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The Failed Presidency of Barack Obama

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Photo Credit: The Federalist The events of the past week illustrate the degree to which Barack Obama has become a failed president.

When Obama burst onto the national scene, he almost immediately became an inspirational figure. His promise spoke to our hearts as Americans and our desire for dramatic change in the wake of the fractious Bush years. His personal story and his optimism about the future sounded an affirming and uplifting note at a time when Americans were losing their hope for what tomorrow could bring. For a moment, it seemed like the promise of a uniter, not a divider, could provide leadership which – whatever Obama’s personal ideology – could lead to a healthier politics and a less fractured society.

Obama’s tenure in office has turned all these hopes into despair – despair in the corruption of our institutions, in the capability of our government, in our ability to manage large systems and more. Consider just the events of the past few days: the slow-rolling scandal of how we care for our Veterans, full of mismanagement, denials, and a growing awareness that this problem was shoved under the rug for years; the White House’s decision to embark on a top-down monopartisan environmental policy which will squeeze the working class and make energy more expensive; and of course, Obama’s decision to trade five high ranking terrorists for an apparent American deserter in Afghanistan, a decision which directly ignores the law of the land and will almost certainly lead to future deaths.

In these arenas, we see the Obama administration at its worst: willing to engage in irresponsible and occasionally illegal acts, bowling their way through mismanagement and cronyism and the rule of law to achieve their aims, no matter the cost. It is the same approach they used in his single domestic policy achievement – Obamacare – and they have not stopped using it since.

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Ted Cruz: The Imperial Presidency of Barack Obama

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Photo Credit: Reuters

Photo Credit: Reuters

Of all the troubling aspects of the Obama presidency, none is more dangerous than the president’s persistent pattern of lawlessness, his willingness to disregard the written law and instead enforce his own policies via executive fiat. On Monday, Mr. Obama acted unilaterally to raise the minimum wage paid by federal contracts, the first of many executive actions the White House promised would be a theme of his State of the Union address Tuesday night.

The president’s taste for unilateral action to circumvent Congress should concern every citizen, regardless of party or ideology. The great 18th-century political philosopher Montesquieu observed: “There can be no liberty where the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person, or body of magistrates.” America’s Founding Fathers took this warning to heart, and we should too.

Rule of law doesn’t simply mean that society has laws; dictatorships are often characterized by an abundance of laws. Rather, rule of law means that we are a nation ruled by laws, not men. That no one—and especially not the president—is above the law. For that reason, the U.S. Constitution imposes on every president the express duty to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.”

Yet rather than honor this duty, President Obama has openly defied it by repeatedly suspending, delaying and waiving portions of the laws he is charged to enforce. When Mr. Obama disagreed with federal immigration laws, he instructed the Justice Department to cease enforcing the laws. He did the same thing with federal welfare law, drug laws and the federal Defense of Marriage Act.

On many of those policy issues, reasonable minds can disagree. Mr. Obama may be right that some of those laws should be changed. But the typical way to voice that policy disagreement, for the preceding 43 presidents, has been to work with Congress to change the law. If the president cannot persuade Congress, then the next step is to take the case to the American people. As President Reagan put it: “If you can’t make them see the light, make them feel the heat” of electoral accountability.

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Pentagon Can’t Afford Syria Operation; Must Seek Additional Funds

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

The U.S. military, struggling after defense cuts of tens of billions of dollars, will be unable to pay for attacks on Syria from current operating funds and must seek additional money from Congress, according to congressional aides.

President Barack Obama, meanwhile, said on Friday he has not made a final decision on a military strike against Syria. He sought to play down both the scope and duration of the anticipated punitive missile and bombing campaign.

“As you’ve seen, today we’ve released our unclassified assessment detailing with high confidence that the Syrian regime carried out a chemical weapons attack that killed well over a thousand people, including hundreds of children,” Obama said.

The president said the use of the deadly weapons had violated international “norms” and that action was needed to prevent the further use of the arms.

