The IRS, AP, and Benghazi Scandals are Just Part of the Obama Administration’s War on the Bill of Rights

The once untouchable Obama administration is in trouble. Despite their best efforts, the President’s phalanx of propagandists cannot make the recent AP, IRS, and Benghazi revelations disappear. Partisans who pretend this is much ado about nothing discredit themselves for even the most vaguely impartial observer, and a media desperate for credibility has taken to asking real questions of President Obama.

Obama and his closest aides have been exposed. Not just as a cabal of lying, preening, and corrupt politicos, but an administration so wedded to authoritarian progressive doctrine they will hammer at the load-bearing walls of liberty in pursuit of their statist agenda.

President Barack Obama smiles during prayer at the Morehouse College Sunday, May 19, 2013, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

This is because the Obama administration’s vision of America is inherently in conflict with the Bill of Rights. Recent scandals are merely the latest skirmish in this ongoing battle.

This makes perfect sense when you put it in context. Authoritarian statists despise the Bill of Rights because of the plainness of its language and the clarity of its intent; it’s meant to protect us from them. And when government transgresses the protection the Amendments afford U.S. citizens, it is obvious that our freedoms are in jeopardy.

Which brings us to why the IRS targeting, AP investigation, and Benghazi debacle are, while disgraceful, largely unsurprising. The Bill of Rights stands in the way of just what the Obama administration means by fundamentally transforming America. They want a more collective, centrally planned America. To achieve that, they must disassemble the Bill of Rights, piece by piece, through legislation, executive fiat, and demagoguery.

Even a cursory review of Obama administration positions shows a constant, unnerving tension with core Constitutional protections. Here’s a breakdown showing how the Obama administration has twisted, ignored, or attacked the Bill of Rights.

1^st Amendment--  “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

It is necessary to show the entire 1^st Amendment here because it has been so diligently savaged by the Obama administration. From top to bottom, clause-to-clause, the legal bedrock of our spiritual and intellectual freedom has suffered sustained assaults under the Obama regime.

In President Obama’s America, free exercise of religion is fine, so long as everyone accepts they can be coerced to both pass out contraceptives, and pay for the same. His disdain for people of faith—those who “cling to guns or religion”—is a well-established fact.

But Obama’s attacks on freedom of speech and the press have reached new heights. The AP phone records seizures proves that Obama and his team only like leaks that benefit them. Step out of line, and they will crush you, using the full weight of federal law enforcement to do it. Just ask those who wanted to speak out—and still do—on Benghazi.

Much has been made of the “chilling effect” on speech that the AP phone seizures will have, and that the IRS targeting did have, on free speech. Indeed, that was the point, and it is one that will not be forgotten anytime soon. Those who wish to challenge the administration or expose its misdeeds have been put on notice.

2nd Amendment--  “…The right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”

There are few things that agitate the authoritarian mindset quite as much as an armed citizenry. The right to bear arms not only allows them to defend their homes and families, it would make them quite unruly should the ruling elites attempt to establish tyranny.

The Obama administration has waged an all-out, scorched earth campaign against the 2^nd Amendment.  Progressive-statist hatred for an armed population burns so hot, they pushed this beyond their own political benefit and lost embarrassingly on their first try to pass national gun control. But make no mistake, they will try again. 

4^th Amendment--  “No Person shall be held to answer for a capital… unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury… nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law”

(For our purposes, dealt with simultaneously alongside)

6^th Amendment--  “In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed.”

The NDAA, and President Obama’s drones anywhere, anytime policy, seem to make a mockery of both the 4^th and the 6^th.  Attorney General Holder’s parsing of “due process” and “judicial process” with regard to the targeted killing of Americans more or less summarizes their view, not just of these two Amendments, but our system of law in general. It’s great when it suits them, and irrelevant when it doesn’t.

            8^th Amendment-- … Nor Excessive fines imposed...

Perhaps someone should send around a copy of number 8 to the Environmental Protection Agency, the Obamacare enforcers, and every other federal agency that has the power of financial life and death over individuals and businesses. Leave your engine idling too long, and you get yourself thousands of dollars in fines. If your property is declared a wetland, you don’t really own it anymore. The stupidity of unaccountable bureaucrats knows no bounds. Neither does their lack of empathy.

10^th Amendment--The Powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people

While under more subtle assault than the others, the 10^th Amendment received a bailout from the Supreme Court in the ObamaCare decision. In a smack down of federal overreach, the majority decided that funding for Medicaid under the ACA could not constitute, to borrow from Don Corleone, an offer the states couldn’t refuse.

That was just one of many examples of the Obama administration’s disdain for the separation of powers, and more specifically, the sovereignty of individual states within the Union.

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There is no question now that President Obama, his senior-most advisors, and his left-wing base share an ideology that is inimical to individualism, liberty, and limited government. The Bill of Rights, as written by the Founders, stands athwart that agenda, which is why the Obama administration seeks to render it obsolete.

What remains to be determined is whether the American people, presented with irrefutable evidence of an authoritarian trajectory, will take to the bully pulpit and the polling booth to retrieve our liberties before it is too late.