* 7/1/10--"Recently, the secretary of labor, Hilda Solis, produced a video advising workers to contact her office should they feel that they have been shorted wages by their employers. Fair enough. But then she goes on to explicitly include workers who are not documented and to promise them confidentiality, i.e., de facto federal protection for their illegality: 'Every worker has a right to be paid fairly, whether documented or not.' 'Undocumented' is part of the current circumlocution for breaking federal law and residing here illegally. In short, although Solis is a federal executive sworn to uphold existing federal law, she has decided which laws suit her and which do not. She rightly promises to pursue lawbreaking employers, but quite wrongly not to pursue lawbreaking employees. Yet when we become unequal before the law, the entire notion of a lawful society starts to erode." --historian Victor Davis Hanson (from Patriot Post Chronicle)
* 7/2/10--WASHINGTON -- President Obama arrived on the scene yesterday of one America's most pressing political disasters and tried lecturing it away. It was a halting speech, punctuated with sighs and head-shaking. America had been sent to its room and once again punished with a long, boring lecture. What made yesterday's speech so remarkable was how callow and shifty Obama was about a topic of such dire importance. He claimed that solutions have been "held hostage to political posturing" and wagged his finger at all those who just beg the government to finally enforce current law before creating a scheme of new promises. Then he played the very same partisan games that created the problem. He told us that illegal aliens cannot be stopped from crossing the border. He said that laws on the books are unenforceable. Anyway, he explained, those laws are immoral and un-American. But the good news? The border IS sealed! "For the first time, we've begun screening 100 percent of southbound rail shipments," Obama crowed. That's right, southbound, as in from the United States to Mexico. As if that's how 11 million illegals got here. All this from the executive charged with guarding the borders of our country.--Charles Hurt, NY Post
* 7/5/10--"[In her confirmation hearings last week, Elena] Kagan did her best to say nothing, and her best was sufficient unto the day. She reduced the vapid to the insipid, as in an exchange with Sen. Tom Coburn over the limits of the Constitution's Commerce Clause -- written by the Founders to limit the power of the federal government and distorted by liberals, both on the Supreme Court and off, to enable the feds to expand the nanny state without limit. When Mr. Coburn asked whether Congress could enact a law requiring Americans to eat three fruits and three vegetables a day, Mzz Kagan replied: 'That sounds like a dumb law.' Mr. Coburn was trying to get at her view of the Commerce Clause, and got a wisecrack. Mzz Kagan then added that the courts would be wrong to strike down a dumb law just because it was dumb. What's not at all dumb about the question is that President Obama is relying on the Commerce Clause to defend his own dumb idea, the health care 'reform.' But not to laugh. The left is always eager to defend its dumb ideas. ... Since Mzz Kagan has never been a judge, we don't have a judicial record to measure her by, and we must rely on her vague answers to vapid questions and can only surmise, suppose and speculate. She sounds like a reliable liberal, ready to stand up for the law of the nanny, enforced by the rod of the state. We won't know for sure until it's time to bend over." --Washington Times editor emeritus Wesley Pruden (from Patriot Post brief)
* 7/6/10--The US workforce shrank by 652,000 in June, one of the sharpest contractions ever. The rate of hourly earnings fell 0.1pc. Wages are flirting with deflation. "The economy is still in the gravitational pull of the Great Recession," said Robert Reich, former US labour secretary. "All the booster rockets for getting us beyond it are failing." "Home sales are down. Retail sales are down. Factory orders in May suffered their biggest tumble since March of last year. So what are we doing about it? Less than nothing," he said. California is tightening faster than Greece. State workers have seen a 14pc fall in earnings this year due to forced furloughs. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is cutting pay for 200,000 state workers to the minimum wage of $7.25 an hour to cover his $19bn deficit. Can Illinois be far behind? The state has a deficit of $12bn and is $5bn in arrears to schools, nursing homes, child care centres, and prisons. "It is getting worse every single day," said state comptroller Daniel Hynes. "We are not paying bills for absolutely essential services. That is obscene." Roughly a million Americans have dropped out of the jobs market altogether over the past two months. That is the only reason why the headline unemployment rate is not exploding to a post-war high. Let us be honest. The US is still trapped in depression a full 18 months into zero interest rates, quantitative easing (QE), and fiscal stimulus that has pushed the budget deficit above 10pc of GDP. The share of the US working-age population with jobs in June actually fell from 58.7pc to 58.5pc. This is the real stress indicator. The ratio was 63pc three years ago. Eight million jobs have been lost. The average time needed to find a job has risen to a record 35.2 weeks. Nothing like this has been seen before in the post-war era. Jeff Weninger, of Harris Private Bank, said this compares with a peak of 21.2 weeks in the Volcker recession of the early 1980s. "Legions of individuals have been left with stale skills, and little prospect of finding meaningful work, and benefits that are being exhausted. By our math the crop of people who are unemployed but not receiving a check amounts to 9.2m." Republicans on Capitol Hill are filibustering a bill to extend the dole for up to 1.2m jobless facing an imminent cut-off. Dean Heller from Nevada called them "hobos". This really is starting to feel like 1932. Washington's fiscal stimulus is draining away. It peaked in the first quarter, yet even then the economy eked out a growth rate of just 2.7pc. This compares with 5.1pc, 9.3pc, 8.1pc and 8.5pc in the four quarters coming off recession in the early 1980s. The housing market is already crumbling as government props are pulled away. The expiry of homebuyers' tax credit led to a 30pc fall in the number of buyers signing contracts in May. "It is cataclysmic," said David Bloom from HSBC. Federal tax rises are automatically baked into the pie. The Congressional Budget Office said fiscal policy will swing from a net +2pc of GDP to -2pc by late 2011. The states and counties may have to cut as much as $180bn. Investors are starting to chew over the awful possibility that America's recovery will stall just as Asia hits the buffers. China's manufacturing index has been falling since January, with a downward lurch in June to 50.4, just above the break-even line of 50. Momentum seems to be flagging everywhere, whether in Australian building permits, Turkish exports, or Japanese industrial output. On Friday, Jacques Cailloux from RBS put out a "double-dip alert" for Europe. "The risk is rising fast. Absent an effective policy intervention to tackle the debt crisis on the periphery over coming months, the European economy will double dip in 2011," he said. It is obvious what that policy should be for Europe, America, and Japan. If budgets are to shrink in an orderly fashion over several years – as they must, to avoid sovereign debt spirals – then central banks will have to cushion the blow keeping monetary policy ultra-loose for as long it takes. The Fed is already eyeing the printing press again. "It's appropriate to think about what we would do under a deflationary scenario," said Dennis Lockhart for the Atlanta Fed. His colleague Kevin Warsh said the pros and cons of purchasing more bonds should be subject to "strict scrutiny", a comment I took as confirmation that the Fed Board is arguing internally about QE2....The question is whether they will...resist the chorus of 1930s liquidation taking charge of the debate. Last week the Bank for International Settlements called for combined fiscal and monetary tightening, lending its great authority to the forces of debt-deflation and mass unemployment. If even the BIS has lost the plot, God help us.--Telegraph.co.uk
* 7/6/10--In emotional and personal testimony, an ex-Justice official who quit over the handling of a voter intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party accused his former employer of instructing attorneys in the civil rights division to ignore cases that involve black defendants and white victims. J. Christian Adams, testifying Tuesday before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, said that "over and over and over again," the department showed "hostility" toward those cases. He described the Black Panther case as one example of that -- he defended the legitimacy of the suit and said his "blood boiled" when he heard a Justice official claim the case wasn't solid. "It is false," Adams said of the claim. "We abetted wrongdoing and abandoned law-abiding citizens," he later testified. The department abandoned the New Black Panther case last year. It stemmed from an incident on Election Day in 2008 in Philadelphia, where members of the party were videotaped in front of a polling place, dressed in military-style uniforms and allegedly hurling racial slurs while one brandished a night stick. The Bush Justice Department brought the first case against three members of the group, accusing them in a civil complaint of violating the Voter Rights Act. The Obama administration initially pursued the case, winning a default judgment in federal court in April 2009 when the Black Panther members did not appear in court. But then the administration moved to dismiss the charges the following month after getting one of the New Black Panther members to agree to not carry a "deadly weapon" near a polling place until 2012. In a statement Tuesday, a Justice spokesman said the civil rights division determined "the facts and the law did not support pursuing claims" against the two other defendants and denied Adams' allegations. "The department makes enforcement decisions based on the merits, not the race, gender or ethnicity of any party involved. We are committed to comprehensive and vigorous enforcement of both the civil and criminal provisions of the federal laws that prohibit voter intimidation," the spokesman said. The Civil Rights Commission, which subpoenaed Adams, has been probing the incident since last year. Adams said he ignored department directives not to testify and eventually quit after he heard Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez testify that there were concerns the Black Panther case was not supported by the facts. Adams has described the case as open-and-shut and said Tuesday that it was a "very low moment" to hear Perez make that claim. But he described the department's hostility toward that and other cases involving black defendants as "pervasive." Adams cited hostility in the department toward a 2007 voting rights case against a black official in Mississippi who was accused of trying to intimidate voters. Adams said that when the Black Panther case came up, he heard officials in the department say it was "no big deal" and "media-generated" and point to "Fox News" as the source. But as the investigation unfolded, he said he discovered "indications" that the Black Panther Party was doing the "same thing" to supporters of former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton during the Democratic primary season in early 2008. He urged the commission to pursue testimony from other Justice officials to corroborate his story. It's unclear how far the commission will get. The commissioners want to hear from Christopher Coates, the former chief of the Justice Department's voting section, but the commission claims the Justice Department is blocking Coates from testifying about why the case was dropped. In a written statement last week, the department questioned the motives of Adams, now an attorney in Virginia and a blogger for Pajamas Media. "It is not uncommon for attorneys with the department to have good faith disagreements about the appropriate course of action in a particular case, although it is regrettable when a former department attorney distorts the facts and makes baseless allegations to promote his or her agenda," the statement said. Adams said Tuesday that his personal views played no part in his handling of the case. He also said he did not fight to testify before the commission but resigned after the department would not take action to quash the subpoena.--FoxNews.com
* 7/6/10--NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said in a recent interview that his "foremost" mission as the head of America's space exploration agency is to improve relations with the Muslim world. Though international diplomacy would seem well outside NASA's orbit, Bolden said in an interview with Al Jazeera that strengthening those ties was among the top tasks President Obama assigned him. He said better interaction with the Muslim world would ultimately advance space travel. --FoxNews.com
* 7/7/10--A former head of NASA yesterday blasted the space agency's surprising new goal of making Muslim countries feel good about their contributions to science, math and engineering as a "perversion" of its original mission. "NASA was chartered by the 1958 Space Act to develop the arts and sciences of flight in the atmosphere and in space and to go where those technologies will allow us to go," Michael Griffin, who headed the agency under President George W. Bush, told the San Francisco Examiner. "That's what NASA does for the country. It is a perversion of NASA's purpose to conduct activities in order to make the Muslim world feel good about its contributions to science and mathematics." NASA's current administrator, Charles Bolden, recently said that President Obama told him the agency's "foremost" mission was to "to reach out to the Muslim world." The space agency yesterday released a statement clarifying its mission, saying, "NASA's core mission is exploration . . . Inherent to the success of that mission is cooperation and collaboration with other nations." --NY Post
* 7/7/10--The nation's debt leapt $166 billion in a single day last week, the third-largest increase in U.S. history, and it comes at a time when Congress is balking over higher spending and debt has become a key policy battleground. The one-day increase for June 30 totaled $165,931,038,264.30 - bigger than the entire annual deficit for fiscal year 2007 and larger than the $140 billion in savings the new health care bill will produce over its first 10 years. The figure works out to nearly $1,500 for every U.S. household, or more than 10 times the median daily household income. Daily debt calculations jump and fall, and big shifts are common. But all three of the biggest one-day debt increases have occurred under the tenure of President Bush, and all of the top six have been in the past two years - an indication of just how quickly the pace of deficit spending has risen under Mr. Obama and President George W. Bush.--Washington Times
