I also have some experience with the tea-party movement.

I wrote the “Tea Party Manifesto,”which I am making available for a limited time for 99 cents because it is more relevant than ever. I was a headline speaker, along with Sarah Palin, at the first national tea-party convention, and you can see what I said there that I knew – and predicted – would lead to politically motivated audits of my tax returns.

I predicted this would happen in a column in March 2010.

I wrote about it when it came to pass in November 2011.

I don’t claim the gift of prophecy.

I just know the nature of people like Barack Obama and those he places in positions of authority. I know this because I was just like him. I even had some of the same friends and acquaintances as a misguided youth – people like Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn.

But my experience with politically motivated tax audits goes back long before the Obama administration.

I was a prominent target of Bill Clinton’s reign of Internal Revenue Service hell on individuals and tax-exempt organizations. And I was the guy who broke the story about it – long before there was a WND. Back then, I had to get the help of the Wall Street Journal, which, to its credit, gave me commentary space to lay out the whole story and turned the sordid tale into an 11-part series of editorials.

But in this day of historical forgetfulness, no one in the media seems to remember how Bill Clinton used the IRS to terrorize Paula Jones and many other women who had the misfortune of crossing his path along with a virtual who’s who of those who made his “enemies list” like me.

In my case, we finally got the evidence from the Treasury Department years later that showed it wasn’t some “rogue agent” who instigated the audit. It was Bill Clinton personally who dispatched a letter to the head of the IRS tax-exempt division.

Bill Clinton was allowed to skate for that kind of abuse.

And that’s why I knew, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that it would happen again under the watch of Barack Obama.

It’s been three years now that Obama has gotten away with targeting his enemies using the IRS. I’ve heard the horror stories from many friends – most of whom don’t want the limelight. Tax-exempt organizations hate to admit they are being audited because it tends to dry up donations. That was the problem telling the story in the 1990s, and it’s a problem now.

You will hear many horror stories about politically motivated audits now because people and organizations are starting to see it as a badge of honor to be audited by Obama – now that the story has legs.

Some will be tempted to discount these stories. Don’t make that mistake. They’re true. The abuse is far more than anyone can imagine. That’s why Obama publicly dispatched a sacrificial lamb, his IRS commissioner, so quickly. He thinks he may be able to cut his losses by finding a scapegoat.

Whether he’s right remains an open question.

Sadly, it depends primarily on two institutions that don’t have a less-than-stellar track record in holding him accountable – the Republican Party and the media establishment.

I’m not holding my breath.

But I can say this without any equivocation: If Obama serves out his second term by merely blaming others beneath him, this will not be the last administration that uses the IRS to target its enemies. It will become a matter of course for leaders without scruples and integrity to continue the harassment and abuse Obama ensured would happen.

I’m not suggesting we will find any written authorization from Obama to do this – as we did with Clinton. As Rush Limbaugh so aptly pointed out, Obama didn’t need to do that. In politics and government, personnel is policy.

He hired people who would do his bidding. They didn’t need to be told by Obama to do it. All they needed to do was listen to what he said publicly about his enemies in the tea-party movement, the patriot movement and all those who crossed him.

Lastly, let me say this: Not only does Obama have to be chased from the Oval Office to ensure the IRS doesn’t victimize others in the future. The IRS also has to go. It has proven once again to be the U.S. version of the Gestapo – there for future would-be fuehrers to abuse.

You might want to watch it again, following Barack Obama’s performance Wednesday night to see his inspiration for pleading surprise and ignorance to the way his Internal Revenue Service targeted people and organizations for their political leanings.

You remember the scene. Police Capt. Louis Renault, played by Claude Raines, raids a casino operation in the Rick Blaine’s (played by Humphrey Bogart) nightclub.

Asked why he’s closing down the club, Renault responds: “I’m shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!” The croupier hands Renault a pile of money and offers, “Your winnings, sir.”

That’s Obama.

