Barack Obama: An American Dictator?

Member Group : Glen Meakem

This past week, President Obama once again bypassed Congress and the legislative
branch of Government by asserting a dubious "Executive Privilege" on all documents related to the growing "Fast and Furious" scandal. The flawed Fast and Furious operation allowed thousands of assault styled weapons to "walk" illegally across the Mexican Border and into the arms of drug cartels. These cartels then used the weapons to kill two U.S. law enforcement personnel and hundreds of Mexican citizens.

To date, only a third of these weapons have been recovered.

Although Congress has been investigating this scandal since the beginning of 2011, President Obama issued his "privilege" only after it became clear that his Attorney General, Eric Holder, would be held in contempt by the House Oversight Committee for failing to turn over subpoenaed documents related to Fast and Furious. To date, Holder has released only 7,600 heavily redacted pages from more than 140,000 documents identified by the Department of Justice. The House Oversight Committee has requested 70,000 additional documents, but in the final days leading up to the contempt vote, they sought a compromise with the Attorney General and agreed to postpone the vote if he turned over a mere 1,300 specific documents. Evidently, at the last hour, Attorney General Eric Holder said he would turn the documents over to
Congress only if they abandoned their congressional oversight duty and ended their investigation all together. When Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) refused, The White House, at Holder’s request, determined that it would assert Executive Privilege over all Fast and Furious Documents in a blatant attempt to keep the American public in the dark regarding who authorized this operation.

Although there is ongoing discussion regarding the historical application and legal use of the president’s executive privilege, and whether it can apply under any circumstances to the 1,300 documents that Holder decided NOT to release at the last minute, what is clear is that Mr. Obama does not want the American people to see these documents. It is clear the President has something to hide. And in order to keep these things hidden, he has inserted himself into the middle of the scandal, shifting the question away from which high level DOJ officials were aware of and authorized this operation, to what did the President know and when did he know it.

Furthermore, President Obama’s actions violate his own historical thinking on the subject of executive privilege. In 2007, then Senator Obama stated that the Bush administration had a tendency "to try to hide behind executive privilege." And on January 21, 2009 (his second day in office), President Obama issued his memorandum calling for a "national commitment" to transparency in government.

The family of U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry (one of the two law enforcement officers gunned down with Fast and Furious weapons) reacted to the President’s latest executive overreach with disappointment stating, "Attorney General Eric Holder’s refusal to fully disclose the documents associated with Operation Fast and Furious and President Obama’s assertion of executive privilege serves to compound this tragedy. It denies the Terry family and the American people the truth… Our son lost his life protecting this nation, and it is very disappointing that we are now faced with an administration that seems more concerned with protecting themselves than revealing the truth behind Operation Fast and Furious."

Unfortunately, this is not the first time that President Obama has defied the
constitutional separation of powers, and expanded his own executive authority.

Just last week, the Obama administration announced that it would not enforce current U.S. immigration law, but instead allow some 800,000 young illegal immigrants to stay and work in the U.S. – all in violation of current U.S. law! Why? To build his reelection support within the Hispanic community.

Just a couple of weeks ago, the Obama administration was caught leaking sensitive U.S. national security secrets to the press regarding our under cover technology war with Iran in order to make his foreign policy appear more aggressive and hawkish.

Earlier this year, the Obama administration assaulted our constitutional right to freedom of religion by mandating that all employers, including the Catholic Church, pay for contraceptive devices, sterilization procedures, and abortifacient drugs in violation of religious beliefs and teachings. And shortly after Christmas, President Obama made numerous illegal "recess appointments" while the Congress was in pro forma session, in order to get his pro labor appointees onto the National Labor Relations Board. Copying exactly what Harry Reid did when the Democrats were the majority party in the Senate and George W. Bush was President, Senate Republicans were holding the pro forma session for the sole purpose of preventing President

Obama from making recess appointments. But, in stark contrast to President Bush, President Obama disrespected Senate rules, tradition, and the rule of law by making "recess" appointments anyway. Consistent with Marxist ideology, the "ends justified the means" once again for Barack Obama. Apparently, he felt that putting left-wing labor activists in control of the National Labor Relations Board was more important than preserving the rule of law in The United States of America. This is the kind of leadership that made countries like Argentina and Venezuela what they are today!

And this is hardly an exhaustive list of Obama’s executive over reach. At the very least, Obama’s actions establish dangerous precedents that may encourage future Presidents to ignore the rule of law. At worst, these actions betray a President who believes he has the authority to dictate his will onto the American people, even if our Constitution or Congress stands in his way. Such actions prove that Barack Hussein Obama II is a dangerous man who must be voted out of office this November.

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