— Barack
H. Obama,
August 7, 2014
State
Dept. Claims It Would Take 75 Years to Compile Clinton Emails. The State Department claims it would take
75 years to compile the 450,000 pages of emails between Hillary Clinton and her top aides, meaning it will be able to satisfy
two Freedom of Information Act lawsuits from the Republican National Committee no later than 2091. [...] This should
conclusively refute the State Department Inspector General's accusation that the department constantly provides slow,
inaccurate, and incomplete responses to FOIA requests — delays that always seem to have the magical result of
producing vital information after the November elections.
Hillary
is running, but she is also hiding. [Scroll down] Presisent [sic] Obama's officials originally promised
to produce these documents by April this year. But not very surprisingly, it has suddenly decided to keep them under
wraps until late November, 489 days after the newspaper's request and a couple of weeks after the general election. [...] The
electoral coincidence of a November release date is manifestly unacceptable. It is calculatedly convenient for Clinton,
a candidate whose public life is a 30-year litany of deceit and subterfuge.
White
House Can't Explain Omission of Damaging Line About Iran Deal Deceit From Transcript. White House press
secretary Josh Earnest could not explain Tuesday the omission of a potentially damaging line about the Iran nuclear deal from
the official transcript of a White House press briefing last month, refusing to revisit the matter and rejecting the notion
that there was any wrongdoing. Fox News correspondent Kevin Corke asked Earnest on May 9 if he could "state
categorically that no senior official in this administration has ever lied publicly about any aspect of the Iran nuclear
deal." Earnest responded, "No, Kevin," followed by a brief, awkward silence before discussing the merits of the nuclear
agreement. The words "No, Kevin" never made it into the official White House transcript, however. The transcript
immediately goes from Corke's question into Earnest's talking points about the Iran deal. ABC News first reported this
story and noted the White House's official response is that the line was omitted because it was inaudible.
White
House Lies About Scrubbing Press Briefing Transcript. "Can you state categorically that no senior official in
this administration has ever lied publicly about any aspect of the Iran nuclear deal?" That question to White House
Press Secretary Josh Earnest was asked by Fox News reporter Kevin Corke during the White House Press Briefing on May 9,
2016. "No Kevin," Earnest replied, followed by about five seconds of silence.
Congressman:
Obama Withholding Info About 86,000 Criminal Illegal Aliens. The Obama administration is withholding from
Congress and the American people detailed information about more than 86,000 illegal aliens who have committed serious crimes
and continue to walk the streets in the United States, according to conversations with a member of Congress, who disclosed to
the Washington Free Beacon that "if the public knew about this there would be total absolute outrage" over the matter.
Censored
State Department Briefing: VP Biden Also Pledged Transparency. As it fends off criticism over the
censoring of a briefing video, the State Department is justifying a former spokeswoman's Feb. 2013 denial that U.S. and
Iranian officials had held talks by saying "she had no knowledge at that date that we were conducting bilateral talks with
Iran." But days before former spokeswoman Victoria Nuland made that denial, Vice President Joe Biden is on the record
as saying that were such talks to be held with the Iranians, "we would not make it a secret." Speaking at the Munich
Security Conference on Feb. 2, 2013, Biden said the administration's position remained that "we would be prepared to meet
bilaterally with the Iranian leadership."
Obama
adviser lashes out at Fox News amid questions over deleted footage. Top Obama press adviser Jen Psaki lashed
out at Fox News on Thursday after being pressed for clarification over her statements on press briefing footage that the
State Department admitted had been deliberately deleted from a public archive. The department acknowledged Wednesday
that several minutes of video from the 2013 briefing — at which then-State Department spokeswoman Psaki appeared
to acknowledge misleading the press over the Iran nuclear deal — had been intentionally cut. The order
apparently came from an official in the public affairs office, but that individual has not been identified.
Putting
the media 'under the gun'. Just last week, [...] it was revealed that the U.S. State Department had
intentionally edited out a question and answer from the online archive of a press conference from 2013. Fox News
reporter James Rosen had asked State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki whether her predecessor had lied when she told Rosen
there had been no "direct secret bilateral talks" between the United States and Iran. Psaki didn't confirm that anyone
from the State Department had lied, but she noted in classic doublespeak that "there are times where diplomacy needs privacy
in order to progress." So what did the "most transparent administration in history" do about it when they realized the
Q&A session was "politically inconvenient" if not incorrect? Why, easy! They sent it down George Orwell's "memory
hole," the final resting place in "Nineteen Eighty Four" for all such "inconvenient" facts. The video was edited, and
the exchange magically disappeared due to what the State Department first called a "glitch" and last week confirmed was
instead political manipulation by some unnamed bureaucrat who ordered another unnamed bureaucrat to "excise the video."
Scrubbing
Words is Nothing New for Team Obama. [Scroll down] Team Obama did this so recently that when I first read
about the Psaki deletion, I thought we might already have written about it. Just two months ago, during a meeting with
President Barack Obama at the White House, French president Francois Hollande used the term "Islamist terrorism" when
referring to the recent Islamic State terrorist attacks in Europe. As Scott noted here, someone at White House deleted
this language from the official White House video. As it initially did with the Psaki deletion, the White House
official claimed there had been a "technical issue" that "led to a brief drop in the audio." However, he could not explain
why the alleged technical problem occurred at the precise moment that the words "Islamist terror" were spoken or how the glitch
managed to correct itself in time for Hollande's next words.
Team Obama's
feckless efforts to censor history. The mystery of the missing video's been solved — except the
State Department won't name the perp. It all began when Fox News' James Rosen recently searched online for video of his
2013 question to a State Department official about whether the Obama administration had lied about secret talks with
Iran. State's Web site had video of the briefing — but his exchange with spokeswoman Jen Psaki was nowhere
to be found. In fact, it had been cut from the tape. It was a significant moment — because Psaki's
answer essentially admitted that Team Obama had indeed lied to the American people.
White
House Secretly Squashed IRS Resistance to ObamaCare's Illegal Subsidies. The New York Times reports on a
secret meeting from 2014, exposed thanks to sworn testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee, at which a vanload of
IRS officials were told to stifle their complaints about billions of dollars in flagrantly illegal ObamaCare funding. [...]
The Times makes a fitful attempt to spin this as a "Republicans pounce" story, stressing that we're only learning
about Fisher's testimony because Ways and Means Democrats "feared Republicans would release selected excerpts" as part of a
"witch hunt," which would in turn be part of a "crusade to dismantle the Affordable Care Act, which has been twice upheld by
the Supreme Court."
Outrage
Rising Over State Department's Wiping of Official Video Showing Obama Administration Lie About Iran Deal. The
US State Department is facing a wave of angry criticism after a spokesman confirmed that someone inside the department made a
"deliberate request" for the scrubbing of part of an official video showing the Obama administration misled journalists on
the Iran deal. State Department spokesman John Kirby admitted to reporters on Wednesday [6/1/2016] that the missing
footage of a December 2013 press briefing "wasn't a technical glitch." During the 2013 briefing, then-spokeswoman Jen
Psaki confirmed to Fox News reporter James Rosen that earlier claims of direct, secret talks between the US and
Iran — which were denied in February 2013 by then-spokesperson Victoria Nuland — were indeed
true. "There are times where diplomacy needs privacy in order to progress. This is a good example of that," Psaki
said regarding the discrepancy. Fox News discovered earlier this month that the exchange had been edited out of
official State Department archive footage — including eight minutes of comments and further questions on the Iran
deal. Officials suggested a "glitch" had occurred.
White
House accused of selective editing on Iran. A new report contradicts White House press secretary Josh Earnest's
Thursday statement that officials in the Obama administration would not have altered video footage or transcripts of press
briefings regarding the Iran nuclear deal without consulting him first. ABC News discovered late Friday the White House
omitted a line from a May 9 press briefing that had included a response from Earnest in which he admitted the administration
might have misled the public on the controversial Iran nuclear deal. Fox News reporter Kevin Corke has asked Earnest,
"Can you state categorically that no senior official in this administration has ever lied publicly about any aspect of the
Iran nuclear deal?" "No, Kevin," Earnest responded.
Obama
adviser lashes out at Fox News amid questions over deleted footage. Top Obama press adviser Jen Psaki lashed
out at Fox News on Thursday [6/2/2016] after being pressed for clarification over her statements on press briefing footage
that the State Department admitted had been deliberately deleted from a public archive. The department acknowledged
Wednesday that several minutes of video from the 2013 briefing — at which then-State Department spokeswoman Psaki
appeared to acknowledge misleading the press over the Iran nuclear deal — had been intentionally cut. The
order apparently came from an official in the public affairs office, but that individual has not been identified.
Congressman:
Obama Admin Withholding Info About 86,000 Criminal Illegal Immigrants. The Obama administration is withholding
from Congress and the American people detailed information about more than 86,000 illegal aliens who have committed serious
crimes and continue to walk the streets in the United States, according to conversations with a member of Congress, who
disclosed to the Washington Free Beacon that "if the public knew about this there would be total absolute outrage"
over the matter. Rep. Brian Babin (R., Texas) told the Free Beacon that the administration is trying to
suppress information about the release of some 86,000 criminal illegal immigrants who have committed 231,000 crimes in just
the past two and a half years.
HHS
replies to GOP subpoena with one blacked-out page. Department of Health and Human Services officials have only
released "one heavily redacted page of one document" in response to congressional subpoenas about the funding of a disputed
Obamacare program, and HHS staff has refused to communicate with congressional investigators, House Republicans charged
Tuesday [5/31/2016]. "The pattern of conduct to this point suggests that the department intends to frustrate our
legitimate efforts to conduct oversight of the Basic Health Program," House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred
Upton, R-Mich., and House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady, R-Texas, wrote to HHS Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell.
State
Dept. admits intentionally altering video of Iran press conference. The State Department admitted Wednesday
that a 2013 press briefing video was purposefully altered to remove a portion of a discussion about the Iran nuclear talks,
after an unknown State Department official asked that it be edited out. Spokesman John Kirby's announcement contradicted
the position held by the department for the last three weeks, during which officials said the video was missing because of a
"glitch." But Kirby said officials didn't know who asked for the video to be edited, and said the department is unlikely
to investigate further into who wanted the video to be edited.
Timeline:
The State Department's Iran video tampering scandal. The State Department is facing heavy scrutiny after acknowledging that it selectively
edited video of a 2013 press briefing about the Iran nuclear talks. Here's a timeline of events: [...]
President
Obama's new problem — Flacks, lies and videotape. The Obama administration suddenly has a credibility problem, and not just
with Congress or the press, but with its own senior-level officials. The State Department was forced to admit on Wednesday [6/1/2016] that it
altered a press briefing video to hide an exchange in which a spokeswoman seemed to indicate officials lied about when the Iran nuclear talks began.
And late Friday [6/3/2016], a report came out that a White House transcript was altered, in another discussion about Iran. That transcript omitted
a comment from Josh Earnest in which he said "No, Kevin" when asked if he could categorically state that no one ever lied about the Iran deal.
State
Department admits briefing footage on Iran deal [was] intentionally deleted. The State Department, in a
stunning admission, acknowledged Wednesday [6/1/2016] that an official intentionally deleted several minutes of video footage
from a 2013 press briefing, where a top spokeswoman seemed to acknowledge misleading the press over the Iran nuclear
deal. "There was a deliberate request [to delete the footage] — this wasn't a technical glitch," State
Department spokesman John Kirby said Wednesday, in admitting that an unidentified official had a video editor "excise" the
segment. The State Department had faced questions earlier this year over the block of missing tape from a December 2013
briefing. At that briefing, then-spokeswoman Jen Psaki was asked by Fox News' James Rosen about an earlier claim that
no direct, secret talks were underway between the U.S. and Iran — when, in fact, they were.
Dana Perino Blasts State
Department: Explanation of Editing 'Well Short of Acceptable'. Former Bush White House Press Secretary
Dana Perino got heated on Fox's The Five Wednesday over the State Department acknowledging they deleted footage from a 2013
press briefing. The State Department admitted on Wednesday [6/1/2016] that several minutes from a 2013 press briefing regarding
administration deception over the Iran nuclear deal was purposefully deleted. The deleted footage involved an exchange
between Fox News reporter James Rosen and then-spokeswoman Jen Psaki. Perino provided two reasons as to why the State
Department's explanation for the mishandling of the situation falls short. "I think that their explanation falls well
short of acceptable, because, one, it is a violation of the Federal Records Act. It has to be," Perino said.
"That's yet another Federal Records Act violation the State Department is dealing with right now.
Former
State Dept Spox Offers Suspiciously Specific Denial About Video Edit. Former State Department spokeswoman Jen
Psaki spoke out Wednesday after an investigation revealed that one of the press briefing videos was edited to remove a
politically damaging exchange under her tenure. "I had no knowledge of nor would I have approved of any form of editing
or cutting my briefing transcript on any subject while [at the State Department]," she tweeted out. Fair enough.
But Psaki, who now handles communications for the White House, has never been accused of editing the State Department's
briefing transcript. No one has.
State
Dept: There Was 'Deliberate Request' to Delete Video of Rosen's Iran Questions. The State Department
admitted today that a "deliberate" request was made to delete a portion of a 2013 press briefing video in which Fox News
correspondent James Rosen asked about secret negotiations between the Obama administration and Iran. "There was a
deliberate request, this was not a glitch," said State Department spokesman John Kirby, adding that it is not known who
made the edit request on that day. "It was not the right step to take," said Kirby.
Kerry
vows to get to bottom of State Dept.-doctored video on Iran nuke deal. Secretary of State John F. Kerry says he
wants to find out "exactly what happened" with regard to the doctoring of a 2013 State Department news briefing video about
the Iran nuclear deal — and that whoever altered the video was "stupid and clumsy and inappropriate."
Mr. Kerry's remarks came as two influential Republican lawmakers sought an explanation Friday [6/3/2016] for why the video
record of the briefing by the department's then-spokeswoman Jennifer Psaki was deliberately altered to delete her suggestion that
officials had misled the public about when the controversial Iran nuclear negotiations had begun.
House
Speaker Demands Investigation Into Obama Admin's Iran Deception. Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R., Wis.) is
calling for an immediate investigation into recent disclosures that the Obama administration censored public video of a State
Department briefing about secret discussions with Iran, according to comments provided to the Washington Free Beacon.
Ryan, a vocal critic of the administration's diplomacy with Iran, accused the White House of misleading Congress and the American
people about the nature of last summer's comprehensive nuclear agreement. The disclosure on Wednesday [6/1/2016] that an
unnamed State Department official ordered portions of a December 2013 press briefing about secret negotiations with Iran to be cut
reinforces the need for full investigation into the administration's deceptions surrounding the deal, Ryan said.
This
Is Not The America My Parents Immigrated To In 1957. Obama is pushing for several international trade deals
(TTIP, TPP, and/or TISA). Only a handful of people know the full scope of these deals. Most legislators working on
these deals are only allowed to see small parts of the deal. What we do know is that these deals will transfer national
sovereignty to an international corporate dictatorship. We, the people, aren't allowed to see any of the
details — until after it is passed. Does this sound like a representative democracy, or dictatorship?
The Obama Navy as Farce.
[Scroll down] It's not clear how the Iranians treated the U.S. sailors, but we know a few key facts. The Iranians
seized Navy computers aboard the boats and copied their contents. The sailors were interrogated individually —
constantly — and paraded before Iranian television crews. In footage broadcast internationally, they were
apparently compelled to admit that they were in the wrong for entering Iranian waters — though the evidence showed
they had not — and to apologize for doing so. But every American soldier, sailor, airman and Marine is trained
to refuse to aid the enemy in that manner. It's a violation of their duty to do so. So were they abused?
Tortured? Threatened with immediate execution? We don't know because the Obama administration has classified
everything about how the sailors were treated.
Benghazi
Committee Finally Questions Drone Pilots the Pentagon Said Were 'Unnecessary' Witnesses. The Obama
administration hasn't exactly been the most cooperative when it comes to the efforts of the House Select Committee on
Benghazi. Case in point: Chairman Trey Gowdy asked the Pentagon back in February if his panel could interview two
relevant drone pilots about the fateful night of September 11, 2012. It wasn't until this past week, three months after his
inquiry, that the department complied. What was the holdup? In a letter to the committee, the Pentagon expressed confusion
as to why Gowdy and the other panelists needed to interview the pilots, since they already had access to video from the Benghazi
raid. The interviews were "unnecessary," the Pentagon concluded.
Has
the IRS Been Illegally Deleting Records? The Cause of Action Institute (CoA) filed a legal complaint against the Internal
Revenue Service for illegally destroying records Tuesday [5/24/2016], at the same time that IRS commissioner John Koskinen approaches an
impeachment trial before Congress. In the complaint, CoA alleges that the IRS and Koskinen refused to "capture and preserve"
employees' electronic communication dealing with official business, as the law requires.
The
FBI Wants To Keep The National Biometric Database A Secret. In early May the U.S. Department of Justice
released a proposal which would exempt the FBI's biometric database from public disclosure. [...] Although the database does
contain biometric data on convicted criminals, it also contains information on individuals who were only suspected or
temporarily detained under the suspicion of a crime. The system also features data from people fingerprinted for jobs,
licenses, military or volunteer service, background checks, security clearances, and other government processes.
Essentially the FBI is arguing that it will prevent individuals from knowing if their information is in the massive database
if the release of information would "compromise" a law enforcement investigation.
X-37B
Plane In Space For A Year Now, Nobody Knows Its Mission. At the time the plane took off, some scientists
expressed grave concern. A senior scientist at the Global Security Program, and also a member of the Union of Concerned
Scientists, Laura Grego reportedly told Space.com that there was "no compelling reason" why experiments should be carried
aboard a top-secret craft. Currently, it is believed the unmanned plane has spent the past year orbiting around
Earth. The American government has, however, failed to give any tangible reason behind the deployment of X-37B to
space, except saying it is for an experiment. As to the actual nature of the experiment, that still remains a mystery.
EPA
Conducts Two Secret Meetings A Year To Decide How To Dole Out Billions In Slush Fund Money. Congress
appropriates about $1 billion annually for EPA's Superfund program, and the agency has accumulated nearly $6.8 billion
in more than 1,300 slush fund-like accounts since 1990. Two committees consisting entirely of EPA officials meet behind
closed doors twice annually to decide how the agency spends those funds on highly polluted — and often
dangerous — Superfund sites. All reports to and from the groups, as well as the minutes of their meetings
and all other details, are kept behind closed doors.
Obama
discovers the separation of powers. Barack Obama has never shown much of an appreciation for the separation of
powers. At an event in Argentina, in March, the president said he found it "very frustrating ... that power is distributed
across a lot of different institutions." But suddenly he's invoking the separation of powers to stop his national security
aide from testifying to a congressional panel.
Napolitano:
Ben Rhodes, the Obama White House and the issue of lying. What is a privilege? It is the ability under
the law to hide the truth in order to preserve open communications. It is a judgment by lawmakers and judges that in
certain narrowly defined circumstances, freedom of communication is a greater good than exposing the truth. [...] Executive
privilege is the ability of the president and his aides to withhold from anyone testimony and documents that reflect
military, diplomatic or sensitive national security secrets. This is the privilege that Rhodes has claimed. Yet
the defect in Rhodes' claim of privilege here is that he has waived it by speaking about the Iranian negotiations to The New
York Times. Waiver — the knowing and intentional giving up of a privilege or a right —
defeats the claim of privilege.
Benghazi
shocker! Pentagon caught hiding witnesses. The chairman of the House Benghazi committee on Thursday made
a surprising accusation — the Pentagon has made key witnesses in the 2012 Benghazi terror attack investigation
vanish. The hiding of witness from the night of the deadly 2012 attacks in Libya is threatening the more than
two-year-old investigation — and may be part of a backroom deal to protect former Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton. Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., said in a statement that the Defense Department spent five weeks completely
ignoring a request for the pilots who sent drones over Benghazi and Tripoli. When the list was finally provided, the
Pentagon reportedly had left off key names.
Where did the money come from?
J-Street was paid by Obama administration
to promote Iran deal. J-Street received more than half a million dollars to advocate for the Obama administration's
controversial nuclear deal with Iran, it has been revealed. The liberal Jewish group, which bills itself as "pro-Israel and
pro-peace" but which critics say takes solely anti-Israel stances, was paid the money by the White House's main surrogate organization
for selling the deal. The Ploughshares Fund was named in an explosive New York Times profile of Obama aid Ben Rhodes, in which
the President's chief spin doctor listed the central groups responsible for creating an "echo chamber" in order to promote the deal,
even when the White House's official line didn't jibe with the facts. According to Associated Press, the group's 2015
annual report details several organizations which received substantial funds to peddle the official White House line on the nuclear
deal. Among them was National Public Radio (NPR), which received a $100,000 grant to promote "national security reporting that
emphasizes the themes of U.S. nuclear weapons policy and budgets, Iran's nuclear program, international nuclear security topics and
U.S. policy toward nuclear security."
House
Moves to Subject National Security Council to Public Records Law. Congress unanimously advanced a measure on
Wednesday [5/18/2016] to subject the White House's team of national security advisers to laws giving the public access to
internal administration documents. An amendment to a key Defense Department funding bill brought forward by Rep.
Jackie Walorski (R., Ind.) would require the White House National Security Council to produce internal records in response to
requests under the Freedom of Information Act. The amendment comes in the midst of controversy over admissions by
Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes in a recent New York Times interview that he and media allies created an
"echo chamber" to promote the administration's nuclear deal with Iran.
Sen.
Cotton: White House Says One Thing In Classified Briefings, Another Thing To Public. Sen. Tom
Cotton alleged Tuesday [5/17/2016] that President Barack Obama's administration officials say one thing in classified
briefings with members of Congress and another thing in public to the American people. "It's time that the
administration came clean and told the American people exactly what they tell Congress in a classified setting," Cotton
insisted. Appearing on the Hugh Hewitt Show on Tuesday, Cotton said that he "became public enemy number one at the
White House... because I'm telling the truth about the Iran deal."
GOP
reps hammer WH aide Rhodes at hearing; senators seek firing. Republican condemnation of a top White House aide
who boasted about the administration's success selling the Iran deal to the public reached new levels on Tuesday [5/17/2016],
as several senators urged President Obama to fire him and a House committee looking into his claims went forward with its
hearing — even though he didn't show up to testify.
Is
Obama's Stonewall Strategy Blowing Up In Hillary's Face? As we have observed many times, the Obama
administration's response to scandals, investigations and inquiries has been invariable: it stonewalls them. And the
Obama Stonewall Strategy has been highly successful. Given our generally ineffective legal processes, the administration
has been able to defer compliance with Congressional subpoenas, Freedom of Information Act requests and the like for years,
by which time whatever information might emerge from a sea of redaction is deemed "old news."
House Hides
Most War Funding in NDAA Bill Scheme. The House Appropriations Committee has today unveiled its draft version
of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), a $575 billion bill that includes some $59 billion worth of money
for Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO), the controversial fund which the Pentagon is allowed to shuffle around. This
actually looks like a cut from last year's $612 billion bill, but provides a deliberately misleading figure, as it includes
only the first four months of 2017 war funding, with the assumption that whoever wins the November election will seek "emergency
funding" to cover the rest of the year.
CIA
watchdog 'accidentally' deletes torture report, destroys physical copy. The CIA's inspector general is claiming
it inadvertently destroyed its only copy of a classified, three-volume Senate report on torture, prompting a leading senator
to ask for reassurance that it was in fact "an accident." "As you may be aware, the office of the CIA inspector general
has misplaced and/or conditionally destroyed its electronic copy and disk of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence's
full 6,700-page classified study of the CIA detention and interrogation program," Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.,
wrote in a Friday [5/13/2016] letter to CIA Director John Brennan.
Mystery
Mission: Air Force's X-37B space plane nears 1 year in orbit. The U.S. military's uncrewed X-37B space
plane is nearing one year in orbit on its latest secret mission. The robotic space plane launched atop a United Launch
Alliance Atlas V rocket on May 20, 2015, kicking off the X-37B program's fourth flight. This mission, dubbed OTV-4
(short for Orbital Test Vehicle-4), remains a clandestine affair. "I can confirm the fourth OTV mission is approaching
one year on orbit," Air Force spokeswoman Capt. Annmarie Annicelli said in response to Space.com's inquiry about the
X-37B's activities.
Obama's
legacy: Duping America about everything is the name of the game. One can only imagine how President Obama
and his sycophants will pay homage to their getting away with lying to the American people about every aspect of their
administration. Perhaps in the Obama Library they'll have a special room surrounding visitors with giant flat-screen
TVs where various Obama staffers will laugh and point at them in an endless video loop. They'll have to think of
something, because May 2016 has been a banner month with the delivery of a forgotten 2008 campaign meme from Mr. Obama
and his henchmen. The good news is, the much-ballyhooed promise of being the "most transparent administration in
history" has peeked out from under the covers. The bad news is, it took the form of admissions from both current and
former Obama aides that the White House is a House of Lies.
Barack H. Obama is suddenly concerned about the Constitution!
Rhodes
won't show: White House raises 'constitutional concerns'. The White House told the House Oversight and
Government Reform Committee Monday that Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes won't be testifying on Tuesday about his
controversial comments on the Iran deal. In a letter to Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, Neil Eggleston,
counsel to President Obama, said it would raise "constitutional concerns" if Rhodes were to testify. He also said
Congress has been consulted enough.
GOP
knives out for Ben Rhodes. Ben Rhodes, the famed White House spinmeister, is entangled in a growing fight with
congressional Republicans — the latest fallout from his bombshell magazine profile two weeks ago. On Monday
[5/16/2016], three Republican senators called on President Barack Obama to fire his deputy national security adviser, saying
Rhodes had been "disrespectful," "deceptive" and dishonest" in how he had sold the Iran nuclear deal to the public. The
White House, meanwhile, said Rhodes will not testify about the deal before a House committee, calling it a "separation of
powers" issue.
White
House snubs Chaffetz, refuses to let aide testify after controversial Iran remarks. The White House confirmed
Monday [5/16/2016] that Obama adviser Ben Rhodes will not be allowed to testify before House lawmakers on the Iran nuclear
deal, after a last-ditch attempt by Republican Rep. Jason Chaffetz to pry the controversial aide loose for the
hearing. Chaffetz and the White House have been engaged in an escalating feud, all on the heels of a New York Times
Magazine piece where Rhodes was quoted boasting about the administration's success in crafting a public narrative for the
Iran deal. The profile on Rhodes quotes him saying they built an "echo chamber" of experts who sold that narrative to
young, often inexperienced reporters.
After
Only Nine Months On The Job, Administration's New FOIA Czar Calls It Quits. Josh Gerstein at Politico brings us
that news that James Holzer will step down from his position as the director of the Office of Government Information Services
(OGIS) and return from whence he came: the Department of Homeland Security. [...] Depending on where you sit, Holzer was
either the perfect pick for FOIA work or the worst. For FOIA requesters, Holzer was anything but. His former (and
now current) agency has a terrible FOIA track record. That this background would somehow result in his promotion to a
position meant to facilitate FOIA requests was inexplicable.
White
House Hit With Suit Alleging Systematic Obstruction Of Transparency. A government watchdog launched a lawsuit
Monday targeting 11 federal agencies, the Office of the White House Counsel and White House Counsel Neil Eggleston.
Cause of Action Institute filed the suit "to end the Obama administration's practice of delaying government responses to
Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests that the administration considers politically sensitive or embarrassing," the
group wrote in a statement. "The Obama administration, however, has interfered in the FOIA process in ways that violate
the statute and hinder its purpose of federal transparency," the statement said.
State
Dept. faces questions over missing tape, amid scramble over WH aide's Iran boast. While the White House
scrambles to contain the damage caused by one of President Obama's closest aides — who boasted of manipulating
social media, journalists and friendly interest groups to sell the Iran nuclear deal — it now is facing new
questions about a portion of missing tape in which a State Department official acknowledges misleading the press on the Iran
negotiations. Deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes' comments to The New York Times Magazine have sparked outrage
in Washington's political and policy circles, especially re-igniting the debate over whether the White House oversold the
deal to curb Iran's nuclear program.
Obama
White House showed 'bad faith' in global-warming case, judge rules. The White House showed "bad faith" in how
it handled an open-records request for global warming data, a federal court ruled Monday [5/9/2016], issuing yet another stinging rebuke
to the administration for showing a lack of transparency. For President Obama, who vowed to run the most transparent government in
U.S. history, Judge Amit P. Mehta's ruling granting legal "discovery" in an open-records case — the third time this year
a judge has ordered discovery — is an embarrassing black eye.
Edited
State Dept. video hides key admission on Iran nuke talks. A State Department video has been altered in what
could be an attempt to hide a 2013 discussion with reporters about whether the Obama administration lied about when it first
began the Iran nuclear talks. Fox News reporter James Rosen reported Monday night that a section of a Dec. 2, 2013
press briefing was somehow erased from the State Department's own video of the event. In the section that was erased,
Rosen was interviewing then-spokeswoman Jen Psaki about when the talks started.
Senator
seeks secret memo used as 'loophole' for Obama regs. The Obama administration is facing pressure from Congress
to release a secret Reagan-era memo allegedly used to this day to shield a slew of executive actions and regulations from
congressional scrutiny. At issue is a 1983 memorandum of understanding (MOU) that permits the Treasury Department to
"escape" a review of economic costs and benefits when it comes to IRS rules. Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, says this
has helped the administration pursue a range of unilateral changes — and he wants the memo made public.
Sen.
Hatch demands secret memo that's aided Obama executive actions. President Obama's unilateral pen-and-phone
approach to governing has been aided by a decades-old secret memo that allows him to avoid economic scrutiny of some of the
most intrusive rules and regulations his administration has issued, a top senator said Thursday [4/28/2016]. Now
Sen. Orrin G. Hatch, Utah Republican and chairman of the Finance Committee, has demanded Treasury Secretary Jacob
Lew release the 1983 memorandum of understanding and defend the Reagan-era policy that has let Mr. Obama pursue changes
on everything from corporate taxes to Obamacare without first giving a full heads-up to Congress.
Most
Transparent Administration Ever Withheld Incriminating Hillary Emails From Federal Courts. It would seem that
the only group interested in performing oversight of the Obama administration is an independent watchdog group, not the
Republican-controlled Oversight committees in Congress. Those committees appear to be either complicit, incompetent or
(more likely) both. Instead, we are left to groups like Judicial Watch (an organization that I have financially
supported in the past thanks to my generous readers) to perform oversight on the most lawless administration in modern
American history.
Busted! Obama hiding Benghazi
emails. The Obama administration defied a federal court order and refused to release a key Hillary Clinton
email concerning the 2012 attacks on a diplomatic outpost in Benghazi, Libya. By holding back the information, the
administration wasn't just protecting Clinton from Benghazi fallout — they may have been trying to hide the fact
that Clinton maintained a private email account while secretary of state.
State
Department Hid Key Clinton Benghazi Email from Judicial Watch. The Obama State Department last week admitted it
withheld a key Benghazi email of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton from Judicial Watch since at least September 2014.
If the State Department disclosed the email when first supposedly found, Clinton's email server and her hidden emails would
have been disclosed nearly two years ago, before Clinton authorized the alleged deletion of tens of thousands of emails.
State
Dept. Withheld Key Email From Clinton's Private Server in FOIA Lawsuit. The State Department has now
acknowledged that it withheld a key Benghazi e-mail in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed in July
2014. The State Department acknowledged finding the e-mail in 2014, but it was withheld in its entirety until last
week. This latest admission comes in a FOIA lawsuit filed by Judicial Watch, a conservative legal watchdog group,
that seeks records related to the drafting and use of the Benghazi talking points.
State
Dept. Delayed Releasing Email That Could Have Blown Lid Off Hillary Email Scandal. The State Department
withheld an email that would have shown — months before it was eventually reported — that Hillary
Clinton used a personal email account to conduct State Department business, a conservative watchdog group claims.
Judicial Watch says that it received a letter from the State Department last week in which agency officials said that a
September 2012 email had been completely withheld from a production of documents that the watchdog demanded as part of a
Freedom of Information Act seeking records containing Benghazi talking points.
Feds
Blow Off House Subpoena For Obamacare Co-Op Docs. Federal health officials refuse to give Congress hundreds of
subpoenaed documents on Obamacare's failed co-ops so that people will continue enrolling in the deeply troubled program, a
congressional leader said Tuesday [4/19/2016]. Twelve of the 23 co-ops created in 2011 under Obamacare at a cost
of $2.4 billion have failed, and another eight of the remaining 11 are likely to go under this year. But the U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) won't hand over documents subpoenaed months ago by the House Committee on
Oversight and Government Reform.
Documents
confirm Eric Holder's role in Fast and Furious cover-up. "Fast and Furious" is back in the news. The
reason? In January, Judge Amy Berman, an Obama appointee, ordered the Department of Justice to produce documents
relating to the "gun walking" scandal that Congress had been seeking for four years. DOJ finally produced them, some
20,000 pages worth, this month. [...] Having reviewed these documents, Jason Chaffetz, chairman of the House Committee on
Oversight and Government Reform, has released a memo summarizing what they show. [...] Holder and his subordinates:
1. Presumed that allegations about gunwalking in Arizona were false and refused to adjust when documents and
evidence showed otherwise.
2. Politicized decisions about how and whether to comply with the congressional
investigation.
3. Devised strategies to redact or otherwise withhold relevant information from Congress and
the public.
4. Isolated the fallout from the Fast and Furious scandal to ATF leadership and the U.S.
Attorney's Office in Arizona.
5. Created a culture of animosity towards congressional oversight.
Microsoft
Sues U.S. Over Orders Barring It From Revealing Surveillance. The software giant is suing the Justice
Department, challenging its frequent use of secrecy orders that prevent Microsoft from telling people when the government
obtains a warrant to read their emails. In its suit, filed Thursday morning [4/14/2016] in Federal District Court in
Seattle, Microsoft's home turf, the company asserts that the gag order statute in the Electronic Communications Privacy Act
of 1986 — as employed today by federal prosecutors and the courts — is unconstitutional. The
statute, according to Microsoft, violates the Fourth Amendment right of its customers to know if the government searches
or seizes their property, and it breaches the company's First Amendment right to speak to its customers.
New
Balance claims Obama administration promised shoe contract for silence on TPP. New Balance, a Boston company
that makes athletic shoes, says someone from the Obama administration promised to help get the company a substantial military
contract in exchange for the company ending its vocal opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal.
Despite the promise, no order for shoes was ever placed by the Pentagon, so now the company is renewing its opposition to TPP.
Shoe Company: Obama Admin Pressured Us
to Stay Quiet on TPP. The Boston Globe is reporting that U.S.-based shoe manufacturer New Balance has
come out hard against the Trans Pacific Partnership trade deal. The odd thing, though, is that "the Boston company had
gone quiet [on TPP] last year. Now, apparently, we know why: [...]
Fournier:
Obama Admin 'The Least Transparent,' Probably In This Nation's History,' 'Clearly Lying' About Fast and Furious. National Journal
Senior Political Columnist Ron Fournier declared that the Obama administration has been "the least transparent administration, probably in this nation's
history, certainly in modern time" and that "the administration is clearly lying, it's clearly hiding documents that belong to us" regarding the Fast
and Furious program on Wednesday's [4/13/2016] "Special Report" on the Fox News Channel.
FCC Kept
'Obamaphone' Fraud Under Wraps Until After It Expanded Program. Federal regulators were instructed to keep a
massive fraud investigation under wraps until a day after a controversial vote to expand a program that was allegedly used to
bilk taxpayers of tens of millions of dollars, one those regulators claims. The Federal Communications Commission on
Friday [4/8/2016] announced that it would seek $51 million in damages from a cell phone company that allegedly defrauded the
federal Lifeline program of nearly $10 million. The commission's five members unanimously backed the Notice of Apparent
Liability (NAL), but Republican commissioner Ajit Pai parted from his colleagues in a partial dissent. According to Pai, he
and other commissioners were told not to reveal the details of its investigation until April 1, a day after the FCC voted to
expand the Lifeline program.
House
Republicans Finally Receive Huma Abedin, Susan Rice Benghazi Files. The State Department has finally turned
over to the Republican-run House Select Committee on Benghazi an estimated 1,000 pages of documents, according to military
veterans group Special Operations Speaks (SOP). These are reported to include communication between Hillary Clinton's aide
and vice chairwoman for Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign Huma Abedin and US National Security Advisor Susan Rice. [...]
The Benghazi committee chairman, Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) told the press on Friday, "It is deplorable that it took over a
year for these records to be produced to our committee, and that our Democrat colleagues never lifted a finger to help us get
them. Shame on them and everyone else who has demanded this committee to give up before gathering all of the
facts." "This investigation is about a terrorist attack that killed four Americans, and it could have been completed
a lot sooner if the administration had not delayed and delayed and delayed at every turn," Gowdy said.
State
Dept. releases personal emails from Clinton's inner circle. State Department officials on Friday handed over
1,100 pages of documents demanded by the the House Select Committee on Benghazi, two years after congressional investigators
requested them. "It is deplorable that it took over a year for these records to be produced to our committee, and that
our Democrat colleagues never lifted a finger to help us get them," committee Chairman Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., said Friday
evening. "Shame on them and everyone else who has demanded this committee to give up before gathering all of the facts."
Obama
relents on Fast & Furious executive privilege, turns records over to Congress. The Obama administration caved to a judge's
order Friday [4/8/2016] and sent documents from the botched Fast & Furious gun-running operation to Congress, complying with a subpoena
the House Oversight Committee issued years ago. President Obama had claimed executive privilege in trying to shield the documents
from Congress, but a federal judge rejected that, insisting lawmakers had a right to see the information in order to complete their
investigation into an operation that saw thousands of guns trafficked into Mexico, with the administration's knowledge. With just
hours to go before the judge's 60-day deadline, the administration complied Friday [4/8/2016].
Issa,
Grassley say Fast and Furious document releases a 'fraction' fails to meet subpoena. Republicans lawmakers who
led probes into the Obama administration's botched Operation Fast and Furious gun-trafficking operation are criticizing the
court-ordered release Friday [4/8/2016] of related documents, saying they are only a "fraction" of those requested in subpoenas.
"What we need from the president is an explanation of why he felt these documents couldn't have been seen by the American people
and why there has been no real accountability for the officials involved," said Rep. Darrell Issa, who as chairman of the
House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform led congressional investigations.
Justice
Department Kept Public in Dark About Iranian Hackers Until After Obama's Nuclear Deal. On March 24, the
Department of Justice indicted seven Iranian hackers for two cyber-crimes. The charges result from the individuals'
attacks on U.S. bank websites and the breach of a New York dam's control systems. Even though the indictment was just
released to the public, it had originally been announced but then immediately sealed the same week the U.S. and Iran were
implementing agreements regarding Iran's nuclear program — in addition to negotiating the release of four American
prisoners and compensation of $1.7 billion back to Iran.
Watchdog
group sues for FBI records on Obama. A watchdog group on Thursday [3/31/2016] announced it was suing the
federal government to obtain records on President Obama held by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The lawsuit from
Judicial Watch, filed against the Justice Department in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, follows a
2011 Freedom of Information Act request in which the group sought information the bureau obtained from 2008 interviews with
associates of former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich. Those included meetings with Obama, his former chief of staff
Rahm Emanuel, and senior White House adviser Valerie Jarrett.
DHS
Won't Tell You But Radical Islamists Are Actively Trying to Poison Us. With cyber attacks becoming more frequent and attacks on our
power grid and water supplies increasing, there is a corresponding decrease in information out of the Department of Homeland Security because
politics trumps safety with this government. We can't prepare if we don't know the threat. Americans are not being warned about the
attempts by Islamic terrorists on our water supplies but if you look at the Register UK, you can get some recent information.
Watchdog
group sues for FBI records on Obama. A watchdog group on Thursday announced it was suing the federal government
to obtain records on President Obama held by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The lawsuit from Judicial Watch,
filed against the Justice Department in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, follows a 2011 Freedom of
Information Act request in which the group sought information the bureau obtained from 2008 interviews with associates of
former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich. Those included meetings with Obama, his former chief of staff Rahm Emanuel,
and senior White House adviser Valerie Jarrett.
Exclusive:
EPA Dumps 880,000 Lbs Of Toxic Metal Into River, Won't Answer Any Questions. Environmental Protection Agency
(EPA) officials refuse to answer two questions surrounding the August 2015 Gold King Mine spill that would help resolve
issues uncovered by a Daily Caller News Foundation investigation. TheDCNF reported numerous contradictions in the EPA's
explanation of how and why it intentionally breached Colorado's Gold King Mine, releasing 880,000 pounds of dangerous metals
and mining waste into drinking water for three states and the Navajo Nation. Yet, the EPA refused to clarify those
contradictions and instead disregarded TheDCNF's findings and clung to its original story.
Defense
Secretary Ashton Carter used personal email nearly a year. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter continued using a
private email server for months after a scandal involving former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's private email use
became public. Some 1,300 emails released by the Pentagon on Friday show Carter using a personal cellphone and tablet to
send emails related to official Pentagon business, including communications with Defense Department staff on press requests
and other matters. The emails also include personal correspondence with friends.
Obama
EPA Used Secret Email Accounts to Scheme with Lobbyists and Climatards. There is new evidence senior Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA) officials routinely use private email accounts to conduct government business, this time to pass along
information from an energy lobbyist. Michael J. Bradley, president and founder of an energy consulting firm that
represents numerous green advocacy groups, described his preference for using a private email to communicate with EPA
Administrator Gina McCarthy regarding an agency regulation, according to documents obtained by the Energy & Environment Legal
Institute (E&E Legal) through a Freedom of Information Act request. "Joe, Would you please send this email to Gina
for me? I would have sent it to her directly with a cc to you but I don't have a private email address for her and would
prefer to not use an office email address," Bradley emailed to EPA Senior Counsel Joe Goffman.
Reporter
Angrily Walks Out When State Dept. Won't Answer His Question. The city of Brussels was rocked by coordinated
terror attacks Tuesday morning [3/22/2016] that killed over 30 people and injured 187 others. The Islamic
State jihadist group claimed responsibility for the attacks, although Kirby said at the briefing that the U.S. government
cannot yet confirm the veracity of those claims. Kirby also said in his opening remarks that Americans were injured
in the attacks, but the State Department is not ready to give a specific figure of how many were hurt. Lee said he
understood the department could not give a complete count of the number of Americans injured but asked Kirby for the minimum
number possible. "I'm going to avoid giving a specific number," Kirby responded.
What
is Homeland Security Hiding Behind Immigration Numbers? As Americans ominously observe the raging fire of suicidal immigration
policies implemented by our European friends across the pond, one of the first questions on their minds is: how many of these Islamic
radicals have been admitted to our country? The answer is we don't even know how many people in total have come to our country since
2013 because the Department of Homeland Security has refused to publish that data or make it available to Congress.
Obama busted in Clinton email cover-up. Did President
Barack Obama's administration intentionally help hide some of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's aides emails from
public record? Some critics are claiming that the Obama administration couldn't have just misplaced nearly 100,000 emails
and documents from a Clinton aide they claimed they couldn't find — until a lawsuit seemed to jog their memory.
And it looks like hiding emails and documents that should be public record has become a pattern for the Obama administration.
Obama
Admin Delivered Property to Iran As Part Of Secret Détente. The Obama administration has been shipping
historical artifacts to Iran since last year as part of a secret détente that also included a taxpayer-funded payment
of nearly $2 billion, according to a letter written by the State Department and exclusively obtained by the Washington Free
Beacon. Obama administration officials engaged in secret talks with Iran between June 2014 through at least January 2015
over a series of legal claims leveled against the United States by the Islamic Republic, the State Department disclosed in its letter.
Judge
Orders White House To Stop Hiding Its Bogus Global Warming 'Proof'. [Scroll down] The released material is not
highly sensitive. So one wonders why the government bothered to redact it in the first place — and fought its release in
court for over a year. Upon assuming office, Holdren's boss, President Obama, and his attorney general, Eric Holder, issued
guidance telling agencies not to withhold information just because they can, or based on technicalities, and to err on the side of
disclosure, rather than secrecy. As Holder once noted, "On his first full day in office, January 21, 2009, President
Obama issued a memorandum to the heads of all departments and agencies on the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The President
directed that FOIA 'should be administered with a clear presumption: In the face of doubt, openness prevails.'" But
that commitment to transparency has been flouted throughout the government, especially in Holder's own Justice Department.
Report:
Obama denied a record 77 percent of FOIA requests. The Obama administration has set a new record for rejecting
Freedom of Information Act requests, according to a report published Friday [3/18/2016]. The administration censored
materials or rejected requests for access in a record 596,095 cases, or 77 percent of the time, according to the annual
review conducted by the Associated Press. That's an increase of 12 percent since Obama's first year in office.
White House Slams
Bush Administration for Not Being Transparent Enough. White House spokesman Josh Earnest slammed the Bush
administration Thursday for not being as transparent as the Obama administration. [...] When Obama came into office he had
made a promise to be the most transparent administration in history. Since that promise, the administration has not
held up to that standard. Vice recently reported on newly released documents from the Department of Justice
showing the White House has worked behind the scenes to push against reforms that would give the public better access to
information from the federal government.
White
House mum on Obama dissidents meeting in Cuba. The White House won't yet say which political dissidents President Obama plans to
meet with during his upcoming historic visit to Cuba, or whether any of those dissidents include prisoners the Castro regime is holding.
Obama will arrive in Cuba on Sunday [3/20/2016], and with less than 48 hours before he leaves, the White House is putting off providing a
list of dissidents it invited for a meeting with Obama. Instead, White House press secretary Josh Earnest told reporters Friday [3/18/2016]
he hasn't seen the list, which the administration plans to release at an unspecified time over the next few days.
The
federal government no longer cares about disclosing public information. Two years ago last month, I filed a
public-records request to the Federal Emergency Management Agency as part of my reporting into the flawed response to
Hurricane Sandy. Then, I waited. The Freedom of Information Act requires a response within 20 business days, but agencies
routinely blow that deadline. Eight months later, ProPublica and NPR published our investigation into the Sandy response, but
it did not include any documents from FEMA. The agency had simply never gotten back to me.
The Age of Mafia Government.
When black-helmeted men circle your home, break down your door, throw your children from their sleeping beds onto the dew-ridden lawn, and
shoot you 22 times because some meathead mistook your house for a drug dealer's, it's clear government has gone from protecting you from
threats to becoming a threat itself. More directly, however, thanks to "The Godfather" and "The Sopranos," everyone knows that the mafia's
presence means frequent, mysterious deaths. That's also a hallmark of this administration. Fast and Furious and the Benghazi massacre
are the two most obvious examples. It's been years, in both cases, and it's still an utter mystery as to why Americans died in foreign lands,
where all those guns went, who used what money, where it all came from, and why. That may have something to do with the Justice Department's
utter lack of curiosity about massive crimes being committed on its watch, but remember: where there are mafia, there are corrupt police,
district attorneys, and courts. The mystery isn't who did it, but proving it. Part of the reason it's impossible to find evidence to
prove what everyone knows is that no one will talk.
A
CIA whistleblower talks about Obama's bizarre secrecy obsession. How did this suave and intelligent guy, with
the cosmopolitan demeanor, the sardonic sense of humor and the instinct for an irresistible photo-op, end up running the most
hidden, most clandestine and most secrecy-obsessed administration in American history? [...] Barack Obama seems like a smart,
funny, cool guy, and maybe he's too much of all those things for his own good. Maybe we will look back decades from now and
perceive the Obama paradox — the baffling relationship between his appealing persona and his abysmal record on
surveillance, government secrecy and national security — in a different light. For one thing, whatever they
told him between November of 2008 and January of 2009 must have been really scary.
George
Soros Had White House Meeting With Obama's ISIS Czar. Liberal billionaire George Soros was at the White House late last year to
meet with President Obama's controversial top adviser on ISIS, according to the White House visitor log. Soros, joined by top aide Michelle's
Vachon and Bulgarian political scientist Ivan Krastev, met with White House ISIS czar Rob Malley late in the afternoon on October 8, 2015
in the Executive Office Building, according to a recent update of the log.
The Editor says...
What does an "update of the log" really mean? It means the White House staff tried to keep it quiet as long as they could,
and "update(d)" the log as quietly as possible, and at the best possible time — right before Super Tuesday.
Holder
used Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's name for emails while in office. Former Attorney General Eric Holder used the birth
name of basketball icon Kareem Abdul-Jabbar as an alias for his official Justice Department email account, according to new
documents revealed Thursday [2/25/2016]. The Justice Department said in response to a Vice News request under the Freedom
of Information Act (FOIA) that Holder used the name "Lew Alcindor" in email conversations with his staffers. His own name
does not appear in the emails. The disclosure raises new questions about Obama administration officials' email practices,
following controversy over former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's unconventional email setup.
White
House Misses Deadline to Deliver ISIS Strategy to Congress. The House Armed Services Committee noted Tuesday [2/16/2016] that the Obama
administration missed their February 15 deadline to deliver a strategy to counter violent extremist groups in the Middle East, such as ISIS and
al Qaeda, as required by the National Defense Authorization Act. Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Texas), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee,
harshly criticized President Obama's failure to meet the deadline. "I fear the President's failure to deliver this report says far more about the
state of his strategy to defeat terrorists than any empty reassurance he may offer from the podium," Thornberry said in a statement.
Reports
Showing War Against ISIS Wasn't Working. This is dipping well into cover-up mode. This is beyond simple
tampering with intelligence. Once records are being deleted, that's a coverup.
Israeli outrage over US Judea-Samaria labeling
'deception'. Israeli officials expressed outrage late Tuesday, after the International Legal Forum (ILF) argued that the US
Customs' January 23 "reissuing" of orders to importers to label all products from Judea and Samaria as not being from "Israel" was a
covert policy change. Slamming the move as deceiving Congress, as well as the American and Israeli public, the Israeli group
International Law Forum told Channel 2 that American claims of merely "reissuing" policies from 1995 are in fact false.
End the Army
coverup on the 'lost dogs of war'. From Bernie Sanders to Ted Cruz, the presidential candidates talk up
how much they care for America's veterans. Well, Sunday's [New York] Post suggests a test: Will any of them
fight for the "lost dogs of war"? Maureen Callahan's expose shows the Pentagon repeatedly breaking its promise to
reunite bomb-sniffing dogs with their handlers on the pups' return from war. Instead, private firm K2 Solutions
routinely places the four-footed veterans in civilian hands. Never mind that a federal law passed in 2000 mandates
that soldiers who handled the animals in Iraq, Afghanistan and so on get the chance to adopt their dogs. Callahan
uncovered evidence that three Pentagon employees took dogs for themselves.
John
McCain threatens to subpoena U.S. sailors held by Iran if Obama administration doesn't hand over investigation findings by end of month. US
Republican Senator John McCain said on Sunday [2/14/2016] he would subpoena 10 US sailors to testify about their brief detention by Iran if the Obama
administration does not provide the findings of an investigation into the incident by March 1. 'It's an option that I do not want to exercise,'
McCain, who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee, told reporters as he was returning to the United States from an international security conference
in Germany.
Obama dines privately with DreamWorks CEO
Jeffrey Katzenberg, actor Will Smith. As he is wont to do when he visits Los Angeles, President Obama dined secretly with moguls and stars. Mr.
Obama had dinner at a hotel Thursday night [2/11/2016] with Jeffrey Katzenberg, DreamWorks CEO and a major campaign donor; Alan Horn, chairman of Walt Disney Studios;
and actor Will Smith, most recently in "Concussion." The White House didn't disclose the dinner, nor was it on Mr. Obama's public schedule. It was first
reported by Deadline.com.
Obama
Scolds Illinois on 'Building a Better Politics' While Barring Public from the Speech. Noting that the public was invited to
Obama's 2007 announcement speech but that the speech this week was limited to the power brokers, the Kankakee Daily Journal accused
the president of "shutting out" his Illinois supporters by only allowing legislators to attend his Wednesday [2/10/2016] speech. "It
seems like Obama is turning his back on the people who elevated him to widespread popularity and put him in the White House for eight
years. It's in one word, disappointing. Of course, there are those who will tell you that lone word describes his entire
presidency," the paper said in an editorial.
Chaffetz
Slaps Uncooperative OPM Head With Subpoena. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform (HOGR) Chairman Rep.
Jason Chaffetz is slapping a subpoena on Office of Personnel Management Acting Secretary Beth Cobert after waiting months for
documents about the agency's massive security breaches. OPM's repeated failures to address known cyber security gaps allowed
hackers to steal the personal information of more than 21 million current and former federal employees. But OPM hasn't
turned over all of the 11,000 un-redacted files and directories HOGR has been demanding for months. The committee even received
some of the same files OPM held back from private company CyTech, a contractor that inspected OPM's networks. Chaffetz, a
Republican from Utah, said Cobert is "not working in good faith with the committee."
Obama's
Growing Conflict of Interest in the Clinton E-Mail Scandal. [Scroll down] So egregious have the scandal's
latest developments been that a critical State Department admission from last week has received almost no coverage: Eighteen
e-mails between Mrs. Clinton and President Obama have been identified, and the government is refusing to disclose them. [...]
Think about what this means. Not only is it obvious that President Obama knew Mrs. Clinton was conducting government
business over her private e-mail account, the exchanges the president engaged in with his secretary of state over this
unsecured system clearly involved sensitive issues of policy. Clinton was being asked for "advice and counsel" —
not about her recommendations for the best country clubs in Martha's Vineyard, but about matters that the White House judges
too sensitive to reveal.
Texas
AG: Obama Admin. Resettled Syrians 'Under Cloak Of Secrecy'. The Obama administration admitted in federal district court
late last week that it did not give advance notice to Texas about settling a family of seven Syrian refugees in the state, according to
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. The failure to inform Texas authorities of the resettlement plans in advance, Paxton said, is
a violation of the court's directive. The attorney general's office on Tuesday [1/26/2016] filed a response with the court
supporting its request for an injunction.
Obama to Meet with Bernie Sanders in the Oval
Office. President Barack Obama will meet Wednesday morning [1/27/2016] with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) in a private sitdown in
the Oval Office. The White House announced Tuesday evening [1/26/2016] that Obama will meet with Sanders after receiving his morning
briefing and meeting with Treasury Secretary Jack Lew and Vice President Biden. "Afterward, the President will meet with Senator Bernie
Sanders. This meeting in the Oval Office is closed press," the White House stated.
IRS Wipes Another Hard Drive: Sackless GOP Leaders Issue
Sternly Worded Memo in Response. Leading members of Congress are ripping IRS officials for erasing a computer hard drive after a federal judge ordered it to be
preserved. "The destruction of evidence subject to preservation orders and subpoenas has been an ongoing problem under your leadership at the IRS," Committee on House
Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Jason Chaffetz and Rep. Jim Jordan, wrote in a letter to IRS Commissioner John Koskinen late Thursday [1/21/2016]. "It is
stunning to see that the IRS does not take reasonable care to preserve documents that it is legally required to protect," Chaffetz, a Utah Republican, and Jordan, an Ohio
Republican, said in the letter to Koskinen.
No "Major Scandal" in Obama Administration?
This list just scratches the surface. Executive overreach has become standard fare, whether on immigration or environmental regulations. The
Obama administration's penchant for controlling leaks, a lack of transparency, and a war on journalists has been noted by the likes of former
Washington Post executive editor Len Downie Jr. who said "The [Obama] administration's war on leaks and other efforts to control information
are the most aggressive I've seen since the Nixon administration leaks," and New York Times reporter David Sanger who said, "This is the most closed,
control-freak administration I've ever covered." James Risen of the Times added that the Obama administration has been "the greatest enemy of
press freedom that we have encountered in at least a generation."
IRS
under fire for erasing records sought in court order. Lawmakers blasted the Internal Revenue Service this week for
deleting records that a federal judge had ordered the agency to produce. First, Sens. Orrin Hatch and Ron Wyden demanded
to know why a hard drive had been "sanitized" after a court ordered the IRS to hand over records from that computer. In a
letter to IRS Commissioner John Koskinen Wednesday [1/20/2016], the pair of Republicans questioned the tax agency's record-keeping
policies, which have come under fire for years thanks to a series of lengthy congressional investigations that were stymied by the
IRS' failure to turn over key documents.
IRS Erases Hard Drive Despite Court
Order. The IRS erased a hard drive belonging to a former top employee involved in the agency's controversial,
taxpayer-funded hiring of elite trial law firm Quinn Emanuel. Although there was a court preservation order on all documents
related to the IRS hiring of the outside firm, the hard drive was erased anyway. The order was borne of a Freedom of Information
Act (FOIA) request submitted by Microsoft. Even though the white shoe law firm has zero experience handling sensitive tax data,
taxpayers have been footing bills of over $1,000 per hour for its services.
EPA
Knew About Michigan Water Contamination For Months Without Telling The Public. The Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) top Midwest
official knew about the Flint, Michigan drinking water crisis of 2015 months before telling the public, according to a Tuesday [1/12/2016] report by
the The Detroit News. EPA official Susan Hedman did not publicize the EPA's concern over Flint's water quality or the water's dangerous health
concerns. The federal agency instead quietly fought with the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality for at least six months about what
should be done.
FOIA: Officially, Undeniably Broken. Secrecy
is the order of the day at many federal agencies when it comes to their actions and to public records. That's according to a new report today [1/11/2016]
from the House Oversight Committee staff. [...] Instead of being an effective tool to help the public obtain public information, the FOI process has been
perverted by federal agencies and is now used to obstruct the release of public information.
'FOIA
Is Broken,' Says House Panel Report. In some ways it's never been easier for citizens to seek federal agency
records through the Freedom of Information Act, the public's main tool to get information from the government. Public
records portals like Muckrock.com and FOIA Machine have helped automate and simplify the FOIA process, making it easier for
people to craft records requests and share disclosed documents with other online users. According to a new report by the
Republican-led House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, the FOIA system has gotten more dysfunctional and opaque,
The
most transparent and the most dishonest. This is a tale about "the most transparent administration in history."
We thank President Obama for that description, for we were momentarily at a loss about how to describe the executive branch during
his tenure. On Friday [1/8/2016], the most transparent administration in history's State Department released a batch of emails
from Hillary Clinton's time as secretary of state. More interesting than what they contained — it was the usual
batch of previously denied classified material — was that they landed on sleepy reporters' desks at 1 o'clock in
the morning.
Feds shuttle illegal migrants around
Texas. With their 21-day window closing, hundreds of minor migrants from Central America have been shuttled
to new government holding facilities in Texas. Up to 700 of the 900 unaccompanied youngsters sent to Ellis and Rockwall
counties last month are still under federal control. Because Texas law set a three-week limit at those locations, the
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is moving the migrants to camps in Somervell and McLennan counties. The
ongoing influx of minor migrants is requiring more facilities in additional counties — though HHS has not disclosed
where. Nor could HHS spokeswoman Andrea Helling provide current head counts.
Clinton's
private email account exploits FOIA loophole, report says. Hillary Clinton's unorthodox use of a private email
account and personal server for government business exploited a loophole in the State Department's FOIA, or Freedom of
Information Act, process, according to the findings of the first Inspector General report to stem from her email scandal.
Congress asked the Office of Inspector General, the State Department's independent watchdog, to investigate the issue following
the revelation that Mrs. Clinton did not use a government email account while secretary of state.
'Four
Times Greater Than Solyndra': DOE Drops 1,200 Pages Of Heavily Redacted Docs On Green Energy Loans. The Department of Energy
recently turned over more than 1,200 pages of heavily redacted documents in response to a records request about a subsidized biofuels
company from The Daily Caller News Foundation. In October, TheDCNF filed a FOIA request with the Energy Department, asking for email
records from government officials regarding federal loan guarantees given to Abengoa, a Spanish-based green energy company. The request
came on the heels of reports Abengoa was running into big financial problems, despite being given generous taxpayer-backed loans. The
DOE gave TheDCNF the records it requested Dec. 18, and after spending time reviewing the documents, it's apparent there's a lot of
information the department did not want the public to see. The DOE redacted virtually all information specific to Abengoa — in
many cases whole pages were blacked out.
Report:
Facing Investigations, DOJ Claims Right To Avoid Investigations. Beset by several investigations, the Department of Justice is
claiming the right to avoid being investigated. As reported by PJMedia, the Office of the Inspector General's job is to combat problems
of waste, fraud and abuse within the federal government. But Attorney General Loretta Lynch has no intention of allowing any investigation.
She told the House Judiciary Committee that her office will simply ignore any request from the OIG at will.
Obama
administration blocks Washington Times FOIA request on Syria chemical weapons. The Obama administration is blocking The
Washington Times from obtaining detailed information about Syria's extensive chemical weapons arsenal, which was used to kill thousands
of innocents and changed the course of the country's savage 4-year-old civil war. Critics within advocacy groups, and within the
journalism establishment, have lambasted the administration for its slow, or lack of, responses to Freedom of Information Act requests.
Yet in 2009, President Obama pledged to run the most transparent administration in U.S. history and told FOIA administrators to err on the
side of releasing data.
Obama
Meets with Bloomberg, Readies New Gun Control Executive Actions. President Obama met with gun control proponent, nanny-statist, and
former NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg yesterday [12/16/2015] to discuss Obama's imminent executive actions to restrict the Second Amendment.
The meeting was not on the president's public schedule but obviously revealed after the fact to the press. The conclave was "part of the
administration's continuing push to address gun violence in America," the White House said in a statement.
Carter:
Using Personal Email Account for Work Was a Mistake. Defense Secretary Ash Carter acknowledged on Thursday
[12/17/2015] that he used a personal email account to conduct some government business during his first months on the job.
How many more cabinet-level officials are using private email accounts?
Defense
Secretary Conducted Some Official Business on a Personal Email Account. Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter relied on a
personal email account to conduct a portion of his government business during his first months at the Pentagon, according to White House
and Defense Department officials and copies of Mr. Carter's emails obtained by The New York Times. Mr. Carter continued the practice,
which violated Defense Department rules, for at least two months after it was publicly revealed in March that Hillary Clinton had exclusively
used a personal email account as secretary of state, the officials said.
Defense
Secretary Conducted Some Official Business on a Personal Email Account. Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter relied on a personal email account
to conduct a portion of his government business during his first months at the Pentagon, according to White House and Defense Department officials and copies of
Mr. Carter's emails obtained by The New York Times. Mr. Carter continued the practice, which violated Defense Department rules, for at least two months
after it was publicly revealed in March that Hillary Clinton had exclusively used a personal email account as secretary of state, the officials said.
Did someone
mention Hillary Clinton's improper use of a private email system?
Pentagon
chief says 'I should have known better' on personal email use — but Senate military panel wants to see them
anyway. U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter acknowledged on Thursday that he used a personal email account to
conduct some government business until 'a few months ago.' 'I should have known better,' Carter told reporters traveling
with him in Irbil, Iraq, the regional capital of the Kurds. 'It's not like I didn't have the opportunity to understand
what the right thing to do was. I didn't do the right thing.' The same practice by former Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton, now the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, has drawn intense criticism and led to an FBI investigation
into two emails that are now considered top secret. The White House confirmed the news later Thursday [12/17/2015].
