Dick Morris

 President Obama is as thoroughly fenced in by his scandals as Richard Nixon ever was. The scandals that are engulfing him hurt him badly with both the younger voters who have been his political base and the older voters he has sought to woo. And, the media scandals are destroying his image with his political mainstay: his popularity with the press.

We all know that we need the best possible protection against terrorism and that increasing amounts of data must be collected by the government to make that happen. But we need only look at the Internal Revenue Service and the Justice Department to realize how extensive is the potential for abuse of this data, especially in an administration as corrupted, self-involved, self-righteous and partisan as this one.

Did the Internal Revenue Service scandal begin when the Obama administration aggressively tried to deny tax-exempt status to pro-Israeli groups that funded settlements on the West Bank in defiance of its wishes? The IRS seems to have used tax audits to try to cripple these Jewish groups. When the Citizens United decision came down, did President Obama turn the guns focused on the conservative Jewish groups to fire on Republican political organizations?

The Washington Free Beacon reports that the idea of using the IRS to undermine settlement activity surfaced barely two months after Obama took office.

On March 26, 2009, The Washington Post questioned the tax-exempt status of pro-settlement Jewish groups.

The next day, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), which has enjoyed warm relations with the president, asked the IRS to investigate groups “allegedly raising funds for the development of illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank.”

Meanwhile, Arab pressure to audit the settlement groups escalated. In October 2009, a cable revealed by WikiLeaks recounted a meeting between the chief negotiator for the former Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei and U.S. Consul General Daniel Rubinstein. The cable noted that Qurei gave

Rubinstein “a copy of an article … in Israeli daily Haaretz newspaper on August 17, entitled ‘American Non-profit Organization Raises Funds for Settlement’ and asked the US to review the situation with an eye toward eliminating organizations’ tax exempt status if they are funding settlement activity.”

The Free Beacon notes that the following week, J Street, a pro-Palestinian lobbying group, also demanded an investigation into U.S. charities that contribute to settlements.

HaYovel, a group that sends volunteers to work in West Bank vineyards, was the first to be audited, six months after its role was prominently featured in a New York Times article. The Times quoted a senior State Department administration official calling such groups “a problem” and “unhelpful to the efforts that we’re trying to make.” It was the first of many Jewish pro-settlement groups to experience IRS audits.

When the Citizens United decision came down, outraging the Obama administration, the IRS already had begun to use the agency’s power to audit and intimidate Jewish groups promoting West Bank settlements. The idea of using the same M.O. to go after tax-exempt groups that sprang up in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision likely was another fruit of the same tree.

Was the president personally involved? The numerous visits to the White House by Acting IRS Director Douglas Shulman — including four personal meetings with the president — in a two-year period after the court ruling bear further scrutiny. By comparison, the Bush 43 IRS director visited the building only once in his tenure.

Schulman’s meetings with White House staff may have focused on the IRS’s role in administering ObamaCare, but the chances that the audit of conservative groups was discussed cannot be ruled out, especially in view of the work of Schulman’s wife, Susan L. Anderson.

Anderson works for Public Campaign, an organization “dedicated to sweeping campaign reform that aims to dramatically reduce the role of big special interest money in American politics” and funded by groups like Health Care for America Now!

Anderson, who supported the Occupy Wall Street campaign, appears to have occupied the IRS through her husband. According to Breitbart.com, Anderson’s tweets indicate that she worked for Obama and had an obsession with cutting Karl Rove’s Crossroads group down to size.

On June 20, 2012, for example, she tweeted “Karl Rove Crossroads get money out,” and appealed to supporters to come to a demonstration to “CONFRONT Karl Rove plus American Crossroads REBUILD THE AMERICAN DREAM.”

Anderson’s activities and Schulman’s White House visits need further congressional scrutiny. Who knows where it might lead?

Morris, a former adviser to Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) and President Clinton, is the author of 16 books, including his latest, Screwed and Here Come the Black Helicopters. To get all of his and Eileen McGann’s columns for free by email, go to dickmorris.com.

Recent speeches by Tennessee Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander highlight a connection that has yet to be reported in the media and is yet to be understood by the young people struggling with high interest rates in the hopes of financing their college education.

From prominent election lawyer Cleta Mitchell comes the disgusting detail with which the Internal Revenue Service hounded conservative groups — they demanded so much information it constituted a deliberately crippling workload.

“The statesman’s duty is to bridge the gap between his nation’s experience and his vision. If he gets too far out ahead of his people, he will lose his mandate; if he confines himself to the conventional, he will lose control over events.” — Henry Kissinger, in his 1982 book Years of Upheaval

Americans can stand pretty much anything, but not being lied to by their president. When Bill Clinton lied about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky, his personal favorability ratings dropped 20 points and never recovered for the duration of his presidency.

Listen to the air going out of the economy. 

So many of the unattractive parts of the personality and presidency of Barack Obama are evident in how he has handled the sequestration issue.

Immediately after 9/11, America was united, vigilant and determined not to permit a repeat of the slaughter of the innocents. But since then, we have let down our guard.