According to the following story, the NSA is very concerned about the quality of the background investigation of Snowden:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/20/nsa-data_n_3474820.html?icid=maing-grid7%7Chtmlws-main-bb%7Cdl2%7Csec1_lnk3%26pLid%3D333404

It is pretty embarrassing when someone with a top secret clearance spills the beans to the Guardian UK and then runs off to Hong Kong.  I can already guarantee you that there are far fewer holes in the background of Eric Snowden than there are with Barack Hussein Obama and we elected him President.

I speak from experience, because I had a top secret clearance.  It took several months to conduct my background investigation and they checked everything.  I even had friends from high school telling me about how someone sat down next to them in a bar and started up a conversation.  Then at one point they were casually asked if they knew me from high school.   They checked my background from date of birth until the day I got my clearance. 

They would never have considered giving a security clearance to someone who could not verify where they were born.  I am not a birther, but Barack Obama has never produced a certified copy of his birth certificate.  No representative from the State of Hawaii has ever said the following:  The birth certificate presented by Barack Obama is identical to the one we have on file.   They have said they have his records, that they can verify he was born in Hawaii and that he is a U.S. citizen.  All that is nice, but we still don’t have a single copy certified copy of his birth certificate.  You know the kind we all needed to get a driver’s license or register to vote, before Democrats decided that was no longer necessary.  I believe Obama was born in Hawaii and I am really sure he wasn’t born in Kenya.  But that doesn’t change the fact that he has never produced this most basic of personal documents. 

This was discussed, again, this week on MSNBC:

http://tv.msnbc.com/2013/06/18/republican-congressman-questions-obamas-validity/

Once again, MSNBC missed the point.  This is a photocopy of a long form birth certificate that looks like it was photocopied out of a book.  Does your birth certificate look like this?  Do you know anyone else whose birth certificate looks like this?  I mean this is not hard.  You ask for a certified copy of your birth certificate and you get it in about two days.  This is like driving around with a photocopy of your driver’s license.  Do you think any cop would accept that, not matter how “good” it looked? 

They would never have considered giving a security clearance to someone with a history of drug abuse.  That includes pot smoking.  Barack Obama admits to using cocaine and smoking pot enthusiastically.  This would have disqualified him for a security clearance.  I had one guy who went all the way through language school with me.  The Air Force had invested over 18 months in training him.  They found out he had smoked pot one time and they immediately booted him out of the program.  To all you kids out there who think that all the baby boomers smoked pot, I guarantee you that if they did, they didn’t work for the NSA if anyone knew about it.

They would never have considered giving a security clearance to someone who had traveled overseas under less than clear circumstances.  Barack Obama’s great adventure to Pakistan, after leaving Occidental College, would have drawn a lot of scrutiny.  It was probably not illegal to travel to Pakistan at that time, but it would have raised some very red flags. 

They would have never considered giving a security clearance to someone who had close blood relatives living overseas.  Barack Obama has several close relatives, including a grandmother and a half-brother living in Kenya. 

They would never have considered giving a security clearance to someone who was close friends with someone like William Ayers.  Ayers was a leader in the Weatherman Underground, a terrorist organization that conducted bombings against government facilities, including the pentagon.  They don’t give security clearances to people who are best friends with enemies of the state.

Both Barack Obama and Michelle Obama surrendered their law licenses.  Michelle surrendered hers in 1994.  Barack Obama surrendered his in 2007.  There are no public records verifying the reason.  Factcheck.org tried to discredit rumors that both Obamas surrendered their licenses to avoid discipline.  The following article contains their report:

http://www.factcheck.org/2012/06/the-obamas-law-licenses/

Actually this report only demonstrates the lengths to which factcheck.org went to try and cover for Obama.  The exact wording is as follows:

Neither of the Obamas has any public record of discipline or pending proceedings against them, according to the online public registration records of the ARDC. We also confirmed that with Grogan, who said that the Obamas were “never the subject of any public disciplinary proceedings.”

I am sure this is absolutely true and absolutely meaningless.  The key word is “public.”  There is no “public” record.  The official policy of the Illinois Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission (ARDC) is that if the ARDC investigates a licensed lawyer, the proceedings become public record, but the ARDC won’t punish or publicize finding against a lawyer who voluntarily resigns.  The only thing factcheck.org was able to prove was the lack of a public record.

Barack Obama surrendered his law license after a request was filed with the Illinois Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission asking that the application to the bar that Barack Obama had filed in 1991 be examined in light of information that had recently been made public.  Was that a coincidence?