*7/7/10--The Obama administration charged headlong into the contentious issue of immigration yesterday, filing a lawsuit against Arizona over its strict crackdown on illegal aliens and sparking a bare-knuckle brawl with the GOP ahead of the midterm elections. Top Republicans immediately denounced the lawsuit -- filed by the Justice Department in federal court in Phoenix -- as an affront to states' rights, and accused the Obama administration of political posturing.--NY Post
* 7/8/10--Attention is focused on Arizona and the federal government's challenge to the state's strict new immigration law, but three other states could adopt similar legislation next year. Lawmakers in Oklahoma, South Carolina and Utah, which have already taken steps against illegal immigration, say that Arizona-style measures have a realistic chance of passing when their legislatures reconvene in 2011. The Obama administration sued Arizona in federal court Tuesday, charging that the state law usurps federal authority, would hamper immigration enforcement and would lead to police harassment of those who have no proof of lawful status. The government asked that a federal judge stop the law from taking effect July 29. Legislators in at least 17 other states introduced bills this year similar to the Arizona law, which allows officers to question anyone they suspect of being in the country illegally. But most of those measures are not considered likely to be adopted or signed by governors. The political climate in Oklahoma, South Carolina and Utah, however, improves the chances that state legislatures there could follow Arizona's lead in 2011.--Washington Post
* 7/8/10--The White House says President Obama had nothing to do with the Justice Department's challenge to Arizona's immigration law, insisting the decision was Attorney General Eric Holder's alone. Please. This is a political lawsuit, driven by Obama's drop in the polls among Hispanics and Democrats' hope of bringing out Latinos this fall by hanging an anti-immigrant millstone around the GOP's neck. The Arizona statute, on the other hand, is chiefly about the rule of law. That Obama and Holder, along with Arizona's other critics, choose not to understand this speaks volumes. The lawsuit does not accuse Gov. Jan Brewer and Arizona of violating the Constitution's "equal protection" clause -- curious, given the loud charges that the law will lead to massive racial profiling. Instead, it accuses Phoenix of "crossing a constitutional line" by interfering with federal authority over immigration. Actually, Holder -- who publicly trashed the law before he'd read it -- has a point: The law does interfere with what clearly is Washington's blatant refusal to enforce federal immigration laws. Arizona's statute, after all, essentially mirrors existing federal law -- including a requirement that aliens carry proper documentation "at all times." Its stated purpose is to "discourage and deter the unlawful entry and presence of, and economic activity by, persons unlawfully in the United States." Obama claims to agree with that goal -- he just doesn't want to actually do anything to "discourage and deter" such activity. How differently might he and Holder feel if either had ever actually lived in Arizona -- which has been flooded with illegals for years. And which has had to deal with a narcotics-driven war on the border that has claimed at least 23,000 lives. Which is why Brewer rightly notes that the lawsuit itself is a wasteful diversion of federal resources that "could better be used against the violent Mexican cartels than the people of Arizona." And why even Arizona's Democratic elected officials agree with her. And why the law itself enjoys widespread support across the US. Soon the nation will come to see this suit for what it is -- an act exceeded in cynicism only by its contempt for the rule of law. And for the American people.--NY Post
* 7/8/10--Today, President Obama officially made Donald Berwick his recess appointment to be the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. In 2008 while speaking on the British health care system in the UK, Berwick said wealthy individuals must redistribute their wealth to those less fortunate for health care funding. Also during this speech, he told those in attendance that he opposes free markets. “Any health care funding plan that is just equitable civilized and humane must, must redistribute wealth from the richer among us to the poorer and the less fortunate. Excellent health care is by definition redistributional.”-Eyeblast.tv
* 7/8/10--On Tuesday, the Obama administration decided to do something rather peculiar, somewhat shocking and politically fascinating: It circumvented the process by which the Senate advises and consents on executive-branch nominees. The move, which seems unprecedented in subtle but important ways, promises increased chaos in Washington -- but also hope on health care. President Obama wants a distinguished doctor named Donald Berwick to head up the office that administers Medicare and Medicaid -- two of the most expensive programs in the federal government. Ordinarily, the nomination would have gone through the process known as "confirmation," with a hearing before the Senate Finance Committee followed by a full vote of all 99 senators. (One seat is vacant due to the death of West Virginia's Robert Byrd.) Instead, Obama decided to invoke his constitutional authority to appoint Berwick (and two other officials of lesser moment) to his post without having to be confirmed by the Senate. This is possible only when Congress is not in session, as is the case right now, and it's called a "recess appointment." It is designed to be temporary; it is valid only until that session of the Congress adjourns, which in this case will come at year's end. Past presidents have resorted to recess appointments when they believe a nominee's appointment has been subjected to unjust political and ideological gamesmanship. And the White House said it was resorting to the recess appointment because of Republican recalcitrance. "Many Republicans in Congress have made it clear in recent weeks that they were going to stall the nomination as long as they could, solely to score political points," Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer said on the White House blog Tuesday. That was astoundingly untrue. The only way Republicans, who have 41 votes in the Senate compared to 58 for the Democrats, could have "stalled" the nomination would have been to organize a filibuster, and that would happen only when the nomination came to the Senate floor. They couldn't have blocked a favorable vote on Berwick's nomination from the Senate Finance Committee, which has 13 Democrats and 10 Republicans. As ABC's Jake Tapper reported yesterday, "Republicans were not delaying or stalling Berwick's nomination. Indeed, they were eager for his hearing, hoping to assail Berwick's past statements about health-care rationing and his praise for the British health-care system." Democrats in charge of the Senate could have scheduled hearings at any time since the administration sent his nomination to the Capitol in April. But, Tapper reported, "neither Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) nor Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), the chair of the Senate Finance Committee, were eager" to hold them. That's what makes the administration's decision unprecedented in my nearly 30 years of closely following politics: I can't recall a preemptive decision to make a recess appointment absent a controversy, ugly political battle or contentious confirmation hearing. And that's especially true when there's no indication there will be an effort to filibuster, which Democrats would likely have been able to override. (Berwick's credentials as a Harvard muckety-muck would have given the two Maine Republican moderate senators more than enough leeway to let him pass.) So what's going on here? First, it appears Obama likes to muscle things through. It makes him feel like he's cutting through the nonsense and getting things done. This unorthodox and questionable move is of a piece with his administration's bullying of Chrysler creditors last year -- insisting, in contravention of eight centuries of common law, that the contracts those creditors signed with Chrysler should simply be ignored so as to get the United Auto Workers the deal it wanted. But procedure, precedent and tradition exist for good reason; ignoring and undermining them blazes a path to political disorder. Second, this is as glaring an admission as there is that Obama and his people know they've lost the public on health care. Rather than using these hearings to bolster popular support for the landmark legislation they rammed through in the spring, they can't bear to submit to public questioning about it. By running away from this fight, Obama is signaling that the possibility of repealing the health-care monstrosity before it really begins to sink its teeth into the American system by 2014 is very real indeed. --John Podhoretz, NY Post
* 7/8/10--WASHINGTON -- The bad economy means job insecurity and stagnant wages for most Americans -- but federal workers have been sitting pretty, with few layoffs and high pay, a new report shows. Workers on Uncle Sam's payroll almost never get fired and pocket 22 percent more pay per hour than comparable private-sector employees, said the study by the conservative Heritage Foundation. "Federal workers enjoy far greater job security," the report's author, James Sherk, said. "Federal agencies rarely lay off employees for bad performance, and they don't let workers go in economic downturns, either...."Federal also workers enjoy better benefits than most of their private-sector counterparts, including Cadillac-style health plans, child care, student loan repayments and generous pension plans.--NY Post
* 7/9/10--...It's the second point that brings us to another Justice Department action -- that of dropping a slam-dunk case against the New Black Panther Party (another valuable constituent group for the Democrats) for intimidating voters on Election Day 2008 in Philadelphia. We don't know how much clearer the evidence can be than having the Panthers caught on video wearing paramilitary garb, wielding billy clubs and shouting racial threats at potential white voters in front of a polling place. Indeed, Bartle Bull was an eyewitness. He's also a former civil rights attorney and publisher of the ultra-liberal Village Voice. He called it "the most blatant form of voter intimidation I've ever seen." Initially, the administration pursued the case, which was brought during the final days of the Bush Administration, winning a default judgment in federal court in April 2009 after the Panther members failed to appear in court. A month later, however, Justice (under Holder) moved to dismiss charges in exchange for one Panther member's pledge not to carry a "deadly weapon" to a Philadelphia polling place and only until 2012. Not surprisingly, mainstream media coverage of this gross miscarriage of justice has been virtually non-existent. The problem is race-based and it is endemic. J. Christian Adams, an ex-Justice official who resigned over the department's handling of the case, testified Tuesday before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights that the DoJ instructed attorneys in the civil rights division to ignore cases involving black defendants and white victims. Furthermore, he alleged that Deputy Assistant Attorney General Julie Fernandes declared that she would not enforce Section 8 of the "Motor Voter" law, which requires states periodically to purge voter rolls of felons, the deceased and those who have moved. According to Adams, Fernandes said, "We're not interested in those kind of cases. What do they have to do with helping increase minority access and turnout? We want to increase access to the ballot, not limit it." Perhaps stating the obvious, Adams said the dismissal of the Panthers' case "raises serious questions about the department's enforcement neutrality in upcoming midterm elections and the subsequent 2012 presidential election." It's not just neutrality that's a problem, though. "The salient thing about J. Christian Adams's accusation," writes Richard Fernandez of PajamasMedia, "is that, if true, it constitutes a pure exercise in the abuse of power [by the administration]. The other wrongs it represents -- the perversion of the electoral process, the violation of civil rights -- are secondary. The most serious allegation in the whole affair is that certain officials countenanced a crime because they wanted to." The Panther case and the Arizona suit make plain that the Department of Justice is engaging in the Saul Alinsky "Rules for Radicals" method of governance: Give blatant favors to allies and crush opponents with brute force.--Patriot Post Digest
* 7/10/10--Why haven't national media outlets reported on the vile and violent rants of the New Black Panther Party thugs whose 2008 voter-intimidation tactics got a pass from the Obama administration? This week, Justice Department whistleblower J. Christian Adams came forward with damning public testimony about how Obama officials believe "civil-rights law should not be enforced in a race-neutral manner, and should never be enforced against blacks or other minorities." In the wake of Adams' expose on how the Obama Justice Department abandoned judgments against the Black Panther bullies for the sake of racial politics, a shocking video clip of one of the lead defendants in the Philadelphia voter-intimidation case resurfaced on the Internet. It shows King Samir Shabazz during a 2009 National Geographic documentary interview spewing: "You want freedom? You're gonna have to kill some crackers! You're gonna have to kill some of their babies!" These death threats and white-bashing diatribes are nothing new. Last August, I reported on a sign on display outside New Black Panther defendant (and elected member of Philadelphia's 14th Ward Democratic Committee) Jerry Jackson's home. It reads: "COLORED ONLY: No Whites Allowed." In July 2009, I interviewed poll watcher Christopher Hill, whom Shabazz and Jackson called "cracker" several times while Shabazz brandished his baton. "They physically attempted to block me," Hill recounted. He also saw a group of elderly ladies walk away from the polling site without voting while the duo preened at the entrance. "If you're a poll watcher, you shouldn't be dressed in paramilitary garb," Hill said, as he wondered aloud at what would have happened if he'd showed up in the same sort of costume. In May 2009, I reported on the affidavit of civil-rights attorney and poll watcher Bartle Bull, who witnessed the NBPP thuggery in Philadelphia and reported on billy club-wielding Shabazz's Election Day boast: "You're about to be ruled by the black man, cracker." In the fall of 2008, just days before he showed up to hector white poll workers, Shabazz told the Philadelphia Inquirer: "I'm about the total destruction of white people. I'm about the total liberation of black people. I hate white people. I hate my enemy . . . The only thing the cracker understands is violence . . . The only thing the cracker understands is gunpowder. You got to take violence to violence." The desire to kill, subordinate and demonize white people is a staple of New Black Panther Party propaganda. A "block party" music video from the Trenton chapter, posted on YouTube, calls on black followers to "bang for freedom," "put the bang right into a cracker's face," and "if you're going to bang, bang for black power . . . hang a cracker . . . if you're going to bang, bang on the white devil . . . burying him near the river bank with the right shovel . . . community revolution in progress . . . banging for crackers to go to hell, we don't need 'em." Chanting "Black Power," Minister Najee Muhammad, national field marshal for the party, and Uhuru Shakur, local chairman of the Atlanta chapter, issued a pre-Election Day 2008 threat to "racists and other angry whites who are upset over an impending Barack Obama presidential victory." Said Muhammad: "Most certainly, we cannot allow these racist forces to slaughter our babies or commit other acts of violence against the black population, nor our black president." If a Tea Party activist threatened to kill the babies of his political opponents, it wouldn't just be front-page news. It would be the subject of Democrat-led congressional hearings, a series of terrified New York Times columns about the perilous "climate of hate," a Justice Department probe by Attorney General Eric Holder, a domestic-terror alert from Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and another Important Teachable Moment Speech from Healer-in-Chief Obama. But with the racism shoe on the other foot, Team Obama and its media water-carriers are exhibiting the very racial cowardice Holder once purported to condemn. Thanks to Obama's Justice Department, these black supremacists are free to show up on the next Election Day at polling places in full paramilitary regalia with nightsticks, hurling racist, anti-American epithets at those exercising their right to vote and at those protecting the integrity of the electoral process. The reaction of our national media watchdogs: Shhhhhhhh.--Michelle Malkin, NY Post
