Illegality Tracker

So, my beginnings of a post are below. Fortunately for all of us,  Keith Koffler IS a full-time professional and he has collected two dozen Obama scandals.


It would take a full-time professional staff to keep track of the acts and omissions of the current regime that are contrary to the rule of law, that skirt or exceed the constitutional limits and statutory powers of the president and the executive branch.

Not only do we have 5 years of abuses to record, but new instances are coming to light daily.

I don't have a full-time professional staff. But I'll do my best to highlight the ones that come to my attention.

1. Treasury: Debt Has Been Exactly $16,699,396,000,000.00 for 56 Days - As reported in CNSNews.com on 15 July 2013 the official federal debt has been exactly $25M below the debt limit for almost 2 months while the Treasury has issued more debt instruments than it has redeemed. Now, as anyone who has lied with numbers will tell you, a number with that many trailing zeroes is not an accurate number. There is no practical way that in real life, there could be no change from day to day in the number. That the Treasury has been issuing more debt than it has been redeeming makes the number even more blatantly fallacious. 

CNS asks the obvious question: "How could the value of extant U.S. Treasury Securities increase by $51.586 billion during a 56-day period when the federal government’s debt subject to the legal limit set by Congress has remained constant at $16,699,396,000,000.00—just $25 million below the legal limit?"

Jack Lew's response is a classic of bureaucratic opacity: "Treasury Secretary Lew sent a letter to House Speaker John Boehner. In the letter, Lew said the Treasury would begin implementing what he called “the standard set of extraordinary measures” that allows the Treasury to continue to borrow and spend money even after it has hit the legal debt limit."

Only a U.S. Federal Government Official could use the term "standard set of extraordinary measures" and proceed to borrow more than is authorized by law - with complete seriousness. Really, if it weren't true, I'd swear it was a Monty Python sketch. I didn't bother to investigate what the "standard set of extraordinary measures" are, but when Timmy Geithner did it, they included failing to fund federal worker pension accounts - an illegal act for any organization that isn't the Federal Government.

2. EXCLUSIVE: Feds admit improper scrutiny of candidate, donor tax records
Justice has declined to prosecute any of the cases According to the Washington Times, "The Treasury Department has admitted for the first time that confidential tax records of several political candidates and campaign donors were improperly scrutinized by government officials, but the Justice Department has declined to prosecute any of the cases.

Its investigators also are probing two allegations that the Internal Revenue Service “targeted for audit candidates for public office,” the Treasury’s inspector general for tax administration, J. Russell George, has privately told Sen. Chuck Grassley."

3. Circumventing or ignoring completely laws currently in force. There are any number. Refusing to enforce immigration laws in order to effectively enact the DREAM Act by Executive fiat is probably the most egregious. Failing to enforce DOMA, and failing to perform his constitutional duty to defend it in court combine for another. I just came across a relatively minor, but perhaps telling in that his abrogation of his Constitutional responsibilities and his flaunting of laws is becoming mundane. There has been a provision in an appropriations bill for quite some time that prohibits the CDC from using any of its funding “to advocate or promote gun control.” Which effectively thwarted their research because of course the CDC was doing research expressly to promote gun control. Obama issued an executive order  instructing the CDC to ignore Congress' intent and to proceed to produce 'research' 'proving' the need for more restrictions on guns.

UPDATE

The Attorney General "is giving new instructions to federal prosecutors on how they should write their criminal complaints when charging low-level drug offenders, to avoid triggering the mandatory minimum sentences." In other words, prosecutors are being told to ignore the actual offense and to enter a charge based on the amount of punishment they would like the alleged criminal to receive, thereby circumventing (once again) the will of the people expressed through laws passed by their elected representatives.

Did I mention that the administration is importing illegal immigrants through a loop hole in the asylum rules?

Immigrants are being taught to use "key words and phrases" to be allowed to enter and stay in the country. 

Just this past Monday, Border Patrol agents say about 200 people came through the Otay Crossing claiming a quote: "credible fear" of the drug cartels. 

 It's even providing free hotel rooms for them. 

