In breaking news, President Obama did not play 18 holes...

Heritage idiots:

Government Shutdown: Memorials Closed, Golf Course…Open?

Many government employees are on furlough. Veterans have been barred from their memorials. Yet despite the temporary slowdown in government, there’s one thing still open: Obama’s golf course.

Last week, the President paid a visit to one of his favorite courses at Andrews Air Force Base. Obama deemed that all military installations remain operational during the shutdown, and therefore, the golf course, too.

From American Stinker, uncredited, August 26, with an article by Thomas Lifson, the magazine's publisher. 

Actually, not one veteran was ultimately barred from the World War II Memorial, and it is now open for "First Amendment Activities". I never thought I'd be citing the Daily Caller for facts, but [jump]

“It’s not necessarily their fault, but they had no idea what to do,” Sekulow said of the Park Service Rangers in his visits to the memorial prior to Wednesday. “They were haphazardly opening the gates when congressmen were showing up, but they weren’t letting [individuals] in. So if you were not in a group, you had no First Amendment rights.”

It was never anything to do with the president; just some honest flunkies terrified one of those old coots would have a stroke or break a hip on the premises or maybe whip out a gun, and they'd get in trouble for allowing it when the site was officially closed. Don't you realize practically everyone in DC is an attorney?

And the golf course? Get a grip, Mr. Heritage. The Golf Courses at Andrew Air Force Base are private courses. The government cannot take away their funding because they do not take a dime of federal funding. They don't need it.

It wouldn't even be legal to shut down the Courses at Andrews. It's fine to shut down the PX stores on the base because only poor people—airmen—need that. The PX is socialism, government-subsidized to keep prices down for the people who shop there. The golf courses are for generals and their defense contractor friends (and future employers). You wouldn't want something that important run by the government, would you?

Why does the White House not explain this? It may be that that Overton Window has traveled so far to the right that the president and his minions themselves believe that the Heritage Foundation is probably telling the truth about this; or that he just thinks taking the bait will keep this stupid story in the news, although of course it's hardly in the news anyway, just in the noise machine. I can't find any references to the president playing golf since September 30, just before the shutdown began, in spite of old Georgie Bush advising him to go ahead and allow himself a few holes—no point in letting yourself get all tensed up—

Gave up golf in support of the troops in 2003 but didn't tell anybody about it until 2008 (most likely because the real reason he gave it up was bum knees—lying again, in that endearing Georgie Bush way)

but Obama has apparently stayed off the course ever since. Not that he gets any credit for it; nobody's going to report "The president failed to golf today" unless the White House sends out the release to tell them about it, which they won't, of course, since that would just give the accusations more legs. But at least he avoids those optics.

The thing that disturbs me is that your Axis of Neutral Powers—your journalistic Villagers like Cokie and Wolf and Mara and Anderson and the whole of the Washington Post—believes that the Andrews course is being kept open at the whim of the President, and that the reason they don't report it is that it would be indecorous; they never thought to ask anybody if it was true or not. If you want to know what really ails our democracy, that's about it.

Oh, and here's Thomas Lifson, in an image (possibly a little photoshopped) from Sadly, No. Couldn't find any golfing poses or other ways of highlighting his butt.