Archive for September, 2009
A Helpful Obama Glossary
This is a great list!
A helpful Obama glossary
September 24th, 2009
Bob Maistros
Many Americans are no doubt confused by some of the terminology used by the president in recent weeks as he has given speeches before a joint session of Congress and the United Nations, conducted a variety of television interviews and introduced new policy proposals. As a public service, we are providing a glossary of these terms with their real meanings:
Let’s be clear.
ACORN – who? Never heard of them. (For related definition of Defunding – “holding a show vote on an amendment to eliminate funding, then bottling up the bill” – see the Congressional Glossary.)
Action (as in “now is the time for action”) – big government.
Balanced and sustained (as in “chart a course for growth that is balanced and sustained”) – involving more big government.
Choice – the opportunity to select big government.
Competition – we choose who wins.
Compromise – accepting my position after I give a big speech.
Cost savings – $900 billion in new spending.
Create or save (as in “create or save 4 million jobs”) – destroy or lose, as in 2 million jobs.
Engagement – a combination of unilateral concessions and America-bashing abroad.
Fact (as in, “these are the facts” or “to state a fact”) – my opinion.
Honest debate – agreeing with me.
Incorporate (as in “incorporate ideas from Republicans”) – include in the early stages of a proposal and then have Pelosi and Reid drop like a hot potato behind closed doors in the final version.
Irresponsible (as in “irresponsible behavior”) – constitutionally protected.
Misinformation – facts, when presented by our opponents.
Neutrality (as in “net neutrality”) – favoring one side in a dispute, especially when that side has supported your campaign and provided a senior White House staff member.
Necessary (as in “necessary war”) – not really that necessary, at least when it comes to backing up your words with required manpower and funding and standing up to your liberal base.
Negotiations without preconditions – the position I took vis-à-vis our enemies during the campaign, then denied taking, but am now trying to force on the Israelis.
Nobody (as in “nobody disputes [these facts]”) – no liberals or members of the mainstream media.
Non-profit (as in proposals to establish tax-favored, non-profit status for failing newspapers) – making official a condition that has existed unofficially for years.
Nothing (as in “nothing in this plan will require you or your employer to change the coverage or the doctor you have”) – everything.
Plan (as in, “the [health-care] plan I am announcing tonight”) – a really good speech.
Respect (as in, “respects the rights of the Israelis and Palestinians” or “the Iranians and North Koreans”) – overrun (Israelis) or elevate beyond reason with no expectation of reciprocity (everyone else).
Responsibility (as in the “responsibility” to buy health insurance or America’s “responsibility” to confront global warming) – big government telling people or nations things they have to do. (See “Action” above.)
Scare tactics – see “Misinformation” above.
Security (as in “stability and security” in health care or “true security for all Israelis”) – you’re toast.
Stand by our friends – desert our friends in order to “engage” with our enemies. (See “Engagement” above.)
Tax – certainly not the fine that goes along with the individual mandate. No matter what that little #&%@! Stephanopoulos or Webster’s say.
LINK: http://www.northstarnational.com/2009/09/24/a-helpful-obama-glossary/
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Author Confirms Bill Ayers Helped Obama Write ‘Dreams’
There are 3 main reasons I find this interesting. One is that he downplayed any relationship he and Ayers had and acted like they barely knew each other. We all knew it was a lie. The second is that Obama is praised for his eloquence in speaking and writing. Then we find out he didn’t really write the book alone. Obama is not as eloquent and smooth as he wants us to think!! And the third reason is that it shows once more what a liar he is!! I’m not sure he is even capable of telling the truth!
Author confirms Bill Ayers helped Obama write ‘Dreams’
New release on president’s marriage verifies work of WND’s Jack Cashill pointing to ex-terrorist’s role
Posted: September 23, 2009
By Art Moore
© 2009 WorldNetDaily
Confirming the literary detective work of WND columnist Jack Cashill prior to the 2008 election, author Christopher Andersen says in a newly released book that former domestic terrorist William Ayers helped Barack Obama write the president’s highly acclaimed memoir “Dreams from My Father.”
Obama’s 1995 book won the 2006 Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album and drew praise from Time magazine, which called it “the best-written memoir ever produced by an American politician.”
But since July 2008, Cashill has unveiled in nearly two dozen columns, summarized here, his compelling evidence that the unrepentant co-founder of the radical Weather Underground group – dismissed by Obama during the campaign as just “a guy who lives in my neighborhood” – shaped and refined the book with his exceptional writing skill and radical ideas.
Cashill, who acquired a copy of Andersen’s new book today, told WND the author “lays out the scenario just as I envisioned it.”
Andersen, in “Barack and Michelle: Portrait of a Marriage,” writes that Obama was faced with a deadline with the Time Books division of Random House to submit his manuscript after already having canceled a contract with Simon & Schuster. Confronted with the threat of a second failure, his wife, Michelle, suggested he seek the help of “his friend and Hyde Park neighbor Bill Ayers.”
Obama had taped interviews with relatives to flesh out his family history, and those “oral histories, along with a partial manuscript and a truckload of notes, were given to Ayers,” writes Andersen.
The author quotes a neighbor in the Hyde Park area of Chicago where Obama and Ayers lived, who says of the two, “Everyone knew they were friends and that they worked on various projects together.”
“It was no secret. Why would it be? People liked them both,” the neighbor said, according to Andersen.
-snip-
Andersen writes:
In the end, Ayers’s contribution to Barack’s “Dreams from My Father” would be significant – so much so that the book’s language, oddly specific references, literary devices, and themes would bear a jarring similarity to Ayers’s own writing.
Andersen concludes, “Thanks to help from the veteran writer Ayers, Barack would be able to submit a manuscript to his editors at Times Books.”
Andersen relied on inside sources, quite possibly Michelle Obama, to describe how “Dreams” was published, Cashill says. Andersen cites Cashill as a source, but Cashill points out in a fresh WND column today that Andersen “clearly has access to inside information that I did not have.”
“His level of detail on the mechanics of the transmission goes beyond anything that I could have discovered on my own,” Cashill writes.
Cashill pointed out in a column last year that in contrast to “Dreams,” the Obama writing samples unearthed before 1995 “are pedestrian and uninspired.”
“There is no precedent for this kind of literary transformation,” Cashill wrote. “It is as if a high 90s golfer suddenly showed up with his PGA card – with no known practice rounds in between.”
