In unbelievable fashion, Barack Obama told North Carolinians on Tuesday that if elected president Conald Trump would trample the Constitution.
Yes, he actually went there:
If you disrespect the Constitution by threatening to shut down the press when it doesn’t say things you like, or threaten to throw your opponent in jail, or discriminate against people of different faiths — if you do that before you’re elected, then what are you going to do when you have actual power to do those things?
Let’s parse that statement in terms of Obama’s actions as commander-in-chief:
Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?
Threatening to shut down the press: Obama used the Department of Justic to try and shut down Fox News reporter James Rosen by spying on him and accusing him of committing a crime.
Threatening to throw your opponent in jail: Very recently, the President has used the DOJ in an attempt to jail his political opponent on immigration, Sheriff Joe Arpaio.
Discriminating against people of different faiths: Obama has a longstanding record of discriminating against the Christians and Catholics, whether it’s his fight to force churches to pay for abortions, or even the Syrian refugee crisis in which Christian refugees – the group most persecuted in the Middle East – are being ignored.
There’s more. Here is a short list of times that the “constitutional lawyer in the Oval Office” actually violated the Constitution.
1) During the 2012 election year, the Justice Department mounted an attack on the First Amendment and freedom of the press by seizing the records of reporters at Fox News and the Associated Press, and had one correspondent labeled a criminal “co-conspirator ” in an effort to access his personal emails. The effort proved successful.
2) The president launched an assault on the Second Amendment right to bear arms, issuing 23 executive orders to further unconstitutional federal gun control laws. Tucked away in those executive orders were amendments to the Affordable Care Act, which would allow doctors and hospitals to ask patients about any guns they keep at home and to report perceived threats of violence for those seeking medical care.
3) In 2012, the president made three recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board while the Senate was not in recess, an action the Supreme Court recently unanimously ruled unconstitutional.
4) The Obama IRS compiled a “be on the lookout” list for non-profit organizations applying for tax-exempt status. Those lists included key words and phrases such as “Tea Party,” “Israel,” and “Patriots.” The targeting of political opponents has since been blown open as a full-scale constitutional free speech scandal, including the Nixonian-level loss of two-years worth of emails, and the destruction of multiple hard drives belonging to key figures at the IRS.
5) Multiple revisions in the president’s signature health care reform law are unconstitutional, including delays in employer mandates and out-of-pocket caps, insurance requirements, exemptions for Congressional members and their staff, IRS regulation of the employer mandate penalty, and of course, yesterday’s Hobby Lobby ruling on religious freedom.
6) Bailouts of auto industry giants General Motors and Chrysler violated creditors’ rights and bankruptcy law, as well as the Constitution’s Takings and Due Processes Clauses.
7) Obama’s trade of five high-ranking Taliban commanders for Army Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl was a violation of federal law (at least) when he failed to notify Congress, something a leading policy expert described as a violation of the separation of powers and “a serious challenge to the Constitution.”
8) Obama released a draft executive order requiring businesses with federal contracts to disclose independent expenditures on federal elections. This action is something Senator Ted Cruz recently decried as “disastrous policy that would unconstitutionally chill free speech.”
9) The administration developed a “kill list” that would let the President himself kill American citizens if he claims they are suspected of terrorism. The act of droning Americans based on suspicions is a clear violation of due process rights afforded under the Fifth Amendment. Obama actually killed two American citizens with drones, without any charges or evidence presented of their guilt, no trial, and no sentence. One of them was a 16 year-old boy whose only crime, according to Obama’s spokesman, was “not having a better father.”
10) In an attempt to shield any DOJ officials from wrongdoing in the Fast and Furious gun running case, the President misused executive privilege to keep the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform from accessing 1,300 pages of documents.
Surely Obama can’t think the American people are so stupid… can he?
Cross-posted at the Mental Recession
