Obama does his best Nixon imitation

At this rate, I suspect President Obama might soon step up to a microphone and tell reporters, “I am not a crook.”

You know the Obama administration is in trouble when it faces scathing bipartisan criticism on two different subjects in a matter of three days.

It only gets worse when both of those controversies conjure the ghost of Richard Nixon.

Using the IRS to secretly target political foes – that one is straight out of the Nixon playbook, and was the subject of one of the articles of impeachment brought against him by Congress.

Using the Justice Department to obtain news reporters’ phone records – that’s another Nixon dirty trick, and one that’s sure to bring unrelenting pressure on Obama from the media. Don’t mess with the First Amendment.

In four days, much of the information the IRS gave last Friday about harassing tea party and “patriot” groups has proven false or misleading. The former IRS commissioner and the acting commissioner both knew what was happening with this selective abuse a year ago.

Now we have learned that the agency has been targeting a wide array of conservative groups that operate as a nonprofit with 501(c) 4 status. And the little “field office” in Cincinnati is actually a national center that works with IRS officials in Washington to scrutinize tax-exempt groups.

At the same time, the Justice Department is getting hammered for secretly obtaining two months of phone records of journalists working for the Associated Press. The DOJ says it’s working on a year-long investigation into the disclosure of classified information about a failed al-Qaeda plot.

The issue, though, is that the federal authorities’ subpoena was so broad that it included numerous anonymous sources and whistleblowers that AP relies upon at the local, state and federal level. Eric Holder’s DOJ obtained phone records from: cellular, office and home telephones of individual reporters and an editor; AP general office numbers in Washington, New York and Hartford, Conn.; and the main number for AP reporters covering Congress. The AP is calling the DOJ’s actions a “massive and unprecedented intrusion” into newsgathering activities, which is fairly accurate.

According to The Washington Post, the Obama administration has repeatedly pursued current and former government officials suspected of releasing secret material. Six officials have been prosecuted, more than under all previous administrations – combined.

Meanwhile, the poor Republicans have more scandals to take advantage of than they can handle. Many pundits are already suggesting that the GOP will focus on the IRS’ outrageous behavior rather than the Benghazi cover-up (another Nixonian word) because it’s a juicy issue that Americans can better relate to and understand.

The Republicans will receive plenty of help from all corners of the media.

I could almost picture a collective cringe in the White House this morning when Carl Bernstein, the former Post reporter of Watergate fame, was on TV railing against the Obama administration. It was almost as if Nixon had been brought back to life.