Amid Reckless Talk Of Impeachment, Fox News Questions President Obama’s Loyalty

It’s taken four years, but the least productive Congress in recent history has finally found something they consider worthy of their time: Impeachment. The Tea Party Republicans running the House of Representatives have managed to avoid or deliberately obstruct everything from tax reform to job creation to immigration to climate change, and much more. In place of doing their actual jobs they have repeatedly attempted to cripple or repeal the Affordable Care Act (aka ObamaCare), deny women access to reproductive care, legislate their conservative flavor of religion, and conduct endless and unwarranted investigations into a slew of phony scandals.

The GOP has had help in their avoidance of their responsibilities. Fox News has been right beside them in diverting attention and tax dollars from useful services to wasteful partisan exercises. Specifically with regard to the Impeachment issue, it was a Fox News regular, Sarah Palin, who fired the most recent volleys.

Now Fox is setting its sights on bolstering the impeachment argument by orchestrating a campaign of propaganda to characterize President Obama as disloyal to the country. And they aren’t mincing words about it.

Fox News

On their lie-riddled community website, Fox Nation, there are currently two articles that raise questions with regard to Obama’s patriotism. They overtly suggest that the President may be rooting for our enemies, including violent terrorists.

One article, with a headline that asserts that “Obama Needs to Choose Sides – Israel or Hamas,” blatantly accuses Obama of potentially being on the side of Hamas terrorists. It’s author, Todd Starnes of Fox News, responds to the FAA’s temporary ban on flights to Israel (which has already been lifted) by accusing Obama of implementing an economic boycott against Israel. Starnes says that “There have been no such flight bans over other war-torn nations. So why Israel?” However, in addition to defaming Obama, Starnes is demonstrating his ignorance of world affairs because there are other flight bans, including two hot spots in the news recently, Ukraine and Mali.

The second article’s headline asks “Whose Side is the President Really on?” Again, the Fox Nationalists are implying that Obama is not on the side of the nation he leads. This article concerns the immigration crisis on the southwestern border, and its right-wing author, Ed Rogers of the Washington Post, writes that “It is not hard to believe the president has a bias on the side of the foreigners.” Although it may not be hard for Rogers to believe it, he offers little of substance to support his theory. It appears to based solely on the administrations efforts to resolve the unfolding humanitarian crisis.

Ironically, it is over the immigration issue that the GOP Speaker of the House, John Boehner, has chosen to respond to a White House comment regarding the GOP impeachment fixation. Senior White House adviser Dan Pfeiffer is properly concerned that the extremists in the GOP are serious about trying to remove Obama from office. He told reporters that Republican talk of impeachment should not be summarily dismissed:

“I think a lot of people in this town laugh that off. I would not discount that possibility. I think that Speaker Boehner, by going down this path of this lawsuit, has opened the door to Republicans possibly considering impeachment at some point in the future.”

Boehner’s office responded in a painfully twisted manner that criticized Pfeiffer for reacting to the impeachment talk that Republicans began. Boehner’s spokesman lamented that the White House “is focused on political games, rather than helping these kids and securing the border.” That comment begs the question: Has Boehner lost touch with reality? It is the administration that is trying to resolve the border crisis but, as usual, Boehner’s comrades in Congress are refusing to cooperate on passing the necessary legislation.

What’s more, it is Boehner himself who is playing political games with his ludicrous lawsuit against the President. Remember, this is a lawsuit by a party with a long history of opposing frivolous lawsuits. They are also known for opposing regulations that burden small business. So, of course, they are now filing a frivolous suit against the President for easing regulations on small business. And then Boehner complains about political game-playing.

Pfeiffer, the White House adviser, is quite correct to worry about impeachment. The Republican Party is so thoroughly demented and/or corrupt that they may just be crazy enough to try it. For that reason, it is critical that Democrats wake up and make a commitment to vote in November. Democrats have been notoriously absent during midterm elections. But this time they must recognize that the President is on the ballot just as surely as he was in 2008 and 2012.

