What to Make of Obama’s Executive Privilege Move?
The president may be protecting himself. Executive privilege is a presidential power limited to his own communications. The Department of Justice delivered a letter to the House regarding Fast and Furious in February 2011. That letter was full of inaccuracies and was retracted in full after nine months. What did the president know about the creation of that letter, which is the prime subject of the subpoena that has led to the contempt of Congress action and assertion of executive privilege? When did he know it? Why was the letter so full of falsehoods? Why did the author of that letter retire just a week prior to the contempt vote?
The president may be seeking to expand executive privilege itself. United States vs Nixon recognized but also limited the scope of executive privilege for presidents, down to the president’s personal communications and communications of a national security nature. Neither applied to Fast and Furious, but the assertion of executive privilege implies that either one or both does apply. President Obama came into office promising unprecedented transparency, but asserting executive privilege breaks that promise. Breaking a public promise must be worth today’s actions to the president. He may want to expand executive privilege to use the power more extensively if he wins a second term.
Whatever the president’s intentions, he has now made Fast and Furious a mainstream story. He and his allies will use it to play up the partisan divide and fire up his base, but that may become more difficult as the voting public learns more about a scandal that most are hearing about for the first time. Unlike most political scandals, Fast and Furious involves the blood of two US agents, Brian Terry and Jaime Zapata, and hundreds of innocent Mexican citizens. That blood now leaves a public trail straight to the president himself.
Obanixon photo credit to rdbrewer at Ace of Spades. (@rdbrewer4)
Holder and Obama both out on the Executive Privy ledge.
Jump! Jump!
GREAT photo! LOL
That’s not very nice to the memory of a dead man.
Major error by the president, inadvertently drawing the likes of MSNBC and NYT into the action. Morphing himself into Nixon, Jr. is unspeakable.
Who said this guy was smart?
Nixon and Carter in a blender
Note they’ve morphed the rather robust though limited in scope federal Executive Privilege into the more vague “Deliberative Privilege” that one normally wouldn’t need under FOIA’s Executive Privilege. Deliberative Privilege is a creature of many state public records laws, including mine, and has real limits. As it is understood under the Alaska PRA and other state PRAs with similar language, it protects some executive branch communications during the pendancy of a decision; it doesn’t obtain once a decision is made. In this sense it is broader than federal Executive Privilege, which is limited to Presidential communication, in that it can extend to other executives/appointees involved in advising the President or perhaps a Cabinet officer in making a decision. It doesn’t distinguish between types of information or subject matter; it is entirely predicated on a decision not yet being made. It is an interesting question for the courts if it obtains at all to a decision over whether to provide to Congress information that the Congress is clearly entitled to. Our courts have held that for Public Records Act purposes, the Legislature isn’t the public but rather as a part of government is entitled to anything the Executive Branch has but is bound to the same rules regarding disclosure as the Executive Branch. If Comrade Obama is thinking he might be able to expand the limits on Executive Privilege set out in Nixon, he might want to be careful, but then he’s a Constitutional Scholar so surely his knowlege of this stuff is far more nuanced than mine. Or, maybe we’ll see just how meaningful his and Holder’s affirmative action degrees really are.
Maybe Obama’s worried that someone in congress might – heaven forbid – leak some of these classified documents to some news agency other than the NYT.
– and the “deliberative process ‘privilege’” is laughed out of state courts in California.
I wonder if Obama has something up his sleeve, perhaps staging a “leak” of the documents and having the documents or some false version of them make O. look good.
Something in this story stinks. Something isn’t true.
Nice catch!
“Something in this story stinks. Something isn’t true.”
Only change that ‘Something’ to ‘Everything’!
Change that again to “Everything that Obama does stinks”, and I think we will at last be in pursuit of the truth.
Was thinking the same thing! Trouble is, when have we ever heard the truth about anything from this Admin? Without that baseline it becomes very difficult to figure out which part of their typical half-truths and 3/4-lies reveal the typically one small smidgen of verity, let alone where it might be hiding? I no longer have a clue!
And, come to think, that may be the whole idea behind this latest maneuver.
In other words, if you want to hide an unpalatable truth, pack it up in so many layers of half-truths and lies and partial lies that nobody will be able to uncover it in time. Then, beginning about September, the Demons can start feeding the large percentage of gullible public almost any kind and quantity of sugar-coated BS-spun “cotton-candy”, and be fairly sure to get the benefit of the doubt long enough to be reelected. Sounds like some crazy scheme, but this bunch would be just sufficiently cynical to try it, especially Axelfraud!
