FW:  Sept. 11, 2013

'Energy is crazy high' as groups explode in all 50 states

Published: 08/20/2013 at 10:52 PM

WASHINGTON – The “Overpasses for Obama’s Impeachment” movement is suddenly sweeping the nation.

WND first reported on the booming movement in July, and now the group claims it has mushroomed to 40,000 members across America to become “the largest grassroots movement in the nation” in the few weeks since it was launched in June.

The group’s national website has links to Facebook pages of groups in all 50 states, plus Washington, D.C.

And it is on those Facebook pages that organizers recruit and inform, while fellow members share their experiences and bond, as the group’s Internet-age version of grassroots democracy takes root and flourishes in cyberspace and on the streets.

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The clout of “Overpasses for Obama’s Impeachment” is growing so fast, Press Secretary Jennifer Hitt told WND, “We would like to get to the point we can help fund a 2016 candidate. The movement started with the main Facebook page, grew to the state Facebook pages, and now we are trying to get most people to register on our state forums on the website, Overpasses.org.”

Hitt said the buzz isn’t limited to one area: “It’s nationwide. The energy is crazy high.”

That energy crackles in comments on the Alabama site, which boasts 1,005 members.

• “Members, what a wonderful problem I have!! I am so excited to announce we have an influx of new members from all over the state. In order to keep everyone in their area, I have created pages for each area group. Please join the group closest to you.

• “Me (pictured) at the Hwy 280 Birmingham Rally. Met some wonderful people whom are now friends! Many cars honked for us, a few middle-finger salutes, but, we will continue until we drop!”

• “Guys [please] go to the Jasper Daily Mountain Eagle page and like it. They’re attempting to reach 10,000 likes by the end of the month. They did an excellent article for our movement, and I’ve gotten a fantastic response. Let’s return the kindness. Thx!”

• “Tina has stepped up to lead and organize Dothan and surrounding areas. Tina came to the Birmingham rally and was very excited. She drove from Dothan to Birmingham to attend then drove home alone in horrible weather. Now Tina wants to lead her area. Please comment below if you live in Dothan and surrounding areas and can attend rallies or help Tina. UNITED WE STAND.”

• “[K]idding around with the Memphis local boys and girls in blue as they frequently check in on our safety! She hugged me before they left and the rest just shook my hand! Way to go, Blue!”

• “Excellent write up in Daily Mountain Eagle this morning on Jasper protest. Started on front page and continued on another page. Lonnie, I was especially proud of your comments. Excellent!”

• “My husband and I have been so frustrated for the past 5 years and felt so helpless to really do anything. Thank God somebody finally got the guts to really stand up. We cannot be nice and expect results. If we ever needed something to give ourselves to, this is it. We can be strong and make America strong again by demanding that the people be heard and not just heard, but action taken to stop this train wreck. We will not be intimidated by their bullying and socialist agenda; it’s now or never people. Thank you, Ann. I know you are a true patriot.”

There’s even advice on how to make a quick do-it-yourself sign.

“Signs are here: https://www.box.com/impeachobamasigns. Just copy to a flash drive and take to Staples or other print store. A 2′ x 3′ is only $3.25.”

Members of Congress may think impeaching Obama is an impossible dream, but sentiment to oust the president appears to be rapidly gaining momentum across the nation.

As WND reported, just a little more than a week ago, Rep. Blake Farenthold, R-Texas, said he believes there are enough votes in the House to impeach President Obama, but he fears such an effort would be futile because of the Democratic Party’s grip on the Senate.

However, the mood of the country may be shifting after a relentless parade of Obama administration scandals, a number of severe setbacks to the president’s signature health care law that is now more unpopular than ever, an economy still refusing to recover after five years and a foreign policy that has a good portion of the Middle East either in turmoil or at war.

That mood could be evidenced in the great interest in, and huge advance sales for, WND’s latest book, “Impeachable Offenses: The Case for Removing Barack Obama from Office.”

Buzzfeed Politics declared, “It’s not just overpasses anymore,” and the “book ushers in the Obama Impeachment movement.”

“Impeachable Offenses,” to be published by WND Books on Aug. 27, has already gone into its third printing, co-author Aaron Klein said, “due to unexpected demand from bookstores.”

