Since many politicians say “let me be very clear” without really meaning it, I hesitate to use the same phrase—but I do want to reemphasize something. It is not a delightful thing to me to constantly point out the hypocrisies of our president and his administration. I do so only because I believe it needs to be done. It would be far more edifying and and enjoyable to write always about examples of integrity and truth-telling. Yet I feel “called,” if I may use that word, to highlight the inconsistencies and sins of leaders and the citizenry alike. The purpose? To show the contrast with the godly character that is absolutely necessary for our society to flourish the way God intended.

Being a Jeremiah-like character is not fun. It’s especially hard for someone like me who loves to see the humor in life. Perhaps that’s why I use political cartoons so often. They allow a serious point to be made while simultaneously offering a comical take on that which is serious.

For instance, recently, President Obama visited Mexico, where he gave a speech that pretty much blamed the United States for all the violence in Mexico. I think he relies on low-information voters and those with short memories to try to get away with making comments that are the height of hypocrisy:

Now, for the sake of any low-information citizens viewing that cartoon, let me remind you that Operation Fast and Furious was a gun-running scheme of this administration that led to a U.S. border agent being killed, as well as hundreds of Mexicans. For the president to sanctimoniously make such statements is inexcusable. Someone ought to make a movie:

Rest assured I will continue to fulfill my calling, no matter how distasteful it can be at times. Renewal can begin only after first acknowledging the problems.

Tonight is debate night. The topic is domestic policy. I almost wish the first debate would be on foreign policy because that has forced its way into the forefront lately. A number of things have occurred nearly simultaneously. The biggest event, of course, was the attack on our consulate in Libya that led to the murder of six Americans, one of whom was our ambassador to that country. We now know the consulate had been begging the administration for greater security for some time, but all requests were denied. We also now know it was a terrorist attack, not some spontaneous protest over some silly film. Yet Obama and his people continue to push that discredited story. The radicals don’t need an excuse to hate America and try to kill our citizens, but the administration keeps blaming our insensitivity to Islam instead. It’s flimsy, but it fits the Obama narrative and his worldview:

Then when Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu sought a face-to-face with the president, he was rebuffed. Netanyahu performed a valuable service to the world with his speech at the UN, seeking to draw a line in the sand, so to speak, with reference to the Iranian nuclear program and that country’s publicly expressed desire to annihilate the Jewish state. Netanyahu challenged the world community—such as it is—to draw a “red line” and take a stand. What was our president doing in the meantime? His calendar was very full:

Even more recently, just in the past couple of days, the Spanish-speaking network Univision did some investigative reporting that revealed how the foolish Fast and Furious operation killed even more Mexicans than we originally thought. It’s a scandal that should be shouted from the housetops, along with the Libyan fiasco. Why does the mainstream media bury these stories and concentrate instead on manufactured Romney gaffes? It’s almost as if the president has some sort of mesmeric control over them:

None of this should be surprising anymore. There’s a history of denying reality with this administration. One cartoonist offers this little history lesson:

Another four years of this could signal the death of the republic.

As I write this, we are less than three hours away from the Supreme Court decision on Obamacare. Most of you reading this will already know what was decided. I’ll examine what transpires today and offer some thoughts on it tomorrow. This is probably one of the most anticipated and historic Supreme Court decisions in my lifetime, aside from all the bad decisions on abortion. If Obamacare is allowed to stand, it will go down as the worst decision since Roe v. Wade. A decision to uphold this unconstitutional nightmare will follow in the infamous footsteps of the Dred Scott decision before the Civil War that declared no black person was a citizen and the Plessy v. Ferguson segregation ruling of 1896.

Well, that lets you know where I stand.

The other big event of the day will be the House vote on the contempt of Congress charges against Eric Holder. There’s not nearly the suspense for that one. Even some Democrats are going to vote for those charges, especially those who represent Republican-leaning districts in the upcoming election. So much is at stake in this as well: immigration policy, border security enforcement, states’ rights, possible misuse of executive privilege. If these charges pass, will the courts then do their job and force the attorney general to do his? I wish I had more confidence in the public’s grasp of the importance of the issues in this case. Well, at least some of the cartoonists have a good handle on it:

For me, seeing cartoons like this on a daily basis provides hope that rational thought and common sense may yet prevail. November will tell if my hope is illusory or if we still have a future as a nation.

The Supreme Court yesterday, in a much-anticipated ruling, upheld the central feature of the Arizona illegal immigration law that has been the center of controversy for the last few years. Yes, the Court did strike down other features of the law, but they were minor in comparison to the provision that allows police to check the immigration status of citizens who happen to be stopped under suspicion of breaking a law. Although the Obama administration, spearheaded by Eric Holder of the Department of Justice [it still has the name, but not the substance of the name] has branded the law racist, the phoniness of that charge was laid bare in this decision. Why? The Court ruled unanimously in favor of that so-called controversial provision—both liberals and conservatives on the Court declared it valid, which, in a sane world, would put to rest the idea that racism was behind the law.