* 7/14/10--"The NAACP, in crafting a resolution condemning racism in the Tea Party movement, seems to have forgotten those Black Panthers with clubs intimidating voters and wanting to kill white people. The 'angry mobs' that reshaped the 2010 political landscape are angry white racist mobs, at least according to a resolution [passed] by the NAACP at its annual convention this week in Kansas City, Mo. The resolution calls on 'all people of good will to repudiate the racism of the Tea Parties, and to stand in opposition to its drive to push our country back to the pre-civil rights era,' said Anita Russell, head of the Kansas City chapter of the NAACP. 'We need to realize it's really not about limited government.' We suppose 'tax cuts' is also code for racism. The resolution comes after the late Sen. Robert C. Byrd, former grand kleagle of the Ku Klux Klan, was honored for his service to the nation.... This may be a shock to ... the NAACP, but the Tea Party movement has black members. Lots of them, all concerned about ObamaCare's damage to the economy and the creeping socialism advanced by this administration. ... The proposed NAACP resolution says Tea Partyers 'displayed signs and posters intended to degrade people of color generally and President Barack Obama specifically.' Attacking the president's policies is not racism, though his defenders have tried to say so since Day One. As the polls plummet for the president and his party, we suspect this is an attempt to stir up the Democrats' African-American base, just as the administration's war on Arizona over illegal aliens is designed to stir up Hispanic voters. It is a manufactured issue designed to be used against Tea Party candidates such as Sharron Angle in Nevada and Rand Paul in Kentucky. Hope and change? Sounds like playing the old race card to us." --Investor's Business Daily
* 7/15/10--You've seen the reports about Van Jones, President Obama's onetime "green jobs czar," and Cass Sunstein, his equally volatile "regulatory czar," and Fox News show host Glenn Beck has put together a list of dozens of such appointees. Now here's the newest White House promotion: "Health food czar" Sam Kass. "In a comical move even for a czar-happy president who has rewarded dozens of cronies with distinguished titles, the White House has named the Obamas' personal Chicago cook as 'Senior Policy Adviser for Healthy Food Initiatives,'" reports the Washington government watchdog Judicial Watch. "It's no joke, even though it sounds like a bad one. The Chicago chef's rapid ascension ... has been kept under the radar for the last month," Judicial Watch said. "Sam Kass went from being a 20-something, Windy City gourmet cook – privately paid by the Obamas to feed them – to big-time White House adviser in a matter of months," the report said. But it makes sense, the report said, since Michelle Obama has claimed that childhood obesity is a threat to "national security." According to an earlier CNSNews.com report, Michelle Obama confirmed – in talking about her White House campaign against obesity – that the condition "impacts national security" because it is a "disqualifier for military service." Judicial Watch said the situation is so dire, President Obama has been convinced to spend $400 million a year on "healthy foods" in low-income neighborhoods as well as revise – at a cost of $10 billion – a federal plan to provide food to poor children in school. Such an assembly of programs "no doubt requires a trusted senior policy adviser – like Kass – who is an expert in healthy cuisine," Judicial Watch said. "Makes you wonder what Kass … has been putting in the Obamas' food all these years," the report said. --WorldNetDaily.com
* 7/15/10--The past year has been rough for climate alarmists, with Americans' growing skepticism about the threat of global warming and a series of scandals that appeared to show a potential conspiracy to distort science. A March 2010 Gallup poll found 48 percent of Americans think the threat of global warming is "generally exaggerated." That was the highest in 13 years, according to Gallup. That's all in the past, according to journalists. Recently the news media have reported that the scientists accused of unethical or illegal behaviors have been "vindicated" by Sir Muir Russell's investigation. USA Today, The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN and many other U.S. and international media outlets reported that the most recent British inquiry "cleared scientists of any misconduct." Despite that, left-wingers who complained that the media hasn't covered the report enough have banded together to urge news outlets to report the investigation's findings, which they say "completely disprove" the ClimateGate scandal. But the news media have covered Muir Russell's conclusions. "The British scientists involved in a controversial scandal over global warming are cleared of any dishonesty," Lisa Sylvester stated on CNN July 7. She went on to say that the "independent" report found that scientists "did not exaggerate threats of global warming as critics alleged." The July 8 Washington Post also reported the "independent commission," but without mentioning who commissioned the report. A Chicago Tribune editorialist even used the Muir Russell report to claim that ClimateGate itself was "something of a hoax." The Post and many other outlets didn't mention crucial indications that the so-called "independent" investigations were a "whitewash." Cato Institute Senior Fellow Pat Michaels wrote an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal July 12 cautioning people, "Don't believe the 'independent' reviews." Michaels, who was a professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia (UVA) from 1980 to 2007, pointed out that Muir Russell's panel named "The Independent Climate Change E-mails Review" was in fact "commissioned and paid for by the University of East Anglia (UEA), the same university whose climate department was under investigation." That would be like BP handpicking and paying a panel of experts to investigate its handling of the oil spill. Would the news media take that panel seriously if it "exonerated" BP? Not likely. But according to Michaels and others that wasn't the only problem with the review panel. "Mr. Russell took pains to present his committee, which consisted of four other academics, as independent," Michaels explained. "He told the Times of London that ‘Given the nature of the allegations it is right that someone who has no links to either the university or the climate science community looks at the evidence and makes recommendations based on what they find.'" But there were actually strong links between the reviewers and UEA. Michaels noted that one of the panelists, Prof. Geoffrey Boulton, had been on the faculty of UEA's School of Environmental Science and CRU - the division accused of impropriety was established at the beginning of his tenure. Michaels isn't the only one crying foul over the ClimateGate reviews. Competitive Enterprise Institute's director of energy and global warming policy, Myron Ebell, also condemned the Muir Russell report as a "professional whitewash." The report "does a highly professional job of concealment. It gives every appearance of addressing all the allegations that have been made since the ClimateGate e-mails and computer files from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Institute were released last November," Ebell said in a statement to The American Spectator. "However, the committee relied almost entirely on the testimony of those implicated in the scandal or those who have a vested interest in defending the establishment view of global warming. The critics of the CRU with the most expertise were not interviewed. It is easy to find for the accused if no prosecution witnesses are allowed to take the stand," Ebell continued. In an interview with the Business & Media Institute, Ebell said that he thought such whitewashed "official" reports will actually "damage the alarmist position, because it is so obvious that there was wrongdoing here." Labour MP Graham Stringer also found fault with the Russell inquiry, calling it "inadequate." According to Stringer, Parliament was misled by UEA when conducting its inquiry. According to Andrew Orlowski of The Register, "Parliament only had time for a brief examination of the CRU files before the election, but made recommendations." "MPs believe that Anglia had entrusted an examination of the science to a separate inquiry," Orlowski wrote. But neither a previous investigation known as the Oxburgh inquiry nor Muir Russell delved deep enough into the science. Penn State also investigated and cleared its own scientist Michael Mann, the creator of the infamous, and "comprehensively discredited," hockey stick graph of global warming. None of the investigations have been enough for Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, who has subpoenaed documents "pertaining to an alleged $500,000 giant fraud" by Mann while he was at UVA. It's difficult to see how the scientists could be "cleared" after e-mails appeared to show potential manipulation of temperature data, a willingness to destroy information rather than release it under British Freedom of Information (FOI) law and the intimidation of publications willing to publish skeptical articles. One particularly disturbing e-mail from CRU director Phil Jones to Penn State scientist Michael Mann (famous for his hockey stick graph of global warming) and two others said: "I've just completed Mike's Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd [sic] from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline." A Melbourne newspaper, The Age, reported July 8 that Russell's investigation "dismissed many of those accusations." The paper even downplayed that "trick," saying "Sir Muir found the technique used was reasonable as long as the procedures were properly explained." Another embarrassing ClimateGate e-mail, from Kevin Trenberth, head of the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and lead author of three IPCC climate change reports, to Mann and others including NASA's James Hansen and Princeton's Michael Oppenheimer, said:"The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate." Other exchanges asked people to delete e-mails rather than turn them over to Freedom of Information requests. Still others showed a desire to keep the public from getting their hands on raw data. Steve McIntyre, one of the people who helped discredit Mann's hockey stick, has been combing through the Muir Russell report. He wrote on his website ClimateAudit that it was absurd for Russell to conclude they "have seen no evidence of any attempt to delete information in respect of a request already made," since a May 29, 2008, e-mail from Jones expressly asked Mann and four others to "delete any emails you have had with Keith re AR4?..." "This is getting stupid," McIntyre said. "Jones' email came immediately following David Holland's FOI request." Christopher C. Horner, CEI senior fellow and author of the newly released book Power Grab, told the Business & Media Institute the investigators chose not to interview "skeptics" most knowledgeable about the allegations, including McIntyre. "And when speaking to those alleged to have done wrong, they chose not to ask them questions at the heart of the matter, like, did you destroy documents like you said?" Horner explained. "It's pretty easy to claim no wrongdoing when you only speak with the accused, and then fail to ask them if they actually did wrong." According to Horner, none of the investigations "specifically refuted or disproved that what the emails say was done was done." Another scientist: Dr. Fred Singer, president of Science and Environmental Policy Project, also criticized the Muir Russell report saying "As far as one can tell, they consulted only supporters of anthropogenic [manmade] global warming (AGW), i.e., supporters of the IPCC." "As a result, they could not really judge whether Phil Jones (head of the Climate Research Unit at UEA) manipulated the post-1980 temperature data," Singer concluded. The 160-page Muir Russell report conclusions made no mention of the more damaging Harry_Read_Me.txt file that was leaked along with the e-mails. That 247-page file "describes the efforts of a climatologist/programmer" at the CRU to update an enormous database of climate data and temperature records that in his own words were in a "hopeless" state. The "Read Me" file included admissions to making up data, as well as references to hiding the temperature decline by using different data after 1960.--Newsbusters.org
* 7/16/10--...In response, the St. Louis Tea Party passed a resolution condemning the NAACP's resolution condemning the Tea Party movement, specifically calling for the NAACP to withdraw its, "bigoted, false, and inflammatory resolution." We concur. The time has come for the NAACP to accept the responsibility that comes with influence and make clear that there is no place for racism and anti-Semitism, homophobia and other forms of bigotry in their movement. As for our "post-racial" president and First Lady, they'd do well to focus their NAACP legions on the content of their own character, rather than baseless attacks on the character of others.--Patriot Post Digest
