phrase, as Hamilton explained, refers to the “political wrongs of public men”—meaning abuses of power and breaches of the public trust reposed in high executive officials. More than penal offenses, it much more resembles concepts found in military justice, e.g., dereliction of duty, failure to honor an oath, etc. The Framers were most concerned about executive maladministration that would undermine our constitutional framework, usurping the powers of the states and the other federal branches.</p>
<p>I recently heard former Attorney General Mukasey give a great example of how an impeachable offense need not be a standard crime or an indictable offense. Presidents have plenary, unreviewable constitutional power to issue pardons and commutations for federal crimes and sentences. If a president suddenly decided to pardon and commute the sentences of every single convict in federal prison and every indicted defendant in a federal case, there would be no crime in that. A president clearly has the constitutional authority to issue such an order. But it would also be a massive abuse of power and he could and, one hopes, surely would be impeached and removed from office for doing it.</p>
<p><strong>FP: </strong>You emphasize that making the legal case for impeachment is not enough. Kindly explain.</p>
<p><strong>McCarthy: </strong>In their genius, the Framers wanted us to have a clear standard—treason, bribery and high crimes and misdemeanors—defining what misconduct legally suffices to remove a president from power. But recognizing that removing a president would be very disruptive to our society, they wanted it to be hard to accomplish—so it would only be done in worthy cases, not as a result of partisan hackery. So while articles of impeachment (i.e., accusations of high crimes and misdemeanors) may be filed on just a simple majority of the House of Representatives, it requires a two-thirds Senate supermajority to remove the president from power. No matter how many provable impeachable offenses you have, then, a president will not be removed unless there is a broad-based popular will that he should be ousted. So the legal case for impeachment, the establishment of high crimes and misdemeanors, is not as important as the political case that the impeachable offenses truly warrant removal. Impeachment is essentially a political remedy, not a legal one.</p>
<p><strong>FP: </strong>As a former prosecutor, you have gained some extra insights on this matter, the differences between a legal case and impeachment?</p>
<p><strong>McCarthy: </strong>Yes, I have a chapter in the book that analyzes how different the criminal investigation and trial process is from the substantially political process of impeachment. I don’t mean “political” in a pejorative sense. I mean it in the sense that the Constitution is a division of political power—so I’m talking about the judicial process of ordinary law-enforcement cases versus the process of filing articles of impeachment in the House and conducting a Senate impeachment trial.</p>
<p><strong>FP:</strong> The campaigns to impeach Nixon and Clinton involved very different ingredients than why Obama would need to be impeached, right?</p>
<p><strong>McCarthy: </strong>The lawlessness in which Nixon and Clinton engaged, while certainly qualifying as “high crimes and misdemeanors,” was different not only in degree but kind from Obama’s. Clinton’s conduct was reprehensible but it did not really touch the core of his presidential duties, much less undermine the constitutional framework. Nixon’s was more severe, but it was largely based on a single transaction and was not a systematic assault on our governing framework—in fact, Nixon obeyed a court order, surrendered the tapes, and ultimately resigned from office rather than stonewalling, destroying the tapes (other than the infamous 18-minute gap), putting the country through an impeachment trial, and otherwise using his enormous power to fight to the bitter end.</p>
<p><strong>FP: </strong>You demonstrate that all of this is very much connected to the “fundamental transformation” that Obama promised. Illuminate that for us please.</p>
<p><strong>McCarthy: </strong>In marked contrast to Nixon and Clinton, Obama is a committed movement leftist who is using his raw power to make good on his vow to “fundamentally transform the United States of America” under circumstances where he does not have a public mandate and governing majority—most Americans, it turns out, like the country and don’t want it transformed. Of necessity, then, if he’s going to transform us, Obama has to do it outside the bounds of the law and traditional notions of presidential duty. It follows that there’s a slew of lawlessness and derelictions of duty.</p>
<p>Indeed, because Obama is a trained community organizer and steeped in Leftist strategies like Piven-Cloward, it follows that he presses his raw power beyond his legitimate authority as far as he thinks he can afford to go politically and that he overloads the system with crisis—so that by the time you barely wrap your brain around the details of one scandal, he’s two or three scandals down the road. There were lots of Clinton scandals, but they were mostly about his personal failings not a strategic challenge to the constitutional framework.</p>