You will also notice that factcheck.org uses tortured logic to try and prove that Obama didn’t say what he said during a State of the Union address.  What Obama actually said:

Abroad, America’s greatest source of strength has always been our ideals. The same is true at home. We find unity in our incredible diversity, drawing on the promise enshrined in our Constitution: the notion that we’re all created equal; that no matter who you are or what you look like, if you abide by the law you should be protected by it; if you adhere to our common values you should be treated no different than anyone else.. 

He was clearly quoting the Declaration of Independence and he was clearly referring to the Constitution.  Actually, I don’t care, because Obama didn’t write the speech and the blame for this mistake rests with his speech writer and his TelePrompter.  I only mentioned to show that factcheck.org went to great lengths to avoid actually checking facts.  They should have said:  “Obama made a mistake.”  I mean who really cares?

I firmly believe that at some point all of this will eventually come out and there are going to be a lot of red faces.  But, I doubt that this will happen while Obama is still President.  We are just now learning about JFK and he has been dead for nearly 50 years.  We recently learned that JFK wrote in his diary,about the great job Adolph Hitler was doing in Germany.  Nice!

http://dailycaller.com/2013/05/24/jfks-secret-diary-fascism-right-thing-for-germany/

Of course the main stream media never reported this, because Camelot is still Camelot.

Snowden probably should not have been given a clearance, but he was vetted a lot more than Obama.  Maybe, during our life time, we will learn the truth.  Don’t hold your breath.

TDM

Several years ago, while working at a major corporation I got a threatening letter from an attorney.  This was no surprise because I was responsible for handling all the tort litigation nationwide so I got these kinds of letters all the time.  In this particular case the attorney was demanding huge sums of money because one of our janitors allegedly destroyed a crucial piece of evidence.  This plaintiff attorney was apparently planning on filing a major claim against SunGlo.  He left the crucial piece of evidence, an empty SunGlo pop bottle on top of his desk.  Our hero, the janitor, came in after hours; saw an empty bottle sitting on a desk, so he threw it in the trash.  Then, to complete the cycle, he emptied the trash.  The next day the attorney lost his mind when his crucial piece of evidence was missing.  He decided we were to blame because our janitor threw out that extremely important bottle.

I contacted the attorney and told him to tee it up.  I explained that we would not offer him a dime and that if he wanted to sue us and go to court that he better be prepared to explain to a jury why an $8 per hour janitor should take all of the blame for throwing away an empty soda bottle a $300 an hour attorney stupidly left on his desk.  After a few more attempts at hyperventilating his way into undeserved settlement money, the plaintiff attorney hung up and I never heard from him again.  I suspect he had night mares about that jury trial.

The Snowden NSA scandal reminds me of the SunGlo Ultimatum.  While the Obama administration, and their RINO Republican support crew, is busy trashing Snowden and calling him a traitor, they are missing the point.  What idiot allowed this clown to have access to top secret information in the first place?  We are not even sure this guy graduated from high school.  His first job at the NSA was as a security guard.  He has no known academic credentials and certainly no significant work history.  Yet he was hired, as an “analyst,” paid $120,000 per year, and given access to top secret information.  Not only was he given access, apparently no one noticed that he was copying documents and/or electronic files and taking them home.  It is pretty hard to deny that he had access, because he managed to leak information to the press that was so secret Peter King said this damaged National Security:

http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-TV/2013/06/12/Rep-Peter-King-NSA-Leaker-Traitor-Damaged-Natl-Sec

John McCain and Lindsey Graham are tied in a race to see who can say the dumbest things in front of the nearest microphone.  It was close, but McCain managed to out stupid Graham, which was quite an accomplishment.  He called for the U.S. to bomb Hong Kong until we get Snowden back:

http://dailycurrant.com/2013/06/10/john-mccain-calls-for-invasion-of-hong-kong/

“Either you’re with us or you’re against us,” McCain explained to anchor Freddie Lyon, “and clearly the nation of Hong Kong is against us. By harboring this known cybercriminal they pose a clear and present danger to the American people.

“I don’t want to hear about extradition or rendition or any of that nonsense. This man is a traitor and if we don’t get him within 24 hours I say we need to start bombing the hell out of Hong Kong.

McCain has done something I did not think possible.  He has convinced me that he would have been an even worse choice for President than Barack Hussein Obama.  Before this comment, I wouldn’t have thought that was possible.

Lindsey Graham came perilously close to matching McCain for stupidity.  It is really embarrassing when MSNBC sounds more rational than a Republican Senator:

http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2013/06/12/18922414-we-dont-need-to-censor-the-mail-but

“In World War II, the mentality of the public was that our whole way of life was at risk, we’re all in. We censored the mail. When you wrote a letter overseas, it got censored. When a letter was written back from the battlefield to home, they looked at what was in the letter to make sure they were not tipping off the enemy,” Graham, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, told reporters on Capitol Hill. “If I thought censoring the mail was necessary, I would suggest it, but I don’t think it is.”

