Urgent That Barack Obama Take Leadership In Investigation Of Alleged Scandals In His Presidency!

President Barack Obama has been President for more than four years, and is in the crucial first year of his second and last term in the White House.

The time for applause over his second term victory is over, and he must face the facts that his administration is in crisis, caused by his own lack of outfront leadership over what goes on during his watch in the Oval Office!

The Benghazi matter is being politicized, but more needs to be revealed about that tragedy, and no coverup is going to work, although it seems clear there is no “smoking gun” on that issue.

The confusion over the IRS checking out conservative and Tea Party groups is reprehensible, and it must be made clear who was involved, people appointed by the President, or civil service bureaucrats who have gone way beyond their authority, and abused their positions. Heads must roll, and if it is the bureaucracy, then the whole agency must be cleaned up of those who have broken the law, and prosecutions must follow quickly!

The Associated Press matter, if related to national security matters, must also be revealed in total, as media should never be interfered with by the Justice Department, and a full investigation must be pursued, with Attorney General Eric Holder properly recusing himself in this matter.

The point is, that despite Republicans gleefully jumping on these controversies, it is yet possible that nothing that Obama could have done would have been able to prevent these controversies, but he MUST be proactive, not laid back and withdrawn, which has too often been his mode of operation in his first term.

Obama is in danger of ending up like other second term Presidencies, in the midst of scandals which undermine their legacy, no matter how good those legacies might be.

Progressives do not want Obama to end up in the troubled historical legacy of such predecessors as:

Ulysses S. Grant–Credit Mobilier Scandals
Harry Truman–several minor scandals
Dwight D. Eisenhower—Sherman Adams Scandal
Richard Nixon–Watergate Scandal
Ronald Reagan–Iran Contra Scandal
Bill Clinton–Monica Lewinksy–Paul Jones Scandals
George W. Bush—Scooter Libby Scandal

The only way to avoid this fate is PROMPT, ASSERTIVE, PROACTIVE leadership by our 44th President, who has done so much good, and should not allow his enemies to destroy him by a policy of passivity, and leading from behind!

28 comments on “Urgent That Barack Obama Take Leadership In Investigation Of Alleged Scandals In His Presidency!

  1. Juan Domingo Peron May 15, 2013 5:14 pm

    I’m pretty sure Obama will act, and that of course he did not give any orders. He didn’t need to. The issue I think is that these people at all of these bureaucracies who are political appointees are there because they don’t need orders. They don’t need instructions. They already know what to do. They are Obama in a way. They are committed leftist activist. And Ron we don’t have to go that far to realize it, I mean you can just read Leia’s or Maggie’s post and if they were in the exact same position as any of these bureaucrat appointees they would have done exactly the same thing. And, by the way, that’s not uncommon.
    It’s safe to say this guy at the IRS, whoever he is, didn’t need instructions. They didn’t have to have meetings with him to tell him what to say. He was already a true believer. This guy at the IRS hates conservatives without having to be told to. The guy at the IRS is fully capable and willing to obstruct conservatives, to punish conservatives, to wage war — political war — against them. He doesn’t need an owner’s manual. He doesn’t need a meeting every day.
    You don’t have time to meet with people every day. You don’t have time to instruct them. You delegate. So this guy at the IRS, he may as well have been Obama. Guys like Van Jones, they’re hired because they already are Obama, in their own way. So it’s not in any way, far as I’m concerned, an excuse. It doesn’t excuse Obama. It’s not an out for him to say that the IRS had a couple of rogue people in there, operating without anybody’s knowledge. Of course they were! They didn’t need supervision. Everybody Obama puts in these key positions — be it the EPA, be it the Department of Defense, be it the Department of Justice, everybody he puts in there — is going to do what he wants one way or the other. They’re either fellow travelers or they’re eager to please him and know exactly how to do it. They don’t need meetings. For these committed, activist, leftists to whom this stuff is what all their lives are about, this is all standard operating procedure.
    Lying about conservatives, impugning conservatives, using the power of government to suppress your opposition, using the power of government to make the playing field unlevel and unfair. That’s all part and parcel of being a leftist. They don’t need instruction.

