When one watches Rep. Bob Etheridge (D-NC) pushing a camera, grabbing a college student by the arm, collaring him around the neck, and finally hugging him to his body in order to threaten him for information about his identity, one thing becomes absolutely clear: this guy is a moron.

Well, something else also becomes clear: Etheridge is guilty of criminal assault under Washington D.C. law. DC Criminal Code §22-404(a)(1) dictates, “Whoever unlawfully assaults, or threatens another in a menacing manner, shall be fined not more than $1,000 or be imprisoned not more than 180 days, or both.” Generally, assault requires four elements: (1) ability to carry out a threat (i.e. Stephen Hawking threatening you with a personal kick to the jaw would probably not constitute assault); (2) an unlawful attempt (the perp actually has to try to do something); (3) to commit a violent injury; (4) upon someone else (you can’t assault yourself – duh).

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I host a radio show on WEUS 810 AM in Orlando, Fla., on Sundays 1-4 p.m. EST. On last week's show, I had firebrand Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) as a guest. "Is President Obama better or worse than Jimmy Carter?" I asked her. "Worse. Easily worse," she replied. She went on to say that without question, Obama was the worst president in U.S. history.

Is it true?

There are only two other true contenders for the title of "worst president in U.S. history": Jimmy Carter and James Buchanan. Warren G. Harding's tenure was corrupt but not disastrous, and Andrew Johnson's presidency failed because of his Southern roots and wrongful adherence to extreme states rights concepts in the aftermath of the Civil War, not because his administration effectuated any grave damage to the nation. Only Buchanan matches the record of incompetence, failure and wrongheadedness pursued by Obama.

Take Jimmy Carter, for example. He was responsible for the fall of the Shah in Iran and the subsequent rise of the Ayatollahs. He emboldened the Soviets to invade Afghanistan. He oversaw the Three Mile Island incident and presided over a high unemployment rate of 7.1 percent and staggering inflation and interest rates, both of which topped 18 percent by early 1980. His presidency saw gas rationing and shortages, the surrender of the Panama Canal and the boycott of the 1980 Olympics. Pretty bad by any measure.

During his entire first term, Carter's record doesn't touch the Obama administration's record in its first year and a half. Obama has already tacitly OK'd the Iranian nuclear program and derided Israel's nuclear program. He has allowed Iranian protestors to be slaughtered in the streets without so much as a peep for days on end. Obama has allowed the Russians to sponsor an uprising in Kyrgyzstan that resulted in the removal of a U.S. airbase. He has lent legitimacy to an Islamist Turkish government and sold American debt to a communist Chinese government that supports North Korea. He has presided over the largest oil spill in world history in the Gulf of Mexico and spent his efforts blaming everyone but himself.

He's poised to raise our taxes at the end of the year. He's pushing for comprehensive "immigration reform" that will really act as an amnesty for illegal immigrants. He has denigrated Arizona before Mexico, bowed before the king of Saudi Arabia and the Chinese president and the Japanese emperor, hugged a Venezuelan quasi-dictator, and undermined a constitutional uprising in Honduras. He has pushed carbon taxes and gas taxes and estate taxes. He has propped up unfit mortgage borrowers and penalized those who pay their mortgage on time. He has bailed out his buddies in the banking industry and nationalized the auto and health industries for the benefit of his union friends.

He has insulted the Cambridge police and defended Muslim terrorists like Maj. Nidal Hassan. He has utilized advisers who are Marxists (former Green Jobs Czar Van Jones), anti-Semites (foreign policy adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, special adviser Samantha Power, National Security Adviser Adm. James Jones), racists (Attorney General Eric Holder), sycophantic pro-Islamists (Deputy National Security Adviser for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism John Brennan), kooks (Director of White House Office of Science and Technology John Holdren), perverts (Safe Schools Czar Kevin Jennings), and paid thugs (Rahm Emanuel).

When Obama took office, the national debt was just under $10 trillion. Now it is $12 trillion, and by 2015, it will be at least $19.6 trillion. Unemployment under Obama increased to 9.7 percent, up from 7.6 percent when Bush left office. The inflation rate has yet to explode, but most economists believe it will have to unless Obama drastically raises taxes, destroying the economy even further.

Carter can't touch this guy.

As for Buchanan, the man was a symptom of his times -- an active supporter of admitting Kansas to the Union as a slave state and of Chief Justice Roger Taney's execrable opinion in Dred Scott. He was also responsible for a near-war in Utah against the Mormons, inflation of the currency, and the abominable state of the Union's military position at the beginning of the Civil War.

It would be difficult for Obama to top this record of pure disgrace -- after all, he doesn't have to face down the internal specter of a looming war over a major moral issue like slavery, so his tenure can't be as cataclysmically destructive. But like Buchanan, he'll try to subvert American principles all the same.

In short, Obama may not be the worst president in American history. But he's easily the worst American president in modern history -- and we'll have to reassess the case in two and a half years, because there's no sign Obama will change his ways. There is good news, though. All of America's worst presidents served one term, and American recovered. That's because if any of them had served a second, America could have been utterly decimated. Americans had better wake up and place Obama in his proper context by 2012, or it may be too late for recovery.

