Confidence Waning In Obama

Leading up to tomorrow night's State of the Union address, Barack Obama and his spokesmen are once again threatening to implement unilateral, constitutionally questionable executive actions if Congress will not bend to Obama's will.

On CNN yesterday, Dan Pfeiffer, a top Obama advisor, said, "He is going to look in every way he can with his pen and his phone to try to move the ball forward. We're putting an extra emphasis on it in 2014."

Obama's use of executive power is angering many Americans, including even a few liberals. Left-wing law professor Jonathan Turley, who has defended polygamy, said, "In my view, Obama has surpassed George W. Bush in the level of circumvention of Congress and the assertion of excessive presidential power. I don't think it's a close question." Worse than Bush -- that's a big indictment from a liberal like Turley.

And just as Obama is promising even more executive actions comes a new ABC/Washington Post poll showing that only 37% of the public has a fair amount of confidence that he will make the right decisions for the country.

The Criminalization Of Conservatism?

Is America on the verge of becoming a tyrannical police state? There are many ways in which the state can abuse its power. Among the worst is when law enforcement officials plant evidence to convict innocent people. A more subtle form of tyranny is the selective enforcement of the law in a way that targets political dissent.

Last week conservative author, filmmaker and Obama critic Dinesh D'Souza was indicted for election fraud. The charge is that he convinced people to make political donations and then reimbursed them. That is a violation of the law. He is facing charges that, combined, could send him to jail for seven years.

I know Dinesh D'Souza well -- he worked for me in the Reagan White House. He is an extremely intelligent man and an articulate spokesman for conservatism. I won't defend illegal behavior, but this case seems fishy.

Historically, cases like this have been treated as misdemeanors and handled with fines, at least when the offender was a liberal. Usually it happens in hotly-contested elections where every dollar is critical.

In D'Souza's case, the race was never in doubt. The candidate D'Souza supported had virtually no chance. So why was the FBI targeting this race unless someone decided to go after Dinesh D'Souza?

Gerald Molen, who produced D'Souza's "2016: Obama's America" as well as "Schindler's List," fears the indictment may be political. "I've never had the occasion to think that I had to fear my government," Molen said. "I never had the thought that I had reason to think I had to look over my shoulder until now."

If D'Souza broke the law, he should be held accountable. But given the harassment of conservatives in Hollywood, the treatment of Tea Party groups and Christian ministries and the targeting of James O'Keefe's Project Veritas in New York, it is hard not to question whether justice in America today is indeed still blind.

And add to that list of questionable activities what is beginning to look like a a political purge of top military officers. How is it that the administration did not act when Major Nidal Hasan was engaged in activities that should have set off alarm bells, but somehow it is routinely uncovering the officer who drank too much in Moscow, who used fake poker chips in Iowa or the top general who had an affair?

Supremes Side With The Little Sisters

Late Friday afternoon the Supreme Court handed the Obama Administration a big setback when it issued an injunction against Obamacare's contraception mandate. The case involves a Catholic charity, the Little Sisters of the Poor, which was facing fines of up to $1 million a year, if it refused to obey Obamacare's mandates, which the Little Sisters believed would force them to violate the teachings of their faith.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, an Obama appointee, granted the Little Sisters a temporary injunction earlier this month while she referred the issue to the entire court. To be clear, this is not a ruling on the merits of the case -- the court did not strike down the mandate.

But some legal observers believe the real significance is that not a single justice issued a dissent against the injunction, which remains in effect until the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals hears the case.

If a majority of justices felt the injunction was justified, that suggests the mandate could be in real trouble when the high court takes up two challenges, including the Hobby Lobby lawsuit, in March.