President Barack Obama: Were there a “Hall of Fame” for broken promises, here is one that would get in on the first ballot: “Let me say it as simply as I can: Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency” (President Barack Obama, January 21, 2009). Instead of transparency and the rule of law over the past four years, we have witnessed the greatest expansion of government in modern political history and, consequently, an explosion of government secrecy, scandals, and abuses of power. Among the low-lights: •Illegal recess appointments: Perhaps former Attorney General Ed Meese and Todd Graziano summed it up best in their January 5, 2012, Washington Post guest commentary: “President Obama’s attempt to unilaterally appoint three people to seats on the National Labor Relations Board and Richard Cordray to head the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (after the Senate blocked action on his nomination) is more than an unconstitutional attempt to circumvent the Senate’s advice-and-consent role. It is a breathtaking violation of the separation of powers and the duty of comity that the executive owes to Congress.” •Illegal immigration: In mid-June, Obama announced that by executive decree – and in apparent violation of his oath of office – his administration would stop deporting and begin granting work permits to younger illegal immigrants who came to the U.S. as children. According to The AP, “the policy change … bypasses Congress and partially achieves the goals of the so-called DREAM Act, a long-sought but never enacted plan …” Lest anyone doubt that Obama knew he was overriding the law of the land, in March, 2011, he said, “There are enough laws on the books by Congress that are very clear in terms of how we have to enforce our immigration system that for me to simply, through executive order, ignore those congressional mandates would not conform with my appropriate role as President.” •Unprecedented secrecy: Judicial Watch has had to file almost 1,000 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests and nearly 100 lawsuits against the Obama administration on issues ranging from Obamacare to the continued funding of the criminal ACORN network; from tracking Wall Street bailout money to the unconstitutional use of czars; to White House visitor logs; to the attacks on the integrity of our nation’s elections. This president touts transparency but condones law-breaking of open records laws by his administration. •Unconstitutional czars: As far back as 2009, Reuters reported, “Name a top issue and President Barack Obama has probably got a ‘czar responsible for tackling it.” By the time the Judicial Watch Special Report President Obama’s Czars was published in October 2011, the number of Obama czars had skyrocketed to 45. Largely unconfirmed by and unaccountable to the Senate, many of Obama’s czars are often outside the reach of FOIA. Some of these czars exercise unprecedented and unconstitutional control over major aspects of government policy and programs. And a number of the czars have been linked to scandals, thefts and kickbacks, flagrant and offensive statements, conflicts of interest, and radical leftist political ideologies and policies. •Use of Executive Privilege to protect Eric Holder: On June 20, 2012, Barack Obama acquiesced to a plea from Attorney General Eric Holder and asserted “executive privilege” to protect the Attorney General from being prosecuted for failing to provide Congress with Fast and Furious documents. On March 22, 2011, when asked by a Univision TV if he had been informed of the Holder gunrunning program, Obama bluntly stated, “Absolutely not. This is a pretty big government, the United States government. I’ve got a lot of moving parts.” So, as Judge Andrew Napolitano said on Fox News, “They can’t have it both ways. If the President was not personally involved, executive privilege does not apply.” To this day, President Obama refuses to detail the specific documents he is withholding from Congress. The list could go on ad infinitum – with Benghazigate, bailouts, abusing the perks of office for luxury vacations for his family, and, of course, his personal involvement in the Solyndra scandal. But the bottom line is this: The federal government under Barack Obama is off the rails and out of control. And now, with Obama having been given the “flexibility” of a second term, it can only be expected to get worse. Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV): A July 30, 2012, headline in the Las Vegas Review-Journal alerted Nevadans to Sen. Harry Reid’s latest influence-peddling scandal – this one involving ENN Energy Group, a Chinese “green energy” client of the Nevada law firm of which Reid’s son, Rory, is a principal. As Reuter’s reported on August 31, 2012, “Reid has been one of the project’s most prominent advocates, helping recruit the company during a 2011 trip to China and applying his political muscle on behalf of the project in Nevada. His son, a lawyer with a prominent Las Vegas firm that is representing ENN, helped it locate a 9,000-acre (3,600-hectare) desert site that it is buying well below appraised value from Clark County, where Rory Reid formerly chaired the county commission.” “Well below appraised value” is a considerable understatement. The deal Rory Reid put together for the firm his dad brought to town saw ENN purchase the site for just $4.5 million – a mere fraction of separate appraisals that valued the property at $29.6 million and $38.6 million. Even with all of that, however, the project has failed to move forward as rapidly as Harry and Rory Reid would like – for the simple reason that there is currently no market in Nevada for the green energy ENN claims it could produce. But, of course, funneling money to the Reid family is nothing new for the Senate Majority Leader. As the Washington Post reported in a February 7, 2012, story titled “Public projects, private interests:” In 2004 and 2005, the Senate majority leader secured $21.5 million to build a bridge over the Colorado River, linking the gambling resort town of Laughlin, Nev., with Bullhead City, Ariz. Reid owns 160 acres of undeveloped land in Bullhead City. And according to Peter Schweizer, writing for Fox News on December 12, 2012, “Sen. Reid has sponsored at least $47 million in earmarks that directly benefitted organizations that one of his sons, Key Reid, [RW1] either lobbies for or is affiliated with. Needless to say, the well-entrenched Sen. Reid has been a repeat Top Ten offender
Posted on: Mon, 07 Oct 2013 13:10:08 +0000
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