The Editor says...
I can now predict next week's headline: Secretary Carter's hard drive was wiped, then it crashed, and then it was melted and buried at sea.
Nothing
Good Ever Comes From Congress At 2:00am. 2:00am, December 16th 2015, and yet another 2,000+ page bill emerges from the halls
of congressional staff — this one an "Ominibus spending bill" with over $1.5 Trillion in expenditures, almost certain to
add yet another thousand billion to the structural deficit. Republicans control the House and the Senate.
Either they are incompetent or they are stonewalling.
DHS
Official Unable to Give Number of Syrians in U.S. or Number of Expired Visas. A senior Department of Homeland Security official was unable to
tell Congress the number of Syrian refugees who have entered the United States in the last year and the number of Americans who have travelled to Syria and
returned, in testimony on Capitol Hill that angered many lawmakers. Kelli Ann Burriesci, a deputy assistant secretary in the department's office of
policy, could not provide statistics about immigration when the House's national security subcommittee grilled her about potential flaws in the visa waiver
program. While lawmakers had requested that its secretary, Jeh Johnson, testify before the committee, the agency sent Burriesci instead, saying that
she is the resident expert on these issues. However, Burriesci struggled to answer questions, prompting anger from lawmakers and concerns that the
department is failing to track potentially dangerous immigrants.
The Editor says...
Why would someone go to testify before Congress without doing his or her homework? What did she think they were going to ask about?
DHS
Should Release All Documents Regarding San Bernardino Terrorist, says Congress. Shouldn't the Department of
Homeland Security release the information so we can figure out how to prevent another tragedy like San Bernardino?
IGs:
At Least 20 Investigations Slowed or Closed Due To Obama Admin. Numerous inspectors general say that at least
20 investigations have been slowed or closed due to government watchdogs not having access to needed documents or records
under the Obama administration. Dozens of interviews of people with firsthand knowledge of the years-long problem
spoke of the tensions between the watchdogs and the administration.
ISIS
Czar a Terrorist Sympathizer Once Fired by Obama for Hamas Ties. A radical foreign policy adviser fired by President
Obama years ago for meeting with the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas is back as the administration's new czar in charge of countering
the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS). The White House downplayed the new appointment by burying it deep in a press
briefing delivered at a Paris hotel during the recent climate summit.
The Editor says...
Isn't there already a terrorism czar?
Gov't
Watchdog: HUD's Financial Books Are Impossible To Audit. A government watchdog says it can't audit billions in
Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) spending because the agency's financial books are kept so poorly. HUD's
financial statements and systems are missing records, inaccurate and sometimes even violated federal laws, according to a HUD
inspector general report released Monday [11/30/2015]. Included among the programs with useless financial accounting records
is nearly $20 billion at the Government National Mortgage Association.
Demanding
transparency from the 'most transparent administration in history'. The Obama administration has an abysmal
record on openness to the press and the American people. Nowhere is it worse than the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
DHS currently boasts the largest backlog of any federal agency and, since the Obama administration took over, there has been a
182 percent increase in the number of FOIA requests at DHS. A November 2014 Government Accountability Office (GAO)
report found DHS had over 50,000 backlogged FOIA requests due to mismanagement and duplicative efforts among the different
departments at the agency. The number of backlogged requests continues to rise each year and many requests are either
ignored or improperly closed.
Obama signs bill making Gitmo closure
tougher. Away from public view, US President Barack Obama signed a defense bill Wednesday [11/25/2015] barbed with measures
designed to undo his bid to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay. In a terse statement, the White House said Obama has signed the
National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2016, along with several other pieces of legislation.
A True Scandal. The [New York] Times
reported over the weekend that congressional investigators were informed by military officials that some of the documents related to the intentional
misleading of policy makers were destroyed before they could be turned over to the appropriate authorities. Last week, Foreign Policy
revealed that reports regarding the strength of opposition elements in Afghanistan had also been shaded to create the impression of success for the
White House. On Monday [11/23/2015], Fox News Pentagon correspondent Catherine Herridge revealed "a source close to the CENTCOM analysts [alleged]
that the pressure on them included at least two emails saying they needed to 'cut it out' and 'toe the line.'" Another source confirmed to
Herridge the revelation reported in the Times that incriminating communication about these warnings were destroyed before they could be
handed over to investigators.
Obama
Quietly Releases Plans For 2,224 Regulations Ahead Of Turkey Day. While millions of Americans prepare to stuff
themselves with Turkey and pie, the Obama administration quietly released its plans for 2,224 federal rules Friday
[11/20/2015] — a preview of just how many more regulations the president is attempting to issue before he leaves
office. President Barack Obama's Unified Agenda for Fall 2015 is his administration's regulatory road map and lays out
thousands of regulations being finalized in the coming months. Obama has developed a habit of releasing the agenda late on
Friday before a major holiday.
Should the State Department Be
Disbanded? In recent years, Republican presidential candidates — notably Rick Perry and Ted Cruz —
have called for numerous government departments — Education, Energy, Commerce, HUD and, of course, the IRS — to
be disbanded. Almost all candidates have urged that the bureaucracies be significantly curtailed. But in this orgy of cost
and regulation cutting, one monumental, all-important agency (with a budget approaching $50 billion) curiously has been
ignored — the State Department. [...] The last few years have shown us that prying information out of the State Department
(Benghazi, Clinton emails, etc.) is [impossible]. Their lineup of spokespeople are about as forthcoming as dead bats.
The primary purpose of the organization seems to be self-preservation, but self-preservation for what?
Whistleblowers
Claim NOAA Climate Report Was "Rushed To Publication". I hope these whistleblowers are hiding deep, because they will be in
big trouble from the CoC when found, laws [notwithstanding]. Some Warmists are already calling for the whistleblowers to be named and
forced to testify publicly, in contradiction of federal law. [...] What is it with this Administration and stonewalling? If they aren't
releasing the requested material, they're hiding something. If there was nothing there, you can bet the communications and emails would
have been released. At this point, we must ask what NOAA is hiding.
Judicial
Watch Sues Department of Homeland Security for Records of Senior DHS Officials Using Personal Email Accounts on Government-Owned Computers.
Judicial Watch announced today [11/18/2015] that it filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to
obtain records related to the use by senior officials, including Secretary Jeh Johnson, of government-owned computers for personal web-based email accounts.
[...] According to press reports, Johnson and 28 other top Homeland Security officials sought and were granted waivers to use the personal email accounts
for the past year, despite the practice having been banned in April 2014.
Judge:
State Dept. 'lackadaisical' in processing Clinton files. A federal judge scolded the State Department Tuesday
for being "lackadaisical" in processing the emails turned over by former Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton as well as messages
and notes from other department officials. Judge Rudolph Contreras said the department has had Mrs. Clinton's emails since
December, and he wondered why it is only now beginning to hire additional reviewers to go over her messages and the tens of
thousands of other documents that are being sought as the Obama administration faces an avalanche of open-records requests
concerning her time in office.
Obama
asks people to read TPP deal themselves. President Obama on Tuesday morning [11/10/2015] asked people to make their own
judgment about the 12-country Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact by reading it themselves online. [...] On Monday, Sen. Jeff Sessions,
R-Ala., tweeted out a picture showing just how hard it might be for the average person to read the deal. His tweet showed a pile
of paper about three feet high on his desk.
Secret
TPP Text Released: GOP to Push Obama's Dangerous Trade Deal. Following years of secret negotiating, the Obama
administration released the text of the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) at 3:30 a.m. today (Thursday,
November 5). Although billed as a "trade agreement," the treaty calls for economic and political "integration"
among the TPP members. Adopting the model that transformed the European Common Market into the European Union, the
TPP creates regional governing structures and processes aimed at eventual convergence into a similar EU-style super-state.
NOAA
Says There Is No "Pause" But Refuses to Turn Over Their Evidence. Temperature has long been a problem for
Climate science. We have weather stations all over the country to measure temperature, but when volunteers looked into the
siting of the stations, it was found that many were situated next to air-conditioning outlets or vast expanses of concrete that
are heat collectors. Tree-rings are fallible, but we now have a satellite record that is the gold standard. The RSS
satellite record shows clearly the inconvenient truth that there has been no global warming since January 1997. The U.S
government's main climate research agency has refused to release to Congress the key documents that support their conclusion
that there has been no pause in global warming. What could they be trying to hide?
Most
transparent administration in history closes more meetings than ever. The CRS [Congressional Research Service]
just published a detailed look at what are called Federal Advisory Committees. Yes, yes, it sounds arcane. That's how the
Washington bureaucracy gets away with so much stuff. Make it sound as boring as humanly possible, like a Joe Biden speech on
Scranton. And the people will leave you alone, tune out. But don't you dare. For one thing, you're shelling out a third
of a billion dollars for these things. And you don't even know what they do. That's $915,000 every single day.
Bizarro
President. The flurry of spy stories spinning around in recent weeks makes clear that US-Israel relations
remain in crisis. Two weeks ago, The Wall Street Journal published a fairly detailed account of the US's massive spying
operations against Israel between 2010 and 2012. Their purpose was to prevent Israel from attacking Iran's nuclear
installations. The Journal report, which was based on US sources, also detailed the evasion tactics the Obama administration
employed to try to hide its covert nuclear talks with Iran from Israel. According to the report, the administration was
infuriated that through its spy operations against Iran, Israel discovered the talks and the government asked the White House
to tell it what was going on.
Harsh:
Obama Official Who Pled Guilty to Espionage Gets... $250 Fine. Glenn Woodell, a NASA supervisor who pled guilty
to violating U.S. espionage laws involving a Chinese NASA contractor was given a slap on the wrist with six months' probation
and a $250 fine, the Daily Caller News Foundation has learned. Daniel Jobson, a Woodell colleague and fellow NASA supervisor,
had his espionage charges reduced to a misdemeanor and was released without any penalty. The lenient plea deals were
quietly delivered October 26 in U.S. District Court in Newport News, Virginia. The U.S. Attorneys office did not
to [sic] issue a press release about the deals and declined comment when contacted by the DCNF.
NOAA Won't Release Global Warming
Data to GOP. Congress is finally investigating some of the global warming claims made by the Obama Administration,
particularly a study that refuted the 15-plus-years pause in warming that other studies have reported. But the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is refusing to fully comply with a subpoena issued by the House Committee on Science,
Space and Technology, chaired by Rep. Lamar Smith.
White House Seeks to Keep Some
Clinton Emails Secret. The White House will try to block the release of a handful of emails between President Obama and former Secretary
of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, citing longstanding precedent invoked by presidents of both parties to keep presidential communications confidential,
officials said Friday [10/30/2015].
The
U.S. War Casualties the Pentagon Doesn't Want You to See. Five Americans have been wounded in action while fighting ISIS
in Iraq. But the U.S. military won't say the first thing about who they are, or how they got injured.
Obama
Attends Secret Luncheon at DC's Exclusive Metropolitan Club. President Obama is attending a private luncheon
today at the exclusive Metropolitan Club of Washington, D.C. Former Senate Majority Leaders Tom Daschle and George Mitchell
are hosting the event. One source described Obama's outing as "a purely social drop-by" with former and current members
of the Senate.
White
House concealing list of a dozen dying Obamacare insurers. Federal officials have a secret list of 11 Obamacare
health insurance co-ops they fear are on the verge of failure, but they refuse to disclose them to the public or to Congress,
a Daily Caller News Foundation investigation has learned. Just in the last three weeks, five of the original 24
Obamacare co-ops announced plans to close, bringing the total of failures to eight barely two years after their launch
with $2 billion in start-up capital from the taxpayers under the Affordable Care Act. All 24 received 15-year
loans in varying amounts to offer health insurance to poor and low income customers and provide publicly funded competition
to private, for-profit insurers.
Eight
ObamaCare Co-Ops Failed; Are 11 More On The Way? Last week, the total number of failed ObamaCare-created insurance co-ops reached eight,
as co-ops in Colorado and Oregon announced that they were closing doors at the end of the year. These co-ops got a total of about $900 million
in low-interest loans, most of which are unlikely to be repaid. [...] Now we learn that 11 of the remaining 15 co-ops could be at death's door too, but
the administration is hiding information about their health.
Feds Hide Secret List Of 11
Staggering Obamacare Insurers. Federal officials have a secret list of 11 Obamacare health insurance co-ops they fear are
on the verge of failure, but they refuse to disclose them to the public or to Congress, a Daily Caller News Foundation investigation has
learned. Just in the last three weeks, five of the original 24 Obamacare co-ops announced plans to close, bringing the total of failures
to nine barely two years after their launch with $2 billion in start-up capital from the taxpayers under the Affordable Care Act.
Also posted
under Obamacare will never work as promised.
Trumka calls for immediate
release of TPP text. One of the nation's top labor leaders on Wednesday [10/14/2015] called on the Obama administration
to immediately release the text of a far-reaching trade deal that spans the Pacific Rim to Latin America. AFL-CIO President
Richard Trumka wrote a letter to President Obama arguing that stakeholders, lawmakers and the American public need to see the final
text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) to start what is expected to be a long process of evaluating the deal brokered by the
United States and 11 other nations.
Congress
must hold EPA responsible for its own environmental disaster. An EPA contractor breached a wall at a long-shuttered mine and
roughly three million gallons of fluid laden with arsenic, lead, mercury, and other heavy metals flowed freely into the Animas River.
Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper, New Mexico Governor Susanna Martinez, and local leaders have rightly called for accountability and
transparency. The EPA's response to its own environmental disaster has been anything but honest, transparent or thorough. The
EPA released documents — only after weeks of pressure and in an effort to bury the news at the end of the week —
revealing how officials knew of the potential for a spill more than a year before the debacle near Durango.
Hillary Clinton
is a Mess on Trade. On Monday [10/5/2015], American officials announced that they had finally reached an accord
on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), an east-meets-west free trade deal that has been in the works for nearly a decade.
TPP languished under "classified" status, irking both Republicans and Democrats who publicly lashed out against the Obama
Administration for keeping the details of the trade deal secret, and that frustration has now boiled over as legislators and
other officials get their first look at the 1000+ pages of negotiated regulations.
House
Republicans Consider Suing Obama. for Withholding Side Deals on Iran's Nuclear Program
Obama
Admin Will Not Reveal to Congress Number of Americans Killed By Iran. The Obama administration is declining to
inform Congress about the number of American citizens and troops killed by Iran and its terror proxies, according to a
document provided to Congress and obtained by the Washington Free Beacon. The administration was repeatedly asked by
Congress to release figures describing how many Americans and Israelis have been killed by Iran's military and terror
activities since the country's 1979 revolution. In a series of on-the-record responses obtained exclusively by the Free
Beacon, and provided in written form to Sen. Marco Rubio (R., Fla.), Kerry sidestepped the questions on all of the three
separate occasions he was asked to provide the figures.
Elusive
crime wave data shows frightening toll of illegal immigrant criminals. The federal government can tell you how
many "Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islanders" stole a car, the precise number of "American Indian or Alaska Natives" who
were arrested for vagrancy or how many whites were busted for counterfeiting in any given year. But the government agencies
that crunch crime numbers are utterly unable — or unwilling — to pinpoint for the public how many illegal
immigrants are arrested within U.S. borders each year. In the absence of comprehensive data, FoxNews.com examined a patchwork
of local, state and federal statistics that revealed a wildly disproportionate number of murderers, rapists and drug dealers are
crossing into the U.S. amid the wave of hard-working families seeking a better life.
Official
may have tried to keep Clinton emails off the record. State Department email records suggest one official
attempted to keep discussions about Hillary Clinton's private communications out of email messages that could one day become
public through the Freedom of Information Act. Peggy Grafeld, an agency FOIA officer, encouraged her colleagues to
"discuss, rather than email" critical information about Clinton's records, according to conservative nonprofit Judicial
Watch. Grafeld's message "shows that one of the agency's top officials for the records management and public disclosure
did not want to create a written record about issues," Judicial Watch said.
State
Dept. concedes 'gaps' in Clinton emails; contradiction could result in perjury charge. The emails former
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton turned back over to the government last year contained "gaps," according to
internal department messages evaluating her production. Mrs. Clinton took office on Jan. 21, 2009, but the first
message she turned back over to the department was dated March 18, and the earliest-dated message she herself sent was
on April 13, or nearly three months into her time in office, according to a message obtained through an open records
request by Judicial Watch, which released it Monday [9/14/2015].
41 Traitors. 41 Democratic Senators chose to back an Iran deal that is a
disaster for national security, a gift to terrorists and a path to war. Here are the five worst things about the deal that the #41Traitors now own. [...]
While the text of the treaty is online, the devil is in the details. Those details are the agreements between Iran and the IAEA. Iran has demanded
that those agreements be kept secret. The #41Traitors are backing a deal whose contents they don't even know. We have to pass it to find out how
many nuclear bombs Iran ends up with. Obama and Biden have refused to answer questions about what's in those agreements, [...]
State
Dept. withholds dozens of Clinton-related records. State Department officials withheld dozens of documents
related to the unusual employment status of Huma Abedin, a former aide to Hillary Clinton who held two separate jobs in
addition to her government position during Clinton's tenure. Despite a court order requiring the agency to hand over
68 pages of records to the Associated Press by Tuesday [9/8/2015], the State Department delivered just seven pages to
the news outlet in its response to its pending Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. The batch contained just five
emails, two of which had been partially redacted, the Associated Press said.
John
Kerry Appoints Hillary Clinton Donor as 'Transparency Coordinator' at State Department. Secretary of State John
Kerry appointed former career diplomat Janice Jacobs as the government agency's "transparency coordinator" who will be
responsible for improving its document preservation and transparency systems. The announcement comes as the State
Department receives multiple Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests and inquiries from congressional lawmakers stemming
from the controversy surrounding former secretary of State Hillary Clinton's exclusive use of a private email system while
working in the Obama administration. Jacobs, who most recently worked as Assistant Secretary for Consular Affairs before
retiring last year, appears to have donated the maximum $2,700 to Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign in June, according
to records from the Federal Election Commission.
Obama's
Stonewall Tactics: A Case Study. The Obama administration has proved to be the least transparent in our modern
history. To an unprecedented degree, the administration is staffed by scofflaws who flout their legal obligations. When
confronted with requests for information, let alone actual investigations, Obama's habitual response is to stonewall. This
strategy has been remarkably successful in avoiding accountability, in part because legal processes are so slow. We have
seen this pattern dozens of times. One instance, which is highlighted by a federal court order issued on Friday [8/28/2015],
illustrates how the administration has operated from the beginning of Obama's term in office.
Conservative
group calls for removal of 'transparency czar'. A conservative group has called on Ambassador Janice Jacobs,
the State Department's newly-appointed "transparency czar," to resign amid revelations that she donated the maximum amount
permitted by law to Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign. America Rising, a Republican political action committee,
highlighted the "conflict of interest" created by allowing a Clinton supporter to decide which of Clinton's emails will be
disclosed to the public and Congress — a reported part of Jacobs' new position.
Iran
Pact's Secret Side Deals: A National Security Fraud. First, we know there are secret side deals that were not
mentioned in the Obama administration's rollout of the Iran nuclear agreement. The administration provided classified (that
is, secret) briefings on the side deals to Congress during the week of July 20, in which it claimed that U.S. diplomats have
been briefed on the side deal documents but have not seen them. Obama officials told Congress that the side deals are routine
International Atomic Energy Agency arrangements that were being briefed in a classified setting because they are confidential
agreements between the IAEA and Iran. So if the side deals are secret, from whom are they being kept secret? The
U.S. Congress, apparently.
Why
an Ethics Report on a Questionable Congressional Trip Will Stay Secret. On Wednesday [8/26/2015], 10 civic
organizations and academics sent a letter to the House Ethics Committee's chairman and ranking member expressing displeasure
that the panel didn't publicly disclose findings by the Office of Congressional Ethics, an independent, nonpartisan entity.
[...] "While we understand that the Committee claims it is not obliged to release OCE's findings because the Committee had
sent OCE a 'cease and refer' order and the Committee considered the findings 'supporting documentation,' it is not clear
under House rules that the 'cease and refer' order was indeed valid," the letter states. "Thus, the decision to
withhold OCE's findings may have violated House rules."
IRS
tea-party villain Lois Lerner had another secret email address. Embattled former Internal Revenue Service
official Lois Lerner used at least two separate private email accounts to conduct government business, it has emerged, after
the agency told a federal court that investigators discovered a second address as they sifted through her communications.
Lerner, considered a Washington Cruella de Vil by conservative groups who say she orchestrated a campaign to discriminate
against them, retired in September 2013 amid a scandal launched by her Exempt Organizations office's slow walk of tax-exempt
applications from right-wing organizations.
What Is Obama's Top Population-Control
Freak Hiding? The most transparent administration in American history is at it again — dodging sunlight and evading
public disclosure. Joining former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her secret servers, former IRS witch hunt queen Lois Lerner and
her secret email accounts, former EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson and her Internet alter egos, and former Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack
and his non-public email account is White House science czar John Holdren. President Obama's top climate change adviser is defending
his hide-and-seek game in federal court.
"Toby
Miles": IRS finds yet another Lois Lerner email account. Lois Lerner had yet another personal email account
used to conduct some IRS business, the tax agency confirmed in a new court filing late Monday that further complicates the
administration's efforts to be transparent about Ms. Lerner's actions during the tea party targeting scandal. The
admission came in an open-records lawsuit filed by Judicial Watch, a conservative public interest law firm that has sued
to get a look at emails Ms. Lerner sent during the targeting.
Response
to Obama IRS Disclosure of New Lois Lerner Email Account. It is remarkable that the Obama IRS and Justice
Department waited two years to tell a federal court that Lois Lerner had a separate email account that contains documents at
issue in the IRS scandal. Especially since both agencies knew about this account since April of last year. It could be a
crime if Lois Lerner kept confidential taxpayer data on her non-governmental email account. This new disclosure follows
the Obama administration's Nixonian practice of "modified limited hangouts" of information about its IRS scandal and Lois Lerner "lost
and found" emails. Every step of the way, the Obama IRS has obstructed this court's orders to get Lois Lerner's emails recovered
and searched. The Court has already threatened contempt against both IRS Commissioner John Koskinen and Justice Department
attorneys over the Lerner email issue. And I suspect that Judge Sullivan won't be pleased by this latest revelation.
It's
no Camelot! Caroline Kennedy's oversight of Japanese embassy slammed. The State Department's internal watchdog
leveled biting criticism at the management style of U.S. Ambassador to Japan Caroline Kennedy in a new audit on Tuesday [8/25/2015],
citing "confusion among staff" and "major management challenges" in key offices at the Tokyo embassy. And in an echo of the
email woes plaguing former Secretary of State and 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton, the inspection by
the department's Office of Inspector General (OIG) specifically faulted Ms. Kennedy, the daughter of President John F.
Kennedy and President Obama's personal pick for the job, and her aides for using "personal email accounts to send and receive
messages containing official business."
Report: Caroline Kennedy used private
email account for official business. Many State Department staff used their private accounts to both send and receive
these emails, the State Department's inspector general found in an investigation of Kennedy's embassy in Tokyo. "Senior embassy
staff, including the ambassador, used personal email accounts to send and receive messages containing official business," investigators
wrote in the report, released Tuesday [8/25/2015]. "In addition, (investigators) identified instances where emails labeled sensitive
but unclassified were sent from, or received by, personal email accounts." The watchdog report said that Kennedy's practices were
against State Department policy and put the agency at risk.
Journalists:
Obama Isn't Open And Transparent After All. A coalition of 50 journalism groups Tuesday condemned President
Barack Obama for his stranglehold on information — this despite promising to be the most open and transparent
president. The most recent call to end the strict control of information is not the first time the Society of Professional
Journalists (SPJ) has tried to end the practice. Despite the previous attempts, the administration has continued to ignore
them. David Cuillier, a chairman for the group, noted what the Obama administration is doing falls in strict contrast to his
earlier promises.
IRS finds yet another
Lois Lerner email account. Lois Lerner had yet another personal email account used to conduct some IRS business, the tax
agency confirmed in a new court filing late Monday [8/24/2015] that further complicates the administration's efforts to be transparent
about Ms. Lerner's actions during the tea party targeting scandal. The admission came in an open-records lawsuit filed by
Judicial Watch, a conservative public interest law firm that has sued to get a look at emails Ms. Lerner sent during the targeting.
DHS
Kept Secret the Release Of Violent Criminal Illegal Immigrants. Obama administration officials only began
notifying local law enforcement officials of the release of violent criminal illegal immigrants within the last two weeks,
according to Arizona law enforcement officials, who say they have for years been kept in the dark about the release of
illegal immigrants back into local towns. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) had been keeping secret its release
of illegal immigrants with violent criminal records from local law enforcement for at least two years, denying for a time
that this was taking place, law enforcement officials disclosed to the Washington Free Beacon. The public
disclosure of this practice, in which Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) frees criminal illegal immigrants back into
U.S. communities, came to light earlier this week, when Arizona law enforcement was made aware that three illegal aliens
with violent criminal records had been released back onto the streets.
Stonewalled:
Feds Hide Fiscal Details About Vast Operation To Resettle Illegal Alien Minors. Illegal aliens who show up at
the border have been resettled all across United States of America instead of being detained and deported, as Donald Trump
recently called for in his new immigration plan. According to data from the Justice Department obtained by Breitbart
News, 96 percent of Central Americans caught illegally crossing into the country last summer are still in the United States.
Now Breitbart News has learned exclusively that a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request from a pro-security group about the cost
of this operation is being stonewalled.
Senators:
Obama administration hiding secret Iran deal letters. Two leading U.S. senators are calling on the Obama
administration to release secret letters to foreign governments assuring them that they will not be legally penalized for
doing business with the Iranian government, according to a copy of a letter sent Wednesday [8/19/2015] to the State Department and
obtained by the Washington Free Beacon. Sens. Mark Kirk (R., Ill.) and Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) disclosed in the letter to
the State Department that U.S. lawmakers have been shown copies of several letters sent by the Obama administration to the Chinese,
German, French, and British governments assuring them that companies doing business with Iran will not come under penalty.
State
Department Clamps Down on Speaking to Congress or Press. The State Department has quietly issued a new policy
that some insiders view as designed to keep employees from freely speaking to Congress or the press about Benghazi and former
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's email controversy. The State Department issued 19 pages of revised rules about
official clearance for speaking, writing and teaching on July 27.
Obama
protects White House insiders, cracks down on low-level leakers. The Obama administration has a history of
dealing harshly with those who mishandle classified information — unless the offender resides in the White House
inner circle. The FBI is conducting a security investigation of Hillary Rodham Clinton's at-home private email server
for holding classified material while she was secretary of state. A new poll shows the majority of Americans want a
criminal probe, and some conservatives are calling for one.
The Editor says...
There would be no such thing as a "leaker" if Obama ran the kind of open and transparent administration
he promised in 2008.
Obama's
Betrayals: Illegality and Malfeasance in Office. President Barack Obama is guilty of multiple counts of illegality
and malfeasance in office. He has both willfully abused his executive powers and willfully neglected to perform his executive
duties under the Constitution to "take care that the laws be faithfully executed." [...] Obama asserted a spurious claim of executive
privilege to withhold information from Congress on efforts within the Justice Department to hide the truth about the Fast and Furious
gun-running operation. President Obama was protecting his crony Eric Holder and trying to keep embarrassing facts from the public.
Hillary's
State Department Routinely Hid Emails On Purpose. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's State Department
routinely failed to preserve its own emails in order to intentionally hide them from official records. Clinton-era email
use at the State Department was fraught with widespread, intentional concealment, according to an October 2014-March 2015
semiannual report to Congress filed by the State Department's office of inspector general (OIG). Only a fraction of
the messages sent by email were stored as "record emails," according to the report.
EPA Withholding Mine Spill Info
From State AGs. The EPA is not letting the public know the names of the government contractors responsible for
spilling three million gallons of toxic wastewater from a southern Colorado mine. The agency is holding the information
close — so close, the Colorado attorney general's office doesn't have it.
How
Obama Misled Us about the Concessions He Was Making to Iran. If what senior Iranian officials are saying is
true, the Obama administration's duplicity in explaining its nuclear negotiations with Iran is even more staggering than we
realized. In a new report, MEMRI (the Middle East Media Research Institute) reveals that, according to Iranian officials,
the Obama administration initiated secret negotiations with Iran not after the 2013 election of President Hassan Rouhani, but
rather in 2011 when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was still Iran's president.
White
House Blocks Pentagon Report on Russian Treaty Breach. The White House is blocking the release of a Pentagon
risk assessment of Russia's violation of the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty, according to a senior House
leader. Rep. Mike Rogers, chairman of the House Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee, disclosed the existence of
the Pentagon assessment last month and said the report is needed for Congress' efforts to address the problem in legislation.
"As we look to the near-term future, we need to consider how we're going to respond to Russia's INF violations," Rogers said in an
Air Force Association breakfast July 8. "Congress will not continue to tolerate the administration dithering on this issue."
Obama
heavily redacts latest batch of Hillary Clinton's emails. The Obama administration slapped a secret
designation Friday [7/31/2015] on a number of Hillary Rodham Clinton's emails from her time as secretary of state,
raising more questions about whether her controversial email arrangement led to classified information being left
unsecured. A new tranche of Clinton emails, released by the State Department under a court order to impose
transparency on the Obama administration, contains dozens of documents with information redacted and labeled either
"confidential" or "sensitive."
The
Iran Nuke Documents Obama Doesn't Want You to See. Seventeen unclassified Iran deal items have been locked in
ultra-secure facilities ordinarily used for top secret info. Why is the Obama administration trying to bury this material?
IAEA
Refuses to Brief Senators on Iran Deal, Even in Classified Setting. Leaders of the
Senate Foreign Relations Committee said at a hearing on the Iran nuclear deal today [7/30/2015] that
they requested a meeting with International Atomic Energy Agency on its agreements with Tehran.
These deals are not in the possession of the Obama administration and have never been seen by Secretary
of State John Kerry, much less provided to Congress. "I believe one person may have read it at
the — at the facility, but doesn't have it, they don't possess it," Kerry told the Senate
Armed Services Committee yesterday.
Kerry:
We Can't Reveal Contents of Secret Side Deals to American People. Secretary of State John Kerry testified on Capitol Hill
today [7/29/2015] the U.S. government will not be revealing the contents of secret side deals with Iran to the American people.
Senator Tom Cotton wanted to know why it can't be made public. [Video clip]
Moniz:
The Iran side deal is 'confidential,' not 'secret'. Protocols spelling out how the International Atomic
Energy Agency will examine and monitor a country's nuclear program are always confidential, Energy Secretary Ernest
Moniz said on Friday [7/31/2015], trying to tamp down once and for all the notion that "secret" deals with Iran exist
as part of an agreement Tehran reached with six world powers to cease its nuclear weapons program. "There is no
secret side deal," Moniz told reporters on Friday at the White House. The actual deal sent to Congress for review
forces Iran to allow the IAEA to go about its work unfettered, he said.
Not
Just Hillary — Clinton Staffer Delivers 20,000 Work-Related Emails From Private Account.
Philippe Reines, Cheryl Mills, Jake Sullivan and Huma Abedin all used non State Dept. email accounts during their
tenure within the Clinton led State Department. It appears all of them joined with Hillary Clinton to avoid
FOIA investigative inquiry into their activity. Reines turns over 20 boxes of hand-selected emails for
review.
Kerry:
We Can't Reveal Contents of Secret Side Deals to American People. Secretary of State
John Kerry testified on Capitol Hill today the U.S. government will not be revealing the contents of
secret side deals with Iran to the American people. Senator Tom Cotton wanted to know why it can't
be made public. [Video clip]
IRS
gets lashing from judge for refusing to release Lerner emails, other documents. A federal judge Wednesday
[7/29/2015] rebuked the Obama administration's IRS for refusing to divulge documents, including Lois G. Lerner's
emails, and warned that he would hold in contempt those who break his orders. Judge Emmet G. Sullivan called
the administration's defense "nonsensical" and said the IRS must release documents every Monday to Judicial Watch, a
conservative public interest law firm that requested the documents under open records laws and then sued after the IRS
didn't comply.
House
Oversight Committee Details Case for Removal of IRS Commissioner. House Oversight
Republicans, led by Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) today called for President Obama to remove IRS
Commissioner John Koskinen. Under Koskinen's leadership, the agency has continually stonewalled the
investigation into the Lois Lerner targeting scandal. Years after the scandal first broke, the
agency has done its utmost to bury the truth. Taxpayers deserve a transparent and responsive
government, but under Commissioner Koskinen the IRS has displayed unprecedented unaccountability.
Chairman Chaffetz vowed to explore all options to remove Commissioner Koskinen including impeachment
and holding him in contempt of Congress. As Chaffetz notes, the agency under Koskinen's leadership
has failed time and time again to comply with Congressional investigators.
IRS
Used Instant Messaging System to Hide Internal Communications. The IRS used a "wholly
separate" instant messaging system that automatically deleted office communications, according to
documentation released by the House Oversight Committee on Monday [7/27/2015]. The system appears
to have been purposefully used by agency officials responsible for the targeting of conservative
non-profits, in order to evade public scrutiny. The system, known as "Office Communication
Server" or OCS was used by IRS officials, including many in the Exempt Organizations (EO) Unit,
which was headed by Lois Lerner. As the Oversight Committee report states, the instant messaging
system did not archive any communications, so it is not possible to know what employees of the EO
unit discussed on it.
Lois
Lerner Used Instant-Messaging System Because It Didn't Save Her Messages. The Internal Revenue
Service (IRS) used an instant-messaging system that did not automatically save the messages they sent, according
to newly released emails obtained by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. Disgraced
former IRS official Lois Lerner loved the agency's "Office Communication Server" (OCS) specifically because it
left no record of her messages during the period in which her department was targeting conservative and
tea party groups.
More evidence that late-night comedians are really political activists:
Jon
Stewart's secret White House visits. To engage privately with the president in his inner sanctum
at two sensitive moments — previously unreported meetings that are listed in the White House visitor
logs and confirmed to POLITICO by three former Obama aides — speaks volumes about Stewart and his reach,
which goes well beyond the million or so viewers who tune into The Daily Show on most weeknights. Love
Stewart's jokes or hate them, he has proven to be a unique voice who is capable of turning in-the-weeds policy
discussions into viral video sensations that the country is still talking about the next morning.
Jon
Stewart Made Secret Visits To Obama White House. Jon Stewart, host of The Daily Show
on Comedy Central, made multiple secret visits to the White House during Barack Obama's presidency,
the Virginia-based political blog Politico revealed Tuesday [7/28/2015]. "Jon Stewart slipped
unnoticed into the White House in the midst of the October 2011 budget fight, summoned to an Oval
Office coffee with President Barack Obama that he jokingly told his escort felt like being called
into the principal's office," the article by Darren Samuelsohn opens. Stewart made another visit
to the White House in February 2014, shortly before Obama warned Russia of potential repercussions if
it made a bigger military intervention into Ukraine.
Obama's
secret Iran deals exposed. President Obama promised that his nuclear deal with Iran
would not be "based on trust" but rather "unprecedented verification." Now it turns out Obama's
verification regime is based on trust after all — trust in two secret side agreements
negotiated exclusively between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that
apparently no one (including the Obama administration) has seen. Worse, Obama didn't even reveal
the existence of these secret side deals to Congress when he transmitted the nuclear accord to Capitol Hill.
The agreements were uncovered, completely by chance, by two members of Congress [...]
Too
Many Secrets. One of the most persistent challenges of U.S. national security policy
is balancing the short-term benefits of secrecy with the long-term benefits of openness. Government
agencies responsible for dealing with national security threats will often be more effective if they
are allowed to keep certain details about their activities secret. But openness is not just a cherished
American value; it is a core element of American strength. Government officials who ignore this fact
and insist on secrecy whenever it seems convenient will serve their agencies and their country poorly.
IRS
Encrypts An Entire CD Of Redacted Documents In Response To FOIA Request. Muckrock has
a story of Alex Richardson, seeking information on the IRS's Whistleblower Office, which has been
receiving some scrutiny lately. Richardson filed a bunch of FOIA requests and discovered that the
IRS apparently would like to make his life as difficult as possible. First he got an infamous GLOMAR
"neither confirm nor deny" response — which was supposed to be limited to national security
issues. However, with at least one request, a package with a CD just arrived... and Richardson
was dismayed to find the contents of the CD encrypted.
HHS
Rejects Planned Parenthood FOIA Request Because It's 'Not Newsworthy'. Earlier this
week, Mary Hasson broke the news here at the Federalist that federal funds went to Planned
Parenthood's salad-munching, wine-sipping, organ-harvesting Dr. Deborah Nucatola for advice on
"healthy baby" births. Hasson requested all communications and documents relevant to any
payments to or compensation of fees, consultant fees, reimbursements, etc. to Deborah Nucatola, MD,
a Planned Parenthood employee. And she requested that the documents be sent as soon as possible.
White
House denies Iran 'side deal' it acknowledged yesterday. The White House is now denying that
there was a side deal to the Iran agreement, just a day after National Security Adviser Susan Rice
acknowledged that there was an agreement between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency that
falls outside the main Iran nuclear agreement. The issue could be a matter of semantics because
the White House is insisting that the accord between the IAEA and Iran is integral to the overall deal.
"This does not represent some sort of side deal," White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters Thursday
[7/23/2015].
Obama
allows Iran and UN to see secret deal, but not Congress. And why are key documents
missing from the Iran nuclear deal that was submitted to Congress and the two leaders of the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee for review? What could possibly be worse than what we already know?
Seriously, what are they hiding now from the American people?
White
House acknowledges 'side' deals between Iran, IAEA. National security adviser Susan
Rice on Wednesday acknowledged the existence of side agreements between Iran and the International
Atomic Energy Agency. Rice said the deals involve Iran accounting for past military uses of
its nuclear program, but rejected GOP assertions that this represented "secret" side deals to the
Iranian nuclear agreement.
Nets
Ignore Controversy Swirling Around Secret Side Deals With Iran. Despite the revelation
on Wednesday [7/22/2015] that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) made secret side deals
with Iran over nuclear weapons inspections and refused to disclose the details to the U.S. Congress,
NBC, ABC, and CBS all ignored the story. By contrast, Fox News's Special Report led with the
breaking news that evening as anchor Bret Baier informed viewers: "As President Obama continues to
both court and mock critics of his legacy-shaping nuclear agreement with Iran, there is word tonight of a
separate covert deal between the Islamic Republic and the U.N.'s nuclear team. Two of them,
in fact, that are not going to be shared with members of Congress nor with you."
Obama
aides deny GOP accusations of secret U.N. side deals with Iran. Obama administration officials denied
Republican accusations Wednesday [7/22/2015] that the United Nations made secret side deals with Iran over the
inspection of Iranian military sites, as lawmakers demanded that the administration disclose the fine print of the
nuclear agreement and raised fresh objections to the historic accord. White House National Security Adviser
Susan E. Rice said the additional documents signed by the International Atomic Energy Agency and Iran "are not
public" but that the administration would share the information with lawmakers behind closed doors. She
indicated that the U.S. government doesn't have the documents.
Corker,
McConnell completely outraged that Obama hid Iran nuclear documents from Congress. The
apogee of Republican Failure Theater — the act of pretending to oppose radical Left policies
while secretly supporting them — was the surrender of the Senate's treaty review rights with
respect to Barack Obama's secret Iran nuclear agreement. This complete abdication of Congressional
power was orchestrated by the usual suspects — John Boehner and Mitch McConnell —
along with their henchman, Senator Bob Corker (R-TN).
Susan
Rice Admits Secret 'Side Deals' with Iran. White House National Security Advisor Susan
Rice admitted the existence of two secret "side deals" between Iran and the International Atomic
Energy Agency (IAEA), to accompany the main Iran nuclear deal agreed last week between Iran and the
P5+1 powers (U.S., Britain, France, Germany, Russia, and China).
Homeland
Security Leaders Bent Rules on Private E-Mail. Jeh Johnson, the secretary of homeland
security, and 28 of his senior staffers have been using private Web-based e-mail from their work
computers for over a year, a practice criticized by cybersecurity experts and advocates of
government transparency. The department banned such private e-mail on DHS computers in April 2014.
Top DHS officials were granted informal waivers, according to a top DHS official who said that he
saw the practice as a national security risk.
Obama's
big $1 million take in the Big Apple. President Obama raised nearly $1 million for
Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign and other Democrats' re-election efforts in Manhattan Friday
night [7/17/2015] at the uptown home of a British shipping magnate. The president headlined a Democratic
National Committee "roundtable" with some 30 donors who paid $33,400 each to attend the event held at the
east side four-story brownstone of George Logothetis and his wife Nitzia. The event was closed to the press
and the White House provided only a read-out of the name of the hosts and the amount each person paid to attend.
EPA
'secret science' under the microscope as GOP lawmakers seek ban. The Environmental
Protection Agency for years has issued costly clean air rules based, in part, on two '90s-era
studies linking air pollution with death. But, critics say, the same agency has stymied efforts
to access the data behind them. The transparency concerns have Republican lawmakers on a new
campaign to end the use of what they dub "secret science." "Why would the EPA want to hide this
information from the American people?" House science committee Chairman Lamar Smith, R-Texas, asked
EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy at a hearing last week.
The
Justice Department's Hidden Race Data. Back in 2010, Ron Unz of The American
Conservative set off a debate by arguing that Hispanics didn't have higher crime rates than
non-Hispanic whites, and therefore crime shouldn't be a concern when it comes to immigration from
Latin America. He had to argue this using a variety of roundabout calculations and obscure data
sources, however, because good, national data weren't readily available. For example, the federal
government's National Crime Victimization Survey, which asks people about their experiences with
crime, didn't allow interviewees to identify their attackers as "Hispanic." And the racial and
ethnic offender breakdowns stopped being published in routine reports after 2008, though the raw
numbers were still available in the full data sets. It turns out the Justice Department has been
holding out on us. It fixed the way it asked about offenders' races, but this went unnoticed
because the data were no longer publicized.
State
Dept. Ejects, Threatens Journalist Covering Iran Nuke Talks. The State Department
today refused to allow a reporter for the Washington Free Beacon to attend a press briefing given by
lead negotiator Wendy Sherman and threatened to call security to have him removed.
ATF's
Left Hand Doesn't Know What Its Right Hand is Doing. A complaint filed Tuesday
[6/23/2015] in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia seeks an order to
compel the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to comply with a Freedom of
Information Act request filed in March and ignored in violation of federal law. [...] In 2005, the
Congressional Research Service published a memorandum regarding ATF firearms testing procedures.
Among other things, it revealed that the ATF has "over 300 cubic feet of classification letters
stored in file cabinets." The Bureau hasn't scanned any of these documents into a searchable
database to assure consistency of interpretation, to identify and resolve regulatory conflicts. The
extent to which this inconsistency has grown and compounded in intervening years is unknown and unknowable
without a major organization and review effort.
Obama
has issued 19 secret directives. A one-digit correction to President Obama's directive
on hostage policy Wednesday [6/24/2015] had the effect of disclosing the existence of a previously
unknown — and still-secret — Obama order on national security. The hostage
policy was originally released Wednesday as a presidential policy directive numbered PPD-29. When
the White House corrected that number to PPD-30, it meant Obama had issued a secret directive as PPD-29
sometime in the past 17 months. Obama signed PPD-28, an order on electronic eavesdropping in the
wake of revelations by Edward Snowden, in January 2014. So what is PPD-29? No one's talking.
IRS
Deleted Hundreds of Back-up Tapes Containing Thousands of Lerner Emails After Congressional Subpoena
Was Issued. This used to be called obstruction of justice and tampering with evidence.
According to new information from the House Oversight Committee, Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration
[TIGTA] Russell George and Deputy Inspector General for Investigations Tim Camus, the IRS deleted hundreds of
backup tapes containing thousands of emails belonging to former IRS official Lois Lerner, the woman at the center
of the conservative targeting scandal. The tapes were destroyed nine months after a congressional
subpoena was issued to the agency demanding they be preserved and turned over.
Sen.
Sessions: Slow Fast-Track Now, Before It's Too Late. Fast-Track, or Trade Promotion
Authority, will receive a final cloture vote in the Senate on Tuesday morning [6/22/2015]. This is
the bill that passed the House. If cloture is invoked, the bill will pass the Senate and go to the
President's desk. More than four weeks have passed since the Senate first voted on whether to grant
the Executive six years of fast-track authority.v In that time, an enormous amount has been discovered
about how the President plans to use this authority — information that was either not known
or understood when the vote was held. This includes the Administration's pledge to use the
agreement to impose "environmental governance."
Also posted
under What's the rush?
Obama's
secret dinner with Hollywood moguls. Tinseltown is emerging as a transparency-free
zone for President Barack Obama, where for the second time he appears to have given his pool the
slip to have a private, off-the-schedule dinner with movie moguls. Deadline Hollywood reported
that Obama dined at his Beverly Hills hotel Thursday night with Dreamworks CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg
and director Steven Spielberg. White House spokesman Eric Schultz would only confirm that "the
president did have dinner with two of his friends last night in Los Angeles," adding, "I believe
they've been supporters of the president in the past."
No Wonder Obama Won't Let Us
Read TPP. On Friday [6/12/2015], Congress disrupted President Obama's plan for a sweeping transfer of U.S. sovereignty
to an unaccountable group of foreign busybodies. Hurray for the stalwart Americans who resisted the demands of Obama, the
Republican leadership, and the big-donor claque, but Speaker Boehner plans to give Congress another chance this week to make this
dangerous mistake. The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) would turn over to globalists the power to issue regulations about
U.S. trade, immigration, the environment, labor and commerce. It's called a "living agreement" which means the globalists
can amend and change the text of the so-called agreement after it has gone into effect. That reminds me of our supremacist
judges who invented the term of a "living" Constitution, which they can rewrite to comport with their own updated ideology.
The globalists claim that this "living" document (TPP), now called Obamatrade, has all the powers of a treaty to commit the U.S.
to new foreign obligations, although it certainly did not comply with any U.S. constitutional provisions for treaty ratification.
White
House mum on working with McCain to close Gitmo. The White House on Monday declined to
say if it's working with Sens. John McCain and Joe Manchin to permanently close the terrorist
detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, just days after it released another six detainees.
McCain, R-Ariz., said last week that the administration — specifically Lisa Monaco, the
White House's counter-terrorism adviser, and Pentagon officials — have told him they are
working on a plan to send to Congress to close the facility.
White
House won't confirm Prince performed for Obama. Prince performed some of his greatest
hits at a weekend White House party for President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle. But
although guests put details on social media, White House spokesman Josh Earnest is refusing to
confirm the "Purple Rain" singer's attendance.
Democrat
arm-twisting on trade deal delayed after Obama weekend of golf, private Prince concert. Prince gave a
private performance at the White House for the Obamas and about 500 guests Saturday night [6/13/2015] to celebrate
African-American Music Appreciation Month. Among the guests were former Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.;
Education Secretary Arne Duncan; White House National Security Adviser Susan E. Rice; Seattle Seahawks quarterback Russell
Wilson and his date, singer Ciara; and entertainers Jon Bon Jovi, James Taylor, Tyler Perry, Connie Britton and Angela
Bassett. [...] The White House didn't reveal anything about the event, which was not on Mr. Obama's public schedule.
White
House Defends 'Private' Prince Concert With 500 People: 'They Did It On Their Own Dime'. Although
rumors had surfaced about the concert, the White House was silent about the event that brought up to 500 people
to the event and did not inform the press about it. News of the event quickly leaked on social media —
including posts from Seattle Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson and Rev. Al Sharpton. Earnest indicated that the
Obama family paid for the event at the White House, telling reporters that the first couple "did it on their own dime."
When repeatedly questioned about the size and scope of the event, Earnest defended it as an "appropriate" "private social
event" on a Saturday night, and that the Obamas wanted a chance to "host some of their friends" at "their own home."
Earnest also suggested that since details of the event leaked, it was a sign that Obama was committed to transparency.
The Editor says...
Accidental leaks of information do not amount to transparency. In addition, the White House is "their own home" only
temporarily: They are tenants — they do not own the house. And if you were to "host some of [your] friends"
some evening, amounting to some 500 people, would you really expect to be able to keep the event a secret?
Probably not. So why wasn't the event announced on the presiden't schedule? When the spokesman says Mr. and
Mrs. Obama "did it on their own dime," does that mean the event cost the taxpayers nothing? If so, why the secrecy?
DHS
agent says bosses tried to strip her gun rights. A Department of Homeland Security whistleblower testified
Thursday [6/11/2015] that the "retaliation" against her for probing a controversial visa program was so extensive she was
told she couldn't "carry or own a personal weapon" — a step she described as a constitutional rights violation,
and just one of several ways she was punished for speaking out. Taylor Johnson, a senior special agent in the Homeland
Security Investigations division of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, testified at a Senate hearing alongside
whistleblowers from several other agencies who claim to have faced similar harassment.
DHS
Agent Says She Was Stripped Of Gun, Nearly Lost Daughter After Blowing Whistle On Immigration Visa
Program. A Department of Homeland Security agent testified Thursday that she nearly
lost custody of her 1-year-old adopted daughter and was told that she could not own a personal
firearm after she voiced concerns about a little known federal program that grants green cards to
foreign investors. Taylor Johnson, a senior special agent with a division of Immigration and
Customs Enforcement (ICE), testified at a Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental
Affairs hearing alongside several other whistleblowers who claim they've faced retaliation for
reporting wrongdoing in their agencies.
Revealed:
The Secret Immigration Chapter in Obama's Trade Agreement. Discovered inside the huge tranche of secretive
Obamatrade documents released by Wikileaks are key details on how technically any Republican voting for Trade Promotion
Authority (TPA) that would fast-track trade deals like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal would technically
also be voting to massively expand President Obama's executive authority when it comes to immigration matters.
Obama
Can't Be Trusted With This Trade Deal. Most common-sense people rightly assume that establishing stable uniform
rules of engagement and reducing trade barriers is good in and of itself. But it's a mistake to think that the Trans-Pacific
Partnership (TPP) involving 11 countries in addition to the U.S. — which is close to being concluded after six-plus
years of negotiation under the Obama administration — is only a free trade pact. It's also a misstep to grant the
Obama administration with fast-track authority and the attendant secrecy on all details of this trade pact.
Revealed:
The Secret Immigration Chapter in Obama's Trade Agreement. Discovered inside the huge
tranche of secretive Obamatrade documents released by Wikileaks are key details on how technically
any Republican voting for Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) that would fast-track trade deals like the
Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal would technically also be voting to massively expand
President Obama's executive authority when it comes to immigration matters.
Obama
lawyers asked secret court to ignore public court's decision on spying. The Obama
administration has asked a secret surveillance court to ignore a federal court that found bulk
surveillance illegal and to once again grant the National Security Agency the power to collect the
phone records of millions of Americans for six months. The legal request, filed nearly four hours
after Barack Obama vowed to sign a new law banning precisely the bulk collection he asks the secret
court to approve, also suggests that the administration may not necessarily comply with any potential
court order demanding that the collection stop.
Chaffetz:
Obama Administration Has Claimed 550,000 FOIA Exemptions. Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), chairman of
the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said the Obama administration refused to provide information
more than 550,000 times in response to Freedom of Information Act requests. "I worry that over the course of
several administrations but certainly this administration, the stiff arm that is being given to the media, that has
been given to the public has become excessive. In this administration there were more than 550,000 times that
the administration has claimed some sort of exemption and not let that information out," he said at a National
Journal event focused on Chaffetz's chairmanship.
Rand
Paul Slams Rubio over Obamatrade: 'We Should Read Legislation Before We Vote on It'.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) is opening fire on Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and everyone else who backed or is
backing Obamatrade without reading the text of the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) that Trade
Promotion Authority (TPA) would fast track. [...] "It kind of boggles the mind," Paul said "Who's in
charge of the administration that decides to keep a trade treaty secret? To keep it classified
makes no sense at all."
I
Agree with the Unions: Stop Secret Obamatrade TPP Deal. Here are some of the things
that ObamaTrade does, according to one source:
• Only two of its 26 chapters
actually cover trade issues such as tariffs and quotas.
• Obamatrade would
submit the U.S. to the jurisdiction of international tribunals established under the auspices of the
United Nations or World Bank.
• Obamatrade would surrender control of 544
million acres of public land — a quarter of the entire U.S. land area — to
international authorities.
• It would establish a system of foreign tribunals
higher in authority than even the U.S. Supreme Court that could overrule federal court
rulings[.]
• Obamatrade would shift decisions over the payment of U.S. tax
dollars away from Congress and outside of the Constitutionally-established Article III federal court
system (or even U.S. state system) to the authority of international tribunals.
•
Obama's agreement would obligate the federal government to force U.S. states to conform state
laws to 1000 pages of rules, regulations and constraints unrelated to trade — from land
use to whether foreign firms operating in a state can be required to meet the same laws as domestic
firms.
• Obamatrade would empower foreign companies to use foreign tribunals
to enforce special privileges only available to them. Obamatrade would exempt foreign companies from
EPA and other onerous regulations that American firms would still be forced to comply with.
• Under Obamatrade, foreign companies could actually go to an international
tribunal and sue American taxpayers for cash awards to compensate them for costs associated with
government regulations — something American-owned companies would not be able to do.
• Obamatrade rewrites the global rules of the Internet to impose restrictive
rules that Congress rejected when it rejected SOPA, PIPA and ACTA.
• The TPP
includes some 26 separate chapters that affect our sovereignty, jobs, businesses, farms, food,
consumer safety, immigration, the Internet and more.
Sessions
to Obama: Why Are You Keeping Obamatrade's New Global Governance Secret? Sen. Jeff
Sessions (R-AL), the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee's subcommittee on Immigration and
the National Interest, has written a scathing new letter to President Barack Obama pressuring him
to explain why Obamatrade has been so secretive.
What's
The Rush On Obamatrade Plans With Its 'Global Governance' Hidden Inside? Rep. Duncan
Hunter (R-CA) is pressuring House GOP leadership, particularly Majority Leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy
(R-CA), to delay plans to muscle Obamatrade through the House of Representatives quickly. In in a
letter to McCarthy obtained exclusively by Breitbart News, he's asking leadership to slow down and
consider the ramifications of what it is doing.
Directive
11: Obama's Secret Islamist Plan. Behind the rise of ISIS, the Libyan Civil War, the
unrest in Egypt, Yemen and across the region may be a single classified document. That document is
Presidential Study Directive 11. You can download Presidential Study Directive 10 on "Preventing
Mass Atrocities" from the White House website, but as of yet no one has been able to properly pry number 11
out of Obama Inc. [...] With Obama's typical use of technicalities to avoid transparency, Directive 11 was
used to guide policy in the Middle East without being officially submitted. It is possible that it will
never be submitted. And yet the Directive 11 group was described as "just finishing its work" when
the Arab Spring began. That is certainly one way of looking at it.
Smoking-gun
document said to prove Obama-Muslim Brotherhood ties. The White House isn't commenting on the exposure of
a secret presidential directive, but critics tell WND it confirms what they feared: The Obama administration has
an official policy of backing so-called "moderate Islamists," including the jihadist group the Muslim Brotherhood.
A source familiar with the document told the Washington Times the "policy of backing the Muslim Brotherhood is outlined
in a secret directive called Presidential Study Directive-11, or PSD-11."
Carly
To Obama: Release Obamatrade Text Now. Carly Fiorina, the former Hewlett-Packard CEO
and 2016 Republican presidential candidate, is calling on President Barack Obama to publicly release
the text of Obamatrade immediately.
Two
Members of Boehner's Leadership Team Openly Refuse to Admit if They've Read Obamatrade. Two members
of House GOP leadership — Majority Whip Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) and Rules Committee chairman Rep. Pete
Sessions (R-TX) — refused to admit through spokespersons to Breitbart News whether they have read the
text of the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) Pacific Rim trade deal, but they still support granting President
Barack Obama the Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) to fast track it. What's more, Scalise and Sessions —
and others GOP conference-wide, including even perhaps Boehner — could be vulnerable to serious primary
challenges if they continue forward with Obamatrade.
Attkisson:
Feds 'Perverted' FOIA to Intentionally 'Obfuscate, Obstruct and Delay'. Tuesday
[6/2/2015] at the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform hearing on the Freedom of
Information Act (FOIA) investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson testified that the federal
government has so "perverted" the FOIA process by "ridiculously overused" exemptions and stall
tactics they have created a system to intentionally "obfuscate, obstruct and delay" the release
of public information.
Media
Bias? With Obama It's More Like Battered Spouse Syndrome. Imagine a Republican president who
investigated, harassed and stonewalled the press at every turn. Reporters would be in a vein-popping
rage. But with President Obama, they keep blowing kisses.
Journalists
Tell Oversight Committee: Bureaucrats Make FOIA Process 'Useless'. Members of a House
oversight committee were outraged during a bizarre hearing Tuesday [6/2/2015] in which congressmen
listened to journalists discuss how government agencies intentionally botched formal requests for
information. The reporters told the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform of
numerous instances where agencies needlessly delayed, denied or redacted Freedom of Information Act
requests. The FOIA guarantees the public access to all government documents, subject only to nine
exemptions such as for privacy, commercial privilege and national security.
New
York Times Lawyer: Obama Admin Made Us Wait Years To Get Public Information. David
McCraw, legal counsel to The New York Times newsroom, testified Tuesday [6/2/2015] that the Obama
administration has a "culture of unresponsiveness" when it comes to fulfilling Freedom of Information
Act (FOIA) requests, and that the administration has made the Times wait years to get simple FOIA
information. "Last year, I filed eight FOIA lawsuits on behalf of The Times," McCraw testified
before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. "Much of that litigation was driven
not by actual disagreement about legal issues but in response to unacceptable delay by agencies.
In other words, we find ourselves compelled to initiate litigation simply to prompt agencies to act
upon a request."
Dealing
away American sovereignty. The legacy media and the federal bureaucracy are really,
really, hoping you'll be distracted by the arrests of soccer executives. And if that's not your
speed, they have the drama of federal charges against former House Speaker Dennis Hastert, sparking
questions about blackmail, "bad acts" and Mr. Hastert's time as a teacher and wrestling coach in his
hometown. But there is something much more ominous facing the United States, which is not just
being pushed by President Obama. Rather, it is facilitated by Senate Republicans —
the secretive Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).
US
Air Force launches X-37B space plane on 4th mystery mission. The U.S. Air Force's
X-37B space plane blasted into Earth orbit today, kicking off the robotic vehicle's clandestine
fourth mission — as well as the first flight of a tiny solar-sailing spacecraft. [...]
Most details about the space plane's orbital activities are classified, so it's unclear what exactly
the X-37B will be doing as it zooms around Earth, or how long it will remain aloft.
House
Panel Meets the Press In Probe of FOIA Woes. An unusual House hearing next week will
feature reporters testifying before a congressional committee hearing instead of covering it.
The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee's probe of barriers to receiving federal documents
under the Freedom of Information Act features three journalists and New York Times assistant general
counsel David McCraw among the witnesses on June 2. One journalist is Sharyl Attkisson, a
former CBS investigative reporter and author of Stonewalled, a 2014 book celebrated by
conservatives that targets Obama administration "efforts to monitor journalists, intimidate and
harass opposition groups, and spy on private citizens."
For
once, Sen. Warren is right. What we're talking about is the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and if you haven't heard about it
yet, you are not alone. If you have heard of it, but you have no idea exactly what is in it, then you are in very good company
indeed. That's because — according to the White House — the United States got such a good deal that if
anyone found out about it before it is approved, the whole thing would fall apart. Huh? Yep, as part of "the most
transparent administration in history," the draft Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement is kept under lock and key somewhere in
the basement of the Capitol Visitor Center. Only members of Congress can read it, and then only under the watchful eye of
some basement bureaucrat who will ensure that no sly senator slips out a cell phone to transmit the secret details of this
"free trade" deal to Twitter or Instagram.
Over
1 Million Bin Laden Documents Remain Unreleased. The U.S. government released
Wednesday morning [5/20/2015] an additional 86 documents from the vast collection of documents
captured during the 2011 raid on Osama bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. The new
disclosures bring the total number of documents released to 120 — a tiny fraction of the
more than one million documents that were taken during the assault.
Under
What Authority Can Obama keep his TPP Trade Deal Secret? Members of Congress are scuttling around
like weasels, claiming they can't disclose what's in this far-reaching, 12-nation trade treaty. They can
go into a sealed room and read a draft, but they can't copy pages, and they can't tell the public what they
just read. Why not? If there is a US law forbidding disclosure, name the law.
Obama's
Link to Nonprofit Stirs Up Transparency Debate. A charitable foundation connected to a
president is facing criticism from watchdog groups about transparency and influence peddling.
No, it's not the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation, which has come under fire over its
donor disclosure, transparency standards and foreign donors as former Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton geared up for her 2016 presidential run. Government watchdogs and transparency advocates
say that President Barack Obama's involvement in the new My Brother's Keeper Alliance, a private-sector
version of a government initiative he started in 2014, raises potential red flags about the millions of
dollars in corporate pledges flowing to the new group.
Obama's
State Department repeatedly ignores open government laws. The State Department has
been dismissing about half of the press requests it receives for information under open government
laws — a pattern of rejection that members of the Senate Judiciary Committee described on
Wednesday [5/6/2015] as unacceptable and embarrassing. Sen. Patrick Leahy, ranking member of the
committee, said the State Department has repeatedly failed to respect the country's open government
laws, like the Freedom of Information Act, more commonly known as FOIA.
Reporters
kept out of Obama-Lynch meeting. President Obama dodged potential questions about
violent street protests in Baltimore on Monday when he met with Attorney General Loretta Lynch.
Obama met with Lynch for the first time since she was sworn in, but the White House barred print,
radio, and television reporters from covering the Oval Office meeting. Only still photographers
were allowed inside.
White
House sneaks out two new climate-related programs. The Obama administration snuck in two new climate
change-related programs when it rolled out a major new study on the nation's challenged energy system. The
first installment of a major four-part energy analysis, dubbed the Quadrennial Energy Review, was issued Tuesday
morning [4/21/2015] after several months of persistent delays. Included with the 350-page review, which focused
on the nation's energy infrastructure hurdles, were two new executive actions: one addressing climate change
resilience, and another for clean energy improvements in rural America.
Chuck
Grassley: FBI obstructing Fast and Furious, other probes. The chairman of the Senate
Judiciary Committee accused the FBI on Monday [4/20/2015] of not cooperating with the Department
of Justice's top watchdog in the investigation of the Fast and Furious gunrunning scandal, among
others, endangering Congress's ability to be a check on the administration's actions. "One
of the tools we have created to help the government identify and correct its mistakes is being
obstructed. I refer to the vital work of Inspectors General," said Sen. Chuck Grassley,
Iowa Republican, in a speech on the Senate floor Monday. "We must stay vigilant and insist
that all government agencies, including the FBI, work with Inspectors General — not
against them."