* 7/16/10--"The Senate approved a wide-ranging overhaul of the nation's financial regulations Thursday, handing President Barack Obama his second major domestic-policy victory of the year," reports The Wall Street Journal. The vote was 60-39, mostly along party lines. Republican (in the loosest sense of the word) Senators Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine joined Scott "Kennedy" Brown (?-MA) in supporting the 2,300-page bill, offsetting the loss of Sen. Robert Byrd, who died recently, and Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI), who voted "no" -- because the legislation's not tough enough. Barack Obama will sign the bill into law in the coming days. According to the Journal, "The measure, once implemented, will touch all areas of the financial markets, affecting how consumers obtain credit cards and mortgages, dictating how the government dismantles failing financial firms and directing federal regulators' focus on potential flashpoints in the economy." Left out of the bill, though, were Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the quasi-government-run mortgage giants that were the prime "flashpoints" of the current financial crisis. Instead, Democrats took the opportunity to put the screws to everyone else. The New York Times adds further clarity: "The bill ... is basically a 2,000-page missive to federal agencies, instructing regulators to address subjects ranging from derivatives trading to document retention. But it is notably short on specifics, giving regulators significant power to determine its impact." One worrisome provision grants the federal government subpoena power for any financial information from any institution it wants, without probable cause. Giving the game away, the bill's co-author, lame-duck Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT), said, "No one will know until this is actually in place how it works." If this sounds chillingly familiar, recall what House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said regarding the 2,400-page health "reform" legislation: "We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what's in it."--Patriot Post Digest
* 7/16/10--Having had its moratorium on offshore drilling smacked down twice already by the courts, "Team Chosen" is now attempting to prove yet again that no significant ethical hurdles are presented to it by the Rule of Law. The "new" moratorium effort is substantively no different from the previous two attempts. "But never mind that," administration attorneys confidently tell us, "we really need this moratorium, so here it is again." Notwithstanding terminology referencing so-called "deep-water" sites, however, the moratorium will apply to virtually any "floating facility with drilling activities" (read: anything and everything associated with drilling for offshore oil). Meanwhile, the first of many drilling rigs has begun sailing away from the Gulf. Diamond Offshore announced last week that its Ocean Endeavor rig is now bound for Egyptian waters. Don't look for it, or any others, to return soon, either: Estimates put the earliest possible return at a decade or more, given the time and expense associated with these moves. And therein lies the real goal: Stall, foot-drag, litigate and obfuscate long enough to render the issue moot. Once the rigs are gone, who cares if the ban is operative? This piece of the dismantling of America will have been completed by that time, moratorium or not. Feebly attempting to justify the suspension, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar stated, "I cannot conclude at this time that deep-water drilling can move forward in a safe and environmentally sound manner." But even Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) noted that Salazar's claim "contradicts testimony given by drilling experts and ignores the history of oil and gas operations in the Gulf." Does anyone really think this moratorium could successfully negotiate a hat trick of federal judicial gauntlets otherwise? To counter actual news and public outrage associated with the truth, the Obama administration has launched a propaganda -- um, "information" -- campaign using two different websites, restorethegulf.gov (that's $3.5 million to you, taxpayer) and deepwaterhorizonresponse.com, the latter funded by BP in the wake of more government arm-twisting. The most recent site, "Restore the Gulf," centers on "transparency and openness about the BP oil spill," to include the administration's lightning-fast-Day-One response (remember that?) and its assistance to the Gulf Coast communities. The recently retired former head of the Coast Guard, credibility-challenged Admiral Thad Allen, announced the new campaign (did we mention he just "retired" following his brief tenure as disaster-cleanup point man?). Finally, don't plan on going down to the Gulf anytime soon to find out what the government is actually doing to fix the problem ... or else also plan on going to jail shortly afterwards. According to CNN's Anderson Cooper, reporting on the Gulf oil spill is now essentially a crime, punishable by a fine of up to $40,000, now that the most "transparent administration in history" has made approaching within 65 feet of what the Coast Guard deems "essential recovery efforts" a Class D felony. From our perspective, the truth couldn't be any more "transparent."--Patriot Post Digest
* 7/16/10--The State Department is bracing for a potentially explosive new feature on the Washington Post website that would publish the names and locations of agencies and firms conducting Top Secret work on behalf of the U.S. government, according to the copy of an email obtained by The Cable. The Diplomatic Security Bureau at State sent out a notice Thursday to all department employees warning them to protect classified information and reject inquiries from the press when the new web feature goes live. "The Washington Post plans to publish a website listing all agencies and contractors believed to conduct Top Secret work on behalf of the U.S. Government," the notice reads. "The website provides a graphic representation pinpointing the location of firms conducting Top Secret work, describing the type of work they perform, and identifying many facilities where such work is done." According to the notice, the Post used only open-source information to compile its site. However, if some of that open-source information turns out to have been classified, its publication by the Post doesn't change that classification, the State Department emphasized. "All Department personnel should remain aware of their responsibility to protect classified and other sensitive information, such as the Department's relationships with contract firms, other U.S. Government agencies, and foreign governments," the notice says. State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley confirmed the authenticity of the e-mail and said it went out to all State Department employees in the Washington, DC area, 14,574 people. The Washington Post declined requests for comment. --TheCable.com
* 7/16/10--WASHINGTON (AP) -- China reduced its holdings of U.S. Treasury debt in May as total foreign holdings of government debt posted a slight increase. China's holdings fell by $32.5 billion to $867.7 billion, the Treasury reported Friday. The report said that total holdings of Treasury securities edged up $5.8 billion to $3.96 trillion in May, a slight increase of 0.1 percent compared to April. The Treasury said that net purchases of long-term securities, a category that covers not only U.S. government debt but also debt of U.S. companies, increased by $35.4 billion in May. That followed bigger gains of $81.5 billion in April and $141.4 billion in March. While the May figure was down from the previous two months, analysts said it still reflected significant interest on the part of foreigners in holding U.S. government and corporate debt.
* 7/16/10--President Barack Obama has played a remarkable 41 rounds of golf since becoming president, easily outpacing his predecessor and possibly damaging his ability to portray himself in 2012 as a populist advocate of average folks. With the excursions lasting on average at least five hours, the president has devoted a total of more than 200 hours to golf, not counting time spent on the White House putting green. That’s the equivalent of twenty five eight-hour work days, or five work weeks spent smacking golf balls.
The former community organizer’s 41 trips around the links – a standard of recreational activity well beyond the budgets of most Americans – compares to only 24 total outings for former President George W. Bush, according to statistics compiled by White House chronicler Mark Knoller of CBS News. Bush, whose golf outings were used to help deride him as a callow, lazy, rich boy, played his 24th and last round on Oct. 13, 2003, saying he was ending the practice out of respect for the families of Americans killed in Iraq. Since the April 20 explosion that killed 11 rig workers and started the Gulf oil spill, Obama has teed up seven times, according to White House Dossier’s count. This includes back to back sessions April 23 and 24 while on vacation at the Grove Park Resort & Spa in Asheville, NC, just days after the crisis began....He went out only once in June when, with the Gulf of Mexico slowly becoming the new U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve and accusations of presidential inattention at their height, White House image counselors appeared to think the golf needed scaling back. But he’s back with a vengeance, having made his way out on the course both weekends so far this month. Since he’s officially on vacation this weekend in Bar Harbor Maine, there appears to be little holding him back from heading out to the greens at least once. While on the course, Obama for the most part likes to keep it nice and light, often playing with a youngish crowd. No deep discussions of policy on the links....Emphatically not invited for the most part are members of Congress or senior White House aides. The White House is of course sensitive to the awkward look of the whole thing. A search of of the word “golf” on the White House page or the photo sharing site Flickr brings back only nine official White House photo results, three of which are neither of Obama nor golf. A search for “basketball,” the everyman’s game, brings back 39 photos. But who wants to be the White House official to tell the president to cut back on golf? Somebody with another job offer, one would presume.--Whitehousedossier
* 7/19/10--The White House is revising its Afghanistan strategy to embrace the idea of negotiating with senior members of the Taliban through third parties – a policy to which it had previously been lukewarm.--Guardian.co.uk
* 7/19/10--"[O]ne-third of the stimulus money went to state and local governments, with the effect of propping up the pay and saving the jobs of public employee union members. As a result, while 8 million private-sector jobs have disappeared, the number of public-sector jobs has barely budged. The cynical will see these measures as a political payoff and might venture that the unions have gotten something like a hundredfold payout for the $400 million they gave to Obama and his copartisans. Those who insist on looking for purer motives, in contrast, might see something potentially more sinister. They might see a former community organizer acting out of a sincere conviction that America would be better off with a much, much larger unionized private sector. That prompts the question of what the private sector would look like if nearly half its workers were union members, as is the case now with the public sector. As one who grew up in Detroit in the heyday of the Big Three auto companies and the United Auto Workers, I have some idea what the answer would be. ... It took the U.S. manufacturers multiple decades to achieve quality levels comparable to those their foreign-based competitors achieved with American workers. ... [T]he Obama Democrats want to take us back to a system that produced huge inefficiencies and rigidity in the private sector. Does that sound progressive?" --political analyst Michael Barone (From Patriot Post Digest)
* 7/19/10--"It seems a lifetime ago that Obama represented hope for a post-racial presidency and in fact a post-racial era in American politics. Like so much else about Obama, the reality is the opposite of what was promised. ... Speaking about the Uganda bombings, the president said, 'What you've seen in some of the statements that have been made by these terrorist organizations is that they do not regard African life as valuable in and of itself. They see it as a potential place where you can carry out ideological battles that kill innocents without regard to long-term consequences for their short-term tactical gains.' ... Explaining the president's comment, an administration official said Mr. Obama 'references the fact that both U.S. intelligence and past al Qaeda actions make clear that al Qaeda -- and the groups like al Shabaab that they inspire -- do not value African life. The actions of al Qaeda and the groups that it has inspired show a willingness to sacrifice innocent African life to reach their targets.' ... 'In short,' the official said, 'al Qaeda is a racist organization that treats black Africans like cannon fodder and does not value human life.' Oh, good grief. Al-Qaeda isn't a racist organization -- it's an organization that kills regardless of race anyone who stands in the way of its Islamo-fascist vision. ... Does the administration really think that Africans can only be motivated if they think race is behind the slaughter of their people? And does Obama mean to suggest that al-Qaeda is pro-white? The mind reels. It is this sort of thing that fills one with dread and raises this question: is there no limit to the lengths Obama will go to avoid spelling out the real motive behind Islamic fundamentalist terror?" --columnist Jennifer Rubin (From Patriot Post Digest)
* 7/19/10--Starting Jan. 1, 28 million middle Americans will be socked with a massive Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT), which Republicans had suspended. That's a "gotcha" that penalizes taxpayers in ways they never expect, adding big tax penalties based on an "alternative" way of calculating taxes due. Upper-income Americans will see a big jump in their marginal tax rates. Their accountants are already telling them that the more they work, the less additional money they will take home, so they may be already slowing down, canceling investments or retiring to draw Social Security. Hardworking parents who are saving for their children's future will be hit by the reinstatement of the massive "death tax" on Jan. 1. They may wonder why they work hard and save if their money will go to Uncle Sam and to people who choose not to work. Marriage penalties will hit couples hard, both in the income tax law and in ObamaCare. Obama's financial favoritism toward unmarried women, his second biggest voting bloc, has become common knowledge. Those who choose to control their own health care through Health Savings Accounts will be slapped with new taxes. That's just one more way to promote Obama's goal of moving all health care to government control. Employers are not hiring because they know they will soon be paying not only higher taxes but also more health care costs or penalties. Depreciation allowances for investment in equipment will be lowered from $250,000 to $25,000, which means businesses will do less investing. Our ability to compete in the marketplace, of course, depends on our advanced research and development. New taxes will hit R&D hard, which means more slowdowns and more outsourcing overseas. The expiration of the GOP tax cuts will impose the largest tax hikes in history, affecting all taxpayers. The nearly 50% who pay no taxes will also be hurt by more loss of jobs.--Phyllis Schlafly, (From IBD).
