President Obama's cabinet, staff and other associates

Note:  You might want to start at the Barack Obama Index Page, especially if you arrived here by using a search engine.

This page includes news and commentary about President Obama's appointments to various positions in his administration.  Besides an obvious series of low-level scandals, many of the appointments have required Mr. Obama to waive his own rules and violate his campaign promises about changing the way Washington insiders access the White House.

Some of Mr. Obama's selections, especially that of Timothy Geithner to head the Treasury Department, speak volumes about Mr. Obama's poor judgment and his complete lack of management experience.  There is a large subsection on this page about Tom Daschle, even though Mr. Daschle withdrew his nomination as Secretary of Health and Human Services, just to show that President Obama has done an exceptionally poor job of filtering out people with excess baggage.

Eric Holder and the politicized Justice Department are discussed on a page of their own.



Note:  This page originated in late 2008 as President-elect Obama began to assemble his leftist cabinet.  Many of these people have already moved on to another job.

Susan Rice

Rice-a-Phony?  So what's wrong with this picture?  For one thing, we are told Rice is a fierce advocate for human rights — yet she opposed the war to liberate Iraq, which overthrew one of the most sadistic figures in the last half-century, an architect of genocide, and the aggressor in wars against Iran and Kuwait.  If Ms. Rice had had her way, Iraq would still be ruled by Saddam, rather than be on the road to self-government.  And if Ms. Rice and President-elect Obama had both had their way, the surge would never have happened...

Susan Rice Twarted Capture Of bin Laden.  During a campaign interview on CNN, Barack Obama's-then national security adviser Susan Rice stated that President Bush blew opportunities to capture Osama bin Laden and she wouldn't mind seeing him killed.  It turns out Obama's choice of UN Ambassador blew opportunities as well.

Susan Rice:  Another Do-Little Obama Appointee.  Like many of her cohorts in the Obama administration, U.N. Permanent Representative Susan Rice seems to spend more time gallivanting around the Washington, D.C. social scene than doing any actual productive work. ... There seems to be a pattern here:  Perhaps B.O.'s staffing decisions revolve around establishing the best group of partiers in Washington, D.C. regardless of their previous accomplishments or proclivity for work.

Susan Rice:  Another Obama Failure.  America's Ambassador to the United Nations has been a failure.  Perhaps Susan Rice should spend less time career-climbing in DC, angling to replace Hillary Clinton (she has been "wildly inattentive" according to the non-partisan The Hill magazine) and more time doing her job.  Rice (and the US) was AWOL when it came to the vote to allow Libya onto the UN Human Rights Council; was AWOL in a Sec Council Resolution that condemned Israel (the first time such as Security Council resolution was not vetoed by America).

Newt: Fire Chu.  Finally someone in the Republican presidential sweepstakes is saying what needs to be said:  Fire Energy Secretary David Chu. ... On Chu's watch, the Department of Energy co-signed for a $535 million loan to a company that promised to make solar panels in the most expensive way possible using the most expensive materials available for a market already glutted with cheap foreign competitors.  The loan was used to build a second factory to expand Solyndra's ability to make solar panels no one was buying.  This made no sense, yet Chu signed off on the loan.

The Editor says...
That's all very good, but I think the man's name is Dr. Steven Chu, not David Chu.  Am I wrong?

Greg Craig

Exclusive:  Gregory Craig to be White House counsel.  Gregory B. Craig, a well-known Washington lawyer who quarterbacked President Bill Clinton's impeachment defense, has been chosen White House counsel by President-elect Barack Obama, according to Democratic officials.

Meet Greg Craig, Obama's White House Counsel.  Mike Allen reported over the weekend that "Gregory B. Craig, a well-known Washington lawyer who quarterbacked President Bill Clinton's impeachment defense, has been chosen White House counsel by President-elect Barack Obama".  Believe it or not, the time Craig spent shilling for Clinton may have been his most honorable days of work.

Craig's clients at times at odds with U.S..  As a top Washington lawyer, newly named White House counsel Greg Craig has represented high-profile clients, from Bill Clinton to John Hinckley to Alexander Solzhenitsyn to Elian Gonzalez's father.  But less well known is Craig's work in the 1990s for at least four foreign governments or leaders facing a variety of tricky situations in Washington.

The Obamameter Points Left.  When reports surfaced that Gregory Craig was to be named White House counsel to the incoming Obama administration, most journalists focused on the fact that a former staunch ally of the Clinton family (he led President Clinton's impeachment defense) was joining Team Obama.  But Cuban-Americans and moderate Hispanics worry about the other legal clients Mr. Craig has collected over the years.

Greg Craig and the Terrorist.  American prosecutors have long wanted to put [Pedro Miguel] González behind bars; the nearly 17-year-old murder charge stands today.  But in addition to his family in Panama, González has at least one very well-connected, very influential advocate in the United States:  Gregory Craig, the man Barack Obama chose to be the next White House counsel.

Flashback to 2008:
Release of Clinton Schedules Offers Chance to Test Campaign Assertions.  Gregory B. Craig, who was a senior State Department official in the Clinton administration and is now a policy adviser to Mr. Obama, said Friday [3/21/2008] that the White House records showed that Mrs. Clinton was absent when critical foreign policy decisions were made and that her trips abroad were largely ceremonial.  "The fact is, and this was established by the White House schedules, that she did not attend N.S.C. meetings or routinely meet with the secretary of state or the national security adviser," said Mr. Craig, a lawyer who represented Mr. Clinton in his 1998-99 impeachment and trial.

Tom Daschle

Daschle's Lobbyist Wife Might Complicate New Post.  President-elect Barack Obama has chosen [Tom] Daschle, a South Dakota Democrat to fill the cabinet post, and that of "health czar."  The 59-year-old Daschle, according to sources speaking to The Washington Post's Ceci Connolly and Chris Cillizza, is expected to take the jobs.  Daschle's new position might be complicated by his wife, Linda Hall Daschle, who is a registered lobbyist with the Washington firm of Baker, Donelson, Bearman, Caldwell & Berkowitz.

Obama's Pick of Daschle May Test Conflict-of-Interest Pledge.  At issue is Mr. Daschle's work since leaving the Senate four years ago as a board member of the Mayo Clinic and a highly paid adviser to health care clients at the law and lobbying firm Alston & Bird.  In a detailed list of campaign promises, Mr. Obama pledged that "no political appointees in an Obama administration will be permitted to work on regulations or contracts directly and substantially related to their prior employer for two years."

Driving Mr. Daschle.  So Tom Daschle, the erstwhile prairie populist and scourge of multiple Presidential nominees, failed to disclose and pay taxes on hundreds of thousands of dollars of income.  He also waited months to pay up and told the Obama transition team about his tax oversights only days before his Senate confirmation hearing to become Secretary of Health and Human Services.

Daschle Faces Questions on Trips.  Former Sen. Tom Daschle, already facing questions over his failure to pay some taxes in a timely fashion, will likely face another question when the Senate Finance Committee meets Monday to consider his nomination as health and human services secretary:  whether he improperly took gifts of value from charities with which he was involved.

Who's Limousine Lounging Now?  Back in 1986, when Tom Daschle was a member of the House, President Reagan nominated a man named Richard Lyng to be Agriculture Secretary.  Daschle didn't like the nomination.  Why?  Lyng, Daschle said, was "a limousine-lounging corporate executive" who didn't know anything about agriculture.

The Daschles:  feeding at the Beltway trough.  Other than his ability to know how to swing doors wide open in Congress, what "expertise and insights" worth that level of compensation does Tom Daschle have?  It's pure legalized influenced peddling, and — upon being booted out of the Congress — he ran right to it as quickly as he could and engorged himself at the trough as hungrily as possible.

Daschle takes 'a bad first-day hit'.  Senate Republicans on Saturday [1/31/2009] were still trying to come to grips with the scale of Daschle's tax issues, and had yet to decide whether to support him or block his nomination as Health and Human Services secretary.

Daschle's Prospects.  The Daschle nomination could (and certainly should) be in very serious trouble after the last 24 hours.  Surely no senator who voted against Tim Geithner (34 senators) could vote to confirm him, and many of those who voted for Geithner's confirmation said they did so because he seemed to have unique qualifications to serve the country in this particular economic crisis that few if any other possible candidates could match.  That is simply not the case for Daschle.

Daschle Owed Back Taxes That Exceeded $128,000.  Thomas A. Daschle, nominated to be secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, did not pay more than $128,000 in taxes over three years, a revelation that poses a potential obstacle to his Senate confirmation.  The back taxes, along with $12,000 in interest and penalties, involved unreported consulting fees, questionable charitable contributions, and a car and driver provided by a private equity firm run by entrepreneur and longtime Democratic Party donor Leo J. Hindery Jr., according to a confidential draft report prepared by Senate Finance Committee staff.

Questions arise after Daschle surprise.  It was designed as the most comprehensive vetting form ever — 60-plus inquiries meant to leave not a single gap in what Barack Obama's nominees must divulge about their lives.  But when he returned his questionnaire, Tom Daschle forgot to mention the free limo rides.

Marion Barry for Drug Czar.  If a certain sort of conservative tends to be moralistic about sex, liberals tend to be moralistic about money.  That makes Tom Daschle the equivalent of a televangelist caught in a sex scandal.  Daschle, now President Obama's nominee for secretary of health and human services, was first elected to Congress in 1978 as a Democrat from South Dakota.  In 2004, in the final throes of the Bush majority, voters ousted him from the Senate. ... he stayed in Washington, joined a lobbying firm — albeit as a "special policy adviser," since as a former senator he was prohibited by law from "lobbying" — and raked in the bucks.

Cabinet roulette.  It most likely won't happen, but the majority Senate Democrats should vote down the confirmation of their former leader, Thomas Daschle, as health and human services secretary because of his income tax "oversights."  They probably should not have approved Timothy Geithner as Treasury secretary for his.  One can be assured that would be the case had a Republican president nominated them.

Taxes? Too Busy, Busy, Busy!  When someone earns more per week than the U.S. median yearly household income, we naively assume that person has more sophistication about money than the rest of us. ... Even if we don't know what Daschle did to earn all his money, we do know that when you monetize the job of Senate majority leader, as Daschle's financial disclosure forms reveal, you come up with almost $5.3 million in two years.

Senators rally round their pal Daschle.  It's unclear whether the American people will accept the apology; they tend to look unfavorably on people who amass more than $350,000 in unreported income and improper deductions.  They also might be skeptical of somebody who used his connections and influence to pile up more than $5.2 million since he left the Senate, much of it from a major Democratic donor and $220,000 of it from health care interests that Daschle, if confirmed by senators, will begin to regulate.

O's Ethics 'Exceptions':  Did the Democrats adopt a plank in their party platform last summer requiring all of their top dogs to have serious personal tax problems?  Sure looks that way. ... Daschle has raked in a staggering $5.2 million since being defeated for re-election in 2004 — including a big bag of cash from the health-care industry, which he's set to regulate.

Daschle Never Forgot to Vote for Higher Taxes.  During his 26 years in Congress, former Sen. Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) consistently supported tax hikes, opposed tax cuts and had tough words for tax scofflaws.  "Make no mistake, tax cheaters cheat us all, and the IRS should enforce our laws to the letter," Daschle said in 1998, according to the Congressional Record.

Daschle's derailment.  Does anyone important in Washington pay taxes?  Or is that civic duty — like jury duty or serving in the military — now something that only the "little people" in America, those without deep pockets and connections, do?

How Did Daschle Realize He Had a Limo Problem?  One of the unanswered questions concerning Health and Human Services Secretary-designate Tom Daschle's tax problem is why it suddenly occurred to Daschle, in June 2008, that the car and driver he had been provided by a wealthy Democratic donor in 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2008 might count as income and thus be subject to taxes — taxes which Daschle had not paid.

Daschle withdraws as nominee for HHS secretary.  Tom Daschle has withdrawn his nomination to be Health and Human Services secretary.  That's according to a joint White House statement from President Barack Obama and his former nominee.

Obama scrambles after Daschle's fall in tax controversy.  President Barack Obama scrambled to regain control of his political message Tuesday [2/3/2009] after a series of tax and vetting scandals forced one of his most important nominees to withdraw and raised questions about the new president's central campaign pledge to change politics as usual.

Barack Obama and Tom Daschle — inept, naive, tone-deaf or arrogant?  So Tom Daschle has ended the farce and withdrawn as health secretary nominee.  But why did Barack Obama stick by him so defiantly for so long?  And in the current horrendous economic climate, how did he think this was playing outside the Beltway?  And what happened to that much-vaunted vetting process?

Daschle spares Democrats further embarrassment.  [Scroll down]  [Harry] Reid, along with other Democratic colleagues, signaled strong support for Daschle.  Other senators, like Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), risked making themselves look utterly ridiculous.  A few weeks ago, Conrad called Geithner's tax problems "completely unacceptable."  "I'm a former tax commissioner," Conrad said.  "I've dealt with hundreds of cases like this one, and in normal times that alone would lead me to oppose his confirmation."

Tom Daschle Withdraws:  Another Ethics Casualty for Obama.  How quickly they fall.  Tom Daschle, who just yesterday had the full backing of President Barack Obama, has announced he is withdrawing his name from consideration as Health and Human Services secretary.  For both Daschle and Obama, it has been a rough ride, calling into question the latter's judgment and skill as a chief executive.

Nonprofits Linked to Daschle Spread Cash Around Washington.  The founders of two nonprofits that figured in the failed cabinet nomination of former Sen. Tom Daschle have cultivated ties to an array of prominent Washington figures, even as their businesses were coming under scrutiny by the Internal Revenue Service, according to public records, court documents and people familiar with Senate Finance Committee investigation.

Daschle gave a speech on tax cheats.  If Tom Daschle had his way, Tom Daschle would be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law for failing to pay his taxes.  At least according to the old Tom Daschle, who gave an impassioned speech on the Senate floor about the scourge of tax scofflaws.

Geithner Skated, So Daschle Couldn't.  Initially, it looked like we would simply witness a repeat of the Geithner saga.  On Monday, Daschle apologized, Obama publicly stuck up for him, White House aides lobbied on his behalf, and some key senators -- most notably from Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, whose panel would also have voted on Daschle's nomination -- reaffirmed their support.  And then on Tuesday morning, Daschle pulled the plug, withdrawing his name from consideration on the grounds that he risked becoming a distraction for the new administration.

You're Out, Tom.  Tom Daschle's decision to withdraw his nomination as Secretary of Health and Human Services after revelations that he had failed to pay more than $120,000 in back taxes will not only embarrass President Obama in the short term, but it will be a major setback in his administration's push for universal health care.

Obama:  The Hollow Man.  Daschle was supposed to become health and human services secretary, but his dirty laundry included more than just unpaid taxes.  He had been getting $1 million a year from a big D.C. law firm — and he's not a lawyer.  He had been getting another million a year (plus the limousine and chauffeur that became the flashpoint of his tax evasion) for unspecified services to an investment firm.  Why were these companies paying Daschle so much money?  Because he was an elitist in good standing and would use his influence to their benefit.

Hillary Clinton

Political Climate:  Incoming Secretary of State Hillary Clinton tells the Senate that global warming "threatens our very existence" and she'll shape a foreign policy to fight it.  Pardon us, but remember Iran and the nukes?

Hillary for Secretary of State — Is Obama Kidding?  Obama would do well to remember the history of Harry Truman and Jimmy Byrnes in 1944. ... If Obama nominates Hillary, he will put himself in the same position as Truman was with Byrnes, and the results will be just as predictable.

Hillary Clinton would face tough questions about Bill's finances.  The President-Elect has reportedly sounded out his former bitter rival to be the international face for his new administration — just months after she mocked his foreign policy inexperience and criticised his plans to talk to America's enemies.  But the ex-First Lady would first have to go through a gruelling confirmation process on Capitol Hill at which, The Sunday Telegraph has learned, Republican senators will raise her husband's secrecy-shrouded business deals and fund-raising for his glitzy presidential library and foundation.

No drama?  With Hillary aboard?  Forget it.  When the man they call No Drama Obama met the Clinton Psychodrama in the Democratic primary campaign, it was bound to produce an epic for the ages.  The iron self-discipline of the long-shot pretender proved just enough in the end to overcome the front-runner whose strengths were undermined by the self-indulgent incontinence characteristic of the Clinton political machine.

Hillary's Big Ethics Problem:  Bill.  What guidelines should govern Bill Clinton's future activities if Hillary becomes Secretary of State?  Recent events suggest that at least two are necessary:  no more favors for human rights violators in exchange for big contributions to the Clinton Foundation; and no more lying to the news media about such deals.  It's worth remembering the nearly-forgotten story we could call "Bill Clinton and the Kazakh uranium."

"Complications" = "baggage"
Clinton's Sec. of State Chances Improving.  Clinton would give the Obama administration someone who is already a familiar face to many foreign heads of state, as well as to foreign populations around the world, who know her and her husband from the Clinton presidency.  Her appointment, however, would also come with complications stemming from Bill Clinton's constant world travels and fundraising among foreigners for his presidential library and William J. Clinton Foundation.

Hillary Clinton to State?  Bill Clinton has been busy touting his wife for the post of secretary of state, which should remind President-elect Barack Obama's transition team of the need to examine Mr. Clinton's paid speechmaking in connection with his wife's future responsibilities at State.  Mr. Clinton earned more than $10 million in speaking fees in 2007, some of it for speeches abroad.

Rubber-Stamp Approval Slips Over Hil's Chasms of Conflicts.  "The (William J.) Clinton Foundation exists as a temptation for any foreign entity or government that believes it could curry favor through a donation," cautioned Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana.  "It also sets up potential perception problems with any action taken by the secretary of state in relation to foreign givers or their countries...."  Therefore, he concluded, in a sharp reversal of his own logic, "I believe that every member of this committee will seek ways to support Senator Clinton's work as secretary of state."  Huh?

Senate Confirms Clinton as Next Secretary of State.  Hillary Clinton was confirmed by the U.S. Senate as the next secretary of state Wednesday [1/21/2009], after questions about her husband's foundation sidetracked her nomination for a day.

Hillary and the Emoluments Clause, Part II.  Generally speaking, the emoluments argument goes like this:  when the compensation for a certain cabinet position increases, all members of the Congress in office during the time of the increase shall be disqualified from later holding that position.  According to several academics, the Emoluments Clause is in play because the Secretary of State got a cost-of-living adjustment in January of this year, at which time Hillary Clinton was a senator from New York.

Another day, another scandal from Team Obama.  From pocketing $100,000 for a cattle futures trade made in her name by a lobbyist, to White water, to Filegate, to Travelgate, to Monicagate, to the Mark Rich pardon, to Norman Hsu, to hubby investing overseas, to hubby collecting $50 million in speeches, to hubby pocketing money from the Saudis... (Have I left anything out?  Probably.)  Mrs. Clinton is the most corrupt official ever appointed to a Cabinet post.

Hillary and the Peter Principle:  Hillary, remember, had gone oh-for-February and under the rules of the Democratic Party it was not likely she would be able to overtake Barack by the end of the primary season, but she refused to get out.  It is now clear to me — although I have absolutely no reason to know this to be true — that Hillary agreed not to blow up the Democratic convention in Denver if she became Secretary of State.  Which she is.  And she is dreadful at it.

Arne Duncan

Public Schools Change Young Evangelicals' Values.  Barack Obama's selection for secretary of education is his crony Arne Duncan, who most recently made news by recommending the creation of a Chicago Social Justice High School-Pride Campus, where half the students would be homosexuals and the other half straight.  Somehow that school was canceled just about the time that Obama announced Duncan's appointment.

Schools Led by Obama's Education Secretary Designee Failed NCLB Standard.  The Chicago Public Schools, whose superintendent, Arne Duncan, has been tapped by President-elect Barack Obama to be the next education secretary, failed to meet the Illinois state standards set under the No Child Left Behind Act for the last five years.

U.S. Education Secretary Signs Partnership with Chinese Communists.  U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan has signed a formal educational partnership agrement with the Peoples Republic of China, a Communist regime that, according to the U.S. State Department, subjects political dissidents to re-education through labor.  Duncan signed the 2009 Joint Statement of Exchange and Cooperation with the Chinese Minister of Education Zhou Ji on April 16.

Chicago schools report contradicts Obama and Duncan.  New research from a Chicago civic group takes direct aim at the city's "abysmal" public high school performance — and puts a new spin on the academic gains made during the seven years that Arne Duncan led the Chicago schools before he was named U.S. Education secretary.

Arne Duncan's list and the Chicago Way.  When U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan ran the Chicago Public Schools for the boss of Chicago, he kept a secret list of those who hoped to clout children into the city's top-tier public schools.  "We didn't want to advertise what we were doing because we didn't want a bunch of people calling," CPS official David Pickens admitted to Tribune reporters Azam Ahmed and Stephanie Banchero, who broke the story.  So the schools kept a clout list.  But they didn't want nobody nobody sent hassling them with calls.

Arne's List:  A World Of Privilege.  Education Secretary Arne Duncan taught us Orwell this week, showing how some are more equal than others with his VIP list for admission to Chicago's best schools.  Unfortunately, it doesn't stop there.  Duncan, hailed as a miracle-working reformer in the Chicago school system he once led, didn't quite persuade that city's well-connected elites of the value of his reforms, given the number who sought placement in the district's better schools.

Education Secretary Advises School Districts on Homosexual Clubs for Students.  Education Secretary Arne Duncan issued a "Dear Colleagues" letter on June 14 advising federally funded schools about establishing clubs on campuses, specifically Gay-Straight Alliance clubs for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students.  The letter was issued from the department's Office of Civil Rights for elementary and secondary schools and was sent to all school districts in the United States, according to Jo Ann Webb, spokesperson for the Department of Education (DOE).

Leon Panetta

An Awful Pick.  Would you ask your accountant to perform brain surgery on your child?  That's the closest analogy I can find to the choice of Democratic Party hack Leon Panetta to head the CIA.

Amateur Hour at the CIA.  Barack Obama and his team of Cabinet-vetters and political balancers were doing so well there for a while. ... Then came the announcement of Barack Obama's choice as head of the Central Intelligence Agency — no minor appointment when the country is involved in two wars (Iraq and Afghanistan) and a third, over-arching War on Terror.

Obama Is Under Fire Over Panetta Selection.  On Capitol Hill, Democrats on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence were still stewing over Obama not consulting them on the choice before it was leaked Monday and continued to question Panetta's intelligence experience.

Can A Politician Fix The CIA?  Does it make sense for a political operator such as Leon Panetta to head the CIA?  Maybe.  The flawed agency has a checkered history, and has had repeated run-ins with presidents of both parties.

Panetta Chosen as C.I.A. Chief in Surprise Step.  Leon E. Panetta, a former congressman and White House chief of staff, has been selected by President-elect Barack Obama to head the Central Intelligence Agency.  The choice, disclosed Monday by Democratic officials, immediately revealed divisions in the party as two senior lawmakers questioned why Mr. Obama would nominate a candidate with limited experience in intelligence matters.

Will Leon Panetta be the next body under Obama's bus?  Apparently, his reports to ethics officials indicate the onetime congressman who hung around Washington anyway is now worth nearly $4 million, which makes hanging around Washington seem a worthy pastime for washed-up pols.  Last year Panetta took in about $1.2 million in investments, consulting and speaking fees, plus other income from corporate boards like BP and banks that have now failed or taken bailout money like Wachovia.  Let's all do that.

CIA Nominee Panetta Received $700,000 in Fees.  The White House's nominee for Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Leon Panetta, has earned more than $700,000 in speaking and consulting fees since the beginning of 2008, with some of the payments coming from troubled financial firms and from a firm that invests in contractors for federal national security agencies, according to financial disclosures released Wednesday.

What on Earth Was Leon Panetta Doing Palling Around With a Spy-Linked Communist?  President Obama's nominee for Secretary of Defense had a previously undisclosed friendship with Communist Party USA figure Hugh DeLacy, according to a new report.  The nominee, Leon Panetta, is currently director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).  He previously served in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Obama's CIA Director Linked to Spies Through Communist Party Figure.  New research from writers and researchers Trevor Loudon and Cliff Kincaid shows that Leon Panetta, the CIA director being considered on Thursday [6/9/2011] for the position of Secretary of Defense, had a previously undisclosed personal and friendly relationship with Hugh DeLacy, a prominent member of the Communist Party USA.  DeLacy visited such countries as China and Nicaragua and was himself a personal contact of identified Soviet spies Solomon Adler and Frank Coe and accused spy John Stewart Service.  Panetta spoke at DeLacy's memorial service, directed a series of letters to him personally as "Dear Hugh," and placed a tribute to him in the Congressional Record.

Is the Panetta Scandal the Next Alger Hiss Case?  Researchers Trevor Loudon and Cliff Kincaid are warning the Senate to examine CIA Director Leon Panetta's anti-defense record, associations with identified communists, and support for the Marxist Institute for Policy Studies before voting on his nomination as Secretary of Defense.

Panettagate: A Real Scandal Involving National Security.  Trevor Loudon and I have dug into the background of CIA director and Secretary of Defense nominee Leon Panetta.  It's too bad that we didn't have this material assembled before now, but better late than never.  The evidence shows that Panetta had a close and personal relationship with a member of the Communist Party by the name of Hugh DeLacy, whose record included meeting with communist espionage agents.  By any objective standard of journalism, this should be big news.  But the question now is whether the media, liberal and conservative, will take time off from Weinergate to pay attention and examine the evidence.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta

Obama Wants Journalist for Surgeon General.  President-elect Barack Obama has offered the job of surgeon general to Dr. Sanjay Gupta, the neurosurgeon and correspondent for CNN and CBS, according to two sources with knowledge of the situation.