If anyone should be impeached it’s Fox News. They spend 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, disparaging America and its elected representatives. They tear the country down and call it weak and its people stupid. They practically invite enemies to attack us. What’s more disloyal than that? And if their disinformation helps Republicans seize control of the Senate it will empower the House GOP to draft Articles of Impeachment. And while they will still undoubtedly fail in the end, they will detour the nation from doing any of the important work that needs to be done to revive the nation’s economy, create jobs, and restore our reputation throughout the world.

The Lone deRanger: Sarah Palin Thinks Her Impeachment Talk Is Making Obama Nervous

This weekend the Right-Wing Grousers of America are meeting in Denver to complain about how terrible the country is, and how near to destruction due to the black, Muslim, foreigner who has occupied the White House in defiance of the people (except for the majorities who voted for him twice). The Western Conservative Summit is being hosted by the Colorado Christian University in furtherance of their mission to establish a theocracy in the United States.

Among the far-right fringe’s celebrity speakers at the affair are Ted Cruz, Ben Carson, Michele Bachmann, and Allen West. In other words: the Brain Trust of the Tea Party. And perhaps the event’s superstar is former half-term governor, Fox News pundit, and reality TV star, Sarah Palin.

Sarah Palin

Palin’s speech was a half-hour of whining about how delinquent the country is in its obligation to impeach President Obama. She castigates everyone from Congress, to party regulars, to ordinary citizens, for not harboring the same maniacal urgency to rip the nation apart that she does. Yet even as she claims that the country isn’t doing enough to advance the cause of impeachment, she also brags about the impact she’s having and implores her followers to keep the pressure on, saying “Let’s talk more about impeachment, because it’s got them nervous.” Yeah, right. Here’s the evidence of just how nervous Obama is:

In the course of her address she hits all the wingnut talking points: the IRS, the Veterans Administration, ObamaCare, Benghazi (of course), and what she refers to repeatedly as the scourge of “open borders.” In fact, the only subject she spends more time on than impeachment is immigration. She regards it as the single greatest justification for impeaching the President. Her characterization of the issue is that of an “invasion” of gang members, drug dealers, terrorists, moochers, and disease carriers who were invited to America in order to inflate the ranks of the Democratic Party.

Immigrant Kids

One topic was conspicuously missing from her speech. Palin never mentioned the downed Malaysian aircraft in Ukraine. In fact, she hasn’t commented on it since it occurred. The only reason that she might be avoiding the matter is that she would have to repudiate her BFF, Vladimir Putin. Recall that not so long ago she was extolling the manly virtues of the Russian leader and comparing his bear-wrestling prowess with our own mom-jeans wearing president. She can hardly betray the man on whom she has developed such a strong crush by acknowledging his complicity with the murder of nearly 300 innocent civilians.

However, it was impeachment that Palin concentrated on with a fervor that bordered on obsession. She sings the chorus, popular now among the crackpot constituency, that Obama is a tyrant, an imperial president. And She believes that, literally, the only path to survival is impeachment.

Palin: Friends if we let Congress refuse to use the power the Constitution gives it, Barack Obama will continue to rule however he wants. And the fabric of America will unravel. So don’t be afraid to raise this and know that there’s no other recourse.

It is endlessly perplexing that the pseudo-patriots on the right consider America to be resting on such a shaky foundation that it will unravel if leaders with a different political philosophy hold power for a while. Apparently they love a country that they see as weak and susceptible to crumbling into dust in the face of a light breeze. Liberals were certainly not fond of George W. Bush, and some even thought he should be impeached for lying the nation into a disastrous and unnecessary war in Iraq. But no one on the left, with the party profile that Palin has on the right, ever speculated that the United States would cease to exist if Bush were not driven from office immediately.

