By Tom Tancredo Source: The Washington Times, editorial by Tom Tancredo
Excerpts from the editorial:
I’ve always thought it significant that the Founders included domestic enemies in that oath of office. They thought liberty was as much at risk from threats within our borders as from outside, and French political thinker and historian Alexis de Tocqueville agreed with that warning.
In the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the greatest threat to our nation was clear - and foreign. While Islamic terrorism still represents the greatest external threat to America and American lives, the avowed program of the Obama regime has changed the picture in a fundamental way.
For the first time in American history, we have a man in the White House who consciously and brazenly disregards his oath of office to protect and defend the Constitution. That’s why I say the greatest threat to our Constitution, our safety and our liberties, is internal. Our president is an enemy of our Constitution, and, as such, he is a danger to our safety, our security and our personal freedoms.
Barack Obama is one of the most powerful presidents this nation has seen in generations. He is powerful because he is supported by large majorities in Congress, but, more importantly, because he does not feel constrained by the rule of law.
Mr. Obama’s paramount goal, as he so memorably put it during his campaign in 2008, is to “fundamentally transform America.” He has not proposed improving America - he is intent on changing its most essential character.
Yes, Mr. Obama is a more serious threat to America than al Qaeda. We know that Osama bin Laden and followers want to kill us, but at least they are an outside force against whom we can offer our best defense. But when a dedicated enemy of the Constitution is working from the inside, we face a far more dangerous threat. Mr. Obama can accomplish with the stroke of his pen what bin Laden cannot accomplish with bombs and insurgents.
Mr. Obama’s most egregious and brazen betrayal of our Constitution was his statement to Sen. Jon Kyl, Arizona Republican, that the administration will not enforce security on our southern border because that would remove Republicans’ desire to negotiate a “comprehensive” immigration bill. That is, to put it plainly, a decision that by any reasonable standard constitutes an impeachable offense against the Constitution. For partisan political advantage, he is willfully disregarding his obligation under Article IV, Section 4 of the Constitution to protect states from foreign invasion.
Mr. Tancredo goes on to make the argument that Obama is impeachable because of his refusal to protect the United States from foreign invasion. You can read the whole story here..
Comment by American Grand Jury:
Impeachment is a classic view from those that still don’t grasp the crux of the issue. Obama is not a legitimate president. He is not a “natural born” citizen and was never qualified to even run on the ballot. Obama was legally challenged on this “long” before he was elected. The Courts have done nothing but stall, sweep it under the rug and generally rule against the Constitution.
Obama needs to be removed by rule of law, not impeached. However, if our uninformed American public can’t get their minds around any other concept than impeachment I guess it will have to suffice. Impeachment will bring up the eligibility issue in a Congressional trial setting. The biggest downside is the word “Congressional.” These criminals are not about to bury one of their own — however, the herd that will arrive after the election could make things very uncomfortable for ZERO. Time will tell.
The good news: The Washington Times is rated one of the top newspapers in the world. They are credible, even with many conservatives. This is still an editorial but such a story will resonate in all in Washington. Obama has to be pissed! That my friends, is worth is weight in gold.
 PS.. the Times even had this illustration
posted with the article..
By Jeffrey FolksSource: American Thinker website
Lack of real-world experience may actually be the primary criterion for employment in the Obama White House. Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner, for example, has no work experience outside government. He joined the Department of Treasury in 1988, three years after graduating from college and traveling about Asia, and he has continued in government service ever since. Lawrence Summers, Geithner’s invisible twin on the economic team, has no more experience than Geithner. His entire work experience can be summed up in a few words: professor, World Bank advisor, government employee. Even more limited is the experience of Cass Sunstein, regulatory czar and close friend of the president. His resume can be inscribed on a postage stamp: professor, 1981 to present.
Then there are the hardcore politicos whose relation to the private sector is not just distant, but hostile. Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s Chief of Staff, worked on the Illinois U.S. senate campaign of Paul Simon even before completing his university education. From there he moved to the Daley mayoral campaign in 1989 and the Clinton White House in 1993.
