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Wednesday, July 9, 2014
Tuesday, July 8, 2014
THE MOST VIRAL VIDEO FOR 2014
Sometimes the cold hard facts hurt. Especially for those who voted for Barry.
On a tip from Ed Kilbane
Senior National Correspondent
(If video won't load click post title)
Video 73
THE MOST VIRAL VIDEO FOR 2014
Monday, July 7, 2014
"Stedman's" long losing record before the Supreme Court
If Eric Holder were a baseball player, he’d have been benched long ago — if not kicked off the team. His batting average before the Supreme Court is abysmal, losing again and again in his efforts to undermine the Constitution.
This term featured four big strike downs.
First was Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, in which the Supremes tossed out ObamaCare’s contraceptive abortion mandate and upheld the First Amendment rights of several family-owned businesses to make their living in conformance with their religious beliefs.
Although the government was not party to another case, Harris v. Quinn, the Justice Department filed an amicus brief on the side of Illinois and the SEIU, arguing that unwilling home health-care workers could be forced into unions (and made to pay compulsory dues) simply because their services are paid for through Medicaid.
Fortunately, the Court ruled against Illinois’s heavy-handed attempt to help bolster its political allies, public sector unions.
On June 26, in National Labor Relations Board v. Canning, all nine Justices ruled that President Obama’s “recess” appointments to the NLRB violated the Constitution.
Not only did Obama’s own judicial appointees vote against him (including his former solicitor general), but the majority opinion was written by Stephen Breyer, a liberal stalwart of the Court.
The Administration also lost United State v. Wurie, in which the Holder Justice Department claimed that the police and federal authorities did not need a search warrant to seize all of the information stored in the cellphone of someone who had been arrested.
Once again, the administration lost all nine justices.
The basic invasion of privacy and violation of Fourth Amendment protections against unlawful searches and seizures represented by the administration’s position is in line with its frightening view of governmental power over its citizens.
John Fund and Hans A. von Spakovsky co-wrote “Obama’s Enforcer: Eric Holder’s Justice Department.”
Canning and Wurie are only the latest losses of the administration in which all nine Supreme Court justices ruled against the government.
In fact, there have been 20 such cases during this administration — and even more if you include cases in which the administration filed an amicus brief, such as in McCullen v. Coakley, the free-speech case that was handed down the same day as the recess appointments case.
The Obama administration filed an amicus brief in that case supporting the Massachusetts law in question and helped argue the case before the Supreme Court.
But all nine justices found the Massachusetts law, which created a 35-foot “buffer” zone around abortion clinics, violated the First Amendment by restricting speech in public areas “that have historically been open to the public for speech activities.”
It is no surprise that the administration supported a law that restricted the voice of pro-life supporters.
That is in accord with its general attack on the political speech and activities of disfavored conservative advocacy organizations through the IRS and other government agencies.
The positions taken by this administration in the other 9-to-0 cases are just as overbroad.
In 2012’s Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church & School v. EEOC, DOJ displayed an open hostility to religious freedom by claiming that the federal government had the right, as the Supreme Court termed it, to “interfere” in a church’s employment decisions on the hiring and firing of its ministers and religious teachers.
The Supreme Court was clearly astounded at the arguments being made by the Justice Department and unanimously rejected it.
In Sackett v. EPA, the administration tried to prevent a family from defending itself in court and contesting a punitive order from EPA bureaucrats imposing a fine of $75,000 a day for trying to develop a lot in a residential neighborhood which the EPA considered a wetland. The administration lost.
In US v. Jones, just like in the Riley/Wurie cases, the administration claimed that law enforcement could attach a GPS device to your car without a warrant or even any suspicion of criminal activity.
The Court unanimously rejected this position and, in a concurring opinion, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the administration was trying to invade “privacy interests long afforded, and undoubtedly entitled to, Fourth Amendment protection.”
Typically, the Justice Department does very well before the Supreme Court. Holder has made that a losing record.
That’s because, as legal scholar Ilya Shapiro says, the administration has “relied on outlandish legal theories that pushed a constitutional interpretation of extreme federal power.”
Holder and Obama have argued that we as Americans don’t have the right to free speech, the right to privacy, the right to due process or the freedom of religion.
Thankfully, the Supreme Court has become the last defense for those who still believe in those rights.