The evidence Cashill had gathered to that point, he said, “severely tests Obama’s claim of a superficial relationship with the self-declared ‘communist’ Ayers. This appears to be a conscious and consequential deception.”
‘That’s a myth’
Cashill noted in a column in May this year that Ayers was confronted at a Baltimore book-signing by a Washington Times online editor with the question of his alleged role in Obama’s book.
In the encounter, which was captured on video, the Times’ Kerry Picket asked Ayers if he had received any feedback from Obama on Ayers’ latest book, “Race Course: Against White Supremacy.”
Ayers asked rhetorically, “Why would I?”
Picket then asked, “Considering that you may have had a collaboration with ‘Dreams of My Father.'”
Ayers’ body language changed abruptly. Turning away from Picket, he replied curtly, “I never had a collaboration, no.”
“No?” she persisted.
“That’s a myth,” said Ayers, ending the conversation.
Literary cabal
In an interview last night with the Fox News Channel’s Sean Hannity, Andersen was asked to comment on his assertion that Ayers helped Obama write “Dreams.” Hannity pointed to Andersen’s observation that “the literary devices and themes” of the book “bear a jarring similarity to Ayers own writings.”
“They were good friends,” Andersen affirmed, recalling that during the campaign Obama denied that fact.
“There was a literary cabal there in Chicago,” Andersen continued. “They were all giving each other quotes, blurbs to promote their respective books.”
Hannity concluded rhetorically: “So (Obama) lied to the American people.”
Andersen appeared hesitant to concur, but conceded, “Well, you know, I think, well, let’s face it, during that campaign I think he was doing some backpedaling, I’ll be honest. And I think that, you know, Michelle probably recommended that he not emphasize the relationship with Ayers.”
Forensic evidence
Last fall, Cashill commissioned an independent scientific comparative analysis of writings by Obama and Ayers to determine whether Ayers had a significant role in the writing of “Dreams.”
Cashill reported at least four different stylometric analysts supported his extensive forensic evidence.
His experts included university professors from the U.S. and England in the statistical analysis of authorship, systems engineers, writers and Ph.D. literary analysts. Most, particularly professors at public universities, asked that their names not be revealed.
One analyst said it was possible Ayers served as a “book doctor,” drastically rewriting work Obama already had done.
Game changer
Cashill conjectures that the apparent revelation of Ayers part in Obama’s book would have changed the outcome of the 2008 election.
He recalls that Chris Matthews, host of MSNBC’s “Hardball, mocked the Republicans’ 2008 vice presidential candidate, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, for needing a collaborator for her book, because “she can’t write.”
Cashill comments in his column today that as “the Obama-as-Milli Vanilli story unfolds, Matthews and those willfully blind souls like him are in for a shock.”
“To admit that Obama needed a collaborator would have undercut his campaign for president,” Cashill says, “and to reveal the name of that collaborator would have ended it.”
LINK: http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=110784
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Obama Will Spend More on Welfare in the Next Year than Bush Spent on Entire Iraq War
Did you know this?? Probably not, since the MSM doesn ‘t like to put the facts out there!
Obama Will Spend More on Welfare in the Next Year Than Bush Spent on Entire Iraq War, Study Reveals
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
By Fred Lucas, Staff Writer
(CNSNews.com) – As a candidate for president, Barack Obama decried the financial toll that the Iraq war was taking on the economy, but Obama’s proposed spending on welfare through 2010 will eclipse Bush’s war spending by more than $260 billion.
“Because of the Bush-McCain policies, our debt has ballooned,” then-Sen. Barack Obama told a Charleston, W.V., crowd in March 2008. “This is creating problems in our fragile economy. And that kind of debt also places an unfair burden on our children and grandchildren, who will have to repay it.”
During the entire administration of George W. Bush, the Iraq war cost a total of $622 billion, according to the Congressional Research Service.
President Obama’s welfare spending will reach $888 billion in a single fiscal year–2010–more than the Bush administration spent on war in Iraq from the first “shock and awe” attack in 2003 until Bush left office in January.
Obama’s spending proposals call for the largest increases in welfare benefits in U.S. history, according to a report by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. This will lead to a spending total of $10.3 trillion over the next decade on various welfare programs. These include cash payments, food, housing, Medicaid and various social services for low-income Americans and those at 200 percent of the poverty level, or $44,000 for a family of four. Among that total, $7.5 trillion will be federal money and $2.8 trillion will be federally mandated state expenditures.
In that same West Virginia speech last year, Obama said, “When Iraq is costing each household about $100 a month, you’re paying a price for this war.”
The Heritage study says, “Applying that same standard to means-tested welfare spending reveals that welfare will cost each household $560 per month in 2009 and $638 per month in 2010.”
The welfare reform package of 1996 only targeted one program, which was Aid for Families with Dependent Children, pushing work requirements for recipients to encourage them to get off the rolls. There are still 70 different welfare programs spread across 14 different federal agencies, said Robert Rector, senior research fellow in domestic policy studies at the Heritage Foundation, who co-wrote the study.
“The average person says I thought we ended welfare. Well, it’s a good thing we ended it, otherwise we’d be spending some real money,” Rector joked while speaking about the report on Tuesday. “Reform was grossly oversold by Clinton and the Republicans. It reformed one program out of 70. Medicaid, public housing, the Earned Income Tax Credit were not reformed.”
According to his White House budget proposal, President Barack Obama will increase annual federal welfare spending by one-third, from $522.4 billion to $697 billion in his first fiscal year. Adjusted for inflation, the combined two-year increase of $263 billion is greater than any increase in welfare spending in history.
By 2014, annual spending on welfare programs will reach $1 trillion for the fiscal year.
“One in seven in total federal and state dollars now goes to welfare. But this is a completely unknown story,” Rector said. “This is not being reported. No one knows Obama is spending $10 trillion on welfare.”
Welfare spending has taken its toll on the federal debt. Since the beginning of the “war on poverty,” $15.9 trillion has been spent on welfare programs. The total cost of every war in American history, starting with the American Revolution, is $6.4 trillion when adjusted for inflation.
Welfare has been the fastest growing part of the federal government’s spending, increasing by 292 percent from 1989 to 2008. That’s compared to Social Security and Medicare, which grew 213 percent, the study says.
Adjusted for inflation, welfare is 5 percent of the gross domestic product today. It was only 1.2 percent of GDP in 1965, the report says. Also, over the next decade, $1.5 trillion in welfare benefits will be paid to low-skilled immigrants.