For at least three years now, Obama has been gambling that he would get away with using the IRS as an attack dog against his political enemies. Now that he’s caught red-handed he feigns horror: “Americans are right to be angry about it, and I’m angry about it.” He insists he “will not tolerate this kind of behavior in any agency, but especially in the IRS, given the power that it has and the reach that it has.”

I know there are some candid true believers out there like Julian Bond of the NAACP who actually publicly applaud what Obama and the IRS did. But is there a single American who today honestly believes he didn’t, at the very least, wink at what was happening at the IRS if not inspire it by those he placed in charge of the agency and by his harsh rhetoric against his political adversaries ever since he began running for the presidency?

I know there are a lot of low-information voters out there, or we wouldn’t have Obama in the White House. But it’s hard for me to believe that this scandal is not completely transparent to even most of them – whether or not they care about the rule of law, justice, equal protection, personal liberties, free speech and all of those American principles.

You can’t say I didn’t warn America beginning in 2008.

Now, maybe, Americans are beginning to understand what this man is capable of – which is scary for those of us on the receiving end.

Think about it.

Is there anything a president who would abuse the IRS to target his enemies wouldn’t do to get his way and “fundamentally transform America,” as he promised?

Need I remind you that some of us have been attempting to blow the whistle on this scandal for more than two years? There have been lawsuits. There have been Freedom of Information requests filed. There have been news stories. There have been press conferences by groups victimized. There have been dozens of individuals, like me, who have told their own horror stories about political audits. (In my case, I predicted it with great specificity in advance and wrote about it when it inevitably came to pass!)

There’s just one difference between Renault and Obama.

In the end of the movie, Renault turns out to be a good guy. Even though he is playing ball with the Nazis and doing their bidding in “Casablanca,” that’s not where his heart is. I don’t hold out much hope that Obama is going to turn himself in for his high crimes and misdemeanors. Nor do I hold out much hope he is going to reform and become a defender of the Constitution and those previously mentioned American principles.

He’s made it clear to those of us who are awake that he despises the American way.

He hates pretty much everything it stands for.

So isn’t it time for all good, decent, patriotic, God-fearing Americans to demand he leave office at once or be impeached?

Trust me. If he serves out his complete term, the America we once knew will never be the same.

Do you believe the IRS has come clean about all of its actions as a political attack dog against adversaries of the Obama administration?

Do you believe a half-hearted and half-truthful apology by the IRS should excuse the Obama administration of any legal culpability or restitution?

Do you believe the Obama administration just became aware of this abuse last week and quickly cleared the air publicly last Friday afternoon?

Do you believe the Obama administration has taken decisive action to ensure that all political abuse of and by the IRS has ceased?

If you believe any of that, I’ve got a bridge in Brooklyn I’d like to sell you.

Here’s the truth:

• The tea party targeting has been going on for years – and may have been a significant contributing factor to the decline of the grass-roots movement. Last year, in a congressional hearing on just such accusations, then-IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman declared in sworn testimony, “There’s absolutely no targeting. This is the kind of back and forth that happens to people.” The IRS insists officially today that none of the abuse of tea party and “patriot” groups was “due to any political or partisan rationale.” It took press exposés, lawsuits and congressional hearings to force this admission – and still it was done on a Friday afternoon when the administration knew most Americans would not be paying attention.

