This is exactly what Barack Obama ran against, and instead he relaxed lobbying rules in the administration and hired them to work in the White House – LINKS – 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18,
The newspaper USA Today said Friday an editor and reporter probing Pentagon propaganda efforts have been targeted by an online “misinformation campaign.”
Fake Twitter and Facebook accounts have been created under the names of the reporter and editor with postings denigrating their professional reputations, according to the daily.
The timing of the online harassment coincided with stories by Pentagon correspondent Tom Vanden Brook, who has written about the military’s “information operations” program that spent large sums on marketing campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The program has faced criticism in and outside the Defense Department as “ineffective and poorly monitored,” the paper said.
The false online accounts, including a fake Wikipedia entry, started appearing only days after the reporter first contacted Pentagon contractors for the story, the newspaper wrote.
Two weeks after enterprise editor Ray Locker’s byline appeared on a story on the same subject, a fake website under his name — RayLocker.com — popped up, the paper said.
A US official confirmed to AFP that the Defense Department had made inquiries to contractors doing public relations work to ask them about the false online accounts.
The contractors denied any such activity, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
But the websites were taken down following the Pentagon’s inquiry. Some other accounts were removed for violating Internet providers’ terms of service, USA Today said.
Ask yourself this: In which administration have there been more egregious miscarriages of justice than the following list?
1. Challenges voter ID laws
The Justice Department has challenged state voter ID laws, first in South Carolina and more recently in Texas, the first such actions in 20 years. Apparently requiring a U.S. citizen to bring a driver’s license to the voting booth is an onerous infringement on their constitutional rights. Why would the chief law-enforcement office in the nation try to make it easier to engage in voter fraud? Could it be because Barack Hussein Obama is on the ballot this November?
2. Challenges immigration laws
The Justice Department is also challenging immigration laws enacted by states—most notably Arizona’s legislation (hasn’t Mr. Holder heard of the Constitution’s 10th Amendment?) In its brief challenging Arizona’s S.B. 1070, the Justice Department said the law interferes with the federal government’s authority to enforce immigration policy. We didn’t know that the federal government was doing much of anything to control illegal immigration.
3. Fast and Furious outrage
The Justice Department turned a blind-eye to the Fast and Furious gun-running operations, with the weaponry ending up in the hands of deadly Mexican drug gangs, and then obfuscated when Congress reviewed the operation. Allowing guns to cross the border resulted in the murder of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry and some 300 deaths in Mexico. New revelations are still coming, such as the news that one of the chief gun traffickers was questioned and released by Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents.
4. New Black Panther Party dismissal
The Justice Department decided to dismiss charges of violating the Voting Rights Act against three members of the New Black Panther Party, who acted menacingly outside a polling station in Philadelphia in 2008, hurling threats, racial slurs, and brandishing a night stick. The action by the Justice Department prompted a probe by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, which heard testimony by J. Christian Adams, who resigned from the department over the issue. Adams said he was instructed by his superiors to ignore cases involving black defendants and white victims.
5. Defense of marriage recusal
The Justice Department served notice last year that it would no long defend the Defense of Marriage Act, which states that the federal government defines marriage to be between one man and one woman. The action, in a letter from the attorney general to congressional leaders, said President Obama had decided that the act, signed into law in 1996 by President Clinton, was unconstitutional. Odd, we can’t seem to find the spot in the Constitution that allows the President to declare a law unconstitutional.
6. Sen. Ted Stevens case bungled
In its pursuit of Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) on charges he failed to report gifts on his financial disclosure forms, the Justice Department concealed evidence from the defense. A report by a special counsel said there was “systematic concealment of significant exculpatory evidence” by the Justice Department, “which would have independently corroborated Senator Stevens’ defense.” Stevens was found guilty and died in a plane crash before he could be exonerated. Imagine the howls from the mainstream media, if the senator in question had been Ted Kennedy, instead of Ted Stevens.
7. Civilian trials for terror detainees
The Justice Department sought to bring 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to trial in a civilian New York City courtroom, blocks from the World Trade Center site. The action would have afforded Mohammed all the constitutional guarantees of a fair trial, raising the possibility that Mohammed could go free on a technicality despite confessing to involvement in the 1993 and 2001World Trade Center attacks, the Bali, Indonesia, bombings, the murder of journalist Daniel Pearl, and other failed terror plots. The outcry against civilian trials forced Holder to back down, and Mohammed and four co-defendants will now face a military tribunal at Guantanamo Bay.
8. CIA probed
Attorney General Holder re-opened a probe of CIA officials involved in the use of enhanced interrogation techniques on terror detainees. Holder’s action came despite earlier rulings that the interrogations were legally authorized, despite seven former CIA directors asking the probe be shut down, and despite the fact that the interrogations provided valuable intelligence that led to Osama bin Laden’s Pakistani hideaway. Holder later admitted he hadn’t read Justice Department memos that concluded no laws were broken.
9. NYPD probed
When the New York Police Department conducted surveillance operations in the Muslim community—including monitoring members of the Muslim Student Association, which has connections to the Muslim Brotherhood—the Justice Department decided to review the police department. While the NYPD is trying to thwart another 9/11, the Justice Department is siding with Muslim apologists. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg had the right response to the Justice Department when he said, “To let our guard down would just be an outrage.”