A future military operation would not involve troops on the ground as part of a long-term campaign, Obama said. “But we are looking at the possibility of a limited, narrow act that would help make sure that not only Syria but others around the world understands that the international community cares about maintaining this chemical weapons ban and norm,” he said.

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Judicial Tyranny? FISA Courts Fashioning Their Own Rules, In Secret, to Spy on Every American

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Photo Credit: Washington Post

Photo Credit: Washington Post

Wedged into a secure, windowless basement room deep below the Capitol Visitors Center, U.S. District Court Judge John Bates appeared before dozens of senators earlier this month for a highly unusual, top-secret briefing.

The lawmakers pressed Bates, according to people familiar with the session, to discuss the inner workings of the United States’ clandestine terrorism surveillance tribunal, which Bates oversaw from 2006 until earlier this year.

Bates had rarely spoken of his sensitive work. He reluctantly agreed to appear at the behest of Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who arranged the session after new disclosures that the court had granted the government broad access to millions of Americans’ telephone and Internet communications.

The two-hour meeting on June 13 featuring Bates and two top spy agency officials — prompted by reports days earlier by The Washington Post and Britain’s Guardian newspaper about the vast reach of the programs — reflects a new and uncomfortable reality for the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and its previously obscure members. Within the past month, lawmakers have begun to ask who the court’s judges are, what they do, why they have almost never declined a government surveillance request and why their work is so secretive.

The public is getting a peek into the little-known workings of a powerful and mostly invisible government entity. And it is seeing a court whose secret rulings have in effect created a body of law separate from the one on the books — one that gives U.S. spy agencies the authority to collect bulk information about Americans’ medical care, firearms purchases, credit card usage and other interactions with business and commerce, according to Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.).

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Congressman to Holder: ‘Throw the President Under the Bus’

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Photo Credit: Breitbart In an exclusive interview with Breitbart News, Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) unloaded on Attorney General Eric Holder, offering up the possibility that the nation’s top law enforcement official may turn on President Barack Obama and shed light on one or several of the many scandals facing the White House.

“Here’s your chance, Eric: You can throw the president under the bus, too, just like he’s going to throw you under the bus,” Gosar, a member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, said in the phone interview.

Gosar has previously called for Holder’s resignation. He introduced a resolution, which attracted many cosponsors, demanding Holder’s immediate resignation as a result of Operation Fast and Furious. He told Breitbart News he is currently “pushing” his resolution calling for Holder’s immediate resignation “hard.”

“We want his job,” Gosar said. “We have had renewed interest already.”

Calls for Holder’s resignation have resurfaced in recent days, and mainstream media outlets have come to call Obama’s top cop “embattled.” A report from the Chicago Sun Times suggests that President Obama is considering naming Deval Patrick, the Democratic governor of Massachusetts, to replace Holder. Patrick’s name has been mentioned for other cabinet positions, including Attorney General.

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Natalie Holloway Forensic Profiler: Obama “Harbors Evil Intentions,” Claims Situation Precarious for America

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Photo Credit: WND

A forensic profiler who worked on the disappearance of Natalie Holloway and the double-murder case against O.J. Simpson says he is becoming alarmed by some of the references President Obama is using…

Hodges noted that even activists on the left have expressed concern. Medea Benjamin, co-founder of the left-wing Code Pink, in a recent WABC radio interview with host Aaron Klein, called the potential abuse by the Obama administration’s huge domestic police power “extremely troubling.”

“Recall Obama’s earlier words which, importantly, he made spontaneously, strongly pointing toward an unconscious confession. ‘We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded [as the military].’

“What exactly was he thinking and why? Undeniably this was extreme: a civilian force just as well funded and strong as our military – implying majorly armed. The question is what exactly was Obama secretly confessing about his future plans? His unconscious super intelligence suggests a warning from a very dangerous Obama,” Hodges contends.