<p><strong>FP: </strong>What would the framers of this country think of Obama?</p>
<p><strong>McCarthy: </strong>They’d think he should be impeached and removed, but they’d be more surprised, I imagine, at how drastically the country had changed, and how much the relation between the citizen and the central government had changed. Obama is a known quantity and he’s doing what one who had studied his background and record would expect him to do. And the president’s political opposition in Congress is feckless, but they are not inventing out of whole cloth the possibility of being damaged politically for resisting him. The wild card in the equation is the public. How important to us is it that we are still a republic under the rule of law rather than subjects of presidential whim. That’s hard to say, and that’s what would have surprised the Framers.</p>
<p><strong>FP: </strong>The consequences for this nation if the American people do not give their support for their leaders to pursue impeachment?</p>
<p><strong>McCarthy: </strong>Well, as I argue in the book, the best thing for the country would not be Obama’s impeachment. It would be to create the political conditions—by emphasizing the issue of presidential lawlessness—under which the president sees his interest as following the law, honoring his oath, and finishing his term that way. But if he is not going to do that—and things seem to be getting worse rather than better—something has to be done about it. The Framers gave Congress two tools: the power of the purse and impeachment. If neither of those remedies is going to be used, we are going to be a very different kind of country.</p>
<p><strong>FP: </strong>Final thoughts?</p>
<p><strong>McCarthy: </strong>The precedents being set today by Obama’s lawlessness and derelictions of duty are going to be available for exploitation by every future president, regardless of party or ideological bent. This should not be a partisan or a conservative issue. We all have a stake in the president’s not being above the law.</p>
<p><strong>FP: </strong>Andrew C. McCarthy, thank you so much for joining Frontpage Interview.</p>
<p><strong>McCarthy: </strong>It’s been my pleasure, thanks so much.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </strong><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank"><strong>Click here</strong></a><strong>.   </strong></p>
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		<slash:comments>29</slash:comments>
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		<title>&#8220;The President has No Authority to Unilaterally Attack Iran, If He Does&#8230; I Will Move to Impeach.&#8221; Joe Biden</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/the-president-has-no-authority-to-unilaterally-attack-iran-if-he-does-i-will-move-to-impeach-joe-biden/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-president-has-no-authority-to-unilaterally-attack-iran-if-he-does-i-will-move-to-impeach-joe-biden</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/the-president-has-no-authority-to-unilaterally-attack-iran-if-he-does-i-will-move-to-impeach-joe-biden/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 27 Aug 2013 23:36:13 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Impeachment]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Joe Biden]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Syrian Civil War]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=202276</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[ Senator Joe Biden stated unequivocally that he will move to impeach President Bush if he bombs Iran without congressional approval]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/_dRFJ6CF2Mw?feature=player_detailpage" height="360" width="540" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p><a href="http://ace.mu.nu/archives/342865.php">Don&#8217;t worry. This has no relevance now</a>. This was when Bush was in power. The idea of impeaching Obama for unilaterally starting a war is silly. Just ask Time Magazine or Politico or Atlantic. The War Powers Act has no meaning. The Framers always intended that one man should be able to start a war any time he feels like it.</p>
<p>Sure Joe Biden disagreed, but that was in 2007. The law stopped applying in 2008. All laws did. And if you disagree, well you&#8217;re probably racist. (But only if you disagree after 2008)</p>
<blockquote><p>Presidential hopeful Delaware Sen. Joe Biden stated unequivocally that he will move to impeach President Bush if he bombs Iran without first gaining congressional approval.</p>
<p>Biden spoke in front of a crowd of approximately 100 at a candidate forum held Thursday at Seacoast Media Group. The forum focused on the Iraq war and foreign policy. When an audience member expressed fear of a war with Iran, Biden said he does not typically engage in threats, but had no qualms about issuing a direct warning to the Oval Office.</p>
