Selling Access or this is how the world works

You decide. Is this just how "business is done" or are they selling access to the leader of the free world? Read the original here.

Former Dem. Congressman Kennedy Alleges 'Quid Pro Quo' for Access to White House
8:42 AM, APR 15, 2012
BY DANIEL HALPER 

The Weekly Standard

Access to the Obama White House is in direct correlation to the amount of money donated to the president's reelection effort and the Democratic party, the New York Times reports today.

The Times reports: "those who donated the most to Mr. Obama and the Democratic Party since he started running for president were far more likely to visit the White House than others. Among donors who gave $30,000 or less, about 20 percent visited the White House, according to a New York Times analysis that matched names in the visitor logs with donor records. But among those who donated $100,000 or more, the figure rises to about 75 percent. Approximately two-thirds of the president’s top fund-raisers in the 2008 campaign visited the White House at least once, some of them numerous times."

But the most explosive allegation in the news story comes from former Democratic congressman Patrick Kennedy, son of the late Ted Kenney, who calls what the Obama White House is doing "quid pro quo."

Patrick J. Kennedy, the former representative from Rhode Island, who donated $35,800 to an Obama re-election fund last fall while seeking administration support for a nonprofit venture, said contributions were simply a part of “how this business works.”

“If you want to call it ‘quid pro quo,’ fine,” he said. “At the end of the day, I want to make sure I do my part.”

Mr. Kennedy visited the White House several times to win support for One Mind for Research, his initiative to help develop new treatments for brain disorders. While his family name and connections are clearly influential, he said, he knows White House officials are busy. And as a former chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, he said he was keenly aware of the political realities they face.

And Kennedy admits that folks in the White House are checking out the donor records:

“I know that they look at the reports,” he said, referring to records of campaign donations. “They’re my friends anyway, but it won’t hurt when I ask them for a favor if they don’t see me as a slouch.”
Translated, "quid pro quo" means "this for that." As in, if you want this from the Obama White House, then give that (e.g., cash).

Do as POTUS says, not as he does

Double standards, same stuff, different day. Read the original here.

OBAMA WHITE HOUSE PAYS WOMEN LESS THAN MEN, RECORDS SHOW
BY: Andrew Stiles - April 11, 2012 2:52 pm

Female employees in the Obama White House make considerably less than their male colleagues, records show.

According to the 2011 annual report on White House staff, female employees earned a median annual salary of $60,000, which was about 18 percent less than the median salary for male employees ($71,000).


Calculating the median salary for each gender required some assumptions to be made based on the employee names. When unclear, every effort was taken to determine the appropriate gender.

The Obama campaign on Wednesday lashed out at presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney for his failure to immediately endorse the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act, a controversial law enacted in 2009 that made it easier to file discrimination lawsuits.

President Obama has frequently criticized the gender pay gap, such as the one that exists in White House.

“Paycheck discrimination hurts families who lose out on badly needed income,” he said in a July 2010 statement. “And with so many families depending on women’s wages, it hurts the American economy as a whole.”

It is not known whether any female employees at the White House have filed lawsuits under the Ledbetter Act.

The president and his Democratic allies have accused Republicans of waging a “war on women,” and have touted themselves as champions of female equality. Obama’s rhetoric, however, has not always been supported by his actions.

White House press secretary Jay Carney told reporters last week that Obama believes it is “long past the time” for women to be admitted to the traditionally all-male Augusta National Golf Club, site of the Masters golf tournament.

But the president has demonstrated a strong preference for all-male foursomes in his frequent golf outings, a bias that extends well beyond the putting green and into the Oval Office.

“Women are Obama’s base, and they don’t seem to have enough people who look like the base inside of their own inner circle,” former Clinton press secretary Dee Dee Myers told the New York Times.

In a 2011 article titled “The White House Boys’ Club: President Obama Has a Woman Problem,” TIME magazine’s Amy Sullivan detailed the president’s fondness for male-dominated environments.

“There’s a looseness to Obama when he’s hanging out with the boys club that doesn’t appear in co-ed gatherings,” she wrote. “The president blows off steam on the golf course with male colleagues and friends. He takes to the White House basketball court with NBA stars, men’s college players, and male cabinet members and members of Congress.”

As a presidential candidate in 2008, Obama was criticized for paying the women on his campaign staff less than the men, and far less than GOP opponent John McCain paid his female staffers.
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I forgot, he's too smart...right?

Alright this kind of bugs me. Part of being POTUS is being able to effectively communicate to the people, isn't it? I'm sick of this continuing theme of he's the smartest guy in the room, he's smarter than the Republicans, he's smarter than flyover country. Take some responsibility for the words that come out of your mouth. Read the original and view the video here.

Carney: Obama Not Understood Because He Spoke In "Shorthand" Since He Is A Law ProfessorRealClearPolitics

White House press secretary Jay Carney tells the press corps that President Obama's attack on the Supreme Court was misunderstood because he was speaking in "shorthand" since he is a former professor of law.

Henry: The president is a former constitutional law professor. One of his professors is Laurence Tribe. He now says, in his words, the president “obviously misspoke earlier this week”, quote “he didn’t say what he meant and having said that in order to avoid misleading anyone, he had to clarify it.” I thought yesterday you were saying repeatedly that he did not misspeak. What do you make of the president’s former law professor saying he did?

Carney: The premise of your question suggests that the president of the United States in the comments he made Monday, did not believe in the constitutionality of legislation, which is a preposterous premise and I know you don’t believe that.

Henry: Except this is from Laurence Tribe, who knows a lot more than you and I about constitutional law.

Carney: What I acknowledged yesterday is that speaking on Monday the president was not clearly understood by some people because he is a law professor, he spoke in shorthand.

WH OKs indefinite military detention of terrorism suspects

Here's the big story for the day. Read the original here.

December 14, 2011 9:22 PM
WH OKs military detention of terrorism suspects
By Phil Hirschkorn

(CBS News) The White House is signing off on a controversial new law that would authorize the U.S. military to arrest and indefinitely detain alleged al Qaeda members or other terrorist operatives captured on American soil.

As the bill neared final passage in the House of Representatives and the Senate on Wednesday, the Obama administration announced it would support passage of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which contains slightly watered-down provisions giving the military a front line role in domestic terrorism cases.