Still, high levels of poverty are reflected by the U.S. Census Bureau because the bureau counts only 4 percent of the total welfare spending as income when it calculates poverty. Thus, most discussions on poverty begin on the virtual premise that welfare does not exist, the study says.
“None of the $800 billion being spent is counted as income, so the Census comes back and they say, ‘Oh my goodness, we have 40 million poor people. We need to spend more money,’” Rector explained. “That is a game the taxpayer can never win.”
Changing how the money is spent could go a long way in achieving better results, the study says.
“Annual means tested welfare spending is more than sufficient to eliminate poverty in the United States,” the study reports. “If welfare spending were converted into case benefits, the sum would be nearly four times the amount needed to raise the income of all poor families above the official poverty line.”
LINK: http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=54400
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 2 so far )Video: School Kids Taught to Praise Obama
Watch the video linked below – it makes me gag!! It is NOT the school’s place to force Obama and his policies on the children! Eerily similar to what they did in Hitler’s time. For all the libs out there who like this, tell me what you would think if they had done this for Bush??
School Kids Taught to Praise Obama
Link to Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0aqMTD5UFmU
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Unearthed! Obama’s Twisted ACORN Roots
The more I find out about Obama and his associates, the slimier he seems to get. He really is surrounded by a bunch of radicals ( a lot of them are also criminals), but when they get caught he suddenly distances himself from them. He is just a slimy, radical, con man!!! I cannot believe that so many people were duped into voting for him!!
Unearthed! Obama’s twisted ACORN roots
Track timeline of president’s ties to group immersed in scandals
Posted: September 18, 2009
By Chelsea Schilling
© 2009 WorldNetDaily
While ACORN remains riddled in scandal, lawmakers have voted to cut off federal funding to the group, the U.S. Census Bureau has severed ties to the organization – and the White House has blasted its behavior as “unacceptable.”
But just how extensive are President Obama’s personal ties to ACORN?
The following is a timeline outlining some of the purported connections between the president and ACORN through the years:
1990s: Obama meets ACORN
ACORN, or the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, first noticed Obama when he was organizing on the far south side of the city with the Developing Communities Project. A March 2, 2008, Los Angeles Times article by Letta Tayler and Keith Herbert, titled “Obama Forged Path As Chicago Community Organizer,” explored Obama’s pre-law school days as a community organizer in Chicago and his efforts to build a partnership with Chicago’s “Friends of the Parks.”
“Obama’s task was to help far South Side residents press for improvement,” the Times article explained.
National Review Online noted, “Part of Obama’s work, it would appear, was to organize demonstrations, much in the mold of radical groups like ACORN.”
The Times article reveals that Madeleine Talbot, who at the time was a leader at Chicago ACORN, was thoroughly impressed with Obama because “he got people to vote with their feet.”
“At the time, Talbot worked at the social action group ACORN and initially considered Obama a competitor,” the article stated. “But she became so impressed with his work that she invited him to help train her staff.”
Talbott personally led Chicago ACORN’s campaign to intimidate banks into making high-risk loans to low-credit customers, Stanley Kurtz reported.
“Long the director of Chicago ACORN, Talbott is a specialist in ‘direct action’ – organizers’ term for their militant tactics of intimidation and disruption,” Kurtz writes. “Perhaps her most famous stunt was leading a group of ACORN protesters breaking into a meeting of the Chicago City Council to push for a ‘living wage’ law, shouting in defiance as she was arrested for mob action and disorderly conduct. But her real legacy may be her drive to push banks into making risky mortgage loans.”
1992: Project Vote! and training green ACORNs
As WND reported, in 1992, while he was working as a community organizer in Chicago, Obama headed the Chicago operations of Project Vote!, an ACORN effort to register voters nationally. In Chicago, Obama had his biggest impact registering African-American voters on the city’s South Side. However, Obama’s “Fight the Smears” website disputes this, saying Obama “never organized with ACORN.”
After completing his legal education at Harvard in 1991, Obama returned to Chicago to work on the voting project that developed directly out of a radical revolutionary strategy developed by two Columbia University sociologists in the 1960s. In what became known as the Cloward-Piven strategy, the tactic advocated a revolutionary approach to mobilizing the poor in the form of class warfare against capitalist forces viewed as exploiting labor and oppressing the poor. The Cloward-Piven strategy sought to apply the tactics of the revolutionary civil rights movement, including urban riots, to the poor as a whole, transcending interest-group politics defined by race to involve interest-group politics defined by class.
Kurtz wrote, Obama also “conducted leadership-training seminars for ACORN’s up-and-coming organizers. That is, Obama was training the army of ACORN organizers who participated in Madeline Talbott’s drive against Chicago’s banks.”
1993: Woods Foundation
In 1993, Obama joined the board of the Woods Foundation, a non-profit foundation which declares its goal to “increase opportunities for less advantaged people and communities by giving money primarily to not-for-profit groups involved in housing, the arts and other areas.” Obama served along with Bill Ayers and remained on the board until 2002.
Pajamas Media reports that during Obama’s time there, ACORN received grants of $45,000 (2000), $30,000 (2001), $45,000 (2001), $30,000 (2002) and $40,000 (2002) from the Woods Fund.
1994: Buycks-Robinson v. Citibank
As WND reported, in 1994, Obama, a graduate of Harvard Law School then fresh from his Project Vote! experience, represented ACORN in the Buycks-Roberson v. Citibank Federal Savings Bank case, in which ACORN pressed for Citibank to make more loans to marginally qualified African-American applicants “in a race neutral way.”
After obtaining a settlement in the Citibank litigation, ACORN used its subsidiary organization ACORN Housing, a nationwide organization with offices in more than 30 U.S. cities, to push the group’s radical agenda to get subprime home buyers mortgages under the most favorable terms possible.
1995: ACORN attorney in Illinois lawsuit
In 1995, Obama was hired as a lawyer for ACORN in a major lawsuit. As a lawyer with civil-rights law firm Davis Miner Barnhill & Galland, he sued the state of Illinois on behalf of ACORN to implement the federal “motor voter” law.
Also in 1995, as WND’s Jerome Corsi reported, Bill Ayers co-founded the Chicago Annenberg Challenge with a $50 million grant program for the Chicago public schools. Ayers selected Obama to be the first chairman of the board of the Annenberg Challenge, a position Obama held for eight years, until 2003, a period during which Ayers remained active with the Challenge.
In his Wall Street Journal article, Stanley Kurtz wrote that the Annenberg project funneled money to through various far-left community organizers, including ACORN.
