Obama ignores the constitution

Mona Charen:

If you Google “George W. Bush shredding the Constitution,” you will get many millions of hits. The New York Times railed that “ever since 9/11, we have watched Republican lawmakers help Mr. Bush shred the Constitution in the name of fighting terrorism.”

President Bush attempted to listen in on the international calls of suspected terrorists, he used waterboarding on exactly three terrorists, and he put detainees in Guantanamo.

Mr. Obama — greeted rapturously in 2008 as the “constitutional-law professor” who would restore respect for our founding document — has demonstrated a contempt for law unseen since Richard Nixon.

Nixon was devious, insecure, and paranoid. Everyone knows that those are unfortunate traits. Ever since Nixon, we’ve been encouraged to be wary of leaders who are suspicious or guarded.

Obama is brimming with excessive self-regard, intellectual vanity, and supreme self-righteousness. No one has ever warned Americans to regard these as dangerous traits, but they may be more worrisome than Nixon’s cynicism. Arguably, more damage has been done to the world by zealots than by misanthropes.

One of the president’s defenders, The New Republic’s Noam Scheiber, was asked recently whether the multiple scandals engulfing the administration would have “legs.” He didn’t think so. The scandals lack a common “narrative,” he explained.

In fact, the common thread couldn’t be clearer: The Obama administration is unwilling to let something as trivial as the Constitution interfere with its plans for our improvement.

The IRS scandal is hydra-headed. It features the leaking of private tax-return information to Pro Publica, lying to Congress, and allegations that particular individuals were targeted for audits in retaliation for political activity. The chief outrage, however, is the fact (acknowledged by the IRS) that the tax-collecting agency was attempting to hinder the political activities of groups that disapprove of the current administration — a naked attack on the First Amendment.
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There is much more.

Obama is arrogant with an overrated intellect which is fed by many in the liberal media.  Another common narrative in the scandals is that Obama has a problem with freedom of speech.  He hates dissent whether it is in the media or by the Tea Party groups.  What sets him apart is that he is willing to use the power of the government to suppress it and punish those who disagree with him.   In Benghazi he tried to control the narrative and ignore the facts about a terrorist attack.  He even arrested a filmmaker whose video had nothing to do with the attack.  His Justice Department also attempted to criminalize the collection of news.

All of this shows a willingness to abuse the power of his office to attack those he sees as political enemies.  The man just does not handle criticism well.  He is clearly not a friend of the 1st Amendment.