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That is just one of the many differences between left and right. The left believes that democracy is a process wherein the people are endowed with the power to direct the course of the nation, even if they are sometimes mistaken. The right believes that their positions are ordained by God and that any variance from that holy path is a detour to hell. Consequently, for the right, the choice is always between righteousness or ruin, and compromise is sacrilege.

For Sarah Palin and her disciples, impeachment has nothing to do with law or governance. It is a holy crusade that the faithful are required to accept. It is an obligation unto the lord. Palin’s friends among the world’s most devout practitioners of religious extremism have another word for it: Jihad.

Sean Hannity Hosts Sarah Palin’s Impeach-a-Thon: Third Time’s The Chum

Sarah Palin achieved her main objective yesterday with an article on the Zombie Breitbart News website that declared that “It’s Time To Impeach President Obama.” Her objective, of course, was to garner media attention for herself. But aside from the litany of Obama-phobic nonsense that made up the bulk of her rancid rant, the notion that Palin was just awakened by a revelation to discover the imminent need to file Articles of Impeachment against President Obama is another lie perpetrated by Palin and the fawning media stooges that trail after her and lap up the slime left by her immaculate footsteps.

Sarah Palin

The truth is that Palin has previously called for Obama’s impeachment at least twice. It is a common theme among her Tea Party contingent that has never regarded Obama’s presidency as legitimate. Even without resorting to the extremist latitudes of impeachment, the unfiltered accusations that cast Obama as an anti-American socialist, who is deliberately working to destroy the country, are evidence of the depth of the delusion by the paranoid right. Then add in the impeachment mantra and what you have is a manic agitator throwing chum into the water to feed the cravings of the baby barracudas.

Palin’s previous entreaties for impeachment were just as devoid of any factual basis as her latest one. But they were no less ludicrous and lacking substance:

6/13/2014: I sense not enough guts in D.C. to file impeachment charges against Team Obama for their countless documented illegalities.

This was just last month (how soon the feeble-minded forget) and it also cited immigration as the justification for removing the President from office. Never mind that Obama has supported a comprehensive immigration bill that was passed in a rare bipartisan vote in the senate last year, but that GOP Speaker John Boehner has refused to allow it come to the House floor for a vote because he knows it would pass.

10/13/2013: Defaulting on our national debt is an impeachable offense, and any attempt by President Obama to unilaterally raise the debt limit without Congress is also an impeachable offense.

This is a laughably incoherent remark stemming from the disastrous government shutdown last year wherein Palin is asserting that Obama should be impeached if he defaults on the national debt (which he was trying to prevent the GOP Congress from doing), but also threatens impeachment if he takes steps to pay the debt. A damned if you do, damned if you don’t – ah just damn you to hell for whatever – proposition.

Palin took her Impeach-a-Thon to Fox News last night in a visit to the Sean Hannity show. As usual, her patented brand of word-salad ramblings offered nothing more than frothing hatred of all things Obama. And she also admitted that her motivation for impeachment is based on policy differences, not law, when she said that Obama intended…

“…to fraud the American people on these programs, these policies that he has promised will work or will not impact debts or deficit. These have been lies by our President. Yes, those are impeachable offenses.”

No, they are not. And the Obama administration has actually cut the deficit in half, just as he promised to do in his campaign. But reason never plays a part in Palin’s world. For instance, she also told Hannity that “You don’t bring a lawsuit to a gunfight.” What she is referring to here is, to say the least, obscure. Impeachment is a legal proceeding. So is she now abandoning her call for impeachment and escalating it to a call for armed rebellion? She clearly sees her solicitations as a movement and even said so explicitly:

“If people care about the future of this country and defense of our republic, they will join this cause of Articles of Impeachment against Barack Obama because enough is enough.”

If you have the stomach for it, here is the video of Palin on Hannity. It is the perfect representation of her mental disorder, with a manner of articulation that seems to have been styled by political satirist. Only she is one hundred percent serious. Which makes it both funnier and scarier.