The administration abandoned its long-held veto threat due to changes in the final version of the bill, namely that in its view, the military custody mandate has been “softened.” The bill now gives the President the immediate power to issue a waiver of the military custody requirement, instead of the Defense Secretary, and gives the President discretion in implementing these new provisions.

“We have concluded that the language does not challenge or constrain the President’s ability to collect intelligence, incapacitate dangerous terrorists, and protect the American people, and the President’s senior advisors will not recommend a veto,” the White House statement said.

The detainee provisions are just one part of the annual NDAA authorizing $662 billion in federal defense spending next year.

While the bill never expanded the authority to detain American citizens indefinitely without charges, proponents said the legislation would codify court decisions finding the President does have the authority to declare “enemy combatants,” as commander-in-chief and under the post-9/11 Authorization for Use of Military Force against al Qaeda and its allies. The administration, which has pledged not to use this power, believes the bill leaves this legal issue unresolved.

“By signing this defense spending bill, President Obama will go down in history as the president who enshrined indefinite detention without trial in U.S. law,” said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. “In the past, Obama has lauded the importance of being on the right side of history, but today he is definitely on the wrong side.”

FBI Director Robert Mueller, testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, said the provisions still could create confusion among counter-terrorism professionals.

“My concern is that you don’t want FBI agents and the military showing up at the same time, with some uncertainty” as to who has control, Mueller said, and raised this hypothetical example: “A case that we’re investigating on three individuals, two of whom are American citizens and would not go to military custody and the third is not an American citizen and could go to military custody?”

Mueller was joined earlier in the detainee debate by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper in opposing the military custody provision, because they said it might inhibit flexibility by counter-terrorism professionals, restrain federal, state, and local law enforcement authorities, and risk losing the cooperation of terror arrestees.

“If President Obama signs this bill, it will damage both his legacy and American’s reputation for upholding the rule of law,” said Laura Murphy, director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office. “The last time Congress passed indefinite detention legislation was during the McCarthy era, and President Truman had the courage to veto that bill.”

Bill opponents have noted that in the decade since the 9/11, the government has successfully convicted over 300 people for terrorism-related crimes, including thwarted plots to bomb passenger jets, subway lines, and landmarks such as Times Square and the Sears Tower.

By comparison, the military justice system, although stymied by constitutional challenges, has completed only six cases in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where 170 detainees remain.

© 2011 CBS Interactive Inc.. All Rights Reserved.

Glad someone has spare time...

With all that's going on in the world and here in country, I'm glad that some people have the time to relax. Because relaxing is important. Things to remember if you want to be snarky, there are 52 weeks in a year and there have been 148 weeks in Barack Obama's presidency. Not to be too snarky, I mean in all seriousness, the President should have be able to relax now and then. But shouldn't he be working harder at being President than the checkout cashier at your local Target? I don't know if he just doesn't do work or if just appears that way, but judging at the state of things.... What do you think, am I being overly critical or is it ok to expect that POTUS has more important things to do than go golfing all the time?  Read the original here.

Obama Plays Golf for the 30th Time This Year
by Keith Koffler on November 25, 2011, 3:21 pm

It is an unseasonably warm 65 degrees in the Washington area, and President Obama has bolted out of the White House to go golfing.

It’s his 30th time golfing this year and the 88th golf outing of his presidency.

He’s at the Andrews Air Force base course with one of his usual crew, White House trip director Martin Nicholson, as well as Marvin’s brother Walter and Reggie Love.

Love, who is Obama’s personal assistant – or “body man” – is not usually a golfing companion. So the outing may be a farewell gift to Reggie, who is leaving by the end of the year.

Themed National Parks?

I have a few questions about this.

1. Why do we have racially themed national parks. Are national parks supposed to be for the country as opposed to shoving more racial politics down everyone's throat?
2. Is the national park service the right avenue for a cultural preservation?
3. If I remember my history classes correct, we do a pretty bad job of preserving American history and culture, let alone Hispanic culture.
4. Is this what we need to spend public money on right now?

5. I'm sure this has nothing to do with pandering to a minority for votes in 2012.

Read the original here.

Ken Salazar Urges More Latino-Themed National Parks, Sites

“Less than 3 percent of all the national landmarks that we have — the highest designation you can receive as a historic landmark — are designated for women, Latinos, African Americans or other members of minority groups,” Salazar said in a meeting with reporters last week. “That tells you that the score is not even.”

The secretary’s concerns will be one of several issues discussed at White House meetings on Latino heritage scheduled for Wednesday. The meetings, set to bring together a who’s who of Latino business, political, religious and entertainment leaders, are slated to focus on whether the government is properly serving Hispanic students, small business owners, military veterans and artists.

The meetings, held in the closing days of Hispanic Heritage Month, come as both President Obama’s reelection campaign and Republican presidential contenders are reaching out to Latino voters. Obama administration officials are meeting regularly with hundreds of Latino leaders in hopes of rekindling excitement among Hispanic voters, while Republicans and conservative activists are preparing a series of Spanish-language radio and television ads blasting Obama’s record.

But Salazar said the White House-sponsored meetings have nothing to do with electoral politics — and are instead designed to improve the country’s poor preservation of Hispanic history and culture.

“I think when you look at the way Americans most understand the history of Latinos in this country, a lot of it is being told now through the lens of what’s happening with the immigration debate,” Salazar said last week at a meeting hosted by the Christian Science Monitor. “While that’s an important debate that has security and moral implications, in my view, there’s also a huge history of Latinos in the United States that’s never been told.”

Salazar, who oversees the National Park Service, in June ordered a national study of people and places worthy of national historic preservation. He said he has also met with Park Service rangers in California to try to identify Latino-themed sites in the state.

One location, the “Forty Acres” site used by labor activist Cesar Chavez in the 1960s to raise awareness about the plight of migrant farm workers, earned national historic landmark status in February. The agency is asking the public to weigh in on other sites that could be used to commemorate Chavez’s legacy.

The most ambitious attempt to date to memorialize Latino history will come with construction of the National Museum of the American Latino, whose planning commission is pushing to build on a site near the U.S. Capitol. The project would cost about $600 million and be financed with a mix of private and federal dollars.

