Radio America’s Greg Corombos and Jim Geraghty from National Review Online are pleased to see widespread criticism of Hillary Clinton’s book and interviews. Jim worries Baghdad will become another Saigon as radicals move toward Baghdad and the US refuses to provide airstrikes. President Obama says young people shouldn’t become cynical on Tumblr interview. But Jim points out the president is making Americans like that anyway.
Gosar: Impeach Holder for Human Smuggling
A humanitarian crisis is growing quickly in parts of Texas and Arizona, as thousands upon thousands of unaccompanied illegal immigrant teenagers flood across the border and the federal government moves them to various locations for shelter.
Arizona Rep. Paul Gosar says this mess is entirely the work of the Obama administration and that Attorney General Eric Holder needs to be impeached for flouting federal law and effectively engaging in human smuggling.
Gosar has called for Holder’s resignation several times in the past, over issues such as the fatally botched gun-running operation known as Fast and Furious and the Justice Department harassment of Fox News Channel reporter James Rosen. He says the attorney general’s latest actions make it imperative that he be removed.
“This is the continuing destruction of the rule of law and the constitutional framework which we operate under,” said Gosar, who cited as evidence that Holder needs to be removed from office.
“USC § 1324 (a)(1)(A) reads ‘knowingly, or in reckless disregard of the fact that an alien has come to enter or remains in the United State in violation of law, transports or moves or attempts to transport or move such alien within the United States by means of transportation or otherwise in futherance of such violation of the law,'” said Gosar.
“I’ve contended now, and it’s been supported by a U.S. federal judge, that the attorney general is in fact violating criminal smuggling laws. Congress has the ability to impugn those people that actually disregard the rule of law. It’s time to call him into question to stop the furtherance of the destruction of the rule of law,” he said.
Gosar says the crisis along the border is the latest impetus for removing Holder from office but he says support for impeachment is increasing and the public outrage is growing about several other issues as well.
“People are fed up. We saw the election last night (that defeated House Majority Leader Eric Cantor). People are scared and they’re angry at a government that will not uphold the rule of law. That’s what made us special. He is to tell the president, ‘Hey, you’re overreaching,’ whether it be immigration, whether it be prisoner release at Guantanamo, whether it be Fast and Furious, whether it be Benghazi behind the scenes. In all this stuff, the attorney general is required to uphold the rule of law, and if he can’t, he needs to get out of the way,” said Gosar.
“If the House knows a breakdown of the law is occurring,it is their due diligence to file the articles of impeachment, to hold the attorney general accountable and make sure that we find an attorney general that can actually comply with the rule of law,” he said.
According to the government’s own data, the number of teenage illegals coming to America in the first half of 2014 easily dwarfs the total number from 2013 and previous years. Gosar says the massive influx is no coincidence.
“The president said that he would not deport anybody, and then the attorney general was complicit in saying that they would not uphold the rule of law in border security. They perpetuated this issue and what we’re seeing right now is just the tip of the iceberg,” said Gosar.
“What we’re generating is whole new generations of ‘dreamers’ that are then being taken by plane. At least seven different flights have come from Texas to Arizona. These people have been moved around without food, water, shelter and many have not had any vaccinations,” he said.
The congressman said his staff recently met with Homeland Security officials about the government’s transporting of illegal immigrants from one state to another. He says DHS could not cite any part of federal allowing them to do what they are doing and further states that the federal government gave no advanced notice to him or Arizona state officials that thousands of destitute people would be transported to their state.
To further complicate matters, Gosar says most of the illegal immigrants have been coached to tell U.S. Border Patrol agents that they are seeking asylum from Mexican drug cartels or some other nefarious entity, which then compels the border agents not to return them across the border.
Gosar admits he does not have any Democrats on board with the idea of impeaching Eric Holder, but that won’t stop him from trying to bring it to the floor.
In the meantime, a flood of illegal immigrants is pouring across the border and being left in squalid conditions in Texas and Arizona. Gosar says those problems should be addressed decisively.
