John Boehner

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News/Politics 3-10-15

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. It’s time to drag her in and get some answers.

From FoxNews  “In the depths of the hacker and IT-blogger community, a skirmish has broken out over the nature of Hillary Clinton’s email server — a debate that could have profound implications for national security during Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state, and for investigators hoping to mine her emails for evidentiary purposes.

The questions center on where, exactly, Hillary Clinton’s email server is, or was, physically located; which private-sector firms may have been hosting it; and how secure Clinton’s emails were at any given point. 

Why does the physical location matter? Because if the server was not in Clinton’s home, and was maintained at some other site, then the secretary of state and the Diplomatic Security corps that guarded her were not in physical control of her server. This would have raised the possibility for compromise of Clinton’s account, either from an inside job, carried out by the very firm retained to host the server, or from external actors that could range from the Kremlin to China to independent hackers.”

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2. The dispute intensifies…

From MSN/WaPo  “An already heated battle between the White House and Republicans over negotiations to curtail Iran’s nuclear program grew more tense Monday when 47 Republican senators sent a letter to Iran designed to kill any potential deal.

The White House responded by accusing the Republicans of conspiring with Iranian hardliners, who oppose the delicate negotiations, and suggested that their goal was to push the U.S. into a military conflict.

“It’s surprising to me that there are some Republican senators who are seeking to establish a back channel with the hard-liners in Iran to undermine an agreement between Iran and the broader international community,” said White House spokesman Josh Earnest on Monday.

He characterized the Republican effort as a “rush to war or at least a rush to the military option that …is not at all in the best interest of the United States.”

The letter’s main author Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) described the one-page letter as a remedial civics lesson to help Iran’s mullahs better understand the limits of presidential power.”

Says the guy who wants to give those same hardliners a nuclear weapon…

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3. Jihad, American style.

From TheTelegraph  “Egyptis facing a new campaign of violence, this time a series of attacks targeting western companies like KFC and Vodafone.

A series of bombings has killed at least three people and injured scores more in Cairo and Alexandria in recent weeks, separate from the intense jihadist violence being inflicted by Isil-backed terrorists against the police and military.

It seems in part inspired by an American Muslim convert with an anti-capitalist agenda, who posts texts online urging Egyptians to throw off a “neo-liberal” order in favour of Islam.

Shahid King Bolsen – born Shannon Morris – served time in Dubai for killing a German businessman, and hiding his body in a suit-case. Now he inspires young radicalised Egyptians with online calls for action – though he told The Telegraph he does not approve of violence.”

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4. Hold his feet to the fire.

From WND  “Pro-life activist Jill Stanek is joining with the Christian Defense Coalition later this month to stage a sit-in on Capitol Hill over lack of action on a late-term abortion ban that was supposed to be passed in January.

The sit-in is scheduled for 11.a.m. EST on March 25 outside the office of House Speaker John Boehner.

At issue is the GOP leadership’s handling of the “Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act,” which bans abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy but includes exceptions for victims of rape and incest.”

“The bill was supposed to be voted on Jan. 22 in conjunction with the anniversary of the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision to legalize abortion and while Washington was filled with pro-life activists for the annual March for Life. Stanek said the concept is very simple.

“It is a ban on abortion past 20 weeks,” she explained. “It is known that by 20 weeks, and probably before, children feel pain. When they are aborted at 20 weeks, they are literally drawn and quartered. They’re just ripped apart, limb by limb. So this ban would make it a federal offense [and] ban abortions past 20 weeks.” But the bill, which sailed through the House with a smaller Republican majority in the previous Congress, never received a vote.”

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5. Oh boy…. 🙄

From CNSNews  “Many people are living longer, but not to age 112 or beyond — except in the records of the Social Security Administration.

The SSA’s inspector general has identified 6.5 million number-holders age 112 — or older — for whom no death date has been entered in the main electronic file, called Numident.

The audit, dated March 4, 2015, concluded that SSA lacks the controls necessary to annote death information on the records of number-holders who exceed “maximum reasonable life expectancies.”

“We obtained Numident data that identified approximately 6.5 million numberholders born before June 16, 1901 who did not have a date of death on their record,” the report states.

Some of the numbers assigned to long-dead people were used fraudulently to open bank accounts. And thousands of those numbers apparently were used by illegal immigrants to apply for work:”

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by

News/Politics 3-9-15

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. The White House is dragging out Obama’s favorite excuse.

Scandal? What scandal? Oh, you mean the one Obama read about in the news?

Yet another lie. They’ve known since August of last year at least.

From Politico  “The White House, State Department and Hillary Clinton’s personal office knew in August that House Republicans had received information showing that the former secretary of state conducted official government business through her private email account — and Clinton’s staff made the decision to keep quiet.”

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You mean these Clinton staffers?

From FoxNews  “Emails obtained through a federal lawsuit show that two top aides to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton were running interference internally during the 2012 Benghazi terror attack.

The aides were Philippe Reines, widely described as Clinton’s principal gate-keeper, and Cheryl Mills, who has been at Clinton’s side for decades.