More shady stuff with "Fast & Furious" investigation

Read the original here.

Corrupt as Hell: Acting DOJ Inspector General Tips Off Obama's Gunwalker Co-conspirators

Perhaps you've read about the audiotapes posted to CBS news, of a conversation between the gun dealer that sold many Fast and Furious guns and the ATF agent that was part of the operation.

Now we find out that those tapes came out after the acting Inspector General leaked them to the suspects in the case, jeopardizing the Oversight investigation.

In a letter released on Wednesday to Acting Justice Department Inspector General Cynthia Schnedar, they expressed deep concern over her decision to turn over to U.S. prosecutors in Arizona audio recordings obtained during her investigation.Representative Darrell Issa, head of the House Oversight Committee, and Charles Grassley, the senior Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said Schnedar apparently did not consider the significant harm caused by giving the recordings to those under investigation.
They criticized the move as potentially obstructing the congressional probe into the operation because potential witnesses may have colluded about what to tell investigators.

Schnedar needs to be fired, and if statutes allow it, charged for obstruction of justice and any related charges (aiding and abetting the enemy?).

This is mob-lawyer-level actions committed by a federal official in charge or one of the most important investigations in U.S. history... and considering the hundreds dead, I'm not overselling that at all.

Did Attorney General Holder know about "Fast & Furious"?

Is there a cover up? I don't think there's any doubt there's some stonewalling going on. Read the original here.

Republicans Step Up Pressure On Holder As More Details Surface On 'Fast And Furious'

Congressional Republicans once again are turning up the heat on Attorney General Eric Holder, asking more questions about whether he had a role in the controversial anti-gunrunning operation known as "Fast and Furious."

The new inquiry comes from Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas, the ranking Republican on the House Judiciary Committee. Despite recent personnel changes at the Justice Department, Smith told Holder in a letter Friday the department cannot "pin this scandal on a few individuals and expect it to be forgotten."

"Fast and Furious was a result of systemic problems at the ATF. Congressional interest will continue until we fully understand who authorized the failed program," Smith said.

The idea behind Fast and Furious, hatched in the ATF's Phoenix office, was to let so-called straw buyers purchase guns in the United States so they could be traced to big-time gunrunners in Mexico. But documents and testimony now show that U.S. officials lost track of thousands of guns, some of which later were found at the scenes of violent crimes, including the murder of a U.S. border agent.

On Friday, National Rifle Association President Wayne LaPierre accused Holder of stonewalling Congress.

"This is the biggest cover-up since Watergate, and it's time to ask the Watergate question. Who authorized Fast and Furious, and how high up does it go?" LaPierre asked during a speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando.

According to a source close to the investigation, despite numerous subpoenas and demands for potentially thousands of pages of records, the Justice Department has turned over just 12 documents. Unless the House Oversight Committee can cut lose more incriminating documents from the Justice Department or additional whistleblowers come forward, the investigation could stall, said a person familiar with the situation.

So far, the scandal has produced headlines but only one resignation, that of the U.S. attorney in Arizona.

The paper trail however has revealed blatant lying by the Justice Department, which originally told Sen. Charles Grassley the ATF did not "walk" guns. That position conflicts with agent testimony and pages of internal emails.

A document obtained Friday by Foxnews shows the following agencies all had some hand in Operation Fast and Furious: ATF, IRS, DEA, ICE, the U.S. Marshall's Service, Phoenix police and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The operation allowed members of the Sinaloa Cartel to buy in excess of 1,900 weapons for more than $1.25 million dollars over a one-year period beginning October 2009, according to a briefing paper dated last January. The briefing paper did not delineate the duties of each agency, but other records have shown the IRS investigated the income sources of the straw buyers, Phoenix police assisted occasionally with surveillance, the DEA shared its informant and ICE “saw everything and had access to everything” the ATF did, according to an agent tasked to Fast and Furious.

But throughout the operation, the agency recovered just over 10 percent of the weapons.

An ATF whistleblower agent told Fox News the agency made "absolutely no attempt to follow the weapons." And even though agents used electronic vehicle trackers, they only used them on the strawbuyers, not on those to whom they transferred the weapons.

This does not jibe with an amended statement issued Thursday by ATF Agent in Charge Bill Newell, who claimed in a letter to Congress his the agency used "a wide variety of well established law enforcement investigative techniques" to interdict and seize weapons.

In his letter to Holder on Friday, Rep. Smith demanded to know what oversight role the Justice Department had over Fast and Furious. He also noted that President Obama promised a new era of government "transparency and openness" when elected in 2008, a promise that Smith says rings empty.


Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/09/23/republicans-step-up-pressure-on-holder-as-more-details-surface-on-fast-and/#ixzz1ZbIA8bOV

"Fast & Furious" update: ATF directly bought sold guns to cartel?

Read the original here.

Fast & Furious “smoking gun”?
POSTED AT 11:25 AM ON SEPTEMBER 29, 2011 BY ED MORRISSEY

The New York Post’s Michael Walsh wonders when the media outrage will arrive in the aftermath of the disastrous and deadly Operation Fast and Furious. The latest revelation shows that the ATF wasn’t really interested in stopping illegal gun sales or stopping the movement of guns across the border, Walsh writes, but something else entirely. And until the national media exposes the “lies” coming from the Department of Justice, Americans simply won’t get answers as to what purpose the ATF and DoJ really intended:

This just might be the smoking gun we’ve been waiting for to break the festering “Fast and Furious” gun-running scandal wide open: the Department of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives apparently ordered one of its own agents to purchase firearms with taxpayer money, and sell them directly to a Mexican drug cartel.

Let that sink in: After months of pretending that “Fast and Furious” was a botched surveillance operation of illegal gun-running spearheaded by the ATF and the US attorney’s office in Phoenix, it turns out that the government itself was selling guns to the bad guys.

Agent John Dodson was ordered to buy four Draco pistols for cash and even got a letter from his supervisor, David Voth, authorizing a federally licensed gun dealer to sell him the guns without bothering about the necessary paperwork. …

On orders, Dodson then sold the guns to known criminals, who first stashed them away and then — deliberately unhindered by the ATF or any other agency — whisked them off to Mexico.