  2. Princess Leia May 15, 2013 7:11 pm

    Some info concerning the IRS “scandal” from this article: http://www.salon.com/2013/05/14/when_the_irs_targeted_liberals/singleton/

    There are two critical pieces of context missing from the conventional wisdom on the “scandal.” First, the conservative groups were not targeted in a political vendetta — but rather were executing a makeshift enforcement test (an ugly one, mind you) for IRS employees tasked with separating political groups not allowed to claim tax-exempt status, from bona fide social welfare organizations. Employees are given almost zero official guidance on how to do that, so they went after Tea Party groups because those seemed like they might be political. Keep in mind, the commissioner of the IRS at the time was a Bush appointee.

    The second is that while this is the first time this kind of thing has become a national scandal, it’s not the first time such activity has occurred. Under George W. Bush, it went after the NAACP, Greenpeace and even a liberal church.

  3. Princess Leia May 15, 2013 7:22 pm

    As far as the Associated Press matter is concerned, I agree the advice this blog gives: http://immasmartypants.blogspot.com/2013/05/looking-bit-deeper-into-dojap-story.html

    As the blog says, in following this story, its going to be important to watch reporters who are being fair-minded – that’s because this story is about the press itself and the defensive posturing about it has already resulted in many of them making ridiculous statements about it.

    If you want a pretty good run-down on the whole AP phone records situation, please read the NYT story by Charlie Savage and Leslie Kaufman and the Think Progress story by Hayes Brown.

    link for the NYT story: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/14/us/phone-records-of-journalists-of-the-associated-press-seized-by-us.html?pagewanted=all&_r=2&

    link for the Think Progress story: http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/05/13/2005021/doj-yemen-aqap/?mobile=nc

  4. Juan Domingo Peron May 15, 2013 9:04 pm

    Regarding the AP Scandal today in response to repeated questions by Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va) about the DOJ seizing phone records from the Associated Press, Holder said: “I was not the person involved in that decision…I am not familiar why the subpoena was constructed in the way it was because I was not involved in the case…”
    “On what date did you recuse yourself?” Bachus asked.
    “I’m not sure, I think it was towards the beginning of the matter,” Holder responded.
    “Isn’t that sort of an unacceptable procedure? The statue says that the attorney general shall approve the subpoena. There was no memorandum, no email — when you recused yourself, was it in writing, was it orally? Did you tell someone, did you alert the White House?” Bachus probed.
    “I would’ve told the deputy attorney general,” Holder replied, though he said there would be no record of it in writing.
    You just got to be kidding!!!! The AG recuses himself and does not leave it in writing as to why? No record at all? How are the other departments and agencies supposed to know that he recused himself? Are not documents and reports still going to be forwarded to the AG if nobody knows he has recused himself? This is , how do I say it?? B.S.!!

  5. Ronald May 15, 2013 9:29 pm

    Juan, what you say in the first comment above is certainly true, but you act as if it is only liberals and progressives who are true believers, when it is clear that the same or similar tactics occur under conservatives such as Bush II, Bush I, Reagan, Nixon. Do not make your viewpoint holier than thou, as this is the tendency of people in government positions to do what benefits their side of the political equation. It is a very sad and troubling situation, with no easy resolution long term, and very worrisome for the future trust of the American people in their government, whether Republican or Democrat in power!

  6. Princess Leia May 16, 2013 6:51 am

    Professor,

    This is what I was educating Juan about yesterday. I’ve seen this reported, not only on Lawrence O’Donnell’s show, but on many liberal blogs as well.

