Friday, May 9, 2014

The affirmative action presidency

(CFP) When Richard Nixon, among other things, attempted to use the IRS to punish his enemies, the eventual outcome was a Congressional push for impeachment. A Senate trial actually never took place because Nixon resigned before impeachment was voted on. When Bill Clinton steadfastly declared that he “did not have sex with that woman,” he was impeached. What does Barack Obama have to do to have impeachment proceedings initiated?

The short answer is, he can do anything he damn well pleases because he is an “African American,” which means that as a member of an “oppressed minority” he’s given lots of slack. Let’s look at this administration another way: Let’s say that instead of Obama in the White House, it’s a guy named O’Leary, a white guy of Irish heritage. Now let’s assume further that this pale, red-haired president decided to unilaterally fiddle with laws, changing them as whims occur, bragging to foreign dignitaries that he has a pen and a phone. Do you think that there would be push back from the legislative or judicial branches? I think it’s something that you can bank on.

However, Obama is being held to a much lower standard than any previous holder of that office. His gross incompetence and shocking mendacity are studiously ignored, while his policies are turning America into something akin to an oligarchic gulag, where only the progressive elites that offer him unqualified support prosper.

In today’s America we make exceptions for certain groups of people. These are the favored ones, the victims, those who were historically persecuted on the basis of race, gender, creed or sexual orientation. As Justice Sonya Sotomayor attempted to explain in her recent Orwellian dissent on Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, for the state not to engage in racial discrimination against whites, amounts to racially discriminating against blacks and other minorities.

This is where we have arrived in today’s America. The official progressivism party line lauds racial discrimination in order to, wait for it… prevent racial discrimination! So racial discrimination is illegal and immoral, unless the discrimination is aimed toward whites, practiced in the furtherance of social justice. Quite frankly, this practice constitutes the most condescending form of racism in that it assumes that these favored groups need to be held to a lower standard than everyone else. And everyone else needs to be obstructed in order for some minorities to be successful. It’s akin to forcing prima ballerinas to wear sandbags while dancing, so as not to outperform the other dancers.

This outlook has resulted in a presidency that is mindboggling in its incompetence and criminal in its relation to the Constitution. Under the Constitution, federal officials, including the president, must obey the laws of the United States, or be subject to impeachment, which like an indictment, is issued for Treason, Bribery, or other High Crimes and Misdemeanors.

I do not believe that Obama is treasonous, albeit a case could be made for that. However, there’s little doubt that he is guilty of Bribery and High Crimes and Misdemeanors. The way ObamaCare was enacted amounts to bribery, when considering all the side deals that took place. Cornhusker kickback, anyone?

High Crimes, for sure: These include obstructing the investigation into the Benghazi attack, the obstruction of the ‘Fast and Furious’ investigation, using the IRS to punish political enemies, failure to prosecute voter fraud, illegal surveillance of reporters’ telephones and emails, killing American citizens without the benefit of a trial and then the whole NSA fiasco.

Any of the above would have meant the end of any white president’s presidency. But because Obama is black, even opposing his policies, ill conceived as they are, is decried as racist. America is now in a very weird place: We do not, in the words of Martin Luther King, judge people by “the content of their character.” To our detriment, we are still judging by “the color of our skin.”