At least one mainstream media outlet has stuck with the case. The Los Angeles Times’ Richard Serrano, who broke the news to which Walsh refers, extends the story today by reporting that F&F guns turned up in El Paso, Texas in January 2010 in what should have been a huge red flag that the operation had spun out of control:

A cache of assault weapons lost in the ATF’s gun-trafficking surveillance operation in Phoenix turned up in El Paso, where it was being stored for shipment to Mexico, according to new internal agency emails and federal court records.

Forty firearms along with ammunition magazines and ballistic vests were discovered in Texas in January 2010 during the early stages of the program, meaning the firearms vanished soon after the program began. …

The El Paso case is the first example of Fast and Furious weapons turning up on this side of the border outside the Phoenix area.

The big question is why the ATF didn’t suspend the operation after discovering that it had lost control of the guns. The answer seems to be that they didn’t care that they had lost control of the guns, since they were allowing the F&F guns to go across the border anyway. Walsh writes that this demonstrates that the explanations offered in defense of F&F are simply false. Instead, Walsh deduces that only two explanations are possible any longer — or maybe three:

There are two possible explanations. The first is that the anti-gun Obama administration deliberately wanted American guns planted in Mexico in order to demonize American firearms dealers and gun owners. The operation was manufacturing “evidence” for the president’s false claim that we’re to blame for the appalling levels of Mexican drug-war violence.

If this is true, then Holder & Co. have got to go — and the trail needs to be followed no matter where it leads. For the federal government to seek to frame its own citizens is unconscionable.

A second notion is that the CIA was behind the whole thing, which accounts for all the desperate wagon-circling. Under this theory, the Agency feared the los Zetas drug cartel was becoming too powerful and might even mount a coup against the Mexican government. So some 2,000 weapons costing more than $1.25 million were deliberately channeled to the rival Sinaloa cartel, which operates along the American border, to keep the Zetas in check.

Of course, there’s a third explanation — that both scenarios are true, and that those in charge of Fast and Furious saw an opportunity to shoot two birds with one Romanian-made AK Draco pistol.

I’m going with option C. And if that’s the case, then include Leon Panetta among those who has to hit the road, too.

Update in the "Fast & Furious" GunRunning investigation

Gotta love trying to skip the weekly news cycle. Read the original here.

New Fast and Furious docs released by White House
By Sharyl Attkisson

September 30, 2011 9:35 PM

WASHINGTON - Late Friday, the White House turned over new documents in the Congressional investigation into the ATF "Fast and Furious" gunwalking scandal.

The documents show extensive communications between then-ATF Special Agent in Charge of the Phoenix office Bill Newell - who led Fast and Furious - and then-White House National Security Staffer Kevin O'Reilly. Emails indicate the two also spoke on the phone. Such detailed, direct communications between a local ATF manager in Phoenix and a White House national security staffer has raised interest among Congressional investigators looking into Fast and Furious. Newell has said he and O'Reilly are long time friends.

Newly-released White House documents (pdf)

ATF agents say that in Fast and Furious, their agency allowed thousands of assault rifles and other weapons to be sold to suspected traffickers for Mexican drug cartels. At least two of the guns turned up at the murder scene of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry last December.

ATF Manager says he shared Fast and Furious with the White House

The email exchanges span a little over a month last summer. They discuss ATF's gun trafficking efforts along the border including the controversial Fast and Furious case, though not by name. The emails to and from O'Reilly indicate more than just a passing interest in the Phoenix office's gun trafficking cases. They do not mention specific tactics such as "letting guns walk."

A lawyer for the White House wrote Congressional investigators: "none of the communications between ATF and the White House revealed the investigative law enforcement tactics at issue in your inquiry, let alone any decision to allow guns to 'walk.'"

ATF Fast and Furious: Who at the White House knew?

Among the documents produced: an email in which ATF's Newell sent the White House's O'Reilly an "arrow chart reflecting the ultimate destination of firearms we intercepted and/or where the guns ended up." The chart shows arrows leading from Arizona to destinations all over Mexico.

Newell email (09.03.10) (pdf)
Arizona Gunrunner Impact Team chart (pdf)

In response, O'Reilly wrote on Sept. 3, 2010 "The arrow chart is really interesting - and - no surprise - implies at least that different (Drug Trafficking Organizations) in Mexico have very different and geographically distinct networks in the US for acquiring guns. Did last year's TX effort develop a similar graphic?"

O'Reilly email (09.03.10) (pdf)

The White House counsel who produced the documents stated that some records were not included because of "significant confidentiality interests."

Also included are email photographs including images of a .50 caliber rifle (left) that Newell tells O'Reilly "was purchased in Tucson, Arizona (part of another OCDTF case)." OCDTF is a joint task force that operates under the Department of Justice and includes the US Attorneys, ATF, DEA, FBI, ICE and IRS. Fast and Furious was an OCDTF case.

An administration source would not describe the Tucson OCDTF case. However, CBS News has learned that ATF's Phoenix office led an operation out of Tucson called "Wide Receiver." Sources claim ATF allowed guns to "walk" in that operation, much like Fast and Furious.

Congressional investigators for Republicans Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) have asked to interview O'Reilly by September 30. But the Administration informed them that O'Reilly is on assignment for the State Department in Iraq and unavailable.

One administration source says White House national security staffers were "briefed on the toplines of ongoing federal efforts, but nobody in White House knew about the investigative tactics being used in the operation, let alone any decision to let guns walk."

Who is pressing the Debt crisis?

Read the original here.

White House Stokes Debt-Ceiling Crisis - Right Turnby Jennifer Rubin - Washington Post

A Republican aide e-mails me: “The Speaker, Sen. Reid and Sen. McConnell all agreed on the general framework of a two-part plan. A short-term increase (with cuts greater than the increase), combined with a committee to find long-term savings before the rest of the increase would be considered. Sen. Reid took the bipartisan plan to the White House and the President said no.”

If this is accurate the president is playing with fire. By halting a bipartisan deal he imperils the country’s finances and can rightly be accused of putting partisanship above all else. The ONLY reason to reject a short-term, two-step deal embraced by both the House and Senate is to avoid another approval-killing face-off for President Obama before the election. Next to pulling troops out of Afghanistan to fit the election calendar, this is the most irresponsible and shameful move of his presidency.