<p>&#8220;The president has no authority to unilaterally attack Iran, and if he does, as Foreign Relations Committee chairman, I will move to impeach,&#8221; said Biden, whose words were followed by a raucous applause from the local audience.</p>
<p>Biden said he is in the process of meeting with constitutional law experts to prepare a legal memorandum saying as much and intends to send it to the president.</p></blockquote>
<p>Wait&#8230; can we get a copy of that memorandum. It might come in handy and might help make Biden president.</p>
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		<title>Should Obama be Impeached if He Goes to War Without Congress?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/should-obama-be-impeached-if-he-goes-to-war-without-congress/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=should-obama-be-impeached-if-he-goes-to-war-without-congress</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/should-obama-be-impeached-if-he-goes-to-war-without-congress/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 27 Aug 2013 21:18:09 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Barack Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Impeachment]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=202234</guid>
		<description><![CDATA["The use of military force by a President without prior authorization of Congress constitutes an impeachable high crime and misdemeanor under article II, section 4 of the Constitution."]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/impeach-obama.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-202235" alt="impeach obama" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/impeach-obama-262x350.jpg" width="262" height="350" /></a></p>
<p>The media buzz says that Obama is meeting with security officials and planning the release of a report claiming that the Assad regime was behind the chemical weapons attack.</p>
<p>Meanwhile the UN team has yet to be allowed to finish its job or to even investigate who was behind the attack. That&#8217;s richly hypocritical coming from the party that spent 2002 shrieking, LET THE UN INSPECTORS FINISH THEIR JOB.</p>
<p>Apparently letting the UN do its job is one of those rules that only applies to Republicans.</p>
<blockquote><p><a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18563_162-57600171/obama-orders-release-of-report-justifying-syria-strike/"> Obama ordered a declassified</a> report be prepared for public release before any military strike commences. That report, top advisers tell CBS News, is due to be released in a day or two.</p>
<p>There was no debate at the Saturday meeting that a military response is necessary. Obama ordered up legal justifications for a military strike, should he order one, outside of the United Nations Security Council.</p></blockquote>
<p>It&#8217;s nice that there&#8217;s no debate.</p>
<p>Polls show the American people decisively opposed to Obama&#8217;s Syrian War. The UN is not likely to approve his unilateral and illegal attack. And most importantly, there is no mention of Obama asking Congress for a resolution to approve the use of force.</p>
<p>For the second time in his administration, Obama will fight an illegal war without Congress. As in Libya, he will keep a few key friendly senators in the loop. A White House official has as much as admitted that saying<a href="http://www3.blogs.rollcall.com/goppers/obama-will-consult-congress-on-syria/"> that Obama will &#8220;consult Congress</a>&#8221; not ask it for a resolution to authorize the use of force. And he&#8217;ll eventually give a speech to Americans. And that&#8217;s it.</p>
<p>Obama did it once and got away with it. He shouldn&#8217;t be allowed to get away with it twice.</p>
<p>During the debates, he blatantly lied to the American people telling them that he didn&#8217;t want any more foreign wars and that he would focus on nation building at home.</p>
<p>His new war is wildly unpopular. There is no better chance to hold him accountable on an issue that even many on the left would agree with.</p>
<p>Obama&#8217;s complete disregard of the law and his insistence on imperial government makes such a confrontation both necessary and inevitable. And this would be one of the best places for such a confrontation. The impeachment would not succeed, but it would force a debate on Obama&#8217;s abuses of power.</p>
<p>Before the election, Obama said, &#8220;The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.&#8221;</p>
<p>He knows his actions are illegal. He was against them, before he was carrying them out.</p>
<p>Last year, <a href="http://www.examiner.com/article/congressman-walter-jones-moves-to-impeach-obama">Congressman Walter Jones submitted a resolution</a> to impeach Obama if he illegally attacks Syria without receiving approval from Congress.</p>
