U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell made the following remarks on the Senate floor Tuesday regarding free speech in the health care debate:

“I rise to call my colleagues’ attention to a disturbing development in the health care debate.

“A colleague of ours has called for an investigation into a major health care company because this company informed its customers of its concerns about health care legislation that this colleague of ours introduced.

“As a result, the federal government has now told all companies that provide Medicare Advantage to seniors to stop communicating with their clients about the effects of that legislation — even telling them what they can and cannot post on their websites. This gag order, enforced through an agency of the federal government at the request of a Senator, is wrong.

“It started when a company based in my hometown of Louisville — Humana — had the temerity, in the eyes of some of our colleagues, to explain to its customers that if Medicare Advantage is cut, as the chairman’s mark requires, it may have to reduce benefits, which, of course, is a common sense conclusion.

“Mr. President, this is America: Citizens, either as individuals or grouped together in companies, have a fundamental right to talk about legislation they favor or oppose. That is the core of the First Amendment’s protections on speech. Unfortunately, this is part of a troubling trend of efforts to dismiss the concerns raised by the American people over the past few months.

“Over the summer, we saw American citizens who raised concerns about the health care proposals before Congress dismissed as ‘un-American’ by leaders in Congress. That’s bad enough, but using the full weight of the federal government’s enforcement powers to stifle free speech should trouble all Americans — and all of us — even more.

“We cannot allow government officials to target individuals or companies because they do not like what they have to say.

“This latest effort to squelch free speech raises several serious questions:

“Is this what we have come to as a country — that an individual or company can no longer factually advocate their position on an incredibly important public policy issue?

“Shouldn’t customers have a right to know the potential impact of a Congressional action?

“Is this what we believe as a Senate — that this body should debate a trillion-dollar health care bill that affects every American while using the powerful arm of government to shut down speech?

“Is this how citizens and companies can expect to be treated if health reform passes? That any health provider that disagrees with a powerful Senator will be subject to an investigation and a gag order?

“How is this any different than what the Washington Post and New York Times have done in lobbying for a reporter shield law? Would we stand by if the Judiciary Committee asked the FBI to investigate the media for taking positions on pending legislation we don’t agree with? Of course not.

“Humana is headquartered in my hometown of Louisville, and yes, I care deeply about its 8,000 employees in Kentucky. But this gag order now applies to all Medicare Advantage providers.

“I would remind my colleagues that I have spent my career defending the First Amendment rights of people to criticize their elected officials, including me. I would make the same argument if this were a company based in San Francisco or Helena or Chicago.

“The right to free speech is at the core of our democracy. Free citizens have a First Amendment right to petition their government for a redress of grievances. This gag order on companies like Humana and those in all our states, in my view, is a clear violation of that right. It’s wrong.

“Employers that warn their customers about the effects of legislation aren’t the ones who should be getting warnings here. Senators who threaten Americans’ First Amendment rights are.”

by Victor Davis Hanson

In George Orwell’s allegorical novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, the picture of “Big Brother” appears constantly in the adoring media.

Perceived enemies are everywhere — supposedly plotting to undo the benevolent egalitarianism of Big Brother. Citizens assemble each morning to scream hatred for two minutes at pictures of the supposed public traitor Emmanuel Goldstein. The “Ministry of Truth” swears that the former official Goldstein is responsible for everything that goes wrong in Oceania.

In Orwell’s Oceania, there is a compliant media that offers “Newspeak” — recycled government bulletins from the Ministry of Truth. “Doublethink” means you can believe at the same time in two opposite beliefs.

America is not Oceania, but some of this is beginning to sound a little too familiar.

We see Barack Obama’s smile broadcast 24/7, in a fashion we have not seen previously in earlier presidents. A Newsweek editor referred to Obama as a “god.” MSNBC’s Chris Matthews claimed physical ecstasy when Obama speaks. A Washington Post reporter swooned over Obama’s “chiseled pectorals.”

Former president George W. Bush — our new Emmanuel Goldstein — remains a daily target of criticism. Diplomats continue to discuss the need to hit a “reset” button that will erase the past. Last week, the president said those in the past administration caused our present problems — and so should keep quiet and get out of his way.

Bush is somehow culpable for the newly projected $2 trillion annual deficits. Bush caused the new unemployment levels to soar to nearly 10 percent. Bush’s war on terrorism failed. Bush is responsible for the most recent trouble abroad with Iran, the Middle East, North Korea, and Russia.