“The first thing we need to do is enforce the immigration law, tell them they will not be accepted and that they will be returned home. We have to highlight the complicit behavior that is being shown by this U.S. district judge that shows that DHS is actually taking illegal immigrants that have crossed the border recently and then connected them with their illegal parents within the states,” said Gosar.
“These are not limited to Arizona. They’ve gone to New York and Maryland as well. So we need to highlight this aspect that we need to uphold the rule of law. There’s a right way of coming in and there’s a wrong way. This is the wrong way and we cannot tolerate it,” he said.
Three Martini Lunch 6/11/14
Radio America’s Greg Corombos and Jim Geraghty from National Review discuss Dave Brat’s improbable defeat of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in the Virginia GOP primary. They look at the future of Iraq in the wake of news that major cities are being taken over by Islamic militants. They close by talking through the Florida governor’s race and new polling showing Charlie Crist is deeply unpopular.
Seven Reasons to Impeach Obama
Former federal prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy says President Obama is guilty of numerous high crimes and misdemeanors that warrant his removal from office is proposing seven specific articles of impeachment on which he says the evidence is very clear.
McCarthy is best known as the lead prosecutor in the cases against the “blind sheikh”, Omar Abdel Rahman, and eleven conspirators behind the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and plots against other New York City landmarks. McCarthy is now with the National Review Institute. His new book is “Faithless Execution: Building the Political Case for Obama’s Impeachment.” In the book, he says the case for impeachment is solid, although he does not believe there is enough political will in the country to move forward at this time.
Nonetheless, McCarthy offers seven indictments, beginning with “The President’s Willful Refusal to Execute the Laws Faithfully and Usurpation of the Legislative Authority of Congress.” Within that article, McCarthy cites Obama’s illegal and unilateral changing of federal statutes, from several components within Obamacare to scrapping codified welfare work requirements to amending immigration laws to enact policies Congress did not approve.
He also alleges Obama failed to execute laws ranging from layoff notifications to the Clean Air Act to nuclear waste and Medicare. McCarthy says there’s a simple reason he put these allegations first.
“When I was a prosecutor, what you always want to have in the indictment is one count that’s pretty much indefensible. I think even the president’s most ardent admirers would have to admit that he does not execute the laws faithfully, which is one of the most important duties that he has in the Constitution,” said McCarthy.
“The president is the only officer in our government who is required by the Constitution to take an oath to faithfully execute the laws and preserve the Constitution. We have a president who is very arbitrary about laws. He enforces some. He doesn’t enforce others. He’s selective. He rewrites them. He presumes to be able to decree federal benefits. A lot of people may like that on the hard left because it’s basically implementing their ideological program. But I think most people, if they’re of good faith, have to admit that he’s not following the law,” said McCarthy.
Obama’s alleged failure to faithfully enforce immigration laws also appears in the fifth article, specifically referring to the president’s unilateral conferring of amnesty upon certain groups of immigrants and fighting states that seek to enforce federal immigration laws on their own. Immigration is also mentioned in another article on defrauding the American people, alleging the administration deliberately misleads the public on its border enforcement record.
McCarthy says there is a very good reason for the heavy focus on immigration.
“I think it’s because it’s so blatant. The president has taken the position that he can write the immigration law himself. He’s tried to go the constitutional route. He’s tried to go to Congress. He hasn’t gotten what he’s wanted. What he says in those instances is that, ‘If Congress won’t act, I will.’ Constitutionally, it’s not that Congress won’t act. They’ve said no. His response to that is to become imperious and try to impose his own program and do it in a way that not only disregarding of the Constitution’s separation of powers but also is an insult to the sovereignty of the states,” said McCarthy.
Other articles of impeachment on McCarthy’s list, include “Usurping the Constitutional Authority and Prerogatives of Congress” for not getting congressional authorization for extended military action in Libya and making recess appointments at a time when the Senate was not in recess, and dereliction of duty as commander-in-chief. The latter charge focuses on crippling rules of engagement that McCarthy says makes our troops much more vulnerable and more unlikely to complete their missions.