The violent imagery Obama used in his first inaugural stunned Hodges. He cited “sacrifices borne by our ancestors,” “perils we can scarcely imagine,” “stained with blood,” “earlier generations faced down fascism …with missiles and tanks … and enduring convictions.”

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President Obama’s Naive Foreign Policy Unravels As A “Tiny Country” Threatens Us With Nukes

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Photo Credit: IrishCentral

Four years ago a newly minted President Obama assured us we had very little to fear in his new world of foreign policy. There was no longer a Soviet Union that could threaten our very existence and besides, as a Nobel Peace Prize winner he had the moral authority to reset our foreign policy….to make America loved, rather than feared. Unlike it had been during the Bush administration.

He proclaimed that Iran, Cuba and North Korea were tiny countries and wouldn’t be able to resist his charm offensive coupled with a beer summit.

In order to show the utmost self confidence in his ability to change the world, President Obama acquiesced to the Russians and didn’t install planned anti missile defenses in Eastern Europe aimed at incoming missiles from Iran. He also cancelled/delayed planned deployment of anti missile shields on our own soil leaving us wide open and unprotected

But after over 4 years of the Obama foreign policy/charm offensive, the administration is feverishly trying to deploy the very missile shields it cancelled 4 years ago. These shields were designed to thwart incoming nuke missiles from the tiny country of North Korea. 14 anti missile batteries are being rushed into place in Alaska, along with other measures previously rejected by Obama in other parts of the world.

Four years of dithering and charm offensive have let Iran and North Korea go forward virtually unchecked in their nuclear ambitions. Now those chickens are starting to come home to roost.

Last week North Korea cancelled the armistice it had with South Korea and declared their right to launch a preemptive nuclear strike on the US in retaliation for new sanctions imposed on them.

North Korea has already thumbed its nose at Obama by conducting underground nuclear explosions and successfully launched a missile capable of striking the US….All of this in the face of “stern” threats from the paper tiger Obama administration.

Ominously, in the other tiny country of Iran, the acquisition of much faster centrifuges will speed up the time it takes to get them enough enriched uranium for nuclear weapons…again all of this in the face of “stern” threats and trade sanctions from the Obama administration.

Buried in the press a few months back was the report that Iran had suffered an accident at one of their nuclear sites. The accident killed several of their scientists, but reportedly killed a few North Korean scientists as well.

President Obama: Today even tiny nuclear armed countries can have the ability to ruin our day, not by just lobbing nuclear missiles at us, but by spreading those weapons to terrorists and other rogue, tiny countries around the world. It’s time you take the rose colored glasses off. In this world it is far better and safer to be feared and respected, rather than trying to be liked.

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Ed Farnan is the conservative columnist at IrishCentral, where he has been writing on the need for energy independence, strong self defense, secure borders, 2nd amendment, smaller government and many other issues. His articles appear in many publications throughout the USA and world. He has been a guest on Fox News and a regular guest on radio stations in the US and Europe.

All of a Sudden, the President Says We Don’t Have a Debt Crisis

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Photo Credit: Llima

Presto, change-o! At the beginning of the year, we were sternly lectured that huge tax increases were absolutely necessary to confront our looming debt crisis. America was driven to the edge of the “fiscal cliff,” ostensibly producing business panic that explained a fair measure of Barack Obama’s permanent economic malaise, by the President’s refusal to budge an inch from his demands for those deficit-fighting tax increases.

During the previous years, the President insisted that this “payroll tax cut,” funded by a raid on Social Security, was the vital ingredient to American economic survival. He asked citizens to send him their horror stories about how losing $60 in higher taxes from each paycheck would ruin their lives. But at the end of 2012, Obama let this supposedly crucial tax cut die without saying one single word in its defense. I mean that literally – he made absolutely no effort to protect it during “fiscal cliff” negotiations. The urgency of deficit reduction through tax increases was simply too great!

