Just days ahead of the pResident’s trip to Hopenhagen to help hammer out some kind of deal that usurps American sovereignty and moola, Robert Gibbs takes a question from Major Garrett about the hacked ClimateGate emails, and totally sidesteps answering it by stating that “…Carol Browner addressed that last week; on the order of several thousand scientists have come to the conclusion that climate change is happening. I don’t think that’s anything that is, quite frankly among most people, in dispute anymore.” Don’t hold your breath waiting for Gibbs or Obama to volunteer that those scientists based their opinions on faked data.
Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, announced today that the Obama administration argued in a recent court filing that the Privacy Act does not apply to the Executive Office of the President (EOP). This court filing came in a Judicial Watch lawsuit filed in 1996 against the Clinton White House related to a scandal known as “Filegate,” where the Clinton White House obtained and maintained the private FBI files of hundreds of former Reagan and Bush officials [Alexander v. Federal Bureau of Investigation, Civil Action No. 96-2123/97-1288 (RCL)].
In the Obama administration’s “Renewed Motion for Summary Judgment,” filed with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on September 17, the Obama Justice Department stated the following: “The White House is not an agency under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), and it necessarily follows that it is not an agency subject to the Privacy Act.”However, the Privacy Act specifically lists the “Executive Office of the President” as an agency subject to the Act’s provisions. (emphasis mine)
“The White House is not an agency…” It is OUR house where the salaries and bills are paid with OUR money. It is a branch of our government. If it is not a federal agency, what is it?
U.S. District Court Judge Royce Lamberth had repeatedly rejected this same legal argument, most recently in 2008 when the court ruled against a government motion that would have dismissed the lawsuit: “…this court holds that under the Privacy Act, the word ‘agency’ includes the Executive Office of the President, just as the Privacy Act says.”
While the Obama administration continues to advance the legal and political argument that the White House and the FBI should not be held accountable for the Filegate scandal, former President Bill Clinton apparently disagrees. Clinton told historian Taylor Branch in preparation for a recently published book, “those files did not belong at The White House,” and that they “should have been isolated and returned immediately.” According to Branch, Clinton also said “[h]is administration should and would be held accountable.”
“What the Obama administration is effectively saying here is that if the White House decides to illegally compile FBI files and violate your privacy rights, tough luck,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “It is disturbing that the Obama administration has taken the legal position that the Privacy Act does not apply to the White House and the Clinton FBI files scandal was not a scandal. It is worrying to those of us concerned about the Obama White House’s collecting “fishy” emails and compiling an enemies list of new organizations, radio hosts, businesses, and industry associations to attack and smear. Is the Obama defense of the FBI files scandal less about that Clinton scandal and more about what his White House is up to now?” (emphasis mine)
An era of transparency when the White House is compiling emails lists, is asking for the names of people spreading “misinformation”, and waging a war on FoxNews and free speech? An era of transparency when the party in power is doing all their work behind closed and LOCKED doors, not posting the bills online, not allowing the American people a chance to voice their opinions on fiscal life and death bills without ridicule, or even giving the members of both the House and Senate enough time to read and digest bills before being brought to a vote?
Just one more lie to add to the ever lengthening list coming from this administration, and another “Let Them Eat Cake” moment.
Today’s message from Glenn is about “The Chicago Way”, and if you sit at the White House table long enough, you are gonna get whacked by this administration. (Nothing new to the readers here at the Monster)
Update: Loss of Freedom and Global Climate Treaty shenanigans:
This White House just does not do well with or without an opponent, but because Obama appears to be running for king of the world, he has to attack people here at home instead of taking care of the relevant issues here at home; Tea Partiers, The Military, Senior Citizens, and the escalating campaign against Fox News. At what point are the teenagers in the WH going to understand that we are getting very tired of this behavior and a time out is coming soon.
The White House is calling on other news organizations to isolate and alienate Fox News as it sends out top advisers to rail against the cable channel as a Republican Party mouthpiece.
Top political strategists question the decision by the Obama administration to escalate its offensive against Fox News. And as of Monday, the four other major television networks had not given any indication that they intend to sever their ties with Fox News.