The emails show that while receiving updates about the assault as it happened, Mills told then-State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland to stop answering reporter questions about the status of Ambassador Chris Stevens, who was missing and later found dead. 

Also littered throughout the State Department emails, obtained by conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch, are references to a so-called Benghazi Group. A diplomatic source told Fox News that was code inside the department for the so-called Cheryl Mills task force, whose job was damage control.”

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FOIA requests? Never heard of ’em….

From TheFreeBeacon  “The State Department may have ignored or rejected a request made in 2012 under the Freedom of Information Act by the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) seeking Hillary Clinton’s email addresses, according to a Daily Caller report on Thursday.

The New York Times reported on Monday that Clinton exclusively used a private email account and server for her email during her four years as secretary of state, skirting federal records laws, as well as State Department and Obama administration transparency guidelines, and raising suspicions that numerous public records requests for her emails were improperly blocked.

Anne Weismann, CREW’s general counsel, submitted a FOIA request to the State Department on Dec. 6, 2012, seeking “records sufficient to show the number of email accounts of or associated with Secretary Hilary Rodham Clinton, and the extent to which those email accounts are identifiable as those of or associated with Secretary Clinton.”

CREW’s request came on the heels of news that former EPA administrator Lisa Jackson had used an alias email account to conduct government business, and the organization was seeking to see if other senior officials used similar pseudonymous email accounts.”

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2. And Clinton and Jackson aren’t the only ones….

From TheDailySignal  “IRS manager Lois Lerner allegedly used an msn.com email account labeled ‘Lois Home’ for government-related communications. Lerner was a key player in what the IG found was the tax agency’s unfair targeting of conservative groups.

Former Obama EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson used private email accounts, as well as a secret EPA email address under the pseudonym “Richard Windsor,” to conduct official business. That included communicating with a climate lobbyist.”

“The EPA inspector general recently found the agency’s Chemical Safety Board Chairman Rafael Moure-Eraso and two top officials used personal email accounts to conduct official business. The IG said the officials did not preserve the emails, in violation of federal regulations.”

“Attorney General Eric Holder’s criminal division head, Lanny Breuer, was caught forwarding controversial Fast and Furious-related emails to his personal account.”

“Obama Labor Secretary Thomas Perez, Holder’s former assistant attorney general for civil rights, allegedly used his private email account to leak non-public information about official business.

As to whether Holder himself ever used personal email for government business, the Justice Department isn’t saying. A spokesman did not respond to requests for information about Holder’s email practices.”

This is common practice in the self-proclaimed “most transparent administration ever.”

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3. And since I brought up Holder….

From InvestorsBusinessDaily  “Unable to pin racism charges on Ferguson policeman Darren Wilson in the shooting death of Michael Brown, Attorney General Eric Holder is using half-baked data to manufacture a case of racism against his entire police force.

Holder’s race-baiting civil rights crew combed through several years of Ferguson Police Department data on traffic stops, searches and arrests and “found a pattern of racial disparities in Ferguson’s police activities.”

“African Americans are overrepresented in FPD’s vehicular stops” and victims of “racial bias,” Holder concludes in his report.

He notes that blacks accounted for 85% of vehicle stops, “despite comprising only 67% of Ferguson’s population,” while whites made up 15% of stops, despite representing 29% of the population.

So there you have it, a slam-dunk case of racism, right? Hardly.

Outrageously, the nation’s top prosecutor failed to control for factors that explain the racial “disparity” in traffic stops, such as speeding, DUI, expired license plates, headlight, seat-belt and child-restraint violations and other reasons for being pulled over.

Holder’s own department statistics show that African Americans, on average, violate speeding and other traffic laws at much greater rates than whites.”

You mean Holder’s race-baiting dishonestly and fudging the numbers? Say it ain’t so….. 🙄

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4. This is just one more reason Boehner has to go. Like I said, he’s a Democrat’s best friend.

From TheHill  “A number of right-wing Republicans, long wary of Boehner’s commitment to GOP efforts attacking President Obama’s policy priorities, have openly considered a coup in an attempt to transfer the gavel into more conservative hands.

But Democrats from across an ideological spectrum say they’d rather see Boehner remain atop the House than replace him with a more conservative Speaker who would almost certainly be less willing to reach across the aisle in search of compromise. Replacing him with a Tea Party Speaker, they say, would only bring the legislative process — already limping along — to a screeching halt.”

““I’d probably vote for Boehner [because] who the @#$% is going to replace him? [Ted] Yoho?” Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-N.J.) said Wednesday, referencing the Florida Tea Party Republican who’s fought Boehner on a host of bipartisan compromise bills. 

“In terms of the institution, I would rather have John Boehner as the Speaker than some of these characters who came here thinking that they’re going to change the world,” Pascrell added.”

Yeah, nobody wants to change the world. Just the horribly broken and corrupt Washington DC.

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by

News/Politics 3-4-15

What’s interesting in he news today?

Open Thread.