“Clearly a large segment of the population is concerned Obama has overstepped his executive authority and has used his office to circumvent Congress to change, ignore, or at times perhaps invent de facto law,” he added.

WND Books CEO Joseph Farah told Buzzfeed, “We knew this was going to be a popular book. What we didn’t realize is that retailers would recognize it in advance and place large orders before the public weighed in.”

The impeachment passion has been evident in growing numbers on the streets of America in recent weeks.

“Overpasses to Impeach Obama” has gone from local protests to nationwide events. The first “National Patriot Wave” was held Aug. 6, with rallies in more than 300 American cities and towns. “National Patriot Wave II” on Aug. 17 had planned for rallies in all 50 states.

Hitt said, “We refer to our national rallies as the Patriot Wave because it starts early on the east coast and spreads west (like a wave).”

She said up until then, cities held their own local rallies.

James Neighbors started the movement in Oklahoma after seeing footage of police shut down an anti-Obama overpass rally in San Diego.

In addition to the national website and the state Facebook pages, the group also has a national Twitter account @OverpassesUSA.

“I am also encouraging every member to give their info to two or three other people to make sure we can all keep in touch,” said Hitt, concerned what would happen should their social media accounts close for some reason.

There have been a few challenges already.

“We had a couple incidents in Missouri and California. The police showed up and arrested some of our patriots. You can watch the videos on YouTube and decide for yourself if it was legit,” noted Hitt.

What the protesters do is simple but effective. They merely gather on highway overpasses and wave signs calling for the impeachment of Obama or urging drivers to “honk to impeach.” The tactics attract attention, both from drivers and the media.

Their national website’s mission statement says “Overpasses for Obama’s Impeachment has a simple goal. The removal of the corrupt and criminal President of the United States of America, Barack Hussein Obama.”

It lists 12 reasons for his removal, including abdicating “his responsibility to enforce the laws of the United States against illegal immigration,”  failing to enforce and defend laws adopted by Congress such as the Defense of Marriage Act and for taking the nation to war against Libya “without the consent of the Congress of the United States.”

The “Overpasses for Obama’s Impeachment” movement has taken off by itself without much input from established groups such as the many tea parties around the country.

WND contacted a number of tea-party groups around the nation. Their reaction was typified by Chris Lawton of the tea party in Spartanburg, S.C., who said the movement “kind of snuck up on us,” but now members are becoming involved.

Hitt said, “Most people I encounter are all for our movement. Then again, I live in the country. Our goal is to wake people up, and we are doing just that. Waves, honks and thumbs up way outnumber middle fingers.”

She said enthusiasm, already high, just keeps growing.

“Comments from attendees consist mostly of, ‘I can’t wait to get back out there,’ and, ‘I am going to make sure I recruit more people for next time,” or, “Can we do this more than once or twice a month?’”

Many conservatives may feel the mainstream media has forgotten the Benghazi scandal, but Main Street hasn’t.

“My town in North Carolina holds a Benghazi Corner every Saturday. Signs are limited to Benghazi verbiage and we get lots of attention,” said Hitt.

She also insists the president’s race has nothing to do with the group’s call for impeachment, citing the example of Jaison Sheppard, “a black conservative who joins us for every event along with his entire family” and points to his YouTube video.

According to Hitt, “He voted for Obama in ’08 and basically says, ‘It’s not about color. It’s about right and wrong. Obama has to go.’

“And he does have to go. He is the most corrupt POTUS America has ever had. A couple larger groups are supporting us in our efforts: ALIPAC (Americans for Legal Immigration) and Guns Across America and we support them in their efforts,” she adds.

WND has reported Watergate investigator Bob Woodward of the Washington Post compares Obama to Richard Nixon. Members of Congress say it’s about time to consider impeachment. And even Code Pink co-founder Medea Benjamin has called for Obama’s removal.

There’s also a national petition that calls on Congress to immediately investigate the “unconstitutional and impeachable offenses” of Obama.

It is addressed to Congress and cites a number of scandals in just the last few weeks and months.

Among them are the “lethal and prolonged terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya, and the subsequent ‘Watergate-era cover-up.’” And then there’s the big – and getting bigger – scandal involving the federal government’s use of the Internal Revenue Service to harass and attack conservative groups.

There’s also the spying and harassment of journalists.