10. Pool fiasco
Justice Department guidelines for compliance with the Americans for Disabilities Act included a requirement for public swimming pools to install a lift that could move the disabled from a wheelchair to the water. As 300,000 public pools faced a March 15 deadline to install the lifts—at a cost of up to $20,000 each—DOJ backed down and issued a 60-day stay of execution in March before allowing lawsuits over the matter. Considering there is not an available number of lifts or installers of the devices for every pool in America, “poolmagedon” will provide the nation’s trial lawyers—major supporters of the Democrats—with plenty of new business opportunities.
Yet another example to our leftist friends that “regulations are not made by Angels for the people’s benefit, they are made at the direction of corrupt politicians to pick winners and losers”.
So imagine that you are a small tax preparer and are a minority owned small business. Like so many of these small businesses they train tempts to do some of the work when tax season comes so as to be able to handle the work load.
H&R Block doesn’t like the competition so H&R Block creates a Political Actin Committee (PAC) that spreads around campaign cash to Members of Congress and the parties, spends a few million on lobbying.
What did they buy? New regulations that make even the temporary employees get fully licensed, have to attend a government certified course, AND attend continuing education classes every year. What small business can afford that? BUT WAIT…. you really didn’t think it ended there do you? The large tax preparers are exempt from some of the most burdensome requirements on their seasonal employees…..
So Sabrina Loving of Chicago is suing the IRS with help from the Institute for Justice.
From left, Butch Morgan, Pam Brunette, Beverly Shelton and Dustin Blythe were charged April 2, 2012, in an election fraud case from the 2008 Indiana Democratic primary
For our previous coverage of this story go HERE. South Bend is the editor’s home town.
Felony charges related to election fraud have touched the 2008 race for the highest office in the land.
Prosecutors in South Bend, Ind., filed charges Monday against four St. Joseph County Democratic officials and deputies as part of a multiple-felony case involving the alleged forging of Democratic presidential primary petitions in the 2008 election, which put then-candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton on the Indiana ballot.
The officials are accused of taking part in a scheme to fake signatures and names on the primary petitions needed to run for president. Court papers say the plan was hatched by local Democratic Party officials inside the local party headquarters.
Among those charged is the former long-time chairman of the St. Joseph County Democratic Party, Butch Morgan, who allegedly ordered the forgeries. He was forced to resign when the allegations were first made public last October, even though his lawyer, Shaw Friedman, told Fox News at the time that Morgan did not do anything wrong.
The St. Joseph County Board of Voter Registration’s Democratic board member, Pam Brunette, Board of Voter Registration worker Beverly Shelton and Democratic volunteer and former board worker Dustin Blythe also face charges.
According to affidavits, St. Joseph County Voter Registration Office worker Lucas Burkett told investigators that he was part of the plan that started in January 2008 “to forge signatures on presidential candidate petitions instead of collecting actual signatures from citizens.”
The documents state that Burkett told investigators that “he was heavily involved in St. Joseph County political activities with the local Democratic party,” and that “he had, in fact, personally forged several such signatures,” and had attended meetings at the local Democratic party headquarters, where it was agreed to forge the petitions. Morgan, the County Democratic Chairman, allegedly “instructed Mr. Burkett, Pamela Brunette, Beverly Shelton, and Dustin Blythe to forge ballot petitions for presidential candidates,” and that “all of them agreed to follow these instructions” by copying names and signatures from old election petitions.
According to affidavits, Burkett told investigators it was his job to “forge petitions for candidate Barack Obama,” Shelton “was assigned to forge petitions for candidate Hillary Clinton” and Blythe “was assigned to forge petitions for candidate John Edwards.” When Edwards dropped out of the race at the end of January 2008 and Burkett refused to continue the forgeries, Morgan allegedly ordered Blythe to then forge petitions for Barack Obama.
Indiana State Police investigators identified a total of 22 petitions that appeared to be faked, yet sailed through the Voter Registration Board as legitimate documents. The signature of the board’s Republican supervisor, Linda Silcott, which is required for legal certification, appeared to be rubber stamped on the documents. She told investigators that she did not remember signing or authorizing her rubber stamp to be used.
Silcott also told investigators that she recognized the handwriting on the alleged forged Obama petitions as that of Blythe’s.
The South Bend Tribune and independent political newsletter Howey Politics Indiana have reported that a handwriting analyst concluded last fall that Blythe’s handwriting matched some of the alleged Obama fakes. When Fox News caught up to Blythe as he left the Voter Registration Board last November and asked him if he forged any signatures or faked any petitions, he repeatedly replied, “I don’t have anything to say.”
The case raises the possibility that the president’s campaign and that of Clinton’s, could have been legally challenged in Indiana if the alleged forgeries were discovered during the race.
Under state law, presidential candidates need to qualify with 500 signatures from each of Indiana’s nine congressional districts. Indiana elections officials say that in St. Joseph County, which is the 2nd Congressional District, the Obama campaign qualified with 534 signatures; Clinton’s camp had 704.
But the signatures, which were certified by the elections board, were never challenged. If the number of legitimate signatures for Obama or Clinton fell below the legal requirement of 500, they could have been bounced from the state ballot. Reports have previously put the number of phony signatures for both candidates at about 150, but state investigators plucked names from the petitions at random and cited only 20 individual alleged forgeries as part of their case. They say their investigation of the petitions continues.
Multiple voters, including Indiana’s former Democratic Gov. Joe Kernan, told Fox News that their names and signatures were phonies.
“That’s not my signature,” Charity Rorie told Fox News as she sat in her kitchen in Mishawaka, Ind.. The mother of four was stunned that her name and signature, and those of her husband, appeared on one of the Obama petitions. She said they “absolutely” were fakes and was troubled that personal details such as their address and birthdays were also included.