<blockquote><p>Expressing the sense of Congress that the use of offensive military force by a President without prior and clear authorization of an Act of Congress constitutes an impeachable high crime and misdemeanor under article II, section 4 of the Constitution.</p>
<p>Whereas the cornerstone of the Republic is honoring Congress&#8217;s exclusive power to declare war under article I, section 8, clause 11 of the Constitution: Now, therefore, be it</p>
<p>Resolved by the House of Representatives (the Senate concurring), That it is the sense of Congress that, except in response to an actual or imminent attack against the territory of the United States, the use of offensive military force by a President without prior and clear authorization of an Act of Congress violates Congress&#8217;s exclusive power to declare war under article I, section 8, clause 11 of the Constitution and therefore constitutes an impeachable high crime and misdemeanor under article II, section 4 of the Constitution.</p></blockquote>
<p>The resolution was cosponsored by a variety of figures like Louie Gohmert to Dennis Kucinich. It may be time to pick it up again. If we&#8217;re going to confront Obama&#8217;s lawlessness, let&#8217;s do it here.</p>
<p>Let&#8217;s force the media to spend its credibility defending a war that the vast majority of Americans oppose and defending the right of Obama to unilaterally go to war against the wishes of Congress and the American people.</p>
<p>Let&#8217;s stop playing around with the small stuff and cut right to the chase. We either have a Republic or a Monarchy. We either have checks and balances and the rule of law&#8230; or the whim of a handful of powerful men using their media empires and fortunes to manipulate ignorant voters into writing them blank checks for their lawlessness in periodic elections.</p>
<p>This is the most important conversation that we need to have about the future of this country. Impeachment will force us to have it.</p>
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		<title>What Did Nixon Do?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/matthew-vadum/what-did-nixon-do/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=what-did-nixon-do</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 28 May 2013 04:27:56 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Matthew Vadum]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[enemies list]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[Reflecting on a Republican president oversold as a villain -- and Obama's vastly more scandalous misdeeds.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/NixonObama_ReutersAP_0513_660.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-191073" alt="NixonObama_ReutersAP_0513_660" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/NixonObama_ReutersAP_0513_660-450x273.jpg" width="270" height="164" /></a>Although Richard Nixon left office under a cloud for trying to subvert the democratic process for his own political advantage, Barack Obama&#8217;s behavior has been far more serious in its corruption and blatant attempts to manipulate the electoral process by unethical and unconstitutional means.</p>
<p>Nixon, bad as he may have been, has been oversold as a villain. He serves as a convenient bogeyman for left-wing historians and journalists to spew self-serving narratives in which they paint him as a devil and themselves as victims. It would, therefore, do well to review some of the facts of what really transpired in the Nixon presidency and how they stack up against Obama&#8217;s unprecedented malfeasance:</p>
<p>First, the much-vaunted &#8220;enemies list&#8221; that was maintained by Nixon is more the stuff of myth than underhanded politics. In his 1979 book, <em>Blind Ambition</em>, Nixon White House counsel John Dean explained that the list consisted merely of names of individuals not welcome at White House functions. White House chief of staff H.R. &#8220;Bob&#8221; Haldeman singled out about 20 people on the list for IRS audits and other official torments, “but no action had been taken as far as I knew,” Dean wrote.</p>
<p>So what did President Nixon actually do?</p>
<p>In his final report as chairman of the Senate Watergate committee, Sen. Sam Ervin (D-N.C.) concluded that the purpose of the series of acts that collectively constituted Watergate was “[t]o destroy, insofar as the presidential election of 1972 was concerned, the integrity of the process by which the President of the United States is nominated and elected.”</p>
<p>As Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, who broke the original Watergate story, <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/woodward-and-bernstein-40-years-after-watergate-nixon-was-far-worse-than-we-thought/2012/06/08/gJQAlsi0NV_story.html" target="_blank">wrote</a> last year, &#8220;At its most virulent, Watergate was a brazen and daring assault, led by Nixon himself, against the heart of American democracy: the Constitution, our system of free elections, the rule of law.&#8221;</p>