1996: New Party ties
As WND reported, newspaper evidence shows Obama was a member of the New Party, which sought to elect members to public office with the aim of moving the Democratic Party far leftward to ultimately form a new political party with a socialist agenda. While running for the Illinois state Senate in 1996 as a Democrat, Obama actively sought and received the endorsement of the New Party, according to confirmed reports during last year’s presidential campaign.
According to Democratic Socialists of America documents, the New Party worked with ACORN to promote its candidates.
In 1995, the DSA’s New Ground newsletter stated, “In Chicago, the New Party’s biggest asset and biggest liability is ACORN.
“Like most organizations, ACORN is a mixed bag,” the newsletter said. “One one hand, in Chicago, ACORN is a group that attempts to organize some of the most depressed communities in the city. Chicago organizers for ACORN and organizers for SEIU Local 880 have been given modest monthly recruitment quotas for new New Party members. On the other hand, like most groups that depend on canvassing for fundraising, it’s easy enough to find burned out and disgruntled former employees. And ACORN has not had the reputation for being interested in coalition politics – until recently and, happily, not just within the New Party.”
1997-2004: Illinois state senator
In 1997, Obama became an Illinois state senator. ACORN national board member Toni Foulkes bragged of ACORN’s long-standing relationship with Obama prior to his election in the 2003-2004 issue of Social Policy.
Foulkes wrote in “Case Study: Chicago – The Barack Obama Campaign”:
ACORN noticed [Obama] when he was organizing on the far south side of the city with the Developing Communities Project. He was a very good organizer. When he returned from law school, we asked him to help us with a lawsuit to challenge the state of Illinois’ refusal to abide by the National Voting Rights Act, also known as motor voter. .. Obama took the case, known as ACORN vs. Edgar (the name of the Republican governor at the time) and we won. Obama then went on to run a voter registration project with Project VOTE in 1992 that made it possible for Carol Moseley Braun to win the Senate that year. Project VOTE delivered 50,000 newly registered voters in that campaign (ACORN delivered about 5,000 of them).
Since then, we have invited Obama to our leadership training sessions to run the session on power every year, and, as a result, many of our newly developing leaders got to know him before he ever ran for office. Thus, it was natural for many of us to be active volunteers in his first campaign for State Senate and then his failed bid for Congress in 1996. By the time he ran for Senate, we were old friends.
2005: U.S. senator
In 2005, Obama became a U.S. senator.
2007: From Obama’s own mouth …
On Obama’s Organizing for America blog, Sam Graham-Felsen, a paid blogger, wrote about Obama’s November 2007 speech to ACORN leaders:
When Obama met with ACORN leaders in November, he reminded them of his history with ACORN and his beginnings in Illinois as a Project Vote organizer, a nonprofit focused on voter rights and education. Senator Obama said, “I come out of a grassroots organizing background. That’s what I did for three and half years before I went to law school. That’s the reason I moved to Chicago was to organize. So this is something that I know personally, the work you do, the importance of it. I’ve been fighting alongside ACORN on issues you care about my entire career. Even before I was an elected official, when I ran Project Vote voter registration drive in Illinois, ACORN was smack dab in the middle of it, and we appreciate your work.”
Again, on Dec. 1, 2007, Obama spoke at the Heartland Democratic Presidential Forum, a meeting for community organizing groups including ACORN. Obama received wild applause from the crowd as he promised that community organizing groups such as ACORN would help shape the agenda for his presidency.
Naked Emperor News posted the following video of his pledge:
He was asked, “If elected president of the Unites States, would you agree, in your first 100 days, to meet with the delegation of representatives from these various community organizations that campaigned for community values? Could they count on you in your first 100 days to sit down with them?”
Obama responded, “Yes. But let me even say before I even get inaugurated, during the transition, we’re going to be calling all of you in to help us shape the agenda. We’re going to be having meetings all across the country with community organizations so that you have input into the agenda for the next presidency of the United States of America.”
2008: ACORN endorses Obama
On Feb. 21, 2008, the Acorn Political Action Committee endorsed Obama over Hillary Clinton during the 2008 primaries.
During the presidential campaign, Barack Obama and his running mate, Joe Biden, insisted they had nothing to do with ACORN after the inner-city advocacy group became engulfed in controversy over voter-registration fraud.
But in August 2008, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reported that the Obama campaign paid $832,598.29 to ACORN “offshoot” Citizens Services Inc. for “get out the vote” projects from Feb. 25 to May 17.
The newspaper revealed that Obama’s payments to CSI for services were unusual: “For example, CSI received payments of $63,000 and $75,000 for advance work. Excluding the large payments to CSI, the average amount the Obama campaign spent with other organizations was $558.82 per check on more than 1,200 entries classified as advance work.”
According to the report, Citizens Services Inc. is headquartered at the same address as ACORN’s national headquarters in New Orleans. A 2006 ACORN publication describes Citizen Services Inc. as “ACORN’s campaign services entity.”
In 2008, Anita MonCrief, a woman who worked in the Strategic Writing and Research Department of ACORN Political Operations and its affiliate Project Vote from 2005 through January 2008, said ACORN acted as an unofficial arm of the Democratic Party during the election and used cash operations to keep some financial transactions under wraps
“It has always been a Democrat operation,” she recently told WND. “They’ve never made any secrets about who they support. Their political action committees are usually set up to support these Democratic candidates.”
She said political action committees support Democrat candidates, and the at the same time voter registration drives were being conducted, the group was putting out propaganda in communities telling people not to vote for Republicans.
According to a Pittsburgh Tribune-Review report, she further told a Pennsylvania court before the election that the Obama camp provided ACORN with a “donor list” that enabled Project Vote to solicit contributions from Obama supporters who had “maxed out” under federal contribution limits but who could surreptitiously give more to Obama’s cause by donating to ACORN and its affiliates.
As WND reported, Project Vote, an affiliate of ACORN, is now suing MonCrief to the tune of $5 million.
2009: Criminal case against ACORN
According to the results of a congressional investigation done in July, ACORN was found to be rife with criminal activity.
A report from the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform states that ACORN “has repeatedly and deliberately engaged in systemic fraud. Both structurally and operationally, ACORN hides behind a paper wall of nonprofit corporate protections to conceal a criminal conspiracy on the part of its directors, to launder federal money in order to pursue a partisan political agenda and to manipulate the American electorate.”
Since 1994, ACORN has received more than $53 million in federal funds, according to the report.