But, it is a matter of national security. “Fast and Furious” is an act of war against Mexico.
That’s a good point, and something I’d neglected to think about.
I have thought about it, and I am wondering why Mexico has not gone to an international court having jurisdiction over the U.S. with it. For all of the allegations of “war crimes” levied against GW Bush and his administration, they, at least, acted within the scope of United States law. Nothing in F&F was legal, either by domestic or international standards.
B/c Mexico has way too much of it’s own troubles to deal with… and needs the US’s help too badly to deal with them…
Perhaps not an error. Perhaps either Obama’s or Holder’s personal involvement was enormous, and Issa forced Obama’s hand. Only time will tell.
Whatever, this might well reduce Obama’s chances for a second term to toast. Consider this.
Even though much of the MSM will be spinning their stories, if they can’t ignore entirely, some of it will undoubtedly arouse interest in the Center. Something like this, with death of gov’t agents involved, might well push independent voters who previously didn’t have time, to dig for more info. That would lead them to Fox, et cetera.
A few more, and very critical, percentage points.
SOP for the Obama White House is throw issues like this and those associated under the bus. In this case, they’ve floored it (the bus).
For a nobody like Holder to cause this whole thing to go in this direction is important. What does Holder know?
I’m guessing that the only reason Holder isn’t under the bus is he has something on Obama. Hey boss, if you throw me under the bus you’ll be looking up at an exhaust system right along with me.
@ Phillep Harding. F&F is an act of war against not just Mexico, but the American people too.
Don’t be surprised when the meme tries to become that the two agents actually weren’t killed by Fast and Furious weapons. It will quickly fail, but someone on the lower blog levels will at least try it out, trying to salvage every single vote possible.
Or that they’re alive in a secret holding cell outside of Cleveland. Along with all the passengers on the airplanes that didn’t hit the twin towers and the pentagon.
Along with the astronauts who would not go along with the moon-landing hoax…
They are sealed up along with Brett Kimberlin’s top secret exoneration for the Speedway bombings.
I’m fresh from a banning at Kos, where I find that the #1 meme is “blame Bush.” It was a Bush program, started under Bush, etc. This will be the biggest lie to overcome.
Readers here will know the crucial differences between Operation Wide Receiver and Operation Fast and Furious. Brush up. Be prepared with the facts.
Is Obama admitting that a crime was committed and is trying to cover it up? Why doesn’t Congress start impeachment proceedings against Obama? Didn’t he swear that he’d uphold the laws on the country?
It would be a waste of time. A Democrat Senate will not convict a Democrat President. Period. Better to vote him out in November, and prosecute him after January.
For Obama to go so far to cover for Holder makes me wonder what else Holder has on him. The corruption oozing from our White House is beginning to stink up the entire country. Congress, you need to deal with this decisively. Obama and his thugs are outright criminals. Show them as much mercy as they showed those two agents and those Mexican citizens who died at the DOJ’s hands. Bring them down. Lock them up.
Obama is not covering for Holder. He needs Holder to ensure that there is sufficient voter fraud so that the democrats can steal the election in November. If Holder goes away, all the federal lawsuits against the states for cleaning up voting rolls, photo ID for voting, and other ways to ensure only registered voters vote go away also. Cheers -
Another “good” idea — and probably true, unfortunately!
Cheers!
Fast & Furious was a criminal conspiracy by high level political and civil servants in Federal Law Enforcement to transfer guns to Mexican Drug cartels for the express purpose of building political support for more gun control laws in a hostile to gun control in a Republican controlled House of Representatives.
The key question with Pres. Nixon during Watergate was his knowingly shielding malfeasance. It’s the thing Obama can be reasonably suspected of with Fast & Furious.
Pres. Obama’s actions in asseting executive privledge is enough to convince reasonable men that what is in those documents that Chairman Issa wants is enough to put all of the top guys at Justice in prison and to impeach Obama.
Pres. Nixon’s actions knowingly shielding malfeasance was what flipped the House Judiciary Committee in 1974 and decided them on the path of impeachment rather than further investigation.
It also caused one of the great political speeches of the last fifty years, by th late Democratic Represenative Barbara Jordan, which if the House Republican Leadership are half smart they’ll be dragging out excerpts from:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_K9Wi-g3Rk
(That’s an excerpt from Great American Speeches. There’s about 2 min of background about Watergate, and a 3 min bio of Jordan, before the actual speech begins at about 5 min into it).