1. Hillary has some ‘splainin’ to do.

From TheWashingtonPost  “The New York Times reported Monday night that, during her tenure at the State Department, Hillary Clinton never used her official e-mail account to conduct communications, relying instead on a private e-mail account. As the Times notes, only official accounts are automatically retained under the Federal Records Act, meaning that none of Clinton’s e-mail communication was preserved.

In March 2013, an adviser to Clinton, Sidney Blumenthal, had his e-mail hacked by “Guccifer” — the Romanian hacker perhaps best known for revealing George W. Bush’s paintings to the world. At the time, Gawker reported that Blumenthal was communicating with an account that appeared to belong to Clinton at the “clintonemail.com” domain. The content of some of those e-mails was published by RT.com.

Examining the registry information for “clintonemail.com” reveals that the domain was first created on Jan. 13, 2009 — one week before President Obama was sworn into office, and the same day that Clinton’s confirmation hearings began before the Senate.”

This isn’t an occasional email sent on a private account, this is all of them. Same as the head of the EPA and others. There’s a pattern here of Obama admin officials trying to circumvent oversight.

Officials investigating Hillary over Benghazi say she has other personal accounts as well, and they want to see them too.

More here, from Politico

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2. And yes, it’s illegal.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=qTNYgBtQ6oo ______________________________________

3. Patreus has pled guilty to charges related to the sharing of sensitive info with his lover. This is the same charge Hillary should be looking at.

From TheNYTimes  “David H. Petraeus, the best-known military commander of his generation, has reached a plea deal with the Justice Department and admitted providing his highly classified journals to a mistress when he was the director of the C.I.A.

Mr. Petraeus has agreed to plead guilty to one count of unauthorized removal and retention of classified material, a misdemeanor. He is eligible for up to one year in prison, but prosecutors will recommend a sentence of probation for two years and a $40,000 fine.

The plea deal completes a spectacular fall for Mr. Petraeus, a retired four-star general who was once discussed as a possible candidate for vice president or even president. He led the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and was the architect of a counterinsurgency strategy that at one time seemed a model for future warfare.”

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4. As is typical of Republican leadership, they’re snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. If only they had the guts of Reid. Then they would have used his “nuclear option” and done this right. But since Boehner and the establishment crowd support Obama’s amnesty plan anyway, they think this provides them cover to punt it to the courts. That’s not leadership, it’s pathetic. Boehner has to go.

More on that here, from NationalReview 

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by

News/Politics 1-7-15

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. Boehner endures the biggest revolt in over 120 years.

From TheWashingtonPost  “Republicans took full control of Congress on Tuesday, but — even on a day of happy ceremony — GOP leaders were reminded of the limits of their power, first by a veto threat from the president and then by a historic rebellion by conservatives in the House.”

“When a clerk called the roll, 24 Republicans voted for a candidate other than the incumbent speaker, John A. Boehner (Ohio). The plotters couldn’t agree on their own candidate: They voted for one another, and for two sitting senators.

In the end, their rebellion was not enough to unseat Boehner: The speaker won on the first round with 216 votes, 11 more than he needed. But it was far larger than a similar coup attempt against Boehner in 2013. In fact, it was the largest rebellion by a party against its incumbent speaker since the Civil War.”

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2. Boehner celebrated by taking revenge on those who voted against him. Too bad he’s not so tough when it comes to battles with the White House. If he was, he would’ve never had this problem.

From Politico  “After he secured his third term as speaker Tuesday afternoon, losing 25 votes on the House floor to some relative-unknown members of the Republican Conference, Boehner moved swiftly to boot two of the insurgents from the influential Rules Committee. That could be just the start of payback for the speaker’s betrayers, who might see subcommittee chairmanships and other perks fall away in the coming months.

Boehner’s allies have thirsted for this kind of action from the speaker, saying he’s let people walk all over him for too long and is too nice to people who are eager to stab him in the back. The removal of Florida Reps. Daniel Webster and Rich Nugent from Rules was meant as a clear demonstration that what Boehner and other party leaders accepted during the last Congress is no longer acceptable, not with the House’s biggest GOP majority in decades.”

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3. Former Va. governor McDonnell is going to jail. Eventually.

From USAToday  “Former Virginia governor Bob McDonnell, who asked a judge Tuesday for mercy for his wife and himself, was sentenced to two years in federal prison for public corruption.

McDonnell was convicted Sept. 4 of trading access to the power of the governor’s office for more than $165,000 in loans and high-end gifts. Prosecutors had wanted him to spend more than 10 years in prison, but early in the four-hour hearing Judge James Spencer said federal officials misinterpreted the guidelines, contending the range was more like 78 to 97 months — 6½ to a little more than 8 years.

Then Spencer discarded the recommendations entirely but rejected the 6,000 hours of intensive community service that McDonnell’s lawyers had suggested.

“It breaks my heart, but I have a duty I can’t avoid,” Spencer said in handing down the punishment. “Mrs. McDonnell may have allowed the serpent into the mansion, (but) the governor knowingly let him into his personal and business affairs.””

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4. We don’ need no stinkin’ warrants…..