McCarthy also sees impeachable offenses on this front in the recent prisoner swap that allowed five key Taliban figures to go free from Guantanamo in exchange for captive U.S. soldier Bowe Bergdahl.
“I’m not impressed by the one that seems to have everybody whipped up in Washington, this 30-day notification requirement. I think that’s of dubious constitutionality. I actually think Obama has a pretty good argument on that statute because it really does try to restrict his core constitutional authority as commander-in-chief,” said McCarthy.
“It seems to be quite beside the point when we have a commander-in-chief who is replenishing the enemy in wartime when the enemy is still on the battlefield conducting offensive, jihadist operations against our guys. That’s about as shocking a dereliction of duty as I can imagine,” said McCarthy.
McCarthy lodges another article of impeachment against Obama for fraud perpetrated against the American people. The allegations under that charge focus on the core promises of Obamacare that Americans could keep their health plans and doctors. They also cite Obama for going into Libya under the premise of averting genocide and always intending to depose Moammar Ghaddafi, blaming the 2012 Benghazi attacks on a video long after the truth was known, facilitating Iran’s nuclear program while publicly vowing to stop it and propping up the green energy firm Solyndra with taxpayer dollars in a way that deceived investors.
Another article calls for impeachment based on the Justice Department’s alleged failure to execute the laws faithfully. That indictment centers on the illegal monitoring of reporters, the Fast and Furious gun-running operation, politicizing the hiring process at the Justice Department and unequally applying civil rights laws.
On matters such as Benghazi, the Justice Department’s actions and even the IRS scrutiny of conservatives, it is still unclear what Obama knew and if he had an active role in those issues. McCarthy says it doesn’t matter.
“In the system the framers gave us, it was very important to them that the president be accountable. If you look at the Constitution carefully, you’d find that all the executive power in the government is invested in one person. It is not endowed in this vast array of executive agencies. It is singularly the president who is responsible,” said McCarthy.
“It’s not what Hillary Clinton does or Susan Rice does or Eric Holder or Eric Shinseki or any of the people who have become infamous over the past five -and-a-half years. All those facts are attributable to the president,” said McCarthy, who says the founders would have little patience with the Obama administration’s frequent explanation that the president did not know or approve of any wrongdoing.
The final article accuses Obama of undermining the constitutional rights of the American people, from the IRS harassment of conservatives applying for non-profit status to his refusal to classify the Ft. Hood massacre as an act of terrorism to infringing on religious freedom through the contraception and abortifacient mandate and eroding gun rights through the United Nations.
However, McCarthy save some special frustration for Obama’s efforts to stifle criticism of Islam in the public square.
“From the first days of Obama’s presidency in 2009 with the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, that’s this cabal of 57 Islamic government including the Palestinian Authority, they’ve been working on a resolution to curtail American free speech rights in deference to sharia blasphemy standards. They have essentially struck a human rights resolution that makes it unlawful to engage in expression that could incite hostility to religion. Of course, there’s only one religion we’re talking about in this context,” he said.
“Proving that there is an Obama administration mandate that attacks religious liberty, it’s not difficult to prove these things have happened, and I don’t even think it’s hard to prove these are high crimes and misdemeanors. Are they serious enough? Does the public think this is egregious enough to remove the president from power?” asked McCarthy.
Three Martini Lunch 6/10/14
Radio America’s Greg Corombos and Jim Geraghty from National Review clear out the bar with bad martinis. They start by discussing the details of thousands of patients experiencing wait times in the VA health care scandal. They look at the influx of young illegal immigrants sweeping over states bordering Mexico. They close by reflecting on Hillary Clinton’s presidential prospects given her denial of blame in the Benghazi attacks.
Why Impeachment Must Wait
Former federal prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy says there is abundant legal evidence to impeach and remove President Obama but he says it’s an exercise in futility and may actually embolden Obama if Republicans move in that direction with the political will of the nation behind them.