“Under the Obama administration, ACORN stands to receive a whopping $8.5 billion in available stimulus funds. Operationally, ACORN is a shell game played in 120 cities, 43 states and the District of Columbia through a complex structure designed to conceal illegal activities, to use taxpayer and tax-exempt dollars for partisan political purposes, and to distract investigators. Structurally, ACORN is a chess game in which senior management is shielded from accountability by multiple layers of volunteers and compensated employees who serve as pawns to take the fall for every bad act,” the report said.
The report continued, “Lobbying is a substantial part of what ACORN does. It has endorsed Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Representative Albert Wynn (D-MD), and Representative Donna Edwards (D-MD). ACORN keeps donor records from the Clinton, Kerry and Obama campaigns with the intent to engage in prohibited communications. ACORN receives federal funding yet engages in improper lobbying. ACORN and its nonprofit affiliates do not have separate accounts. Neither ACORN nor any of its affiliates have properly reported their political activities to the IRS. These harms fly under the legal radar because the IRS rarely checks for compliance. The ‘no substantial part’ test is rarely enforced and the accounts of ACORN and its affiliates are illegally commingled.”
ACORN became a hot topic during the 2008 presidential race because of Obama’s ties to the group as well as its own admission that more than 400,000 of the 1.3 million voter registrations it claimed to have collected were not valid. ACORN registered 1.3 million new voters last year, and it is now under investigation in numerous states and faces voter fraud charges in nearly two dozen states.
The Obama administration selected ACORN to recruit counters for the 2010 Census, but the Census Bureau severed its ties with ACORN on Sept. 11.The Internal Revenue Service has also indicated that it is conducting a “thorough review” of its agreements with ACORN. According to Bloomberg, ACORN has has helped prepare about 150,000 free tax returns since 2004 for low-income families. Those returns have generated $190 million in tax refunds.
Cutting ties with ACORN?
Obama has tried to publicly disassociate himself from the group.
“The only involvement I’ve had with ACORN was I represented them alongside the U.S. Justice Department in making Illinois implement a motor voter law that helped people get registered at DMVs,” Obama declared in one of the presidential debates.
“Now, with respect to ACORN, ACORN is a community organization. Apparently what they’ve done is they were paying people to go out and register folks, and apparently some of the people who were out there didn’t really register people, they just filled out a bunch of names,” Obama said.
“It had nothing to do with us. We were not involved,” he declared.
Today, the House voted 345-75 to eliminate federal funding of ACORN after undercover videos showed counselors giving advice on tax evasion to a undercover reporters posing as a pimp and prostitute.
According to Fox News, the Defund ACORN Act prohibits any “federal contract grant, cooperative agreement or any other form of agreement (including a memorandum of understanding)” from being awarded to or entered into with ACORN. It also prohibits federal funds “in any other form” from being granted to ACORN.
The decision followed a Sept. 14 Senate vote to strip millions of dollars in federal housing funds for ACORN.
House Minority Leader John Boehner has called on President Obama to indicate whether he would sign a bill forbidding ACORN from receiving federal funding, the New York Times reported. The White House is now distancing itself from ACORN and its scandals.
White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs referenced the video that revealed ACORN employees giving illegal tax advice to a man and woman disguised as a pimp and prostitute.
“Obviously, the conduct that you see on those tapes is completely unacceptable. I think everyone would agree to that,” Gibbs said. “The administration takes accountability extremely seriously.”
However, Gibbs said he’s unsure of whether Obama will ask Democrats to sever ties with ACORN.
“I don’t know that I’ve had any discussion with him about that,” he said.
LINK: http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=110131
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Feminist Camille Paglia: Birthers Have a Point
I’ve posted some other stuff about the question of Obama’s birthplace and I’m still amazed that we don’t have clear proof of this issue, especially since congressional hearings were held to determine whether McCain was constitutionally eligible to be president as a “natural born citizen”. Even this woman realizes we don’t have the answers we need regarding Obama’s citizenship. Good article.
Feminist Camille Paglia: Birthers have a point
Tells radio audience ‘there are legitimate questions about the documentation’
Posted: September 17, 2009
© 2009 WorldNetDaily
Feminist icon Camille Paglia, a Salon.com columnist who earlier wrote about the ambiguities of President Barack Obama’s birth certificate, now has told a National Public Radio audience that those who have questions about his eligibility actually have a point.
Talking to the NPR program “On Point” this week, she provided a defense to the citizens who carried protest signs asking “Where’s The Birth Certificate” at the recent protests that drew hundreds of thousands to Washington.
The program discussion focused on the “civility” of the political attacks on both Obama and his critics. One caller to the program described his visit to Washington and the myriad signs questioning Obama’s eligibility to be in office.
“It was unbelievable. It was absolutely everywhere,” the caller stated.
Paglia responded:
First of all, I reject the idea that the ‘birther’ campaign is motivated by racism. There may be racism among it, but there are legitimate questions about the documentation of Obama’s birth certificate. I’m sorry, I’ve been following this closely from the start. To assume that all those signs about the birth controversy were motivated by racism, that is simply wrong.
She continued, explaining she first came on the scene in the 1990s and has dealt with cries of sexism and homophobia, calling such battle cries “emotional” triggers. Paglia said the fact there was little racism in the campaign against Obama is evidenced by the fact he “was elected by white people.”
Criticism of Obama, instead, is coming because of the “strategic failures he is making in pushing this very important issue of health care reform.”
According to the Washington Independent, the exchange was “compelling.”
Paglia, a professor of humanities and media studies at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia and Salon.com columnist, earlier wrote, “Yes, there were ambiguities about Obama’s birth certificate that have never been satisfactorily resolved. And the embargo on Obama’s educational records remains troubling.”
Her commentary at that time addressed Obama’s “painful missteps,” and she addressed charges that Obama has suffered from poor advice.
“The buck stops with the top executive. But we all know how little executive experience Barack Obama has had. He was elected for his vision and his steady, deliberative character, not his résumé. For better or worse, Obama is learning as he goes – and surely most fair-minded people would grant him reasonable leeway as he grows into the presidency, one of the hardest jobs in the world,” she wrote.
“At a certain point, however, Obama will face an inescapable administrative crux. Arriving at the White House, he understandably stayed in his comfort zone by bringing old friends and allies with him …. But these comrades may not have the practical skills or broad perspective to help Obama govern,” wrote Paglia.
