Krauthammer: 'Seething' Obama would welcome impeachment
President 'to sort of get revenge on everybody by doing reckless thing'
A Fox News commentator whose background includes a stint as chief
resident in psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital says Barack
Obama is “seething” over his election losses and likely will do
something “reckless” – even to the point of provoking an impeachment
proceeding so he once again can be the center of attention.
The comments from Charles Krauthammer came on Bill O’Reilly’s Fox News show.
The Pulitzer Prize-winning Krauthammer is a columnist for the
Washington Post and a contributing editor to the Weekly Standard. He has
won many journalism awards, including the 2013 William F. Buckley Award
for Media Excellence.
He was discussing with O’Reilly the Republicans domination of
Tuesday’s midterm elections in which the GOP took control of the U.S.
Senate and increased its margin in the U.S. House, building a majority
described by the head of the National Republican Congressional Committee
“as big as any we have seen in our lifetime.”
Obama, at a post-election news conference, denied Tuesdays result was a rejection of his policies.
“The principles that we’re fighting for, the things that motivate me
every single day and motivate my staff every day … those things aren’t
going to change,” he said.
O’Reilly speculated that Obama is planning to “go out guns blazing.”
“You’re absolutely right,” said Krauthammer, who also served a
speechwriter during the 1980s. “He’s a strange combination of
obliviousness and recklessness. It’s as if he doesn’t know what
happened.”
Now, Krauthammer warned, Obama is “going to sort of get his revenge
on everybody by doing a reckless thing which is to legalize millions of
illegal aliens, I would say, unconstitutionally, in a way that he knows
is going to create a crisis.”
He said such a crisis would put Obama “back in the limelight … in the spotlight.”
“What are we talking about tonight? We’re not talking about one of
the most important elections in 20 years. We’re talking about him.
That’s what he wants,” Krauthammer said.
When O’Reilly raised impeachment as a response to Obama’s order for amnesty, Krauthammer said that would be the wrong move.
“This is time for Republicans to be very disciplined. They won the
election because they were disciplined. They stayed on message. They
made it a referendum on Obama,” he said.
“And they won,” he said. “What they have to do now is to go from being the party of no to the party with an agenda.”
He said a goal is to pass bills to help America, demonstrating how
different the GOP majority is from Obama, and send them to the
president.
“The prize here is not the impeachment of Obama and the curtailing of
his term by three months. The prize is winning the White House in 2016
and changing the country,” he said.
He said Congress’ reaction to a unilateral move by Obama on
immigration should be to defund the programs, encourage private legal
challenges and make it clear that any executive order would be canceled
by an incoming president in 2017.
O’Reilly asked if Obama really will go through with ordering immigration reform.
“The way he spoke today at the press conference, he looked absolutely
determined to do it. This is a man seething with anger over what’s
happened,” Krauthammer said. “This is a man who thinks he’s been
betrayed by the country.”
Commentator Chuck Woolery endorsed Krauthammer’s opinion, saying on
Twitter, “I guarantee that #Obama is angry with the American people for
this election. He will do anything to try to get the congress to
#Impeach him.”
He also agreed with Krauthammer’s assessment Obama is ready to do the extreme.
“Now Obama has a new enemy. The American people. They had the
audacity to vote against him. Now he will show them what for. Just
wait,” he said.
WND reported Wednesday Sarah Palin brought up impeachment in an interview with the Fox Business Network’s Stuart Varney.
“The American people are expecting [Congress] to hold their president accountable.”she said.
Varney challenged Palin, arguing impeachment could rebound against the GOP in 2016.
But Palin, who was running mate to Sen. John McCain in 2008, said:
“It’s the right thing to do though, Stuart. … Put politics aside and do
the right thing. The constitutional duty and responsibility that they
have, that is to hold this president accountable.”
WND reported just before the election that even first lady Michelle Obama was talking about impeachment.
She fretted in an email that even a “few hundred” votes could change the course of Obamacare and other issues.