“It was shocking,” she said. “Why did they do that, and where did they get it from?”
“I did not sign for Barack Obama,” Democratic voter Robert Hunter told Fox News as he stared at the Obama petition that included his name and purported signature supporting the candidate. While he observed that the scrawl looked “very close” to his real one, it was not.
“I always put ‘Junior’ after my name, every time… there’s no ‘Junior’ there,” Hunter told us. “I don’t like anybody using my name for anything other than myself.”
“It’s scary,” Charity said. “A lot of people have already lost faith in politics and the realm of politics and that solidifies our worries and concerns.”
As for Burkett, a 26-year-old lifelong Democrat, “he is the whistle-blower in this,” his lawyer, Andrew B. Jones, told Fox News.
“Lucas really is the hero in this situation. He is someone who stood up for good government, and has cooperated with the state police and will continue to do so.”
If you suspect voter or election fraud where you live, tell the Fox News Voter Fraud Unit: voterfraud@foxnews.com
Thanks to ACORN type of registration fraud and the dead voting in larger numbers in some areas, including some precincts that cast more votes than said precincts have voters, over 34 states have now introduced and/or passed laws saying that you must have ID when you vote.
The Democrats oppose such laws because they say that they are racist, but the courts have not been sympathetic to such arguments. The Supreme Court has held up Indiana’s voter ID law and Obama’s Justice Department knows very well that eventually their court challenges will lose, but the goal is to enable as much vote fraud as they can until after the election.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department’s civil rights division on Monday objected to a new photo ID requirement for voters in Texas because many Hispanic voters lack state-issued identification.
Texas follows South Carolina as the second state in recent months to become embroiled in a court battle with the Justice Department over new photo ID requirements for voters.
Photo ID laws have become a point of contention in the 2012 elections. Liberal groups have said the requirements are the product of Republican-controlled state governments and are aimed at disenfranchising people who tend to vote Democratic — African-Americans, Hispanics, people of low-income and college students.
Proponents of such legislation say the measures are aimed at combating voter fraud. But advocacy groups for minorities and the poor dispute that and argue there is no evidence of significant voter fraud.
In regard to Texas, “I cannot conclude that the state has sustained its burden” of showing that the newly enacted law has neither a discriminatory purpose nor effect, Thomas E. Perez, the head of the Justice Department’s civil rights division, said in a letter to the Texas secretary of state.
Texas Attorney General Greg Abbot has said the Obama administration is hostile to laws like the one passed last year in Texas.
The National Conference of State Legislatures called the voter ID issue “the hottest topic of legislation in the field of elections in 2011,” with legislation introduced in 34 states.
UPDATE – O’Keefe video exposes voter fraud friendly Vermont – LINK
On Vermont Primary Day, Project Veritas sent a team of investigators into polling places throughout the state with a list of both deceased and still-living voters to see if they would be permitted to vote without presenting a photo ID.
Our team tested multiple polling places, simply walking up and stating the name of the registered voter and in all cases — they were offered ballots.
While our investigators cast no votes and returned the ballots, there was nothing stopping our team, or anyone else, from illegally influencing the outcome of a presidential primary.
In fact, as shown in the video, Project Veritas investigators insisted on presenting identification in order to vote, but were told repeatedly, “you don’t need it.”
One investigator was eerily told, “We believe you.” In contrast, Project Veritas’ team also tested the integrity of other establishments in Vermont: Bars and Hotels. Our investigators were repeatedly turned away for their failure to present a photo ID.
• At least 51 million eligible citizens remain unregistered—more than 24 percent of the eligible population.
• Nearly 2 million deceased individuals are listed as voters.
• Approximately 2.75 million people have registrations in more than one state.
• About 12 million records have incorrect addresses, meaning either the voters moved, or errors in the information make it unlikely any mailings can reach them.
This is not some reporter or blogger saying this and it sure isn’t Alex Jones, this is Larry Sabato who is the most quoted political scientist alive. Sabato writes many of the political science texts used in universities. While this writer believes that many professors are full of it, Sabato has credibility in spades.
Newt Gingrich blasts NBC’s David Gregory and the elite media for deliberately misleading the American people about this made up “access to contraception” issue. No one is being denied access to contraception and not one politician is trying to ban it, yet the elite media and the Democrats are either saying or directly implying that this is what Republicans are trying to do.
The Obama Administration is trying to make the Catholic Church pay for abortion pills.
“I am astonished at the desperation of the elite media to avoid rising gas prices, to avoid the president’s apology to religious fanatics in Afghanistan, to avoid a trillion-dollar deficit, to avoid the longest period of unemployment since the Great Depression, and to suddenly decide that Rush Limbaugh is the great national crisis of the week,”
According to the Justice Department, Homeland Security and other parts of the Obama Administration the dangerous wild card is supposed to be a conservative, white, male, military vet who believes in the Constitution, supports conservative candidates and believes in the Bible.
But time and time again what do we see with the Fort Hood shootings, underwear bombers. the guy who tried to shoot up LA Airport, Islamic students who try to mow down Christians and Jews with their SUV, leave a bomb at Times Square, and the list goes on and on they all seem to have one thing in common; they are Muslim males.
But why is Obama’s Justice Department and Homeland Security putting out a new warning every few months claiming that one flavor of traditionalist or conservative is the latest “boogie man”?
Federal authorities on Friday arrested a 29-year-old Moroccan man in an alleged plot to carry out a suicide bombing at the U.S. Capitol, the latest in a series of terrorism-related arrests resulting from undercover sting operations.
