And we are seeing the same tricks being used now.
All posts by Chuck Norton
Senate Judiciary Committee Fires Letter to Justice Department Over Bogus Recess Appointments
Dear Attorney General Holder:
On Wednesday, President Obama deviated from over 90 years of precedent established by the Department of Justice (Department), and the Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), by recess appointing four individuals to posts in the Administration, namely Richard Cordray as the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and three members of the National Labor Relations Board, despite the fact that the Senate has not adjourned under the terms of a concurrent resolution passed by Congress. This action was allegedly based upon legal advice provided to the President by the Office of White House Counsel. We write today seeking information about what role, if any, the Department or OLC played in developing, formulating, or advising the White House on the decision to make these recess appointments. Further, we want to know whether the Department has formally revised or amended past opinions issued by the Department on this matter.
In 1921, Attorney General Daugherty issued an opinion to the President regarding recess appointments and the length of recess required for the President to make an appointment under Article II Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution. The Attorney General opined that “no one, I venture to say, would for a moment contend that the Senate is not in session when an adjournment [of 2 days] is taken. Nor do I think an adjournment for 5 or even 10 days can be said to constitute the recess intended by the Constitution.”
The reasoning of the 1921 opinion was given affirmative recognition in subsequent opinions issued by the Department, including opinions issued in 1960, 1992, and 2001.
The Department has also weighed in on the applicable time period for recess appointments in legal filings in federal courts. In 1993, the Department filed a brief in the federal district court for the District of Columbia arguing, “If the recess here at issue were of three days or less, a closer question would be presented. The Constitution restricts the Senate’s ability to adjourn its session for more than three days without obtaining the consent of the House of Representatives.”
Additionally, the Department, via the Office of the Solicitor General, argued in a 2004 brief to the Supreme Court, “To this day, official congressional documents define a ‘recess’ as ‘any period of three or more complete days-excluding Sundays-when either the House of Representatives or the Senate is not in session.” This exact argument was also filed by the Solicitor General in another case during 2004. Most recently, the Deputy Solicitor General argued before the Supreme Court in 2010 that “the recess appointment power can work in – in a recess. I think our office has opined the recess has
to be longer than 3 days. ”Taken together, these authorities by the Department clearly indicate the view that a congressional recess must be longer than three days – and perhaps at least as long as ten 9-in order for a recess appointment to be constitutional. These various authorities have reached this conclusion for over 90 years and have become the stated position of the Executive Branch, including multiple representations before the Supreme Court, regarding the required length of time for a recess in order for the President to make a recess appointment.
Read more at the link above…
Devastating New Ad on Mitt Romney
The Romney Con
Notice Romney dodges the tough interviews while the other candidates are taking them on regularly? Granted this is a Ron Paul ad, but this one, unlike so many of his other ads, is pretty honest and has a point about the lack of tough interviews after the Brett Beier disaster where Romney just lied through it, and the big lobbying money.
Jordanian Sheik: Wage war on other countries till they convert to Islam
Attention Ron Paul zealots…
Newt: Reagan and the Power of Truth
Moral Clarity
Newt interviewed on Sean Hannity and his post Iowa strategy. This is a must see.
FIRE: Harvard Fires Economics Professor over Political Article Published in India
It is really simple. Islamists blow up Hindu’s in horrible attack, professor writes piece about how to combat militant Islamists, censor happy lefties on campus totally freak, and after the Harvard Administration brags about it’s commitment to free speech and academic freedom said professor is fired. FIRE intervenes….
Details at FIRE.
Priceless: Union hires non union labor to protest a church for using non union labor
RedState comments:
Although details are lacking, the above pic was e-mailed stating that the Southwest Regional Council of Carpenters has replaced its banner outside Hope Baptist Church (in Las Vegas) and is now being manned by non-union temp. labor. [Apparently, a church should not be using non-union labor, but a union can?] According to the e-mail, the union’s prior banner stated “Shame on God.”
Democrats California Budget: More Taxes, More Debt, Smoke & Mirrors….
Moe Lane at RedState has a revealing piece on the California budget crisis; Democrats are making it worse on purpose:
To summarize: $92.6 billion in spending (7% increase over last year’s); $9.2 billion deficit over eighteen months (half in the first six months, the other half in the next twelve). Brown is requesting $7 billion in new taxes, mostly from raising the sales tax again (to 7.75%) but with a faux-populist-friendly soak-the-rich* (actually, soak-the-small-business-owner) increase to 10.3%. Or the state can ‘cut’ an additional $4.8 billion in educational aid (he’s already planning to reduce poverty assistance by $4.2 billion): the most increased spending appears to be in tax relief/local government**… and education. In other words, that cut would actually be mostly in a projected increase in education spending, which means that it’s not really a cut at all.