“I’ll put it frankly: If we lose these midterm elections, we’ll just
see more obstruction, more lawsuits and talk about impeachment, and more
votes to repeal the Affordable Care Act or even shut down the
government,” her email to constituents stated.
She added: “These races are going to be unbelievably tight. They
could be won and lost by a few thousand – or even a few hundred –
votes.”
Her email:

‘No plans’
While the GOP added about a dozen members to its already-significant
majority in the U.S. House on Tuesday and at least seven Senate seats,
giving the GOP the majority, party leaders have said there are no plans
for impeachment.
In July, House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, blasted Democrats for
saying the House GOP wants to impeach Obama, calling it “a scam started
by Democrats at the White House.”
“This whole talk about impeachment is coming from the president’s own
staff and coming from Democrats on Capitol Hill,” Boehner said. “Why?
Because they’re trying to rally their people to give money and to show
up in this year’s election.”
He added: “We have no plans to impeach the president. We have no future plans.”
The Big List
WND reported in August
when a member of Congress said the Constitution provides for
impeachment when a president exceeds his authority, and it’s a provision
that should be used.
Rep. Walter Jones, R-N.C., told WTIB’s “Talk of the Town” program
that Boehner’s plan to sue Barack Obama in court probably is a
non-starter.
“Use the Constitution,” he said on the Greenville, North Carolina, radio program. “That’s what it’s there for.”
Discussion about bringing impeachment charges against Obama has been
around for years. It’s increased in intensity in recent months because
of the piling on of scandals, including the immigration catastrophe on
the southern border.
Jones has been just one of many to join the conversation.
“I am one that believes sincerely that the Constitution says that
when a president, be it a Republican or a Democrat, when a president
exceeds his authority and you can’t stop the president from exceeding
his authority then we do have what’s called impeachment,” he told the
station.
“You can thank Alexander Hamilton,” Jones said. “He felt that the
Congress needed to use this process to get the attention of a president.
And if the president had lost the public trust then move forward in
that area. A lot of people – you know, we recently had a vote to go to
federal courts. I did not vote for that, Mike. I was one of five.”
He explained he’s already gone to court twice against a sitting
president, first Bill Clinton and then Obama, and in neither instance
did it get very far.
Jones said he had lunch with Jonathan Turley, the constitutional law
professor at George Washington University, to discuss the lawsuit. They
were joined by Sen. Tim Johnson, D-S.D., former former Republican
congressman Ron Paul, former Democrat Rep. Dennis Kucinich and two other
Democrats.
“We held a news conference in front of the federal court in
Washington, D.C.,” Jones said. “Turley said I think we’ve got a pretty
good shot to get this through the court system – George Washington
University will pay for it. We did not get very far in the courts. My
problem with what my party is trying to do, to sue, will cost the
taxpayers between $2 and $3 million. Use the Constitution, that’s what
its there for.”
Comments are at about the 14:00 mark:
Impeachment talk even has come from a White House top adviser.
According to Reuters, Dan Pfeiffer said the president’s planned
executive orders on immigration will make Republicans in Congress very
unhappy.
The comments came at a breakfast organized by the Christian Science Monitor.
“The president acting on immigration reform will certainly up the
likelihood that they would contemplate impeachment,” the report quoted
Pfeiffer saying.
He said it would be “foolish” to overlook the possibility.
Pfeiffer said he can see Republicans moving toward impeachment,
according to the report, “in retaliation for the immigration orders he
is expected to unveil by the end of the summer.”
The comments came just as a poll indicated nearly half of adult
Americans believe Obama has “gone too far” in expanding his power, and
one-third believe he “should be impeached and removed from office.”
The results were from a CNN/ORC Poll that interviewed 1,012 adult Americans July 18-20. The margin of error was plus or minus three percentage points.
Some 45 percent of respondents said Obama has gone too far, and 33
percent said he should be impeached. Very few people were unaware of
Obama’s controversies and scandals, with only 1 percent responding with
no opinion.