From HotAir  “In a private briefing to committee members, the FBI apparently indicated that they do not believe they need warrants in order to secure data from cell technology using decoy towers known as “stingrays.”

“The Judiciary Committee needs a broader understanding of the full range of law enforcement agencies that use this technology, the policies in place to protect the privacy interests of those whose information might be collected using these devices, and the legal process that DOJ and DHS entities seek prior to using them,” the letter read.

For example, we understand that the FBI’s new policy requires FBI agents to obtain a search warrant whenever a cell-site simulator is used as part of a FBI investigation or operation, unless one of several exceptions apply, including (among others): (1) cases that pose an imminent danger to public safety, (2) cases that involve a fugitive, or (3) cases in which the technology is used in public places or other locations at which the FBI deems there is no reasonable expectation of privacy.

We have concerns about the scope of the exceptions. Specifically, we are concerned about whether the FBI and other law enforcement agencies have adequately considered the privacy interests of other individuals who are not the targets of the interception, but whose information is nevertheless being collected when these devices are being used. We understand that the FBI believes that it can address these interests by maintaining that information for a short period of time and purging the information after it has been collected. But there is a question as to whether this sufficiently safeguards privacy interests.

The congressional investigation was prompted in part by a report published in The Wall Street Journal in November in which the existence of these secret mock cell towers as well as Cessna aircraft that randomly surveil America’s urban centers was revealed.”

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by

News/Politics 1-6-15

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. The new Congress is in session.

From TheWeeklyStandard  “The office of House speaker John Boehner announces it’s kicking off the new Congress with a series of jobs bills.”

“Hire More Heroes Act:  The president’s health care law “is prompting many” small businesses “to hold off on hiring and even to shed jobs in some cases,” CNBCreports.  The Hire More Heroes Act will help by exempting veterans who are “already enrolled in healthcare plans through the Department of Defense or the VA from being counted toward the employee limit under the health care law,” the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Rodney Davis (R-IL), explained in this week’s Republican Address.  “So not only are we providing small businesses – and our economy – with much-needed relief, but we’re also helping more of our veterans find work.”

Save American Workers Act: Thousands of workers have seen their hours and wages slashed thanks to ObamaCare’s employer mandate that forces businesses to hold hours down to 30 per week or face a penalty.  Women and low-income workers are particularly hard hit by the mandate, according to an analysis by the Hoover Institution, which found that the 30-hour rule puts 2.6 million Americans earning less than $30,000 a year – 63% of whom are women – at risk of having their hours and their wages cut.  The Save American Workers Act restores the traditional 40-hour work week to protect these workers and help our economy grow.

Approving the Keystone Pipeline: President Obama has stood in the way of the widely-popular Keystone pipeline for more than six years, putting his own political interests ahead of thousands of jobs and increased energy security for the American people.  The House will once again act where the president has not and approve the Keystone pipeline, keeping the pressure on the White House to finally move forward with what one labor union calls a “lifeline” for American workers.”

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2. But Republicans are still split on who will lead the House.

From TheDailyCaller  “The supposedly routine reelection of House Speaker John Boehner is becoming a dramatic repeat of the GOP’s December split over immigration, where the party’s populist base was jammed by the business-backed leadership.

By mid-Monday, at least 10 defectors said they will vote against Boehner for speaker. A new poll was released showing overwhelming opposition to GOP leaders funding President Barack Obama’s executive amnesty. And the House switchboard was jammed by Republicans who are urging their members to vote against Boehner.

 The Daily Caller was on hold for 25 minutes, but the switchboard operator did not answer the phone.

Boehner needs to win 218 votes in the Tuesday ballot, which is scheduled for midday.”

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3. It should be a required course, but those in charge of public education seem to have other priorities.

From TheNYPost  “When people from other parts of the world become US citizens, they have to pass a test that includes questions about how our system of government works. Why shouldn’t native-born Americans have to know the same?

Many Americans grew up with civics classes. But today, civics instruction has largely been abandoned — former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor calls this “the quiet crisis in education.”

The good news is that a dozen states are trying to make civics a requirement for high-school seniors.”

“We’re not talking about obscure historical trivia or constitutional arguments. The questions involve basic knowledge of how the US government works. For example, students would be asked to name America’s economic system or to identify one of the three branches of government.

This last is apparently more difficult than it might appear: A recent survey by the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania found that 35 percent of the 1,416 adults questioned couldn’t do it.”

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4. I found this interesting.

From MSN/WaPo  “It started 15 years ago with plans to expand the Tower of David Museum. But the story took a strange turn when archaeologists started peeling away layers under the floor in an old abandoned building adjacent to the museum in Jerusalem’s Old City.

They knew it had been used as a prison when the Ottoman Turks and then the British ruled these parts. But, as they carefully dug down, they eventually uncovered something extraordinary: the suspected remains of the palace where one of the more famous scenes of the New Testament may have taken place — the trial of Jesus.

Now, after years of excavation and a further delay caused by wars and a lack of funds, the archaeologists’ precious find is being shown to the public through tours organized by the museum.