• There is strong evidence already emerging that political harassment of 501(c)3 groups that promote educational programs at odds with Barack Obama’s worldview is still going on today. IRS officials told at least one new pro-life nonprofit group that it would need to promote “both sides” of the life issue to obtain a tax-exemption. Cherish Life Ministries was created to be a nonprofit so that churches would feel comfortable working together for pro-life causes. Peter Shinn was also told he would have to prove the group was not involved in political activity. This is akin to demanding that Greenpeace not only promote saving whales but killing whales, too.
• From December 2012 to January 2013, the IRS released pending applications for tax exemptions for six organizations. The release of such information is a felony punishable by a fine of up to $5,000 and imprisonment for up to five years. No one was prosecuted or fired as a result of the leaks.
• In 2010, Austan Goolsbee, then chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, divulged in a conference call confidential IRS information on how Koch Industries, which supports libertarian causes, was organized. In a background call with reporters, a “senior administration official” used Koch Industries as an example of how large corporations used corporate structures to avoid taxes.
• On the eve of the 2010 elections, conservative donors to nonprofits were told that past donations could be taxed as gifts. After not levying a gift tax for decades, the IRS investigated five donors to political advocacy nonprofits. Among those to receive letters threatening additional levies and taxes was conservative philanthropist Foster Friess. The move was protested by congressional investigators.
• Mitt Romney supporter Frank VanderSloot was attacked by name by the Obama campaign. A few months later, VanderSloot and his wife were told by the IRS they were being audited for the first time.
• The IRS claimed just last month that it can read your emails without a warrant.
• Once Obamacare is fully implemented in 2014, the IRS will enforce 47 new tax provisions along with distributing subsidies to 18 million people and tax credits to small businesses. The Treasury Department expects the cost of enforcement from 2010 to 2013 to total $881 million. Shulman informed Congress last year the agency would need an additional $13.1 billion in 2014 for this purpose.

I wrote a column in 2010 predicting that Obama’s IRS would audit me for my criticism of him. A year later, my prediction came true. I had not been audited since Bill Clinton launched a similar campaign of political audits against organizations and individuals – his “enemies list,” if you will. I remember because not only was I a target, I also exposed the systematic effort by the last Democratic president with the help of an 11-part series in the Wall Street Journal. (There was no WND back then.)

This is serious stuff.

This cannot be swept under the rug.

When one president gets away with this kind of abuse, it becomes a precedent for the future. If that happens, we cease to live in a free society under the rule of law.

The stakes are high.

Every American, regardless of their political leanings, should recognize it is not in the interest of liberty to permit such abuse by politicians against anyone.

By that I mean the reigning ethos of the day is despair.

I understand it.

Government is broken.

Politics is broken.

The culture is broken.

All of the manmade institutions on which we count to pull us out of despair and improve our lives are broken.

And, sad to say, that includes the church in America.

The church is an institution of all believers. But most people who call themselves believers are not acting like believers. They are not in obedience to God’s word. When they fall short, they are not in repentance. They are not striving for holiness. Most seem to think they will be welcome in God’s kingdom if they simply say some magic words at some point in their life and ask Jesus into their hearts.

They are not salt and light in the world. They do not evangelize non-believers. They do not humble themselves before the Creator of the universe. They do not fervently seek His face.

And this is why everything is broken. This is why we’re in despair. The Bible is replete with stories about how this same condition affected ancient Israel. Those stories are in the Bible for a reason – to serve as lessons for us.

Why aren’t the sheep following the right path? Because, in too many pulpits in America, they are not being fed with the Word of God.

Believers and shepherds need to recognize the signs of the times.

This is not a time to condone sin or to make compromise with it. It’s a time for believers and pastors to clean themselves up, putting on the full armor of God through the Holy Spirit and the Word.

If believers in America follow the simple prescription of 2 Chronicles 7:14, miracles will happen.

I believe that with every fiber of my being and soul. Why? Because it’s a promise from God.

There’s a lot of prayer going on in America today. Of that I have no doubt. But it’s not the right kind of prayer. It’s not the kind God hears. It’s not offered in total humility. It’s not done with sufficient fervency, intensity and frequency. And, most of all, it’s not done in the spirit of total repentance for the sin that abounds not just in the world but in the lives of all believers.

I include myself in this condemnation, so do not take it personally.

But I am making a pledge – a promise to myself and God – that that’s going to change, starting today.

This is a message that needs to be preached from every pulpit every week – leading right up to 9-11-13, the National Day of Prayer and Repentance.

Do you want to get closer to God? Do you want to strive for holiness? Do you want to be counted among the righteous? Do you want to save not only your own eternal soul but America, too?

That’s what is at stake.

It’s all we have. It’s the missing ingredient. It’s why our nation is falling into judgment.

There is no other way.