Citing “one needless gaffe after another,” including the “embarrassing incident” in which Obama bowed to the king of Saudi Arabia, she wrote about the “ambiguities” about his birth certificate and the “troubling” status of Obama’s concealed educational records.
“Obama will need to cut the umbilical to his hometown posse, whose inefficiency and poor decision-making took the shine off his honeymoon and brought the dispirited Republicans back from the dead,” she advised at the time.
WND has reported on dozens of legal challenges to Obama’s status as a “natural born citizen.” The Constitution, Article 2, Section 1, states, “No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President.”
Some of the lawsuits over the dispute question whether he was actually born in Hawaii, as he insists. If he was born out of the country, Obama’s American mother, the suits contend, was too young at the time of his birth to confer American citizenship to her son under the law at the time.
Other challenges have focused on Obama’s citizenship through his father, a Kenyan subject to the jurisdiction of the United Kingdom at the time of his birth, thus making him a dual citizen. The cases contend the framers of the Constitution excluded dual citizens from qualifying as natural born.
Complicating the situation is Obama’s decision to spend sums estimated at more than $1 million to avoid releasing a state birth certificate that would put to rest the questions.
WND has reported that among the documentation not yet available for Obama includes his kindergarten records, Punahou school records, Occidental College records, Columbia University records, Columbia thesis, Harvard Law School records, Harvard Law Review articles, scholarly articles from the University of Chicago, passport, medical records, files from his years as an Illinois state senator, his Illinois State Bar Association records, any baptism records and adoption records. The campaign followed a petition that has collected more than 450,000 signatures demanding proof of his eligibility, the availability of yard signs raising the question and the production of permanent, detachable magnetic bumper stickers asking the question.
The “certification of live birth” posted online and widely touted as “Obama’s birth certificate” does not prove he was born in Hawaii, since the same “short-form” document is obtainable for children not born in Hawaii. The true “long-form” birth certificate – which includes information such as the name of the birth hospital and attending physician – is the only document that can prove Obama was born in Hawaii, but to date he has not permitted its release for public or press scrutiny.
Oddly, though congressional hearings were held to determine whether Sen. John McCain was constitutionally eligible to be president as a “natural born citizen,” no controlling legal authority ever sought to verify Obama’s claim to a Hawaiian birth.
LINK: http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=110114
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )We’re Sick of Liberals Playing the Race Card!
I am so sick of liberals playing the race card. It is a pathetic attempt to silence any dissent of Obama by calling the dissenters racist. They know that in the past if you called someone a racist it immediately shut down the conversation because people were so scared of the label. Their tactic is to scare people so much that NO ONE EVER disagrees with Obama.
Well, I refuse to accept their false label. I am NOT a racist and I will not be bullied into staying quiet just because they play the race card. I am very passionate about politics and where this country is headed, and it has nothing to do with a person’s color. I spoke out adamantly against Bill and Hillary Clinton, Al Gore, John Kerry, John Edwards and numerous other politicians whose policies I disagree with, yet now I’m called a racist if I disagree just as strongly with Obama. It is ridiculous!!!
And what about the conservative African-Americans who disagree with Obama??? Are these people supposed to be racist also?
The truth of the matter is that the ones calling us racists are actually the racists themselves. All they can think about is color! When Bush was in office, some of these very same people were bashing him and I never said they were doing it because he was white. Why is it that they can say they voted for Obama because he is black and they’re not called racists?? If I said I only voted for Bush because he was white I would never hear the end of it. So how can they get by with it?
Obama said he was going to unify this country regarding race, when in reality he and his followers are dividing it even more! Color is the only thing they focus on. Can’t we just talk about the issues?? Probably not, because, apparently, they didn’t vote based on issues, they voted based on color. I would bet most of them wouldn’t know the first thing about the real issues.
What’s going to end up happening is that this bullying ‘racism card’ ploy is going to backfire on them. People will only put up with being wrongly accused for so long before their attitudes actually do start to change, and at that point we will start getting bitter towards our accusers – NOT because of their color – but because of their own racism.
I’m tired of being discriminated against and wrongly accused just because I’m white, so I say to them “Stop your racism!”
The two excellent articles below address this race issue very well.
SO … NOW WE ALL KNOW THIS IS JUST ABOUT OBAMA’S RACE
By Neal Boortz
September 16, 2009
And just who didn’t see all of this coming? Come on, folks! Having you been paying attention for the past 30 years? In virtually every state and community in this nation liberals have been blaming racism for any failure, miscalculation, controversy or outright act of corruption by black elected officials. There has been a standard operating methodology in place for all of the 40 years I’ve been doing talk radio:
1. Black citizen elected to office.
2. Black official runs into opposition to policy objectives or has a problem with corruption.
3. Black supporters and liberals blame the problems on race.
One-two-three. This scenario has been played out so many times in modern American history it would have been impossible to keep count. Now a black man has become president. Some fools thought that this would help our country move beyond racial division. Well — perhaps it would have, if only evil white people had been smart enough not to object to anything this man might propose. But it didn’t work out that way, so now the left and the media are finding racists under every bed, behind every utility pole and on every street in America. Newsweek Magazine even ran a totally absurd story about racism in babies … putting a picture of a white infant on the cover with the title “Is your baby racist?” Read that story and you’ll find that the authors think that it would be horrifying if a white child were to ever express pride in being white.
Last year, before the election, some of us predicted that if (or when) Barack Obama became president that this would happen. We said that every time his policies met with opposition the left would start screaming racism. So what happened when we said that this would happen? Well … you guessed it. We were called racists. You just can’t imagine how surprised and shocked we were.
So .. here is what Jimmy Carter, Bill Moyers, Hank Johnson, much of the Washington and New York press corps, Newsweek Magazine and the brilliant thinkers on the American left would have you believe of Americans right now:
• We would be more than willing to welcome cap-and-trade with open arms, even if we paid a thousand dollars or more extra every year for our energy use, if Barack Obama were only white.
• We would be dancing in the streets celebrating the dawning of government control of our health care if only Barack Obama were white.
• It would be just dandy if government bureaucrats rationed health care for our parents, as long as the president is white.
• We would jump at the chance of the government owning ALL of the auto manufacturing companies .. not just General Motors … if the president just didn’t have dark skin.
• We would applaud those ACORN workers giving tax avoidance advice to a pimp and his prostitute if the workers hadn’t been black.
• Most Americans – even ones that don’t pay income taxes now – would be more than willing to give 70% of everything they earn to the federal government when asked … so long as they are asked by a white president.