The prison “is a great part of the ancient puzzle of Jerusalem and shows the history of this city in a very unique and clear way,” said Amit Re’em, the Jerusalem district archaeologist, who headed the excavation team more than a decade ago.”

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by

News/Politics 1-5-15

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. Make it so.

From FoxNews  “Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert said Sunday that he will challenge House Speaker John Boehner for his post when Congress returns this week to Washington.

Gohmert, among the House Republican caucus’ most conservative members, made the announcement on “Fox & Friends,” saying he decided to run after Rep. Ted Yoho, R-Fla., said Saturday that he would challenge Boehner for the chamber’s top post.

“We have heard from a lot of Republicans that said, ‘I would vote for somebody besides speaker Boehner.’ But nobody will put their name out there,” Gohmert said. “That changed yesterday with Ted Yoho.””

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2. Challenging the myth that Republicans are the party of the rich.

From TownHall  “Not only do Democratic billionaires spend more on campaigns then Republicans do, as Katie Pavlich noted yesterday, but Democrats also represent the nation’s richest congressional districts, while Republicans represent the middle class.

According to 2012 U.S. Census data, Democrats represent seven of the nation’s ten richest congressional districts including, California 18 (median household income $100,917), California 17 (median household income $100,652), Virginia 11 (median household income $98,815), New York 3 (median household income $96,626), Virginia 8 (median household income $92,918), California 33 (median household income $92,111), and Maryland 8 (median household income).

Meanwhile, Democrats also represent nine of the nation’s ten poorest congressional districts, including New York 15 (median household income $23,314), Mississippi 2 (median household income $29,981), Michigan 13 (median household income $30,273), Alabama 7 (median household income $31,080), Florida 5 (median household income $31,116), Ohio 11 (median household income $31,331), Arizona 7 (median household income $32,259), North Carolina 1 (median household income $32,488) , and California 34 (median household income $32,714).

And not only is the Democratic Party sharply divided between those that represent rich and poor congressional districts, but income inequality within Democratic congressional districts is far greater than it is within Republican ones. Of the top ten congressional districts with the highest levels of income inequality, Democrats represent nine of them.”

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3. So taxpayers will be helping to foot the bill for 87% of new ObamaCare enrollees.

From TheDailyMail  “About seven out of every eight Obamacare insurance customers who enrolled between November 15 and mid-December are poor enough to qualify for taxpayer-funded subsidies designed to lower their monthly premiums.

The Department of Health and Human Services reported that number Tuesday, saying it’s up from 80 per cent a year ago.

Americans who participate in government-brokered medical insurance can get subsidies from the federal treasury if their households earn less than four times the government’s official ‘poverty’ level.

That situation describes 64 per cent of all U.S. residents, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. But far more are qualifying, suggesting that the Obamacare subscriber base is dramatically tilted toward low-income earners.

And as poor Americans depend inreasingly on handouts to manage their monthly health insurance bills, the U.S. Supreme Court could be months away from invalidating the entire subsidy system that supports the 34 states that chose not to run their own Obamacare marketplaces.”

Let’s hope so.

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4. The discovery phase should be fun to watch.

From TheWashingtonExaminer  “Investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson, whose coverage of the Sept. 11, 2012, terrorist attacks in Benghazi, Libya, has earned her both high praise and harsh criticism, has launched a lawsuit against the Department of Justice, demanding access to FBI documents that involve her personally.

The now-senior independent contributor to the Daily Signal, a conservative online news outlet based at the Heritage Foundation, alleges that during her final months as a correspondent for CBS News, her personal and work computers were hacked as she continued to produce often unfavorable reports on the Obama administration.

“I am hoping to get information that sheds light on a number of problems I’ve been dealing with,” Attkisson told the Washington Examiner’s media desk Friday evening. “One of the items the FBI is withholding is information surrounding a case they opened on my computer intrusions, which lists me as the victim.”

“Yet they never told me they opened the case, never interviewed me, and won’t produce material relevant to the case or the case file. The case has to progress through court and, historically, the government drags it out (at taxpayer expense). So it’s unclear when, if ever, we might receive the documents to which we are entitled,” she said.”

Yet another of the Obama admin’s “investigations” that don’t really investigate.

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5. Extortion by another name is still extortion.

From TheNYPost  “Want to influence a casino bid? Polish your corporate image? Not be labeled a racist?

Then you need to pay Al Sharpton.

For more than a decade, corporations have shelled out thousands of dollars in donations and consulting fees to Sharpton’s National Action Network. What they get in return is the reverend’s supposed sway in the black community or, more often, his silence.”

“Al Sharpton has enriched himself and NAN for years by threatening companies with bad publicity if they didn’t come to terms with him. Put simply, Sharpton specializes in shakedowns,” said Ken Boehm, chairman of the National Legal & Policy Center, a Virginia-based watchdog group that has produced a book on Sharpton.”

“Once Sharpton’s on board, he plays the race card all the way through,” said a source who has worked with the Harlem preacher. “He just keeps asking for more and more money.””