This is absolutely brilliant.  He stopped short of bombing Hong Kong but he would consider censoring the mail. This was after he twittered that we should hunt down Snowden:

“I view Mr. Snowden’s actions not as one of patriotism but potentially a felony,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said Monday in a post on his Twitter account. “I hope we follow Mr. Snowden to the ends of the Earth to bring him to justice.”

It was a close call as to who won the stupidity award, but bombing Hong Kong is really hard to beat.

There are only two possibilities here, both really bad.  One is that a subcontractor to the NSA was hiring near high school grads off the street, paying them exorbitant salaries  and letting them handle top secret information.  Oh, by the way, they also let them copy secret stuff and disappear.  The other is that this guy had virtually no access at all and King, Graham and McCain started lathering at the mouth before bothering to find out if he leaked anything of value.  In either case, they are acting like blithering idiots.  And these are supposed to be the good guys looking out for us.  Please, please, please Mr. Tea Party, do whatever it takes to get rid of the RINOs.  Sarah Palin, if you ever support John McCain again conservatives should disown you. 

We expected the Obama administration to botch things.  When you elect the most naïve and inexperienced person to ever run for President of the United States you should not be surprised that he screws everything up.  The miracle would have been if this didn’t happen.

So, I think this is similar to the SunGlo ultimatum.  The more anyone points the finger at Snowden, the more they will be pointing the finger at themselves.  The worse he looks, the worse they look. 

I don’t consider him to be a traitor.  I also don’t consider him to be a hero.  I guess I would sum him up, not as the man who never was, but rather the man who never should have been.  No matter how you look at it, it looks bad.

TDM

The NSA data grab scandal is much worse than you think.  In retrospect, we should have listened to those on the liberal left who warned us about the Patriot Act.  We ignored them because they are typically wrong about everything.  But sometimes those people who disagree with us are actually right.  In this case those people who criticized the Patriot Act are being vindicated and all those Republicans and Democrats who signed off on this in the name of national security are about to be embarrassed.

We should have known better.  The problem is that if you allow the government to have access to this information, for any reason, at some point the data will be abused.  We don’t know if the Obama administration has limited itself to hunting terrorists, but ultimately it was only a matter of time before someone misused this data.

Under this administration the IRS abused power by targeting the Tea Party and other conservative groups.  How can we be sure that it started and ended there?

The Obama campaign has been bragging about his massive data base and the use of this information to win elections.  Following are two links confirming this.  The first is from Cyber News Network with the transcript of an interview by Maxine Waters earlier this year:

http://cnsnews.com/news/article/rep-waters-obama-campaign-database-has-information-every-individual

She said that the Obama campaign had database that “will have information about everything on every individual.”

“And that database will have information about everything on every individual in ways that it’s never been done before,”

There was also in interview as recent as May 19^th, where the person who set up the data mining for the Obama campaign was bragging about it:

http://venturebeat.com/2013/05/19/obama-campaigns-chief-data-guy-gets-candid-about-the-data-strategy-that-won-the-election/

The chief scientist of the campaign, Rayid Ghani, said that they used this data to help Obama win the election.  He is now the chief data scientist at the University of Chicago.  His program is called:

“Data Science for Social Good.”  That is a pretty ominous title when we now know the NSA has data about everything from everyone. 

Obama was probably re-elected in large part because he was better at data mining then his opponents.  Imagine what they could do if they really did have information on everything about everyone.

It is even more frightening when one reads the interview by Snowden, the man who leaked information about the program:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2013/jun/09/nsa-whistleblower-edward-snowden-interview-video

“The government has granted itself power it is not entitled to. There is no public oversight. The result is people like myself have the latitude to go further than they are allowed to,” he said.

He describes the problem with a clarity is that stunning:

“Now increasingly we see that it’s happening domestically and to do that they, the NSA specifically, targets the communications of everyone. It ingests them by default. It collects them in its system and it filters them and it analyses them and it measures them and it stores them for periods of time simply because that’s the easiest, most efficient, and most valuable way to achieve these ends. So while they may be intending to target someone associated with a foreign government or someone they suspect of terrorism, they’re collecting you’re communications to do so.”

“Any analyst at any time can target anyone, any selector, anywhere. Where those communications will be picked up depends on the range of the sensor networks and the authorities that analyst is empowered with. Not all analysts have the ability to target everything. But I sitting at my desk certainly had the authorities to wiretap anyone from you or your accountant to a Federal judge to even the President if I had a personal e-mail.”

His point it that it wouldn’t even have to be the government who does this.  Compare this to the current IRS scandal.  We don’t know, yet, who was the mastermind of this or even if there was a mastermind.  What we do know is that confidential information was exploited resulting in an abuse of power that may have influenced a national election.