Another poll, by YouGov and
the Huffington Post, found more than a third of all Americans “and
two-thirds of Republicans” say “Congress would be justified in bringing
impeachment proceedings against President Obama.”
“Impeachable
Offenses” promises to be the year’s biggest blockbuster, presenting an
indictment that goes well beyond today’s headlines. Order it today at
WND’s Superstore.
And Joe Miller, at the time a potential GOP candidate in Alaska to unseat Sen. Mark Begich, a Democrat, endorsed impeachment.
According to a Huffington Post report on his campaign, Miller said:
“Sarah Palin is right; it’s time to impeach this president for
dereliction of duty, selectively enforcing the law, and usurping powers
that the Constitution does not authorize. He is willfully undermining
the rule of law and creating chaos.”
The idea has been gaining traction across America. For example, the South Dakota Republican Party passed a resolution at its state convention calling for Obama’s impeachment.
The resolution says Obama has violated his oath of office, citing the
release of five Taliban combatants in a trade for captive U.S. soldier
Bowe Bergdahl and the president’s statement that people could keep their
health insurance policies. It also cites recent Environmental
Protection Agency regulations on power plants.
And talk-radio star Dr.
Savage recently said: “I believe we should impeach Obama. It doesn’t
matter whether Harry Reid lets a motion to impeach go forward or not.
Merely bringing the charge of impeachment will slow down if not stop
Obama’s agenda entirely.”
Another top syndicated talk-show host, author Mark Levin, agreed with Palin that Obama should be impeached.
In a fiery discourse on Fox News with Sean Hannity, Levin was
discussing the crisis of illegal alien children that has developed on
Obama’s watch along with other problems.
“Sarah Palin is right. If we had a functioning constitutional
republic with a president who violates the separation of powers, thumbs
his nose at the court system … and says he’s going to do more and more
of it, she’s exactly right,” he said.
“This would be an open and shut case,” he said. “Wait for the next election? That doesn’t fix it.”
Levin, a constitutional lawyer who has been adviser to Rush Limbaugh
and is contributing editor for National Review Online, was chief of
staff to the attorney general under President Ronald Reagan. His books
include “Liberty and Tyranny,” “Ameritopia” and “The Liberty Amendments.”
He accused Obama of not establishing an agenda, strategy, policy or plan, but “chaos” and “anarchy.”
Palin earlier said the
immigration crisis Obama has created along the southwestern U.S. border
is the tipping point, and she believes it now is time to bring
impeachment articles against the president.
“It is time,” she told Sean Hannity on Fox News. “A great awakening
is due in this country … [that] he is not an imperial president and
lawlessness will not be accepted by the American people.”
She cited a long list of the scandals under Obama but said the
“tipping point” has been the “illegal immigration crisis created by
Obama.”
“Impeachment is a message that has to be sent to the president,” she said, citing the president’s “lies.”
She rejected the suggestion that impeachment would be a losing issue for Republicans, insisting it would be bipartisan.
In an earlier commentary at Breitbart, Palin explained why the immigration issue is so important.
“Without borders, there is no nation. Obama knows this. Opening our
borders to a flood of illegal immigrants is deliberate. This is his
fundamental transformation of America. It’s the only promise he has
kept. Discrediting the price paid for America’s exceptionalism over our
history, he’s given false hope and taxpayer’s change to millions of
foreign nationals who want to sneak into our country illegally.”
She continued: “President Obama’s rewarding of lawlessness, including
his own, is the foundational problem here. It’s not going to get
better, and in fact irreparable harm can be done in this lame-duck term
as he continues to make up his own laws as he goes along, and, mark my
words, will next meddle in the U.S. court system with appointments that
will forever change the basic interpretation of our Constitution’s role
in protecting our rights.
