Likelihood of contempt vote against AG rises
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WASHINGTON (AP) -- A Republican House committee chairman said
Tuesday he is prepared to follow through on a contempt vote against
Attorney General Eric Holder unless the Justice Department provides
Congress with documents on a flawed gun-smuggling probe.
The
likelihood of a contempt vote on Wednesday rose after Rep. Darrell
Issa, R-Calif., and Holder failed to reach agreement in a 20-minute
meeting at the Capitol.
"If we receive no documents, we'll go forward," Issa told reporters.
Holder
told reporters he would not turn over documents on the gun-smuggling
probe called Operation Fast and Furious unless Issa agreed to another
meeting. The attorney general said he would explain what is in the materials at that time. Holder wants an assurance from Issa that the
transfer of the records would satisfy a subpoena from the House
Oversight and Government Reform Committee that Issa chairs.
"We
have offered to make materials available, documents available ... to
brief on those documents, to answer any questions that might come up
with regard to the documents that we produced," the attorney general
said.
"The ball's in their court," Holder said. "We made what we thought was an extraordinary offer."
Issa took a different view: "After this meeting I cannot say that I am optimistic" for avoiding a contempt vote, he said.
Issa
spokesman Frederick Hill said that at the meeting, "The attorney
general indicated he would only be willing to produce a subset of
documents that numbered fewer than 1,300 pages if the committee would
first agree that the production of these documents would end the
committee's investigation of the Justice Department."
Issa declined the offer.
Holder
said he is prepared to turn over material detailing how the department
arrived at the conclusion that federal agents engaged in a risky tactic
called gun-walking. It resulted in hundreds of weapons purchased at gun
shops in Arizona ending up in Mexico, many of them at crime scenes.
Initially, the department denied that gun-walking had taken place.
"It's
a whole variety of material, and it's consistent with what we have
already made available - emails, documents of that nature - that really
go into the way in which the department handled itself from February of
2011 until December of 2011," Holder said.
The material "pretty clearly demonstrates that there was no intention to mislead, to deceive," Holder said.
Relying
on the gun-walking tactic, federal agents from the U.S. Bureau of
Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives abandoned their usual practice
of intercepting all weapons they believed to be illicitly purchased.
Instead, the goal of gun-walking was to track such weapons to high-level
arms traffickers, who had long eluded prosecution, and to dismantle
their networks.
Gun-walking has long been
barred by Justice Department policy, but federal agents in Arizona
experimented with it in at least two investigations during the George W.
Bush administration before Fast and Furious. These experiments came as
the department was under widespread criticism that the old policy of
arresting every suspected low-level straw purchaser was still allowing
tens of thousands of guns to reach Mexico. A straw purchaser is an
illicit buyer of guns for others.
The agents
in Arizona lost track of many of the weapons in Operation Fast and
Furious. Two of the guns that "walked" in the operation were found at
the scene of the slaying of U.S. border agent Brian Terry.
Issa's
committee has been investigating Fast and Furious for the past year and
a half. Holder says the Justice Department has already turned over
7,600 pages of documents.
Issa said he was
willing to postpone Wednesday's contempt vote if the attorney general
first provided the documents the panel still seeks.
In
addition to Holder and Issa, the participants in the meeting were
Deputy Attorney General James Cole; Senate Judiciary Committee chairman
Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.; Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, the ranking
Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Rep. Elijah Cummings
of Maryland, the ranking Democrat on Issa's committee.
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Tuesday, June 19, 2012
Obama’s Cowardice
By / The Western Center for Journalism
This past Friday, a reporter from the Daily Caller started a firestorm by daring to ask President Obama a question about him giving about 800,000 ILLEGAL immigrants amnesty before Obama had finished his statement. The reporter then had the audacity to ask the question again! The lame stream media was furious that decorum had been trampled on by an upstart “blogger” because the “Daily Caller” is nothing more than a right-wing propaganda machine! So say those on the left about ANY news organization that doesn’t keep in lockstep of praise for “the Leader!
”The reporter, Neil Munro, has asked a question that Obama really couldn’t answer. “With unemployment for our young people at 11% and unemployment for black youth at 14%, why are you putting more youth, especially ILLEGAL youth, into the workplace?” (I paraphrased the question.) Munro also had another reason for asking the question when he did. Obama NEVER takes off-the-cuff questions from the press when he holds a news conference. Obama simply makes a statement to the public and then walks away unchallenged! Obama acts like he is not to be questioned on any of his policies or statements. Behold the King!
