Obama’s The Sinner, Holder His ‘Sin Eater’

BIG media have been willing, even eager, to pass the buck for Barack for the past five years. But the Fourth Estate rose as one on its proverbial hind legs when the president made the mistake of going after their own: members of the media.

For doing their jobs, Associated Press journalists were spied on and had their telephone records and other personal information seized by the head of Barack Obama’s Justice Department, Attorney General Eric Holder. For doing his job, Fox News Channel’s James Rosen was framed by the same department for the crime of conspiracy to leak classified materials.

IRS bloodhounds Douglas Shulman and Steven Miller, likely in charge of hounding conservative organizations unsympathetic to Obama, had practically taken up residence at the Big Dog’s House. Yet, curiously, conservatives have largely avoided linking Barack Hussein Obama to this and to the other scandals reverberating throughout his administration.

Republicans have eddied around the issue, merely describing the president’s stance with respect to the Rosen, AP, Benghazi and the Internal Revenue Service affairs as “disconnected,” “lacking focus.” An “absentee presidency,” surmised the conservative bloggers at Powrline. “The Spectator President,” pronounced Patrick Buchanan. Judge Andrew Napolitano’s brief was equally narrow. He avoided so much as hinting that Holder had likely been carrying out the wishes of his bosom buddy.

Although it’s hard to know what to make of it here, Republican rigor mortis is par for the course. Fortunately, for every mealymouthed Eric Cantor—the House majority leader is responsible for the “disconnected” description—there are progressives like Salon’s Joan Walsh, who, spittle flying, are tying the president to the infractions liberals consider unforgivable. “If you want to know how Obama feels about the AP and Rosen controversies,” reasoned Walsh, “compare his reactions to the three different ‘scandals’ the GOP has been working overtime to conflate … .”

“On Benghazi, Obama has been uncharacteristically defiant,” noted Walsh. He defended the women involved and accused the GOP of staging a “sideshow.” “By contrast, he quickly called the IRS targeting Tea Party groups for extra scrutiny ‘outrageous’ and ‘unacceptable.'” “On the AP and Rosen controversies” the president equivocated. He tried “to have it both ways,” observed Walsh.

To the news that the president’s former senior legal advisor (Eric Holder), as The Huffington Post reported, “personally signed off on the warrant that allowed the Justice Department to search Rosen’s personal email,” Obama has responded by holding Holder still closer to him—he praised the AG and charged him with probing his own malfeasance.

Concludes Ms. Walsh: “the DOJ’s media probes reflect administration policy.”

Obama’s feeble response to “the outcry over the AP and Fox scandals” Jonathan Turley has also taken as evidence “that these are Obama’s sins.” Writing in USA Today, professor Turley, a civil libertarian who is “neither a Republican nor conservative,” smarted over what he termed “the greatest attack on the free press in decades.” Turley goes well beyond other liberals in fingering Holder for supervising a “comprehensive erosion” of civil liberties, privacy rights, and press freedoms. Deftly drawn deductions have enabled this cool brain to elegantly connect the philosophical dots between The Boss and his underling’s pervasive and persistent assaults on due process.

“Holder is what we call a ‘sin eater’ inside the Beltway — high-ranking associates who shield presidents from responsibility for their actions,” posits the professor.

“Richard Nixon had H.R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman. Ronald Reagan had Oliver North and Robert ‘Bud’ McFarlane. George W. Bush had the ultimate sin eater: Dick Cheney, who seemed to have an insatiable appetite for sins to eat.”

Alas, having reasoned that, “feigned ignorance” notwithstanding, Obama is the original sinner, and Holder his “sin eater,” Prof. Turley stopped short of calling for the impeachment of the president for his many “mortal sins.”

From the expansion of surveillance-state USA, to the leveling of Libya, to forcing individual Americans to purchase healthcare and religious organizations to fund birth control; to the crafting of a Kill List featuring his chosen targets for extrajudicial elimination, to running guns to Mexico’s goons, while gunning for America’s guns—Barack Hussein Obama’s philosophical fingerprints are all over his administration.

While pitting a favored voting bloc against the rest of us, Obama told militant Latinos: “We’re gonna punish our enemies and we’re gonna reward our friends who stand with us on issues that are important to us.”

The link between President Obama and the policies his minions have pursued seems patent enough. Obama is the philosophical felon, the fulcrum on which everything pivots.