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Impeachment Fever: America Rejected Sarah Palin, Now She Rejects America

The “Quitta From Wasilla” is making headlines again by displaying symptoms of acute Obama Derangement Syndrome. Sarah Palin, the 2008 GOP nominee for Vice-President, who was soundly rejected by American voters, is now calling for the impeachment of President Obama (again), who was elected twice with significant majorities.

Sarah Palin

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Palin’s panicky challenge to the Psycho Chicken Littles she commands from the parapets of her Facebook page cites the standard menu of wingnut atrocities that Tea Party dimwits cling to so fiercely (i.e. fundamental transformation, American exceptionalism, etc.). What her unhinged freak-out failed to provide were any actual legal justifications for impeachment. You know…high crimes, misdemeanors, jaywalking, anything remotely deserving of removal from office. With a completely empty basket of goodies, Palin launched her tirade saying that …

“Enough is enough of the years of abuse from this president. His unsecured border crisis is the last straw that makes the battered wife say, ‘no mas.'”

That’s a nice touch. In that one opening sentence Palin likened President Obama to a wife beater with America as his victim; she pandered to the Latino immigrants she so often disparages by demonstrating her trifling command of the Spanish language, which she and her disciples insist must never be spoken within U.S. borders; and she lied about the President’s record on immigration, which has reduced unlawful entries and increased deportations.

From there Palin portrays the perilous journey of immigrants as a leisure trip wherein the brown hordes will “kick off their shoes and come on in.” It’s just like a big pool party in her view. But even worse, she completely fails to grasp the needs and desires of the American people by misrepresenting their priorities and the consequent duties of the President.

“There is no end in sight as our president prioritizes parties over doing the job he was hired by voters to do. Securing our borders is obviously fundamental here […] communities become unrecognizable and bankrupted due to Obama’s flood of illegal immigration.”

There is a bountiful cache of supid in that paragraph. First of all, what she calls “Obama’s flood of illegal immigration” was put in motion by George W. Bush’s signature on an anti-child trafficking bill in 2008, that requires the government to provide minor immigrants with legal representation and safe and secure housing while awaiting resolution of their status. And Palin did not, and can not, cite an example of a community that is unrecognizable, save for the one she can see from her house in Alaska.

More to the point, Palin’s assertion that immigration is job one for the President ignores the fact that most polls on the priorities of the American people actually put jobs as job one (20%). Immigration, while a serious matter that needs to be addressed, is not particularly high on the list of things Americans want their government to work on. In fact it is often near the bottom of that list (3%).

It is pathetic that people like Palin are making monsters out of children who find themselves in an untenable position. They are alone and frightened by the prospect of being returned to countries where they live in danger and poverty. And now they are further terrorized by insensitive Americans who scream at them and threaten them and put up barricades to prevent them from reaching safe harbor. It’s atrocious behavior that is embarrassing to the majority of Americans who reject such hatefulness.

Immigrant Kids

Palin concludes her rant with a generalized lashing out that offers no substance or reason – just hostility and spittle-inflected animus toward the man that America elected twice and summarily threw her in the political gutter.

“It’s time to impeach; and on behalf of American workers and legal immigrants of all backgrounds, we should vehemently oppose any politician on the left or right who would hesitate in voting for articles of impeachment. The many impeachable offenses of Barack Obama can no longer be ignored. If after all this he’s not impeachable, then no one is.”

Palin, like many of her comrades on the irrational right, have no idea what impeachment means or how it is invoked. She failed to provide even a single example of a valid impeachable offense, even though she says that there are many of them. And her hysterical overreach is in harmony with the conservative pseudo-patriots who are salivating at the prospect of winning a majority in the Senate this November so they can pursue their anti-democratic agenda and oust the man that they pledged, from the moment he was inaugurated, to destroy.

For this reason it is imperative that Democrats break out of their traditional mid-term complacency and actually get out and vote this year. If they don’t, they can expect with near certainty that Republicans will try to impeachment Obama. And with that will come all the attendant political soap operas and antagonisms that the nation really doesn’t need as there are numerous other issues to address without having to poison the atmosphere with a politically driven show trial. If after all this Democrats don’t vote in record numbers, they will wake up the day after the election with two year long migraine.