“It’s time to impeach; and on behalf of American workers and legal
immigrants of all backgrounds, we should vehemently oppose any
politician on the left or right who would hesitate in voting for
articles of impeachment,” she said.
“The many impeachable offenses of Barack Obama can no longer be
ignored. If after all this he’s not impeachable, then no one is.”
Sign
the petition that asks whether Americans have had enough and would be
willing to tell Congress to change the title of the former community
organizer to former president.
Another member of the U.S. House has joined the conversation about
the possibility of impeaching Obama for illegal activities, saying his
colleagues probably would vote for the move.
Rep. Lou Barletta, R-Pa., in an interview with radio host Gary Sutton, said the nation has “a president who has taken this to a new level.”
“And it’s put us in a real … position where he’s just absolutely
ignoring the Constitution, ignoring the laws, ignoring the checks and
balances,” he said.
“The problem is, what do you do? … For those who say impeach him for
breaking the laws or not enforcing the laws, you know. Could that pass,
in the House? It probably, it probably could. Are the majority of
American people in favor of impeaching President Obama? I’m not sure,”
he said.
He cited the primary election defeat of House Majority Leader Rep.
Eric Cantor, R-Va., and noted a House majority leader had never been
defeated in a primary.
“There’s a big message here,” he said. “People in Washington better pay close attention.”
The fact that Washington has serious problems was confirmed by Fox News commentator Charles Krauthammer.
Referencing the White House claim that IRS emails sought by
investigators looking into harassment of tea-party members and
conservatives were “lost,” he said, “These guys are living on a
different planet.”
He noted computer experts said they are retrievable, but the Obama administration doesn’t want people to see them.
“Nixon lost 18 minutes. Obama now has lost two years of email,” he
said. “One thing that people don’t remember, the second article of
impeachment for Richard Nixon was the abuse of the IRS to pursue
political enemies. This is a high crime. This is not a triviality.”
Impeachment has become a topic across America in recent months, and the big list confirms the scope.
Jeanine Pirro, host of the Fox News show “Justice with Judge
Jeanine,” blasted Obama for his “impeachable” handling of various
issues.
Earlier she uncorked a blistering verbal assault
on Obama in connection with his handling of the fatal attack on the
U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya, on Sept. 11, 2012, and the subsequent
cover-up.
“Mr. President, it’s called an abrogation of duty,” Pirro said. “You
have not taken your oath to honestly and faithfully execute the duties
of your office. As commander in chief, you have NOT protected us. This
dereliction of duty as commander in chief demands your impeachment.”
The
definitive case for removing Barack Obama from office is presented in
“Impeachable Offenses” by Aaron Klein and Brenda J. Elliott.
The impeachment idea was also broached
in response to Obama’s exchange of five Taliban leaders for an Army
soldier who has been accused by his former colleagues of desertion.
Former Rep. Allen West, R-Fla., said, “I call upon the leadership of
the U.S. House of Representatives; Speaker John Boehner, Majority Leader
Eric Cantor, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi to draft articles of
impeachment.”
Fox News judicial analyst Andrew Napolitano supported West’s opinion.
“We have a federal statute which makes it a felony to provide
material assistance to any terrorist organization. It could be money,
maps, professional services, any asset whatsoever, include human
assets,” he said.
Earlier, Andrew McCarthy, the
former federal prosecutor who brought the evidence that convicted
perpetrators of the first Islamic terror bombing of New York’s World
Trade Center, said Obama likely broke the federal law against supporting
terror.
Retired U.S. Army Lt. Gen. William “Jerry” Boykin,
who said it’s clear “high crimes and misdemeanors” were committed in
Obama’s May 2014 deal with terrorists, also talked of impeachment.
“This was about emptying out Guantanamo,” he said. “This was a
backdoor deal. The reasons for it, the details of it will probably never
come out in its entirety, but this is an ugly story.