“Top constitutional attorneys from across the political spectrum now agree that Obama has committed certain specific offenses that unquestionably rise to the level of impeachable ‘high crimes and misdemeanors,” the petition explains.

Sign the petition right away!

And that’s even before the issue of “Obama’s policy of targeted assassinations of U.S. citizens without any constitutionally required due process – including the drone assassination of an American-born 16-year-old as he was eating dinner.”

There’s also the “disastrous ‘Fast and Furious’ operation in which approximately 2,000 firearms were directed from U.S. gun shops across the U.S.-Mexico border and into the hands of members of Mexican drug cartels.”

The petition also cites Obama’s refusal to fulfill his obligation to defend the Defense of Marriage Act.

That’s all in addition to the alleged illegal “recess” appointments of several officials as well as the Obama Justice Department’s refusal to prosecute voter intimidation, his appointment of 30 “czars” and general contempt for Congress and the American people.

The petition states: “Therefore, we the undersigned urge Congress to immediately undertake a full and impartial investigation into the many blatantly unconstitutional actions of Barack Obama. For members of Congress, each of whom has also sworn a solemn oath to uphold the Constitution, to allow a president to routinely flout the Supreme Law of the land without being held accountable is equally repugnant to a free country and a free press.”

Tens of thousands already are on board with the effort, which is just the latest in a long string of calls for impeachment or an investigation.

Impeachment has been brought up by several WND columnists recently.

Nat Hentoff wrote that Obama, “since taking office, has continually limited the First Amendment, the most singular and powerful right that distinctly identifies Americans from residents in all other countries on Earth.”

Columnist Bert Prelutsky took it further.

“I want Obama to go through the process because he has it coming. In totalitarian states, after all, the people have no other recourse except to take to the streets and spill blood. But we have available the process of impeachment, and Obama should be forced to defend his contemptible lies and actions,” he wrote. “If for no other reason than his unbearable arrogance, the schmuck should have to pay a penalty. For instance, when a White House reporter asked him to justify spying on the Associated Press, Obama said, ‘I’ve still got 60,000-plus troops in Afghanistan and I still have a bunch of intelligence officers around the world.’ No, sir, the United States has 60,000-plus troops in Afghanistan and a bunch of intelligence officers around the world.”

A panel of top constitutional experts convened by WND blasted Obama’s actions in office. Bruce Fein, the legal scholar who is best known for having drafted articles of impeachment against former President Clinton for perjury after he lied under oath, said Obama’s orders to drone-kill a terror suspect were “tantamount to murder.”

“You can’t have democracy and the rule of law if you never get to know what the facts are and you just have to accept what the government says they are. If you don’t have a trial, that’s the definition of tyranny.”

Louis Fisher, a scholar in residence at the Constitution Project, said of Obama’s appointment of “czars”: “That is a big deal. A lot of people say, ‘Well, that’s been going on a long time.’ In our form of government, citizens vote for representatives and representatives pass laws. You have people heading departments, and they’re confirmed. There’s an understanding that we will call you up whenever we need to. … Congress passed legislation saying there’d be no funds for three czars, and they were named in the bill. Obama signed it into the law, but in the signing statement, he said that’s unconstitutional because he has the ‘prerogative’ to get the advice he needs to implement statutes. Well, c’mon Obama. You don’t have a prerogative to bring into the White House anybody you want at any salary. It’s all done by law. It goes back to 1978 where Congress passed legislation saying you have this number of people and these are their salaries and Congress can increase or decrease that at any time.”

And Herbert Titus, counsel to the law firm William J. Olson who previously taught constitutional law, common law and other subjects for 30 years at five different American Bar Association-approved law schools, said Obama’s military actions in Libya are a strong argument for impeachment.

“That’s the one that stands out. It’s unprecedented. It doesn’t even fit within any of the precedents that have been set since Korea.”

Obama should have seen such a move coming. A recent poll earlier this year said half of Americans say he should be impeached.

“It may be early in the process for members of Congress to start planning for impeachment of Barack Obama, but the American public is building a serious appetite for it,” said Fritz Wenzel of Wenzel Strategies, which did the telephone poll.

Half or nearly half of those surveyed said they believed Obama should be impeached for the trifecta of scandals now consuming Washington.