There are similar Big Brother attacks on recent critics of the Obama administration’s health-care initiatives. Once-praised dissent has become subversive. Protesters are a mob to be ridiculed by the government as mere health-insurance puppets. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D., Calif.), is suspicious of the nice clothes the protesters wear. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.), used a few isolated incidents to claim that the health-care dissidents are “carrying swastikas and symbols like that” to compare Obama and Democrats to the Nazis.

At a meeting with Democratic senators, Obama’s deputy chief of staff, Jim Messina, urged them to “punch back twice as hard” against these critics, according to two people who were in the room. An official presidential website now asks informants, in Big Brother style, to send in e-mails and Internet addresses that seem “fishy” in questioning the White House health-care plans.

Doublethink is common. Presidential sermons on fiscal responsibility tip us off that deficits will soar. Borrowing an additional trillion dollars to manage health care is sold as a cost-saving measure. Racial transcendence translates into more racial-identity politics, reflected both in rhetoric and in presidential appointments.

The government wants to determine how some executives should be paid. The administration assures millions of citizens it will now intrude into everything from buying homes and cars to how they go to the doctor.

If some Americans chose to purchase a roomy gas-guzzler rather than an uncomfortable but more efficient compact car, a kindly Big Brother will now “correct” that bad decision and buy the “clunker” back. If we bought a house for too much money, the government will assure us it was not our fault and redo the mortgage. If our doctor wants to conduct a procedure, a government health board will first determine whether it is cost-effective and in the collective interest.

Despite the absence of another 9/11-like attack, we are still told by the new terrorism czar, John Brennan, that the old war was largely a Bush failure. Administration officials keep inventing euphemisms. Some have dubbed the war on terror “an overseas contingency operation.”

We were once told that military tribunals, renditions, the Patriot Act, and Predator drone attacks in Pakistan were George Bush’s assault on the Constitution rather than necessary tools to fight radical Islamic terrorists.

Not now. These policies are no longer criticized — even though they still operate more or less as they did under Bush. Guantanamo is still open, but no longer considered a gulag. The once-terrible war in Iraq disappeared off the front pages around late January of this year.

George Orwell, a man of the Left, warned us that freedom and truth are not endangered only by easily identifiable goose-stepping goons in jackboots. More often he felt that state collectivism would come from an all-powerful government — run by a charismatic egalitarian, promising to protect us from selfish, greedy reactionaries.

Orwell was on to something.

President Obama likes to pose as the tribune of the common people, but Americans who show up at town-hall meetings to object to Obama’s plans to nationalize health care are, in the words of Obama’s Democratic National Committee, “the mob,” a bunch of “extremist” yahoos who must be publicly denounced and ridiculed. It’s a remarkable piece of condescension and snobbery, but one that is indicative of how President Obama thinks and does business.

Except when he condescends to make the occasional offhanded jibe about cops policing “stupidly” in Boston or hapless Special Olympics competitors, Obama famously likes to strike a pose of being above it all — but what country does he think he is president of, anyway? We cannot recall a similar episode in recent history in which a group of Americans bringing their concerns about a public-policy question to their representatives were told to sit down and shut up. It’s true that democratic discourse should be respectful and dignified — but it also should be two-way: Politicians should expect to listen as much as they expect to be listened to.

The DNC’s ad, “Enough of the Mob,” abominates those Americans who show up to address their congressmen and to exercise their constitutional rights to speak freely, to assemble, and to petition their government for redress of grievances. You know, that old pre-hope-and-change, hopelessly retro, pre-messianic democratic stuff. The ad is deeply dishonest, even by the standards of Washington discourse: The beginning and ending images, and many of those in between, are not those of people protesting Obama’s health-care proposals, but rather of the wacko fringe “birthers” (about whom much has been written here and elsewhere), who have nothing to do with either the town-hall meetings in question or with the Republican party as such. This is pure chicanery: The people protesting Obamacare have not gone out and comported themselves like a gang of buffoons, so Obama’s partisans simply took video of different people comporting themselves like a gang of buffoons and substituted it. That’s a low, shoddy, and intellectually dishonest way to operate.

It’s also a little ironic: This smear job is being shepherded by the DNC’s Brad Woodhouse, who back in his Americans United days acted as a front for the union bosses working to defeat President Bush’s Social Security reforms, doing precisely what he now accuses Republicans of doing — packing town-hall meetings with political activists and party operatives posing as regular people, shunting lobbyists’ money into phony grassroots action, etc. We’ll take Mr. Woodhouse’s tender concerns for decorum with a grain or two of salt.