“It was really bad form for him not to at least call in the chair and
ranking member of the intel or armed services committee and tell them
what he was about to do with regard to the release of these prisoners,”
he said. “It’s an example of how this president only obeys the laws and
follows the policies that he wants to. In our Constitution, it falls
under the category of high crimes and misdemeanors, where you just
selectively obey certain laws and ignore others.”
Listen to the WND/Radio America interview with Lt. Gen. William “Jerry” Boykin:
Former Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., wrote recently that impeachment is a valid response to Obama’s Benghazi scandal.
“But White House lies about Benghazi are only the tip of what is
really a very large impeachment iceberg,” he wrote in a commentary on
WND. “We will hear many pundits say that whatever the truth of what
happened in Benghazi, it’s ‘only politics’ to lie about foreign events
during an election campaign, and so, it’s not a scandal on the scale of
Watergate. That argument misses the point that what Benghazi and
Watergate have in common: What brought Nixon down was not the crime but
the cover-up. And when it comes to cover-ups, Obama and his team make
Nixon look like a rank amateur.”
He continued: “There is a pattern here of abuse of power through the
deliberate disregard of constitutional norms and standards. And what
makes that pattern so egregious and dangerous is the participation of a
partisan media that actively supports and condones the ongoing cover-ups
of Obama’s arrogant disregard of the Constitution.”
U.S. Senate candidate Mark Callahan, who called out a reporter who
apparently was disrespectful to another candidate, according to Now Renew America, signed a “Pledge to Impeach.
It called for members of Congress to agree to “acknowledge that my
sworn oath of office, if I am elected, will require me” to “support the
initiation of House impeachment proceedings against President Barack
Hussein Obama, and his inner circle.”
Washington Post commentator Paul Waldman reported the impeachment drive has gone mainstream.
“Now we have the Benghazi select committee, and a select committee is
what you form when there may be crimes and misdemeanors to uncover,” he
pointed out.
“It has no other business to distract it, and it will be led by Trey
Gowdy, a former prosecutor who excels at channeling conservatives’
outrage,” Waldman wrote. “To be clear, this doesn’t mean that [House
Speaker John] Boehner or the party establishment he represents want
impeachment, not by any means. They realize what a political disaster it
was when they did it in 1998, and they understand that the effects
would likely be similar if it happened again.”
But Waldman wrote that “there are multiple Republican members of
Congress who have at least toyed with the idea, and the committee’s
hearings could build pressure in the Republican base for it.”
Among the people who have raised the prospect of impeachment are
Watergate reporter Bob Woodard, actor Steven Seagal, Ambassador Alan
Keyes, Code Pink co-founder Medea Benjamin and Oliver North, the former
Marine Corps lieutenant colonel first known for his testimony as a
National Security Council staff member under President Reagan.
“Tragically, this administration has gotten away with things that any
other president would have been impeached for,” North said. “There’s no
doubt in my mind.”
Seagal, whose dozens of films
feature action and violence but also have an underlying theme of seeking
justice, said Obama would be impeached if the truth about the Benghazi
attack was revealed.
His charge came Feb. 22 in an appearance at the Western Conservative Conference in Phoenix
“Never in my life did I ever believe that our country would be taken
over by people like the people who are running it this day,” said Seagal.
“I think that when we have a leadership that thinks the Constitution
of the United States of America is a joke, when we have a president who
has almost 1,000 executive orders now, when we have a Department of
Justice that thinks that any kind of a judicial system that they make up
as they are going along can get by with whatever they decide that they
want to do – like Ted Nugent said the Fast and the Furious, what’s
happening with the Fast and the Furious? What’s happened with the truth
about any of the greatest scandals of American history that have
happened right before our eyes?” Seagal said.
“If the truth about Benghazi were to come out now, I don’t think that
this man would make it through his term. I think he would be
impeached,” he said.
Sign
the petition that asks whether Americans have had enough and would be
willing to tell Congress to change the title of the former community
organizer to former president.
As WND reported,
Maj. Gen. Paul Vallely said it’s time for millions of Americans to
“stand up” to a federal government that is “conducting treason …
violating the Constitution, violating our laws.”
