Obama knows nothing of what goes on in his own administration.

The scandals it gets itself into come as a total surprise to him.

Jean Kaufman writes about this at her blog Neo-Neocon here:

Obama says “if only Obama knew”…

… about the problems in the VA:

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney … told reporters that President Barack Obama first learned from a TV news report that his Veterans Administration was denying medical care to vets with secret off-the-books-waiting lists.

The actual quote is this; note how careful Carney is to parse his words about the “specific” reports, because he knows that the White House was told about the general problem when Obama first took office in 2008:

A CNN reporter asked Carney on Monday when the president was ‘first made aware … of these fraudulent lists that were being kept to hide the wait times’ at VA medical centers.

‘You mean the specific allegations,’ Carney asked, ‘that I think were reported first by your news network out of Phoenix, I believe?’

‘We learned about them through the reports.’

He’s a sly one, that Carney, isn’t he?

As for Obama, it’s a good thing we have the news, because otherwise he’d never learn about anything that happened under his watch:

After the Operation Fast and Furious scandal broke, Obama responded to national outrage in an interview broadcast by CNN’s John King on October 12, 2011, similarly saying he was out of the loop until he turned on his television…

A few months into his presidency, Obama’s White House approved an unannounced New York City flyover by Air Force One…It was a mistake,’ the president said on April 28, 2009, the day after the flight. ‘It was something we found out about along with all of you. And it will not happen again.’

Last year on May 14, Carney told reporters that Obama had learned about his Department of Justice seizing two months’ worth of Associated Press journalists’ phone records ‘from news reports yesterday, on the road.’

‘We don’t have any independent knowledge of that,’ Carney insisted.

That punt came just one day after Obama himself told the Washington press corps during a joint press conference with UK Prime Minister David Cameron that he was in the dark – until it hit news reports – that the Internal Revenue Service had targeted conservative nonprofit groups for special inquisitions when they applied for tax-exempt status.

‘I first learned about it from the same news reports that I think most people learned about this,’ he said in the East Room of the White House on May 13, 2013. I think it was on Friday…

Why shouldn’t Obama keep doing this? With the cooperation of the MSM, it has worked for him so far.

Sarah Palin comments:

The head of a government that has the most sophisticated spying apparatus ever created can monitor who we talk to, what we talk about, how many twinkies our kids eat and the calories we consume, where we travel, etc. etc., yet announces [his] daily Intelligence report is actually prepared by Matt Drudge.

When such a man as Eric Holder is in charge of justice for the nation, the nation should not expect to get it.

As Attorney General he has turned the DoJ into the powerhouse of  a “political protection racket”.

The quoted words are those of Thomas Sowell, who writes, with unfailing good judgment:

Attorney General Eric Holder recently told a group of black clergymen that the right to vote was being threatened by people who are seeking to block access to the ballot box by blacks and other minorities.

This is truly world-class chutzpah, by an Attorney General who stopped attorneys in his own Department of Justice from completing the prosecution of black thugs who stationed themselves outside a Philadelphia voting site to harass and intimidate white voters. 

This may have seemed like a small episode to some at the time, but it was only the proverbial tip of the iceberg.

The U.S. Attorney who was prosecuting that case – J. Christian Adams – resigned from the Department of Justice in protest, and wrote a book about a whole array of similar race-based decisions on voting rights by Eric Holder and his subordinates at the Department of Justice.

The book is titled Injustice: Exposing the Racial Agenda of the Obama Justice Department. It names names, dates and places around the country where the Department of Justice stopped its own attorneys from pursuing cases of voter fraud and intimidation, when it was blacks who were accused of these crimes. …

Moreover, Adams has also testified under oath before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, on the racial double standard at the Department of Justice, when it comes to voting rights.

What Attorney General Holder has been complaining loudly about, and launching federal lawsuits about, are states that require photo identification to vote. Holder calls this blocking minority “access” to the voting booths.

Since millions of black Americans – like millions of white Americans – are confronted with demands for photo identification at airports, banks and innumerable other institutions, it is a little much to claim that requiring the same thing to vote is denying the right to vote. But Holder’s chutzpah is up to the task.

Attorney General Holder claims that the states’ requirement of photo identification for voting, in order to prevent voter fraud, is just a pretext for discriminating against blacks and other minorities. …

Despite Holder’s claim, a little experiment in his own home voting district showed how easy it is to commit voter fraud.

An actor – a white actor, at that – went to a voting place where Eric Holder is registered to vote, and told them that he was Eric Holder. The actor had no identification at all with him, either with or without a photo. He told the voting official that he had forgotten and left his identification in his car. Instead of telling him to go back to the car and get some identification, the official said that that was all right, and offered him the ballot. The actor had the good sense not to actually take the ballot, which would have made him guilty of voter fraud — and, being white, he would undoubtedly have been prosecuted by Eric Holder’s Department of Justice.

But the actor had made his point. When a white man with no identification can go to a voting site, impersonate a black man who lives in that district, and get his ballot offered to him, then it is far too easy to commit voter fraud.

Does not Attorney General Eric Holder understand that? Of course he understands it! The man is not stupid, despite his other failings.

His failings: racism, bigotry, base instincts, moral corruption, a crippled sense of justice, an oversupply of gall …

Holder’s pooh-poohing of voter fraud dangers, and hyping the “threat” of denying minorities “access” to the voting booth, are completely consistent with his drive to (1) maximize the number of votes by black Democrats and (2) spread as much fear as possible among minorities that they are under siege, and that the Democrats are their only protection and salvation.

It is a political protection racket, with payoffs in votes.