Or, to summarize the summary: Brown’s bailing out the municipalities; and he’s trying to blackmail the Californian populace into a tax hike to pay for it by threatening to wipe out anincrease in K-12 education funds if they don’t vote said hike in. See how that works? Increase spending in a line-item; then call the threat to remove that increase a ‘budget cut’ and use it to justify a ‘temporary’ tax. It’s a great scam; or, rather, it was a great scam twenty years ago, when there was more give in the system. Today, it’s just kind of alarming.
And, just for anybody still ready to believe in old Moonbeam: “Brown had been scheduled to release his general-fund budget Jan. 10, but was forced to unveil it today after it was inadvertently posted to the Finance Department’s website.” Oops.
*Not to be rude about this, but California business owners should contemplate that, say,Texas has no state income tax and a state sales tax of 6.25%, with a maximum state/local tax of 8.25%. Which is one major reason why Texas now has four extra seats in Congress and California’s delegation has stagnated for the first time since it became a state.
Obama vs Obama on earmarks
Allen West Puts the Truth to Leftist Congressional Black Caucus Member
Show this to everyone. There is not a better example of why the Republican Party has always been better on the issues affecting inner city families than the Democrats.
Allen West: Ron Paul is not the man to be president
Indeed.
Allen West sets record straight about National Defense Authorization Act
Conspiracy nuts have gone crazy with the misinformation they put out.
Rush on Rick Perry
What Rush says here is so true. I know the TEA Party has helped in this regard, but people need to do some homework and get beneath the surface.
Bill Whittle: Facing the Arithmetic
What we are doing now cannot continue…..
Do not tailgate…
Incomes Drop 6.7 Percent During Obama ‘Recovery’
Jeff Anderson at The Weekly Standard:
New evidence suggests there’s a reason why this economic “recovery” hasn’t felt much like a recovery. Figures from the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey, compiled by Sentier Research, show that the “recovery” has actually been harder on most Americans than the recession from which they’ve allegedly been recovering.
According to Sentier’s report, the median American household income has actually fallen during the “recovery.” Not only that, but it has fallen even more than it did during the recession. Gordon Green, former chief of the Governments Division at the U.S. Census Bureau and co-author of the report (with fellow Census veteran John Coder), says, “Real income fell by 3.2 percent during [the recession]. And during the recovery it went down by 6.7 percent.” So “income [has] declined twice as much in the recovery as in the recession itself.”
According to the report — which has been referenced by both the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times — in early 2000, Americans’ median annual household income was $55,836, in real (inflation-adjusted, June 2011) dollars. By the start of the recession (in December 2007), Americans’ real incomes had fallen 0.9 percent, to $55,309 — a decline of $527. During the recession (which ended in June 2009), their incomes fell an additional 3.2 percent, to $53,518 — a decline of another $1,791. During the first two years of the “recovery” (from June 2009 to June 2011), they fell an additional 6.7 percent, to $49,909 — a decline of another $3,609.
So, from the start of 2000 to mid-2011, the typical American household’s real income dropped nearly $6,000 — and more than 60 percent of that drop (over $3,600) came after the start of the “recovery” and thus squarely on Obama’s watch.
While the real median income of American households dropped 6.7 percent during the first two years of the “recovery,” the incomes of many households dropped even more than that. The income drop was steeper for those under 25 years of age (their incomes were down 9.5 percent), for those between 25 and 34 years of age (down 9.8 percent), for black Americans (down 9.4 percent), for families with three or more children (down 9.5 percent), and for families headed by part-time workers (down 11.5 percent). And that’s despite the fact that the report’s income tallies include unemployment compensation and monetary public assistance (both state and federal).
In fact, the anemic economy has meant that Americans’ incomes have declined during the “recovery” even without adjusting for inflation. According to Green, in actual (non-inflation-adjusted) dollars, the median American household income was $51,140 at the start of the “recovery,” but it fell to $49,909 two years later.
Ron Paul Staffer: He is “most certainly Anti-Israel”. Believes U.S. Should Not Have Stopped the Holocaust…
Dondero tries to split a line between anti-Israelism and antisemitism. History demonstrates that such a split is imaginary. You cannot be OK with Jews and say that the holocaust, genocide, is none of our business.
- Fmr. Senior Aide, US Cong. Ron Paul, 1997 – 2003
- Campaign Coordinator, Ron Paul for Congress, 1995/96
- National Organizer, Draft Ron Paul for President, 1991/92
- Travel Aide/Personal Asst. Ron Paul, Libertarian for President 1987/88
He (Ron Paul) is however, most certainly Anti-Israel, and Anti-Israeli in general. He wishes the Israeli state did not exist at all. He expressed this to me numerous times in our private conversations. His view is that Israel is more trouble than it is worth, specifically to the America taxpayer. He sides with the Palestinians, and supports their calls for the abolishment of the Jewish state, and the return of Israel, all of it, to the Arabs.
