As reported in the last issue of Illinois Conservative Examiner, the Democratic National Committee formally asked the Pentagon for correspondence between military agencies and nine potential Republican presidential candidates, a clear indication that Democrats were building opposition-research files on specific 2012 contenders even before the midterm elections. The digging for dirt has not stopped.
The Obama Administration may be unwilling to investigate the New Black Panthers, but it is apparently intent on adding to the list of potential 2012 Obama opponents – the newest target of interest is New Jersey’s upstart Republican governor Chris Christie.
This month, the Justice Department’s inspector general released a report that allegedly showed that Christie, who has built up a reputation as a spending-slashing fiscal conservative by taking on New Jersey’s bloated 
public sector, routinely overcharged the government for hotel stays while in his former job as a U.S. Attorney. Christie exceeded the government’s set rate for travel expenses on 14 of 15 trips, according to the report, on nine of those trips, his “lodging costs exceeded the government rate by more than $100 per night.” These costs, which went over the government rate by between $19 and $242 a night, ultimately totaled $2,176.
The charges are not new. They initially surfaced during Christie’s election fight last fall against Democratic incumbent Jon Corzine, who seized on news reports about Christie’s hotel expenses suggest that he was out of touch with average Americans. New Jersey’s voters registered their opinion clearly, when they voted Christie into office – there is nothing revelatory in the Justice Department’s audit.
Why then is the Justice Department suddenly so concerned with the dated travel expenses of New Jersey’s governor? It can hardly reflect a broader instinct for austerity on the part of the Obama administration. This president has presided over a massive spending spree in his first two years in office, spiking the national debt by more than $3 trillion. What’s $2,000 in travel costs, assuming they really are unjustified, next to the government’s two-year spending binge?
During the Obama’s Administration’s watch, the priorities of the Justice Department seem to be dictated more by politics than merit. Thus, in 2009 the department quietly dropped a clear-cut case of voter intimidation by the New Black Panther Party. Yet the department is bent on pursuing a long-settled and far more trivial matter, against a popular Republican governor.
The health and wealth of the nation is not a priority of the Democratic Party and Barack Obama. Staying in power is.
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