I’m not telling anyone to ignore the problems government is creating. But those are just symptoms of our own illness.

I’m not telling anyone to stop engagement in politics. But politics without this component will continue to fail us.

I’m not telling anyone not to do good deeds, to feed the hungry and shelter the homeless and comfort the widows and orphans. I’m just saying that it will never be enough unless believers clean up their own act and get right with God.

I’m not expecting 350 million Americans to follow this prescription. But I am counting on a remnant of believers to do so – and God promises that’s all it takes to save a nation.

Will you consider these words prayerfully, humbly, seriously and with a spirit of repentance of all your wickedness?

That’s what it will take. Nothing short of that will save America from destruction.

The hour is late.

Time is short.

I urge you to take this message seriously.

Pastors: I urge you in love to lead the way.

“I think the notion of a quote, cover-up, has all the elements of Pulitzer Prize fiction attached to it,” Pickering said on MSNBC.

He rebutted claims his review board tried to protect former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the way it conducted its investigation.

“I saw no evidence of it,” he said. “She did publicly take responsibility for what happened below her and indeed one of the things the Congress did in preparing the legislation that established the Accountability Review Board was to say we don’t want a situation where heads of agencies take responsibility and then nobody who made the decision in the chain has to suffer any consequences for failure for performance. I believe in fact the Accountability Review Board did its work well.”

But wait just a minute.

Only a few days later, on Sunday, on “Meet the Press,” even Pickering was scampering for the tall grass, saying his review only looked at what led up to the Benghazi attack with an eye toward security concerns. He said the review board did not examine the spin that followed the attack. In other words, all the changing talking points, after the fact, were not part of his review.

So how could he have said a few days ago there was no cover-up, which, by definition, is what occurs after an attack, if his investigation didn’t look at that?

What’s particularly distressing about Pickering’s role in the Benghazi scandal is his own personal history.

Lt. Col. Oliver North recalls a time when he served as with the National Security Council in the Reagan administration that Pickering was in a pickle very similar to Ambassador Christopher Stevens. Pickering was the target of assassination threats while serving as ambassador to El Salvador. He was, in all likelihood, saved from such an attack because of decisive action taken on his behalf.

It’s tragic that someone who lived through that experience would have such a cavalier attitude today about a fellow ambassador who was abandoned by another administration.

Pickering went on from that experience to become ambassador to Israel, where he became one of the first U.S. diplomats to distance U.S. support for Israel’s national security. It’s hardly surprising that he would find himself defending the indefensible in Benghazi.

In any case, Pickering has discredited his earlier remarks claiming there was no evidence of a cover-up in the Benghazi scandal.

By admitting his investigation was not even authorized to look into the matter, his earlier statements should be regarded as no more than an opinion – of no more value that anyone else’s opinion. He is no more qualified to determine whether a cover-up took place in the burgeoning Benghazi scandal than any other casual observer.

I doubt he is the first or last member of the Obama administration who recognize this scandal is unraveling fast. No one will want to be part of the mess. The rats are beginning to abandon the ship, just as they abandoned Ambassador Chris Stevens and other Americans who died while Hillary Clinton and other members of the administration watched – and while Obama slept.

What a difference a week makes!

Even members of the press, who showed so little concern about Benghazi before the election, are beginning to cover their rear ends in what promises to become of the most embarrassing and tragic national security scandals in American history.

What can you say about an administration that lies systematically about events leading up to the torture-murder of one of its ambassadors, U.S. military personnel and other U.S. citizens in Benghazi?

What can you say about an administration that uses drones to spy on its own citizens and to kill them overseas without due process?

What can you say about an administration that monitors the phone records of the largest news-gathering organization in the world – and one of the friendliest to that administration?

The only fair assessment is that it is a rogue administration – one that represents a frightening departure from any previous historical precedent in its authoritarian nature, one out of touch with the rule of law, one that is revealing itself to be prone to tyrannical policies and one that has committed so many impeachable offenses it’s becoming difficult to count them all.