* 7/20/10--Last week, the Justice Department made an astonishing statement about its unprecedented lawsuit to stop the Arizona illegal-immigration law. Attorney General Eric Holder's spokeswoman, Tracy Schmaler, claimed that it was appropriate to go after Arizona, but inappropriate to stop "sanctuary cities." Schmaler said: "There is a big difference between a state or locality saying they are not going to use their resources to enforce a federal law, as so-called sanctuary cities have done, and a state passing its own immigration policy that actively interferes with federal law. . . That's what Arizona has done in this case." There's a big difference, all right. Sanctuary cities are expressly forbidden by federal law, while Arizona's statute is in perfect compliance with federal law. Evidently, just as Holder didn't read the 10-page Arizona law before he criticized it on national TV, his staff couldn't be bothered to read the relevant federal immigration laws before issuing the statement. In 1996, Congress prohibited sanctuary cities in no uncertain terms: A "local government entity or official may not prohibit, or in any way restrict, any government entity or official from sending to, or receiving from, the Immigration and Naturalization Service information regarding the citizenship or immigration status, lawful or unlawful, of any individual" (8 USC Sec. 1373(a)). In direct contravention of that statute, New York, San Francisco, Chicago and dozens of other cities have adopted "sanctuary" policies that prevent their police from reporting illegal aliens. Yet the Holder Justice Department is giving a pass to these cities that brazenly defy federal law, while using our taxpayer dollars to sue Arizona -- though Arizona's immigration statute does little but echo federal law. The bottom line is that the politicized Holder Justice Department doesn't want federal immigration laws vigorously enforced. Sanctuary cities fit that agenda; Arizona's new law doesn't.--Kris W. Kobach, NY Post
* 7/20/10--NEW YORK (CBS) ― LastTuesday, the NAACP passed a resolution condemning racism in the Tea Party movement. The organization's delegates called on Tea Party leaders to "repudiate those in their ranks who use racist language in their signs and speeches." Tea Party members and supporters saw the resolution as a condemnation of the group itself, which calls for fiscal responsibility, restrictions on governmental power, and backs political candidates who claim the same. The NAACP's action caught the attention of Andrew Breitbart of BigGovernment.com, who said the controversy was "absolutely manufactured for political gain," in a summer "in which the economy is the number one issue affecting blacks and whites in this country. This country can ill afford the schism of race to be exploited the way [he is] based upon the false premise of the Tea Party being racist." He also claimed to possess recorded evidence of racism from the NAACP. On Monday, Breitbart posted a video of a speech by Shirley Sherrod, USDA Rural Development Georgia State Director, delivered at the NAACP's 20th Annual Freedom Fund Banquet. The video shows Sherrod speaking of racial considerations being a factor for how much help she would give. Sherrod tendered her resignation Monday. "The first time I was faced with having to help a white farmer save his farm, he took a long time talking but he was trying to show me he was superior to me. I know what he was doing, but he had come to me for help. What he didn't know while he was taking all that time trying to show me he was superior to me was, I was trying to decide just how much help I was going to give him," Sherrod said. "I was struggling with the fact that so many black people had lost their farmland, and here I was faced with having to help a white person save their land. So I didn't give him the full force of what I could do. I did enough," Sherrod said. "So that when he, I assumed the Department of Agriculture had sent him to me, either that or the Georgia Department of Agriculture, and he needed to go back and report that I did try to help him." In the video, Sherrod also spoke of referring the white farmer to a white lawyer, thinking the latter would be more sympathetic because of race. "So I took him to a white lawyer that had attended some of training that we had provided because Chapter 12 bankruptcy had just been enacted for the family farm. So I figured if I take him to one of them, that his own kind would take care of him." NAACP President and CEO Benjamin Todd Jealous issued the following statement Monday: "Since our founding in 1909, the NAACP has been a multi-racial, multi-faith organization that-- while generally rooted in African American communities-- fights to end racial discrimination against all Americans. We concur with US Agriculture Secretary Vilsack in accepting the resignation of Shirley Sherrod for her remarks at a local NAACP Freedom Fund banquet. Racism is about the abuse of power. Sherrod had it in her position at USDA. According to her remarks, she mistreated a white farmer in need of assistance because of his race. We are appalled by her actions, just as we are with abuses of power against farmers of color and female farmers. Her actions were shameful. While she went on to explain in the story that she ultimately realized her mistake, as well as the common predicament of working people of all races, she gave no indication she had attempted to right the wrong she had done to this man. The reaction from many in the audience is disturbing. We will be looking into the behavior of NAACP representatives at this local event and take any appropriate action.--cbs.tv.com
* 7/20/10--(Bloomberg) -- Housing starts fell in June to the lowest level in eight months after the expiration of a U.S. government tax incentive caused sales to slump. Work began on 549,000 houses at an annual rate last month, fewer than the median estimate of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News and down 5 percent from May, Commerce Department figures showed today in Washington. The retreat following the end of government support shows it will be difficult for the industry that precipitated the recession to sustain a recovery. Mounting foreclosures will swell the supply of houses on the market and pressure prices, while prospective buyers shy away as a lack of jobs shakes confidence in the world’s largest economy.
* 7/21/10--As President Obama coupled his syrupy demand for compassion for the jobless with a charge that Republicans were playing political games by demanding any increased aid not add to the deficit, I was overcome with a familiar dilemma. What to make of our president's conduct? The choices are all unappealing. No. 1: He truly believes that stretching unemployment insurance to nearly two years, so it is a form of welfare, is going to solve the jobs crisis. He honestly does not realize his own policies are a big reason employers aren't hiring. No. 2: He is the one playing cynical games by trotting out three jobless people so they could, like lost puppies, be pitied as victims. That way, the focus is not on his job-killing policies, but on Republicans who oppose benefits to them. Neither option is flattering, so lets look for a third choice. No. 3: Obama is a true believer In his own policies, and he is simultaneously playing cheap politics with the jobless. Sadly, it's the most likely scenario as he tries to shift the blame before the midterm elections while sticking to his expensive Big Government grab. Obama's refusal to change course In light of growing evidence the economy has stalled compounds his earlier mistakes. Even if you assume his big decisions -- from the stimulus to health care to financial regulations -- are not part of the problem, you can't argue they are part of the solution for one simple reason: There has been no solution. That's what makes the president's hard turn toward politics so disheartening. It is a sign he will not seriously confront the jobs and deficit issues, but instead will simply turn up the partisan rhetoric and hope voters forget he's been president for 18 months. He is who he is. --Michael Goodwin, NY Post
* 7/22/10--The White House last year released a supposedly scientific analysis that claimed to show that adopting the "stimulus" bill would cut unemployment. Indeed, the report specifically estimated that the unemployment rate today would be down to 7.5 percent. Something obviously went wrong. The actual unemployment rate is 9.5 percent, a statistic that doesn't include the millions who've given up looking for work or can only find part-time jobs. What were President Obama's biggest mistakes? Part of the problem was a misplaced faith in Keynesian economics -- that is, in the discredited notion that politicians can borrow money from the economy's right pocket and increase prosperity by dumping money in the economy's left pocket. But the bigger stumbling block is the folks in the White House seem to have no clue how the real-world economy works. Critics have noted that the Obama Cabinet sets the record for the lowest-ever level of private-sector experience. That doesn't necessarily mean people who don't understand how and why jobs are created -- but that seems to be the case with this administration. Let's start with two common- sense observations. First, businesses are not charities. They only create jobs when they think that the total revenue generated by new workers will exceed the total cost of employing those workers. In other words, if it's not profitable to hire workers, it's not going to happen. Second, it takes money to create jobs. More specifically, labor isn't very useful or productive unless investors are providing capital.... The key issue is whether companies have a reason to invest. In other words, if they start spending money and hiring workers, will they make money? Unfortunately, almost everything Washington's done the last 18 months has sent the opposite message. The "stimulus" boosted federal spending, thus draining funds from private-capital markets and diverting resources from the productive sector of the economy. The main jobs that it "saved" were employees of state and local governments -- shielding the public sector from pain even as it inflicted more agony on the private sector....Investors, entrepreneurs and other job creators also look into the future. If they think economic conditions will improve and that they can make money by expanding employment, they're more likely to take that risk. But what's happening in Washington gives them little reason to feel optimistic. A big challenge is that tax rates are going to rise. The 2001 and 2003 tax cuts are scheduled to expire as the ball drops in Times Square on New Year's Eve. This means higher income-tax rates, higher dividend-tax rates, more double-taxation of capital gains and a reinvigorated death tax. Each provision will increase the cost of productive behavior and specifically make it more expensive to provide the capital needed for job creation. But that's just part of the story. On top of the scheduled tax hikes, the alternative-minimum tax is a ticking time bomb waiting to explode. Millions more Americans are on track to be swept into this surreal world where you have to calculate your taxes twice and then pay the government the larger of the two amounts. The White House claims it wants to alter the law to avoid that -- but any reforms to reduce the impact of the AMT probably will be financed by some other form of tax hike. And let's not forget that the White House wants higher payroll taxes to bail out Social Security. We don't know how big the tax hike will be, just as we don't know what taxes it would raise to "fix" the AMT, but it all just adds to the uncertainty and makes it hard for business owners to create jobs. Last but not least, we have the looming threat of a European-style value-added tax, which may even be part of the post-election surprise package being concocted by Obama's so-called Deficit Reduction Commission. Nobody in the administration has explained, however, why making America more like France is a good idea -- especially since growth tends to be slower on the other side of the Atlantic and unemployment tends to be higher. The final straw -- and it's a big one -- is the potential for a radical global-warming bill that would give politicians sweeping powers to control and limit energy consumption. Even for those who think it will lead to good climate effects, there's no hiding from the fact that direct and indirect energy taxes will have a dampening effect on production and competitiveness. Further fueling uncertainty is the fact that the administration may try to seize those powers even if it can't get a bill through Congress -- by having the Environmental Protection Agency treat the gases said to cause warming as pollution....The bad news is that the United States is gradually becoming a European-style welfare state. This means that we'll have growth in most years, but it will be tepid growth. It means jobs will be created -- but probably not enough to move the unemployment rate from its unacceptably high level. To get truly robust job creation, we need to stop growing government and start getting it out of the way. --Daniel J. Mitchell, Cato Institute, (From NY Post).
* 7/22/10--WASHINGTON -- Young voters who had been enthralled by Barack Obama's "Yes, we can" message are now saying "Maybe not" -- and are backing away from the president in a worrisome new poll for the White House. Obama is losing in a match-up against a generic Republican challenger by 37 percent to 34 percent among voters in the 18-34 age group, according to a stunning Quinnipiac University poll released yesterday. In March, voters in this group approved of Obama by 54 percent to 37 percent. "The youngest age group may be the most impatient and the most easily disillusioned among all age groups," said Molly Andolina, a youth-vote expert and DePaul University political-science professor. For many young voters in 2008, "it was the first time they'd been really been involved, really paying attention. This is someone telling them, 'Yes, you can,' " she said. Two years later, with a prolonged Gulf oil spill, "watching how slow it is to respond may be a little disillusioning," she added. Obama won an astounding 66 percent of the vote among the under-30 crowd, according to exit polls tracked by the Pew Research Center, the biggest winning percentage for a candidate since Richard Nixon in 1972. In other poll results: * Obama's overall approval rating is 44 percent, with 48 percent disapproval -- his worst score ever in the survey. * The president trails an unnamed generic Republican among all voters by 39-36 percent. * Voters disapprove of his handling of immigration by a stark 58-30 percent margin, with 60 percent saying the federal lawsuit against Arizona for its tough immigration crackdown is a bad idea. * Obama beats Sarah Palin 49-45 percent in a 2012 match-up. * Thirty-seven percent of voters say the country would be better off with John McCain as president, while 35 percent said it would be worse off. Critically important independent voters continue to drift away from Obama, and disapprove of him by 52-38 percent. A year ago, independents backed Obama 52-37. Obama gets just 39 percent approval of his handling of the economy and 43 percent approval on handling of foreign policy. --NY Post
* 7/22/10--The number of people applying for initial (NY) state unemployment insurance benefits rose 37,000 to 464,000 in the week ended July 17, the U.S. Labor Department reported Thursday. Economists surveyed by MarketWatch expected an initial claims level of 450,000. The four-week average of initial claims -- a better gauge of employment trends than the volatile weekly number -- rose 1,250 to 456,000. --NY Post
* 7/22/10--(AP) WASHINGTON -- Government watchdogs told a Senate panel yesterday that the Obama administration's effort to help homeowners avoid foreclosure isn't working. Special inspector general Neil Barofsky said the program has not "put an appreciable dent in foreclosure filings."