But several top White House officials have taken aim at Fox News since communications director Anita Dunn branded Fox “opinion journalism masquerading as news” in an interview last Sunday.
White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel told CNN on Sunday that President Obama does not want “the CNNs and the others in the world [to] basically be led in following Fox.”
Obama senior adviser David Axelrod went further by calling on media outlets to join the administration in declaring that Fox is “not a news organization.”
“Other news organizations like yours ought not to treat them that way,” Axelrod counseled ABC’s George Stephanopoulos. “We’re not going to treat them that way.”
Asked Monday about another Axelrod claim that Fox News is just trying to make money, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said that while all media companies fall under that description, “I would say sometimes programming can be tilted toward accentuating those profits.”
But by urging other news outlets to side with the administration, Obama officials dramatically upped the ante in the war of words that began earlier this month with Dunn’s comments.
So far, none of the four other major networks has given any indication that they wish to disinvite Fox News from the White House pool — the rotation through which the networks share the costs and duties of White House coverage and the most significant interaction among the news channels.
The White House stopped providing guests to “Fox News Sunday” after host Chris Wallace fact-checked controversial assertions made by Tammy Duckworth, assistant secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs, in August.
Dunn said fact-checking an administration official was “something I’ve never seen a Sunday show do.”
“She criticized ‘Fox News Sunday’ last week for fact-checking — fact-checking — an administration official,” Wallace said Sunday. “They didn’t say that our fact-checking was wrong. They just said that we had dared to fact-check.”
“Let’s fact-check Anita Dunn, because last Sunday she said that Fox ignores Republican scandals, and she specifically mentioned the scandal involving Nevada senator John Ensign,” Wallace added. “A number of Fox News shows have run stories about Senator Ensign. Anita Dunn’s facts were just plain wrong.”
Fox News senior vice president Michael Clemente said: “Surprisingly, the White House continues to declare war on a news organization instead of focusing on the critical issues that Americans are concerned about like jobs, health care and two wars. The door remains open and we welcome a discussion about the facts behind the issues.”
This behavior coming from our pResident and the Leader of the Free World. I am so embarrassed.
It appears that the White House, while taking four days, has figured out who to blame and how to sidestep their role in the suspect activity of the unsolicited emails and spam that people have been receiving from senior White House advisor David Axelrod concerning healthcare reform.
The White House statement from Nick Shapiro:
The White House e-mail list is made up of e-mail addresses obtained solely through the White House website. The White House doesn’t purchase, upload or merge from any other list. … [A]ll e-mails come from the White House website as we have no interest in emailing anyone who does not want to receive an email. If an individual received the e-mail because someone else or a group signed them up or forwarded the email, we hope they were not too inconvenienced. Further, we suggest that they unsubscribe from the list by clicking the link at the bottom of the e-mail or tell whomever forwarded it to them not to forward such information anymore.
We are implementing measures to make subscribing to emails clearer including preventing advocacy organizations from signing people up to our lists without their permission when they deliver petition signatures and other messages on individual’s behalf.
Yesterday, the director of the CBO, Douglas Elmendorf, (also a former senior fellow at the Brookings Institute 2007-2009), was “invited” to the White House to meet with the resident’s “key budget and health advisors”, and outside experts to discuss “achieving cost savings in health reform”.
I am supposing that people would not be making such an issue about this visit if it weren’t for Bambi’s Chicago thuggery record. Here are just a few examples and don’t be fooled by the titles:
Republicans on Wednesday criticized as inappropriate a meeting President Obama held Monday with the director of the Congressional Budget Office, Douglas Elmendorf.
Elmendorf, a Democratic appointee, has been a thorn in the side of President Obama and congressional Democrats for the way he has analyzed health care reform legislation. In their view, Elmendorf hasn’t sufficiently given their health care reform proposals enough credit for cutting costs – which has caused them political problems in getting the legislation passed. Last week, frustrated at one analysis by Elmendorf, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., snapped, “what he should do is maybe run for Congress.”