Obama
Kept Iran's Short Breakout Time a Secret. The Barack Obama administration has
estimated for years that Iran was at most three months away from enriching enough nuclear fuel for
an atomic bomb. But the administration only declassified this estimate at the beginning of the
month, just in time for the White House to make the case for its Iran deal to Congress and the public.
Report:
FBI Holds Special Meeting in Juarez on Press Strategy to Deny Judicial Watch's Reporting About ISIS
on the Border. The government watchdog group Judicial Watch is not backing down from
its report about ISIS training camps on the border amid Obama administration denials. In a new
report, up at its website today, Judicial Watch reports that a "high level intelligence source" has
confirmed that FBI supervisors called a special meeting at the U.S. Consulate in Ciudad Juárez.
The source, who "must remain anonymous for safety reasons," told Judicial Watch that the meeting was
convened specifically to address a press strategy to deny their reports about terrorist activity on the
border, and to figure out who is leaking the information to JW.
AZ
Sheriff: I Can't Get the Names of Criminal Illegals Released In My County. Pinal
County, AZ Sheriff Paul Babeu (R) said that he cannot get access to the names of the nearly 500
criminal illegal immigrants released in his county on Tuesday's [4/14/2015] "Your World with Neil
Cavuto" on the Fox News Channel.
Russia's
Invasion of White House Computers. [Scroll down] Only on October 28, days before the election,
did the Obama administration admit that White House computers had been down for weeks. The administration said that
it learned of the foreign intrusion, apparently by Russia, from "an ally." So we didn't detect it, and there was no
indication of how long one or more hostile powers had access to White House computers before the intrusion was discovered.
[...] Isn't it reasonable to infer that major news outlets kept Russia's cyberattack a secret until after the election
because it reflected badly on the Obama administration's competence as well as its complacent view of the world?
Some "reset"! I think that is an inescapable conclusion. Even today, it is astonishing that the story has
gotten so little attention in the Democratic Party press.
Read
the Memo on Jack Lew's Meeting with Tom Steyer Treasury Tried to Keep Secret. The
document, a previously unreported briefing memorandum provided to Treasury Secretary Jack Lew
released after months of unsuccessful efforts to prevent its public disclosure, lays out the agenda
of a June meeting on U.S. climate policy with Steyer and a number of White House officials. The
event focused on the Risky Business Project, a joint effort by Steyer, former treasury secretary
Hank Paulson, and other public figures to get the business community on board with restrictions on
carbon emissions.
Obama
administration's new spending website rolls back transparency. A redesign of a
transparency website that provides information on federal spending by the Obama administration now
makes it much more difficult to see how taxpayer dollars are spent. Usaspending.gov, a website
mandated by law to provide detailed information on every federal contract over $3,000, received a
makeover on Tuesday [3/31/2015]. Users can no longer search federal spending by keywords, sort
contracts by date, or easily find detailed information on awards, which are delivered in bulk.
Access
denied: Reporters say federal officials, data increasingly off limits. Stacey Singer,
a health reporter for the Palm Beach Post in Florida, was perusing a medical journal in 2012 when
she came across something startling: a federal epidemiologist's report about a tuberculosis outbreak
in the Jacksonville area. Singer promptly began pursuing the story. But when she started seeking
official comment about the little-reported outbreak, the doors began closing. [...] The stories
aren't always as consequential or as dramatic as a TB outbreak, but Singer's experience is shared by
virtually every journalist on the government beat, from the White House on down.
White
House Vows To Be 'Protective' Of 'Private' Obama Meetings With Hillary. The White
House today explained that Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's meeting with President Obama
earlier this week was "private" and that it would be "protective" of his right to do so. The
guiding principal is that we're going to be very protective of the right of the President of the United
States to have private meetings," Earnest said. "But that where possible, and when we determine
that we can, we're going to do our best to try to let you know what the president is up to."
White
House chief florist resigns — wilted under pressure from first lady? The
official story is that Chief Florist Laura Dowling simply left her position earlier this year.
But a source familiar with the situation confirmed to Fox News that she "resigned." Reportedly, she
was even escorted from the building — and this was preceded by a clash over aesthetics with
first lady Michelle Obama. The Washington Post first reported on the fresh-cut drama earlier this
week, with a source telling the newspaper Dowling was escorted out on Feb. 13 after nearly six years
on the job.
The
White House head florist is gone and rumors are flying about why. When White House
chief pastry chef Bill Yosses left the executive mansion last summer, the president publicly mourned
the loss of "the crust master's" mysteriously addictive pies. [...] But the recent exit of head
florist Laura Dowling, who'd been in the job since 2009, has been a much quieter affair. So hush
hush, in fact, that most outside of 1600 Penn knew nothing about it. There's still no official
comment on why Dowling is no longer at the White House, but according to a source with close ties to
current residence staffers, she was escorted from the building on Friday Feb. 13. [...] The silence
from the East Wing surrounding Dowling's exit is in sharp contrast to the buzz of her hiring.
Obama
Hosts Secret Meeting at the White House With Hillary Clinton. At the White House Press
Briefing began today [3/23/2015], White House reporters had a question: Would former Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton stop by the White House to visit with President Obama? Clinton was
scheduled to join a roundtable event at the Center of American Progress earlier in the day, so
it was only natural to wonder if she would visit Obama while in Washington D.C.
Obama
Sets Record for Refusing to Release Government Files. Remember when Obama first came
to the White House claiming that he would have the most ethical and transparent administration in
history? Well, it turns out not so much. In fact, Obama has set the record for refusing to
obey the Freedom of Information Act by releasing requested documents to the media and watchdog groups.
US
Sets New Record For Denying, Censoring Government Files. For the second consecutive
year, the Obama administration more often than ever censored government files or outright denied
access to them under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act, according to a new analysis of federal
data by The Associated Press.
No
Transparency for You! The White House Excludes Itself from Transparency. Freedom of
Information Day falls on March 16th in tribute to James Madison's birthday in 1751. Madison was
known as the "Father of the Constitution" for drafting the United States Constitution and the United States
Bill of Rights, and was the loudest voice of the time for ensuring that the government of the newly formed
nation held no secrets from the people it owned. The Freedom of Information Act was enacted on July 4th,
1966. It declared that every person has the right to get information to federal agency records that are not
protected by one of nine exemptions, or special law enforcement record exclusions. Marking that day,
yesterday, the O'Bomber administration announced that it was removing a federal regulation that subjects its
Office of Administration to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)!
White House
Office: No More FOIA Requests. The Obama administration, which bills itself as the
most transparent administration in history, is announcing on Tuesday that its office of administration
will no longer be subject to federal regulations regarding the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), which
allows citizens to request copies of federal documents. While the action is not surprising, it
was a move they could have made in 2009, which raises questions about the timing.
The most
transparent administration — oh, wait.... Many have different concerns
about the email fiasco. Some believe she may have flouted federal record laws. Others believe this
is where they can find the "smoking gun" tying her to the Benghazi debacle. Still others just enjoy
seeing egg on her face. But the scandal is actually much simpler and more insidious than that.
The truth is, the American people have lost all patience with the Obama administration's façade, excuses,
and prevarications about transparency. Hillary Clinton may or may not have violated certain rules and ethical
expectations as Secretary of State. We will see. But the Internal Revenue Service and the
Environmental Protection Agency have been doing the same thing for years. That much we do know.
White
House gets rid of FOIA regs, raising transparency questions. The White House, in a
curiously timed move, is stripping a federal regulation that made a particular office subject to
reporters' records requests. The rule change means the Freedom of Information Act will no longer
apply to the White House Office of Administration. In turn, the policy will allow the Obama White
House to reject records requests for that office, just as the last Bush White House did.
Border
Patrol Agent: We are Punished for Reporting Illegal Alien Groups of More Than 20. A
U.S. Border Patrol agent from the Rio Grande Valley Sector in Texas told lawmakers today that his
fellow agents are punished for reporting illegal alien groups of more than 20. "Agents who
repeatedly report groups larger than 20 face retribution. Management will either take them out of
the field and assign them to processing detainees at the station or assign them to a fixed position
in low volume areas as punishment," Border Patrol agent Chris Cabrera told a Senate panel. "Needless
to say Agents got the message and now stay below this 20 person threshold no matter the actual size
of the group."
FCC
chief on defensive over secret White House meetings. Top White House aides met with
the head of the Federal Communications Commission at least nine times while it was working on strong
Internet regulations without telling the public, House Republicans revealed on Tuesday [3/17/2015].
Agency head Tom Wheeler defended the lack of disclosure about the meetings during a hearing in the House
Oversight Committee on Tuesday [3/17/2015], claiming that the tough new net neutrality rules never
came up in those talks.
White
House office to delete its FOIA regulations. The White House is removing a federal
regulation that subjects its Office of Administration to the Freedom of Information Act, making
official a policy under Presidents Bush and Obama to reject requests for records to that office.
The White House said the cleanup of FOIA regulations is consistent with court rulings that hold that
the office is not subject to the transparency law. The office handles, among other things, White
House record-keeping duties like the archiving of e-mails.
Overreaching in Plain
English. In 2010, you see, President Obama signed the Plain Writing Act into law. It
requires that all federal agencies use "clear government communication that the public can understand and
use." In 2011, Obama took the plain-language initiative a step further. He issued an executive
order (No. 13563) that demands that government "regulations are accessible, consistent, written in plain
language, and easy to understand." Too bad these actions came after ObamaCare, which Nancy Pelosi said
Congress had to pass so we could find out what was in it.
'How
Hard Can It Be?' State Dept Still Can't Find Hillary's Crucial 'Separation' Form. AP
reporter Matt Lee was stumped by the State Department's inability to find the "separation" form
Hillary Clinton should've signed when she quit as Secretary of State, wondering why the department
cannot go back and pull the document from the department's HR files. The form, OF-109, is critical
to understanding whether Clinton violated the law by maintaining her own private e-mail account and
server to conduct official business as Secretary. If she signed the form, as is required for all
departing employees, she may have committed a felony. The document asserts, under penalty of
perjury, that the employee turned over all relevant records at the time of signing. And if
she didn't sign the form, the question remains: Why not?
National
Archives Tried to Hide Email About Living in Fear of White House. The National
Archives and Records Administration (NARA) tried to hide an email about its fear of upsetting the
White House from Freedom of Information Act requests by the Associated Press, the AP reported Friday
[3/13/2015]. Associated Press president Gary Pruitt reported in an op-ed on government
transparency that, during the course of an AP investigation into Michelle Obama's dresses, NARA used
a privacy exemption to redact a line in an email that was actually about the agency's fear of the
White House: [...]
Surprise:
Eric Holder Also Used Secret Email Aliases. The DOJ states that the secret email
account in no way interfere with Congressional oversight nor FOIA requests. As long as the
requester knows what those email addresses are that no one knows. And, "the official told
The Huffington Post[,] Holder has used the aliases to prevent spam and to keep his inbox from being
overwhelmed by the public, not to avoid transparency." Apparently, the federal government
cannot afford a decent spam filter with their teeny tiny $3.8 trillion budget. And, how
dare you pesky Citizens dare email the top cop! But, wait, it gets better!
Josh
Earnest Refuses To Say Whether Or Not Obama Uses Private Email. During the White House press briefing Wednesday
[3/11/2015], White House press secretary Josh Earnest refused to answer whether or not President Barack Obama uses a private
email for government business. [Video clip]
White
House won't say whether Obama uses private email. White House press secretary Josh
Earnest Wednesday [3/11/2015] declined to say whether President Obama uses a private or a government email
address, claiming the president's personal security as a reason for withholding an answer. "I'm
not going to be in a position to talk about the president's email address for a variety of reasons,"
Earnest told reporters Wednesday when asked if Obama uses a private or a dot-gov email address.
Holder
Used Secret Email Address, Too. Attorney General Eric Holder used secretive email
accounts under aliases during his tenure at the Justice Department, raising fresh questions about
the Obama administration's compliance with federal records laws as former Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton reels from her own email scandal. Holder has emailed under the nom de plume "Henry
Yearwood" in the past, former Justice Department officials say. The Huffington Post reported
Tuesday that Holder had used three aliases.
EPA's
toxic mess on transparency. In August 2012, the conservative watchdog group Landmark
Legal Foundation made a Freedom of Information Act request for records at the Environmental
Protection Agency — specifically seeking records of any efforts to slow down the issue of
new regulations until after the 2012 election. FOIA requests are supposed to be acknowledged and
complied with very promptly. In this case, EPA bureaucrats did precisely what the Freedom of
Information Act is intended to prevent — they slow-walked Landmark's request past the
2012 elections, so that voters could not use the information to make their decision.
Most
Transparent Administration Ever Suffers Curious Epidemic of Disappearing Email Systems, Crashed Hard
Drives and Lost Backup Tapes. Remember when Barack Obama promised his would be the
"most open and transparent administration ever"?
FOIA
Request for Hillary Clinton's Email Address Went Missing. The State Department may
have ignored or rejected a request made in 2012 under the Freedom of Information Act by the watchdog
group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) seeking Hillary Clinton's email
addresses, according to a Daily Caller report on Thursday [3/5/2015]. The New York
Times reported on Monday that Clinton exclusively used a private email account and server for
her email during her four years as secretary of state, skirting federal records laws, as well as
State Department and Obama administration transparency guidelines, and raising suspicions that
numerous public records requests for her emails were improperly blocked.
As
House panel issues subpoenas, questions mount over Clinton e-mails. A congressional
committee issued subpoenas Wednesday [3/4/2015] seeking information about Hillary Rodham Clinton's
use of a private e-mail account for official business while she was secretary of state, setting up
a potential legal clash with the presumptive Democratic front-runner for president. The move
followed the revelation that Clinton had installed a private server at her New York home that
allowed her, and not the State Department, to store her e-mail correspondence and later decide
which ones to turn over as public records.
Hidden
Clinton emails taint Obama transparency vow, boost Benghazi probe. The revelation
Hillary Rodham Clinton used an off-the-books email account during her time as secretary of state
reverberated across Washington on Tuesday, further eroding the Obama administration's claims of
transparency, giving new momentum to House Republicans investigating the Benghazi affair and raising
fresh questions about Mrs. Clinton's credibility heading into 2016. While Mrs. Clinton now has
turned over roughly 55,000 pages of emails — including about 300 messages related to the
deadly September 2012 terrorist attack in Benghazi given to House Republicans — it's unclear
whether more emails remain hidden and, if so, how many.
The Hillary Cover-Up
and the End of Democracy. On Monday [3/2/2015], The New York Times reported that
former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton never — not once — used her official
State Department email address for her official communications. Instead, she utilized a private
email account, effectively protecting her emails from public scrutiny. The Washington Post then
broke the news that Hillary had registered her email address the same day her confirmation hearings
for secretary of state began. In other words, Hillary knew she would be secretary of state
conducting official business, and coincidentally opened a private email account at the same time
to guard her from Freedom of Information Act requests.
Hillary
Clinton's Criminal Activities Must Disqualify her from the Presidency. 'Witch hunts"
sometimes find a witch, and those who dismissed the establishment of the House Benghazi Select
Committee, chaired by Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., as just another witch hunt are eating their words.
The existence of a personal account that Hillary Clinton used to conduct government business as secretary
of state was discovered by the committee and reported by the New York Times. Clinton's use of this
personal account explains why investigations of the Benghazi terrorist attack — and her
culpability in our diplomatic mission's vulnerability there, the failure to heed warnings and the
cover-up afterward — failed to find much email evidence of her direct involvement.
Hm:
Hillary was warned over private e-mail use, security? Several have wondered, surely
there was someone in the Clinton orbit who said, "Hey, maybe it's not the greatest idea ever for you
to ignore federal records acts, never get a government e-mail, and so obviously hide everything you
do during your tenure at the State Department." Well, there wasn't anyone close enough to her
to care to get the message through, apparently, but there was someone.
Clinton
Ran Homebrew Computer Service For Official Emails. The computer server that
transmitted and received Hillary Clinton's emails — on a private account she used exclusively for
official business when she was secretary of state — traced back to an Internet service registered to
her family's home in Chappaqua, New York, according to Internet records reviewed by The Associated Press.
Other
Hillary State Dept Aides Held Private Email Addresses For Secretive Communication. We
shared this expectation last evening within hours of finding out about the secret Clinton email
accounts. Specifically, regarding Huma Abedin. If there were other State Department Officers and
aides to Hillary who held similar email profiles Abedin would definitely be at the top of the list.
Court rips EPA
over FOIA dodge. In 2012, Mark Levin's Landmark Legal Foundation filed a FOIA request
with the EPA in an attempt to discover if senior agency officials were postponing the implementation
of key (read: controversial and politically-damaging) regulations until after the 2012 presidential
elections. As soon as that FOIA request was received by the EPA, the agency was bound to preserve
any and all documentation covered by the request. What happened next was predictable, and not at
all out of character for an Obama agency.
Hillary
Set Up Her Off-the-Books Email Account the Day Her Confirmation Hearings Began. No, it
wasn't a mistake, or an oversight. Clinton's efforts to drag her correspondence into the
unaccountable shadows were carefully planned and deliberate. They required a great deal of
cooperation from the rest of the Obama administration, which had to pretend not to notice that none
of Hillary's mail was coming from the State Department's domain. And we're not talking about a
couple of messages sent improperly here and there, or even the sort of secretive backstage
communications network Obama administration officials are so fond of (and which, let us stipulate,
politicians of both parties, at every level of government, have employed.) No, Hillary Clinton
routed all of her correspondence through her off-the-books account, and only a portion of it
was captured when her email slipped into the in-boxes of other officials who did use properly
archived accounts.
The
Lessons of Hillary Clinton's Secrecy. We now know that Hillary Clinton evaded government record-keeping
and jeopardized national security by using a private email account while Secretary of State. Troubling as this
incident is, it points to larger and more disturbing lessons about the woman who may become our next president.
White
House says Clinton did not heed e-mail policy. Former secretary of state Hillary
Rodham Clinton appears to have operated in violation of what the White House said Tuesday was "very
specific guidance" that members of the Obama administration use government e-mail accounts to carry
out official business. Clinton did not have a government account at the State Department but
instead used her personal e-mail account. That was permissible only if all e-mails relating to
government business were turned over and archived by the State Department, White House press secretary
Josh Earnest said at his daily briefing.
Hillary
Clinton's email server traced to home-based service: AP. The computer server that transmitted and
received Hillary Clinton's emails — on a private account she used exclusively for official business
when she was secretary of state — traced back to an Internet service registered to her family's home
in Chappaqua, New York, according to Internet records reviewed by The Associated Press. If the details in
the AP report are true, they add a new level of secrecy and sophistication surrounding her e-mail use while she
was at the State Department, observes CBS News correspondent Margaret Brennan.
Clinton
may have broken transparency rules with email use at State. Former Secretary of State
and presumptive Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton might have violated transparency
rules by solely using her personal email address for official business, according to a report in The
New York Times. That means that her official correspondence from her tenure at the State
Department wasn't immediately backed up on government servers, so aides had to comb through emails
to hand official work over to the State Department. So far, aides gave the agency 55,000 emails,
according to the Times, and recently turned over 900 pages discussing the attacks on the
annex in Benghazi, Libya, in 2012.
Hacked
emails indicate that Hillary Clinton used a domain registered the day of her Senate hearings. The
New York Times reported Monday night that, during her tenure at the State Department, Hillary Clinton never used
her official e-mail account to conduct communications, relying instead on a private e-mail account. As the
Times notes, only official accounts are automatically retained under the Federal Records Act, meaning that none
of Clinton's e-mail communication was preserved.
NYT:
Hillary conducted official State business on her private e-mail account — all of it. Ever wonder
why multiple investigations of the Benghazi attack failed to turn up much from Hillary Clinton's e-mails? So
did the House Select Committee investigating the attack on the facility and the failures that led to it. To their
surprise, the Secretary of State had conducted all of her e-mail on a private account rather than an official State
Department account — and her aides had carefully culled only the e-mails they wanted investigators to see.
Hillary
Clinton Used Personal Email at State Dept., Possibly Breaking Rules. Hillary Rodham
Clinton exclusively used a personal email account to conduct government business as secretary of
state, State Department officials said, and may have violated federal requirements that officials'
correspondence be retained as part of the agency's record.
Report:
Hillary Clinton Evaded Government Email While Secretary Of State. The New York
Times is reporting that, during the time that she served as Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton
exclusively used a private email account with unknown security protocols to communicate with State
Department employees, others in the Federal Government and, presumably, foreign government
officials, in what appears to be a violation of both the letter and the spirit of Federal
record keeping laws.
Hillary
Clinton 'used an unsecured personal email account for her four years as Secretary of State. Hillary
Clinton used only a personal email address to conduct official government business during her four-year tenure as
Secretary of State in a 'serious' breach of protocol, officials have said. The 67-year-old former first lady
did not acquire nor use a government email account while serving in the position from January 2009 to February
2013, State Department officials said. She also failed to preserve her correspondence on the State Department's
servers — something that is required of officials under the US Federal Records Act — until two months ago.
The
"prebranding" of Hillary Clinton. The New York Times reports that Hillary Clinton used
a personal email account — and only a personal email account — to send emails
in connection with government business while she was Secretary of State. [...] There are good
reasons why, except in special circumstances, the Secretary of State shouldn't conduct public
business on a private email account. One reason is to ensure the preservation of records.
Such records are of general historical interest. In addition, they may be of interest in connection
with specific investigations such as, say, the Benghazi investigation. In fact, the existence of
Clinton's personal email account was discovered by the House committee that, under the leadership of
Trey Gowdy, is investigating this matter.
Treasury
throws unauthorized $3 billion to insurers under Obamacare, won't say why. It's right
there in the Constitution: "No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of
Appropriations made by Law; and a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of
all public Money shall be published from time to time." Which is why this latest episode of
lawlessness from the administration is so particularly galling. "The U.S. Treasury Department has
rebuffed a request by House Ways and Means Chairman Rep. Paul Ryan, R- Wis., to explain $3 billion
in payments that were made to health insurers even though Congress never authorized the spending through
annual appropriations," The Washington Examiner's Philp Klein reported on Thursday [2/26/2015].
If
the FCC's 'Net Neutrality' Plan is So Great, Why Can't Anyone See It? If the FCC's
plan to "protect" net neutrality and rein in the power of greedy corporations is so fantastic, then
why haven't its 332 pages been released for public consumption? [...] Despite this mammoth change in
the function of the web, no Congressional debate took place, no bills were introduced and no
legislation was signed. The vast majority of Americans are unaware that this is even taking
place since the news networks are offering scant coverage.
GOP
House Chairmen Blast FCC Chairman's Refusal to Testify. [Scroll down] "The last time a rule of
this magnitude was voted on by the FCC, then-Senator Obama was motivated to call for transparency at the commission,"
the congressmen said. "We continue that call today." The FCC is set to vote on the proposed net neutrality
regulations on Thursday. However, no one outside of the commissioners and their staff are permitted to see
the regulations until they are passed. Even members of Congress are barred from reading the 332-page draft.
House
Chair Demands FCC Net Neutrality Gag Order Lifted. Chairman of the House Oversight
Committee Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) demanded yesterday [2/23/2015] that the Federal Communications
Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler make public the details of the proposed net neutrality regulations
that will regulate the Internet under the same rules as the old AT&T monopoly. Chaffetz also
asked the FCC Chair to appear and answer questions at the House Oversight hearing Wednesday [2/25/2015], prior
to the planned Agency vote on the draft rules now scheduled for Thursday. The 332-page final
draft FCC order was only delivered to the four other FCC commissioners three weeks ago.
White
House that promised transparency refuses to cooperate with IRS probe. The White House
told Congress last week it refused to dig into its computers for emails that could shed light on
what kinds of private taxpayer information the IRS shares with President Obama's top aides, assuring
Congress that the IRS will address the issue — eventually. The tax agency has already
said it doesn't have the capability to dig out the emails in question, but the White House's chief
counsel, W. Neil Eggleston, insisted in a letter last week to House Committee on Ways and Means
Chairman Paul Ryan that the IRS would try again once it finishes with the tea party-targeting scandal.
Michelle
Obama's secret Aspen ski trip exposed after her motorcade was allowed to sneak around a car
accident. While President Obama flew to California for a few rounds of golf this
weekend, his wife and daughters headed to Aspen for a secret trip — but it didn't stay secret for
long. The trio arrived in Colorado on Friday and would've stayed under the radar had it not been
for a car crash and some eagle-eyed Instagrammers.
The Editor says...
This leads to an obvious question: How many other secret trips have there been?
Obama
Secretly Partied With Bill Ayers Last Summer. On Aug. 30, 2014, MSNBC anchor Alex
Wagner and former White House chef Sam Kass got married at a private wedding north of New York City.
It was widely reported at the time that President Obama, a longtime friend of the groom, attended the
ceremony with his family. There were two other notable guests, however, whose attendance has been
successfully kept secret: Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, [...]
White
House Says They Will Not Release IRS Documents On Tea Party Targeting. Is the Obama
regime still claiming to be the "most transparent" administration ever?
Oops-White
House Forgot To Tell Intelligence Committee About New Cyber Intelligence Center. What
a comfort it is to know that President Hope and Change has made things in Washington so toxic that
the branches of government can't communicate on matters of terrorism-related national security.
[...] Here is hoping that his petulance doesn't lead to something catastrophic happening, it's
already doing enough damage to the budget.
Obama
administration won't release IRS targeting documents. The Obama administration is
refusing to publicly release more than 500 documents on the IRS's targeting of Tea Party groups.
Twenty months after the IRS scandal broke, there are still many unanswered questions about who was
spearheading the agency's scrutiny of conservative-leaning organizations.
Transparency: 47 Inspectors General Denied Documents
in Violation of Law. Obama declared that his administration would be the most
transparent ever in the same Orwellian spirit that ObamaCare was named the "Affordable" Care Act.
Trey Gowdy sounds the alarm on what "transparency" means to a lawless tyrant regarding documents
that by law must be provided to inspectors general: [Video clip]
Congress
looking into White House's role in FCC's net neutrality regulations. The secrecy
surrounding the Obama administration's plans for regulating the Internet has prompted a
congressional inquiry into whether the independent Federal Communications Commission or the White
House and its allies are calling the shots over the future of the nation's broadband networks.
A top adviser to Tom Wheeler, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), defended
Wheeler's decision to hide his latest draft of Internet regulations from the public until after the
agency voted on them at the end of the month during a public question and answer session on Twitter
held on Friday, Feb. 6.
Congress
Looking Into White House's Role in FCC's Net Neutrality Regulations. The secrecy
surrounding the Obama administration's plans for regulating the Internet has prompted a
congressional inquiry into whether the independent Federal Communications Commission or the White
House and its allies are calling the shots over the future of the nation's broadband networks. A
top adviser to Tom Wheeler, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), defended
Wheeler's decision to hide his latest draft of Internet regulations from the public until after the
agency voted on them at the end of the month during a public question and answer session on Twitter
held on Friday, Feb. 6.
Obama
prepares to veto Keystone ... in private. Obama has spent months bragging about his
pen and phone and has issued a number of veto threats publicly since the November elections that
gave Republicans full control of Congress. However, this veto won't include photo ops.
What is the Openness
Administration Hiding? In what must be the most under-reported story of the past year,
some two thirds of the inspectors general in the government think the administration is stonewalling
their lawful efforts to oversee government activities. Three of them testified Tuesday [2/3/2015]
before the House Oversight Committee, newly chaired by Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah). Many others were
in the room. In an August 2014 letter to Congress, 47 Inspectors General from across the
administration — including major agencies like the Department of Commerce, the Department
of HUD, the Department of Labor, and NASA — supported specific complaints by their fellow
IGs in the Peace Corps, EPA and DOJ about foot dragging and lawyer-driven end-runs, and suggested
the practice is pervasive.
Pew:
Two-thirds of reporters say Obama administration spies on them. In a survey of investigative reporters that
makes Richard Nixon's enemies list look like child's play, nearly seven in 10 said they believe that the Obama administration
has spied on their phone calls, emails and online searches. According to a Pew Research Center survey of 454 media
figures, 64 percent "believe that the U.S. government has probably collected data" from their calls and email and eight
in 10 believe just being a journalist jumps the chance Uncle Sam is spying on them. The survey follows multiple reports
of actual spying by federal officials on reporters, and the White House's effort to track down those who leak information to
reporters despite long-forgotten promises to be the most transparent administration ever.
The
White House Won't Reveal Who Attended Obama's Secret Meeting With Muslim Leaders.
President Obama met with American Muslim leaders this afternoon, according to the White House
schedule, but so far the administration is unwilling to reveal who attended the meeting, which was
closed to the press. The White House released a readout of the meeting explaining that Obama
discussed "a range of domestic and foreign policy issues" including Obamacare, police fairness,
anti-Muslim discrimination, and the upcoming Summit on Countering Violence Extremism.
Obama
To Host American Muslims At The White House — Closed To The Press. President Obama plans
to meet with American Muslim leaders at the White House, the day after a video of a Jordanian pilot being burned
alive was released by Islamic State terrorists. The meeting will take place later this afternoon [2/4/2015],
according to the White House, but it will be closed to the press according to the schedule. Photographers
will also be blocked from the event.
Obama
Administration Refuses to Release Time Records of Key Attorney in IRS Scandal Investigation.
Judicial Watch announced today that the Obama Department of Justice (DOJ) is going to extreme lengths to keep
from the public the number of hours DOJ Attorney Barbara Bosserman expended on the investigation of the Internal
Revenue Service's targeting of conservative organizations. The DOJ has claimed no less than four separate
privileges in federal court to keep secret Bosserman's hours. In doing so, the DOJ has confirmed that the
criminal investigation into the IRS' abuses is ongoing and that Bosserman, a major donor to Obama's political
campaigns and Democratic National Committee, continues to be part of the team of lawyers criminally investigating
the issue.
Obama
WH Hiding Bowe Bergdahl Charges — Treason Too? According to [retired Army
Lt. Col. Tony] Shaffer, an analyst with the London Center for Policy Research, White House Deputy
National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes, who played a key role in the cover-up of administration
malfeasance in the Benghazi terrorist attack that killed four Americans, has been laboring to keep
this information under wraps as long as possible, perhaps to be included later in one of those
Friday data dumps the administration is famous for. We'd be stunned if any other decision were
reached, for the uncontestable fact is that Bergdahl walked away from his combat post in 2009 in a
time of war, leaving behind his weapon, his gear and his fellow soldiers. At least six soldiers
were reported to have been killed in operations looking for him. He was not out for a walk to
relieve stress or clear his head.
What
exactly does the Census Bureau spend $982 million on? You might remember that the
Chicago regional director — who was apparently tight with Illinois politicians — was
"removed" from his job late last year. And Census won't tell us why. So we'd like to take a
look at how Chicago is spending taxpayer money. The Philadelphia region is where we caught someone
cheating on data collection — an event that has led to congressional and Inspector General
investigations. The probes resulted in reforms despite the fact that [the Department of] Commerce
"obstructed" the congressional probe.
EPA
faces internal review over scrubbed text messages. The Environmental Protection Agency, on the heels
of the controversy at the IRS over missing emails, is facing a probe of its own over whether it improperly scrubbed
text messages. The EPA inspector general's office announced this week it is launching an audit into the agency's
policies for keeping text messages. The audit was prompted by a complaint from Republicans on the House science
committee, worried the EPA may have "deleted thousands of text messages" that should have been preserved.
Obama,
Democrats head to retreat in cloak of secrecy, with press banned. President
Obama — who famously promised when he took office in 2009 to bring about an
"unprecedented level of openness in government" — has headed off to Baltimore for a
retreat with Democrats with one special caveat: No press allowed. Newsmax reported that in
previous years, the Democrats have let in some members of the media. But this year, none are
allowed — though some topics of discussion have sneaked into the public arena.
Obama
Is Said to Be Planning New Rules on Oil and Gas Industry's Methane Emissions. The Environmental Protection Agency will
issue the proposed regulations this summer, and final regulations by 2016, according to the person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity
because the administration had asked the person not to speak about the plan. The White House declined to comment on the effort.
I'm
Glad Obama Skipped Paris. Unlike many conservatives, I was not outraged when President
Obama directed the Justice Department to end the pretense of "defending" the Defense of Marriage Act
(DOMA). I feel the same way about the president's decision not to join dozens of world leaders in
Paris last Sunday to march in favor of free speech and against Islamic-supremacist terror. I'm
glad he stayed home. I'm glad he didn't send Vice President Biden (whose main job is to attend
such exhibitions), Secretary of State Kerry (whose main job escapes me), or Attorney General Holder
(who was in Paris but still didn't go). It's not too often that the "most transparent administration
in history" is, what's the word? ... transparent.
Family
of murdered Marine suing military over alleged cover-up. Three days before he was
scheduled to come home, in 2012, Lance Cpl. Buckley was killed in Afghanistan, in the one place he
was supposed to be safe. He wasn't killed in a firefight on a battlefield, or by a roadside bomb
while on patrol. The 21-year-old was working out with fellow Marines at the base gym when an Afghan
teenager walked in carrying an AK-47 — and emptied the clip, killing Buckley and two others.
Buckley's family, stonewalled in their search for answers, has since resorted to filing a rare lawsuit
against the Marine Corps and Department of Defense.
The
IRS: Just One of Dozens of Uncooperative Agencies. Earlier this year, 47 inspectors
general — the officials charged with fighting corruption, waste, and wrongdoing in
federal agencies — sent a letter to Issa's committee complaining that organizations
ranging from the EPA to the Justice Department were impeding their investigations by withholding
information — despite the fact that federal law specifically forbids withholding that
information. These are not a bunch of Republican operatives trying to score a few political points:
Those 47 inspectors general comprise more than half of all such officials, and many who signed the letter were
appointed by President Barack Obama. Their complaint is that the federal agencies treat them more or less
like they do members of Congress: thwarting them, withholding documents, obstruction investigations.
Reading the Small Print. Mark Lander of
the New York Times describes how president Obama has 'mastered the art of secret negotiations'. "What the Cuba, Iran and China talks
have in common — aside from their cloak-and-dagger allure — are a small team of negotiators, strict discipline and tight
control by the White House." A less charitable description might use the words "deceit", "amateurism" and "bad faith" to characterize
the White House's efforts.
IRS
Watchdog Continues to Hide Records on White House Leaks. An independent IRS monitor
announced Monday it will block the release of roughly 400 more pages of documents related to
unauthorized leaks of confidential taxpayer information to the White House. The Treasury Inspector
General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) told the watchdog group Cause of Action it would be withholding
nearly all of the 2,500 documents it located that were related to unauthorized IRS leaks to the White House.
Earlier this month, TIGTA told Cause of Action it was withholding roughly 2,100 of the documents and said it would
take an additional two weeks to review the rest.
The
real story behind the release of the CIA 'torture' report. Senate Democrats and
President Obama have moved up to a whole new level of desperate. On Tuesday, Democrats in the
Senate, who will lose control of the chamber in just three weeks, released a report focused on
interrogation techniques — during the administration of George W. Bush.
Yes, Mr. Obama is all about transparency, as long as it's not about his administration.
Darrell
Issa Subpoenas Jonathan Gruber's Obamacare Documents, Including Contracts and Work Product.
Representative Darrell Issa (R-CA), Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, is
issuing a subpoena demanding MIT economics professor Jonathan Gruber produce all documents related to his
Obamacare consulting work for the federal government and any state governments. Gruber refused to
produce these documents or answer any questions concerning them when he testified before the committee on
Tuesday. At the time, Issa warned Gruber that he would issue a subpoena for the documents if the
professor failed to produce them voluntarily. On Friday [12/12/2014], Issa made good on that promise.
Obama
administration claims a right to hide evidence before Supreme Court. Today [12/10/2014], the Supreme Court
will hear oral arguments in United States v. June, a case that has received little attention, but will have far-reaching
implications. The case boils down to this: Can the federal government actively conceal material evidence in order
to escape liability? Common sense says no. The Obama administration says yes.
Gruber Lawyers Up Regarding How Much Money He Made
From Governments Advising on ObamaCare. He repeatedly refuses to simply state how much
he's made off advising on Obamcare, and repeatedly says he'll discuss it with his lawyer.
'Torture'
report shows Obama's selective transparency. Senate Democrats' new report on the CIA's
secret detention and enhanced interrogation program outlines several highly disturbing allegations —
both about the nature of the harsh techniques used by U.S. officials and the agency misleading both Congress and
the White House. To the extent that national security permits, voters have a right to know what is being
done in their name, especially if it is improper. That's part of government transparency. But there
seems to be incongruity and even political opportunism in President Obama's selective commitment to disclosing
the inner workings of the federal government to its employer, the public.
Issa:
Obamacare Enrollment Data Provided to Congress Was Password-Protected, in 6 Point Font. Obamacare enrollment
data that the Department of Health and Human Services was compelled by sub poena to provide to Congress was in 6 point
font, unreadable even with glasses, according to Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Darrell
Issa (R-Calif.) Issa said data was also password-protected and locked.
Mystery
Surrounds NASA's Secret Mission in Africa. A NASA official recently confirmed that one
of the agency's aircraft had been spotted on an American military airstrip in eastern Africa a few
weeks ago, but like a series of U.S. military officials, declined to say what the space agency's
high-tech bird was doing there. "I really can't give you any of the details," Jim Alexander, a
NASA official with the WB-57 High Altitude Research Program, told ABC News. "You know, the airplane
was there, you see it in the picture. But I really can't tell you what it was for."
Smidgen
Alert — Dept. of Treasury Blocks Release of IRS to White House Emails Because The Content
Would Be Illegal To Share With Court. As the Daily Caller partly outlines[,] Secretary
of the Treasury Jacob Lew, Obama's former White House Chief of Staff, who was chief of staff when
the illegal IRS/White House scheme was rolled out, took the emails and documents that were set to be
released and now refuses to ever turn them over. His rationale? Secretary Lew claims he cannot
release information about improper disclosures of confidential taxpayer information —
because [...] that would be an improper disclosure of confidential taxpayer information.
Feds
balk at releasing docs showing IRS sharing tax returns with White House. Dan Epstein,
executive director of Cause of Action, said Treasury was using "sophisticated" lawyering to weasel
out of providing the documents. And he noted that their letter said that Treasury Secretary Jack Lew
is now looking into "potential liability" that his tax aides broke laws in sharing taxpayer information
with the White House. Epstein said that either Treasury was "stonewalling" his group, or that Lew "is
incompetent" for just now looking at potential lawbreaking by his team on the case that is two years old.
Stonewalled:
A Conversation with Sharyl Attkisson. In many cases, reporters have allowed the
government under the Obama administration to bully them into submission. [Sharyl Attkisson]
documents how the Obama presidency has become an enemy to openness and is one of the least
transparent administrations in American history. In fact, after reading what she had
to go through, President Obama makes Richard Nixon look like Mother Teresa.
White
House Quietly Releases Plans For 3,415 Regulations Ahead Of Thanksgiving Holiday.
While Americans are focused on what delicious foods they're going to eat for Thanksgiving, the White
House is focused on releasing its massive regulatory agenda — marking the fifth time the
Obama administration has released its regulatory road map on the eve of a major holiday. The
federal Unified Agenda is the Obama administration's regulatory road map, and it lays out thousands
of regulations being finalized in the coming months. Under President Barack Obama, there has been
a tradition of releasing the agenda late on Friday — and right before a major holiday.
No Shame for
Obama. [Scroll down] Obama's tentacles expand to silence and suppress alleged
enemies. The most recent revelation is an e-mail that "proves that the DOJ targeted reporter Sharyl
Attkisson" as "out of control" because her reporting was "really bad for the AG [Attorney General]."
The corrupt Department of Justice targets anyone deemed dangerous and who will diminish its power —
e.g., James Rosen, Fox News reporter, was accused of being a co-conspirator in a spying case when, in fact,
he was merely reporting the news. Conservative groups continue to be singled out by the IRS, and
no one is punished by this administration. And, of course, everything is done in secrecy,
because that is how corrupt government breeds and metastasizes.
Issa
calls Gruber to testify before Oversight. The House Oversight Committee is asking
embattled former ObamaCare consultant Jonathan Gruber to testify at a hearing next month on the
"transparency failures" of the administration's healthcare law. Oversight Committee Chairman
Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) sent a letter to Gruber on Thursday, about two weeks after videos surfaced
in which the Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor suggested that a "lack of transparency"
and the "stupidity of the American voter" helped Congress pass the Affordable Care Act.
Obama
'secretly' expands US combat operation in Afghanistan. President Barack Obama has
signed a secret order allowing the Pentagon to target Taliban fighters in Afghanistan, broadening
previous plans that had limited the military to counterterrorism missions against al-Qaida, it was
revealed Friday [11/21/2014]. The president's decision, made during a White House meeting with
national security advisers, also gives the military the green light to conduct air support for
Afghan operations when needed.
Gruber
Called To Testify On Obamacare Transparency Failures. House Oversight and Government
Reform Committee chairman Darrell Issa is calling on MIT economist and so-called Obamacare architect
Jonathan Gruber to testify next month about "transparency failures and outright deceptions
surrounding Obamacare." Issa also sent a letter to Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services
administrator Marilyn Tavener requesting her testimony as well on Dec. 9. "I expect Mr. Gruber
and Administrator Tavenner to testify publicly next month about the arrogance and deceptions surrounding
the passage and implementation of ObamaCare," Issa said in a statement released Friday [11/21/2014].
Oops:
Obama Administration Inflated Obamacare Enrollment Numbers. In September, federal
health officials announced that 7.3 million people had signed up for health insurance on the state
or federal exchanges. This was big news — as it meant Obamacare had beaten the White House's
goal of enrolling 7 million people in the first year of the program. However, it turns out,
the real number of people who signed up for medical coverage is actually about 6.97 million. A
report by Bloomberg's Alex Wayne revealed that the administration quietly lumped as many as 400,000
dental plans into the total enrollment number without telling anyone.
5
Ways ObamaCare Hides Its Costs. Healthcare.gov and the other exchanges were originally
supposed to open in October, but the White House pushed the date back a month. The administration
said that it would give insurers more time to figure out next year's rates, but critics said that
the administration meant the delay to hide ObamaCare's 2015 premiums until after the midterm
elections. Shoppers could get a peek at rates for the first time this week.
Sharyl
Attkisson and the Transparency Lie. I close my new book, You Lie!, with a list
of President Barack Obama's twenty-five most egregious deceptions. At the top of that list is the
promise Obama made to the American people on his first full day in office, "Transparency and the
rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency." This was an extension of Obama's
campaign promise to establish the "most transparent and accountable administration in history."
Improbably, five years into his presidency, Obama was still claiming, "This is the most transparent
administration in history."
Federal
Judge Shoots Down Obama State Secrets Defense in No-Fly List Case. Unaccountable mass
surveillance, secret courts and secret lists are regular features of the modern American police
state. The federal government, now gone completely rogue and no longer representative of the people
continues to invoke the magical talisman of "National Security" to prevent oversight. That has just
taken a hit though thanks to a federal judge.
Obama
Hides Executive Abuses by Calling Decrees "Memoranda". Since taking office, Obama has issues 198 decrees via memoranda — that
is 33 percent more than Bush, the runner up for the record, issued in eight years — along with 195 executive orders. Among other policy
areas, Obama's memoranda edicts have been used to set policy on gun control, immigration, labor, and much more. Just this week, Obama issued
another memoranda decree purporting to declare Bristol Bay in Alaska off limits to oil and gas exploration — locking up vast quantities of
American wealth and resources using his now-infamous and brazenly unconstitutional "pen and phone." "Like executive orders, presidential memoranda
don't require action by Congress," reported USA Today as part of its investigation into Obama's decrees. "They have the same force
of law as executive orders and often have consequences just as far-reaching. And some of the most significant actions of the Obama presidency
have come not by executive order but by presidential memoranda." However, despite the newspaper's obvious confusion on constitutional
matters — only Congress can make law, not the White House — the review raises a number of important issues.
'Political'
pull? Border figures posted, removed month before election. Staggering statistics that
show nearly a half-million people were caught trying to enter the U.S. illegally — and
more than half were not Mexican, a number far higher than in 2013 — reportedly were
posted on a U.S. government website for just a few hours last month before being taken down.
According to the Center for Investigative Reporting, the numbers were posted on the U.S. Customs and
Border Protection website on Oct. 10 for roughly five hours. The dramatic numbers raised
questions over whether they were yanked to protect the administration before key midterm elections.
Obama
spending Election Day behind closed doors. President Obama is spending Election Day as
he's spent much of the preceding weeks: at the White House and out of view of the cameras. [...] The
president will also host a private lunch with Vice President Biden, and the pair are scheduled to
meet with Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel in the late afternoon. But none of the events are
scheduled to be open to reporters.
Obama's
party fundraisers shutting out media. President Obama has been largely invisible on
the campaign trail this fall, but his disappearing act also has extended to party fundraisers,
frequently held in secret and away from the view of the press. Before stumping for Maine
gubernatorial candidate Michael Michaud and other Democrats on Thursday evening [10/30/2014], President
Obama spoke at a closed-door "roundtable" for the Democratic National Committee, an event that essentially
is a fundraiser with a different title.
Apparently the President would prefer not to have the press report his movements, actions and words.
On
Obama's Asia trip, members of media will have to pay $60,000 each for flights.
President Obama's trip to Asia next month should prove to be reasonably newsworthy, given its
regional summit meetings in China and Burma and a stopover in Australia. For the news media,
however, there is a more immediate concern: the heart-stopping cost of covering the president's
travels. News organizations began reacting with surprise and exasperation when they learned this
week that a ticket to ride on the press charter plane that follows Obama throughout Asia will be
$60,000. Per person.
Running
against Obama's postponed November surprises. The administration's near-term plans on
health care, the environment, immigration, nominees for high office and other issues are shrouded in
mystery. It doesn't take much of a crystal ball to guess what lies just ahead, but the people should
hear it from the source. Mr. Obama isn't talking. He says his policies are on the ballot, and
he knows that the less the voters know, the better for Democratic candidates.
President
Obama Exerts Executive Privilege Over Letters Between Eric Holder and His Wife.
[Scroll down] Judge Bates issued his smack down on September 23. Attorney General Eric
Holder announced his resignation two days later. With only 3 hours and 26 minutes left to comply
with the court order the Department of Justice finally released the 1,307 page "Vaughn index" which is being used
to hide 15,662 pages of Fast and Furious documents — the revelations are mind blowing[.]
Obama
Claims Executive Privilege Over 15,000 Fast and Furious Docs. The 1,307-page Vaughn
index lists 15,662 documents related to Operation Fast and Furious that the Obama administration is
asserting executive privilege over — the first time that full list and description of the
records has been released. According to Judicial Watch, the withheld documents include
communications between top officials at the Justice Department and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco
and Firearms (ATF), as well as with the United States Ambassador to Mexico. The Obama
administration is also asserting executive privilege over nearly 20 emails between Holder
and his wife Sharon Malone.
Treasury
Department won't let witness testify about Lois Lerner's 'lost' emails until AFTER the
election. The chairman of a powerful committee in Congress is demanding access
'without delay' to a key witness in the Lois Lerner email saga that has engulfed the IRS, but the
Treasury Department insists she can't testify until after the midterm congressional elections.
House Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp, a Michigan Republican, demanded late Wednesday in a letter
to Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew that he must make Treasury counsel Hannah Stott-Bumsted available
before that Nov. 4 political milestone date. Stott-Bumsted was the first Treasury aide to learn
that the IRS was unable to locate two years' worth of disgraced official Lois Lerner's emails
because of a hard drive crash.
ObamaCare
Enrollment Delays Hide Insurance Cost Hikes Till After Elections. On October 1st of
last year, ObamaCare's inaugural enrollment period launched with all of the grace of a rocket
exploding on its launch pad. Double-digit premium hikes, cancelled plans, and non-functioning
websites caused misery for millions, leaving even supporters of the law lacking for words at times.
This October there is silence, with few outside of the beltway focused on anything to do with
ObamaCare. Has the system been fixed — is ObamaCare working? Not at all.
We
don't know what the White House is hiding. Typically, the practice of avoiding making
any controversial announcements or decisions in the weeks leading up to an election is something of
an artful and hopefully discreet exercise — even if it obvious what is happening, there
is usually a fig leaf of cover. Apparently, the Obama administration has abandoned the "artful"
aspect of this exercise. In order to hide what they really believe and what they really want to do,
this administration is blatantly delaying announcements on a range of topics until after the midterm
elections. For instance, when explaining the immigration reform delay, David Nakamura and Ed O'Keefe
from The [Washington] Post reported that a White House official admitted the reason President Obama was delaying
action was because "we're in the midst of the political season."
Mr. Obama's
November Surprise. Only in November will Americans learn how much their health care
costs will rise after the implementation of President Obama's "signature" legislative
accomplishment, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010. Of course, the
administration doesn't admit that it is waiting until after voters cast their November ballots to
give them a nasty post-election "surprise." As the Washington Times notes, there are some states in
which word is already leaking out. Those happen to be states with hotly contested Senate contests.
How
an Obama Administration Policy is Destroying Lives. Government health officials
haven't offered any explanation for the unusual outbreak. The Centers for Disease Control has
pointedly refused to disclose the states where children have died or even specific locations of
outbreaks. State and local officials are similarly closed mouthed. Except for suggesting routine
precautions, public officials largely refuse to offer any details whatsoever, and in some cases have
spread misinformation. And the media seem incapable of penetrating the wall of silence, simply
repeating the official narrative. But there is significant, almost irrefutable evidence that this
outbreak is the direct result of this year's illegal alien invasion from Central America.
Obama:
The Most Secretive President? Having been elected to the White House with the promise of increased
openness and transparency regarding government operations, Barack Obama may end his presidency as among the most
secretive in American history. That, anyway, was the conclusion of a couple of the high-powered panelists
Monday night [9/22/2014] during a debate on freedom of the press vs. national security at the Paley Center for Media.
The
Myriad Contradictions of Barack H. Obama. In 2008 and 2009, Obama's campaign website, barackobama.com,
boldly placed the following statement on its "Blue Print for Change" page: "Too often bills are rushed through
Congress and to the president before the public has the opportunity to review them. As president, Obama will
not sign any non-emergency bill without giving the American public an opportunity to review and comment on the White
House website for five days." According to congressional records, the very first bill Obama signed into law as
president, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, passed the senate January 22, 2009, passed the House on January 27,
and was signed by the president just two days later on January 29. The legislation was never posted to the White
House website. His second bill, an expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program, he signed February 4,
2009, a matter of mere hours after it was finalized in Congress. The president signed the "Credit Card Accountability,
Responsibility, and Disclosure Act of 2009 on May 22, 2009 — only two days after the bill was finalized in Congress.
And of course, there's the now infamous "Affordable Care Act." With associated regulations, the ACA is nearly
11,000 pages, none of which was ever posted to any website. The bill was signed almost instantaneously
after it passed the Senate on Christmas Eve 2010.
Worse
than Nixon? Obama White House accused of hiding public information. Though President
Obama vowed to run the most transparent administration in history, his White House has quietly
empowered itself to censor or delay the release of information in ways that not even Richard Nixon
envisioned during the Watergate scandal, according to federal workers on the front lines of
processing open records requests. The workers, who spoke to The Washington Times only on the
condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal, said that an April 15, 2009, memo from White House
Counsel Gregory Craig to all federal agencies has slowed, and in some cases nixed, the public
release of government documents that would have been released under prior administrations.
White
House: Decision to Delay Obamacare Enrollment Until After The Election Was Not Political. The White
House is making an astonishing claim that the decision to delay the enrollment period for Obamacare until after the
election was not political. During the White House Press Briefing today [10/14/2014], ABC News reporter
Jonathan Karl questioned the administration's decision, pointing out that people shopping for health care would be
unable to see premium hikes until after the election.
White
House Won't Say How Much Taxpayers Pay For Obama Fundraising. When President Barack Obama takes Air Force One on
a fundraising swing, he is required under the law to reimburse taxpayers for certain travel expenses. But as Mark Knoller
of CBS News reports, the White House has made it a practice of not publicly releasing specific reimbursement figures, making it
impossible for the public to see exactly how much they pay every time the president goes on a political trip. Knoller
says it's not about national security reasons, but rather about saving face.
Must be pretty bad.
Obama
Waiting For Midterm To Name Attorney General. President Barack Obama does not plan to
announce his choice for attorney general before the November elections, shielding the nomination
from the midterm election politics while setting up a potential year-end showdown with the lame duck Senate.
'The dog
ate my emails'. [Scroll down] The most troubling recent instance of this has
been at the Internal Revenue Service, where Lois Lerner, the official at the heart of allegations
that the agency singled out conservative groups for harassment, has pleaded the Fifth Amendment and,
conveniently, seen some of her email records destroyed. You don't have to be a conspiracy
theorist to find the disappearance of such key documentary evidence suspiciously convenient for the
embattled tax official. Given that the missing documentation seems to have effectively put the
brakes on any meaningful punishment for Lerner or her IRS colleagues, it should come as no surprise
that similar lapses are now breaking out elsewhere in the federal government.
You
can find out your 2015 Obamacare premiums after the election. Citizens will have the
opportunity to line up at their laptops once again and enroll in the program which will provide them
with some sort of health insurance (no matter how much it costs or if they can even afford it) and
avoid having their government hit them with a cash penalty for not being able to afford insurance in
the first place. But there will be some differences this time.
How
much do Obama's fundraising trips cost? Mum's the word. From the way the White House
vehemently refuses to disclose information on the costs of presidential political travel and
calculations on reimbursing the government, you might think they were state secrets. As President
Obama embarks Thursday [10/9/2014] on a three-day Democratic fundraising trip to California, the
White House again refuses an umpteenth request from CBS News for the political travel information.
Investigator
claims he was told to delay Secret Service prostitution report until after election. Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah,
also questioned whether a double standard was at play, considering many Secret Service and military personnel were disciplined
on that trip for seeing prostitutes and other inappropriate behavior. [...] "The concern is that when it came to the White House
and the White House taking care of its own personnel, a totally different standard," Chaffetz said. "And perhaps some
misdirection and some cover-up to make sure that that story never saw the light of day before the 2012 elections."
EPA
can't find top official's text messages. The EPA is poised to "do an IRS" —
similar to what the tax agency had to do with dismissed top official Lois G. Lerner — and
officially notify the National Archives that it may have lost key electronic records, according to a
think tank that's suing to get text messages under an open-records request. Justice Department
lawyers told a federal court on Tuesday that the alert will be coming soon, in a case that's shaping
up as a significant battle over whether government agencies are required to keep cellphone text
messages as "official" records.
No
lessons learned from last year's Obamacare debacle. Judging from last year's
experience, one would expect the bureaucrats who run healthcare.gov to be relatively transparent
about any issues they expect this time around. The last thing they need is for customers to be
blindsided again by massive technical, systemic or security failures on the website.
Unfortunately, the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services — the agency in charge of
healthcare.gov, known colloquially as CMS — has chosen darkness and smoky back rooms over
sunlight. The agency has explicitly forbidden insurers who participate in testing the new system
this month from revealing anything about their experience.
White
House Can't Hide Look Into Koch Tax Data Misuse. A court tells the White House to acknowledge the
existence of a probe into whether one of its advisers used private tax records for political gain. Transparency
is being forced on an administration that's anything but.
8
Ways the Obama Administration Restricts Access to Information, According to the Associated
Press. The Associated Press' Washington bureau chief is the latest journalist to
criticize the Obama administration for failing to live up to its promise of transparency. "Bush
was not fantastic," Sally Buzbee recently told a meeting of journalists. "The [Obama] administration
is significantly worse than previous administrations." Buzbee detailed eight ways the Obama
administration is restricting access to information at a joint meeting of the American Society of
News Editors, the Associated Press Media Editors and the Associated Press Photo Managers.
Court:
Obama Admin Can't Hide Investigation into Former White House Adviser. The Obama
administration must acknowledge the existence of an independent investigation into former White
House senior economics adviser Austan Goolsbee's alleged unauthorized access to the Koch brother's
tax returns, a court ruled Tuesday [9/30/2014]. A federal judge ruled the Treasury Inspector General for Tax
Administration (TIGTA) must disclose to watchdog group Cause of Action whether records of an investigation exist.
Cause of Action filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit after TIGTA refused to confirm or deny the existence
of the investigation in what is commonly known as a "Glomar response."
CDC
Refuses to Directly Answer If Ebola Patient A US Citizen. Tuesday [9/30/2014] during
the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention press conference, which confirmed the first case of
Ebola in the United States, CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden refused to directly answer if the man who
traveled from Liberia to Texas earlier this month was a citizen of the Untied States.
Transparency
Groups Press White House on FOIA Delays. In a letter to the White House released
Monday, 25 transparency organizations said the Obama administration's policy of reviewing FOIA
requests that contain so-called "White House equities" has "caused significant confusion and delay
among agencies in their compliance with the Freedom of Information Act." According to a 2009 memo
from the White House Counsel to all agency heads and general counsels, the White House reminded all
agencies to send FOIA requests containing White House "equities" to it for review. The equities
mandate "applies to all documents and records, whether in oral, paper, or electronic form, that relate
to communications to and from the White House, including preparations for such communications."
Transparency groups say the review process has significantly delayed some requests and that agencies
do not have proper guidance on what counts as a "White House equity."
Most
Transparent Administration Ever Bans Media, Demands ID and Shuts the Windows at Ferguson Townhall. How is demanding
identification to get into a town hall not racist? Anyone care to explain that?
25
Rules of Disinformation. These rules are generally used more directly by those at the
leadership, key players, or planning level of the criminal conspiracy or conspiracy to cover up.
[#1] Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil. Regardless of what you know, don't discuss
it — especially if you are a public figure, news anchor, etc. If it's not reported, it
didn't happen, and you never have to deal with the issues.
Retailers
want food stamp data secret. Retail chains that accept food stamps are fighting a
regulatory initiative to make public store-by-store data on their participation in the $80 billion
government program. How many food stamps — known officially as the Supplemental
Nutritional Assistance Program — are redeemed at which stores has long been viewed by the
companies and the Department of Agriculture as a commercial trade secret and thus exempt from
disclosure. But a recent federal appeals court decision on a Freedom of Information Act
request by a South Dakota newspaper has forced USDA to reconsider that stance.
What is
the Pentagon's secret space drone doing? For almost two years, an unmanned space plane
bearing a remarkable resemblance to NASA's space shuttle has circled the Earth, performing a
top-secret mission. It's called the X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle — but that's pretty much
all we know for certain.
Why
Won't Democrats Talk About Obama's Fundraising? Last week, President Obama headlined a $100,000-a-plate fundraiser
at the swank Jefferson Hotel in downtown Washington on behalf of the Democratic Party's Senate campaign arm. The
ticket price was high — even by modern standards. But beyond that, there was almost no information
to be found about it.
Rice
Bolts During Intense Press Questioning Over Obama's Syrian Air Strikes. Friday [9/19/2014] during the White House press briefing,
National Security Advisor Susan Rice abruptly left in the middle of a question after confusing reporters with her announcement President Barack
Obama was going ahead with air strikes in Syria. When reporters began to grill Rice about whether the president had already given the
authorization to the militarily to bomb in Syria, Rice kept repeating they would not be releasing information on the timing of those air strikes.
Susan
Rice bolts from podium, unable to answer reporters' questions at White House press briefing. The question that
caused Ms. Rice to flee was a fairly simple one: whether or not the president has authorized the bombing of targets in
Syria. Rice responded multiple times that the timing of strikes would not be released, but that was not the question
at hand, and reporters pressed her on whether her boss had authorized strikes. This she could not answer. Did she
not know? Or had he not bothered to sign the authorization? Or did she get her information from Valerie Jarrett and
not know the details? We don't know because she ran away.
Obama Admin Threatening
to ARREST Agents Warning of Terrorist Attack at Border. Federal officials have
threatened law enforcement agents with termination and criminal prosecution for leaking information
about the threat of terrorist attacks near the Texas-Mexico border, according to a new report.
The government watchdog organization Judicial Watch (JW) says that after it reported on the possibility
of radical Islamic terrorists in Juarez, Mexico — just across the border from El Paso —
a memo containing warning agents about leaking information "came down through the chain of command."
Team
Obama Bans Press Cameras from White House Congressional Picnic. Ahead of President Obama's annual picnic with
members of Congress [9/17/2014], the White House prohibited television cameras and photographer access to the event. Only
allowing print pool reporters were allowed to cover Obama's speech.
House GOP: Commerce 'ambushed' whistleblower interview.
Department of Commerce officials tried to block congressional investigators from speaking with whistleblowers claiming U.S. Census
Bureau records were being fabricated, according to a report by House Republicans to be released Thursday [9/18/2014]. "Commerce
Department officials showed up uninvited to a transcribed interview with a Census Bureau employee and put her in a position where
she was forced to risk retaliation if she excluded them from the interview," according to a joint report by the House Committee on
Government Oversight and the Joint Economic Committee of Congress. "The Commerce Department officials who ambushed the witness
claimed that congressional staff may only speak to witnesses in the presence of department personnel, and that it is unlawful for
congressional staff to speak with department employees directly."
Obama's Untruth, Inc. [Scroll
down] As far as the VA, AP, IRS, NSA, and other scandals go, do not count on any confession, investigation, lawsuit, or special prosecutor
to reveal the truth in the next two years. The Obama administration will lose documents, redact critical information, find e-mails only
years later, and lie about evidence until most of its members are safely out of office and working for Citigroup, one of the major TV networks,
or Goldman Sachs. Obama's prevaricating has lost him any thought of a legacy, all the more so because for years as a candidate and as
president he pontificated about his new transparency and the need for executive candor — itself an untruth at best, and at worst a
cynical ploy to provide cover for a deliberate effort to enact policies that could not be honestly presented to the American people.
Controversial
DHS Adviser Let Go Amid Allegations of Cover Up. A Department of Homeland Security (DHS) adviser long
engulfed in controversy over his radical views was let go from his role in the department last week after a long fight
by lawmakers and others to revoke the individual's privileges at DHS. Mohamed Elibiary was until last week a
senior member of DHS' Homeland Security Advisory Council (HSAC). After years of controversy about his status at
DHS, Elibiary announced his final day with the department on Twitter earlier this month and said he would remain close
to the agency. Media outlets have raised questions about the circumstances surrounding his departure, speculating
that his provocative comments about the "inevitable" return of the Muslim "caliphate" may have played a role.
Holder
Says Private Suit Risks State Secrets. The government said the case should be dropped
because forcing the group to open its files would jeopardize national security. The group is not
affiliated with the government, and lists no government contracts on its tax forms. The government
has cited no precedent for using the so-called state-secrets privilege to quash a private lawsuit
that does not focus on government activity.
White
House knew of destroyed emails two months before Congress. Congressional investigators have released tesimony showing that an
attorney for the IRS told the Treasury Department counsel of the destroyed emails, who then passed the information on to the White House.
The conversations took place in April — two months before the IRS told Congress of the destruction of evidence.
Osama bin Laden's library is still locked up.