Nor can Holder’s boss, Barack Obama, be unaware of voter fraud. After all, he comes from Chicago, where voting officials refuse to discriminate against dead people.

Rep. Darrell Issa has taken steps to hold the Attorney General  in contempt of Congress over Operation Fast and Furious. Even if he gets away with that operation – providing Mexican cartels with guns which are then fatally used against US border guards – and with letting black criminals off the hook, and with whatever other injustices he has disgracefully and sarcastically used his position to perpetrate, thanks to J. Christian Adams and Rep. Darrell Issa, Holder stands before us stripped of respect, his moral turpitude exposed to the world.

As we say in our Articles of Reason:

Justice may be elusive, but judgment is inescapable.

When the officials appointed to see that the law is enforced and justice is done are themselves deeply corrupt, and purposefully unjust in their proceedings; when they cover up their own law-breaking and blatantly lie to the people’s representatives, the rule of law is over. That is what has happened in America under the Obama administration. The rule of law has been contemptuously abandoned by those sworn to uphold it. The constitution no longer protects liberty. Evil men are in charge, exerting their own arbitrary and tyrannical will. Where can the people turn for help?

This column by Jeffrey T. Kuhner comes from the Washington Times:

A year ago this week, U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was murdered. He died protecting his country from brutal Mexican gangsters. Two AK-47 assault rifles were found at his death site. We now know the horrifying truth: Agent Terry was killed by weapons that were part of an illegal Obama administration operation to smuggle arms to the dangerous drug cartels. He was a victim of his own government. This is not only a major scandal; it is a high crime that potentially reaches all the way to the White House, implicating senior officials. It is President Obama’s Watergate.

Operation Fast and Furious was run by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) and overseen by the Justice Department. It started under the leadership of Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. Fast and Furious enabled straw gun purchases from licensed dealers in Arizona, in which more than 2,000 weapons were smuggled to Mexican drug kingpins. ATF claims it was seeking to track the weapons as part of a larger crackdown on the growing violence in the Southwest. Instead, ATF effectively has armed murderous gangs. About 300 Mexicans have been killed by Fast and Furious weapons. More than 1,400 guns remain lost. Agent Terry likely will not be the last U.S. casualty.

Mr. Holder insists he was unaware of what took place until after media reports of the scandal appeared in early 2011. This is false. Such a vast operation only could have occurred with the full knowledge and consent of senior administration officials. Massive gun-running and smuggling is not carried out by low-level ATF bureaucrats unless there is authorization from the top. There is a systematic cover-up. 

Congressional Republicans, however, are beginning to shed light on the scandal. Led by Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Rep. Darrell Issa of California, a congressional probe is exposing the Justice Department’s rampant criminality and deliberate stonewalling. Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer, who heads the department’s criminal division, helped craft a February letter to Congress that denied ATF had ever walked guns into Mexico. Yet, under pressure from congressional investigators, the department later admitted that Mr. Breuer knew about ATF gun-smuggling as far back as April 2010. In other words, Mr. Breuer has been misleading Congress. He should resign – or be fired.

He should be punished by the law. But the criminal division of the Department of Justice will not let that happen. It’s not in the business of prosecuting crime or administering justice. It’s head, the guilty man himself, has seen to that.

Instead, Mr. Holder tenaciously insists that Mr. Breuer will keep his job. …

Another example is former acting ATF Director Kenneth Melson. Internal documents show Mr. Melson directly oversaw Fast and Furious, including monitoring numerous straw purchases of AK-47s. He has admitted to congressional investigators that he, along with high-ranking ATF leaders, reassigned every “manager involved in Fast and Furious” after the scandal surfaced on Capitol Hill and in the press. Mr. Melson said he was ordered by senior Justice officials to be silent regarding the reassignments. Hence, ATF managers who possess intimate and damaging information – especially on the role of the Justice Department – essentially have been promoted to cushy bureaucratic jobs. Their silence has been bought, their complicity swept under the rug. Mr. Melson has been transferred to Justice’s main office, where he serves as a “senior adviser” on forensic science in the department’s Office of Legal Policy. Rather than being punished, Mr. Melson has been rewarded for his incompetence and criminal negligence.

Mr. Holder and his aides have given misleading, false and contradictory testimony on Capitol Hill. Perjury, obstruction of justice and abuse of power – these are high crimes and misdemeanors. Mr. Holder should be impeached. Like most liberals, he is playing the victim card, claiming Mr. Issa is … conducting a judicial witch hunt. Regardless of this petty smear, Mr. Holder must be held responsible and accountable – not only for the botched operation, but for his flagrant attempts to deflect blame from the administration. …

For years, his out-of-control Justice Department has violated the fundamental principle of our democracy, the rule of law. He has refused to prosecute members of the New Black Panthers for blatant voter intimidation that took place in the 2008 election. Career Justice lawyers have confessed publicly that Mr. Holder will not pursue cases in which the perpetrators are black and the victims white. States such as Arizona and Alabama are being sued for simply attempting to enforce federal immigration laws. Mr. Holder also opposes voter identification cards, thereby enabling fraud and vote-stealing at the ballot box. …

Mr. Holder is fighting ferociously to prevent important internal Justice documents from falling into the hands of congressional investigators. If the full nature of his involvement is discovered, the Obama presidency will be in peril.

Both Obama and Holder should be impeached. If justice can still be done, Holder should go to prison for a very long stretch of time. In Obama’s case, there is no punishment commensurate with the crimes he has committed against the country he was so disastrously elected to lead, but he should be sentenced to the worst the law allows. Then we would know that the rule of law has been restored.