“No one blames Mr. Elmendorf for accepting an invitation from the President of the United States,” House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, said in a statement.“The issue is whether it was appropriate for the White House to invite him to discuss pending legislation before Congress at all.”
CBO is tasked with providing “objective, nonpartisan, and timely analyses to aid in economic and budgetary decisions on the wide array of programs covered by the federal budget.”
The White House flatly rejected the idea that there was anything untoward about the invitation or the meeting, which took place on Monday for just under an hour. In addition to the president and Elmendorf, present in the meeting were White House officials such as Assistant to the President for Legislative Affairs Phil Schiliro, Director of the White House Office of Health Reform Nancy-Ann DeParle, Office of Management and Budget director Peter Orszag (a former CBO director himself), National Economic Council Director Larry Summers, chair of the Council of Economic Advisers Christy Romer, senior adviser David Axelrod, and press secretary Robert Gibbs.
Others were there as well, including Department of Health and Human Services adviser Meena Seshamani, Harvard University economist David Cutler and Alice Rivlin of the Brookings Institute, who was founding director of CBO from 1975-1983.
Wow, a heck of a list of heavy hitters. Once again, for those of you new to the Monster, check out the links on the backgrounds of these people.
Paul Warburg became known as a persuasive advocate of central banking in America, in 1907 publishing the pamphlets “Defects and Needs of Our Banking System” and “A Plan for A Modified Central Bank”. His efforts were successful in 1913 with the founding of the Federal Reserve System. He was appointed a member of the first Federal Reserve Board by President Woodrow Wilson, serving until 1918.
In 1919 he founded and became first chairman of the American Acceptance Council. He organized and became the first chairman of the International Acceptance Bank of New York in 1921. International Acceptance was acquired by the Bank of the Manhattan Company in 1929, with Warburg becoming chairman of the combined organization.
He became a director of the Council on Foreign Relations at its founding in 1921, remaining on the board until his death. From 1921 to 1926 Warburg was a member of the advisory council of Federal Reserve Board, serving as president of the advisory council in 1924-26. He was also a trustee of the Institute of Economics, founded in 1922; when it was merged into the Brookings Institution in 1927, he became a trustee of the latter, serving until his death.[8][9]
So you see the connections from the past to the present through Aldrich, Rockefeller, Warburg, The Council On Foreign Relations and the Brookings Institute?
But back to the thuggery story:
“The President invited the director to the White House to discuss health care reform and reducing health care costs,” said White House spokesman Reid Cherlin.
Gibbs described the meeting as a way to discuss ways to reduce health care costs, with no discussion of the CBO methodologies that have annoyed Democrats in their drive to pass health care reform legislation.
Former CBO director Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a Republican appointee who advised the 2008 presidential campaign of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said that he never had a private meeting at the White House during his time helming CBO, from 2003 to 2005.
“The only appearance could be that they’re leaning on him,” Holtz-Eakin said. “CBO was created for Congress, for independent analysis. The White House did him (Elmendorf) a terrible disservice.”
This is what the CBO has said about Bambi’s DeathCare:
Congress’ budget watchdog warned Thursday that Democrats’ health care bills would not lower skyrocketing costs and would drive up government spending, undermining one of President Obama’s chief arguments for the overhaul.
Congressional Budget Office (CBO) Director Douglas Elmendorf said the plans already released by the House and Senate would keep costs rising at an unsustainable pace, fueling criticism from Republicans and some conservative Democrats that the overhaul will bankrupt the country.
I keep stating that the takeover of this country started some 100 years ago and finally people are catching up. The Pilgrims are behind the CFR, Brookings, AIG, and numerous other think tanks. Stop worrying about George Soros.
The Red Lemur and I have created our very first video for your perusal. We want to thank Congressman Jason Chaffetz (R) Utah for the inspiration for this piece. We hope you like it, send it around if you think it is worthy…and we suggest you put your coffee cups down…(although if coffee were to come out your nose, we would know for sure we had accomplished our purpose. If you enjoyed it, please make sure to go over and rate it so that it rises through the rankings.)