On the issue of the Benghazi scandal, in which four Americans were killed after terror threats were ignored, 50.1 percent of Americans said Obama should be impeached. That included 27.6 percent of the responding Democrats.

All of America is buzzing about impeaching Obama. Now you can order Aaron Klein’s latest blockbuster, “Impeachable Offenses: The Case for removing Barack Obama from Office.”

On the IRS harassment of conservative and Christian organizations? Forty-nine percent said they agree that impeachment is appropriate, including 24.4 percent of the Democrats.

And on the fishing trip the Obama administration took into AP reporters’ telephone records in search of a security breach that may have been done by his own administration, 48.6 percent said impeachment is appropriate. That included 26.1 percent of the Democrats.

Sign the petition urging Congress to impeach Obama.

Former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan wrote that the country is in the midst of the worst Washington scandal since Watergate.

“The reputation of the Obama White House has, among conservatives, gone from sketchy to sinister, and, among liberals, from unsatisfying to dangerous,” she said. “No one likes what they’re seeing. The Justice Department assault on the Associated Press and the ugly politicization of the Internal Revenue Service have left the administration’s credibility deeply, probably irretrievably damaged. They don’t look jerky now, they look dirty. The patina of high-mindedness the president enjoyed is gone.”

Noonan said Obama, “as usual, acts as if all of this is totally unconnected to him.”

“He’s shocked, it’s unacceptable, he’ll get to the bottom of it. He read about it in the papers, just like you. But he is not unconnected, he is not a bystander. This is his administration. Those are his executive agencies. He runs the IRS and the Justice Department,” she continued. “A president sets a mood, a tone. He establishes an atmosphere. If he is arrogant, arrogance spreads. If he is too partisan, too disrespecting of political adversaries, that spreads too. Presidents always undo themselves and then blame it on the third guy in the last row in the sleepy agency across town.”

It’s even being compared to Watergate, the break-in that ultimately led to the resignation of President Nixon.

That was the assessment of no less than Woodward, whose reporting on Watergate eventually snared the sitting president.

Woodward said not long ago: “If you read through all these emails, you see that everyone in the government is saying, ‘Oh, let’s not tell the public that terrorists were involved, people connected to al Qaeda. Let’s not tell the public that there were warnings.’ And I have to go back 40 years to Watergate when Nixon put out his edited transcripts to the conversations, and he personally went through them and said, ‘Oh, let’s not tell this, let’s not show this.’ I would not dismiss Benghazi. It’s a very serious issue.”

A Republican congressman also brought up the subject.

“I would say yes. I’m not willing to take it [impeachment] off to take it off the table, but that’s certainly not what we’re striving for,” Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, told CNN.

“We want truth, we want to bring the people who perpetrated the terrorism in Benghazi to be brought to justice, and we want to have the president do what he has said he would always do. And that is be open and transparent. Thus far, the White House has not done that.”

Earlier, Chaffetz, in an interview with the Salt Lake Tribune, was asked if impeachment was within the realm of possibility.

“It’s certainly a possibility,” he told the paper. “That’s not the goal but given the continued lies perpetrated by this administration, I don’t know where it’s going to go. … I’m not taking it off the table. I’m not out there touting that but I think this gets to the highest levels of our government and integrity and honesty are paramount.”

Chaffetz has been championing the call to probe the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the Benghazi compound that left four Americans dead, including Ambassador Chris Stevens.

Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., said last week impeachment was possible over the “most egregious cover-up in American history.

“People may be starting to use the I-word before too long,” Inhofe told radio host Rusty Humphries, according to the Hill.

“The I-word meaning impeachment?” Humphries asked.

“Yeah,” Inhofe responded.

Additionally, radio host Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor and one-time presidential candidate, predicted Obama won’t serve out his second term because of his complicity in a cover-up over Benghazi.

Other members of Congress who have suggested impeachment for a variety of reasons in recent years include Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C.; Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn.; Rep. Steve Stockman, R-Texas; Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas; Rep. Trey Radel, R-Fla.; and Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa.

Others who have raised the subject include rock legend and gun-rights defender Ted Nugent, who said there’s “no question” Obama should be impeached.

He blasted “the criminality of this government, the unprecedented abuse of power, corruption, fraud and deceit by the Chicago gangster-scammer-ACORN-in-chief.”

“It’s so diabolical,” he said.