Obama is heralded as such an “articulate speaker”, but it seems that away from a teleprompter, the man is totally at a loss for words. When Obama hasn’t been in front of a teleprompter, he has made some classic gaffes. So now with a reporter holding Obama’s feet to the fire as he tries to explain an unconstitutional act of amnesty, Obama and his attack dogs are trying to hide behind the “Office of the President” as an excuse NOT to have to answer an embarrassing question.
To all the talking heads and pundits out there who are roundly criticizing Neil Munro for his…gasp..breach of decorum, let me remind you that the man in the office represents what that office means! The man in the Oval Office blatantly violated the Constitution that he publically swore to uphold, and all the Lame Stream media are worried about is some “right-wing journalist ” violating the “decorum” of the office of the Presidency? Why don’t you so-called “establishment” journalists, or cheerleaders, or whatever you are, start demanding that this man answer questions instead of dictating to the American people. Obama is, after all, the most “transparent” President since forever ….right?
The hypocrisy of this story is unbelievable. Obama embarrasses America by the bowing and scraping that he did in front of foreign leaders on his “Blame America First Tour”; yet, he is NOT to be questioned (“you’re a racist”), criticized (“you’re still a racist”), or interupted when he’s doing something illegal? Obama’s White House ( he says it’s his?) leaks top secret information meant to make him look good just before an election while totally screwing our secret operatives and those of our allies, only to call that accusation “offensive’? Yet, Neil Munro is the villian of the week for interupting his highness!
America needs a cold shower. A good run around the block to get their heart pumping. A new pair of glasses that aren’t rose-colored, and therapy to get rid of the envy and greed that seem to be a hallmark of this administration. Do this please BEFORE you go into the voting booth this November (or fill out your absentee ballot.) Oh and seniors, remember, you are NOT mushrooms…. you don’t need to be kept in the dark or fed BS (about what party is going to do what for you if you vote for them) to grow and prosper. You will be dead, and they will be out of office long before the bill for whatever it is they gave you comes due.
By the way, one last thing, what is it that this immigration story is distracting you from seeing? Obama and his Thugocracy are like magicians; they get you to watch the left hand so that you don’t see what the right is doing. Fast and Furious? Obama’s failed meeting with Russia’s Putin? The bad unemployment numbers? Or maybe it’s the fact that Democrats are strongly criticizing him for not having a campaign message that resonates with voters? Keep your eyes open to see what suddenly appears.
5 Ways Obama Is Sealing His Own Doom
By / The Western Center for Journalism
The plot of Mel Brooks’ 1968 classic film “The Producers” revolves
around a crooked Broadway producer who sells 25,000 percent of his play,
then HAS to make certain it flops so no one will be looking for any
return on their investment.The play’s name “Springtime For Hitler” is purposely selected to insure its failure.
If the play is a success, Brooks’ character, the despicable Max Bialystock, will be seen for the crook that he is. In 2008, like Max Bialystock, Barack Obama easily promised much much more than he could deliver. The difference between Bialystock’s suckers and Obama’s suckers was that Obama’s should have/could have known better.
Watching Barack Obama’s reelection campaign careening wildly and bouncing off walls begs the question: who are we watching, Barack Obama or Max Bialystock? Could it be that Obama actually doesn’t want to be President anymore and that he WANTS to lose? At this point, he can’t very well walk away- this makes losing the cleanest and easiest way to get out of a job he was never fit for or capable of handling.
Consider Barack Bialystock’s self-destructive moves just since last summer.
Obama has virtually bragged about not wanting the support of the white middle class – America’s largest voting bloc. This one move alone may have sealed his fate. A new Gallup poll shows Obama’s white support has fallen from 44% to 38% since last November.
In January, Barack Bialystock decided he didn’t need Catholic voters, so he backed the Catholic Bishops into a corner with a demand that all employers, including Catholic and other religious institutions, will provide abortion and contraception services in employee medical plans. It has been estimated that starting this fight with the Catholic Church could cost Barack Bialystock 18 million votes in the most important states.
Last month, President Bialystock decided he had “evolved” far enough to allow him to make a statement in support of gay “marriage.” By doing so, he has found a way to enrage about 20 % of African Americans as indicated by a Public Policy Polling survey done recently in North Carolina.
Now, our theatrical president has decided he is a dictator, and he alone will grant amnesty to 800,000 illegal aliens – because he can – and the Constitution be damned.