Almost on a daily basis now the police-state tactics of the Obama White House are on display. They no longer need to be ferreted out by a handful of independent journalists and the citizen blogosphere. Even the Big Media that have coddled Barack Obama and shielded him from scrutiny for nearly five years are shocked by what they see.

The latest abuse was revealed by the Associated Press – which was also the victim.

The lead says it all: “WASHINGTON (AP) – The Justice Department secretly obtained two months of telephone records of reporters and editors for The Associated Press in what the news cooperative’s top executive called a ‘massive and unprecedented intrusion’ into how news organizations gather the news.”

The shocking report goes on to explain both work and personal phone records were seized and scrutinized.

“In all, the government seized the records for more than 20 separate telephone lines assigned to AP and its journalists in April and May of 2012,” the report continued. “The exact number of journalists who used the phone lines during that period is unknown, but more than 100 journalists work in the offices where phone records were targeted, on a wide array of stories about government and other matters.”

AP is, of course, outraged – and today sent a letter of protest to Attorney General Eric Holder, who, I predict, will not finish out his term in office.

“There can be no possible justification for such an overbroad collection of the telephone communications of the Associated Press and its reporters,” said the letter. “These records potentially reveal communications with confidential sources across all of the newsgathering activities undertaken by the AP during a two-month period, provide a road map to AP’s newsgathering operations and disclose information about AP’s activities and operations that the government has no conceivable right to know,” wrote AP President and Chief Executive Officer Gary Pruitt.

Obama rose to power suddenly and, with the help of friendly media like the AP, was unstoppable in his bid for a second term. But he may be the cause of his own political undoing. Nobody likes what they are seeing in Washington today – not the left nor the right nor the mushy middle, not the so-called “mainstream media” nor its burgeoning alternative, not conservative legal watchdogs nor the American Civil Liberties Union.

The Obama administration is running out of cheerleaders.

Heads are going to roll here soon. They must – if only to provide Obama himself the cover he needs to continue in office. Soon his friends in the Democrat-dominated Senate will be forced to abandon his indefensible policies as we get nearer to the 2014 election cycle.

This is big.

It’s a game-changer.

Obama is fighting off too many scandals – Benghazi-gate, IRS-gate and now Press-gate.

If this were almost any other president in American history, he would already be writing his resignation letter.

• Apology not accepted
• Which heads are going to roll?
• When do congressional hearings on this begin?
• When will Barack Obama be apologizing for the demonization of tea-party groups that led directly to this action?

As someone whose organization was a victim of this kind of illegal harassment and intimidation and political retribution during the Clinton administration – and who blew the whistle on it – my question is, “Who is going to be fired and prosecuted as a result of this admission?” Apologies are nice. But they don’t excuse people of crimes. When government officials abuse their power and break laws, they need to be punished as certainly and severely as ordinary citizens. In fact, to maintain trust in government, we need to ensure they are held to a higher standard. So what happens now? Who’s going to take the rap? Which law-enforcement agency is going to investigate? It would seem that an independent prosecutor is necessary unless the Congress is willing to take the lead.

If I rob a bank and apologize for it later, it doesn’t absolve me of guilt for the crime.

And make no mistake about it, what IRS administrator Lois Lerner admitted to in a conference of the American Bar Association Friday is a crime – a high crime.

Also, keep in mind, it has been more than a year since members of Congress raised concern over the issue of political audits by the IRS. So this is hardly a spontaneous act of contrition.

Take a look at the “red flags” IRS operatives looked for in targeting intrusive and thuggish audits and demands for more information about returns: Groups that used the words “tea party” or “patriot” in their organizational descriptives were targeted. Imagine what Samuel Adams would think about this.

For years, Barack Obama’s defenders have been telling the American people that his patriotism should never be questioned. Yet, what we have in this admission by the IRS suggests those working for him think “patriot” is a dirty word.

Worse yet, these groups were asked for their lists of donors – trampling on the privacy rights of individuals without their knowledge.