    This is what he told on his show, Monday night:
    [Section 501(c)(4) of the Internal Revenue Code defines tax-exempt social welfare groups like this:
    Civic leagues or organizations not organized for profit but operated exclusively for the promotion of social welfare.
    In 1959, under the administration of Dwight Eisenhower, the meaning of this section was changed dramatically when the IRS decided the word “exclusively” could, in effect, be read as “primarily.”
    “For 54 years, the IRS has gotten away with the crime of changing the word ‘exclusively’ to ‘primarily,” said Lawrence O’Donnell on The Last Word Monday. “The IRS took a hard, clear word like ‘exclusively’ and changed it into a soft word ’primarily’ and then left it to the IRS agents to determine if your organization was primarily concerned with the promotion of social welfare.”]

    Link to see video: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/05/14/1209160/-A-real-crime-at-the-IRS

  7. Juan Domingo Peron May 16, 2013 9:18 am

    Obama’s Second-Term Embarrassments
    “Hope and change” is looking more like the 1973 Nixon White House.
    By Victor Davis Hanson
    In Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign, he ran to the left of Hillary Clinton as a moral reformer. Obama promised to transcend the old politics and bring a new era of hope-and-change transparency to Washington. Five years later, those vows are in shambles.

    True, the murder of four Americans in Benghazi has become a mess of partisan bickering. But the disturbing facts now transcend politics. The Obama administration — the president himself, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, U.N. ambassador Susan Rice, White House press secretary Jay Carney — all at various times blamed an obscure video maker for the “spontaneous violence” that killed Americans last September.

    The problem is not just that such scapegoating was untrue, but that our officials knew it was untrue when they said it — given both prior CIA talking-point briefings and phone calls from those on the ground during the attacks.

    One theme ties all the bizarre aspects of the Benghazi scandal — the doctored talking points, the inexplicable failure to beef up diplomatic security before the attacks and to send in help during the fighting, the jailing of a petty con artist on the false charge that his amateur video had led to attacks on our consulate, and the shabby treatment of nonpartisan State Department whistleblowers — together.

    There was an overarching preelection desire last year to downplay any notion that al-Qaeda remained a serious danger after the much ballyhooed killing of Osama bin Laden. Likewise, Libya was not supposed to be a radical Islamic mess after the successful “lead from behind” removal of Moammar Qaddafi. Facts then had to change to fit a campaign narrative.

    As the congressional hearings on Benghazi were taking place last week, we also learned that the IRS, administered by the Department of the Treasury, has been going after conservative groups in a politicized manner that we have not seen since Richard Nixon’s White House. There was no evidence that any of these conservative associations had taken thousands of dollars in improper tax deductions — in the manner of former Treasury secretary Timothy Geithner, the one-time overseer of the IRS.

    Instead, groups with suspiciously American names like “Patriot” or “Tea Party” prompted IRS partisans to scrutinize their tax information in a way that they would not have for the tax-exempt MoveOn.org or the Obama-affiliated Organizing for Action.

    On top of that, the Justice Department just announced that it had secretly seized the records of calls from at least 20 work and private phone lines belonging to editors and reporters at the Associated Press in efforts to stop suspected leaks. At about the same time as the Benghazi and IRS disclosures, it was learned that there was a strange relationship between the Obama White House and the very center of the American media — odd in a way that might explain the unusually favorable media coverage accorded this administration.

    Ben Rhodes, the deputy national-security adviser for strategic communications in the Obama administration, is linked to the doctoring of the Benghazi talking points. He also happens to be the brother of CBS News president David Rhodes. CBS recently pressured one of its top reporters, Sharyl Attkisson, for “wading dangerously close to advocacy,” as one report worded it, in her critical reporting of Benghazi.

    Unfortunately, such relationships are not rare with this administration. The head of ABC News, Ben Sherwood, has a sister, Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, who works for the Obama White House as a special assistant.

    And there is more. The CNN deputy bureau chief, Virginia Moseley, is married to Hillary Clinton’s former aide at the State Department, Tom Nides, who is also a former Fannie Mae executive. Carney, Obama’s press secretary, is the husband of Claire Shipman, the senior national correspondent for ABC’s Good Morning America.