Oh The Stupidity: Sarah Palin Wants Obama Impeached For Both Solving/Not Solving The Debt Crisis

America’s own rogue GOPachyderm, Sarah Palin, is such a consistent source of hilarity it seems impossible that she could keep up the pace any longer. But just when you think she’s exhausted her supply of inanity, she posts another Facebook column and reestablishes her crackpot bona fides:

“Apparently the president thinks he can furlough reality when talking about the debt limit. To suggest that raising the debt limit doesn’t incur more debt is laughably absurd. The very reason why you raise the debt limit is so that you can incur more debt. Otherwise what’s the point?”

What Palin is mocking as “laughably absurd” is known to those who have advanced beyond remedial economics as “the truth.” The point of raising the debt ceiling, which Palin goes out of her way to misunderstand, is to pay for debt already incurred. It does not, and cannot, authorize new spending. Only Congress can do that. So if Palin has a problem with the outstanding debt, she needs to take it up with John Boehner.

Palin continues by declaring that “It’s also shameful to see [Obama] scaremongering the markets with his talk of default.” I wonder if she would castigate the sainted Tea Party icon, Ronald Reagan, for saying (video here)…

“Congress consistently brings the Government to the edge of default before facing its responsibility. This brinkmanship threatens the holders of government bonds and those who rely on Social Security and veterans benefits. Interest rates would skyrocket, instability would occur in financial markets, and the Federal deficit would soar.”

But Palin hasn’t even begun to showcase her Olympian idiocy. Her Facebook drivel proceeds with a self-contradictory passage that begins by stating that…

“There is no way we can default if we follow the Constitution. The Fourteenth Amendment, Section 4, requires that we service our debt first.”

Actually, what the Fourteenth Amendment (Section 4) says is that “The validity of the public debt of the United States […] shall not be questioned.” It is a controversial clause that many interpret as authorization for the President to unilaterally raise the debt ceiling at will. So it appears that Palin is advising the President to take matters into his own hands. But her next paragraph puts an end to that sort of thinking.

“Defaulting on our national debt is an impeachable offense, and any attempt by President Obama to unilaterally raise the debt limit without Congress is also an impeachable offense.”

Huh? Palin just got finished arguing that the Constitution demands that the President take any and all measures to pay our debts. Now she says that if he does so he is guilty of an impeachable offense. And just to lock in the crazy, she also says that not doing so is likewise impeachable. In Palin’s twisted reality Obama cannot glance sideways without violating his oath of office.

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What is abundantly clear is that Palin wants to believe that whatever this President does is a justification for impeachment. Her perspective is so irreparably warped that it has lost any semblance of rationality. This is something that has been noticeable for quite some time with Palin, but what stands out as utterly incomprehensible is that there are still people who hang on her every word – including in the media. It’s a sad state of affairs, but one that is not irreversible. We just need to provide the proper educational support. So let’s start with something that Palin might be able to grasp.

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Cletus on Debt Ceiling

IMPEACH, IMPEACH: A Frenzy Breaks Out At Fox News

Is it a slow news day, or just another day at Fox News? For some reason Fox is exposing their wacko side (again) over at their community web site Fox Nation (See Fox Nation vs. Reality for an in-depth look at the site’s blatant dishonesty). In two days they have posted two articles about fishy fringe groups proposing phony “Articles of Impeachment” against President Obama.

The first thing to note is that such articles cannot be drafted by citizens. It is a legal process that begins in the House of Representatives. So these charades have no meaning other than as political publicity stunts. Secondly, the allegations must assert criminal wrongdoing that amount to “high crimes and misdemeanors.” Being unsatisfied with explanations about what took place at Benghazi, or opposition to a health insurance law, that was passed by congress and upheld by the Supreme Court, do not rise to that standard.