Sen. Barbara Boxer has added to the national mirth, as she often does, by arguing that these people cannot possibly be real American voters. Why? Because they’re too “well dressed.” Presentable, peaceable protesters? It’s a set-up!

The Obama gang is derided, often and justly, for practicing cheap racial politics, but even more poisonous, if less remarked upon, is its class politics. The entire intellectual infrastructure behind the stimulus, the bailouts, the auto-industry takeover, and the proposed health-care takeover rests on the assumption that the people who staff the Obama administration are smarter, better, more caring, and more decent than you yahoos out there in the general public, who simply cannot be trusted to make your own decisions about important matters, such as what sort of health insurance to purchase or whether to buy a car that gets 20 miles per gallon or 22 miles per gallon. Given that line of thinking, it’s easy to understand why Obama’s partisans would dismiss those citizens who dare to criticize his proposal as “the mob.”

The most mockery-inviting aspect of all this is that Obamacare-supporting Democrats are now ducking constituent meetings back in their home districts, afraid to face questions from the people they are paid to represent. Given the Obama team’s contempt for these people, and its utterly dismissive attitude toward their concerns, is it any wonder “the mob” doesn’t want Obama in charge of their health care? Obamacare will constitute an injury to Americans’ well-being — and the president now adds insult to it.

Federal law now criminalizes activities that the average person would never dream would land him in prison. Consequently, every year, thousands of upstanding, responsible Americans run afoul of some incomprehensible federal law and end up serving time in federal prison. With all the attention that’s been paid lately to long federal sentences for drug offenders, it’s surprising that a far more troubling phenomenon has barely hit the media’s radar screen.

What is especially disturbing is that it could happen to anyone at all–and it has.

We should applaud Reps. Bobby Scott (D-Va.) and Louie Gohmert (R-Texas), then, for holding a bipartisan hearing today to examine how federal law can make a criminal out of anyone, for even the most mundane conduct.

Federal law in particular now criminalizes entire categories of activities that the average person would never dream would land him in prison. This is an inevitable result of the fact that the criminal law is no longer restricted to punishing inherently wrongful conduct–such as murder, rape, robbery, and the like.

Moreover, under these new laws, the government can often secure a conviction without having to prove that the person accused even intended to commit a bad act, historically a protection against wrongful conviction.

Laws like this are dangerous in the hands of social engineers and ambitious lawmakers–not to mention overzealous prosecutors–bent on using government’s greatest civilian power to punish any activity they dislike. So many thousands of criminal offenses are now in federal law that a prominent federal appeals court judge titled his recent essay on this overcriminalization problem, “You’re (Probably) a Federal Criminal.”

Consider small-time inventor and entrepreneur Krister Evertson, who will testify at today’s hearing. Krister never had so much as a traffic ticket before he was run off the road near his mother’s home in Wasilla, Alaska, by SWAT-armored federal agents in large black SUVs training automatic weapons on him.

Evertson, who had been working on clean-energy fuel cells since he was in high school, had no idea what he’d done wrong. It turned out that when he legally sold some sodium (part of his fuel-cell materials) to raise cash, he forgot to put a federally mandated safety sticker on the UPS package he sent to the lawful purchaser.

Krister’s lack of a criminal record did nothing to prevent federal agents from ransacking his mother’s home in their search for evidence on this oh-so-dangerous criminal.

The good news is that a federal jury in Alaska acquitted Krister of all charges. The jurors saw through the charges and realized that Krister had done nothing wrong.

The bad news, however, is that the feds apparently had it in for Krister. Federal criminal law is so broad that it gave prosecutors a convenient vehicle to use to get their man.

Two years after arresting him, the feds brought an entirely new criminal prosecution against Krister on entirely new grounds. They used the fact that before Krister moved back to Wasilla to care for his 80-year-old mother, he had safely and securely stored all of his fuel-cell materials in Salmon, Idaho.

According to the government, when Krister was in jail in Alaska due to the first unjust charges, he had “abandoned” his fuel-cell materials in Idaho. Unfortunately for Krister, federal lawmakers had included in the Resource Recovery and Conservation Act a provision making it a crime to abandon “hazardous waste.” According to the trial judge, the law didn’t require prosecutors to prove that Krister had intended to abandon the materials (he hadn’t) or that they were waste at all–in reality, they were quite valuable and properly stored away for future use.

