What happens when Democrats get their wires crossed?
What happens when drivel like “Change you can believe in” collides with such malarkey as “our commitment to the Rule of Law”?
Fraud happens. The etymology, by the way, traces to the Latin word
fraus — which the Obama campaign might bear in mind if it’s planning to whip up any more of those mock presidential seals.
Or, for that matter, mock presidential addresses. Sen. Obama has just bestowed another of these upon us: a two-minute
political ad on a Wall Street upheaval so sudden the campaign didn’t have time to dust off the seal or the Greek columns.
Explaining “what I believe we need to do,” the Anointed One decreed the need for “a responsible end to this war in Iraq so we stop spending billions each month rebuilding their country when we should be rebuilding ours.”
Where to begin with such a whopper? Let’s start with the felony, since it leads seamlessly to the fraud.
Thanks to
reporting from Amir Taheri, the gist of which the Obama campaign has confirmed, we now know that while Obama is telling the American people he wants an end to the war, he has secretly negotiated with the government in Iraq to extend the U.S. military mission there. That is a black-and-white violation of federal criminal law.
Very simply, in our system the president is responsible for conducting foreign policy. President Bush is thus negotiating with the Iraqi government for a “status of forces” agreement that would clarify the rights and responsibilities of U.S. forces in Iraq after the current U.N. mandate expires at the end of this year.
Yet, during Obama’s heralded trip to Baghdad in July, he asked Iraqi leaders to ignore Bush and delay resolving the legal status of our forces until next year — by which time the Senator hopes no longer to need a phony presidential seal.
Under the “Logan Act” (now codified at Section 953 of the federal penal code) it has been against the law since the late 18th century for U.S. citizens to carry on “intercourse with any foreign government” that is aimed either “to defeat the measures of the United States” or to influence the foreign government’s dealings with the United States. Being a
senator is no immunity from this statute — as any Republican senator would find out in a hurry if he dared to pull a stunt like this during an Obama administration.
Naturally, the Waxmans, Conyers, Leahys, law-professor legions, and Democrats everywhere who’ve harangued us for eight years about “the rule of law” have fallen silent. No one is issuing subpoenas, talking about special prosecutors, or holding top Obama advisers in contempt until they tell us “what did you know and when did you know it.”
That’s fine. The episode is a welcome reminder of what we learned in the Clinton years: When these folks say “no one is above the law” they really mean “no Republican is above the law.” If a Democrat president, or mock president, decides to violate statutes, order national-security searches without warrant, kidnap uncharged suspects for extraordinary rendition to countries that practice torture, detain captives indefinitely at Guantanamo Bay, and launch attacks without congressional or U.N. approval — all and more of which were staples of Democrat governance in the nineties — it’s anything goes.
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