For those not old enough to remember, the articles of impeachment drawn up against Richard Nixon in the 1970s included the allegation that he attempted to abuse the IRS as a political attack dog. History has revealed Nixon didn’t actually do it, he just talked about it, proposed it and was shot down by his Treasury secretary for evening thinking about it.

Yet, the two most recent Democrat administrations have actually permitted this offense deemed by Democrats and Republicans in the 1970s as impeachable.

Bill Clinton not only allowed it, he directed it, as I discovered as a target of his actions. My organization was one of dozens of groups Clinton determined to be adversaries – or, as Nixon would have called them, “enemies.” That’s right. Clinton had an “enemies list” and went after those on it with all the full weight and power of the federal government – the feared IRS.

This is a matter of public record, still ignored by the media for the most part, because years later, in response to the lawsuit filed by me, the Treasury Department released a letter from Bill Clinton himself directing the IRS to look into my organization, then known as the Western Journalism Center.

I was hardly alone. While there was no tea-party movement back in the 1990s, those targeted with audits represented a virtual “who’s who” among conservative organizations as well as individuals who had, in one way or another, crossed Clinton.

And here we are again nearly two decades later, with another Democrat administration doing it again.

Don’t believe for a moment the IRS doesn’t already have in place safeguards against this kind of abuse by low-level functionaries. It does. And that means what we heard about on Friday is just spin. It’s disinformation. It’s deflection from the truth.

Let me close with one last rhetorical question: If Democrats believed it was an impeachable offense for Nixon to fantasize about using the IRS to go after political enemies but never actually doing it, what do they think about a president who, at the very least, created the climate that permitted the IRS to actually do it?

Why did the Obama administration not respond in any way to the attacks on the Benghazi mission as they were unfolding?

Why was no rescue effort initiated?

Why were no contingencies in place to deal with such attacks?

Why did the Obama administration’s talking points on the Benghazi massacre change 12 times?

And why did former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in her sworn testimony to congressional investigators show such contempt for accountability, such indifference to human suffering and such arrogance of leadership by asking the reprehensible and insulting question “What difference does it make?”

It’s been eight months since those terror attacks in Benghazi – and the Obama administration is still stonewalling the truth.

But, as Rep. Trey Gowdy noted this week, “There’s no statute of limitations on the truth.”

Neither is there any statute of limitations on coldblooded murder.

Nor is there any statute of limitations on accessory to coldblooded murder.

Nor is there any statute of limitations to negligence that leads to coldblooded murder.

That’s why Benghazi matters.

That’s before we even get to the question of what the Obama administration has done or is doing to ensure there is not a repeat of Benghazi next Sept. 11 or even tomorrow.

There is no doubt among the sane, rational, objective, informed American public that a monumental and systematic cover-up of the Benghazi scandal has been conducted by the Obama administration.

That’s why this congressional investigation must continue and must be expanded. Perhaps an independent counsel needs to be appointed, because culpability now points directly to the top – not just to Hillary Clinton but to Barack Obama, who literally slept through the slaughter of a U.S. ambassador, other civilian personnel and U.S. military personnel.

Americans need to hear the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth about Benghazi. No more lies and half-truths can be acceptable. No more spin can be acceptable. No more stalling can be acceptable.

Americans don’t want to hear members of Congress tell them that people just die, that those involved understood the risks they were taking. That kind of suggestion is as insulting to our intelligence and demeaning to the memory of the victims of the terrorist attack as anything I’ve ever heard.

It’s obvious the Obama administration was thinking about one thing as the Benghazi attack took place and in its aftermath – the November election results.

To paraphrase a refrain familiar during the previous administration, when it was inappropriately used by those who supported Obama: “Obama lied, people died.”

In this case, it’s the absolute, unvarnished truth.

The American people need to turn up the pressure on their elected officials for closure on this scandal. Too often, in Washington, members of Congress get distracted by other matters. Too often, in Washington, members of Congress get cold feet and timid in pursuing the truth – even on the gravest matters of national security and matters of life and death. Too often, in Washington, elected officials put election cycles and personal political interests ahead of ensuring that government doesn’t make the same mistakes over and over again.