Nevertheless, Fox News is going all out to promote these absurd spectacles. The first was posted yesterday with a headline that shouted “Black Citizens Group Files ‘Articles of Impeachment’ Against Obama”

Fox Nation NBRA

In fact, the group was actually the National Black Republican Association, a shadowy organization with no visible means of support who exist primarily to advance false claims about the historical relationship of Democrats and Republicans to the black community. For instance, they produced radio ads and billboards declaring that Martin Luther King was a Republican, a claim that is demonstrably untrue.

The Fox Nationalists sourced their story to Watchdog.org, a division of the Franklin Center which is financed by the Koch brothers as an “investigative” journalism service. Both Watchdog and the Franklin Center espouse rabidly right-wing/Tea Party propaganda disguised as news reporting – much like Fox News.

The next impeachment article was posted today in the form of a video “trailer” for a new book by noted birther Aaron Klein. The book is titled “Impeachable Offenses: The Case for Removing Barack Oabam from Office.” It suffers from the same deficiencies of law and logic as the NBRA’s article.

Fox Nation WND
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Klein’s book was published by the book division of WorldNetDaily, the far-right home of the wildest conspiracy theories on the net, many of which are manufactured by Klein himself. In addition to a variety of birther myths, WorldNetDaily is the source of such reputable reporting as terrorists building “boob” bombs (seriously, you have to see the graphic), and Obama using the movie “The Butler” to incite race wars. The site features such distinguished contributors as Ted Nugent, Victoria Jackson, and Donald Trump.

So that’s two articles in two days planting the asinine idea of impeachment in the minds of Fox’s gullible and glassy-eyed audience. Both are from sources that represent the dregs of the uber-rightist conspiracy swamps with no credibility whatsoever. I can’t wait to see what the Fox Nationalists post tomorrow. And Fox wants people to regard them as a reputable news organization? Yeah, sure.

Fox Nation vs. Reality: Impeach Obama Rally Causes 10 Mile Yawn

The folks at Fox Nation must be getting pretty desperate for any slime to fling Obama’s way. Clearly the parade of phony scandals has failed to convince the President to resign and join a Muslim monastery, so they are grasping for ever shorter straws in an effort to break Obama’s back.

Today the Fox Nationalists reported that an “Impeach Obama” rally in Southern California organized by confirmed birther had snarled traffic for 10 miles.

Fox Nation
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First of all, anyone who has ever driven in Southern California knows that there are very few 10 mile stretches of highway that are not snarled at almost any time of day. That said, the particular claim in this case was easily disproved by photos supplied by the source for the story. One glance shows that traffic was moving fairly well. It also shows that the rally was a pathetic affair that brought out only six or seven nutcases who were unable to articulate an actual reason to impeach the President. Their signs carried unrelated messages concerning Benghazi, immigration, guns, and something about cults. This also further confirms earlier reports that these Teabaggers have not gained any ground in the wake of recent political melodramas.

The organizer was long-time birther, Roger Ogden. He has been advocating for Obama’s impeachment for years. He continues to believe that the birth certificate the White House posted was a fake. He also defends comparing Obama to Hitler and the Nazis. I’m not sure whether Ogden is a LaRouche follower, but there was at least one LaRouche sign at the rally.

I don’t particularly care what a loser like Ogden does on his spare Saturday mornings, but the fact that Fox News saw fit to feature this non-event on their web site says something about how frantic they are to invent a new controversy. But what made them think that a lame handful of wingnuts on a freeway overpass would have a better chance of stirring up trouble than the pseudo-scandals that have already flopped, I’ll never know.

GOP Calls For Impeachment Of President Hillary Clinton

Vowing to get an early start on efforts to remove Hillary Clinton from the White House, Republican leaders in congress have announced their intention to hold hearings on what they claim are the high crimes and misdemeanors that Hillary Clinton will commit once she assumes the presidency in January of 2017.