Wish the Democrats luck in facing down their Nixon.
The American Republic will need that luck.
Go ahead and rip me for this, but I think Obama WANTS to get impeached. He keeps pushing the envelope (i.e. refusing to enforce DOMA, the recess appointments, implementation of the DREAM Act, etc.). Each act is bit more brazen than the previous.
What’s the benefit? Nothing would spin up support with his base like an impeachment trial divided along party lines. He and his supporters could scream racism and the echo chamber that is the MSM would amplify the message to the heavens. Where is the downside? There is no chance the Senate would have the votes to make impeachment stick.
Like Clinton, Obama would be a martyr for the cause.
Maybe so, but with the election a little over 4 months away, there is no way that Boehner will take the bait.
Rather than ask what the President is thinking, I would ask what his closest political advisor — Valerie Jarrett — is thinking. Her fingers seem to be in all the pies, and so far, this administration and its policies have been a massive disaster.
I just hope justice comes out of this, and it doesn’t drain down the memory hole.
I think you may have a strong point here. Valerie Jarret could well have been involved in advising the President on what he should or shouldn’t do with regards to F&F. Thus making her, at least complicit in the Murders of U.S. agents Brian Terry and Jaime Zapata.
God Bless America!
“Attorney general is a constitutional office, and is supposed to represent the United States, not necessarily the president’s particular political preferences. “
AG is not a “constitutional office;” it’s mentioned nowhere in the Constitution. It was created in the Judiciary Act of 1789 to act as the government’s chief lawyer and provide the president with legal advice. That role has morphed some with the creation of the DoJ in 1870 and the growth of the AG’s law enforcement powers, but he’s still a political officer that serves at the pleasure of the president. Because of those enforcement powers, however, it does require extremely scrupulous behavior on the part of the president and the AG. Bush and Mukasey were examples of that. Obama and Holder evidently are not.
I agree with the rest of the article, though: Obama is surely hiding something he thinks worth risking a constitutional crisis.
The gist of this article, that Op F&F is now going to be a mainstream story and part of the campaign, is absolutely correct. I hope Romney is prepared to beat Obama into the ground with it: opacity, arrogance, and incompetence.
Ask your favorite Democrat: don’t you want to get the name of the raging asshat who authorized this lethally stupid POS and see to it that he or she is banned from government service forever, ideally without a pension? Don’t you want to nail some *dumber-than-Bush, taxpayer-salaried Mexican-killer to the wall?
* see my comment above about the oncoming lie
This completely tears it for me. I LOATHE the man (?) currently occupying the White House. He is a disgrace to his office and a disaster for our country. I don’t care what his birth certf. says, he’s no more American than the man-in-the-moon. He has either gotten totally confused, or more likely conveniently forgotten, he is NOT a king, emperor or monarch of ANY flavor. You know (and more importantly understand) the rejection of same is the reason for America’s existence! He’s just the latest in a long line of presidents. With any luck he’ll be gone in less than 5 mos. We can only work toward that end and desperately hope the damage & harm he’s caused and continues to wreck can be undone & put right.
This is what happens when administrations fall. It’s not the lie that gets them, it’s the attempt to cover up the lie that does them in. All Holder and Obama had to do was say at the very beginning of all this was that it was a botched DOJ operation and that the people responsible for it were fired. Obama could even blame it on the DOJ if he didn’t want to get involved. Now this is a HUGE problem for Obama, because not only has Holder been caught in a lie, but he now has tried to cover it up. And remember, when Watergate first happened it was also treated as a joke, not worth the media’s time. Look what happened then. The only question is, will Congress act on this before the election? I think the Republicans have nothing to lose in pursuing this. It will force Obama and Holder to play defense until the election and, at worse, it will also force Holder to resign. But if Holder resigns, I wonder if Congress will still pursue this to the bitter end? Maybe, just maybe. The only thing that saved Nixon was a pardon from Gerald Ford. I don’t think a President Romney will be that forgiving.