It’s time to demand the truth – and let the chips fall where they may.

What was the Obama administration up to in Benghazi?

What possessed the Obama administration to make such bad choices?

What secrets was the Obama administration keeping that cost the lives of those brave Americans?

It now appears that Benghazi was another “Fast and Furious” scandal on the international stage.

Somebody or somebodies – and not some sacrificial lamb – need to be held to account for the human carnage and the damage inflicted on America’s honor.

But I didn’t expect it to be quite so good.

What was stunning about the film for me was the strong Christian content and perspective it took. Christians were the good guys in “42″ – something we don’t see frequently in releases from Hollywood these days.

I came of age just shortly after the Jackie Robinson breakthrough, when black baseball players were no longer an anomaly. By the early 1960s, as a Yankee fan, it was already hard to imagine there had been a color barrier in Major League Baseball just a few years earlier.

It was even harder to imagine there were opposing players and managers who would goad Robinson with racial insults and epithets relentlessly – trying ever so hard to crack him.

When I was growing up as an avid baseball fan (and as a youngster who wanted more than anything to become a Major League baseball player), black and Hispanic players had broken through and earned spots on every roster. Today, they dominate baseball, not because of bone structure, as one racist in the movie suggests, but because of determination and practice and the willingness to strive for excellence.

How many men could have endured that kind of stress and derision with dignity and courage the way Jackie Robinson did? Branch Rickey clearly picked the right man for the right time.

I am old enough to remember my first trip to the deep South, from the New York area where I grew up, and seeing the segregated restroom signs that play a significant role in the movie. It was mind-blowing even then as Martin Luther King was so successfully pushing desegregation.

One of the most touching moments in “42″ comes when a little boy, attending a Brooklyn Dodgers game in Cincinnati, talks to his father about his hero, Pee Wee Reese, the shortstop for the Dodgers. Reese was a good old boy from Kentucky. But when the Dodgers took the field, the dad begins to heckle Jackie Robinson with racial slurs.

The little boy seems confused, because Robinson is a teammate of Reese’s. Finally, he begins to join in the taunts.

But Reese walked over to first base to put his arm around Robinson – bringing an end to the racist chorus. Just that quickly, the little boy’s conflict between idolizing his hero and his discomfort with indoctrinated hatred is resolved and dissipated.

Wow!

The Jackie Robinson story is a redemptive and compelling story with strong spiritual overtones. And the movie lives up to the inspiring history.

It’s an American story, too – about how we successfully overcame racism and bigotry through sacrifice and loving one’s enemy.

Can America learn from this example today?

Or will we learn all the wrong lessons from “42″?

Are we still able to make moral distinctions between bigotry against people because of the color of their skin and disapproval of people’s destructive and sinful behavior?

Will people watch “42″ and see whatever they want to see in the movie and the life of Jackie Robinson, or will they only be able to see what their pre-conceived notions about America allow them to see?

I don’t know the answers to these questions, but I would urge every American to see this movie and reflect deeply on how Jackie Robinson succeeded, not only personally, but in forever changing one of an American sports institution.

More than that, it’s a movie about overcoming the odds – the same way “Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story” gives us hope that the underprivileged can overachieve because of hard work, grit and determination.

After all, that’s what Democrats do.

They’ve been doing it since at least 1984 when U.N. Ambassador Jeanne Kirkpatrick pointed out that those she called “the San Francisco Democrats” (that’s where they held their convention that year) were always “blaming America first.”

They’ve been doing it ever since.

In fact, it started long before 1984.

It started precisely in 1972 when the Democratic Party took a wicked left turn after the nomination of its last real American, Vice President Hubert Humphrey, resulted in a defeat by Richard Nixon. It was all downhill from there.

The Democrats nominated that year Sen. George McGovern, pledging to pull out of Vietnam immediately and precipitously, which a later Democratic Congress ultimately did, resulting in the slaughter of millions.

