Should Barack Obama be impeached?

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So in your mind, blowing people up and refusing to explain why or even why you believe you can legally do so is morally equivalent to holding the nation together and ending the institution of slavery? I mean I generally oppose ends justifying means thinking across the board, but Lincoln's ends were a whole hell of a lot more noble than Obama's, which have ranged from protecting his public image to doling out favors to wealthy supporters to expanding his own power at the expense of the citizenry. I'm actually kind of offended that you'd even make that comparison, one of our greatest presidents shouldn't even be mentioned in the same breath as one of our shittiest.

Violation of the war powers act with regards to Libya is the lowest hanging fruit, his fig leaf that not having boots on the ground doesn't count is just that, a fig leaf.

And boots were on the ground. We sent in special forces to help equip and train the rebels. This was well-documented, but nobody really called Obama on it. So, we actively aided in overthrowing a sovereign government.

Sometimes extraordinary circumstances call for extraordinary actions.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

That is exactly what some Germans said about Hitler. How strange!

ruveyn

There were comparisons of the Bush Administration to the Third Reich made by the left with a straight face.

To simplify it, Wiemar era Germany was in the dark and Hitler was the only one with a flashlight that worked. They followed him without thinking of where he'd lead them just because he had the flashlight and took the lead. The US is getting closer and closer to that same in the dark situation with each passing year.

For one, Bush holds the title of this country's shittiest president.

Another, Obama is protecting American citizens against religious lunatics.

The charge that he's doing this for the sake of his supporters doesn't hold water, as he's in his second term and doesn't need to face another election.

And finally, Lincoln killed and blew up plenty of American citizens - they were called the Confederacy.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

How is it that President Obama and former Vice President Dick Cheney, who appeared on Fox News Sunday defending the NSA's vast surveillance program, find themselves on the same side of so many highly controversial national security debates? They subscribe to different ideologies, belong to opposing political parties, and differ dramatically in background and temperament.

For all their substantial differences, Dick Cheney and Barack Obama share one leadership trait: they trust their own judgment so thoroughly, and value it so highly, that they recklessly undermine all institutional and prudential restraints on their ability to exercise it whenever they see fit. Indeed, like Kobe Bryant at the end of a playoff game, they both harbor a barely suppressed, supremely arrogant belief that behaving in this way is their responsibility, or even their burden.

Seeing all the ways Obama is different, many miss the trait in him. But consider the evidence. Unlike Cheney, Obama doesn't believe, as a matter of longstanding ideology, that the executive branch ought to be far more powerful than it was in 2000. As a senator, he warned against the trend. True, he's embraced the powers given him as president, and expanded them in various ways. All the while, however, he's never stopped warning Americans about the perils of our present course -- most recently in the speech where he advised us to end the War on Terrorism. Perhaps this isn't a contradiction at all. Obama mistrusts these powers deeply ... except when he's the one empowered by them. When he's in charge, the stuff he warns about isn't sufficient reason for change. Hope in his person is enough (Obama would surely frame it as everything good about America being personified in him, but it all amounts to the same heavy-handedness).

Obama thinks it's important, under a not-Obama, to have institutionalized rules governing drone strikes. But he "placed himself at the helm of a top secret 'nominations' process to designate terrorists for kill." Judge, jury, and executioner for me, institutions and process for thee!

Obama thinks "it is illegal and unwise for the President to disregard international human rights treaties that have been ratified by the United States Senate," but decided that "looking forward" was more important than investigating and prosecuting torture, a binding treaty requirement.

So long as others are in office, Obama regards the War Powers Resolution as binding law, and believes that "the President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation." But legal and prudential standards, however genuinely praised, do not trump Obama's ad hoc judgment in situations like Libya, where he violated the War Powers Resolution.

And surveillance on Americans? Well, Obama "welcomes debate" on the tradeoffs between liberty and security -- except when Obama decides that significant legal interpretations and sweeping new policies should be kept secret, having already carefully balanced things himself. Debate is less important in the singular case in which the judgment of someone as wise as Obama can be substituted.

Do you see the similarity now? When it comes to doing whatever the hell one wants, or not doing it, due to legitimate constraints, Cheney's avowed preference and Obama's revealed preference are the same. In their own ways, they both subvert whatever it is that gets in their way. Obama thinks of himself as balancing lots of complicated factors -- and somehow it always comes out that he has to assume more power than he thought prudent when others were exercising it.

In fact, many of Obama's decisions since taking office have been imprudent. His arrogant insistence on preserving his own ability to act as he pleases, in every circumstance, comes at a steep cost. Having maximized the prerogatives of the one man he trusts more than anyone on earth -- Barack Obama -- he's expanded the prerogatives of all the presidents who'll follow him, many of whom he won't trust. His shortsightedness has been irresponsible and discrediting.

Rather than correcting the "process" problems of the Bush years and the tendency to subvert the law, he has compounded them, and given them the veneer of bipartisan acceptance. Thanks to Obama, who had the chance to reverse it, Cheney's notion of the executive is winning. The U.S. desperately needs a leader who values institutions and law more than his or her own judgment. Or at least a Congress that isn't so impotent as to let the executive branch behave so arrogantly.

What Lincoln practiced was an early version of American ur-fascism. Statism, fascism with a smile, low calorie tyranny.

The son of a b***h had people tossed in jail without the privilege of habeas corpus. He closed down newspapers because the editors opposed the War.

If Lincoln can be called "great" for extending the power of the State, why not Barak Obama?

ruveyn

ruveyn

And perhaps he should have been impeached for it, but sic semper tyrannis! kind of mooted one.

Bush got us into two quagmires which Obama got us out of. Bush had allowed his Wall Street friends almost wreck the country, while Obama had pulled the country out from the precipice.
Obama's still the better president.
And I'll remind you - Cheney had lied us into a BS war with Iraq. When has Obama ever done anything of that magnitude?

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

Another deflection... Color me surprised...