Right now there are a handful of people like Lindsey Graham, John McCain and Diane Feinstein who still appear to be more concerned about tipping off potential terrorists than in protecting our personal privacy.  We are probably going to see an attempt to stifle any investigation by trying to prosecute Snowden.  There will be a full scale effort to suppress this story.  I don’t think that is going to work.

This story is going to explode and it will destroy anyone who gets in the way.  That includes the President and those members of congress who seem oblivious to the problem.  I really think this is a game changer.  I think this will be that rare issue where Liberals line up next to Conservatives united in opposition to a threat to all of us.

At the end of World War II, in his speech accepting the surrender of Japan, General Douglas McArthur said the following:

The destructiveness of the war potential, through progressive advances in scientific discovery, has in fact now reached a point which revises the traditional concepts of war.

Men since the beginning of time have sought peace…. Military alliances, balances of power, leagues of nations, all in turn failed, leaving the only path to be by way of the crucible of war. We have had our last chance. If we do not now devise some greater and more equitable system, Armageddon will be at our door.

McArthur was naïve in believing that we would find a peaceful way to end conflicts.  The Korean War, the Vietnam War and the two Iraq wars dispelled that theory.  But what we have been able to do is to avoid nuclear war. 

We are now on the verge of creating a weapon potentially more dangerous than a nuclear weapon.  We are on the verge of compiling all of the personal information on every human being who ever used a phone, a cellphone, an e-mail or even surfs the web and making it accessible to government.  Knowledge is power and this type of knowledge would inevitably result in absolute power.  Perhaps, just perhaps, we are very fortunate that this scandal broke now, rather than later.  It is impossible to overstate the danger.  It is equally impossible to overstate the need to get this fixed now.  The only solution is to prevent the government from ever gaining access to this information, for any reason at any time.  Ben Franklin said it well long ago:

They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.

This was true in 1775.  It is even more true today.

TDM

When we were kids playing a game like “kick the can” we used to yell “Olly Olly Oxen Free.”  That told everyone still hiding that it was ok to come in without penalty.  I can’t think of a better way to describe how the NSA phone tapping scandal released liberals from their cone of silence.  The liberal left came out of hiding and they are the ones screaming the loudest.  Ironically, Obama has more support from Republicans than Democrats, which is remarkable.  I expect the Republican support to start vanishing when more and more facts are released.

This all dates back to 2001, after the September 11 terrorist attack, when George Bush authorized the NSA to go on a terrorist hunt.  They basically looked for people who phoned al Qaeda or other suspected terrorists overseas.  Most knowledgeable people believe that this program stopped at least some terrorist attacks.  George Bush gave a speech in 2006, where he said that he had personally authorized this and he explained his reasoning:

http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/01/01/nsa.spying/

The NSA was authorized to intercept certain domestic communications without a warrant, as long as one party was outside the United States.

At the time, Democrats expressed concern over the invasion of privacy and Republicans said it was a small price to pay for security.  At the time it seemed like a good idea, primarily because no one ever accused George Bush of abusing this power.  Even his harshest enemies acknowledge that Bush used this solely to hunt terrorists.  He actually had pretty strong bi-partisan support.  The Patriot Act passed with 98 votes in the Senate in 2001 and 89 votes when it was re-authorized in 2006.

I remember reading about this at the time and asking myself if I would trust a Democratic President with this type of power.  I was not worried about George W. Bush because he seem focused on hunting down terrorists.  But I was very concerned over the next President who might have a very different view of the world.  Unfortunately, that fear has now been justified.

That is exactly the problem with the NSA program.  I doubt that anyone really knows how the Obama administration is using the data, we just know they have access to:  EVERYTHING.  They have requested data on EVERYONE.   Even if they are not abusing it, which is far from certain, this is not acceptable.  Once that data is loaded on a data base it is only a matter of time before it is abused.

As far as I can tell, Bush only asked for access to overseas phone calls.  Mother Jones, not exactly a right wing rag, confirms this:

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/06/timeline-nsa-domestic-surveillance-bush-obama

This time line is devastating for the Obama administration.  There was a remarkable change that started in 2009, right about the time Barack Hussein Obama came into office.  The comparison between the safeguards in place during the Bush administration and the safeguards in place during the Obama administration could not be starker:

2008

July 10: Bush signs the FISA Amendments Act, which gives the federal government the power to compel telecoms to provide access to emails, phone calls, and text messages if one party is “reasonably believed” to be overseas. The law also gives legal immunity to the phone companies that had participated in the NSA’s warrantless wiretapping program. Sen. Obama opposes extending immunity to the phone companies, but votes for what he calls “an improved but imperfect bill.” 

2009

April 15: Intelligence officials tell the New York Times about the “overcollection” of domestic communication by the NSA despite the new limits set in 2008.

