WEBCommentary Contributor

Author: Michael J. Gaynor
Date:  October 8, 2013

Topic category:  Corruption in Government

It's Time to Punish the Punisher-in-Chief, President Obama


"It is an act of political theater, a gross and possibly illegal abuse of political power, an assault on private property, and a wanton subjugation of responsible governance to the political interests of President Obama and his party."

Like the child who realized that the Emperor actually wasn't wearing clothes, more and more people are realizing that President Obama is not the kind of person for whom they hoped and electing and reelecting him (a rookie United States senator who dreamed of becoming the first black President of the United States and fundamentally transforming it) was a terrible mistake.

The Constitutional makes the President of the United States Commander-in-Chief.

President Obama, having a tantrum behind his calm "I won't negotiate" facade because he can't imtimidate the House of Representatives into obeying him, thinks he's Punisher-in-Chief.

National Review recently explained the Obama shutdown strategy exquisitely in www.nationalreview.com/article/360591/vindictive-shutdown-theater-editors:

"'I just don’t know what they’re trying to accomplish.' So says Jim Hagen, South Dakota’s secretary of tourism, about the federal government’s blocking off not only the entrance to the Mount Rushmore monument but also roadside viewing areas outside the park. 'They won’t even let you pull off on the side of the road,' he says, noting that this particular act of shutdown theater is damaging his state’s tourism economy and ruining the plans of countless travelers. Shutdowns are strangely labor-intensive things: After setting up traffic cones to block off the Mount Rushmore viewing areas, the feds had to pick them up again because of a blizzard, but apparently had plans to put them right back down again after the plowing is done. Perhaps Mr. Hagen has too gentle a cast of mind to appreciate just what the Obama administration is trying to accomplish: It is an act of political theater, a gross and possibly illegal abuse of political power, an assault on private property, and a wanton subjugation of responsible governance to the political interests of President Obama and his party.

"Consider the case of Ralph and Joyce Spencer, 77 and 80 years of age, respectively, who were evicted from their home on Lake Mead in Nevada by an officious park ranger who told them they had 24 hours to vacate the premises. The Spencers own their home outright, but it sits on land leased from the federal government. A lease is a legal contract, and the government shutdown presents no legitimate reason for the violation of that contract. Even if it did, the place to settle such a dispute is in a court of law — not through the arbitrary exercise of federal police power. This is not a blunder: It is the malicious harassment of private citizens in their own homes by an administration intent on creating hardships and then using them for propaganda purposes. You own your home right up until the moment when that the fact becomes inconvenient to President Obama.

"Likewise, monuments that require no federal oversight — being, as they are, open to the public — have been barricaded by the federal government as part of the shutdown theater. The government has even ordered the closure of state-operated parks that sit on federal land. Anna Eberly, who manages the Claude Moore Colonial Farm in McLean, Va., one such shut-down park, says: 'In all the years I have worked with the National Park Service, I have never worked with a more arrogant, arbitrary, and vindictive group representing the NPS.' 'Vindictive' is the right word: It takes federal action to close the sites and none to keep them open. This is not what an inactive government looks like, but a spiteful one.

"Likewise, federal websites have been shut down rather than left alone, with the selection of blacked-out sites being 'bafflingly arbitrary,' in the words of Ars Technica. The Amber Alert site at the Department of Justice was taken offline, but the first lady’s 'Let’s Move' campaign remained up and running. As with the case of the roped-off monuments, it takes more work and resources to black out websites than it does to simply leave them be. The administration is willing to do a great deal of work for a political stunt, but apparently takes a nonchalant view of the situation of abducted children.

"Or veterans. After closing off the World War II Memorial in Washington, the administration partly reversed itself, declaring the site open for 'First Amendment activities.' In the United States, having a thought in one’s head or a word in one’s mouth is a First Amendment activity. We do not exercise our rights at the sufferance of the federal government; Washington is named after a man who fought for that principle, an irony apparently lost on Barack Obama.

"The point of this federal propaganda exercise is obvious: The administration seeks to gin up ill will against the Republican-controlled House of Representatives for refusing to crumble when Obama and the Senate peremptorily refuse to even consider its proposals. But there is a bit more to it than that. The Obama administration cleaves to the notion that 'government is the only thing we all belong to,' as the Democrats put it during their 2012 convention, and it seeks to put the state at the center of national life. That the government has resorted to turning old people out of their homes suggests a level of ruthlessness that is shocking if not surprising. The Democrats have called their opponents 'hostage-takers' in this matter — but they are the ones conducting seizures.

"This may simply be an extreme version of the Democrats’ usual strategy of closing the Washington Monument, but it is notable extremism: throwing people out of their homes and forcing the shutdown of non-federal facilities. It is, if anything, an excellent illustration of why conservatives believe that the tentacles of the federal government are too long and too many."

Amen!

Michael J. Gaynor


Biography - Michael J. Gaynor

Michael J. Gaynor has been practicing law in New York since 1973. A former partner at Fulton, Duncombe & Rowe and Gaynor & Bass, he is a solo practitioner admitted to practice in New York state and federal courts and an Association of the Bar of the City of New York member.

Gaynor graduated magna cum laude, with Honors in Social Science, from Hofstra University's New College, and received his J.D. degree from St. John's Law School, where he won the American Jurisprudence Award in Evidence and served as an editor of the Law Review and the St. Thomas More Institute for Legal Research. He wrote on the Pentagon Papers case for the Review and obscenity law for The Catholic Lawyer and edited the Law Review's commentary on significant developments in New York law.

The day after graduating, Gaynor joined the Fulton firm, where he focused on litigation and corporate law. In 1997 Gaynor and Emily Bass formed Gaynor & Bass and then conducted a general legal practice, emphasizing litigation, and represented corporations, individuals and a New York City labor union. Notably, Gaynor & Bass prevailed in the Second Circuit in a seminal copyright infringement case, Tasini v. New York Times, against newspaper and magazine publishers and Lexis-Nexis. The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed, 7 to 2, holding that the copyrights of freelance writers had been infringed when their work was put online without permission or compensation.

Gaynor currently contributes regularly to www.MichNews.com, www.RenewAmerica.com, www.WebCommentary.com, www.PostChronicle.com and www.therealitycheck.org and has contributed to many other websites. He has written extensively on political and religious issues, notably the Terry Schiavo case, the Duke "no rape" case, ACORN and canon law, and appeared as a guest on television and radio. He was acknowledged in Until Proven Innocent, by Stuart Taylor and KC Johnson, and Culture of Corruption, by Michelle Malkin. He appeared on "Your World With Cavuto" to promote an eBay boycott that he initiated and "The World Over With Raymond Arroyo" (EWTN) to discuss the legal implications of the Schiavo case. On October 22, 2008, Gaynor was the first to report that The New York Times had killed an Obama/ACORN expose on which a Times reporter had been working with ACORN whistleblower Anita MonCrief.

Gaynor's email address is gaynormike@aol.com.


Copyright © 2013 by Michael J. Gaynor
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