For several weeks, Donald Trump has been warning that the 2016 presidential elections could be “rigged.” Despite significant criticism from some Republicans and many Democrats, he continued that line of attack in his first major ad release of the general election.

The “rigged” claim is common on both sides of the aisle — and sometimes it’s even accurate, like the e-mail scandal that proved the Democratic National Committee intentionally set up the Democratic presidential primary for Hillary Clinton. Likewise, President Barack Obama may have won re-election in 2012 thanks to his IRS’ targeting of Tea Party activists.

Democrats used similar terms language quite judiciously after the 2000 election, and apparently in the mind of Secretary of State John Kerry, he lost the 2004 election thanks to voter fraud.

Whether Trump is serious about his rigging claim or not, it’s certainly a valid concern in light his opponent’s e-mail scandals and Clinton Foundation donor questions. Most people would be in jail but Clinton is well on her way to victory in November, helped by Obama himself.

Indeed, according to Obama, on August 4 that Trump’s claims about a “rigged” 2016 election, especially in Pennsylvania, are “ridiculous.”

“If Mr Trump is suggesting a conspiracy theory that is being propagated across the country … that’s ridiculous,” the president said. “It doesn’t make sense and I don’t think anyone would take that seriously.”

The New York Times apparently agrees, as does a prominent Vanity Fair writer and several other leading voices. They’ve all declared cries of rigged elections to be outside the bounds of decent speech.

But that wasn’t the case when it was convenient for the current resident of the White House. As highlighted in a neat montage by Grabien, the same man who describes rigging of an election to be “ridiculous” once decried advantages given to a special few with regards to income and power in politics. Obama also decried “massive campaign checks,” people being “pushed away from participating in our system,” and more.

Perhaps the greatest example of Obama’s hypocrisy is his attack on the U.S. Supreme Court at the 2010 State of the Union address. Obama warned that “foreign enemies” might be able to buy domestic influence — ironically some of the same concerns conservatives have today as Saudi Arabia and other nations have contributed millions to the Clinton Foundation.

Six-and-a-half years ago, Obama was concerned about corruption in politics caused by money. Yet today, he considers such concerns to be inappropriate. To quote his former adviser David Axelrod in the Grabien clip, “the delegitimization of our institutions” by Trump is “dangerous.”

But sometimes institutions need to be attacked. Axelrod said “it is a very irresponsible thing to” delegitimize “the investigative justice system,” but what are self-serving candidates and actual patriots supposed to do when the FBI allows Clinton to skate free, possibly right into the White House?

In reality, the solution to concerns by Trump today and 2010’s Obama is the same: Reduce the power of politics and politicians.

As Senator Ted Cruz, R-Texas (A, 97%) pointed out two years ago, so-called “campaign finance reform” is a big weapon that both parties use to help their allies and to keep themselves in power. And right now, that’s what our system of politics incentivizes — politicians getting re-elected, and corporations, unions, and others using re-election to grease the proverbial skids.

If both parties were serious about really reducing the rigging of power, they would keep the U.S. federal government within the limits of the U.S. Constitution.

Once this happens, what incentive is there to buy an election? The politicians cannot help the special interests, and the politicians themselves would find far less value in elected office.

Is the system rigged against the non-rich? Yup. But that’s mostly thanks to bipartisan liberal policies like bank bailouts, auto bailouts, tax loopholes, corporate subsidies, and special interests like the pre-2015 Donald Trump. (For more from the author of “AWKWARD! Remember All Those Times Obama Blasted Our ‘Rigged’ System” please click HERE)

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It would be easy to spend an entire day comparing the media coverage of President Obama’s lack of interest in Louisiana during a natural disaster with their coverage of President Bush and the events surrounding Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Rob Eno reminded everybody of Bush’s response: He was there right away to survey the damage, and coordinate responses between state and local authorities. President Obama, on the other hand, has hardly put down his golf clubs while vacationing in Martha’s Vineyard last week.

And why should he, right? He’s not running for re-election so his attitude is, “Who cares?”

It may sound harsh, but what other reason could there be? The president has issued nary a statement on the events surrounding Louisiana, other than having the Justice Department release 16 pages of guidelines warning recipients of federal disaster assistance to not engage in discrimination.

The Red Cross says the flooding in Louisiana is the worst natural disaster in the U.S. since Hurricane Sandy. Ironically, President Obama’s reaction to that disaster, which happened during a tough re-election campaign in 2012, was far different.

The president made his first statement about Hurricane Sandy on October 29, the same day it first hit New Jersey. Two days later, President Obama landed in Atlantic City Airport and hopped on a helicopter with New Jersey Governor Chris Christie to survey the damage. Gov. Christie still hasn’t been able to escape the infamous Christie/Obama hug that showed a solemn Obama looking … presidential.

It allowed for a narrative to be crafted. While there was a mutual unwritten agreement between President Obama and Republican presidential nominee, Mitt Romney, to stop campaigning, Obama’s “presidential” tour of the storm-ravaged areas of New Jersey was his opportunity to campaign without actually campaigning. (For the record, Obama didn’t visit New York, which also suffered massive damage, until after the election.)