• We would have been thrilled, I tell you … THRILLED to have all of those Islamic goons being held at Guantanamo be not only released, but sent to be school resource officers at our local government schools, if only a white president put that plan in motion.
• It would be OK if a white president stood back and allowed Iran to build its coveted nukes … we’re only unhappy about that because a black president is doing it.
• Deficits? We don’t care about deficits! Make our children and grand children and great grand children pay through the nose for our president’s spending habits … just so long as the president isn’t black.
• Government pork? Like we actually care? Look … you folks in Washington can spend all the money you want – how about more studies of the mating habits of Polish Zlotnika pigs? – just make sure it’s not a black president who signs the spending bill into law.
• We wouldn’t care if all illegal aliens were counted twice in the next Census … just so long as the president isn’t black.
• Those Black Panther thugs who threatened voters in Philly? The ONLY reason we’re upset that they were given a pass is because Barack Obama is black.
• Every single member of the president’s cabinet could be a tax cheat as far as we’re concerned … just so long as the president is white.
• Forced unionization? Bring it on! We love card check! We love the idea of union goons threatening and intimidating workers to sign a card saying they want to belong to a union! What we don’t like is that a black president is pushing this idea.
• Single-party talks with that Gargoyle that runs North Korea? It’s about time we legitimized that little pipsqueak. We’re only mildly upset here because the person who is doing that happens to be black.
• More regulation of the finance sector? We could care less! For all we care you can nationalize the banks and decree that only the government can make home loans .. .and you can even apportion those home loans on the basis of race if you want to … just so long as the president is white!
• Minimum wage? Like we care about that? Raise it to $15 an hour if you want! Just give us our white president back.
Yeah .. the moonbat left really has us figured out, don’t they?
LINK: http://boortz.com/nealz_nuze/2009/09/so-now-we-all-know-this-is-jus.html
The Racism Card
by Cal Thomas
When Barack Obama was elected president of the United States, some suggested that race played a factor in his success. People “wanted” to elect a black man president because of our history of slavery and the denial of civil rights for so many years to African-Americans. It is never “racism” to vote for someone because he is black. It is only racism to oppose the policies of a black Democrat.
As the president’s approval ratings fall and rise and fall again, some of his supporters in journalism and politics are returning to days of old when the label “racist” could end any discussion and force the accused either into stunned silence, or groveling repentance. I suspect the tactic won’t work this time because Obama supporters will have difficulty explaining how a mostly white country could elect a black man president last November and ten months later become a racist majority.
Racism has always been a one-way street for the Left. When Clarence Thomas was nominated to the Supreme Court, some liberals called him a “handkerchief head negro” and an “Uncle Tom.” According to liberal doctrine, black people can never be racist because they are members of a victim class created by white liberals as a kind of modern plantation to keep blacks voting for liberal Democrats.
Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, African-American like President Obama, grew up in Birmingham, Ala., at the time of the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing by members of the Ku Klux Klan, which killed some of her friends. She has more “street cred” than others who claim to have it, but she got no points from liberal Democrats when she ascended the ladder of power and influence. It was the same with Colin Powell. The Left strongly criticized Powell for adding credibility to the claim that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction thereby winning U.N. approval to use force, if necessary, against the Iraqi dictator. Were those who opposed Powell racist? Using the formulation now being applied to President Obama that opposition to any of his policies — from health care, to record amounts of debt — constitutes racism, they were.
The polar opposite case could be made that, despite his race, President Obama is being treated just like any other politician, which proves he’s being treated equally. He is getting the same heat every president gets, sooner or later. The president’s race would be a factor only if Americans shied away from criticizing him because of it. That they are not is a triumph of Martin Luther King Jr.’s hope that people be judged by the content of their character, not the color of their skin. Some opinion polls show that Obama’s character is being judged and found wanting by a rapidly growing number of Americans, at least a small percentage of whom are black.
With Democrats controlling all three branches of government, including significantly wide margins in Congress, isn’t there a better explanation than racism for why the president is having difficulty with some of his proposals? If racism is the cause of his difficulties, there must be many congressional Democrats who are racists, because they have the power to enact the president’s agenda, but some are reluctant to do so.
The Pew Research Center has noted a 10 percent drop in Obama’s approval ratings, which includes a 3 percent decline among blacks. As black conservative columnist Star Parker has written, “If we assume this reflects the 16 million blacks who voted for Obama last November, a three-point shift means there are about a half-million blacks who now have buyer’s remorse.” Are these black Obama voters racist?
There is a better explanation for the growing opposition to President Obama. It has less to do with his ethnicity than it does his credibility. Character, after all, is colorless.
LINK: http://townhall.com/columnists/CalThomas/2009/09/17/the_racism_card
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 3 so far )MSM Bias: Even Jon Stewart Slams MSM for NOT Reporting the ACORN Story
Two great articles below on the continuing bias of the mainstream media. Even Jon Stewart slams them for not reporting the ACORN story!!! The MSM is either biased and not reporting the stories on purpose or incompetent. I think we know which one it is because they certainly seem to be able to ferret out information on those they don’t like, but either option is unacceptable!!!!!
Jon Stewart slams media for missing ACORN story: ‘Where the hell were you!?’
By: CHARLIE SPIERING
Last night, Jon Stewart featured video clips of ACORN employees advising undercover journalists posing as a pimp and a prostitute how to hide the nature of their business in their tax forms.
The video clips debuted on biggovernment.com and were featured by FOX News commentator Glenn Beck. Since then the clips have circulated widely on conservative blogs and news sites and sparked a vote in the Senate to de-fund the organization.
“The bad news is that ACORN appears to be a criminal organization that aids and abets criminals and get millions of dollars in taxpayer money!” Stewart said, after highlighting the clips on his show.
Stewart joined conservatives in their criticism of the media, wondering why major media outlets failed to investigate ACORN or report on the investigative videos.
“Where were the real reporters on this story…Where the hell were you?” Stewart screamed into the camera,
“You’re telling me that two kids from the cast of High School Musical 3 can break this story with a video camera and their grandmother’s chinchilla coat, and you’ve got nothin’?” he asked.
“I’m a fake journalist, and I’m embarrassed these guys scooped me,” he added, “Let’s get to work people!”
Mainstream Media Fears Where Stories They Ignore May Lead
by John Nolte
Forget bias. Bias is officially the good ole’ days. Bias is the warm memory of Mary Ellen Hickenlooper in the back seat of the family station wagon on a cloudless Fourth of July night. Oh, how we long for the Days of Bias when the world was young and full of rainbows and peppermint trees.