2011

May 26: Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Mark Udall (D-Colo.) say that the Department of Justice has been misapplying the Patriot Act to allow expanded domestic surveillance. “When the American people find out how their government has secretly interpreted the Patriot Act, they will be stunned and they will be angry,” says Wyden.

2012

July 20: In a letter to Wyden, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence concedes that some of the surveillance conducted under the 2008 FISA amendment has “sometimes circumvented the spirit of the law” and that one occasion a FISA judge found such “collection” to violate the Fourth Amendment

December 30: Obama signs a five-year extension of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Amendments to provide more oversight of untargeted mass wiretapping are defeated in the Senate. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) says the surveillance of foreigners’ communications in the United States “produced and continues to produce significant information that is vital to defend the nation against international terrorism and other threats.”

2013

March 12: During an intelligence committee hearing, Sen. Wyden asks Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, “Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?” Clapper’s reply: “No sir.”

June 7: “Nobody is listening to your telephone calls. That’s not what this program’s about,” Obama says at a speech in Silicon Valley. “But by sifting through this so-called metadata, they may identify potential leads with respect to folks who might engage in terrorism.” He adds, “”You can’t have 100 percent security and then also have 100 percent privacy and zero inconvenience.”

This is really bad, no matter how you look at it.  When you combine this with the obvious abuse of power by the IRS, spying on reporters by the DOJ and the deliberate lies and distortions after Benghazi, this becomes earthshattering.  It is impossible to have any confidence in the integrity of this administration.

I do not know where this is headed, but it is definitely headed toward a very dark place.  We haven’t seen anything this bad since Watergate.  At least Nixon limited his abuse of power to known enemies.

TDM

President Obama appointed Susan Rice to be his National Security Advisor.  Although this is one of the most important positions in our government, it does not require confirmation by the U.S. Senate.  That is why he nominated her for this position.  He really wanted her to be Secretary of State but she could not survive confirmation hearings in the Senate.

This is an in-your-face appointment to both congress and the American people.  It demonstrates a total lack of respect for the Republican leadership.  No one even pretends that her interviews on September 17, 2012 were accurate.  The only question is why she said things that were demonstrably false. 

I believe this is an enormous mistake by Obama.  At a time when he needs to cool down the rhetoric, he just publicly slapped the GOP in the face.  He is forcing them to challenge him.  Now he has doubled down on this by spreading the word that Eric Holder is in for the duration. 

This reminds me of England before World War II.   They were terrified at getting into a conflict with Adolph Hitler.  They bent over backward to try and avoid a war.  Ultimately, Hitler pushed them to the brink and they finally declared war on Germany in September of 1939.  However, England still did not begin to actually wage war against Germany until May of 1940.  That was just before Germany invaded France and just after Germany invaded Norway.  When England finally realized it was in a real war, and they actually needed to fight, they looked for a war leader.  Winston Churchill replaced Neville Chamberlain as Prime Minister and the rest is history.

Barack Obama has declared war on the Republican Party.  He actually has been waging war on the Republican Party since day one.  But now, with the appointment of Susan Rice and with the stubborn refusal to even discuss dumping Eric Holder, the war has escalated.  Things have now reached the point where Republicans must either fight back or they must surrender. 

The first casualty of war should be the current Republican leadership.  It is patently obvious that the traditional Republican establishment, dominated by RINOs, has failed to even slow Obama down.  He has responded to their attempts at accommodation by publicly slapping them in the face and laughing at them.  It is increasingly difficult to imagine reaching a reasonable compromise with Barack Obama on any issue.  We desperately need strong new leaders to take control.  Don’t be surprised to see a new Speaker of the House and even Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell better step up his game or he will be gone too.  When you have to fight a war, you need a war leader.  None of the current Republican establishment need apply. 

The first requirement of a war leader is to find someone with the skill, character and courage to do the job.  My personal recommendation would be Ted Cruz.  He is smarter, by far, than the rest of them.  He has the skill set necessary to wage this kind of battle.  He is a brilliant trial attorney who has argued cases successfully in front of the U.S. Supreme Court.  He is a also solid hard core conservative and he will not back down from a fight.  Even those on the liberal left who hate his guts, fear him, as demonstrated in the following article: 

 http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2013/05/30/ted-cruz-is-turning-out-to-be-a-very-effective-demagogue/

This level of respect is rarely offered to a conservative Republican:

there’s no denying that in this interview, Cruz pulls this off very deftly. The new senator from Texas is turning out to be a highly skilled, highly effective demagogue, isn’t he?

One thing is clear.  A new leader will emerge and the final outcome will be significantly impacted by how well Republicans choose their leader.  The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.  A more current definition would be for Republicans to retain the same leadership and somehow expect better results.