In my view, the entire law should have been upheld, and Justice Scalia wrote a stinging dissent making that very point. He stated that the law didn’t create anything new, but simply mirrored federal laws that were not being carried out by the federal government, thereby forcing the state of Arizona to try to make up the difference. States have a right to defend themselves. The three most conservative justices all agreed on this.

So what did the Obama administration do immediately upon hearing of the Court’s decision? The Department of Homeland Security [another agency that is quickly becoming an oxymoron] suspended its cooperative agreement with Arizona for border security. In effect, it has said the state is now on its own in protecting its borders and dealing with illegal immigration. Further, it has published a phone number for Arizona citizens to call to report on police attempting to do their duty. Obama and his people have decided that Arizona is the criminal and must be punished. The federal government will do even less of its job in the future. It will refuse to execute the law of the land.

This is almost breathtaking, if you really stop to consider what’s happening at the highest levels of our government. In a series of actions and/or inactions, the president has trampled the entire concept of separation of powers and has taken it upon himself to be the government, purposely ignoring the constitutional limitations of his office and relegating the legislative and judicial branches to irrelevance. Here are examples of what he has done lately:

• He has adamantly refused to enforce the Defense of Marriage Act, duly passed by Congress, and has declared his approval of same-sex marriage.
• He has unilaterally suspended the rules on how to handle illegal immigrants aged 16-30 and substituted his own agenda, again without any congressional act to authorize it.
• He has misused the right of executive privilege to shield himself and his attorney general from potentially embarrassing information in documents needed by a congressional committee investigating Fast and Furious.
• Fast and Furious itself was an out-of-control operation by the Justice Department that led to hundreds of deaths with guns deliberately passed to organized crime in Mexico.
• Now, with the denial of help for Arizona in policing illegal immigration, the president once again has violated his own oath of office, which says that he pledges to uphold, protect, and defend the Constitution and the laws passed under its authority.

And it’s all politics. Hispanics, on the whole, seem to be in favor of his “new” rules for illegal immigrants, despite the damage this does to the rule of law. He has solidified their votes for November. His “evolving” view on same-sex marriage mollified a segment of society that has money to burn in the upcoming election. He now has greater access to those funds.

With this man, everything is political. But why should anyone be surprised? He was weaned on corrupt Chicago politics. He never was a genuine hope and change kind of guy; it was all political theater that worked amazingly well in the wake of a disillusioned electorate that, without thinking rationally, just wanted to take out its angst on Republicans. Few listened to the voices that were warning of the true nature of the candidate. I only hope eyes have now been opened and ears are more willing to hear.

America doesn’t crown monarchs, and when a president tries to act like one, the voters can let him know they won’t abide such arrogance. At least the voters who aren’t on the public dole won’t abide it. Are there still enough of those to make a difference?

I was thinking I’d skip writing about Fast and Furious, Eric Holder, contempt of Congress votes, and executive privilege today, but there’s at least one point I didn’t cover last week. And I may need to amend a comment I made about this being policy-oriented and not political in nature. Since the invocation of executive privilege seems to be inappropriate in this type of situation, it’s quite possible there’s a rather embarrassing revelation that could come from inspecting the documents. We’re told they’re not hiding anything, but the argument, in this case, is not very persuasive. It kind of reminds me of someone else in a similar situation:

Speculation has been circulating that the real reason for the operation was to push for stricter gun-control laws. In other words, blame the people who sold the guns rather than the government agents who allowed those guns to get in the hands of drug dealers, etc. What facts might lend themselves to this interpretation? Well, first of all, there was no attempt to trace where these guns were going. If you’re planning a sting operation, shouldn’t you be on top of the path of these weapons? Second, there was no coordination with the Mexican government. Apparently, they didn’t even know this was going on. When you take all of this together, it doesn’t look good for Holder or his boss.

On other matters, this administration has boasted of its secrets when it shouldn’t have said anything. Now we see just the opposite. Again, it makes one wonder why:

The Democrats are circling the wagons in the same way they did with Bill Clinton when he faced impeachment. But there are some cracks in the solid wall. A number of high-profile Democrats, including the governor and a senator from West Virginia, have decided not to attend the Democrat convention. They don’t want to be identified with a president who is not popular in their state. The rest of the Democrat party will try to say this is all a Republican political maneuver, but they are ignoring one salient fact:

As I said last week, and will repeat again, this is much worse than Watergate. If the media had any semblance of integrity, this could lead to the resignation of the attorney general and could possibly bring down a presidency. The big difference: they hated Nixon; they love Obama.

The Fast and Furious scandal has many commentators comparing it with Watergate. Might I point out some major differences between the two? First, Watergate was not policy-oriented; it was a political scandal entirely. It was basically a botched burglary at the Democrat National Headquarters in Washington, DC. Some of President Nixon’s supporters, without his knowledge or approval, decided to break into the HQ to steal documents. As I’ve often told students, it was wrong to do so, but in addition, it was one of the dumbest moves any campaign ever made. The Democrat nominee that year, George McGovern, had no better chance of defeating Nixon than I would have trying to dunk a basketball over Lebron James.