McCarthy is best known as the lead prosecutor in the cases against the “blind sheikh”, Omar Abdel Rahman, and eleven conspirators behind the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and plots against other New York City landmarks. McCarthy is now with the National Review Institute. His new book is “Faithless Execution: Building the Political Case for Obama’s Impeachment.”
In it, he lays out seven separate articles of impeachment against Obama on issues ranging from changing laws and failing to execute them faithfully to dereliction of duty as commander-in-chief to fraud on issues ranging from Obamacare to Benghazi. However, he also argues that now is the wrong time to pursue impeachment.
According to McCarthy, the founders included impeachment and removal from office in the Constitution as a protection for the people and the Constitution itself. However, he says the founders also didn’t want impeachment to be too easy to accomplish.
“They also wanted to make sure, knowing that removing a president is very socially disruptive, that we had a standard for removal that would not allow impeachment to become an exercise in partisan hackery,” said McCarthy.
He says that’s why the Constitution requires a two-thirds vote in the Senate for a president to be convicted and removed.
“That ensures that unless you have a broad consensus among the public, one that cuts across ideological and partisan lines, an attempt to remove the president is probably a non-starter. It’s a political remedy. You can have a thousand provable impeachable offenses, but if the public is not of a mind to remove the president from power, then the president won’t be impeached in the sense of being removed from power,” said McCarthy.
McCarthy says even though House impeachment of Obama could be plausible, he believes it’s pointless if the Senate votes are not there to remove him. He says the impeachment of Bill Clinton serves as a valuable lesson, not because the case wasn’t strong enough but because the public didn’t want him removed.
“There wasn’t a public will to remove the president from power. Unless you have, it cannot only be a mistake to go forward in the sense of not being able to achieve impeachment, you can actually end up encouraging presidential lawlessness,” said McCarthy.
“Spin it out with what would happen with Obama at this point. If you filed articles of impeachment, you’d have a trial in the Senate. At this point, you’d probably lose that by something like 70-30. That would be spun by the media and the administration as approval of President Obama’s methods over the last few years. You’d be setting out trying to correct presidential lawlessness and you’d end up actually encouraging it,” said McCarthy.
McCarthy believes it is possible to turn public opinion on a matter as weighty as impeachment in a fairly short period of time. He says we saw it happen just 40 years ago.
“I think if you asked people if the president’s committed impeachable offenses, they’d probably overwhelmingly say yes. If you asked them if they wanted the president removed from power, I think a lot fewer people would say yes. But politics is dynamics and things change. In 1972, (Richard) Nixon won re-election with the largest then-landslide in American electoral history. In 20 months he was gone because he couldn’t survive politically once the country became riveted to presidential lawlessness,” said McCarthy.
Republicans in Congress have other avenues to check the advance of the executive branch, and McCarthy says they simply refuse to stop much of what he considers Obama’s illegal activities.
“The main tool (the founders) gave Congress to that purpose is the power of the purse. The president’s opposition has been supine. They haven’t been willing to do anything along those lines. The way you really stop presidential lawlessness, short of impeachment, is you cut off the money the president needs to carry it out. They haven’t been willing to do anything like that,” said McCarthy.
He says the budget showdown last September and October proved most in the GOP aren’t willing to fight.
“The one time that some of the Republican conservatives in Congress tried to cut off the money from Obamacare, which is an immensely unpopular program. They were castigated, not only by the press but by members of their own party. I think it’s become very hard structurally to use the other tools the framers gave us,” said McCarthy.
He says the GOP suffers from two major problems in budget fights, which make them reluctant to demand their way.
“When Republicans oppose the president, they get demagogued as racists and the like, which is really an unfortunate thing that has happened to our politics. The other thing is that the government’s become so big that when you start cutting off money, you’re always talking about somebody’s transfer payments. Republicans never want to be in a position of being portrayed as mean ogres who are taking food from babies’ mouths and money out of people’s pockets,” said McCarthy.