TDM

I am beginning to suspect that Barack Obama is incapable of making a decision.  This would not surprise me, because I have known many people in positions of power who cannot make a decision.  These people typically ask for more and more information in a desperate hope that circumstances will make the decision for them.  Often they make the decision to not make a decision, which is usually the worst possible decision.

To those of you who are Downton Abbey fans, this scenario played out with regard to the youngest daughter.  She was showing symptoms of eclampsia.  The local doctor wanted to do an emergency C section, which he admitted was a high risk procedure.  The high-priced London doctor wanted to wait; because he wasn’t convinced she had eclampsia.  The delay in making a decision resulted in her becoming extremely ill to the point where there were no options.  She died shortly after giving birth, with the parents and the husband watching hopelessly wracked with guilt.

Sometimes, the situation demands a strong person willing to make a decision.  The President of the United States has a duty to make decisions.  But I can’t recall a single circumstance where President Obama made a tough call.  By all accounts, he didn’t approve the raid on Osama bin Laden until the last possible moment.  If sources are correct, he only made it then because he really didn’t have a choice.  We know that he definitely did not make a decision about Benghazi during the evening of September 11, 2012.  He couldn’t even make a decision on how to handle the fiscal cliff.  That is why Republicans, in an act of desperation, reached out to Joe Biden. 

I don’t think Obama is capable of making a decision about Eric Holder.  I think he will just ignore the problem and hope that the decision is made for him.  He will wait until Republicans have some smoking gun evidence so overpowering that Obama will have no choice.  At this point, I am not even sure that Obama has made the decision to make a decision.  That is what makes this situation so difficult to predict and so potentially dangerous for the President. 

Every administration has a lot of palace intrigue.  Dick Cheney and Colin Powell were definitely at odds and Cheney even mixed it up with Condoleezza Rice.  But in the Bush administration, everyone knew that George W. Bush would make the final decision.  No one questioned who was in charge.

I am sure there is at least as much turmoil within the Obama administration and this is exacerbated by Obama’s inability to make a decision.  We are already starting to see leaks by people who want Holder to resign.  Other people are desperately lobbying Obama to keep Holder.  There appears to be a strong contingent in the White House that doesn’t think there is a problem.  The least likely outcome is a bold and decisive move by Obama.  It just isn’t in his character.

Those who cannot make decisions, have decisions forced upon them.  I don’t think this Republican congress can tolerate Holder remaining in office.  The Republican base will come unglued if that happens.  Holder clearly misrepresented the truth in his testimony before congress.  However I am sure Republicans would really rather not get into a word parsing contest to determine whether or not this amounted to perjury.  But they may not have a choice, because neither the White House nor Holder is willing to admit that this was even an error.

Unless Holder resigns sooner, rather than later, we are probably headed toward a constitutional crisis.  Most administrations have found a way to avoid this type of constitutional challenge.  But if Obama cannot bring himself to make a decision, Republicans may have no alternative but to challenge him.  If this is allowed to escalate it may be difficult, if not impossible, for either side to back down.

TDM

Watching the mess in Washington DC these days reminds me of the song from the Thomas Crown Affair, “The Windmills of Your Mind.”  A couple of the lines seem very appropriate to describe the current Washington Merry-go-round:

Round like a circle in a spiral
Like a wheel within a wheel
Never ending or beginning
On an ever-spinning reel

Like a tunnel that you follow
To a tunnel of its own
Down a hollow to a cavern
Where the sun has never shone

Barack Obama appears to be caught in a time warp.  He can neither move forward or backward.  He desperately needs to fire Eric Holder, but he also desperately needs Holder to stay in office. 

The investigation of Eric Holder has been assigned to Eric Holder.  If there is to be a Special Counsel, he or she would be appointed by Holder.  The FBI probe of the IRS scandal was ordered by Holder.  The one man we must be able to trust is the one man who cannot be trusted.   

Did Holder commit perjury?  I don’t know.  It depends on how generous one wants to be in parsing his testimony.   Could a skilled lawyer make an argument that this wasn’t precisely perjury?  The answer is yes.  It is similar to when Bill Clinton tried to explain his lie by saying it depends on the meaning of the word “is.”  The sad reality is that the testimony Holder gave was extremely deceptive.  We are left to wonder whether this was the result of mere incompetence or perjury.  Ultimately it doesn’t matter.  In either case, this is not someone we can trust.

Michael Gerson nailed this in his May 29, 2013 opinion in the Washington Post:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/michael-gerson-eric-holders-tenure-marked-by-incompetence/2013/05/29/f570e7ba-c881-11e2-9245-773c0123c027_story.html

Forcing Holder to resign really matters.  It is not that getting rid of Holder would solve all problems.  It won’t.  It is rather that Holder is the one person in the administration who probably knows where the bodies are buried.   