For more than a year, Amine El Khalifi, of Alexandria, considered attacking targets including a synagogue, an Alexandria building with military offices and a Washington restaurant frequented by military officials, authorities said. When arrested a few blocks from the Capitol around lunchtime on Friday, he was carrying what he believed to be a loaded automatic weapon and a suicide vest ready for detonation.
The gun and vest were provided not by al-Qaeda, as Khalifi had been told, but by undercover FBI agents who rendered them inoperable, authorities said.
They said Khalifi had been the subject of a lengthy investigation and never posed a threat to the public. On Friday afternoon, he made an initial court appearance in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, where he was charged with attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction against federal property. He faces life in prison if convicted.
Khalifi “allegedly believed he was working with al-Qaeda,” said Neil H. MacBride, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. Khalifi “devised the plot, the targets and the methods on his own.”
“This is what President Obama would call a “teachable moment”. The teachable moment here is when we elect a president who brings this progressive philosophy to bear to government, they decide how our rights are to be granted and given and organized. And if they clash with our first amendment right of religious freedom or something else then we know who wins in that exchange. This is much much bigger than about contraception or something like that, this is about religious freedom, first amendment rights, and how this progressive philosophy of fungible rights or a living, breathing constitution really clashes and collides with these core rights that we built our society and country around,”.
When you head down to the beach for a little fun this summer, county officials want you to leave the pigskin at home.
The Board of Supervisors this week agreed to raise fines to up to $1,000 for anyone who throws a football or a Frisbee on any beach in Los Angeles County.
In passing the 37-page ordinance on Tuesday, officials sought to outline responsibilities for law enforcement and other public agencies while also providing clarification on beach-goer activities that could potentially disrupt or even injure the public.
The updated rules now prohibit “any person to cast, toss, throw, kick or roll” any object other than a beach ball or volleyball “upon or over any beach” between Memorial Day and Labor Day.
Exceptions allow for ball-throwing in predesignated areas, when a person obtains a permit, or playing water polo “in or over the Pacific Ocean”.
However, during the winter off-season, the new rules will be relaxed.
Officials warned that any activities that could potentially harm “any person or property on or near the beach” should not be allowed during the peak summer season.
Your kids could also end up costing you big bucks: the ordinance also prohibits digging any hole deeper than 18 inches into the sand except where permission is granted for film and TV production services only.
The city of West Allis has agreed to pay $30,000 to settle a federal civil rights lawsuit prompted by one of the first tests of Wisconsin residents’ right to openly carry guns.
Brad Krause was planting a tree in his backyard in August 2008 — while wearing a holstered handgun — when police arrived, drew their weapons and arrested him.
In February 2009, a municipal judge found Krause not guilty of disorderly conduct, and in April of that year state Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen issued a memo advising law enforcement agencies that the mere fact of wearing a gun, by itself, would not support a charge of disorderly conduct.
“This is a clear victory for Mr. Krause and Wisconsin residents who wish to assert their rights under the state and federal Constitution to bear arms lawfully,” said his attorney, John Schiro.
In reaching the settlement, the city did not acknowledge any wrongdoing.
Several other gun rights advocates arrested for openly wearing their weapons in public, assisted by Wisconsin Carry Inc. and a Georgia attorney who specialized in such cases, have won similar lawsuits against other Wisconsin municipalities. Settlements ranged from $6,500 or $7,500 to $10,000.
But after his acquittal, and even after the Van Hollen memo, Krause contends, he was warned by West Allis police that if he wore a gun in the city he would be arrested again.
In fact, when TV reporters were interviewing Krause in West Allis about the Van Hollen memo on April 21, 2009, two squad cars pulled up with their emergency lights on, and officers began to question Krause, according to his lawsuit.
“During the questioning, one officer stated that had television camera not been filming, Plaintiff would have been taken to the ground at gunpoint, disarmed, and possibly arrested,” the suit reads.
Now keep this in mind, the officers knew who this citizen was, knew he was not a threat, and yet they put him at gunpoint anyways, meaning that they were looking for an excuse to pull the trigger and take his life.
Self defense shootings in Detroit are up 79% as the police has been cut from 5,000 to 3,000 – LINK.
The U.S. Constitution actually protects federal lawmakers from detention while they’re on the way to the capital.
“The Senators and Representatives…shall in all Cases, except Treason, Felony and Breach of the Peace, be privileged from Arrest during their Attendance at the Session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same….” – Article I, Section 6.
The court hit this one out of the park. While I see Scalia’s point of nuance I agree with Alito that it also covered privacy because the penumbra of the law certainly cast a shadow on the FBI’s violation.
WASHINGTON—The Supreme Court ruled Monday that police violated the Constitution when they attached a Global Positioning System tracker to a suspect’s vehicle without a valid search warrant, voting unanimously in one of the first major cases to test privacy rights in the digital era.
The decision offered a glimpse of how the court may address the flood of privacy cases expected in coming years over issues such as cellphones, email and online documents. But the justices split 5-4 over the reasoning, suggesting that differences remain over how to apply age-old principles prohibiting “unreasonable searches.”
The minority pushed for a more sweeping declaration that installing the GPS tracker not only trespassed on private property but violated the suspect’s “reasonable expectation of privacy” by monitoring his movements for a month. The majority said it wasn’t necessary to go that far, because the act of putting the tracker on the car invaded the suspect’s property in the same way that a home search would.
Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the majority, said that as conceived in the 18th century, the Fourth Amendment’s protection of “persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures” would extend to private property such as an automobile.
“The Government physically occupied private property for the purpose of obtaining information. We have no doubt that such a physical intrusion would have been considered a ‘search’ within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment when it was adopted,” Justice Scalia wrote, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Sonia Sotomayor.
Advocates for privacy said that despite the differences, the court’s unanimity on the outcome sent a strong message.
“This is a signal event in Fourth Amendment history,” said Walter Dellinger, a former acting solicitor general who represented the defendant, Antoine Jones.
The government said Federal Bureau of Investigation agents use GPS tracking devices in thousands of investigations each year. It argued that attaching the tiny tracking device to a car’s undercarriage was too trivial a violation of property rights to matter, and that no one who drove in public streets could expect his movements to go unmonitored. Police were free to employ the tactic for any reason without showing probable cause to a magistrate and getting a search warrant, the government said.
The justices seemed troubled by that position at arguments in November, where the government acknowledged it would also allow attaching such trackers to the justices’ own cars without obtaining a warrant.
Emphasizing the Fourth Amendment’s “close connection to property,” Justice Scalia wrote that even a small trespass, if committed in “an attempt to find something or to obtain information,” constituted a “search” under the Fourth Amendment.
In a surprising departure from the majority, Justice Samuel Alito, a former prosecutor usually known for his law-and-order views, split from fellow conservatives to argue that the search violated an individual’s “reasonable expectation of privacy.”
The court has used that test since 1967, when it held that warrants were required before police could wiretap a call made from a public telephone booth because “the Fourth Amendment protects people, not places.”
Limiting Fourth Amendment protections to trespassing property as understood in 1791 “is unwise” and “highly artificial,” Justice Alito wrote in a concurring opinion, joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan. “It is almost impossible to think of late-18th-century situations” analogous to placing a GPS tracker on a car, Justice Alito wrote, unless one imagined “a gigantic coach, a very tiny constable, or both.”
With such rapidly advancing technology, the Scalia approach left open “particularly vexing problems,” Justice Alito wrote, particularly when police don’t have to physically touch a vehicle to conduct surveillance. He mentioned automatic toll-collection systems and smartphones that continuously track their own location as examples.
Justice Alito’s concurring opinion suggested that the GPS case had provoked a robust debate within the court over the extent to which the 1967 case, Katz v. U.S., remained good law.
Justice Scalia declined to apply the 1967 standard to this case, but emphasized that the broader approach remained in force.
Justice Scalia wrote that even surveillance without physical trespass may be “an unconstitutional invasion of privacy”—but, he added, there was no need to speculate on such problems until a specific case presented them to the court.
Remember this story? Well it appears justice has been done and the winners are parents, teachers and the kids who were exposed to this radicalized school administrator.
This wen site, but especially my old college blog (2) has countless stories of administrators gone wild. Civil rights groups such as FIRE and ADF list thousands of such cases on their web sites. The problem of radicalized overzealous school administrators (without a residue of good judgment and common sense) is nearly epidemic.
GASTONIA, N.C. (CBS Charlotte/AP) — The principal of a Gaston County school where a 9-year-old boy was suspended for sexual harassment submitted his resignation Tuesday, saying he wasn’t given a chance to apologize.
Jerry Bostic told The Gaston Gazette he could understand being written up for the suspension and having someone follow up during the school year, but he added that he was disappointed because this is how his 44 years in education ended.
“To me it’s a really sad final note to a career that I have found very satisfying and enjoy working with kids,” Bostic said. “I really don’t believe I was treated fairly.”
School officials offered an apology to Emanyea Lockett and his mother, Chiquita Lockett, after the boy was accused of calling a teacher “cute.” A statement from the system said it was determined that the fourth grader at Brookside Elementary School didn’t engage in sexual harassment. The school system said the suspension won’t count against the student, and there will be additional instructional assistance provided to the student for the classroom time missed.
“This is something that everyone needed to see, just to see what’s happening within our school systems,” Lockett told WSOC-TV.
Gaston County Schools Superintendent Reeves McGlohon would only say that Bostic submitted his resignation. McGlohon had no further comment.
“He (McGlohon) told me he had made the decision he was going to terminate me or drop me into an assistant principal position,” Bostic said. “I admit I made some errors in what I did, but to fire me or to demote me with 44 years in it, it just doesn’t make sense. To me he was a very heartless man, and he did it because of politics.”
In 44 years of experience he still had such a complete lack of judgment, common sense, and restraint to not see what is perfectly obvious to anyone who is not radicalized by Marxist radical feminism. The real problem is that it took 44 years for this pinhead to get escorted to the door.
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.
For example, over near Deming, New Mexico is the Gila National Forest. The U.S. Forest Service wanted to make almost all of it off limits for people — until the militia of Luna County intervened. They told the feds that they would resist any effort by the Forest Service to restrict access to visitors. The result? Visitors have continued to access all of the Gila National Forest!
In the Southeast corner of the state, many landowners have working oil wells on their property. The EPA told the oil operators they would have to stop operating their wells because there was too much risk of harming the environment. At a town hall meeting convened by the EPA, a woman in her 60s rose to address the feds. She pointed out that her land had been in her family for over 200 years, and she was not about to let some official from an unconstitutional bureaucracy tell her what she could or could not do with her land.
The woman ended by warning the feds that her family has many guns and a huge supply of ammunition, and they would use all of it if needed to keep the EPA off of their land. The locals who had packed out the hearing room jumped to their feet with a shout and prolonged applause. That was in August of this year. As of November, oil is still being pumped at full tilt.