As for the House, why not pass the deal that Sen. Harry Reid agreed to, send it to the Senate and leave town? Enough already.

WSJ on POTUS Tweet Conference

James Taranto at the WSJ has some opinion on the President's tweet conference. I can't say I disagree...read the original here.

Commander in Tweet
Just what we need, another "explanation" from @BarackObama!
By JAMES TARANTO

We have to admit, we didn't watch President Obama's "Twitter town hall" yesterday. In fact, we were unclear on the whole concept. We assumed that the whole thing was happening on Twitter--that the president would be tweeting answers to tweeted questions. And to be honest, we can think of better things to do on Twitter, like replacing a word in a famous quote with "duck."
In short, it was little more than a glorified press conference--replete, as CBS reports, with the usual Obama tropes:

A CBS News video set us straight. Apparently it was sort of an interview format, with a guy in a gray suit (Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, according to CNN) reading questions off a TV screen, and Obama speaking, not tweeting, in response. The questions were screened by a team of eightTwitter-selected "curators"--all journalists, coincidentally enough--which ensured that none of IowaHawk's questions would get through to the president. Too bad. We'd have liked to hear the answer to this one: "An $8 billion high speed train leaves Chicago for Iowa City at 8:15am at 40mph. Why?"
The magnitude of the worst U.S. recession since the Great Depression escaped President Obama when he first stepped into office, the president acknowledged today at his "Twitter town hall."
Asked what mistakes he made in handling the recession, Mr. Obama said today he could have done a better job at explaining "to the American people it was going to take a while to get out of this."

Except of course that he did explain: that there was a danger unemployment would rise as high as 8% unless Congress spent some $800 kajillion on a so-called stimulus. Congress obliged. Unemployment reached as high as 10% and is still above 9%.

That's why the World's Greatest Orator keeps claiming that the quality of his explaining was insufficient. It diverts attention from the real problem: that his explanation was wrong because his policy was bad.

Nonetheless, there's always room for improvement, and if Obama wants to learn to explain things better, he could do worse than to stop talking and start tweeting. Twitter's 140-character delimitation, though sporadically vexatious, is an inexorable disincentive to magniloquence. And let's face it, Obama can be a bit pompous.

This seems as good a time as any to mention that you can now follow this columnist on Twitter. Sorry for the self-promotion, but as Hillel the Elder observed, "If I am not for my duck, who will be for me?

Campaigning from the White House?

Is this a thing? Does the administration's defense hold up? Should this be a thing? Or is this just a perk of being the incumbent? Should anyone be making a big deal of this to see if it is a thing? Read the original here.

White House says Obama Fundraising Appeal not Illegal
RealClearPolitics - Articles - Print Article
By Alexis Simendinger - June 28, 2011

President Obama appealed to supporters and donors in a videotaped message emailed by his campaign team to millions of people Monday -- a message filmed with the president inside the White House by a crew from the Democratic National Committee, according to a White House official who responded to RCP questions about the solicitation.

In the video, Obama tells supporters they can join him and Vice President Joe Biden for dinner if they win a contest offered by his campaign. "We're both really looking forward to it. Hope to see you soon," Obama says on camera. The script was written by the DNC.

The president's video is accompanied by a donor solicitation form in which supporters of the administration can check boxes donating from $5 to $700 to the Obama-Biden re-election effort. This may, or may not, constitute fundraising by a federal employee in a federal office building, a practice that is generally prohibited. Even if it is fundraising, the statutory barriers regarding the White House itself are vague.

In response to questions about whether the president and his political team had stayed safely on the legal side of the relevant statutes, White House officials made three arguments. First, they said, an open process for small donors to essentially win a raffle is not the kind of fundraising prohibited under the law -- and the president didn't make a direct appeal for donations, anyway. Second, they pointed to a longstanding advisory opinion from the Justice Department that differentiates between the residence portion of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. -- where the aide said Obama had been filmed -- and official rooms in the White House. Third, they said, Obama's approach is in keeping with the practices of his predecessors.

"It's no different than what happened under eight years of George Bush and eight years of Bill Clinton," the official explained, speaking on background.

This assertion appears to be half-true. Although the news accounts cited by White House officials do show that George W. Bush filmed political ads in the White House, they were not overt fundraising efforts. But directly raising money in the White House was indeed the context of the bitter controversy President Clinton and Vice President Al Gore provoked in 1995 and 1996 by aggressively raising millions of dollars in campaign funds during activities expressly designed to use the White House as a hook to attract donor interest.

Congress subsequently investigated Clinton's Pennsylvania Avenue courtship of donors, which included using the Lincoln Bedroom for donor sleepovers and offering intimate meetings and briefings with Clinton and other top officials inside the White House for the donors who could -- and did -- write big checks. Republican lawmakers, joined by some good-government advocates, howled that the president had sold White House access to raise money for his re-election.

Gore, who admitted that he solicited campaign cash from a telephone in his vice presidential office, famously argued during a West Wing briefing for reporters in 1997 that he had been operating within the law because there was "no controlling legal authority."

The Obama campaign video is a small part of an aggressive fundraising effort[1] being undertaken by Team Obama. It also comes on the heels of criticism that the president, who campaigned to change the way Washington works, was instead participating in some of its more questionable rituals, including a March 7 meeting with Obama arranged by the DNC in the Blue Room of the White House residence. The meeting, first described in a June 24 Politico story[2] about a list of attendees released by the White House, took place with business leaders who were former or current donors or fundraisers. White House press secretary Jay Carney told Politico the meeting was not "a fundraiser."

In the email message[3] that accompanies Obama's Monday video, however, Obama campaign manager Jim Messina explains to supporters that a minimum $5 donation is required to enter the campaign contest: "Make a donation today and be automatically registered for a chance to have dinner with President Obama and Vice President Biden together. We'll cover your airfare and the meal -- all you need to bring is your story and your ideas."