With such a broad law, the second jury didn’t have much of a choice, and it convicted him. He spent almost two years locked up with real criminals in a federal prison. After he testifies today, he will have to return to his halfway house in Idaho and serve another week before he is released.

The other hardened criminal whose story members of Congress will hear today is retiree George Norris. A longtime resident of Spring, Texas, Norris made the mistake of not knowing and keeping track of all of the details of federal and international law on endangered species–mostly paperwork requirements–before he decided to turn his orchid hobby into a small business. What was Norris’s goal? To earn a little investment income while his wife neared retirement.

The Lacey Act is an example of the dangerous overbreadth of federal criminal law. Incredibly, Congress has made it a federal crime to violate any fish or wildlife law or regulation of any nation on earth.

Facing 10 years in federal prison, Norris pled guilty and served almost two. His wife, Kathy, describes the pain of losing their life savings to pay for attorneys and trying to explain to grandchildren why for so long Poppa George couldn’t see them.

Federal criminal law did not get so badly broken overnight, and it will take hard work to get it fixed. It is encouraging that members of Congress such as Reps. Scott and Gohmert are now paying attention to the toll overcriminalization takes on ordinary Americans. Congress needs to begin fixing the damage it has done by starting to restore a more reasonable, limited and just federal criminal law. Today’s hearing is an excellent first step.

Wise guy liberal talk show hosts and writers of impassioned letters to the editor have been lecturing me with the argument that Obama and his Democrats are not remotely planning any sort of government health-care rationing in their socialized medicine plan, which is going to save so much money that they are now scrounging around for the biggest tax increase in U.S. history to pay for it. But Obama has now made fools out of all of them with the release last week of his White House report, “The Economic Case for Health Care Reform” (.pdf), produced by his Council of Economic Advisors (CEA).

Read the document, and you will see that it envisions a complete government takeover of America’s health care in great detail. Wise, all-knowing, government bureaucrats in Washington will identify exactly what health care in each locality in the entire country is waste, and eliminate it. They will determine whether the treatments and health care your doctor has prescribed for you are right, and the best of the alternatives, and they will control his practice through their payment policies and regulations, forcing him to follow what they in their all-knowing wisdom think is best. Worst of all, they will decide whether the health care your doctor thinks you need is “cost-effective,” meaning they will decide whether the cost of your health care is worth it, to them.

Listen to Obama, and you will hear him say almost every day that his health reforms are going to save America and its economy by reducing health costs. The CEA report explains exactly how and why he is going to do that. They don’t use the word, of course, but nevertheless it is all overwhelming, government, health-care rationing, meaning you and your doctor lose control and choice over your health care, and centralized, government bureaucrats in Washington decide what health care you get and when. Think about it, and you will realize that in the government-run system Obama envisions, there is no other way to achieve the cost reductions he is talking about than through extensive government health-care rationing, meaning denying you the health care you want.

Indeed, the CEA report says 30% of American health care is waste, which government bureaucracy is now going to eliminate. That is a lot of health care to deny you. Doctors and hospitals who don’t think this downsizing is going to affect them, and their freedom to control and run their own practices, are whistling past the graveyard. Wake up, and you will realize that in Obama’s Brave New World, you are going to be the targets, just like the bank executives are today.

The Government Doesn’t, Can’t, and Won’t Know

The economists who wrote the CEA report on health-care reform start by assuming first that the government is omniscient. They don’t say that, but that assumption jumps out of every line.

For example, the report says the government is going to sharply reduce health costs by

Looking systematically at what works and what doesn’t in order to provide more high value care and less care that is of low value. For many types of medical conditions, a patient may have a choice of several methods or treatments, each having different benefits or risks. Systematic examinations of the merits of different treatments and dissemination of the results of these examinations to patients and providers is one mechanism for promoting high value health care.

You will notice in reading Obamaspeak on health policy a distinct lack of nouns. Just who is going to look systematically at what works and what doesn’t? And just who is going to conduct those “systematic examinations of the merits of different treatments?” And will whoever that is really know what works and what doesn’t for 300 million patients across America, and “the merits of different treatments”? The answer to the first two questions is a centralized government health-care bureaucracy in Washington. Intelligent readers might think the answer to the last question is “No,” or maybe “Hell, no!” But the answer is really, “Of course not, wake up and smell the coffee before it is too late.”

