In “The Case for Impeachment: Why Barack Hussein Obama Should Be Impeached to Save America,” the Republicans’ roadmap for investigating the president next year, author Steven Baldwin lists as one of Obama’s potential high crimes and misdemeanors an incident that occurred during a visit to the White House last spring by two world-famous entertainers:
[Baldwin’s] report reveals how rapper Jay-Z and Beyonce were photographed sitting around the “Situation Room” – the confidential White House location filled with top secret communications equipment that allows the tracking of terror threats worldwide.
Access to the room normally requires a high security clearance level.
In the photograph, Beyonce Knowles and Jay-Z (Shawn Corey Carter), who were married in 2008, are clearly not “sitting around” but rather appear to be seated at the table to pose for the photo. The couple visited the White House in March, according to the New York Daily News.
As we noted here in August, Baldwin is a senior research fellow at the Western Journalism Center — which, despite its highfalutin name, is operated by World Net Daily, the conservative propaganda outlet that serves, in part, as a right-wing conspiracy clearing house.
WND’s publisher, Joseph Farah, is a leading proponent of Birtherism and remains convinced to this day that Hillary Clinton had Vince Foster murdered, despite numerous federal investigations — including two by Republican special prosecutors, one of whom was Ken Starr — all of which determined beyond a doubt that Foster had committed suicide.
The Western Journalism Center has received hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations from Richard Melon Scaife, the bizarre conservative Pittsburgh millionaire who also funded the Arkansas Project, which served as the core of the “vast right-wing conspiracy” against the Clintons in the 1990s.
The irony here is that, in 2003, WND and the rest of the American right never called for the impeachment of Dick Cheney when it was revealed that he and his minions, Scooter Libby and Karl Rove, had committed a serious breach of national security by deliberately betraying the identity of covert CIA agent who specialized in tracking worldwide black-market sales of terror weapons.
But lest anyone think the present matter is so trivial that Rep. Darrel Issa, R-CA, the incoming chairman of the House Oversight Committee, would not dare waste weeks and months and millions of dollars to investigate it, remember that the last time this committee was under Republican control, it investigated Socks, Pres. Clinton’s family cat.
In fact, Issa’s GOP predecessor, Chairman Dan Burton, may be best remembered for his personal investigation into the Foster suicide, including an episode in which he tested various conspiracy theories about the shooting of Foster by firing a gun into melons in his backyard.
During his Burton’s investigation into Pres. Clinton’s extramarital affair, it was revealed that Burton had fathered at least one child out of wedlock. That small hypocrisy did not prevent him from strongly advocating Clinton’s impeachment after the president was accused of perjury during a deposition in a civil lawsuit during which he falsely denied having had an extramarital affair.
You know their actions are going to make a lot of lawyers rich and famous. And we are in for a lot more wasted time instead of recovery.
I may be mistaken — but — that’s not the White House Sit Room.
I’m a retired Army officer who made more than a few trips to the Sit Room as Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency Watch Center.
Oh, even better. Will try to verify.
Personally I hope the crazies do try to impeach the O man. This will turn off the independent swing voter AND energize the base. Go Darrel, Go Darrel, Go Darrel!
Well, all those folks in the photo are black. That’s the real problem.
If they were a bunch of white folks ‘sitting around’, there wouldn’t be one word said. And the Rethuglicans and Tea Baggers keep saying they’re not racist.