Top 10 Obama Scandals to Discuss at Tonight’s Debate

I tend to indict the system rather than the man (in keeping with this blog’s “Month of Systems”), but here are ten current Obama scandals we should touch on at tonight’s 9:30 DIONYSIUM debate at Muchmore’s about whether to impeach him, with emphasis on what are arguably the victims:

10. The man got a Nobel Peace Prize before presiding over another five years of the war in Afghanistan.

9. It’s unclear we were told the truth about events during the al Qaeda attacks in Benghazi that killed the U.S. ambassador to Libya and others (as Rand Paul may end up reminding Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential race, in the ultimate semi-libertarian vs. semi-Progressive showdown).

8. The Associated Press, Antiwar.com, and others have found themselves spied on thanks to the Department of Justice, while Fox News’s James Rosen was snooped on by the FBI (all of it suggesting to Sen. Ted Cruz that Obama dislikes the First, Second, Fourth, and Fifth Amendments, despite being a constitutional law professor).

7. Bradley Manning is now on trial years after first being arrested for spilling Department of Defense secrets about collateral deaths to WikiLeaks.

6. Tea Party groups have gotten special scrutiny from the IRS.

5. As Nation-affiliated reporter and Dirty Wars author/screenwriter Jeremy Scahill has documented, the U.S. government kills many innocents and maybe-innocents caught in its drone strikes.

4. Obama has doubled the combined number from all prior administrations of lawsuits against whistleblowers.

3. If CIA whistleblower Eric Snowden is correct, we’re all being spied on every time we use phones, e-mail, or website, in an unprecedented government data-mining operation including the program called Prism.

2. Gitmo still being open over four years after Obama’s election, and wracked by a massive hunger strike, must frustrate some Democrat voters, I’d think (though I’ve always said it’s only 160 or so guys, for now).

1. More troubling is the fact that despite a decade of al Qaeda being the great menace on the horizon, we appear now to be allied with it in Syria.  Anyone but Russia, basically -- not that I dismiss realpolitik. 

And I will remain neutral as I moderate tonight’s debate (please join us), recognizing the very real tensions between transparency and the need for secrecy, government overreach and real terrorist dangers, American safety and the risk of imperialism, tradition and change, heroism and martyr complexes, honor and rebellion, uncertainty and inquiry, proper procedure and subversion, defense and anarchy.