President Bialystock probably cinched his Springtime For Hitler “plan” by his refusal to approve the union-job-rich Keystone pipeline and further thumbed his nose at unions when they were most desperate for his help in recalling the “hated” Scott Walker in Wisconsin. Now the biggest union – the AFL-CIO-has announced it is steeply curtailing its financial support for Obama and his Party.
If this isn’t “Springtime for Hitler”, it’s damned close.
Photo credit: terrellaftermath
Israel: Make military threats against Iran more real
Photo: Heinz-Peter Bader/Reuters
On the eve of the third round of talks between Iran
and the world powers expected to begin Monday in Moscow, Israeli
officials urged the international community to better impress upon
Tehran that they will face military action if their nuclear march is not
stopped.
“Our position is that the international community needs to do three things for the talks to be successful,” an official said Sunday. “Make its demands crystal clear and tied to a clear timeline for implementation, ratchet up the economic and diplomatic pressure, and augment that pressure by making clear there is a credible military option.” The official, reflecting a position that has been percolating for weeks in Jerusalem, said there is a sense the Iranians are not yet convinced that when the US or others say that “all options are on the table,” they actually mean it.
Only if the regime in Iran believes that the continuation of the nuclear program is totally unacceptable, and the world will not allow it even if it means military action, will diplomacy work, the official said.
“We would like the international community to say that these are our demands, these are our sanctions, comply...or else, “ he said. “Just as we think the sanctions have to be beefed up, this position must be clearly stated.”
The official said there was a need for greater specificity when repeating the mantra “all options are on the table.”
In recent weeks differences between Israel and the US administration over the world powers’ negotiating strategy with Iran have come out into the open, with the group of nations negotiating with Iran known as the P5+1 – the US, China, Russia, France, Britain and Germany – focused on getting the Iranians to stop enriching uranium to 20 percent, while Israel maintains Iran must stop all uranium enrichment at any level.
In addition to ending all uranium enrichment, Israel is also calling for Iran to transfer all of the already enriched uranium in its possession out of the country, and to close down the underground nuclear facility at Qom.
Israel was critical of the two previous rounds of talks the P5+1 held with Iran this year – with one round held in Baghdad last month, and the other held in Istanbul in April – saying the demands on Iran were too low and were enabling the Iranians to continue their nuclear development even as they negotiated with the world.
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, in an interview earlier this month with Germany’s Bild newspaper, said: “The P5+1 are so keen on getting any agreement that they have lowered the demands.”
Israel’s position on what demands should be made of Tehran was buttressed Friday by the US Congress, when a bipartisan letter signed by 44 senators was sent to Obama, urging him to end negotiations unless Iran halted all enrichment and closed the facility at Qom.
The Moscow talks are coming 10 days before the US is to implement a series of tough sanctions on Iran’s oil clients, and two weeks before the EU begins its embargo of Iranian oil.
“Our position is that the international community needs to do three things for the talks to be successful,” an official said Sunday. “Make its demands crystal clear and tied to a clear timeline for implementation, ratchet up the economic and diplomatic pressure, and augment that pressure by making clear there is a credible military option.” The official, reflecting a position that has been percolating for weeks in Jerusalem, said there is a sense the Iranians are not yet convinced that when the US or others say that “all options are on the table,” they actually mean it.
Only if the regime in Iran believes that the continuation of the nuclear program is totally unacceptable, and the world will not allow it even if it means military action, will diplomacy work, the official said.
“We would like the international community to say that these are our demands, these are our sanctions, comply...or else, “ he said. “Just as we think the sanctions have to be beefed up, this position must be clearly stated.”
The official said there was a need for greater specificity when repeating the mantra “all options are on the table.”
In recent weeks differences between Israel and the US administration over the world powers’ negotiating strategy with Iran have come out into the open, with the group of nations negotiating with Iran known as the P5+1 – the US, China, Russia, France, Britain and Germany – focused on getting the Iranians to stop enriching uranium to 20 percent, while Israel maintains Iran must stop all uranium enrichment at any level.
In addition to ending all uranium enrichment, Israel is also calling for Iran to transfer all of the already enriched uranium in its possession out of the country, and to close down the underground nuclear facility at Qom.
Israel was critical of the two previous rounds of talks the P5+1 held with Iran this year – with one round held in Baghdad last month, and the other held in Istanbul in April – saying the demands on Iran were too low and were enabling the Iranians to continue their nuclear development even as they negotiated with the world.
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, in an interview earlier this month with Germany’s Bild newspaper, said: “The P5+1 are so keen on getting any agreement that they have lowered the demands.”