Hillary Clinton

Although she has not yet been sworn in to office (or elected, or announced her candidacy) Republicans are determined not waste any time in initiating her impeachment. House Speaker John Boehner told reporters that…

“We do not want to repeat the mistakes we made in the previous [i.e. current] administration where we waited too long to get the ball rolling. After all, President Obama was in office for nearly a month before we took meaningful action to remove him.”

Some members of the GOP attribute the failure to impeach Obama on the late start they got on manufacturing allegations of malfeasance and ginning up outrage over imaginary scandals. Consequently, they chased after flimsy accusations of foreign birth and socialist aspirations that never caught on with the public. That left them facing a reelection campaign dominated by impotent sound bites of whether or not small businesses “built that” and desperate rejections of real data including poll results and unemployment numbers. Republican strategist Karl Rove Rove addressed these shortcomings saying…

“We are proud of the fallacies we created and promoted. No one worked harder to invent phony issues than we did. Could we have done better? Should we have connected Obama to Hitler more often, or the spread of the Bubonic Plague? Sure, but it’s always easier to criticize with hindsight.”

This is not to say that there weren’t zealous attempts to plunder the Obama presidency. Republican politicians, with the help of Fox News and the Koch brothers, worked feverishly to construct controversies designed to hobble the administration. They labored over “Fast and Furious,” Solyndra, Bill Ayres, and ObamaCare, which they unsuccessfully took all the way to the Supreme Court. Each of these affairs, and several more, were alleged to be “Obama’s Watergate,” but none of them gained any traction with a populace that proved to be smarter than the Tea Party – admittedly, not a very high bar.

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The latest episode for which conservative muckrakers are crying wolf (or Watergate, as the case may be) is the tragedy that took the lives of four Americans in Benghazi, Libya. However, even with the help of near blanket broadcasting of Benghazi hysteria by Fox News, the utter lack of any compelling evidence of wrongdoing has turned the whole affair into a mushy smear campaign notable only for the tacky theatrics of the accusers. Even the specter of a cover-up fell flat when the proponents of that theory could not explain what exactly was being covered-up. “We forgot that little detail,” said Rep. Jason Chaffetz (Tea Party-UT).

Rather than risk a similar fate in the event that Clinton runs for and wins the presidency in 2016, Republicans are casting their lots now. Since it doesn’t matter whether the object of their scorn has actually done anything unlawful, why wait until the former senator and Secretary of State is in office to try her for the crimes they are planning to pin on her no matter what reality ultimately serves up. It’s a strategy that they believe conserves a great deal of political energy that would otherwise be wasted on honest politicking and the responsible stewardship of government.

Senator Mitch McConnell, who declared shortly after Obama’s first election victory that his primary legislative goal was to “make him a one-term president,” is devoting the same measure of commitment to the effort to pre-impeach Clinton. In remarks to the GOP caucus last week he reminded his fellow Republicans that their priorities ought not to change just because the complexion and gender of the person in the White House does.

“We have spent five years obstructing everything this president has attempted to do, from passing bills, to appointing judges and cabinet officials. This is not the time to let our guard down and be distracted by the burdens of actually governing or helping the nation recover from adversity.”

Asked for a comment when Clinton was told of the Republican campaign to impeach her, she said incredulously “What the fuck?” And walked away laughing uncontrollably. Her office later followed up with this statement:

“We have always known that these clowns were certifiable, and now we are seeing some of the best evidence of that. The Secretary has not yet made a decision as to whether or not she will run for president, but if she does she expects to campaign vigorously and appeal to the hearts and minds of the American people.

She also expects to face dipshits in the Republican Party who, with their pals at Fox News, will manufacture insane theories and conspiracies, and she plans to wipe up the pavement with their lame asses.”

How Stupid Are The Fox/Tea Party Nuts Who Want To Impeach Obama?