* 7/22/10--PRINCETON, NJ -- Gallup's 2010 Confidence in Institutions poll finds Congress ranking dead last out of the 16 institutions rated this year. Eleven percent of Americans say they have a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in Congress, down from 17% in 2009 and a percentage point lower than the previous low for Congress, recorded in 2008.--Gallup.com
* 7/22/10--"It seems quite possible that the NAACP has now lost whatever moral clout it had among Americans. It is now seen by more and more Americans as what in fact it became some time ago -- an abuser of its civil rights moral cachet. The charge of racism leveled by liberal organizations, whether black or white, is now regarded as the politically motivated falsehood that it is. It is rightly seen, along with its six siblings -- sexism, xenophobia, intolerance, bigotry, homophobia and 'Islamophobia' -- as the Left's way of avoiding argument by demeaning its opponents." --columnist Dennis Prager (From Patriot Post Chronicle)
* 7/23/10--The JournoList has started to leak like an overripe diaper. Just in case you've been living in a cave, or if you only get your news from MSNBC, here's the story: A young blogger, Ezra Klein, formerly of the avowedly left-wing American Prospect and now with the avowedly mainstream Washington Post, founded the e-mail listserv "JournoList" for like-minded liberals to hash out and develop ideas. Some 400 people joined the by-invitation-only group. Most, it seems, were in the media, but many hailed from academia, think tanks and the world of forthright liberal activism generally. They spoke freely about their political and personal biases -- including their hatred of Fox and Rush Limbaugh, and their utter loyalty to the progressive cause and Democratic success. That off-the-record intellectual bacchanalia has started to haunt the participants like an inexplicable rash after a wild party during fleet week. The diaper is coming off entirely. Perhaps stretching the diaper metaphor too far, what's inside JournoList may stink, but it's no surprise that it does. JournoList e-mails obtained by The Daily Caller reveal what anybody with two neurons to rub together already knew: Professional liberals don't like Republicans and do like Democrats. They can be awfully smug and condescending in their sense of intellectual and moral superiority. They tend to ascribe evil motives to their political opponents -- sometimes even when they know it's unfair. One obscure blogger insisted that liberals should arbitrarily demonize a conservative journalist as a racist to scare conservatives away from covering stories that might hurt Obama. Oh, and -- surprise! -- it turns out that the "O" in JournoList stands for "Obama." In 2008, participants shared talking points about how to shape coverage to help Obama. They tried to paint any negative coverage of Obama's racist and hateful pastor, Jeremiah Wright, as out of bounds. Journalists at such "objective" news organizations as Newsweek, Bloomberg, Time and The Economist joined conversations with open partisans about the best way to criticize Sarah Palin. Like an Amish community raising a barn, members of the progressive community got together to hammer out talking points. Amidst a discussion of Palin, Chris Hayes, a writer for the Nation, wrote: "Keep the ideas coming! Have to go on TV to talk about this in a few min and need all the help I can get." Time's Joe Klein admitted to his fellow JournoListers that he'd collected the listserv's bric-a-brac and fashioned it into a brickbat aimed at Palin. Many conservatives think JournoList is the smoking gun that proves not just liberal media bias (already well-established) but something far more elusive as well: the Sasquatch known as the Liberal Media Conspiracy. I'm not so sure. In the 1930s, The New York Times deliberately whitewashed Stalin's murders. In 1964, CBS reported that Barry Goldwater was tied up with German Nazis. In 1985, the Los Angeles Times polled 2,700 journalists at 621 newspapers and found that journalists identified themselves as liberal by a factor of 3 to 1. Their actual views on issues were far more liberal than even that would suggest. Ezra Klein was born in 1984. In other words, JournoList is a symptom, not the disease. And the disease isn't a secret conspiracy but something more like the "Open Conspiracy" H.G. Wells fantasized about, where the smartest, best people at every institution make their progressive vision for the world their top priority. As James DeLong, a fellow at the Digital Society, correctly noted on the Enterprise Blog, "The real problem with JournoList is that much of it consisted of exchanges among people who worked for institutions about how to best hijack their employers for the cause of Progressivism." For a liberal activist that's forgivable, I guess. But academics? Reporters? Editors? Even liberal opinion writers aren't supposed to "coordinate" their messages with the mother ship. The conservative movement at least admits it's a movement (even though conservatives outnumber liberals 2-1 in this country). Establishment liberalism, not just in the press but also in the White House, academia and Hollywood, holds power by refusing to make the same concession. This isn't about ideology. . . We just call them like we see them. . . We don't have an agenda. The open conspiracy that perpetuates that lie is far more pernicious than any chat room.--Jonah Goldberg, (NY Post)
* 7/23/10--WASHINGTON -- Rep. Charles Rangel was slapped yesterday with charges of serious ethics violations -- and faces a public trial in the House that could end with his expulsion after 40 years in office. The charges are the latest setback for the embattled 80-year-old dean of the state congressional delegation, who grudgingly relinquished his chairmanship of the powerful Ways and Means Committee in March after being admonished by the committee for going on a corporate-paid junket to the Caribbean. The secretive House Ethics Committee didn't reveal which of the accusations leveled against the Harlem Democrat were included in the formal charges being brought against him. But sources said they're related to Rangel's use of official stationery to raise money for a City College center named for him; his use of four rent-regulated apartments; and his failure to report income. "It's very bad news for Mr. Rangel," said Melanie Sloan of Citizens for Responsible Ethics in Washington, which called for him to step down yesterday. "This means they found some very bad stuff. To me, this is a step toward expulsion." Rangel was briefed in recent weeks on the allegations and rejected them, The Washington Post reported, citing sources who said he could have avoided the trial by accepting the findings. Among the most serious charges that have been aired against Rangel -- first disclosed by The Post -- was his failure to report and pay taxes on rental income from his villa in the Dominican Republic. The Post later revealed that Rangel also didn't report hundreds of thousands of dollars in assets and income on the financial-disclosure forms he has filed with Congress each year. And Rangel has been accused of soliciting large corporate donations for a center named after him at CCNY while heading Ways and Means. He also was found to be maintaining four rent-regulated apartments in Harlem, as well as preserving a tax shelter for an oil-drilling company, Nabors Industries, whose CEO had donated to the Rangel Center. The trial is set to kick off Thursday and is certain to draw national attention. --NY Post
* 7/23/10--WASHINGTON -- House Speaker Nancy Pelosi yesterday affirmed her support for letting lower tax rates for wealthier Americans expire at year's end, despite opposition by several Senate Democrats who say the economy is too fragile for higher taxes. Fiscally conservative Senate Democrats Evan Bayh of Indiana, Kent Conrad of North Dakota and Ben Nelson of Nebraska all have said they believe lower tax rates for all income groups should be renewed when they expire at the end of the year. Pelosi said that does not change her stance. "Our position has been that we support middle-income tax cuts. The tax cuts at the high end have increased the deficit enormously," she said. Her comments are part of a broad debate coming over whether to renew tax cuts enacted in 2001 and 2003 under former President George W. Bush that are set to expire. President Obama and many congressional Democrats want to extend the lower rates for individuals earning less than $200,000 or couples making less than $250,000, but not for those earning more. --NY Post
* 7/23/10--Barack Obama signed into law the sweeping financial-sector overhaul Wednesday, opening the way for government tentacles to gain an even firmer grip on the economy. Of course, Obama couched the bill with a promise: "The American people will never again be asked to foot the bill for Wall Street's mistakes. There will be no more taxpayer-funded bailouts. Period." As Democrats feverishly expand the power of government, another issue looms -- the expiration of the Bush tax cuts at midnight on Dec. 31. What a New Year's celebration that will be. If Congress doesn't act, Americans will be saddled with one of the largest tax increases in history. Don't be fooled by demo-goguery, either. The tax hikes will hit every income level. The top bracket would rise from 35 percent to 39.6 percent; the 33 bracket will rise to 35; 28 will rise to 31; 25 will rise to 28; and the lowest bracket, 10 percent, will rise to 15 percent -- a 50 percent hike. Capital gains taxes will rise from 15 percent to 20 percent, and the tax on dividends will skyrocket to 39.6 percent, which is a far cry from the current 15 percent rate. The marriage penalty will return, and the child tax credit will be cut in half from $1,000 to $500....The Obama agenda includes increasing spending to such stratospheric levels that deficits must be solved with higher taxes. Of course, with elections looming, Democrats have suddenly found religion on deficits, which means arguing over how much extending the tax cuts will "cost." According to Politico, "Extending all the tax cuts would add $3 trillion to the deficit over the next decade, while extending only the middle-class cuts would cost $1.4 trillion." Um, whose money is it? Indeed, deficits are now such a public relations nightmare that Democrats didn't even bother enacting a budget this year -- they'll just let that $3.6 trillion blow in the wind and hope you don't notice the $1.5 trillion deficit. On the other side of the aisle, Republicans actually have a plan. Rep. Tom Price (R-GA), an orthopedic surgeon who heads the conservative Republican Study Committee, has offered a budget that reduces federal borrowing from Obama's new baseline by $6.4 trillion over 10 years. Not only that, but it makes the Bush tax cuts permanent for everyone and further lowers taxes by $1.7 trillion. Price also proposes a spending "reset" to 2008 levels. "We think it's essential to show the American people we can cut spending enough to balance the budget even with the big hole Barack Obama has put us in," Price said. However, he admitted, "Even some Republicans will flinch from the spending cuts required to get to a balanced budget." Those Republicans should grow a backbone.--Patriot Post Digest
* 7/23/10--First, it was Pennsylvania. Now, Maryland will pay for abortions using federal tax dollars under Obama's health care overhaul. Maryland will get $85 million in federal funds, while Pennsylvania is in line to receive $160 million to fund a "high-risk" insurance program that will cover abortions. (New Mexico had been set to use $37 million for a similar program, but the state removed abortions from coverage following media attention and pro-life protests.) Of course, ObamaCare's abortion funding is no surprise, Obama's "no federally funded abortions" pledge and equally useless Executive Order notwithstanding. As Kathryn Jean Lopez of National Review notes, "Obamacare never prohibited abortion funding. It's a matter of administrative discretion.... And the administration will have to provide a new myth or actually act ... to prohibit that which is not currently prohibited." Another promise broken. Surprise, surprise. Speaking of fraud, federal authorities recently busted a Medicare fraud ring spanning five states and siphoning $251 million from the entitlement program. The elaborate scheme used tactics such as submitting fraudulent claims and billing Medicare for unneeded treatments and equipment. Obama promised to reduce Medicare fraud and abuse, but lest you think this translates into cost savings for taxpayers, think again. The president aims to use the money for "reform." In other words, what might have been a $251 million return to taxpayers is now a $251 million check made payable to Uncle Sam.--Patriot Post Digest
* 7/23/10--It should come as much more of a surprise than it does: a liberal media plot to protect then-Senator Barack Obama from the Jeremiah Wright scandal. Sadly, for those of us who have followed the coverage of Obama's campaign and his subsequent acts as president, the only surprise is the explicitness of the evidence and how it came to light. The Daily Caller, an online political journal founded by conservative-libertarian Fox News contributor Tucker Carlson, recently uncovered documents in which journalists from such notable publications as The Washington Post, Time, Politico, Baltimore Sun, the Guardian and the New Republic conspired how best to deflect the public attention from Obama's relationship with "Reverend" Wright. Their answer: Run a smear campaign against Obama's conservative critics, below the belt and without regard to truth or fundamental journalistic ethics. "What is necessary is to raise the cost on the right of going after the left," wrote Spencer Ackerman of the Washington Independent. "[L]et the right know that it needs to live in a state of constant fear. ... If the right forces us all to either defend Wright or tear him down, no matter what we choose, we lose the game they've put upon us. Instead, take one of them -- Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares -- and call them racists." Apparently the above were peeved when ABC's Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos had the nerve to ask Sen. Obama "tough questions" during one of his debates with fellow candidate Hillary Clinton, so they plotted on "Journolist," an exclusive online forum for leftist media. "This isn't about defending Obama," wrote Michael Tomasky of the Guardian, "This is about how the [mainstream media] kills any chance of discourse that actually serves the people." Only a liberal could argue that he is burying information in the interest of "discourse that actually serves the people." It'd be comical, were it not so shamefully despicable. Journolist was shut down last month after a leak exposed the liberal bias of David Weigel, the Washington Post's blogger covering the conservative movement. The information is still flowing from its archives, however, including the involvement in the "discourse" of Jared Bernstein, who became Vice President Biden's top economist. Apparently, a little ethical lapse here and there was worth gaining, as they put it, "control of the country."--Patriot Post Digest
* 7/24/10--How sad: NASA, under Team Obama, is finding itself increasingly "lost in space" -- even as Russia forges ahead with plans to boost its own exploration of space. On Monday, Premier Vladimir Putin said his country will build a new $800 million spaceport -- in part, to cut its space program's reliance on other nations; Russia's main launching facility now is in Kazakhstan. Think of it as "one giant leap" for Russian space independence. Meanwhile, US plans seem adrift. For starters, when the space shuttle is mothballed next year, the only way for Americans to reach the International Space Station will be on Russian spacecraft. Gee, how things have changed since the days when America led space exploration -- and Neil Armstrong took that first step on the moon. The moon! Today, visions for NASA's future have been shifting by the day, plagued by funding cuts and political rivalry. Indeed, the agency's own self-conception seems clouded. And nothing makes that point better than the wacky claim by NASA's boss, Charles Bolden, that President Obama told him his "foremost" mission is to "engage much more with [pre]dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science and math and engineering." One small step toward the end of US global prominence? Let's hope not.--NY Post
* 7/26/10--"The real problem with JournoList is that much of it consisted of exchanges among people who worked for institutions about how to best hijack their employers for the cause of Progressivism. Thus, the J-List discussion revealed [last week] in the Daily Caller was about how the group could get their media organizations to play down the Reverend Wright affair and help elect Barack Obama. Were I an editor of one of these institutions, I would instantly fire any employee who participated in this gross violation of his/her duty. For example, the J-List included Washington Post reporters, and the idea that the paper has been turned into a propaganda organ is a big reason it is bleeding readers and influence. Of course, it is possible that the Post's editors were on the list, since the membership is not known, in which case the corporate executives should fire the editors, or the board should fire the executives, or the stockholders should fire the board. (If Director Warren Buffet was on J-List, I give up.) So here, JournoList is composed not of reporters who happen to be 'Progressives,' but of Progressives who boast about how to perfect and use their capture of their employers. This is in itself institutional rot, but the more serious rot is the failure of the managers of those institutions to react to the problem." --James DeLong of the American Enterprise Institute (From Patriot Post Brief)
* 7/28/10--"The next time you hear a liberal scoffing at the idea that the American left has a set of 'talking points,' or that they're 'reading from the same script,' tell him to google 'JournoList.' Frankly, it is completely unsurprising that 400, invitation-only, members of leftist media, academia, think tanks and political activist associations would be attempting to coordinate their political strategy. When your ideology is bankrupt, the only thing left is strength in numbers. And when you revere the collectivist aspirations of Marxist/socialist all-encompassing government, 'group-think' becomes as natural as breathing." --columnist Arnold Ahlert (From Patriot Post Chronicle)
* 7/29/10--It's not exactly hard-hitting journalism, but President Obama said yesterday he had a good reason for sitting down with the gabby ladies of the late-morning chatterfest "The View." Obama -- who yesterday became the first sitting president ever to appear on a daytime talk show -- said he wanted to be on a program his wife actually watches. "All those new shows, she's like, 'Eh, let me get the clicker,' " he told the co-hosts at ABC's Upper West Side studios. Obama's entire interview will air today, but the network released parts of it last night. --NY Post
* 7/29/10--WASHINGTON -- The key sticking point in Rep. Charles Rangel's negotiations last night with the House Ethics Committee over his scandals was his refusal to admit wrongdoing in making improper solicitations for a center named after him at CCNY, The Post has learned. The deal-breaker emerged as Rangel was playing a high-stakes game of chicken with attorneys for the panel over the terms of a settlement that would allow him to avoid the potentially damaging trial in the House, which is due to start today at 1 p.m.