The CEA report says at the beginning that “up to 30 percent of health-care costs (or about 5 percent of GDP) could be saved without compromising health outcomes.” Achieving that result to slash the federal deficit, increase GDP ultimately by 8%, and reduce unemployment is going to require a lot more than “dissemination of the results [of the above] examinations to patients and providers [as]one mechanism for promoting high value health care.”

No, a more promising mechanism for enforcing what the government decides works and what doesn’t is found in another policy for controlling costs in the CEA report:

Reorienting the financial incentives of providers toward value rather than volume. Payment systems….should reward providers who deliver care that adheres to evidence based guidelines and should not pay for preventable medical errors.

This is supposed to solve a problem identified earlier in the report:

Provider Incentives. Most provider payment systems are fee-for-service, which creates financial incentives for doctors and hospitals to focus on the volume of services that they deliver rather than the quality, cost, or efficiency of care delivery. In general, payment systems do not reward higher quality and value. In some cases, they reward poor quality of care by paying for the costs associated with additional medical care necessary to fix errors that could have been prevented.

In other words, the government will enforce its decisions as to what works to provide high quality care and what doesn’t through the payment system for doctors and hospitals. Those who follow the government’s decisions get paid well, and those that don’t don’t. They will be lucky to get paid at all.

The CEA here also displays more faith in the omniscience of government, which is supposed to develop the prices for all health-care services that will perfectly reward high quality care that works rather than low quality care that doesn’t, providing the perfect incentives that will perfectly wring out 30% of total health costs as unnecessary waste. The only problem is that a remote, centralized, government bureaucracy in Washington doesn’t, can’t, and won’t know, out of all the health-care services in the economy, what works and what doesn’t, what are the right prices for each that will provide exactly the right incentives to eliminate precisely only the 30% of health-care spending that is waste, and what exactly is waste, rather than the health-care services you want. And this is before politics gets involved, and the bureaucrats answer the phone calls from Congressmen who want an explanation as to the pitiful payments the government is providing to such and such doctors and hospitals in their districts.

Nevertheless, despite the government’s severe lack of knowledge as to what it is doing, those doctors and hospitals that do not follow the government’s decisions as to what is quality care will get formally labeled as “lower quality,” losing out to the good doobies who win high quality provider labels by slavishly following the health-care diktats of the remote government bureaucrats who don’t even know their patients. This is found in another CEA cost control measure:

Expanding performance measurement and provider feedbacks. Performance measurements include collecting and summarizing information about clinical quality, consumer satisfaction, and resource use of provider practices….One potential way to increase efficiency is to facilitate the development of a set of performance measures that all providers would adopt and report….Additionally, new efforts could be made to generaterisk-adjusted provider performance profiles to encourage quality improvement and to inform consumer decision-making around quality.” [Emphasis added.]

The omniscient, central, government, health-care bureaucracy, of course, will know exactly how to measure the performance of every doctor and every hospital in the country for every health-care service. And there won’t be any politics in this either.

America’s New Waiting Lines

But the CEA has still more bright cost control ideas:

Rewarding high-value technology creation that reduces morbidity, mortality, and total spending over the lifetime. In most fields, technological progress is generally cost-reducing as individuals discover more effective ways of accomplishing things that were already being done. In medicine, however, technological progress in recent decades has been almost exclusively cost-increasing, without generating a commensurate increase in value. Undoubtedly, provider incentives, which largely reward finding an expensive way of treating a previously untreated condition rather than finding a less costly alternative to an existing treatment, contribute to this trend.

This is meant to address a problem earlier identified in the paper:

Providers also have strong financial incentives to compete on the basis of technology adoption rather than price, leading to an excess supply of high technology equipment and services (for example, MRI machines and minimally invasive vascular diagnostic and procedure suites) and accelerated replacement of hospital beds in local markets. In turn, this can lead to higher rates of utilization and costs.

But is the government going to know exactly which technological innovation will reduce morbidity, mortality, and overall spending, and which will simply involve “an excess supply of high technology equipment and services”? Is the government going to know exactly how much to reward technological innovators to provide the incentives to gain exactly the right technological innovation, but none of the wrong, excess technology? Or is the government going to use this power to delay implementation of new technological innovations, discourage investment in new technology development, leave patients floundering with long waiting times for the latest high tech diagnostics and treatment, and thereby reduce costs, as in all those foreign countries the CEA admires in its report? What do you think?

