Washington is abuzz with talk of impeachment — mostly from Democrats, according to Nate Silver:
Consider, for example, the Sunlight Foundation’s Capitol Words database, which tracks words spoken in the House and Senate. So far in July, there have been 10 mentions of the term “impeachment” in Congress and four others of the term “impeach.” Eleven of the 14 mentions have been made by Democratic rather than Republican members of Congress, however.
Impeachment chatter has also become common on cable news. On Fox News this month, Sarah Palin, the former Alaska governor, called for Obama’s impeachment, for instance. But for every mention of impeachment on Fox News in July, there have been five on liberal-leaning MSNBC.
Clearly, the Democrats are using the whispers of impeachment coming from Republicans as a fundraising gimmick. It’s working, The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee raised $2.1 million in 24 hours earlier this week.
But all the political maneuvering doesn’t address the fundamental question: Has the president committed an impeachable offense?
PJ Media columnist Andrew McCarthy recently released Faithless Execution, which makes a case for impeaching President Obama for offenses of both omission and commission. In an interview with PJ Media’s Ed Driscoll, McCarthy lays out two major reasons to impeach the president:
Well, the second half of the book, as you point out, is an actual effort to draft articles of impeachment. And I start out with the failure to execute the laws faithfully, not because that’s necessarily the one that grabs you by the throat. I mean, the one that really grabs me is all the acts that involve Benghazi, more than anything else.
But as an old prosecutor, I like to have a slam-dunk count in an indictment. You know, you always want the jury to get used to saying “guilty,” because then they’ll say it again and again. And I think even the president’s most ardent admirers would have to admit that he does not follow federal law, he does not execute laws faithfully.
And a president, as I point out in the book, does have the right and the power, under our system, to refrain from enforcing a law that he’s got a good-faith belief is unconstitutional. But that is not Obama’s objection. He’s objecting to and not enforcing laws on the basis of policy disagreements.
So I think the failure to enforce the law is a big one, because it’s one of the president’s most important jobs in our system. The president is the only official who’s required by the Constitution to take an oath to faithfully uphold the laws and preserve the Constitution.
As I said, I think that Benghazi, to me — and there are many different acts that are laid out in the book — but I think the Benghazi transaction, to me, is the most offensive.
I take that back to the unauthorized war that Obama instigated against Libya and the Gaddafi regime at a time that Libya was being underwritten by our government as an important counterterrorism ally, precisely because it was giving us intelligence about the Jihadists in Eastern Libya.
Obama had no authority to commence that war. It was done under circumstances where it was clear that it would empower anti-American Jihadists. They follow it up by this really recklessly irresponsible failure to provide protection for the personnel who are mysteriously assigned to Benghazi, which is one of the most dangerous places on the planet.
You’ve heard from McCarthy and other pundits about possible impeachable offenses the president has committed. Now it’s your turn. What is the most impeachable offense committed by President Obama?
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