"He feels, I think very strongly, that he has not done anything that was wrong," said a Democratic member of the House in Rangel's camp. The supporter said Rangel was drawing a line in the sand on the matter of his solicitations of big-bucks contributions from corporations for the Charles Rangel Center for Public Affairs at CCNY -- a story The Post first broke in 2007. Such an admission -- particularly if investigators conclude that Rangel provided a legislative favor to a corporate donor, as has been reported -- could also leave Rangel open to potential criminal prosecution.--NY Post
* 7/29/10--PHOENIX -- A federal judge yesterday blocked key parts of Arizona's tough immigration law hours before it was to take effect, handing a victory to the Obama administration as it tries to take control of the issue. Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer said she would file an appeal to reinstate the provisions, which had popular support but were opposed by President Obama and immigrant-advocacy groups. (Bill Clinton appointee) US District Judge, Susan Bolton barred several provisions, including one that required a police officer to determine the immigration status of a person detained or arrested, if the officer believed the person was not in the country legally. The judge also stayed provisions requiring immigrants to carry their papers at all times and making it illegal for people without immigration papers to seek work in public places -- a move aimed at day laborers. In addition, the judge blocked officers from making warrantless arrests of suspected illegals....She said the controversial sections should be put on hold until the courts resolve the issues. Other provisions of the law, many of them slight revisions to existing statute, go into effect at 12:01 a.m. today. The law was passed by the Republican-controlled Arizona Legislature and signed by Brewer in April, immediately making immigration a hot-button issue in the national midterm elections. The law has inspired similar action elsewhere and prompted a boycott against Arizona. Lawyers for the state contend the law was a constitutionally sound attempt to assist federal immigration agents and lessen woes, such as the costs of providing health care for illegal immigrants. Arizona is the busiest gateway into the country for illegal immigrants, and the state's border with Mexico is awash in drugs and smugglers. The Justice Department had argued that provisions of the law encroached on federal authority. In her 36-page decision, Bolton agreed. She ruled "that the United States is likely to suffer irreparable harm" under Arizona's policies. In a sign of the international interest in the law, about 100 protesters in Mexico City who had gathered in front of the US Embassy broke into cheers when speakers told them about the judge's ruling. --NY Post
* 7/29/10--With Congress gridlocked on an immigration bill, the Obama administration is considering using a back door to stop deporting many illegal immigrants - what a draft government memo said could be "a non-legislative version of amnesty." The memo, addressed to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Alejandro Mayorkas and written by four agency staffers, lists tools it says the administration has to "reduce the threat of removal" for many illegal immigrants who have run afoul of immigration authorities. "In the absence of comprehensive immigration reform, USCIS can extend benefits and/or protections to many individuals and groups by issuing new guidance and regulations, exercising discretion with regard to parole-in-place, deferred action and the issuance of Notices to Appear," the staffers wrote in the memo, which was obtained by Sen. Charles E. Grassley, Iowa Republican. The memo suggests that in-depth discussions have occurred on how to keep many illegal immigrants in the country, which would be at least a temporary alternative to the proposals Democrats in Congress have made to legalize illegal immigrants.--Washington Times
* 7/29/10--You know when a politician starts a sentence with "frankly," he's about to lie to your face. The same principle applies to campaign-finance legislation dubbed the "DISCLOSE Act." The voter's instinctive reaction should be: What are they trying to hide now? Drafted out of public view and rammed through Congress after bypassing committee hearings, this bum bill would have been better named the CLOSED-DOOR Act. At a Rose Garden press conference on Monday, President Obama decried the influence of "shadow groups" on elections and urged the Senate to pass the Sen. Chuck Schumer-sponsored "reform." But the loophole-ridden package exempts large nonprofits with 500,000 or more members. Behemoth labor unions get preferential treatment. Bradley Smith, former Federal Elections Commission chairman, noted that the law places speech-squelching restrictions on companies' ability to run independent political ads: "If you're a company with a government contract of over $10 million [like more than half of the top 50 US companies] or if you're a company with more than 20 percent foreign shareholders, you can't even mention a candidate in an ad for up to a full year before the election . . . There are no similar prohibitions for unions representing government contractors." GOP Sen. Mitch McConnell put it more starkly during Tuesday's debate before the Senate cloture vote on the bill: The DISCLOSE Act, he said, is a "transparent attempt to rig the fall elections." At bottom, McConnell said, it's a jobs-protection bill for incumbents. While the cloture vote fell three votes short of the needed 60 on Tuesday, Schumer vowed to resurrect the issue "again and again and again until we pass it." ....Team Obama and its allies on Capitol Hill have some nerve gnashing their teeth about transparency after two years of backdoor kickbacks, secret Big Labor deals, C-SPAN camera evasion and sunlight-shirking holiday and midnight floor votes. A White House spokesman called the battle over the DISCLOSE Act a "defining moment for the public." Nah. It's just another example of the Democratic majority's endless hide-and-seek hypocrisy. --Michelle Malkin (From NY Post)
* 7/29/10--Fact: Despite all of the claims by Barack Hussein Obama and his cadre of Socialists about "creating or saving" jobs through their so-called "stimulus plan," their taxing revenue out of the private sector (from this and future generations) does NOT "stimulate" private sector job growth -- quite the contrary. (Nor is there any expressed authority in our Constitution for such redistribution of wealth -- but who pays attention to that venerable old parchment?) Late last Friday, after the White House press corpse had departed for weekend resorts, Obama released his administration's "Mid-Session Budget Review," which analyzed the results of his effort to "fundamentally transform the United States of America" with his "stimulus" plan. From almost any vantage point, the report is tantamount to an admission of failure, but Obama's rhetorical smokescreen continues to imply otherwise. That plan, officially known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act but more accurately known as the American Socialization and Redistribution Act, is Obama's ruse to confiscate from taxpayers -- and borrow primarily from the Red Chinese -- almost a trillion dollars, then redistribute it to his constituents through government-controlled conduits. As George Bernard Shaw wrote, "A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul." The deficit created by Obama's plan this year alone is projected to be $1.471 trillion. That's the largest deficit in our nation's history and the largest as a percentage of U.S. economic output since World War II. According to Heritage Foundation analyst Brian Riedl, "Before the recession, federal spending totaled $24,000 per U.S. household. President Obama would hike it to $36,000 per household by 2020 -- an inflation-adjusted $12,000-per-household expansion of government." Notably, if federal spending were reduced to the per-household rates under Ronald Reagan, we'd have a balanced budget by 2012 without any tax hikes. Of course, that would require cutting government spending, and such a notion is antithetical to the Socialists in control of the U.S. government. That might explain why unemployment in Washington, DC, is just 3 percent.--Mark Alexander, Patriot Post
* 7/30/10--WASHINGTON -- The House ethics panel threw the book at Rep. Charles Rangel yesterday, charging him with 13 violations, in an action that rocked the Capitol and set up a possible corruption trial in the midst of the election season. The devastating charges, detailed in a 40-page report, are an embarrassing last act to the Harlem Democrat's 40-year career as a congressional powerhouse and dean of the New York delegation. The ethics committee found after an exhaustive two-year investigation that Rangel had a "pattern of indifference or disregard for the laws, rules and regulations of the United States and the House of Representatives." --NY Post
---The House members summoned to investigate Charlie Rangel repeatedly assured the TV cameras yesterday they were filled with regret and sadness at their solemn duty against a colleague. But reading the detailed charges they assembled against the New York Democrat left me with an entirely different set of emotions. They ranged from outrage to outrage. Charlie is more of chiseler than even the most cynical among us imagined. With gratitude to Howard Beale, it's past time we all get mad as hell and refuse to take this crap anymore. The charges, if they hold, show Rangel was a 24-hour-a-day bunko man. He was zealous only about feathering his own nest, whether making money on real estate, hoarding rent-stabilized apartments or hiding income and suspiciously large assets from the tax man. No wonder his great legacy is that he went to Congress and stayed 40 years. Consumed with the reported scams, he didn't have time to actually do any work for Harlem. Some call him "The Dean" of the city's delegation. The damning charges suggest "The Don" fits better. He was hitting up companies and foundations for contributions to his hoped-for library, even while those companies and foundations wanted his votes on their business before Congress. They all played ball because Rangel had the power to penalize or reward them. Said power was entrusted to him by voters he swore to serve. He must have had his fingers crossed when he took those oaths. Here's a shocker: Rangel repeatedly stonewalled investigators, forcing them to issue subpoenas. He then publicly cited the probe's slow pace as proof he was innocent. He claimed only the press had charged him with anything, even after he had received official notification of the charges. In short, he's a serial liar on top of everything else. A real outrage, of course, is that the 13 charges are categorized as ethical violations and infractions of House rules. Baloney. If at least some aren't crimes worthy of prosecution, we might as well empty the prisons because nobody in there is guilty of anything. Yet still, no prosecutor in Washington or New York has shown the guts to raise a hand and take the case. This undue deference is a license for members of Congress to live by a different set of rules than the rest of us. Theirs is the most exclusive club in the country, a virtual honor system exempt from the laws of the land. The mob only wishes it had that kind of power. Tony Soprano would have enjoyed a much longer run if he'd gone to Congress. Consider that Rangel's House disclosure forms were riddled with omissions and false claims for at least a decade. Assets appeared and disappeared without explanation or logic, yet nobody ever said boo -- until the press picked up the scent. Taxes? They were for little people. This newspaper blew the biggest whistle of all by finding he failed to report at least $75,000 of rental income on his villa in the Dominican Republic. The New York Times and The Washington Post also revealed aspects of the case, leading probers to uncover additional issues. After all that, Rangel faces, at most, expulsion from the club. Reports until the very minute the House panel met talked of negotiations on a deal that would have allowed him to keep his seat with a slap on the wrist. It still could happen, unless the public is vigilant and vocal. For if such a deal emerges in coming days and we accept it as the final result, it will be proof America has become a nation of sheep who deserve to be fleeced by the Charlie Rangels of the world.--Michael Goodwin, NY Post
* 7/30/10--Judge Susan Bolton has to get credit for her cheekiness. She took a matter of profound national concern and injected an element of hilarity into it. As gloriously ridiculous as a classic "Monty Python" skit, the federal judge's decision blocking Arizona's immigration law is an appropriate first volley in the legal war over the law. If our immigration system is to be defined by a judicially sanctioned lawlessness, we might as well dispense with the pretense. Acting in keeping with federal law, court precedent and a Justice Department memorandum (not to mention common sense), Arizona said its law-enforcement officers would henceforth check the legal status of suspected illegals during the course of a lawful stop or arrest. To conclude that the law likely will be struck down for "pre-empting" federal regulations, Bolton had to engage in complicated judicial gymnastics, which she nailed with the skill of a Mary Lou Retton in robes....--Rich Lowry, NY Post
* 7/30/10--Arizonans will be grateful for some extra help from the National Guard, starting Sunday, in protecting the border and fighting drug violence -- especially now that a federal judge has blocked key parts of their recent illegal-immigration law. But there's a more pressing border issue that goes beyond Arizona: the alliance between drug cartels and groups that aim to smuggle terrorists into our country through the Mexican border. Last week's detonation along the Texas-Mexico border of an Improvised Explosive Device similar to those used in Iraq and Afghanistan strongly suggests that Hezbollah is working with the drug cartels -- and that America is unsafe. Law-enforcement officials and intelligence analysts believe that terrorist groups like al Qaeda have been working with such gangs as the ruthless MS-13 to smuggle terrorists into America. Intel briefings and other sources suggest that al Qaeda spends as much as $50,000 to smuggle in a single terrorist, while Hezbollah, funded by Iran, pays as much as $10,000. Indeed, some analysts estimate that thousands of terrorists have already been smuggled into the United States through the Mexican border since 9/11. Last year, a worker at the Mexican embassy in Beirut was caught selling visas to enter Mexico for $3,000 apiece. Hezbollah terrorists know that once they get to Mexico they can make their way here through our southern border. A congressional report on homeland security acknowledges this threat. The report, "A Line in the Sand: Confronting the Threat at the Southwest Border," addresses the alarming rate at which the number of aliens referred to as "other than Mexican," or OTMs, are crossing the border. Many OTMs are nationals and terrorists from countries such as Iran, Syria, Pakistan, Chechnya, Afghanistan and Iraq. Our biggest threat is that a nuclear, dirty or biological bomb could be smuggled by OTMs into America soon....An alliance between the drug cartels and Hezbollah is a symbiotic, win-win situation for both parties. Hezbollah can share its expertise in tunnel-engineering and bomb-making with the drug cartels. The cartels can then smuggle dealers and drugs through these tunnels, several of which have been discovered in recent years, while Hezbollah smuggles terrorists and munitions to be used in terror missions in America. Hezbollah is Iran's proxy army and is trained by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. As Iran and America head into a confrontation over Iran's nuclear program, Iran must ensure it has sufficient operatives in America to retaliate when the time comes, and this alliance provides the means to get them here. That time is coming faster than we think. Intelligence analysts think Hezbollah has at least 11 cells in America, including one in New York City. If provoked, perhaps via an Israeli strike, it is likely Iran will retaliate not only against Israel but against its strongest ally. Our border-security crisis extends beyond illegal workers and employers looking for cheap labor. A suitcase bomb or biological bomb detonated in any major city in America would kill untold numbers of civilians and wreak havoc on our economy. Health care, prison housing and other costs for illegal immigrants would ultimately pale in comparison to such devastation. Terrorists now have operational centers all over South America. They're learning Spanish and obtaining fake Spanish papers in case they're caught crossing over the Mexican border. The Tri-Border region of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay in South America has become a haven for international Islamic extremists. A State Department report notes that Hezbollah and other terrorist groups were using bases in Latin America to "raise millions of dollars annually via criminal enterprises." Americans must put politics aside and act now to secure the Mexican border. Arizona families are in need of protection from the drug violence, but we must protect the millions of Americans living in major cities who are threatened by a suitcase bomb or the like smuggled through the Mexican border. The time for bickering is over.--Brigitte Gabriel, NY Post
* 7/30/10--KABUL, Afghanistan – Three U.S. troops died in blasts in Afghanistan, bringing the death toll for July to at least 63 and surpassing the previous month's record as the deadliest for American forces in the nearly 9-year-old war. (AP)
* 7/30/10--WASHINGTON (AP) -- The recovery lost momentum in the spring as growth slowed to a 2.4 percent pace, its most sluggish showing in nearly a year and too weak to drive down unemployment. Consumers spent less, companies slowed their restocking of shelves and the nation's trade deficit dragged more on the economy in the April-to-June quarter. In a separate report, the Commerce Department said the recession was deeper than previously estimated. Together, the reports raise doubts about whether employers will hire enough and consumers will spend enough to invigorate the economy. As unemployment remains near double digits, Congress could feel pressure to pass more stimulus measures to speed the recovery. So far, Republicans and some Democrats have blocked additional spending because of their concerns about the size of the deficit. Investors reacted to the report with disappointment. Stock futures fell in the hour before the markets opened.