John Fund, a columnist for National Review, and Hans A. von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation, are co-authors of “Obama’s Enforcer: Eric Holder’s Justice Department” (HarperCollins/Broadside 2014).
"Stedman's" long losing record before the Supreme Court
Sunday, July 6, 2014
He doesn't want to return to the scene of the crime
Obama won't visit detention facilities holding thousands of illegal children (dumped on our doorstep) when he travels to Texas next week to fundraise for Democrats
The Daily Mail
(with some additions)
The Daily Mail
(with some additions)
By Francesca Chambers
Published: 17:18 EST, 3 July 2014 | Updated: 18:04 EST, 3 July 2014
• President Barack Obama is traveling to Texas next week to attend Democratic Party fundraisers
• While he's there he'll also meet with a supporter who wrote him a letter
• He won't visit the border to see any of the captured Central American children who are piling up in detention facilities, however
Captured ?
• The White House says he doesn't need to make a pit stop at the border because he's 'well aware' of the situation
He sure is...he created it
• White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said other administration officials who have been to the border are updating Obama on the situation, and that's how the president wants it to stay
The biggest threat to America?
You're looking at them
When did our policy of deporting illegals switch to busing them to states stupid enough to take them?
This is an attack on the Constitution which Barry knows little about and respects even less.
What else do they have to do before they're thrown out of office?
President Barack Obama will meet with average Americans and hold fundraisers for Democratic candidates during his trip to Texas next week, but he will not visit detention facilities at the border housing thousands of illegal immigrant children, the White House said today.
The day after the Benghazi attack he went to a fundraiser in Las Vegas. Did you expect this to be any different?
Press Secretary John Earnest said the president is 'well aware' of the humanitarian crisis at the border and doesn't need to see it first-hand during his trip to the Lonestar State.
'The president has a very good sense of what's happening at the border,' Earnest said during his daily press briefing. 'He's getting regular updates from his officials who've traveled to that region. They're focused on solving this problem.'
'And what the president wants is ... regular reports about what they're seeing on the border, and how resources that are being devoted to processing these--those who have appeared at the border, are being used to effectively administrate justice.
Ain't nobody got time for that: President Barack Obama will hold fundraisers for Democratic candidates for Congress when he visits Texas next week but he doesn't plan to go see the humanitarian crisis on the border
The original impetus of the president's travel to Texas was a pair of Democratic National Committee fundraisers taking place on Wednesday and Thursday in Austin, which is located near the middle of the large southern state.
News outlets first began reporting the trip last weekend, and the White House confirmed earlier this week that Obama was in fact planning to appear at political events in the state.
The first fundraiser will take place at filmmaker Robert Rodriguez' home. Tickets to that event reportedly cost between $5,000 and $32,400.
The next day, Obama will participate in a roundtable discussion with progressive activist Aimee Boone Cunningham, assistant secretary of theCenter for Reproductive Rights. Admission to that event is also $32,400.
Obama is reportedly scheduled to attend a fundraiser in Dallas on the first day of his trip, as well.
Today the president will also participate in another 'Day in the Life' event, in which he meets face to face with someone who wrote him a letter. In this instance, Obama will meet with a Texas resident who sent the White House a message praising the president's economic policies.
He will not, however, make a pit stop at the border, Earnest said.
President Barack Obama made a surprise trip to tech startup hub 1776 this morning in Washington, D.C. to talk about about job growth and meet with young entrepreneurs.
The president's trip 1776 today was the latest in a string of attempts by the president to get out of the White House bubble
Questions about a potential presidential visit to the border first arose during the White House press briefing on Tuesday.
Asked whether Obama would visit the overcrowded detention facilities in the Rio Grande area during his upcoming visit to Texas so he could observe the humanitarian crisis with his own eyes, Earnest said, 'At this point, no,' Earnest said. 'But if there are any changes to the schedule we'll let you know.'
Earnest was again asked about Obama's plans on Wednesday, after Texas Governor Rick Perry invited the president to come visit the border in person during an appearance on Fox and Friends that morning.
'If he doesn't come to the border, I think it's a real reflection of his lack of concern of what's really going on there,' Perry said.
'If the President of the United States is really serious about securing that border, we can show him how to do that,' the former Republican presidential candidate said.
'But I haven't even had a phone call from this president.'
On Wednesday Earnest said Obama still had no plans to visit the border but he 'wouldn't rule it out until the day of.'