White House officials queried about the solicitation by RCP on Monday emphasized that the law permits Obama and Biden to conduct solicitations from select rooms inside the White House, including the residence, which is treated as the president's home and not his official workplace. That determination is based on an Office of Legal Counsel interpretation of the statute originating in the 1970s, a presidential spokesman told RCP before forwarding a copy of the opinion. A White House official repeatedly stated that the Obama dinner solicitation was filmed in the White House residence. If true, that would be a mitigating factor, but some observers who viewed the video believe it might be the Map Room[4], a venerated ground-floor office in the mansion that was used as a situation room for Franklin Roosevelt during the Second World War -- and where Obama himself often does official business[5]. A White House aide said Tuesday morning that he didn't think it was the Map Room, although he wasn't certain of the exact location.

The campaign's dine-with-Obama contest first began in mid-June and then added Biden to the prize this week. The campaign team is working intensively this week to solicit money from small-dollar donors to increase the size and composition of Obama's war chest prior to an important June 30, second-quarter deadline to report total campaign finance details to the Federal Election Commission.

"The web videos you're referencing don't ask for funds," the White House spokesman said. "However, even if we did it, the Office of Legal Counsel has determined that there are certain rooms in the White House in which you can do that."

He described Obama's campaigning from the White House as even more carefully scripted by the DNC than the filmed messages of Clinton and Bush. "We're going above and beyond what's required by law. The law would permit that in certain rooms. And we're not even doing what's permitted in certain rooms," he added.

To make the case that Obama acted in keeping with his predecessors, the White House sent RCP these references, as well as YouTube links:


2004: President Bush And First Lady Laura Bush Filmed Parts Of Their Campaign Ads In The White House Residence -- The Bush Campaign Pointed To 31 White House Images Used By The Clinton Campaign In 1996 For Precedent. "Bush and his wife filmed their parts of the ads last month in the White House residence. Campaign officials said both parties have used the executive mansion for political ads. By their count, President Clinton used White House images 31 times in 1996." [USA Today, 3/3/04]

2004: "The President's Reelection Campaign Filmed Mr. Bush In The White House During The Week Of Feb. 9 For Advertising To Be Aired In Swing States." "The president's reelection campaign filmed Mr. Bush in the White House during the week of Feb. 9 for advertising to be aired in swing states. Monday, it began the process of calling stations to inquire about purchasing ad time. The advertising campaign will emphasize President Bush's 'positive message' and present him as a man of 'steady leadership in the face of remarkable change,' Bush campaign spokesman Scott Stanzel said. He added that the advertising would show that the president has led 'with the strong leadership that challenging times demand.' " [CBS News, 2/11/09]

"This is not the Clinton coffees or the Lincoln bedroom," Obama's spokesman said. "This is something that was routinely done under Bill Clinton and routinely done under George Bush, so if you're going to start comparing this to those mega-scandals, you need to sort of back up and take a deep breath."

According to the advisory legal opinion on which Obama is relying as his re-election campaign begins, "Areas within the discrete private residence area included in the White House mansion, although not physically detached from areas formally given over to official office space or to areas used for ceremonial functions, may therefore reasonably be seen to fall outside the reach of the statute."

The statute governing campaign solicitations inside federal offices appears in Title 18, Section 607, of the U.S. Criminal Code and expressly includes the president and vice president. It states, "It shall be unlawful for an individual who is an officer of employee of the Federal Government, including the President, Vice President, and Members of Congress, to solicit or receive a donation of money or other thing of value in connection with a Federal, State or local election, while in any room or building occupied in the discharge of official duties by an officer or employee of the United States, from any person."

References
^ aggressive fundraising effort (www.washingtonpost.com)
^ Politico story (www.politico.com)
^ the email message (donate.barackobama.com)
^ Map Room (www.whitehousemuseum.org)
^ Obama himself often does official business (www.whitehouse.gov)

WH says War Powers Act doesn't apply;

POTUS doesn't need Congressional approval for Libyan action. Read the original here via HotAir.com.

The War Powers Act Doesn’t Apply To Libya Because We’re Not Engaged In “Hostilities” « Hot Air

So predictable[1] that even a dummy like me saw it coming[2].

The two senior administration lawyers contended that American forces have not been in “hostilities” at least since April 7, when NATO took over leadership in maintaining a no-flight zone in Libya, and the United States took up what is mainly a supporting role — providing surveillance and refueling for allied warplanes — although unmanned drones operated by the United States periodically fire missiles as well.

They argued that United States forces are at little risk in the operation because there are no American troops on the ground and Libyan forces are unable to exchange meaningful fire with American forces. They said that there was little risk of the military mission escalating, because it is constrained by the United Nations Security Counsel resolution that authorized use of air power to defend civilians.

“We are not saying the president can take the country into war on his own,” Mr. Koh said. “We are not saying the War Powers Resolution is unconstitutional or should be scrapped, or that we can refuse to consult Congress. We are saying the limited nature of this particular mission is not the kind of ‘hostilities’ envisioned by the War Powers Resolution.”

In fact, we’re really not “constrained” by the UN’s Libya resolution. That’s why it was big news last week when NATO finally admitted that it’s targeting Qaddafi[3]after spending the past three months insisting that it was only acting to protect Libyan civilians. There’s no “constraint” if the meaning of the resolution can change at the coalition’s whim, and since when is congressional oversight of U.S. military action satisfied by UN constraints anyway? But never mind that. The bigger issue, per the boldfaced bits, is that the White House is actually offering three distinct rationales for why the WPA might not apply. Do all three need to obtain in order to render the Act inoperative or will any one suffice? I doubt even Obama is hubristic enough to send ground troops into battle without congressional approval, so the “no forces at risk” condition is mandatory. Not sure about the other two, though. What happens if France and Britain decide to end the mission, forcing NATO to hand things back over to the U.S., and O elects to ramp up the drone strikes in an all-out bid to topple Qaddafi? There still wouldn’t be any forces at risk, but the “support role” and “no chance of escalation” conditions would be violated. Where would that leave us in terms of deciding whether the WPA applies?