    Apparently, in the logic of the Obama White House and the Washington media, there is nothing improper about wives dispassionately reporting to the nation on what their husbands are doing, or brothers adjudicating the news coverage of their own siblings.

    Last month, the congressional architect of Obamacare, Senator Max Baucus (D., Mont.) announced his plans to retire — in part because he feared his legislative child would become “a train wreck.” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who shepherded the bill toward passage, has echoed that worry.

    Democrats are panicking because before the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is even fully implemented in the midterm election year 2014, it appears neither affordable nor protective of patients. That reality was long ago foreseeable — given that Obamacare passed on a strictly partisan vote, with a number of questionable legislative payoffs to skeptical fence-sitting Democrats, and even after Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, who helped ram the bill through the House, admitted that “we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it.”

    What is the common denominator in all these second-term administration embarrassments? “Hope and change” is fast becoming the 1973 Nixon White House.

  8. Juan Domingo Peron May 16, 2013 10:31 am

    The Obama administration and the IRS scandal gets even more pathetic!
    The Nine Lies of Lois Lerner By By Kevin D. Williamson National Review
    Lie No. 1: Lois Lerner’s apology last Friday was a spontaneous reaction to an unexpected question from an unknown audience member. In fact, the question came from tax lawyer and lobbyist Celia Roady. Ms. Roady has some interesting career highlights: She was part of the 1997 ethics investigation of Newt Gingrich, but, more to the point, she was appointed to the IRS’s Advisory Council on Tax-Exempt and Government Entities by IRS commissioner Douglas Shulman. She is a longtime colleague of Lerner, who is director of tax-exempt organizations. Ms. Roady has declined to comment on whether her question was planted, but it obviously was. The IRS had contacted reporters and encouraged them beforehand to attend the otherwise un-newsworthy event, and it had an entire team of press handlers on hand. So what we have is the staged rollout of what turns out to be — given the rest of this list — a disinformation campaign.

    Lie No. 2: Lerner said about 280 organizations were given extra scrutiny, about 75 of them tea-party groups or similar organizations. The actual number of organizations that were targeted is closer to 500.

    Lie No. 3: This was the work of low-level grunts in Cincinnati. In truth, very senior people within the IRS, including its top lawyer, were aware of the situation, and had been since at least 2011. The home office in Washington was very much involved in the process.

    Lie No. 4: Lerner says that the situation came to her attention through allegations from tea-party groups carried in media reports. In fact, the matter has been under both internal and external investigation for some time.

    Lie No. 5: Lerner says she put an end to the practice as soon as she found out about it. In fact, the IRS continued to do precisely the same thing, only monkeying a little bit with the language: Instead of targeting “tea party” groups explicitly, it targeted those groups with an interest in such esoterica as limited government, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, etc.

    Lie No. 6: She says that the commissioner of the IRS didn’t know about the targeting project. While the targeting was going on, Ms. Lerner’s boss was being asked some very pointed questions by Congress on the subject of targeting tea-party groups. He enthusiastically denied that any such thing was going on, in direct contravention of the facts. Ms. Lerner says he didn’t know about the situation, because it was confined to those aforementioned plebs in Cincinnati. But given that this was not the case, her explaining away the commissioner’s untrue statements to Congress is a lie based on another lie — a compound lie, if you will. And acting commissioner Steven Miller was briefed on the situation in May of 2012 — and then declined to share his knowledge of it with Congress when asked about it during a hearing in July.

    Lie No. 7: Lerner says she came forward with her apology unprompted by any special consideration. In fact, an inspector general’s report was about to be released, making the matter public.

    Lie No. 8: When Congress was investigating complaints from conservative groups, Lerner told them that she could not release information about organizations with pending applications. But her group was in fact releasing such information — to the left-leaning news organization ProPublica, rather than to congressional investigators.