CNN's Gupta:  A Surgeon General Who Backs an Obesity Tax?.  A look into the Business & Media Institute archives revealed that Gupta thinks iPods are potentially dangerous to "breathe," tax increases are okay for the sake of the war on obesity, and the federal food grant program WIC isn't large enough.

Sanjay Gupta Bows Out As Surgeon General Candidate.  Dr. Sanjay Gupta, a neurosurgeon and CNN's chief medical correspondent, has withdrawn his name from consideration as surgeon general of the United States, according to a new release from the cable news network.

Timothy Geithner

Secretary of Bailouts.  Barack Obama's widely leaked selection of Timothy Geithner as his Treasury Secretary is certainly a sign of the financial times:  About Mr. Geithner's views on taxes and economics, the world knows very little.  His specialty at the Clinton Treasury and as President of the New York Federal Reserve has been negotiating bailouts and otherwise navigating through financial panics.  His first and primary task, in other words, will be to serve as Secretary of Bailouts.

Geithner's apology makes it worse.  Treasury Secretary-designate Timothy Geithner apologized for his $34,000 tax mistake.  He said, "These were careless mistakes.  They were avoidable mistakes.  But they were unintentional.  I should have been more careful."  I take him at his word.  That's why he should not be confirmed as Treasury Secretary.

Geithner should not be Secretary of the Treasury.  The media rush to exonerate Timothy Geithner's failure to pay his self-employment tax as an "innocent mistake" (in Obama's words) ignores a crucial fact: even after he knew of his liability thanks to an IRS audit, he failed to pay taxes on years covered by the statute of limitations.  Additionally, his failure to pay in the first place flies in the face of the fact that his employer, the IMF, notified him regularly of his obligation, and even paid him half of the tax liability, in lieu of the employer's share, money which he kept for himself.

Geithner Accepted IMF Reimbursement for Taxes He Didn't Pay.  Although it has been dismissed by some observers as a "hiccup" in an otherwise smooth confirmation process, treasury secretary-designate Timothy Geithner's failure to pay self-employment taxes during the years he worked at the International Monetary Fund is causing some Republicans on Capitol Hill to ask serious questions about his actions.  First among those questions is why he accepted payment from the IMF as restitution for taxes that he had not, in fact, paid.

Is he incompetent or dishonest?  Or both?
Obama's Treasury pick faces delay as questions mount.  [Scroll down]  Geithner's confirmation still seems likely, but it isn't assured.  He's under fire for underpaying federal taxes from 2001 to 2004.  During most of that time, he was an employee of the International Monetary Fund.  When he was made aware of the error, he paid the Internal Revenue Service — an agency under the Treasury's jurisdiction — about $43,000 in back taxes and interest.  Blogs written by accountants were abuzz Wednesday [1/14/2009] over the revelation that Geithner prepared his own taxes at the time, a practice he's since stopped.

Too Taxing.  We're tempted to say America needs a Treasury secretary who is smart enough to figure out his own taxes.  But such a cheap shot would be beneath us.  Instead, we are going to make a serious point:  America needs a tax code simple enough for the Treasury secretary to figure out.

Schumer, Durbin and Barney Frank See No Problem with Treasury Nominee's Tax Problems.  House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.) told CNSNews.com that Treasury Secretary nominee Timothy Geithner is qualified to serve despite his failure to properly pay at least $34,000 in taxes.  Other members of Congress, including Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) agreed, but some Republicans questioned the nomination.

Geithner Can't Explain His Failure to Pay Taxes.  In the end, senators will be looking for any reason to explain why a man of [Timothy] Geithner's financial sophistication — he came to the IMF after a stint as a high-ranking official in the Treasury Department and left the IMF to become head of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York — could have made such mistakes on his taxes.  If he were confirmed as treasury secretary, Geithner would, among other things, oversee the IRS, something that makes his tax problem all the more relevant to his confirmation.

41% Say Geithner Should Not Be Treasury Secretary.  Voters are evenly divided over whether President Obama should scuttle his embattled choice for secretary of the Treasury.  Forty-one percent (41%) of U.S. voters say Geithner's failure to pay Social Security and Medicare taxes in 2001, 2002 and 2003 should prevent him from being Treasury secretary, while the identical number (41%) disagree.  Eighteen percent (18%) are not sure in a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey.

Obama's Economic Genius Can't Understand the Tax Code.  Geithner's confirmation by Congress was supposed to be a formality (and with this Congress, what Obama nominee wouldn't see it all as a formality?).  But a funny thing happened on the way to the Treasury Department:  it has come out that Geithner, who would be put in charge of "saving" our economy from economics and be head of the IRS among other things, can't do his own taxes.  He keeps making mistakes and the mistakes always seem to go one way — in his favor.

A Comedy of Tax Errors.  You would not be mistaken to think there was a bit of showbiz going on with Geithner's hearing yesterday.  Senators plan to confirm him, but they don't want to encourage tax cheats.  The solution:  3½ hours of ritual flagellation.

42 million Americans know better.  Treasury nominee Timothy Geithner is now blaming Turbo Tax for his failure to pay the self-employment tax he owed.  The excuse may work with Senators, but users of that, and other tax preparation programs, know better.

Liberal Media Anxious to Get Geithner Confirmed.  If Obama Treasury Secretary nominee Timothy Geithner is so smart, why was he so dumb in handling his own taxes?  Or perhaps he wasn't so dumb.  Perhaps he thought he could get away with not paying his taxes.  Either way, how is he fit to be Treasury Secretary, with jurisdiction over the IRS?

A Free Pass for the Indispensable Man.  One of the main talking points, particularly among left-wing bloggers, was that ["Joe the Plumber"] Wurzelbacher was a tax cheat because, it was revealed by ABC News, he had a tax lien of $1,182 for back Ohio state taxes.  This fueled the argument that he was a fraud, his opinion didn't matter.  Nothing to see here, folks.  Move along.  Fast-forward to today.  Timothy Geithner, President Obama's choice to be the next treasury secretary, quite clearly tried to defraud the government of tens of thousands in payroll taxes while working at the International Monetary Fund.

Geithner Accused of Lying About Tax Cheating.  In a major conflict of interest media scandal, General Electric's media properties, which include CNBC, NBC News and MSNBC, are indirectly benefitting from the Wall Street bailout through a federal loan guarantee of $139 billion extended to GE Capital, the lending arm of GE.  What's more, GE chairman Jeffrey Immelt is a member of the board of the New York Federal Reserve, headed by one Timothy Geithner.

The Big Money Behind Geithner.  A guy who can't figure out his own taxes is supposed to fix the economy?  This is the absurd rationale being offered by media figures such as Andrea Mitchell of NBC News for confirming Timothy Geithner as Obama's Treasury Secretary after it was disclosed that he was a serial tax evader.  He did his own taxes for a couple years and got into trouble, Mitchell chuckled.  And everybody can relate to that, right?

Top Ten Disturbing Aspects of Obama's Choice of Treasury Secretary.  Barack Obama's nomination of Timothy Geithner for Treasury Secretary, and the circumstances surrounding it, have raised many issues and questions — not only about the nominee himself, but also about senators and others reviewing it, the media's coverage, and ultimately his presumptive boss's leadership.

Who's better to take care of the horses than a reformed horse thief?  In one respect Timothy Geithner is just like most of us; he doesn't want to pay taxes and he will do all he can to send the government as little as possible; however that's where the similarity ends.  Timothy [Geithner] will likely be the next Secretary of the Treasury and will be in charge of the Internal Revenue Service and the rest of us will not.

Wall Street's Marxist Presidential Pawn.  There was big news out of the U.S. Senate on Monday evening but the major media were not paying much attention.  By approving exposed tax cheat Timothy Geithner as President Obama's Treasury Secretary, the Democratic Party was confirming and advertising itself as the party of Wall Street. ... Wall Street control of the Democratic Party may come as a surprise or shock to those who have been led to believe over the years by the liberal media that the Republican Party is the party of fat cats, rich people, and special interests.  But the vote count for Geithner, the President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, speaks for itself.

Geithner receives large severance sum.  Newly minted Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner's finances got a recent boost, thanks to a plump $435,000 severance payment from his old employer — the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.  In addition, Geithner last year earned $411,000 as president of the New York Fed and got another $50,000 to $100,000 for unused vacation and comp time, according to a mandatory financial disclosure statement released by the Office of Government Ethics.

Obama's Wounded Treasury Man.  Over a third of the Senate voted against Tim Geithner's confirmation as Treasury secretary, though he did pass the test by 60 to 34 early Monday evening [1/26/2009].  That is the closest post-WWII margin for a Treasury secretary.  According to Bloomberg, seven of the last 23 Treasury-secretary nominees — under which actual Senate roll-call votes were taken — were confirmed by an average vote margin of 95 to one.  (The others were confirmed without an official vote count.)

The 'Geithner: Boy Genius' myth exploded.  The Sydney Morning Herald has an absolutely devastating expose of Treasury Secretary Geithner as the former Australian Prime Minister during the Asian financial crisis of the 1990's relates how Geithner's actions destroyed the Indonesian economy — a feat thought impossible at the time.

Tim Geithner's Black Hole.  Pity Barack Obama's economic advisers.  The blogs are now demanding their scalps, and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and his colleagues face a nasty dilemma:  There are no solutions to the banking crisis without extraordinary political and financial risks.  Thus, they have adopted a three-pronged approach, delay, delay, delay, in the hope that somebody comes up with a breakthrough.

Tiny Tim.  The public detected a faintly rank odor produced by the act of installing a tax evader as head of the IRS, but a number of Republican senators judged Geithner's nomination the way Geithner had judged Bear Stearns:  too big to fail.  Perhaps that sentiment is less unanimous today than it was a few months ago, when he was confirmed, since Geithner's raggedy performance so far suggests anything but indepensability.

Secretary Loophole.  When Timothy Geithner worked at the International Monetary Fund, he managed a feat that probably very few Americans have even contemplated:  he got himself reimbursed by his employer for taxes he never paid. ... From his time at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to his turbulent four months so far at Treasury, Geithner has made a career out of seekingÑand usually findingÑways to do what most people thought the rules wouldn't allow.

Geithner's Radioactive Record at the Fed.  Last week, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner admitted the Fed failed miserably during his tenure as New York Fed president, and contributed mightily to the financial calamity the world is digging out from under.

Judicial Watch Announces List of Washington's "Ten Most Wanted Corrupt Politicians" for 2009.  [Including] Secretary of Treasury Timothy Geithner:  In 2009, Obama Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner admitted that he failed to pay $34,000 in Social Security and Medicare taxes from 2001-2004 on his lucrative salary at the International Monetary Fund (IMF), an organization with 185 member countries that oversees the global financial system.  (Did we mention Geithner now runs the IRS?)  It wasn't until President Obama tapped Geithner to head the Treasury Department that he paid back most of the money, although the IRS kindly waived the hefty penalties.

Secretary Geithner's Got Some Explaining to Do.  Just about everyone has had something to say about [the AIG] bailout — mostly that it was an ugly but necessary step to stave off a domino effect that would have brought the world's financial system to its knees.  But what we have not yet heard is just how Treasury Secretary Geithner, as then-head of the NY FED, got away with taking ownership of 77.9% of AIG's equity and voting rights in clear violation of the law.

Carter Country.  Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner says the world can no longer depend on the U.S. to drive the global economy.  Yes, that's the demoralizing sound of the White House spreading more malaise.

Does Barack Obama Have a Learning Disability?  [Scroll down]  Timothy F. Geithner is Secretary of the Treasury. Geithner is a person who demonstrated an inability to properly do his own taxes even with the help of a mass-market consumer tax preparation software package used by people without a financial background.  It would be expected that a person nominated for Treasury Secretary would be able to figure out how to do taxes, unless [a learning disability] was present.

Fire Geithner before he kills the economy.  If a corporate financial officer in the private sector had overseen the wasteful spending of hundreds of billions of borrowed dollars without producing anything to show for it, he would be summarily fired.  But corporate performance standards don't apply to President Obama's Treasury secretary, Tim Geithner.  He was a guiding hand on the government boondoggles and bailouts that have enraged taxpayers since 2008.

Geithner Cornered On Tax Hypocrisy.  Either Tim Geithner has elephant-sized chutzpah or he's completely clueless. ... Geithner himself doesn't have the moral authority to push tax hikes on anyone.  He's a tax cheat.  Recall that before his confirmation hearings to head the Treasury Department, Geithner paid $42,702 in back taxes and interest for the years 2001 through 2004.  He blamed this "error" on TurboTax.

Tim's secret war.  The Treasury Secretary is at war, and it's a war he is determined to win and which the US consumer may be a casualty.  It's not about hearts and minds, it's about dollars and cents.  Geithner's enemy isn't Larry Summers or Peter Orzag — they were quickly vanquished this summer.  No, the Treasury secretary is battling the US dollar.

Treasury Secretary Geithner downgrades his own credibility to junk.  FOX Business reporter Peter Barnes began his televised interview with Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner two days ago with this question:  "Is there a risk that the United States could lose its AAA credit rating?  Yes or no?"  Geithner's response:  "No risk of that."  "No risk?" Barnes asked.  "No risk," Geithner said.

How Big Gov't Strangles The Job Creators.  Some factions just won't accept shrinking the size of government.  Most in them run in the same tight circles as [Timothy] Geithner.  Never hearing anything other than support for increasing the size of government, they assume that's what Americans want.  But quite a few Americans have been wanting to cut government for decades, and that number is growing as the almost intractable problems created by overspending have become more obvious.

Debt Increased More Under Geithner Than Under Any Treasury Secretary.  Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner oversaw the largest increase in the national debt of any Treasury secretary in American history, presiding over a $3.7 trillion increase in the debt.  According to data from the Treasury Department's Bureau of the Public Debt, the national debt has increased $3,723,575,990,130.10 from Jan. 26, 2009 until June 30, 2011, Geithner's entire tenure to date as Treasury secretary.

He rescued us?  On Sunday [7/10/2011], on Meet the Press, Treasury Secretary Geithner said "The Amercian economy was falling off the cliff in the Fall of 08 and the first months of [President Obama's] Administration and he put in place the most creative, the most forceful set of economic measures we have ever done as country, and because of that we prevented a second Great Depression ...." If you haven't seen this performance, you should — the forcefulness and conviction with which the Secretary delivered these lines is impressive.  There's something I don't understand.  Why didn't David Gregory, the host of MTP, laugh in Geithner's face?

Facts? We Don't Need No Stinkin' Facts.  [Scroll down]  Here's two ideas, Mr. president: one, give up the ghost on your tedious and ultimately destructive allegiance to re-distributionist Marxism, masquerading itself as Keynesian stimulus.  It hasn't "created or saved" anything other than government budgets and public sector unions.  Those priorities demonstrate beyond a shadow of a doubt that getting re-elected, rather than fixing the economy, is your first priority.  Second, show Tim Geithner the door.  His credibility, highlighted by his assurance in April that the U.S. would never get a ratings downgrade, is completely gone.  He should be completely gone as well.

The AA+ Presidency.  A few months ago, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner predicted with unshakable confidence that there was "no risk" of a downgrade of U.S. debt.  In fact, he argued, "things are better than they've been if you want to think about the prospects for improving our long-term fiscal position."  In his self-assured cluelessness, Geithner reflected the president he serves.

When You Open That Refrigerator Door The Lights Don't Come On'
Rep. Allen West On Tim Geithner.  Upon hearing the news that Geithner plans on sticking around in the role of Treasury Secretary throughout the rest of Obama's term, [Allen] West provided a blunt assessment of Geithner's job performance.

Nancy Killefer

With Daschle's withdrawal, can Obama repair image as 'change' agent?  Tom Daschle, nominated to serve as secretary of Health and Human Services and as White House health reform "czar," succumbed to a growing firestorm over his admission that he owed more than $128,000 in delinquent taxes for the use of a private car and driver provided by a wealthy businessman and political activist.  Just hours earlier, Nancy Killefer, Mr. Obama's appointee for a new position — chief White House performance officer — announced she was stepping down, acknowledging a failure to pay employment taxes on household help for 1½ years.

Time for Tim Geithner to Step Down, Too.  Now that Tom Daschle has withdrawn his nomination for health secretary because of his failure to pay taxes, and Nancy Killefer, who was appointed chief performance officer and deputy OMB director, has also withdrawn because of non-payment of taxes, it is time for Treasury secretary Timothy Geithner to do exactly the same.

Tax issues force Nancy Killefer to bow out.  Tax troubles have tripped up another Obama administration official.  Nancy Killefer withdrew from consideration to be the federal government's chief performance officer — a new position — because of her past failure to pay unemployment taxes for household help at her D.C. home.

Janet Napolitano

Napolitano is no stranger to Washington scandals.  President-elect Barack Obama's likely pick for Homeland Security secretary, Janet Napolitano, is no stranger to headline-making Washington scandals and controversies.  Napolitano was a Clinton-appointed U.S. attorney in Phoenix when the Justice Department decided against prosecuting Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain's wife, Cindy, for the theft of prescription drugs from her medical charity.

Janet Napolitano's sleaze campaign against Clarence Thomas.  Wonder why, in a survey reported by the Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism, only 28 percent said they "believed all or most" of what they see on CNN?  CNN's Campbell Brown took three minutes of prime evening news time the other night to berate Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell for remarks, unwittingly made next to a live microphone, that in Brown's view were sexist.  Speaking, in what he thought was a private conversation, Rendell called the selection of Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano to head the Department of Homeland Security perfect "Because for that job, you have to have no life.  Janet has no family.  Perfect.  She can devote 19, 20 hours a day to it."

Ideology versus Competence:  Janet Napolitano.  [Scroll down]  You see, Janet is an ideologue.  She is the kind of person who will pursue ideological goals without regard for truth, a person who can be expected to reinvent reality to fit the ideological vision of the administration, which she does with abandon.  She is the perfect Obama Administration appointee.

Conservative reps. want Napolitano out.  House Republicans are calling on Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to step down or be fired in the wake of a controversial department memo that has sparked indignant battle cries from conservatives and some veterans.  "Singling out political opponents for working against the ruling party is precisely the tactic of every tyrannical government from Red China to Venezuela," said Texas Rep. John Carter, a member of the party's elected leadership who has organized an hour of floor speeches Wednesday night [4/22/2009] to call for Napolitano's ouster.

Napolitano's Warped Vision for America: Up With Illegal Aliens, Down With Vets!  How in the world did this great nation deteriorate so rapidly and so profoundly?  What insanity inspired We the People to install a leftist regime that would, in less than 100 days, declare war on veterans, opponents of illegal immigration, abortion, higher taxes and spending, and other "right wing extremists," while deciding that those who enter the U.S. illegally are NOT committing a crime?  Why would any president with even minimal concern for the security of American citizens appoint someone like Janet Napolitano to head the Department of Homeland Security Secretary?

Shake-up needed at Homeland Security.  Janet Napolitano has to go.  President Barack Obama's Secretary of Homeland Security, who had no experience for the job when she was appointed by the president last year, is in way over her head as director of the vast agency that controls everything from natural-disaster response, counterterrorism, immigration and customs to the U.S. Coast Guard and the Secret Service.

House Democrats Scold No-Show Homeland Security Secretary.  Top Democrats on the House Homeland Security Committee publicly scolded Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano for failing to show up at a Wednesday hearing where the committee examined the attempted Christmas Day suicide bombing of Northwest Flight 253. ... That evening, Napolitiano did prominently show up at the Capitol to attend President Barack Obama's State of the Union address.

Lack of Intelligence.  On January 27, the secretary of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, was roundly criticized at a meeting of the House Homeland Security Committee.  She had ducked the hearing, which was about the Christmas Day terrorist attack, and lawmakers were animated.  The surprise was that it was Democrats doing most of the attacking.

Janet Napolitano Lied, Rob Krentz Died.  Rancher Rob Krentz spent his life working on his 35,000-acre cattle ranch by the border with Mexico in Cochise County, Ariz.  His family had owned the ranch since 1907.  He died there last weekend, he and his dog shot by an illegal alien that he was trying to help.  The Arizona Cattle Growers' Association immediately posted a $15,000 reward.  The Monday before Rob Krentz was killed, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano, a former Arizona governor, made a speech claiming "significant progress" in controlling violence along the border.  It was a lie.

Abortion Lobby Dedicates Its Annual Report to DHS Secretary Napolitano.  NARAL Pro-Choice America, a pro-abortion advocacy group, has dedicated its annual report on "the status of reproductive rights in America" to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano for "her courage, principled stance, and commitment" to legalized abortion in America.  The report was released on Friday [1/14/2011].

Napolitano: No "Logic" In Profiling Muslim Men Under The Age Of 35.  "You're not using good logic there.  You've got to use actual intelligence that you received.  And, so, you might — all you've given me is a kind of status.  You have not given me a technique for tactic or behavior.  Something that would suggest somebody is not Muslim, but Islamic, that has actually moved into the category of violent extremists," Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said at a forum on U.S. security and preventing terrorist attacks.

Janet Napolitano Still Giving Non-Answers on Operation Fast and Furious.  Earlier today [10/26/2011] House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa grilled Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano on Capitol Hill about Operation Fast and Furious.  Not surprisingly, Napolitano still gave non-answers to specific questions asked by Issa about the lethal program, what she knew, when she knew it, if she was outraged about the program and more.

Napolitano queried on lack of Fast and Furious probe.  Congressional Republicans are trying to expand the scope of questions over the disastrous ATF gun-sting operation "Fast and Furious" to Homeland Security Secretary Janet A. Napolitano, asking her why she never investigated even after suspected guns showed up at the scene of a dead U.S. Border Patrol agent.

Napolitano Grilled Over 'Fast and Furious,' Likens Hearing to Cross Examination.  Napolitano, at one point likening the questioning to a cross-examination, said repeatedly she only learned of "Fast and Furious" after Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was killed in December.  She emphasized the operation, conceived and run by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, "was an ATF operation," under the auspices of the Justice Department, not her department. ... Napolitano said she has never spoken with Attorney General Eric Holder about "Fast and Furious," a revelation Republicans strongly criticized.

More about the Fast and Furious scandal.

Congresswoman takes on Napolitano.  Florida Republican Rep. Sandy Adams wants answers from Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.  Adams says she is not following existing law, which requires the federal government to cut off visas from countries that refuse to re-admit their citizens who have committed crimes while residing in the U.S. illegally.  If these countries refuse to take the criminal illegal immigrants back after a six-month "detention period," the U.S government releases them back into U.S. communities.

Hilda Solis

Labor Dept. Targets the Family Farm.  Yes, sometimes the work is dangerous and accidents do happen.  They can be serious, even fatal.  But the rewards of the culture of the family farm have long been believed to far outweigh the risks, and government historically left parenting and farm family life alone.  That's about to change.  The Obama Administration is proposing to use the force of federal law to usurp the judgment of farm parents and replace it with government regulations.  Led by big labor, union advocate Hilda Solis, Secretary of Labor, the Administration is proposing a sweeping set of new rules ... Solis believes that some farm work is "too hazardous for children to be engaged in."  How she knows this is anyone's guess since she apparently has never lived or worked on a farm, nor do we find any evidence that she has children of her own.

Hearings and Evasions.  You might think a confirmation hearing for, say, the labor secretary would elicit her views on, say, labor issues.  Not, it seems, in the case of Barack Obama's nominee, California Democratic Rep. Hilda Solis. ... The new transparency, it seems, has its limits.

The Nominee Who Lobbied Herself.  A seemingly innocuous letter sent to the Clerk of the House of Representatives last Thursday by President Obama's Secretary of Labor nominee Hilda Solis raises serious and troubling legal questions about her nomination and apparent violation of House ethics rules.  Not only was she involved with a private organization that was lobbying her fellow legislators on a bill that she has cosponsored, but she apparently kept her involvement secret and failed to reveal a clear conflict of interest.

Solis Senate Session Postponed in Wake of Husband's Tax Lien Revelations.  A Senate committee today abruptly canceled a session to consider President Obama's nomination of Rep. Hilda Solis to be labor secretary in the wake of a report saying that her husband yesterday paid about $6,400 to settle tax liens against his business — including liens that had been outstanding for as long as 16 years.

Husband of Rep. Solis, Labor nominee, settles tax liens.  The confirmation of another Cabinet member stalled Thursday because of unpaid taxes after USA TODAY disclosed that the husband of Labor secretary nominee Hilda Solis paid about $6,400 this week to settle numerous tax liens against his business dating to 1993.  Solis and her husband, Sam Sayyad, were unaware of liens against his auto repair shop until USA TODAY asked about them Tuesday, White House spokesman Tommy Vietor said Thursday.

The Editor says...
Does anyone else find it hard to believe that Mr. Solis didn't know about those tax liens?

Solis Senate Session Postponed in Wake of Husband's Tax Lien Revelations.  A Senate committee today abruptly canceled a session to consider President Obama's nomination of Rep. Hilda Solis to be labor secretary in the wake of a report saying that her husband yesterday paid about $6,400 to settle tax liens against his business — including liens that had been outstanding for as long as 16 years.

