The dictionary defines "chutzpah" as unmitigated effrontery or impudence. It defines "hypocrite" as a person who falsely professes beliefs and values he doesn't really possess. I leave it to the reader to decide which of the two, if either, applies to our president.
Yesterday, Mr. Obama granted his Attorney General "executive privilege" so that he would not have to submit subpoenaed documents to the House Oversight Committee trying to get to the bottom of the ignominious Fast and Furious debacle.
Whether the courts will allow this use of executive privilege to stand is uncertain. It's unclear what grounds Mr. Obama has for asserting executive privilege when national security is not at issue and the matter does not involve the White House (of course, we only have Mr. Obama's and AG Holder's word for it that F&F doesn't involve the White House. The fact that EP is being employed leads one to suspect that perhaps they're trying to hide something damaging).
In any case, executive privilege is something to which Senator Obama took a dim view when it was invoked by a Republican president.
This makes about the five thousandth flip-flop Mr. Obama has executed since becoming president. Like a freshly landed trout he twists and gyrates whenever he thinks it'll confer a political advantage to abandon any belief he professed in the past. He certainly gives the appearance of lacking any underlying core principle that guides those beliefs. Perhaps his apologists will construe this invocation of EP as merely another evolution in the President's thinking, like his reversal on gay marriage, Gitmo, the Bush tax cuts, and numerous other positions, but taken together with so many other such reversals, it begins to give one the impression of a hollow man devoid of any real character or virtue.
Now comes on top of all these a biography of Mr. Obama by David Maraniss in which he reveals that the President's autobiography Dreams of My Father is riddled with dozens of false claims about his family and himself. The man is simply not who he has claimed to be. It's very sad for the country.
