FAR WORSE THAN WATERGATE

More scandals swirl about Barack Hussein Obama than any president before him.  Each one seems worse than Watergate.  Taken together, they dwarf the scandal that caused Richard Nixon to resign the presidency.

*After receiving a $535 million guaranteed loan from the Obama administration, Solyndra, a manufacturer of solar panels, filed for bankruptcy this month.  In apparent violation of federal law, private investors were given priority over taxpayers for claims on Solyndra’s assets.

The White House overrode objections from analysts at the Office of Management and Budget, who said Solyndra’s business plan was unsound.

Solyndra is owned by Tulsa billionaire George Kaiser, a major fund-raiser for Mr. Obama.  He and Solyndra executives made 20 visits to the White House before the loan was made.

The FBI raided Solyndra’s San Francisco headquarters Sept. 8.  At a congressional hearing Friday, Solyndra executives said they wouldn’t answer questions and "take the 5^th" because they might incriminate themselves.

* The general commanding Air Force Space Command told the House Armed Services Committee the White House pressured him to make his testimony more favorable to a satellite communications company owned by an Obama donor.

The Pentagon fears LightSquared’s proposed wireless telephone network will interfere with the Global Positioning System, on which the military depends for navigation and targeting, General William Shelton said.

LightSquared owner Philip Falcone, his wife, and LightSquared CEO Sanjiv Ahuja donated more than $90,000 to Democrats before and after meetings with administration officials.

Mr. Obama owned stock in LightSquared when he was a senator.  He bought the stock on the very day the Federal Communications Commission issued a ruling favorable to LightSquared.

The Federal Aviation Administration also expressed "serious concerns" (commercial airliners use GPS too).  But the FCC, headed by Julius Genachowski, another major Obama donor, rushed through conditional approval to LightSquared in January to build near the GPS bandwith.  Mr. Genachowski has refused to let Congress examine the FCC’s records of its dealings with LightSquared.

After Gen. Shelton’s testimony was made public, the FCC said LightSquared may not go forward until further testing proves the GPS would not be harmed.

LightSquared could get people killed.  Gunwalker already has.

*The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives deliberately permitted more than 2,000 guns to "walk" across the border to Mexican drug cartels.  We learned this last December when two of them were found near the body of Border Patrol Officer Brian Terry.  Gunwalker guns have since been recovered at 11 other crime scenes in the U.S.

It was a rogue operation in Arizona "we knew nothing about," Justice Department officials said.  Since then, there’ve been reports ATF and ICE in Tampa allowed the vicious Salvadoran gang MS-13 to obtain weapons, and ATF and the FBI permitted criminals in Indiana to buy guns for gangs.

An internal memo which indicates "political appointees" were involved in Gunwalker is being withheld from Congress, Acting ATF Director Kenneth Melson told investigators in July.  The inspector general at Justice obstructed their inquiry, the lead congressional investigators said yesterday (9/21).

CBS News has obtained secretly recorded conversations which indicate the FBI concealed evidence of a third Gunwalker gun recovered at the Terry crime scene, Sharyl Attkisson reported Monday (9/19).

Gunwalker is a sting gone wrong, the administration claims. Since ATF had no authority to follow the guns across the border to make arrests — and made no effort to coordinate with Mexican police — this is unlikely.

Some think Gunwalker was a cynical attempt to promote gun control in the U.S. by fomenting violence in Mexico.  (Mr. Obama claimed, falsely, that 90 percent of guns found at Mexican crime scenes are from the U.S.  The actual figure is 18 percent, according to ATF.)

The government wanted to build up the Sinaloa cartel to keep its more powerful rival, Los Zetas, from seizing power in Mexico, others suspect.

Few in the news media are curious. Only Ms. Attkisson and Richard Serrano of the Los Angeles Times have reported much on the scandal.  White House reporters haven’t asked a question about Gunwalker since July 5.

Watergate was on the front page most days for more than a year.  Nobody died in Watergate.  Gunwalker guns have killed hundreds — including two U.S. law enforcement officers.  But to most journalists, a scandal isn’t scandalous unless a Republican is involved.

Jack Kelly is a former Marine and Green Beret and a former deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force in the Reagan administration. He is national security writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.