<p>Nixon and his aides, Ervin said, had “a lust for political power” that “blinded them to ethical considerations and legal requirements; to Aristotle’s aphorism that the good of man must be the end of politics.”</p>
<p>The three articles of impeachment approved by the House Judiciary Committee in 1974 <a href="http://watergate.info/impeachment/articles-of-impeachment" target="_blank">accused</a> Nixon of violating &#8220;his oath faithfully to execute the office of President of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.&#8221;</p>
<p>The first article of impeachment referenced the June 17, 1972 break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters then located in the Watergate office complex in the nation’s capital. Ahead of the approaching November election, the five burglars&#8217; purpose was &#8220;securing political intelligence.&#8221;</p>
<p>After the break-in, Nixon used</p>
<blockquote><p>the powers of his high office, engaged personally and through his close subordinates and agents, in a course of conduct or plan designed to delay, impede, and obstruct the investigation of such illegal entry; to cover up, conceal and protect those responsible; and to conceal the existence and scope of other unlawful covert activities.</p></blockquote>
<p>Although Nixon had apparently not been aware of or authorized the DNC break-in before it was carried out, audio tapes made by the president&#8217;s secret recording system revealed that he attempted to cover up the incident and other illegal activities that had taken place during his administration. After extensive litigation the Supreme Court unanimously held that the president had to produce the recordings for investigators. He complied.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/matthew-vadum/obamas-irs-gate/" target="_blank">second article of impeachment</a> against Nixon detailed how he allegedly used the Internal Revenue Service and other federal agencies and their employees against those he perceived as his political enemies.</p>
<p>According to the impeachment resolution, Nixon used the IRS to obtain</p>
<blockquote><p>confidential information contained in income tax returns for purposes not authorized by law, and to cause, in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens, income tax audits or other income tax investigations to be initiated or conducted in a discriminatory manner.</p></blockquote>
<p>Although Nixon reportedly <a href="http://swampland.time.com/2013/05/14/anger-over-irs-audits-of-conservatives-anchored-in-long-history-of-abuse/#ixzz2USjzufuf" target="_blank">encouraged</a> a clandestine IRS program called the “Special Services Staff” to probe his political adversaries and plague them with audits, the tax-collection agency&#8217;s bark at the time was apparently worse than its bite insofar as Democrats were concerned.</p>
<p>Nixon endorsed but then quickly <a href="http://www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp?entity=tom_charles_huston_1" target="_blank">backed away</a> from an ambitious crackdown on left-wing organizations urged by his aide, Tom Charles Huston. Nixon approved Huston&#8217;s plan on July 14, 1970 but by July 27 he had changed his mind and rescinded approval for it after FBI director J. Edgar Hoover voiced objections.</p>
<p>Huston later lamented that dealing with the IRS was fraught with peril. “Making sensitive political inquiries at the IRS is about as safe a procedure as trusting a whore,” since the Nixon administration at the time had no “reliable political friends at IRS.”</p>
<p>Later in September 1971 Nixon ordered White House aide John Ehrlichman to direct the IRS to look into the tax returns of all those thought to be seeking the 1972 Democratic presidential nod, including Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.).</p>
<p>“Are we going after their tax returns?” Nixon said. “You know what I mean? There’s a lot of gold in them thar hills.”</p>
<p>Nominated as IRS commissioner by Nixon, Johnnie Mac Walters headed the IRS from Aug. 6, 1971, to April 30, 1973. Nixon White House counsel John Dean gave Walters an envelope containing the names of about 200 prominent Democrats to harass.</p>
<p>Walters refused to target the individuals. “The story is interesting because the IRS wouldn’t do it,” <a href="http://www.greenvilleonline.com/article/20130526/NEWS/305260011/Defying-president?gcheck=1" target="_blank">said</a> Tim Naftali, former director of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum. “It didn’t happen, not because the White House didn’t want it to happen, but because people like Johnnie Walters said ‘no.’”</p>
<p>Contrast Walters with left-wing bureaucrat Lois Lerner, head of the tax exempt organizations division at the IRS, who apparently did the Obama administration&#8217;s bidding, harassing conservative groups and funders. Lerner testified before Congress last week and after ostentatiously protesting her innocence invoked the Fifth Amendment and refused to continue testifying.</p>
