Crimes Against Liberty (14 page)

NATIONAL SECURITY

When campaigning for president, Obama lashed out at President George W. Bush for employing legal justifications to support enhanced interrogation techniques. He piously pledged to “abide by the Geneva Conventions. We will uphold our highest ideals.” Yet his own Justice Department used those very same legal arguments when trying to convince the U.S. Supreme Court to dismiss
Rasul v. Rumsfeld
, saying the plaintiffs didn’t clearly establish that their constitutional rights had been violated .
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Candidate Obama had also vowed to stop “extraordinary rendition,” but as president, his Justice Department adopted the Bush Justice Department’s supposedly unacceptable arguments in defending against five men who claimed they had been subjected to the practice in the case of
Mohamed et al. v. Jeppesen Dataplan Inc.
⁷²

Indeed, one columnist correctly argued, “On state secrets, indefinite detention, warrantless surveillance, the Patriot Act and signing statements, President Obama has used the language of transparency to give the appearance of change. In practice, however he has asserted virtually the same executive authority he reviled as abuses by his predecessor.”
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The same holds true for his targeting of suspected al Qaeda members in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

ARMENIAN GENOCIDE

Obama boasted of having “criticized the Secretary of State for the firing of U.S. Ambassador to Armenia, John Evans, after he properly used the term ‘genocide’ to describe Turkey’s slaughter of thousands of Armenians starting in 1914. . . . As President I will recognize the Armenian Genocide.” He so far has not honored that pledge despite making statements on memorials for the event, and reportedly tried to scuttle a House Foreign Affairs Committee resolution officially recognizing the genocide .
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THE BORN ALIVE INFANT PROTECTION ACT

Critics who accuse Obama of having supported infanticide are not engaging in hyperbole. While in the Illinois Senate, Obama opposed the Illinois Born-Alive Infants Protection bill—a measure almost identical to the federal Born Alive Infant Protection Act. These bills were designed to provide immediate protection to a child born as a result of a failed abortion. In 2001, Obama voted against the Illinois bill in committee and gave a floor speech opposing it, but voted “present” on the bill. After passing the Illinois Senate, the bill failed in the House. In 2002 the bill was proposed again, and Obama voted “no” in committee, spoke against it on the Senate floor, and voted “no” on the floor. The bill failed again. In 2003, the bill was reintroduced, and after certain amendments were added, became virtually identical to the federal bill. Obama then led committee Democrats in voting to kill the amended bill.
⁷⁵

During the presidential campaign, Obama repeatedly lied about his record on this while audaciously accusing his critics of lying. In an interview with CBN’s David Brody, Obama said the National Right to Life had lied in asserting he had voted against a state bill that was virtually identical to the federal Born-Alive Infants Protection Act. After being repeatedly challenged—though not by Brody—Obama issued a statement acknowledging he had misstated his position in the CBN interview and that in fact he had voted against an identical bill in the state senate .
⁷⁶

The video, however, makes it clear this wasn’t a mere misstatement. Obama clearly understood what he was saying, and he was adamant in calling his accusers “liars,” knowing that it was
he
who lied. On the floor of the Illinois Senate, Obama coldly expressed more concern for the doctors who would risk liability than for the live babies. He argued there was already an Illinois bill that would protect infants born as a result of a failed abortion. But in fact, Illinois state senator Patrick O’Malley said he had drafted that legislation only after the state attorney general’s office told him that existing Illinois law
would not
protect such babies .
⁷⁷
Obama also claimed doctors would take care of infants who were born alive and therefore no new law was needed. But in fact, as many as one in five babies were left to die, which is why the bill was offered in the first place. And Obama knew it.

VAN JONES, COMMUNIST

Obama brought on himself a firestorm of criticism when he named Van Jones as “Green Jobs Czar.” Appointed in March 2009, Van Jones resigned under pressure in September 2009 because of revelations about his radical past (including ties to Communist groups and his self-identification as a Communist at one point), his vulgar, incendiary statements against Republicans, and his signing of a “Truther” petition suggesting the Bush administration may have facilitated the 9/11 attacks.

Or did he actually resign? White House adviser David Axelrod said Jones made the decision himself, but Accuracy in Media reported he was forced out of his position, and that documents obtained through a FOIA request indicate the administration even wrote his resignation letter for him.
⁷⁸
The Obama administration was also untruthful in claiming they had not properly vetted Jones before appointing him. Not only did their appointment of many other radicals discredit the claim, but Jones was the specific choice of Obama confidant and close adviser Valerie Jarrett, who bragged that she had recruited him for the position.
⁷⁹
The insufficient vetting excuse was also suspect considering that the White House specifically created this position for Van Jones because of his unique background. They knew what they were getting. They just didn’t want us to know.