Obama Needs To Fire Someone.  The first revelations were Tim Geithner and Bill Richardson.  Now Daschle and Killifer are gone because of unpaid taxes.  Next Hilda Solis comes along letting us know she was not only pimping for a labor group against Congressional rules, but her husband had tax liens for 16 years.  She wants us to believe that she has no knowledge of the tax matter.  It is possible that her husband did not know that she was in the California Legislature or a member of Congress, but now realizes that he should do the right thing and be a model citizen.  It certainly possible he hid it from her until Obama came calling and he had a "Honey, we need to talk" conversation.  However that scenario seems a little farfetched to me.

Senate confirms Solis as labor secretary.  California Rep. Hilda Solis won confirmation Tuesday as President Barack Obama's labor secretary, giving the agency a decidedly pro-worker tilt after years of business-friendly leadership under the Bush administration.

Communist Groups Support Card Check.  The appointment of Hilda Solis as Labor Secretary was noted with accolades on the Web site of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA). ... The CPUSA has also been a longtime supporter for the Employee Free Choice Act — also known as card check.

Obama's labor secretary lets union officials off transparency hook.  Never mind about those revised union financial disclosure requirements President Obama inherited from his predecessor.  Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis now says she won't make union officials comply.

Obama Administration Not Enforcing Union Reporting Laws.  Are you a union member trying to find out information of the criminal actions and shady financial dealings of your union?  Well don't expect Obama and his toady in the Labor Secretary's office, Hilda Solis, to help you uncover any illegalities perpetrated by your union bosses.

The U.S. Department of Illegal Alien Labor.  President Obama's Labor Secretary Hilda Solis is supposed to represent American workers.  What you need to know is that this longtime open-borders sympathizer has always had a rather radical definition of "American."  At a Latino voter registration project conference in Los Angeles many years ago, Solis asserted to thunderous applause, "We are all Americans, whether you are legalized or not."

Amid Wisconsin battle, Labor Secy joins union planning call.  Labor Secretary Hilda Solis took part in a Communications Workers of America conference call Wednesday night [3/2/2011] in which she expressed her strong support for unions fighting Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's proposed budget.  "Let's keep fighting," Solis told CWA president Larry Cohen and thousands of CWA shop stewards listening to the call.

It's time for Labor Secretary Solis to go.  Thanks to his dogged insistence on prosecuting 9/11 conspirators in civilian courts and his refusal to prosecute the Philadelphia New Black Panther case, Attorney General Eric Holder has long appeared to us as President Obama's worst Cabinet appointment.  But based on her wholly inappropriate remarks at a recent Democratic National Committee gathering, Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis is running a close second.

An unratified treaty is now called a partnership.
Labor Dept. Signs 'Partnerships' with Foreign Gov's to Protect Illegal Workers in U.S..  U.S. Labor Secretary Hilda Solis today [8/29/2011] signed "partnership" agreements with ambassadors from a group of Latin American nations aiming to protect what she described as the labor rights of both legal and illegal migrants working in the United States.

Obama Labor Boss Buys Canadian-Built Car.  To show her support for American workers, President Obama's labor secretary, Hilda Solis, has junked the standard black limo and purchased a new Chevrolet Equinox to ride around Washington in.  The problem:  the crossover SUV is built and assembled in Canada from parts also made in Canada.

Beware: Obama's executive fiat.  On Friday, it was announced zero net jobs were created nationwide in the whole month of August.  Labor Secretary Hilda Solis stammered, "I do believe that we're going in the right direction, but we need cooperation and it begins with members of the House and the Senate agreeing to do something now."  Going in the right direction?  It's a perfect admission of the cluelessness of this White House that the head of the Labor Department thinks zero new jobs and a permanent unemployment rate above 9 percent mean the country is headed the right way.

Boosting only illegal labor.  The Labor Department is now zealously protecting the workplace rights of illegal aliens even as it shuts down avenues for people to come to America and work legally.  You see, Labor Secretary Hilda Solis has to serve both the liberals' ideological fixation on illegals and labor unions' hostility to any competition.

A Labor Chief As Clueless As The President.  It appears that Labor Secretary [Hilda] Solis had no interest in looking at how a state with 8% of the nation's population had created nearly half of the nation's new jobs over the past 10 years.

Obama officials play defense during 'green jobs' hearing.  U.S. Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis admitted Thursday morning [9/22/2011] during a congressional hearing that she and the Obama administration believe driving a bus that happens to run on "clean energy" should count as a "green job."

The Question Hilda Solis Won't Answer.  I followed along on a short tour that Catholic University gave on Tuesday [10/4/2011] to Hilda Solis, President Barack Obama's Catholic secretary of labor, who has spent much of her political career zealously advocating legalized abortion.  When Solis served in the U.S. House in 2003, she voted against the partial-birth abortion ban.  The day President Bush signed it, she called for the Supreme Court to reverse it.  "I would just like to say it's the wrong decision that the president is making today," Solis said, "and we have to stand up and challenge him."  On the 31st anniversary of Roe v. Wade in 2004, Solis celebrated three decades of abortion on demand.

Rahm Emanuel

Beg Your Pardongate.  [Alejandro] Mayorkas highlights the challenge the Obama campaign is having in bringing in experienced hands to the transition and administration.  "We either have Clinton holdovers or folks from the campaign, but honestly, a lot of the people from the campaign aren't the types you want being the face of the new administration right now," says the outside adviser to the campaign.  "The people coming to me looking for jobs aren't people I'd hire to work in the White House or at a senior level for a cabinet office.  I don't know that they could pass a basic security clearance, let alone a full national security vetting.  So that's why you're seeing all these Clinton re-treads.  That, and these are folks who have been waiting eight years to get back in."

Rahm Emanuel:  A profile of Barack Obama's enforcer.  Rahm Emanuel, who has been chosen by Barack Obama to be the White House chief of staff, is known by colleagues as "Rahmbo" -- a nickname reflecting his reputation as one of the most ferociously combative figures in Washington.

Emanuel Was Director Of Freddie Mac During Scandal.  President-elect Barack Obama's newly appointed chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, served on the board of directors of the federal mortgage firm Freddie Mac at a time when scandal was brewing at the troubled agency and the board failed to spot "red flags," according to government reports reviewed by ABCNews.com.

Obama's Chief of Staff Pick Took Campaign Contributions from Wall Street.  President-elect Barack Obama's choice for White House chief of staff is one of the biggest recipients of Wall Street money in Congress, according to a Washington, D.C.-based "money-in-politics" watchdog group.  The Center for Responsive Politics has issued a report highlighting millions of dollars in campaign contributions that Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.) has raised from individuals working in the hedge fund industry, private equity firms, and large investment firms.

Emanuel Will be Wall Street's Man in the Obama White House.  Sixteen years ago, when Bill Clinton was moving into the White House, good-government liberals were disheartened that the President-elect named his campaign's top fundraiser, Rahm Emanuel, as White House political director.  They read this as a sign that cash would be king in the Clinton Administration.  They were right.  Four elections later, after getting rich in a brief stint in finance, Emanuel is the favorite congressman of Wall Street, measuring by campaign contributions.

Rahm Emanuel's Dope Basement Pad Haunted by Ethics, Tax Issues, Possibly Furnace Monster.  Big Democrats just can't seem to get right with Big Government, lately.  Tim Geithner "mistakenly" avoided more than $40,000 in taxes.  Nancy Killefer withdrew her nomination over word that she failed to pay employment taxes for household help.  Tom Daschle "honestly" overlooked more than $100,000 for a car service donated to him by a lobbying company.  Hilda Solis, Obama's Labor Secretary nominee, faces questions over her husband's failure to pay thousands in tax bills, some of them 16 years old.  Now, it turns out, skull-cracker Rahm Emanuel himself has been crashing in a colleague's basement for five years for free and, you guessed it, not paying taxes on the abode.

Rahm Emanuel and the Classless Society.  Several of my friends voted for Obama on the premise that he would, when elected, govern from the center and not the far Left.  Their anger with Bush and the Republicans drove them to a willing suspension of critical thinking.  His selection of Emanuel as Chief of Staff is one early signal that their critical thinking yielded to wishful thinking.

Rahm's 'rent' Is Just The Tip Of Ethics Iceberg.  News broke last week that Rahm Emanuel, now White House chief of staff, lived rent-free for years in the home of Rep. Rosa De Lauro (D-Conn.) — and failed to disclose the gift, as congressional ethics rules mandate.  But this is only the tip of Emanuel's previously undislosed ethics problems.  One issue is the work Emanuel tossed the way of De Lauro's husband.  But the bigger one goes back to Emanuel's days on the board of now-bankrupt mortgage giant Freddie Mac.

Emanuel's story line is fishy.  White House Chief of Staff and partisan hit-man-in-chief Rahm Emanuel wouldn't know a real idea if was served up to him on a fish platter. ... Emanuel, a foul-mouthed would-be tough guy best known for having sent a decomposing 30-inch fish to a pollster he didn't like, clearly doesn't even want to pay attention — because conservatives have been pushing innovative ideas for just about every issue of national importance.

Let all of us run for mayor of Chicago!  On Sunday [10/3/2010], Rahm Emanuel declared his candidacy for mayor of Chicago.  Instantaneously, he had problems with his campaign, not the least of which is that he is as much a resident of Chicago as I am.  So on Monday, I declared my candidacy for mayor of Chicago.  Why not?

Shauna Daly

Obama's Very Dirty Pool.  In 2001, when President Bush's chief political strategist Karl Rove moved from the campaign into a senior position in the White House, the Left went mad:  how dare they "politicize" the White House, they yelled. ... And yet.  Nobody has said a word when Barack Obama's chief political strategist, David Axelrod, was brought into the White House in a senior position.  Nobody has said much when The Bama moved the U.S. Census from the Commerce Department to the White House, to be overseen by partisan attack terrier Rahm Emanuel. ... Nobody has said much when The Bama brought into the White House counsel's office a 29 year old campaign operative, Shauna Daly.

Political operative leaving White House.  A Democratic operative whose hiring a month ago by the White House legal office raised conservative hackles is leaving to go back to work at the Democratic National Committee.  Shauna Daly, 29, will be the DNC's research director, returning to the fast-paced realm of bare-knuckles politics that associates said suits her best.

To The Left.  Shauna Daly, who for about a month was ensconced in the White House Counsel's Office as research director there, didn't stay very long in that position.  It was announced late last week that Daly was leaving her White House post to become Research Director at the Democratic National Committee.  But DNC, White House, and Congressional Democrats say she was at counsel's office long enough. ... "She saw everything, and who knows what she was able to scan and pull out on data sticks," says a Senate Republican Judiciary Committee staffer.

Charles Freeman

How Long?  How long can the rest of the mainstream media hold out without reporting on an embarrassing debacle for the Obama administration?  This is the John Edwards story on steroids — a virtual conspiracy of silence with little if any journalistic justification.  And here the issue is really important — the appointment of a key intelligence official who is alleged to harbor serious conflicts of interest and extreme views.

Why the Cover Up Matters.  The mainstream media, with the exception of ABC's Jake Tapper, utterly ignored the Chas Freeman story.  A large number of mainstream outlets simply wouldn't report on it at all.  In doing so they not only missed a significant event — made more significant by Freeman's self-revelation as a ranting aranoid — but they missed a key insight into the administration's current travails.

Why Democrats Too Should Oppose the Freeman Appointment.  Do the Democrats really want someone like Freeman choosing what national security information to give to the President each morning, given Freeman's track record of being a shill for the Saudis and a man in the pocket of the Chinese government?

Chas And The ChiComs.  It seems the foreign conflicts of interest to the man President Obama wants to oversee his eyes-only intelligence are worse than first reported. ... Now we learn that, in addition to co-chairing the pro-China lobby's U.S. China Policy Foundation, he sits on the international advisory board of the Beijing-controlled China National Offshore Oil Corp.

Obama's National Intelligence Crackpot.  On Thursday, The Wall Street Journal published a letter from 17 U.S. ambassadors defending the appointment of Charles Freeman to chair the National Intelligence Council.  The same day, the leaders of the 1989 protests that led to the massacre at Beijing's Tiananmen Square wrote Barack Obama "to convey our intense dismay at your selection" of Mr. Freeman.  If moral weight could be measured on a zero to 100 scale, the signatories of the latter letter, some of whom spent years in Chinese jails, would probably find themselves in the upper 90s.

Another man down.  On Monday, Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair announced that Charles Freeman had withdrawn his name from consideration for the post of Chairman of the National Intelligence Council (NIC), ending weeks of acrimonious debate that had been triggered by Freeman's nomination.  But while Freeman has receded from the spotlight, his selection to a critical intelligence post — despite a deeply troubling political background — lingers as a dark cloud over the Obama administration.

More on Chas Freeman, Obama's Pick to Head the National Intelligence Council.  To give an idea of just how far off the rails the government has gone under the current leadership, here's more information on Chas Freeman, the bin Laden associate Chairman Zero deems fit to head the National Intelligence Council.  Here's what he had to say about the communist Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989...

Freeman Affair Reveals Problems For Obama and the Media.  The recent appointment and ultimate withdrawal of Chas Freeman to head the National Intelligence Council has exposed much that is wrong with President Barack Obama's first months in office, both in terms of policy and vetting, as well as the media coverage surrounding both.  Many of Obama's supporters said it was unfair to criticize Obama's associations with people like the unrepentant terrorist Bill Ayers and the anti-Semitic preacher of hate, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and called it guilt by association.  It is now becoming clearer why those sorts of associations matter.

Tony West

Obama Nominates S.F. Lawyer for Justice Post.  Tony West, a high-powered San Francisco lawyer whose clients have ranged from corporate giants to "American Taliban" John Walker Lindh, has been nominated by President Obama as an assistant attorney general in charge of the Justice Department's Civil Division.

Obama's Nominee to Justice Dept. Was a Terrorist's Lawyer.  On March 9, the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on one of Barack Obama's latest nominees.  This time it was to assess the suitability of Tony West, Obama's nominee for the assistant attorney general in charge of the U.S. Justice Department's Civil Division. ... Curiously enough, though, not one of these brief reports mention that Tony West was "American Taliban" terrorist John Walker Lindh's defense lawyer.  Another key bit of info left out of these announcements was that Tony West raised $65 million for Obama's presidential campaign.

David Hamilton

Moderate nominee?  Not according to some.  Christian Broadcasting Network's David Brody runs through the reasons why some conservative Christians likely aren't going to be pleased by President Obama's decision to nominate federal district Judge David Hamilton to fill a vacancy on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Seventh Circuit Nominee David Hamilton:  "Allah" Yes, "Jesus" No.  In 2005, in Hinrichs v. Bosma, federal district judge (and now Seventh Circuit nominee) David Hamilton enjoined the Speaker of Indiana's House of Representatives from permitting "sectarian" prayers to be offered as part of that body's official proceedings. ... One peculiar aspect of Hamilton's ruling is how he drew the line between "sectarian" and "non-sectarian" prayers.  On the one hand, Hamilton made clear that prayers that "use Christ's name or title" are sectarian.  On the other hand, he ruled (on a post-judgment motion) that it is presumptively not sectarian for a Muslim imam to offer a prayer to "Allah".

GOP Senators Boycott Hearing on Obama Judicial Nominee.  Most Republicans boycotted the hearing Wednesday [4/1/2009] for President Barack Obama's first judicial nominee, allowing Democrats to pitch softballs to David Hamilton in his quest for a seat on a Midwestern appeals court. ... Hamilton, a U.S. district judge from Indiana, has issued a number of controversial rulings in more than 1,100 opinions and nearly 15 years on the bench.  He struck down the use of sectarian prayer to open the Indiana legislature and also ruled against a state law that required a woman seeking abortion services to receive counseling from her doctor.

The President's Radical Court Pick.  President Obama has made a number of controversial appointments during his first 100 days in office, but perhaps none more so than activist judge and ACLU alumnus David Hamilton. ... The appointment serves as an early warning that Obama's judicial nominees, presented as "moderates," will be anything but.

Jesus, no, but yes to Allah.  Senate Democrats are proving once again that no judicial nominee is too extreme for them to stomach.  A move seems to be afoot to open debate on the Senate floor this week on the nomination of David Hamilton of Indiana to the 7th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals.  This judge is a radical's radical.

Another Radical Judge.  Yet another judicial nominee seeks to impose the "empathy" standard on the courts.  He thinks judges should base rulings on a plaintiff's status, legislate from the bench and amend the Constitution.  Indiana federal judge David Hamilton stands poised to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate to assume a seat on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals serving Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin.  He's a former fundraiser for Acorn and a former leader of the Indiana chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Former ACORN fund raiser gets Obama judicial nomination.  President Obama's first federal court nominee was Judge David Hamilton of Indiana. ... Among Hamilton's "qualifications" is the fact that he is a former fund raiser for ACORN.  That fact was conspicuously left out of the White House statement announcing Obama's nomination of the federal district judge for a position on the Seventh Circuit federal appeals court.

Now Obama wants to put an ACORN fund-raiser on the federal bench.  Hamilton ignored a felony conviction on a man's record when being prosecuted for his third felony drug crime to avoid imposing a life sentence, for which Hamilton was unanimously reversed on appeal.  Hamilton also struck down a law requiring convicted sex criminals from reporting information to police to track their whereabouts.  He also petitioned the White House for clemency for a police officer who produced child pornography.  He has also shown surprising hostility to people of Christian faith.  He ruled that any prayers uttered in the Indiana statehouse that invoke the name of Jesus Christ are unconstitutional and cannot be permitted.

Senate confirms controversial judge.  The Senate confirmed Judge David Hamilton to the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals 59-39 Thursday [11/19/2009] after breaking a GOP filibuster Tuesday and a five-and-a-half month delay.  Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), who represents Hamilton's home state of Indiana, cast the lone Republican vote for the judge.

Filibustering to Preserve the Constitution.  There is no question that [David] Hamilton, a former fundraiser for ACORN and board member of the ACLU, is a radical.  He has plainly said that judges have the right to amend the Constitution by writing "a series of footnotes to the Constitution."  Hamilton believes judges have the ability to make the law and has demonstrated his determination to implement his own views on social issues instead of following the precedents of the Supreme Court.  He was chastised by the Seventh Circuit for refusing for seven years to allow Indiana to implement an informed consent abortion law despite the Supreme Court's approval of such laws.  Even the ABA rated him as "not qualified" when he was first proposed for a federal district court judgeship.

Kathleen Sebelius

HHS Leader Sebelius Brings A Radical Abortion Record.  Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius is being reported as the front-runner as President Barack Obama's appointment for Health And Human Services Secretary.  Although Ms. Sebelius was touted by The New York Times as a bipartisan politician, she comes with a strong pro-abortion record.  Not only has Ms. Sebelius — governor in a battleground state on the abortion issue — repeatedly vetoed any measures that would limit or regulate abortion that came across her desk, she also has ties to an abortionist with a history of performing risky abortions in the third trimester of pregnancy.

Aspects of Sebelius' record apparently taboo.  A conservative media watchdog organization says the mainstream media is going out of its way to cover up the radical abortion record of Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius as she vies to become President Barack Obama's HHS secretary.  Dan Gainor is vice president for business and culture at the Culture and Media Institute (CMI).  He notes that during the 2001 confirmation hearings for Tommy Thompson to become George W. Bush's Health and Human Services secretary, CBS anchor Dan Rather reminded Evening News viewers of Thompson's "hardline anti-abortion stand."

Obama Nominates Pro-Abort Radical to Run America's Health and Human Services.  President Barack Obama campaigned on the noble promise of bringing the country together and uniting citizens around common goals.  Yet, with just two months in office under his belt, he has made some radical decisions.  The most prominent of his extreme choices are those surrounding the issue of abortion, personified by his recent selection of Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius to be Secretary of Health and Human Services.

D.C.-Area Bishops To Enforce Communion Ban On Sebelius.  Two Washington, D.C.-area Catholic bishops have instructed Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, D-Kan., President Barack Obama's pick to Be Secretary Of Health and Human Services, to refrain from receiving Holy Communion on account of her stances on human-life issues such as abortion and embryonic stem cell research.  This comes as Ms. Sebelius undergoes Senate confirmation hearings before the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions.

Honor Killing, American-Style.  In the Obama administration there can be no dissent from the view that abortion must be unrestricted, paid for, and with no shilly-shallying about parental notification, partial birth abortion, or other such measures that would actually reduce the frequency of abortion.  Certain appointments stand out.  For HHS, where abortion regulation resides, the president chose a Sadduccee of abortion purity, Kansas governor Kathleen Sebelius.  Despite her kindly mien, Sebelius is a strict constructionist of abortion rights.

More about Governor Sebelius and the abortion issue.

Another Obama Nominee Has Tax Issues.  Kathleen Sebelius, President Obama's nominee to become Health and Human Services secretary, said in a letter obtained by the Associated Press that she made "unintentional errors" on her taxes and has corrected her returns from three different years.  In the letter, which was sent to senators and dated today [3/31/2009], Sebelius wrote that she had made changes related to charitable contributions, business expenses and the sale of a home, according to the AP.

Sebelius admits errors, pays $7,000 in back taxes.  Health and Human Services nominee Kathleen Sebelius recently corrected three years of tax returns and paid more than $7,000 in back taxes after finding "unintentional errors" — the latest tax troubles for an Obama administration nominee. ... Sebelius said she filed the amended returns as soon as the errors were discovered by an accountant she hired to scrub her taxes in preparation for her confirmation hearings.

Obama's Toxic Assets:  It has happened again!  Another Obama appointee has admitted to tax problems.  Health and Human Services nominee Kathleen Sebelius has admitted to irregularities in her tax returns extending over the past three years. ... According to my calculations that makes five Obama nominees who have reported similar tax irregularities, none of which was discovered until they began making preparations for their confirmation hearings. ... Two other Obama Administration nominees withdrew from consideration when their tax problems were discovered.

Sebelius spared tough questions.  Here's one way to breeze through a confirmation hearing: Get it scheduled for the same day that the Senate votes in a marathon session on the budget resolution.  Health and Human Services nominee Kathleen Sebelius fielded less than two hours' worth of softballs tossed at her Thursday by members of the Finance Committee as they rotated through the hearing room between votes in the chamber.

Sebelius lowballed donations from abortion doctor.  President Barack Obama's health secretary nominee got nearly three times as much political money from a controversial abortion doctor as she told senators.  The Health and Human Services Department said Monday [4/13/2009] that the omission was an oversight that Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius would correct.

The Editor says...
Yeah, right.  Just like her tax problems were an oversight.  It's pretty hard to believe.

Sebelius-Tiller story 'always changing'.  More questions are being raised about financial issues surrounding HHS secretary-designate Kathleen Sebelius.  The Kansas governor is President Obama's pick for secretary of Health and Human Services.  During confirmation hearings she said she had received $12,450 from well-known late-term abortionist George Tiller and nothing from him in her run for governor.  Operation Rescue's Cheryl Sullinger offers her take on that story.  "We were able to uncover documentation that she, in fact, received at least $26,000 more than that —and possibly even more...," says Sullinger.  Sebelius then changed her statement to reflect the new amount.

Senators Urged to Vote 'Nay' On Sebelius Confirmation.  Media Research Center Founder and President Brent Bozell today [4/22/2009] — in his private capacity as concerned individual citizen — joined with a list of other conservative luminaries on a letter to the members of the United States Senate calling on them to vote down President Barack Obama's nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services — current Democratic Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius.

Murder, Inc.  Usually when a president picks a friend of a big but controversial industry to run a federal department that regulates that same industry, some eyebrows are raised.  The press wonders how independent the nominee could be.  Senators fret over the long financial relationship between the nominee and the controversial industry.  In time, the White House quietly withdraws the nomination and insiders chortle that the administration never should have made such a foolish nomination. ... So we are wondering why President Obama nominated Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius to be the next Secretary of Health and Human Services.

Sebelius Wins Senate Confirmation as Health Secretary Nominee.  Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius won Senate confirmation Tuesday [4/28/2009] as the nation's health and human services secretary, thrusting her into the middle of a public health emergency with the swine flu sickening dozens of Americans.  The 65-31 confirmation vote came after Democrats urged quick action so that Sebelius could get to work leading the federal response to the flu outbreak.

America's Most Powerful Woman:  [Kathleen] Sebelius was handed one of the biggest jobs in Washington when she left the Kansas governor's office to run HHS.  She oversees about 70,000 employees (full-time equivalents), manages a budget of about $860 billion (for 2010) and runs the largest health insurance programs in the world, Medicare and Medicaid.

Obama's Burden of Being So Bright.  Sorry, but I can't allow Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius' statement that "we have a lot of re-education to do" slip by without comment.  It's amusing when avowed leftists don't even recognize the Marxist buzzwords they're sputtering. ... The most remarkable thing is that Sebelius didn't actually use the term "re-education" accidentally or out of school.  Perhaps unwittingly, she's quite comfortable using a term long associated with tyrannical regimes.  As one of Obama's chief lieutenants, she obviously believes this administration knows better than the public what is good for them.

Gov't 'Has Finally Come Out of the Closet'.  Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius spoke at the first "Federal LGBT Youth Summit" on Monday [6/6/2011] after being introduced by a homosexual on her staff, who said the secretary "gets us" and is "tireless" in her support of lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transgender youth.  "Your federal government has finally come out of the closet in support of LGBT youth," said Pam Hyde, HHS administrator for Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services.

Dawn Johnsen

Johnsen's Radical Views Will Alienate Pro-Life Americans.  Nominating [Dawn] Johnsen [to head the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel] is a serious slap in the face of pro-life Americans.  Johnsen has condemned virtually every type of regulation of abortion conceived by a legislature and espoused a passionate pro-choice agenda throughout her career.  Her public records are dominated by pro-abortion rhetoric and criticisms of the pro-life movement.