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by

News/Politics 12-5-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. Has the Red Cross been misleading donors about where their dollars are going?

From MSN/NPR  “The American Red Cross regularly touts how responsible it is with donors’ money. “We’re very proud of the fact that 91 cents of every dollar that’s donated goes to our services,” Red Cross CEO Gail McGovern said in a speech in Baltimore last year. “That’s world class, obviously.””

“The problem with that number: It isn’t true.”

“The Red Cross declined repeated requests to say the actual percentage of donor dollars going to humanitarian services. But the charity’s own financial statements show that overhead expenses are significantly more than what McGovern and other Red Cross officials have claimed.”

“In recent years, the Red Cross’ fundraising expenses alone have been as high as 26 cents of every donated dollar, nearly three times the nine cents in overhead claimed by McGovern. In the past five years, fundraising expenses have averaged 17 cents per donated dollar.

But even that understates matters. Once donated dollars are in Red Cross hands, the charity spends additional money on “management and general” expenses, which includes things like back office accounting. That means the portion of donated dollars going to overhead is even higher.”

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2. Utah is set to seize millions of acres of it’s land back from the federal govt.

From TheWashingtonTimes  “In three weeks, Utah intends to seize control of 31.2 million acres of its own land now under the control of the federal government. At least, that’s the plan.

In an unprecedented challenge to federal dominance of Western state lands, Utah Gov. Gary Herbert in 2012 signed the “Transfer of Public Lands Act,” which demands that Washington relinquish its hold on the land, which represents more than half of the state’s 54.3 million acres, by Dec. 31.

So far, however, the federal government hasn’t given any indication that it plans to cooperate. Still, state Rep. Ken Ivory, who sponsored the legislation, isn’t deterred.”

““That’s what you do any time you’re negotiating with a partner. You set a date,” said Mr. Ivory. “Unfortunately, our federal partner has decided they don’t want to negotiate in good faith. So we’ll move forward with the four-step plan that the governor laid out.”

“With the 2012 law, Utah placed itself on the cutting edge of the heated debate over public lands in the West. The federal government controls more than 50 percent of the land west of Kansas — in Utah’s case, it’s 64.5 percent, a situation that has increasingly resulted in tensions across the Rocky Mountain West.”

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3. I hope Boehner and his friends at the Chamber of Commerce realize that this isn’t sufficient. It’s meaningless and does nothing to stop Obama’s plan. You were put their to do a job, now do it.

From HotAir  “This was the bill proposed by conservative Ted Yoho that would, if also passed by the Senate and signed by Obama, block Obama’s authority to remake immigration policy on his own. I … thought we had a Constitution that does that, but I guess we don’t anymore. Obviously, a bill like this isn’t going to get past a Democratic Senate and a Democratic president, which means this was an empty gesture designed to show grassroots righties that the leadership shares their concerns about O’s power grab even if they’re not prepared to play hardball to stop it.

The burning question: With House tea partiers complaining that the bill was meaningless and ineffectual, could Boehner still find a majority to pass it? Yup, as it turns out. Although he needed a little Democratic help to cross the 218 threshold.

Three Democrats voted yes while seven Republicans voted no and another three Republicans voted “present.” The roll isn’t out yet so we’re not sure who those 10 GOPers are but I’ll update as soon as it’s available. The White House, incidentally, has already all but promised to veto this bill. If Boehner had wanted to make Obama choke on it, he could have followed the Lee/Cruz plan by inserting this as a rider to a spending bill that would fund the entire government for a few months. That way, Reid and Obama would have a stark choice of either approving the money with this condition attached or else blocking it and bracing for the resulting shutdown. Instead, by splitting Yoho’s bill off from the “cromnibus” funding bill that’ll be voted on later today (I think), Boehner made it easy for Democrats to oppose Yoho’s language without risking any standoff over government funding. The name of the game here for Republican leaders is no shutdown, no shutdown, no shutdown. The solution was an empty gesture.”

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4. Meanwhile Senate conservatives are huddling with some House members to come up with a real solution because the House leadership refuses to.

From NationalReview  “A trio of senators crossed the Capitol last night to discuss the congressional response to President Obama’s recent executive orders on immigration. The consensus: Republican leadership doesn’t want to fight Obama, so the lawmakers have to hope that grassroots activists can goad their colleagues into a more aggressive posture.

“I hope that the American people will speak up and share their views with Congress and good strong language will come out of the House,” Senator Jeff Sessions (R., Ala.) told National Review Online Thursday afternoon. 

Sessions demurred when asked about coordination with House colleagues — “all of us are curious about what they’re doing,” he said — but multiple sources tell NRO that Sessions, Senator David Vitter (R., La.), and Senator Mike Lee (R., Utah) met with a group of House members last night in the office of Arizona representative Matt Salmon. Vitter also organized a conference call with some House Republicans Wednesday afternoon. The purpose of the two encounters, which happened on the same day that Texas senator Ted Cruz met with Iowa representative Steve King, was to emphasize that “the first bill that you guys do was really our best and only chance,” according to one Senate aide; the Senate hawks won’t be able to instigate a fight if the House passes a bill that provides long-term funding for the entire government.