For his part, David Axelrod, Obama’s closest political advisor, has spent his entire career in the world of Democratic politics. Beginning as a political writer for the Chicago Tribune, he soon established himself as an independent consultant, serving on the campaigns of such leftist luminaries as John Edwards and Eliot Spitzer, as well as on the U.S. Senate and presidential campaigns of Barack Obama. No one in Obama’s inner circle has less experience or appreciation of the private sector than Axelrod.
Another key figure is Obama’s long-time adviser, Valerie Jarrett. Ms. Jarrett (who, by the way, was born in Iran and from childhood spoke Persian as a first language) spent most of her career in Chicago politics before following Obama to the White House. She has become wealthy by consulting with government clients and maneuvering the politicized world of Chicago real estate development.
From Geithner to Jarrett, all of Obama’s advisors have one thing in common: they have devoted their lives to the expansion of government. They believe — quite “passionately,” as Axelrod has put it — that government is the solution to America’s problems. Their political DNA is deeply antagonistic to the free market and to the assumption that monetary incentives spur productivity and growth. Professors and politicos, they know nothing of how to manage a business, and they certainly know nothing of how to balance a budget.
Most ordinary human beings know a great deal more than Obama’s circle of advisors. They understand that it is the private sector, not government, that produces goods and services. Instinctively, they know there’s something wrong with the idea that government “creates” jobs. They understand that subsidies for biofuel start-ups and failing banks are wasteful and wrong, and they know that more subsidy is only throwing good money after bad.
They also know that government revenue comes out of somebody’s pocket. Only those who have spent their entire lives in government service or in academe don’t understand this. The trillion dollars in stimulus of which Obama is so proud — he still claims it created or saved millions of jobs even as the Labor Department reports that four million jobs disappeared since the stimulus was signed — was confiscated from the paychecks of working Americans. It was spent to expand welfare payments to those who do not work, to preserve the jobs of inefficient unionized workers, and to fund favored projects of Democratic political contributors.
Americans who have to work for a living understand that Obama’s stimulus spending is political payola on an epic scale. They also understand that it is capitalism that produces wealth and that the profit motive is the key to wealth creation.
Without the opportunity to earn a profit — to be paid for their labor and rewarded for their investment — workers would not work, and investors would not invest. For this reason, a society that disdains capitalism will soon find its standard of living faltering. Fewer goods will be produced, supply will be constrained, and prices will rise. With prices rising, goods will become less affordable, and less will be purchased. The result is a vicious cycle of declining production and rising prices.
What I am describing is the classic state of affairs within all socialist economies. Goods become scarce, and so, as government attempts to equalize supply, they are rationed. Since rationed goods are by definition sold at below-market prices, more and more goods find their way to the black market, where they are sold to the highest bidder. Instead of creating equality, socialism always produces a two-tiered system. On the black market, for those who can afford them, goods are plentiful. For the rest of the population, they are scarce.
It is this two-tiered system toward which we are heading. In only twenty months, Obama has succeeded in shifting one hundred million Americans into greater dependency on government. One hundred million Americans now receive unemployment benefits, expanded welfare payments and child credits, food stamps, housing subsidies, Medicaid, and (soon enough) ObamaCare. In essence, they are the recipients of rationed goods within a state-run economy. Over time, they will become less well-off as wealth continues to be sapped from the private sector and the production of goods is curtailed. They will be serving life sentences in the prison of socialism.
For the political elite, of course, no such prison exists. Once it becomes apparent that the economy is not coming back, those who have engineered the miracle of Obamanomics — long-term unemployment rates of 17%, stagnant growth, and crushing deficits — will obtain new political appointments, move on to lucrative consulting jobs, or simply return to their tenured university positions. Comfortable and well-fed, they will continue to prosper even as they have learned nothing from the failure of their policies.