He called for marches, a legislative vote of “no confidence” in
President Obama and congressional leaders, even citizen arrests, drawing
inspiration from the 33 million Egyptians who stood up to their
government and removed Muslim Brotherhood officials from office.
The impeachment drive has been fueled by Georgetown professor Jonathan Turley’s congressional testimony.
The liberal professor has represented
members of Congress in a lawsuit over the Libyan war, represented
workers at the secret Area 51 military base and served as counsel on
national security cases. He now says Obama is a danger to the U.S.
Constitution.
He was addressing a House Judiciary Committee hearing Dec. 4.
Chairman Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., asked him: “Professor Turley, the
Constitution, the system of separated powers is not simply about
stopping one branch of government from usurping another. It’s about
protecting the liberty of Americans from the dangers of concentrated
government power. How does the president’s unilateral modification of
act[s] of Congress affect both the balance of power between the
political branches and the liberty interests of the American people?”
Turley replied: “Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The danger is quite severe.
The problem with what the president is doing is that he’s not simply
posing a danger to the constitutional system. He’s becoming the very
danger the Constitution was designed to avoid. That is the concentration
of power.”
WND reported when Rep. Trey
Gowdy, R-S.C., said Obama’s actions have reached “an unprecedented
level, and we’ve got to do something about it.”
“Assume that a statute said you had to provide two forms of ID to
vote. Can the president require three forms? Can the president require
one form? Can you suspend all requirements? If not, why not?” he said.
“If you can turn off certain categories of law, do you not also have the
power to turn off all categories of law?”
Gowdy cited Obama’s decisions to ignore certain immigration laws,
even though Congress did not approve the changes. He also cited
arbitrary changes to the Obamacare law and Obama’s “recess appointments”
of judges even though the U.S. Senate was not in recess.
His proposal is for Congress to take the White House to court over
the president’s actions, through a resolution proposed by Rep. Tom Rice,
R-S.C., that would authorize the House to sue the Obama administration.
It has 118 co-sponsors.
Rice said that because of “this disregard of our country’s checks and
balances, many of you have asked me to bring legal action against the
president.”
“After carefully researching the standing the House of
Representatives has and what action we can take, I have introduced a
resolution to stop the president’s clear overreach,” he said.
A Fox News interviewer asked Gowdy if Obama could refuse to enforce election laws.
“Why not?” asked Gowdy, “If you can turn off immigration laws, if you
can turn off the mandatory minimum in our drug statutes, if you can
turn off the so-called Affordable Care Act – why not election laws?”
WND reported that it was at
the same hearing that Michael Cannon, director of Health Policy Studies
for the Cato Institute, said there is “one last thing to which the
people can resort if the government does not respect the restraints that
the Constitution places of the government.”
“Abraham Lincoln talked about our right to alter our government or our revolutionary right to overthrow it,” he said.
“That is certainly something that no one wants to contemplate. If the
people come to believe that the government is no longer constrained by
the laws, then they will conclude that neither are they.”
Cannon said it is “very dangerous” for the president to “wantonly
ignore the laws, to try to impose obligations upon people that the
legislature did not approve.”
Several members of Congress also contributed their opinions in an interview with talk-show host Sean Hannity.
See the Hannity segment:
Talk-radio host Rush Limbaugh said
Obama won’t be impeached. But Limbaugh also made the case that the
Constitution is in crisis, an emergency for which the founders probably
created the impeachment process.
“You can’t impeach the first black president,” he said on his radio show. “No matter how corrupt or lawless.”
But he said the danger is very high, citing Boehner’s comments that
the House wouldn’t adopt amnesty legislation this year because the
president probably wouldn’t follow it.
“This is the president of the United States effectively nullifying
the legislative branch of government,” an outraged Limbaugh said. “He’s
basically saying … and he has in practically these words, said this, ‘I
got a pen and I got a phone and if they don’t do what I want I’m going
to it anyway.’
