Recently, the Justice Department announced it would not be indicting anyone for his or her role in the most serious domestic political scandal since the Nixon years.
Starting in 2010, the IRS, under pressure from congressional Democrats and the White House, engaged in blatant ideologically motivated discrimination against conservative organizations applying for non-profit status.
That the most feared bureaucracy in Washington was making decisions based on illegal political criteria should send a chill down the spine of any American who cares about the First Amendment and the rule of law.
Yet the Department of Justice has refused to indict even IRS official Lois Lerner, who invoked her Fifth Amendment right to silence to avoid incriminating herself in testimony before Congress.
Unfortunately, the failure to prosecute anyone responsible for abusing the IRS’s authority reflects the Obama administration’s broader contempt for the Constitution and the rule of law.
Consider just a few examples:
1.            Going to war in Libya in blatant violation of the War Powers Resolution, and in defiance of the legal advice of the president’s own lawyers, based on the ridiculous theory that bombing the heck out of Libya did not constitute “hostilities” under the law
2.            Appointing so-called policy czars to high-level positions to avoid constitutionally-required confirmation hearings
3.            Modifying, delaying, and ignoring various provisions of Obamacare in violation of the law itself
4.            Attacking private citizens for engaging in constitutionally protected speech
5.            Issuing draconian regulations regarding sexual assault on campus not through formal, lawful regulation but through an informal, and unreviewable, “dear colleague” letter
6.            Ignoring 100 years of legal rulings and the plain text of the Constitution and trying to get a vote in Congress for the D.C. delegate
7.            Trying to enact massive immigration reform via an executive order demanding that the Department of Homeland Security both refuse to enforce existing immigration law, and provide work permits to millions of people residing in the U.S. illegally
8.            Imposing common core standards on the states via administrative fiat
9.            Ignoring bankruptcy law and arranging Chrysler’s bankruptcy to benefit labor unions at the expense of bondholders
10.    Trying to strip churches and other religious bodies of their constitutional right to choose their clergy free from government involvement.

More generally, the president has abandoned any pretense of trying to work with Congress, as the Constitution’s separation of powers requires. He prefers instead to govern by unilateral executive fiat, even when there is little or no legal authority supporting his power to do so.

Presidents trying stretch their power as far as they can is hardly news. What is news, however, is that top Obama administration officials, including the president himself, see this not as something to be ashamed of, but as a desirable way of governing, something to brag about rather than do surreptitiously.

Obama behaves as if there is some inherent virtue in a president governing by decree and whim, as if promoting progressive political ends at the expense of the rule of law is proper not simply as a desperate last resort but as a matter of principle.

After all, Obama says, democracy is unduly “messy” and “complicated.” “We can’t wait,” the president intones, as he ignores the separation of powers again and again, ruling instead through executive order.

“Law is politics,” and only politics, according to a mantra popular on the legal left, and therefore the law should not be an independent constraint to doing the right thing politically. Obama seems to agree.

As Obama’s lawlessness has received increased attention from Congress, the (conservative) media, and the general public, the president has been defiant, even petulant. When confronted by allegations of lawlessness, Obama takes no responsibility, and doesn’t even bother to defend the legality of his actions.
Harry S. Truman famously said “the buck stops here.” Obama responds to serious concerns about his administration’s lawlessness with a derisive “so sue me.”

As George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley writes, Obama “acts as if anything a court has not expressly forbidden is permissible.” And in many situations, no one has legal standing to challenge the president’s actions in court—which means that no judge can stop the administration’s lawbreaking.
So sue me? If only we could.






"We know that Obama and his inner circle have set up a war room in his D.C. home to plan 

and execute resistance to the Trump administration and his legislative agenda.  None of 

these people care about the American people, or the fact thatTrump won the election 

because millions of people voted for him."  Patricia McCarthy / AMERICAN THINKER.com

Barack Obama in Norway Slams President Trump on Global Warming Policy



In this Friday, Sept. 21, 2018 file photo, former U.S President Barack Obama speaks as he campaigns in support of Pennsylvania candidates in Philadelphia. Former U.S. President Barack Obama has on Wednesday, Sept. 26 taken a swipe at President Trump's attitude to the environment, saying the world needs "political and …
AP Photo/Matt Rourke




Former President Barack Obama on Wednesday laid out his vision before the Oslo Business Forum in Norway for tackling climate change if he were once again in the White House, while criticizing the Trump administration’s environmental policy.

A partial transcript is as follows:
INTERVIEWER: First of all, what everyone is curious about, if you were president once more for a day, what would you have done and why?
OBAMA: You know, the truth is if I would president for a day I would do much because the nature of the U.S. presidency, although it is obviously is an extraordinarily powerful position, you stand atop a big ocean line. Steering that ship takes a lot of people and a long time, even if there is a move of a few degrees. So, in one day, I would say hello to all the staff at the White House that I miss. But, obviously, if I had a longer stretch of time, there was a lot of unfinished business when I left. That’s the nature of democracy, you take the baton from the person behind you and you run your race, then you have pass it on and you haven’t done everything you would like to do. The single highest priority that I see globally is the issue of environmental sustainability and climate change.
Obviously, Paris Accords were an important step in the right direction, but it was only a first step and so much more work needs to be done. The good news is technology is accelerating faster than we might have expected, and I’m confident that if we’re able to create an effective ridge over, let’s say over the course of 25-30 years with more efficiency and deployment of existing technology, that we could get to a point were new technologies take us where we need to go. But, that requires a level of political and social commitment on the part of all of us: businesses, the non-profit sector, each of us individuals, that right now is not forthcoming. Unfortunately, we have a U.S administration that deals differently around these issues.