BLOCKING FOX NEWS

CBS News
exposed false denials by the Obama administration that they had blocked FOX interviews with pay czar Ken Feinberg. Treasury said “there was no plot to exclude FOX News and they had the same interview that their competitors did. Much ado about absolutely nothing.” But the other four networks who were granted interviews knew better. The only reason the interview was granted is that the other four networks of the press pool, including CBS, refused to participate without FOX. CBS reporter Chip Reid said the administration “crossed the line.”
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LOCKERBIE BOMBER RELEASE

Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, as well as other U.S. officials including Attorney General Eric Holder, sharply criticized Scottish authorities for releasing from prison Abdelbaset Al Megrahi, a Libyan convicted for the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am flight over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 people. But Downing Street denounced the criticism as “disingenuous.” According to British officials, Obama and Clinton had been kept informed at all stages of the discussions and spoke out only because of the public backlash against the release, not because they were unaware of what was about to happen. “We would never do anything about Lockerbie without discussing it with the US,” said a Whitehall aide. “It is disingenuous of them to act as though Megrahi’s return was out of the blue.” Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Foreign Secretary David Miliband were “disappointed” by the force of Washington’s reaction.
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As shown in this chapter, Obama’s disingenuousness is not just a matter of stretching the truth once in a while or engaging in a little old-fashioned hyperbole. His outright, habitual lies are a fundamental aspect of his governance. Past campaign promises are changed retroactively or brazenly denied, while he dissimulates and deceives about the true scope of healthcare reform, cap and trade, and his other signature policy goals. This is, perhaps, unsurprising, since he is pursuing an extremist agenda that he hid from the American people on the campaign trail and continues to mask today.

Chapter Four

DIVISIVE AND HYPER-PARTISAN

CRIMES AGAINST THE UNION

W
hile Obama prayed at the National Prayer breakfast for a “spirit of civility” in Washington, he didn’t seem to consider himself a contributor to the incivility. “You can question my policies without questioning my faith,” he said. “Or, for that matter, my citizenship.”
¹

Indeed, as a presidential candidate, Obama turned his ostensible bipartisanship into a central plank of his campaign. His camp featured a 60-second national TV ad emphasizing Obama’s cooperation with Republicans in the Illinois legislature and the U.S. Senate, including a clip from Obama’s 2004 Democratic National Convention speech in which he rejected the red state-blue state dichotomy. Obama said in March 2008, “I’m a big believer in working with the other side of the aisle. Even if we’ve got a majority of Democrats, I think it’s very important to listen to Republicans, to respect them . . . I want to have a weekly meeting with Republican and Democratic leaders to talk about the economy, to talk about foreign policy, so that we’re actually trying to solve problems away from the TV cameras, not trying to score political points.”
²
Likewise, Senator Claire McCaskill announced, “He understands that we’ve gotta move forward with a different kind of politics.”
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But Obama’s idea of bipartisanship is to consider each and every idea Republicans offer, except those he refuses to consider. In May 2009, he made overtures toward reaching across the aisle on the abortion issue, claiming he was seeking common ground between pro-lifers and pro-abortionists. He brought together the two factions in a series of meetings and immediately “took off the table any discussion of whether abortion should be legal.”
⁴
That’s bipartisanship, Obama style.

If Obama truly sought to establish an atmosphere of civility and bipartisanship, he could lead by example. Former adviser to President George W. Bush, Karl Rove, told FOX News’s Chris Wallace that Obama holds himself out “as some bipartisan, post-partisan kind of politician, but in reality he is a very—you know, a hyper-partisan who’s failed to reach across party lines when he had a terrific opportunity to do so in the aftermath of his victory.”
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Obama’s notion of a bipartisan Super Bowl party was to invite one Republican congressman along with about forty Democrats.
⁶
He told Republicans they “seem to be almost rooting against [economic] recovery.”
⁷
He said at a Philadelphia fundraiser during the campaign, “If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun.”
⁸
He encouraged his supporters to “argue with (your neighbors); get in their face. . . . you are my ambassadors.”
⁹
He refused Senator McCain’s call for a series of joint bipartisan townhall meetings. As a U.S. senator, he politicized the plight of injured soldiers by falsely accusing President Bush of doing the same, declaring, “The problems plaguing our military hospital system will not be solved with a photo-op. Our military hospital system is in a state of crisis. Delays and rhetorical band-aids will not move us closer to a solution.”
¹⁰
His administration even issued documents characterizing pro-life activists as racist extremists and likely terrorists.
¹¹

Obama’s the guy who had issued a “declaration of war” in one of his healthcare speeches, according to conservative columnist, economist, and TV host Larry Kudlow. Kudlow wrote, “He’s more than willing to use a 51-vote reconciliation majority to jam through a roughly $2 trillion healthcare plan that amounts to a government takeover of nearly one-fifth of the economy.”
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Obama’s the guy whose administration intends to purge Republicans from the civil service, according to a memo from the Office of Personnel Management.
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And Obama’s the guy who nominated Larry Persily—a former aide to former Alaska governor Sarah Palin who wrote scathing pieces against her on the
Huffington Post
website—for an Alaska pipeline job, an appointment described by blogger Pamela Geller as “transparent, petty and small.”
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