Weapons Of Mass Distraction

Ed Morrissey brings us up to speed on the firing of Inspector General Gerald Walpin by the Obama White House:

The White House not only deliberately misled Congress on Walpin’s firing, they also withheld these new documents until after Grassley and Issa made their initial report on the investigation on Friday.  As Byron York notes, that takes the traditional Friday-night document dump to a whole new level.  It also completely refutes any claim on transparency and openness from this administration.

The new information shows that Obama fired Walpin for political purposes, not for cause.  The White House also broke the law, at least initially, by not giving Congress the proper notification before terminating Walpin (they adhered to the regulation after being called on this violation by postponing Walpin’s termination date).  The firing appears to have been motivated to protect an Obama ally (Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson) from having allegations of using federal funds to pay off employees and avoid sexual harassment charges exposed.  The White House essentially smeared Walpin with completely unsubstantiated allegations of senility to undermine his credibility, once Walpin went public.  One might think that the national media would take an interest in this, but as York also notes, their interest has never been very intense at all.

Inspectors general exist to check abuses of power and corruption, regardless of the party in power.  An attack on them, especially one so nakedly political and potentially corrupt as Walpin’s firing, is an attack on accountability and citizen government.  This case should be headlining major media outlets — and if the current president was a Republican, it no doubt would be.

Hey, they have more important stories to cover, as Kyle Smith writes in the New York Post:

Liberals in the media make heinous personal attacks, dress up quibbles and debating as “fact-checking” and compare her to such noxious harridans as Evita Peron and Madonna. Newsweek went with a cover photo of a picture of her in running shorts to degrade her to the level of a spokesmodel and Stephen Colbert broke character to call her book “a steaming pile of s – – -.” They called her a “deeply disturbed person” (Andrew Sullivan) “unhinged” (ibid), a “delusional fantasist” (ibid; Andrew’s been a busy lad) and even — this is really low — “the leader of the Republican party.”

To all of these liberal attacks I say: well played, my friends. Take a bow.

Hate-drunk Democrats are possibly not even aware of what a savvy political move they are carrying out.

By attacking the former governor of a state smaller by population than Westchester County, a woman whose chances of being the next president are about the same as Nancy Pelosi’s, Democrats aren’t wasting their time at all. They are distracting conservatives and changing the subject.

Conservatives should be, but aren’t, completely focused on one idea. It’s liberalism, stupid.

Last week, Obama looked exceptionally weak, naive and disingenuous, even for him: He got a knee in the face when he bowed to China; he admitted his promise to close Gitmo by January was the bloviation conservatives have always said it was; his attorney general invited terrorists to bring their Cirque du Jihad to New York so they can put the US national security apparatus on trial (and added that Obama wasn’t even part of the decision); the claims about stimulus-provided jobs turned out to involve lots of fictitious work in nonexistent congressional districts; a second Democratic senator threatened to help filibuster the health bill; and Afghanistan and Iran grew more dire as each hour brought the president inching ever closer to thinking about meeting to discuss the possibility of suggesting the next half-hearted response.

So what preoccupied the nation? Bill Belichick’s 4th and two call. And the book tour of an unemployed former governor of a very small state.

And her 17-year old fans.