'Our focus at this point is to plan to do something else,' he said.
Likewise, Earnest, 'the most important thing' people like Perry could do 'is not offer public invitations but actually to lend their public support to comprehensive immigration reform.'
The White House official also explained that the president doesn't need to travel to the border because other senior administration officials, including Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell and Director of White House Domestic Policy Cecilia Muñoz, have recently traveled to the border.
White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest got hammered with questions from reporters today about the president's upcoming trip to Texas and his decision not to visit the border while he's there
Last weekend House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and other members of the president's party made the trek to the border to stand in solidarity with the immigrant children and show their support for immigration reform.
Johnson and Burwell were just in McAllen, Texas, on Monday to speak with border patrol officers and receive an update on the federal government's efforts to feed, clothe, house and treat the overpowering number of unaccompanied minors being held in the area's detention facilities.
Last week, Johnson visited illegal immigrant children being held at Nogales, Arizona, detention centers.
'So this is something that the administration is paying very close attention to,' Earnest said during yesterday's briefing. 'The President is getting regular updates on this situation.'
'This President is obviously very attuned to what's happening at the border,' he said at another point.
After a reporter asked if Earnest was 'comfortable with the optics of the President going for fundraisers only and not taking an eyeball look himself on the border?' Earnest said Obama's trip would 'include some activities other than just building some support for Democratic candidates for office who are on the ballot in November.'
Obama's trip came up a third time during today's briefing to Earnest's chagrin.
The newly minted senior administration official first repeated previous statements about Obama's travel schedule, and then said: 'I think the reason that some people are suggesting the reason the president go to the border when he's in Texas is because they'd rather play politics than actually try to address some of these challenges.'
'If they were committed to solving the problem, you know, for example in the case of the Texas Governor, he could probably be pretty useful, I hear he's a pretty persuasive fellow, that he could pick up the phone, and call up some of those Republican members of Congress from Texas who are standing foursquare against common sense immigration reform,' Earnest said a few minutes later.
'If the governor were genuinely concerned about solving so many of these problems that exist on the border, the most impactful thing he could do right now, is encourage those Republican members of the House of Representatives to stop blocking common sense legislation from coming to the floor of the House of Representatives.'
The president's comprehensive immigration reform legislation passed in the Senate last summer, but
House Speaker John Boehner has refused to bring it to the House floor.
Boehner has said that he will not introduce immigration legislation until the president agrees to a step-by-step approach instead.
Texas. Gov. Rick Perry shakes hands with Texas Department of Public Safety spokesperson Sgt. Johnny Hernandez after touring the McAllen Border Patrol station on Monday
President Obama is one of the only a few high-profile Washington officials who hasn't visited the border since news outlets began reporting on how poorly the unaccompanied minors coming to the U.S. were being treated in detention facilities.
Pictures of children sleeping in piles on the floor without mattresses or blankets caused an uproar, and the Obama administration had to act suddenly to resolve the situation.
The president announced more than $250 million in new aid to the Central American countries from which the kids are primarily migrating from and sent both Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State John Kerry to to speak with leaders of Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras about the importance of shutting down the criminal networks that are smuggling children in through the U.S. border with Mexico.
On Monday the president announced that he was using his executive authority to direct the Homeland Security to 'refocus' its resources from the interior of the country to its Southern border.
The president himself is yet to meet in person with Central American leaders or any of the 52,000 children who fled their home countries to come to the U.S. in the last year.
Today, members of the House Homeland Security took a field trip to McAllen to hear from Perry and Texas law enforcement officials.
During the field hearing, which took place on the campus of South Texas College, Perry asked the government to pay back Texas the $500 million his state had spent since 2005 on border security efforts.
'We have been fulfilling a federal responsibility,' Perry said. 'The hardworking people of the state of Texas shouldn't be shouldering that cost.'
The Texas Governor also called on the president to send 1,000 National Guard members to his state to help secure the border.
'The power of boots on the ground cannot be overstated,' Perry said.
'The message needs to be not, "If you come into the United States, you'll be deported," but, "You won't enter the United States."
The president said last week that he would send more border patrol agents to Texas, but he's ignored multiple requests from Republican officials to deploy the National Guard.