<p>Returning to Nixon, even if he had used the IRS in the way described in the second article of impeachment, he was simply doing what presidents had done for the previous 40 years. This is not to excuse Nixon&#8217;s behavior, but it hardly seems fair to single him out for doing what had long been the norm in Washington.</p>
<p>The first known instance of an administration snooping around in its enemies&#8217; tax records for intelligence purposes happened during the presidency of Republican Herbert Hoover (1929-33). FBI director J. Edgar Hoover tried to dig up dirt on a conservative group called the Navy League. He found nothing.</p>
<p>Surprisingly, even if the FBI chief had found anything, his actions were apparently not unlawful. The &#8220;confused drafting&#8221; of a section in a 1910 appropriations act &#8220;actually authorized presidents to use tax records any way they saw fit,&#8221; writes author David Burnham. The law stated tax records &#8220;were to be open for inspection &#8216;only upon the order of the President under rules and regulations to be prescribed by the Secretary of the Treasury and approved by the president.&#8217;&#8221;</p>
<p>The loophole was closed only after the Watergate scandal. &#8220;Partly because of the curious wording of what really was an open records law, few Americans have understood that, from 1910 until 1976, the IRS routinely made tax information available to almost any federal or state agency that requested it.&#8221; (A Law Unto Itself: Power, Politics and the IRS, by David Burnham, Random House, 1989, p.228)</p>
<p>What may have been unethical in Nixon&#8217;s day, is clearly illegal in the Obama era. Presumably Obama, conversant as he is in the law, knows this.</p>
<p>The third article of impeachment accused Nixon of obstructing the congressional investigation into his administration&#8217;s conduct. It stated that he &#8220;failed without lawful cause or excuse to produce papers and things as directed by duly authorized subpoenas issued&#8221; by the House Judiciary Committee and &#8220;willfully disobeyed such subpoenas.&#8221;</p>
<p>Nixon did in fact refuse to comply with congressional demands and went out of his way to hinder investigations into his misconduct. Facing seemingly certain impeachment in the House and removal from office after a trial by the Senate, Nixon resigned on August 9, 1974.</p>
<p>Now what has President Obama done?</p>
<p>Obama may not stand accused of breaking into his enemies&#8217; offices to gain an unfair electoral advantage, but he has engaged in tactics aimed at unfairly suppressing the Republican vote.</p>
<p>Under Obama, the Department of Justice gave free rein to ACORN and similar left-wing voter fraud factories, refusing to investigate their many wrongdoings. DoJ let the New Black Panther Party off scot-free for physically intimidating Philadelphia voters.</p>
<p>The Obama administration appeared to violate the civil rights of nearly 200,000 U.S. soldiers around the world by deliberately <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/matthew-vadum/obama’s-military-voter-suppression-campaign/" target="_blank">disenfranchising</a> them because they tend to vote Republican. Although the administration has moved with lightning speed to attack desperately needed state voter identification laws, last year it seemed barely aware of its obligations under the Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment (MOVE) Act, which President Obama signed into law in 2009.</p>
<p>The law was created to help deployed soldiers, many of whom are constantly on the move, to exercise the right to vote that they fight to protect. The law requires the Pentagon to create an “installation voting assistance office,” or IVAO, for every military base close to a combat zone.</p>
<p>IVAOs are supposed to help military personnel navigate the labyrinth of often confusing voting rules of the nation’s 55 states and territories. But IVAOs can’t help anybody vote if they don’t exist. As of September last year, in half of the 229 overseas military installations Obama&#8217;s Department of Defense hadn’t even bothered to set up the IVAO facilities that the law mandated.</p>
<p>Obama’s IRS targeted conservative “social welfare” nonprofits seeking tax-exempt status under section 501c4 of the Internal Revenue Code. Evidence establishes that hundreds of groups affiliated with the Tea Party movement were bullied and intimidated from engaging in constitutionally protected political activism. Some conservative groups were made to wait years for a tax-exempt status determination while the Barack H. Obama Foundation and various liberal groups sailed through the process at breakneck speed.</p>
<p>Who knows how many people failed to donate or become active in those right-leaning groups and what impact this IRS skulduggery had on Republican voter turnout last November.</p>
<p>As commentator Michael Barone observes, the Benghazi cover-up and the IRS scandal “were both about winning elections under false pretenses.”</p>