Three Martini Lunch 6/9/14
Radio America’s Greg Corombos and Jim Geraghty from National Review reacts to new Senate polls in Iowa and Georgia that show Republicans ahead. They talk about Hillary Clinton’s upcoming book release and the large amounts of money she made giving speeches. And they conclude today’s lunch with quotes from Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein about being left out of the loop by the White House in the Bergdahl swap.
The DOJ’s New Domestic Threats
The Justice Department is resurrecting a program designed to thwart domestic threats to the United States, and Attorney General Eric Holder says those threats include individuals the government deems anti-government or racially prejudiced.
The Domestic Terrorism Executive Committee was created in the wake of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing but was scrapped soon after the 2001 terrorist attacks as intelligence and law enforcement officials shifted their focus to threats from outside the country. The committee will be comprised of figures from the FBI, the National Security Division of the Justice Department and the Attorney General’s Advisory Committee.
In his statement announcing the return of the committee, Holder said he remains concerned about the specter of attacks prompted by Islamic extremists, but he says this committee will be tasked with identifying other threats.
“We must also concern ourselves with the continued danger we face from individuals within our own borders who may be motivated by a variety of other causes from anti-government animus to racial prejudice,” Holder said.
According to reporting from Reuters, The American Civil Liberties Union is pushing back against the DOJ plan, fearing “it could be a sweeping mandate to monitor and collect controversial speech.”
Conservative groups are alarmed on multiple levels. First, they see themselves once again the target of an administration that disagrees with them philosophically.
“It appears there’s an attempt to marginalize people who hold views that are sharply different from those of the administration and much of the establishment, said Horace Cooper, co-chairman of the Project 21 National Advisory Board. Project 21 is a network of black conservatives.
Cooper says plenty of presidents dealt with critical speech, particularly in opposition to the Vietnam War and even the Iraq War. He says no president ever responded like this.
“We didn’t arrest them (due to their speech). We didn’t try to prevent them from being able to express themselves on campuses and we didn’t try to prevent them from trying to enter into the public square,” he said. “This administration appears not to appreciate that lesson and says that the groups of people that are not within their particular perspective ought to be considered the very threat…that the real terrorist threat that comes internationally [presents].”
Project 21 is a very vocal critic of what it considers administration efforts to cloak liberal policies in the guise of racial equality. Cooper says devoting resources to stop threats based on racial prejudice is a solution in search of a problem.
“We’re particularly bothered by mixing together so-called domestic insurrectionists and racists. There is simply no anti-black or anti-minority underground movement in America that is threatening in any way the stability of our government or the stability of local governments. There is just nothing like that. That’s just a complete and total boogeyman,” said Cooper, who believes the Justice Department is fully aware of the reality.
“When we see this administration talking as if the real threat is that if you’re a young black male, you’re going to be shot, you’re going to be kidnapped or you’re going to be forced to prison without actually having any charges against you, there’s simply no evidence to show that,” said Cooper.
Cooper says Holder could solve this debate by compiling a report showing the real number of racially-motivated murders, kidnappings and bombings. He says that report will never come because he believes the real motivation for this committee and this policy is entirely political.
“In our organization’s view, this is done, particularly the racial component, to create the false impression to minority communities that it is the Obama administration that is here to help them and another reason why, with all of the economic failings that they have provided to Americans generally and minorities in particular, they should continue to consider giving away their vote to that particular administration,” said Cooper.
In addition to the political maneuvering he alleges is behind this committee, Cooper is also deeply frustrated that this effort diverts resources from what he considers more severe and realistic threats.
“We are still under a threat watch. We still have all of the security measures that we put in place after 2001. The period of 2001-2008 was a period in which we thwarted more than a few. Some of those have been made public. But many of those still have not made public. But what we’ve seen since the beginning of the Obama administration is that many of these attacks, whether they’re increasing or not, are being more effective. They’re actually happening,” said Cooper.
“To shift more resources away from the threat that’s real to this theoretical problem is harmful to the safety of Americans and is more about a political agenda than it is in protecting Americans,” he said.
