Our Republic is under assault, and the world is becoming more dangerous by the day. It’s difficult to choose which issue to opine about.

Tens of thousands of children from Central America are flooding and overwhelming border agents in the southwest, and this human cargo is being transported and dumped around cities in Arizona and Texas. Nothing is being done to reinforce the border while federal agents babysit, and try to deal with a humanitarian crisis that is likely being orchestrated by the Obama administration (yes, I just said that).

The president certainly isn’t doing anything to stop it. Why not call up the National Guard? Why not start a “shovel-ready jobs” program, effective immediately, and send out-of-work Americans to the border to build a fence or security zone? The only reason you would not mobilize every single asset at your disposal to try to deal with this situation is if you want it to happen.

Newspapers in Central America feature ads telling parents that children will be enrolled in sports and learn English if they are sent to America illegally. On top of the dozens of things that are wrong with this picture, it opens the border to Hezbollah, al-Qaida and other terrorist groups to simply waltz into the U.S. and do what they please.

Because the president won’t enforce the law, parents from Central America are sending their children, unaccompanied, in droves via drug cartels into the U.S. Some are sold into the sex trade and violent gangs. Many are sick, and none of them are being tested for diseases. There is some effort underway to immunize the children, but how can 90,000 children be immunized at once?

Additionally, five top al-Qaida terrorists who were being held at Guantanemo Bay were released without the proper authority from Congress, because Obama said so. Now it turns out the American soldier they were exchanged for may have been a deserter and joined forces with those looking to destroy us. Not only that, but Obama just elevated the Taliban, a terrorist group, to the same level as a foreign independent country, since he negotiated with them. Obama has released these five dangerous enemies back out to the battlefield against our own troops, while we are still engaged in fighting them, and simultaneously eliminated the hazard pay to our soldiers stationed in the country where they were released. Stunning.

In 2009, the Obama administration shut down the Bucca prison camp in Iraq, and also released those prisoners. One of them was Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, known as ISIS. The FBI has a $10 million reward out for the man who is responsible for the surge of violence and chaos in Iraq, whom we previously had in custody.

Obama has hijacked a sixth of the economy and socialized health care, and violated his own law countless times with single-handed changes to the ACA. Our veterans have died under his Veterans Administration while they wait for care (the same system we are all under now).

Four Americans died in Benghazi under Obama’s “leadership,” and his whereabouts the night of that attack are still unknown. Retired Air Force Reserve Maj. Eric Stahl, one of the C17 pilots who flew into Tripoli to recover the bodies of Ambassador Chris Stevens and others, has said some of the 33 survivors from the bloodbath in Benghazi said they had “no idea what (the administration was) talking about” when it claimed the attack was a spontaneous demonstration in response to an anti-Muslim video.

Obama’s IRS selectively targeted his political enemies after the 2010 election when he lost the House of Representatives, and now the IRS is telling Congress they’ve “lost” two years’ worth of ex-IRS chief Lois Lerner’s e-mails. Seriously? As if the FBI and NSA couldn’t “find” those emails.

Obama has put the country $17 trillion in debt. His “Justice” Department prosecutes members of the media with whom they disagree. Our military forces are being reduced to pre-World War II levels. He has said he doesn’t need Congress, that he can simply do whatever he wants via executive order.

Because Americans haven’t learned anything about our history, our Constitution, or our laws in school for the past 50 years, very few citizens actually understand the bedrock principle of our Constitutional republic, which is the rule of law, and the egregious offenses the President is committing in violating it.

In “Faithless Execution: Building the Political Case for Obama’s Impeachment,” Andrew C. McCarthy, a former federal prosecutor, lays out the clear evidence that Obama has committed high crimes and misdemeanors: “The ‘fundamental transformation’ Obama promised involves concentrating power into his own hands by flouting law – statutes, judicial rulings, the Constitution itself – and essentially daring the other branches of government to stop him.”

McCarthy’s publisher, Encounter Books USA, aptly describes it this way:

“At the constitutional convention in 1787, the delegates concurred that the ‘high crimes and misdemeanors’ standard captured the many ‘great and dangerous offenses’ involving malfeasance, incompetence, and severe derelictions of duty that could undermine the constitutional order.

“As Alexander Hamilton put it, ‘High crimes and misdemeanors’ are of a purely political nature as they ‘relate to injuries done immediately to the society itself.’

“The Framers were very clear: betrayals of the constitutional order, dishonesty in the executive’s dealing with Congress, and concealment of dealings with foreign powers that could be injurious to the American people were among the most grievous, and impeachable, high crimes and misdemeanors.

“Above all, the Framers had in view the president’s oath of allegiance to our system of government, a system in which the president’s highest duty is faithful execution of the laws. The mere attempt to subvert the constitution would be a breach of trust that warranted impeachment and removal.

“A free country requires the rule of law. But the rule of law is a sham if lawlessness is rampant among those who govern. This was the deep political truth that the Framers of this country recognized in the providing for the impeachment of an errant executive. It is a truth that we ignore at our peril.”

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Julie McDonald-Smith lives in North Yarmouth. She is a registered nurse, former Capitol Hill staffer, and former chairwoman of the Cape Elizabeth Republican Committee. Her column appears every other week.

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