Hurricane Sandy was Obama’s “October surprise.” It allowed him to project a measure of leadership and calm that a president needs during a time of crisis. It is debatable as to whether or not it sealed the election for him as some have argued, but it certainly helped.

Yet four years later, there is a crisis in Louisiana, and Obama is nowhere to be found. The president has finally scheduled a visit to the state this Tuesday. After his vacation ends. What a sport. Regardless of what a president can or cannot do personally is irrelevant to the fact that people are encouraged when they believe their political leaders are looking out for them. In such times, party affiliation does not matter. Yet President Obama is more concerned with golfing, shopping, and going to the beach than cutting his trip short to visit a bunch of yokels in the red state of Louisiana.

It’s been a similar situation in Milwaukee. Obama relishes getting in front of the camera to wax poetic about “disparities” related to crime and interactions with police when there’s some political gain to be had or when he can inflame tensions between Americans even more than they already are. The police shooting in in Milwaukee sparked two days of violent riots, but the president didn’t say a word. Why? Three reasons:

1. The victim, Sylville Smith, was armed with a stolen gun. He has a misdemeanor conviction for carrying a concealed weapon.

2. According to “witnesses,” Smith was shot in the back. The medical examiner, however, says Smith was shot in the arm and chest.

3. The officer who shot Smith, Dominique Heaggan, is also black and was wearing a body camera.

There simply is no political hay to be made from this shooting. That has undoubtedly contributed to President Obama’s silence on the matter.

Political opportunism and narcissism are hallmark traits of President Obama’s tenure. Now that he is five months away from leaving office, it’s safe to say his “leadership” will be non-existent unless it helps to serve him in some manner. (For more from the author of “The Easy Answer to Why Obama Hasn’t Been to Louisiana or Milwaukee” please click HERE)

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Arguing that internet freedom and the constitutional power of the purse are at risk, a coalition of more than two dozen civil society groups and activists are calling on Congress to lawyer up and sue the Obama administration.

The Commerce Department has violated federal law, the coalition of groups argued in an Aug. 10 letter to lawmakers, by finalizing plans to relinquish U.S. control of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority.

Though led by digital specific interest group TechFreedom, the coalition includes a number of different organizations like Heritage Action for America and Americans for Tax Reform. And they all argue that more than just internet regulation is at issue.

In policy riders attached to two separate spending bills, Congress prohibited the executive branch from using taxpayer funding to surrender control of the internet. By using government resources to prepare to hand off control this September, the coalition argues that the administration violated the spending directive and federal law. Now they want Congress to sue.

“We agree that internet governance should work from the bottom up, driven by the global community of private sector, civil society, and technical stakeholders,” the coalition wrote. “Without robust safeguards though, internet governance could fall under the sway of governments hostile to freedoms protected by the First Amendment.”

A California nonprofit is invested with what’s called Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, IANA, allowing it to curate a registry of the world’s websites.

That body, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, has operated under direct supervision of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration since 1998.

But the Obama administration announced two years ago that it intended to transfer that stewardship to a “global multi-stakeholder community.” Though Congress has acted twice to stop that effort, the administration moved forward with the transition plan.

U.S. supervision of ICANN and IANA is set to expire Sept. 30 and government officials argue that Congress only prohibited them from completing the transaction before that deadline.

After consulting “informally with both the House and the Senate” last year, a National Telecommunications and Information Administration administrator, Lawrence Strickling, concluded that Congress had not intended to leave the agency “like our hands are tied.”

“That’s not how our system works,” The Heritage Foundation’s Brett Schaefer, who also signed the Aug. 10 letter, told The Daily Signal. “Because there are check and balances, Congress has exercised a check by adopting that appropriations rider and the president signed it into law.”

Now Schaefer accuses “the administration of trying to circumvent the law” by moving forward with the transition.

Republicans have made similar arguments before. The party’s 2016 platform accuses President Barack Obama of “throwing the internet to the wolves” by sanctioning the transition. And several Republican senators and representatives publicly oppose it.

Rep. Bob Goodlatte of Virginia and Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, who chair the House and Senate Judiciary committees, respectively, came out in opposition to the transfer this June, citing unanswered legal, constitutional, and human rights questions.

“The U.S. has served as a critical and responsible backstop against censorship and threats to openness and free speech on the internet. As a result, the internet has thrived,” Goodlatte told The Daily Signal. “The future of the internet as a medium for free speech, the flow of ideas, and global commerce is at stake, and must be protected.”

But under the Obama administration’s plan, Goodlatte said he’s “extremely concerned” about the future of the World Wide Web.

To halt the transition, the TechFreedom-led coalition urged congressional leaders to file suit against the White House like Republicans did in 2014 while challenging provisions of Obamacare.

“Suing to enforce the appropriations riders and extending it through [fiscal year] 2017 are amply justified by the extraordinary importance of the constitutional principle at stake,” the coalition letter said.

Berin Szóka, president of TechFreedom, argued that that inaction could do irreparable harm to Congress and the Constitution.

“If they don’t stand up for themselves here, they will regret it in the future,” Szóka told The Daily Signal. “Future congresses will find that the power of the purse has been diminished and there’s one fewer restraint upon the power of the imperial presidency.” (For more from the author of “Coalition Urges Congress to Sue Obama Before He Gives Away Control of Internet” please click HERE)

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