In Otero County, villages in the mountains are surrounded by forests. The county commission voted to establish an 80,000 acre plan to manage forest overgrowth. Residents wanted to cut fire breaks to protect their homes in Cloudcroft, but the Forest Service said, “No.” The residents responded that they had to for safety’s sake and were going to construct the fire break in spite of the Forest Service. Residents were told that if they cut down any trees, they would be arrested. But Sheriff Raymond Cobos told the Forest Service that if they made any arrests, they would be arrested for false arrest.
Not only were the trees cut down with no opposition from the feds, the first tree was cut down by Congressman Steve Pearce (R-2ndDistrict). Would that there were many more like Rep. Pearce. The folks in the Second District are blessed with a constitution-supporting congressman and a number of constitutional sheriffs backed by the militias of their counties. This is the way that local governments can push back and help the feds to live within the limitations that have been placed upon them in Article 1, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution.
President Obama’s United States Department of Agriculture has delayed shale gas drilling in Ohio for up to six months by cancelling a mineral lease auction for Wayne National Forest (WNF). The move was taken in deference to environmentalists, on the pretext of studying the effects of hydraulic fracturing.
“Conditions have changed since the 2006 Forest Plan was developed,” announced WNF Supervisor Anne Carey on Tuesday. “The technology used in the Utica & Marcellus Shale formations need to be studied to see if potential effects to the surface are significantly different than those identified in the Forest Plan.” The study will take up to six months to complete. The WNF study reportedly “will focus solely on how it could affect forest land,” despite the significance of hydraulic fracturing to united proponents of the delay, “and not how it could affect groundwater.”
Speaking of the WNF gas drilling, one environmentalist group spokesman suggested that moving forward with drilling “could turn the Ohio Valley into Ozone Alley,” even though Wayne National Forest already has nearly 1300 oil and gas wells in operation which this study does not affect.
The Ohio Oil and Gas Energy Education Program (OOGEEP) recently estimated that drilling in the Utica shale, which is affected by the suspension of the mineral lease auctions, would produce up 204,500 jobs by 2015. [Update: the USDA estimates that the creation of only a few dozen to 200 jobs will be delayed by this study.]
“The President’s plan is to simply say ‘no’ to new energy production,” House Natural Resources Committee chairman Doc Hastings, R-Wash, said to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar during a hearing pertaining to hydraulic fracturing. “It’s a plan that is sending American jobs overseas, forfeiting new revenue, and denying access to American energy that would lessen our dependence on hostile Middle Eastern oil.”
Judicial Watch has done it again. It has produced–following a Freedom of Information Act request filed with the United States Department of Justice (DOJ)–documents that suggest extensive coordination and communications between the DOJ Voting Section and former ACORN affiliate Project Vote.
Project Vote appears to be directing DOJ resources toward particular states; is having meetings with DOJ staff; and is even recommending lawyers to work in the Justice Department Voting Section that will oversee the 2012 presidential election.
Project Vote also appears to have played a role in the Justice Department’s lawsuit against Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal’s administration, which aims to force the state to increase voter registration in welfare agencies and drug treatment offices.
The documents also appear to show that Project Vote receives special access to, and meetings with, DOJ officials. So do other voter fraud-deniers, such as the NAACP Legal Defense Fund; Tova Wang at Demos; and the Brennan Center for Justice. I write about numerous similar instances in my book,Injustice: Exposing the Racial Agenda of the Obama Justice Department.
These activist groups have enjoyed access to the top political appointees at DOJ over voting–including Aaron McCree Lewis, in the Office of the Attorney General; Sam Hirsch, Deputy Associate Attorney General; and Deputy Assistant Attorney General in charge of voting issues, Matthew Colangelo.
Emails obtained by Judicial Watch also suggest that Project Vote was directing complaints to the persons at DOJ responsible for deploying election monitoring resources, urging them to devote resources to races around the country–particularly where Tea Party groups were active in efforts to combat voter fraud.
On February 23, 2010, Estelle Rogers, head of Project Vote and a former ACORN lawyer, also urged Voting Section Chief Chris Herren to hire two particular ACORN-approved attorneys to work in the Justice Department Voting Section. “Now that the application period has closed, I want to heartily recommend two candidates to you,” she wrote.
“Thanks very much Estelle,” Herren wrote back.
Eventually, the Voting Section in fact hired numerous lawyers from left-wing groups, such as those that were dedicated to aggressive enforcement of the welfare agency voter registration provisions of Motor Voter. The relevant emails obtained by Judicial Watch are redacted, so we don’t know if the individuals hired were the same ones suggested by Rogers. However, we do know that DOJ hired attorneys expert in Motor Voter–such as Bradley Heard and Elizabeth Westfall, who brought lawsuits while at the Advancement Project that stopped Colorado and Michigan from purging voter rolls of ineligible voters prior to the 2008 Presidential election.
But that isn’t the worst of it. Other documents suggest that a swarm of left-wing groups is meeting regularly with top DOJ election officials. The documents show these groups urging the DOJ to open investigations into particular people, states and events.
More lies and more concentrated efforts by this administration to kill jobs and how many times has the administration used this tactic to try and silence contractors, insurance companies and corporations?
The Obama administration pressured analysts to change an environmental review to reflect fewer job losses from a proposed regulation, the contractors who worked on the review testified Friday.