Israel’s position on what demands should be made of Tehran was buttressed Friday by the US Congress, when a bipartisan letter signed by 44 senators was sent to Obama, urging him to end negotiations unless Iran halted all enrichment and closed the facility at Qom.
The Moscow talks are coming 10 days before the US is to implement a series of tough sanctions on Iran’s oil clients, and two weeks before the EU begins its embargo of Iranian oil.
Op-ed:
The ‘Arab Spring’ has sadly turned into an ‘Arab Dead of Winter’
with Mursi’s win, as mighty Egypt, once the most advanced civilization in the
ancient world, has now taken a giant step back into the Dark Ages with this
Muslim Brotherhood win.
Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood and Obama
By: Diane Sori
Egyptian women better stock up on burkas because a member of
the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party, Mohammed Mursi, appears to
have won the presidential election over former Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq, the
last remnant of the old Mubarak regime.
The ‘Arab Spring’ has sadly turned into an ‘Arab Dead of Winter’
with Mursi’s win, as mighty Egypt, once the most advanced civilization in the
ancient world, has now taken a giant step back into the Dark Ages with this
Muslim Brotherhood win.
The Muslim Brotherhood, founded in Ismailia, Egypt by Hassan
al-Banna in 1928, is the islamic religious, political, and social organization
credited with kick-starting islamic revolutions around the world. This group operates as an islamic society
within secular Egypt, and has been the largest, best-organized political
opposition force to former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, and helped fuel
the flames of Mubarak’s downfall.
To put it bluntly, the Muslim Brotherhood are nothing but
thugs, terrorists, and jihadists. Obama
has sent millions and millions of our taxpayer dollars to the Muslim
Brotherhood, even though they’re on America’s list of terrorist organizations. And we know those dollars didn’t go for
humanitarian purposes but went to help instigate the overthrow of Mubarak.
The Muslim Brotherhood leaders outwardly proclaim that once
in power they’ll rule Egypt based on an insular and hierarchical male dominated
system of laws that places little if any value on women. The Muslim Brotherhood leaders have said time
and again that once they’re in control of the government that they will impose strict
Sharia Law on those they’ll govern.
But even with a victory at the polls, The Muslim Brotherhood
must, for now at least, deal with Egypt's ruling generals because the generals have
made it clear that they plan to force negotiations with Mursi over the balance
of executive, legislative and military power.
A lot of good that will do the generals.
All governments need a balance of power, and the Egyptian
military and The Muslim Brotherhood need to balance one another out and play
nice in the sandbox, at least outwardly, until a constitution is written, a Parliament
is seated, and the judiciary is reformed. However, even if the change in power runs smoothly
it will still have the best and brightest in Egypt leaving the country for both
personal freedom and to escape encroaching Sharia Law, which will shortly follow
no matter what phony mask the Muslim Brotherhood puts on to try and fool the
world.
You might wonder what these events in Egypt have to do with events
here in America, well I’ll tell you and it’s really quite simple...Barack
Hussein Obama and his sanctioned, hoped for islamization of America.
The Muslim Brotherhood’s publicly stated mission in America
is a “civilization-jihadist process…a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and
destroying Western civilization from within” and this is at the heart of Obama’s
plan for his new vision for America. In
fact, six Muslim Brotherhood sympathizers have been given positions or advisory
roles in Obama’s administration, those being Special Envoy to the Organization
of Islamic Cooperation Rashad Hussein; Deputy Chief of Staff to Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton Huma Abedein; Presidential advisor Dalia Mogahed; FBI
Citizens Academy graduate Kifah Mustafa; Homeland Security Advisory Committee
Member Mohamed Elibiary and Homeland Security Countering Violent Extremism
Working Group Member Mohamed Magid.
Stealth jihad doesn’t even come into play here as this is
out and out, in your face infiltration into our government...sanctioned,
approved, and endorsed by Barack Hussein Obama.
The Muslim Brotherhood, the same group that planned and
initiated the overthrow of Hasni Mubarak is now outwardly operating in this
country and plans to destroy us from within, while our president sits back and
does nothing to stop them. Starting with
the policies and directives coming from the White House, and reaching down to
our judiciary system (as more and more judges are ruling on and adjudicating
cases involving muslims using Sharia Law instead of our laws), the Muslim
Brotherhood walks amongst us.
And Barack Hussein Obama is leading the way.
We need to block the path they walk on before Obama leads us
down the same path that Egypt is on right now.
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