Since the Justice Department sued Arizona over SB-1070, its harsh new anti-immigration law, Republicans have been blasting the Obama administration, saying officials are showing “contempt for the majority of the American people who support Arizona’s efforts.” Sens. Jim DeMint (R-SC) and David Vitter (R-LA) have even introduced an amendment that would prohibit the federal government from “participating in lawsuits seeking to invalidate the recently enacted Arizona immigration law.”

On Wednesday, Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) was on Lou Dobbs’ radio show and went a step further. He agreed with Dobbs’ statement that President Obama is “awfully close” to violating his “oath to protect the Constitution of the United States” by not completely securing the border:

DOBBS: The fact that we’ve witnessed both the Bush administration and now the Obama administration…refuse to secure the borders, refuse to enforce immigration law — at what point does this rise to the level of a breach of oath to protect the Constitution of the United States?

SMITH: I think we’re on the verge of being there right now. … Whatever law they’re not enforcing, I think it comes awfully close to a violation of their oath of office.

Listen here:

Neither Dobbs nor Smith mention the word impeachment, but in the past, a violation of the oath of office has been cited as grounds for such a procedure. During President Bill Clinton’s impeachment trial in 1999, Rep. Henry Hyde (R-IL) said:

The debate about impeachment during the Constitutional Convention of 1787 makes it clear that the Framers of the Constitution regarded impeachment and removal from office on conviction as a remedy for a fundamental betrayal of trust by the President. The Framers had invested the presidential office with great powers. They knew that those powers could be — and would be — abused if any President were to violate, in a fundamental way, the oath he had sworn to faithfully execute the nation’s laws.

For if the President did so violate his oath of office, the covenant of trust between himself and the American people would be broken.

Is Smith really therefore interested in impeaching Obama over the immigration issue?

The Tea Party movement gets plenty of attention for its national protests, but the groups are becoming increasingly active at the local level as well. In Currituck County, North Carolina, the local Tea Party Patriots group, led by a man named Charles Carter, is taking aim at county plans to build a local community center in cooperation with the YMCA. The Daily Advance in Elizabeth City, NC reports:

Charles Carter, founder of the Tea Party Patriots, says the agreement between the county and the YMCA is “one sided” and questions the county’s openness in providing information about how the deal was arranged in the first place. “I think it’s an open window to their position on fiscal responsibility,” said Carter. [...]

Carter said he is dissatisfied with the county’s response to his protests so far. … Carter charges that the county has agreed to pay $15 million up-front for the new recreational building, but the YMCA has done little to contribute to the investment.

Like so many of the Tea Party talking points at the national level, these charges are based on misinformation. Carter has charged that the Currituck-YMCA deal was not publicly discussed until after a decision had been made. However, there is video evidence of County Attorney Ike McRee “going over items of the lease agreement at a commissioners’ meeting” as far back as November 2009. Additionally, this deal is far from the “sweetheart deal” and big government spending that Carter alleges:

County plans for building a recreational center abruptly halted in 2008 after the county learned it would cost $28 million. At the time, the county had saved only $11 million and could not afford to move forward, explained Scanlon.

New hope for the center re-emerged after the YMCA offered to build basically the same facility for $15 million. The YMCA can build it for less because it uses the same contractors each time it builds a new facility, a YMCA representative said at the meeting.

Operational costs would also be less, said Scanlon. The YMCA can operate the center for less because it uses the same data base for all its facilities in Hampton Roads.

The editorial staff of the Daily Advance also took Carter to task for dishonestly opposing the deal, stating that the new project is actually a great example of citizen involvement:

Currituck County residents — not their government — have been asking for a wider range of recreational opportunities for more than a decade. Both longtime and new residents have sought the addition of ballfields, parks and other facilities to provide outlets and alternatives for youth and adults in the growing county.

Government in Currituck has responded by looking for opportunities and by appointing citizens to serve on recreation boards to identify recreational needs and help in the planning of facilities. To suggest that citizens have not been involved in the process is not only misleading and unfair to Currituck officials but also to those citizens who have been involved.

The editorial goes on to mock Carter’s attempts to portray the YMCA as evil, stating that the group “is a partner — and a good one — in a worthwhile project, not some middle-man brokering a sleazy side hustle.”

Tea Party and FreedomWorks chapters in Georgia recently also took up an important cause: opposing mandatory trash collection.

While the tea party movement is desperately trying to fight off charges of “racist elements” from the NAACP, Ryan J. Murdough, a Republican candidate for New Hampshire State House, has no qualms about expressing his views on race. “It is time for white people in New Hampshire and across the country to take a stand,” Murdough wrote in a letter to the Concord Monitor titled “We must preserve our racial identity”:

For far too long white Americans have been told that diversity is something beneficial to their existence. Statistics prove that the opposite is true. New Hampshire residents must seek to preserve their racial identity if we want future generations to have to possibility to live in such a great state. Affirmative action, illegal and legal non-white immigration, anti-white public school systems, and an anti-white media have done much damage to the United States of America and especially New Hampshire. It is time for white people in New Hampshire and across the country to take a stand. We are only 8 percent of the world’s population and we need our own homeland, just like any other non-white group of people deserve their own homeland.

Murdough is running as a Republican because it’s easier to get on the ballot, but the party immediately “disowned him as a candidate on their ticket,” calling him a “despicable racist” and a “fraud.” But Murdough has no love lost for the GOP, complaining, “they’ve sold white people out.”

It’s unclear whether Murdough is a tea partier, but in the comments section of the Monitor’s website, where Murdough is very active, he wrote, “I think the Tea Party movement is doing great things.” His rhetoric in the comments often reflects that of the movement, and he repeatedly advises the the tea party to “embrace the fact [that] there is a racial aspect to the movement.” “White people need to stop wasting time arguing about how they are not racist,” he said in one comment, adding in another:

The Tea Party at its core is all about race but most of the Tea Partiers do not even realize it. They downplay the race issue every chance they get because they are afraid of being perceived as racist.

He also called on them to stop the “jewish appeasing.” “If the Republicans continue to put out weak, israel first, zionist, anti white, neo cons, the tea party will be for nothing,” Murdough warned.

In an interview, Murdough denied that he is a racist, explaining, “I can’t really be a racist, because I don’t hate them. I just don’t want to live around areas that are heavily, predominantly non-white.” Still, Murdough believes Martin Luther King was a prostitute-chasing Communist who was just “out for the black man,” and that Abraham Lincoln was one of history’s worst presidents because “[h]e waged war against the South.” He’s also worried about white “genocide,” noting, “Nobody is flooding Africa with non-Africans.” But Murdough is an equal opportunity bigot, saying, “no group of people has exploited their victimhood as much as Jews have.” “Technically, they’re a different race than white people.” He’s also homophobic, writing that gay parenting is “child abuse” and that “Homosexuals want to get married because they hate Christ.” Murdough acknowledges his stance on race and “Jewish issues” is controversial, but claimed he has DNA evidence to support him.

Murdough is the state chairman of American Third Position (A3P), “a fledgling political party…with the aim of uniting disaffected racists,” the Southern Poverty Law Center reports. Last week, the group proudly announced its “triple-digit donation” (i.e. less than $1,000) to a fund established by Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer (R) to defend her state’s draconian new immigration law. (HT: Political Correction)