“That’s not a ho-hummer to me. That is major. If the chartered body
in our government that makes the law decides not to because they don’t
think it’ll matter, because the executive branch will just ignore it, I
mean that’s a breach of serious proportion,” he said.
“That is a constitutional challenge and crisis that is very real that
nobody apparently has the courage to do anything about because of the
president’s race,” he said.
Ambassador Alan Keyes, however, wrote in a WND column that Limbaugh isn’t right about impeachment.
“When Rush Limbaugh says that ‘efforts to try to have Obama impeached
or held personally responsible for these scandals is a bunch of wasted
effort,’ he is saying that, on account of the politics of our times,
this fundamental aspect of the U.S. Constitution no longer matters. With
all due respect to Rush Limbaugh (and my respect for him is sizable and
sincere), I beg to differ. The judgment about ‘wasted effort’ depends
on what we’re trying to achieve. If politics is just a partisan game,
with no goal but to score points for one side or the other, it may be
reasonable to conclude that impeachment is a wasted effort. After all,
the Democrats who control the U.S. Senate will never allow Obama to be
removed from office. Doesn’t this make impeachment impossible? ”
He continued: “Mr. Limbaugh is right to assume that impeachment is
inherently political. In this respect his view accords with that of
Alexander Hamilton, who wrote (in Federalist No. 65) that ‘… the
subjects of its jurisdiction are those offenses which proceed … from the
abuse or violation of some public trust. They are of a nature which may
with peculiar propriety be denominated POLITICAL, as they relate
chiefly to injuries done immediately to the society itself.’”
But Keyes said: “The difference between Limbaugh and Hamilton,
however, is that when Mr. Limbaugh speaks of politics he is referring to
the competition of partisan factions. But for Hamilton politics means
the business of citizens, i.e., individuals characterized by their
concern for the common good of their society as a whole, not just their
own personal, factional, partisan interests. From Hamilton’s
perspective, the way elected representatives handle such offenses is
therefore a test of their concern for the common good. If they act, or
refuse to act, based solely on whether by doing so they advance their
personal or factional agenda, they show their contempt for the
well-being of the nation as a whole. They thereby prove themselves unfit
for the offices (duties) they hold, whether or not they are ever called
to account for their dereliction.”
Polls have revealed American support for impeachment is growing, and rock legend and gun-rights defender Ted Nugent said there’s “no question” Obama should be impeached.
Referring to Obama, Nugent says: “There’s no question that this guy’s violations qualify for impeachment. There’s no question.”
He blasted “the criminality of this government, the unprecedented
abuse of power, corruption, fraud and deceit by the Chicago
gangster-scammer-ACORN-in-chief.”
“It’s so diabolical,” he said.
Nugent made his comments in an interview with radio host Alex Jones.
Even Code Pink co-founder Medea Benjamin called for the impeachment of Obama over his policy of permitting drone strikes on American citizens overseas who are members of terrorist organizations.
On WABC Radio’s “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio,” Benjamin affirmed she believes the drone warfare is an impeachable offense.
A comment was from Rep. Paul Broun, a Georgia Republican who was seeking to replace the retiring Sen. Saxby Chambliss.
A video from a forum featuring candidates for Chambliss’ seat shows
Broun and two others, Derrick Grayson, an engineer, and Eugene Yu, a
businessman, raising their hands when asked whether they would support
impeachment.
A forum moderator asked the candidates: “Obama has perjured himself
on multiple occasions. Would you support impeachment if presented for a
vote?”
Broun, Grayson and Yu raised their hands.
Others who have commented on impeachment:
Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa; Rep. Blake Farenthold, R-Texas; Rep. Steve
Stockman, R-Texas; Rep. Bill Flores, R-Texas; Rep. Duncan Hunter,
R-Calif.; Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla.; Rep. Kerry Bentivolio, R-Mich.; Sen.