It's Not Unusual to be Fooled by Anyone (Especially a President).  If you still think that President Barack Obama is about hope and change and moms and apple pie and nothing objectionable or radical, consider his nominee for head of the Office of Legal Counsel, Dawn Johnsen.  Her record sets off many alarms, with the most distressing sirens arising from her views on abortion.  Regardless of what the New York Times might write, (they called her position on abortion "hardly unusual" in a recent glowing endorsement,) I'd like to think that you'd have to attend a wacky women's studies lecture in order to find people who equate pregnancy with slavery.

Obama re-nominates Johnsen; Once sued to punish Catholic Church for its pro-life stance.  [Dawn] Johnsen, you may recall, is more famous for comparing pregnancy to slavery in a legal brief.  In a footnote from the landmark 1989 Supreme Court case Webster v. Planned Parenthood, Johnsen made this argument in a footnote:  "Statutes that curtail [a woman's] abortion choice are disturbingly suggestive of involuntary servitude, prohibited by the Thirteenth Amendment, in that forced pregnancy requires a woman to provide continuous physical service to the fetus in order to further the state's asserted interest."

Pro-choice is too kind a word for Obama's latest nominee.  Dawn Johnsen is President Obama's nominee to head the U.S. Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel (OLC).  It's arguably the most important office at DoJ.  OLC sets policy for the entire federal government.  When not serving in government, Dawn Johnsen spent her career promoting abortion-on-demand.

Dawn, Go Away.  President Obama is big on civility.  He talks a very good game.  But his nominee for a top slot at the Department of Justice — Dawn Johnsen — is a leading exponent of incivility.  Johnsen worked with the ACLU for years.  And she joined ARM — the so-called Abortion Rights Mobilization — to strip the Catholic Church of its tax-exempt status because of its pro-life advocacy.

Dems Advance Obama's Nominee for Justice Department Post.  The Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday voted 12-7 along party lines for the full Senate to cast an up-or-down vote on Dawn Johnsen to head the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel. ... Republican committee members who oppose the nomination made it clear that they believe Johnsen's past activism with liberal groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union and her pro-abortion stance disqualify her for the post.  "She has aggressively opposed even modest restrictions on abortion, such as partial birth abortion, and parental involvement," Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said at Thursday's hearing.

An Obama Nominee and Disappearing Persons.  Dawn Johnsen, another of President Barack Obama's remarkable nominees, discovered a way to make a person disappear by making two persons into one. ... She saw a great danger to liberty in laws enacted to protect babies in the womb from external threats (not including abortion) such as drunk drivers and acts of negligence.  In her view, it was OK to make such laws to protect the interests of the woman carrying unborn child — or to protect whatever interest the baby may have retroactively in its fetal existence if it is ever born alive — but it was not OK to make such laws in the interest of the unborn child himself.

Obama pick for Justice post withdraws.  President Barack Obama's nominee to head the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel has withdrawn her bid for confirmation, after several Republicans objected to her criticism of the Bush administration's terrorist interrogation policies.

Steven Chu

Top 10 Examples Proving Obama Wants High Energy Prices.  Perhaps the strongest indication that Obama wants higher gas prices is the fact that he appointed Steven Chu as energy secretary.  Before his nomination, Chu told the Wall Street Journal, "Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe," which are considerably higher than the U.S. due to steep levels of taxation.

Energy Nominee Shifts His Stance.  Physics met politics at the confirmation hearing Tuesday for Steven Chu, the Nobel laureate scientist chosen by President-elect Barack Obama to head the Department of Energy, and the physics bent a bit, as Dr. Chu backed away slightly from earlier statements he has made — that gasoline prices should be higher, and that coal was his "nightmare."

Key Questions for Steven Chu, Nominee for Secretary of Energy.  The federal government already has several anti-energy forces in place, particularly the Environmental Protection Agency, whose statutory duties require it to impose environmental constraints on energy production and use, especially fossil fuels, and often without regard to cost.  Therefore, it is an important part of the secretary of energy's job to act as a pro-energy counterweight to EPA rather than as a redundant anti-energy voice within the executive branch.

Update on the "Chu Effect".  One month ago, Secretary of Energy Dr. Steven Chu warned of apocalyptic drought in California.  "We're looking at a scenario where there's no more agriculture in California."  And, he added, "I don't actually see how they can keep their cities going" either."  USA today warned:  "Calif. facing worst drought in modern history"[.]  Almost immediately after Dr. Chu's pronouncement, the rain and snow started in earnest.  As of today, all California Snowtel stations report normal snow depth and water content, as do all stations in Colorado where California gets much of their water from.

Energy Sec. now admits he was 'Silly' to call for $8 per gallon gas in U.S..  REP. STEARNS:  No.  But somehow, your statement, "Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the ($8 a gallon) levels in Europe," doesn't that sound a little bit silly in retrospect for you to say that?  SEC. STEVEN CHU:  Yes.

Save the Planet — Paint the Roof.  The other day, the current Secretary of Energy Dr. Steven Chu was speaking at the "St James's Palace Nobel Laureate Symposium" in London which, if it is not the most pretentiously named meeting on the planet, it must be among the top five, told his laureateal colleagues that we should paint much of the world white to reflect heat back up into space and, thus, cure global warming.  I am not making this up.

Greens Want Black and White.  Energy Secretary Steven Chu appeared at noted climatologist Prince Charles' symposium in London today [5/26/2009], and expressed the Obama administration's support for painting roofs white and cars black in order to reflect energy and fight global warming. ... This is the kind of dictatorial looniness that might awaken the general public to the fact that greens are stark-raving mad.  In fact, the public is already awake in California.

'Global warming', painting your roof white, and the Chattanooga Chu-Chu.  Will painting the town white be a cool thing to do?  Scientists answer questions like this by doing a little math. ... About 75% of the Earth is covered in water or ice.  [Water can't be painted,] and there's no need to paint ice because it's white already.  That leaves 25% of the surface. ... About 40% of the atmosphere is covered in clouds.  They're white too, ... And up to 30% of the land surface of the Earth is covered in snow for up to six months of the year.

Leftists assume that the teeming masses are too dumb to do what's right.
Steven Chu:  Americans Are Like 'Teenage Kids' When It Comes to Energy.  When it comes to greenhouse-gas emissions, Energy Secretary Steven Chu sees Americans as unruly teenagers and the Administration as the parent that will have to teach them a few lessons.  Speaking on the sidelines of a smart grid conference in Washington, Dr. Chu said he didn't think average folks had the know-how or will to to change their behavior enough to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.

Energy Sec. Chu claims he knows 'what the future will be 100 years from now'.  President Obama's Energy Secretary Steven Chu is at it again.  Fresh off his declarations in May claiming computer model predictions as evidence of a certain climate catastrophe, he has now gotten more bold, confidently predicting a certain climate catastrophe by the year 2109.  (When he and everyone who hears his warning today will be unable to verify his predictions because they will be conveniently DEAD!)

Chu announces grants for 'out-of-the-box' global warming projects.  Fulfilling a campaign pledge to tap Silicon Valley innovation to combat global warming, Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced Monday [10/26/2009] at Google's headquarters the first federal grants for high-risk, high-reward clean-tech ventures — including revolutionary technologies like using bacteria to create gasoline. ... Chu added that he'll call the program a success if three of the 37 projects, picked from a pile of 3,700 competing projects by 500 volunteer scientists, work.

Skating on thin ice for climate change.  Energy Secretary Steven Chu didn't reach the pinnacle of his profession by treading the well-worn path of modern group-think.  It's regrettable that the Nobel Prize-winning physicist is stuck in that rut now. ... You have to feel for a man of science trying to make the jump to politics.  In science, facts speak for themselves.  In politics, facts are often run to ground by baloney.  As energy secretary, Mr. Chu has traded fact for fiction and now spends his days selling President Obama's discredited climate-change policy.

Chortling At Chu.  Our secretary of energy pushes bio-refineries and windmills to oil executives at an energy conference as the administration announces a three-year offshore drilling ban.  This is a policy for economic suicide.

Your Insane U.S. Energy Department.  The Department of Energy was created in the wake of the oil crisis of the 1970s and was signed into existence by President Jimmy Carter on August 4, 1977.  Its responsibilities were the nation's nuclear weapons program, a nuclear reactor for the U.S. Navy, energy conservation, energy-related research, radioactive waste disposal, and domestic energy production.  It currently employs 16,000 federal workers and, in 2009, had an annual budget of $24.1 billion.  President Obama appointed Dr. Steven Chu as its Secretary.  Dr. Chu is perhaps best known for recommending that global warming can be avoided by painting the roofs and highways white in order to reflect back the sun's radiation.

Chu's Guessing Game.  The secretary of energy says the U.S. doesn't need to be 100% certain humans are heating the planet to enact policies to mitigate climate change.  Apparently just a hunch will do.

US Energy Secretary Plays Climate Activist.  At the UN Climate Change Conference in Cancun, the US government has fought back against accusations that it isn't doing anything to combat global warming.  In his speech, Energy Secretary Steven Chu criticized climate change deniers, highlighted inventions by US scientists and even quoted a Native American saying about saving the planet.

Energy Secretary Chu Embraces High Gas Prices, Again.  This weekend, Energy Secretary Steven Chu appeared on Fox News Sunday and host Chris Wallace asked him about his desire in 2008 for Americans to punitively pay more at the pump in order to wean them off of gasoline.  Shockingly, Chu did not walk back his comments as he has attempted to do in the past.  In fact, he embraced the strategy noting that his focus is to ease the pain felt by his energy policies by forcing automakers to make more fuel-efficient automobiles.

Newt: Fire Chu.  Finally someone in the Republican presidential sweepstakes is saying what needs to be said:  Fire Energy Secretary David Chu. ... On Chu's watch, the Department of Energy co-signed for a $535 million loan to a company that promised to make solar panels in the most expensive way possible using the most expensive materials available for a market already glutted with cheap foreign competitors.  The loan was used to build a second factory to expand Solyndra's ability to make solar panels no one was buying.  This made no sense, yet Chu signed off on the loan.

Holding Obama accountable on Solyndra.  [Scroll down]  EPACT did not create a citizen-suit provision and it would be next to impossible for any one litigant to show the harm necessary to establish standing.  So it is unlikely Republicans can hold Obama accountable for breaking the law in court.  But the Constitution does provide other means for Congress to check Executive Branch lawlessness:  impeachment.  House Republicans would not have to impeach Obama, just the highest ranking official(s) that knowingly broke the law.  Apparently, that just may be Energy Secretary Steven Chu.

Energy Secretary Chu offers no apologies for Solyndra.  Energy Secretary Steven Chu made no apologies Thursday for the $535 million loan guarantee the government made to now bankrupt solar panel maker Solyndra, saying the company's collapse was unforeseeable and politics did not play a role in the approval process.

Chu: taxpayers won't recover much from Solyndra.  Taxpayers shouldn't expect to recover much money from bankrupt solar panel manufactuer Solyndra, which received a $535 million loan guarantee from the Obama administration, Energy Secretary Steven Chu testified on Thursday [11/17/2011].

DOE's Chu Takes Responsiblity for Solyndra Amid Charges of Unlawful Conduct.  Today [11/17/2011] embattled Energy Secretary Steven Chu finally ended his silence and took personal responsibility for the controversial Soyndra loan amid congressional charges that he may have violated federal laws.  At the contentious hearing he repeatedly said he was unaware of many governmental emails and reports that warned Solyndra was a bad bet.  Chu testified under oath before a key House Energy and Commerce oversight subcommittee.  He asserted "the final decisions on Solyndra were mine" and that "I did not make any decision based on political considerations."

Steven Chu Should Lose His Job Over The Solyndra Scandal.  The Secretary of Energy takes responsibility for and defends the granting of a half-billion-dollar-loan guarantee to an imploding solar panel maker.  But that's not where the campaign donor buck stopped.

Chu offers no apology for fleecing taxpayers for Solyndra.  People can debate all day whether government should be in the business of picking winners and losers in the marketplace by selectively awarding loan guarantees.  What's beyond dispute is that any official decision that results in the loss of half-a-billion tax dollars should elicit an apology from somebody in government.  Just don't expect that somebody to be Secretary of Energy Steven Chu...

Steven Chu's Solyndra testimony: Misleading jobs stats and missing context.  We always warn readers to be wary of claims about the number of jobs created by some government, congressional or corporate initiative.  These are almost always suspect and based on dubious assumptions.  (Chu, we should note, carefully used the word "employ" instead of "create.")  As it happens, Carol D. Leonnig and Steven Mufson of The Washington Post examined the job-claim figure two months ago and found it wanting.

Harold Koh

The Crackpot Mentor of State Department Nominee.  With the nomination of Harold Hongju Koh, the Dean of Yale Law School, as the Legal Adviser for the State Department, President Barack Obama is putting a world government team in place under Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.  The other key appointment was Anne-Marie Slaughter, the dean of Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, as Director of Policy Planning at State.  Slaughter wrote the 2004 book, A New World Order, and believes in an international system dominated by the U.N. and other global institutions and networks.

Koh's Academic Hero Proposed 'Global Dictatorship'.  Criticism of President Obam'a nomination of Harold Koh, the dean of Yale Law School, has focused so far on Koh's extremely radical outlook that appears to elevate international law above U.S. law.  Some critics contend he even espouses the application of Islamic sharia law in the U.S.

Obama's Most Perilous Legal Pick:  Judges should interpret the Constitution according to other nations' legal "norms."  Sharia law could apply to disputes in US courts.  The United States constitutes an "axis of disobedience" along with North Korea and Saddam-era Iraq.  Those are the views of the man on track to become one of the US government's top lawyers:  Harold Koh.  President Obama has nominated Koh — until last week the dean of Yale Law School — to be the State Department's legal adviser.

The Editor says...
If the dean of the Yale Law School believes all that, imagine what the classes are like.

Critics Decry Obama Nominee for State Department Legal Adviser.  Former Clinton administration official Harold Koh, who has been dean of the Yale Law School since 2004, once wrote that the U.S. was part of an "axis of disobedience" with North Korea and Saddam Hussein's Iraq.  Koh also has long held that the U.S. should accept international law when deliberating cases at home.  Obama nominated Koh on March 23 to become the State Department's legal adviser — an appointment that, if confirmed by the Senate, will give Koh far-reaching influence over the extent to which international norms affect U.S. law.

Who Is Harold Koh?  President Obama's nominee for State Department legal adviser could be a future Supreme Court pick.  He believes U.S. law should be based on foreign precedent, and even Shariah law could find a home here.

Harold Koh's Transnationalism:  What is "transnationalism" generally?  Well, let's start by considering how two academics — one a critic of transnationalism, the other an ardent proponent — have described it.

Trans-national law at State is not the American way.  Could international laws override American laws even if the United States has refused to ratify a treaty accepting a foreign authority?  Harold Koh, President Barack Obama's nominee to be the chief legal counsel at the State Department, thinks so.  That's reason enough for the Senate to reject this Yale Law School dean.

Questions on the Role of International Law in the U.S. Legal System.  On March 23, President Obama nominated Harold Koh to be the next Legal Adviser, which is the top legal position at the U.S. Department of State.  While Koh has had a distinguished career in government service and legal academia, his views raise serious national security and constitutional questions.

Pay More Attention to Harold Koh.  It is said that there are two kinds of lawyers — those who know the law, and those who know the judge.  And then there is Harold Koh, the man who is likely to be the next Legal Adviser to the State Department.  Koh most recently served as Dean of the Yale Law School and before that as Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Labor and Human Rights in the Clinton administration.  He is a prolific author and a legal activist of the Left. ... His pending appointment has received scant attention from the media or the senators who will decide his fate.  It deserves a closer look.

U.S. Courts Should 'Download' International Law into Domestic Law, Obama Nominee Says.  Harold Koh, nominated by President Barack Obama to be the State Department's top legal adviser, once argued that U.S. federal court judges — including the Supreme Court — are the "critical link" between international and domestic law and play a critical role in bringing international norms into force as domestic law.

Harold Koh Is Too Dangerous for America.  Does Barack Obama really want to make Americans subject to foreign law and courts?  That is the question Senators should ask when they vote on his nomination of Harold Hongju Koh, former dean of the Yale Law School, to be the top lawyer at the State Department.  Koh is encumbered by a long paper trail that proves he is eager to use foreign and international law to interpret American law.  He calls himself a transnationalist, which means wanting U.S. courts to "domesticate" foreign and international law, i.e., integrate it into U.S. domestic law binding on U.S. citizens.

Harry Knox

The problem with a heretic like Obama...  Harry Knox is not just critical of faith based people.  He's one of these demonic forces that parades as an angel of light, to accomplish the work of darkness.  For my "born again" friends / "followers of Jesus" who voted for Obama, how do you defend this move.  Harry Knox worked against Prop 8 in California... meaning he worked AGAINST the side of God on the issue of marriage and its definition.  Harry Knox before accepting Obama's post most immediately had just come from the Human Rights campaign, the most virulent anti-God, pro-sexual promiscuity, same sex issues defense group in the nation.

Obama's Christian Appointee Says New Testament Teaching on Homosexuality Is 'Not True'.  President Obama has named to his faith-based advisory council a self-professed Christian who holds that the New Testament's teaching that homosexual behavior is unnatural and wrong — which is found in St. Paul's letter to the Romans — "is not true."

House Republican Leader Calls on Obama to Fire Adviser Who Attacked Catholic Church.  House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) ... is the most high-profile public official so far to speak out against the appointment of Harry Knox to the President's Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.  Knox is director of the Faith and Religion Program at the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), a homosexual rights organization.

Hard Knox.  [Harry] Knox — a member of the United Church of Christ and a long time voice for faith and gay issues — became known in recent months for inflammatory remarks he made about Pope Benedict XVI and the Catholic Church, most of which surfaced after he was named to the 25-member President's Advisory Council on Faith Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.

Boehner Calls for Obama Adviser to Resign.  House Minority Leader John Boehner (R.-Ohio) said today [2/4/2010] that Harry Knox, who serves on President Barack Obama's faith-based advisory council, appears to be an "anti-Catholic bigot" and should resign as a White House adviser.

Rosa Brooks

It's like making Jane Fonda senior adviser on Vietnam.
A disaster for Defense.  President Obama is surrendering national security with a radical appointment at the Defense Department.  Rosa Brooks, this month made adviser to Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Michelle Flournoy, will be in a position to do significant damage to U.S. security.  This position is unknown to most outside the Beltway but is at the critical locus of defense policymaking.

Soros Invades Pentagon.  Democratic Party financier George Soros, who puts much of the blame for Islamic terrorists on America and former president George W. Bush, can celebrate his first foothold inside the Pentagon.  It is in the person of Rosa Brooks, far-left former Los Angeles Times columnist.  She was once counsel to billionaire Soros' Open Societies Institute, whose funding arm bankrolls a number of hard-left pressure groups, such as MoveOn.org.

New Defense Department advisor Rosa Brooks is about as far to the left as one can go.
Political Extremism Infiltrates the Pentagon.  Every once in a while something happens so shocking, so inconceivable, that it threatens to remove the last bastions of confidence I have in the federal government.  The appointment of Rosa Brooks, the radical left-wing Los Angeles Times columnist, as an advisor to Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Michelle Fluornoy is one of those moments.  And by advisor, I don't mean someone who talks on an informal basis — I mean a full-time advisor so committed to helping formulate policy that she had to leave her position as a fire-breathing partisan columnist.

Who Is Rosa Brooks?  Before she was a far-left columnist for the Los Angeles Times, Rosa Brooks was once counsel to Soros' Open Societies Institute.  Now she's the "principal adviser" to Undersecretary of Defense Michele Flournoy, the Pentagon's No. 3 official and top policymaker.  Soros is the mover and shaker behind MoveOn.org, famous for its ad depicting Gen. David Petraeus, the architect of our Iraq victory, as a traitor and a Web ad depicting Bush as Adolf Hitler, something our Ms. Brooks would agree with.

Van Jones

Czarred And Feathered.  It's been suggested that the White House has more czars than the Russian Romanov dynasty.  Has the administration forgotten that we have a government of elected officials, not of imperial appointments?  Many of these czars, most of whom are useless or counterproductive, are sitting in newly created positions.  [They include the] Green jobs czar.  This post is held by Van Jones.  Officially he is Obama's special adviser for enterprise and innovation at the White House Council on Environmental Quality.  Jones was a founder and leader of Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement.  The group, now disbanded, had Marxist, Leninist and Maoist influences.  Jones admitted that he became a communist and radical after the officers accused of using excessive force on Rodney King were acquitted.

Fox News Notes Communist Past of the 'Green Jobs' Czar.  The administration's "Green Jobs" czar, Van Jones, has a "very checkered past" deep-rooted in radical politics, including black nationalism, anarchism, and communism.  The broadcast network newscasts have mostly failed to report on Mr. Jones's past political affiliations which are lock-step with the network's downplay of coverage regarding President Obama's associations with the former radical and terrorist William Ayers during the election.

"Green Jobs Czar" is a self-described "communist".  Like a character out of The Big Chill, Van Jones seems to have evolved from radical activist to Establishment insider.  Perhaps only a left-wing administration incapable of recognizing irony would put a self-described communist in charge of creating jobs.  Luckily for Van Jones, and Obama's many other "Czars", his new job was not dependent upon making it through Congressional hearings.

Also posted under Here a czar, there a czar, everywhere a czar czar.

Van Jones and His STORMtroopers Denounced America the Night After 9/11.  Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement (STORM), the revolutionary group formed by self-described "communist" and "rowdy black nationalist" Van Jones, held a vigil in Oakland, California, "mourning the victims of U.S. imperialism around the world" on the night after Sept. 11, 2001.  The reason this is important is because Van Jones is now President Obama's green jobs czar.  He does not appear to have distanced himself from his past communist activities and is now part of the Obama administration's push to turn Sept. 11 into a National Day of Service focused on the promotion of the radical environmentalist agenda.

Czar: 'Spread the wealth! Change the whole system'.  Just days before his White House appointment, Van Jones, President Obama's environmental adviser, used a forum at a major youth convention to push for what can easily be interpreted as a communist or socialist agenda.  As WND previously reported, Van Jones, special adviser for green jobs, enterprise and innovation to the White House Council on Environmental Quality, is an admitted black nationalist and radical communist.

White House Green Jobs Adviser:  Republicans Are 'A**----s'.  Van Jones, the Obama administration's "green jobs" adviser, told a group of listeners earlier in the year that the reason Republicans are stonewalling the president is because they're "a**----s."  Jones' remarks were recorded in a video from February that was posted to YouTube.

The truth according to Van Jones:  Obama administration green jobs commissar Van Jones is a funny guy.  He's a self-avowed Communist.  He has also kindly revealed the truth about his interest in the whole "green jobs" shtick.

The Real Van Jones Scandal:  Why Glenn Beck Is Right.  The question:  What did the Obama White House know about Van Jones and when did they know it?  Jones, the Obama White House "green jobs" adviser, is getting in deeper trouble by the minute with revelations of his radical statements about being a Communist, having been twice arrested, and, in the last few hours, with news surfacing that he had signed onto a petition accusing the Bush administration of being responsible for 9/11...

Green jobs 'czar' apologizes for 'truther' statement.  President Obama's "green jobs czar" Van Jones is apologizing for the second time in two days, this time for signing a 2004 petition for an organization that seeks to expose the "official lies and cover-up surrounding the events of 9/11."  This comes after a video that recently surfaced in which Mr. Jones called Republicans a disparaging name at an energy lecture in Berkeley, California last February.  He apologized for doing that on Wednesday [9/2/2009].

'Green Jobs' Adviser's Past Could Stir Trouble for White House.  President Obama's "green jobs" adviser could become a mounting liability for the Obama administration, as the latest revelation about Van Jones shows his apparent belief that the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks may have been an inside job.

A vulgar Marxist twice over.  We've written about Obama administration green jobs commissar Van Jones as a Communist in the White House. ... Now courtesy of Breitbart.tv and Naked Emperor News we have Jones explaining the deep meaning of the Obama administration's devotion to "green jobs."  The goal of green jobs is complete revolution step by step away from gray capitalism until the forces of oppression are overcome.

Pence calls on Van Jones to resign.  Rep. Mike Pence, the no. 3 Republican in the House, is calling on Obama green jobs czar Van Jones to resign.  This sort of thing would usually be laughed off by Democrats — a conservative Republican telling a Democratic appointee to quit.  But the Obama team isn't exactly jumping to back Jones today in wake of revelations that in the past he signed on to one of the "truther" groups that claimed 9/11 was an inside job.

The Radicalization of Obama's 'Green Czar'.  The political radicalization of Van Jones, President Obama's "green jobs" adviser, dates back to 1992, when he and hundreds of others took their anger to the streets of San Francisco in the infamous Rodney King protests.  Jones, a Yale Law School student who was working in the Bay Area as an intern, was part of a mob that stormed the city following the acquittal in Los Angeles of four white police officers who had been charged with beating King, who is black, after a car chase.

The Editor says...
He must not have learned much about law and order in the Yale Law School, if he participated in a riot.

Yale Law School and Why Van Jones went There.  During the Anita Hill hearings after a series of implausible witnesses all of whom were black Yale law school graduates, Juan Williams wrote in the Washington Post that he could now understand the wisdom of the saying that Yale law school had ruined more good black minds than crack.