What if Obama and Holder couldn’t fess up to a botched operation because it wasn’t just a botched operation, and too many people therefore had the goods on them. And why isn’t anyone talking about the people on the receiving end of the gunwalking, and what did they give in return for all the guns, surely they are not so dumb as to fail to notice where all the new guns suddenly started coming from and the ATF was laying off them. Is the administration somehow involved with the Sinaloa cartel, because we know now that the Mexican government was kept in the dark about it. I have never believed that it was done only to undermine the second amendment. For one thing there is way too much money there, in the cartels, for it not to be an attraction, and we all know that nobody gets something for nothing; and for another thing what goes on south of the border and farther south is not just simple crime or simple politics, it is complex crime and complex politics all mixed up together. I’m just pointing out that we are talking about gun running to one of the most powerful crime syndicates in the world and all that might entail.
Just out of curiosity, what are the banking laws of Barbados like? Is there any way to find out if Barry, Holder, Jarrett, Axelrod, etc. have offshore accounts there?
Yes, “botched” is actually a meme the MSM is trying to spread, with considerable success, to cover for the administration. Nothing was “botched”. It all went exactly as planned. They set out to let a whole bunch of guns get bought in the US and smuggled into Mexico. The agents assigned knew this was a bad idea and said so. But their supervisors told them to shut up and do it. It is impossible to think of any way this could have been a legitimate law enforcement effort. Any one could see that once those guns were in Mexico, the BATF would be unable to “trace” them, and even if they could, they had no power to do anything about them. And you don’t need any special expertise to know what a Mexican drug cartel is going to do with a bunch of machine guns. But the MSM (pronounced muzum) would like us to believe that it would have turned out fine except somebody “botched” it. Who? How?
By pretending the original plan was legitimate, they can claim that the furor is politically motivated. This lets them avoid the question of who developed this plan, and what were they thinking. Obviously, those are two questions which this administration does not want asked, let alone answered.
Yes, you are right , Jerome, but still I ask isn’t anybody thinking why in the h— is this administration doing favors for a Mexican drug cartel? Is there something more going on that what people are talking about?
Everything you write in the post, Bryan, seems accurate to me. What I find weird in the request to the WH by Holder and the assertion of Executive Privilege by the Obama, is that it wasn’t necessary at this time.
Holder’s request was for those documents after November 4, 2011 that were subpoenaed. That’s clear in his request letter. I haven’t seen Cole’s (the WH assertion of it) letter to the Committee, but the NYT’s characterization of it, implies that the EP only applies to those. The other docs subpoenaed are for before that and Cole only refers to them being not appropriate for disclosure.
The reason the assertion of EP wasn’t needed is because the Contempt Resolution does not include or apply to those docs after Nov 4 2011. Those were taken out last Friday, four days before Holder requested EP for them. [The Contempt report explains the removal and Issa has mentioned this in the hearings a few times today.]
I don’t know why the Administration would have followed through on this when they must have known the docs they’re including in the EP are not relevant to the vote. Like I said this is weird. Is it just a distraction or a ploy to have the Attorney for DC use it to obfuscate any inaction on his part if the contempt resolution passes and is sent to him for action?
The little BO needs a consult from Hillary – recall when the Rose law firm records mysteriously showed up in the hallway of the white house ?
Counter the libs, “Bush did it too” with the fact the COMPLETELY DIFFERENT AND LEGAL program under Bush DRASTICALLY FAILED…So why would/did they implement a HORRID PROGRAM and, MAKE IT EVEN WORSE? Also, many depts/agencies including but not limited to, DHS, HAD to of known about this program, otherwise they are inept as heck, so HOW MANY INTERNATIONAL LAWS WERE BROKEN? Especially since Mexico DIDN’T KNOW?
Many other questions/rebuttals for the lib lapdogs.
(Sorry for caps, I have no italics)
Prediction: Obama will order that Holder appoint a special prosecutor to investigate F&F. Republicans will be successfully pressured into tabling their own investigation until after the special prosecutor reports.
All the media interest in F&F dies, Romney never mentions it, claiming it is not appropriate to comment until after the investigation.
Special prosecutor will report in March or April 2013, safely after the election. The results will be “inconclusive.” Fast and Furious simply disappears down the memory hole.
Like Rev. Wright.
Like accepting a Nobel Prize, without having done anything to earn it.
Like the slimy maneuvering and tyrannous unheeding of public opinion, to pass ObamaCare.
Like allowing the EPA to label carbon dioxide a pollutant, and generally to issue fraudulent regulations (bereft of honest science) as a law unto itself.
Like appointing activist “czars” to manage the people’s business according to his ideology, not the public welfare.
Like pretending on every occasion to be morally without blemish (a messiah complex), giving out moral judgments from “on high”, and blatantly lying–on any subject whatsover, no matter how important to the country–to keep up that image for himself.