* 7/30/10--The nascent US economic recovery would be halted in 2011 if Congress fails to extend the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, analysts at Deutsche Bank said. The cuts were enacted in 2001 and 2003 under President George W. Bush and in part covered those earning more than $250,000, but they are expected to expire at the end of this year. Tax decreases for lower-earning people likely will be continued, but the ones for the top end of the income scale are in danger of going away. Deutsche said the drag on gross domestic product should they lapse could be as much as 1.5 percent, with the more likely impact at 1.1 percent. The impact would be worse, the analysts said, if Congress fails to fix the Alternative Minimum Tax, which was enacted in 1969 to make sure rich people pay taxes but was never indexed for inflation, and thus is now hitting middle-income workers. "In a worst-case scenario, allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire and failing to fix the AMT could result in (1.5 percent) of fiscal drag in 2011 on top of the 1 percent fiscal drag we expect to occur as the Obama fiscal stimulus package unwinds," Deutsche said in a note to clients. "If the recovery remains soft/tentative through early next year, this additional drag could be enough to push the economy to a stalling point." The opinion runs counter to that of Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, who said earlier this week that allowing the cuts to expire would not cause the economy to re-enter recession. The administration has proposed letting most of the tax cuts stand, but eliminating the ones for the top-tier earners.--cnbc.com
* 7/30/10--The U.S. government appears to be complicit in the early release of convicted Lockerbie bomber Abdel Baset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, who in 2001 had been sentenced to spend the rest of his natural life in a Scottish prison. However, Megrahi was released and allowed to return to Libya last year when it was made public that he was allegedly terminally ill with cancer and expected to live only three months. Megrahi is still alive in Libya, and some experts maintain that he could live another decade in his native country. Documents surrounding the matter that were recently made public reveal that the U.S. government considered "compassionate release" in Scotland -- where Megrahi was imprisoned -- more acceptable than a transfer to Libya, where he remains a free man. Not surprisingly, Attorney General Eric Holder was involved in this correspondence. What is surprising is why compassion had to be considered at all for the terrorist who was responsible for the murder of 270 people. Perhaps it's just another example of Barack Obama's outreach to the Muslim world to help them understand their "contributions" to society.--Patriot Post Digest.
* 7/30/10--The Internet is a large-scale version of the "Committees of Correspondence" that led to the first American Revolution — and with Washington's failings now so obvious and awful, it may lead to another. People are asking, "Is the government doing us more harm than good? Should we change what it does and the way it does it?" Pruning the power of government begins with the imperial presidency. Too many overreaching laws give the president too much discretion to make too many open-ended rules controlling too many aspects of our lives. There's no end to the harm an out-of-control president can do. Bill Clinton lowered the culture, moral tone and strength of the nation — and left America vulnerable to attack. When it came, George W. Bush stood up for America, albeit sometimes clumsily. Barack Obama, however, has pulled off the ultimate switcheroo: He's diminishing America from within — so far, successfully. He may soon bankrupt us and replace our big merit-based capitalist economy with a small government-directed one of his own design. He is undermining our constitutional traditions: The rule of law and our Anglo-Saxon concepts of private property hang in the balance. Obama may be the most "consequential" president ever. The Wall Street Journal's steadfast Dorothy Rabinowitz wrote that Barack Obama is "an alien in the White House." His bullying and offenses against the economy and job creation are so outrageous that CEOs in the Business Roundtable finally mustered the courage to call him "anti-business." Veteran Democrat Sen. Max Baucus blurted out that Obama is engineering the biggest government-forced "redistribution of income" in history. Fear and uncertainty stalk the land. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke says America's financial future is "unusually uncertain." A Wall Street "fear gauge" based on predicted market volatility is flashing long-term panic. New data on the federal budget confirm that record-setting deficits in the $1.4 trillion range are now endemic. Obama is building an imperium of public debt and crushing taxes, contrary to George Washington's wise farewell admonition: "cherish public credit ... use it as sparingly as possible ... avoiding likewise the accumulation of debt ... bear in mind, that towards the payment of debts there must be Revenue, that to have Revenue there must be taxes; that no taxes can be devised, which are not ... inconvenient and unpleasant ... ." Opinion polls suggest that in the November mid-term elections, voters will replace the present Democratic majority in Congress with opposition Republicans — but that will not necessarily stop Obama. A President Obama intent on achieving his transformative goals despite the disagreement of the American people has powerful weapons within reach. In one hand, he will have a veto pen to stop a new Republican Congress from repealing ObamaCare and the Dodd-Frank takeover of banks. In the other, he will have a fistful of executive orders, regulations and Obama-made fiats that have the force of law. Under ObamaCare, he can issue new rules and regulations so insidiously powerful in their effect that higher-priced, lower-quality and rationed health care will quickly become ingrained, leaving a permanent stain. Under Dodd-Frank, he and his agents will control all credit and financial transactions, rewarding friends and punishing opponents, discriminating on the basis of race, gender and political affiliation. Credit and liquidity may be choked by bureaucracy and politics — and the economy will suffer. He and the EPA may try to impose by "regulatory" fiats many parts of the cap-and-trade and other climate legislation that failed in the Congress. And by executive orders and the in terrorem effect of an industrywide "boot on the neck" policy, he can continue to diminish energy production in the United States. By the trick of letting current-law tax rates "expire," he can impose a $3.5 trillion 10-year tax increase that damages job-creating capital investment in an economy struggling to recover. And by failing to enforce the law and leaving America's borders open, he can continue to repopulate America with unfortunate illegals whose skill and education levels are low and whose political attitudes are often not congenial to American-style democracy. A wounded rampaging president can do much damage — and, like Caesar, the evil he does will live long after he leaves office, whenever that may be. The overgrown, un-pruned power of the presidency to reward, punish and intimidate may now be so overwhelming that his re-election in 2012 is already assured — Chicago-style.--Investor's.com
* 7/31/10--A reprimand? That's it? Seems so. Barely a day after the House Ethics Committee issued its 13-count bill of particulars against Rep. Charlie Rangel, one of his de facto inquisitors revealed the likely punishment. "The recommendation we had was a reprimand, and I'll let the full committee make that decision," said Rep. Gene Green (D-Texas), who led the investigative subcommittee that brought the 13 misconduct charges against Rangel -- which included misusing official resources for personal gain. No fines. No censure. No expulsion. Just a reprimand. And the sentence is revealed before the case is formally presented to the appropriate adjudicatory committee? How Alice-in-Wonderland. How deliciously appropriate for a House of Representatives so lacking in moral courage -- to say nothing of shame -- that it hasn't yet brought itself to confront Rangel's outrageous transgressions. No doubt the House is also worried about setting harsh precedents. One can never know who the next congressman to be caught might be. And Rangel got caught -- by reporters from this newspaper and others -- and caught good. Now his peers say he has brought "discredit to the House" -- and reasonable people can only wonder what the hell that even means. No doubt, he has brought "discredit to the House." But no more than the House itself would be bringing with this ridiculous wrist-slap of a "penalty."--NY Post Editorial
--The disciplinary action that the House ethics subcommittee recommended for Rep. Charles Rangel is a relatively toothless verbal rebuke that has been meted out for everything from pulling strings for a hooker to fudging campaign disclosure forms. Officially called a reprimand, it's the least serious form of punishment the House doles out (the others are censure and expulsion) and involves members voting to disapprove of the wrongdoer's actions....
Possible punishments:
* EXPULSION: Requires a two-thirds vote. Only five members have ever been expelled; the last was Jim Traficant (D-Ohio) in 2002.
* CENSURE: By majority vote, a resolution strongly disapproves of the violator’s conduct. The wrongdoer then gets a verbal dressing-down by the speaker on the House floor.
* REPRIMAND: Least severe. House votes to disapprove of violator’s actions, but there is no chastisement.--NY Post
*/7/31/10--(AP) WASHINGTON – A second House Democrat, Rep. Maxine Waters of California, could face an ethics trial this fall, further complicating the election outlook for the party as it battles to retain its majority. People familiar with the investigation, who were not authorized to be quoted about charges before they are made public, say the allegations could be announced next week. The House ethics committee declined Friday to make any public statement on the matter. Waters, 71, has been under investigation for a possible conflict of interest involving a bank that was seeking federal aid. Her husband owned stock in the bank and had served on its board. New York Democrat Rep. Charles Rangel also faces an ethics trial this fall on charges that include failure to disclose assets and income, nonpayment of taxes and doing legislative favors for donors to a college center named after him. Both Waters and Rangel are prominent members of the Congressional Black Caucus and the trials would be an embarrassment for the group. Dual ethics trials would also be a major political liability for Democrats, forcing them to defend their party's ethical conduct while trying to hold on to their House majority. While Rangel is a former chairman of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, Waters is a prominent member of the House Financial Services Committee. Waters came under scrutiny after former Treasury Department officials said she helped arrange a meeting between regulators and executives at Boston-based OneUnited Bank without mentioning her husband's financial ties to the institution.
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