Dondero continues:
There was another incident when Ron finally agreed to a meeting with Houston Jewish Young Republicans at the Freeport office. He berated them, and even shouted at one point, over their un-flinching support for Israel. So, much so, that the 6 of them walked out of the office. I was left chasing them down the hallway apologizing for my boss.
More:
Ron Paul is most assuredly an isolationist. He denies this charge vociferously. But I can tell you straight out, I had countless arguments/discussions with him over his personal views. For example, he strenuously does not believe the United States had any business getting involved in fighting Hitler in WWII. He expressed to me countless times, that “saving the Jews,” was absolutely none of our business. When pressed, he often times brings up conspiracy theories like FDR knew about the attacks of Pearl Harbor weeks before hand, or that WWII was just “blowback,” for Woodrow Wilson’s foreign policy errors, and such.
I would challenge him, like for example, what about the instances of German U-boats attacking U.S. ships, or even landing on the coast of North Carolina or Long Island, NY. He’d finally concede that that and only that was reason enough to counter-attack against the Nazis, not any humanitarian causes like preventing the Holocaust.
More HERE.
Union Thugs Vandalize Scott Walker Signs
Socialism!
Newt vs “Massachusetts Moderate”
Click to enlarge.
Newt Gingrich: President Barack Obama is “Legitimately and Authentically a Saul Alinsky Radical”
Clarity.
Krauthammer: Obama’s Recess Appointments Part Of “A Long String Of Lawless Actions”…
Why? because the Senate is not in recess. The lawsuits will fly.
McCain Endorses Romney After Trashing Him…
Does this mean that McCain wasn’t serious about his rediscovered Reagan Conservatism on the 2008 campaign? It would seem so by how Steve Schmidt and some other liberals hired by McCain to run his campaign treated Sarah Palin. Or it could mean none of that and these ads meant nothing to John McCain at all other than a means to winning an election.
This schizophrenic messaging completely takes McCain’s endorsement credibility and tosses it right out the window. It also speaks volumes about how the GOP elites view messaging to GOP voters and is another example of why the GOP communications strategy and brand needs new blood.
Failed Promises (Video)
J.C. Watts: Newt Did Not Lobby for Freddie Mac
And he should know because Watts was the head of the Freddie Mac Watch Committee in Congress.
Leftist Economic Guru: We Need More Debt!
Paul Krugman is the neo-Marxist “economist (and I use the term loosely) from the New York Times. He has been documented wrong more than any columnist I am aware of. Unfortunately, like too many “economists” he is a totally partisan political hack.
Speaking like a true advocate of the Alinsky Model….
First, families have to pay back their debt. Governments don’t — all they need to do is ensure that debt grows more slowly than their tax base.
Unless abortion and pressure from eco-extremists about “population control” wither your tax base and work force – and then those making the loans figure out that you have no intention of stopping the accumulation of new debt or paying it back.
Quote:
The debt from World War II was never repaid; it just became increasingly irrelevant as the U.S. economy grew, and with it the income subject to taxation.
This is not an argument for increasing debt, this is an argument for economic growth. Growth that is stymied by the anti-wealth, anti-capital and anti-production policies that Paul Krugman advocates. Wealth is the opposite of poverty.
Also, the income subject to taxation is not very relevant. It is the amount of money put in a taxable position by people moving it in ways that are taxable and in ways that take risk to create wealth. It is about tax compliance. The higher the rates, the greater the noncompliance and “Going Galt”. It is also about increasing the growing number of tax payers which only happens when people are confident to produce and take risk here in the United States.
Our friend NeoNeocon has a great critique of this piece HERE. Go read it.
Interviews With Obama Voters… (video)
Dem Strategist On Romney: “He’s The Guy We Want To Run Against”
This editor has said this for a long time. Romney is who they know best and it is who the Democrats want to run against. Like Dole and McCain, Romney will trash other Republicans, but always says that we should not be “strident” in our critiques of the Democrats.
Real Clear Politics has the video HERE.
Dick Harpootlian: “We’re looking forward to blood on the ground here in the next three weeks and I think you’re going to see Mitt Romney not able to take the punch, which I am hoping he is the nominee because I know watching him in ’08 that he can’t take a punch. The guy does not have the ability to deliver. He’s pro-abortion and anti-abortion; he’s pro-intervention, he’s against intervention; he’s pro-tarp, he’s against tarp. He’s all over the map, he’s the guy we want to run against.”
Professor William Jacobson has it spot on as he explains in a three part article:
What if everything we have been told about Mitt Romney’s electability is wrong
Political Arena 