Al Qaeda Wasn't
'on the Run'. At a Pentagon briefing one day after the raid [on Osama bin Laden's hideout], a
senior official described the haul as a "robust collection of materials." It included 10 hard drives,
nearly 100 thumb drives, and a dozen cell phones — along with data cards, DVDs, audiotapes, magazines,
newspapers, paper files. In an interview on Meet the Press just days after the raid, Barack Obama's national
security adviser, Thomas Donilon, told David Gregory that the material could fill "a small college library."
Attkisson:
Obama Admin Refusing to Tell Congress Where Illegal Children Went. Wednesday [9/3/2014] on Newsmax TV's "The Steve
Malzberg Show," former CBS News correspondent Sharyl Attkisson said the Obama administration is refusing to tell Congress where the
ten of thousands of unaccompanied minors who crossed the U.S.-Mexican Border this summer were sent after they were processed though
holding centers along the border. [Video clip]
IRS
Delaying Release of Data on People Leaving High-Tax States. IRS data on internal migration showing how many
people have moved to and from which states generally shows people leaving high-taxed states and states with high unemployment
to states doing better in those categories. Now Obama's IRS is seeking to delay release of these statistics for another
12 months. For decades economists and lawmakers both have used this IRS data as a marker for which states are
succeeding in America, but the Obama administration has show its disdain for this important metric.
Sharyl
Attkisson wants to know where the illegal immigrant children have gone. Since the border crisis began, three
military facilities housing more than 7,700 unaccompanied, illegal immigrant children have been close[d]. Where were they sent?
The government isn't providing answers to citizens, to reporters, or even to Congress. Of the ones that we can track down, the
largest numbers seem to be going to Texas, New York, Maryland and Virginia.
Obama's
Department of Labor Bans Employees From Talking To The Daily Caller. As we celebrate the annual day of paid rest
arbitrated into our calendar by powerful 19th century New York labor unions, we at The Daily Caller are also celebrating
another milestone: We're banned from talking to the Department of Labor. Department of Labor (DOL) Office of Public
Affairs senior advisor Carl Fillichio placed TheDC as well as National Review on the department's permanent "no-contact list" in
a profanity-laden rant at a March 31 staff meeting.
Why
Is Obama Hiding ObamaCare Enrollment Data? It's been 110 days since the last "monthly"
report on ObamaCare enrollment, when the president bragged that 8 million had signed up.
What are they hiding?
ICE
refuses to identify convicted killers released from custody. Federal immigration authorities on Monday [8/25/2014]
refused to identify the seven convicted murderers with Atlanta-area addresses that they released during the last fiscal year, citing
privacy reasons. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement also could not immediately say why they were released or identify the
charges for which they were convicted.
Judge
rejects Obama administration secrecy on Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac. A federal judge has
issued a stinging rebuke to the Obama administration's recent attempt to shield documents from
disclosure in a case that could yield important clues about the Treasury Department's relationship
with mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Government lawyers had argued they could redact
key information before releasing records to the public by saying the documents related to the
"deliberative process." But in a ruling last month, U.S. Federal Claims Court Judge Margaret M.
Sweeney rejected that, saying the government was illegally cutting corners.
Is Obama
really on Martha's Vineyard? Press whines they never see golfing, hiking Obama.
After being snubbed by the active president who didn't show his face to reporters on Friday
[8/22/2014] or Saturday, the press "pool" on Saturday turned to mockery as Obama hit the links —
again. [...] While other presidents have tried to briefly make themselves available to traveling media
photographers during vacations, Obama has gone days without being seen by the press corps pool, a group
formed years ago for death watch duties but also used by the White House as a mini-press corps that
relays information to the larger corps.
'Extorting'
Is the Word For Government Action Against Bank of America. [Scroll down] These
huge bank settlements are election-year ATMs for the Obama administration. It was $12 billion for
JP Morgan, another $7 billion for Citigroup, and on and on. It's a real shakedown.
No one even remotely knows how these penalty-payment numbers are calculated. The federal government's
disbursement of these funds is equally mysterious. As the Wall Street Journal editorial page has pointed
out, a lot of money has gone to states run by Democratic governors.
White
House meddling in records requests? Suit claims agencies locked down documents. A
government watchdog group has sued 12 federal agencies for allegedly withholding emails and other
documents, in the latest episode in which the Obama administration is being challenged over its
transparency. The conservative-leaning Cause of Action wants the documents in order to see
whether agencies are being forced to channel basic public-information requests through the White
House, so that politically sensitive material can be screened. The group filed the suit Monday
[8/18/2014] in a District of Columbia federal court. The lawsuit says the agencies "stonewalled" the
organization — and claims the White House is "influencing" their response to record requests.
Obama
heads back to vacation after unexplained DC trip. President Obama went back to his
vacation on Martha's Vineyard Tuesday evening following less than 48 hours in Washington, leaving
people puzzled over why he came back in the first place. Obama's two days in Washington were
mostly quiet, and concluded with the president receiving his daily national security briefing in the
morning, and joining Vice President Biden to huddle with members of his economic team in the
afternoon.
The Editor says...
It is safe to assume that Obama was up to something extraordinary that required his presence in the White House for a
couple of days, since he obviously would have preferred to stay out on his luxurious taxpayer-funded vacation. It may be
weeks before the truth comes out, but someday we will know what he was up to this past weekend.
White
House won't reveal documents related to ObamaCare website security. The White House
has rejected a request to publicly disclose documents relating to the kinds of security software and
computer systems behind the federal health care exchange website on the grounds that the information
could "potentially" be used by hackers. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services denied a
Freedom of Information Act request made late last year by the Associated Press amid concerns that
Republicans raised about the security of the website, which had technical glitches that prevented
millions of people from signing up for insurance under ObamaCare.
Lawsuit
accuses Obama White House of thwarting release of public data under FOIA. A watchdog
group on Monday [8/18/2014] sued the U.S. government, accusing the Obama White House of interfering
in and thwarting the release of public documents under the Freedom of Information Act. The lawsuit
filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia by the group Cause of Action (CoA)
names 12 federal agencies that delayed the release of documents so officials could consult with
White House under a new process established in spring 2009.
Joe
Biden Stonewalled FOIA Request to Hide Travel Costs. Vice President Joe Biden's office
stonewalled a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for his travel expenses, according to Ronald
Kessler's new tell-all book on the Secret Service, The First Family Detail. Kessler, a
former Wall Street Journal and Washington Post investigative reporter, filed a FOIA
request in April 2013 with the Air Force for the details and costs of Biden's personal trips.
"But in what amounts to a cover-up on behalf of the vice president, on June 6, Biden's office
blocked transmitting the results to me and told Air Force officers they were not to comment to
anyone about the case," Kessler writes.
Behind
Closed Doors, Obama Crafts Executive Actions. When President Obama announced in June
that he planned to bypass congressional gridlock and overhaul the nation's immigration system on his
own, he did so in a most public way: a speech in the White House Rose Garden. Since then, the
process of drafting what will likely be the only significant immigration changes of his
presidency — and his most consequential use of executive power — has been
conducted almost entirely behind closed doors, where lobbyists and interest groups invited to the
White House are making their case out of public view.
Who's teaching the kids at New Mexico's
immigration facility?. The school year is about to start for kids across New Mexico. And
the same goes for the children staying in the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Artesia, N.M., which
has been remodeled to house up to 700 immigrants, nearly all of whom came to the U.S. from Central
America. But who has been contracted to teach and how much it will cost is not so easy to discover.
White
House won't reveal documents related to ObamaCare website security. The White House
has rejected a request to publicly disclose documents relating to the kinds of security software and
computer systems behind the federal health care exchange website on the grounds that the information
could "potentially" be used by hackers. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services denied a
Freedom of Information Act request made late last year by the Associated Press amid concerns that
Republicans raised about the security of the website, which had technical glitches that prevented
millions of people from signing up for insurance under ObamaCare.
HHS HealthCare.gov Official: "Delete this
email". An email obtained by Congress shows the top official for Healthcare.gov at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid
Services under the Department of Health and Human Services, Marilyn Tavenner, instructed the agency's top spokesman to "Please delete
this email." The instruction appears significant for several reasons: First, the email to be deleted included an exchange
between key White House officials and CMS officials. Second, the email was dated October 5, 2013, five days into the
disastrous launch of HealthCare.gov. Third, federal law requires federal officials to retain copies of — not
delete — email exchanges.
Sharyl
Attkisson Sues Federal Government to Obtain Obamacare Documents. Attkisson, a senior independent
contributor to The Daily Signal, filed the lawsuit against the Department of Health and Human Services to obtain
information about the troubled Obamacare rollout last year. The former CBS News reporter and Emmy award-winning
journalist won't be going alone; the legal group Judicial Watch will represent her in court. The lawsuit follows
four unsuccessful Freedom of Information Act requests. In October 2013 and again in June of this year, Attkisson
requested information from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) concerning the efficiency and security
of the HealthCare.gov website. All four requests went unanswered.
Obama
Health Official Instructed Staff To Delete Email Exchange With White House About Healthcare.gov.
House Republicans on Friday [8/15/2014] released an email from Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Administrator
Marilyn Tavenner, a key Obama administration health official instructing the top CMS spokeswoman to delete an
email exchange between CMS, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the White House. The email
exchange discussed how to handle calls from people asking about Obamacare. The email is dated October 5,
2013, five days into the disastrous launch of HealthCare.gov. and the first line of the email reads "please
delete this email but see if we can work on the script".
Call Obama's mysterious mid-holiday
return to D.C. 'Skulk Sunday'. Sometime today the 53-year-old playboy president of the
United States will be heading back to D.C. for a mission which the mainstream media describes as
"mysterious". No one seem to know why he's temporarily back in town for two days mid-holiday, and
Barack Hussein Obama isn't saying. In the face of the open fact that transparency is a broken
Obama administration promise, today should go down as 'Skulk Sunday'. Even as surrealistic as the
BHO administration is, why should any president be making a return in stealth to Washington in the
middle of another one of his too many lavish holidays?
Why
is Obama returning to Washington? President Obama won't make any major announcements on immigration
reform during his secretive mid-vacation trip back to Washington next week, the White House said Wednesday [8/13/21014].
The president is expected to return to the White House on Sunday, but officials won't say why Obama is taking the unusual,
and costly, trip back to Washington. He's expected to return to Martha's Vineyard, where he's been vacationing, on
Tuesday. Speculation has circled around whether Obama might make an announcement of executive actions he's taking on
immigration reform, or a surprise visit from a foreign leader.
Obama
dines with chef. President Obama stopped by for an unscheduled dinner on Monday night
[8/18/2014] at the home of Sam Kass, a White House chef and adviser to first lady Michelle Obama.
A White House pool report said his deputy chief of staff Anita Decker Breckenridge also joined him
for the dinner. No other details were provided.
Obama
takes break from vacation for high-level White House meetings on undisclosed topics.
Political observers have speculated that Obama might be returning to take executive action to help
fix the country's broken immigration system — perhaps broadening a 2012 order that
delayed deportation for some young illegal immigrants to include as many as 5 million people now
living illegally in the United States. However, White House officials have said the president
won't take such action until after summer and after receiving full reports on the issue from the
departments of Justice and Homeland Security.
Keywords: Cover story, ruse, red herring, chicanery.
Obama
back in D.C., dealing with Iraq and Ferguson. The president and [Attorney General Eric] Holder met Monday
afternoon [8/18/2014] in the Oval Office. Obama flew back to Washington on Sunday night from his vacation in Martha's
Vineyard, Mass. He is scheduled to return to his vacation on Tuesday.
The Editor says...
How many of you have ever interrupted a vacation, flown back to your office for a few days, and then flown back to your
vacation spot to rejoin the family? The president's actions make no sense, unless he is going to meet with someone
in the White House with whom he doesn't want to be seen.
White
House rejects media's demand for openness. The White House blew off a demand for
openness and transparency from 40 prominent media groups, offering instead a "bunch of spin" that
has reporters calling for a public debate on the administration's anti-press policies, according to
a prominent journalism organization. "We need to have a discussion," said David Cuillier,
president of the 10,000-strong Society for Professional Journalists. Cuillier, in Washington to
address a national convention of archivists, told [the Washington Examiner] that White House Press
Secretary Josh Earnest on Monday [8/11/2014] sent a response to a July 8 letter from SPJ and
others demanding that the administration stop blocking reporter access to federal agencies and
officials and end an overall "politically-driven suppression of the news."
Did
White House press secretary Josh Earnest just tell the biggest whopper of the Obama era? Josh
Earnest is either the most gullible individual ever to serve as White House press secretary or the least concerned
with telling the American people the truth. In a letter Monday [8/11/2014] to a coalition of 42 journalism
groups and media organizations, Earnest said this: "The president's commitment to transparency and the crucial
role of the independent press is unwavering. The president has set an historically high standard of transparency
that is part of the legacy to which future presidents will aspire ..."
Feds
Won't Tell Texas School Districts How Many Unaccompanied Minors to Expect. This school
year, Texas taxpayers will likely be on the hook for approximately $45 million to educate the wave
of Central American children who entered the U.S. illegally during recent months. Thousands of
unaccompanied minors are expected to attend Texas public schools this year. Despite this, the Texas
Education Agency (TEA) is unable to put plans in place for accommodating the minors — the federal
government has not revealed the number of foreign students to expect in each school district.
Press
Shunned from Obama's 400th Fundraiser Charged to Taxpayers. As we celebrate President
Barack Obama's 400th fundraiser since taking office five-and-a-half years ago, it should be noted
that of all the thousands of people who have attended, one group has been barred from ever entering
the events: The press. Now, fundraisers can be a dicey place for the media to be. You (almost)
never know what kinds of things are said in what is supposed to be behind closed doors — just ask
Mitt Romney. To that end, our current president — who greatly benefited from that infamous Romney
recording — has barred the press from all fundraising events. No pictures, no recordings, and no
questions asked of the richest one-percent in the room paying for exclusive access to the most powerful person
in the world. And of course, no questions for the president, either.
Senators
Slam White House For CIA Torture Report Redactions That Make It 'Incomprehensible'.
The fight over the redactions of the CIA's torture report continue. Last week, Senator Dianne
Feinstein noted that she and her staff were somewhat taken aback by the amount of redacted information
when they received back the black ink-drenched copy of the executive summary to the $40 million,
6,300 page "devastating" report on the CIA's torture program prepared by the Senate Intelligence Committee.
'Serious
limitations': Gov't watchdogs unite in letter slamming Obama administration transparency. Dozens
of government watchdogs are sounding the alarm that the Obama administration is stonewalling them, in what is
being described as an unprecedented challenge to the agencies they're supposed to oversee. Forty-seven of
the government's 73 independent watchdogs known as inspectors general voiced their complaints in a letter to
congressional leaders this week. They accused several major agencies — the Justice Department,
the Peace Corps and the chemical safety board — of imposing "serious limitations on access to
records." The inspectors general are now appealing to Congress to help them do their jobs uncovering
waste, fraud, and mismanage
Tavenner: Transparency
for Thee But Not for Me. It has been widely reported that the latest Obama
administration official to delete emails requested by congressional investigators is Marilyn
Tavenner, who runs the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). Far less coverage, however,
has been devoted to the ironic fact that Tavenner's agency administers the Physician Payment Sunshine Act.
The "Sunshine Act," as it is generally known, is a provision of Obamacare meant to ensure that physicians conduct
business transactions with complete transparency. In other words, the very bureaucrat whose emails have
conveniently gone missing oversees the agency tasked with keeping your doctor and his business associates honest.
The
glamorous life of a White House journalist, in 2 photos. According to today's [8/8/2014] White House pool
report, photographers were given a little time to photograph President Obama in the Oval Office — and by a
little, we mean a little. "At 11:18 am, the pool was brought to the windows outside the Oval Office for a
photo spray. It lasted 10 seconds."
Ben
Carson Calls Into Question CDC Secrecy Over Ebola Testing. Neurologist and author of "One Nation," Dr.
Ben Carson said that the Centers for Disease Control should keep the need to balance patient privacy and the
public's need to know in mind when it comes to the Ebola virus.
Valerie
Jarrett in secret meetings with Elizabeth Warren, author Ed Klein says. New York Times
best-selling author and long-time journalist Ed Klein said that Valerie Jarrett has been engaging in
secret meetings with Sen. Elizabeth Warren in recent months, giving rise to speculations that the
Massachusetts political newcomer is actually the administration's choice to head the White House in 2016.
Governor
Pat McCrory wants more information on relocated children. Gov. Pat McCrory didn't seem
to be trying too hard to hide his frustration with the federal government's response to the growing
immigration crisis. "We know we have a large Latino population," McCrory said, "but we're in the
dark." The governor said he learned last week that nearly 1,200 undocumented, unaccompanied minors
had been placed in North Carolina while their cases plodded through slow moving immigration courts.
Migrant
children and unanswered questions. When protests began across South Carolina in
response to the thousands of migrants that have flooded the U.S.-Mexico border, state officials said
there was nothing to worry about. They had been assured by the federal government that while those
immigrants may be an issue for other states, no one had been relocated to South Carolina. That
turned out not to be true. At least 350 children have been relocated to the Palmetto
State — and both state and congressional leaders say they were kept in the dark.
Obama
mum on where illegal immigrant children are sheltered. The Obama administration is
concealing key details about its response to the surge of unaccompanied children illegally crossing
the southern border, including where the unaccompanied minors are being sheltered and the
circumstances under which some are set free inside the U.S. Lawmakers on Capitol Hill say the
lack of information has handicapped their push to pass legislation to gain a handle on the surge — a
debate taking place this week in both chambers. "We're getting almost no information, and there
is all kinds of conflicting information," said Sen. John McCain, Arizona Republican, who for months
has been hounding the administration for answers about where unaccompanied minors, who crossed the
border without their parents, are detained and released.
Mike
Pence Learned HHS Was Dumping Migrant Children in His State from the Press, Not HHS.
Indiana governor Mike Pence said he first learned the federal government had placed 245
unaccompanied alien children in Indiana through media reports. In a letter to President Obama,
Pence wrote that the Department of Health and Human Services informed him that the federal
government had housed hundreds of unaccompanied alien children in Indiana from January 1, 2014, to
July 7, 2014, but only after reports surfaced in the media.
Indiana
Gov. Calls for Timely Information on Unaccompanied Minors. Indiana Gov. Mike Pence on
Tuesday urged President Barack Obama to provide "timely and necessary information" to states about
the placement of unaccompanied illegal minors after it was discovered that the Department of Health
and Human Services (HHS) sent 245 unaccompanied minors to Indiana in January, but did not notify the
state until seven months later. "In Indiana last week, we learned from media reports that more
than two hundred unaccompanied children had been placed by the federal government with sponsors in
our state," said Pence in a letter to the president.
Feds
quietly dump hundreds of illegal immigrants in Tennessee. The Obama administration
recently released 760 illegal immigrant children to sponsors in the Volunteer State without any
warning, the governor charged. [...] [Tennessee Governor Bill] Haslam, a Republican, said he still
has not been contacted by the Obama administration — and has no idea where the illegals were
resettled. "I still have not been contacted and have no information about these individuals or
their sponsors other than what was posted on the HHS website," he wrote.
Eleanor
Holmes Norton says 'you don't have a right to know' what's going on in government.
Eleanor Holmes Norton, the non-voting congressional delegate for the District of Columbia, angrily
sputtered during a congressional hearing Friday [7/25/2014] that the White House should not be held
up to scrutiny, saying that there was no right to know what it was doing behind closed doors.
"You don't have a right to know everything in a separation-of-powers government, my friend. That is
the difference between a parliamentary government and a separation-of-powers government," Norton
said during a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing. It was, to put mildly, a
significant departure from the more traditional liberal stance that openness and transparency are
must to prevent abuses of power by government officials.
The Editor says...
Here's the good news: Ms. Norton is a "non-voting congressional delegate." Now for the bad news:
Barack H. Obama wants to change that, by giving statehood to
the District of Columbia.
Democrat
Rep: 'You Don't Have a Right to Know' What's Going on in Your Government. Remember
when the Obama Administration was meant to serve as the model for how a transparent government is
supposed to operate? That promise of "hope'n'change" has produced the most secretive government
administrations in the history of this nation. [...] What Norton seems to have confused is that it
is the very principle of scrutiny that defines a government that is equipped with a separation of
powers. Each branch of government checks the power of the other branches of government. It's
amazing that America possesses even one citizen who would believe such an obvious falsehood; it's
even more outrageous that America has a representative in Congress who believes this.
Some
in 'Torture' Report Denied Chance to Read It. About a dozen former CIA officials named
in a classified Senate report on decade-old agency interrogation practices were notified in recent
days that they would be able to review parts of the document in a secure room in suburban Washington
after signing a secrecy agreement. Then, on Friday [7/25/2014], many were told they would not be
able to see it, after all.
Obama just
dumped 1504 illegal alien kids in NJ and won't tell us where they are. New Jersey's
new motto on the Statue of, ahem, Liberty: "Give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses
yearning for Free Stuff." Did I say "give?" I meant dump. Because we didn't
ask for 1504 new mouths to feed. Obama just dropped 'em off, behind our backs.
Barack
Obama locks out the press — again. President Barack Obama went to the West
Coast to meet donors from two top Democratic super PACs, but the press wasn't invited. Tuesday
[7/22/2014], the reporters and photographers traveling with the president on Air Force One and in
his motorcade were left on the gravel path not even within sight of former Costco CEO Jim Sinegal's
house in the Seattle suburbs where Obama sat for a Senate Majority PAC fundraiser with a $25,000 entrance fee.
WHCA
lodges press access complaint over Apollo 11 meeting. The ongoing battle for press
access at the White House continued on Tuesday [7/22/2014] as the White House Correspondents' Association lodged
a formal complaint with press secretary Josh Earnest for limiting coverage of President Barack Obama's meeting
with Apollo 11 astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins. CBS News' Major Garrett lodged the complaint
during the press briefing on Tuesday. Only still photographers were allowed into the meeting for a pool spray.
Most
transparent administration ever closes Apollo 11 anniversary event to press. President
Obama met with the surviving members of the moon landing mission Tuesday morning at the White House,
but no press was allowed. [...] Major Garrett of CBS News lodged a formal complaint on behalf of the
White House Correspondents' Association, which yes, sounds rather meek and procedural in the face of
the Obama administration's treatment of the press. But it's nice to see some fight, and such a
complaint draws attention to the White House's opaque standard operating procedure, even on the
fluffiest of stories.
What is Obama Hiding at His
Wealthy Donor Fundraisers? A common complaint about George W. Bush's second term is that he was "insulated"
and cut off from the outside world, and increasingly so from what he perceived to be a hostile press. This alleged
isolation caused many liberal commentators to begin to derisively refer to President Bush as a "Bubble Boy." It
has taken considerably longer for the press to openly criticize Obama for the same tendencies given their largely shared
ideological heritage but finally the Press is starting to carp openly about Obama's refusal to allow them basic access to
Presidential events.
Now
IRS Reports EVEN MORE Computer Crashes, Doesn't Know If Emails Still Exist. IRS Deputy
Associate Chief Counsel Thomas Kane said in transcribed congressional testimony that more IRS
officials experienced computer crashes, bringing the total number of crash victims to "less than
20," and also said that the agency does not know if the lost emails are still backed up
somewhere. The new round of computer crash victims includes David Fish, who routinely corresponded
with Lois Lerner, as well as Lerner subordinate Andy Megosh, Lerner's technical adviser Justin Lowe, and
Cincinnati-based agent Kimberly Kitchens
The Editor says...
The government certainly has experienced a lot of hard drive "crashes" lately. As part of the
congressional investigation into these unfortunate coincidences, some elected representative should
learn the make and model of these hard drives and publish the findings, so the rest of us won't ever
buy computer hardware from those companies! Of course, no hard drive works well after it has been
slugged a few times with a hammer, which is what I suspect was the cause of most of the convenient
hardware failures at the IRS. Otherwise there would be widespread computer "crashes" all over the
government, not just in the agencies that are in the middle of embarrassing scandals.
IRS
seeks help destroying another 3,200 hard drives. Days after IRS officials said in a
sworn statement that former top agency employee Lois G. Lerner's computer memory had been wiped
clean, the agency put out word to contractors Monday that it needs help to destroy at least another
3,200 hard drives. The Internal Revenue Service solicitation for "media destruction" services
reflects an otherwise routine job to protect sensitive taxpayer information, but it was made while
the agency's record destruction practices remain under a sharp congressional spotlight.
White
House Press Secretary Faces Reporter Revolt After Criticizing Media At Briefing. The
White House press secretary, Josh Earnest, faced a minor media revolt at his daily press briefing
Monday after he criticized a Washington Post story for its reliance on anonymous sources. Several
reporters at the briefing challenged Earnest's critique by pointing out White House officials regularly
insist information be anonymously attributed to members of the administration in conference calls and
other communications.
Abramson
Opens Up to Greta, Defends Charge Obama WH the 'Most Secretive'. Ex-New York
Times executive editor Jill Abramson joined Greta Van Susteren tonight to open up about her
firing and her experience at the Times. Abramson also defended a claim she has made
previously that the Obama White House is the "most secretive" she's ever dealt with. Abramson said
she's "never dealt with an administration where more officials... demand that everything be off the
record." She cited criminal investigations against journalists' sources, including the current case involving
Times reporter James Risen, to make the case of just how secretive the White House is.
Lois
Lerner's Illegal Instant Message Trick. It was so brazen. Right there, over email,
Lois Lerner warned her colleagues "Congress has asked for emails... so we need to be cautious about
what we say in emails." Then she asked whether the IRS's instant messaging application was being
archived, and was told that — contrary to law — archiving had been disabled.
She responded: "Perfect."
Most
border invaders are not children; they're working age. Most of those invading America's
southern border are not what we normally call "children." They evidently are 16 years old
and older — working age. They are labeled children to promote political agendas, even
though most are teens and adults, according to those willing to break down a White House-imposed wall of
secrecy.
White
House: Migrants' Privacy Trump Americans' Right To Know. The White House won't reveal
where it is housing thousands of Central American juvenile migrants because their privacy rights
trump Americans' right to know what's happening in their neighborhoods, press secretary Josh Earnest
declared July 16. "The public does have a right to know what's happening... [but] at the same time,
there are privacy rights that are included in the law that this administration is committed to
enforcing and following," Earnest told Ed Henry, Fox News' White House correspondent. "We are not
surprised in the least to see the Obama administration imitate the smugglers," William Gheen,
founder of Americans for Legal Immigration PAC, told The Daily Caller. "This is how smuggling
operations work, this is what the smuggler-in-chief wants — secret planes and secret
buses full of illegal immigrants."
Lois
Lerner's Former FEC Pal Under Investigation Claims Her Computer Crashed Too. Really,
how much more smoke do we need to choke on before we understand exactly what is burning here[?]
Obama
Official Won't Testify to Congress. The White House said Tuesday night [7/15/2014] that it would
refuse to allow its director of political strategy to testify Wednesday before a Republican-led
House committee investigating whether the administration had illegally conducted political activity
in the West Wing. In a letter to Representative Darrell Issa, the chairman of the House Committee
on Oversight and Government Reform, the president's top lawyer said that as a member of the executive
branch the political director, David Simas, had immunity from being compelled to testify before Congress.
Issa
slams White House over aide's defiance of subpoena. The chairman of the House Oversight and
Government Reform Committee attacked the Obama administration late Tuesday [7/15/2014] after the White House
said a top political aide to the president would defy a subpoena and not appear at a hearing investigating the
White House Office of Political Strategy and Outreach. The White House argued that David Simas, the office's
director, is immune from the "extraordinary demand" of being forced to testify before the committee.
White
House defies House Oversight Committee subpoena on the grounds that presidential advisers are
'absolutely immune' from testifying before Congress. The White House refused to comply
today with a subpoena issued by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee demanding that
the president's official political adviser testify before Congress. The president's Director of
the Office of Political Strategy & Outreach, David Simas, was scheduled to appear before the
Oversight committee today to state for the record that his work does not violate a federal law that
bans most executive branch employees from engaging in political activity.
Obama
rejects subpoena that would force top aide to testify in corruption probe. Well, that's one
way to cover up a scandal — just give your top aides immunity from the law. If they can't
be forced to testify, then the truth will never come out.
Hagel
quietly notifies Congress of transfer of 6 Gitmo detainees. Defense Secretary Chuck
Hagel quietly notified Congress last week that the military is set to transfer six Guantanamo Bay
prisoners to Uruguay as soon as next month, The New York Times revealed Wednesday [7/16/2014]. The
deal has been waiting for Mr. Hagel's approval since March, but stalled after the Obama administration
received a wave of backlash for releasing five Taliban detainees to Qatar in exchange for the release
[of] Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl. The administration did not give Congress 30-days notice in that
deal, but argued it was still legal because any delay could have risked Sgt. Bergdahl's life.
White
House Press Secretary Claims Transparency Criticism Unfounded. Thirty-eight national
press groups and transparency organizations, including the Society of Professional Journalists and
the Poynter Institute, sent a letter to the White House last week criticizing the Obama
administration's "politically driven suppression of news and information about federal agencies."
"Over the past two decades, public agencies have increasingly prohibited staff from communicating
with journalists unless they go through public affairs offices or through political appointees," the
letter reads. "This trend has been especially pronounced in the federal government. We
consider these restrictions a form of censorship — an attempt to control what the public is
allowed to see and hear."
White
House Pushes Back Against Subpoena. The White House pushed back against a Republican
subpoena for a top presidential adviser to testify this week, saying that summoning David Simas to
Capitol Hill raised significant concerns about separation of powers. White House counsel W. Neil
Eggleston wrote in a letter Monday [7/14/2014] to House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R., Calif.)
that he would direct his staff to provide a briefing Tuesday [7/15/2014] on the White House Office of Political
Strategy and Outreach. But Mr. Eggleston questioned the Republican lawmaker's to decision to
subpoena Mr. Simas, who serves as the director of that office.
IRS
scandal: Lois Lerner's 'perfect' method for hiding emails. At what most expected to be
a relatively routine House oversight committee hearing on Wednesday [7/9/2014], there was yet
another IRS bombshell. On April 9, 2013, just days after seeing the draft Treasury Inspector
General Report that revealed the IRS's massive Tea Party targeting scheme, Lois Lerner, then
director of exempt organizations at the IRS, sent an email to an IRS IT official asking whether the
IRS's internal chat system was searchable. What's equally as troubling and unbelievable is that
congressional investigators and the American people learned of this internal chat system only on
Wednesday — the first time this critical communications method inside the IRS was disclosed.
Spokesman:
Obama 'absolutely' the most transparent president. President Obama is "absolutely" the
most transparent president in history, White House press secretary Josh Earnest said Sunday [7/13/2014] after
the White House received a letter from signed by a dozen top journalists' groups complaining about
the administration's policies toward the media. [...] The letter, signed by the Society of
Professional Journalists and the Poynter Institute, among others, accuses the White House of
"politically driven suppression of news and information about federal agencies."
What's
Obama hiding at illegal-alien 'refugee' camps? President Obama's ultimate weakness may
be that he believes his own blarney. A year ago, Mr. Obama boasted in a "fireside" Web chat that his
"is the most transparent administration in history." There was not the slightest hint of irony.
He may actually believe it. But three-dozen organizations representing newspapermen and other journalists,
mostly liberals, beg to differ. In a testy letter to the president on Tuesday [7/8/2014], the group
decried the "slick non-answers" and cold shoulders they're getting from Mr. Obama's representatives, who have
restricted access to any information they consider embarrassing to the administration.
Why
media groups are accusing the administration of 'censorship'. In an unusual alliance, a number of journalism
organizations have banded together to denounce what they call "politically driven suppression of news and information about
federal agencies." Those are strong words. Suppression of news sounds like something done in totalitarian regimes.
But the Society of Professional Journalists, American Society of Newspaper Editors, the Poynter Institute and other media groups
make that case in a letter to Obama.
DHS
preventing reporters, congressmen from doing their jobs. The Department of Homeland
Security is clamping down on information regarding the thousands of illegal alien children being
held in detention facilities near the border. They are preventing congressmen from making
unscheduled visits to the facilities and keeping reporters from covering the flood of illegals
crossing the border.
White
House warns Dem rep to shut up. U.S Representative Henry Roberto Cuellar a Democrat from Texas told Brian Kilmeade
on Fox and Friends this morning [7/9/2014] that he's already gotten a phone call from the White House, he wouldn't say from
whom, warning him to stop criticizing Obama on his handling of the border.
Republicans
Say Ex-I.R.S. Official May Have Circumvented Email. Lois Lerner, the former Internal
Revenue Service official at the center of an investigation into the agency's treatment of
conservative political groups, may have used an internal instant-messaging system instead of email
so that her communications could not be retrieved by investigators, Republican lawmakers said
Wednesday [7/9/2014]. The accusation against Ms. Lerner, the former head of the agency's division
on tax exemption, came nearly a week after the I.R.S. gave investigators thousands of her emails, including
some that were destroyed when her hard drive crashed in 2011 but were recovered from the accounts of people
with whom she had corresponded.
White
House Strong-Arms Photo Agency to Quash Malia Photos. Malia Obama went to a famous L.A. restaurant Monday
night [7/7/2014] — a restaurant regularly frequented by celebs and paparazzi — and when the White House
found out a photog took her pic, they went into DEFCON 1 to KILL the photo
Press
Groups Call on Obama Admin to End 'Pervasive' Secrecy Practices. Dozens of leading
U.S. press organizations are urging the Obama administration to live up to its transparency promises
and reverse a trend of increased secrecy at federal agencies. Thirty-eight national press
organizations and transparency groups — including the Society for Professional
Journalists, Investigative Reporters and Editors, and the Poynter Institute — called on
the Obama administration to end "politically driven suppression of news and information about
federal agencies," in a letter to the White House released Tuesday [7/8/2014].
Censorship:
38 journalism groups slam Obama's 'politically-driven suppression of news'. In
unprecedented criticism of the White House, 38 journalism groups have assailed the president's team
for censoring media coverage, limiting access to top officials and overall "politically-driven
suppression of the news." In a letter to President Obama, the 38, led by the Society of
Professional Journalists, said efforts by government officials to stifle or block coverage has grown
for years and reached a high-point under his administration despite Obama's 2008 campaign promise to
provide transparency.
New
ObamaCare Rules Mean Less Care, More Paperwork. On July 3, when Americans were
preparing to celebrate freedom, the Obama administration reduced freedom by adding 1,296 pages of
regulations to ObamaCare. The burdensome rules were published in the Federal Register on
Independence Day eve, when few were likely to be watching. So much for transparency.
Feds
limit reporters on border kids visits. As members of Congress and reporters ask to
visit federal facilities housing children who have been apprehended by the U.S. in recent months,
federal officials are slapping limits on members of the news media who want a glimpse inside. For
example, an email sent to news organizations by Jesus Garcia, a public affairs officer for the
Administration for Children and Families, a division of the Department of Health and Human Services,
sets out a number of restrictions on reporters if they want to visit "Unaccompanied Alien Children"
being held at Fort Sill in Oklahoma.
The
celebrity dinners, golf outings and even public appearances that Obama keeps hidden from
Americans. The White House officially said Thursday what Twitter and MailOnline knew
days beforehand: that President Barack Obama would travel to Colorado and Texas this week for a
series of fundraisers. The events weren't part of the president's public schedule, but they
became common knowledge after enterprising reporters obtained copies of exclusive invites for events
with the president and shared them online. The omission from Obama's public schedule wasn't an
anomaly. The president and his administration have made a habit out of telling reporters at the last
minute about previously scheduled out-of-town trips, fundraisers and speaking engagements.
Doctor
Speaks Out Against Feds Silencing Medical Staff on Border. Early in July it was revealed that
doctors and nurses were allegedly threatened with arrest if they disclosed any information about the diseases
discovered in federal housing facilities for illegal immigrants. Many on the left have claimed that by
speaking out about their work at the facilities, medical personnel would be violating the Health Insurance Portability
and Accountability Act (HIPAA), which "protects the privacy of individually identifiable health information."
Homeland
Security Secretary Jeh Johnson dodges deportation question. Department of Homeland
Security secretary Jeh Johnson expressed optimism Sunday [7/6/2014] that the influx of illegal immigration
from Central America could be slowed, but repeatedly dodged questions about how the Obama administration
would resolve the status of the immigrants who have already arrived. [...] But Johnson was less forthright
about the administration's stance toward the more than 50,000 unaccompanied minors who have crossed the
border this year, many of whom remain in the custody of the Border Patrol or the Department of Health and
Human Services. Those children are a "special situation," said Johnson.
CIA employee's quest to release information 'destroyed my
entire career'. His CIA career included assignments in Africa, Afghanistan and Iraq,
but the most perilous posting for Jeffrey Scudder turned out to be a two-year stint in a sleepy
office that looks after the agency's historical files. It was there that Scudder discovered a
stack of articles, hundreds of histories of long-dormant conflicts and operations that he concluded
were still being stored in secret years after they should have been shared with the public. To
get them released, Scudder submitted a request under the Freedom of Information Act — a
step that any citizen can take, but one that is highly unusual for a CIA employee. Four years
later, the CIA has released some of those articles and withheld others. It also has forced
Scudder out.
ICE
Demands "Unaccompanied Alien Children" (UAC) Identifier Drop Use of Word "Alien". Controlling
the verbiage and words is a key element in deceiving the public, and keeping the electorate unaware of what is
actually going on. In the foreground we will continue to see President Obama and fellow travelers say they
are opposed to the influx and committed to stopping it. However, in the background they are giving specific
instructions to the federal agencies to continue promoting the process and affirming the intent. In essence
they are doing the exact opposite of what they are saying.
Sometimes Friday document dumps happen on Thursday, if Friday is a federal holiday.
HHS
releases 1,296 pages of regulations ahead of holiday weekend. As Americans scrambled ahead of the July Fourth holiday
weekend on Thursday afternoon [7/3/2014], the Department of Health and Human Services released 1,296 pages of new regulations
dealing with payment rates to doctors and hospitals. The timing of the news release is part of a long pattern for President Obama's
administration, which has often used holidays as an opportunity to dump dense regulatory changes when most reporters and Americans are
focused on their holiday plans. The release came at 4:15 p.m.
We've gone
from an inherited tyrant to an elected one. The Obama administration had successfully resisted the efforts of The New York Times
and others to induce a judge to order the release of the memo by claiming that it contained state secrets. The judge who reviewed the memo
concluded that it was merely a legal opinion, and yet she referred to herself as being in "Alice in Wonderland": The laws are public, and
the judicial opinions interpreting them are public, so how could a legal opinion be secret? Notwithstanding her dilemma, she accepted the
government's absurd claims, and the Times appealed. Then the government shot itself in the foot when it surreptitiously released a portion
of its secret memo to NBC News. This infuriated the panel of federal appellate judges hearing the Times' appeal, and they ordered the
entire memo released.
Government
to Doctors: Mention Illegal Aliens' Diseases, Go to Jail. It appears that our
government is working hard for the citizens. Unfortunately, they're not the citizens of the United
States. Fox News' Todd Starnes reports shocking allegations that a government-contracted security
force is threatening to arrest medical personnel at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas,
if they reveal information about the rampant disease among the illegal migrants at the facility.
Nonetheless, several of these workers have decided to come forward, fearing the contagion risk posed
to Americans. Starnes has kept their identities secret, as they could be subject to persecution.
Starnes reports, "'There were several of us who wanted to talk about the camps, but the agents made
it clear we would be arrested,' a psychiatric counselor told me. "We were under orders not
to say anything.'"
Rep.
Jim Bridenstine denied access to child immigrant facility: 'What are they trying to
hide?'. Oklahoma Rep. Jim Bridenstine is asking what the Obama administration has to
hide after he was denied access Monday to a Health and Human Services facility at Fort Sill
currently housing up to 1,200 illegal immigrant children. "There is no excuse for denying a
Federal Representative from Oklahoma access to a federal facility in Oklahoma where unaccompanied
children are being held," the Republican said in a press release.
Bridenstine
denied access to illegals being housed Ft. Sill. Congressman Jim Bridenstine was
denied access yesterday [7/1/2014] to the HHS facility at Ft. Sill, Oklahoma currently housing up
to 1,200 unaccompanied alien children (UAC) who illegally crossed the southern border into the
United States. Congressman Bridenstine said, "There is no excuse for denying a Federal
Representative from Oklahoma access to a federal facility in Oklahoma where unaccompanied children
are being held. Any Member of Congress should have the legal authority to visit a federal youth
detention facility without waiting three weeks."
HHS
Bars Congressman From Seeing Immigrant Children. A Health and Human Services official
refused to allow a member of Congress to enter a facility in his district where some of the
unaccompanied immigrant children are being housed. Representative Jim Bridenstine (R., Okla.)
was told he could schedule an appointment for July 21. "What are they trying to hide?" Bridenstine
said after the incident. "Do they not want the children to speak with Members of Congress? As a
Navy pilot, I have been involved in operations countering illicit human trafficking. I would like
to know to whom these children are being released."
U.S.
Congressman Blocked From Entering Child Immigrant Facility. An Oklahoma Congressman
who visited an Army base being used to house illegal immigrant children now wonders what the
federal government is hiding after he was denied access to the facility. "There is no excuse for
denying a Federal Representative from Oklahoma access to a federal facility in Oklahoma where
unaccompanied children are being held," Rep. Jim Bridenstine said in a statement following his
visit Tuesday to Ft. Sill Army base near Lawton.
Medical
staff warned: Keep your mouths shut about illegal immigrants or face arrest. A
government-contracted security force threatened to arrest doctors and nurses if they divulged any
information about the contagion threat at a refugee camp housing illegal alien children at Lackland
Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, sources say. In spite of the threat, several former camp
workers broke their confidentiality agreements and shared exclusive details with me about the
dangerous conditions at the camp. They said taxpayers deserve to know about the contagious diseases
and the risks the children pose to Americans. I have agreed to not to disclose their identities
because they fear retaliation and prosecution.
Sharyl
Attkisson: Team Obama 'Has Perfected The Stall, The Delay, The Redaction, The Excuses'.
Attkisson spoke at length about the Benghazi scandal, pointing out the lack of information regarding the
timeline of events, something she has perceived to be a "basic question" because Americans "have no idea what
the Commander in Chief was doing" when the attacks transpired. Attkisson is of the understanding that the
administration would answer that basic question "if there was something positive to say about it."
So as a journalist the lack of answers has caused her to to be curious about a cover-up, so she has continued
to press for answers.
Memo
justifying drone killing of American Al Qaeda leader is released. Neither the U.S.
Constitution nor laws governing prosecution of people who commit murder abroad prohibited killing
American citizen Anwar Awlaki in Yemen, according to a previously secret Justice Department memo
released by a federal court Monday [6/23/2014]. Although the existence of the memo, written in
2010 to justify Awlaki's 2011 death by U.S. drone strike, has long been known, its precise legal
reasoning had been shrouded in secrecy. The ACLU and the New York Times sued for its release.
US
Media Restricted at Border, Federal Agent Cites Safety Concerns. A remote section of
the U.S.-Mexico border near the Anzalduas International Bridge is one of the few places where media
can witness and record the mass crossings of minors coming from Central America. The U.S. Border
Patrol is now restricting journalists' access to the area citing safety concerns.
Counting
Lies: How Obama Deepens Distrust in the Presidency. Along with two wars and massive
debt, President Bush left Barack Obama a legacy of false statements — nearly 1,000 of
them on the Iraq War alone, according to Charles Lewis, author of "935 Lies: The Future of Truth
and the Decline of America's Moral Integrity." After promising the most transparent and ethical
administration in history, Obama picked up where Bush left off — further eroding the
public's faith in the presidency.
Obama
Officials Refuse To Provide Data About Flood of Illegals. White House officials won't say how many of the
illegal immigrants now flooding up from Central America have been given a courtroom date to ask for green cards.
"I will take a look and see if those numbers are available," White House Josh Earnest told frustrated reporters at the
Friday White House press conference. Earnest's evasion came after multiple questions from Fox News' Ed Henry and
NBC's Jim Avila.
Washington
Still Ordering Border Patrol Not To Speak On Crisis. Thousands of illegal immigrants —
mostly from Central America — have overwhelmed U.S. resources and facilities. Amid what has
been labeled a "humanitarian crisis," Border Patrol agents and spokespeople outside of Washington, D.C. have been
ordered not to provide any information regarding the situation. When asked about the status of the thousands
of children who have crossed the U.S.-Mexico border illegally this year, Tucson Border Patrol spokesman Bryan Flowers
told Breitbart Texas that due to orders from Washington, D.C. "we cannot give out those details."
Most
transparent administration ever telling local police to keep surveillance secret.
This isn't a matter of an Obama administration official whispering in local law enforcement's ears
or sending a vague memo. They've been actively interfering in public records requests and lawsuits:
[...] As we know, local law enforcement is well on its way to becoming baby military forces, with
MRAPs, riot gear galore, and firepower sometimes akin to the U.S. Marine Corps. Now, we know
they're becoming baby NSAs, and being just as secretive about it. What I find most discouraging
about this story is that, if you can't get any clear idea from your local government about where
and how it might be capable of spying on you, there is no chance you're going to get any answers
from the feds.
Officials
are now trying to silence border patrol officers from talking to the media. Border
Patrol agents overwhelmed by a recent influx of immigrant children crossing the border illegally
have been knowingly letting gang members enter the country. Art Del Cueto, president of the
National Border Patrol Council Local 2544 in Tucson, Arizona told the National Review that officers
who recognize gang tattoos on the minors are supposed to treat them like everyone else. For the
most part, that means letting these unaccompanied children be reunited with their parents or other
relatives already living in the United States. 'It's upsetting that a lot of them are 16 or
17 years old and a lot of them are not going to face deportation,' Cueto said.
Obama
and Prosecutorial Misconduct. To understand the (politely-put) "lack of transparency" from the White
House, the enormous politicization of the Department of Justice, the release of Taliban leaders from Guantanamo,
refusal to cooperate with congressional investigations, the IRS's harassment of political opponents, and the
cover-up of Benghazi, read on.
Claim:
DHS Secretly Housing Would-Be DREAM Kids at Texas Military Base. Department of
Homeland Security officials are secretly housing the Central American children surging across the
southern border in a Army airfield hangar that has not been identified as "an illegal immigrant
processing/holding center" by the federal government, a watchdog group reports, citing a
"high-level source" at the military installation. Busloads of people are being sent to
Fort Bliss, Texas, according to Judicial Watch.
IRS
Says It Lost Two Years of Lerner E-mails. House Ways and Means Commitee chairman Dave
Camp has hit a roadblock in his investigation of the Internal Revenue Service's targeting of
conservative groups: The IRS says it has lost over two years' worth of e-mails sent by former
agency official Lois Lerner, the one of the chief subjects of the committee's investigation.
Camp, who is retiring in November, is calling for an investigation into the matter and forensic
audits by the Department of Justice and Treasury Department Inspector General for Tax Administration.
Lois
Lerner's "Lost" Emails. Eliana [Johnson]'s report is just stunning — no
matter how many times similar "mishaps" have occurred in this administration. The IRS, like other
government agencies, has lots of reasons to maintain e-mails, so I'm curious about whether they
will be similarly informing courts, Congress, litigants, FOIA petitioners, and other people and
bodies they must periodically make disclosures and reports to that they've lost nearly two years'
worth of agency communications? Or was this just one of those highly, highly unusual computer
crashes that affects only the e-mail account of Lois Lerner and any executive branch official with
whom she happened to exchange messages?
The two-year gap.
The IRS has informed the House Ways and Means Committee that it has lost Lois Lerner email messages
from January 2009 — April 2011. Harkening back to the allegedly accidental erasure of
18½ minutes of critical Oval Office recordings that contributed to Richard Nixon's resignation
from office, the IRS attributes the loss of Lerner email to a computer crash. Some email survives: the
agency retains Lerner email to and from other IRS employees during this period. The IRS claims it
cannot produce email written only to or from Lerner and outside agencies or groups, such as the White House,
Treasury, Department of Justice, FEC, or offices of Democrat congressmen. Funny how that works.
The Editor says...
This story is simply not believable because she could not have lost a selective part of her email
due to the crash of her personal computer. Her email resides on a server, and the servers have backups.
IRS
Claims to Have Lost Over 2 Years of Lerner Emails. Today [Friday 6/13/2014], Ways and
Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-MI) issued the following statement regarding the Internal
Revenue Service informing the Committee that they have lost Lois Lerner emails from a period of
January 2009 — April 2011. Due to a supposed computer crash, the agency only has Lerner
emails to and from other IRS employees during this time frame. The IRS claims it cannot produce
emails written only to or from Lerner and outside agencies or groups, such as the White House,
Treasury, Department of Justice, FEC, or Democrat offices.
Exactly what one would expect in Cuba or North Korea:
Border
Patrol Agents Threatened with Criminal Charges for Speaking to Reporters. A surge of
thousands of illegal immigrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border has left federal resources and
facilities overwhelmed. Most of the new migrants are children from Central America. In the
aftermath of Breitbart Texas releasing photos showing minors warehoused in crowded U.S. cells, Border
Patrol agents in Texas have been instructed not to speak to media outlets.
Doctor:
Obama still chewing nicotine gum, Vitamin D deficient. President Obama seems to have
kicked his cigarette habit — thanks to the continued use of nicotine gum, according to
his doctor. "The president's overall health is excellent. All clinical data indicates that the
president is currently healthy and that he will remain so for the duration of his presidency," the
White House said today in releasing details about the president's latest physical.
The Editor says...
Not mentioned in the report, as far as I can tell: Any evidence of cocaine or marijuana usage.
Palm
Springs: President to arrive Friday evening. President Barack Obama and first lady
Michelle Obama should land at Palm Springs International Airport at about 6 p.m. Friday [6/13/2014],
straight from a visit to the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota. [...] What is Obama's plan
here in the Coachella Valley? Presumably a short vacation, and likely a round of golf or
two — though the details remain fuzzy.
The Editor says...
Obama's entire life is "fuzzy."
In
Bowe Bergdahl hearing, Chuck Hagel hedges the tough questions. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel
is not a lawyer. He's not famous for lawyerly evasions. But when it came to a few of the most
critical issues discussed at the House Armed Services Committee's hearing on the Bowe Bergdahl case Wednesday [6/11/2014],
Hagel was full of wiggle words. Actually, just one wiggle word — "direct" —
but Hagel used it repeatedly to sow confusion about some key questions.
Report:
WH Orchestrated Campaign Of Threats and Intimidation Against Servicemen To Keep Them Quiet About
Bergdahl. Huffpo columnist Bill Robinson joined Fox and Friends Monday morning with
some exclusive info from a Pentagon official. Robinson said the official wanted the American people
to know that there's a bigger story about the Bergdahl swap that isn't being told — including the
claim that servicemen received threats and intimidation from the White House to keep quiet.
Judicial
Watch Threatens To Sue Feds Over Communications Behind Dinesh D'Souza's Arrest.
Judicial Watch says it will sue the federal government if it doesn't hand over communications
relating to the arrest of 2016: Obama's America star Dinesh D'Souza. For now, Judicial
Watch has filed a FOIA request to gain the information, but the nonpartisan group warns legal
action may be needed to force the government into transparency.
US
State Dept Still Won't Say If It Paid to Get Bergdahl Back. When the Obama
administration isn't lying, it's just denying giving us any answers at all. [...] "I have not heard
anything about cash, I'm happy to check," said State spokeswoman Marie Harf when asked about the
prospect at Monday's press briefing. [...] "I'm happy to check." Yeah, no she isn't. Checking means
having to answer directly, and that's something that Marie Harf and her cohorts in the Obama
administration just won't do.
After
Leaked Photos Expose Unaccompanied Child Crisis, Border Patrol Agents Threatened With
Firings. Last week, photos surfaced from Texas and Arizona showing Border Patrol
processing centers overwhelmed as thousands of unaccompanied children from Central America continue
to need shelter and resources. The photos show hundreds of children sleeping in crowded, chain
linked cages. Agents have described the situation as a humanitarian crisis. In response to
the leaked images out of Arizona, Patrol Agent in Charge Leslie Lawson is cracking down on the use of
personal technology by agents in the Nogales Border Patrol processing center.
Reporters
Revolt As Obama Officials Stonewall On Aliens Released From Custody.
With illegal immigrants streaming across the southern border, senior Obama administration
officials couldn't provide reporters specific information about how many have been released from
custody into the U.S. on a conference call with reporters Monday [6/9/2014], prompting frustration
from the 4th Estate. The call was on "background," which means that the government officials
providing the information can be quoted, but not by name, a fact that didn't sit well with the
first questioner.
TSA
'Abusively and Arbitrarily' Using Security Designation to Hide Information. The
Transportation Security Administration has been misusing its power to withhold certain sensitive
documents from view under the guise of maintaining safety, according to a congressional report,
while actually endeavoring to keep potentially disconcerting information from the public eye. [...]
According to the new report, the Federal Aviation Administration in 1974 created a category for
sensitive but unclassified information popularly known as "Sensitive Security Information" and
issued regulations prohibiting the disclosure of information designated as such as detrimental to
transportation security. Under the regulation, documents designated as SSI were exempted from
release under the Freedom of Information Act.
How
Obama's media strategy unraveled with recovered POW. [President Obama] He has stiffed
the White House press corps, not only by denying reporters access to him but by creating a force
field of discipline that keeps his staff from talking about what is going on in any way. The
public gets what little White House information it has from Obama's own propaganda
stream — official tweets, Instagram photos and mini-events carefully manufactured for
positive media effect. Meanwhile, the administration as a whole has declared a cold war against
the media it does not control.
Hillary Shares
Secret Lunch With Obama at White House. The White House pool reporter confirms a People magazine
tweet saying that President Obama had lunch today [5/29/2014] with Hillary Clinton.
Hillary Clinton's (almost)
off-the-record lunch with Obama. President Obama had lunch at the White House with Hillary Clinton Thursday [5/29/2014],
an event that likely would have gone unnoticed had People Magazine not sent out a tweet of its Washington bureau chief with Clinton.
Who
pays for first lady's fabulous fashions? The financing of the first lady's wardrobe is something that the Obama White
House is loath to discuss.
Did
Hillary know about the Bergdahl swap last week? Last week, the White House caused a
stir among the press corps by failing to announce that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton had met for
a private lunch. Reporters began questioning the White House after People Magazine tweeted about
the Thursday lunch meeting, which was not part of the public presidential schedule. People Magazine
deleted the tweet, but the White House finally confirmed that "The president enjoyed an informal,
private lunch with Secretary Clinton at the White House this afternoon" later in the day. Now
Republicans are wondering just how informal that lunch was.
Hillary's
secret 'lunch' with prez raises questions. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl officially became an issue in
the 2016 presidential race this week when Hillary Clinton backed the president's reckless swap for the soldier with
the Taliban. It looks good for both President Obama and Clinton, the presumed front-runner for her party, that
the Democrats stopped the war in Afghanistan and left no one on the battlefield, Christopher Bedford, managing
editor at dailycaller.com, told Herald Radio. What doesn't look so good is the coincidence that the
president did not initially disclose his lunch date with the former Secretary of State last week.
Guilty
until proven innocent in the age of ubiquitous electronic surveillance. Upon taking office, President Obama
issued a memorandum on the subject of transparency: "My Administration," he said, "is committed to creating an
unprecedented level of openness in Government. We will work together to ensure the public trust and establish
a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration. Openness will strengthen our democracy and
promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government." Apparently, though, in spite of this stated goal, the
Obama administration has been doing quite the opposite. Instead of sharing information openly with the
American people, they've been collecting information, in secret, about the American people, building the largest
domestic spying infrastructure known to man.
What Else is Obama Hiding?
Though the Obama administration tried to cover up the full extent of the website failure in the days following its launch, the lengthy
Judicial Watch document tells a tale of complete collapse. The document was forced out of this secretive administration by our
November 25, 2013, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit.
White
House won't say if Obama kept promise to return 5% of his salary. President Barack
Obama pledged in the spring of 2013 to give back 5 percent of his $400,000 salary in solidarity
with federal government workers who were expected to lose an average of two weeks' pay because of
automatic budget cuts — known in Washington parlance as a 'sequester.' A year later,
however, it's not clear that he made good on his $20,000 promise.
White
House Reporter Sent To Shed During Obama's Golf Game. As President Obama golfed
[5/17/2014] at the fancy Robert Trent Jones Golf Club in Gainesville, Va., an exclusive course that
has hosted four President's cups, the reporter was put in a maintenance shed. On the way to the
shed, Houston Chronicle's Kevin Diaz first waited in the equipment shack cafeteria (whatever
that means). Later, he was sent to a "maintenance shed" to wait out the President's golf game.
Lawsuit
follows Navy's stonewall on stonewalling information. Some parts of the government have a history of
stonewalling on information requests, but now one branch of the U.S. military has been accused of stonewalling on its
procedures on stonewalling. The Department of the Navy refuses to disclose its procedures for how it
answers — or doesn't answer — Freedom of Information Act requests. The Navy has
now refused to respond to a FOIA request by Judicial Watch for more than three months, prompting a lawsuit
by the taxpayer watchdog group.
CDC
Official 'Gets Very Worked Up' By Interview Request From Conservatives. Emails obtained by The Daily
Caller show that a spokesman at the Centers for Disease Control told an agency scientist to lie to a reporter to
avoid an interview, and that a senior press official at the agency "gets very worked up" by interview requests
from conservative media outlets. The freeze-out came in response to an inquiry into a study released in
February by the CDC, which found a drastic, 43-percent decline in obesity rates for children between 2 and
5 years old. The New York Times touted the findings in a front page article, and both the CDC and
first lady Michelle Obama tied the results to her Let's Move! anti-obesity campaign.
Show Us the Drone Memos.
I believe that killing an American citizen without a trial is an extraordinary concept and deserves serious debate.
I can't imagine appointing someone to the federal bench, one level below the Supreme Court, without fully understanding
that person's views concerning the extrajudicial killing of American citizens. But President Obama is seeking to
do just that. He has nominated David J. Barron, a Harvard law professor and a former acting assistant attorney
general, to a seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.
Obama
adds solar panels to White House, pressing his support for green energy. Citing security and other concerns,
the White House won't say how many panels now encase the top of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. or how much they cost.
Obama's
chief science adviser must explain secret emails. White House Office of Science and
Technology Policy Director John Holdren or somebody on his staff would have been well-advised to
heed Sir Walter Scott's poetic warning: "What a tangled web we weave when first we practice to
deceive." As a result, the Competitive Enterprise Institute filed suit in a federal court Monday
claiming Holdren violated federal law and regulation by doing something he specifically advised
employees not to do. That something was using a private email account to conduct official government
business. Holdren used the account he had held in his prior position as director of the Woods Hole
Research Center, a prominent environmental advocacy group.
Shocking
Charges at VA Likely To Be But the Start Of an Even Worse Scandal. The nation was
shocked by charges that more than 1,400 vets lingered and 40 died on a secret waiting list at the
Phoenix, Arizona, Veterans Administration A medical center. The list was concocted to conceal long
waits for care. What you haven't heard is even worse. VA hospitals all over the country are
manipulating the official electronic waiting list, and the deadly cover ups have been going on for years.
Toothless
EPA homeland security office bristles at oversight. When EPA officials began having doubts in
2012 about John Beale — a top adviser who bizarrely claimed he was missing work because he was
on secret CIA spy missions — they didn't go to the agency's inspector general for an investigation.
Instead, they went to the Environmental Protection Agency's little-known office of homeland security to
check out Beale's story. Beale's ruse eventually unraveled, but questions have emerged in the wake
of his time and attendance fraud case about the role of the EPA's homeland security operation.
Obama's
war on watchdogs. A Senate report last week revealed that the Obama administration
utterly debilitated the inspector general for the Homeland Security Department. Charles Edwards, the
acting IG from early 2011 till last December, toadied to Obama appointees at every opportunity —
stifling reports, deleting damning findings and boasting of his chumminess with agency chieftains.
Unfortunately, torpedoing oversight of the federal government's largest nonmilitary department fits
the administration's template of suppressing evidence of its debacles far and wide.
DHS
Covers Up Another Mexican Military Incursion Into U.S.. Another Mexican military incursion
into the United States occurred near San Diego this month and the Obama administration is trying to cover
it up, though officials at one Homeland Security agency have come forward with the startling details.
The infiltration took place a few weeks ago at a cross-border drug tunnel recently discovered by federal
authorities. The U.S. Border Patrol was charged with guarding the tunnel, which runs under the U.S.-Mexico
border and leads to a warehouse in Otay Mesa. A group of at least five armed Mexican military soldiers
came through the tunnel on April 1 and attempted to enter California through the warehouse, according
to an account posted on the Border Patrol's local union website.
Release Obama's Benghazi intelligence briefings. President
Obama claims he was only repeating what the intelligence community told him when his administration asserted that
the attack in Benghazi began with a spontaneous protest inspired by an Internet video. If that's the case,
there is a simple way to prove it: Give the new congressional select committee investigating Benghazi his
daily intelligence briefings that show exactly what he was told.
Issa:
WH Withholding Benghazi Docs 'Disturbing and Perhaps Criminal'. During the Committee hearing
on Benghazi, Congressman Darrell Issa, chairman of the Oversight and Reform Committee complained that the
Benghazi documents recently released by the White House to Judicial Watch in response to their FOIA request,
should have been turned over to Congress a year and a half ago.
Seizing
Control: A Better Way to Cover the White House. The typical White House reporter considers President Obama's
team the most secretive in memory, stingier with information than the tight-lipped Bush White House and, according to a
Politico survey, prone to lie. The press corps also is relatively inexperienced, with 39 percent on the beat
five years or less, and nearly 60 percent in their first decade. Most of these extraordinary reporters were
never stonewalled by President Clinton's team, deceived by Bush's advisers or bullied by any of their predecessors.
I was. Yes, I'm pretty old. With age comes the experience and arrogance required to advise the
hard-working White House press corps.
Reporters
Say [the] Obama White House [is the] 'Most Secretive' Ever. Fifty percent of White House reporters
say a White House official has lied to them and 42 percent agree that the Obama White House is "the most
secretive" they've ever covered while only 20 percent disagree, according to a new survey by Politico Magazine.
The survey, based on a lengthy questionnaire filled out by 61 correspondents who cover the presidency, shows a deep
skepticism toward the Obama administration and reflects a tension between the media and the president and his
aides — a situation that has been customary over the years regardless of who was in the Oval Office.
Sources:
Sebelius Now Refusing To Testify Before Senate Panel. Outgoing Health and Human Services Sec. Kathleen
Sebelius is now refusing to testify before the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services,
Education, and Related Agencies, a Senate aide told The Daily Caller Tuesday [4/29/2014]. Sebelius had originally
been set to testify before the subcommittee about the department's 2015 $70 billion budget request on April 2.
[...] Now, after announcing her resignation on April 11, she is refusing to testify according to the two aides,
even though she is still the sitting secretary — remaining at the post until her successor, OMB Director
Sylvia Mathews Burwell is confirmed.