    Lie No. 9: Lerner says that there was no political pressure to investigate tea-party groups. In fact, Senator Carl Levin (D., Mich.) repeatedly pressed the agency to investigate conservative groups falling under Lerner’s jurisdiction. (http://freebeacon.com/under-pressure-2/) What we have, then, is this: Under a Democratic administration, the IRS was under pressure from Democratic elected officials to investigate political enemies of the Democratic party. The agency did so. Its commissioner lied to Congress about its doing so. When the inspector general’s report was about to make these abuses public, the agency staged a classic Washington Friday news rollout at a sleepy American Bar Association tax-law conference, hoping to minimize the bad publicity. Lerner lied to the public about the nature, scope, and extent of the IRS intimidation campaign.

    That she has a job today is a scandal in itself. She’ll be receiving an award — for public service! — from the Western New England University School of Law on May 18. An orange jumpsuit would suit her better than academic robes.

  9. Princess Leia May 16, 2013 11:06 am

    Thursday Guano Droppings nobody here is buying.

  10. Princess Leia May 16, 2013 11:14 am

    Juan,

    Even some on your side, such as Bill O’Reilly, are saying the scandals are being blown out of proportion.

  11. Juan Domingo Peron May 16, 2013 12:07 pm

    Since when do I care what O’Reilly says? I don’t need him or anyone to know what’s going on. I can read the reports , watch the hearings and listen to the laughable press conferences on my own.

  12. Princess Leia May 16, 2013 12:28 pm

    Haha! Obama destroyed both the Benghazi and IRS scandals: http://www.politicususa.com/hours-obama-destroys-gops-benghazi-irs-scandals.html

    As the article says, Republicans will preach to the conservative choir that believes every negative statement and wild conspiracy about Obama, but for the vast majority of the country these two “scandals” are dead and dying.

    As the article also says, as for the AP scandal, the AP flap is resonating much more with the media than it is with the country at large.

  13. Princess Leia May 16, 2013 6:27 pm

    This is my corrected post. Please delete my 12:57 pm post.

    I agree to disagree about listening to pundits. They help me become more informed about politics than I would be without listening to them.

  14. Ronald May 16, 2013 9:13 pm

    Juan, using the National Review as reliable will have no effect on anyone intelligent, and this is all just right wing propaganda, which will NOT have a long range effect, as the nation is well aware of what conservatives and Republicans are doing–setting out to destroy Obama and Hillary Clinton, and both efforts will fail miserably!

  15. Ronald May 16, 2013 9:13 pm

    And to compare Obama to Nixon is totally laughable!

  16. Juan Domingo Peron May 16, 2013 10:38 pm

    Ron: True, Nixon actually only talked about launching the IRS against opponents, though his administration never did it. He speculated about it, but he never did. Nixon did not send the IRS on McGovern. There is no proof that Richard Nixon ever tried to get the commissioner of the IRS, Donald Alexander, to do anything, ever. As a matter of fact the Nixon campaign was audited by the IRS and Donald Alexander was hailed as a hero for the rest of his life because he didn’t allow the IRS to be used against Nixon’s enemies. Now the Obama administration did use the IRS against political opponents. And you know why? Because Obama and the left that is in control of the Democrat party considers us, the conservatives, not the opponent but the enemy as Obama has said on various occasions.
    Last year the President of Argentina, Cristina Kirchner, a left wing statist progressive, you the big government type that you on the left seem to adore, came to Harvard to give a speech. She was , for the first time, asked tough questions by Argentine who were students at Harvard. You know what happened afterwards to their families back in Argentina? They were all audited and harassed by the Argentine IRS! So no, comparing Obama to Nixon is uncalled for. Obama is more like a third world leftist statist demagogue. He’s more like Cristina Kirchner or any other one of those class warfare multimillionaire elitist populist who “care for the poor.”
    As for NR, I really find it amusing that you would think that anyone of you progressive “intellectuals” would have more intelligence and in-depth knowledge that Victor Davis Hanson. Its laughable really!There is absolutely no comparison, at all, either in intellectual capacity and seriousness.

