The Obama Scandals

A score-sheet to the current crop of scandals.

Benghazi - The left keeps presenting this as a made-up scandal. It is not. Regardless of who came up with the talking points, the Obama Administration used them to conceal what happened. To be clear, an al Qaeda affiliate executed a planned assault on a consulate and killed the ambassador. This raises questions about intelligence gaps and the strength of al Qaeda in a country we had been aiding. With an election coming, the administration preferred to push the idea that the attack was spontaneous. If it wasn't planned then there could be no intelligence failure. Even when testifying before Congress, Hillary Clinton's "what difference does it make?" outburst presented it as either spontaneous but inspired by a video or simply spontaneous.

The furor over the talking points hides the fact that the real question is why we didn't anticipate an attack.

The IRS - Obama apologists like to insist that it was perfectly logical to profile Tea Party groups for additional tax scrutiny. Here is an example:

Someone at your office notices that a lot of the applications for 501(c)(4) status are from groups that claim to be part of the burgeoning Tea Party movement. Aha! When you're looking for signs of political activity, wouldn't it make sense to search for criteria related to the largest new political movement of our times?

The problem is that there were lots of political groups being formed but only conservative causes got put on the list. These were not large groups with lots of money, either. This shows every sign of being politically motivated.

The AP - The Obama Justice Department spread a wide net in trying to track down a leak. It is true that some Republicans called for the leak to be investigated but they did not specify the means. They assumed that the Obama Justice Department would follow the guidelines set down in 1980 which call for the narrowest search possible. The leak investigation is not the scandal. The scandal is that the Justice Department totally ignored the guidelines.

Fox News - In a different leak investigation, the Justice Department named a reporter as a co-conspirator because he asked a source for more information. This goes way beyond the AP investigation.

Obama's cluelessness - Last weekend the President's supporters defended him on the basis that he didn't know anything about any of these. Even when the White House had been briefed, the President was kept in the dark. This fits other accounts of President Obama as a hands-off administrator who only puts in minimal effort.