In case anyone is still wondering how stupid the Fox News/Tea Party crowd is, they have announced that they are trying to raise money to fly a banner over the Super Bowl that will say “Impeach Obama.”

Fox Nation Impeach Obama

That’s right. The Super Bowl, over which it will be illegal to fly. The Super Bowl, which will be held in a covered stadium. These geniuses are plotting to hire an airplane to fly in restricted air space, pulling a banner that no one in the stadium would be able to see, that advocates a criminal procedure for which there is no legal basis. And presumably there are dimwits willing to donate to this quixotic scam.

The video above was posted with their pitch for contributors. It proudly displays a prior banner overflying of the Rose Parade which, due to weather and a late takeoff, they missed all but the last half hour. That ought to convince their victims, I mean donors, to dig deep.

I’ve gotta come up with a really dumb idea to fleece these morons. I can’t shake the feeling that I’m missing a rare opportunity to bank some coin before the Tea Party is over. Any suggestions?

Bush League Justice Under Investigation At MSNBC

Dan Abrams will be hosting a series of programs this week focusing on the abuses of the Bush Administration, particularly with regard to the Department of Justice. This is an important subject that gets far too little play in the press, but impacts everything from civil rights to political corruption to First Amendment freedoms of speech and religion, and so much more. The article announcing the program, penned by Abrams, covers all of these issues with the indignation of someone who loves the law and the fair administration of justice. Here are some selected excerpts:

“‘Bush League Justice’ is a series (airing Monday-Thursday at 9 pm on MSNBC) that stems from my increasing frustration and outrage over how the Bush Administration has politicized the usually apolitical Justice Department.”

“…this President has flipped the goals and mission of the [Civil Rights] Division and allowed it to become a tool of the radical right […] almost half of the new hires in that department who had ‘civil rights experience’ had ‘experience’ only in defending employers or -fighting- affirmative action.”

“The President has effectively declared the right to disobey more than 750 laws. From the interrogation of prisoners to torture to investigations by U.S. officials in Iraq, President Bush has added a caveat that says, ‘I will only enforce this if.’ So he is effectively telling Congress thanks for your advice on this law, but I reserve the right to ignore this law.”

“Maybe the most obvious betrayal of the public trust has been politically motivated prosecutions. A University of Minnesota study conducted this year shows that for every elected Republican investigated during this President’s tenure, there were seven elected Democrats investigated.”

“This series is long overdue. The scandal with the firings of the U.S. Attorneys under Attorney General Alberto Gonzales exposed the underbelly of this administration’s penchant for putting politics over objectivity and qualifications.”

The tone set by Abrams is both surprising and promising. He does not have the reputation of a firebrand activist, but he is clearly expressing something heartfelt in these comments. He was trained as a lawyer and his father, Floyd Abrams, is one of the most respected First Amendment attorneys of the 20th century. So perhaps Dan’s genetics are kicking in.

These issues are desperately in need of a champion, someone who can do for justice what Lou Dobbs does for immigration. And the protection and preservation of our Constitutional liberties is far more important than the racist scapegoating that demagogues like Dobbs engage in.

We’ll see, as the series unfolds, if Abrams’ passion for the law results in a broadcast that forthrightly exposes Bush’s contempt for fairness and equality in the administration of justice. There is a cornucopia of criminal misconduct to explore produced by both intent and incompetence. The scandals of the Alberto Gonzales era at DoJ have fallen from the media radar, but they are just as toxic to our nation’s future as ever. The political firings of department attorneys, the distortion of the mission of civil and voting rights prosecutions, the hiring of more than 150 lawyers from Pat Robertsons Regent University, the justification for torture, the disrespect for Congress and the doctrine of equal powers, the debasement of the Supreme Court – all of these matters need to be remembered and acted upon if our democracy is to endure.

An honest presentation of the record is indeed long overdue. An honest presentation should put to rest the question of whether impeachment ought to be on the table. I hope that these programs will finally provide what has been sorely lacking from a somnolent media for the past seven years: an honest presentation.