Read
Almost Every White House Reporter Mock Obama's Transparency Claims. For most of President Barack
Obama's first term, and even the early part of his second, the president has proudly asserted that his is the
"most transparent administration" in American history. That claim invited some scrutiny at first, but
incredulity quickly took hold. New York Times Executive Editor Jill Abramson famously called
this "the most secretive White House I have ever dealt with." The Associated Press has lodged complaints
over blocking the access of their photographers to the president, favoring instead internal image-crafters
which some say smacks of a state-run media. Even the White House Correspondents Association has expressed
frustration with this administration's lack of openness.
Cummings
Responds to 'Shockingly Disrespectful' Kerry Benghazi Subpoena. The top Democrat on
the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee accused Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) of
creating conflict just to reap publicity with his subpoena of Secretary of State John Kerry. The
subpoena tells Kerry to appear at a May 21 hearing to answer more questions about Benghazi — in
particular, the State Department's unwillingness to hand over requested documents to the committee.
In a three-page letter to Kerry accompanying the subpoena, Issa outlines the State Department's evasiveness
with the committee and stresses that "compliance with a subpoena for documents is not a game."
A fatal wait: Veterans
languish and die on a VA hospital's secret list. At least 40 U.S. veterans died waiting for
appointments at the Phoenix Veterans Affairs Health Care system, many of whom were placed on a secret waiting
list. The secret list was part of an elaborate scheme designed by Veterans Affairs managers in Phoenix
who were trying to hide that 1,400 to 1,600 sick veterans were forced to wait months to see a doctor, according
to a recently retired top VA doctor and several high-level sources.
Arizona
VA boss accused of covering up veterans' deaths linked to previous scandal. A Veterans Affairs
official accused of keeping double books to hide the fact that dozens of veterans died awaiting care previously
ran a Washington state VA facility that allegedly fudged suicide numbers, FoxNews.com has learned. Sharon
Helman, director of the Phoenix Veterans Affairs Health Care system, is accused with other management officials
of keeping a fake waiting list that made it appear sick veterans were being treated in a timely manner — while
hiding the real list that showed up to 1,600 sick veterans were waiting months to see a physician.
Obama
and the Most [REDACTED] Administration in History. Good news: thanks to a ruling by
the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Monday, the "most transparent administration in history" is
going to have to tell American citizens when it believes it's legally entitled to kill them.
The lawsuit arose out of Freedom of Information Act requests by two New York Times reporters for
Office of Legal Counsel memoranda exploring the circumstances under which it would be legal for U.S.
personnel to target American citizens. The administration stonewalled, asserting that "the very fact
of the existence or nonexistence of such documents is itself classified," and a federal district judge
upheld the refusal in January 2013.
Communications Crackdown.
Members of the intelligence community are now forbidden from unapproved contact with reporters, according to a
memo issued last month by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. The March directive,
obtained by the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) Project on Government Secrecy, says members of the
intelligence community "must obtain authorization for contacts with the media" regarding intelligence matters.
While the directive refers to intelligence matters, it makes no distinction between classified or unclassified
information.
Barack
Obama and the politics of lies. Since it became painfully clear in 2013 that Obama had
lied about Obamacare since 2009, it has been increasingly difficult for many Americans to continue
accepting at face value his statements on other major public issues. In both the Benghazi and IRS
scandals, for example, Obama claimed to have known nothing about them until they were reported in the
national media. But if that were true, why has the president's attorney general and so many
other of his most prominent appointees withheld thousands of documents subpoenaed by Congress and
requested by journalists under the Freedom of Information Act? Are there passages in those
withheld documents that make it clear Obama knew much more than he has admitted?
Census
Survey Revisions Mask Health Law Effects. The Census Bureau, the authoritative source of health
insurance data for more than three decades, is changing its annual survey so thoroughly that it will be difficult
to measure the effects of President Obama's health care law in the next report, due this fall, census officials said.
Bureau
secrets: 'Censusgate' e-mails fail the smell test. What is the Census Bureau hiding?
Census, which is under investigation by several government agencies and by Congress, is refusing to
turn over an estimated 1,900 e-mails and text messages between a regional supervisor in its Philadelphia
office, where falsification of unemployment data took place, and a colleague in its Chicago region, whom a
source has identified as the supervisor's mentor and confidant.
White
House defends closed press Obama moment of silence. The president and aides will observe the
anniversary of the deadly [Boston Marathon] attack behind closed doors at 2:29 p.m., exactly one year
after two pressure cookers packed with shrapnel detonated near the finish line of the raise. "The
president's going to have a moment of silence in the Oval Office. There will be some senior advisers
there," said White House press secretary Jay Carney, adding that the tribute was coming "during the
course of a meeting."
The Editor says...
Sounds like a really important meeting. Maybe a teleprompter salesman is coming by with a few samples.
Or maybe the whole story is an outright lie, and there won't be any moment of silence, because
Mr. Obama doesn't grieve over Islamic terrorist attacks,
since he is a Muslim.
Is
Obama Cooking the Census Books for Obamacare? For several months now, whenever the topic of
enrollment in the Affordable Care Act came up, I've been saying that it was too soon to tell its ultimate
effects. We don't know how many people have paid for their new insurance policies, or how many of those
who bought policies were previously uninsured. For that, I said, we will have to wait for Census Bureau
data, which offer the best assessment of the insurance status of the whole population. Other surveys are
available, but the samples are smaller, so they're not as good; the census is the gold standard.
Unfortunately, as I invariably noted, these data won't be available until 2015. I stand corrected:
These data won't be available at all. Ever.
New
Census Questions Will Change ObamaCare Findings; Networks Ignore. New Census questions
will change the findings on the impact of ObamaCare, reported the New York Times on Tuesday.
The broadcast networks ignored this new report on the Tuesday evening newscasts, however. In fact,
a census official told the Times they "are expecting much lower numbers" of the uninsured "just
because of the questions and how they are asked." As the Times stated, the Census Bureau "is
changing its annual survey so thoroughly that it will be difficult to measure the effects of President
Obama's health care law in the next report, due this fall, census officials said."
Jay
Carney: No timetable for releasing information about Obamacare sign-ups. White House
spokesman Jay Carney said he doesn't know when the administration plans to release more information
about the 7.5 million Americans who signed up for Obamacare on the federal exchanges by the
March 31 deadline. The Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Medicare
and Medicaid Services "are working to crunch the numbers and assess the data and collect it in a way that
provides as much information as possible," he said Monday during his daily briefing with reporters.
"I don't have a timetable for when that would happen," he added.
This Is Probably
The LAST Award The Obama White House Wanted To Win. The Obama administration has won an award named after
America's third president, Thomas Jefferson. That's the "good" news. The bad news? The award is the
"Jefferson Muzzle," which the administration won for spying on the news media and limiting journalists' access to
Obama. The "coveted" awards announced Wednesday by the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free
Expression are presented to people and institutions that engage in the most egregious affronts to the First Amendment.
The ObamaCare
Copperheads. In the Rose Garden Tuesday, President Obama reported that 7.1 million people
had signed up so far, confirming a Monday night White House news leak. "That doesn't mean all our
health-care problems have been solved forever," he conceded with customary modesty. The government appears
to have tapped heretofore-unknown reserves of bureaucratic efficiency by releasing numbers timed to this
campaign-style pep rally. Yet for months the Health and Human Services Department has refused to disclose
crucial contextual data, such as how many insurance contracts are in force, the market-by-market totals and how
many beneficiaries were previously covered. Regardless of your partisan sympathies, the White House's
selective disclosure is a crime against transparency and accountable government.
Captain Obama and the
wreck of the Hesperus. As with so many of the actions taken by the Obama administration, it is difficult
to ascertain exactly when and how he and his minions arrived at the convoluted decision to launch an insecure website
and gut their own "individual mandate." After announcing on his first full day in office that his would be the
most "transparent administration in history," Obama has conducted his affairs in such secrecy that Judicial Watch has
been forced to file more than 2,500 Freedom of Information (FOIA) requests and nearly 150 FOIA lawsuits in an effort
to uncover the secrets guarded by Obama's Justice Department and other federal agency lawyers.
Appeals
court rules against Justice in DeLay FOIA case. A federal appeals court on Tuesday [4/1/2014]
said that the Justice Department did not provide good enough reason to withhold documents related to its
investigation into former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. The appeals court overturned a district
court ruling that had allowed the department to withhold documents related to its case against DeLay.
It remanded the decision back to the district court, which will give the Justice Department another
opportunity to argue why the documents should not be released.
VA
Hides Names of Hospitals Where Vets Died From Delays. The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA)
blocked the release of the names of hospitals where 19 veterans died because of delays in medical
screenings, leading to calls for transparency from news outlets and a bipartisan group of Capitol Hill
lawmakers. Earlier this month, the VA denied a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request from
Tampa Tribune reporter Howard Altman, who had been investigating the deaths.
U.S.
Gives Russia Free Military Equipment Used By Army, Marines. Behind closed doors the U.S. government
is giving Russia free military equipment — also used to train American troops — even after President
Obama announced punitive sanctions against Moscow and, more importantly, a suspension in military engagement
over the invasion and occupation of Ukraine. The secret operation was exposed this week by members of
Congress that discovered it in the process of reviewing the Fiscal Year 2014 budget and the proposed Fiscal
Year 2015 budget request. It turns out that the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has
been providing the Russian Federation with the Multiple Integrated Laser Engagement System (MILES), the
federal legislators say.
Turning
over Lerner e-mails could take years, IRS says. Internal Revenue Service documents requested by
the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee could take years to produce, the IRS commissioner said.
At a hearing Wednesday [3/26/2014], Commissioner John Koskinen sparred with Republicans over the breadth of the
investigation into the agency's handling of applications for tax-exempt status of conservative groups.
Issa
to IRS Commissioner: Release Lerner's Emails or Face Contempt. Six months ago, Chairman of the House
Oversight Committee Darrell Issa subpoenaed the emails of former head of IRS Tax Exempt Organizations Lois Lerner.
Lerner was in charge during the IRS' inappropriate targeting of conservative, patriot and tea party groups.
IRS officials have failed to comply with the subpoena and today during a hearing on Capitol Hill, Issa threatened IRS
Commissioner John A. Koskinen, one of only two political appointees at the agency, with contempt.
"Unfortunately you've been more concerned with managing political fallout than complying with this Committee," Issa
said, urging Koskinen to comply or "potentially be held in contempt."
Trey
Gowdy threatens to hold IRS commissioner in contempt for withholding Lerner emails. After a
contentious Wednesday hearing with IRS Commissioner John Koskinen, South Carolina Republican congressman Trey
Gowdy threatened to hold the top tax official in contempt of Congress unless he produces disgraced IRS official
Lois Lerner's emails by the end of this week. Gowdy spoke with Fox News' Greta van Susteren about Wednesday's
hearing, where a slew of GOP congressmen tore into Koskinen's claim that responding to the Oversight committee's
subpoena for Lerner's emails could take years.
Reporter protests being 'detained' by Capitol police for
trying to question EPA head Gina McCarthy. U.S. Capitol police officers "detained" a
journalist who was attempting to question Environmental Protection Agency administrator Gina McCarthy,
according to the reporter, who was released after a background check.
NY
Times Reporter: Obama WH 'Greatest Enemy of Press Freedom' Today. New York Times reporter
James Risen has been in a years-long legal battle against the government to reveal one of his confidential
sources, even petitioning the Supreme Court to hear his case. He's been very critical of President
Obama's administration for its "aggressive use of the powers of the government to try to rein in independent
national security reporting," and in a recent journalism forum, Risen took another shot at the White House
for being an enemy of press freedom.
James
Risen: Obama hates the press. New York Times reporter James Risen said Sunday [10/5/2014] that
none of the current leak investigations would be happening if President Barack Obama did not hate the media
so much, the Morning Sentinel of Maine reports. "I don't think any of this would be happening under the
Obama administration if Obama didn't want to do it," Risen said at Colby College in Maine after he received the
Elijah Parish Lovejoy award for journalism. "I think Obama hates the press. I think he doesn't like
the press and he hates leaks." Risen could face jail time for refusing to reveal his sources about a failed
CIA operation, though Attorney General Eric Holder and Obama have indicated Risen will not go to jail.
Obama Secretly
Rewrote FOIA to Exclude His And All WH Docs. On April 15, 2009, a mere four months after he
was sworn into office, the president decided to secretly rewrite the Freedom Of Information Act, which is designed
to inform the public and provide oversight of various government activities and behavior to keep any of what it
called "White House equities" from being released without a White House review. [...] An actual Speaker of the
House who had respect for congress and cared about the Constitution would make a major public stink, bring
charges in the House and submit them to the senate for trial to force the Democrats to vote against such an
outright violation of law — if they dared. Unfortunately, John Boehner isn't that kind of Speaker.
Ego te absolvo. Carlota Gall of the
New York Times describes what — if true — must be the biggest cover up in of all of the Obama
administration's checkered history. Her article is titled "What Pakistan Knew About Bin Laden". But it is really
about what the Obama administration knew that Pakistan knew about Bin Laden. The answer, as far as she can tell is that
Washington knows for a fact that Osama bin Laden was Pakistan's creature. They know it was Pakistan — or factions
within it — that ran the whole war on terror. But, she writes, the Obama administration has made a policy
decision to ignore this perfidy, since to publicly acknowledge Islamabad's guilt would force the administration to act in
ways they are not prepared to act.
The
most transparent administration, cont. On Tuesday night, The New York Times reported that no reporters
would be traveling with First Lady Michelle Obama to China, and that she would be giving no interviews while there.
Nicholas Kristof, the Times columnist, called the First Lady's decision "a mistake," and said it "signals weakness or
fear of coverage."
Mainstream
Press to Obama: Thank You, Sir, May I Have Another? How much abuse will the mainstream media take before
they stand up for themselves? When the abuse comes from the Obama administration, their tolerance appears
to be unlimited. This week, for example, two things happened that should have sent reporters into a frenzy of
outrage. First, there were reports that the Obama administration has effectively crippled the Freedom of Information
Act, despite Obama's promise of unequaled transparency. [...] Next, we learned that Michelle Obama has banned the
press from her taxpayer-paid China visit.
Hmm:
Hillary Camp Claims Zero Emails Exist Between Top Spokesman and Reporters. More censorship, less responsiveness,
longer FOIA wait times — and it's gotten worse. This president is a fraud. But that's old news.
Obama is unpopular, he's lost independents, and he's on the fast track to lame duck status. But she who would be queen
is another story. Charles Krauthammer has long discussed the administration's successful and ongoing stonewall on the
Benghazi massacre, but that matter doesn't appear to be the only front on which Clinton's protectors are fogging over details.
AP
photographer hits White House: 'Once we lose access, we'll never get it back'. The Associated Press has
stepped up its attack on White House efforts to block coverage of events involving President Obama, warning that once
access is cut, "we'll never get it back." In the latest media charge that the White House has reneged on promises to be
"transparent," two of AP's White House staff told a convention in Denver this week that the president's team often bars
coverage of Obama events because they are "hypersensitive" about his image.
The
Pentagon Spent $2.7 Billion on an Intelligence System That Doesn't Work. Here's another item for the (long)
list of spectacular waste in the Pentagon's budget: a $2.7-billion intelligence program that's supposed to help
Army troops on the ground collect and use intelligence on enemy fighters. It sounds like a good idea, but the
thing is, the Army's Distributed Common Ground System doesn't actually do that, according to report from Foreign Policy.
The article cites an internal assessment of the DCGS's effectiveness, long requested by Congress but kept under wraps by
the Pentagon for eight months. Probably because they didn't feel like talking about such a spectacular failure.
Dealing with
Michelle Obama's press office is no cake walk. Earlier this week, Dylan Byers, the media writer for Politico,
detailed his dealings that day with Michelle Obama's press office and just how difficult it was to get his question answered.
"It's absolutely terrible," he wrote me by email. The information Byers sought involved a NYT report that
no reporters would be accompanying the first lady on her trip to China. NYT's Nick Kristoff said the
call was a bad one. Byers wanted to know why the decision was made in the first place. "A spokesperson
for the First Lady responded to my inquiry but declared the response 'off the record,' meaning I wasn't allowed to
use the information therein," he wrote in a post.
No Reporters on Michelle
Obama's Trip to China. First Lady Michelle Obama will be accompanied by her children and her mother on her trip
to China, which begins today. But she won't be accompanied by the press. "Michelle Obama's trip to China starting
on Wednesday will be nonpolitical, the White House says, a 'people-to-people exchange' emphasizing the importance that both
nations place on education. As if to underscore the point, no reporters are traveling with the first lady, and she
does not plan to give interviews while there," reports the New York Times.
'Most
transparent' White House ever rewrote the FOIA to suppress politically sensitive docs. It's Sunshine Week, so
perhaps some enterprising White House reporter will ask press secretary Jay Carney why President Obama rewrote the Freedom of
Information Act without telling the rest of America. The rewrite came in an April 15, 2009, memo from then-White
House Counsel Greg Craig instructing the executive branch to let White House officials review any documents sought by FOIA
requestors that involved "White House equities." That phrase is nowhere to be found in the FOIA, yet the Obama White
House effectively amended the law to create a new exception to justify keeping public documents locked away from the public.
Democrats
armed with wealth of EPA records; Little trace of FOIA requests from Republicans. Democrats have filed more
than 50 FOIA requests, including lots seeking correspondence between Republicans and EPA officials — letters that
operatives will scour for any hint that politicians' rhetoric doesn't square with how they conduct themselves outside
of public view. Their findings help supply a steady flow of material for damaging news stories and campaign ads.
Twenty-eight of the Democrats' requests have been completed. [...] Republican political committees have filed just four
requests since 2012, and none of those has been fulfilled.
Obama's
most transparent presidency in history isn't. One of Obama's most famous sunken promises, which he still occasionally
tries to re-float with Chicago-style chutzpah, was that his would be the most transparent presidential administration in history.
The first signs of trouble came early when Vice President Joe Biden's public schedule showed he had a meeting set to review the
administration's transparency efforts with its head of transparency efforts. But those meetings on transparency were closed.
It's been downhill ever since. With Obama's Justice Department even launching criminal investigations into unauthorized
releases of information.
US cites security more to censor, deny
records. The Obama administration more often than ever censored government files or outright denied access to
them last year under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act, according to a new analysis of federal data by The Associated Press.
Despite vows of help, White House
withholds thousands of documents from Senate CIA probe. The White House has been withholding for five years more than
9,000 top-secret documents sought by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence for its investigation into the now-defunct CIA
detention and interrogation program, even though President Barack Obama hasn't exercised a claim of executive privilege. In
contrast to public assertions that it supports the committee's work, the White House has ignored or rejected offers in multiple
meetings and in letters to find ways for the committee to review the records, a McClatchy investigation has found.
Obama
secretly waives individual mandate for millions, tries to hide it from view. Wow. The administration is more politically
desperate than thought. Now they are waiving the individual mandate in secret and intentionally trying to conceal it.
Oh, by
the way: Obama just quietly suspended ObamaCare's individual mandate until 2016. The "hardship" exemption applies only to people who
used to have insurance, and it applies only for this enrollment period. The mandate penalty would continue to bite people who didn't have
insurance before, which seems unfair, and it'd be back in full force this fall even for people who did have it, right around the time that America
votes in the midterms. And so a political problem gets a policy solution. Again.
Why
won't the White House explain how off-budget ObamaCare money got spent? [I]t became clear early on that the Obama
administration miscalculated the operational costs of ObamaCare when Kathleen Sebelius began pressuring insurers to contribute
to Enroll America after the non-profit hired Obama administration figure Anne Filipic to assist HHS in preparing people for
the sign-up launch in October. Republicans called this an attempt to get around the Constitution by creating new lines of
funding for executive-branch operations, while they also wondered exactly where HHS got its funding for other efforts in ObamaCare.
Under
legal fire, State Dept. hands over docs on 'competence' of ambassadors. Facing legal action, the State Department
on Friday [3/7/2014] responded to a request for documents about the qualifications of President Obama's ambassadorial nominees.
The American Foreign Service Association, the labor union for career diplomats, has been dissatisfied with the backgrounds of several
recent administration picks for ambassadorships and on Thursday threatened to file suit against State for withholding information about
their qualifications.
Obama's unkept promises: a
scorecard. [One] goal Obama identified on his first day in office as key to his presidency was establishing a "sunshine"
administration. He pledged to end the excessive secrecy of the Bush administration and put more information in the public arena.
Obama's self-professed aim was to restore trust between the people and their government by pledging to promote accountability and provide
"information for citizens about what their government is doing." Toward that end, the president quickly released a number of previously
classified documents from the Bush years on torture policy. But that, as it happened, was the end of the sunshine. In the five
years since, little of note has occurred in the name of transparency and much, including a war against whistle-blowers, has been pursued
in the name of secrecy.
Whitewashing Benghazi. If a president were intent on covering
something up — something big, such as an illegal gun walking operation to Mexico or a dereliction of duty that gets Americans killed at a
diplomatic outpost in the Middle East — he would have to operate on as grand a scale as Obama has. He would have to insist that the
events were caused not by what the facts showed, but something cut from whole cloth. He and his administration's functionaries would have to
hide documents and shut people up to thwart congressional oversight. And, most importantly, he'd have to have the unquestioning support of
loyal minions who would lie and mislead on his behalf, [...]
Emails:
Another top EPA official used private email account to aid environmentalists. It pays to know people in charge, especially if they
are federal regulators. Emails suggest that an Environmental Protection Agency regional administrator used a private AOL email account to
correspond with environmentalists. Such email use is prohibited by agency rules and is seen as a way to skirt transparency requirements.
Emails show that EPA Region 2 Administrator Judith Enck gave advice to environmental activists, including securing government funding, getting
meetings with high-level officials and attending events.
Is Our Commander, Covert Or
Criminal? On January 1 an agreement between the United States and our most hostile enemy went into effect. This agreement was
secretly negotiated at secret meetings by a secret Presidential trip, and a secretive Secretary of State. This super secret agreement we were
told would bring peace in our time. [...] The only problem however is that there is now no way for "We The People" to know if our employee, one Barack
Hussein Obama, is telling the truth. And in our representative republic there is no way for our representatives — even ones legally
empowered to watch foreign affairs and national security specifically — to be able to know. Why? Because the President has the
text of the agreement — an agreement we are told is unclassified — being squirrelled away — and is off limits.
EPA's use of secret email addresses was
widespread: report. EPA employees' use of their own private email accounts to conduct government business was rampant among top-level officials,
according to according to a new report Thursday from Senate Republicans that accused the agency's own internal watchdog of botching an investigation.
Republicans on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee said their findings call into question the work of the EPA's inspector general, who in
September issued a report clearing the EPA of wrongdoing in the email scandal.
Suspense in Senate: Debt Vote Shrouded in
Secrecy. [O]n perhaps the most important vote of the year, the Senate did something extraordinary this week: It tried to keep the
vote tally secret until the outcome was assured.
Justice
bars lawyer from testifying before House panel in IRS probe. The Justice Department said Thursday it is refusing
to let a key lawyer testify to the House oversight committee on the criminal investigation into the IRS, saying that to let
her brief Congress could potentially skew its probe. But oversight committee Republicans said blocking lawyer Barbara
Bosserman from testifying only makes the Justice's investigation look more partisan.
Court rejects
secrecy for food stamp numbers. A federal appeals court has rejected the Obama Administration's attempt to keep secret the
government's data on how much individual retailers take in from the food stamp program. In a ruling Tuesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals
for the 8th Circuit turned down the U.S. Department of Agriculture's arguments that a provision in federal law protecting retailers' application
information from disclosure also barred disclosure of how much the feds pay out to specific businesses.
Obama to speak on economy at
Maryland Costco store. A day after he delivers his State of the Union address, President Obama will head to a Costco store in suburban
Maryland to speak about the economy, the White House announced Monday. The president's remarks, which are open to the media but closed to the
public, will come at Costco's Lanham store at about 10:30 a.m. Wednesday [1/29/2014].
[Emphasis added.]
Political Review Hampers FOIA Process, Watchdogs
Say. Government watchdog groups and reporters say political appointees have been given increased sway over Freedom of Information
Act (FOIA) requests in the Obama administration, slowing down the release of public records and introducing political pressure to the process.
Numerous federal agencies have adopted policies to review "significant" or "sensitive" FOIA requests. The White House also frequently
reviews FOIA requests it claims contain executive branch materials.
NY
Times Editor Jill Abramson: Obama White House the 'Most Secretive' I've Ever Dealt With. New York Times editor Jill
Abramson sat down for an in-depth interview with Al Jazeera America recently. She discussed issues ranging from Edward Snowden
to the the [sic] future of the print industry, but in perhaps the most candid moment of the interview, Abramson admitted that of all the
White Houses she's ever dealt with, the Obama administration is hands-down the "most secretive" thus far.
White House
imposes secrecy rules on First Lady's lavish, celebrity-filled birthday party. There was a party in the East Room of the White House Saturday night
[1/18/2014], an affair attended by a reported 500 people, a lavish celebration with celebrities galore, appearances by some of the world's most popular performers,
lots of dancing and powerful government officials, including, of course, the most powerful official of all, the President of the United States. And the White
House wants to make sure you know as little as possible about it. [...] [M]aybe, since the president has announced he is devoting the rest of his time in office to
an "inequality agenda," the White House felt photos of a champagne-soaked, star-studded party would be somewhat off-message.
Obamacare Questions the White House
Won't Answer. The Obama administration's signature domestic policy achievement has been marked by an unwillingness to
directly answer basic questions about the law and its implementation. When it comes to Obamacare, the most transparent
administration in history is anything but. Months after the launch of the exchanges, key questions about the law remain
unanswered. First among those is how many people have actually enrolled. Not merely signed up, but enrolled,
by picking a plan, requesting a bill, and paying the first month's premium.
Obama has low-key holiday in
Hawaii. While his administration has sent out formal statements, and campaign organizations have e-mailed fundraising solicitations
under his name, Obama has also gotten in daily workouts, hiking and beach trips, dinners with friends and family and six golf outings in his home
state. Obama has also signed bills into law and conducted a series of briefings, all behind closed doors.
Administration says 2.1 million enrolled in Obamacare but won't say how many
paid. The Obama administration announced Tuesday that 2.1 million people had enrolled in health plans ahead of the start
of new Obamacare exchanges in 2014, but officials could not say how many Americans had actually paid for their coverage.
The Most Underreported Domestic News Stories of 2013.
To put it bluntly: nobody knows nothin' about the president of the United States, aka the leader of the free world. And what
little we do know is highly uninformative and often contradictory. In a world where every phone call, email, text message,
Tweet, Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook post, [etc. ...] has been recorded digitally for posterity and beyond, nobody knows what
Barack Obama even got in freshman English. (Well, maybe the NSA does, but they're not telling.) Does this matter?
I don't know — and that's the point. In an administration that once proclaimed that it would be transparent like
no other, but now has lied like no other, one can only guess.
Obama's albatross: Transparency.
Five years into his presidency, Barack Obama might have been reaping kudos for ushering in a new era of transparency in government. Instead,
he's under fire for his administration's secrecy. The White House has faced a fusillade of high-profile complaints in recent weeks from all
corners of Washington.
Obamacare deadline
secretly pushed back to tomorrow night rather than tonight. Americans had been told that they would have to sign up for health
insurance through the ever-breaking healthcare.gov site by the end of Monday night but now it has been revealed that the deadline has been covertly
pushed back one more day to try to give more people a chance. Two anonymous officials announced that the 11.59 pm deadline that had been
set for tonight was pushed back to Tuesday- Christmas Eve- over the weekend, according to The Washington Post.
Obama
administration secretly extends health care enrollment deadline by a day. At midnight Monday, the official deadline arrives for Americans
to sign up through the new federal health insurance exchange for health plans that begin Jan. 1. But, without any public announcement,
Obama administration officials have changed the rules so that people will have an extra day to enroll, according to two individuals with knowledge
of the switch.
Susan
Rice: NSA Officials Didn't Lie, They 'Inadvertently Made False Representations'. National Security Advisor Susan Rice appeared on Sunday
night's 60 Minutes with Lesley Stahl, and one of the issues she addressed was the continued fallout from the Edward Snowden NSA leaks. Rice
argued that NSA officials didn't lie about intel dragnets, they just "inadvertently made false representations." This statement comes as House
Republicans are demanding a criminal probe for Director of National Intelligence James Clapper for his flat-out denial in March, three months before the
Snowden leaks began, that the NSA collects data on hundreds of millions of Americans (a denial that Clapper later categorized as the "least untruthful"
answer he could have provided).
Court Rejects Obama Admin Executive Privilege
Arguments. A federal judge Tuesday [12/17/2013] rejected the Obama administration's sweeping claims of executive privilege and ordered the
disclosure of a foreign aid directive signed by President Barack Obama in 2010 but never publicly released. U.S. District Court Judge Ellen Huvelle
ruled the presidential order is not within the bounds of executive privilege and called the government's arguments in favor of secrecy "troubling."
"The government appears to adopt the cavalier attitude that the President should be permitted to convey orders throughout the Executive Branch without public
oversight ... to engage in what is in effect governance by 'secret law,'" Huvelle said.
Judge smacks Obama secrecy in unique FOIA
case. In a Freedom of Information Act victory, a federal judge has slapped the Obama administration for its secretive ways and ordered
officials to turn over a bland-sounding foreign policy document. Chastising what she called "the government's unwarranted expansion of the
presidential communications privilege at the expense of the public's interest in disclosure," U.S. District Judge Ellen Seal Huvelle ruled the
Presidential Policy Directive on Global Development is not exempt from FOIA.
Finally, the media revolt against
another empty Obama vow. Sentient Americans will remember Obama's vow that his would be the most transparent presidential administration in history.
Yeah, right. Remember how ObamaCare was going to be written wide-open on C-SPAN? Uh-huh. Obama even appointed someone in full-time charge of
pushing transparency everywhere. That worked so well that when Joe Biden met with him to check on progress, the meeting was closed to the media. Twice.
White House press corps tees off on Jay Carney
over access. A frustrated press corps sounded off Thursday [12/12/2013] against White House press secretary Jay Carney over lack of access to President
Barack Obama. Carney said the White House "is working" to address the concerns, noting that the administration has been meeting with the White House
Correspondents' Association. He did not, however, give further details about what steps are being taken to expand access.
This is how Mr. Obama pretends to be accessible:
Steve Harvey Interviews Obama, Avoids Politics.
Steve Harvey got the chance for a one-on-one interview the President of the United States this week, a rare opportunity for a journalist let alone a comedian.
Harvey made one item clear up front about his exclusive chat — he didn't ask President Barack Obama any political questions.
Obama's Orwellian Image Control. Mr. Obama's
administration — in hypocritical defiance of the principles of openness and transparency he campaigned on — has systematically
tried to bypass the media by releasing a sanitized visual record of his activities through official photographs and videos, at the expense of independent
journalistic access. The White House-based press corps was prohibited from photographing Mr. Obama on his first day at work in January 2009.
Instead, a set of carefully vetted images was released. Since then the press has been allowed to photograph him alone in the Oval Office only
twice: in 2009 and in 2010, both times when he was speaking on the phone.
Bush Spends
90 Minutes with Reporters on Air Force One, Obama Avoids Them. There's nothing like a communal flight with the current
president of the United States and his predecessor to make the press miss the days of a communicative commander in chief. [...] The
Obamas have stayed in their cabin for the flight, according to the White House pool report from the refueling stop in Senegal, while
President Bush came to the press cabin twice for a total of about an hour and a half.
Hidden Obamacare
Website Costs Show Lack of Transparency. President Barack Obama's health agency said it has spent $319 million building
an online health-insurance marketplace through October. More than three years after the passage of Obama's signature health-care law
in 2010, it's almost impossible to verify and track that spending through public records. What the estimates don't include is the
around-the-clock effort to repair the website, which hundreds of thousands of Americans found unusable after its Oct. 1 debut.
NBC, ABC News Press White
House on Secret Sebelius Meetings. During Friday's White House briefing, Jonathan Karl of ABC News and Peter Alexander of NBC News
both pressed White House spokesman Jay Carney on a Government Accountability Institute (GAI) report that found President Obama and Health and
Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius had met only once during the three and half years after the passage of ObamaCare.
Obama's Wretchedly Convoluted
Presidency. An administration that can't be trusted accurately to provide basic biographical information about the president is an
administration that can't be trusted to provide accurate information about anything. What we have in Barack Obama is not "the most
transparent administration in history" but the most convoluted one. And we have this convoluted presidency not because Obama is our
first dishonest chief executive but because he's the first who had to conceal from the American people the essence of who he really is and
what he really stands for.
IRS
lawyer at the center of tea-party targeting scandal told Congress 'I don't recall' — a whopping 80 times!. A top
lawyer at the Internal Revenue Service told congressmen quizzing him over the tea party targeting scandal 'I don't recall' a 'staggering 80 times
in fill or partial response to the committees questions', a letter revealed today [12/4/2013]. The letter was sent to Chief counsel William
Wilkins by two powerful House Republicans who gave him until December 10 to 'amend' his statements.
What if It's All True? [Scroll down] To put it
bluntly, Occam's Razor has moved. Things that were once possibilities now seem almost certainties to me. Principal among those is that
Obama's academic records are perpetually unavailable for a reason — and that reason is most likely that they reveal he received financial
preferences, scholarships and/or loans, as a foreign student. They probably also reveal academic mediocrity, but that's par for the course for
many of our politicians (except it becomes embarrassing in Obama's case where he has the reputation of being brilliant).
Rogers: WH
wouldn't brief us on Healthcare.gov security gaps — even in closed session. Rep. Mike Rogers provides a cheery thought on
personal security as the White House gears up to sell ObamaCare all over again. Last night, he told Greta van Susteren that data security on
Healthcare.gov didn't even meet "minimal standards" for the industry. In terms of the "private-sector velocity and efficiency" claimed by the
Obama administration over the last couple of days, Rogers says that experts warned him that they would be sued out of business if they rolled out a
website with this many security gaps.
CMS won't reveal error rate
for sharing data with insurers. The White House is trumpeting fixes to the healthcare.gov website, saying it met a self-imposed Nov. 30
deadline to deliver a smooth user experience to the "vast majority" of consumers. Insurers, however, say the federal website is nowhere near fixed,
citing back-end issues with the online marketplaces. Insurance companies say they have been unable to receive data on many users who have
successfully enrolled in Obamacare exchanges, preventing them from registering those consumers for the correct insurance plans.
NPR Reporter
Frustrated by WH's Transparency: 'Have to Take Their Word' on Obamacare Site Fixes. On Saturday [11/30/2013], the White House reached the
self-imposed deadline it set to ensure that HealthCare.Gov functions for at least 80 percent of visitors. While the White House is indicating
that a number of goals it set for itself have been met, National Public Radio's health policy correspondent Julie Rovner said she found verifying the
Obama administration's claims "frustrating." She added that the administration has not provided reporters with "independent access" to the data they
claim shows that they have largely repaired the federal insurance exchange portal.
Feds
refuse to tell House committee about their global warming spending. Eleven federal agencies that declined to testify at a
Sept. 18 hearing on their global warming spending also missed a Nov. 22 deadline to provide a congressional panel with written
information about the issue. The House Committee on Energy and Commerce asked officials at 14 agencies to testify at the
hearing. When the agencies said none of their top officials were available, the committee extended its invitation to any available
staff member. Still, all but the Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency refused to provide a witness, citing
scheduling conflicts.
Obama's
photo policy smacks of propaganda. The White House has increasingly excluded news photographers from Obama's official events
and is instead releasing images taken by in-house photographers, who are government employees. These photos often appear online and
in newspapers, even though they lack the same standards of authenticity that govern those taken by photojournalists.
The Obama Administration and the
Press. U.S. President Barack Obama came into office pledging open government, but he has fallen short of his promise.
Journalists and transparency advocates say the White House curbs routine disclosure of information and deploys its own media to evade
scrutiny by the press. Aggressive prosecution of leakers of classified information and broad electronic surveillance programs deter
government sources from speaking to journalists. [...] "This is the most closed, control freak administration I've ever covered," said
David E. Sanger, veteran chief Washington correspondent of The New York Times.
Newsroom Protests Against White House Spread.
USA Today on Monday [11/25/2013] joined a growing list of news agencies boycotting the use of official White House photography over
what it says is an unprecedented lack of access to the president. USA Today Deputy Director of Multimedia Andrew Scott said in a
memo to staff the publication will not use "handout photos originating from the White House Press Office, except in very extraordinary
circumstances." USA Today is now one of more than 35 news agencies refusing to use White House photography.
Photographers Protest White House
Restriction. A mutiny has erupted among photographers who cover President Obama over what they say is the White House's increasing
practice of excluding them from events involving the president and then releasing its own photos or video. On Thursday, the White House
Correspondents' Association and 37 news organizations submitted a letter to the press secretary, Jay Carney, protesting what photographers said
amounted to the establishment of the White House's own Soviet-style news service, which gets privileged access to Mr. Obama at the expense of
journalists who cover the president.
White House blocks access to Obama events, news
groups say. The nation's largest news organizations lodged a complaint Thursday [11/21/2013] against the White House for imposing
unprecedented limitations on photojournalists covering President Barack Obama, which they say have harmed the public's ability to monitor its own
government. The organizations accuse the White House of banning photojournalists from covering Obama at some events, and then later releasing
its own photos and videos of the same events.
Journalists,
Networks Decry Obama White House's 'Troubling Precedent' on Press Access. On Thursday, CBS's Sharyl Attkisson reported on Twitter that the
White House Correspondents Association, along with "dozens of associations & media outlets", sent a letter of protest to White House Press Secretary Jay
Carney. Attkisson outlined in subsequent Tweets that the letter blasted the Obama administration for restricting the access of photojournalists at certain
presidential events, "while releasing government photos and videos of the same events".
Obama's Image Machine:
Monopolistic Propaganda Funded by You. Obama's image-makers are taking advantage of new technologies that democratized the media, subverting
independent news organizations that hold the president accountable. A generation ago, a few mainstream media organizations held a monopoly on public
information about the White House. Today, the White House itself is behaving monopolistic.
White House photogs seek more
access. Nearly 40 news outlets and organizations signed a letter Thursday [11/21/2013] urging the White House to relax its restrictions
on news photographers when covering the president. The group, including major wire services and TV networks, said the White House is replacing
"photojournalism with visual press releases" by barring photographers from certain meetings at the White House, then releasing its own photos of the
events through social media.
Report:
Valerie Jarrett Led Secret Negotiations with Iran for Past Year. The Times Of Israel is reporting that a team of negotiators led by White
House adviser Valerie Jarrett has been conducting secret talks with Iran about it's nuclear weapons program for the past year.
Obama Negotiates IP Treaty
in Secret, Lets Special Interests Run Wild. Remember when Obama campaigned on not having lobbyists in the White House? Well
now he's having them write our international treaties. The Founding Fathers explicitly rejected European conceptions of copyright by
instead creating a limited short term for copyright and ensuring that it was also limited in scope. But the Obama Administration, at the
behest of Hollywood lobbyists and other special interests, is negotiating to incorporate international and European conceptions on copyright to
supersede the U.S. Constitution.
President
Obama and His Gang That (Still) Isn't Shooting Straight. Incompetence is one thing. Secrecy is another. The administration
that promised to be the most transparent ever settled on the "80-percent-is-better-than-nothing" construction without making it public.
Top White House officials refuse
to testify on Obamacare. On Nov. 7, Rep. Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, along with
subcommittee chairman Rep. Jim Jordan, sent the White House a letter requesting testimony from top Obama aides Nancy-Ann DeParle and Jeanne Lambrew.
Both are leading figures shaping the White House position in Obamacare design and implementation. Issa wanted them to appear at a Nov. 20
hearing on the so-far disastrous rollout of the president's national health care scheme.
The Obamacare hearings are
getting ugly. What began as a congressional request for a bureaucrat's testimony has, over the course of a few days, escalated into an
all-out Obamacare war. This is the story of the House Oversight Committee's request to have White House Chief Technology Officer Todd Park
appear at a Wednesday [11/13/2013] hearing about the rollout of HealthCare.gov. The hearing, announced last Thursday, listed Park among the
five witnesses — all members of the Obama administration — called to testify. The White House had attempted to decline
the invitation the day before, [...]
Obamacare IT chief
really, really doesn't want to testify. Todd Park is the administration's Chief Technology Officer. Before taking the job in 2012,
he was head of technology at the Department of Health and Human Services, where his biggest project was the development of the Obamacare website
healthcare.gov. Now, as he oversees the administration's tech efforts, his biggest project is still healthcare.gov. That is why Rep.
Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, wants Park to testify at a hearing Wednesday on the Obamacare
rollout. But Park doesn't want to talk, as Issa is finding out.
White House blocks tech
chief from testifying on Obamacare. The Obama administration is refusing to make Todd Park, one of the chief technology officials repairing
HealthCare.gov, available for a hearing next Wednesday [11/13/2013] with House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa. They say he's too busy right now fixing
the Obamacare enrollment portal.
Energy Dept. failed to report concerns as green-tech firm was heading for bankruptcy. The
Department of Energy failed to disclose concerns about a green-technology company that won $135 million in federal funding but ended up filing
for bankruptcy in September, according to a watchdog report released this week. DOE Inspector General Gregory Friedman noted that the firm, San
Francisco-based Ecotality, is still due to receive $26 million from the agency for testing electric vehicles.
Dispute Over Obamacare Tech Official Not
Testifying. The White House declined this week to make Chief Technology Officer Todd Park available to testify at a House Oversight hearing
next Wednesday on the rollout of Healthcare.gov. White House Assistant Director for Legislative Affairs Donna Pignatelli said Mr. Park is
currently too busy helping fix the troubled healthcare website to appear, and suggested he testify in early December instead.
The Editor says...
I find Mr. Park's excuse to be feeble and incompetent. Appearing before a congressional hearing would be part of fixing the website's
problems.
Pentagon kills Early Bird daily news digest.
The Pentagon's Early Bird, an influential daily digest of news and opinion articles about the military that began early in the Cold War, died Friday
[11/1/2013], another victim of digital news and the government's desire to control the flow of information.
Key House committee threatens Obama admin.
with subpoena over health care data. House Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp, Michigan Republican, sent a stern letter Friday [11/1/2013]
to Marilyn Tavenner, the federal official closest to the health care law's implementation, that threatened to subpoena the records from the Centers for
Medicare and Medicaid Services. "The Committee is not prepared to wait until 'around mid-November' for the Administration's scrubbed and spun numbers,"
Mr. Camp wrote.
O-Care stonewall: Media
stymied. CNN, ABC, MSNBC and others have filed Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) seeking information on the beleaguered healthcare.gov website.
They have also asked for government documents revealing how many people have enrolled in the new healthcare exchanges. Journalists have repeatedly
pressed the White House and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) for the enrollment data, but the administration says it won't do so until
mid-November. Republicans have noted that President Obama has dropped hints he is aware of the enrollment figures. In a recent speech,
Obama said "thousands" have signed up.
Carney slams reporter, to hide another Obama deception.
ABC News' Jon Karl highlighted another Obamacare deception Nov. 4, prompting White House spokesman Jay Carney to retaliate with mockery, mimicry and
misdirection. Carney is having a tough few weeks because he volunteered to defend President Barack Obama's catastrophically mismanaged rollout of the
Obamacare network.
Jay Carney Mimics and Sneers at ABC News'
Jon Karl During Daily Briefing. White House Press Secretary Jay Carney has become increasingly animated and explicit in his pushback against some
reporters, and at Monday's daily briefing that trend continued with a lively exchange in which Carney openly mocked and mimicked ABC News Chief White House
Correspondent Jonathan Karl.
WH: We Have
'Rough Estimate' of Enrollment Figures, But Won't Release to Public. White House press secretary Jay Carney revealed that the administration
has "rough" Obamacare enrollment numbers, but that it is waiting to release them to the general public until they're more reliable. [...] Carney's
comments come a day after reports that just six people enrolled on the federal exchanges when the Healthcare.gov website launched last month.
AP editors: Obama relies on staged propaganda
photos. Editors of The Associated Press condemned the White House's refusal to give photojournalists real access to President Obama, who
prefers to circulate press release-style pictures taken by his own paid photographers. These official photographs are little more than propaganda,
according to AP director of photography Santiago Lyon. The AP has only been permitted to photograph the president alone in the Oval Office on two
occasions — both in his first term — and has never been allowed to photograph the president with his staff in the office.
First Crony Michelle
Obama's Big Business Bonanza. On Wednesday, Mrs. Obama announced an agreement by the Sesame Workshop and the Produce Marketing Association
(PMA) to join her nonprofit Partnership for a Healthier America (PHA) in a two-year agreement to help promote fresh fruit and vegetable consumption to
kids. [...] Joining her for the rollout of that initiative: Hollywood actress Eva Longoria, who gets paid to promote sugary soda pop Pepsi when
she's not standing by Michelle Obama telling the rest of us to drink more healthy water. Mrs. Obama's nonprofit reportedly has assets of
$4.5 million. It doesn't have to disclose its donors. So much for the "most transparent administration ever."
More hot water for Sebelius and the ObamaCare
crew. It's not particularly surprising to learn that Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has followed the time-honored
Obama Administration practice of refusing to hand over documents requested by Congress. I'm honestly not sure why House Oversight bothers making
polite requests with generous deadlines any more. Subpoenas are the only way to get the attention of the Most Transparent Administration In History,
and even then it's hit and miss.
ObamaCare sites fail to rate insurance
plans. The consumer ratings are called for in the Affordable Care Act. They would be provided by a respected independent company,
allowing consumers to judge health plans by treatment outcome, service and consumer satisfaction. Federal and state officials, though, largely
decided it would reflect poorly on the insurance exchanges if some companies were rated and others were not — and have not yet published them.
Benghazi witnesses grilled in secret on Capitol Hill.
Two of the Justice Department's key witnesses in last year's terrorist attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya, were summoned to Capitol Hill this month
and grilled for hours in separate legal depositions. [...] How those highly guarded and secret interviews came about was part of an increasingly bitter dispute
between two branches of the federal government.
The Editor asks...
Why the secrecy?
Why is Obama hiding Joe Biden? Where is Joe Biden? For 16 days,
the federal government was shut down, and yet the White House's ambassador to the Senate was invisible. ObamaCare rolled out [...] and the guy who
dubbed it a BFD had not a word to say.
Federal officials still mum on many Obamacare website problems.
Former White House aide Jeffrey Zients, who is heading up the administration's efforts to rescue the malfunctioning website, briefed reporters on
behalf of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services on Friday [10/25/2013], but continued to remain vague about both the problems and possible
solutions. Zients still refused to say how many people had enrolled through the new health care exchanges. He also refused to predict
how many people would enroll by the Dec 15 enrollment deadline.
Has He Got a Health-Care Deal for You. On Oct. 16, Consumer
Reports offered this advice: "Stay away from Healthcare.gov for at least another month if you can." This will likely keep the Obama administration
from reaching its goal of having seven million Americans (2.7 million of them young people) signed up for coverage through the exchanges when the
enrollment period for 2014 ends March 31. It will take signing up 38,461 Americans a day to reach that target. The White House refuses
to say how many people have signed up so far, either because that number is shockingly low or because its screwed-up computer systems can't
report it.
[Emphasis added.]
White House Declares
ObamaCare Truth Telling A Firing Offense. One can be forgiven for wondering if this White House has some wimpy aversion to firing anyone, given
the scale of unpunished blundering seen in the Benghazi attack, the IRS suppression of political dissent, the Fast and Furious gunrunning scandal and now the
incompetence of the ObamaCare rollout. But there does seem to be one offense where a red line has been drawn: telling the truth. That's what
cost ObamaCare telephone operator Earline Davis her job.
Newspaper presses FOIA
fight for food stamp payment data. South Dakota's Argus Leader newspaper urged a federal appeals court Wednesday to reverse a ruling blocking
the newspaper from receiving data on how much the federal government pays to stores that redeeem food stamp benefits. Jon Arneson, an attorney for the
newspaper, told a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit that a lower court judge misinterpreted the law by ruling that a confidentiality
provision for retailer applications allowed the U.S. Department of Agriculture to withhold all data on payments to those retailers.
Homeland Security, Energy employees
confidentially cashing in on 'official time'. Federal agencies hide the names of employees they pay to work full-time for labor unions by claiming
their right to privacy trumps taxpayers' right to know how the government spends their money. Federal law allows agencies to provide full civil service pay
and benefits to employees even though they work full- or part-time for government unions. But finding out how many such "official time" employees there are
in a particular agency can be all but impossible.
Obamacare
Operator Fired After Taking Call From Hannity. On the top of Thursday's broadcast of his radio show, Sean Hannity revealed Earline Davis, the
Obamacare operator he called early in his Monday show, got fired. Hannity quizzed her on how well the law is being received by applicants and she
revealed no one liked it. Hannity had Davis on his show today and revealed he will give her a year's salary of $26,000 and help her find a new job.
Why Was
Obamacare Hotline Operator Fired, But Sebelius Still Has a Job? Sean Hannity appeared on Fox & Friends Friday morning to
discuss his pledge to help former Obamacare hotline operator Earline Davis because she was fired as a result of taking the radio host's
call on Monday afternoon [10/21/2013]. Recounting the story of how Davis was fired one day after that fateful phone call, Hannity
lamented that Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is still gainfully employed.
Obama Admin Asks Blue
Cross Blue Shield to Hide Poor Enrollment Numbers. In a bombshell revelation, a consumer sales manager for North Dakota's largest health insurer said Monday
[10/21/2013] that the Obama Administration asked Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Dakota to hide how many people registered for health insurance through an online exchange
that just went up. James Nichol of Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Dakota told a forum in Fargo that the Obama Administration had made the request.
Feds invoke 'privacy' to
shield public employees while snooping on the rest of us. Even as Washington gets heat for snooping on ordinary Americans and warning them that they
"have no reasonable expectation of privacy" on Healthcare.gov, federal officials are increasingly using the "personal privacy" exemption in the law to shield their
employees from scrutiny, according to open government advocates. Information about pay bonuses, disciplinary actions and severance packages are being withheld
by federal agencies citing the personal privacy concerns of their employees.
Ryan blasts Sebelius'
silence on ObamaCare implementation inquiries. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has repeatedly rebuffed requests by House
Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan to testify on ObamaCare implementation, Fox News has learned, raising more questions about what the administration knew
about problems with the site in advance of the troubled launch.
Obamacare's Rollout Is a Disaster That
Didn't Have to Happen. Obama promised open innovation and transparency. Yet startups and hackers are forced to take a backseat to state-run websites, a
mediocre government contractor secured the lucrative deal to build the federal exchange, and both HealthCare.gov's code and enrollment numbers are locked up by
tight-lipped bureaucrats.
The Editor says...
Obamacare will inevitably implode, because Marxism fails every time it is attempted, and the Obamacare scheme is just a collectivist middle man between you and
your health insurance company. There is no value added by Obamacare — it is a tax collection mechanism that siphons money out of the health
care industry, and it does this under threat of imprisonment. Obamacare is a meddling parasite at best, and heavy-handed tyranny at worst. In
that regard, it is a reflection of Obama himself.
GOP shut out of Dem-only Obamacare briefing. House Republicans
say they're being left out of an Obamacare briefing from a White House officials who are coming to the Hill to brief Democratic allies on Wednesday. Mike Hash, who leads
the HHS Office of Health Reform, is scheduled to brief Democrats on implementation of the law at the Democrats' weekly caucus meeting.
White House Obamacare team: Best, brightest —
and a mystery. The "best and the brightest" also appear to be the cloaked and elusive. President Barack Obama insists he's culled the country's tech elite
to help repair the mangled Healthcare.gov website. But the administration hasn't made its smart new crew public, and any of the tech companies or federal contractors
involved remain tight-lipped.
State Department swept sex scandals under the rug. Months after
whistleblowers accused the State Department of covering up employee sex scandals, most of the cases have been ignored or swept under the rug, critics charge. Records
show that staffers were given cushy jobs or allowed to retire, and watchdogs say the feds have hardly bothered to investigate since the shenanigans came to light this past
summer.
Barnicle: Obama Administration Lying About Enrollment Numbers.
Obamacare came under fire Monday morning [10/21/2013] on Morning Joe, with the panel pointing out that the Obama administration has been too secretive about the
healthcare program. "They are lying about the numbers of who have enrolled, the numbers of people who have made the process complete, the numbers of people who have
actually signed up," said show mainstay Mike Barnicle.
Obamacare figures leave a lot unsaid.
The administration hopes to get 7 million people enrolled in coverage through the exchanges by the end of March, and millions more on Medicaid.
But the longer the computer problems persist, the harder it will be to meet that goal. To get covered by Jan. 1, people must enroll by Dec. 15.
But they can still sign up for coverage until the end of March 2014. Administration officials Saturday night would not release any information beyond
the raw number of applications.
Obama's
Secret Collaboration with ACORN Bosses. Former officers of the disgraced radical group ACORN are
still advising the Obama administration and guiding its catastrophic far-left policies almost three years after
the group filed bankruptcy. Former ACORN Housing public affairs director Bruce Dorpalen, who now runs the
National Housing Resource Center (NHRC), has been meeting with and advising senior Obama administration officials on
housing policy, according to good-government group Judicial Watch. The watchdog discovered the secret
collaborations after filing a Freedom of Information Act (FoIA) request.
Healthcare.gov Obama's biggest lollygag to date. A website up and running
smoothly would be the best education in existence to teach people exactly how much ObamaCare is going to cost them. Obama can't afford that kind of
knowledge coming out until he and his Democrats are safely past next year's midterms. Forbes magazine hit the nail on the head when it headlined "Obama's
Website is Crashing Because It Doesn't Want You to Know How Costly Its Plans Are".
Sebelius to Attend Gala, but Unable to
Testify About Obamacare. [Video clip]
Under Obama, Journalism Is an Inside Game.
Yesterday the Committee to Protect Journalism released a report on the Obama administration and the press. [...] One of the more disturbing points this report
raises is that while the name of the game might be "free and open," there is nevertheless a large quantity of officially sanctioned communication only.
The HHS Secretary refuses to testify about ObamaCare's rollout.
Sebelius on the Run. The Affordable Care
Act's botched rollout has stunned its media cheering section, and it even seems to have surprised the law's architects. The problems run much
deeper than even critics expected, and whatever federal officials, White House aides and outside contractors are doing to fix them isn't working.
But who knows? Omerta is the word of the day as the Obama Administration withholds information from the public.
ObamaCare's Black Box. The White House set
low expectations for the Affordable Care Act's October 1 debut, so anything remotely competent should have seemed like a success. But three
weeks on, the catastrophe that is Healthcare.gov and the 36 insurance exchanges run by the federal government is an insult to the "glitches"
President Obama said were inevitable. This isn't some coding error, or even the Health and Human Service Department's usual incompetence.
The failures that have all but disabled ObamaCare are the result of deliberate political choices, which HHS and the White House are compounding with
secrecy and stonewalling.
From the Start, Signs of Trouble at
Health Portal. For the past 12 days, a system costing more than $400 million and billed as a one-stop click-and-go hub for citizens
seeking health insurance has thwarted the efforts of millions to simply log in. The growing national outcry has deeply embarrassed the White House,
which has refused to say how many people have enrolled through the federal exchange.
Why Is Obama Hiding
ObamaCare Enrollment Data? After spending three-and-a-half years and $634 million building its ObamaCare exchange, the administration
claims it can't manage to produce any enrollment data. [...] That makes no sense, since the 14 states running their own ObamaCare exchanges have
already released their first week's enrollment figures. New York says 40,000 signed up, for example, and California claims 28,000 did so.
The only conceivable explanation for Sebelius' refusal to do likewise is that the federal enrollment number is embarrassingly small.
Obama Administration Casts A Chill
On Journalism. Barack Obama gave his word there'd be "a system of transparency" and "openness" in his administration. Like so many
other promises, this one was broken, too. This president runs a secretive operation.
Study: Obama Admin Most Secretive Since Nixon.
A new report issued by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) asserts that the Obama White House is the most insular in decades, and the worst since the Nixon Administration
for its secrecy and lack of transparency. The report was based on interviews with upper echelon Washington reporters and news organization chiefs.
Report: Obama administration most secretive since Nixon.
The Obama White House's war against leaks, and its penchant for secrecy and noted lack of transparency, are the worst "since the Nixon administration," according to a major new study that
relied on interviews from leading Washington reporters and news organization chiefs. The report, released Thursday by the Committee to Project Journalists, found that reporters from
many major media outlets consider the Obama administration the most closed-off in recent memory, and that there is not "any precedent" for its often hostile relationship toward the press.
White House takes down White House
visitor logs, blames Republicans. The White House has taken down online White House visitor logs and blamed Congress. The logs,
which were posted beginning in December 2009 "as part of President Obama's commitment to government transparency," are the latest victims of a
partial government shutdown that has temporarily idled 17 percent of the federal workforce.
The Obama Administration and the Press. U.S.
President Barack Obama came into office pledging open government, but he has fallen short of his promise. Journalists and transparency advocates say the White
House curbs routine disclosure of information and deploys its own media to evade scrutiny by the press. Aggressive prosecution of leakers of classified information
and broad electronic surveillance programs deter government sources from speaking to journalists.
Most Transparent
Administation, Evah feeling a little defensive. Last week, a veteran New York Times reporter dubbed the Obama administration the "most
closed, control-freak administration I've ever covered" in a preview of Leonard Downie's special report on the White House's supposed commitment to transparency
for the Committee to Protect Journalists. That full report was released on Thursday, and let's just say that things did not get much more flattering for the
Obama administration.
What are you hiding, Mr. President? The "most transparent administration in history" will not reveal the
federal enrollment numbers for Obamacare. A White House spokesman said it could be "weeks" before the Obama administration releases Obamacare enrollment figures.
Your tax dollars pay for Obamacare, unfortunately. But your president can't be bothered to reveal how many — or how few — people have actually signed up.
Do you smell whitewash?
EPA officials cleared of email abuse charges.
The EPA has failed to train its employees or give them sufficient guidance about abiding by open-records laws, according to an inspector general's report released
Monday [10/7/2013] that chides the agency but clears top-level employees of intentionally trying to hide information by using private email accounts.
Investigators said they talked with top-level employees and found no intent to deceive the public.
Conservatives Demand Info on Obamacare Rollout Failure.
Conservative critics of Obamacare want to know how many people have actually purchased insurance through the president's signature legislation following the
glitch-ridden rollout of the Obamacare website last week. Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) launched a website Monday — obamacarecoverup.com —
attacking the administration's refusal to release information about the number of enrollees.
Is This How IRS Cover-up Works? Darrell Issa, the chairman
of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, says he is confident the story behind the IRS's targeting of tea-party and conservative groups applying for
tax-exempt status will eventually come out. But patience will have to be a virtue. Issa's staff acknowledged late last month that the IRS had handed
over to the committee a little more than 10 percent of the documents the IRS itself has admitted are relevant to the committee's investigation.
Journalist:
Obama Admin is 'Most Closed, Control-Freak Administration I've Ever Covered'. In a long piece revealing the current antagonistic climate between
journalists and the Obama administration published in the Washington Post, Obama is called a "control-freak," as well as "secretive," and "manipulative,"
it is said he is fostering an atmosphere of fear both at home and abroad, and is delivering a "slap in the face" to reporters all over his increased use of
electronic surveillance of reporters.
FBI raids on homes in Texas, Michigan remain a
mystery. Federal officials on Monday remained silent on why they raided homes in Texas and Michigan this weekend that property records
indicate are owned in part by a Houston art appraiser.
The Editor says...
I find it hard to believe there's a valid reason for all the secrecy about what they were looking for, or what they found. My guess, based on the treatment
of Gibson Guitar, is that the "art appraiser" said or did something Barack H. Obama didn't like.
ATF tries to block Fast and
Furious whistle-blower from publishing book. The ATF agent who blew the whistle on Operation Fast and Furious has been denied permission to write
a book on the botched anti-gun trafficking sting "because it would have a negative impact on morale," according to the very agency responsible for the scandal.
After first trying to stop the operation internally, ATF Agent John Dodson went to Congress and eventually the media following the death of Border Patrol Agent
Brian Terry in December 2010.
ATF tries to block whistleblowing agent's
'Fast and Furious' book. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is blocking the main whistleblower in the Fast and Furious case
from publishing a book, claiming his retelling of the Mexico "gun-walking" scandal will hurt morale inside the embattled law enforcement agency, according to
documents obtained by The Washington Times. ATF's dispute with Special Agent John Dodson is setting up a First Amendment showdown that is poised to bring
together liberal groups like the American Civil Liberties Union and conservatives in Congress who have championed Mr. Dodson's protection as a whistleblower.
CEI Suit Seeks Injunction Against Ongoing EPA
Record Destruction. Beginning in April, CEI filed a series of Freedom of Information Act requests seeking text messages from the EPA-issued
personal data assistants of Gina McCarthy, then head of the EPA's Air and Radiation Office and now the agency's Administrator, and her predecessor Lisa Jackson.
CEI first asked for her texts on 18 specified days when she was known to have testified before Congress and been seen sending texts. After EPA
acknowledged no such records existed, CEI obtained information relating to McCarthy's PDA bill that showed she sent 5,392 text messages over a three-year
period.
NYT
reporter: Obama admin "most closed, control-freak administration I've ever covered". Does it even occur to [Leonard] Downie that
Obama's claim to deliver "the most transparent administration ever" (not just incrementally more transparent than before) was simply a load of
hogwash? Apparently not — because if Downie and the rest of the Obama-fawning media had to acknowledge that possibility, then
they would have to ask themselves why Obama would deliberately set out to make his administration the least transparent ever, as [Bob] Schieffer
acknowledges.
Court Says Holder Can't Stop Fast And
Furious Truth Search. The most transparent administration in history suffered a defeat Monday, when U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson
turned down the Justice Department's request to dismiss a lawsuit seeking "Fast and Furious" documents hidden by Attorney General Eric Holder and the Justice
Department after President Obama invoked executive privilege. The lawsuit was brought by Rep. Darrell Issa's House Oversight and Government Reform
Committee after the president asserted executive privilege to prevent records about the administration's response to the "Operation Fast and Furious"
gun-running scandal from being turned over to Congress.
Obama hides aid for criminals in immigration
bill. The White House is trying to hide unpopular provisions in the Senate's immigration bill that would allow immigrant criminals
to stay in the country and would increase the inflow of low-skill refugees from war-torn countries, says a top White House official. "The
bill has a number of other important provisions that have stayed under the radar, and we'd actually like to keep them under the radar," said
Esther Olavarria, the White House's director of immigration reform.
Orwell, Obama, and Totalitarianism.
Yes, mendacity is integral to totalitarianism. We have had a sample of it in Barack Obama's two administrations. From TARP to Obamacare
to Benghazi and now an off-and-on-and-off Syrian intervention, all the country has been fed is a continuing stream of lies, fabrications, and falsehoods.
Obama gave away his hand early on when he boasted that his term in office would be the "most transparent" in our history. On that faux
transparency, even liberal journalists are beginning to remove the rose-dyed gauze from their eyes.