“There is a general belief that, despite the rhetoric from leadership after the executive order was announced, they really have no desire to do anything substantive to fight this,” one lawmaker who attended the meeting explained to NRO in a series of text messages. “Part of it is that leadership (as proxies for the Chamber [of Commerce]) wants the amnesty; Obama’s order provides a way to deliver cheap labor to the Chamber without having to vote for it. Part of it is an absolute fear of any conflict, including even a partial ‘shutdown.’”

They believe it because it’s true. If Boehner isn’t up for the job, and he doesn’t appear to be, then find someone who is.

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News/Politics 6-26-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. Nope, not even a “hint of scandal.” 🙄

From WaysAndMeansHouse.gov  “Washington, DC – Today, Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-MI) announced the Internal Revenue Service’s (IRS) targeting of conservative individuals includes a sitting United States Senator.  According to emails reviewed by the Committee under its Section 6103 authority, which allows the Committee to review confidential taxpayer information, Lois Lerner sought to have Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) referred for IRS examination.

“We have seen a lot of unbelievable things in this investigation, but the fact that Lois Lerner attempted to initiate an apparently baseless IRS examination against a sitting Republican United States Senator is shocking,” said Camp.  “At every turn, Lerner was using the IRS as a tool for political purposes in defiance of taxpayer rights.  We may never know the full extent of the abuse since the IRS conveniently lost two years of Lerner emails, not to mention those of other key figures in this scandal.  The fact that DOJ refuses to investigate the IRS’s abuses or appoint a special counsel demonstrates, yet again, this Administration’s unwillingness to uphold the rule of law.”

And now we’re starting to see why Lois took the 5th.

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2. Destroying evidence is a criminal offense too. Anyone else noticing a pattern?

From TheHill  “The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the IRS share a problem: officials say they cannot provide the emails a congressional committee has requested because an employee’s hard drive crashed.

EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy confirmed to the House Oversight Committee Wednesday that her staff is unable to provide lawmakers all of the documents they have requested on the proposed Pebble Mine in Alaska, because of a 2010 computer crash.

“We’re having trouble getting the data off of it and we’re trying other sources to actually supplement that,” McCarthy said. “We’re challenged in figuring out where those small failures might have occurred and what caused them occur, but we’ve produced a lot of information.”

I’m sure they did, just nothing incriminating.

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3. Boehner is finally doing something about Obama’s many abuses of power.

From FoxNews  “House Speaker John Boehner announced Wednesday he plans to file suit against President Obama over his alleged abuse of executive power. 

“This is not about impeachment — it’s about him faithfully executing the laws of this country,” Boehner said. 

The speaker alleged that the president not only has ignored the law but “brags about it,” decrying what he described as “arrogance and incompetence.” 

Boehner had been weighing such a lawsuit in recent days, over concerns that Obama exceeded his constitutional authority with executive actions. Republicans have voiced frustration with Obama’s second-term “pen and phone” strategy of pursuing policy changes without Congress — particularly environmental rules via the Environmental Protection Agency. Republicans also complained about numerous unilateral changes to the implementation of ObamaCare. “

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4. As is always the case with this administrations numbers, they’re worse than first reported. And as always, NBC does it’s best to put on a good face for the admin.

From CNBC  “The U.S. economy contracted at a much steeper pace than previously estimated in the first quarter, but there are indications that growth has since rebounded strongly.

The Commerce Department said on Wednesday gross domestic product fell at a 2.9 percent annual rate, the economy’s worst performance in five years, instead of the 1.0 percent pace it had reported last month.

While the economy’s woes have been largely blamed on an unusually cold winter, the magnitude of the revisions suggest other factors at play beyond the weather. Growth has now been revised down by a total of 3.0 percentage points since the government’s first estimate was published in April, which had the economy expanding at a 0.1 percent rate.

The difference between the second and third estimates was the largest on records going back to 1976, the Commerce Department said. Economists had expected growth to be revised to show it contracting at a 1.7 percent rate. Sharp revisions to GDP numbers are not unusual as the government does not have complete data when it makes its initial and preliminary estimates.”

The only ones blaming the weather are those looking to provide cover for the admin. Only the sycophants at NBC could claim these horrible numbers are a sign of a rebounding economy.

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5. The Supreme Court has banned warrantless cell phone searches by police.

From TheWashingtonTimes  “The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that police must obtain warrants before snooping through people’s cellphones, delivering a unanimous decision that begins to update legal understanding of privacy rules to accommodate 21st-century technology.

Police agencies argued that searching through data on cellphones was no different from asking someone to turn out his pockets, but the justices rejected that, saying a cellphone holds the most personal and intimate details of someone’s life and falls squarely within the Fourth Amendment’s privacy protections.

“The fact that technology now allows an individual to carry such information in his hand does not make the information any less worthy of the protection for which the Founders fought,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote in the unanimous opinion. “Our answer to the question of what police must do before searching a cell phone seized incident to an arrest is accordingly simple — get a warrant.”