UPDATE 2: Charles Krauthammer adds to the list:

  http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2013/08/12/krauthammer_holders_actions_on_drug_sentencing_unlawful_shocking.html

UPDATE 3:  I see this list is going to grow daily. In this case, reported by the Washington Times,  the Administration has been caught ignoring a federal law to open Yucca Mountain. Just ignoring it.

"WASHINGTON (AP) — The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has been violating federal law by delaying a decision on a proposed nuclear waste dump in Nevada, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday.

Two of the three judges from the the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia think the government ought to obey the law. Crazy, I know...

"In a sharply worded opinion, the court said the nuclear agency was “simply flouting the law” when it allowed the Obama administration to continue plans to close the proposed waste site 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. The action goes against a federal law designating Yucca Mountain as the nation’s nuclear waste repository.

“The president may not decline to follow a statutory mandate or prohibition simply because of policy objections,” Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh wrote in a majority opinion"

Judge Kavanaugh ought to know better than that. The president certainly can, and has. ACA waivers, DOMA, Immigration, oh, I could go on. But there are only 24 hours in a day...

Besides, if Congress doesn't care, why should the the president?

"Reid, a Democrat, called the appeals court decision “fairly meaningless.” Congress has cut funding for Yucca and is unlikely to restore it, Reid said.

“This isn’t even a bump in the road. This, without being disrespectful to the court, means nothing,” Reid told reporters at a clean energy conference Tuesday in Las Vegas.

How do you call a federal court decision "fairly meaningless" which "means nothing" without thereby being disrespectful of the court and the actual rule of law?

On a slightly more positive note, it seems there IS a precedent for stopping the implementation of a law by withdrawing funding. Mike Lee, call Harry Reid to see how that's done...

Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/aug/13/appeals-court-obama-violating-law-nuclear-site-nev/#ixzz2bwvBMaNt
Follow us: @washtimes on Twitter

UPDATE 4: Sorry for two in as many minutes. But this article by Victor Davis Hanson is a must-read.

The list gets longer every day

The list of impeachable or incarceratable offenses by the members of the ruling regime grows day-by-day.

Today's culprit,  EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson:

Congress demands EPA’s secret email accounts

Jackson is accused of using an alias email account to evade open record laws and to avoid disclosure of the unethical, insidious and potentially illegal actions in which she and her agency are engaged. Judging from the Washington Times article, and an earlier one in the Washington Post, it was nearly official policy to use personal email accounts, like gmail, to hide information from congressional oversight potential legal fights.

I didn't see any articles that indicates Sliver suffered any legal ramifications. He merely lost his job for allegedly advising subordinates to evade open government laws and potential congressional attention by using unsecure personal email accounts.

Meanwhile the layers continue to be pealed back on the rotten onion that is Benghazi.

Meanwhile clear instances of voter fraud in Ohio and Philadelphia and perhaps Florida and elsewhere will never be investigated by the most politicized Justice Department in the history of the Nation.

Meanwhile, the (mal)administration refuses to perform its constitutional duty to defend DOMA

While it refuses to enforce immigration laws, thereby effectively enacting a law never passed by Congress

Meanwhile, Operation Fast and Furious questions remain unanswered regarding when the Attorney General and the White House knew guns were being shipped to Mexican drug cartels by the hundreds if not thousands, and why they didn't do anything to stop it before Border Patrol agents and hundereds of Mexican citizen were killed with those same guns.

And the list could go on, if I had more time.

My BS Meter is off the Scales

Washington Times Headline:  "White House says it didn’t edit Benghazi talking points"

"On Friday, Mr. Petraeus told a congressional committee investigating the Libya attack that the CIA’s references to “Al Qaeda involvement” were stripped from his agency’s original talking points."
David Petraeus had to be feeling heat following the Benghazi debacle. CIA contractors killed in an al Qaeda attack is bad enough. The possibility that the unseemly things they were doing would become public is worse. We now know that he was under investigation for something unseemly in his personal life at the time as well. We don't know, yet, if the FBI investigation was used by someone to coerce him to shade his statements to shift attention away from administration malfeasance in Libya.

