Fast and Furious: Executives Have Their Privileges

With the 11th hour assertion by Barack Obama and Eric Holder of executive privilege, it looks like the mainstream media will finally have to cover the Fast and Furious gunrunning scandal.

Prof. William Jacobson of Legal Insurrection has an excellent summary of the issues:

First Holder pretends he will cooperate, but doesn’t.  Then he stalls with negotiations.  Then he stalls some more by promising to cooperate again, but doesn’t.  Then, when his back is up against the wall because a vote is scheduled to hold him in contempt, he runs to Obama for some legal protection, which will result in the matter being thrown into the courts for more delay.

 As with most things damaging to Obama, all they care about is pushing the bad news off until after the election.

What all this means, of course, is that Holder has been withholding documents responsive to the House subpoena which have not been turned over.  So he has not complied with the House subpoena, since it only was today that he obtained the protection of an Executive Privilege claim from the White House.

 Darrell Issa and his Republican committee members deserve a medal.  Keep pushing.

 Former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy of PJ Media weighs in:

Axelrod was Against Presidential Golf Before He was Fore It

Remember when the media went bananas over George Bush's workout regimen? The president even ultimately gave up golf entirely during his the bulk of his presidency.

Yet as far as Obama's record-setting presidential golf outings, once again the sound you are hearing is crickets:

The next time President Obama hits the links, it will be his 100th round of golf since coming to the White House. That’s quite a milestone in just 3 1/2 years. As it takes him about six hours to drive to the greens and complete 18 holes, Mr. Obama has spent the equivalent of four months’ worth of work time golfing. Meanwhile, the U.S. economy has been stuck in a sand trap...

Mr. Obama had no sense of the inappropriateness of playing 99 rounds of golf while 99 percent of the country couldn’t even afford the cost or time to go once. Now he wants a second term to finish what he started. After the 100th round, voters may want to think twice about giving him a mulligan.

Ironically, back in 1994, future Obama top adviser David Axelrod criticized President G.H.W. Bush for playing too much golf and therefore being too out of touch with the American people:



Note that Axelrod admits that "beating up on Bush is the only thing we have left."

The more things change, the more they stay the same.


 

"One-Term Proposition"

Would you believe a one-term presidency?

Executive Disorder on Immigration

Will Obama's political pandering on the immigration issue via his executive order pay off in November?

NRO's Victor Davis Hanson doesn't think so:

Politically, Obama calculates that some polls showing the current likely Hispanic support for him in the high 50s or low 60s would not provide enough of a margin in critical states such as Nevada, New Mexico, and Colorado, or perhaps also in Florida and Virginia, to counteract the growing slippage of the independent vote and the energy of the clinger/tea-party activists. Thus, what was not legal or advisable in 2009, 2010, or 2011, suddenly has become critical in mid-2012. No doubt free green cards will quickly lead to citizenship and a million new voters. Will it work politically? 

Obama must assume lots of things: that all Hispanics vote as a block in favoring exempting more illegal aliens from the law, and are without worry that the high unemployment rate hits their community among the hardest; that black voters, stung by his gay-marriage stance, will not resent what may be seen as de facto amnesty, possibly endangering his tiny (and slipping) lead in places like Virginia, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. And because polls show overwhelming resistance to non-enforcement of immigration law, Obama also figures that the minority who supports his recent action does so far more vehemently than the majority who opposes it. 

Time will tell; but my gut feeling is that his brazen act will enrage far more than it will delight — and for a variety of different reasons. As with all his special-interest efforts — the Keystone cancellation, war-on-women ploy, gay-marriage turnabout, and now de facto amnesty — Obama believes dividing Americans along class, ethnic, gender, and cultural lines will result in a cobbled together majority, far more preferable than a 1996 Clinton-like effort to win over the independents by forging  a bipartisan consensus.

As far as the underlying policy itself, NRO's John Yoo argues that it is a huge overreach by the administration:

President Obama’s claim that he can refuse to deport 800,000 aliens here in the country illegally illustrates the unprecedented stretching of the Constitution and the rule of law. He is laying claim to presidential power that goes even beyond that claimed by the Bush administration, in which I served. There is a world of difference in refusing to enforce laws that violate the Constitution (Bush) and refusing to enforce laws because of disagreements over policy (Obama).

Neil Munro, American Hero

Remember during the Bush administration how the president was being blasted interminably for "shredding the Constitution"?

Fast forward to 2012: What's more rude, a president disregarding separation of powers or a Daily Caller reporter interrupting the president to ask a legitimate question? What's more important, disrespecting Obama or disrespecting the U.S. Constitution?

As far as the media as the media's reaction of this president doing an end-run around the Constitution, it's generally crickets.

It does seem like that after a terrible week, make that a terrible month, on the economic front, the Obama administration wanted to do something to change the subject in a big way.



Leaving aside the merits of granting quasi-amnesty to illegals, does anyone really believe that this executive order will only involve 800,000 persons? When has a government projection--especially in immigration--ever been correct? And do you think the bureaucracy will be competent enough to root out fraudulent claims under this new program?

As far as governing by executive order, even some leftists don't like it:

Border Patrol Getting' Busy

They're on paid leave, of course.

"Police, Firefighters, and Teachers"

Watching the Sunday morning news shows is usually a waste of time, but we learned something new from the delusional leftists who were trying to spin the Scott Walker victory: Public sector employment, the way they made it sound, is entirely made up of police, firefighters, and teachers.

Anytime anyone talks about even modest budget reductions, the liberals usually trot out the scare tactics and the fear mongering.

Like most people, when we think of government employees, the clerk at the DMV or the deputy assistant under secretary for such-and-such comes to mind--the kind of "unessential workers" that never have to show up during a snowstorm. If there were far less of these bureaucratic paper shufflers and placeholders, there likely would be more room in the budget to hire additional police, firefighters, and qualified teachers.

Added: As NRO's Jim Geraghty writes:

...if localities want to hire more police, fire, or teaching personnel, there are several tools to do that beyond begging Washington to borrow more money to distribute to localities. The first is to cut other areas of local government — the less beloved categories of administrative staff, make-work patronage jobs, etc. The second is to reform their pension systems.