On Tuesday, Nov. 17, David Bernstein will be at The Heritage Foundation at noon for an event about his book, “Lawless: The Obama Administration’s Unprecedented Assault on the Constitution and the Rule of Law.” More details here.

The Russia Hoax As Contingency Plan



By Mark Wauck
See also: Now we know what Strzok meant in that ‘insurance policy’ text to Page

Remember, back in August, 2016, when Peter Strzok and Lisa Page were obsessively texting one another? One exchange went something like, well, exactly like this:
"[Trump’s] not ever going to become president, right? Right?!" Page texted Strzok.
"No. No he won’t. We’ll stop it," Strzok responded.
Fast forward a couple of years and here we are in October, 2018, just about two years after Trump's electoral triumph, and for reasons best known to themselves Ben Rhodes and Jen Psaki have decided to reveal to New York Magazine that the Russia Hoax was a key part of the Obama Administration's -- and presumably the Clinton campaign's -- contingency plan to, well, steal an election: Obama Had a Secret Plan in Case Trump Rejected 2016 Election Results. We're all adults -- right? -- so there's no need to quibble over the meaning of words like "results." Here's what Rhodes and Psaki are saying:
The Obama White House plan, according to interviews with Rhodes and Jen Psaki, Obama’s communications director, called for congressional Republicans, former presidents, and former Cabinet-level officials including Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, to try and forestall a political crisis by validating the election result. In the event that Trump tried to dispute a Clinton victory, they would affirm the result as well as the conclusions reached by the U.S. intelligence community that Russian interference in the election sought to favor Trump, and not Clinton. Some Republicans were already aware of Russian interference from intelligence briefings given to leaders from both parties during the chaotic months before the election. “We wanted to handle the Russia information in a way that was as bipartisan as possible,” Rhodes said. 
The existence of the postelection plan has not been previously reported. A July 2017 op-ed by Obama’s chief of staff, Denis McDonough, refers to Obama directing his staff to “prepare possible responses” to claims of Russian interference in the election.
Psaki said the plan was one of a larger set of “red-teaming” conversations to address how the White House should respond to postelection scenarios that did not have any historical precedent. “There was recognition that we had a Democratic president who was quite popular but also divisive for a portion of the population,” she said. “For them, just having him say the election was legitimate was not going to be enough. We didn’t spend a lot of time theorizing about the worst thing that could happen — this isn’t a science-fiction movie. It was more about the country being incredibly divided and Trump’s supporters being angry. Would there be protesting? I don’t want to say violence, because we didn’t talk about that as I recall.” [emphases added]
Of course, the Obama and Clinton camps never foresaw -- or so they claim -- Trump winning the election.
Stunned crowd at Hillary's election night party (YouTube screen grab)
They feared a squeaker, a cliff hanger. Or, two years on, that's their story. So let's try a thought experiment of sorts. By dispensing with some of the coded language or doublespeak we come up with this more succinct version of what Rhodes and Psaki are saying:
The Obama plan called for prominent NeverTrump Republicans to try and forestall a Trump victory or -- God forbid! -- a Trump inauguration by throwing the election to Clinton based on claims -- and, no, I swear I'm not plagiarizing The Onion -- that Russia had interfered on behalf of Trump. This Russia Hoax narrative had already been floated among some NeverTrump Republicans, and they liked this "bipartisan" approach -- they would provide the cover needed for a coup. Planning had already gotten so far that Obama had directed his staff to develop an action plan for the event of a Hillary loss -- the rejection of continued Progressive rule would be "historically unprecedented (in their minds) and thus invalid.
As we know so well, in the event, Trump spoiled it all by posting an electoral landslide. The plotters had failed, in Strzok's words, to "stop it." Or had they? After all, an election is one thing, but the inauguration of a new president doesn't take place for two and a half months afterwards. Time enough to throw a whole smorgasbord of crackpot theories at Trump, and see whether any of it would stick! But the key to it all, right from the start, was the Russia Hoax:
Less than 24 hours after Hillary’s concession speech, Podesta and Campaign Manager Robby Mook convened a staff meeting at Clinton’s Brooklyn headquarters to formalize this attack. The effort was described by authors Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes in a book that explains “what happened” more insightfully than Mrs. Clinton’s memoir.
“For a couple of hours, with Shake Shack containers littering the room, they went over the script they would pitch to the press and the public,” they wrote. “Already, Russian hacking was the centerpiece of the argument.”
Russia hacking, yes, but soon enough the whole "dossier" was part of the mix. The Russia-hacked-my-emails story just made people's heads hurt -- much better to go front and center with undocumented sleaze. Traditional but still effective. Or not. The plan quickly began to lose traction, both in the halls of government and the legislative branch as well as with the public.
What's interesting are the deep roots of the Russia Hoax. The basic idea can be documented as an action plan as far back as early Spring of 2016, with the efforts to frame hapless Trump foreign policy "advisers" as Russian agents. There are still many questions about those early events. Were Page and Papadopoulos unwittingly inserted into the Trump campaign by Democrat operatives? And how about Paul Manafort coming on board? A John Podesta protege to run the convention, to become campaign manager? Had Glenn Simpson -- the world class Paul Manafort expert and now Hillary opposition researcher -- died and gone to heaven? And that weird Trump Tower meeting -- how did that really go down? 
The Russia Hoax was already in place, for use when needed, capable of adaptation to fits the circumstances. From campaign talking points to soft coup contingency plan was but a short step. Or paradigm shift, as we like to say.