Obama OMB Director Peter Orszag was more clear and direct in explaining the policy recently, saying, “Future increases in spending could be moderated if costly new medical services were adopted more selectively in the future than they have been in the past, and if the diffusion of existing costly services was slowed.” Told ya’.

Can you see yet how the Obama socialized medicine plan will involve the government taking over and running health care in great detail? Can you see how under that plan, remote government bureaucrats in Washington will be deciding what health care you get and when, rather than you and your doctor? Can you see how the Obama socialized medicine plan involves pervasive and detailed central economic planning, which all experience teaches us will not work? Can you see now how these Obama cost controls involve government rationing of your health care, just like in every other country that has adopted socialized medicine?

CEA’s Blind Spots

While Obama’s CEA explains exactly how the Obama health reforms will impose severe government health-care rationing to reduce costs, it is totally blind as to how those reforms will increase costs, and bankrupt the nation. Obama’s socialized medicine plan will increase health costs by increasing demand, not primarily through increased demand from the currently uninsured, but because of the incentives for all patients under the new system. With the government paying the bill, the incentive is to consume health care until the net benefit from it is equal to zero, rather than equal to costs as in an efficient market.

Even worse are the incentives for health-care providers, which greatly reinforce the rationing. Obama’s socialized medicine plan will increase health costs by reducing supply. The government already has a long history of failing to pay adequately for health services under Medicaid, and increasingly for Medicare. With a complete government takeover of health care, these payment policies will soon cover the entire health-care system. That and the loss of freedom of choice and control over their own practices and services due to vastly increased government control will cause doctors and other health professionals to leave the industry, and talented young people to choose other professions.

Still more damaging is that investors will flee health care, taking with them the capital that is needed for new, expanded, updated, modernized, and maintained hospitals and clinics. Gone will be the capital for buying new, modern, advanced, high technology, as the government cannot be expected to pay adequately for such technology, and even wants to discourage it. And who will pay for the research and development of new medical advances and technology, for the new miracle drugs, for the new biotech and genetic breakthroughs that our modern science makes possible? With the government as the new monopoly buyer of all health care, investors will turn to other industries.

Then there is the huge, added cost burden for the government of taking on a new, massive health-care entitlement for everyone, even when we cannot hope to pay for all the current entitlement promises. That will involve huge increases in taxes, deficits and government borrowing, which will introduce enormous new inefficiencies.

All of this means a deep decline in America’s standard of living. Today we enjoy the freest, most advanced health care in the world. All that freedom and rapid innovation does involve some waste and inefficiency. That can be addressed by market reforms to improve incentives. But some waste and inefficiency is well worth the health-care freedom and quality we have today, and will enjoy all the more with advancing science over time. Moreover, government is not the place to turn for reducing waste and inefficiency. Obama’s government takeover of health care will make everything worse, and ultimately trash our entire health-care sector.

Just having the appearance of someone who might possibly vote for an opponent of Barack Obama could land them on the President’s enemies list where proxies do the dirty work. Political appointees in the Justice Department killed a six-month investigation by career DOJ lawyers into the most blatant voter intimidation case in 40 years. Last November, jack-booted, uniformed, baton-wielding thugs from the New Black Panther Party calling themselves “security” obstructed a Philadelphia polling location and behaved in an intimidating manner toward white voters.

Days after dismissing charges against the menacing thugs, the Justice Department moved in the opposite direction by blocking responsible steps to stem voter fraud. The DOJ barred the administrative procedures Georgia authorities put into place – under federal court guidance — to verify voter registrations. The DOJ claimed the procedures violated the rights of minority voters.

A de facto Obama enemies list and dirty political machine have been expanding since last year. Obama has established several embarrassing presidential firsts including targeting private individuals by names, assigning a well-known “partisan dirt-digger” and non-lawyer to the White House Counsel’s Office to likely gain access to Bush Administration documents protected under attorney-client privilege, and moving the senior political advisor into the West Wing. These are heretofore unseen partisan practices.

Career opposition researcher Shauna Daly left the White House Counsel’s Office after a mere month and returned to the Democratic National Committee where using privileged attorney-client information in the opposition research department would set a new low in unethical practices.