Republicans think Labor
Department has secret Obamacare 'fix' for unions. Two Republican House lawmakers asked the Labor Department to provide "all legal analyses" it
has done on a proposed Obamacare "fix" sought by Big Labor. The lawmakers think the administration is secretly working on a such a fix but trying to
keep it hidden from the public.
EXography: No public tours,
but 344 visits by lobbyists to the White House. Regular American citizens visiting the nation's capital lost access to the White House in March as
President Obama eliminated public tours to make a point in his battle with House Republicans in the sequestration debate over cutting spending or raising taxes.
But hundreds of K Street lobbyists, including corporate advocates who are paid to influence policy on behalf of Fortune 500 giants, saw no change in
their access to the chief executive and his senior aides, according to a Washington Examiner analysis of White House visitor logs and lobbying records.
Surveillance and Arrogance. President Obama has
said that he welcomes a debate over the proper place of surveillance in a digital society. Perhaps such a debate would be fruitful and informative, and both sides would
contribute toward some kind of mutually acceptable compromise. The president has also claimed, essentially, that the government should be able to decide unilaterally
what information is available to facilitate that debate. When someone like Edward Snowden makes information available independently, the administration has argued, we
are all less safe. Those two arguments seem contradictory, since for a debate to be meaningful, everyone needs to be able to adduce evidence.
Former EPA Administrator Defiant over Use of Email Aliases.
Seven months after resigning as head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Lisa Jackson returned to the hot seat Tuesday [9/10/2013] to refute allegations she had
abused her official email accounts and used her own private account to circumvent open records requirements. Jackson, who used an email under the alias "Richard
Windsor" at the EPA, said the practice of using a secondary official account was common among former administrators from both parties.
The Editor says...
Really? Name the Republican officials who have used opposite-sex pseudonyms to send clandestine email about official business.
Lisa Jackson Denies Skirting FOIA Laws. Former Environmental Protection
Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson denied circumventing federal record law by using secret email addresses in testimony before the House Committee on Oversight and
Government Reform Tuesday [9/10/2013]. Jackson, who announced her resignation in December and is now the chief environmental officer at Apple, has been in the
crosshairs of congressional GOP investigators since it was discovered last year that she used a secondary EPA email address under the alias "Richard Windsor."
Obama administration had restrictions on NSA reversed in 2011. The Obama administration secretly won permission from a
surveillance court in 2011 to reverse restrictions on the National Security Agency's use of intercepted phone calls and e-mails, permitting the agency to search deliberately for
Americans' communications in its massive databases, according to interviews with government officials and recently declassified material.
Obama Secrecy Gambit over Visitor
Logs Succeeds in Court. You remember that great Obama proclamation, don't you? It came on January 21, 2009, the day after
assuming office. President Barack Obama then told his senior staff and cabinet members: "Let me say it as simply as I can:
Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency." On September 4, 2009, the Obama White House upped the
ante even further, proclaiming to the press: "Today, the President took another important step toward a more open and transparent
government by announcing a historic new policy to voluntarily disclose White House visitor access records." He added, "Americans
have a right to know whose voices are being heard in the policymaking process." And what have we gotten instead? Nothing but
lying, obfuscation and stonewalling.
The president thinks you're stupid.
But just so you know, Mr. President, Americans are not stupid. They see through your ham-handed attempt to politicize war (he clearly hoped to use a Republican
rejection in the 2014 mid-term campaigns: "Look, the GOP wouldn't even support me to stop the killing of children!"). And Americans know they aren't getting
the truth on U.S. surveillance, IRS targeting of conservatives, Fast and Furious — and especially Benghazi.
Appeals court says White
House visitor logs can be kept from public. President Obama and his successors in the Oval Office are not obligated to make public the names
of individuals visiting the White House, according to a decision of the federal Circuit Court for the District of Columbia made public Friday [8/30/2013].
The case was brought by Judicial Watch, the government watchdog nonprofit that has been fighting a long legal battle seeking to force release of the White
House visitor logs as public records under the Freedom of Information Act.
Snags Slow Formation of
Surveillance Review Group. Privacy and transparency advocates are dubious that Obama's group can independently examine potential or actual
abuses of data collection by December, especially in light of national anxieties about future terrorist attacks. They suspect the White House wants
to buy time in an effort to stave off congressional investigators before lawmakers head home at the end of the year.
CIA Authors "Secret Key" Unlocks CIA Redactions. "I was in the belly of the
beast. I began to see the lengths to which the CIA will go to conceal unconstitutional operations, hide information from Congress and silence anyone
inside who challenges it." Those are the words of Kevin M. Shipp, a former category 1, highly decorated CIA agent [...]
Transparency
at the Obama White House. President Obama frequently claims that he's leading "the most transparent administration in history," as
he asserted last February during a Google Plus "Fireside" Hangout. But that self-administered pat on the back is belied by The Washington
Post's recent account of how the president's spin doctors allegedly tried to rewrite quotes from reporter Barton Gellman's interview with the
National Security Agency's chief compliance officer.
Senator: Obama
Administration Secretly Suspended Military Aid to Egypt. On Capitol Hill, lawmakers and staffers complained that the administration is trying
to skirt congressional intent by refusing to say whether it believes there was a coup in Egypt while implementing its own preliminary punitive measures
outside the confines of the legislation.
5 decades later, some JFK assassination files still sealed; researchers demand 'transparency'.
Five decades after President John F. Kennedy was fatally shot and long after official inquiries ended, thousands of pages of investigative
documents remain withheld from public view.
Sharyl Attkisson Continues To Hit Roadblocks and Administration Refusals To Release Information.
We know of only two certainties within the White House timeline during the night of 9/11/12: 1. That both Obama and Biden were on the phone with
Benjamin Netanyahu between 6:30 and 7:28pm DC time. 2. That President Obama and Hillary Clinton talked around 10:00pm DC time about the event.
That's it. The time between the call with Netanyahu ending at 7:30pm (1:30am Benghazi) and Hillary at 10:00pm (4am Benghazi), is a void. What
happens after 10:00pm DC time is also a void. Sharyl Attkisson, the only journalist with any intellectual credibility on the issue, has been trying to use
FOIA requests to find out the rest.
Sasha and Malia join the Obamas on Martha's Vineyard.
This afternoon, The White House issued a short statement saying President and Michelle Obama's two children, Sasha and Malia, arrived on Martha's Vineyard today to
spend the rest of the week with their parents vacationing on the Island. The White House closely guards the privacy of the two children, and did not release
any information about where they spent the first part of the week.
Senate intelligence panel could seek to declassify
documents; it just doesn't. Outspoken members of the Senate Intelligence Committee have said frequently that they wanted to warn the
public about the National Security Agency's sweeping collection of telephone records but the program's highly classified nature prevented them from
making public reference to the programs. That, however, is not the full story. Buried in the pages of Senate Resolution 400, which
established the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in 1976, is a provision that allows them to try. Across those nearly 40 years,
it's never been used.
IRS's Lerner Used Personal E-mail to
Conduct Official Business, Investigators Say. Embattled Internal Revenue Service official Lois Lerner sent official documents from her government e-mail address to
a personal account, according to House Oversight Committee chairman Darrell Issa and his colleague, Ohio congressman Jim Jordan. "This raises some serious questions
concerning your use of a non-official e-mail account to conduct official business," the GOP lawmakers wrote in a letter to Lerner demanding all documents from her non-official
account for the period between January 2008 and the present.
Amateur Hour (once again) starring Barack Obama.
During the 2008 campaign, Sen. Barack Obama traveled the country vowing to usher in an era of openness and transparency if elected president. Gone would be the bad old days
of President George W. Bush running roughshod over the Constitution with his "enhanced interrogation techniques" and his surveillance via the Patriot Act. No, this
community organizer from Chicago was going to end all that, tell The People what was really going on. But, guess what? (Spoiler alert.) He didn't.
Obama's Watergates. The truth about
Benghazi, the Associated Press/James Rosen monitoring, the IRS corruption, the NSA octopus, and Fast and Furious is still not exactly known.
Almost a year after the attacks on our Benghazi facilities, we are only now learning details of CIA gun-running, military stand-down orders, aliases
of those involved who are still hard to locate, massaged talking points, and the weird jailing of Nakoula Basseley Nakoula.
Obama
transparency promises disappear from transparency website. President Obama's 2008 transition team website Change.gov has been publicly
accessible for years, until June 8 when Obama's campaign promises and agenda were taken down.
Tax reform proposals to be secret for 50 years. The leaders of the
Senate Finance Committee last month asked senators to submit written proposals detailing tax breaks they'd like to see preserved once the tax code is
reformed and explain why. The point was to help inform committee leaders in their efforts to craft a tax reform bill. The request
apparently wasn't embraced, and the committee has now promised skittish senators that their proposals will be kept secret for 50 years.
College Republicans
Denied Admittance to Obama Speech. President Obama was bound to receive a warm response from the audience attending his speech at the
University of Central Missouri yesterday — because some students who disagreed with him weren't allowed into the building. Christopher
White of The College Fix reports that students wearing "Tea Party T-Shirts and others who wore patriotic or Republican-inspired clothing" were
turned away at the door under the guise of security concerns, despite the fact that they held tickets to the event.
Darrell Issa: Energy Department Whistleblowers
Gagged. Energy Department officials prohibited subordinates from speaking with congressional investigators about their probe
into illicit hiring practices and related whistleblower retaliation allegations, according to the lead investigator. Rep. Darrell Issa
(R., Calif.), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, revealed in a letter obtained by the Washington Free Beacon that
the deputy secretary of energy issued the gag order following a scathing inspector general report last week.
Jay Carney hasn't answered nearly 9,500 questions.
Since Jay Carney has become the White House press secretary he has held over 500 press briefings. During that time, according to a Yahoo
News analysis, he has also brushed off more than 9,486 questions from white house correspondents.
Congressman:
Benghazi Survivors Forced to Sign Non-Disclosure Agreements. Congressman Frank Wolf, a Republican from Virginia, said today on the
House floor that survivors of the Benghazi terror attack have been forced to sign non-disclosure agreements: "On Tuesday I raised the
question of why none of the Benghazi survivors, whether State Department, CIA, or private security contract employees have testified publicly
before Congress," said Wolf.
Did
someone mention Benghazi?
Transparency Suffers as State
Department Fails to Report. In her four years as the top U.S. diplomat, Hillary Clinton kept a running total of countries visited, miles
traveled and hours spent in transit on the State Department website. Still untallied: The bill to taxpayers for her globe-trotting.
Leaking Distrust. [Scroll down] It may be that the Senate
Select Committee on Intelligence has had a closed session with [James] Clapper since then. It may be that his "least untruthful" answer was
replaced by the truth. And it's equally possible that it hasn't, and that Congress's constitutional duty of oversight has been thwarted again by
the Obama administration. In that event, Team Obama would have[,] as it has previously in the "Fast and Furious" scandal and countless other
demands for information from Congress[,] thwarted congressional oversight and gotten away with it. We don't know. And we're not likely to
ever learn the truth of the matter.
Fracking
phobia fails yet again. The EPA just dropped its study of fracking allegedly contaminating the water in Pavillion, Wyo. The
enviro left had rejoiced at the news a few years ago that the EPA had for the first time implicated fracking as a threat to groundwater.
Now, amid criticisms of its methodology, the EPA has backed down and won't issue a final report.
Secret move keeps bin Laden records in the
shadows. The top U.S. special operations commander, Adm. William McRaven, ordered military files about the Navy SEAL raid on
Osama bin Laden's hideout to be purged from Defense Department computers and sent to the CIA, where they could be more easily shielded from
ever being made public.
Govt. To Use 'Honor System' Without Verifying Your Eligibility
Not
Qualified For Obamacare's Subsidies? Just Lie. On Friday, Sarah Kliff and Sandhya Somashekhar of the Washington Post
discovered that the Obama administration had buried in the Federal Register the announcement that the government won't be able to verify
whether or not applicants for Obamacare's insurance exchange subsidies are actually qualified for the aid, in the 16 states that are
setting up their own exchanges. Instead, until at least 2015, these states will be able to "accept the applicant's attestation
[regarding eligibility] without further verification."
[Emphasis added.]
The Obamacare mess. The administration can call it whatever
it wants, but there is no hiding the embarrassment of a climbdown on a high-profile feature of President Barack Obama's signature initiative —
although the administration seemed determined to do all it could to hide it. If Bloomberg hadn't broken the news on Tuesday, the administration was
apparently planning to announce it on July 3 — only because the day before Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve were too far off.
The announcement was made timidly and quietly on a Treasury Department blog page.
Obamacare's employer mandate to be delayed
a year. In a stunning development, the Obama administration announced on Tuesday [7/2/2013] it is going to delay the implementation of
the employer mandate, a major aspect of President Obama's health care law initially set to go into effect on Jan. 1, by a year. In a blog
post, the Treasury Department wrote that it has been in talks with businesses about the implications of the mandate and has decided to delay
implementation to provide them with more time to adapt to the requirement.
White House knew about Lisa Jackson's secret
email account. Email records show that the White House knew about the secret email account used by former Environmental Protection Agency
administrator Lisa Jackson since at least February 2010. In a 2010 email exchange between Jackson and Gary Guzy, the Deputy Director and General
Counsel at the White House Council on Environmental Quality, after some initial confusion, Jackson reveals to the White House staffer that "Richard Windsor" is
her "private" email account.
'Atmosphere of secrecy' pervades State Dept.
office, audit finds. A key State Department bureau that manages the official face presented by the U.S. to the rest of the world is rife with
management problems that have left "an atmosphere of secrecy, suspicion and uncertainty," according to a department watchdog review released Thursday
[6/20/2013]. A 2011 reorganization of the Bureau of International Information Programs, which oversees several of the State Department's official
Facebook pages, didn't solve the problem and actually "caused new organizational difficulties," the State Department's Office of Inspector General (OIG)
said in a report based on a recent inspection of the bureau.
The top 9,486 ways Jay Carney won't answer your
questions. Jay Carney doesn't have an answer for that. He hasn't discussed that subject with the president. He will
refer you to the Department of [insert agency here]. He refuses to speculate on that. He'll have to get back to you. But he
appreciates the question. A Yahoo News analysis of the 444 briefings that Carney has held since becoming White House press secretary
has identified 13 distinct strains in the way he dodges a reporter's question.
Why Liberals Kill. [Scroll down] People
for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) preaches an animal-liberation line and even condemns meat consumption, but kills 89 percent
of its shelter animals. Barack Obama promised to have history's most transparent administration, yet it has been the most opaque,
giving us scandals characterized by abuse of law and power and the trampling of Americans' rights. And this brings us to a
question: Does power really corrupt liberals more absolutely than anyone else?
'Atmosphere of secrecy' pervades State Dept.
office, audit finds. A key State Department bureau that manages the official face presented by the U.S. to the rest of the world is rife with
management problems that have left "an atmosphere of secrecy, suspicion and uncertainty," according to a department watchdog review released Thursday [6/20/2013].
Why you should worry about the NSA. My concerns
are twofold. First, the law under which President George W. Bush and now President Obama have acted was not intended to give the
government records of all telephone calls. If that had been the intent, the law would have said that. It didn't. Rather,
the law envisioned the administration coming to a special court on a case-by-case basis to explain why it needed to have specific records.
I am troubled by the precedent of stretching a law on domestic surveillance almost to the breaking point. On issues so fundamental to
our civil liberties, elected leaders should not be so needlessly secretive.
CFPB Working to Limit Transparency. "Transparency is
at the core of our agenda, and it is a key part of how we operate," states the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) on its website.
"You deserve to know what the new bureau is doing for the American public and how we are doing it." But the bureau, which was created by
the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial regulation law, has specifically advised its employees to take steps that would shield significant details about their
activities from public scrutiny. "If possible, avoid annotating entries with agendas, detail discussions, etc.," the CFPB flier states.
McCain Presses Obama on Secret Emails.
Republican Sen. John McCain is questioning President Barack Obama about political appointees' use of secret government email accounts to
conduct official business.
President Obama: NSA Spying
Programs 'Transparent'. President Obama said that two National Security Agency programs recently revealed through leaked
secret documents were "transparent" and, in an interview with PBS's Charlie Rose on Sunday [6/16/2013], he dismissed concerns that the
programs were vulnerable to abuse by government officials.
DOJ Hasn't Found One Improper FOIA Exemption
Since 2009. The Department of Justice told top congressional investigators Monday it has not challenged a single instance of a
federal agency withholding records from Freedom of Information (FOIA) requestors since 2009.
Obama Tells
Keystone Foes He Will Unveil Climate Measures. With his administration under pressure from environmentalists to reject
the Keystone XL pipeline project, President Barack Obama plans to unveil a package of separate actions next month focused on curbing
U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. At closed-door fundraisers held over the past few weeks, the president has been telling Democratic
party donors that he will unveil new climate proposals in July, according to people who have attended the events or been briefed.
The Editor asks...
Why does the most open and transparent administration in history conduct closed-door fundraisers?
Air Force Bans
Personnel from Reading News Stories Reporting NSA Scandal. The Air Force's 624th Operations Center sent an e-mail with a NOTAM
(Notice to Airmen) that prohibits them from accessing and reading news stories related to the current National Security Agency snooping
controversy on the Air Force's NIPRNET (Non-Secure Internet Protocol Router Network) systems.
President Obama Doesn't
Welcome Debate, He Actively Thwarts It. President Obama kept the data collection in question a highly classified state secret. If it were
up to the White House, we wouldn't know of the program's existence, ever. As a consequence, there would have been no debate about its appropriateness.
If Obama values debate, he doesn't value it as much as keeping secrets that inevitably make debate impossible.
More
about domestic surveillance.
U.S. quietly allows military aid
to Egypt despite rights concerns. Secretary of State John Kerry quietly acted last month to give Egypt $1.3 billion in
U.S. military aid, deciding that this was in the national interest despite Egypt's failure to meet democracy standards.
Kerry quietly approved $1.3 billion in arms to Egypt.
US Secretary of State John Kerry quietly approved sending $1.3 billion in arms to Egypt in May, waiving the requirements of a US law meant to promote
democratic development in the post-revolutionary country.
What
do the Obama administration's 'secret' email addresses say about transparency? The Associated Press has sent another
significant little ripple across the pool of Washington scandals that has been near over-flowing this past month. After some
dogged Freedom of Information requests, the AP has discovered that some Obama political appointees, including the secretary for
Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius, have been using 'secret' government email accounts. Officially the accounts
are used to stop senior appointees being overwhelmed with information, but inevitably they raise questions.
Is
This White House Running An Outlaw Government? The Associated Press has turned up a collection of secret email
accounts used by White House appointees. Yet another dark wall is revealed in the most "transparent administration in
history."
Michelle
Obama in heated confrontation with heckler, incident left out of transcript. First lady Michelle Obama got into a
heated confrontation with a heckler at a fundraiser on Tuesday night [6/4/2013], though the standoff never made its way into the
official transcript put out by the White House. The pool report, which is produced by and for members of the media, detailed
the incident.
Carney:
There Are No "Secret" Email Accounts, Only "Alternate Email Addresses". Following an Associated Press report
that Obama administration appointees have "secret government email accounts," White House Press Secretary Jay Carney argued
Tuesday [6/4/2013] that the accounts aren't secret and, in fact, prior administrations have followed the practice of appointees having second
government accounts.
The U.S. Government Asked the AP for
$1 Million for Secret Email Addresses. The Associated Press filed Freedom of Information Act requests for the secret
email addresses of appointed administration employees, and a Labor Department spokesman came back with an offer: you can have
the emails if you give us a million bucks.
Obama
Appointees Using Secret Email Accounts, Demand $1M for Info. The Associated Press has been trying to uncover this information
through FOIA requests. Remarkably, this incredibly corrupt administration demanded over a million dollars for the information.
Top Obama
Officials Flout Transparency Laws Using Secret Email. The administration that promised to be the most transparent in
history uses covert government accounts to keep electronic mail from becoming public, according to a national news conglomerate that
reports "the scope of using the secret accounts across government remains a mystery." That certainly doesn't keep with President
Obama's guarantee of "unprecedented level of openness in government." Those were his words, quoted by media outlets around the
globe, right after taking office. It hasn't quite materialized. In fact, in many ways the Obama administration has been
among the more secretive in history or at least in recent times.
Obama administration defends
secret email accounts. A White House spokesman said Tuesday there's nothing secret about the secret email accounts held by
administration officials, and defended the practice as sensible time management. Asked about revelations that some Obama Cabinet
officials, including former EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson, have used secret alias email addresses, White House press secretary
Jay Carney said the subterfuge "makes eminent sense" because those officials would otherwise be swamped with unwanted messages.
Emails of Top Obama Appointees Remain a
Mystery. Some of President Barack Obama's political appointees are using secret government email accounts to conduct
official business, The Associated Press found, a practice that complicates agencies' legal responsibilities to find and turn over
emails under public records requests and congressional inquiries.
Why is the Benghazi
military story still classified? Key details about what manned and unmanned aircraft were in the region, the actions of
various emergency response forces, and the deliberations of commanders from the ground up are a U.S. government secret.
Afghan Benghazi:
Extortion 17, Betraying Seal Team 6. It's not officially on the growing list of Obama administration scandals, but earlier
this month families of Navy SEAL Team 6 members killed in a disastrous August 2011 shoot-down of a Chinook helicopter in Afghanistan
gathered at the National Press Club asking for answers, calling for a congressional investigation and blaming their government for the
tragedy, the indifference and the secrecy that followed.
Officials
instructed Benghazi hospital to list Stevens as "John Doe". U.S. officials gave instructions for Benghazi Medical Center to
use a "John Doe" pseudonym on the death certificate of Ambassador Christopher Stevens after he died of asphyxiation in the Sept. 11,
2012 terrorist attacks on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya. That's according to a U.S. official speaking on condition of anonymity
because the official isn't authorized to speak publicly on the matter.
More
about Benghazi.
Media Uncomfortable At Holder's
Off-The-Record Offer. The Washington press corps is squirming after being offered a secretive briefing from fork-tongued Attorney General
Eric Holder. What was that about open government and journalistic scrutiny?
More about Eric Holder's
attempted off-the-record press briefing.
Political
intelligence firms set up investor meetings at White House. Wall Street investors hungry for advance information on upcoming federal
health-care decisions repeatedly held private discussions with Obama administration officials, including a top White House adviser helping to implement
the Affordable Care Act.
Eric
Holder's abdication. As the nation's top law enforcement official, Eric Holder is privy to all kinds of sensitive information.
But he seems to be proud of how little he knows.
Know Nothing. Attorney General Eric Holder used the phrase "I don't
know" or some variation, at least 57 times during a hearing before the House Judiciary Committee today as House Republicans grilled
him over controversies including the IRS' targeting of Tea Partiers, the Justice Department's seizure of journalist phone records, and
the security lapses surrounding the Boston bombing.
Obama's
war on leaks undermines investigative journalism. For the past five years, beginning with his first presidential campaign, Barack Obama
has promised that his government would be the most open and transparent in American history.
State
Department shuts down Benghazi questions. "You'll have to take my word for it," said a spokesperson for the most transparent
administration in history when reporters asked her to substantiate her claim that the CIA removed references to terrorists from the
Benghazi talking points before the State Department ever saw them.
Most Transparent Administration in History
Releases Completely Redacted Document About Text Snooping. The American Civil Liberties Union was curious about warrantless
government snooping on citizens' text messages. So the group filed a Freedom of Information Act request to the Justice Department.
Here's what they got back: [...]
A legacy of scandal. We don't know who
gave the order to lie about Fast and Furious, nor about Benghazi, nor about the IRS audits. The answers to the questions have grave
consequences, especially if the IRS campaign of intimidation was orchestrated from the very top. Nearly four decades ago, the House
Judiciary Committee voted 28 to 10 to say that it is an impeachable offense for a president personally, or through his
subordinates, to cause "income-tax audits or other income tax investigations to be initiated or conducted in a discriminatory manner."
So
Much For Obama 'Transparency': Enjoy This Completely Blacked-Out Gov't Doc On Text Snooping. This week sure hasn't looked
good for the Obama administration. Scandalous examples of executive overreach, whistleblower suppression, political targeting at
"independent agencies," etc., all fan the flames of discontent with what was promised to be an administration with "unprecedented levels of
transparency" and openness. Add to that pile the below goofy little FOIA request obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union.
Twin Scandals Sap Obama Credibility.
[Scroll down] When an official is found to have scrubbed talking points about the attack expressly to deny Republicans the opportunity to
criticize the administration, it becomes clear that Obama was wrong when he said his administration was being forthcoming. It also opens the
door to the next round of questioning about whether Obama and then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton were willfully misinformed or willfully
spreading misinformation. Neither is good.
White House holds
'deep background' Benghazi briefing. The White House held a "deep background" briefing with reporters on Friday afternoon
to discuss recent revelations about the Benghazi investigation, sources familiar with the meeting tell Politico. The meeting was
conducted on "deep background," according to White House spokesman Josh Earnest, but sources told Politico that the existence of the
meeting was "off the record." [...] Deep background means that the info presented by the briefers can be used in reporting but the
briefers can't be quoted.
WH
Holds Off-the-Record Benghazi Briefing for Hand-Picked Reporters. Behold, the Obama/Media establishment literally coordinating
behind closed doors on a story the White House keeps insisting is over.
Most
transparent administration ever holds off-the-record briefing. The most transparent administration in history appears to be
circling its wagons.
Obama had
secret inauguration party at White House: report. A mix of A-listers from politics and entertainment mingled during the
on-the-down-low party, according to The Hill.
Krauthammer
On Benghazi: "Where Was The Commander In Chief In All Of This?". ["]And I would ask another question, where was the
commander in chief in all of this? The one man who can authorize and order troops to move above everybody and instantly is
commander in chief. Where was he for these hours when the fight was raging?["]
House
Republicans Call on White House to Release Benghazi E-Mails. House Republicans on Thursday called on the Obama
administration to release a new batch of e-mails that they believe will shed more light on how the White House and the State
Department responded in the days after the attacks on American facilities in Benghazi, Libya. Speaker John A. Boehner,
in a written statement, made the request, saying, "The truth shouldn't be hidden from the American people behind a White House
firewall." His move was the first of many expected by Republicans in the coming days and weeks to try to force the White
House to divulge more documents and allow additional witnesses to testify.
5 Benghazi Mysteries that Must
Be Solved. [#2] Where was President Obama and what was he doing? As commander-in-chief, the president is
ultimately responsible for any U.S. response to attacks on our missions and personnel overseas. According to official schedules
and White House answers after the fact, President Obama held a regularly scheduled meeting at 5 pm Washington time with his then
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, around the time that the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi began. No photos from that
meeting have been released. The American people have been told very little about the president's activities that night. [...] No
photos of the president being present or in command during the attack have ever been released by the White House.
Obama
officials to decide release of UMass data. The Obama administration will decide "in the coming days" whether taxpayers
have a right to know if they helped fund the UMass education of four suspects linked to the Boston Marathon bombing investigation, the
Herald has learned. The University of Massachusetts Dartmouth — which has stonewalled requests for the
financial aid records of terror suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and three students accused of covering up for him — requested
an "exception" to federal law from the U.S. Department of Education on Friday.
Benghazi isn't the only bloody disaster being covered up by the Obama administration.
The Camp Bastion Cover-Up. Do you remember what happened last year
on 9/14? Where are the White House phone calls for the families who continue to grieve? What is being done to prevent another fatal attack like the
one on 9/14? And why is the full truth being withheld from the American public?
Obama's Omerta! Benghazi
Whistleblowers Threatened By Administration. According to Fox news at least four career employees of the State
Department and the CIA have been threatened not to talk by their superiors. [...] But Wait! Isn't this supposed to be
the most transparent administration in history? Why would they threaten people to prevent them from talking to congress?
Obama Not
Familiar With Benghazi Whistle-Blower Threats. Administration officials actually need to lawyer up to reveal the truth about
the Benghazi disaster that left our ambassador and three others dead. This from "the most transparent administration in history."
Government responds to 9/11
records request... 11 years later. Sometimes the government is slow to act, and then there are times when it is glacial.
The conservative government accountability organization Judicial Watch recently received an official response letter to a Freedom of
Information Act (FIOA) request the group submitted in September 2002 — nearly 11 years ago. "It is a sad reminder
that when it comes to being accountable, when it comes to following the law, the federal government doesn't [care]," Judicial Watch
president Tom Fitton told The Daily Caller. "And this is why we have had to sue well over a hundred times to get access to
government information."
Are We Being Compromised by Barack Obama's Murky
Past? Since he first became a presidential candidate, President Obama must have spent millions of dollars in legal expenses to combat dozens of so-called
"birther" challenges seeking the original documents pertaining to his birth. As president, he famously issued an electronic document on the White House website in
2011; the document purported to be his long-form birth certificate, though it is apparently a forgery. In addition, he has taken great pains to hide the paper trail
of passport records, college transcripts, and other data — all of which a prospective employer might require of a job applicant.
Immigration Bill Expected to Be About
1500 Pages. The immigration bill is expected to be about 1500 pages. What could possibly go wrong with that? Will
they even read it? I know we won't because the process isn't transparent. Senator Leahy said he might consider having one hearing
on this massive bill.
EPA accused of using
instant messages to avoid sunshine laws in lawsuit. Top Environmental Protection Agency officials used computer instant
messages to try to circumvent open-records laws, according to a new lawsuit filed late last week by a researcher who has been demanding
the agency comply with the law. Christopher C. Horner, the researcher who earlier uncovered that EPA officials were using
private email addresses to conduct official business, said that in going over some of those earlier records he discovered the agency was
using instant messages, too. He now is suing to get a look at those records, which he said EPA has refused to release.
Obama
Designates Five New National Monuments; Signing Ceremony Closed To Press. Despite continued protestations of doom over the
sequestration cuts that have paralyzed all of Washington in the grips of terror over the past 25 days, President Obama somehow
found it possible to commit the federal government to acquiring five new national monuments today [3/25/2013]. He did so by
using the Antiquities Act, thereby circumventing Congress in the process.
Is it time to ask: What's Homeland
Security up to? [Scroll down] The lack of transparency and explanation about the need for such acquisitions certainly has contributed to conspiracy theories
similar to that expressed by the congressman. With all this ammunition, it is useless without a means to discharge it. The DHS has
also attempted concealment of the purchase of 7,000 assault weapons, and has again censored information about its $1.5 million no-bid
contract with Remington. Normally this would be required to be done in an open, full, and competitive bidding process. What is
the emergency that compels them to avoid this legal bidding process?
Where the Sun Don't Shine. President Obama promised transparency and open
government. He failed miserably. So why do Washington watchdog groups look the other way?
Obama
Administration's Transparency: "Pretty Weak". Government watchdog group Cause of Action yesterday [3/14/2013]
released transparency grades for each of the Obama Administration's executive departments, plus the Environmental Protection
Agency. For an administration that prides itself on transparency, the results were not good.
Obama's White House is open to the rich and closed to the poor.
The most transparent administration ever? The most transparently political, yes. The most open government?
If you have the money to buy access, yes.
The Transparency Sham. Lawmakers and government transparency
experts criticized the Obama administration's openness at a House Oversight and Government Reform hearing on Wednesday morning [3/13/2013].
President Barack Obama's promise to operate the "most transparent administration in history" animated much of the hearing, with witnesses
and legislators noting some progress but much failure to live up to the grand pledge.
Carney Rejects Questions on
Cost of Presidential Travel, Golf Outings. The White House would not answer a question about the cost of security for
President Barack Obama's golf outings or the president's trip to Illinois this week when compared to the cost of the recently cancelled
White House tours.
Vice President's press secretary has to apologize after forcing journalist to delete photos.
The Vice President's office had to issue an apology today after a staffer forced a journalist to delete pictures that they had taken of
Biden at a public event. Mr Biden was speaking at an event about ending domestic violence when one of his staffers approached a
student journalist and asked them to delete the photos they had taken. Jeremy Barr is an accredited student journalist at the
University of Maryland-College Park with approval to attend the event, though he was seated in an area for the public and not the press.
Why would Biden's staff act this way, unless there's something to hide?
Biden's
office apologizes to student reporter for 'unfortunate mistake'. Capital News Service reporter Jeremy Barr was covering
Biden's announcement of a new domestic violence initiative, he told Capital News Service, a student news service run by the Philip
Merrill College of Journalism. He accidentally sat in a section of the audience not meant for the media. He had identified himself
as a member of the press upon entry and been directed to that area. Barr took a few pictures of Biden at the podium. After
the event, a staffer for Biden confronted him and demanded to watch as he deleted the pictures from his camera.
Biden
Press Office Apologizes for Forcing Reporter to Delete Photo. Just imagine if VP Cheney's office had accosted a reporter at
public event and demanded that a photo be deleted from the reporter's camera. It would be the lead story on every MSM outlet, offered
as proof of the rising tide of fascism. Yet such an incident happened last week with VP Biden, and virtually no mention of it can be
found in the mainstream media.
Organizing for Action:
Obama's broken transparency promises. "I'll make our government open and transparent so that anyone can ensure that our
business is the people's business," Mr. Obama proclaimed in a 2008 campaign speech. "No more secrecy. That is a commitment
that I make to you as president." Now, however, Organizing for Action and Mr. Obama seem more interested in securing huge amounts of
money to push their agenda than bringing change to Washington. Mr. Obama is even willing to sell access to the West Wing to get
donors to add extra zeroes to their checks.
Respect the office, not necessarily the
man. Barack Hussein Obama [...] remains an enigma with nothing definitively known about his birth, his alleged father,
his early education, or his early mentors other than they are a succession of left wing, anti-American extremists dissatisfied with this
country and its policies. Affirmative action was his saving grace enabling his entrance into a prestigious high school followed by
an expensive mainland college with no academic achievement or financial support and then transferring to an Ivy League university, again
unsupported by any academic achievement or financial support.
Slate
Slams Obama On Transparency. Some in the media have reported on the Obama administration reneging on its promise to be
transparent and open. The president's drone policy is a testament to its commitment to secrecy. The creation of a secret
kill list is also another instance where Obama has betrayed a campaign promise to his liberal base. So, why aren't watchdog
groups vociferously protesting the president's 180-degree flip on this position?
Stubborn,
Secretive Obama Admin Failed to Inform Congress of Its Intent. The Obama administration failed to inform Congress
that it planned to bring Osama bin Laden's son-in-law, Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, to New York City for a civilian trial on charges of
conspiring to kill Americans. Ghaith is not a common criminal. He has been a top al Qaeda lieutenant of his late
father-in-law for years; he appeared in a video alongside bin Laden taking credit for the 9-11 attacks that killed nearly 3,000,
most of those casualties at the World Trade Center in New York. He is a true enemy combatant against the United States and
should be subjected to trial under the laws of war.
Did Obama DOJ Nix U.S.
Weapons Tech Espionage Probe? It appears that the Obama Justice Department killed — or at the very least
intervened in — a potentially explosive espionage investigation involving the illegal transfer of American weapons technology
to China and other foreign countries. Those who get their news from the mainstream media would never know it, though the scandalous
details have been reported in several aerospace trade publications as well as Washington D.C.'s conservative newspaper.
Why Is the Air Force
Suddenly Removing Drone Strike Data? As the debate over the federal government's drone strike program is climaxing in
Washington, the Air Force has quietly erased previously published drone strike data from its website. [...] Air Force Central Command
(AFCENT) had been publishing monthly updates on drone strikes, or "weapons releases from remotely piloted aircraft (RPA)," since
October. However, data published in February suddenly "contained empty space where the box of RPA statistics had previously
been," the Air Force Times reports.
Air
Force erases drone strike data in Afghanistan war report. As the debate on drone use heats up in the heartland, the Air
Force report released on March 7 failed to list airstrikes from drones and many believe it's no coincidence given the Obama
administration's embarrassment after Sen. Paul took the president to task for the U.S. government's use of drones in U.S. airspace.
Judicial
Watch Sues State Department for Benghazi Security Details. On March 5, Judicial Watch announced that it had filed a Freedom
of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit seeking details on a nearly $400,000 contract the State Department awarded to a private company for
security at the American consulate in Benghazi.
Congressmen
demand investigation of EPA selectively blocking FOIAs. An internal email that appears to counsel Environmental
Protection Agency officials on delaying or obstructing inconvenient Freedom of Information Act requests has sparked congressional
demands for an investigation. Senators David Vitter, R-LA, and Charles Grassley, R-IA, and Rep. Darrell Issa, R-CA, said in a
letter today [3/7/2013] to Attorney General Eric Holder that the investigation should seek to determine if EPA officials stonewall FOIA requests.
Senator: EPA lied about
using private emails. Environmental Protection Agency officials lied when they said a top official used his private
email only once for public business, a Republican senator said Friday [3/8/2013] as he released copies of several emails in which
that official conducted business with the EPA's director and with outside groups.
US citing security to censor more public records. The U.S. government, led by the
Pentagon and CIA, censored in the name of national security files that the public requested last year under the Freedom of Information Act
more often than at any time since President Barack Obama took office, according to a new analysis by The Associated Press.
No Cameras Allowed While
Obama Wooed The Press At Gridiron Dinner. You'd think that the media that constantly gripes about the White House shutting them out
would have demanded that the annual Gridiron Dinner be something to be shared with the public. But I suppose that in doing so they'd expose
themselves as being easily swayed by flattery from the object of their affections.
Intelligence
Committees Get Additional Targeted Killing Memos, But Not the Public. In a win for congressional oversight over the
government's vast killing program, the Obama administration has shown an additional but undisclosed number of Justice Department
Office of Legal Counsel memos justifying the program to the Senate and House Intelligence Committees, but has continued to withhold
some of its legal opinions from the intelligence committees and has not provided any of the legal opinions to the rest of Congress
or to the American public.
Secrets,
Conspiracy, Rumors And A Lack of Transparency. When Americans demand "transparency," they actually mean it.
The President and all his minions and our representatives in Congress work for us. They are not autocrats entitled to keep
their actions secret. The oaths they take to defend the Constitution are not matters of tradition, but promises they
make — in return for the offices we allow them to hold temporarily. They need to explain their actions.
They are responsible to us.
Obama's Transparency: Fade to
Black. President Obama recently stated assertively, "This is the most transparent administration in history, and I can
document how that is the case." Obama made the comment without batting an eye or even causing a lightning strike... in fact
his comment was uttered with his usual apparent sincerity. [...] The President did this as his administration simultaneously battled
to suppress details of the CIA has secret drone program kill list even if the target is an American citizen. Then, just days
later Obama disappeared during a mini vacation in Florida to play golf (some with Tiger Woods) for four days without press access.
CIA's Global Warming
Center A National Security Secret. Most Americans may not know that the government agency responsible for providing national
security data to the nation's senior policymakers, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), operates a special center dedicated to global
warming. That's because the CIA doesn't want anyone to know what goes on in its two-year-old Center on Climate Change and National
Security. So the exclusive unit, led by "senior specialists," operates under a cloak of secrecy that rejects all public-records
requests, despite President Obama's promise to run a transparent government.
Many Questions, No Answers.
Earlier this week the usually compliant press had the audacity to question Jay Carney about Obama's Chi-town mafia's selling quarterly
access to the highest official in the land for $500,000. Apparently expecting the question, Mr. Carney read a prepared response
to journalists in the Press Pool. He reread the same statement again in response to the follow up question from Jake Tapper, as
if Jake wasn't paying attention the first time or was too stupid to understand what he was parroting. As the gaggle of media
minions continued to yell follow-up questions, Jay, of course, slithered silently out of the room.
5 Reasons Barack
Obama is a Creep. [#2] What he says is completely unrelated to what he does: Barack Obama is like an alcoholic
who pledges to quit drinking and then gets hammered every night. [...] This is how Barack Obama can demand a sequester and then turn
around and run against it or yammer on incessantly about transparency while he stonewalls on Fast and Furious. We're talking
about a man who's worth nearly 10 million dollars, who has campaign events with celebrities and millionaires on a regular basis,
and who just seems to squeeze in a little bit of work in between lavish vacations and golf outings with Tiger Woods; yet he spent
most of last year campaigning against rich people.
Carney
Flees Podium When Cornered About Obama's Pay-For-Access Scheme. [Video clip.]
Obama to
Governors: '...Clear Out the Press So We Can Take Some Questions'. At a meeting with the National Governors
Association on Monday [2/25/2013], President Barack Obama closed his prepared speech by saying he wanted the press cleared
out of the room so he could take some questions. [Video clip]
White House hid
Michelle's Oscar pitch from press. The White House kept its press corps in the dark about first lady Michelle Obama's
Oscar video appearance to present Argo the best picture Academy Award Sunday night — the latest sign in the fractured
relationship between the president's team and the media that cover them.
Senate
Hearings Already Held: National Retirement Accounts. The Senate held RECESS hearings in October 2010 — only
Senators Harkin (D-IA) and Socialist Bernie Sanders (D-VT) were in attendance, representing the Senate Committee on Health, Education,
Labor, and Pensions. First up to testify before Harkin and Sanders was a Ross Eisenbrey, the Vice President of the Economic
Policy Institute (EPI), which "is housed on the third floor of the building occupied by the George Soros-funded Center for American
Progress." [...] As I discussed earlier this month, part of this is about bailing out union pensions with your retirement.
Revealed:
Why Obama won't show the rest of his drone memos to Congress. The Senate Intel Committee's seen four memos.
Turns out, per Dianne Feinstein, that the White House has many more in its files and is very, very reluctant to share the
rest — to the point that it's willing to make a deal with the hated GOP to keep them covered up.
Robert
Gibbs: As press secretary, I was ordered not to acknowledge the existence of the drone program. During a discussion
about President Obama's lack of transparency about the drone program, former White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs explained on
MSNBC this morning that he was ordered to never acknowledge the existence of the drone program.
What's in the Secret
Drone Memos. Despite President Obama's pledge in his State of the Union address to make the drone program "even
more transparent to the American people and to the world," his administration continues to resist efforts by Congress, even from
fellow Democrats, to obtain the full range of classified legal memos justifying "targeted killing." A key reason for that
reticence, according to two sources who have read the memos or are aware of their contents, is that the documents contain secret
protocols with foreign governments, including Pakistan and Yemen, as well as "case-specific" details of strikes.
President
Obama holds off-record meeting with top White House reporters. President Barack Obama held an off-the-record meeting with
top White House reporters on Thursday afternoon [2/21/2013], POLITICO has learned. The meeting, with reporters from major print
and television outlets, comes days after the White House Correspondents Association complained publicly about their lack of access to
the president during a golf outing in Palm Beach, Fla., and one day after Obama met with local television reporters.
Fineman: "It's Hard To Get Answers To Simple Questions" From White House.
Even reporters asking simple questions, simple direct factual questions of low-ranking administration officials, have a hard time
getting answers.
Hagel Stonewalls, Refuses to Grant Access to
Archive. Chuck Hagel's archive is housed here at the University of Nebraska-Omaha. But despite his nomination for secretary of defense,
reporters, as well as the public writ large, are being denied access to the thousands of papers, speeches, audio and video files, and artifacts in the archive.
Obama's super-secret golf trip. President Obama
has a very carefully crafted public image, and he's willing to shut out his friends in the press to maintain it. Over a long Presidents Day weekend, Mr.
Obama hit the links for the 114th, 115th and 116th time in a little more than four years. He bunked at the Floridian National Golf Club in Palm Beach, an
exclusive gated golf community, and the traveling White House reporters were not allowed to get any closer than a seat in a bus parked just inside the gate,
with an unobstructed view of a humble maintenance shed. [...] The president often hides get-togethers that he thinks wouldn't please the public.
Obama
is [photographed] leaving $1m golfing weekend with Tiger Woods. Pictures finally appeared of President Obama on Monday evening [2/18/2013]
as he headed home to Washington after a relaxing golf weekend which was kept heavily under wraps.
The Editor asks...
Why would Mr. Obama keep an extravagant weekend "under wraps" unless he was doing something shameful?
Press corps
expresses 'frustration' over lack of access to Obama. The White House press corps on Sunday expressed frustration with the lack of
access given to President Obama this weekend, during his trip to Florida. White House Correspondents Association President Ed Henry released
a statement Sunday evening [2/17/2013], saying that the press corps had not been given adequate access to the president and that the group would
press for "transparency" in the future, according to a pool report.
Vitter:
Another EPA official resigning amid probe into use of banned email account. Sen. David Vitter, R-La., revealed that he has found "widespread"
use of banned, unofficial email accounts at the Environmental Protection Agency. At least two regional administrators used the unofficial email
accounts, including the acting agency leader and one person resigning as the investigation gets underway.
Whole Lotta Redactin' Going On. The Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA) released its second batch of emails from former administrator Lisa Jackson's secret email address Friday [2/15/2013],
but the researcher who sued the agency to obtain the records says it improperly redacted nearly all of the information. The emails,
released in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request from the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), are from Jackson's
pseudonymous, secondary email account under the name "Richard Windsor."
Pelosi: Obama can keep drone
strikes against Americans a secret. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., believes that President Obama doesn't necessarily have to
announce that an American citizen suspected of terrorism has been killed in a drone strike. "Maybe. It just depends," Pelosi replied when The
Huffington Post asked her if "the administration should acknowledge when it targets a U.S. citizen in a drone strike."
Nancy Pelosi says drone strikes on Americans can stay
secret. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said the White House doesn't necessarily have to confess to killing American citizens by unarmed drones.
It all depends on the situation, she said in reply to a Huffington Post reporter who asked if President Obama's administration should acknowledge when it targets a
U.S. citizen in a drone strike, the Washington Examiner reported. "Maybe, it just depends," she reportedly said. "People just want to be protected."
She also said that such disclosure "depends on the timing, because that's right — it's all about the timing."
Sen.
Lindsey Graham: Doing Job On Libya the Media Won't. On his MSNBC show this morning [2/21/2013], NBC's senior White House
correspondent, Chuck Todd, reported that Republican senator Lindsey Graham had been successful in his quest to see White House emails
concerning Libya. As leverage, Graham threatened to hold up the nomination of John Brennan, who's slated to take over the C.I.A., if
the emails weren't released. According to Todd, there are also memos related to Libya the GOP would like to see. Thus far, the
White House hasn't budged on those.
Obama
insists he runs the most transparent administration in history. During a "fireside hangout" on Google+ this afternoon [2/14/2013],
President Obama responded to a questioner who said she was disappointed in the gap between Obama's campaign promises for transparency
and the reality of the last four years. "It feels a lot less transparent than I think we all hoped it would be," she said.
Obama said firmly, "This is the most transparent administration in history, and I can document that is the case."
The Executive
Order The Press Agreed To Keep Secret For Five Hours. Shortly before 4:20 p.m. Tuesday [2/12/2013], the White
House emailed reporters that President Obama had signed a highly anticipated Executive Order aimed at protecting cyber security.
The order — setting up new programs aimed at stopping online espionage and terrorism — was already the law of
the land, signed by the president. But it was also secret. The document was "embargoed until delivery of the President's
in the State of the Union address" — despite the fact it had already been signed.
Obama
says his is 'most transparent administration' ever. President Obama on Thursday hailed his administration for its
transparency. "This is the most transparent administration in history," Obama said during a Google Plus "Fireside" Hangout.
"I can document that this is the case," he continued. "Every visitor that comes into the White House is now part of the public
record. Every law we pass and every rule we implement we put online for everyone to see."
The Editor says...
Even if that were true, and
it isn't, he still isn't putting legislation on the internet before it becomes law.
Waters:
We Have 'Database That Has 'Everything On Everyone'. "The President has put in place an organization with the kind of
database that no one has ever seen before in life," Representative Maxine Waters told Roland Martin on Monday. "That's going to be
very, very powerful," Waters said. "That database will have information about everything on every individual on ways that it's
never been done before and whoever runs for President on the Democratic ticket has to deal with that. [..."]
White
House: No more information about drone killings will be released to public. White House Press Secretary Jay Carney told
reporters Thursday that the Obama administration will not be releasing any more information about the controversial use of drones to
kill American citizens.
Least Transparent Administration in History.
The number of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuits filed against the federal government has increased dramatically under the Obama
administration, according to a December study by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC). A comparison between the last
two years of President George W. Bush's second term and the last two years of President Barack Obama's first term shows FOIA lawsuits
jumped by 28 percent, TRAC reports. FOIA lawsuits are filed to challenge denials of records requests or the use of exemptions of
information by federal agencies.
Lance and Barack: the Content
of their Characters. What does it say about the content of Obama's character that he claims authorship of the book
Dreams [from My Father] when he knows he is not the author? [...] What does it say about the content of a man's character
that he will not permit anyone, particularly the people of the United States whom he has asked to elect him as their president two times,
see the transcripts of his grades in high school, any of the numerous colleges he has attended, or the law school he attended? Do
any of us applying for a job keep our transcripts secret from the company at which we are applying? This is nonsense.
Where Are the 23 Executive
Orders? The President held a press conference on January 16th explaining 23 executive orders that he was to
sign in relation to gun control measures. President Obama, surrounded by children, concluded his press conference by sitting
at a desk and signing several papers. But why are those 23 orders not listed on the White House website?
Government
Scientist Gets Fired for Telling the Truth. Something's amiss at the Department of Interior. Eight government
scientists were recently fired or reassigned after voicing concerns to their superiors about faulty environmental science used for policy
decisions. Which begs the question, "Are some government agencies manipulating science to advance political agendas?"
Holder Begs Court to Stop Document Release on Fast and Furious. Attorney General
Eric Holder and his Department of Justice have asked a federal court to indefinitely delay a lawsuit brought by watchdog group Judicial
Watch. The lawsuit seeks the enforcement of open records requests relating to Operation Fast and Furious, as required by law. [...] Judicial
Watch President Tom Fitton said that Holder's and Obama's desire to continually hide these Fast and Furious documents is "ironic" now that
they're so gung-ho on gun control.
Obama gun panel draws
lawsuit. A conservative gadfly filed a lawsuit Tuesday [1/15/2013] charging that the task force President Barack Obama
set up last month to provide recommendations on policies to rein in gun violence broke the law by meeting privately and without proper
public notice. Attorney Larry Klayman, who runs an organization named Freedom Watch, filed the suit in federal court in the Middle
District of Florida.
John
Brennan — The CIA — Zbigniew Brzezinski — Columbia University and Obama. Obama is friends with
three Pakistani college roommates, muslims, Mohammed Hasan Chandio, Wahid Hamid, and Indian Vinai Thummalapally. In the summer of 1981
Obama travelled with his friends to Pakistan. [...] Obama goes to Pakistan in the summer of 1981 and then for some reason there is a gap in his
historical references and timeline. He does not reappear until the fall of 1982 attending Columbia (?) — or so the story
is told, where he graduated in May of 1983.
Columbia
University and Obama: "Obama alleges he attended Columbia in 1982, 1983. But, the investigators have been UNABLE to turn
up a single shred of written documentation for the years 1981, 1982, 1983, 1984 that show where Obama appeared on a school roster, register,
faculty memo, bulletin board, school awards, dean's list; where Obama's name appeared in a yearbook, club record, fraternity record, extra
curricular activity member roster, student newspaper, student radio or TV activity; where Obama appeared in any records as a worker, employee,
laborer in or about Columbia University; where Obama enrolled in any sports activity or program."
Obama
at Columbia — Or Was He? The stint at Columbia got dramatic treatment in the 2016 film Barry.
As Matthew Cooper of Newsweek noted, the Netflix production "charts his college years in New York, when 'Barry,' as he was
known, wrestled with his racial identity." Still, there was a problem. "I was at Columbia a year behind Obama," Cooper
explained, but "I never knew Obama." As Cooper recalled, Clinton factotum George Stephanopoulos was a year ahead of Barry and
didn't know him either. Neither did many other Columbia students, including those in Barry's own class. "I don't know a
single person at Columbia that knows him, and they all know me. I don't have a classmate who ever knew Barack Obama
at Columbia. Ever!" That was Columbia alum and Libertarian party vice presidential candidate Wayne Allyn Root in 2008.
As Root told Matt Welch of Reason magazine, he and Obama were both in the 1983 political science, pre-law class at Columbia
University. Root and Barry had the same major, same career path and graduated on the same day, but Root "never met him in my
life, don't know anyone who ever met him."
Peeling Back the 'Cover of Darkness' on
Obama's Regulatory Agenda. The Obama administration's long-delayed laundry list of the federal regulations it intends to pursue this
year, released under what one lawmaker described as the "cover of darkness," looks to contain proposals that are more costly than those offered by
the president's immediate predecessors. If fully implemented, the regulatory agenda as it is popularly known could wind up costing the public
$123.2 billion, according to an analysis by the American Action Forum, a conservative, Washington-based think tank. The 2,387 tenders
also are projected to result in at least 13 million paperwork burden hours.
Obama's Lawless Presidency. Another
example of Obama's disinterest in following the law was his responsibility to report his upcoming regulatory changes, the last report
of which was due in October but wasn't bothered with until December — conveniently after the election. The
earlier April report he never issued at all.
Obama
administration delivers delayed regulatory agenda, could cost billions. By law, each April and October, federal
agencies are required to release an accounting of proposed regulations that will have an economically significant impact.
That didn't happen in 2012. Instead, the Obama administration didn't release its 2012 regulatory agenda until on the Friday
before Christmas.
E-mail Scandal at the EPA.
The sudden announcement that Lisa Jackson, the controversial head of the Environmental Protection Agency, will be resigning later this
month means that the mysterious Richard Windsor will be leaving the building with her. His is apparently one of several fake names
on official EPA e-mail accounts that Jackson used to conduct business while at EPA.
'Richard Windsor'
departure from EPA is a victory for transparency. After years of whispers that EPA officials frequently used private email addresses,
fake names and coded messages to circumvent the Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, Jackson admitted recently to using "Richard Windsor" as her
chosen nom de plume on a government email account. [...] The EPA inspector general opened an investigation into the matter because it is
against federal law to use nonofficial or secret email addresses to conduct official business.
EPA admits secret email use as House leaders fume.
Six House leaders are pressing their demands for documents after a senior Environmental Protection Agency executive confirmed that Administrator Lisa Jackson has
used a fake name and a secret email account while doing official business. [...] It is against federal record-keeping laws and regulations to use a private or secret
email account or fake name to conduct official business.
Lisa Jackson forced out of EPA. This is what we call
a "stealth" catastrophic meltdown: Jackson's ability to function in DC effectively cratered as soon as this came out, anyway. A pity
that the Media won't destroy this woman's reputation for the way that she hypocritically contravened good-government transparency, but at least
she's going to be gone.
Questions mount over EPA administrator's secret email address. The House Committee on
Science, Space, and Technology sent a letter Tuesday [12/18/2012] requesting additional information on the secret email addresses, and earlier this month the EPA's
inspector general announced the agency would begin an investigation into the issue. Chairman Ralph Hall (R., Tex.) and other Republicans on the committee
requested additional information on the secret email account, expressing concern that "the potential for confusion, not to mention intentional malfeasance, is
enormous."
Head of EPA
does a bunch of her work on alias e-mail account. So, the head of one of the most active and heavy-handed regulatory agencies
in the federal government does a bunch of her business with colleagues on an e-mail address, that while it's a .gov address, has no obvious
connection to the EPA administrator herself. Among the regulations the EPA released just last year were five classified as "major" and
expected to cost $4 billion annually. [...] But I'm sure there's nothing the public would want to know about going on in "Richard
Windsor's" e-mail.
EPA
IG audits administrator's private e-mail account. Leaders of two House committees with jurisdiction over the EPA have questioned whether the agency
has been fully transparent in its handling of electronic records. Last month, House science committee Chairman Ralph M. Hall (R-Tex.) and five of his
colleagues wrote to EPA Inspector General Arthur A. Elkins Jr. and questioned whether Jackson violated federal law by using "private email and alias accounts to
conduct official government business."
EPA inspector general audits agency's
use of secret email accounts. Last week the Environmental Protection Agency's Office of the Inspector General announced an audit of the agency's
electronic records management practice to determine if it follows the law when conducting official business using private and alias email accounts. [...] Among
other things, the Inspector General's office will look at is whether or not the EPA "[p]romoted or encouraged the use of private or alias email accounts to
conduct official government business."
What We Need to Know about Benghazi.
Much of post-attack discussion about Benghazi has focused on who knew or said what when. That discussion misses the big picture. We are in the middle
of a long war. The question that should concern us most is: Are we doing everything reasonable to protect U.S. diplomatic facilities and personnel so
that they can accomplish their mission? Unfortunately, we don't know the simple answer to that question, because the administration has not given Congress
or the American people the basic facts.
The Coming Regulatory Black Hole. Just how many new regulations
will business have to deal with? We don't know because the administration has failed to issue a report, required by law, that would set out Obama's
regulatory agenda.
An Embarrassing Metric
Disappears. As the din of America's falling headfirst over the fiscal cliff reverberates across the nation, the Obama
administration is quietly killing a key economic metric that tells how, and how many, people are voting with their feet. Since
1991 the Internal Revenue Service has been compiling statistics on filers' addresses, which the agency's Statistics of Income division
uses to show who is moving into and out of every county and state in the nation. As you'd expect, the IRS also knows the aggregate
income levels of those who move.
One year earlier...
Obama: 1, Informed Public: 0.
I've been worried about this for some time: the government would start either manipulating the data or hiding it
altogether. Eliminating the [Statistical] Abstract [of the United States] is not just a
matter of crimping the mirth of data hobbyists like me; it is ominous. It is hiding the truth. It is
Soviet-like. It is a short step from airbrushing people out of photos. The Abstract has been around
for 133 years, or about a century longer than the Department of Education has.
Obama swearing-in to be open to media coverage.
The American public will be able to witness President Barack Obama getting sworn in for a second term; the Presidential Inaugural Committee said Wednesday
[12/12/2012] the unusual Sunday ceremony will be open to media coverage. This should not even have been a question — but it was, because
the White House would not say — as recently as Tuesday — whether the event could be covered.
Will Obama's second oath of office
be closed to the press? A Friday afternoon report at Politico brings news of another "historic" moment in the Obama presidency,
which promised "transparency" but has transformed much of American government into a riddle, wrapped in mystery, inside an enigma.
The most honest
and "transparent" president ever ... to be sworn-in in secret! This is something that is absolutely bizarre. It seems that
Obama will be sworn in as President in private (secret) without the Press being allowed to view to video tape it. They will release photos
that the White House Press photographer will take, after it is done.
Obama's Swearing-in Ceremony Closed to
the Press? Politico reports that Obama's second inaugural oath for the "most transparent administration in history" might be
administered privately, without any media present.
Secret Parley of Obama, Boehner Betrays Their
Pledges To Open Government. Here's one thing President Obama and Speaker Boehner agree on: they don't want you to know what
happened at their meeting Sunday [12/9/2012] about taxes and spending. "We're not reading out details of the conversation," said identical
statements issued by the White House and the Speaker's office.
Press fear Obama private swearing
in. The White House Correspondents Association is strongly urging the Obama administration to allow press access to the
president's official swearing-in ceremony on Jan. 20, following indications from inauguration committee officials that the event
could potentially be closed to the press.
Progressive Media Fear
Exclusion at Second Obama Inauguration. Progressive journalists are worried that Barack Obama is going to cut them out from his
second swearing-in ceremony. As Politico reports, rumors abound that this time 'round Obama is going to hold a private ceremony, one not
open to the media.
The
open-and-shut administration. "My administration," President Obama wrote on his first day in office, "is committed to creating an
unprecedented level of openness in government." Those were strong and hopeful words. Four years later, it is becoming more and more
clear that they were just words.
Members
Question Use of Secret Email Accounts by Top Obama Administration Officials. In letters today [11/16/2012] to the Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA) and various agency Inspectors General, members of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee questioned whether
senior personnel have been conducting official business through secretive means such as aliases and private email accounts.
Obama Administration Gets Sued Over Carbon
Tax E-mails. President Obama's Treasury Department is facing a lawsuit for stonewalling a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request relating to a planned
carbon tax on fossil fuels. The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), a watchdog group focused on energy and environmental regulations, filed suit Tuesday ]11/13/2012]
in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., announcing in a press release that it expects Obama's congressional cronies to propose the tax in the upcoming lame-duck session.
WH Won't Release Photos of Obama Team
During Benghazi Attack. Today [11/21/2012], the White House officially refused to release photos of US officials during the September 11
terrorist attacks on our consulate in Benghazi, Libya, that ended with the deaths of four Americans. CBS News requested the photos on October 31;
the White House has routinely released photos showing members of the Obama administration in their hero poses during national security crises. That
happened most famously with pictures of the Obama administration key players clustered into the White House situation room during the raid on Osama Bin
Laden's compound in Pakistan.
More about
the Benghazi scandal.
Congress demands EPA's secret email accounts.
A House committee has launched an investigation into whether EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson used an email alias to try to hide correspondence from open-government
requests and her agency's own internal watchdog — something that Republican lawmakers said could run afoul of the law. The science committee has
asked Ms. Jackson to turn over all information related to an email account under the name of "Richard Windsor," which is one of the aliases identified by a researcher
looking into the EPA.
Congressmen Confront
EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson Over Use of Alias 'Richard Windsor'. Two members of Congress sent a letter to EPA administrator Lisa Jackson over her use
of the alias "Richard Windsor." The congressmen, Fred Upton and Cliff Stearns, want Jackson to explain her actions. [...] Upton is the chairman of the House
Committee on Energy and Commerce; Stearns is the chairman of the subcommittee on oversight and investigation.
Obama promised transparency,
delivered secrecy. Candidate Obama promised transparency. President Obama talks as if he has delivered it.
People paying close attention know he hasn't. [...] Obama administration officials held off-site meetings with lobbyists to avoid having to
disclose them. They asked lobbyists to use personal emails. They divvied up ObamaCare to various industry lobbyists behind
closed doors and refused to produce the emails in the negotiations.
Obama: Transparently Disappointing.
On March 28, 2011, a group of leading transparency advocates passed through the security checkpoints along the perimeter of the White
House compound to present Barack Obama with an award for his efforts to open up government. [...] The meeting was closed to the media,
off limits even to a promised pool photographer and reporter. The ceremony did not appear on Obama's public schedule, and the White
House did not release a transcript of the conversation.
EPA chief's secret 'alias' email account
revealed. The name Richard Windsor may sound innocuous, but it is allegedly one of the secret "alias" email accounts used by Obama EPA
Administrator Lisa Jackson. "That is the name — sorry, one of the alias names — used by Obama's radical EPA chief to keep her
email from those who ask for it," Chris Horner, senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute and author of the new book "The Liberal
War on on [sic] Transparency," told the Daily Caller News Foundation in an email.
Who is 'Richard Windsor'?
In The Liberal War on on Transparency, published by Threshold Editions last month, I revealed the existence of a series of black, or "alias" email
accounts used by EPA administrators. These were actively instituted by none other than Carol Browner, who designed her own secret address, for an
account that I also learned was set to "auto-delete". You remember Ms. Browner? She's the lady who suddenly ordered her computer hard drive
be reformatted and backup tapes be erased, just hours after a federal court issued a "preserve" order that her lawyers at the Clinton Justice Department
insisted they hadn't yet told her about? She's the one who said it didn't matter because she didn't use her computer for email anyway? Yes,
that one.