At every point in some boy's life, he has to face down a bully and fight him. It's a rite of passage, a transitional moment in which every young man must establish who he is and how far he'll let his enemies go. For me, that moment came when I was 10 years old. One of the kids at school -- he seemed 8 feet tall at the time -- was smacking me with a ruler across the shoulders during P.E. class. Eventually, I'd had enough; I grabbed him around the neck and punched him on the top of the head. His nose started bleeding, to my surprise (I'm not exactly Joe Frazier). Naturally, the principal blamed me ("do you know how much money his father makes?" she asked my dad), but the bully never bothered me again.

The same holds true of presidents. Every president has to draw a line in the sand. Every president has to determine just how far he's willing to be pushed around. Every president has to decide who his enemies are, and then face them down.

President Obama has decided that his real enemies aren't Iranian genocidal dictators, anti-Semitic reporters or Muslim terrorists. His real enemies are conservatives and corporations.

How can we tell? From his rhetoric. Obama doesn't punch anyone in the face directly (not that his fists would do much damage, judging from the way he throws a baseball). But he does lash out at his enemies with his most valuable tool: his silver tongue. When Obama talks about his enemies, his honeyed mouth becomes a blunt instrument rather than a scalpel. The supposed master of the nuances of the English language is apparently rendered stupefyingly inarticulate when faced with those he dislikes; he's suddenly a WWE wrestler pumped up on testosterone, the mic boosted to deafening levels. He calls people out. He uses colorful and confrontational language. He threatens physical force.

When faced with the prospect of Americans who don't like his policies, Obama tells his followers to "argue with them and get in their face." When confronted with his administration's inability to handle the Gulf oil spill, Obama sends out his lackeys to threaten BP in purple terminology; " [we'll] keep our boot on [BP's] neck," they say. This week, Obama doubled down, stating that he had traveled to the Gulf region "so I know whose ass to kick."

Meanwhile, Obama's confrontational tone becomes downright dainty when faced with actual terrorists, murderers and anti-Semites. All of a sudden, the Chicago thug disappears, replaced by the man of considered diplomacy. After waiting for crucial days to comment on the burgeoning Iranian resistance in June 2009, Obama finally spoke ... with all the force of a small mewling kitten. "I would suggest that Mr. Ahmadinejad think carefully about the obligations he owes to his own people," Obama hesitantly intoned. When Obama was faced with the murderous hatred of Muslims like the Ft. Hood shooter, he urged Americans not to "jump to conclusions."

When Jew-hater Helen Thomas suggested that Jews in Israel return to the lands of the Holocaust, Germany and Poland, Obama said that her remarks were "out of line, " but said it was a "shame, because Helen's someone who ... was a real institution." (So was Father Coughlin, for the record.)

It would be one thing if Obama spoke softly and carried a large stick. But he speaks in velvet whispers and carries a corsage for the enemies of Western Civilization. John Brennan, Obama's pro-jihad alleged counterterrorism adviser, explains Obama's delicacy when it comes to those who truly threaten us: "We're trying to be very careful and precise in our use of language because I think the language we use and the images we project really do have resonance."

That isn't true, though, with regard to those who criticize President Obama in the natural course of legitimate political debate, nor is it true of private companies he can attack for his own political benefit. He'll slap them, punch them, scratch them, kick them with all the blustery force he can muster. After all, they're his chosen enemies.

You can tell a lot about a man by the enemies he makes. And you can tell who Obama's enemies are by the anger he displays when confronted with them; Obama's misplaced rage tells us more about where he stands than his teleprompter-ed utterances ever will. The problem for President Obama is that the enemies he identifies seem a good deal less dangerous than the friends he seeks.

Cross-posted at Newsrealblog.

For those of you who haven’t heard of Eric Alterman of The Nation magazine (and unless you’re a shut-in with a crush on Michael Moore and a strange love of unicorns and lotion, why should you have?), he is a far-left columnist who makes it his mission to say silly things.  That is not unexpected, since he is also a professor of English at City University of New York.  A liberal professor who speaks out about issues outside his area of expertise and makes a fool of himself in the process?  Who woulda thunk?

For example, he penned an entire ridiculous book entitled What Liberal Media?, which argued that the media was actually conservative.  In order to reach this counterintuitive conclusion, Alterman essentially labeled everyone to his right “right-wing”, which would make Bill Clinton, John Kerry, and everyone not openly associated with the Marxist left a right-winger in his book.  For a solid review of that tome of stupidity, read here.

Today, Alterman’s job is to say silly things about Israel.  Well, technically, that’s been his job most of the last week.  Falling into the trap that states that because he has a Jewish last name, he is especially qualified to speak about the Jewish state (to find an equally dubious proposition, one would have to posit that because Madonna was born a Catholic woman, she is especially qualified to speak about abstinence in the priesthood), Alterman penned a bizarre piece this week for The Nation in which he contended that certain academics “manage to oppose Israel’s religiously defined state apparatus and yet remain supportive of the rights and aspirations of Jewish Israelis.”  Which is akin to saying that you can oppose the Declaration of Independence and Constitution and remain pro-America.

That piece was dumb enough.  But Alterman (who, like most professors of English, seems to read foreign policy like poetry rather than with the hard-headed realism it requires) has taken it upon himself this week to attack your humble author personally.

To read more, click here.