Whatever. They’re doing this not because they feel duty-bound to explain but because Boehner put them in a bind[4] yesterday at a moment when there may, finally, be light at the end of the tunnel for the mission. The rebels are advancing towards Tripoli[5] under cover of NATO air power and, according to David Ignatius[6], an envoy sent by Qaddafi’s intelligence chief is prepared to offer a deal in which Qaddafi would cede power and “retreat into the desert” in return for sparing his life. O’s probably hoping/expecting that his “no hostilities” argument will give Boehner enough political cover to hold off on legal action for a few more weeks until we see how things shake out on the ground. Not everyone in the House is prepared to be so accommodating — below you’ll find video of Kucinich and a few others announcing their intent to sue The One over the WPA — but my guess is that that suit will fail under the “political question” doctrine[7] anyway, so Boehner will be in no hurry to join it. One question I’m left with: What’s the difference, according to the White House’s War Powers logic, between what we’re doing in Libya right now and what we’re doing in Yemen? Special Ops has been using drones and remotely piloted planes in Yemen for years; CIA drones are set to join the battle[8] soon to provide more firepower against Al Qaeda. So while there are no U.S. forces at risk, the mission is escalating and we’re not in a support role. Does that mean the WPA does or doesn’t apply? Or is it the White House’s position that the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force[9] passed after 9/11 lets it go after AQ anywhere, in perpetuity, so that a new congressional authorization isn’t needed?
References
^ So predictable (www.nytimes.com)
^ saw it coming (hotair.com)
^ it’s targeting Qaddafi (hotair.com)
^ put them in a bind (hotair.com)
^ advancing towards Tripoli (news.sky.com)
^ David Ignatius (www.washingtonpost.com)
^ “political question” doctrine (en.wikipedia.org)
^ join the battle (www.washingtonpost.com)
^ 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force (news.findlaw.com)
^ So predictable (www.nytimes.com)
^ saw it coming (hotair.com)
^ it’s targeting Qaddafi (hotair.com)
^ put them in a bind (hotair.com)
^ advancing towards Tripoli (news.sky.com)
^ David Ignatius (www.washingtonpost.com)
^ “political question” doctrine (en.wikipedia.org)
^ join the battle (www.washingtonpost.com)
^ 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force (news.findlaw.com)

Obama administration shuts out media that allowed Romney Op-Ed

Not really sure what else to say...imagine if a Republican administration that shut out media that allowed a Democrat's op-ed? Read the original here.

White House Shuts Out Herald Scribe

The White House Press Office has refused to give the Boston Herald full access to President Obama’s Boston fund-raiser today, in e-mails objecting to the newspaper’s front page placement of a Mitt Romney[1] op-ed, saying pool reporters are chosen based on whether they cover the news “fairly.”

“I tend to consider the degree to which papers have demonstrated to covering the White House regularly and fairly in determining local pool reporters,” White House spokesman Matt Lehrich wrote in response to a Herald request for full access to the presidential visit.

» Joe Battenfeld: Obama off the deep end[2]

“My point about the op-ed was not that you ran it but that it was the full front page, which excluded any coverage of the visit of a sitting US President to Boston. I think that raises a fair question about whether the paper is unbiased in its coverage of the President’s visits,” Lehrich wrote.

But Lehrich said the Herald wasn’t purposefully barred from the press pool, saying local pool duty by the Boston Globe was arranged earlier with the White House Correspondents Association. And Lehrich insisted the Herald may yet be allowed into Obama events.

“As we have in the past — including the multiple occasions on which the Herald has supplied local pool reporters — we will continue to consider the Herald for local pool duty for future visits,” Lehrich wrote.

Obama is in town today to raise money for his 2012 re-election campaign. His afternoon speech in the South End’s Cyclorama is open to all media, but only a selected pool can attend other aspects of his fund-raiser. Pool reporters must share all their material with other press. The Herald has been bypassed for pool duty during Obama’s last two visits despite asking the White House to be the local pool reporter.

“Newspapers don’t have to be unbiased to get access. You can’t just let only the newspapers you want in,” said Boston University journalism professor Fred Bayles.

Romney spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom defended Romney’s March 8 opinion piece:

“That op-ed was about jobs, which apparently is a sensitive subject for the thin-skinned people around the president. The White House may be able to manipulate pool coverage, but they can’t manipulate the fact that millions of Americans are out of work because of President Obama’s failure to create jobs and get our economy moving,” Fehrnstrom said in a statement yesterday.

The administration has a history of controversial clashes with the press.

The White House was seen to be at war with Fox News early in the administration, with its communications director calling Fox an “arm” of the Republican Party, while the president avoided Fox interviews until his health reform proposal ran into trouble. Since losing control of Congress, Obama has sat down with conservative Fox commentator Bill O’Reilly.

In April 2010, Bloomberg’s Ed Chen, president of the White House Correspondent’s Association, met with then-Press Secretary Robert Gibbs to hash out complaints about limitations on the press, saying, “In my 10-plus years at the White House, rarely have I sensed such a level of anger ... over White House practices and attitudes toward the press.”

Last month, a San Francisco Chronicle editor reported the White House threatened to bar Hearst reporters from pool duty after a Chronicle reporter shot video of protestors mocking Obama at a fund-raiser.

Glenn Reynolds, a University of Tennessee law professor who has followed White House-press relations at right-leaning Instapundit.com, said a pattern appears to be developing.

“It’s all about control,” Reynolds said. “At some point this will blow back on them. Most presidents behave in a more refined fashion. Experience has shown that acting presidential is good politics and to their advantage.”

References
^ Mitt Romney (www.bostonherald.com)
^ Joe Battenfeld: Obama off the deep end (www.bostonherald.com)

Stating the obvious

"The more successful we are, the more American troops can return home."

-- President George W. Bush

It's about time someone finally said this. Why aren't we shouting this on every TV station in Iraq and the United States? The benchmarks which we've been bandying about are all going in the wrong direction. By telling everyone - which, thanks to CNN includes the insurgents and al Qaeda - that we'll be leaving Iraq if things get worse, we're only encouraging the insurgents and al Qaeda to increase the pace of their attacks. By stating that the only way we're leaving is when there's stability and then following through on that (by, for example, this removal of 30,000 troops) we'll show the insurgents that the best way to get American troops out of Iraq is to stop attacking them.

Citing progress, Bush to reduce troops
The Politico

President Bush will use his Oval Office address Thursday to offer what an aide calls a "plan for success in Iraq" that dovetails with the numerical drawdown advised by Army Gen. David Petraeus, aides said.

