Fox’s Judge Andrew Napolitano upped the ante on his impeachment talk this morning during today’s visit to Fox & Friends. Last week, he accused “President Panic” of commiting “almost an impeachable offense” for (in Napolitano’s view) deliberately sabotaging the budget in order to score sequester political points. Today, in a Fox News twofer, Napolitano dropped the “almost” and went full out for impeachment – this time, adding one of Fox’s scare-quester tactics: the supervised release of some ICE detainees.
In case you missed it, Fox has been fear mongering that ICE’s supervised release of undocumented immigrants means that a vicious killer is on his or her way to your neighborhood.
Even though the New York Times reports they are “noncriminals and other low-risk offenders who do not have serious criminal histories.” The Times also noted, “Under supervised release, defendants in immigration cases have to adhere to a strict reporting schedule that might include attending appointments at a regional immigration office as well as wearing electronic monitoring bracelets, officials said.” Furthermore, as Media Matters pointed out, “(T)here is nothing unusual or illegal about supervised releases. This policy has been a regular part of Department of Homeland Security enforcement procedures since at least 2002.”
None of that information was brought up in this discussion. Instead, Steve Doocy actually prodded Napolitano into talking impeachment:
NAPOLITANO: This is really a new low for the government. …(Obama’s) micromanaging the government in a way consistent with his message of pain, not consistent with his Constitutional obligation to enforce the laws whether he agrees with them or not.
DOOCY: Ask a question: Is what he’s doing Constitutional?
NAPOLITANO: It’s within his power to do it. But it is so offensive, it’s impeachable.
DOOCY (feigning surprise): Oh-Kay. Judge Andrew Napolitano. There’s the impeachment word.
Napolitano is not the first person on Fox to talk impeachment. Sean Hannity has been salivating at the thought for years. Even Neil Cavuto has brought it up, and there's every reason to believe it will continue through Obama’s second term.
At the end of the segment with Napolitano, Doocy teased an upcoming guest: a woman whose “brother was killed by an illegal alien… and she’s not buying the sequester excuse, either.” The message was clear: Your brother could be next.
So while Fox is shrieking about the Obama administration deliberately causing pain, it’s “willfully” doing the same thing to its viewers for political gain. If only THAT were an impeachable offense!