The dispute revolves around proposed changes to a rule regulating coal mining near streams and other waterways. The experts contracted to analyze the impact of the rule initially found that it would cost 7,000 coal jobs.
But the contractors claim they were subsequently pressured to not only keep the findings under wraps but “revisit” the study in order to show less of an impact on jobs.
Steve Gardner, president of Kentucky consulting firm ECSI, claimed that after the project team refused to “soften” the numbers, the firms working on the study were told the contract would not be renewed. ECSI was a subcontractor on the project.
The government “‘suggested’ that the … members revisit the production impacts and associated job loss numbers, with different assumptions that obviously would then lead to a lesser impact,” Gardner testified before a House Natural Resources subcommittee. “The … team unanimously refused to use a ‘fabricated’ baseline scenario to soften the production loss numbers.”
Navy Buys Biofuels for $15 Per Gallon From Stimulus-Linked Firm
A California company has been hired to provide 450,000 gallons of advanced biofuels to the U.S. Navy – the “single largest purchase of biofuel in government history,” according to the Navy – at $15 per gallon, or about four times the market price of conventional jet fuel.
The Institute for Energy Research unearthed the purchase in a recent post on its website:
Last week, the Navy signed a contract with two biofuel companies to purchase 450,000 gallons of advanced biofuels at $12 million to assist in President Obama’s goal to establish a domestic biofuels industry and to advance it in ways that do not require Congressional approval. Of course, given the Navy’s mission, they claim to be pursuing biofuels to ensure adequate fuel in the future without relying on crude from the Middle East or other overseas sources that may be a threat to our national security. While this purchase is only a drop in the bucket compared to the Navy’s annual usage of more than 670 million gallons, their goal is to fuel a normal Navy mission with a 50-percent blend of biofuels and gasoline by 2016.
The company selling the fuel to the Navy is called Solazyme. The company’s corporate board includes “strategic advisor” T.J. Glauthier, who “advises companies dealing with the complex competitive and regulatory challenges in the energy sector today.”
Glauthier was the Deputy Secretary and Chief Operations Officer of the Department of Energy from 1999 to 2001, meaning he has experience dealing with energy issues on both sides of the regulatory equation.
Also of note: Glauthier served (pro bono) on President Obama’s White House Transition Team, where he specifically worked on the energy provisions of the stimulus package, according to Solazyme’s website. Solazyme itself landed a $21.8 million stimulus grant to build a biofuel refinery.
[This scandal happened in my home town. The article mentions that the Democratic Machine here is much like Chicago and that is very true. Some business owners in downtown South Bend tell me that they vote GOP, but do not dare to put anything but Democrat signs in their windows or the city will exact revenge. The same goes for many road workers and police officers. – Editor]
Charity Rorie, a mother of four, sat in her Mishawaka, Ind., kitchen, stunned that her name appeared on a 2008 Democratic presidential primary petition for then-candidate Barack Obama.
“That’s not my signature,” she told Fox News, saying her signature is “absolutely” a fake. She also said she was troubled someone forged both her signature and that of her husband, Jeff, and listed personal details such as their address and birthdays.
“It’s scary,” Rorie said. “It’s shocking. It definitely is illegal. A lot of people have already lost faith in politics and the whole realm of politics, so that just solidifies all of our worries and concerns.”
Robert Hunter Jr. said his name was faked, too.
“I did not sign for Barack Obama,” he told Fox News, adding his signature supporting the then-Illinois senator’s effort to get on the primary ballot was also a forgery.
As he examined the Obama petition he held in his hands, Hunter pointed out that “I always put ‘Junior’ after my name, every time … there’s no ‘Junior’ there.” He said the signature on the petition looks “very close” to his real one, but it clearly is not.
“My wife and I actually signed a petition for Hillary Clinton,” he said. “I am an Obama fan, but not in the primaries I wasn’t.”
The prospect that theirs are two of an estimated 150 signatures that may have been forged on the petitions has raised the question of whether President Obama actually reached the legitimate number of signatures needed to be placed on the ballot in Indiana. Under state law, presidential candidates need to file 500 signatures from each of the state’s nine congressional districts. Indiana election officials say that in St. Joseph County, the Obama campaign qualified with 534 signatures; Clinton’s camp had 704. The certified signatures were never challenged.
“I had always thought that, now-President Obama, had earned his victory in Indiana,” said the state’s Republican chairman, Eric Holcomb. “But then I quickly learned that he had cheated his way on to the ballot in the primary.”
The allegations that election fraud touched a race for the highest office in the land are at the center of an investigation by St. Joseph County Attorney Michael Dvorak . He would not comment, but sources say the probe is gaining steam as prosecutors delve into the petitions that sailed through the St. Joseph County Voter Registration Board, located in South Bend. There have been reports that as many as seven people may have been involved in an alleged conspiracy to fake the petitions.
[Political Arena Editor’s Note – Dvorak has been a part of the Democratic Machine for a long time. A small clique in the Democratic Party plays musical chairs here in St. Joe County. A politician will be a city councilman, a member of the local administration, a state senator, back to the local administration etc. The same people just keep getting recycled into different local positions.]
“I was very surprised,” said the newly elected Democratic chairman of St. Joseph County, State Sen. John Broden. “This is a bipartisan issue that we need to take a look at … so I hope that this is something, that we as both parties, try to look at what exactly happened, and most importantly, how do we prevent it from happening again.”
Broden recently replaced long-serving Democratic Chairman Butch Morgan, who resigned suddenly in October under party pressure because of the scandal.