Attempting to build-up the Obama Administration by criticizing that of his predecessor has become a near-daily exercise. Obama has personally led efforts to demonize George W. Bush. There has been a full-court press to label enhanced detainee interrogation techniques, approved by Democratic leaders and discontinued for the past six years, as “torture.” Interrogation techniques used on tens of thousands of U.S. servicemen and women for more than two decades were suddenly considered criminal acts and Bush officials in the review and approval chain have been smeared as criminals.

Two military psychologists who supervised the enhanced interrogation techniques that were used on only three terrorist leaders were publicly outed by Democratic Senator Carl Levin placing both doctors and their families in personal danger. The doctors’ identities had previously been kept under wraps.

Obama’s lawyers are attempting to financially ruin individuals party to the most absurd soap opera involving the 44th president. There is unabated controversy regarding his birth, citizenship and foreign travel. Obama could immediately silence his critics by authorizing the release of his original birth certificate and passport. One has to wonder what could possibly be in either document that has caused Obama to wage a fierce and expensive legal battle to keep the files secreted. Aside from Joan Rivers, nearly every American would willingly make their birth certificate available and Obama’s stubborn refusal to do so only adds to the controversy.

Petty personal politics, while damaging to the dignity of the White House, have allowed the Obama Administration to elevate political allies and their causes and denigrate valid critics. David Axelrod, Obama’s chief political strategist, appeared on National Public Radio last month and belittled a 21-year old beauty pageant contestant, insisting she was one of three finalists for the Obama family dog. The target of Axelrod’s churlish remarks was Carrie Prejean, the reigning Miss California. Weeks earlier, Prejean was victimized by a militant homosexual judge who was angry she did not enthusiastically endorse gay marriage in response to his “have-you-stopped-beating-your-wife?” question during the Miss USA competition.

Hours after a doctor specializing in partial-birth abortions was slain, both Obama and U.S. Attorney-General Eric Holder issued statements strongly condemning the killing. Further, Holder deployed scores of U.S. Marshals to protect abortion clinics nationwide. The emphatic denunciation of this slaying differed wildly with a nearly identical murder only 24-hours later. A Muslim shot two U.S. Army soldiers outside a Little Rock recruiting station killing one. Days later, the White House quietly faxed a subdued statement to a single Arkansas news outlet while Holder remained silent regarding the act of Islamic terrorism.

This antagonistic attitude toward servicemen and women is not surprising. A few months earlier, the Department of Homeland Security issued a document warning counterterrorism and law enforcement authorities of an alleged threat to the U.S. posed by “domestic rightwing terrorists.” Included in the group of potential rightwing terrorists are individuals who are pro-life, support the Second Amendment and oppose the flood of illegal aliens. The DHS pamphlet also singled out military veterans for possible recruitment into domestic terrorist cells.

The targeting of perceived political enemies by the Obama Administration has grown from mere individuals to entire groups. Evidence emerged that a common thread among the list of 789 Chrysler dealerships ordered closed by the White House is that the owners donated to GOP candidates, Republican-leaning causes or donated to Hillary Clinton or John Edwards during the Democratic presidential primaries.

Auto industry observers and others report that apparently successful franchises (such as Chrysler’s highest-rated 5-star dealerships) were ordered closed in favor of less successful car lots and the consistent discriminator was which political party the owners supported. One report suggests the closure list may have been drawn up by the car czar’s office.

In some instances, dealerships ordered closed were those that competed with franchises whose owners were prolific supporters or contributors to Democratic politicians. Thomas “Mack” McLarty, former chief of staff to Bill Clinton, had virtually all of the competition to his six dealership locations wiped out.

Also targeted during the auto industry purge were companies that did not willingly agree to Obama’s political demands. Representatives of three secured creditors that did not receive any government bailout money reported they were threatened if they did not agree to White House demands in Chrysler’s restructuring. The White House insistence that secured creditors accept only 29 cents on the dollar while inflating the value of unsecured credit claims held by the United Auto Workers turned two century-old bankruptcy policy on its head.

One fund manager reported being on the receiving end of a profanity-laced tirade by Auto Industry Task Force head Steve Rattner that included threats to use the Internal Revenue Service and the Securities and Exchange Commission in gangster-like enforcement roles.

In another exchange, Thomas Lauria, a lawyer for financial firm Perella Weinberg Partners, reported the car czar threatened that “the full force of the White House press corps would destroy its [Perella Weinberg's] reputation” unless the firm agreed to Obama administration demands in Chrysler’s bankruptcy. The failure by the White House press corps to repudiate Rattner’s threat speaks volumes and underscores their role as an ally of the Obama Administration.