Three Martini Lunch 6/6/14
Greg Corombos of Radio America and Eliana Johnson of National Review credit George Will for diagnosing that President Obama has no tolerance for any disagreement and accuses any dissenters of “whipping up controversy”. They also discuss the latest troubling news about the Bergdahl exchange. And they slam Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid for responding to questions about the administration’s failure to notify Congress by saying, “What difference does it make?”
Coal in the Obama Cross Hairs
President Obama’s new regulations on power plant carbon emissions shows he doesn’t care about the coal industry, according to a coal country member of Congress, but he says there is a realistic way to stop the measures from ever taking effect that makes this year’s midterms elections pivotal in the energy debate.
Earlier this week, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced new rules that will force fossil fuel-based power plants to reduce emissions by 30 percent by 2030. The policy is a central piece of Obama’s former “Cap and Trade” agenda that failed to pass a Democratic-run U.S. Senate four years ago. The administration is now advancing the policy through the executive branch.
Virginia Rep. Morgan Griffith represents coal-rich southwestern Virginia. He says these rules would be devastating for his district and many others in a nation that gets at least 40 percent of it’s electricity from coal. Griffith says the president just made it very clear how little he regards the coal industry.
“I don’t think the administration really cares about the coal industry, and I think they disregard a lot of facts when it comes to how this will impact middle class Americans. They have shown a callous disregard for the folks in central Appalachia, the area that I represent and others,” said Griffith.
“It just doesn’t seem that they care. Their numbers are almost always wrong. They told us when they did another set of regulations relating to coal usage in utilities that we would lose around 10 megawatts of power capacity. We;ve actually lost about 62 by the end of this year. It’s going to impact our grid and our grid system,” he said.
Griffith says there is no current technology to allow coal-based power plants to meet the new standards. He believes the advancement of technology could make it possible in 10-15 years. However, he says that doesn’t help anyone right now, because the rules require states to have a plan in place within two years as to how they will reduce their emissions and states cannot rely on technology that does not exist yet. He believes prioritizing the development of cleaner burning of coal is a smarter way for Washington to proceed.
“That makes a lot of sense. Pushing these regulations before the science is ready does not make sense. It’s illogical and it’s going to hurt middle class America,” said Griffith.
The congressman says the coal industry would feel the initial pain from the rules but a huge percentage of Americans would be negatively impacted.
“We will have less electricity available and there’s going to be greater costs as companies go to build new facilities to try to meet these new demands on carbon dioxide,” said Griffith. “It’s going to be very difficult for American families to pay those increased electric bills. It’s going to be hard on American industry, so it’s going to cost jobs and hurt middle class families,” said Griffith.
The debate continues to rage over the science behind the administration’s push for its climate agenda. Griffith says before we even get into the academic issues, its fairly clear that unilateral action by the United States is guaranteed to accomplish nothing.
“You don’t even have to get into the fight on the science. What you look at is this: Is the rest of the world going to do the same thing?” asked Griffith. “If the rest of the world doesn’t do the same thing, what we’re doing is killing jobs in the United States and sending those jobs to the rest of the world. They continue to use coal without even the reasonable regulations we had in effect before this administration took over.”
“It’s a worldwide situation, and if all we’re doing is shifting the jobs to Asia, they’re going to ship us back dirty air in exchange for the jobs we have lost,” said Griffith.
So what recourse do opponents have since these rules are being implemented through the executive branch and not through a debate in Congress? A pretty effective one, according to Griffith. He says the midterm election results will be the deciding factor.
“Hopefully we’ll win elections and take over the Senate. There are some Democrats who agree with us but there are only a few. When we get control of the Senate, we then have the power to set aside regulations with a majority vote of the House and the Senate. That’s what we need to do and the American people need to understand that elections have consequences. If they don’t want to see jobs lost and electric rates skyrocketing, then we need to change the Senate. To change Washington, we need to change the Senate,” said Griffith.
The congressman noted that approval from the president is not required to set aside regulations, so majorities on both sides of Capitol Hill could act on their own.