As for the rest of us, we will pay for their lack of experience.
Comment by American Grand Jury:
I knew there was something that really bothered me about the relationship between Obama and Jarrett.. I just couldn’t put my finger on it. Now it all makes sense! Jarrett was born in Iran.. She is Muslim as is Obama. No wonder she has so much influence over Obama. For those of you that don’t know it has been speculated that Jarrett is responsible for many of the “hardcore” policies coming out of the White House.
The author states the obvious here. We all know that Obama’s Czars have little or no experience to manage the White House or this Country’s affairs. Most are downright hostile to capitalism, our Judaic-Christian beliefs and the Constitution.
I will differ with the author on one point: the political elites that are ruining this country will get what’s coming to them in the end. They may escape punishment in the physical world but not in the spiritual world — Judgment day is not a myth!
 Pithy comment: A bunch of inbred, socialistic losers are what is driving the ship right now!
by J.R. Dunn
There comes a moment in a failing presidency where the incumbent, through some single gesture, action, or statement, crosses a certain line from beyond which there is no return. Through his own will and behavior he so underlines his failings, so frames his negative image, that no further action can ever erase it. Fate, accident, and circumstance have nothing to do with it. It is the president himself who puts the period at the end of his own sentence.
Such moments are obvious in retrospect, though not always at the time. With Richard Nixon, it was the “eighteen-minute gap.” An oval office tape recording turned over to Judge John Sirica, who was overseeing the investigation of the Watergate incident, turned out to have a lengthy period of silence smack dab in the middle of a conversation between Nixon and chief of staff H.R. Haldeman. The White House claimed that Rose Mary Woods, the president’s secretary, had inadvertently hit the wrong button for those eighteen minutes. This might well have been true, but in light of Nixon’s long reputation as Tricky Dick, it sounded like the cock-and-bull story to end them all. Nixon had been holding his own in the Watergate battle up to that point. The voting public viewed the uproar with bemusement rather than indignation. But the tape gap finished him. In less than a year, he was forced into resignation.
For Jimmy Carter, it was the “malaise speech” of July 15, 1979, in which he attempted to shuffle the blame for his tepid performance as president from his own administration onto the shoulders of the American people. Carter claimed that a national “crisis of confidence” (he never actually used the word “malaise”) made it impossible for him to adequately grapple with the country’s problems. It was America’s fault, not Jimmy Carter’s. The public reaction was open disgust and the abject collapse of any support for the Carter presidency.
With Obama, we have an abundance of riches: the multiple vacations, the legal harassment of the state of Arizona on behalf of illegals, the clownish response to the Gulf oil blowout. But when historians come to select the moment when Obama went over the edge of the world, I think they’ll find the great Iftar mosque speech of August 13, 2010 hard to beat.
During a White House dinner celebrating Ramadan the president found it appropriate to come out in favor of religious freedom. Not in support of Christians being attacked by janjaweed gunmen, or Bahais tormented by Iranian mullahs, or Jews being stalked by assassins, or even American citizens being told that they cannot pray in public, but in favor of a shadowy foreign foundation with suspicious financing and disturbing Jihadi connections that wishes to build some kind of victory monument congruent to the site of the 9/11 massacre.
These doomsday statements work by putting previous suspicions and surmises about the president — always negative — into sharp relief, acting as verification and confirmation. Nixon had suffered a reputation as a conniver since his knock-down, drag-out 1950 battle against Helen Gahagan Douglas (it was Douglas who coined the “Tricky Dick” nickname). The tape gap fit so perfectly into that narrative as to crowd out everything else. Carter’s inept performance as president was rendered even harder to bear by his continual sanctimony and moral preening. The malaise speech merely added the patina of a whiner.