When the aspiring burglars were caught in the act, they had achieved nothing—there were no stolen documents. That’s all this event would have been had Nixon not made matters worse by attempting to shield his offending supporters from the consequences of their foolishness. This turned into a coverup of the illegal activities carried out by others. For this, he was brought down, and deservedly so.

One caveat to the aura of Nixonian corruption: prior to Watergate, Nixon had never done anything remotely illegal. In fact, as a first-term congressman back in 1948, his doggedness in pursuing the truth in the Chambers-Hiss case was essential to the eventual prison sentence for Hiss as an underground communist agent seeking to influence American government policies. Then, in 1960, when he “lost” the presidential election to Kennedy, he had every reason to believe the result was fraudulent. Dead people in Texas and Chicago apparently found their way to the polls that year. If Nixon had won those states—and he lost both by extremely slim margins—he, not Kennedy, would have been elected. Yet he chose not to press the case; he was concerned for what a long, drawn-out recount would do to the country. Watergate was an unfortunate ending to a career that previously had some high points.

Now let’s switch to Fast and Furious, which, at least at its inception, was not political, but a policy. The supposed goal was to track where guns went, but those in charge allowed these guns to land in the hands of drug dealers and other criminals who, in turn, used them to kill many of their Mexican countrymen and at least one U.S. border guard, Brian Terry. This was miscalculation and stupidity on a grand scale. It was far more than a botched burglary; this time lives were lost. Any comparison of Watergate with Fast and Furious must begin with that essential difference, a difference that makes the latter a greater scandal than the former.

Add to that the lying and stonewalling by the attorney general, Eric Holder, and the invoking of executive privilege by his boss, the president, to avoid releasing documents that would shed light on who was responsible for this warped idea, and you have something that makes Watergate pale in comparison. If only the mainstream media were honest, they would be digging deep into this and not rest until the truth came out. They will not do so, however, preferring to call it a Republican political ploy in an election year.

Did anyone in the media and the Democrat party ever stop to consider that perhaps the Republicans on the Oversight Committee are pursuing this investigation because they believe wrongs were done and they need to be rectified? No. Everything is political. What’s this outworn concept of right and wrong?

At least some cartoonists are on the job. Here are some prime examples:

In a country that had a greater desire for truth and honesty, this would be a front-page and top-of-the-broadcast news item. The networks, though, have been slow to cover it, and are doing so now reluctantly, while offering their own partisan interpretation. Where is Deep Throat when he is really needed?

The two significant developments in the Fast and Furious investigation yesterday were 1) the invocation of executive privilege over the documents subpoenaed from the Justice Department by the House Oversight Committee; and 2) the vote by that committee to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt. It was a busy day for those of us who seek to master the intricacies of constitutional authority. Here’s what I’ve come to after reviewing a number of analyses.

First, executive privilege is only used in matters of national security or dealing with communications between the president and one of the members of his administration. The investigation into Fast and Furious is an attempt to get information from the Department of Justice to figure out who was responsible for this foolish policy of allowing guns to enter Mexico—guns that have led to countless deaths south of our border and the death of one of our own border agents. The Justice Department, while part of the executive branch, is a creation of the Congress. The department is not mentioned in the Constitution; it was created by legislation. If the Congress chose to do so, it could dismantle the department tomorrow. The Justice Department has an obligation to report to Congress and Congress has authority to oversee its actions. That’s all that is taking place in these committee hearings as they try to find the truth behind this failed policy. Yet Holder has stonewalled most requests for documents, and remains adamant even in the face of a rising tide of calls for his resignation.

He has kept Congress at bay for months, sometimes teasing with the promise of information but always drawing back at the last moment. He has proven himself arrogant and untrustworthy.

Second, if Obama is really invoking executive privilege, that invites questions about his involvement in this controversy. After all, if his basis for invoking the privilege is the protection of communication between the office of the president and his subordinates, he must be saying he’s had conversations about this. So now we get back to those age-old questions: what did this president know and when did he know it? Watergate, anyone?

Then there’s the contempt of Congress resolution. It is serious. It hasn’t been carried out often, but penalties do come with it. If the full House, which is planning to vote on it next week, agrees with the committee, Holder could potentially face jail time if he doesn’t cooperate with the investigation. The full House has the authority to call upon the federal judiciary to bring charges against the attorney general. Now, on the practical level, will a Democrat judge, for instance, do this, or will he/she instead follow the expected Obama line that this is a valid use of executive privilege?

Back in 2007, then-senator Barack Obama was quite vocal against President Bush’s use of executive privilege in the matter of dismissing certain attorneys in the Justice Department [a right, by the way, that all presidents have---this was a trumped-up charge with no basis]. At the time, Obama said it was an abuse of power and showed the president had something to hide. Oh, really? Then what does that mean for Mr. Obama now that he is president and is invoking the same privilege? Is this a double standard or is he doing another one of his evolutions in thought?

Unfortunately, most of his evolutions are in the wrong direction. We elected a president who is supposed to be answerable to the people, not a king who is above the law. Given his refusal to enforce the Defense of Marriage Act, his trampling of religious liberty via Obamacare, and his unilateral alteration of illegal immigration policy, we are much closer to a monarch who operates outside the law than we are to a constitutional presidency.