He doesn't want to return to the scene of the crime
DOJ court documents in Benghazi suspect case put video narrative to rest
Remember when a reporter asked about Benghazi? Carney's reply, "that's old news".
Not anymore.
Now the whole world knows Barry, Carney, Clinton, and Rice fabricated a story to help him get reelected and yet there won't be a damn thing done about it!
----------------------
If I was Barry I fire Stedman for not redacting this crucial information which blows the deception "It was the video" out of the water. Isn't it his job to take care of Barry?
Next move for the administration:
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Court documents filed by the U.S. Justice Department in the criminal case against Benghazi attack suspect Ahmed Abu Khatallah provide unprecedented details about the evolution of the assault and further shatter the Obama administration's initial claim that it sprouted from protests over an anti-Islam film.
The narrative that the video played a role continues to live on, with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton saying recently that some of the attackers may indeed have been influenced by the online video.
But the Justice Department's court filings make clear that at least those spearheading the attack were part of a "conspiracy," one that involved several members of the Ansar al-Sharia "Islamic extremist militia."
A government motion filed Tuesday seeking Khatallah's detention provides some of the greatest detail to date on the suspect's alleged role.
The motion says that in the days preceding the attack, the defendant "voiced concern and opposition to the presence of an American facility in Benghazi." According to the motion, a group of 20 or more "armed men," including militia members, assembled outside the U.S. compound at 9:45 p.m. the night of Sept. 11, 2012, and "aggressively breached" the gate.
They carried rifles, handguns and rocket-propelled grenade launchers.
After breaching the gate, they stole a U.S. vehicle, "forcibly entered" buildings and stole U.S. property.
"During this initial attack, buildings within the Mission were set on fire," the court document says, noting that the fires "ultimately led to the deaths" of U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and Information Management Officer Sean Smith.
U.S. personnel who were able to escape fled to the nearby annex, according to the document, and shortly afterward Khatallah entered the compound "and supervised the exploitation of material from the scene." After they were through, he and other Ansar al-Sharia members allegedly returned to a local camp and prepared for the next assault on the annex -- where two other Americans, Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods, would later die.
The government motion went on to describe how Khatallah spent the days following the attack obtaining weapons and other equipment to defend himself "from feared American retaliation" and capture. According to the document, "he increased his personal security."
The documents are part of the case the U.S. government is building against him as the defendant is prosecuted in federal civilian court. More details and evidence can be expected in the weeks ahead.
In the meantime, the defendant is being held at a detention center outside Washington, D.C. At a hearing on Wednesday, a Khatallah defense attorney complained that the defense team had limited access to the Justice Department's evidence.
The details in even the few U.S. court documents that have been filed are a far cry from the Obama administration's initial narrative.
A host of administration officials pointed to an anti-Islam video in the days after the attack as the likely impetus.
"This was the result of opportunism, taking advantage of and exploiting what was happening as a result of reaction to the video that was found to be offensive," then-White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said on Sept. 20, 2012.
Then-U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice infamously cited the video on several Sunday shows after the attack.
The Obama administration has since acknowledged that there was no protest leading up to the attack, as there had been in other countries in the Middle East and North Africa. The State Department's Accountability Review Board report concluded "there was no protest prior to the attacks, which were unanticipated in their scale and intensity."
Administration officials have said repeatedly that the video explanation was based on the best-available intelligence at the time, though many Republican lawmakers question those claims.
But nearly two years removed from the attack, the motivation of the attackers is still an open debate.
Clinton, in her new book "Hard Choices," argued that it is "inaccurate" to say no one was influenced by the video, just as it is inaccurate to say all were influenced by it.
She echoed the comments in an interview with Fox News last month.
"I was trying to make sense of it. I think that the investigations that have been carried out basically conclude we can't say that everybody was influenced [by the video], and we can't say everybody wasn't," she said.
Even a bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report released in January said: "Some intelligence suggests the attacks were likely put together in short order, following that day's violent protests in Cairo against an inflammatory video."
But the information that has been released by the Justice Department indicates that at least the major players in the attack were operating on their own agenda.
The motion filed this week said Khatallah "was motivated by his extremist ideology."
The indictment itself claims the defendant "did knowingly and intentionally conspire and agree with other conspirators ... to provide material support and resources to terrorists," knowing they'd be used "in preparation for and in carrying out" the attack.
DOJ court documents in Benghazi suspect case put video narrative to rest
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