I wonder just how many people were really aware of the 13 embassy attacks during the Bush administration before they became the rebuttal to the Benghazi attacks.
But the Conservation press has kept the President covered from the beginning:
They were quick to claim that Obama had an alliance with the Muslim Brotherhood, they tried to use will power to arrange for Obama to have been born in Kenya. (The time machine was broken, I guess.) And let’s not forget their thorough coverage of Obama’s excessive concern for “the community.” Obviously, that made him a Socialist. Now we have all of these Socialists organizations like libraries, schools, the police departments, the fire departments crammed down our throats. And don’t forget his failure to make his college transcript available to news sources. (He may have been a little too humble about being the President of the Law Review at Harvard. That is a higher appointment than being the Editor of the Law Review.)
How much coverage did the Conservative media give to the horror that Bush started a war on a country without any appropriate reason?
I hope that there is a thorough and fair bi-partisan investigation into the DOJ and the IRS to see if there is any connection to Obama and to read the riot act to anyone responsible. I hope that it is televised from dawn to dusk. I hope that the DOJ had a very, very valid reason for eavesdropping.
And maybe we can do some bi-partisan consideration of which of these acts deserved the talk of impeachment.
Anyone remember Nixon’s Enemies List? He personally wanted people on his list harrassed by the IRS. That list include such monsters as Paul Newman and Bill Cosby. There is no indication from any source that Obama had an enemies list of organizations that he wanted to persecute. That may seem like ancient history to most of you, but for me it was the day before yesterday.
The best part about this latest made up scandal is that the Republicans spent months attacking the white house over the leaks and DEMANDED an investigation.
Yeah but there’s no popular outrage over that. We generally don’t care what happens to furriners.
We stopped caring about torture as soon as Obama took office.
And the 6th amendment only applies to criminal trials. IIRC, the bill of rights only applies to US citizens/residents and anyone that is on American soil (whether t6hey are citizens or not). If you’re a non-citizen/resident of the USA and you are not on American soil, the bill of rights does not apply to you.
Yeah, we already have that, its called the NICS system. Its got some holes in it but we do have a background check system in place.
The IRS admitted to improperly focusing on words like “tea party” in screening applications for higher scrutiny. The fact that other organizations also received scrutiny, the fact that this was not the ONLY filter does not make the use of an impermissible filter acceptable.
If cops were pulling over all black drivers as well as all white drivers that are speeding and driving drunk, it would not be a defense that the cops were also pulling over white drivers even if only white drivers ended up getting arrested.
In “our” defense, that’s because he stopped doing it.
I know apologies don’t fix everything, but this whole thing was disclosed by the IRS, was condemned by the IRS and President Obama, and people said it was wrong and they were sorry. That should take some of the sting out of any scandal. It’s not like these groups were imprisoned, or shot. They had to answer a few extra questions (which may have been appropriate in any case). I don’t think our liberty is in jeopardy.
You said, and I quote, - “Its wrong to only question the conservative organizations about it.”
That didn’t happen. They didn’t ‘only question conservative organizations’, so that’s why I corrected you, because what you said was wrong did not actually happen. I’m not saying that the IRS was totally in the right on this whole deal, but your characterization of what happened was overly simplified and seemingly an attempt to exaggerate the issue. We will have better debates if people stick to what actually happened rather than exaggerating things to try to increase the outrage factor.
In between, the acting head of the IRS lied about the thing occurring.
Ok, fire that guy then. And everyone who knew he lied and did nothing. scandal over.
Yeppers, Daily Kos. Lefty cooty prevention protocols advised.
That guy is already gone, but the point is that you can’t really say “look, they informed you about the scandal and they apologized” while omitting the fact that they lied about it for (I think) about a year. It undermines the openness and the value of the apology just a little bit. And the Inspector General’s report says the IRS has made some changes it needs to make to prevent this kind of thing from happening, but it hasn’t made all of them.
Dana Milbank just rips into the President:
Late Monday came the breathtaking news of a full-frontal assault on the First Amendment by his administration: word that the Justice Department had gone on a fishing expedition through months of phone records of Associated Press reporters.
And yet President Obama reacted much as he did to the equally astonishing revelation on Friday that the IRS had targeted conservative groups based on their ideology: He responded as though he were just some bloke on a bar stool, getting his information from the evening news.
In the phone-snooping case, Obama didn’t even stir from his stool. Instead, he had his press secretary, former Time magazine journalist Jay Carney, go before an incensed press corps Tuesday afternoon and explain why the president will not be involving himself in his Justice Department’s trampling of press freedoms.
Reuters correspondent Jeff Mason asked how Obama felt about “being compared to President Nixon on this.”
The press secretary laughed. “People who make those kinds of comparisons need to check their history,” he said.
Carney had a point there. Nixon was a control freak. Obama seems to be the opposite: He wants no control over the actions of his administration. As the president distances himself from the actions of “independent” figures within his administration, he’s creating a power vacuum in which lower officials behave as though anything goes. Certainly, a president can’t know what everybody in his administration is up to — but he can take responsibility, he can fire people and he can call a stop to foolish actions such as wholesale snooping into reporters’ phone calls.
That’s what I’ve been saying about him for years. He doesn’t perform the most basic functions of his job. He’s a campaigner, nothing more.
Eleanor Clift makes almost exactly the same argument:
The picture that comes through of Obama is that of a leader buffeted by all these forces outside his control, at the mercy of a runaway administration.
And I’m not familiar with these writers, but they make a slightly different point. If the running of an administration is going to be this influenced by politics, how can the President expect Americans to support his vision of activist government?
Because he won?
I predict this to become a meme: “Flauting Danger.” Anyone handy with CGI?
He won by running a relentlessly negative campaign, not by articulating a positive vision of government. It takes more than winning an election to get your way. Ask George W Bush about the effort to privatize Social Security.
“I have political capital, and I intend to spend it.”
Well, he spent it, got nothing.
Besides, the President has to show that he can actually implement the things he advocates, rather than being a passive bystander. The health care law will be a big test. If things go badly and he points fingers everywhere but at himself, his Presidency is going to be finished.
Perhaps you will be so kind as to advise us when that moment arrives. I don’t want to do the whole sackcloth and ashes thing until you tell us you are sure.
You’ll know. It’ll be when you give up defending him like so many liberal journalists have.