With Obama, suspicions have involved his status as an American. The foreign parentage, the registration in an Indonesian school noting him as a Muslim, the uproar over the birth certificate, aroused misgivings that, despite media scorn heaped upon those noting them, he has never quite been able to put to rest. As of last weekend, his opportunities to do so are ended. Impressions trump arguments, and for most of the country, Obama will, from here on in, be a strange and untrustworthy figure — a man who does not understand what Ground Zero means to America, who utilizes American law and custom to support foreign interests, who speaks to strangers more clearly than to his own.
Nothing either Nixon or Carter did enabled them to recover from their faux pas. Even as the tape gap story broke, Nixon was supervising a massive airlift of supplies and ammunition to Israel, which was involved in life-or-death struggle against massive Arab attack in the Yom Kippur War. It gained him nothing, scarcely earning a mention amid all the public speculation about Watergate. Less than three months after the Carter speech, Iranian “students” (actually professional revolutionaries under the control of the Ayatollah Khomeini) sacked the American embassy in Tehran, taking nearly a hundred American hostages. I can attest that I was not alone in thinking, “Great — and we’ve got Mr. Malaise is charge.” The year-and a-half-long hostage crisis, climaxed by the disastrous Eagle Claw rescue mission, hastened the collapse of the worst presidency of the later 20th century.
The past two years are the best Obama will ever see. The real crises of his presidency are still to come, and are easily visible as they move toward us — Iran, terrorism, the economy, the collapse of the national health care system hastened by his own policies. He will meet them under a cloud of his own making, attempting to overcome them as a president who takes endless vacations, who will not defend his country’s borders, who sat out the Gulf oil crisis, who overlooks the sacrifices of his own countrymen in favor of dubious foreign figures.
The tide has gone out for Barack Obama. It is all epilogue from here on in.
Comment by American Grand Jury:
My favorite poster: 
By Ben Feller
MILWAUKEE – Flying thousands of miles to reap millions of dollars, Barack Obama is dashing across the country to help his party retain power, essentially offering one familiar argument: Republicans don’t solve problems.
“Don’t give in to fear,” Obama said Monday in his latest ominous vision of a country led by the opposition party. “Let’s reach for hope.”
Obama has settled on his message for the pivotal midterm elections, which means what he said Monday in Milwaukee will sound like what he says Tuesday in Seattle and Wednesday in Miami. He is covering more than 8,000 freewheeling miles in three days, the kind of personal attention that gets donors to the door.
This week offers not just a window for Obama to campaign — Congress is gone, his summer vacation awaits — but also a window into his thinking about the fall campaign. Despite deep voter impatience over the sickly economy, the White House is betting people will stick with Democrats if the choice is framed as one between those who act and those who obstruct.
Obama has advanced all the big parts of his agenda — the massive stimulus spending bill, health care reform, the rewriting of rules for Wall Street — with little or no Republican support. Republicans counter that the president’s policies have come at a huge cost to taxpayers far into the future without the payoff many voters want most: jobs.
Comment by American Grand Jury:
Let’s hear it again for Obama — yeah man — this is what we know about ol’ “hopey and changey”:
As a citizen of the United States is I am going to side with the tea party groups that want “real” change — a country WITHOUT Obama:
By Frank Burke
The Late Show with David Letterman.
The View.
Paul McCartney plays the White House.
Barack Obama’s affinity for pop culture is emblematic of his administration’s greater disconnect on programs, policy, and ideology from the mainstream of American society. Much of this has to do with the dichotomy between the terms “class” and “cool.”
Though difficult to precisely define, personal class is one of those things of which it may be said (to paraphrase Justice Potter Stewart) that “you know it when you see it.” Its attributes include maturity, rational self-possession, a sense of the appropriate, generosity of spirit, and the humility that begets both charm and wit. Though frequently associated with childhood training and education, class knows no boundaries when it comes to gender, economic status, or even political persuasion. William F. Buckley, Jr. and Daniel Patrick Moynihan held opposing views, but both were possessed of great personal grace and were sincerely liked by even their opponents.