<p>With Benghazi, “[a] deliberate effort to mislead the voters was launched,” Barone writes. “Clinton, White House press secretary Jay Carney, and the president himself talked about a spontaneous protest of an anti-Muslim video — even though no evidence of that came from Benghazi.” The CIA’s talking points on Benghazi were manipulated by the White House and the Department of State, and Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice was wheeled out to peddle the lies on television.</p>
<p>“This attempt to mislead the electorate worked,” Barone concludes. “It seems a stretch to say that it determined the outcome of the election. But it certainly helped the Obama campaign.”</p>
<p>Obama created a grotesque system of unaccountable federal &#8220;czars&#8221; overseeing vast swaths of U.S. government policy without being confirmed by the Senate, as the Constitution requires.</p>
<p>Obama invaded Libya without congressional authorization and on a flimsy pretext. He unconstitutionally recess-appointed Richard Cordray as director of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. He refused to enforce the provisions of the presumptively constitutional Defense of Marriage Act.</p>
<p>In the Fast and Furious scandal, Obama supplied Mexican drug cartels with guns to encourage a wave of violence that would create a public clamor for tougher gun regulations. Hundreds of Mexicans and a U.S. border patrolman died as a result. Attorney General Eric Holder has been cited with contempt of Congress for failing to cooperate with the congressional investigation of the scandal.</p>
<p>Obama has used executive fiat to illegally gut a workfare law and give certain illegal immigrants blanket amnesty. The president also rigged the GM and Chrysler bankruptcy proceedings to unfairly enrich his friends in the United Auto Workers at the expense of higher-priority creditors such as bondholders and suppliers.</p>
<p>Then there is the still-developing scandal surrounding the surreptitious confiscation of telephone records from the Associated Press, a direct assault on the First Amendment. The U.S. Department of Justice secretly procured two months’ worth of telephone logs for journalists at AP, the world’s largest news-gathering organization. Apparently the records were seized as part of an investigation into national security-related leaks.</p>
<p>The administration is also investigating Fox News reporter James Rosen for daring to report what intelligence sources told him about North Korea.</p>
<p>Obama has also done many things that are at least arguably impeachable and are definitely radically un-presidential.</p>
<p>Obama has been particularly aggressive on the propaganda front. His White House asked Americans to report their neighbors who were opposed to Obamacare to the email address of <a href="mailto:flag@whitehouse.gov" target="_blank">flag@whitehouse.gov</a>. In the National Endowment for the Arts <a href="http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/85512/" target="_blank">scandal</a>, Obama used federal taxpayer resources to press artists to create art to advance his political agenda.</p>
<p>Obama has undermined trust in the justice system by trying to intervene on behalf of his personal friend, Harvard law professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. In 2009 after admitting he didn&#8217;t know all the facts of the case, Obama said the Cambridge, Mass., &#8220;police acted stupidly&#8221; in arresting Gates when they investigated a reported break-in at his home. Obama injected race into the situation by offering that &#8220;separate and apart from this incident is that there’s a long history in this country of African-American and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately.&#8221;</p>
<p>After the <em>Citizens United</em> decision opened the door to corporate campaign contributions, Obama gave speeches belittling and browbeating the Supreme Court. He even did so in the presence of Supreme Court members.</p>
<p>President Obama may yet live to regret these remarks. If he is impeached in the House and tried in the Senate, the trial will be presided over by Chief Justice John Roberts.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>The Lessons of Tiger Woods &#8211; by Larry Elder</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2009/jamie-glazov/the-lessons-of-tiger-woods-by-larry-elder/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-lessons-of-tiger-woods-by-larry-elder</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2009/jamie-glazov/the-lessons-of-tiger-woods-by-larry-elder/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 11 Dec 2009 05:12:26 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jamie Glazov]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[Does Bill Clinton draw down the window shades, only to venture out under cover of night to go to the ATM? ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-41411" title="woods" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/woods.jpg" alt="woods" width="450" height="478" /></p>
<p>&#8220;Tiger&#8217;s finished.&#8221;</p>