“There is no evidence that Butch Morgan ever personally directed, authorized or condoned the forging or alteration of petition signatures,” [Notice that is not a denial – Political Arena Editor] said his attorney, Shaw Friedman, who argued against the resignation. He said Morgan did “absolutely not” forge any signatures, or know who might have.
“This is a man who has worked mightily over the 20 years that he served as district chairman, to do so fairly, ethically, appropriately, and my concern was that he not leave under these circumstances,” Friedman told Fox News.
He called the alleged forgeries “a sloppy, amateurish effort, ordinarily that kind of thing would have been caught by the voter registration offices. I’m not quite sure here why it slipped through.”
St. Joseph County Board of Voter Registration worker Dustin Blythe has reportedly been identified as having handwriting that matches the writing on some of the suspect Obama petitions. The South Bend Tribune and the political newsletter Howey Politics Indiana hired a handwriting analyst who examined the documents and says Blythe’s writing can be found on “nine suspicious pages from the Obama petition,” according to the newspaper.
Blythe, 37, works at one of the desks in the Board office. When Fox News asked if he forged any signatures or faked any petitions, he repeatedly replied, “I don’t have anything to say.”
Blythe’s LinkedIn profile describes him as a “government employee” who is also an “independent contractor/volunteer at Indiana Democratic Party” and a St. Joseph County Democratic Party “volunteer.” His Facebook page includes a photograph of him taken with former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards.
Blythe’s lawyer, Andre Gammage, has said that his client did not do anything wrong. He told Fox News that handwriting comparisons don’t mean anything.
“Handwriting is not the same as DNA, handwriting is not the same thing as fingerprints,” Gammage said.
Authorities would not comment about any aspect of the ongoing investigation, including any possible targets of the probe.
Communist propaganda combined with scapegoating. It is so typical and exactly the same tactics used by every tyrant in world history, but perfected by Nazi Germany [Note: Usually it is wise to avoid Nazi comparisons, but in this case it is warranted as the historical parallels are almost exact].
Scapegoating is used by tyrants who blame a group of people they see as expendable for the problems often created by the failures of those very leaders.
(Reuters) – Russia’s youths admire Soviet dictator Josef Stalin — who presided over the deaths of millions of people — and want to kick immigrants out of Russia, according to a poll released on Wednesday.
The poll, carried out by the Yuri Levada Centre, was presented by two U.S. academics who called it “The Putin Generation: the political views of Russia’s youth”.
When asked if Stalin was a wise leader, half of the 1,802 respondents, aged from 16 to 19, agreed he was.
“Fifty-four percent agreed that Stalin did more good than bad,” said Theodore Gerber, a sociologist from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “Forty-six percent disagreed with the statement that Stalin was a cruel tyrant.”
Stalin, who took over from Vladimir Lenin, built a system of terror and repression in which tens millions of people died or were killed. He died in 1953.
“What we find troubling is that there is a substantial proportion of young people in Russia today who hold positive or ambivalent views on Stalin and his legacy,” Gerber said.
“We think it would probably be more appropriate if there was more condemnation of the Stalin era.”
The poll showed 17 percent of the young people disagreed that Stalin was responsible for the imprisonment, torture and execution of millions of innocent people, while 40 percent thought his role in the repression had been exaggerated.
The majority of respondents thought the collapse of the Soviet Union was a tragedy and two thirds thought that America was a rival and enemy. Only a fifth viewed Iran as a potential rival or enemy.
Most young people also wanted immigrants kicked out of Russia: 62 percent said they agreed with the statement that the Russian government should evict most immigrants.
But 64 percent agreed with the idea that immigrants should be allowed to have Russian citizenship if they abided with Russian laws and customs.
The poll showed the biggest concern for the youth was the problem of drugs, followed by unemployment, poverty, corruption, education, crime, HIV/AIDS and ecology.
Welcome to yet another episode if Chicago style machine politics brought to DC by the Daley Machine Obama Administration. Lately we have seen one “Solyndra” after another.
Gen. William Shelton, commander of the Air Force Space Command,
told House members in a classified briefing earlier this month that he was pressured to change prepared congressional testimony in a way that would favor a large company funded by Philip Falcone, a major Democratic donor, congressional sources told Fox News.
Republicans have raised questions about whether the project pursued by the company, LightSquared, is being unduly expedited by the Obama administration, which has pushed for national wireless network upgrades.
Solyndra II? At a classified briefing, head of the Air Force Space Command Gen. William Shelton informed House members that he had been pressured to change prepared congressional testimony in order to better compliment a Virginia-based satellite and communications company funded by major Democratic donor Philip Falcone. The GOP has been wondering for some time now whether work done by that company, LightSquared, has been “unduly expedited” by the Obama administration in its push for nation-wide wireless network upgrades.
As Shelton sees it, the company’s plans for its national 4G phone network would seriously compromise the effectiveness of high-precision GPS receiver systems used by the military, given that its spectrum would be about 5 billion times stronger than the military’s GPS system.
Appearing before the House Armed Services subcommittee yesterday, Shelton alleged that he’d repeatedly been pressured to say that “the interference problems could be mitigated” and that he’d been “asked to say things I didn’t agree with.”
Many cases of more of the same. Of course another aspect of this story is that it is the view of this editor that the military’s reliance on GPS is a mistake. GPS jamming technology is cheap and easy to make or buy. In fact. most anyone with a little electronics and ham radio training could make one with ease. It is almost a certainty that potential targets of US missiles and smart bombs such as Iran have installed these jamming devices around their country.
“If you are not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.” – Malcolm X
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