If Holder goes Obama will have to appoint someone acceptable to both parties as a replacement.  He will have to appoint someone with a reputation for honesty and integrity.  Even if he appoints someone like Deval Patrick, which is the latest rumor, that may really change things.  Deval Patrick is a liberal Democrat and a strong supporter of Obama, but unlike Obama he is a man of legitimate accomplishment.  Patrick actually has the kind of academic credentials that are falsely attributed to Obama.    

I don’t know if Patrick would be the choice to replace Holder, but that is at least a rumor.

http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2013/05/report-obama-eyes-deval-patrick-to-replace-holder/

If you want to understand Deval Patrick, you need to look at the case of Benjamin LaGuer.

http://www.freebennow.org/

Patrick even contributed $5,000 for DNA testing that most people thought would clear LaGuer.  Instead the DNA evidence confirmed his guilt.  Significantly, Patrick stopped supporting the release of LaGuer when he learned the facts.

He has also done something Eric Holder could never do, he has admitted mistakes.  He made a call on behalf of Citigroup,and at first tried to defend it by saying he was calling as a private citizen, not a governor.  He later backed down and said:  ”I appreciate that I should not have made the call.  I regret the mistake.”  The point is that at least with Patrick there appears to be a line he simply will not cross.  There is no such line with Holder.

In the meantime we are caught in the Windmills of the Mind  always circling back to Eric Holder.  Almost any alternative would be better than this. 

TDM

The liberal left is desperately trying to save Eric Holder.  That should be no surprise, because he is the primary defender of Barack Obama.  This is really sad.  The Attorney General is supposed to be the most ethical member of the cabinet.  This is the person who is supposed to uphold the law.  Instead he is either hopelessly incompetent or a deliberate liar.

Here is exactly what Holder said:

HOLDER: Well, I would say this: With regard to the potential prosecution of the press for the disclosure of material, that is not something that I’ve ever been involved in, heard of, or would think would be a wise policy. In fact, my view is quite the opposite that, what I proposed during my confirmation, what the Obama administration supported during 2009 and I understand — I think Senator Schumer is now introducing a bill that we are going to support, as well — that the press should be — should have — there should be a shield law with regard to the press’s ability to the gather information and to disseminate it.

The — because the focus should be on those people who break their oaths and put the American people at risk, not reporters who gather this information. That should not be the focus of these investigations. [House Judiciary Committee hearing, 5/15/13, via Nexis]

Media matters, one of those tax exempt organizations not targeted by the I.R.S. is trying desperately to pretend this is not perjury.  The logic in the following article is pretty tortured, even for Media matters:

http://mediamatters.org/research/2013/05/28/fox-news-gets-its-flawed-holder-perjury-investi/194244

Of course if you start any article by bad mouthing Fox News a certain segment of the liberal left will be too busy applauding to bother reading the rest of the article.  The problem with this analysis is that it would require the entire White House Press Corps to be terminally stupid to buy this nonsense.  More and more of them have turned on Holder.  Holder called an off-the-record meeting with the White House Press Corps and they told him no.

Holder’s statement is hard to explain because it was an incredibly dumb thing to say.  If he knew that warrant was going to be released one would at least expect a better lie.  This is pathetic.   I don’t think Holder knew the DOJ was about to release a copy of the warrant with his signature.

That may be an indication that there are some people in the DOJ who are fed up with this and they released these documents without bothering to kiss the ring.  These are U.S. Attorneys and they knew exactly what would happen.  Media matters may not recognize a perjury trap, but a U.S. Attorney sure would.   The DOJ is famous for selective leaks.  Perhaps, just perhaps, someone leaked the ultimate back at yah.

TDM

President Obama ended the Iraq war by declaring war fatigue.  There was no pretense of victory or even accomplishment.  It just ended because people were sick of it.  Then he used the same technique to end the “necessary war” in Afghanistan.  According to Obama all wars must eventually end, so he will declare that one over too.  Once again there was no pretense of victory or accomplishment.  Last week he declared the war on terror to be over.  Obama believes that because Osama bin Laden is dead, that war is over too. 

He didn’t try to win the war in Iraq or Afghanistan.  He didn’t even try to win the war against terrorism.  Instead, he just changed the name.  He claimed that the war against terror has been won, because it is no longer possible to have a terrorist attack.  As long as he denies defining events as terrorist attacks, there can be no terrorist attacks, so he can claim victory.

This is how Obama plans to deal with all these scandals.  He refuses to consider them scandals.  If he doesn’t call them scandals, they can’t actually be scandals.  Later, after months of delay, he will declare an end to scandals because everyone has scandal fatigue. 