Throughout the 2012 campaign, every proposal for growth-inspiring tax cuts, and every serious effort at reforming America’s embarrassing tax system – from Mitt Romney’s relatively modest proposals, through the flat tax ideas advanced by Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich, to Herman Cain’s “999 Plan” – was savagely denounced by the President and his team because they would supposedly risk increasing the deficit. A fraudulent study supposedly “proving” that Romney’s plan didn’t “add up” was endlessly cited by the Obama campaign, even after its authors admitted it was bunkum. The same argument is invariably advanced by liberals whenever ideas like the Flat Tax, Fair Tax, or even small tax rate reductions are suggested. The possibility (indeed, to any serious student of economics, absolute certainty) of increased government revenue from the combination of lower rates and higher economic output – a smaller slice of a larger pie – is dismissed out of hand. We simply cannot risk adding a single dollar to the deficit by reducing the tax burden on American consumers and businesses!

But all of a sudden, Barack Obama sat for an interview with George Stephanopoulos of ABC News and breezily asserted that “we don’t have an immediate crisis in terms of debt.”

Well– I understand. Which is why, at some point, I think I take myself out of this. Right now, what I’m trying to do is create an atmosphere where Democrats and Republicans can go ahead, get together, and try to get something done. And, y– you know– I think what’s important to recognize is that– we’ve already cut– $2.5– $2.7 trillion out of the deficit. If the sequester stays in, you’ve got over $3.5 trillion of deficit reduction already.

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House Republicans Meet The New, Same Old President Obama

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Photo Credit: AP

After years of pining for more face time with the president, House Republicans found out Wednesday that Barack Obama looks and sounds the same behind closed doors as he does on TV.

That’s not to say they didn’t appreciate the personal touches — gentle banter, praise for some of their ideas and handshakes all around afterward — but the president’s rare meeting with House Republicans in the basement of the Capitol yielded little in the way of movement on either side of the partisan divide. It’s the first time the president has met with the House GOP since 2011.

Obama still won’t take any big risks on entitlement reform unless Republicans agree to raise taxes again, he declined to say whether he would approve the Keystone XL pipeline, and he still won’t slash discretionary spending. Within a couple of hours of leaving the Capitol, Obama issued a threat to veto a job-training bill championed by House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.).

So much for the bipartisan note Obama struck in his closing remarks. Or, as some House Republicans concluded as they shuffled out of the meeting room: Meet the new president, same as the old president.

“I heard what the president had to say. I’ve heard it before,” said Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), who has had his share of failed negotiations with the White House. “I thought it was good for all of our members to hear it, so they have an understanding of where he’s coming from. We’ve got big problems in our country — they need to be addressed, we’re willing to get them addressed. I hope the president continues his outreach.”

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Obama Rejected Tough Options For Countering Chinese Cyber Attacks Two Years Ago

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Photo Credit: Charles Dharapak

President Obama two years ago rejected a series of tough actions against China, including counter-cyber attacks and economic sanctions, for Beijing’s aggressive campaign of cyber espionage against the U.S. government and private businesses networks, according to administration officials.

Meanwhile, China recently issued a veiled threat to the United States about U.S. accusations of Chinese military cyber espionage. China told U.S. officials that continued U.S. public accusations of cyber espionage would render future bilateral discussions unproductive during recent U.S.-China talks following the release of a security firm’s report linking the Chinese military to cyber spying.

On plans to deter Chinese cyber attacks, senior administration officials turned down a series of tough options designed to dissuade China from further attacks that were developed over a three-month period beginning in August 2011.
According to administration officials familiar with internal discussions, the options were dismissed as too disruptive of U.S.-China relations.

The president’s closest advisers feared that taking action would potentially undermine U.S. relations with China, a major economic trading partner that currently has holdings of $1.2 trillion in Treasury debt, the officials told the Free Beacon. Government security and military officials under the White House Interagency Policy Committee, a working group directly supporting the National Security Council, developed the options.

The committee is made up of representatives from the Pentagon, intelligence community, law enforcement, homeland security, and foreign affairs agencies.

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