President Obama must be thanking his lucky stars he is not a republican. If he were a Republican, he would have been up on impeachment charges by now, even in a GOP run House.
First, you have the $500,000,000,000+ loan to a green energy company that went bankrupt and the company was given the loan because of pressure from the White House.
From the Washington Examiner:
Ultimately, Solyndra may prove to be the only Energy Department loan guarantee that explodes into a scandal rivaling Teapot Dome or Credit Mobilier for venality and abuse of the public trust. However, there are at least 16 more such loan guarantees worth in excess of $10 billion, all approved by the same cast of characters at the White House and the U.S. Department of Energy responsible for the current mess. And many other federal departments and agencies have provided billions of dollars' worth of loan guarantees, so nobody should be surprised if Solyndra is only the first of many similar outrages under the Obama economic stimulus regime.
What is clear from emails made public last week by the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, headed by Rep. Cliff Stearns, R-Fla., is that key Solyndra loan decisions were guided primarily by political considerations. Obama was not in the White House when the proposal to back the company initially appeared in Washington, but two weeks before President George W. Bush left office an Energy Department review panel unanimously recommended against making the loan. Even after Obama opted to champion the proposal, career employees at the Office of Management and Budget cautioned against doing so before a final decision was made. One even predicted Solyndra would run out of money and head for bankruptcy court by September 2011. And a Government Accountability Office report said the Energy Department had circumvented its own rules in order to make loan guarantees to at least five firms, including Solyndra.
Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/2011/09/solyndra-scandal-exposes-lie-government-investment#ixzz1YHcVjZm7
Then you have the case of the White House forcing an Air Force General to change his testimony before Congress. From Eli Lake and the Daily Beast: The four-star Air Force general who oversees Air Force Space Command walked into a highly secured room on Capitol Hill a week ago to give a classified briefing to lawmakers and staff, and dropped a surprise. Pressed by members, Gen. William Shelton said the White House tried to pressure him to change his testimony to make it more favorable to a company tied to a large Democratic donor.
The episode —confirmed by The Daily Beast in interviews with administration officials and the chairman of a congressional oversight committee —is the latest in a string of incidents that have given Republicans sudden fodder for questions about whether the Obama administration is politically interfering in routine government matters that affect donors or fundraisers. Already, the FBI and a House committee are investigating a federal loan guarantee to a now failed solar firm called Solyndra that is tied to a large Obama fundraiser.
Now the Pentagon has been raising concerns about a new wireless project by a satellite broadband company in Virginia called LightSquared, whose majority owner is an investment fund run by Democratic donor Philip Falcone.
According to officials familiar with the situation, Shelton’s prepared testimony was leaked in advance to the company. And the White House asked the general to alter the testimony to add two points: that the general supported the White House policy to add more broadband for commercial use; and that the Pentagon would try to resolve the questions around LightSquared with testing in just 90 days. Shelton chafed at the intervention, which seemed to soften the Pentagon’s position and might be viewed as helping the company as it tries to get the project launched, officials said.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/09/15/lightsquared-did-white-house-pressure-general-shelton-to-help-donor.html
Finally, you have the Fast and Furious case in which illegally bought guns, with the knowledge of the Fed's and the ATF, were used to kill a Border Patrol agent. From the Fox News: Weapons from the failed federal operation "Fast and Furious" have reportedly been linked to 11 more violent crimes in the U.S., including in places like Arizona and Texas where a total of 42 weapons were seized.
As early as January 2010, guns tied to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosions were found at crime scenes in cities like Phoenix, Glendale and El Paso, the Los Angeles Times first reported.
The ATF program was designed to identify cartel leaders in Mexico by allowing for the illegal purchase of weapons and then tracking the firearms. The operation backfired when ATF lost track of the guns.
Under the program, 1,418 firearms were circulated though the number of disappeared guns is still unknown.
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/08/17/guns-from-fast-and-furious-sting-linked-to-11-more-violent-crimes/#ixzz1YHiBC9JW
While testifying before Congress, you had the Attorney General and other members of his clan lying. This scandal goes all the way up to the White House. And once again, a gun used in Fast and Furious was used to kill a Border Patrol officer and other guns were used to commit crimes in the U.S..
So, once again, why hasn't Obama been impeached yet? But I suppose it is getting late to do it and since Obama will be a 1 termer, it probably is irrelevant.
Maybe some criminal charges may come after he and others in his administration have left office.
Dan, I don't think Obama has committed impeachable offenses. But given the kid glove treatment he gave the outgoing administration (no investigations, nobody up on charges or in jail), I'd say that trying to drum up charges on Obama would be spectacularly bad form.
ReplyDeleteEven in the waning days of GWB, Nancy Pelosi too impeachment "off the table," though there were many, many things they could have tried.
The Democratic base was rabid for "getting" the GWB administration. Ohhhhhh, we wanted to see Karl Rove frogmarched. We wanted investigations and convictions. Obama incurred some of his base's backlash for NOT pursuing any.
(Oh, and you have three too many zeros in your 500,000,000,000. Million, not billion.)