What Van Jones signifies:  Not that we're inclined to do so, but it would be a mistake to write off Van Jones as a one-off nutjob in the Obama administration.  He signifies.  The Obama team sought him out and signed him up for his job as green jobs commissar precisely because he is who he is.

I Could No More Disown Van Jones Than...  Jones' own deprecations of the U.S. are no more extreme than Michelle Obama's 'downright mean country' and for the first time she has become proud of America.  When Van Jones talks about coal, he is simply amplifying Obama's own suggestion that he would "bankrupt" those who wished to build new plants.  So I do believe Valerie Jarrett that the administration had been looking at Van Jones for a long time, and liked what they saw.

Van Jones resigns, says he was victim of 'vicious smear campaign'.  The White House announced the resignation of green jobs adviser Van Jones early Sunday morning [9/6/2009].  In a departure letter, Jones, whose extensive record of radical politics became public in recent weeks, said he was the victim of a "vicious smear campaign" and that "opponents of reform" had used "lies and distortion" against him.

Jeremiah Wright behind a White House desk.  The key point about the Van Jones affair is what it tells us about Barack Obama.  Jones isn't someone who slipped through the cracks of the vetting process.  We know this because, as Scott pointed out earlier today, top Obama aide Valerie Jarrett has said, "So, Van Jones, we were so delighted to be able to recruit him into the White House; we were watching him ... for as long as he's been active out in Oakland."

White House Adviser on 'Green Jobs' Resigns.  In a victory for Republicans and the Obama administration's conservative critics, Van Jones resigned as the White House's environmental jobs "czar" on Saturday [9/5/2009].

Van Jones Joins the Global Struggle Against America.  "Who's the real terrorists? Uncle Sam."  That according to a record put out by Freedom Fighter Music, a label created by the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, which Van Jones founded.  There are a number of different voices on the record, including that of convicted cop-killer Mumia Abu Jamal and Van Jones himself.

Conspiracy Czar.  Not only is Green Jobs Czar Van Jones a 9/11 Truther, but his organization believes Hurricane Katrina was a Bush conspiracy, as well.  His unique combination of radicalism and irresponsibility provides a remarkable window into Barack Obama's own radicalism.

'Oooh. Van Jones, alright!'  The problems with Van "change the system" Jones are not just his serial slurs against much of American society ("an apartheid regime") as we know it (e.g., capitalism, the coal industry, American farming, the white population, the Bush administration (for causing 9/11), the [Republicans], etc. — but that he simply cannot tell the truth about his own history, in disavowing almost everything he has said, written, or signed in the recent past.

Beck:  'The American people stood up'.  Fox News host Glenn Beck, who led the charge against Van Jones, the environmental adviser who resigned early this morning following controversy over past radical statements and affiliations, said in a statement to POLITICO that "the American people stood up and demanded answers."

Van Jones goes down swinging.  Obama green jobs commissar Van Jones resigned at midnight as a result of controversy over his past statements regarding 9/11 and a few other subjects.  His departure is unfortunate.  A self-avowed Communist and transparent hater of the United States before the Age of Obama, he was a perfect symbol of the animating spirit of the Obama administration.

Obama's gaffe-prone adviser says 'only suburban white kids carry out Columbines'.  Referring to the 1999 Columbine High School massacre, in which two white teenagers shot dead 12 pupils and a teacher before killing themselves, [Van] Jones said 'a black kid is not going to shoot up the whole school'.  His comments were revealed no sooner than he had been forced to apologise twice for other slip-ups.

Jones was recruited not in spite of his wacky beliefs but because of them.  Just how comfortable was the Obama team with the far left, radical statements and beliefs of Van Jones?  Obviously, they believed he fit right in.

Van Jones Did Not Fill Out WH Questionnaire.  Van Jones, the Obama green jobs czar who resigned shortly after midnight Sunday, did not fill out the exhaustive questionnaire White House officials required of every Cabinet-level secretary and deputy-secretary position.  An administration official said special advisers to the president, or czars, are not required to fill out the questionnaire that runs 7 pages and contains 63 questions.  The entire questionnaire, the official said, is reserved for appointees who must win Senate confirmation.

Van Jones on 'The Enemy'.  Van Jones's extremist convictions, quick departure, and the refusal of the administration to mount a defense all lead one to assume that no reasonable mainstream figure would stand against Jones's exit.  Yet Newsweek is now questioning Jones's resignation, while Sierra Club Executive Director, Carl Pope, mounts a belated (and very incomplete) defense.

Moving Van, the Mainstream Green Man.  The lesson not to be missed in the rush to "move on" is that Van Jones is fairly mainstream when it comes to modern environmentalism. ... Van Jones is gone — Obama proving just as able to throw him under the bus as his grandmother, Rev. Wright, and I'm guessing a few more staffers to come — but the shared philosophy stays.

The Fall of the Red Czar.  No thanks to the establishment media and Congressional Democrats, the Obama administration's "green jobs czar" Van Jones is out of a job. ... Now that Jones has stepped down, the media has rallied to his defense, depicting Jones as the victim of a "vicious smear campaign" by foes of his environmental politics — a charge echoed by the administration's Democratic allies.  The less palatable truth is that Jones is a racial provocateur and opportunist who tried to capitalize on the administration's sympathy for the "green" agenda to bring his own brand of socialist and black radical politics to national prominence.

Van Jones:  Black, Red, and Green.  The Van Jones incident boiled to the surface and exploded very suddenly.  When I first heard the sound bites and the pundits, I doubted their veracity.  I thought to myself, there is no way that this man is a self-confessed communist.  I hoped that the brilliant Yale Law School graduate did not really have a racial "chip" on his shoulder.  Unfortunately, as I did just a little research on Van Jones' life and times, I quickly discovered I was wrong.

The "True Identity" Of Van Jones.  Some people are wondering who is next after Van Jones.  But the Van Jones story is not over.  And we still don't know who hired this "obscure" official, as some on the left are now trying to refer to him.  Some of these controversies are currently being investigated by the new media.  Blogger Trevor Loudon, who broke the story about Jones' communist background, thinks White House official Valerie Jarrett needs to be seriously scrutinized.  She appears to have had a family connection to Barack Obama's childhood mentor, Communist Party member Frank Marshall Davis.

Are You Smarter Than A Fifth-Columnist?  Many concerned Americans breathed a sigh of relief when the Special Advisor for Green Jobs, Anthony "Van" Jones, resigned.  The idea of an avowed communist as the president's "Green Jobs Czar" was not only alarming; it prompted the question of how carefully he was vetted.  Is there no longer a requirement that personnel at the White House obtain a security clearance?  After viewing the videos of Mr. Jones's radical speeches, however, I was more alarmed at the audience cheering them.  How clever are the fifth columnists and how dumb are we that we didn't recognize the enemy?

The Editor says...
It's not just Van Jones.  Obama himself would not be able to get a security clearance, because of his past associations with known communists and domestic terrorists.

New Zealand Blogger Nails Van Jones.  Obama's "brain" Valerie Jarrett is on tape as saying "they" have been watching Jones for years and were happy to recruit him.  If the Van Jones resignation is blamed on his controversial statements about Republicans and 9/11, a great lesson will have been lost.  If people don't recognize the dangers of having a communist in the White House, then the nature of the scandal will not have been understood.

Damaging Disclosures in Van Jones Scandal.  When Van Jones resigned his White House job, under fire for his pro-communist views, White House adviser David Axelrod said that Jones had himself made the decision to leave the administration.  But new documents indicate that Jones didn't even write his own resignation letter.  It is now abundantly clear that he was pushed out because the scandal threatened to implicate Obama friend and White House adviser Valerie Jarrett in the scandal that gave him a critical White House position without proper vetting.

Obama And His Appointees Dismantling US.  President Barack Hussein Obama is proceeding to destroy America and has opened up a six-front war to do so. ... He is filling the White House, the executive branch and the court system with an army of radicals, socialists, Communists, Marxists, Maoists, and America-haters.  The most outrageous example was Van Jones, the avowed Communist and believer that 9/11 was an American plot fashioned by President George W. Bush.

Whatever happened to Van Jones?  Ordinary folks working in private industry who publicly make outrageous, unproven statements about their chief executive, or just don't get the facts right are usually fired or forced to quit.  Finding new employment, especially in this economy, is often quite difficult.  But if the person works for the government, especially in the upper echelons, such misconduct is often rewarded with a better job with a higher salary, more perks and a platform to criticize those who behave responsibly.

Van Jones Goes Back To School.  The former green jobs czar in the Obama administration and self-avowed communist has landed a job at an Ivy League school, where he'll be teaching your children why America is racist, capitalism is bad, and redistribution of wealth is good.

We Need Green Money, Not Green Jobs.  Van Jones is back, reconstructed and rehabilitated. ... The Center for American Progress announcement says he'll be a senior fellow and leader with its Green Opportunity Initiative.  CAP was founded by rich liberals who thought the left needed a think tank like conservatives have (as they concluded they needed talk radio, and hence founded the now defunct Air America).  One of the major sources of funding of CAP was Marion and Herbert Sandler who got rich building Golden West Financial selling Adjustable Rate Mortgages with teaser rates to unsophisticated buyers.  Yes, the very greedy kind of businesspeople that the Obama administration would have us believe caused our current economic crisis.


"It takes an honest, upright, innocent man to resign at midnight on a holiday weekend when the boss is on vacation."
Lucianne          


Van Jones Helping to Push 'Human' Rights for Mother Nature.  Van Jones, the Obama administration's controversial former "green jobs czar," has found a new calling:  helping to push for a new, global architecture of environmental law that would give Mother Nature the same rights status as humans.  The new movement is almost certain to be showcased at a U.N.-sponsored global summit on "sustainable development" to take place in Rio de Janeiro in May 2012, when similar issues of "global environmental governance" are a major focus of attention.

Keeping Up with Van Jones.  Back in 2009, the public knew little about Van Jones.  Perhaps, if anything, we knew only that he was one czar among many in the Obama administration.  Like most czars, he did not need to be confirmed by Congress.  However, as more was learned about his radical background, Van Jones was exposed.  Americans were repulsed by what they heard.  With his hateful statements and Communist views revealed, a personal history of radicalism emerged.

How Obama Betrays Martin Luther's King's Dream.  [Scroll down]  He appointed Van Jones to be his Special Advisor for Green Jobs.  Jones had a record that came to light after he assumed office that was filled with bigotry towards whites (he accused white polluters of steering poison into the people-of-color community), radicalism, flirtation with communism, and conspiracy theories regarding George Bush and 9/11.  According to Valerie Jarrett, Obama's right-hand woman, they knew all about Van Jones and had been following his career for years. ... Was he chosen for the content of his character or for the color of his skin?

John P. Holdren

Obama's mad science adviser:  Earlier this month, [John P.] Holdren served as co-chairman when the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology met for the first time.  It's a disgrace that Mr. Holdren is even on the council.  In "Ecoscience: Population, Resources, Environment," a book he co-authored in 1977 with noted doomsayers Paul R. and Anne H. Erlich, Mr. Holdren wrote:  "Indeed, it has been concluded that compulsory population-control laws, even including laws requiring compulsory abortion, could be sustained under the existing Constitution if the population crisis became sufficiently severe to endanger the society."

Two Scientists, Two Standards.  The New York Times recently warned its readers about a wacky scientist in the Obama administration.  But the fish wrap of record let the real nut job off the hook. ... The rationality police in the newsroom have not ... seen fit to print the rantings of a radical secular evangelist now serving as the White House "science czar."  John Holdren, Obama's director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and co-chair of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, co-authored the innocuously titled "Ecoscience" in the 1970s with population control extremists Paul and Anne Ehrlich.

The Mind-boggling Extremism of Obama "Science Czar" John P. Holdren.  As part of his series of profiles on President Barack Obama's many policy "czars," last night FOX News host Sean Hannity looked at the new "Science Czar", John P. Holdren. ... The longtime Teresa and John Heinz Professor of Environmental Policy at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, Holdren is no stranger to controversy.  As Hannity pointed out in his segment, Holdren has been quoted as calling the United States the "meanest of wealthy countries."  He has also, according to Hannity, "left the door open" to prosecuting "global warming deniers."

Obama's Science Czar:  Traditional family is obsolete, punish large families.  President Obama's Science Czar, John Holdren, took a controversial and amoral approach to the science of population by recommending mass compulsory sterilization and even forced abortion (and/or forced marriages) under certain circumstances.  His 1977 tome, Ecoscience, which he co-authored with Paul and Anne Ehrlich, also displays a revealing disregard for the institution of the traditional human family.

It gets worse:
Obama's science czar suggested compulsory abortion, sterilization.  Internet reports are now circulating that Obama's Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, John Holdren, penned a 1977 book that approved of and recommended compulsory sterilization and even abortion in some cases, as part of a government population control regime.  Given the general unreliability of Internet quotations, I wanted to go straight to this now-rare text and make sure the reports were both accurate and kept Holdren's writings in context.  Generally speaking, they are, and they do.

Is Obama's Science Czar a Crackpot?  It is late, considering that he has already been nominated by Obama and confirmed.  But members of the Senate can still demand that he return for a serious examination of his views and agenda.  Then there might be more pressure on the major media to finally pay attention.

Czar 54, Who Are You?  In a recently rediscovered 1977 book, "Ecoscience: Population, Resources, Environment," co-authored with doomsters Paul and Anne Ehrlich, [John] Holdren, who holds the post of presidential assistant for science technology, revealed his pessimistic and apocalyptic views on all three topics.  They are disturbing.  He hates people and views them as the root of all planetary evils.  Large families are a target of Holdren and the Ehrlichs, who write that they "contribute to general social deterioration by overproducing children" and "can be required by law to exercise reproductive responsibility."

Ghoulish Science Plus Obamacare Equals Health Hazard.  After investigative bloggers and this column reprinted extensive excerpts from "Ecoscience," which mused openly about putting sterilants in the water supply to make women infertile and engineering society by taking away babies from undesirables and subjecting them to government-mandated abortions, the White House issued a statement from [John] Holdren last week denying he embraced those proposals.  The Ehrlichs challenged critics to read their and Holdren's more recent research and works.  Well, I did read one of Holdren's recent works.  It revealed his clingy reverence for, and allegiance to, the gurus of population control authoritarianism.  He's just gotten smarter about cloaking it behind global warming hysteria.

Obama's Science Czar Said a Born Baby 'Will Ultimately Develop Into a Human Being'.  President Obama's top science adviser said in a book he co-authored in 1973 that a newborn child "will ultimately develop into a human being" if he or she is properly fed and socialized.  "The fetus, given the opportunity to develop properly before birth, and given the essential early socializing experiences and sufficient nourishing food during the crucial early years after birth, will ultimately develop into a human being," John P. Holdren, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, wrote in "Human Ecology:  Problems and Solutions."

When Is a Human a 'Human Being'?  Ask the White House Science Adviser.  [Scroll down slowly]  "From this point of view, a fetus is only a potential human being," the authors continue.  "Historically, the law has dated most rights and privileges from the moment of birth, and legal scholars generally agree that a fetus is not a 'person' within the meaning of the United States Constitution until it is born and living independent of its mother's body."  The authors then make a case for aborting unwanted children.

White House Science Adviser Advocated 'De-Development' of the United States.  President Obama's top science adviser, John P. Holdren, advocated the "de-development" of the United States in books he published in the 1970s.  "A massive campaign must be launched to restore a high-quality environment in North America and to de-develop the United States," Holdren wrote in a 1973 book he co-authored with Paul R. Ehrlch and Anne H. Ehrlich.  "De-development means bringing our economic system (especially patterns of consumption) into line with the realities of ecology and the global resource situation."

When do human rights begin?  Last August, the Rev. Rick Warren stumped then-Sen. Barack Obama with a seemingly simple question.  "At what point," asked Mr. Warren, "does a baby get human rights, in your view?"  "Well, I think that whether you're looking at it from a theological perspective or a scientific perspective, answering that question with specificity, you know, is above my pay grade," Mr. Obama said.  It turns out, however, that an even simpler question once stumped the very person Mr. Obama now pays to give him advice about science:  When does a person become a "human being"?

Obama's science adviser called for 'zero economic growth'.  At a time when it was popular among environmentalists to talk about capping pollutants, John Holdren was writing about placing "caps" on the U.S. economy itself — and working toward "zero economic growth."  Holdren, who is now President Obama's top adviser on science and technology policy, wrote in the 1970s that it would be "entirely logical" to cap the Gross National Product — the total productivity of the American economy.

Obama's Science Czar:  Traditional family is obsolete, punish large families.  President Obama's Science Czar, John Holdren, took a controversial and amoral approach to the science of population by recommending mass compulsory sterilization and even forced abortion (and/or forced marriages) under certain circumstances.  His 1977 tome, Ecoscience, which he co-authored with Paul and Anne Ehrlich, also displays a revealing disregard for the institution of the traditional human family.

GOP Congressmen Say Science 'Czar' Should Explain His Views.  White House science adviser John Holdren should return to Congress to explain his views, including his notion that a baby that has already been born might "ultimately" become a human being if given the proper resources.

Meet the White House's Alarmist in Chief.  If you had devoted your entire scientific career to predicting the end of the world, what do you think would be the symbol of success with which to crown that career?  Why, to be President Obama's choice as White House Director of Science and Technology.  That's his formal title, but what John Holdren is, in fact, is the nation's Alarmist in Chief.

Radicals to rule us all.  John Holdren [is] director of the White House's Office on Science and Technology Policy (the "science czar").  Mr. Holdren has the president's ear about how to spend our money on science.  During the 1970s, he co-wrote a book with the overpopulation panic couple Paul R. and Anne Ehrlich in which they floated the idea of putting birth-control agents in public drinking water and made the case that mandatory abortions could be justified under the U.S. Constitution.  More recently, Mr. Holdren has been a major backer of global-warming treaties.

Obama's Science Czar on His Past Work:  John P. Holdren, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and President Barack Obama's top science adviser, said last week that his past work is a "stale topic" and:  "If you read it and you have a problem, you're misreading it."  Holdren has co-authored works in the past that called for a campaign to "de-develop the United States" and said people need to eventually face up to a "world of zero net physical growth."

White House Science Czar:  'De-Develop the United States'.  In a video interview this week, White House Office of Science and Technology Director John P. Holdren told CNSNews.com that he would use the "free market economy" to implement the "massive campaign" he advocated along with Population Bomb author Paul Ehrlich to "de-develop the United States."

This is a man with very little work to do:
Holdren: US Must Prepare for Asteroid.  If an asteroid were on a collision course with Earth, would we be ready to defend against its destructive impact or would we be helpless and defenseless?  NASA, America's space agency, is being charged with leading the way to protect not only the U.S. but the entire world in the event of such a horrifying scenario.

Dr. Regina Benjamin

Critics Slam Overweight Surgeon General Pick, Regina Benjamin.  Dr. Regina M. Benjamin, Obama's pick for the next surgeon general, was hailed as a MacArthur Grant genius who had championed the poor at a medical clinic she set up in Katrina-ravaged Alabama.  But the full-figured African-American nominee is also under fire for being overweight in a nation where 34 percent of all Americans aged 20 and over are obese.

Obama's surgeon general nominee advises Burger King.  President Obama's nominee for surgeon general, whose job it is to help encourage Americans to get thinner and healthier, has been working part time as a scientific adviser to the fast-food giant that sells sandwiches like the Whopper and BK Triple Stacker.

Does Barack Obama Have a Learning Disability?  [Scroll down]  The president has recruited a number of key appointments who appear to have [learning disabilities].  Regina Benjamin is the Surgeon General of the United States.  Benjamin states that overweight/obesity is incompatible with health.  She admits that she is fat.  According to the definition she accepts and publishes, she is a health illiterate:  "Health literacy is the ability of an individual to access, understand, and use health-related information and services to make appropriate health decisions."

A radioactive remark.  If ever there were a time when federal officials needed to speak with one voice regarding nuclear energy, this is it.  US Surgeon General Regina Benjamin, especially, needs to watch her tongue.

David Axelrod

David Axelrod's Very Big Problem.  The allegations in this Bloomberg story — if true — pose a huge problem for a senior advisor to the president, David Axelrod.

Obama Campaign Ad Firms Signed On to Push Health-Care Overhaul.  Two firms that received $343.3 million to handle advertising for Barack Obama's White House run last year have profited from his top priority as president by taking on his push for health-care overhaul.

Corporate Shills for Hope and Change.  Two weeks ago, the White House embraced $150 million in drug industry ads supporting Obamacare.  This week, Bloomberg News reported that White House senior adviser and chief campaign strategist David Axelrod's former public relations firm, AKPD Message and Media, has raked in some $24 million in ad contracts supporting Obamacare — along with another PR firm, GMMB, run by other Obama strategists.  The ads are funded by Big Pharma, the AARP, AMA and the powerhouse Service Employees International Union (whose Purple Shirts dumped $80 million in independent expenditures to get Obama and the Democratic majority elected).

Questions For Mr. Axelrod, et al.  The deal itself may well be completely legal if a little starting to outsiders.  What matters is whether Mr. Axelrod knowingly or unknowingly broke the law in striking the deal with his former firm and then participating in negotiations with people or entities that directly or indirectly sent cash to his former firm to produce and air ads pushing the president's health care agenda. ... The only question that really matters is whether or not David Axelrod violated any of the federal laws.

President Axelrod?  The trips to battleground states, the stimulus money being directed towards blue-tinged states, the omnipresence of Obama in the media, the high profile trips, the Bush-bashing, the formation of astrotruf groups, the threatening of adversaries, the name-calling — the non-stop campaigning.  Isn't it now becoming more obvious by the day that David Axelrod is running the White House?

Mark Lloyd

Inspired by Saul Alinsky...
FCC 'Diversity' Chief Calls for 'Confrontational Movement'.  Mark Lloyd, chief diversity officer of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), called for a "confrontational movement" to combat what he claimed was control of the media by international corporations and to re-establish the regulatory power of government through robust public broadcasting and a more powerful FCC.

FCC Diversity Chief Says Republican Communications Policies Hurt Civil Rights.  Mark Lloyd, chief diversity officer at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), claimed that communications policies enacted by Republicans negatively impacted the civil rights of minorities.  Lloyd made the claim in a 1998 essay he wrote while working for the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights.

FCC's Diversity Czar.  Mark Lloyd is the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)'s Chief Diversity Officer, a.k.a. the Diversity Czar.  And he has in a recently discovered bit of archive audio goodness detailed his rather disturbing perspective on race, power and the American system. ... We have said repeatedly that Lloyd is a man myopically focused on race.  What is revealed here is more than just that.

FCC Diversity Officer Lloyd Vociferously Denies Things He's Written and Said on Tape.  Someone who has been so copious about his ridiculous thoughts and positions, and intentions to control the speech of others, should perhaps have practiced a little more speech self-control.  It would have given us less to work with in working to ensure his anti-First Amendment plans do not become a censorious reality.

Glenn Beck Revisits the Ample Evidence Against FCC Diversity Czar Mark Lloyd.  Fox News Channel and radio talk show host Glenn Beck has quickly risen to be one the most prominent targets of the Left.  Radio Talk King Rush Limbaugh is Liberal Enemy #1; there's a strong case to be made that Beck is now running second.

Chavez Arrests Last Opposition TV Station Owner.  Is this what Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chief Diversity Officer Mark Lloyd meant when he said (on camera) Venezuelan thug dictator Hugo Chavez (take that, Sean Penn) had begun "to take very seriously the media in his country" — while praising Chavez's "incredible...democratic revolution?"

Al Sharpton Helping FCC Design Rush Limbaugh 'Free Speech' Show Trials.  [Scroll down]  This particular portion of the FCC trend towards the totalitarian may be explained thusly — they have in their employ as their inaugural Chief Diversity Officer Mark Lloyd.  Who in 2007 co-wrote a Center for American Progress-Free Press "report" — entitled The Structural Imbalance of Political Talk Radio — that calls on the government to "equalize" Conservative talk radio.  Who wrote a follow-up essay that directed "community organizations" (run one would think by community organizers) to threaten the FCC broadcast licenses of stations with whom they do not agree politically.

Kevin Jennings

Why Obama's Elementary Queering Must Be Stopped:  Obama sought to distract with his own, "Once, Twice, Three times a Muslim" act in Cairo, all the while praying that no one would notice that a protector of a child sodomist was being given access to children in our public schools.  Kevin Jennings is not just your normal activist nominee.  He is a firm advocate of mandated affirmation of approval of homosexual actions by school children, and to this end, his involvement with the GLSEN's "Day of Silence" has moved them to go beyond that to demand "Queer Proms" in the local public schools, and to lobby for legislation in each state to change the definition of marriage to make it mean something it has never meant.  With Jennings' support, the GLSEN chapter in Connecticut has begun pushing not just for "tolerance" or "acceptance" of those who choose to engage in homosexuality in the public schools, but they have actually created an "activity" for the school systems which pushes "positive levels of attitude" such as mandated "admiration" and "nurturance."

Critics say Obama's 'Safe Schools' Czar is the Wrong Man for the Job.  [Kevin] Jennings was appointed to the position largely because of his longtime record of working to end bullying and discrimination in schools.  In 1990, as a teacher in Massachusetts, he founded the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), which now has over 40 chapters at schools nationwide.  He has also published six books on gay rights and education, including one that describes his own experiences as a closeted gay student.