This probably would have worked if the scandals were just about money or even sex.  This might even have worked if it was just about Benghazi.  The news media and the liberal left were already willing to ignore Benghazi.  But this time because we have the I.R.S. auditing people for political purposes and we have the DOJ calling reporters criminal co-conspirators.  No one likes the I.R.S. and the press is stupid, but not that stupid. 

He can and will still lie and pretend that the economy is doing ok.  His friends in the media will still chime in with support. He can and will still lie and pretend that our foreign policy is somehow secretly successful.  His friends will back him on that too.  But no one is pretending that the scandals represent anything resembling success.  At best, they are evidence of gross incompetence.  At worst?  His friends are reduced to saying he is not evil, just stupid.  It is really bad when your best defense is that you were merely oblivious.

 Yes, we will soon develop scandal fatigue.  Obama is right about that.  But the country will develop a severe case of Obama fatigue long before that happens.  Who knows what will happen with regard to any of these scandals.  We are soon to enter the finger pointing stage where politicians scream blame at each other.  The Republicans seem to have the upper hand, but they have a long history of botching things up and they could easily snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.  It is hard to predict the final outcome.  But we do know one thing.  We know that Barack Obama is a total failure as a leader.  Being oblivious may keep him in office, but it won’t keep him in power.  The real question is who or what will replace him.

 TDM

Peter Morici is a well-respected professor at the University of Maryland.  He is frequently featured on all the networks, including CNN, CBS, BBC, ABC, ABC, CNBS, NPR, NPB and FOX.  That makes his article from United Press International all the more devastating for Obama:

http://www.upi.com/Top_News/Analysis/Outside-View/2013/05/23/Outside-View-The-IRS-scandal-smoking-gun/UPI-57631369281780/?spt=hs&or=an

He points out the obvious.  President Obama issued an unprecedented executive order in 2009 that allows the union to have pre-decisional involvement in all workplace matters.  This is the same union that solicits contributions from members to campaign against the Tea Party.  The results were inevitable.  Obama didn’t have to suggest anything, he knew what would happen. 

The president isn’t uninformed or incompetent — he is cynical and corrupt.

We didn’t know that he was so lacking in moral fiber and self-restraint when we elected him because as a senator, both in Illinois and Washington, he spent most of his time running for higher office. We never observed him exercising discretion and dealing with tough choices as a legislator or executive.

Having chosen him in haste, the nation can repent at its leisure.

Things are so bad that even the Chicago Tribune is now calling for a Special Prosecutor:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/editorials/ct-edit-irs-20130523,0,7599948.story

The Tribune endorsed Obama for re-election in October of 2012.

The Attorney General of the United States is the only one who can appoint a special prosecutor.  What a mess.  How do we recover from corruption from the Cabinet office that is most responsible to uphold the law?  Would you trust Eric Holder to investigate this administration?  Would you trust anyone appointed by Eric Holder to investigate this administration?  I really don’t see how anyone could have much faith in Holder at this point.  Even the Huffington Post has recommended that Holder resign.  The following article shows how quickly support for Holder is evaporating:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/23/eric-holder-fox-news-james-rosen-warrant_n_3328663.html

A lot of us thought Holder should have been fired years ago.  I won’t bore people with the long list of problems.  But last week, under oath, Holder said the following:

http://www.whitehousedossier.com/2013/05/24/holder-commit-perjury-week/

With regard to potential prosecution of the press for the disclosure of material, that is not something I’ve ever been involved in, heard of, or would think would be wise policy. In fact, my view is quite the opposite

When Holder lied before that House Committee last week he was being questioned by Hank Johnson, Democrat from Georgia. Johnson was trying to make the case that Holder would have some justification in investigating the AP.  It was clearly a line of questioning trying to be favorable to Holder.  At the end Johnson yielded his remaining time to Holder, which is when Holder told the big lie.

It is now confirmed that Holder personally approved the Warrant for James Rosen’s e-mails.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/05/24/holder-probing-holder-obama-orders-doj-review-over-search-warrant-ag-likely/

One would think the end is near for Holder.  Even liberals and Democrats are deserting him after this.   But, there is a problem.  Obama can neither afford to keep him nor afford to lose him.  So far Obama has been pretty much in-your-face about all these scandals.  He may continue to defy everyone and declare that Holder stays and that he trusts Holder to do the investigation.

Some wise folks would tell him that he risks a full scale constitutional crisis, but that still may not deter Obama.  Democrats, particularly Obama, believe that the American people punished Republicans for impeaching Bill Clinton.  They believe that Republicans will blink before engaging in a full scale constitutional conflict with Obama.  I think they are right about Republicans, but if Obama continues on the current path, they will eventually have no choice.

In any event, we have a tasty Morici and this is a very serious blow to Obmaa.

 TDM