  17. Ronald May 16, 2013 11:15 pm

    There you go again, Juan, comparing Obama to third world dictators, a total insult, and totally irrelevant, as we are not Argentina, or any other unstable third world nation. Obama is NOT a demagogue, and could not be, under our system, but Nixon, Reagan and Bush II were all promoting the right wing extremism in one way or another, although not like the third world dictators or populist demagogues! They all undermined our ability to keep a strong middle class, particularly Reagan and Bush II!

  18. Juan Domkngo Peron May 16, 2013 11:58 pm

    What do you mean third world? I suggest a little bit of more respect. Furthermore all of those Presidents have been elected democratically. And finally it is not my fault that they follow the same policies , of course adapted to their countries , as Obama. That is big government, statist and from the left. They even adopt crony capitalism and deficit spending. They speak the same political language such as taxing the rich, raising taxes and wealth redistribution plus social justice.. So I suggest a little bit of respect towards not only other nations but also your ideological cousins. Or is it that because they are from south america they don’t deserve the same respect as your and their European cousins?

  19. Princess Leia May 17, 2013 6:39 am

    Corrected post. Please remove 6:37 am post.

    Professor,

    That’s why I can’t take Juan’s comments seriously. 😉

  20. Ronald May 17, 2013 7:03 am

    I suggest a bit of more respect, Juan, for our President, who is NOT a third world dictator, and I consider most of Latin America to be “third world’, with exception of Costa Rica and Chile, which have had the most stable governments in Latin America, with the period of Pinochet an aberration in Chile, due to the intervention of the CIA and Richard Nixon, encouraged along by Ronald Reagan, but opposed as a violator of human rights by Jimmy Carter. Yes, I consider European nations much more worthy of respect, particularly in Western Europe, where democracy has flourished and they have believed much more in social justice than our nation!

  21. Princess Leia May 17, 2013 8:41 am

    Same way with me Professor! 🙂

  22. Juan Domingo Peron May 17, 2013 10:01 am

    Western European nations? Are you serious? You seem to ignore that democracy and freedom in western continental Europe had to wait for the arrival of the U.S. army Sherman tanks and the Marshall plan to avoid being either Nazi or Communist.The continental Europeans not only gave humanity the gifts of totalitarianism with Nazism and Communism, but were directly responsible for the two world wars of the 20th century, and between these two ideologies were responsible for over 130 million deaths worldwide during the 20th century. Authoritarianism and despotism has always existed, but totalitarianism is a unique European gift to mankind fruit of the rationalist “enlightenment” and heir of the “revolutionary” French Jacobins. Whatever dictatorships existed in Latin America, they pale in comparison to the European totalitarians.
    Furthermore you seem to ignore that Europeans immigrated not only to the United States but also to Argentina whose Constitutional system between 1853-1930 like the US Constitution was ahead of Europe with regards to individual freedoms. Millions migrated to these countries in search of the liberty and progress that they lacked either under the Second Empire of France, the Communes of Paris as well as Bismarck’s Germany. Also let us not forget that Spain, Argentina’s mother country, managed to take the middle ages well into the twentieth century with Franco. History did not start in the 1960’s.

  23. Princess Leia May 17, 2013 12:34 pm

    Lulz!

  24. Ronald May 17, 2013 12:37 pm

    Juan, you do not need to lecture me on history, which I have taught for 40 years. I am talking about since 1945, and the record of Latin America is horrendous, with the exception of Chile except 1973-1990 and of Costa Rica all the time brilliant, but not true elsewhere, as compared to Western Europe. And compare Obama to Peron or Kirchner or Somoza or Trujillo or Chavez or any of the other tin horn dictators or so called “democratic” leaders of Latin America, whether left or right, is a total insult to our President! And this includes Mexico, which is very poorly governed and for a long time was a one party system!

  25. Juan Domingo Peron May 18, 2013 10:15 am

    As I said, you conveniently talk about since 1945.. nothing new here.

  26. Ronald May 18, 2013 10:48 am

    I am talking about the last 80 years, modern times, Juan, and you have no response on that, because you KNOW what I say is totally true!

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