I think the whole point of the growing perception is that these things will not be forgotten, so long as Obama tries to stay in a position of public influence, for the rest of his life.
Translation America: When you hear about gang related violence using assault rifles, chances are the Obama regime is guilty of supplying those weapons to these violate gangs. This is what Obama is hiding.
Yes, “Tricky Berry” seems fitting!
This is an exercise in CYA for Maobama (Holder is expendable).
Soon it will morph from CYA to C ‘ya.
Oh, great GOP bumper sticker:
“Fast & Furious – CYA Nov. 6 – C’ya”
Just goes to show you how wrong you can be. I would have guessed he’d opt for the bus.
I guess Obama’s position on “Executive Privilege” has “evolved”.
D’oh, I just noticed November 4, 2011 should be Feb 4, 2011 in both instances. There was a deal with Holder to remove from consideration the demands for documents after the spurious letter sent to the Committee.
Sorry about that.
Nobody was killed by Watergate. F7F is definitely a more egregious and dangerous scandal.
June 20, 2012 More Dems Ditch Convention
http://www.thedaily.com/page/2012/06/20/web-news-dems-distancing-from-obama/
Operation Fast & Furious apparently began because The One and The Hill are simply too arrogant to retract a misstatement.
Said misstatement was the oft-repeated line about “90% of guns used by the drug cartels in Mexico are bought in U.S. gunshops”. The fact is that 90% of the traceable weapons recovered by the Mexican authorities do indeed come from U.S. sources, but that’s only about 10% of the total; most of the cartels’ weapons come from other nations, notably Red China, whose Norinco arms firm will sell to anybody with cash, no questions asked.
(BTW, they make M16 copies in both 5.56x45mm and 7.62x39mm; the latter are recognizable by using a more “curved” magazine than the standard 5.56 version. So an M16 recovered from the cartels’ gun-bunnies isn’t necessarily “Made in the USA”.)
What’s more, many of those “U.S. sourced” arms never went through a gunshop north of the Rio Grande. They were given to the Mexican government by our government, to be used by their police and military against the cartels. Many such “transferred” arms ended up in the hands of cartel gunman almost as soon as they crossed the border, due to the rampant corruption in the Mexican police and army. (In a couple of cases, raids on cartel warehouses to seize drugs found such weapons right alongside the blow, still in their shipping crates and VCI bags.)
(Also, Mexico has its own government-run arms syndicate, that makes everything from pistols and SMGs, to a rather good knockoff of the Heckler & Koch G36 5.56mm rifle, to medium and heavy machine guns. So why are we sending them arms in the first place?)
The “violence in Mexico is caused by lax U.S. gun laws” is a meme’ that has been part of liberal anti-gun dogma for the last couple of decades. Which probably explains why The One and The Hill both repeat it, because of course they Know In Their Hearts That The Dogma Is Never Wrong.
But when it is, the last thing either one of these arrogant egotists will do is admit it.
I strongly suspect that at first, F&F began as a “Wide Receiver Redux”, for the express purpose of “proving” the President and SecState correct, thereby simultaneously saving them embarrassment due to foot-in-mouth syndrome and confirming a cherished progressive belief. But once it got into the hands of the executive level, “mission creep” began to rear its ugly head.
It’s difficult to say whether BATFE, Holder, or The One first had the idea of using F&F as propaganda for more gun control. It may have been one of those ideas that sweep through a group already prone to dogmatic groupthink like a tsunami, with everyone being carried along with it. (Liberals are rather prone to this; consider the nuclear freeze movement of the Reagan years.) It “fit the dogma”, so they decided to run with it. (Hence the BATFE exec’s statement, “If you don’t think this will be fun…”)
But the trouble with “mission creep” is that it never stops, especially when people get the idea that they are On A Holy Crusade. (BATFE has had this problem since its inception.) The next thing you know, F&F became a classic example of a “Christmas Tree” operation; something for everybody, and the perceived ability to give its originators a cornucopia of nice things;
We can use it to ban guns! (Those bitter clingers will never know what hit them!)
We can use it to push for drug decriminalization! (Because all Smart, Sophisticated People- like Us- know that drugs are harmless, fun, and good for you!)
We can even get a flood of undocumented workers across the border, fleeing the violence! ( More au pairs, more maids, and best of all, more registered Democrats, thanks to SEIU and ACORN! That’ll fix those damned Rethuglicans!)