At the president's pleasure.  A teacher was told by a 15-year-old high school sophomore that he was having homosexual sex with an "older man."  At the very least, statutory rape occurred.  Fox News reported that the teacher violated a state law requiring that he report the abuse.  That former teacher, Kevin Jennings, is President Obama's "safe school czar."

Obama's 'Safe Schools' Czar Admits He Poorly Handled Underage Sex Case.  President Obama's "safe schools czar," under fire from critics who say he's unfit for his job, acknowledged Wednesday [9/30/2009] that he "should have handled [the] situation differently" years ago when he was a schoolteacher and didn't report that a 15-year-old boy told him that he was having sex with an older man.

Obama appointee lauded NAMBLA figure.  Kevin Jennings, President Obama's Assistant Deputy Secretary of the Office of Safe and Drug FreeSchools at the U.S. Department of Education, is in hot water this week for having failed to report that a 15-year-old sophomore student in his school had told him of having sex with an older man.  But failure to report what appeared to be a case of statuatory rape of a child may be the least of Jennings' worries.

Lawmaker calls on Obama to fire official in gay sex ed controversy.  Iowa Republican Rep. Steve King is calling on President Obama to fire gay activist Kevin Jennings, the controversial head of the Education Department's Office of Safe & Drug Free Schools.  Although Jennings has come under heavy criticism from social conservatives in recent months, King is the first member of Congress to call for his ouster.

53 Republicans demand firing of 'safe schools czar' Kevin Jennings.  Fifty-three House Republicans have written President Barack Obama asking him to remove "safe schools czar" Kevin Jennings from that position.  The lawmakers accused Jennings of "pushing a pro-homosexual agenda" and said that Jennings's past writings exhibit a record that makes him unfit for the position.

Queering our schools.  Fifty-three Republican congressmen yesterday [10/15/2009] demanded that President Obama fire his embattled "safe schools czar," Kevin Jennings.  Mr. Jennings' bizarre sexual agenda for American grade schools is one reason the president should dump this dangerous radical.  Mr. Jennings wrote the foreword to a 1998 book titled, "Queering Elementary Education."

Facts hurt Jennings in youth sex controversy.  [Scroll down]  But there are other objections to his role as head of the Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools.  There is his authorship of the foreword to the 1999 book Queering Elementary Education.  There is a life's work singularly focused on bringing the topic of homosexuality into the nation's classrooms, including elementary schools. ... And then, given the title of the office he heads, there is the fact that he has no experience in school safety or drug prevention.

Besieged czar, EEOC chief safe, Obama tells homosexual crowd.  President Obama last night received a warm welcome at the annual dinner of the homosexual support group Human Rights Campaign, promising to sign hate crimes legislation, to repeal both Don't Ask, Don't Tell and the Defense of Marriage Act and to continue supporting his besieged appointments as "safe schools czar" and head of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Obama's buggery czar.  The media is trying to keep this story in the closet, but it's important not to wink at all the serious problems surrounding President Obama's controversial "safe schools czar," Kevin Jennings.  Mr. Jennings is the moral malefactor who gave a speech about how he merely advised a 15-year-old high-school sophomore who was having sex with an older man that, "I hope you knew to use a condom."  He knew the boy had met the adult in a bus-station restroom.  Mr. Jennings also expressed admiration for Harry Hay, a notorious and extremely prominent supporter of the North American Man Boy Love Association.

Warning message in original.
Obama's risky-sex czar.  WARNING:  This editorial includes discussion of topics that are sexually graphic.  Under usual circumstances, we would never entertain these subjects or the rancid language involved.  In this case, however, a very unusual exception must be made because the issues are central to the background of a senior presidential appointee at the U.S. Department of Education who is in a position to influence how and what our children are taught in our nation's schools.

EDITOR'S WARNING:  This article is replete with graphic descriptions of perverse sexual practices.
Kevin Jennings and "FistGate" Should Make Parents Furious.  Why are watchdogs barking this dude down?  Well, it's not because he's mildly gay but because he's wildly militant in his homosexuality, and both he and his hombres at GLSEN have had no problemo whatsoever filling your kids' heads and bodies with weirdness galore.

Obama's Safe Schools Czar Tied to Lewd Readings for 7th Graders.  President Obama's "Safe Schools Czar," already a target of social conservatives for his past drug abuse and what they say is his promotion of homosexuality in schools, is under fresh attack after it was revealed that the pro-gay group he formerly headed recommends books his critics say are pornographic.  The group under fire is the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), which Kevin Jennings, now the assistant deputy secretary for safe and drug-free schools in the Department of Education, founded and ran from 1990 to 2008.

NAMBLA-Gate:  The Case of Kevin Jennings.  Harry Hay, who "inspired" Obama-appointed Education Department official Kevin Jennings to lead a life of homosexual activism, was not only a supporter of the North American Man-Boy Love Association (NAMBLA) but a prominent member of the Communist Party USA and "Radical Faerie" who believed in the power of the occult.  As disclosed by Peter LaBarbera's Americans for Truth organization, Jennings said in 1997 that Hay should serve as an inspiration.  "One of the people that's always inspired me is Harry Hay, who started the first ongoing gay rights group in America," Jennings said.

The Strange Case of Kevin Jennings, Part Two.  [Harry] Hay was summoned to appear before the House Committee on Un-American Activities in 1954 to testify about his CPUSA membership.  But because he was officially out of the party by then, he refused to talk about it.  His real contribution to communism in America was developing the idea that homosexuals, like the "workers" under capitalism, were being oppressed and had to assert their "rights."  Although some CPUSA officials disapproved of the homosexual lifestyle, the Hay approach was seen as a means by which American society could be subverted and undermined.

The Editor apologizes for the graphic nature of this article, but the truth must come to light.
Upward Bound Is Down... Radical Sexual Indoctrination of Kids Is In.  Despite the runaway federal spending and record budget deficits, Barack Obama is including $410 million in the 2011 budget for his "safe schools" czar Kevin Jennings.  This is an increase of $45 million over last year's budget.  Obviously, some things are more important than others. ... Kevin Jennings, the founder of the GLSEN organization, has a long history of promoting sexual material in classrooms including books that describe sex between first graders and books that promote S&M.  The GLSEN group also pushes books that romanticize child rape and books that show men having sex with boy scouts in the background.

Obama Administration Specifically Recruited Homosexual Activist to Be 'Safe Schools Czar'.  Kevin Jennings, the long-time homosexual activist who is now the Obama administration's safe schools czar, never sought public office.  Rather, he said, the Obama administration recruited him.

Carol Browner

Watermelon Environmentalism, Green on the Outside, Red on the Inside.  President Obama, who wants to emphasize science, has chosen Carol Browner for his "Assistant to the President for Energy and Climate Change," a new post being dubbed the "Climate Czar."  Browner's recent career will be of interest to Americans struggling with a weak economy and cold weather.  Carol Browner is not a climate scientist but an attorney and bureaucrat who ran the EPA during both terms of the Clinton Administration, so she does not exactly represent "change."  She also put in a stint with the Socialist International, "the worldwide organization of social democratic, socialist and labour parties.

A Secret White House Power Grab Is In Full Swing.  It's one thing for President Obama to surround himself with the advisers he'd like to have, but it's another to bestow on them sweeping powers to broker secret negotiations and push forward vast new regulations that could cost American families thousands of dollars. ... Driving the push for this massive power grab and circumvention of the elected branches is a key White House official who avoided Senate confirmation by being installed not as EPA director, but instead as White House Climate Czar:  Carol Browner.

Transparency According to Carol Browner.  "Put nothing in writing, ever," sounds like a command a veteran CIA official may give to an incoming class of new officers.  One would not expect such a directive to issue from one of the President's trusted advisors, especially from a White House that proudly proclaims itself to be the most transparent in history.  But according to various media reports, that "cloak and dagger" tactic was Energy and Climate Change Czar Carol Browner's underlying rule for auto industry executives involved with secret negotiations concerning the federal Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards.  Yet, we should not be surprised about her oral-communication-only policy, since she has apparently learned from her past mistakes.

Throw Carol Browner Under the Bus.  Energy czar Carol Browner needs to go the way of disgraced green jobs czar Van Jones:  under the bus and stripped of her unbridled power to destroy jobs and lives in the name of saving the planet.  ASAP.  One of the Beltway's most influential, entrenched and unaccountable left-wing radicals, Browner has now been called out twice by President Obama's own federal BP oil spill commission and Interior Department inspector general.  How many strikes should a woman who circumvented the Senate confirmation process and boasts a sordid history of abusing public office get?

Brown-Out on Browner Testimony.  Controversial 'energy and environment czar' Carol Browner, a former commissioner of the Socialist International who was appointed to a non-existent position to avoid Senate confirmation testimony, is stepping down from her post.  Rumors that this move is calculated to avoid testifying under oath to a House oversight committee are of course being circulated by people who know precisely what they are talking about.

White House Energy 'Czar' to Exit in Staff Shake-Up.  Carol Browner is leaving her position as White House "energy czar," and a staff shake-up is likely to eliminate her post altogether, according to Democrats familiar with events.  The czar position, and Ms. Browner herself, have been lightning rods for critics of the president's environmental-policy agenda and a reassurance to its supporters, who liked having a top official in the White House devoted to their priorities.

Carol Browner Goes, Draconian Policies Stay.  With cap-and-trade seemingly dead and EPA's regulatory authority under attack, the administration's climate czar is abandoning ship.  Too bad she's not taking the administration's energy policies with her.

Browner Resignation, Obama Omission Could Spell the End of Global Warming Policy.  The abrupt resignation of Carol Browner, President Barack Obama's global warming czar, and the omission by Obama of global warming from his State of the Union speech on Tuesday could mean that the White House has given up on global warming, according to climate change analysts.

Climate 'czar' Browner joins liberal think tank.  Carol Browner, President Obama's former top climate and energy policy adviser, has accepted a position at the Center for American Progress (CAP).  CAP, a liberal think tank with close ties to the White House, said Wednesday that Browner will be a senior fellow focused on "domestic and international policy development."  She'll also be on the think tank's executive committee.

Chai Feldblum

Obama Nominee to Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Argued 'Gay Sex Is Morally Good'.  Chai R. Feldblum, nominated by President Barack Obama to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), has argued that homosexual sex is "morally good" and that government should foster all types of domestic partnerships, including "non-sexual" ones.

Obama's EEOC Nominee Would Redefine Marriage.  Chai Feldblum, Obama's nominee for the EEOC, aims to fundamentally change America's definition of marriage.  Feldblum is perhaps the nation's leading LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) rights activist.  A graduate of Harvard Law School, once Legislative Counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), she's now Professor of Law at Georgetown University.  She's also a self-avowed lesbian.

The Privatization of the First Amendment.  President Obama's nomination of Chai Feldblum to be a member of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) represents one of the most serious threats to religious freedom we have seen in a long time. ... Feldblum is a radical homosexual activist whose views on "homosexual rights" are among the most extreme.  Although our right to religious freedom is expressly guaranteed by the Constitution, Feldblum argues that the "homosexual rights" judges have read into the Constitution should be held higher.

Radicals to rule us all.  [Chai R.] Feldblum, a lesbian activist at Georgetown Law Center who has said she cannot think of a single instance in which religious freedom would trump "gay rights," is the newest commissioner on the five-member Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).  That's the agency that enforces federal civil rights laws in the workplace.  Ms. Feldblum once said the culture war could be resolved in a simple manner:  "Gays win, Christians lose."

Anita Dunn

Video of Obama Communications Director Claiming Mao One of Her 'Favorite Political Philosophers'.  The feud between the White House and the Fox News Channel took another, thanks to one of Glenn Beck's viewers.  On Beck's Oct. 15 program, the Fox News host played video sent to him of White House Communications Director Anita Dunn, who had previously slammed Fox News and called it an organ of the Republican Party.

What would Mao do?  White House Communications Director Anita Dunn told a group of high school students last June that former Chinese communist dictator Mao Zedong was one of her two favorite political philosophers, and you could tell she was speaking from the heart.  Of course, Mao's usual response to those who questioned his authority was to have them killed, but mentioning that inconvenient truth might detract from Miss Dunn anointing him a philosopher.  Miss Dunn's quotation of Chairman Mao as one of the two people she "most turns to" has created a media sensation.

Top White House Official Says Obama Team 'Controlled' Media Coverage During Campaign.  White House Communications Director Anita Dunn is seen in a video from January talking about how the Obama campaign exercised absolute "control" over media coverage.

Anita Dunn:  How We Created Obama's Cult of Personality.  With a compliant media willing to focus on his "rock star" personality, Obama got away without having to address many of his questionable friends that never even made it into the public discussion.  Seeing how well this method worked on Obama's church, the campaign decided to use his charm as an answer for most everything else. ... Most Obama supporters had no idea there was a purposeful strategy of fabricating an intimate relationship.  Yet once again, the media chose to ignore all warning signs and encourage people to get swept off their feet.

Anita Dunn Claims Mao Praise Was An Innocent Joke.  Standup comedian Anita Dunn, who doubles as President Obama's White House communications director, now claims she was only joking when she praised Mao Zedong by calling him "one of the two people that I turn to most," Glenn Beck revealed on his TV show Monday.  Hilarious!  There have to be 70 million murdered Chinese rolling in the aisles!  What a knee-slapper.

The Editor says...
This is a very common Democrat strategy:  Say something outrageous, and if there are any objections, follow up with, "Can't you take a joke?"

Anita Dunn's Husband Emerging as Top Contender to Replace White House Counsel.  Bob Bauer, the top lawyer for the Democratic National Committee and husband of White House Communications Director Anita Dunn, is under serious consideration to replace Greg Craig.

Look who's married to Obama's media 'controller'.  [Anita] Dunn is targeting Fox News with criticisms emanating from the administration that it isn't even a news network, while [Robert] Bauer has done his best to prevent the American public from seeing a wide range of Obama's records that could prove, or disprove, his eligibility to occupy the Oval Office.

She Is Gone.  My guess is that [Anita] Dunn's expressed admiration for Mao is the cause of her departure.  For this revelation I suppose we have to thank Fox's Glenn Beck.  He aired a tape of Dunn notifying an audience of students at St. Andrew's Episcopal School near Washington that this cuddly little butterball of a tyrant — who oversaw the murder of some 70 million people — is one of her "favorite philosophers."

Who was Chairman Mao, Lionized by Obama's White house?  It's easy to briefly describe Mao Zedong.  He was a radical progressive who fought for a Marxist revolution in his native China, prevailing to lead the country for 27 tumultuous years.  Despite boasting he fought "for the People," Mao's Great Leap Forward, Cultural Revolution, and other progressive policies resulted in the killing of 77 million people, according to genocide expert Professor J.R. Rummel.

Socialism is Great!  (And Other Chinese Fables):  Anita Dunn, then President Obama's director of communications, last fall held up Mao as an example of individualism.  In reality, under Mao's regime, the communist government was so intent on wiping out individuality that it even demanded ideological allegiance from those it had branded enemies of the state — as it was killing them.

Edward Chen

ACLU:  Pipeline for Obama Judges.  For sixteen years, [Edward] Chen worked as a staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, working on affirmative action, the death penalty, and discrimination cases, among other issues.  He was the second nomination of the day that had ties to the ACLU, leading Rep. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), ranking member on the Senate Judiciary Committee, to comment, "I think we're seeing a common DNA run through the Obama nominees, and that's the ACLU chromosome."

Edward Chen:  Son Of Sotomayor.  The nominee for a California federal district court is an ACLU activist and another advocate for the empathy standard of jurisprudence.  He also has a problem with "America the Beautiful."  The nomination of Edward Chen is the latest in a series of nominations of people who have no particular fondness for the traditions of law and justice.  These nominees see racism everywhere, and believe the courts should be used as instruments of social justice and not to discern the intent of the Founding Fathers who wrote the U.S. Constitution.  They believe their "life experience" should be the final arbiter of justice.

Outrageous judicial pick still requires scrutiny.  Tomorrow [2/4/2010] the Senate Judiciary Committee is scheduled to vote on five of President Obama's controversial court-and-justice nominees.  Among them is federal district court nominee Edward Chen of Northern California, whose radical agenda has not been fully exposed and requires further public hearings rather than a vote.

Patrick Gaspard

ACORN at the White House.  The newly released list of visitors to the Obama White House makes the president's claim he's clueless about his former employer ACORN — and its election fraud trials and tribulations — especially difficult to believe.  Of particular significance is the visit by ACORN spokesman Scott Levenson who met with White House political director Patrick Gaspard in March.  The purpose of the meeting with Gaspard, a former ACORN employee himself, was not disclosed.

ACORN's Big Spender.  More proof has emerged of White House political director Patrick Gaspard's ties to the radical advocacy group ACORN.  Gaspard, a longtime operative for ACORN and one of its partisan arms, New York's Working Families Party, currently holds the title of White House political affairs director, the same title Karl Rove held in President Bush's White House.  Internal ACORN documents show that Gaspard gave ACORN $40,000 over the past two years.

ACORN's Man in the White House.  Newly discovered evidence shows the radical advocacy group ACORN has a man in the Obama White House.  This power behind the throne is longtime ACORN operative Patrick Gaspard.  He holds the title of White House political affairs director, the same title Karl Rove held in President Bush's White House.  Evidence shows that years before he joined the Obama administration, Gaspard was ACORN boss Bertha Lewis's political director in New York.

Erroll Southers

DeMint:  TSA nominee isn't qualified, shouldn't be confirmed.  Republican Sen. Jim DeMint, who has been the target of much Democratic criticism for his efforts to slow down Senate confirmation of Erroll Southers, the Obama White House's nominee to head the Transportation Security Administration, now says Southers should not be confirmed.  DeMint has been critical of Southers for refusing to answer questions about whether Southers would work toward unionizing the TSA.

Obama's latest homeland security fiasco.  For a while, it seemed the nomination and confirmation of Erroll Southers to head the Transportation Security Administration would be a routine affair. ... Wrong.  As the new year begins, the Southers nomination has become the latest Obama confirmation mess, raising questions not only about the nominee but the White House's selection process.

Sex, lies and federal databases.  Democrat Ritter's announcement that he would not run for a second term ... focused renewed attention on Transportation Security Administration nominee Erroll Southers, who gave Congress conflicting reports over his personal use of the same crime database to run unauthorized background checks on his then-estranged wife's boyfriend.

Obama's TSA Nominee Misidentified Domestic Security Threats.  Erroll Southers, who President Barack Obama has nominated to head the Transportation Security Administration, described groups that were a domestic security threat as being "anti-abortion" and "Christian-identity oriented."

CQ reporter:  Southers withdraws.  Southers was controversial because he refused to take a position on unionization of TSA employees.  He had also misled Congress about a decades-old incident in which he abused his position as an FBI agent by using a government database to spy on his estranged wife's boyfriend.

TSA Nominee Southers Withdraws Name Amid Controversy.  Erroll Southers, nominated by President Obama to head the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), withdrew his name from consideration on Wednesday, saying his nomination had become a target of those with a "political agenda."

Amanda Simpson

President Obama Names Transgender Appointee to Commerce Department.  President Obama recently named Amanda Simpson to be a Senior Technical Advisor to the Commerce Department. ... While Simpson is clearly one of the first transgender presidential appointees, Democratic officials say they're unsure if she is the very first one.  The White House had no comment on her appointment.

Meet Obama's transgender appointee.  The Obama administration's appointment of Amanda Simpson to a relatively low-profile spot as advisor to the Commerce Department felt intentionally buried over the New Year's news cycle.  Why?  Simpson, who will be working in the Bureau of Industry and Security, used to be a man.

Craig Becker

Obama's Big Labor Ethics Loophole.  Everything you need to know about President Obama's fraudulent ethics pledge can be summed up in four words:  SEIU lawyer Craig Becker.

Acorn's Ally at the NLRB.  One of Big Labor's priorities in Washington is to place allies in key government jobs where they can overturn existing labor policy without battles in Congress.  This is a very good reason for the Senate to hold a hearing on the nomination of Craig Becker to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).  Mr. Becker is associate general counsel at the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), which is most recently in the news for its close ties to Acorn, the disgraced housing shakedown operation.

Republicans Oppose Nomination of Pro-Labor Union Activist.  In a 13-10 vote along party lines, the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee approved the nomination Thursday [2/4/2010] of Craig Becker to join the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), paving the way for a full Senate vote on the controversial nominee in the coming weeks.

Vote on Obama labor nominee spells trouble for unions.  The vote on Craig Becker's nomination — the first controversial vote since the Senate Democrats' 60-seat majority shrank by one last week — highlighted the difficulty that Democrats will have trying to push union-friendly legislation through Congress.  Only 52 senators voted to cut off debate on the nomination, eight short of the number needed, and 33 were opposed.

Obama Makes Labor Board Appointment During Recess Over GOP Objections.  Despite intense Republican objections, President Obama on Saturday [3/27/2010] used recess appointments to fill some administration posts, including Craig Becker to the National Labor Relations Board.

Obama names 15 recess appointments, including union lawyer.  President Barack Obama on Saturday [3/27/2010] wielded his recess appointment powers for the first time, clearing 15 nominees to assume posts that have remained vacant for months due to insurmountable congressional roadblocks.  Among the 15 named just days before the Senate departs for Easter recess are Craig Becker and Mark Pearce, the White House's two, hotly contested nominees for the National Labor Relations Board.

Obama rewards the SEIU.  Once again Mr. Obama has thumbed his nose at the American people.  Emboldened by his big win in passing ObamaCare, the future former president placed both of his thumbs squarely on the American worker's windpipe and squeezed.  With the U.S. Senate in recess Mr. Obama moved quickly to wield his executive sword to fill a number of federal positions including the appointment of Craig Becker to the NLRB.

Will Craig Becker recuse himself from cases involving National Right to Work?  Despite having loudly objected to Bush's use of recess appointments, over the weekend Obama made 15 recess appointments of his own.  Among them was [Craig] Becker to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), despite the fact that the former lawyer for the SEIU and AFL-CIO had been held up in the Senate by a bipartisan vote on the grounds that he was too radical.

Radical Labor Law Changes After Becker's Appointment?  [Scroll down]  So why should anyone care about this procedural maneuver?  "Because recess appointments last only until Congress adjourns at the end of 2011," noted former NLRB Chairman Peter Kirsanow, a Bush appointee, "But if the Senate confirms Becker and Pearce in exchange for getting Hayes on board also, Becker and Pearce's confirmed terms would be extended by approximately three more years — plenty of time for the Obama-controlled board to make a substantial imprint on labor law."

Obama Appointee under Ethics Cloud.  Atty. Gen. Eric Holder is facing his first real test to enforce the most heralded value of President Obama's Administration — the ethics pledge.  Holder is being pressured to determine whether Craig Becker, a controversial recess appointment to the National Labor Relations Board, has violated that pledge more than a dozen times in just a few short months.

Obama launches new fight over nominees.  President Obama has triggered a new fight with Republicans by re-nominating two controversial officials to key administration posts.  Obama on Wednesday [1/26/2011] re-nominated former labor lawyer Craig Becker to the National Labor Relations Board, and Donald Berwick to serve as administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.  Both are already serving those posts, as they were named as recess appointments in the last year.

Craig Becker and Boeing.  Federal financial disclosure forms reveal that Craig Becker, a key union-friendly vote on the NLRB, owned stock in Boeing at the beginning of this year. Becker is one of federal agency's Democratic board members.  According to documents obtained by the National Right to Work Committee, as of January 2011 Becker owned between $1,001 and $15,000 in Boeing stock, earning between $201 and $1,000 in dividends.

More about The NLRB vs Boeing.

Rashad Hussain

Rashad Hussain's Troubling Ties:  President Obama has chosen Rashad Hussain to be his special envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference, a post originally created by the Bush Administration in 2008.  Hussain's past association with Muslim Brotherhood-connected entities raises major questions about the type of outreach he envisions for the Muslim world.

Troubling Views at Event Attended by Obama's Muslim Envoy:  The Islamic organization whose event was attended by President Obama's new envoy to the Muslim world six years ago has a history of radical stances, and at the time of the event it was urging members to support incarcerated Muslims including terror suspects and a convicted cop killer.

Is White House Attorney Involved in Media Cover-up?  There is a somewhat convoluted story flying under the radar about a White House official, Rashad Hussain, who back in 2004 allegedly spoke out in support of Sami Al-Arian, a man accused (and subsequently convicted) of aiding the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist organization.  Hussain has worked in the White House Counsel's Office since January 2009, and just last week was appointed by the President as his Special Envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC).

W.H. affirms confidence in Islam envoy.  The White House is expressing its confidence in a White House counsel's office attorney President Barack Obama recently named as U.S. envoy to the Islamic Conference, Rashad Hussain, despite his concession last week that he made ill-considered statements in 2004 about Bush-era terrorism prosecutions.

Obama selects a voice of radical Islam.  As [Washington] Examiner columnist Cal Thomas wrote recently, Obama's selection of Rashad Hussain, his deputy associate White House counsel, as U.S. special envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference, "should be of concern to Congress and the American people."  Comprising 57 member states, the OIC's charter makes clear its purpose is to "defend" and "disseminate" the Muslim faith.  Whenever human rights collide with Islam, the OIC sides with the latter.

Obama assisting in imposing Islamic Sharia law, prohibiting criticism of Islam.  Barack Hussein Obama, catering to both Muslim and globalist agendas, is exposing his preference to Islamic and globalist agendas and placing yet another nail in America's coffin by appointing Rashad Hussain as special envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference.