Damn that Charlie Gibson. After the 2008 election, I pinky-sweared to myself that I would never be amazed by the mainstream’s media’s behavior again. And I made it through so much — through Van Jones, ACORN, the Tea Parties and all the NEA revelations. Not being caught off guard by any of these non-stories was a victory, like winning a Decathlon … and then Charlie Gibson opens his mouth and it’s like celebrating the win only to have some judge tap you on the shoulder and point to the swimming portion.
Yesterday the anchor of a major network (ABC) consciously chose to try and look like an imbecile rather than have to answer why he wasn’t covering what so far ranks as the biggest story/scandal of the year. And I say “try and look like an imbecile” because the ruse didn’t work. You, me and anyone with an IQ above room temperature knows he wasn’t telling the truth about not knowing anything about the ACORN scandal. The Manhattan/Cocktail Party Bubble is immune to many things – humility, tolerance – but we’re supposed to believe a network news anchor went two or three days without hearing ACORN was fired by the U.S. Census Bureau?
Of course, we’re not supposed to believe that. “Incredulous” doesn’t begin to describe the nonsense that came out of Gibson’s mouth. But fear makes you do stupid things, and short of wetting his pants, Gibson proved that.
The Palace Guards are … terrified.
The Palace Guards know full well how the “narrative” works and each of the stories they’ve ignored at crippling expense to their own integrity and relevance represents what terrifies them most … a string that could unravel The Whole Thing.
A single serious tug on the Van Jones’ string can only mean questions and more questions that cannot be answered without great harm to the White House and the Leftist agenda our media so desperately wants to see become law. Who vetted Jones? Who recommended him? Did they know about his past? Did the President know? Were the other Czars vetted (or not) in the same way? What’s to be found in the past of these Czars?
Best case scenario, the story swamps the White House and has them playing defense for a time – and this is an important time for a media eager to see the rest of us lose our health insurance. Worst case scenario (for those more enamored with socialism than government accountability), is that we learn Van Jones wasn’t an outlier and that unaccountable, un-vetted radicalism rules the West Wing…
The Perfect Storm, of course, is the laying of this same template over the NEA and ACORN stories.
So you bet they’re terrified. And who can blame them? If you were an ideologue willing to sell your legacy as a journalist down the river for a first love named Bloated Government you’d be terrified too.
And we should stop referring to them as the “Dinosaur Media.” That misses an important point. The dinosaurs didn’t extinguish themselves. They were victims of meteors or Flintstone-made global warming or something.
This is the Kamikaze Media.
LINK: http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/jjmnolte/2009/09/16/mainstream-medias-fueled-by-fear-not-bias/
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Obama Administration Stonewalls US Civil Rights Commission on Black Panther Case
More corruption that Obama is trying to hide!
Obama Administration Stonewalls U.S. Civil Rights Commission on Black Panther Case
pajamasmedia.com
Posted By Jennifer Rubin
On September 13, 2009
Last month, the Obama administration’s decision to dismiss a default judgment against the New Black Panther Party in a clear case of voter intimidation (caught on videotape and circulated on the internet) drew scrutiny from Congress and from the U.S. Civil Rights Commission. That scrutiny has now resulted in one announced investigation by the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) and set the stage for a battle between the administration and the Commission.
In June, the Commission sent a letter of inquiry to the Justice Department demanding an explanation for the dismissal of the case against all but one defendant. In August, the Commission sent a second letter directly to Attorney General Eric Holder reiterating its demand for information on the reasons for the dismissal and advising Holder of its intention to use the Commission’s statutory authority to subpoena witnesses and documents. It also renewed its demand for records of past DOJ investigations so it could make an independent determination as to whether the New Black Panther case’s dismissal was an abrupt change in Justice Department policy, and if so, what the impact of that policy change might be on future acts of voter intimidation. However, the “most transparent administration” in history (it tells us) did not even acknowledge receipt of the letter for weeks.
Last week, the Commission’s General Counsel contacted the Justice Department to inquire if a response would be forthcoming and to advise the Justice Department that on Friday the Commission would meet to decide an issue left open at its meeting last month, namely whether to designate its already expanding investigation into the New Black Panther case as an issue for a year-long study and special report. (By statute the Commission must complete at least one such study and report each year on a matter of federal civil rights enforcement.) Later that day the Justice Department sent a one paragraph letter to the Commission advising that an OPR investigation would be opened and “accordingly” no answer would be forthcoming until OPR concluded its investigation.
A source familiar with the Commission’s deliberations tells Pajamas Media that a number of the commissioners were aghast by the response. An OPR investigation is, of course, no basis for declining to co-operate with the Commission in its statutorily authorized obligation to investigate enforcement of civil rights laws. Moreover, during the Bush administration many controversial issues were the subject of investigation and litigation on multiple “tracks” (e.g., the firing of nine U.S. attorneys triggered both congressional inquiries and an inspector general’s report, investigations of embattled former Voting Rights Section chief Jack Tanner were conducted by both Congress and OPR).
Moreover, the Commission’s concerns, including whether the dismissal marks a deviation from past policy and whether the underlying case did concern a serious civil rights violation, are beyond the ordinary purview of OPR. OPR, in contrast to the Commission, will examine the narrower issue of whether politics or other improper considerations played any role in overriding the decision of the career attorneys who opposed the dismissal.
As one Commissioner described it, the DOJ’s excuse would be analogous to a corporation charged with employment discrimination which instituted an internal investigation — and then claimed that a civil lawsuit couldn’t proceed until the corporation investigated itself.
The analogy is on target here given the fact that OPR is not an autonomous organization but reports up through the Justice Department chain of command to the attorney general. If in fact politics intervened at the behest or with the knowledge of the attorney general or his direct subordinates, then there is all the more reason for an independent entity such as the Commission to examine what occurred.
The commissioners met on Friday to debate the issue. Commissioner Todd Gaziano pointed out that the Commission’s independent examination of the fact witnesses and former defendants in Philadelphia as well as its request for the Department’s records of previous investigations could not possibly conflict with DOJ’s internal investigation of the New Black Panther case. Nevertheless, he acknowledged some potential concerns that might later arise with aspects of the Commission’s investigation and the Justice Department’s OPR investigation, and he offered that the Commission would be sensitive to the OPR interest in rooting out evidence of ethical misconduct by the Justice Department.
-snip-
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