Back when the Assault Weapon Ban was being debated in Clinton’s first year, Charlie Schumer put on a bravura performance of Khrushchev-like intensity, banging his fist on the table and proclaiming that “This (gun control) is religious dogma!!” And with liberals, it absolutely is. They hate guns and their owners and have never made any secret of it.
They should have read a little Frank Herbert, first;
When religion and politics travel in the same cart, the riders believe nothing can stand in their way. Their movements become headlong- faster and faster and faster. They put aside all thoughts of obstacles and forget that a precipice does not show itself to the man in a blind rush until it’s too late.
-Bene Gesserit proverb
The old Japanese Imperial Navy had a simpler term for it. They called it “victory disease”, the tendency to interpret a battle won as proof of invincibility. They suffered from it after Pearl Harbor, the Dutch East Indies, Malaya, and the Philippines, until being brought up short at Midway.
On the other side of the world, the Wehrmacht had a bad case of it after Dunkirk and Cyrenaica. The result was Operation Barbarossa. They got their comeuppance at Moscow, Stalingrad, and Kursk.
What the present group in question overlooked is that such an operation can only be used to achieve even its most basic objectives as long as nobody outside of the group doing it finds out it’s being done. Once the cat is out of the bag, the blowback will inevitably be major, and will very likely wipe out any perceived or projected gains.
Brian Terry and Jaime Zapata’s deaths may have marked the point at which this happened. Because then people started wondering how it happened.
And that was the point at which the Obama Justice Department’s “victory disease” became terminal. Or, if you prefer the Bene Gesserit version, the point at which they went off the cliff.
Myself, I think that the title of the late Cornelius Ryan’s book on the Arnhem airborne disaster, Operation Market Garden (17-25 September 1944) sums it up best;
A Bridge Too Far.
respectfully submitted,
eon
I suspect the claim of Executive Privilege means Obama thinks he’s likely to lose the election. It’s just a stall for time until November. Once the election is over there will be little to no energy in the House to pursue F&F, it will be old news and the players involved will be gone anyway. It will all be swept under the rug because the country will have “more important things to focus on”. In other words, the political class will protect its own just like it always does.
Chris,
You are absolutely correct. They will protect there on just like Corzine will never go to prison for stealing and corruption.
Obama’s trying to pull a “Sandusky” on the American People.
Now we are going to find out just how many democrats actually love their country more than their socialist/marxist ideology…..and how many just had their heads buried under the covers hoping it would all just go away. I have asked for over three years if there were any Patriots left in the democratic party. Well, we’re going to find out over the next four months. Here’s a tip: if they come aboard quickly, they love their country – if they wait until the last minute, they’re just trying to save their own butts.
Sadly, I also believe ChrisS has a good point…they will all try to protect each other when they can.
Executive Privilege? The Department of Justice allowed guns to be sold and delivered to Mexican drug cartels.
The barbaric drug cartels work very closely with the A team of Muslim terrorists: Hezbollah.
MURDER is against the Law. Hundreds of Mexican innocents and U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry were MURDERED by the guns supplied by the Obama-Clinton-Holder George Soros administration.
Where is justice? Why are the guilty not being prosecuted for the murders of HUNDREDS of INNOCENTS?
Bible, Genesis 4:10 And God said, “What have you done? The voice of your brother’s blood cries out to Me from the ground”.
And the crying shall not stop until justice is done.
There is a multi generational list of judgments to come, no more crawing back under the rocks for the commies, leftist and terrorist factions. No more repainting and covering over evil intent. We are in naked truth time now and forever more.
Odd. Perhaps Obama is betting this will not be as damaging as a hard look at his foreign policy and the national security leaks.
This is not a mistake. This is a distract — like all the other social issues Obama has adopted to keep the focus off the economy.
Considering that F&F was an invasion of Mexico perhaps Executive Privilege is appropriate.
Actually, didn’t he invoke Executive Privilege a couple of years ago to protect Valerie Jarrett’s butt when she dropped the ball on White House security and let those party crashers in to a White House function for a foreign dignitary?
What should really torpedo Obombanation’s boat is this article -
http://www.rt.com/news/cia-officers-turkey-syria-378/
And this -http://www.aina.org/news/20120615125537.htm
Summary CIA gives Syrian insurgents weapons in S. Turkey.
Syrian insurgents massacre christians and priests.
No Mr. Preston, Obama morphs into Hugo Chavez.