The justices even said police cannot check a cellphone’s call log because it could contain more information than phone numbers, and perusing the call log is a violation of privacy that can be justified only with a court-issued warrant.”

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by

News/Politics 1-29-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. In case you hadn’t heard, last night was the State of the Union address.

If you missed it, you didn’t miss much you hadn’t already heard.  

From TheHill  “The White House had foreshadowed that Obama’s address would emphasize a new willingness by the president to use executive action, and Obama promised a dozen actions in the next year, including the creation of new “starter” savings accounts and a hike in the minimum wage for federal contractors.

Throughout the speech, the president stressed that the government should work to provide “opportunity for all,” by addressing head-on the problems of income inequality and waning mobility.

Those proposals, along with other calls to Obama’s liberal base, were intended to embolden Democrats ahead of this year’s midterm elections but were delivered in a measured tone.

“What I offer tonight is a set of concrete, practical proposals to speed up growth, strengthen the middle class, and build new ladders of opportunity into the middle class. Some require congressional action, and I’m eager to work with all of you,” Obama said.”

That would be a first.

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2. Here’s some excerpts from the Republican rebuttal. Again, if you missed it, you didn’t miss much.

From Speaker Boehner 

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3. Ted Cruz and “The Imperial Presidency of Barack Obama.”

From TheWallStJournal  “Of all the troubling aspects of the Obama presidency, none is more dangerous than the president’s persistent pattern of lawlessness, his willingness to disregard the written law and instead enforce his own policies via executive fiat. On Monday, Mr. Obama acted unilaterally to raise the minimum wage paid by federal contracts, the first of many executive actions the White House promised would be a theme of his State of the Union address Tuesday night.

The president’s taste for unilateral action to circumvent Congress should concern every citizen, regardless of party or ideology. The great 18th-century political philosopher Montesquieu observed: “There can be no liberty where the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person, or body of magistrates.” America’s Founding Fathers took this warning to heart, and we should too.

Rule of law doesn’t simply mean that society has laws; dictatorships are often characterized by an abundance of laws. Rather, rule of law means that we are a nation ruled by laws, not men. That no one—and especially not the president—is above the law. For that reason, the U.S. Constitution imposes on every president the express duty to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.”

Yet rather than honor this duty, President Obama has openly defied it by repeatedly suspending, delaying and waiving portions of the laws he is charged to enforce. When Mr. Obama disagreed with federal immigration laws, he instructed the Justice Department to cease enforcing the laws. He did the same thing with federal welfare law, drug laws and the federal Defense of Marriage Act.”

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4. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before….  “We have to pass it to find out what’s in it.”

Only this time, it’s Republicans. And even after they pledged to not do stuff like this.

From NationalJournal  “Congressional negotiators released a massive 959-page farm bill Monday night, giving House members less than 48 hours to dig through the bill before they’re expected to pass it Wednesday.

Sound familiar? Congress did the same thing two weeks ago with the omnibus spending bill, taking less than a week to pass a nearly 1,600-page tome (and that’s not even included the appendices!). The farm bill is expected to follow a similar route through Congress, potentially hitting the president’s desk by the end of this week.

That quickened pace breaks—at least in spirit—a House Republican transparency pledge from 2011, promising constituents that they would not vote on any legislation for at least three days after it has been released for public consumption. House Speaker John Boehner’s office argues that neither bill violates the three-day rule, though both were posted online on Monday evenings and scheduled for Wednesday votes.”

Yeah! Who you gonna believe? The Speaker’s office, or your lyin’ eyes?

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5. Of course he will. Can’t be losin’ all those campaign dollars for Dems, now can we? It’s the reason they set ObamaCare up this way. It’s the bloodiest kind of cronyism.

From TheWashingtonExaminer  “The Obama administration is threatening a veto of legislation that would permanently ban federal funds for abortion.

In a statement on Monday, the administration said the measure would intrude on women’s reproductive rights and prohibit the ability of individuals to spend their own money on insurance coverage for abortion under President Barack Obama’s health care law.”

As we learned yesterday, everyone is already paying a surcharge for it.  This would fix that. But it’s obvious that the President doesn’t want it fixed.

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6. Snow hits the South, millions lose their minds….. 🙄

Come on people, act like you’ve done this before. 🙂

From NBCNews  “On Tuesday, the city was ready to give them a workout for the first time in at least three years. A rare winter storm stretched from Texas to Virginia, grounding thousands of flights and making a snowy, icy mess of roads.

Traffic came to a complete stop in the Atlanta area, where a traffic officer delivered a baby late Tuesday afternoon in the back seat of the car for a couple who were stranded in icy conditions on Interstate 285 in the suburb of Sandy Springs. A spokesman for the Sandy Springs police said mom and baby, who weren’t identified, were doing fine.

Classes were canceled from Texas to the Carolinas, while some school districts that did open told parents it would be safer to simply let their kids stay at school overnight.”

😯 Poor kids.

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