And for those of you in the Beltway; all satire aside, A. We’re mad as hell, B. We probably would not have as much time to pick on you if we had jobs, C. Can you feel us yet? We are perhaps not as stupid as you may have been led to believe. (Red Lemur)
I wonder how used Rep. Steve Israel feels now that someone else is now set to run against Gillibrand after he stepped aside at the pleasure of the usurper-in-charge? I wonder if Maloney is going to get a phone call from the resident select asking her not to run and keep the path clear for Gillibrand? OR…I wonder if Maloney is going to get help from the WH because she is more in tune with their radical leftist regime than Gillibrand?
Last month, Rep. Steve Israel of New York said he deferred to a request from Obama to sit out a bid to run in the Senate primary against appointed Sen. Kristin Gillibrand.
Israel was poised to announce his candidacy until the president intervened at the request of Sens. Chuck Schumer of New York and Bob Menendez of New Jersey.
Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney plans to announce a primary challenge to Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand on her Web site Thursday morning, according to two sources including a member of New York’s congressional delegation.
Maloney disputed that characterization in a brief hallway interview.
“Where did you get that from?” she asked. “It’s not true.”
Regardless of the timing or venue, several of her New York colleagues, including Reps. Jerrold Nadler and Anthony D. Weiner, said Maloney has told them she will run. She has also indicated to political allies in her “silk stocking” district on Manhattan’s Upper East Side that she is preparing a bid.
New York Assemblyman Jonathan L. Bing, whose district overlaps with Maloney’s and who shares a close working relationship with the congresswoman, said an announcement on Maloney’s Senate intentions was pending, but could not confirm a specific date.
The decision to run sets up what could be an expensive primary.
Gillibrand was appointed earlier this year by Gov. David A. Paterson when Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton became secretary of State, with the special election in 2010 to determine who will serve out the remainder of Clinton’s term. Since then, Gillibrand has struggled to consolidate support among Democrats, particularly those from downstate, and her centrist voting record during two terms in the House could provide fodder for a divisive contest.
That is something national Democrats have tried to avoid, with New York’s senior senator, Charles E. Schumer , Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Chairman Robert Menendez and the White House all taking pains to clear Gillibrand’s path to the nomination.
Their main target on that front was Rep. Steve Israel who indicated to colleagues this spring that he was preparing a run, only to abruptly shift course in May at the behest of President Obama.
Up to this point, Democrats have not felt the need to stage the same sort of intervention with Maloney or with Rep. Carolyn McCarthy , an anti-gun activist who represents the 4th District, on Long Island.
Israel, said one Democratic operative who asked not to be identified, “could have been a real problem, a real threat,” thanks to his popularity downstate as well as his fundraising abilities.
He said Maloney’s legislative record is “more significant than Sen. Gillibrand’s.”
Gillibrand was first elected to the House in 2006 from a moderate swing district based in the Upper Hudson Valley, where she compiled a record on gun rights, immigration and fiscal conservatism at odds with the base of New York’s Democratic party. Maloney will no doubt seek to exploit Gillibrand’s House votes in a primary.
In May, CQ studied the differences in the House voting records of Gillibrand, Maloney and Israel, revealing that Maloney, a member of the liberal Progressive Caucus, has a voting record that is significantly more in tune with Democratic orthodoxy than Gillibrand’s.
Maloney is a leader. Other Members of Congress tend to cosponsor Maloney’s bills. For more, see congressional statistics.
The top campaign contribution to Maloney in 2007-2008 was $16,200 from employees of Triumvirate Environmental. Carolyn Maloney’s net worth was between $17,009,100 and $83,585,994 in 2007, according to Maloney’s mandated financial disclosure statements. For more information, see the Center for Responsive Politics’ page for Maloney.
New Yorkers better think before they vote for another Chris Dodd and Barney Frank who is just another multi-millionaire with nothing better to do than put forward legislation that hurts everyday working citizens, (i.e. Credit Card Reform Bill). Oh, I forgot, New York is screwed because the other choice is Gillibrand.