Ted Cruz, R-Texas; Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla.; Rep. Jason Chaffetz,
R-Utah; Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C.; Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn.; Rep.
Louie Gohmert, R-Texas; Rep. Trey Radel, R-Fla.; and Rep. Ted Yoho,
R-Fla.
Stockman even handed out in Congress
copies of a book that has been described by its authors as the
“articles of impeachment” for Barack Obama. Stockman suggested that
special investigations and possibly prosecutions are needed in response
to Fast and Furious, Benghazi and other Obama scandals.
Rep. Bill Flores, R-Texas, was speaking at a town hall meeting when
he considered the idea. A video of his comments was posted at the
Western Center for Journalism.
“I’ve looked at the president. I think he’s violated the Constitution. I think he’s violated the Bill of Rights,” he said.
He said at some point a decision must be made.
“I think if the House had an impeachment vote, it would probably impeach the president.”
But he noted at the time there were only 46 members of the GOP in the
U.S. Senate, where an impeached president would be put on trial.
To obtain a conviction, the prosecuting team must have 67 votes, and
he wasn’t sure even all of the GOP members would vote to convict.
WND previously reported Coburn’s statement that Obama is “perilously close” to qualifying for impeachment.
Speaking at the Muskogee Civic Center in Oklahoma, the senator said,
“What you have to do is you have to establish the criteria that would
qualify for proceedings against the president, and that’s called
impeachment.”
Coburn said it’s “not something you take lightly, and you have to use a historical precedent of what that means.”
Visit WND’s online Impeachment Store to see all the products related to ousting Obama.
Earlier, Bentivolio said it would be a “dream come true” to impeach Obama.
Bentivolio told the Birmingham Bloomfield Republican Club Meeting,
“You know, if I could write that bill and submit it, it would be a dream
come true.”
He told constituents: “I feel your pain and I know. I stood 12 feet
away from that guy and listened to him, and I couldn’t stand being
there. But because he is president I have to respect the office. That’s
my job as a congressman. I respect the office.”
Bentivolio said his experience with the president caused him to
consult with attorneys about what it would take to remove Obama from
office.
Cruz responded to a question about impeachment after a speech.
“It’s a good question,” Cruz said. “And I’ll tell you the simplest
answer: To successfully impeach a president you need the votes in the
U.S. Senate.”
In May, Inhofe suggested Obama could be impeached over a White House
cover-up after the attack in Benghazi, Libya, on Sept. 11, 2012.
He told listeners of “The Rusty Humphries Show”: “Of all the great
cover-ups in history – the Pentagon papers, Iran-Contra, Watergate, all
the rest of them – this … is going to go down as the most egregious
cover-up in American history.”
But even with that searing indictment, Inhofe stopped short of calling for impeachment.
Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, has offered tentative support for impeachment.
“I’m not willing to take it off the table, but that’s certainly not what we’re striving for,” he told CNN.
One Republican actually has come out and called for the impeachment
of Obama, and he did it more than two years ago, before he became a
congressman.
Rep. Ted Yoho, R-Fla., posted on his website in June 2011 a list of reasons for impeachment.
Other figures who have discussed impeachment include Glenn Beck,
Watergate investigative reporter Bob Woodward, WND columnist Nat Hentoff
and a panel of top constitutional experts.
Woodward said: “If you read through all these emails, you see that
everyone in the government is saying, ‘Oh, let’s not tell the public
that terrorists were involved, people connected to al Qaida. Let’s not
tell the public that there were warnings.’ And I have to go back 40
years to Watergate when Nixon put out his edited transcripts to the
conversations, and he personally went through them and said, ‘Oh, let’s
not tell this, let’s not show this.’ I would not dismiss Benghazi. It’s a
very serious issue.”
Additionally, radio host Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor
and one-time presidential candidate, predicted Obama won’t serve out his
second term because of his complicity in a cover-up over Benghazi.
See Dennis Kucinich advocate for impeachment over Libya:
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