Business Owners Warn
Of 4,100 New Regs And The Administration's Secrecy About Them. Every administration is legally required to publish a report each April
and October in the Federal Register to inform Congress and the public of the administration's regulatory agenda and its potential economic impact.
The requirement is part of the Regulatory Flexibility Act of 1980. The Obama administration has missed its second straight legal deadline for
disclosing its regulatory plans and their economic impact to Congress and the American public. No previous administration has ever failed to
produce the report even once.
Obama stops making promises to lead an
ethical, open government. President Obama ran in 2008 while making big promises on transparency and ethics, including vows to ban
lobbyists from working for him, to throw open negotiations on health care legislation, to speed freedom-of-information requests and to let voters have
direct input before he signed bills into law. He is making no such promises in this year's campaign, though, nor is he taking a victory lap on
those old vows.
Obama Revealed More Than His Birth Certificate Last Year.
[Jay] Carney knew that two copies of Obama's long-form birth certificate had arrived two days earlier, but he kept silent on this fact until the
following day, when a special press briefing, known as a "Press Gaggle," was held just prior to Obama's official press conference.
No recording devices or photography was permitted. Only paper-and-pencil notes. (Banning physical recordings? What ever
happened to transparency?)
Report gives Obama failing marks on
transparency. The administration received abysmal grades for "virtually ignoring" a promise to post laws online for five days before
the president signed them, for not clearly laying out which offices have what spending authority, and for a test of the Freedom of Information Act
in which "19 of 20 cabinet-level agencies disobeyed the public disclosure law."
Secret U.S., Iranian meetings to continue. The United States
and Iran are moving forward with secret negotiations, despite denying earlier meetings took place, according to a source highly placed in the Islamic government.
The source, who remains anonymous for security reasons, added that teams from both sides will resume the talks in the coming days with the hope of reaching agreement
to announce a breakthrough before the U.S. elections.
White House Kills the Briefing Room
Lights. White House Press Secretary Jay Carney has apparently been pulled from the podium of the White House Briefing
Room, as President Obama's political advisers seek to control their messaging as much as possible and avoid unforced errors.
Carney, the public face of the "openness" White House, has not briefed from the podium since October 10. It's the only
time he has appeared there this month.
Obama White House Goes
Into Information Lock Down. With mounting questions surrounding the Benghazi Massacre, and Barack Obama's consistent
slide in the national polls, the administration has not held a press briefing at the White House since October 10th —
this from the most "transparent" administration in America's history.
Transparency in union finances
a thing of the past. Ignoring their own rhetoric about the value of transparency and openness, the Obama
administration is "rolling back rules requiring labor unions and their leaders to report information about their finances
and compensation," according to [a] Washington Times report written by Jim McElhatton.
Libya and Lies. What has this man not deceived the public
about? [...] Remember his pledge to have a "transparent" government that would post its legislative proposals on the Internet several days before
Congress was to vote on them, so that everybody would know what was happening? This was followed by an Obamacare bill so huge and passed so fast
that even members of Congress did not have time to read it.
Czars, Lies and
Email: What Information Is the Left Trying to Delete From History? The Supreme Court wrote that transparency laws, particularly FOIA,
are to ensure the public knows "what their government is up to." Now that liberals control the institutions that they warned must be subject
to scrutiny for fear of abuse, it is transparency that apparently poses the threat. The Obama administration is sinking to desperate depths to
fend off this horror of accountability.
Transparently Biased Against
Disclosure. Obama came into office pledging to create "an unprecedented level of openness in government" and to "act promptly" to
make information public. Surprise, surprise: Obama is just another politician. In June, Bloomberg reporters filed Freedom of
Information Act requests with 57 federal agencies. The reporters sought data on a very basic level: taxpayer-supported travel by
Cabinet secretaries and top officials. Just eight of the agencies met the 20-day window for disclosure required by law. Of 20 Cabinet-level
agencies, only the Small Business Administration responded within the legal time limit.
Suppressing Scientific (or Public) Inquiry.
These tactics range from the widespread use of private emails, hiding meetings with lobbyists, using "handles" and lobby groups as "cutouts" or
go-betweens with pressure groups with whom the administration doesn't want a paper trail.
The Liberal War on Transparency.
[Scroll down] But I also have an affidavit admitting to an elaborate system established by one activist agency — NASA's Goddard
Institute for Space Studies (GISS) — to view its emails remotely on a non-official computer, purchased with taxpayer money and used for
the taxpayer's business but access to which is being denied the government for inspection, whose use erases any trace of the records back on government
servers.
EPA execs use secret email addresses to skirt FOIA, suit alleges.
Environmental Protection Agency senior executives used secret email addresses to skirt freedom of information laws, a lawsuit by a free-market
think tank alleges. The Competitive Enterprise Institute filed a lawsuit against the EPA last week claiming senior executives at the
agency used secret email accounts to conduct public business, shielding their communications from the Freedom of Information Act.
The suit cites an internal EPA memo, first revealed in a 2008 Government Accountability Office, which describes secondary email accounts
known only to a "few EPA staff members, usually only high-level senior staff."
Obama,
supporters lying to us. He still has not released his school records, which may indicate there is something in them
he wants to hide. But remember he stated that his administration would be the most transparent administration ever; but yet
the press has trouble getting the White House logs.
Obama Cabinet Flunks Disclosure
Test With 19 in 20 Ignoring Law. On his first full day in office, President Barack Obama ordered federal officials to "usher in a new era of
open government" and "act promptly" to make information public. As Obama nears the end of his term, his administration hasn't met those goals,
failing to follow the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act, according to an analysis of open-government requests filed by Bloomberg News.
Nineteen of 20 cabinet-level agencies disobeyed the law requiring the disclosure of public information: The cost of travel by top officials.
Obama Visitor Logs Must Be Public,
Lawyer Tells Court. The names of people vetted by the U.S. Secret Service for White House visits are agency records that must be made public,
a lawyer for Judicial Watch Inc. told a federal appeals court in Washington. Judicial Watch, a Washington-based legal activist organization, asked a
three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals today [9/18/2012] to uphold a district judge's order requiring the Secret Service to process its request for
the names of people who visited the White House during the first nine months of President Barack Obama's term under the Freedom of Information Act.
Not all Obama bundlers are on his
public list. President Obama's campaign has left off its public list of "bundlers" at least 25 names its own finance team
considers to be among their most valuable funders, including seven who live in foreign countries, a review of records by The Washington Times
found. In one case the campaign's own internal documents listed Cynthia Stroum as bundling $400,000 this election cycle, yet she is not
on the campaign's official public list. Mr. Obama tapped Ms. Stroum to be ambassador to Luxembourg after she raised half a million for
his 2008 campaign.
Obama's Not-So-Public Schedule. The
White House has touted the easy availability of President Barack Obama's public schedule as part of his administration's
"commitment to open government." But there's a lot the White House keeps off its regular rundown of the president's
day. Obama has pledged to run the most transparent administration in history, yet the published schedule offers only
a narrow window into his activities, a POLITICO review found. There are tough-to-fathom omissions like leaving off a
reception for AIDS activists and researchers that had already been announced on a White House blog.
Obama
Transparency Fail: Won't admit to producing mandatory FISA reports. Congress required the Department of Justice to produce
a semi-annual report on how the National Security Administration is using its sweeping surveillance powers under the 2008 FISA Amendments
Act. Surveillance expert Julian Sanchez at the Cato Institute submitted a Freedom of Information Act request, asking for copies of
these reports — expecting that information identifying specific cases would redacted, as it was in the past, when the ACLU
successfully sued to obtain publication of older issues of the report.
Testing "The Most Transparent
Administration in History". Barack Obama pledged to preside over the "most transparent administration in history,"
drawing an explicit contrast with the extreme secrecy of his predecessor. The Web site of the Department of Justice highlights
that pledge, declaring its commitment to faithfully carry out a presidential directive encouraging such transparency, especially
with regards to Freedom of Information Act requests, which are a vital tool for public accountability and informed democratic
deliberation about government's activities. Earlier this summer, I decided I'd put that commitment to what should have
been an easy test.
FISA Fight. The Obama administration is pushing for the
reauthorization of a law allowing warrantless wiretaps and prolonging Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests despite
campaigning against such measures and promising to be the most transparent administration ever.
Team Obama's secret film deal.
The killing of Osama bin Laden last year was referenced repeatedly this week at the Democratic National Convention. This is ironic,
as President Obama, in denying requests for basic information about the raid, said he wasn't going to release the information because he
didn't want to be seen as "spiking the football." As there is no spiking-the-football exception to our open-records laws, Judicial
Watch initiated a federal court battle with the administration over the release of post mortem images of bin Laden and his alleged
burial at sea.
Thought Police Patrol
Convention's Radio Row. Conservative talk-show hosts who came to Charlotte to interview political figures are furious.
For the first time in anyone's memory, Radio Row — the designated set of booths available to visiting talk-show hosts —
has seen restrictions placed on its use by Team Obama. DNC staffers at Radio Row will book leading Democrats for slots on conservative
stations but then cancel the appearances an hour or so before broadcast "because you're not our audience." [...] So much for the
transparency and openness of the Obama era.
Romney Campaign Says Obama Fast And Furious
Decision "Another Broken Promise". Romney Press Secretary Andrea Saul attacked President Barack Obama's decision to invoke executive
privilege on documents pertaining to the Fast and Furious scandal requested by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
"President Obama's pledge to run the most open and transparent administration in history has turned out to be just another broken promise," she
said in a statement to BuzzFeed.
Obama Quashes Conservative
Media Access at DNC. Media availability for Obama officials and acolytes has been shut up as tight as a clam for
conservative media here at the Democratic National Convention. According to sources at Talk Radio News Service, placing a
stringer outside the designated TV area to ask high-level Democrats to stop by radio row has been banned by the DNC —
in fact, as one source told me, "You need permission from Obama for America."
Author:
Journalists 'Cover Energy And Environment Subjects As Liberal Activists,' E-Mails Show. Liberals claim to support
transparency in government — until conservatives start finding shady things through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)
requests. New York Times bestselling author, litigator, and Competitive Enterprise Institute senior fellow Chris Horner has been
filing such FOIAs for years and has turned up Obama's "true plan" for cap-and-trade, a close relationship between an energy official and
a Solyndra director — and more. Horner's quest for public information, labeled as "criminal" by one Obama agency head,
will be detailed in his upcoming book, "The Liberal War on Transparency."
In '08, we hardly knew Barack
Obama; In 2012 we don't know President Obama. In 2008, we didn't know who Barack Hussein Obama II was. Most of us had
never even heard the name before the primary season in the spring. We were not — and for the most part still are not —
allowed to see any of his personal records, beginning with his birth certificate. The only writings available about him then were his two
autobiographies and Jerome Corsi's book,
The ObamaNation. As a Cold Warrior and a former intelligence analyst,
The ObamaNation
was enough for me to form a working hypothesis of who this man was.
What
Obama and My Wife Have in Common. [Scroll down] Mr. President, you promised the American
people that you are "committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government." In fact,
in your July 23 prime-time news conference, you said that your administration has been more transparent
than previous administrations: "I think that we have provided much greater transparency than existed
prior to our administration coming in." So again, I ask: Why not live out that transparency promise
by posting your original birth certificate and end the division and debate?
Did
someone mention President Obama's birth certificate?
Irregular Order Puts Taxpayers in Jeopardy.
In making law, process matters. A lot. When lawmakers eschew regular order to craft legislation, it usually means there's dirty work afoot.
That's what happened earlier this year, when Congress finagled an extension of federal highway programs and gas taxes. Lawmakers ignored the regular way of
doing business, and taxpayers got hosed. Now, conservatives worry that lawmakers are prepping to employ the same sorry shenanigans to pass an uber-expensive
farm bill.
Barack Obama — A Transparent Fraud.
In January of 2009, Barack Obama promised Americans an "unprecedented" level of transparency in his dealings with the American people and throughout his
Administration. Almost four years have passed since that promise, during which time, Americans have witnessed an extraordinary level of deception and
obfuscation, all designed to divert attention from the Obama Administration's failure to grow the economy, their failure to create jobs, their failure to curb
out-of-control government spending, and their failure to maintain American prestige on the international level.
Issa to Obama
Chief of Staff: Tell Us Who's Been Using Personal Email for Official Business. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell
Issa (R-Calif.) is pressing the White House for information on who is using personal email accounts for official business after Obama Deputy Campaign Manager
Stephanie Cutter said staffers use personal email "for our longstanding relationships." [...] In addition to violating the Presidential Records Act and the
Federal Records Act, Issa noted that the use of non-official email accounts would stymie Freedom of Information Act requests or litigation requests.
What Obama Has in Store for Us.
The latest line of attack on Mitt Romney by Obama supporters is the most breathtaking yet: Romney, we are told, is a stealth
candidate. [...] Romney certainly could have handled the release of his tax returns better, and it's likely he is concealing embarrassing
details. But Barack Obama, aided and abetted by a subservient media, spent much of his 2008 campaign trying to conceal his radical
roots and evading questions about his past.
What would the press have said if they had caught George Bush doing this?
Obama aide sent
lobbyists private email. With three months to go before Election Day, President Obama's campaign manager faced a
fusillade of questions Wednesday [8/1/2012] about whether he deliberately skirted disclosure rules during his time as deputy White
House chief of staff, undermining the administration's claim to be "the most transparent administration in history."
White
House officials caught out with lobbyists. The White House was accused of breaking its own transparency rules after it
emerged that senior officials went to elaborate lengths to conceal back-channel discussions with lobbyists.
Trump Now Taking Aim at Obama's Collegiate Background. A vocal Romney supporter who once toyed with
a run at the top office himself, Trump took up the latest controversy over the president's background — the circumstances under which Obama attended
Columbia University. "If I were Mitt Romney, and I'm not, I would say very simply, 'I will release my returns, which are 100 percent legit, everything's
fine, if you release the information that we want,'" he said on"Squawk Box." Obama "spends $4 million trying to hide lots of different things that he's
done, whether it's his passport records, his college applications and college record."
Former
Obama Classmate Challenges the President to Release His College Records. Wayne Allyn Root was President Obama's classmate
at Columbia University, Class of 1983. They graduated the same year and shared the same major but Root claims he and his classmates
do not recall knowing Barack Obama during those years.
'Call Obama's bluff!' Somehow Obama got
into Harvard Law School, without leaving so much as a footprint in the sand in the Columbia collective consciousness. The sketchy
outline provided by the campaign/media combine in 2008 simply does not bear scrutiny.
Was Barack Obama A Foreign
Exchange Student? Not many students whose grades supposedly were good enough to get into Harvard Law School can say that
400 of their classmates taken randomly don't remember a single thing about him or his even being there. But Barack Obama, Columbia
University class of '83, can. Student Obama spent two years at Columbia after transferring there from Occidental College in Los
Angeles. And for all the impression he made on his classmates, he might as well have been in the witness protection program.
The Wall Street Journal reported in 2008 that Fox News called that random group of 400 Columbia classmates and never found one who
had ever met Obama.
Barry Soetoro, the Invisible Man. In sum and
substance, [Wayne Allyn] Root speculates that Barry Soetoro was accepted and attended Columbia University as a foreign exchange student,
most likely as an Indonesian citizen. Mr. Root added that He paid little for either undergraduate college or Harvard Law School
because of foreign aid and scholarships awarded due to his citizenship status. At this point, you might be inclined to brush off
the entire matter as speculation, classify it as a distraction or otherwise downplay the significance of the issue. There are a
number of critically important reasons why one must not dismiss any or all of this.
Interior Department
sneaks offshore moratorium past public. While the Obama administration was taking a victory lap last week after the
5-4 Supreme Court decision to uphold the president's signature legislative accomplishment, Obamacare, the Interior Department was
using the media black hole to release a much-awaited five-year plan for offshore drilling. That plan reinstitutes a 30-year
moratorium on offshore energy exploration that will keep our most promising resources locked away until long after President Obama
begins plans for his presidential library. Given the timing, it is clear that the self-described "all of the above" energy
president didn't want the American people to discover that he was denying access to nearly 98 percent of America's vast
energy potential on the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS).
Transparency? Obama's Secretive
Soros-Funded Money Machine. Ever since the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision, left-wingers and Democrats have been braying
for center right and conservative organizations, PACS, and super PACS to reveal their donors, the libs claiming that such "transparency" is good
for American politics. But as far as these people are concerned, "disclosure" is only to be forced on others and the fact that one of Obama's
biggest campaign donation bundlers is the leader of a very secretive Democrat money machine proves the rule rather than the exception.
President Obama courts wealthy donors.
Four times in the last week, President Barack Obama has quietly slipped into private, exclusive Democratic Party
fundraisers around town, glad-handing well-heeled donors away from the eyes of the press — and
contradicting his pledge to run the most transparent administration in history.
Obama admin under fire for
secretive catch and release immigration policy. Three Republican Senators and the presidents of two major law enforcement unions are
expected to band together at a Thursday [7/26/2012] press conference to call out what they consider President Barack Obama's questionable immigration
and border security policies. Specifically, a source familiar with the presser told The Daily Caller, they'll likely focus on a secret internal
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) memo that — if eventually implemented into policy — would allow its agents to catch
and release "low priority" illegal immigrants.
Levin 'Calling On Barack
Obama To Release The Names Of The Drug Dealers' He Used. Radio host Mark Levin is "calling on Barack Obama to release the
names of the drug dealers from whom he bought his drugs." On Thursday's [7/19/2012] show, Levin offered a rebuttal to Pres. Obama's campaign
push for Mitt Romney to release his tax returns: "I'm calling on Barack Obama to release the names of the drug dealers from whom
he bought his drugs all those years when he was a pothead — self identified.
Obama is somebody's puppet.
Obama's insult to successful business people applies best to
him. If there's anyone who didn't get there on his own, it is not the entrepreneur but the man who was parachuted
in as the 44th president of the United States of America. [...] With no accomplishments of note, no qualifications for the job at
hand and no record to prove otherwise, those working to smother America decided Obama had the best makeup with which to con media
and malcontents alike. All the haughty and taunting deeds in his self-proclaimed past were written up as an intro in an
'autobiography', bought up by a book publisher without question.
Barack Obama is somebody's puppet.
Obama Is a Spokesmodel for Tyranny.
Forget calling Obama "incompetent." This tiresome meme presupposes that Obama wants to do what's right for America but doesn't know how.
Does anyone honestly believe that anymore? Yes, he's incompetent, in that he's a fairly unimpressive bloke with no skills, imagination,
or ability to learn, who couldn't run a third-rate laundromat. But so what? His sponsors didn't install him for his competence.
They installed him so that he could strut on the runways of the world, showing off his fashionable skin color and perfectly creased pants, while
babbling whatever useful venom they put on his teleprompter.
Transparent.
Besides from being an administration that has a hard time defining fact from fiction it also has the distinction of not being
the most transparent administration in history. Remember when the president was running in 2008 he would proclaim that the
lobbyist would be driven from the White House and they would be banished. He claimed they would no longer set the agenda for
the government then promptly went back on his word when elected and issued waivers for lobbyist to join his administration.
That should have given the public a hint of what the Obama administration would do when it suited its agenda. It took years
for him to release his long form birth certificate and now he still refuses to release his academic records.
Romney rips Obama over Fast and
Furious 'hypocrisy'. Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney lashed out Tuesday [7/17/2012] at President Obama for a
lack of "transparency" in invoking executive privilege to withhold Operation Fast and Furious documents. In a release headlined
"Transparent Hypocrisy: Obama's Fast and Furious Broken Promises," Romney campaign spokeswoman Andrea Saul said: "President Obama's
pledge to be transparent has turned out to be just another broken promise."
Special
IG: Geithner dropped 'f-bombs' when I said he wasn't transparent enough. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner gets very angry at
the suggestion that he conduct the bank bailouts in a transparent manner, according to Neil Barofsky, the former special inspector general
for the Treasury Department.
Why Obama's College Records Matter. Yes,
many want to see Obama's college records for grades and courses (as with G.W. Bush and others). But in Obama's case, the primary reason
to see his college applications is to learn whether the president applied for college in the U.S. as a foreign student. Why should the public
want to confirm that Obama did not register as a foreigner while not having the same concern for other candidates? Read on. Most
of the basic records of Barack Obama's past — vital, hospital, medical, education, passport, draft registration, et al. —
are guarded as securely as the gold at Fort Knox. Notably, two documents — elementary school and Selective Service
registrations — were obtained by independent citizens.
Harry
Reid: Romney 'couldn't be confirmed as a dog catcher'. President Barack Obama and his Democratic allies have
launched a sustained attack this week over Mitt Romney's refusal to release additional tax returns, suggesting the Republican
nominee is trying to "hide" something from the American people. On Wednesday [7/11/2012], Senate Majority Leader
Harry Reid suggested Romney would never win Senate confirmation for a Cabinet position because "he won't show anybody
his tax returns." But as Politico reports, Reid took that criticism a step further on Thursday, saying that Romney
couldn't even win confirmation to be a "dog catcher."
The Editor says...
Senator Harry Reid and the Democrats are happy to overlook Barack Obama's lack of a paper trail while pointing fingers at someone
who is not yet officially the other party's nominee.
Jay
Carney sneers at reporter's request for Obama's college records. White House Press Secretary Jay Carney derided a
reporter today [7/12/2012] for asking whether President Obama would release his college records in the campaign, to serve as an
example of transparency. [...] Carney reiterated that Obama was an "open book" and had an "extremely sound" record of transparency.
Why the secrecy?
Cornyn to FBI
Director: Make Fort Hood Report Public. Upon reports that the independent review of the FBI's actions
in the Fort Hood shooting are going to be delivered to the bureau today, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) has asked FBI
Director Robert Mueller to make that report available to the public as well. The review team, led by Judge
William Webster, is expected to submit a 150-page report, containing findings and 18 formal recommendations for
necessary reforms in a range of areas within the FBI.
Transparent hypocrisy.
President Obama's senior campaign adviser last week called Mitt Romney "the most secretive candidate we've seen probably since Richard Nixon,"
citing Romney having assets in offshore accounts. Amazingly, Axelrod said this just two weeks after his client invoked executive
privilege — a term practically synonymous with Nixon and Watergate — to block the release of subpoenaed documents in
the "Fast and Furious" scandal. This is especially ironic considering Obama's vow, immediately after the 2008 election, to lead the "most
open and transparent [government] in history."
Obama's Make-Believe Life . Barack Obama exists
only as the sock puppet of his handlers, of the people who have maneuvered and manufactured this pathetic individual's life. When anyone else
would quickly and easily produce a birth certificate, this man has spent over a million dollars to deny access to his. Most other documents, the
paper trail we all leave in our wake, have been sequestered from review. He has lived a make-believe life whose true facts remain hidden.
We laugh at the ventriloquist's dummy, but what do you do when the dummy is President of the United States of America?
Who's Secretive? I don't envy Barack Obama's campaign advisers.
Every day, they have to invent some new distraction to avoid talking about his record in office. It is only July, and already they are running low on
irrelevancies. [...] The litany of Obama's non-disclosures is familiar. Unlike other recent presidential candidates, to cite just one example, Obama
has kept his college and law school records under wraps. But that is relatively trivial. It seems to me that another instance of Obama's secretiveness
is much more significant: his refusal to release his medical records. Almost all major party nominees in modern election cycles have made their medical
records public. (Bill Clinton is the notable exception.)
Transparency Ends at the White House Door. On
his first day in office, President Obama vowed to create "a new level of transparency, accountability and participation for America's
citizens." But the president has not lived up to his transparency rhetoric — and now even the left is taking note.
Liberal magazine Mother Jones laments this week that the Obama administration spent a record-high $12 billion in 2011 to keep
government information classified. Since the process of classifying documents is itself classified, it's impossible to
determine the individual merits of those decisions.
Speaking of Foreign Money, What About
Obama's? President Obama says outside political groups supporting Republicans are "a threat to democracy" because
some won't disclose who their donors are. David Axelrod, the president's senior adviser, doubled down on the issue yesterday
on CNN, insisting that when "people don't disclose, there's a reason." Previously, when asked by CBS's Bob Schieffer whether
the White House had any evidence for its charges that the Chamber of Commerce was spending foreign money on campaign ads, Mr. Axelrod
famously responded, "Do you have any evidence that it's not, Bob?"
Is
US government reading email without a warrant? It doesn't want to talk about it. In March, the American Civil Liberties
Union caused a nationwide stir when the advocacy group released the results of its year-long investigation into law enforcement use of
cellphone tracking data. After issuing hundreds of Freedom of Information Act requests, the ACLU learned that many local police
departments around the country routinely pay mobile phone network operators a small fee to get detailed records of historic cell phone
location information. The data tell cops not just where a suspect might have been at a given moment, but also create the
possibility of retracing someone's whereabouts for months.
While We Were Sleeping. We were so preoccupied with the looming health
care insurance premium that is really a tax for the privilege of living in the U.S., the upcoming health exchanges, Obama's domestic army of IRS health
insurance enforcement agents, more unemployment growing on the horizon, and a dim economic future, that we overlooked the national emergency declared by
President Obama. President Obama sent a letter to the Speaker of the House of Representatives and to the President of the Senate on June 25,
2012, announcing his declaration of national emergency.
"Donors don't want their names to be associated with his events". [I]sn't it curious
that while on his daily fundraising binge Monday [6/25/2012], Obama himself had someone privately foot the tab for security at a New Hampshire
stop after the locals decided they'd had enough of this freeloader campaigning on the public dime. Yet they won't disclose the donor.
Obama's Secret Sugar Daddy. Despite President Obama's outspoken
criticism of the influence of anonymous, deep-pocketed donors in the political process, an anonymous donor is footing the bill for the
president's upcoming visit to Durham, New Hampshire. [...] The conservative group Americans for Prosperity announced it will be filing a records
request to try to determine the identity of the donor as it could be considered an "in-kind" campaign contribution, Buzzfeed reports.
Obama guilty of contempt for
transparency. President Obama promised "an unprecedented level of openness in government." Instead, he has revealed an
apparent contempt for transparency. The president has caused a storm of controversy by using executive privilege to cover up aspects
of his administration's Fast and Furious gun-running scandal. This week, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee passed
a contempt of Congress resolution to be considered by the full House of Representatives next week. If this resolution passes, it will
be the first time in our nation's history that an attorney general has been held in contempt of Congress.
The opacity of hope:
Obama's war on transparency. Executive privilege, affirmed by the Supreme Court in
U.S. v. Nixon, is
historically limited to the president's own discussions. Obama is now extending it to his attorney general. Expanding
executive secrecy contravenes Obama's promises on transparency, but it's not the first time the president has betrayed his high-minded
rhetoric.
Did Obama assert executive
privilege to bail out Holder before? [Scroll down] There are two possibilities in this case, ultimately: Obama asserted
executive privilege in 2009 for Holder to help him cover up his past, or Holder incorrectly claimed he didn't have "authority" to testify about
something when he did. White House spokesman Eric Schultz wouldn't answer when asked if Obama asserted executive privilege then, nor would
Holder spokesman Tracy Schmaler.
'Just
another broken promise' of transparency. "President Obama's pledge to run the most open and transparent administration in
history has turned out to be just another broken promise," Romney campaign spokeswoman Andrea Saul said in an email to The Daily Caller.
Obama's Media-Contrived Courage. [Scroll
down] The people who voted for Obama in 2008 knew virtually nothing about him, and know little more now. Where are his college
transcripts, his friends and girlfriends, and whatever he wrote for the Harvard Law Review? No one has seen the transcripts or the
writing, no one has sought out and interviewed his high school and college friends and girlfriends. We know almost nothing about
Obama's early years except what Obama himself has written.
Conservative
Offers $20,000 to Anyone Who Can Produce Obama's College Transcripts. What could be so bad? Did he get a bunch of C's and D's? Did
he get caught using the girls' bathroom? Did he get disciplined for smacking his gum too loudly during Advanced Horse Hockey Studies in Alinsky's
Machinations class? What? It's gotta be some damning stuff because 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue sure ain't interested in it getting unearthed.
And the media is completely dismissive of it as well, which tells me that there's gold in them thar hills!
Barack Obama's autobiographical fictions. Obama's Occidental years have the
same waterbug quality that so many periods of his life seem to have in retrospect: You see a figure traveling lightly and swiftly over the surface of things,
darting away before he could leave an impression that might last. Archivists have combed college records and come up empty, mostly. Barry Obama, as he
then was known, published two poems in the campus literary magazine his sophomore year. The testimony of the handful of professors who remembered him, four by my
count, is hazy. He was never mentioned in the student newspaper, never wrote a letter to the editor or appeared in a photo; he failed to have his picture taken
for the yearbook, so his likeness isn't there either.
Obama's Best-Kept Secret. If
Justice Department documents that Issa's committee seeks from Attorney General Eric Holder had been the subject of a top-secret meeting in the
White House Situation Room, their contents already would have been splashed across the media.
The
Enigma That Is Barack Hussein Obama, Part Two. Barry has sequestered and locked away all of his personal records in some safe dark place
where they will never again be shown the light of day. These records include his "certificate of live birth" (he released a forgery), his college
transcripts, Harvard thesis, student loans, Harvard law review articles, passport, medical records, Illinois Senate records, community organizer activity
with ACORN, and others. His Illinois bar registration, social security number (he uses one originating in Connecticut) from a place he never lived,
and most any other documents of a personal or professional nature could be construed as his bona fides. His army of lawyers from the Perkins Coie
law firm of Seattle, Washington are his henchman to make sure that each and every challenge to his narrative is immediately quelled. So much for
the most "open and transparent" administration in history, which was only rhetoric as we have seen with his dismal performance in office. This is
beginning to make sense when all the facts leading up to this are considered; clearly, he is hiding something, and all these actions appear preemptive
in nature as a possible legal defense for something as of yet undisclosed.
The white
girlfriends Obama erased from his past. [Scroll down] He gives the impression of a man in such a hurry to save the
world that he had no time for such distractions as romance. But now, in a blistering new biography, Pulitzer-prize-winning journalist
David Maraniss has pulled his exes out of the shadows. In so doing, he has revealed an unflattering picture of a president so desperate
to sell an image of himself as a pioneering race warrior that he has air-brushed many of the 'white' elements from his life —
including that string of well-heeled, well-educated white girlfriends.
Grifters on Parade. An unfortunate
side-effect of the birth debate is that it has served to mask the bulk of the undeniable questions surrounding Obama's record, in
particular his college records, which have faded almost to invisibility. In the light of the fake bio, they may well have
been transformed into the most critical element of them all.
White House Chief of
Staff: 'This Administration Has Been the Most Transparent Ever'. Yesterday on CNN, White House chief of staff Jack Lew defended the Obama
administration's involvement in the Fast and Furious scandal by saying that "this administration has been the most transparent ever." "So why did
you all invoke executive privilege this time when there are some who feel there is something a little shaky taking place?," CNN's Candy Crowley asked.
Obama's latest excuse against probing eligibility.
What's Barack Obama's latest legal excuse against probing his eligibility to serve as president? He's not the nominee of the Democratic Party.
That's what his attorneys argued in a hearing today [6/18/2012] [...] At least the hearing provided an opportunity for [Larry] Klayman to argue the
eligibility case in a public setting — something Obama's attorneys, the media and the political establishment seem determined to prevent
at all costs. Klayman accused the Obama attorneys of playing a "shell game" and trying to put off the issue, as numerous courts did in 2008
until the election was over and Obama was inaugurated.
Turning the Tables on Obama and the Dems. Obama is not
seeking re-election for any reason other than to grab the four more years necessary to complete his messianic Fundamental Transformation
of America. Nothing that has ever been done before will come along to tear America from the voracious jaws of Obama. This is
a man who was propelled from within the foul ranks of street activism to the highest office in the land; the socialist community activist
who hid his true face from the American people with the help of a book based on "conceptual" relationships. This is the man who came
from nowhere; did nothing to earn his lofty perch and who sealed off all those documents that would tell who he really is. This is a
man who changed his name from Barry Soetoro to what he perceives to be the more royal and more substantial sounding 'Barack Obama'.
Obama's Sons: They Are Real for
Him. Much has been said, [...] at
American Thinker and elsewhere, about Barack Obama's recent pair of
teleprompted references to his (presumably) non-existent sons. Thomas Lifson toys with the notion that Obama might in
fact have secret sons, as a way of making sense of the seeming insanity of it. Selwyn Duke suggests it might
indicate brain damage from Obama's (presumably) past drug use. (Funny, isn't it, how often one is left no choice
but merely to
presume about the Cipher-in-Chief.) David Paulin asks whether Obama might be the victim of a
teleprompting prankster/saboteur. All of these are reasonable speculations — which is, in itself, reason
to be perturbed about America's current devolved state.
What Is Obama Hiding? There has been
plenty of conjecture regarding Obama's biography. Clearly, he has a penchant for fiction and does not care to fact-check his
own life. Nor does he care for others to fact-check or scrutinize what he has been doing as president. Has this been
why he has been decimating the taxpayers' best friends in Washington: the inspectors general? Inspectors general are
investigative officials charged with monitoring government programs for waste, fraud, incompetency, corruption, and the like. [...]
Inspectors general are a natural enemy of, let's say, a politician who hails from Cook County and who likes to spend with abandon.
This is particularly true when the beneficiaries of the spending are donors and supporters who can be paid back for their support
with other people's money.
Democrats inadvertenly open
the door to Obama's past. The Democrats, in their zeal to destroy Mitt Romney by any means necessary have opened the door to the
candidates' histories. There's only one problem. Barack Obama, as his first official act as President, sealed his records.
The media is investigating every single pimple that Mitt Romney ever had simply because they can; because the records are available for all to
see. Where are Barack Obama's records?
Mystery
Religion: Mr. Obama's Contradictory Conversions to Christianity. [Scroll down] Mr. Obama has adhered to two
contradictory time frames as to when he converted to Christianity, and no matter which time frame one considers accepting, one
encounters facts that make accepting the time frame very challenging for a rational person. Therefore, one is rational to
conclude that Mr. Obama's true relationship to religion, if indeed he has one, is, like so much else about him, a mystery.
Petitioners
Challenge "Outrageous Secrecy" of Bradley Manning Trial . To date, the Department of Defense has kept all documents
relating to the Manning prosecution under lock and key and has refused to allow anyone to access those files. Nevertheless, a
few intrepid organizations have tried (so far in vain) to penetrate the thick veil of secrecy shrouding the Manning trial.
Mark
Levin: Obama's College Transcripts Should Not Be Off The Table. [Quoting Mark Levin]: He says he was basically in a
drug-induced stupor for the last two years of high school and I've asked many times, 'Well how did he get into Occidental? How
did he transfer to Columbia? And how did he get into Harvard?' He's a pothead. But we're not allowed to know that,
what are you, a birther?
Transparency? Secret, Soros,
Left-Wing, 1% Summit Meeting Held Behind Closed Doors. A luxury resort in Miami, Florida with police-guarded closed doors was the home of a secret
George Soros-backed summit attended by deep-pocketed left-wing donors over the weekend of May 12. They met to plan their strategy for the 2012 elections
and beyond. Yes, it was all hush hush and secret-like — so much for all that "transparency" those lefties are always braying about. The
event hosted by the leftist group Democracy Alliance was reported upon by the Washington Free Beacon from afar. I say from afar because the Soros-paid
group refused the reporters access to the event.
Did Steven Chu Sabotage
BP's Top Kill Effort Just as It Was Succeeding? [Scroll down] So the question before us is, did the administration deliberately
sabotage BP's top kill efforts for political reasons? They were in the midst of trying to pass "Cap and Trade" legislation in the Senate so as to
take control of the energy business through taxation and regulation and thereby promote their political crony capitalist allies in the "green energy"
sector. If they have nothing to hide, they need to fully comply with the legal requests for documents from the various investigations in the
executive, legislative and judicial branches of the government. Let the public know the whole truth. That's the least we should expect
from the "most transparent administration in history."
White House
abandons press pool again. President Obama ditched his press pool reporter for the second time this year, leaving the reporter
at an event as he returned to the White House. [...] Obama previously left the press pool at the White House in January when he decided to
attend his daughter's basketball game on short notice.
So When Will We See Obama's College Transcripts? Or The Rashid
Khalidi Tape? I just got through reading
Washington Post reporter Jason Horowitz's "expose" of Mitt Romney's prep school
days the centerpiece of which focuses on an alleged bullying incident of a gay student
in 1965. If the Washington Post and
other liberal media outlets insist on getting the skinny on Romney's day to day life from the age of 12 to 18 then the very least
they can do is to at long last release President Obama's college transcripts from Occidental, Columbia University and Harvard Law School.
Does it really have to take a $10,000 bounty to find about Obama's academic records?
$10,000 bounty offered
online for Obama college transcripts. The Daily Caller has identified the owner of a website that promised on Tuesday
[5/1/2012] to pay $10,000 to anyone who can provide an authentic copy of President Barack Obama's course transcripts from his days
at Occidental College, Harvard University or Columbia University. Although its one-page website is presented anonymously,
conservative blogger Brooks Bayne confirmed to The Daily Caller that he is responsible for it.
The Editor asks...
Would "fake but accurate" transcripts qualify for the reward?
Liars, Damned Liars, and Harry Reid. Harry Reid wants
to see more of Mitt Romney's past income-tax filings. Debbie Wasserman Schultz wants to see 23 years of his taxes. This, from the die-hard
supporters of a candidate who will not release his college transcripts or so much more. I want to know how Barack Obama got into Columbia University for
undergraduate school. I want to see his application. [...] I want to know who funded his college education. Columbia costs an arm and a leg.
Did Barack Obama have benefactors, admirers of his youthful promise, paying his way? Did he take loans? If so, how did he qualify?
Obama's College Classmate: 'The Obama
Scandal Is at Columbia'. If anyone should have questions about Obama's record at Columbia University, it's me. We both graduated (according
to Obama) Columbia University, Class of '83. We were both (according to Obama) Pre-Law and Political Science majors. And I thought I knew most
everyone at Columbia. I certainly thought I'd
heard of all of my fellow Political Science majors. But not Obama (or as he was known
then — Barry Soetoro). I never met him. Never saw him. Never even heard of him. And none of the classmates that I knew at
Columbia have ever met him, saw him, or heard of him.
Obama's Lost Years. Barack Obama makes his first campaign visit today [9/11/2008]
to his alma mater, Columbia University. Just don't ask the prolific self-diarist to talk about his undergraduate days in Morningside Heights. [...] What can be
said with some certainty is that Mr. Obama lived off campus while at Columbia in 1981-83 and made few friends. Fox News contacted some 400 of his
classmates and found no one who remembered him.
Reconstructing Obama's Columbia Transcript.
Jason Kissner recently questioned President Obama's whereabouts in spring 1982, and also discussed in passing some of the courses Obama took while at Columbia.
In response, I would like to try my hand at reconstructing the Columbia part of Obama's college transcript based on the published record and my own knowledge of
Columbia's requirements as an '84 graduate of the college.
The Enigma That
Is Barack Hussein Obama, Pre-Election To 2009. [Scroll down] Obama as a freshman Senator from Illinois went on a congressional fact
finding tour to Perm Siberia in Russia with Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN) in 2005 to verify the destruction of mobile missiles and their launchers under
the Cooperative Threat Reduction program (CTR). The trip was uneventful, that is, until it was time to depart the Russian military base where these
inspections took place. All of a sudden, Barry and Senator Lugar were confronted and held by Russian authorities for three hours while the Russians
sought permission to search the aircraft they were traveling in. Senator Lugar does not make any mention of this incident in his after-action trip
report; the Chicago Tribune has a small blurb in passing on August 29, 2005. Numerous foreign news sources in Italy and other nations reveal
that Barry was being held and questioned for espionage as being a spy for Britain. This is curious behavior from the Russians because the Cold War
ended in 1991, and our nations have more to gain with mutual cooperation than hostility towards each other.
Who is Barack Obama? As usual, when Obama is the subject,
Americans can't count on the progressives in the Corporate Mainstream Media (CMM) for much help. [...] What happened next — after the
inspections were over — was at the time reported by several foreign news sources but was never reported in the USA by the CMM. The
Russians detained Obama and Lugar for three hours at the airport, demanding to examine both Obama's and Lugar's passports and search their plane.
Some sources reported that the Russians accused Barack Obama of being a spy. But wait — there's more! According to an Italian
source, the Russians did not accuse Obama of being an American spy; they accused him of being a spy for the British! The report went on
to say that the incident ended up involving the White House, the U.S. State Department, and military officials, along with their counterparts
in Moscow. Strangely enough, an official report from Lugar's office about the trip never mentioned the incident.
Who Is Barack Obama? The Question that Won't Go Away.
Alternative sources of information are much more potent now than they were in 2008. It matters not if
The New York Times closes ranks and buries a
story. There are too many other instruments of disinterment. The news will out. And the more people know about Barack Obama, the more, I predict,
they will wonder how this man became president of the United States.
A New Declaration of
Independence. [Scroll down] Echoing the despot of old, Mr. Obama has "called together legislative
bodies" in such manner that makes the action less transparent for the "sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance
with his measures." So while he calls for creating easy-to-read, shorter bills, Mr. Obama creates monstrosities
of several thousand pages. He is famous for his Friday-night document dumps, pushing the legislation through
late on Friday evening when Congress has retired. Before ObamaCare was passed, Mr. Obama promised C-SPAN complete
transparency and public coverage so that the American public could study the law. That never happened.
Mitt Needs to Weaponize
Transparency. If there's one area where President Obama is wholly vulnerable, it's his utter lack of
transparency — yet the presumptive Republican nominee is somehow losing this issue to the president.
This is patently insane. Barack Obama is the president the mainstream media have refused to vet. In fact,
the networks and newspapers have a vested interest in the American people knowing as little as possible about
The One.
Government's
answer to "Fast and Furious" records requests: Blank pages. For more than a year, CBS News
has been investigating the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms' "Fast and Furious" operation and related
cases that also employed the controversial tactic of "gunwalking." With Justice Department officials
refusing all interview requests to date, CBS News requested numerous public documents through the Freedom
of Information Act. So far, all of the requests that have been answered have been denied in part or
in full.
The coming chaos from the Obama-Soertoro playbook.
[A]ny seasoned investigator experienced in conducting background investigations knows that there is no valid substitute for the actual
authenticated paper document. When there is an outright refusal to allow for a legitimate inspection of an actual document, combined
with an overt redirection of investigators' attention away from the hardcopy form, there is always something being hidden. Always.
Obama's
Secretive Keystone XL Decision. To find out what was going on behind the scenes in the Keystone XL decision,
the Institute for Energy Research (IER) filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to Obama's State Department and
EPA. The goal was to understand if politics and special interest group pressure entered into the decision to delay the
pipeline. But while extreme environmental groups like Friends of the Earth, which opposes the pipeline, had no problem
receiving similar information after its FOIA request, IER's request has been delayed.
Under
Obama, the Freedom of Information Act is Still in Shackles. Three years ago this past weekend, on
his first full day in office, President Barack Obama issued his now infamous memo on transparency and open
government, which was supposed to fulfill his campaign promise to lead the "most transparent administration in
history." Instead, his administration has been just as secretive — if not more so —
than his predecessors, and the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) has become the prime example of his
administration's lack of progress.
Open government? Not yet.
The day after being inaugurated, President Obama sought to pry open a government he viewed as insulated from the
people it served. Declaring that "a democracy requires accountability, and accountability requires transparency,"
Obama directed agencies to adopt a presumption of openness in responding to Freedom of Information Act requests, and
pledged to work toward "an unprecedented level of openness in government." We aren't there yet.
Obama:
'Most transparent administration ever' meets Fast & Furious. From the White House web site:
["]My Administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government. We will
work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and
collaboration. Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in
Government.["] Here's an example of Obama's "unprecedented level of openness in Government."
Image courtesy of POLITICO.
A Policy of Lying.
Why does the most open and transparent administration in history lie about government records?
WH:
Visitor logs can't be used to verify visitors. President Obama offered the White House visitor logs as a historic milestone
in transparency, but his spokesman now says the logs cannot be used for "verifying" the identity of White House visitors. The Ann
Romney-Hilary Rosen controversy has led to White House Press Secretary Jay Carney casting doubt on the reliability and use of the visitor
logs in revealing who visits the White House.
Obama Administration
Discontinues Transparency Tool. Since 1993, the Census Bureau has made available detailed data about federal
government expenditures in its Consolidated Federal Funds Report (CFFR). The 2012 report will be the last one.
Through the CFFR website, the public had access to such data as federal expenditures made at the county level for programs
such as Medicaid, Social Security, and Medicare as well as for more obscure federal spending programs. How much did the
federal government send to Autauga County in Alabama for a hazardous materials training program? That data was
available, but now it is concealed.
Democrats Refuse to Hold Medicare Rationing
Czar Hearing. House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Sander Levin (D-Mich.) is refusing to
hold public hearings to examine administration plans to implement a new health care rationing system at
the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS). The president's new Medicare Rationing Czar, Sir Donald
Berwick, is a big fan of British health care rationing. "The decision is not whether or not we will
ration care — the decision is whether we will ration with our eyes open," Berwick said in an
interview prior to his recess appointment to head CMS.
Obama administration rebuffs subpoena. The Obama
administration has snubbed a congressional subpoena in the investigation of a White House "drafting error" that suggested
certain experts supported their decision to temporarily ban oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. The Interior Department
says it will not turnover all of the requested documents and accused the House Resources Committee conducting oversight of
the incident of violating the administration's good faith effort to work with the panel.
Obama
Trades His Oath for Russian Campaign Contribution. A U.S. president has just told the leaders of an unfriendly
nation that he wants to make concessions to them on matters of national defense, but that he cannot do so until after he has
freed himself from having to answer to the American people. In other words, he has explicitly made himself a servant, not
of U.S. national interests, but of Russian national interests. He is assuring the Russians that he intends to satisfy their
wishes, as soon as American public opinion ceases to be an obstacle. This, I suggest, is the kind of government secrecy
that ought to cause alarm.
Birthermania! The only way to
end all doubt is complete transparency. Complete transparency means actually releasing personal records,
including his birth certificate. Actually releasing his birth certificate means making the original available
for forensic authentication. With today's forensic technology, all doubt could be laid to rest quickly.
We have the ability to determine whether the original document is written on paper from 1961 and with corresponding
seal, typeset, and ink. No doubt was erased by Obama's "releasing" a belated birth certificate via internet
posting — the internet meets no legal standard of document production. Try showing an image of your
birth certificate on your laptop to the processing agent when applying for a passport.
Postman: Ayers family put
'foreigner' Obama through school. Did the parents of former Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers help
finance Barack Obama's Harvard education? Did Ayers' mother believe Obama was a foreign student? And was the young
Obama convinced at the time — long before he even entered politics — that he was going to become
president of the United States? A retired U.S. Postal Service carrier who delivered mail to Tom and Mary Ayers in a
Chicago suburb in the late 1980s and early 1990s and claims to have met Obama in front of the Ayers home emphatically says
yes to all three questions.
Why the Ayers family helped Obama.
As Jerome Corsi reported Tuesday in WND, there is excellent reason to believe that Bill Ayers' parents, Tom and Mary Ayers,
helped put Barack Obama through Harvard Law School. This assertion has generated substantial media interest not only
because of the credibility of the story's source, retired mailman Allen Hulton, but also because the story fits all the
known facts and resolves at least one major mystery.
Kagan and
Obamacare — still no answers. Even before he became President, Barack Obama promised
the American people his would be the most open, transparent administration in history. Unfortunately, his
administration's record doesn't match his campaign rhetoric. Now, on the eve of one of the most important
Supreme Court arguments in our nation's history, the stonewalling that has become the hallmark of the Obama
administration may call into question the legitimacy of the court's ultimate decision.
Obama
Administration Seeks More Secrecy for Govt. Files. This sort of obfuscation is an example of an attempt by
agents of the federal government to muddy the clear waters of liberty with words and arguments intended to deprive the
people of the right to monitor the government they created.
Why
Obama's Birth Certificate Matters, Especially Now. You don't present a forged a document for no
reason. ... We're not talking here about some kid who forged an ID so he could drink at 18 in a bar. This
is the most powerful man in the world, who, it appears, is passing off a forgery for some mysterious —
or not so mysterious — reason. This mystery needs to be solved.
Poll:
Government officers impeding reporter access to information, interviews. An overwhelming majority of
journalists who cover Washington say the public is not getting needed information because of government control over
interviews and information requests, according to a new poll. The survey from the Society of Professional
Journalists of reporters who cover federal agencies found most journalists have experienced a range of interference
from public affairs employees. The release comes at the start of so-called Sunshine Week, a week dedicated to
government transparency.
If
Obama's Past Isn't A Concern, Why Cover It Up? The videotape of Obama praising and hugging his America-bashing,
Constitution-trashing law professor Derrick Bell isn't the only evidence that's been hidden from the public. A
1998 video of Obama praising the late Marxist agitator Saul "The Red" Alinsky alongside a panel of hard-core Chicago
communists also exists. Yet it, too, has been withheld. So has a 2003 video of Obama speaking at a Chicago
dinner held in honor of former PLO spokesman Rashid Khalidi. ... If there's nothing to hide, why keep these tapes
under wraps? Why not release them?
Oil and Gasoline Prices.
Actual oil prices are unknown to most Americans. ... A few of us know that the price of U.S. crude oil is always
cheaper than the price of foreign OPEC crude oil. Some of us know that because we have followed "World Crude
Oil Prices" on the website of the Energy Information Administration (EIA) of the U.S. Department of Energy for
years. On November 11, 2011, the EIA shut down the World Crude Oil Prices website. EIA did
not even leave up the valuable historic data on the website. The Obama administration has hidden actual
oil prices from the public. That should be a scandal.
President Obama's muddy transparency record.
A minute after he took office, the White House website declared his administration would become "the most open and
transparent in history." By the end of his first full day on the job, Obama had issued high-profile orders
pledging "a new era" and "an unprecedented level of openness" across the massive federal government. But
three years into his presidency, critics say Obama's administration has failed to deliver the refreshing blast
of transparency that the president promised.
The Editor says...
I am unable to find "the most open and transparent in history" in any transcript of Obama's inaugural address, so that
first sentence might be untrue. Aside from that, I'm generally in agreement.
White House misses Solyndra document deadline.
The Most Transparent Administration In History continued its practice of ignoring inconvenient subpoenas, by missing a
Monday [2/20/2012] deadline to hand over documents related to the Solyndra "green energy" boondoggle.
Obama's
Deceptive Hidden Premises. The most evil thing about the Obama administration's recent violation of the
separation of church and state is its deceptiveness. With his order requiring inclusion of contraception and
abortifacient drugs in insurance coverage, the president is smuggling the hidden premises of NARAL, Planned Parenthood,
and other supporters of abortion into U.S. law, and doing so untruthfully. The Department of Health and Human
Services (HHS) instruction attacking religious institutions such as hospitals, universities, and programs for the
poor rests on four hidden premises.
Obama's Eligibility
Diversion. [Scroll down] In fact, there are so many curious items in Obama's history
and adventures in the "birthers'" quest to obtain more information that anyone attempting to recount it
all ends up sounding like a loon. Many have scoffed at the level of conspiracy or collusion required
to create such a fascinating and frustrating trail. But does the consistent pattern of unknowns
suggest that maybe there really is something there?
Obama's sneaky
treaties. President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are entering negotiations
over — or seeking ratification of — five treaties that could radically limit our national
sovereignty and the reach of our democratic institutions. Particularly scary is that the treaties, once signed
and ratified, have the same status as constitutional law and cannot be altered or eclipsed by Congress or state
legislatures. And their provisions must be enforced by U.S. courts. Those who wish to preserve our
sovereignty and democratic control over our future must rally to block these treaties, either by pressing Obama and
Clinton not to sign them or by blocking their ratification.
Covering Up Fast & Furiously.
The Fast and Furious investigation in Congress is becoming even more fast and furious with Congressional Chairman
Issa threatening a contempt citation against Attorney General Eric Holder. Last week's Friday document
dump by the DoJ once again added to the widely held belief that that the AG and his minions are hiding something
from Congress and the American people, but what?
Government Withholds Information on Drone
Flight Authorizations. State and local law enforcement are increasingly using unmanned aircraft for
investigations into things like cattle rustling, drug dealing, and the search for missing persons. Any drone
flying over 400 feet needs a certification or authorization from the Federal Aviation Administration, part of the
DOT. But there is currently no information available to the public about who specifically has obtained these
authorizations or for what purposes.
Obama's Calculated Deception.
Calculated deception as a central public manipulation strategy practiced by President Obama involves the President
taking advantage of what he thinks the average person doesn't know and won't be told by a compliant media.
The
Most Open And Transparent Administration In History — Not. A centerpiece of Barack Obama's campaign
message was the grandiose pronouncement that his would be the most transparent administration in history.
Congressional bills would be posted on the internet prior to such bills gong to the floor for vote. Governmental
agencies would be open and accountable to the people. As we have seen, the opposite is true.
The Promise That Keeps on Breaking.
President Obama promised on the campaign trail that he would have the most transparent administration in history.
As part of this commitment, he said that the public would have five days to look online and find out what was in
the bills that came to his desk before he signed them. It was his first broken promise, and it's the promise
that keeps on breaking. He has now signed 11 bills into law and gone, at best, 1 for 11 on
his five-day posting promise.
The
"most open and transparent administration in history" sets record for avoiding press conferences.
So since the last one didn't go as he wanted it to he's not giving any more? This Administration has a
penchant not only for insisting it control the message but for acting like children when they can't.
Dem
Convention Press Briefing Attended by 500 Journos Kept Strictly Off-the-Record. So the Democratic
National Committee (DNC) gave a walk-through Wednesday for network journalists planning on covering the party's
nominating convention this summer in Charlotte. But while the DNC is trumpeting the convention as "the most
open and accessible in history," the Charlotte Observer's Mark Washburn complained that the briefing, attended by
some 500 journalists, was kept strictly off-the-record.
Obama Campaign
Rips Romney For Failure to Release Records. Seven years after Barack Obama burst onto the national
political scene, we still await the disclosure of his background records.
1. Occidental College records and transcripts — Not released
2. Columbia University records and transcripts — Not released
3. Columbia Thesis paper — 'not available'
4. Harvard University records and transcripts — Not released
5. Medical records — Not released
6. Illinois State Senate schedule — 'not available'
7. Illinois State Senate records — 'not available'
8. Law practice client list — Not released
9. Certified Copy of Original Birth certificate — Not released
10. Harvard Law Review articles published — None
11. University of Chicago scholarly articles — None
12. Record of Baptism — Not released or 'not available'
Of course, there are different standards for legacy media's preferred candidates. Remember how the media
unearthed Rick Perry's college transcripts within 48 hours of the announcement of his candidacy?
Our Elective Despotism.
[Scroll down] Here is another political heresy: the emperor has no college records. Yes, I
have the temerity to believe that Barack Hussein Obama should be thoroughly vetted before the 2012 election.
We know far more details about Gingrich's marriages, Romney's mutual funds, Paul's prehistoric newsletters and
the voting block made up of Santorum's children than a bare minimum of facts that we need to know about the
current Occupier of the Oval Office.
The
Obama administration is planning a second-term attack on gun rights. Obama administration officials
are deliberately keeping gun owners in the dark about the president's gun-control agenda as we head into next year's
national election, because administration officials know that when NRA members and gun owners show up at the polls
en masse, anti-gun candidates lose.
Who
is this Barack Obama person, really? Almost everything about him is surrounded in mystery or is the
source of never-ending questions and conspiracy. Even his birth has been questioned. Although the White
House produced a certificate that says he was born in Hawaii on Aug 4, 1961, the document has come under
intense scrutiny by many who say it was either edited or is a complete forgery.
Inside Obama's
Secret Fundraiser. With President Obama shifting into campaign mode to raise money for his
re-election effort, the White House has generally let reporters inside the events at least long enough to
record what he says to his top donors. This week, though, Obama departed from that practice, meeting
for more than an hour with big-dollar contributors — all behind closed doors.
Is
anyone really buying Holder's excuses on Fast & Furious? I recall when it came to light that Karl
Rove, who wasn't a Cabinet secretary or running federal law enforcement for the US, used his personal e-mail
account while working on George W. Bush's political team in the White House. Democrats clutched hankies
and swooned at the lack of transparency. Now the Attorney General of the United States has suggested that
his personal e-mail account might have been used to bypass transparency, and that there are thousands of communications
that he will flat-out not share with Congress on the matter of Operation Fast and Furious, which a year ago resulted
in the death of a US Border Patrol agent and perhaps hundreds of murders in Mexico. Have the same Democrats
demanded transparency of the Obama administration?
More
about Eric Holder.
More
about the Fast and Furious scandal.
Why It's So Easy To Destroy
Republicans. If one examines the voting patterns over the last few decades it appears that Republican voters are
particularly picky and principled about whom they vote for. Democrats on the other hand are more interested in what's
being promised to them than in a candidate's character. ... The Democrat crushing machine will continue to eviscerate all
Republicans in its wake because it knows that the media will assist in the destruction while ignoring any possible flaws
in its own candidate. Consider how very little we knew about Barack Hussein Obama in 2008 and for that matter how
little we know now.
Obama's Cloud-Based Transparency.
For three years, White House officials have rolled out countless executive orders and initiatives touting open
government. Just this week, they unveiled plans to move federal archival records from a paper-based to an
electronic system. But behind the scenes, Obama's lawyers systematically have stymied public information
requests, carved out crater-sized disclosure loopholes, fought subpoenas on scandals from Fast and Furious to
Solyndra, and made routine the holiday document dump. The latest meeting of the Government Accountability
and Transparency Board, attended by Vice President Joe Biden, was closed to the press two weeks ago.
Border
Agent's Murder Brings Calls For Investigation. The Justice Department has sealed court records
detailing the circumstances of a border patrol agent's murder by a Mexican drug cartel, including the fact
U.S. agents were being hunted with U.S.-supplied weapons.
The Great American Memory
Hole. Mondo Frazier, in his new book,
The Secret Life of Barack Hussein Obama, wrote:
["]In an age in which seemingly every facet of a person's life is recorded, on file, and increasingly available
on the Internet, the total absence of Barack Obama's vital records is an almost singularly unique phenomenon...
In Obama's case, the records either don't exist, haven't been released, or have disappeared.["]
Joe Biden addresses secretive donor conference.
Vice President Joe Biden spoke at a secretive conference attended by about 150 rich liberals deciding
how to divvy up their cash in the run-up to the 2012 election. A variety of liberal groups pitched the
donors throughout the three-day conference, including a network of Democratic outside groups hoping to raise
upwards of $120 million to fund a sort-of shadow party effort supporting the reelection campaign of
Biden and President Barack Obama.
File Not Found. Why does
the most open and transparent administration in history prefer to lie about government records?
Obama's secrets.
One of the most disappointing attributes of the Obama administration has been its proclivity for secrecy.
The president who committed himself to "an unprecedented level of openness in government" has followed the example
of his predecessor by invoking the "state secrets" privilege to derail litigation about government misdeeds in the
war on terror. He has refused to release the administration's secret interpretation of the Patriot Act, which
two senators have described as alarming. He has blocked the dissemination of photographs documenting the abuse
of prisoners by U.S. service members. And now his Justice Department has proposed to allow government agencies
to lie about the existence of documents being sought under the Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA.
ACLU: Obama "Authorizing Agencies to Lie".
While the Obama administration's hostility to transparency is well known, its latest scheme would break new ground
in government secrecy. The administration's proposed changes to the Freedom of Information Act guidelines
would allow the Department of Justice to deny the existence of documents and prevent judicial oversight.
Barack
Obama accused of breaking transparency pledge. Mr Obama's justice department has proposed
that if documents requested by the public are exempt from freedom of information laws, federal agencies
should be able to "respond to the request as if the excluded records did not exist." Transparency
campaigners described the move as a "stunning" reversal of Mr Obama's pledge to run "the most transparent
administration in history" during his campaign for the presidency.
Update:
Justice Dept. move on FOIA requests eases headache for administration.
The Justice Department is withdrawing a new rule that would allow government officials to be misleading about
the existence of records in response to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. By scrapping the
controversial part of the regulation, the Justice Department is easing what had become a growing headache
for the Obama administration. President Obama has said several times that transparency and openness
are key priorities for his administration, and the proposed regulation was a cudgel for Republicans to swing
at the White House's promises.
Who is Barack Obama?
In the summer of 1981, 20-year-old Barack Obama embarked on a two-week trip to Pakistan. At least what little
reporting that has been done claimed the length of the trip was two weeks. The only proof that the trip didn't
turn into a longer stay is that we (supposedly) have records which show that Barack Obama enrolled at Columbia
University later that same summer. Of course, the public hasn't seen those records, but that's what we've
been told. Anyone in doubt will be directed to Obama's autobiography,
Dreams from My Father.
Obama clearly gave the impression in DFMF that he was this penniless, somewhat confused young man, in search of
an identity. Obama makes sure readers don't miss the point by writing that he was forced to wear "thrift
store clothing" during this time. Yet he somehow managed to find the cash to finance a two-week trip
to Pakistan.
Obama
freezes local reporters out of S.F. event. President Obama is scheduled to appear before
hundreds of donors at a $7,500-a-plate noontime fundraiser today at San Francisco's W Hotel —
but not a single local reporter will be allowed inside to cover his only stop in the area, the White
House said Monday [10/24/2011].
What's the point of the FOIA with this in place?
Obama
Rule Would Allow Feds to Lie About Existence of Official Records. A proposed rule to the Freedom
of Information Act would allow federal agencies to tell people requesting certain law-enforcement or national
security documents that records don't exist — even when they do. Under current FOIA practice,
the government may withhold information and issue what's known as a Glomar denial that says it can neither
confirm nor deny the existence of records. The new proposal — part of a lengthy rule revision
by the Department of Justice — would direct government agencies to "respond to the request as if the
excluded records did not exist."
Obama's 'Fundamental Transformation' of the White
House? The current administration is one that promised transparency but delivers mysteries.
Obama's "Rose Mary Woods" moment:
Busted:
DOE Altered Loan Program Bulletins. It appears as though the Obama administration has been caught
red-handed trying to cover up evidence in relation to the "green" loans programs that helped finance Solyndra.
CNBC reports that a number of press releases posted by the Department of Energy have been retroactively altered to
remove the name a solar company thought by many to be the next "green" failure. ... Naturally, the DOE blames
'outside contractors,' who "inadvertently" altered the news bulletins while updating the loans program website.
Emails
directly link White House to secret transparency meeting. Emails obtained through a Freedom of
Information Act (FOIA) request by government watchdog group Judicial Watch suggest that the White House had direct
involvement in shutting a transparency hearing to the press. ... And if holding a secretive, closed-door meeting
on government transparency makes the Obama administration's open-government rhetoric seem a bit insincere, the
irony was not lost on the transparency advocates.
Michelle Obama
is right on Target. Until now, despite the promises, the Obama administration has been anything
but transparent. In budget year 2009, federal agencies cited exemptions to Freedom of Information Act
(FOIA) requests 466,872 times, compared to the 312,683 exemptions cited by former President George W.
