Impeachable Conduct? You Decide

Impeachment proceedings should not be undertaken lightly. Whenever we down the path of presidential misconduct it is the cover up which really undermines an administration more than the initial misbehavior. That is true again in a matter involving President Obama and his crooked friend Kevin Johnson. Here are the basic alleged facts:
* Former NBA player and current Sacramento mayor Kevin Johnson was investigated by the AmeriCorps inspector general, Gerald Walpin after people reported misuse of funds by Johnson when he was head of a private school funded by Americorps.
* Johnson is a friend and ally of Obama.
* Obama fired Walpin in June amid allegations of senility.
* Walpin filed suit in federal court in Washington in July alleging that he was fired improperly while investigating whether Johnson had misused federal grant funds.
* U.S. attorney ruled in favor of Walpin that he was removed improperly.
* Johnson's fiance, Michelle Rhee, who is now DC schools chief, handled the "damage control" after the sexual misconduct charges arose against Johnson.
* Walpin has not been reinstated.

This scandal and the administration cover up have received scant reporting in the lamestream media. Does anyone doubt it would lead the evening news every night if a Republican president fired an inspector general who was investigating his buddy?

Does impeding an investigation of misuse (fancy word for theft) of government funds rise to the level of impeachable behavior? When you get down to it Nixon was hounded out of office for impeding an investigation into misbehavior by his underlings. Funny thing is based on his naive foreign policy mentality, we have considered Obama to be serving Jimmy Carter's second term and it turns out he is looking more and more like Nixon without the competence (or press scrutiny).

What if Bush had . . . . . . ? #6

Here is another example of boorish behavior by President Obama that would have been critiqued and widely criticized by the extremely left wing media. Add this to the paranoid delusions of government abuse during the Bush administration and the howling over a comment like this would have been deafening.

At his Arizona State University commencement speech last Wednesday, Mr. Obama noted that ASU had refused to grant him an honorary degree, citing his lack of experience, and the controversy this had caused. He then demonstrated ASU's point by remarking, "I really thought this was much ado about nothing, but I do think we all learned an important lesson. I learned never again to pick another team over the Sun Devils in my NCAA brackets. . . . President [Michael] Crowe and the Board of Regents will soon learn all about being audited by the IRS."

As the Wall Street Journal editorial that I pulled that quote from points out, abuse of the audit power of the Internal Revenue Service is nothing for the head of the executive branch to joke about regardless of setting. There have been many instances of prior administrations (Johnson, Nixon, Clinton, etc) using the power of the federal government to exact payback against political rivals or "enemies."

An IRS employee who made a similar comment would face discipline and likely have their employment terminated. I'm not claiming that a president should be removed from office for something that would get a subordinate canned. Rather just saying presidents should attempt to exceed the level of behavior expected of subordinates. It is somewhat analogous to the Clinton misbehavior. Sure, the crime he was prosecuted for committing was perjury. However, his behavior (sexual harassment, assault, adultery, fornication in the work place, etc) was of such a nature that most other government employees would have faced serious sanctions and potentially be fired.

Goofy Quote of the Day

Rep. Don Young (R-AK) gave his response to the conviction of Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK). Even though he is his longtime friend and a strong supporter, I don't think he did Stevens any favors with these comments:

"I'm deeply disappointed," he said in an interview. "It surprises me. I don't think he had a jury of his peers. That's the way it goes. I'm sure there will an appeal. If you watch the conduct of the court and with the one juror leaving and going out and of course the action of the prosecutors themselves, there will definitely be an appeal and it will go for a long period of time."

Can Stevens still win?

"I think he can win. He's the best thing for that, for the Senate. Alaskans know this. This is a trumped up charge. If you look at not reporting, supposedly gifts -- he reported everything he got. I think it was wrong when they prosecuted him on this issue."

Daily News: You worked with him all these years. Some people will look at the verdicts as a statement on his years of services.

"I think that's going to be, you know, a matter of opinion. I can remember Richard Nixon, you know, his years of service, what he's done, and everybody were ridiculing him and he ended up being the greatest president in the history of our century.

"The senator will be reelected. He will appeal it. When he does go, he will win it because there's no way this is a jury of his peers."

Now, I'll admit to thinking Nixon's true record was much better than how history has judged him. However, even through my somewhat biased glasses I don't see Nixon as a top ten president (he certainly isn't the worst either). Beyond that the sentence is just oddly worded and linking the recently convicted senator to a president who was forced to resign can not help his case with the voters.