BOOK:

Gangster Government: Barack Obama and the New Washington Thugocracy 



  • Hardcover: 350 pages

  • Publisher: Regnery Publishing; First Edition edition (April 4, 2011)

  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1596986484
  • ISBN-13: 978-1596986480

Editorial Reviews


From the Inside Flap

The Narcissist-in-Chief’s miserable legacy of failure and deceit.



October 25, 2018

Michelle Malkin
15
Former President Selfie Stick is back in action, firing up Democrats before the midterms with his signature rallying cries:
I, I, I, I! Me, me, me! My, my, my!
According to a tally by The American Mirror's Kyle Olson, Barack Obama's campaign speech Monday for Nevada Senate Democratic candidate Jacky Rosen referred to himself 92 times in 38 minutes — or an average self-allusion every 24.7 seconds.
When he wasn't "I"-ing, the former narcissist-in-chief was lying.
"Unlike some, I actually try to state facts," Obama snarked passive-aggressively in a swipe at President Donald Trump. "I don't believe in just making stuff up. I think you should actually say to people what's true."
Sit down, Mister "If you like your plan, you can keep your plan."
Thanks to you, my husband, children and I lost not one, not two, not three but four private individual market health plans killed directly by Obamacare. Reminder: When the health insurance cancellation notice tsunami hit in 2013, liberal Mother Jones magazine sneered that the phenomenon was "phony." But after 4 million American families received cancellation letters at the end of 2013, Obama's health care prevarication was finally deemed the "Lie of the Year" by left-leaning PolitiFact.
And five years after promising Americans they could "keep their doctor" along with their health plan "no matter what," Obama belatedly 'fessed up that "the average person" would be forced "to have to make some choices, and they might end up having to switch doctors."
Facts, schmacts.
Moving on, Obama tried to galvanize voters this week by trashing Trump's jobs boom: "When you hear all this talk about economic miracles right now, remember who started it."
Hold up, Mister "Jobs are not coming back." I remember you taunting Trump for needing a "magic wand" to achieve what you claimed was an unachievable manufacturing industry renaissance — for which you are now claiming unadulterated credit!
I remember you, Mister Multitrillion-Dollar-Stimulus, promising the sun, moon and stars with the "most sweeping economic recovery package in our history" that was supposed to lift two million people out of poverty.
I recall sky-high unemployment rates for black Americans, nearly double the national rate, and 90 million-plus able-bodied citizens of all colors simply giving up looking for work while wasted billions went to fund crony green energy boondoggles, bridges to nowhere, renovations to Joe Biden's favorite Amtrak train station in Delaware, General Services Administrations junkets in Las Vegas and Hawaii, ghost congressional districts and stimulus propaganda road signs planted nationwide and stamped with the shovel-ready logo.
Speaking of which, I won't forget you smirking while you admitted at one of your phony Jobs and Competitiveness Council meetings that "Shovel-ready was not as, uh, shovel-ready as we expected." Yukkity-yuk-yuk.
Nor will it go down the memory hole how the Obama administration's wreckovery lies were enabled by slavering "journalists" like New York Times columnist David Brooks. He giggled on Jim Lehrer's PBS show that Obama had told him off the record that the shovel-ready promise was a crock, yet he sat on the truth until his Times' colleague Peter Baker reported the admission more than a year later.
Wait, we're not done yet. Astonishingly, Obama is now on the campaign trail comparing the Trump White House to a "tin-pot dictatorship" and calling for a return to "decency" and "lawfulness."
Yes, this is the same man who sicced the IRS on tea party conservatives, evangelicals and pro-life citizens, amnestied millions of illegal immigrants through executive fiat, appointed dozens of unaccountable and unvetted policy czars, used his Justice Department to spy on journalists, deceived the country over the Benghazi massacre and the Iran deal, demonized his political opponents, and mastered the very social justice agitation techniques now wielded by left-wing mobs targeting Republicans in every corner of the public square.
Thanks, Obama, for reminding America of your miserable legacy of deceit, division, persecution and redistribution as voters head to the polls. You wanna make the 2018 midterms all about you? It's on.

 The Nobel Committee should read Gangster Government before it gives our president another peace prize.”—Ann Coulter, bestselling author and Legal Affairs Correspondent for Human Events