Our Islamist Envoy:  What a tangled web Islamist appointees weave.  When his pro-terrorist quotes surfaced, a new White House envoy dismissed them as someone else's.  A recording says otherwise.  Now Rashad Hussain, President Obama's pick as special envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference, has changed his story.

Ambassador to Islam?  The US shouldn't legitimize the OIC.  On February 13, President Obama announced the appointment of Rashad Hussain, deputy associate White House counsel, as U.S. special envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC). ... It was a bad precedent for Bush to set, and it is worse for Obama to continue.  Appointing an American envoy to the OIC gives that organization a legitimacy it does not deserve.

Obama's Envoy to the Muslim World:  A Soros Tie?  The Washington Post published an article on [Rashad Hussain's] ascent that charts how he came to the White House in the first place.  He was recruited to the White house counsel's office by Cassandra Butts — a classmate of Barack Obama's at Harvard Law School.  Who is Cassandra Butts?  She as an alumna for the left-wing think tank Center for American Progress (one of many staffing the Obama administration).  This organization is an ideas factory for the Obama administration and its hiring hall.  It just took on Van Jones, for example.  The Center for American Progress was created and funded by George Soros.

Goodwin Liu

Goodwin Liu Must Be Stopped.  President Obama recently nominated Berkeley law professor Goodwin Liu for the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, looking to shift an already-radical panel even further to the left. ... He actually states that the Constitution mandates "a minimal safety net" (where?), "basic employment supports" (where?), "health insurance" (where?), "child care" (where?), "transportation subsidies" (where?), "job training" (where?), and a "robust earned income tax credit" (where?).  Apparently Liu isn't just ideologically driven, he's constitutionally illiterate.

Liu Nomination Pushes 9th Circuit Farther Left.  By nominating UC Berkeley Law Professor Goodwin Liu to the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, Barack Obama is working to push the nation's most liberal — and most overturned — court even further outside the mainstream of American jurisprudence.  Liu, the son of Taiwanese immigrants, will face certain opposition from many Republicans in part because of his many liberal positions but also because he took an active role in opposing Supreme Court Justices John Roberts and Samuel Alito.

The American Bar Association exposes its liberal bias once again.  I wrote here about Goodwin Liu, the leftist law professor nominated by President Obama for a spot on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.  Among my observations was that Liu has only practiced law in earnest for two or three years.  The rest of his time since graduating from law school has been spent as a law clerk or a law professor.  Moreover, Liu appears to have no trial experience.  Nor, as far as I can tell, has he ever argued a case before a court of appeal. ... Yet the ABA has rated Liu "highly qualified."

Goodwin Liu:  Unqualified, and Hostile to the Constitution.  [Others have written] about Goodwin Liu, a left-wing law professor whom President Obama has nominated to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.  To say that Liu is thinly qualified would give him too much credit, as he has scarcely ever practiced law at all.  Now, an attack Liu launched against John Roberts in 2005 has surfaced and has raised new questions about his nomination.  When President Bush first nominated Roberts to succeed Sandra O'Connor, Liu responded with an attack that tells us nothing about Roberts but a great deal about Liu.

A constitutional right to welfare?  Another day, another radical judicial nominee.  President Obama once again has nominated for a federal judgeship a lawyer whose own words demonstrate unfitness for the position.  In the case of Goodwin H. Liu, nominated on Feb. 24 for the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, the substance behind the words is even worse than the verbiage.

Republicans Slam Obama Judicial Nominee Over 117 Omissions From Record.  Senate Republicans on Tuesday [4/6/2010] slammed one of the Obama administration's most controversial judicial nominees for failing to initially disclose more than 100 of his speeches, publications and other background materials — an omission the Republicans called unprecedented and a possible attempt to "hide his most controversial work."

Goodwin Liu caught hiding the ball, Part Two.  Appeals court nominee Goodwin Liu claims that his failure to provide the Senate Judiciary Committee with more than 100 of his speeches and writings was inadvertent.  In support of this claim, Liu's supporters claim the omissions were inconsequential.  Former Bush White House ethics adviser Richard Painter has tried to minimze them as "a brown bag lunch here, a talk with alumni there, etc."  As Ed Whelan has shown, the facts do not support this defense.

My Last Goodwin Liu Column — I Really Hope.  When Republicans argued that simple fairness demanded a full floor vote on Alito, Feinstein, like Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., and then-Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., supported the use of the filibuster to prevent it.  They tried, but failed to prevent a majority-rules vote.  Now that Democrats are in power, judicial philosophy doesn't matter.

The worst judiciary ever.  [Scroll down to Goodwin H. Liu]  This University of California at Berkeley law professor has argued there is a constitutional right to welfare and that the judiciary should be "a culturally situated interpreter of social meaning" that can "cue the policymaking process during greater deliberation and rationality."  Translation:  Judges should help create law, not just interpret it.

Jerry Brown defends high court nominee's lack of judicial experience.  Gov. Jerry Brown said he was not bothered by his California Supreme Court nominee's lack of judicial experience or that conservative Republicans painted him as a liberal ideologue in rejecting him for a seat on the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.  Brown on Tuesday [7/26/2011] nominated UC Berkeley law professor Goodwin Liu, 40, to the state's highest court, which would give the seven-member panel it's fourth Asian.  He is the son of Taiwanese immigrants.

Judge Robert N. Chatigny

Hearing Delayed for Obama Judicial Nominee Who Supported Serial Killer.  The Senate Judiciary Committee has postponed the hearing for a controversial Court of Appeals nominee after the panel received a letter from a home-state prosecutor blasting the candidate as a judicial loose cannon and after Republicans raised concerns about bias in favor of sex offenders.  U.S. District Court Judge Robert Chatigny gained notoriety in 2005 for his role in trying to fight the execution of convicted serial killer and rapist Michael Ross, also known as The Roadside Strangler, whom Chatigny had described as a victim of his own "sexual sadism."

Obama's Second Circuit Nominee Another Radical?  Judge Robert N. Chatigny — President Obama's new nominee for the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals — ruled against a state sex offender registry while in a District Court, and as judge also scolded and threatened a lawyer, whose client consented to execution while on death row, with negligence for his client.

Obama nominee's sympathy for sexual sadists.  President Obama's judicial nominees are getting more dangerous with each White House announcement.  If you don't believe us, consider one judge's opinion that the "sexual sadism" of a multiple rapist-murderer was "clearly a mitigating factor" that argued against executing the murderer and perhaps even against convicting him in the first place.

Obama's 'Empathy for Sexual Sadists' Judge.  Judge Robert Chatigny, nominated to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit, did just that in an appeal of a defendant who confessed to raping and murdering eight young women.  Chatigny also repeatedly gave light sentences for sexual crimes such as possession of child pornography, and who overturned Connecticut's law requiring registration of sex offenders (a decision later overturned unanimously by the Supreme Court).

The worst judiciary ever.  [Scroll down to Louis Butler]  While a Wisconsin Supreme Court justice, he earned the name "Loophole Louie" for so often finding ways to interpret laws in precisely the opposite way from how they were intended.  A law written to limit casino gambling thus became a law interpreted to expand gambling; a law written to expand the right to carry guns became interpreted as a gun limitation.  And so on.

Will Media Report Professional Misconduct?  Did you know that President Obama has nominated for a federal judgeship someone who believes a serial killer and rapist's "sexual sadism" should be a cause to give him a less serious punishment?  Probably not, since the media have given it almost no coverage.

Obama's Federal Appeals Court Nominee Did Legal Work for Serial Killer.  President Barack Obama's nominee to serve on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit, Robert N. Chatigny, did legal work as a private defense attorney in 1992 for convicted serial killer Michael Ross and then, in 2005, as a federal district judge, led a proceeding that resulted in a delay in Ross' execution.  Chatigny says he forgot about the earlier work and should have recused himself from the matter.

Devastating take-down of an obscure nomination.  [Scroll down]  But setting aside the political angle, the biggest problem with Chatigny's nomination is not the odd extremes to which he went to in order to protect a serial killer from a legally imposed death sentence, nor even his willingness to give light sentences for child pornography offenses and strike down Connecticut's version of Megan's Law.  The biggest problem is that Chatigny presided over the Ross serial killer case despite having previously worked for Ross as a lawyer, without making anyone else aware of that fact.

The worst judiciary ever.  Declaring that a serial rapist-murderer's "sexual sadism" was a "mitigating factor" that made him perhaps "the least culpable" prisoner on Connecticut's death row, the judge [Chatigny] threatened the law license of the defense attorney who tried to fulfill the murderer's own request to end years of appeals.

Elena Kagan

Obama's Attorney General:  President-elect Obama has decided to tap Eric Holder as his attorney general, putting the veteran Washington lawyer in place to become the first African-American to head the Justice Department, according to two legal sources close to the presidential transition. ... The sources said the Obama transition team is still debating over who should serve under Holder in the key post of deputy attorney general.  One top candidate ... is Elena Kagan, dean of the Harvard Law School and a former lawyer in the White House counsel's office under Clinton.

Possible Supreme Court pick had ties with Goldman Sachs.  A top prospect for the Supreme Court was a paid member of an advisory panel for the embattled investment firm Goldman Sachs, federal financial disclosures show.  Solicitor General Elena Kagan was a member of the Research Advisory Council of the Goldman Sachs Global Markets Institute, according to the financial disclosures she filed when President Obama appointed her last year to her current post.

Obama Interviews Solicitor General Elena Kagan for Supreme Court.  President Obama on Friday [4/30/2010] interviewed Solicitor General Elena Kagan for an upcoming vacancy on the Supreme Court, a source close to the president's selection process told Fox News.  The interview came one day after Obama conducted his first known formal interview with federal appeals court Judge Sidney Thomas of Montana.  The White House has not confirmed either interview.

Note:  After Ms. Kagan was nominated to the Supreme Court, the rest of the commentary about her (and the rationale behind President Obama's selection) began to accumulate here.

Dr. Donald Berwick

Redistributing Health?  The administration's nominee to run Medicare and Medicaid is a fan of Britain's National Health Service and rationing services.  He believes in less discretion for your doctor, more power for your government.

Berwick and Obamacare Equal Socialism on Steroids.  We knew Obama was prevaricating when he told us his purpose to cram through Obamacare was to provide universal access to coverage and reduce costs, but how many people did he manage to fool?  How many are still fooled?

Time Magazine Introduces Radical Obama Nominee, Says He's Not Radical.  "Any health care funding plan that is just, equitable, civilized and humane must, must redistribute wealth from the richer among us to the poorer and the less fortunate.  Excellent health care is by definition redistributional.  Britain, you chose well."  Was that a British socialist speaking in Parliament?  Nope.  It was Dr. Donald Berwick, a Harvard professor about to face Senate confirmation as President Obama's nominee to head Medicare and Medicaid.

Obama's Rationing Man.  While much of Washington is focused on President Obama's Supreme Court pick, Republicans are gearing up for a confirmation battle over another Obama nominee who promises to put health care back in the spotlight.  At issue is Obama's choice to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Donald Berwick, a Harvard professor with a self-professed love affair with Britain's socialized health care system.  In his writings and speeches, Berwick has defended government rationing and advocated centralized budget caps on health care spending.

Whistling past the death panel.  President Obama has selected Dr. Donald Berwick to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.  Berwick is a Harvard professor, a pediatrician, and the CEO of a nonprofit that, according to its website, has a staff of over 100 people.  These seem like dubious qualifications to head a massive organization with a budget greater than that of the Department of Defense.

An Incurable Romantic.  Arguably, the single most powerful person in the U.S. health care system is the Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).  As the head of a federal agency that directs the flow of nearly $1 trillion per year through our medical system and effectively dictates quality standards for the nation's hospitals, nursing homes and clinical laboratories, this bureaucrat's influence reaches far beyond the bounds of his statutory authority.  Moreover, that influence will be considerably augmented by ObamaCare.  Thus, the American public should be alarmed that President Obama has nominated Donald Berwick to head CMS.

The Real Face of Obamacare.  Once a sleepy federal backwater, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) now has primary responsibility for implementing the federal takeover of the U.S. health-care industry, and Pres. Barack Obama proposes to fill a key position there with Dr. Donald Berwick, who exemplifies the worst aspects of the Democrats' health-care agenda:  Denouncing the "darkness of private enterprise," he celebrates the centralization of power, the redistribution of wealth, and the subordination of health-care professionals to political players.

O's radical pick for Medicare.   Controversy is mounting over Dr. Donald Berwick, President Obama's nominee to run Medicare and Medicaid — and for good reason.  Berwick's writings reveal that he would make radical changes — seniors beware. ... A fervent ideologue, Berwick puts social engineering ahead of the individual patient's needs.  In contrast, most doctors understand that their duty is to heal each patient who comes to them.

Just the Facts (No Slander) on Berwick.  In an attempt to defend Sir Donald Berwick, President Obama's nominee for healthcare czar, Democrats are accusing Republicans of taking his words out of context and of slandering the Harvard professor.  Berwick, nominated to head Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), has never tried to hide his obsession with socialized medicine.  He even published an op-ed in the Washington Post in 1992 where he stated he was "in love" with Britain's National Heath Service.

Want worse health care?  Try British model.  All you need to know about Dr. Donald Berwick, President Obama's choice to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, is summed up in the nominee's own words.  At the 60th anniversary celebration of Britain's socialized National Health System, Berwick praised NHS, which he clearly views as superior to America's private medical system:  "You could have had the American plan ... Britain, you chose well."

Baucus Objects to Recess Appointment.  The chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana, joined a chorus of Republicans on Wednesday [7/7/2010] in criticizing the White House for bypassing Congress and appointing a Medicare chief while the Senate was in recess.  Senator Baucus did not object to the appointee, Dr. Donald M. Berwick, who will be administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.  Mr. Baucus did object to President Obama's decision to short-circuit the normal confirmation process.

Obama's Unconfirmed 'Recess' Appointee Advocated Rationing, Redistribution of Wealth.  President Barack Obama today circumvented the Senate confirmation process by granting a recess appointment to Dr. Donald Berwick to be director of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the federal agency that runs Medicare and Medicaid.

Re: Berwick.  President Obama will bypass the Senate's advice and consent and use a recess appointment to install Harvard's Donald Berwick — a self-avowed admirer of Britain's National Health Service — as head of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.

Berwick Blues.  As one who generally believes that administrations should receive deference in their personnel selections, I found the recess appointment of Dr. Donald Berwick to be the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) disturbing.

Obama names a health czar who favors rationing.  Donald Berwick is no household name, but President Obama just handed him immense power to shape what kind of health care will be available to every American man, woman and child.  Berwick is the president's newly appointed administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the federal agency that is ground zero for Obamacare's politicization of American medicine.

Gibbs Evades Question of Whether Obama Agrees With His Medicare Director.  White House Spokesman Robert Gibbs has evaded answering the question of whether President Barack Obama agrees with Dr. Donald Berwick, his newly appointed director of Medicare and Medicaid, who has insisted that health-care systems must redistribute wealth.  "Excellent health care is by definition redistributional," Berwick said in a speech delivered on July 1, 2008.  When asked directly at the July 7 White House press briefing whether Obama agreed with this, Gibbs would not answer the question.

Obama Names Rationing Czar to Run Medicare.  Dr. Donald Berwick of the Harvard Medical School does not like free enterprise, but he does like rationing.  Two years ago, in England, he delivered a talk celebrating the 60th birthday of Great Britain's National Health Service, the bureaucracy that runs that nation's socialized medical system. He apparently entertained some fear that day that the Brits might turn back to free enterprise.

The President's One-Man Death Panel.  The president recess-appoints a fan of rationing and Britain's National Health Service to direct one-third of American health care.  Why does the administration want his views hidden from scrutiny?

Obama, Say It Isn't So!  [Scroll down]  Obama used the 4th of July congressional recess to implant Donald Berwick as his healthcare czar.  Talk about wing nuts, this guy was knighted by the English Queen because he is such a big fan of their healthcare system which has people dying in hospital corridors awaiting someone to help them.  Berwick makes no bones about rationing only that he says rationing must be done with your eyes wide open.

Obama appointee's prescription for socialism.  Barack Obama promised the most open and transparent administration in history.  His vow didn't convince him to extend senators the courtesy of listening to their advice and consent on the nomination of Dr. Donald Berwick to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).

A Short History of the Recess Appointment.  [Scroll down]  Obama used a recess appointment for Dr. Berwick not to avoid a filibuster but to avoid the Senate's advice and consent power altogether.  He blamed — surprise! — the Republicans for delaying the process, but that is a bald-face lie, as Republicans would be only too happy to have hearings on Dr. Berwick's appointment in order to put the deeply unpopular ObamaCare back on Page One four months before the midterm elections.  President Obama's action here shows his contempt for everything that stands in the way of his agenda, even the Constitution.

Bowdlerizing Berwick.  [Donald Berwick] has written and spoken extensively, and his views concerning wealth redistribution, rationing, and the free market are very much at odds with those of mainstream health policy experts as well as the electorate.  Moreover, he has not been reticent about revealing his positions in writing and public statements.  This is one of the reasons Obama chose to bypass the Senate confirmation process and it is why Democrat-friendly journalists and bloggers have worked diligently, since his nomination last April, to bowdlerize Berwick's record.

Berwick battle escalates.  Kansas Republican Sen. Pat Roberts has just introduced an amendment calling for the Senate to declare the recess appointment of Medicare and Medicaid chief Donald Berwick "an abuse of power."  The nonbinding "sense of the Senate" resolution also calls on Berwick to appear before the Senate Finance Committee to answer questions.

This Will Make You Sicker.  In addition to the grave medical concerns pertaining to the appointment of Dr. Donald Berwick to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is another issue that speaks to his political perspectives.  Berwick has been actively involved with the international advocacy group Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), which was established with funding from the Ford Foundation.  In 2000, Berwick "began donating thousands of dollars [to PHR] when PHR was focusing most, if not all, of its investigations on Israel's treatment of terrorists during the Intifada."

Does Berwick answer to no one?  Dr. Donald Berwick, President Obama's recess-appointed administrator of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, may be the least accountable federal agency head.

Dr. Berwick and Mr. Hide.  The Dr. Berwick with whom we have become all too familiar was a vocal advocate of health care rationing.  In a 2009 interview for Biotechnology Healthcare, he gushed with enthusiasm for the heavy-handed rationing regime of Great Britain's National Institute for Health & Clinical Excellence (NICE) and advised his interlocutor that "The decision is not whether or not we will ration care; the decision is whether we will ration with our eyes open."  When the good doctor's alter ego appeared before the Ways and Means Committee, however, he told a different story.

Obama 'Stands Firmly Behind' Medicare Chief Berwick.  President Barack Obama is standing "firmly" behind Dr. Donald Berwick, the man he put in charge of Medicare and Medicaid with a "recess" appointment thus bypassing the normal Senate confirmation process.  Berwick's nomination has been highly controversial because of statements he has made including his insistence that in order to be just a health-care sytem "must redistibute wealth."

The Big Obama Defeat the Media Ignored.  Lost amid all the excitement over the Rio trip, the anti-obesity campaign, and the March Madness picks was the revelation that Senate Democrats had given up any attempt to confirm Donald Berwick as chief of Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).  It seems that 42 Republicans had informed the Democratic majority by letter that they would vote for Berwick's confirmation when Hell froze over.

Is it his decision to make?
Never-Confirmed Medicare Chief Won't Say If He Wants Confirmation Hearing.  His recess appointment will expire at the end of December, but Dr. Donald Berwick, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, isn't saying whether he would like the Senate to hold a confirmation hearing for him.

Cathy Zoi

Obama energy official has ties to firms that stand to benefit.  A top Obama administration official who's helping lead a campaign for energy conservation has a major financial interest in two companies that are poised to benefit from the government's spending.  Cathy Zoi, the assistant secretary of energy for energy efficiency and renewable energy, owns between $250,000 and $500,000 worth of stock in Landis+Gyr, a Swiss-based manufacturer of special electric meters that are used to create an efficient "smart" grid of electricity use.

Still Flouting the Law, Still Stonewalling the Investigation.  Documents obtained from the Department of Energy and elsewhere appear to present a prima facie case of a senior Obama administration official, Assistant Secretary of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Cathy Zoi, participating substantially in decisions impacting companies in which she is heavily invested.  This flouts ethics requirements and would be a violation of U.S. criminal law.  The Department of Energy has yet to provide additional requested documents regarding Zoi.  Even more troubling, the designated ethics officer has so far refused to even acknowledge the request for records she is required by law to provide the public.

Your Insane U.S. Energy Department.  In mid-September, Cathy Zoi, an Assistant Secretary of Energy, said that the U.S. Department of Energy has a "mandate" to issue regulations about what household appliances should be available to Americans in the future. ... The DOE intends to "set efficiency standards for energy-consuming products."  These will include commercial clothes washers, small electric motors, water heaters, direct heating equipment and pool heaters, among the countless products consumers use on a daily basis.

Thomas Perez

Thomas Perez, Illegal Activist and Obama's Civil Rights Officer.  In the wake of the Van Jones resignation, Townhall.com is taking a look at a few other characters in Obama's closet and what their policies could mean for America.  First on the list is Thomas Perez, Obama's nominee to head the Department of Justice's Civil Rights division.

The Zealot heading up the DOJ's Civil Rights Division.  Has anyone ever heard of Tomas de Torquemada, the fanatical leader of the Spanish Inquisition?  Well... he is back.  He has been re-incarnated as Thomas Perez, the head of the Civil Rights Division in the Obama-Holder Department of Justice.  Not surprisingly, he is a zealot who is stretching the responsibilities of the office to the breaking point.

Obama's zealous civil rights enforcer gets busy.  "I love this job," said Thomas Perez, the hard-charging head of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, in a speech last December to the liberal legal group American Constitution Society. ... Of all the transformations that have taken place in the Obama administration, perhaps none is so radical as that within the Civil Rights Division.  Under Perez, it is bigger, richer and more aggressive than ever, with a far more expansive view of its authority than at any time in recent history.

Maria del Carmen Aponte

Another Obama recess appointment, another radical avoids scrutiny.  Another controversial Obama recess appointment without Senate scrutiny.  And one of those appointments has a suspect history, reports the Washington Post[:  "]The most contentious of the appointments is Maria del Carmen Aponte, the administration's pick for ambassador to El Salvador.

Sleeping With The ...  President Obama hit a new low in using a recess appointment to name Maria del Carmen Aponte as U.S. envoy to El Salvador.  The radical has consorted with Cuban spies but will be taking no questions.

Elizabeth Warren

Somehow the writer of this article omitted the word czar.
Bankrupt Studies Should Disqualify Warren As Consumer Cop.  White House senior adviser David Axelrod told reporters Friday [7/16/2010] that Harvard Law professor Elizabeth Warren is a candidate to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau created in the recently passed financial reform legislation.  Warren, who currently heads the TARP congressional oversight panel, was one of the first to propose such a bureau.  But making Warren the consumer finance protection cop is a bad idea.  She has been more than willing to produce research on consumer finances that is shoddy at best and dishonest at worst.

Along the flaming paper trail of crusader Elizabeth Warren.  The Consumer Financial Protection Agency is the new kid on the block, a stranger among many agencies regulating financial institutions.  The new kid has an agreeable name, but may turn out to be a bothersome nanny or the school bully.

AFL-CIO urges recess appointment for Warren.  The AFL-CIO is calling for a recess appointment of Elizabeth Warren as the head of the fledgling Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).  In an email sent to the labor federation's activists Thursday [6/9/2011], AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka asks them to urge President Obama to appoint Warren to the head of the agency.

Worse than any czar, Warren building independent fiefdom at CFPB.  She hasn't been confirmed as chairman of the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, but that hasn't stopped Elizabeth Warren from creating her own bureaucratic kingdom to rule.

James R. Clapper

Clanging Clapper caper.  When President Obama named retired Air Force Lt. General James R. Clapper to replace Dennis Blair as the Director of National Intelligence, I had never heard of him. ... Yesterday [2/10/2011] Clapper told a House Intelligence Committee hearing that the Egyptian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood — which seeks to render Egypt an Islamic state ruled by sharia law — is "a very heterogeneous group, largely secular, which has eschewed violence and has decried Al Qaeda as a perversion of Islam."

There's Willful Blindness, and Then There's Willful Stupidity.  James Clapper, the head of intelligence for the United States of America, has explained to Congress that the Muslim Brotherhood is "largely secular."  It further has "eschewed violence," decries al-Qaeda as a "perversion of Islam," and really just wants "social ends" and "a betterment of the political order in Egypt."  I kid you not.  This is the Muslim Brotherhood whose motto brays that the Koran is its law and jihad is its way.

The Spooks' Black Thursday.  Bad day for the "Intelligence Community" here in Washington.  CIA chief Leon Panetta opined that Mubarak was very likely going to resign in a few hours, while DNI (Director of National Intelligence) General James Clapper declared the Muslim Brotherhood "largely secular" and has "eschewed violence." ... Oh, well... tomorrow's another day.  Indeed this afternoon is another day, as Clapper's spokespeople assured us that he really knows all about the Brotherhood, and is "well aware that the Muslim Brotherhood is not a secular organization."  Pity he didn't say that to Congress.

Reelection Slogan for Obama & Co:  We Bring Down Governments?  The Obama regime is now the unsurpassed and most bizarre combination of outward stupidity and hidden (by the media and others) pure evil intent ever to rule over the citizens of the United States of America.  Starting with the stupidity factor — perhaps just to throw us off — Obama's Director of National Intelligence (Intelligence?  Really?) James Clapper has again placed his foot in it and this time, it was both feet.