In 1976, they gave us Jimmy Carter, who disguised his radicalism and vicious anti-Semitism, and won in the wake of Watergate and only token opposition from an embarrassingly weak appointed president named Gerald Ford.

But Ronald Reagan gave us hope by beating him soundly in 1980, and the nation experienced recovery during eight years of “Morning in America.”

In 1984, the Democrats nominated Walter Mondale – who lost in a landslide to Reagan.

In 1988, the Democrats nominated Michael Dukakis of Massachusetts – who lost to George H.W. Bush.

In 1992, the Democrats nominated Slick Willy Clinton, who, once again, disguised his radicalism and beat the inept Bush and the equally inept Bob Dole in 1996.

In 2000, the Democrats nominated Al Gore – the man who invented not only the Internet but global warming as an excuse to usher in a socialist economy in America and around the world. He actually won the popular vote, because he, too, was still in stealth mode. But he lost the Electoral College vote, still a source of great resentment among Democrats, who would like to move to direct election of the president despite what the Constitution requires.

In 2004, the Democrats nominated John Kerry, a man who truly hates America and has ever since he returned from his phony Purple Heart service in Vietnam.

In 2008, a lifelong Marxist named Barack Obama had the good fortune to run against Sen. John McCain and an economy wrecked by George W. Bush who actually admitted, just months before the election, that he was abandoning the free-enterprise system to save the free-enterprise system. Obama, too, disguised his vicious anti-Americanism with the help of an equally vicious anti-American and unprincipled media, and won.

Obama has been “blaming America first” ever since. It’s what he does. He’s never responsible for anything that goes wrong. He’s in his fifth year of blaming all of America’s ills on his predecessor – and getting away with it because of a compliant and virtually state-run media.

So there he was, again, last Friday doing what he does best – blaming America first on foreign soil.

He could see no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil about the country he was visiting.

Why should he?

If it weren’t for Mexico running off so many of its citizens to America, even Obama admitted he never would have become president in the first place. That’s right. He actually admitted it!

“Despite the deep bonds and values we share, attitudes – in both countries – are sometimes trapped in old stereotypes,” said Obama. “Some Americans only see the Mexico depicted in sensational headlines of violence and border crossings. Some Mexicans may think America disrespects Mexico, that we seek to impose ourselves on Mexican sovereignty, or, alternatively, wish to wall ourselves off. And in both countries, such distortions can breed myths and misunderstanding that only make it harder to make progress together.”

He went on to applaud Mexico for:

• “deepening your democracy”
• standing up against violence
• “a courageous press working to hold leaders accountable” (Obama is not so appreciative of the independent press in his own country that attempts to do this.)
• “a robust civil society”
• “political parties that compete vigorously, transfer power peacefully and forge the compromise on which progress depends”

In fact, aside from some truly courageous members of the press who often risk their lives to expose corruption in Mexico, none of these accolades are true. Mexico is about as dysfunctional as any Third World country, despite its immense oil reserves, a potentially fabulous tourist trade and abundant cheap labor.

“I see a Mexico that is creating new prosperity,” Obama said.

Perhaps by Obama’s standards of recovery: Mexico’s economic growth is at 1 percent – about the same as his own since taking office in 2009.

He then went on to apologize for America’s immigration system for not making it easier for more Mexicans to enter the U.S. and stay here forever.

And he even gave away the reason he and his fellow “blame America first” Democrats want to see more millions of Mexican peasants enter the country legally or illegally – and stay.

“Indeed, without the strong support of Hispanics, including so many Mexican-Americans, I would not be standing before you today as president of the United States,” Obama conceded.

One thing conspicuously missing from Obama’s speech was any mention or apology for his administration’s own contribution to Mexican drug violence – his “Fast and Furious” gun-running scandal that resulted not only in the murders of at least two U.S. law enforcement officers, but an untold number of Mexican and American citizens.

But what should we expect from another “blame America first” president?

After all, he was only trying to do an end-run on America’s constitutional guarantee of the right to bear arms by blaming America first for the out-of-control drug violence in Mexico.