<p>&#8220;Define &#8216;finished,&#8217;&#8221; I said to a friend in response to her assessment. Will Tiger Woods lose endorsements? Yes. How many and for how long remain open questions. Has the carefully groomed image of the contented family man who &#8220;has it all&#8221; gone supernova? Absolutely. Will he lose his wife, given her public humiliation and her shattered trust in her husband? Strong possibility.</p>
<p>But the history books are full of Act Twos.</p>
<p>Woods is a golfer. He is neither politician nor pastor. As he struggles to deal with his apparent inner demons/self-loathing/shame/embarrassment/dishonor, he can still golf. The curiosity factor alone means stratospheric ratings for his next tournament, especially if he&#8217;s still contending on the final day. People unable to spell &#8220;golf&#8221; will tune in for his next event.</p>
<p>As bad as all of this is — especially for his wife — Woods hasn&#8217;t killed anybody, at least that we know of. The more bizarre things become — the growing number of alleged mistresses, his mother-in-law&#8217;s hospitalization, the recklessness of his behavior — new revelations may start producing diminishing returns in shock value. People will wonder whether he&#8217;s a really rotten guy with a phony stage-managed image or a really sick guy who &#8220;needs help.&#8221;</p>
<p>A friend and I recently watched a professional football game. The announcer mentioned a stellar player. My friend said, &#8220;I like him. He&#8217;s amazing.&#8221; I said, &#8220;Still standing, after being tried for murder.&#8221; She thought I was joking. &#8220;And,&#8221; I said, &#8220;he pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice for lying to the police.&#8221; We Googled it. He not only lied to the police but told others to do so, as well.</p>
<p>Former President Bill Clinton is the only elected president ever to be impeached. He pleaded guilty to contempt of court for lying under oath and temporarily lost his law license. Does Clinton draw down the window shades, only to venture out under cover of night to go to the ATM? Please. He blamed the Republicans, who wanted to &#8220;overturn elections.&#8221; Defenders said, &#8220;Everybody lies about sex.&#8221; Had the Constitution permitted it, Clinton could have won a third term.</p>
<p>When Clinton first ran for president, he admitted on &#8220;60 Minutes&#8221; having had &#8220;problems with his marriage.&#8221; People interpreted this to mean an acknowledgment of previous cheating with a promise to sin no more.</p>
<p>But he did. He lied to the country about it. He lied about it under oath. Today he strolls around the globe, an elder statesman whose opinions are sought out and somberly considered.</p>
<p>The Rev. Jesse Jackson, in the midst of Clinton&#8217;s crisis, went to the White House to serve as a presidential &#8220;mentor.&#8221; Jackson brought his visibly pregnant mistress, and both later posed for a group photograph in the Oval Office. When Jackson&#8217;s scandal broke, he briefly closed shop. But he soon said, &#8220;The ground is no place for a champion. The ground is no place that I will wallow on.&#8221; Back in business.</p>
<p>As to former President Richard Nixon, few have fallen from so high to so low so quickly. He went from the most powerful person on earth to a guy ACORN wouldn&#8217;t hire. The only U.S. president to resign, Nixon did so just ahead of an impeachment posse, with a conviction in the Senate a near certainty. After leaving office, he got paid for an interview with David Frost, wrote a bunch of books and gave speeches on foreign policy. He sufficiently redeemed himself, to the point that by former President George W. Bush&#8217;s second term, many Democrats thought Bush&#8217;s &#8220;crimes&#8221; worthier of impeachment than those of Nixon.</p>
<p>As for Woods, he once had a favorable rating of nearly 85 percent. A recent poll still gave him a favorable rating of 60 percent. And Woods conceivably could even turn public opinion in his favor if he continues to excel on the golf course. &#8220;My, what an ability to focus!&#8221; etc.</p>
<p>There are many lessons here. There is the silliness of considering celebrities, about whom we really know very little, to be &#8220;role models.&#8221; There is the envy, sometimes, of the lives of others when very little is as it seems.</p>
<p>Fortunate is the person who can look back at his or her life and say, &#8220;I would do it all again, the same way.&#8221; My dad once said that to me. Most of us mortals have made mistakes, sometimes too many to count. Some mistakes have to do with career. Some have to do with money. Some have to do with other poor decisions and poor choices — reconsidered, of course, with the benefit of hindsight.</p>
<p>But the ones that cause the most regret and the most pain have to do with the treatment of other people — especially those who loved and trusted us. We finally discover the value and worth of what we once had and failed to appreciate. And now it&#8217;s too late. Good luck, Mr. Woods.</p>
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