Bush's administration in his final year. This nearly 50 percent increase in refusals occurred even
though there was a decrease in actual information requests. So much for open government.
The American
Con Job Act. The president is out and out campaigning for re-election while
promoting his latest half-baked half-trillion-dollar "American Con Job Act," which he says
will generate jobs and jump-start the sluggish economy, which continues to slide south.
When I sat down to write this, there was no bill for Americans to read and digest. In
my America, the president would have had the bill to present to Congress when he spoke to its
members last week. What happened to all that transparency, Mr. President?
Barry Honey, can we
talk about hypocrisy? [Scroll down] You promised —
quite
explicitly — that you would post online every single bill passed by the Congress for
five whole days before you signed it into law. Now, any way one adds it up, this 1,400 page,
biggest-lump-sum spending bill in the history of these United States was only passed 3 days before it
got your Denver-hoopla signature.
Where's the transparency?
Lack
Of Transparency. After a long legal battle, a federal judge has ruled that White House visitor
logs are public and can be released under the Freedom of Information Act. So much for the White House's
vaunted claim to openness.
Here's a better question:
Why did he even have an Iftar dinner?
Why did the White House hide the names of 3 guests at Iftar dinner?
August 10, 2011, President Obama hosted his third annual Iftar dinner celebrating Ramadan at the White
House. Neil Munro of the Daily Caller noted that the invite list was much shorter than previous
years and had been scrubbed of several "controversial" Muslim leaders who had attended in the past.
Daniel Pipes, writing at the Investigative Project, identified three Islamist attendees who were not on
the official list released by the White House but who are reported to have attended:
• Mohamed Magid, President of the Islamic Society of North America;
• Awais Sufi, Chairman of Muslim Advocates; and
• Haris Tarin, Director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council.
Why did the White House conduct a cover-up of the attendance by these three Muslim leaders of
Islamist lobbying and advocacy groups?
Obama
to host third Ramadan dinner. President Obama will host an Iftar dinner to celebrate Ramadan at the White
House Wednesday evening [8/10/2011]. ... By late Tuesday, White House officials wouldn't provide any names of expected
guests.
Obama's
Iftar guest list omits controversial attendees. The White House's published guest list for this
year's Ramadan Iftar dinner was much shorter than previous years' roster. It excluded the names of several
controversial advocates who have attended the event in the past, including some who The Daily Caller can
confirm did attend on Wednesday night [8/10/2011].
Justice
nominee keeps names of 11 clients secret. Michael E. Horowitz, President Obama's nominee as
the Justice Department's top watchdog, has earned more than $4 million since last year as an attorney
representing the likes of Pfizer Inc., Dow Chemical Co. and Cablevision Systems Corp. But he is keeping
the identities of nearly a dozen other clients secret on newly filed ethics forms.
The Editor asks...
What is the purpose of ethics disclosure forms if they are kept secret?
Obama's
Misleading Vocabulary. A quick review of Obama's speeches reveals his most common euphemisms
seem to show a pattern of deception, obfuscation and misdirection. In President Obama's lexicon,
words have different meanings; to decipher the message and understand what the President is saying requires
a special Washington Dictionary. Here are some samples from President Obama's special dictionary...
Obama's 'Transparent'
Secrecy. Imagine the reaction if President Obama and congressional Democrats had released a
sweeping health care bill, drafted in closed-door meetings, and demanded its approval by Congress immediately.
There would have been national outrage over the secrecy, lack of time for public hearings, and the absence of
discussion, revisions, amendments, and multiple votes. Yet that is exactly what the White House and
Democrats are proposing once — and if — a deal on raising the debt limit by as much
as $2 trillion is reached.
'Sensitivities' Bar DOE
From Discussing Progress on WH Solar-Power Plan. The Obama administration told CNSNews.com
Thursday [6/16/2011] that it is currently in the process of procuring solar panels to place on the White
House roof but it cannot discuss the progress on the project because of "sensitivities."
White
House to cut access to half of federal websites. As part of the Obama administration's
campaign to promote transparency, the White House announced today it intends to eliminate the public's
access to half of the federal government's websites within the next year. The White House said there
are nearly 2,000 websites operated by the federal government, which it said confuses people. ... White House
officials didn't say how the administration will determine which web sites to cut. But the president is
creating an 11-member "government oversight and accountability board," comprised of current executive branch
officials, "to help federal agencies improve their performance."
The Editor says...
I'm not confused. Are you confused? If there are 100,000 names in the phone book,
is that confusing? No, the real motive here is concealment.
Stop It
Already — He's Not So Smart. [Scroll down] To be a law review editor-in-chief,
a Chief Articles Editor, a Chief Comments Editor of a law review, it is a
sine qua non that
you publish something fabulous, a real scholarly piece of work. Many dozens of America's finest law
students do exactly that every year. Those articles later become part of a vast searchable electronic
library of legal scholarship. The thing is, I cannot find Barack Obama's great piece of work, the
scholarship one would presume he researched, drafted, crafted, and honed, that earned him the presidency of
the Harvard Law Review. The name "Obama" is the kind of search term that should do the job. But I
cannot find any scholarship published by him that reveals the exceptional brilliance that paved the way to his
achievement.
How Smart
Is Obama, Anyway? [Scroll down] Obama went back to Chicago. His record as a lawyer was
undistinguished. He was allowed by his firm to speak in court only once. ... Obama was associated with the
University of Chicago Law School for a dozen years, during which he published zero (0) academic articles.
Yet, astonishingly, he was offered tenure anyway.
Corsi Book An Important One.
Unlike every other candidate in modern presidential history, Obama did not choose to share any of his essential documents, and
the media happily obliged him. As Corsi details, Obama has shielded those records involved with his adoption, his kindergarten,
Punahou School, Occidental College, his passport and travel, Columbia University (including his senior thesis), Harvard Law School,
his medical history, his Chicago law practice, his State Senate career, as well as his SAT and LSAT scores, and, until recently,
his very birth certificate. Then, too, there is the question of Obama's Connecticut-based Social Security number, a question
that Corsi tackles, but the media inevitably dodge.
Now
Obama has 'lost' $1.3 trillion. By the time Bush left office, USASpending.gov was up and running
and provided a serviceable tool for accessing billions of bytes about where Washington politicians are spending
trillions of tax dollars. But in January 2009 when President Obama and members of his administration came
into office, they saw USASpending.gov as a potential propaganda tool and the utility of the site became an
open issue.
Why reporters are
down on Obama. [Scroll down] The correspondents association recently met with [Robert]
Gibbs to discuss, in the words of Bloomberg's Ed Chen, "a level of anger, which is wide and deep, among
members over White House practices and attitude toward the press." A few days later, Gibbs said at
one of his briefings, "This is the most transparent administration in the history of our country."
Peals of laughter broke out in the briefing room.
The most transparent and accountable administration in history announces...
White House won't turn over Obama's BlackBerry
messages on Solyndra. President Barack Obama won't be sharing his BlackBerry messages with House
investigators seeking communications about Solyndra, the White House told Hill Republicans on Friday [10/14/2011].
Most
transparent administration in history? Really? Despite Presidents Obama's campaign promise that
this would be the most transparent administration in history, it has been anything but. The [health
care reform] bill contained far too many instances of rules and regulations "to be determined by the
Secretary" to make me feel comfortable. When Nancy Pelosi stated, during the debate over the
Healthcare reform bill that "we needed to pass the bill to find out what's in it", it indicated that the
details were not important to her then and they probably aren't now.
Obama
promised things he knew would be impossible to deliver. Despite promising the most transparent
administration in history, on Obama's very first full day in the Oval Office, Obama sealed his personal records
resulting in us knowing less about Obama's live than we do about the life of even George Washington.
Gibbs Is Set to Rise in Obama's
Inner Circle. [Scroll down] In an interview, [Robert] Gibbs said he was loath to talk
about a job he had not formally been offered. He said, however, that the White House press office
would follow through with Mr. Obama's promise of transparency. "The president-elect has pledged to be
open, transparent and accessible," Mr. Gibbs said.
Congressional
Investigation Exposes White House 'Transparency' Myth. Officials in the Obama administration "go
to great lengths to avoid disclosing their meetings with lobbyists," a Republican congressman said Tuesday, as
he opened a House subcommittee hearing to investigate whether the White House is keeping its promises of
"transparency." "The American people were promised a new era of openness and accountability and they
haven't gotten it," said Rep. Cliff Stearns, chairman of the oversight and investigations subcommittee of
the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
President Obama
out-secrets the "most secretive President" in history. Democrats seem to be having a bit of
trouble figuring out a winning strategy for November's elections. They can't campaign on TARP.
ObamaCare is a campaign loser. And unemployment [stinks]. But there is one area in which President
Obama has surpassed all previous presidents — his administration is now the most secretive in history.
The Promise That Keeps on Breaking.
President Obama promised on the campaign trail that he would have the most transparent administration in
history. As part of this commitment, he said that the public would have five days to look online and
find out what was in the bills that came to his desk before he signed them. It was his first broken
promise, and it's the promise that keeps on breaking.
Most transparent
administration in history? The facts demonstrate otherwise. While he was campaigning for the
presidency, Barrack [sic] Obama promised that his administration would be the most transparent presidency
ever. The facts demonstrate otherwise. A recent report by The Associated Press claims that the
Obama administration has denied the release any material in more than 33% of all FOIA requests and even
when it did respond, the average wait time was getting longer not shorter. Only 20% of "urgent" FOIA
requests received replies within the 20 day period required by the FOIA time.
The
least transparent administration in history. The Administration discriminates in responding to requests
for documents under FOIA. It illegally forces its critics to wait years for the documents to which they are
entitled — well beyond the 20-day legal deadline for responding — or refuses to even respond
to their requests for documents. Meanwhile, it gives many of its supporters the documents they seek in just
a few days. These are just a few of the ways that Obama has broken his promise to have the most transparent
administration in history.
Obama's Empty Transparency
Rhetoric: One of Obama's first actions as president was a pledge to transparency. But according to
a House hearing and outside watchdog groups, that promise has so far been a giant bust.
GOP
slams White House for suspected coffee shop meetings. House Republicans on the Energy and Commerce Committee
raised concerns at a Tuesday [5/3/2011] hearing that White House staffers hold meetings at a nearby Caribou Coffee to
avoid disclosure requirements. "White House staff apparently purposely schedule meetings at the Caribou Coffee
around the corner from the White House so that those meetings won't show up on the White House logs," said Rep. Cliff
Stearns (R-Calif.), chairman of the Oversight subcommittee.
The Mysterious Mr. O. [Scroll
down] He spent a huge chunk of change on attorneys to hide it. He enlisted people all over the
country to help. He left a military officer to languish in a prison. And yet, after years of stalling
and hiding, Obama has released his purported long form birth certificate. What are the possibilities here?
In withholding the document to begin with, perhaps Obama was manipulating the opposition, trying to divide and
conquer us. He may have been stirring the fans of racial resentment, knowing that blacks would assume
racist overtones. Maybe Obama was creating an elaborate smokescreen, a distraction while he dismantles
the country. Or perhaps the document he produced is a counterfeit. Who knows?
Time For Conservatives to
Focus on Obama's Performance in Office. Emotion should have no place in the upcoming campaign.
In order to make these tactics moot it is time to put the issue of Obama's birth certificate, college grades, and
all manner of personal questions on the sidelines and concentrate on making certain he is defeated based on his record.
That is not to say that there may indeed be some validity to these issues; but they cannot be proven with absolute
certitude between now and the fall of 2012. Placing any attention on these matters will not succeed in helping
defeat Obama as long as the mainstream media is a wholly owned subsidiary of liberal deep-pocket benefactors and the
Democratic Party with their access to taxpayer money.
Despite Campaign Claim, Obama Told
Paper He Attended Trinity Church 'Every Week'. President-elect Barack Obama said in 2004 —
while he was a state legislator running for a U.S. Senate seat — that he attended services at Trinity
United Church of Christ every week. This is in contrast to what Obama, as a presidential candidate, said
this year after controversial anti-American remarks by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright surfaced. Obama then told
news outlets that he did not attend the church frequently and was not aware of Wright's comments.
Barack Obama's plan to placate the Muslim
world: He's promising an unrelenting desire to create a relationship with peoples of goodwill? What
about peoples of badwill? What about peoples of goodwill who are ruled by corrupt and oppressive governments? ... We
suppose a certain amount of sheer fluff — or let's call it strategic indirection — can be
useful in international diplomacy. Let us hope that Obama is not actually naive enough to mistake the
platitudinous for the profound, and that he is merely using the former to keep America's adversaries guessing.
Sorry, But
Obama Scares Me. Almost everything about Obama's campaign is fraudulent. He masquerades
as a uniter while dividing, polarizing and alienating us. He denies he's liberal, when objective sources
score him as the most liberal senator. He says he barely knows militants and radicals with whom he has
spent his lifetime cavorting and whose worldviews — horrifyingly — he shares. He
brazenly disguises welfare redistributions as tax cuts. He and his surrogates keep changing his tax plan.
Emperor
Obama's Clothes are Visible and Scary. During this election, Barack Obama said lots to make the
public feel good. He made promises couched in vague language that could mean anything that the listener
wanted them to mean. He used words like "change" and "hope;" he promised tax cuts to 95 percent of
Americans — a promise that was ludicrous and impossible to fulfill, but people fell for it. He
spoke one way in front of liberal audiences and another way in front of conservative ones. He learned
the language of evangelicalism and he spoke it fluently when it served his purposes.
'They Must Think You're
Stupid'. Let's start with social issues like Second Amendment freedoms. Mr. Obama denies
that he's ever supported banning handguns, right after the landmark Heller case where the Supreme Court struck
down Washington D.C.'s handgun ban. When a 1996 questionnaire surfaced that had asked if Mr. Obama
supported banning all handguns, his one-word written answer was "yes." He said an unnamed staffer must
have filled it out without his knowledge. Then another copy surfaced — this one with his
handwriting on it. He says he must not have read that particular question. Sure.
Obama, the hoax. The
packaging of the Democratic candidate for the presidency of the United States, aided and abetted by the
drive-by media and major TV networks, have perpetrated a great hoax on the American public. Never
before in our history have we had a candidate with such a lack of accomplishments and a lack of transparency
into his background and associates. We can't see his records from prep school, Occidental College,
Columbia University or Harvard. What was his thesis? Who paid for his education at Harvard, since
there is no record of student loans? There are even questions concerning where he was born.
If you investigate Obama's background, you will be prosecuted.
Iowa
arraignment for 9 in Obama loan case. Nine people accused of accessing President Barack Obama's
student loan records while employed for a Department of Education contractor in Iowa are to be arraigned on
federal charges.
Woman
accessed Obama loans record. An Iowa woman pleaded guilty today [6/17/2010] to accessing
President Barack Obama's student loan records without permission. ... The nine defendants were charged
with one count of exceeding authorised computer access. Apart from [Mercedes] Costoyas, the
remaining eight have entered pleas of not guilty and are expected to stand trial in August.
But if Obama's critics are investigated, that's another matter altogether.
Judge
tosses out 'Joe the Plumber' privacy lawsuit. A federal judge yesterday threw out a lawsuit by
Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher — the northwestern Ohio man immortalized as "Joe the Plumber" in the
2008 presidential campaign — alleging that three high-ranking state bureaucrats violated his privacy
by running his name through confidential databases. U.S. District Court Judge Algenon L. Marbley
said Wurzelbacher could not show that he had been harmed by the snooping.
A
President Who Won't Uphold the Constitution? Never. Well, now we know why Barack Obama's been so
reluctant to have symbols of this country associated with his campaign. No flags on his airplane.
Nix to pins on his lapel. Not inclined to put his hand over his heart during the national anthem.
After all, it turns out he has a problem with that other slightly more significant representation of our
nation, the United States Constitution.
Obama's campaign
built on lies. There have been many lies by Barack Obama in the 2008 campaign that he has
tried to mask by shifting his recollections over time. ... But two lies in particular have been especially
consequential: Obama's pledge not to run for President in 2008, and his commitment to participate in
federal financing for his general election campaign, with its consequent spending limits. The news
this past Sunday that Obama raised $150 million for his campaign in September shows the significance
of the second lie.
The Real Obama:
The story of Obama's political career is not a pretty story. He won his first political victory by
being the only candidate on the ballot — after hiring someone skilled at disqualifying the signers
of opposing candidates' petitions, on whatever technicality he could come up with. Despite his words
today about "change" and "cleaning up the mess in Washington," Obama was not on the side of reformers who
were trying to change the status quo of corrupt, machine politics in Chicago and clean up the mess there.
Obama Grant Park
election night rally "tickets" really data bonanza for Obama machine. The Obama campaign, by
requiring tickets for the election night rally in Grant Park, is using the event to collect names and contact
data to be used for future voter contact, fund-raising and political or issue organizing. That will let
Obama, win or lose the White House next week, build on what are already the most valuable political lists in
the nation to use to help his causes and candidates.
Obama Falsely Claims 'Every Penny' of
Bailout Proceeds Will Go to Americans. In a speech in support of the financial bailout before the U.S.
Senate Wednesday night [10/1/2008], the Democratic presidential candidate claimed that American taxpayers would get
their money back, raising the possibility they might even profit from the bailout. "If this is managed
correctly, and that is an important 'if,' we will hopefully get most of our money back, and possibly even turn
a profit on the government's investment — every penny of which will go directly back to the American
people," Obama said. The claim is false. According to the bill that passed, the government
will get all of its money back — but none will be returned directly to taxpayers.
Hypocrisy Doesn't Begin To
Describe It. [Scroll down] More than hypocrisy is at work here. It is not just far Left,
American-hating radicals he now disowns. You get the sense that he believes everyone can be played.
It
is not hypocrisy. It's fraud. He's sold the same piece of political real estate to multiple buyers
for multiple, conflicting uses.
The Audacity of
Lies: I don't know what is going to happen on November 4th. But I think it's going
to boil down to whether or not enough Americans have been fooled by this serial liar. For the sake of
our country, I sure hope not.
Homeless
'Driven' to Vote for Obama. Volunteers supporting Barack Obama picked up hundreds of people at
homeless shelters, soup kitchens and drug-rehab centers and drove them to a polling place yesterday [10/6/2008]
on the last day that Ohioans could register and vote on the same day, almost no questions asked. The huge
effort by a pro-Obama group, Vote Today Ohio, takes advantage of a quirk in the state's elections laws that
allows people to register and cast ballots at the same time without having to prove residency.
Pro-Obama, Muslim-led voter
registration in mosques. A leading critic of Islam isn't surprised there has been virtually no
coverage or action taken against a Muslim group that has been running an illegal "get out the vote" campaign
in swing-state mosques.
Memo to
McCain: Take the Gloves Off. Obama says, without rebuttal, that his plan lowers taxes on
"95 percent of working families." This is flatly impossible because 32 percent of income tax
returns filed (some 43 million Americans) pay absolutely nothing in federal income taxes. Obama
makes his claim by offering a $500 "Making Work Pay" tax credit to everybody ($1,000 per family), by expanding
the Earned Income Tax Credit, and creating other credits. If your tax credit is more than your tax
liability, you receive a check from the Treasury
and you pay no taxes. That is not a "tax cut."
Obama covers his
tracks. Barack Obama apparently wishes his two autobiographies to be the definitive record
of his past. He has blocked efforts by others who wish to independently examine his past. He
won't allow his transcript from his undergraduate days at Columbia University to be released. He
"lost" his thesis on Soviet nuclear policy
He won't answer questions about his days at Harvard Law
School. He "lost" his Illinois Senate records. He will only release a simple one-page letter
from his doctor on his medical condition. He won't release his application to the state bar
.
Why Won't
Obama Talk About Columbia? Barack Obama does not want to talk about Columbia. Not even to
his good friends at the New York Times, who've so reliably helped him bleach away his past — a
past neck-deep in the hard Left radicalism he has gussied up but never abandoned. Why? I suspect
it is because Columbia would shred his thin post-partisan camouflage.
The Obama Enigma.
The country is in two unpopular wars — amid the worst financial panic of the last 80 years.
Not since prophet of change and newcomer Jimmy Carter ran against Gerald Ford (post Watergate and the lost
Vietnam war) have voters been so eager for a shake-up. Why then is the charismatic Barack Obama not
quite yet a shoo-in? Easy. Voters apparently still don't know who Obama is, or what he wants to
do — and so are still not altogether sure that Obama is the proper antidote to George Bush.
After more than a year of campaigning, he still remains an enigma.
Cirque De Obama:
Barack Obama says we can't afford four more years like the last eight. What, exactly, is bad about
winning a war on terror, keeping Americans alive and free, and letting us keep more of what we earn?
Obama's Moral
Equivalence Problem: I guess we really shouldn't be surprised that Barack Obama sees no difference
between our toppling of Saddam Hussein and Russia's invasion of Georgia. On an emotional level —
which is where most liberals live and breathe — the comparison is attractive. But on an
intellectual level, it is stupid and deceitful.
Obama's casual ways with
the truth: Barack Obama gave us more than some magnificent photo-ops when he spoke in Berlin yesterday.
By trying to look presidential, he revealed more then he intended to about his operating style — long on
glossy production values, and painfully inadequate when it comes to getting the facts straight. Twice in
the course of generating the almost poetic images which mark his rhetoric, Senator Obama spoke to the assembled
throng and the world's media about matters at variance with reality.
The Audacity of Slander:
Just as his comments about Sarah Palin's lack of experience highlighted the scantiness of his own resume, Obama's
aggressive questioning of McCain's honor invites examination of his own probity. And the Democrat presidential
nominee is no stranger to prevarication. He routinely lies about McCain's positions on a wide variety of
issues, including health care, Social Security, and the mortgage crisis.
Lobbyists Give to
Obama Campaign. Obama has pledged to forgo contributions from federally registered lobbyists.
Yet, more than 40 have donated nearly $15,000 to his presidential campaign this year, according to records
recently filed with the Senate and House. The latest tally, as of Tuesday [7/29/2008], comes as
lobbyists have begun filing their LD-203 forms
.
Obama, Postmodernist.
[Postmodernism] claims to liberate society from fixed meanings and rigid categories, but it is invariably used
to impose new ones, usually in the form of political correctness. We've all seen how adept the PC brigades
are celebrating free speech, when it's for speech they like. Obama gives every indication of having
evolved from this intellectual soup.
Cracks beginning
to show in Obama's exterior. Obama getting testy with a reporter whose only crime was mentioning
that the candidate appeared to flip flop on drilling could mean that the pressure of the campaign is getting
to him. There was no call to accuse the reporter of bias. The question is legitimate and the fact
that the candidate's answer was vague and contradictory shows that Obama has a real problem with keeping his
lies straight.
Life
Lies: Sen. Obama is currently misleading people about what he voted against, specifically
claiming that the bill he voted against in his committee lacked "neutrality" language on
Roe v.
Wade. The bill did contain this language. He even participated in the unanimous vote
to put it in.
Obama
in the mud: So much for honesty. In the past few weeks, Obama has thrown so many false
accusations against John McCain that just keeping track of them has become difficult. And these aren't
innocent errors. They are deliberate distortions of the sort Obama has always said he reviles. On
Thursday, Obama said of McCain, "He has consistently opposed the sorts of common-sense regulations that might
have lessened the current crisis." That's entirely untrue.
Fraud:
Obama as Guardian of the American Taxpayer. Thanks to reporting from Amir Taheri, the gist of
which the Obama campaign has confirmed, we now know that while Obama is telling the American people he wants
an end to the war, he has secretly negotiated with the government in Iraq to extend the U.S. military mission
there. That is a black-and-white violation of federal criminal law. Very simply, in our system
the president is responsible for conducting foreign policy.
Dirty
Politics From Camp Obama. Earlier this week, I wrote about the dirty tricks campaign against
journalist Amir Taheri following his revelation that, in a private meeting in Iraq last July with Iraqi
leaders, Barack Obama tried to persuade them to delay the agreement being hammered out with the US government
on a draw-down of the American military presence. According to this account, which quoted Iraq's foreign
minister Hoshya Zebari, Obama had thus privately sought to undermine an American government foreign policy
initiative — an explosive revelation.
McCain the Ascender, Obama the Condescender.
Polite people say Obama, the man who reads a great speech, simply doesn't come across as well as John McCain as
a conversationalist because he doesn't have the Arizona senator's experience. On Saturday [8/16/2008] night,
even the polite had to admit that, while experience is a key issue when selecting a president, it is our collective
experience of Obama's character deficit that keeps us from boarding Barack Obama's Double Talk Express.
Good
and evil and Obama. "Does evil exist?" [Pastor Rick] Warren asked Obama. "And if it does,
do we ignore it, do we negotiate with it, do we contain it or do we defeat it?" Obama the moral
philosopher replied, accurately, that evil is everywhere, in Darfur, in our city streets, in our own
hearts. We cannot "erase evil from the world. That is God's task. But we can be soldiers in
that process, and we can confront [evil] when we see it." (Imagine the reaction if President Bush
called himself a soldier of God in the battle against evil.)
Obama's
Extremism: Obama's problem isn't his temperament, but the unsustainable exertions necessary to
attempt to square his reasonable-sounding rhetoric on abortion with the extremism of his record. Asked by
Pastor Rick Warren when a baby gets rights, Obama said, "I'm absolutely convinced that there is a moral and
ethical element to this issue." This is a crashing banality couched as thoughtfulness. If Obama is
so sensitive to the moral element of the issue, why does he want to eliminate any existing restrictions on
the procedure?
A little too glib.
Obama's Abortion
Position? It's a One-liner. Barack Obama had made real strides in defusing the abortion
issue with pro-life voters as late as last week. ... But Mr. Obama eroded many of those gains last Saturday
when he told Pastor Rick Warren during a nationally televised forum that deciding when the rights of
personhood should be extended to the unborn was "above my pay grade."
'Pay
grade' unartful dodge. Obama supports partial-birth abortion and voted against the "Born Alive
Infant Protection Act." When he got the invitation to an evangelical forum hosted by a pro-life pastor,
he had to know that issues regarding life and the law were going to come up. And his prepared answer to
the most fundamental question about public policy and abortion ("is the fetus a human being?") is that it's
"above my pay grade?"
What
Will He Say Next? With Obama's lead in the polls disappearing, a steady stream of doubt is
now being poured over Obama's nervous and inverted campaign. The great orator appears ready to
crack.
It is nauseating to watch Obama flipping and flopping on the campaign trail as he frantically
tries to tell mentally stable Americans what he hopes they want to hear.
The illusion that is Barack Obama:
[Obama] engages in doubletalk when, on free trade and Iraq, he tells the yokels one thing and the policy people another.
He overstates when he presents his minimal accomplishments in the Illinois Senate as proof of his stature. He engages in
systematic deception when he says he doesn't take money from lobbyists. He presents a lie as metaphorical truth when he
says it was the 1965 bloody Sunday attacks on peaceful civil rights protesters in Selma, Alabama, that inspired his parents
to marry. (They had been married for years already.)
Dobson
blasts Obama's 'fruitcake' view of Constitution. As Barack Obama broadens his outreach to
evangelical voters, one of the movement's biggest names, James Dobson, accuses the likely Democratic presidential
nominee of distorting the Bible and pushing a "fruitcake interpretation" of the Constitution.
Paper, rapped for outing Obama note,
claims campaign pre-approved leak. What initially seemed to be a journalistic scoop of dubious
moral propriety now seems to be a case of an Israeli paper being played by the Barack Obama campaign.
Maariv, the second most popular newspaper in Israel, was roundly criticized for publishing the note Obama left
in the Kotel. But now a Maariv spokesperson says that publication of the note was pre-approved for
international publication by the Obama campaign, leading to the conclusion that the "private" prayer was
intentionally leaked for public consumption.
Obama's Prayer:
The Intended Audience. [Scroll down slowly] This is a political story that is essentially
about character because the man putting the note is running for the highest office in the United States of
America — the office of the president.
Who is Barack Obama? Is he the kind of man who
would write a note intended for the Kotel, send the media a copy, stick the note in the Kotel, have the note
extracted and conveyed to the media all for political gain? That is the question that is germane to his
character.
Despite openness pledge, President Obama
pursues leakers. The Obama administration, which famously pledged to be the most transparent
in American history, is pursuing an unexpectedly aggressive legal offensive against federal workers who
leak secret information to expose wrongdoing, highlight national security threats or pursue a personal
agenda.
Is the
Democratic candidate starting to symbolize change for change's sake? The Obama camp uses the word
"change" more frequently than commas and perhaps in that constant repeating of the mantra they occasionally
miss that a country yearning for change wants
improvement, not change for the sake of change.
Out of bounds! Obama falsely claims to be
Banking Committee member. Obama on Wednesday [7/23/2008] was speaking to reporters in Israel
when he tried to boast about what he'd done to protect Israel. "Just this past week, we passed out of
the U.S. Senate Banking Committee — which is my committee — a bill to call for
divestment from Iran as a way of ratcheting up the pressure to ensure that they don't obtain a nuclear
weapon," Obama said. Why that's wrong: Obama is not a member of the Senate Banking, Housing
and Urban Affairs Committee.
Messiah
Lies About His Senate Committee Assignment. This guy is going to be harder than Bill Clinton
to keep up with. The next whopper whips along before you have time to wrap your brain around the last
one.
Verbal
junk food. It was a flawless ploy for Obama to inject his offspring into his message. This imparted
the highest degree of folksy empathy: "Like you, I'm a dad. I too would feel impelled to take action."
And these syrupy supportive sentiments crossed the ocean with satellite immediacy and appealed directly to the hearts of
registered Jewish voters, which they were foremost intended to sway.
How Hollywood Hurts Obama: [Scroll
down] The Hollywood glitterati and European elites look at Obama and see one of their own: a socialist
whose politics are rooted in cultural relativism and smug anti-Americanism. In fact, Barack Obama is
exactly like a high budget Hollywood flick. Like much of what Hollywood produces, Obama looks good to
the eye and sounds good to the ear (as long as you don't listen too closely). He dazzles with style and
panache. But just like your typical Tinsletown blowout, Obama is nothing more than eye candy —
the ultimate triumph of style over substance. In the wake of a number of extemporaneous gaffes, Obama
recently decided to take his teleprompter on the road, just another sign of how scripted his campaign has
become.
Obama the Postmodern
Candidate. Mr. Obama is on a nodding acquaintance with the concept of "truth." It appears
that everything he says and does must be viewed "in context" and that the framing of that context is the sole
province of Barack Obama. Take the whole Reverend Wright issue for example. Over the course of six
weeks we were told that he had no idea these things were said; he had a vague idea they were said; he knew
they were said but could no more disown them than his occasionally racist grandmother; he had been personally
disrespected and was through with Jeremiah Wright. Quite a bit of "context" to get from his initial
statements to the end point a mere month and a half later
Barack
Obama Uses Google to Combat Vicious Rumors. Barack Obama is waging a quiet battle in the
Googlesphere to combat damaging rumors, as well as his opponent, John McCain. Specifically, Obama's
campaign has waded into online auctions for Google search terms to snap up not only obvious phrases like
"Barack Obama" but also potentially negative ones like "Barack Obama birth certificate" or "Barack Obama as a
Muslim," according to Hitwise, an Internet audience monitoring firm.
The Editor says...
I'm thinking that if he has to resort to such extreme measures, maybe he has something to
hide. Perhaps the "vicious" rumors have a basis in fact. I
think
these are valid questions.
The Obama College
Try. Are you a college student seeking to register to vote? Barack Obama's website makes it
easy. But does the site follow the law? ... This campaign tactic raises legal and ethical questions. Is Sen.
Obama's campaign encouraging voter fraud? Is it encouraging college students to take actions that may be harmful
without informing them of relevant risks? If so, what does this say about the integrity of the campaign?
The new 'digital
brownshirts': Where is Al Gore when you need him? Three years ago, the former vice
president blasted "digital brownshirts" who "harass and hector any journalist who is critical of the
president." He meant the mortal threat to the Republic of bloggers and angry Republican e-mailers.
But times change, and the digital legions are greater nowadays on Mr. Gore's side. Thus we don't
hear much fretting at all about the Obama Action Wire, which, unlike the brownshirts of yore, is actually
managed by Barack Obama's campaign to muzzle critical media.
Obama's
Revisionist History: The saga over Rev. Jeremiah Wright is Exhibit A. In just
62 days, Americans were treated to eight different explanations.
Mr. Obama's problem is a
campaign that's personality-driven rather than idea-driven. Thus incidents calling into question his
persona and character can have especially devastating consequences. Stripped of his mystique as a
different kind of office seeker, he could become just another liberal politician — only one
who parses, evades, dissembles and condescends.
Problem with Barack Obama's First General
Election Ad. Barack Obama's first general election ad says about 46 seconds in that the
Illinois senator passed laws that "extended health care for wounded troops who'd been neglected." The
ad "Country I Love", which was released Friday [6/20/2008], provides a citation at the bottom of the screen
which reads "Public Law 110-181." The problem is Senator Obama never voted for that legislation.
How Smart is Obama?
Obama has made a habit of coming across like a man who doesn't know what he's talking about. That's
bothersome enough, but what's more worrisome still is how comfortable he is with not knowing what he's talking
about, and how convinced he seems that his rhetorical flourishes will obscure his ignorance.
He talks a lot, but he says nothing.
Obama Cannot Keep Running On
Narcissism. Does Obama have the sort of adviser a candidate most needs — someone
sufficiently unenthralled to tell him when he has worked one pedal on the organ too much? If so,
Obama should be told: Enough, already, with the we-are-who-we-have-been-waiting-for rhetorical
cotton candy that elevates narcissism to a political philosophy.
Obama Still Hasn't Gotten the Memo.
Obama, please, for your own sake, delete the phrase "energy independence" from your database. Purge it
from your campaign. You sound like a moron.
Idols of Crowds:
Barack Obama is truly a phenomenon of our time — a presidential candidate who cannot cite a single
serious accomplishment in his entire career, besides advancing his own career with rhetoric. He
has a rhetorical answer for everything.
Barack Obama: Oratory Versus Action.
"Yes, we can" means anything the listener wants it to be. "Hope" is also subject to all manner of
interpretation. ... If his supporters conclude that [Obama], like the Wizard of Oz, is really "the man behind the
curtain" creating an illusion, his rhetorical skills will not be able to hide the fact that the federal government
that created the present ills is unable to end them.
A Blank Screen And An Empty Suit.
In his most recent study in vapidity,
The Audacity of Hope, Barack Hussein Obama does a remarkably
terse and honest job of describing himself. If only Americans were to take him at his word: "I
serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views."
Indeed.
All that blather about "change we can believe in," "hope we can change with ... change we can
hope for ... beliefs we can change with" or whatever, seems to have mystified folks all over the fruited
plain, making his "blank screen" metaphor spot on.
Prince Obama. Barack Obama is an
accomplished political actor who delivers his lines well, whether or not they contain substance. He manipulates
platitudes like Laurence Olivier, calling for "unity" and the end of alleged divisions to create a better world defined by
peace among nations and the end of class distinctions at home.
The
Greatest Scandal: A visitor to Mr. Obama's Web site finds plenty of information about his plans
to fix public education in this country. Everyone knows this is a long, hard slog, but Mr. Obama and his
wife aren't waiting. Their daughters attend the private University of Chicago Laboratory Schools, where
annual tuition ranges from $15,528 for kindergarten to $20,445 for high school.
What We've Learned
About Barack: The senator has had nearly a year-and-a-half to explain how his new brand of
politics and bipartisanship would work; the optimists among us are still waiting. Quizzed on how he'd
reach across the aisle, Mr. Obama likes to mention that he might, maybe, perhaps, possibly, if caught on a
good day, negotiate on "merit pay" for teachers.
If Republicans can't figure out a way to capitalize on
this gap between the spin and substance, they'll deserve backrow seats at his inauguration.
Obama's
Fatherhood Talk Is Cheap. Sen. Obama claims he is all about change. He says he wants to get
Washington working differently. He might start by declaring independence from the teachers' unions.
When
in the Course of Political Doublespeak. [Many of Obama's] speeches use the same formula:
hearken to America's founding, hail the shining ideals of America's revolutionary liberty, invoke the greatness
and even the rhetoric of American luminaries gone by, and then subtly change the focus to suggest that the
next step for American liberty is to become a socialized nanny state for the greater good.
Obama
should actually read the Constitution. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was on "60 Minutes"
recently, and here's hoping Barack Obama was listening, or that if he wasn't, someone will send him a tape.
You can pray it will straighten out this Harvard Law School graduate on some of the balderdash he passes off as
respect for the Constitution. Respect, at the least, entails upholding what the document says and means,
but as his reported words convey, Obama believes instead that justices should make primary reference to their
own innermost moral convictions and sympathies. He thinks the Constitution should be regarded as "living,"
which is to say that you should be able to jigger its principles in accord with the temper of the times.
What Obama Left
Out: [Scroll down] In the rest of the speech, he goes on to detail — at some
length — the "so many ways to serve" that are available "at this defining moment in our history." There's
the Peace Corps, there's renewable energy, there's education, there's poverty — there are all kinds of causes
you can take up "should you take the path of service." But there's one obvious path of service Obama doesn't
recommend — or even mention: military service.
Obama's Language Games:
Barack Obama, the candidate, has used nuanced language to evade and deflect in order to avoid being candid.
Here are three examples of Obama language games concerning (1) Louis Farrakhan, (2) driver's licenses for
illegal immigrants, and (3) reparations.
Obama Speaks!
Thank you very much. It's great to be here. You know, the definition of insanity is doing the same
thing over again and expecting a different result. We are going to do things differently and expect a
different result. And if we don't do things differently, well, the results we get, well, they'll be the
results we deserve. Thank you.
Obama
won't wear flag pin but displays Cuban Flag in his Houston Office. Barack
Obama's Houston campaign office prominently displays a Cuban flag with a superimposed picture
of Che Guevara, the Argentine-born terrorist and revolutionary. Of course, Obama made
an issue of not wearing an American flag pin or placing his hand over his heart during the
national anthem
.
I
smell Barack Obama baloney. Anyone who delves past his soaring speeches and mesmerizing gaze and
follows the money trail will find plenty to question. The Democratic candidate of "change," for example,
has raised nearly $100 million in campaign contributions, nearly as much as the Hillary Clinton money
machine. Three of his four largest group of bankrollers are executives of Wall Street giants Goldman
Sachs, Lehman Brothers and JPMorgan Chase. What kind of change is that?
Obama's
Deceptive Anti-Oil Ad: 'I Don't Take $ From Oil Companies'. It has been illegal for the
last 100 years for an oil company to directly donate to a political campaign. So, while it is
technically correct that Obama isn't taking money from oil companies, it is ALSO true that neither is anyone
else!
Not from the companies themselves, but from the employees.
Barack Obama
still takes in oil money. Sen. Barack Obama continued accepting donations from oil company
executives and employees last month even as he aired ads in which he stated he took no oil company money, his
campaign finance reports show.
Obama's
Dry Hole: "I want you to think about this," Barack Obama said in Las Vegas last week. "The oil
companies have already been given 68 million acres of federal land, both onshore and offshore, to drill.
They're allowed to drill it, and yet they haven't touched it — 68 million acres that have the
potential to nearly double America's total oil production." Wow, how come the oil companies didn't think
of that? Perhaps because the notion is obviously false
.
The Editor says...
The oil companies haven't been "given" anything.
On offshore oil,
Obama offers the audacity of ignorance. To plan a long and challenging journey, would
you reject Mapquest and GPS and only consult an atlas from the 1970s? Unlikely. But to
pinpoint America's offshore oil deposits, congressional Democrats, starting with Sen. Barack Obama,
love disco-era maps. Despite his conditional, latter-day support for limited offshore drilling, Obama
is the sole sponsor of legislation that would block geological research to locate offshore oil.
Barack Obama is a
Fake. Sen. Barack Obama's star appeal is causing physiological reactions in his supporters.
Which is to say, they're fainting. And these fainting routines are causing me physiological reactions.
Which is to say, I'm throwing up.
I don't mean to suggest that all this is staged. I'm saying it
straight out: It's staged.
The Obama
administration has hidden surprises in store for you. "My Administration is committed to
creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government," the newly inaugurated President Obama declared in
a memo to department and agency heads in January 2009. "Government should be transparent.
Transparency promotes accountability and provides information for citizens about what their Government is
doing." How's that working in practice?
William Jefferson Obama.
I now have reason to suspect that Barack Obama has a skill of proven value to a U.S. President: the ability to
look straight into the camera and not tell the truth,
without lying.
Obama Lies. On issue after
issue, whether confessing to a mistake or tailoring his latest position for political effect ("moving to the
center" is what they call this in political lingo), Obama's words are now increasingly being received as bald
untruths. His image is turning into that of presidential candidate as Pinocchio, the would-be president
as habitual liar. Simply googling "Obama Lies" produces thirteen million references on the
subject — thirteen million! — as opposed to just over a million references
to "Bush Lies" and three million for "Bill Clinton Lies."
Obama
Campaign Removes New Black Panther Party Endorsement From Web Site. Barack Obama's campaign has
removed an endorsement by the New Black Panther Party from its Web site, one day after the Illinois senator
delivered a speech calling for improved race relations in America.
Typical White Fact-Based
Reasoning. Senator Barack Obama said in his memoir,
The Audacity of Hope, "The arguments of
liberals are more often grounded in reason and fact." Yet he also claimed that to fear a black person on the
street more than a white person is a racial "stereotype", "bred" into us. To the contrary, such a fear is
actually "grounded in reason and fact." When the numbers are crunched, a black person is almost six times more
likely than a white person to be a murderer.
Barack
Obama — I'm sure we've seen him somewhere before. Every time I listen to [Obama],
I
find my mind wandering, asking itself things like: 'What does "the challenge of
hope" mean?'
His is a rhetoric that soars and takes flight, but alights nowhere. It
declares that together we can do anything, but doesn't mention any of the things we can
do.
Maybe Obama is so successful because he's the supreme master of what American politics
excels in: high-flown language that denotes as little as possible.
Where's the Beef in
Obama's Big New Ideas? Over the past couple of weeks, Obama has begun to reveal approaches that
only a vegetarian could love. Take his energy proposal. Obama worries that an oil embargo could do
serious harm to our economy and offers up plans to help us avert disaster. The centerpiece of the
proposal is certainly different but not in a favorable direction.
Say Watt, Senator?
Speaking Tuesday in Lansing, Mich., Sen. Obama set a goal of putting 1 million plug-in gas-electric hybrid
cars, capable of getting 150 miles per gallon of gasoline consumed, on the road by 2015. To help
power them, Obama also said he wanted 10% of our electricity to come from renewable sources by 2012 and 25% by
2025. Actually, about 20% of our electricity already comes from a renewable resource — nuclear
power — and John McCain wants to up that percentage significantly.
Obama Scores
as Exotic Who Says Nothing. Obama's appeal comes not from the things he says, but from who is
saying them. He scores as an exotic who talks of barbershops and church socials in the flat tones you'd
expect from any son of the prairie. Had [Evan] Bayh been half-Kenyan and raised in Hawaii by white
grandparents from Kansas, he too would have become a political star, at least for the month of December.
But he is a conventional white man.
Who Is Senator Barack Obama And What Does He
Believe? Sen. Obama's church background is clearly liberal and pro-homosexual. His voting
record shows him to be a typical secularist liberal. Human Events notes that Obama has a 100% rating
from Americans for Democratic Action, NARAL Pro-Choice America, the National Organization for Women, the NAACP
and the National Education Association. He says he believes that marriage should be a union of one man
and one woman, but voted against the Federal Marriage Amendment in 2006.
What does Barack Obama believe
in? The intro he taped for "Monday Night Football" — in an Aaron Sorkin-like setting
of gleaming desk and important lighting — showed he is an actor who can absorb the script and knows
by nature what a camera is. This is a compliment. All the great presidents of the media age, FDR,
JFK and Reagan, were great actors of the presidency. (The one non-great president who was their equal
in this, Bill Clinton, proved that acting is not enough.)
The
real story behind the cover: This latest campaign kerfuffle was the perfect distraction to mask
what's behind the controversial caricature. Inside the New Yorker is a 14,619-word story by Ryan Lizza
that has largely escaped attention. It's not a flattering portrayal of the senator, who comes off as
opportunistic. But few know this, so caught up in the cover controversy that they haven't taken the time
to read the article itself.
Bamboozled
Obama's big black lie: It was the Republican Party that fought for the freedoms of blacks in
Congress following the conclusion of the Civil War. State chapters of the Republican Party were started
by blacks in most southern states. The first black congressional members, some of whom had been former
slaves only months previous, were all Republican.
Jonathan Livingston Obama:
Only white guilt could explain the insanely hyperbolic descriptions of Obama's "eloquence." His
speeches are a run-on string of embarrassing, sophomoric Hallmark bromides. In announcing his
candidacy last week, Obama confirmed that he believes in "the basic decency of the American
people." And let the chips fall where they may!
Barack
Rodney King Obama: Barack Obama's glib announcement in declaring his candidacy for the presidency
provides clues about the man and reminds us, contrary to his stated message, of the great chasm that separates
people of different political orientations. Mr. Obama appears to have fallen prey to the wave of
public adulation accompanying the media's hype about him — to the point that he broke his recent
promise not to seek the presidency at this early stage in his inexperienced political career.
Obama's
Born-Alive Cover-Up. Several of the purported refutations are themselves, at best, misdirections.
One of the most easily verifiable is Obama's continued insistence that he voted against the Illinois Born Alive Act
because it lacked an abortion neutrality clause. Remarkable. Obama now has unequivocally repeated this
falsehood several times. Is he that confident nobody in the mainstream media will call him on it?
Obama's Abortion
Challenge. Senator Obama has justified his strenuous objection to the Illinois bill by
claiming that differences from the federal bill are the reason. This claim is false. The Federal
legislation and the Illinois legislation were in fact virtually identical. ... The candidate has been
burnishing and airbrushing his history as November nears. One aspect of this effort is his
attempt to recreate his own political history involving abortion.
Ethanol Insanity. Barack Obama
doesn't want to talk about corn ethanol. And it's no wonder. In early August, his campaign Web
site purged several sections of his energy plan that talked about corn ethanol. Before the purge, Obama
was touting corn ethanol as a pivotal element in his push for "energy independence." ... In early August, Obama
released a new set of talking points on energy called "New Energy for America" that supplanted his old energy
stance. All mentions of corn ethanol were removed.
A new
Obama: No we can't. During CNN's broadcast of Barack Obama's first press conference
yesterday [11/7/2008], a corner of the screen flickered with a live feed of the Dow Jones Industrial
Average. As Obama spoke, the Dow average lost more than 100 points. In his brief statement
and question session, the president elect of the United States said next to nothing about anything. There
were no signs of the Yes We Can positivism of the campaign in his low-key, even halting manner. What
little he did say may well signal the beginning of a new phase in Obamamania: No we can't.
Pablum from the President-Elect.
President-elect Barack Obama hasn't held his Friday afternoon press conference yet — but we have a
pretty good idea of what he might say. Every day this week, Obama has held a press conference to
introduce new members of his team. In each instance, Obama has said ... not a whole lot.
Obama: Where have all his records
gone? According to March 2008 reports, State Department employees conducted an unauthorized search of Obama's
passport files during the recent presidential campaign. ... Two workers were fired and another faced discipline.
Obama's files reportedly contained copies of passport applications, birth date, basic biographical information, records of
passport renewal and possibly citizenship information. ... Meanwhile, a key witness who had been cooperating with federal
investigators was later found fatally shot in front of a Washington, D.C., church. A police officer found the body of
Lt. Quarles Harris Jr., 24, slumped dead inside his car. At the time, investigators said they didn't have any
information connecting the murder to the passport case. After one year of investigation of the homicide, there have
been no arrests.
No Proof. [Scroll down] That
individual, identified as Lieutenant Harris Junior, 24, was stopped for a minor traffic infraction on 25 March
2008, and was found to be in possession of stolen credit cards and documents that were traced back to the breach of
the passport records. HARRIS, known to DC police, began working with federal authorities to strike a deal as
they expanded their investigation into the passport incident. According to a review of the arrest record,
HARRIS admitted to investigating officers that he obtained the documents from (an unnamed) co-conspirator "who
works for the U.S. Department of State". Less than a month later, HARRIS was found with a single bullet
wound to his head on Thursday, 17 April 2008, inside of his car that was parked in front of the Judah House
Praise Baptist Church in Washington, DC.
Obama's Passport
Breach: Unanswered Questions, and an Unsolved Murder. Back in March 2008, the State Department launched an investigation of
improper computer access to the passport records of Barack Hussein Obama, and days later those of Hillary Clinton and John McCain. The
investigation centered on one employee: a contract worker for a company that was headed by John O. Brennan, a key Obama campaign
adviser who later became assistant to the president and deputy national security adviser for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism.
Then, a month later, the key witness in this case was murdered. Lt. Quarles Harris, Jr., 24, was shot in the head in his car, in
front of his church.
Obama on Fort
Hood Massacre: Don't Jump to Conclusions. [Scroll down] By sealing off records of
his past, including his original birth certificate and his academic records, Obama was in a way persuading
Americans to forget about "all the facts" and to jump to conclusions about his qualifications to be
president. In addition, would the White House be attacking Fox News if it had a healthy respect
for the "marketplace of ideas?"
Obama Treason Charges Advance In Tennessee
Grand Jury. [Scroll down] Yet ten months after inauguration, Obama's entire past remains
a mystery under lock and key. Obama has spent almost $2 million in legal fees to keep his life
Top Secret, not counting millions in tax-payer funded road blocks thrown up by Obama's Justice Department,
which has sent numerous federal attorneys into court after court to file dismissal requests on the basis of
"standing" — with great success. They don't want the courts to ever decide Obama's
Constitutional eligibility on "merit," because if discovery ever goes forward and Obama's files are
opened up, Obama is finished and so is his Marxist Global Agenda!
Who's
Visiting The President? President Barack Obama has worked closely with House Speaker Nancy
Pelosi to pass health care reform and other measures, but there are a number of private-sector figures
whose names appear more frequently in White House visitor records. They include labor leaders, an
executive for a Swiss bank and a Chicago billionaire.
Solving the Obama Problem.
I have argued before that Barack Obama is as close to being a rogue president as can be imagined. There is
something troublingly undocumented about him, a cloud of ambiguity hovering over his selective reticence. ... The
problem is that much of genuine importance remains an ongoing mystery. For example, his college and
university transcripts, including his academic papers and financial statements, his senate files and
schedules, his professional client lists and other documentation remain sequestered under seal, a fact which
should properly distress even his most ardent supporters.
Obviously they have something to hide.
What could it be?
Dems object to GOP gov't transparency probe.
Some Democrats in Congress objected Wednesday [2/2/2011] to early steps taken by the new Republican chairman
of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee to conduct a broad inquiry into President Barack
Obama's promises to improve government transparency.
Promises,
Promises: Little transparency progress. Two years into its pledge to improve government transparency,
the Obama administration handled fewer requests for federal records from citizens, journalists, companies and
others last year even as significantly more people asked for information.
Obama's
openness falling short of campaign promise. He won an award for making government more transparent,
but President Obama is nowhere near keeping his pledge to "usher in a new era of open government," according to
government watchdogs. Obama rode into office two years ago as a self-proclaimed reformer, vowing to kick
down the walls of secrecy that defined George W. Bush's presidency.
Obama's 'Openness' a Transparent
Lie. For an administration which has touted "openness" left and right, the pattern would be
amusing — if it weren't so frightening. ... While it's obviously not possible to comply with
every FOIA request, the sheer volume of refusals is troubling. More troubling still is the apparent
tendency to favor requests from sympathetic agencies and groups.
"President Obama has committed to making his
administration the most open and transparent in history..."
Obama
secretly accepts transparency award. After canceling a scheduled appearance to accept an
award from transparency advocates during Sunshine Week earlier this month, President Obama finally
accepted the award this week — without letting anyone know. According to various
reports, Obama met with several transparency advocates for roughly 20 minutes on Monday [3/28/2011]
to discuss open-government issues and accept an award for his commitment to increasing federal transparency.
Obama
Accepts "Openness" Award at Clandestine Meeting. Earlier this month, the White House announced that
President Obama would be receiving a "transparency" award from good-government groups — a piece of news
that was met with well-deserved mockery from the press. The White House responded by canceling the award
ceremony without explanation. But now Politico is reporting that Obama accepted the award this week in
a secret, closed-door meeting with government transparency groups.
The Editor asks...
Why do "government transparency groups" have closed-door meetings?
Shh!
Obama gets anti-secrecy award. President Obama finally and quietly accepted his "transparency"
award from the open government community this week — in a closed, undisclosed meeting at the
White House on Monday. The secret presentation happened almost two weeks after the White House
inexplicably postponed the ceremony, which was expected to be open to the press pool.
'The
height of irony': Obama awarded prize for transparency ... behind closed doors. President
Barack Obama accepted an award for making the government more open and transparent in secret. The
White House even left the event off the President's public schedule, so no one knew about it and requests
for journalists to cover the meeting by those attending were turned down. 'To have such a meeting not
be transparent is the height of irony.
Where's the
openness, Mr. President? The day after his inauguration, President Obama promised a new era of
"openness in government." But the reality has not matched the president's rhetoric. We ... have
found little openness since Obama took office. If anything, the administration has gone in the
opposite direction: imposing restrictions on reporters' newsgathering that exceed even the
constraints put in place by President George W. Bush. Democrats criticized the Bush
administration for not making decisions based on the best science. But the Obama administration
now muzzles scientists and experts within federal agencies.
The
administration's honesty deficit. Barack Obama is a president who won a peace prize and took
the nation into a new war. It ought not to be a surprise, then, that he would accept an award for his
administration's transparency last week as his third-largest agency was raked over the coals by Congress for
obstructionism. The House Oversight and Government Reform committee alleged in a report released
Wednesday [3/30/2011] that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has politicized the way it responds to requests
for information from the public and the press.
The White House Guess List. President
Barack Obama has won praise from the media — and from himself — for
putting the White House visitor logs online. Yet the visitor logs may hide more than
they reveal. The White House is still holding back "tens of thousands" of visitor logs,
according to congressional testimony last week by Tom Fitton, President of Judicial Watch, who also
added that "the Obama administration is less transparent than the Bush administration."
"It has been my experience that
whenever a leader — whether elected, anointed or media-appointed —
does not want you to see something, that's probably the time when you should go out of
your way to see it."
This is an original
compilation, Copyright © 2018 by Andrew K. Dart
Obama
Birth Certificate Issue More Urgent Than Ever. At this point, every member of the Congress and
media, as well as ordinary citizens, knows that there was something putridly rotten about Obama's election.
Not just the billion dollars in campaign donations, most of which are still unaccounted for but known to have
flowed from foreign donors, many of them enemies of America. And not just the missing mountains of
qualifying data that all presidential candidates are expected to produce, including:
· His Illinois law license. Is he even a lawyer? Where is his supposed
Harvard Law degree? Where are the papers he wrote in law school? Why does he not correct people
when they say he was a law professor when he was never a professor but only a lecturer?
· His Selective Service registration, which investigative-journalist and lawyer Debbie
Schlussel has reported to be falsified, an accusation that Linda Bentley quite persuasively documented just
the other day.
· His visa or more probably visas. After all, he did travel to Pakistan in 1981
when Americans were forbidden into that country. Did he use the Indonesian visa he got when he was
a citizen of that country?
· His school records from Indonesia and Hawaii.
· His college transcripts from Occidental College in CA, Columbia College in NY, and
Harvard Law School in MA.
· His Baptism certificate.
· His Illinois State Senate records.
Did
someone mention Obama's birth certificate?
America has a Deep Moral Disease. Harlem Pastor James
David Manning is convinced that, "Character matters. Nobody talks about this... the fact that the Illinois State Bar ruled Obama is
not fit to practice law and disbarred him!" Calling it beyond outrageous, Rev. Manning wonders how American citizens could allow the
man to serve as President. [Video clip]
Presidential Executive Orders.
In a story by Tom Murse, About.com Contributing Writer, titled "Obama's First Executive Order" dated
September 20, 2010 the question was asked, "Did President Really Seal His Own Personal Records?"
It might surprise you, as it did me, that the answer is "No". One day after being sworn in as the
44th president of the United States, on Jan. 21, 2009, Barack Obama signed Executive Order 13489, states
Mr. Murse and he continues, "That the first order of business Obama took care of on day one of his Presidency
was to sign off on an Executive Order that states that only the records he chooses to be made public will be
released. This is the subject that was at the absolute top of his agenda. If this isn't proof that
Obama is hiding something, I don't know what is."
Democrats Force 'Birther' Issue to Rise
Again: What Gives? In my opinion — as a civics-minded citizen —
Obama's as yet unreleased original long-form birth certificate from the state of Hawaii is merely the tip of
a mysterious iceberg when it comes to the 44th president of the United States. Any journalist worth an
ounce of salt would be curious as to why any presidential candidate would conceal nearly every documented
item from his own past. Obviously, America does not have many remaining curious journalists.
The
Case Against Barack Hussein Obama: [Scroll down] Sure, there's [1] the original, long-form 1961 Hawaiian birth
certificate. Then there's:
[2] Marriage license between Obama's father (Barak Sr.) and mother (Stanley Ann Dunham) — not
found, not released
[3] Obama's baptism records — sealed
[4] Obama's adoption records — sealed
[5] Records of Obama's and his mother's reptriation as US citizens on return from Indonesia —
not found, not released
[6] Name change (Barry Sotero to Barack Hussein Obama) records — not found, not released
[7] Noelani Elementary School (Hawaii) — not released
[8] Punahou School financial aid or school records — not released
[9] Occidental College financial aid records — not released. (These records were, however,
subpoenaed but Obama lawyers succeeded in quashing the subpoena in court. No other Occi records have
been released.)
[10] Columbia College records — not released
[11] Columbia senior thesis — not released
[12] Harvard Law School records (...not released)
[13] Obama's law client list — sealed
[14] Obama's files from his career as an Illinois State Senator — sealed
[15] Obama's record with Illinois State Bar Association — sealed
[16] Obama's medical records — not released
[17] Obama's passport records — not released
That's a lot of records sealed and not released.
Obama conspiracy —
It's no longer just a theory. On Sept. 7, 2008, Barack Hussein Obama appeared on ABC's
"This Week with George Stephanopoulos," and stated, "I had to sign up for Selective Service (SS) when I
graduated from high school ... And I actually always thought of the military as an ennobling and, you know,
honorable option. But keep in mind that I graduated in 1979. The Vietnam War had come to an end.
We weren't engaged in active military conflict at that point. And so, it's not an option that I ever
decided to pursue." Some people did keep in mind that he graduated in 1979 and noted the registration
requirement was suspended in April 1975 by President Gerald Ford and wasn't reinstituted until 1980 by
President Jimmy Carter in response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The Military Selective
Service Act required men born in the calendar year 1961 to register on any of the six days beginning
Monday, July 28, 1980.
Who is Barry Soetoro? Donald Trump is correct,
Barry Soetoro, AKA Obama is hiding something in his past that is very bad and it may not be just his citizenship, it may well be a criminal past.
As an IRS tax examiner I have seen what it appears Barry Soetoro has done, mostly by illegal aliens attempting to acquire a new identity in the U.S.
and/or criminals looking to acquire a new ID. [...] There are literally over 1 million open warrants on file in New York... Maybe Barry is one
of them?
Obama's Draft Registration Raises Serious Questions.
Did President-elect Barack Hussein Obama commit a federal crime in September of [2008]? Or did he never
actually register and, instead, did friends of his in the Chicago federal records center, which maintains the
official copy of his alleged Selective Service registration commit the crime for him? It's either one or
the other, as indicated by the release of Barack Obama's official Selective Service registration for the draft.
A friend of mine, who is a retired federal agent, spent almost a year trying to obtain this document through a
Freedom of Information Act request, and, after much stonewalling, finally received it and released it to me.
But the release of Obama's draft registration and an accompanying document, posted [in this article], raises
more questions than it answers.
Lawfare, Voluntary Surrender, and Right-wing
"Extremists". Fox News, who has, one assumes, a few resources, was unable to come up with a
single student from Obama's purported time at Columbia, who remembered him. ... Was the guy a ghost?
Here is a very partial list of documents relating to Obama's past,that no one seems to have seen. Good
luck finding them.
Original birth certificate (you know, as in one you can actually touch)
Obama/Dunham marriage license
Obama/Dunham divorce documents
Soetoro/Dunham marriage license
Soetoro adoption records
Occidental College records
Passport — the one used for the trip to Pakistan (not mentioned in either biography)
Columbia College records
Columbia thesis
Harvard College records
Illinois State Bar Association records
Is Barack Obama the Ultimate Sleeper Agent?
Many questions regarding Obama's past remain hidden. Beyond the issue of whether he is a natural born
citizen eligible to hold the office, most of the paper trail concerning his education at Occidental College in
Los Angeles, followed by Columbia University and Harvard, and the funding for his tuition, his travel to
Pakistan as a youth, and other factors normally made public during a campaign are still kept secret.
The
Endless Secrecy Around Barack Obama. Just to review, the public cannot get access to paperwork
related grants distributed by then-state-legislator Obama (records from 1997 to 2000 aren't available); his
state legislative office records (which he says may have been thrown out); he refuses to release a specific
list of law clients,
he won't release his application to the state bar (where critics wonder if he lied
in responding to questions about parking tickets and past drug use); he's never released any legal or billing
records to verify that he only did a few hours of work for a nonprofit tied to convicted donor Rezko; and he's
never released any medical records, just a one-page letter from his doctor.
No Paperwork For
Obama Grants From 1997 To 2000. [Obama] won't release his application to the state bar. He's never
released any legal or billing records to verify that he only did a few hours of work for a nonprofit tied to Tony Rezko.
He's never released any medical records, just a one-page letter from his doctor. Does it bother anyone that a guy
with political ambitions for his entire adult life has not left a paper trail?
Berg v. Obama: Elector Suit Call to Action.
Unfortunately, the overwhelmingly vast majority of American citizens are not aware that President-elect Barack
Obama has been the only candidate for the Executive who has not released certain records to help establish his
credentials; to wit:
• Occidental College records — not released.
• Columbia Thesis paper — not available, locked down by faculty.
• Harvard College records — not released, locked down by faculty.
• Selective Service Registration — not released.
• Medical records — not released (only a one-page report).
• Illinois State Senate schedule — 'not available.'
• Law practice client list — not released.
• Certified Copy of original Birth certificate — not released.
• Embossed, signed paper Certification of Live Birth — not released.
• Harvard Law Review articles published — None.
• University of Chicago scholarly articles — None.
• Record of Baptism — Not released or 'not available.'
• Illinois State Senate records — 'not available.'
Obama's
Lost Years: Voters and the media are now exercising due diligence before Election Day, and they
are meeting resistance from Mr. Obama in checking his past. Earlier this year, the AP tracked down
Mr. Obama's New York-era roommate, "Sadik," in Seattle after the campaign refused to reveal his name.
Sohale Siddiqi, his real n