The American people have always valued class in their presidents and other leaders, and for good reason. Its highly personal characteristics are the prime means by which presidents are first observed and measured by foreign leaders, friend and foe alike.
This does not mean that individuals possessing “class” are immune from mistakes, miscalculations, or even personal misconduct. The way in which they handle adversity is perhaps what defines them most.
Despite multiple personal and political failings that we have become aware of in recent years, John and Jacqueline Kennedy possessed such respect for their country and themselves that they worked diligently at projecting the proper image to their fellow citizens and the rest of the world. The pride in American history reflected in his speeches and her restoration of the White House, their support of the fine arts, and their ongoing interaction with younger Americans presented an image that, though some might call it hypocritical, at least preserved us from the tabloid presidency that is the Clinton legacy, and increasingly Obama’s.
It is impossible to conceive of John Kennedy presenting the British Prime Minister with a set of DVDs (even ones that worked) or the Queen of England with an iPod of his speeches. Contrast the Kennedy administration’s approach to physical fitness for the nation’s youth which stressed personal responsibility (the fifty-mile hike) with today’s big-government solution (micromanaging the school cafeteria and excluding certain soft drinks).
From the inception of his campaign, Barack Obama was described by his younger supporters as “cool,” and, as with an American Idol contestant, that was what caused many of them to vote for him. It likewise explains why he persists in trying to maintain the rock star/pop star image long past its useful life.
As it applies to culture, “cool” is largely associated with the personal journey we call “adolescence.” A large part of that process involves a search for self and for independence and is characterized by the adoption and rejection of multiple role models, as well as rebellion against parental and other authority. “Cool” figures have always combined traits that not only typify but idealize this. James Dean’s agonized “Rebel Without a Cause” was the spiritual ancestor of Peter Fonda in “Easy Rider.” From Elvis’ sideburns and hip movements to the Beatles’ new sound, clothes, and haircuts to the grotesqueries of Madonna and Lady GaGa, the elements of novelty, non-conformism and rebellion are readily apparent. Frequently, the cool people try to project a “serious” side by involving themselves in causes that, therefore, appeal to their fans: No matter how egregious, if the star is for it, it’s got to be cool.
Right from the start, the Obama campaign was designed and produced as a pop culture phenomenon. From the screaming, fainting fans to the walk-on endorsement of pop icons to the world tour replete with Las Vegas production values, the cult of celebrity was everywhere prevalent. Like many rock songs, the lyrics “Hope and Change” and “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for” were long on sentiment and short on substance. All of this was greatly magnified by the candidate’s youth as opposed to John McCain’s age. Barack was cool.
In the relatively short time since the election, reality has intruded.
In the world of pop, nothing breeds contempt like overexposure and, except for the most fanatical fans, it takes only a couple of bad albums or films to consign even the once-brightest star to the dismal world of Golden Oldies and Trivial Pursuit. The failed Stimulus Bill, the toxic Obamacare initiative, and so-called financial reform are a lot less sexy than Hope and Change and never even made the charts. It hasn’t helped that the star’s lead act, Reid and Pelosi, is on the far side of the generation gap.
Obama’s juvenile behavior has not helped, either. Lecturing the Supreme Court at the State of the Union address — publicly, and in their presence; insulting those who disagree with him; and looking for an “ass to kick” are more indicative of immaturity than rebelliousness. The perpetually cold, aloof persona, the self-indulgence, the incompetence and vacillation have made his ascendancy a distant memory.
Even in the world of pop culture, the best can sometimes reinvent themselves. After careers defined by “Top 40″ hit songs, Linda Ronstadt, Rod Stewart, and Carly Simon all turned to the classics of the Great American Song Book to interpret music written when their grandparents were young. Unfortunately, politics isn’t showbusiness, and, as opposed to reinvention, we are left with the protracted adolescence of Barack Obama.
Cool is transient. Class endures.
Comment by American Grand Jury:
Nice article.. I enjoyed it!
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