Intelligence breakdown.  No matter how things shake out in Egypt, one thing has become depressingly clear:  Something is very wrong with the American intelligence services.  First it was CIA Director Leon Panetta ... Then it was Panetta's nominal boss, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, telling Congress that the violent pro-jihad Muslim Brotherhood is "largely secular" and has "eschewed violence."

Jamie Gorelick

Another Brick In 'The Wall'?  Jamie Gorelick may be back, this time as attorney general.  It was her "wall of separation" that that left us blind pre-9/11.  And let's not forget her admirable service at Fannie Mae.

How To Ruin The FBI:  A lieutenant of Attorney General Janet Reno in the Clinton administration, it was [Jamie] Gorelick who created "the wall" preventing the CIA from sharing espionage information with the FBI — this owing to her preposterously fastidious resistance to anything hinting of "domestic spying."  Such bureaucratic "stovepiping" blocked agents from knowing of 9/11 jihadists' activity.  Scandalously, Gorelick was appointed to the 9/11 Commission, whose publicized probe highlighted the stovepipe issue.  Her conflict was clear, but she refused to remove herself from the panel.

Clinton Official Embroiled in 9/11 Controversy and Subprime Crisis Reportedly Shortlisted to Run FBI.  Jamie Gorelick, a former Clinton administration official who reportedly has made the Obama administration's short list to become the next director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), was paid more than $26 million in total compensation as a top executive at Fannie Mae — before taxpayers had to bail out the mortgage giant.

There's more about Ms. Gorelick on this page.

John Bryson

Bryson: U.S. Has 'Obligation to Lead' on Climate Change Legislation.  John Bryson, President Barack Obama's nominee to be secretary of commerce, said it was "incredibly important" that the United States pass cap and trade legislation and that America needed to be a global leader in combating man-made global warming.

A Disaster At Commerce.  The nominee for commerce secretary founded an anti-energy group and believes in redistribution of wealth to help poorer nations.  At this rate, we'll be one of them.

America needs the Commerce Department like solar power plants need an eclipse.
Nobody for commerce secretary.  In choosing John Bryson as his nominee to be the next U.S. secretary of commerce, President Obama has chosen a perfect representative of our new ruling class.  He is the founder of a lobby group, the powerful Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), who became a regulator with California's Public Utility Commission, then a rent-seeker with Edison International and Boeing.  His experience is not in commerce at all, but in getting government to direct monies to favored companies.  To be fair, that is the role of the Commerce Department these days, which is exactly why Congress needs to abolish the Commerce Department.

Obama Commerce Nominee Entangled with Chinese Business.  John Bryson, President Barack Obama's nominee for commerce secretary, may be best known as co-founder of the radical activist group Natural Resources Defense Council and as CEO of Edison International, parent company of giant electric utility Southern California Edison.  But one of his biggest obstacles to Senate confirmation may be his relationship with troubled Chinese-backed electric car company Coda Automotive.

John Bryson, job destroyer.  President Obama's pick to replace Gary F. Locke as commerce secretary faces an uphill Senate confirmation battle.  Even before the White House handed in the name of John Bryson for the job, Senate Republicans had vowed to block any nominee over administration foot-dragging on free-trade agreements.  The selection of this particular leftist for a business-outreach post is rallying the opposition.

Austan Goolsbee

Goolsbee heads for the hills.  It can't be easy serving as chief economic adviser to President Obama.  The harder Austan Goolsbee has worked to implement the administration's borrow-and-spend philosophy, the worse the economy has become.  No wonder Mr. Goolsbee wants to get out of town.  If only he were more honest about it.

Professor disaster:  Bam's theories killing economy.  No billions or trillions needed — here's the simplest number to describe the dismal state of the US economy:  One.  With the departure of chief economic adviser Austan Goolsbee, that's the number of members from the original Obama economic team still working for the administration, not quite three years into the first term.

Ken Salazar

Drilling Ken Salazar.  After two years of practicing unrepentant contempt for science, jobs, law and truth, why should Interior Secretary Ken Salazar's words mean anything anymore?  While President Obama promotes offshore drilling overseas thousands of miles away in Brazil, Salazar now promises to revitalize America's oil and gas industry.

Salazar's War On Jobs.  The plight of the prairie chickens, smelt fish and dunes sagebrush lizards is not just a policy cause for environmentalists anymore, but the weapon of choice in a war on jobs by the Obama Administration, say critics in Congress.  The policies in effect at the Interior Department, now led by Secretary Ken Salazar, are supposed to protect endangered species against certain annihilation.  But they're also turning farmlands into dust bowls and running oil and gas development off the land, out of the water and out of the country.

Lisa Jackson

Snitch I must.  Growing up in Brooklyn, NY, one learns early on that being a snitch can be hazardous to one's health but my President has asked and I have decided to forgo my own personal safety and expose those who are doing harm to my President and my Country.  First and by far most damaging must be Valerie Jarrett. ... Second, in my humble opinion, Lisa Jackson, head of the EPA, may very well be a subversive plant within your administration.

How Obama Betrays Martin Luther's King's Dream.  [Scroll down]  Lisa Jackson was chosen by Obama to be the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.  Since assuming office she has been reckless in her war on carbon and in the wake is leaving job losses, slow growth and an uncertain electric energy supply.  She has been accused of exceeding the bounds of her regulatory authority to such an extent that businesses are paralyzed by uncertainty — unsure of what she will unleash next.  She is blithely unconcerned that Congressmen have taken her to task for performance.  Was she chosen for the color of her skin or the content of her character?

Others / Everybody

Bill Ayers Apostle Appointed White House Education Initiative Director.  Jose Rico has been named the new director of the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanics, a key position that could help close the achievement gap between white and minority students.  But if his history is any indication, his influence may do more harm than good.  Perhaps most troubling is Rico's connection to unrepentant domestic terrorist Bill Ayers and communist radical Mike Klonsky through the Chicago-based "Small Schools Workshop."

Obama's Problematic New Nominee for Top Medicare/Medicaid Post.  Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) chief Donald Berwick will step down on December 2, three weeks before his recess appointment expires on December 31.  Fortunately, Dr. Berwick left a voluminous paper trail, leaving little doubt about his affinity for socialized medicine.  His controversial views on "redistributional" healthcare and rationing prompted 42 senators to vehemently oppose his nomination last spring.  Not wishing to have another fight on his hands, President Obama has nominated Berwick's second-in-command, Marilyn Tavenner, to head the agency.

The Power of Samantha Power.  Samantha Power's opinions eclipsed the views of her nominal boss, National Security Adviser Tom Donilon and those of Obama's Defense Secretary (who, at least, had to pass confirmation by the Senate, unlike Power).  Her influence is long-lasting and deep.  She also probably played a role in nominating Mary Robinson to be awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, despite a checkered record involving international efforts towards our ally, Israel.

Obama Picks a Progressive Lawyer for Top Economist.  On January 11, President Obama chose Gene Sperling to replace Lawrence Summers as his Director of the National Economic Council. ... When the book about President Obama's presidency is written, it will be noted that he did not have the discernment to distinguish competent from incompetent advisors.

President Obama appoints Roberta Achtenberg to serve on U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.  Today the Human Rights Campaign, the nation's largest lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender civil rights organization, lauded President Obama's appointment of Roberta Achtenberg to serve on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.  Achtenberg was the first openly gay or lesbian person to be confirmed to a government position by the Senate.

Is the Fix In at Justice?  Announce bad news on a Friday afternoon, the rule in official Washington goes.  Attorney General Eric Holder seems to have a new corollary:  Make bad appointments over holiday breaks.  It works.  Holder's announcement on Christmas Eve that he was appointing Robin Ashton as the new head of the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) went virtually unnoticed in the press, other than a highly complimentary article in the Washington Post.

Obama Brings on the B-Team.  "The appointment of the obscene corporate hack William Daley should put to rest any and all illusions people have on the Obama administration," wrote progressive political consultant Joe Costello to his listserv of likeminded progressives within hours of the announcement that the JP Morgan executive would be replacing Rahm Emanuel as White House chief of staff.

Chief of staff pick just another cog in the Daley machine.  As President Barack Obama knighted Chicago's William Daley as his new chief of staff — and kept the Daley machine in control of the executive branch of our federal government — I couldn't help thinking of the good old days.

Newest member of Obama's National Economic Council is an ardent supporter of cap and trade.  On Monday [1/3/2011], the Obama administration announced it had hired an environmental economist from the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) to join the National Economic Council.  Replacing member Joe Aldy, Nat Keohane, a long-time advocate of cap and trade, will now be advising President Obama on the economics of energy and environmental issues.  With Keohane's addition, it now looks like the Obama administration is preparing to go to battle against congressional Republicans who balk at the prospect of any environmental legislation.  But Keohane's hire also represents something else — the continuation of Obama placing global warming alarmists in positions to have major influence on environmental policy.

Just Another Radical Obama Appointee.  Just what we need — another new Obama appointee with a controversial past and radical inclinations.  Several weeks ago, the president announced his intention to make three appointments to the National Council on the Humanities.  One of them is Cathy Davidson, an English professor at Duke University. ... With her lack of ability to discern real scholarship from superficial nonsense and her radical tendencies, it is hard to imagine somebody who will perform the position's duties less responsibly than Davidson.

The Editor asks...
Why does the National Council on the Humanities exist?  What part of the Constitution authorizes it?

Rep. King:  Obama recess appointment at Justice Dept. 'absolutely shocking'.  Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), the incoming chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, has angrily denounced President Obama's recess appointment of James Cole as deputy attorney general.  King called Cole's appointment "absolutely shocking" and said it might be one of the worst appointments Obama will make during his presidency.

TSA's John Pistole.  As Americans continue to watch in utter amazement as the Department of Homeland Security's Transportation Security Administration demonstrates its continued inability to identify and target likely hostile travelers and, therefore, subjects 100% of travelers to intrusive screening, we all are wondering Why?  The answer is actually straightforward:  TSA Director John Pistole.

Acting U.S. Solicitor General Represented Osama Bin Laden's Driver.  Neal Katyal, who became the acting U.S. solicitor general when Elena Kagan was nominated to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court, previously served as the legal counsel of record for the man who worked as Osama bin Laden's driver from February 1996 through November 2001.  Salim Ahmed Hamdan, who underwent training at an al Qaeda camp, was charged with transporting weapons to al Qaeda operatives.

The Neomarxist who is helping to influence Obama's media policy.  "Only government can implement policies and subsidies to provide an institutional framework for quality journalism."  Does that statement give you chills?  How about this one: ... "In the end, there is no real answer but to remove brick-by-brick the capitalist system itself, rebuilding the entire society on socialist principles."  These are the sentiments of Robert McChesney, a self-professed neomarxist media scholar and the founder of the lobbying group and think tank Free Press.

Political Activism at the National Cancer Institute:  On May 17th, President Obama announced that he would nominate Harold Varmus, MD, as the next director of the National Cancer Institute. ... In 2009 Dr. Varmus was serving on the advisory board of an organization called the "Campaign to Defend the Constitution."  Interesting.  This group was started in 2005 by the Tides Foundation, well known for funding various progressive groups.  The Campaign to Defend the Constitution, also called DefCon, was established to support the constitutional separation of church and state and to oppose what it perceived as the growing influence of the religious right.

Dennis Blair's Replacement:  How about No One?  Now that Dennis Blair has officially resigned from his post, Obama officials are scrambling to find a new director of national intelligence (DNI).  But why bother?  Unnecessary bureaucracy has a venomous effect on the national security establishment, whether it's infantry or intelligence.  The director of national intelligence, which has ballooned to a 1500-man supporting office, was a top down solution to a bottom up problem.

Obama Draws Fire for Appointing SEIU's Stern to Deficit Panel.  President Obama's decision to appoint his close political ally, union leader Andrew Stern, to the newly created National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform has set off a firestorm of criticism from business and conservative groups who charge he is a political radical who should be investigated for failure to register as a lobbyist.

You Can't Make It Up.  The White House has announced that Mari Del Carmen Aponte will be nominated by the President to become the U.S. ambassador to El Salvador.  Aponte is a former director of the radical Mexican organization La Raza and of the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education fund.

The continuing battle over Obama's radicals.  Barack Obama is fighting a lot of political wars these days. ... They're all serious and time consuming.  But the war that has become unexpectedly intense in recent days isn't about any particular policy.  It's the war over personnel — the president's choices to fill important but not necessarily high-profile jobs in his administration.

A Reading From Ezekiel.  You'd think the central planners at the White House would go outside their small group of relatives for some top-notch expertise when they're trying to revamp something as big and complex as one-sixth of the American economy.  When Bill Clinton sought to radically overhaul American health care, he made the mistake of putting Hillary in charge.  This time around, Ezekiel Emanuel, brother of White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, is on the Obama team as a special advisor on health policy...

Obama Administration Defiantly Defends Another Radical Appointee.  I continue to be amazed at the naiveté of people who keep giving President Barack Obama the benefit of the doubt concerning his radical appointments, saying his administration isn't doing its job in vetting the appointees.  When will they wake up to the reality that Obama is deliberately picking people, such as Kevin Jennings, who share his radical values?

The Audacity of Conceit.  It is a common mistake of intellectuals to confuse IQ with common sense and verbal fluency with leadership qualities. ... Nobody would deny that the members of Obama's circle of economic advisors are indeed academically adept, well-spoken men and women.  But have any of them ever run a lemonade stand, much less a bona fide business?  Have they ever met a payroll? ... So what do they bring to the administration other than long resumes and fearsome reputations as intellectual polemicists?  All these brilliant academics have been brought on board for the sole purpose of lending an intellectual veneer to Obama's political schemes and validate his power grab.

Obama Security Breech (sic):  The Obama Administration is worried that yet another senior appointee has run into potential ethics issues one week into his new job.  According to one White House source, the Obama Administration asked its newly appointed chief technology officer to take a leave until the Department of Justice could provide the administration with additional information surrounding an FBI raid at the officer's former workplace, the Washington, D.C. Office of the Chief Technology Officer.

Fourth Nominee Withdraws From Treasury's Roster.  H. Rodgin Cohen, chairman of the New York law firm Sullivan & Cromwell, has withdrawn his name from consideration for deputy Treasury secretary, becoming the fourth pick for a prominent Treasury Department post to pull out in recent weeks.

Obama's secret telecom advisor pushing his company's interest.  A telecommunications company has confirmed for this columnist that its vice president for policy — who is also an Obama donor and a former lobbyist — is advising Barack Obama's transition team on telecom policy.  Obama's transition team, which has failed to disclose this executive's involvement, happens to have proposed a significant change in telecom policy that will profit that very company, called Clearwire.

Past Controversies Hang Over Obama's Cabinet Picks.  [Gov. Bill] Richardson's nomination could be haunted by two incidents.  First, he offered [Monica] Lewinsky a job at the United Nations in what prosecutors called an attempt to buy her silence on behalf of President Bill Clinton, according to FOX News' Washington Deputy Managing Editor Bill Sammon's book, "Meet the Next President."  Richardson also could face a Capitol grilling for accusations he faced from both Democratic and Republican senators for failing to properly safeguard nuclear secrets after he left his U.N. post to become energy secretary.

Gay man backed for Navy secretary.  Some top retired military leaders and some Democrats in Congress are backing William White, chief operating officer of the Intrepid Museum Foundation, to be the next secretary of the Navy — a move that would put the first openly gay person at the top of one of the services.

Vilsack got Ag. Dept. farm subsidies.  President-elect Obama has pledged to cut farm subsidies and embrace renewable fuels — two initiatives that hit close to the wallet of his newly unveiled pick for agriculture secretary, Tom Vilsack.  From 2000 to 2006, Vilsack, the former governor of Iowa, and his wife collected $42,782 in subsidies from the department he was tapped Wednesday to oversee.

Clinton scandal figure on Justice team.  President-elect Barack Obama tapped a major campaign bundler and a former U.S. attorney who got caught up in Bill Clinton's 2001 pardons scandal to serve on the 14-member Justice Department review team announced Friday [11/14/2008].

Too Many Skeletons In My Cabinet.  In an effort to weed out riffraff, Obama has come up with a bizarre job application — a seven-page, 63-question document so invasive that it must have been cooked up by the president-elect's lawyers.  Or his proctologist. ... I'm afraid No. 61 ends my governmental fantasy:  "Have you had any association with any person, group or business venture that could be used — even unfairly — to impugn or attack your character and qualifications for government service?"  How about PETA?  Defense lawyers?  The entire Democratic Party?

Ex-ACLU lawyer settles into government role.  Tim Edgar, lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, never imagined he'd be Tim Edgar, lawyer for the director of national intelligence. Many in the intelligence establishment certainly never thought that Edgar, one of their community's fiercest critics, would be a co-worker.

Key Questions for Lisa Jackson, Nominee for EPA Administrator.  The Clean Air Act and other environmental statutes the agency is charged with implementing have significant economic impacts, especially on things like energy costs and employment in the manufacturing sector.  In the past, the agency has taken actions that were unnecessarily costly, and more of the same in the months and years ahead could jeopardize any economic recovery.

Obama's legal extremists:  Senate Judiciary Chairman Pat Leahy will try to rush though hearings on two Department of Justice appointees today before the public or the Senate can fully consider their records and positions.  That may be by design.  The two appointees have far-left records.

Strike Three!  One could take the withdrawal of so many cabinet nominees as a sign of the Obama administration's high standards — except that the cabinet already contains at least two members with documented tax problems:  Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.  And Rep. Hilda Solis seems on track for confirmation as secretary of labor despite her husband's having failed to pay off tax liens as much as 16 years old until last week.

Payback time...
Palin foe gets administration job.  Alaska State Sen. Kim Elton, one of the leading officials to pursue an investigation of Gov. Sarah Palin during the heat of the presidential campaign, has taken a high-level job in the Interior Department.

Sour Grapes Over The Radical Obama Threw Under The Bus.  Obama was expected to appoint Thomas Saenz as his top civil-rights cop at the Justice Department, where he would have had power to investigate issues related to illegal immigration, such as voting rights, redistricting, worker documentation and police conduct.  But then, at the last minute, the president deselected him in the face of vocal opposition to Saenz's extremist work for an illegal alien group, whose co-founder has made racist remarks against whites.

Obama's Car Team Looks like an Edsel.  America has a former New York Times journalist, Steven Rattner, as our auto czar, a man with zero auto industry expertise.  And it shows.  To be completely fair to Rattner, he did leave journalism for investment banking, and went on to run a private investment firm, but he has no actual experience in the auto industry.  Even worse his firm is now mired in a pay-to-play scandal.

An Anti-Business President.  Democratic presidents are not famous for appointing businessmen, merchants, or entrepreneurs to their cabinet or senior White House staff.  These are people who have started or run private businesses, created jobs, met payrolls, and made profits.  Thus they might be sensitive to how government can help or hurt business enterprises, especially during an economic downturn.  The number of such people appointed by Obama:  zero.  Members of his cabinet and White House staff come predominantly from government, academia, think tanks, and the law.

Animal-Rights Fanatic to Be Obama's Next "Czar"?  Glenn Beck reports that an animal-rights fanatic is on track to become President Obama's regulatory czar.  That individual is the radical legal theorist Cass Sunstein who has argued that:
 •  your money doesn't really belong to you because the government laid the foundations for your success;
 •  Internet censorship is a good idea;
 •  animals should be allowed to sue people;
 •  the names of carbon dioxide emitters should be compiled as part of a "greenhouse gas inventory" and publicized to shame those emitters into changing their behavior; and
 •  Americans' support for property rights and freedom of contract is an "incoherent" form "of so-called individualism."

Deadly Doctors.  The health bills coming out of Congress would put the decisions about your care in the hands of presidential appointees.  They'd decide what plans cover, how much leeway your doctor will have and what seniors get under Medicare.  Yet at least two of President Obama's top health advisers should never be trusted with that power.

Six Months of B.O.  It would be different if Obama had actually hired a capable hand or two to help around the White House.  You would think that by accident he might have made at least one good hiring decision.  Remember when they called the staff assembled by JFK "the best and brightest"?  The Obama squad is the least and the slightest.  While simpering Tim Geithner at Treasury makes Eddie Haskell look forthcoming and sincere, Vice President Joe Biden continues to make Dan Quayle look like Stephen Hawking.

Conservatives hunt for the next Van Jones.  Emboldened by the ouster of presidential adviser Van Jones, conservative and business groups are launching fresh challenges aimed at derailing President Obama's nominees.  The latest of these targets is David Michaels, Mr. Obama's pick to head the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), who as an academic published a book attacking corporate executives for the tactics they used to fight class-action lawsuits.

Sex scandal double standard.  Since taking office, the Obama administration has been hammered by repeated breakdowns in its vetting process.  Appointees who don't pay taxes.  An appointee who signed on to accusations that the previous administration was complicit in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.  And now an appointee who thinks sex between an adult and a 15-year-old is no big deal.

The Weatherman Who Helped Author Obama's Legislation.  Despite being profiled early on in Glenn Beck's czar series, Jeff Jones — who helped author the ObamaCare bill — has received far less scrutiny than Van Jones and some others.  By now, though the barrage of radicalism may have inoculated you to the fact that a member of Obama's team is best-known for his mug shots, Jeff Jones does indeed warrant the country's attention.

Scott Gration — President Obama's Special Envoy to the Sudan.  His diplomatic policy is, quite literally the following:  "We've got to think about giving out cookies," said Gration who was appointed in March, "Kids, countries — they react to gold stars, smiley faces, handshakes, agreements, talk, engagement." ... While President Obama's handpicked "Special Envoy" was tempting genocidal Muslim radicals with "cookies" and "gold stars," marauding bands of guerrillas in the Sudan crucified seven Christians.

Obama Adviser Loves Sharia.  Dalia Mogahed, Barack Obama's adviser on Muslim affairs, appeared on British television last week, where she said:  "Sharia is not well understood and Islam as a faith is not well understood." How have we misunderstood Islamic law?  We have associated it with "maximum criminal punishments" and "laws that... to many people seem unequal to women."

America's Mobocracy.  A minor facet of the Obama administration itself is the Chicago "gangster government" character of his White House staff and his cabinet and departmental appointees.  Not all of his appointees are from Chicago.  They just have that odor about them, of professional political parasites who have scurried in and out of sight and up and down the totem pole of Washington politics over the years as their chosen career choices, to a soul advancing or pimping for collectivism, most of them never having worked a productive day in their lives.

They're ALL Communists.  How many of Obama's advisors have to be exposed as communists and Marxists before some of the duller-witted among us admit not only that there is a pattern here, but that it is deliberate, and reflects the leanings of the White House?  Connect the dots, people.  It's not that Jones, Dunn, Sunstein et al were not properly vetted; it's that they were.  It's not that Obama wasn't familiar enough with their viewpoints; it's that he was.  These people were not chosen despite their views; they were chosen precisely because their views coincide with Obama's own.

Obama health 'czar' worked at legally troubled health firms.  Nancy-Ann DeParle, one of President Obama's chief advocates for the health care reform bill wending its way through Congress, earned more than $6.6 million as a paid director for health care firms, some of which were targeted in government investigations or whistleblower lawsuits on suspicions of billing fraud and other legal problems.

New White House Counsel Was Defender of ACORN.  The incoming White House counsel will carry a reputation for hardball tactics into his new job.  As President Barack Obama's election attorney, Robert Bauer staunchly defended ACORN against political attacks, sought investigations of political opponents and pressed TV and radio stations to stop running ads critical of the Democratic nominee.

Obama's Latest Appointment:  A Reflection of his Radical Past.  [Scroll down]  So we know that Barack Obama came not only from the world of rough and tumble Chicago politics, which Fred Siegel has written about both for The Weekly Standard and National Review many times during the campaign, but also from the world of radical black nationalism exemplified by Rev. Jeremiah Wright and the church he ran and which Obama attended regularly.  This past, I think, explains Obama's propensity to keep appointing rather low-level officials who can operate under the radar and who come from a similar radical or left-wing past.

'This Is the End of Favoring Motorized Transportation at the Expense of Non-Motorized'.  Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has announced that federal transportation policies will no longer favor "motorized" transportation, such as cars and trucks, over "non-motorized" transportation, such as walking and bicycling.  LaHood signed the new policy directive on March 11, the same day he attended a congressional reception for the National Bike Summit, a convention sponsored by a bicycling advocacy group, the League of American Bicyclists.

Another 'visionary' with no practical experience.  Medicare and Medicaid are to be headed by a new Obama appointee, and I smell trouble.

Obama's Army Nominee Let Classified Info Leak.  President Obama's second nominee to be Army General Counsel headed the legal department at a major newspaper when it published stories that compromised the nation's top-secret counterterrorism programs, questioning his ability to protect sensitive national security information if he's confirmed.

NY Times still pays Obama's nominee to Army post.  President Obama's nominee for U.S. Army general counsel, who pledges to investigate anyone leaking military secrets to the media, will receive at least $1 million in deferred compensation from the New York Times Co. even as he works for the government, records show.



Back to the Barack Obama index page
More about Liberals in general
Jump to Here a czar, there a czar, everywhere a czar czar.
Back to the Home page

Bookmark and Share

Custom counter developed in-house

Document location http://akdart.com/obama92.html
Updated January 31, 2012.

Page design by Andrew K. Dart  ©2012