But by the time he testified last week, it seems his boils had all been popped. His affair was made public, he lost his job, he suffered personal dishonor, and the investigation turned to whether classified information may have been compromised in the course of his affair. About the only thing that could make things worse for him would be to be found in contempt of Congress.

So, he had no reason to lie on Friday.

But that's what the White House expects us to believe.

White House national security council spokesman Ben Rhodes "told reporters the only change made by the White House to the CIA’s initial reports was to change the word “consulate” to “diplomatic facility.”

“Other than that, we worked off of the [talking] points that were provided by the intelligence community,” Mr. Rhodes told reporters traveling aboard Air Force One with President Obama on a trip to southeast Asia. “So I can’t speak to any other edits that may have been made within the intelligence community. If there were adjustments made to them within the intelligence community, that’s common, and that’s something they would have done themselves within the intelligence community.”

When a propagandist for the regime uses the same phrase FOUR TIMES IN THREE SENTENCES, you can be sure his purpose is to plant an idea in your head, not to convey truthful facts.

I expect I won't take the time to watch the POTUS SOTU speech, when ever it is. Perhaps I will, and give it the "Mystery Science Theater 3000" treatment. That might be fun with some beers and similarly minded friends.


The WashTimes correctly points out that the speech is merely a campaign event with the taxpayer providing an impressive-looking venue: "Anyone wondering whether President Obama’s State of the Union address Tuesday will focus more on policy or the politics of his re-election should consider the trip he has planned immediately afterward: visits to five battleground states in three days."


There is zero chance of candidate Obama doing other than pandering to his base and head-faking to Independents. But, in case some naive soul or alien from another planet doesn't believe me, he gave us a preview in the form of a (paid for by taxpayers) ad: "In a video preview of his State of the Union speech emailed to 10 million supporters Saturday, Mr. Obama said he would call for “a return to American values of fairness for all and responsibility from all.”

Anyone doubt that the pre-view included a plea for contributions to 'help the president win the future we can't wait to fundamentally transform hope and change to dispair and decline blah blah blah..." But we don't have to conjecture. "fairness for all" and "responsibility from all" - well, not exactly ALL "all". We want fairness FOR all the people who support the concerns expressed by OWS blah blah blah. We want responsibility from the Koch brothers and the 1% that don't attend $36,000/plate Democratic fund raisers.

"“We can go in two directions,” the president said. “One is towards less opportunity and less fairness. Or we can fight for where I think we need to go: building an economy that works for everyone, not just a wealthy few.”

This is less than a weak echo of President Reagan's A Time For Choosing speech. In fact, it is more of a tawdry parody.

"This is the issue of this election: whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capitol can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.
You and I are told increasingly we have to choose between a left or right. Well I'd like to suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There's only an up or down: [up] man's old -- old-aged dream, the ultimate in individual freedom consistent with law and order, or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism. And regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would trade our freedom for security have embarked on this downward course."

But of course the administration can't admit that it is taking its cues from an iconic Republican president. So, they pretend they are channelling Slick Willie:

"Americans of all political persuasions are going to want their elected representatives here in Washington to work together, whether it’s an even year or an odd year or a year in the presidential cycle,” Mr. Carney said. “I think there are historic examples that actually contradict the assumption that you can’t get anything done in a presidential election year — 1996 comes to mind.”
"In 1996, President Clinton delivered his election-year State of the Union address to a Republican Congress that voters had put into power in a midterm election as a check on Mr. Clinton.
"It was in this speech that Mr. Clinton famously declared, “The era of big government is over.” During the address, he added that it was time to “finish the job and balance the budget.” He had to wait just one year to sign legislation requiring a balanced budget by 2002."

Of course, a president is far more likely to get what he proposes through Congress when he proposes what Congress wants in the first place. Unfortunately for the current president, Congress is not interested in "fundamentally transforming America" into a Democratic Socialist Progressive distopia.

"Former U.S. Comptroller General David A. Walker, CEO of the nonprofit Comeback America Initiative, noted that presidents “love” to begin State of the Union speeches with declarations that “The state of our union is strong.”
“This year, that statement would be false,” Mr. Walker said. “And it is more false now than ever before, because of our calamitous financial situation.”"