"This is a mission change based on success and progress on the ground and not a timetable for a hasty withdrawal," said a senior administration official familiar with the speech. "This is a time to put politics aside and an opportunity for people of differing viewpoints to get together."

In making the case that soldiers will return home based on conditions in the theater, officials say reductions will be possible in some regions before others.

"The principle guiding my decisions on troop levels in Iraq is 'return on success'," Bush said in excerpts of his speech released early by the White House. "The more successful we are, the more American troops can return home. And in all we do, I will ensure that our commanders on the ground have the troops and flexibility they need to defeat the enemy."

Decoding Iraq statements

I'm sure everyone has read or watched the President's speech by now. Just in case, here's a CNN article that does a pretty good recap and explanation. What we'll see, though, from the response of the Democrats and the push of the Administration is this:

The Administration has stated because conditions on the ground have improved, they're ending the surge early and starting the withdrawal of troops now instead of next April as originally planned. They've said that the conditions on the ground and the needs of the troops will dictate troop levels.

The Democrats, on the other hand, have said that the conditions on the ground are irrelevant and political expediency will dictate troops levels.

Bush: 5,700 troops to return home by Christmas
CNN

WASHINGTON -- President Bush said Thursday night conditions on the ground in Iraq have improved sufficiently to start bringing some U.S. troops home, and urged Americans divided over the war to "come together."

In a televised speech to the nation, Bush said he would reduce U.S. force strength by 5,700 troops by Christmas and, by next July, reduce the number of combat brigades from 20 to 15 -- a decrease of roughly 21,500 troops overall.

The first step in that process will come later this month, when 2,200 Marines leaving Anbar province will not be replaced, the president said.

"The principle guiding my decisions on troop levels in Iraq is 'return on success' -- the more successful we are, the more American troops can return home," Bush said during a 17-minute prime-time address from the Oval Office.

"In all we do, I will ensure that our commanders on the ground have the troops and flexibility they need to defeat the enemy."

In the Democratic response, Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island said Bush's speech "does not amount to real change."

Bush knew Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction

The title to this Salon hit-job really ticks me off. The title, "Bush knew Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction" conflicts in its entirety with the argument presented in the article: that President Bush was presented with information that said Saddam did not have weapons - some of which, I might add, we have found as well as the knowledge and capability to continue making - but he, and probably the head of the CIA did not believe to be accurate. Believing that the source wasn't to be trusted and, thus, that his assertion that Iraq had no nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons is also not to be trusted is the exact opposite of knowing "Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction." A correct title would be, "Bush trusted wrong CIA sources on Saddam WMD" or "Bush discounted accurate CIA sources on Saddam WMD." The title that was given, however, is ridiculous.

Bush knew Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction
Sidney Blumenthal for Salon

On Sept. 8, 2002, CIA director George Tenet briefed President Bush in the Oval Office on top-secret intelligence that Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction, according to two former senior CIA officers. Bush dismissed as worthless this information from the Iraqi foreign minister, a member of Saddam's inner circle, although it turned out to be accurate in every detail. Tenet never brought it up again.

Nor was the intelligence included in the National Intelligence Estimate of October 2002, which stated categorically that Iraq possessed WMD. No one in Congress was aware of the secret intelligence that Saddam had no WMD as the house of Representatives and the Senate voted, a week after the submission of the NIE, on the Authorization for Use of Military Force in Iraq. The information, moreover, was not circulated within the CIA among those agents involved in operations to prove whether Saddam had WMD.

On April 23, 2006, CBS's "60 minutes" interviewed Tyler Drumheller, the former CIA chief of clandestine operations for Europe, who disclosed that the agency had received documentary intelligence from Naji Sabri, Saddam's foreign minister, that Saddam did not have a WMD. "We continued to validate him the whole way through," said Drumheller. "The policy was set. The war in Iraq was coming, and they were looking for intelligence to fit into the policy, to justify the policy."

Now two former senior CIA officers have confirmed Drumheller's account to me and provided the background to the story of how the information that might have stopped the invasion of Iraq was twisted in order to justify it. They described what Tenet said to Bush about the lack of WMD, and how Bush responded, and noted that Tenet never shared Sabri's intelligence with then Secretary of State Colin Powell. According to the former officers, the intelligence was also never shared with the senior military planning the invasion, which required U.S. soldiers to receive medical shots against the ill effects of WMD and to wear protective uniforms in the desert.

Who won't Bush talk to?

What was it that Hillary said last night about Bush and diplomacy? Who won't he talk with?

U.S.-Iran Talks Resume in Baghdad
ABC News

The U.S. and Iranian ambassadors to Iraq sat down Tuesday for a second round of groundbreaking of talks on stabilizing Iraq, a session marred by a tense exchange over American allegations that Iran is fueling the violence.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki opened the meeting with an impassioned appeal for help from the two nations to stabilize Iraq and warned that militants from al-Qaida and other terror groups in Iraq were now fleeing and finding refuge elsewhere.

"We are hoping that you support stability in Iraq, an Iraq that doesn't interfere in the affairs of others nor wants anyone to meddle in its own affairs," he said, according to excerpts of al-Maliki's remarks released by his office.

"The world ... must stand together and face this dangerous phenomenon and its evils, which have gone beyond the borders of Iraq after terror and al-Qaida groups received strong blows and are now running away from the fight and moving to other nations," he said.

What would this do, again?

Bruce Fein comes up with some interesting suggestions regarding regulation of the executive privilege that was instituted in United States v. Nixon and exercised by the Administration in conjunction with the Valerie Plame investigation, the Cheney energy policy report early in the first term, and the investigation into the dismissal of the U.S. Attorneys by the Administration. The most interesting comment, though, is his criteria for denying Congress access to information and upholding executive privilege:

"In addition, Congress should enact a statute stipulating that executive privilege should yield to congressional oversight unless Congress were to expose presidential advice for the sake of exposure - an act of political voyeurism."

So, if Congress is trying to expose a crime that took place, the executive privilege would not apply. If Congress is, say, trying to engage in a political fishing investigation to drum up political points when no crimes took place - like, for instance, if a CIA analyst's name is leaked to the newspapers or the Vice President writes a document setting out suggested energy policy or the Administration exercises its Constitutional authority to remove U.S. Attorneys - then the privilege would be upheld and Congress's request would be denied.