Dean: I Won't 'Vigorously' Back Obama Re-election Bid

Pour some more butter on the popcorn . . .

Yesterday, Obama press secretary Robert Gibbs took shots at Howard Dean and his opposition to ObamaCare, suggesting the good doctor didn't know what he was talking about.

It was payback time this morning, as Dean announced that he would "not vigorously" back Pres. Obama's re-election bid.

Nelson rejects abortion compromise

In an interview Thursday with a Nebraska radio station, Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) said new compromise language on abortion funding is unacceptable.

"As it is right now, without further modifications, it isn't sufficient," Nelson told KLIN radio in Lincoln, NE.

This could be a significant blow to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's effort to line up 60 votes in the coming days for the health care bill. Nelson has said he would filibuster the bill unless the abortion language mirrored what was included in the House bill.

Even if abortion is addressed to his satisfaction, "that is not enough" for Nelson commit to voting for the bill, he said.

Dec. 17 (Bloomberg) -- World leaders flying into Copenhagen today to discuss a solution to global warming will first face freezing weather as a blizzard dumped 10 centimeters (4 inches) of snow on the Danish capital overnight.

“Temperatures will stay low at least the next three days,” Henning Gisseloe, an official at Denmark’s Meteorological Institute, said today by telephone, forecasting more snow in coming days. “There’s a good chance of a white Christmas.”

If I were a senator, I would not vote for the current health-care bill. Any measure that expands private insurers' monopoly over health care and transfers millions of taxpayer dollars to private corporations is not real health-care reform. Real reform would insert competition into insurance markets, force insurers to cut unnecessary administrative expenses and spend health-care dollars caring for people. Real reform would significantly lower costs, improve the delivery of health care and give all Americans a meaningful choice of coverage. The current Senate bill accomplishes none of these.

EDITORIAL: Psssst ... Let's nail the sheriff

Justice Department takes on Arizona's popular Arpaio

Controversial Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Ariz., is no stranger to hardball tactics, so he probably isn't fazed by being on the receiving end of rough politics. Still, that doesn't excuse the Obama administration's apparent ideological vendetta against him.

By the (il)logic of the administration and its allies at the American Civil Liberties Union, Sheriff Arpaio should not set up a phone tip line to search for immigration violators, and he is not allowed to tell the public about federal immigration enforcement policies even if he is merely disputing demonstrable falsehoods told about him; yet the Justice Department can set up an anonymous tip line to gather evidence against the sheriff.

Of course, the administration isn't much worried about consistency. Moral grandstanding is its game, and its intended prize is the scalp of a pestilent sheriff.

Americans Oppose Closing Gitmo, Moving Prisoners to U.S.

Support is 8% among Republicans, 28% among independents, and 50% among Democrats

PRINCETON, NJ -- Americans remain opposed to closing the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba and moving some of the terrorist suspects being held there to U.S. prisons: 30% favor such actions, while 64% do not. These attitudes could present a significant roadblock for President Obama at a time when he seeks congressional approval to move terrorist suspects from Guantanamo to a converted state prison in northwestern Illinois.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/124727/Americans-Oppose-Closing-Gitmo-Moving-Prisoners.aspx?CSTS=alert

Poll: Obama approval dips below 50 percent

WASHINGTON - For much of his first year in office, President Barack Obama has largely defied political gravity in the midst of skyrocketing unemployment, an ambitious legislative agenda and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

His approval rating remained above 50 percent, a plurality viewed his party positively, and even the number believing the country was on the right track — despite the bad news — temporarily spiked during his first few months on the job.

But now nearing the end of his first year in office, the economy, the wars and the legislative skirmishes finally have taken a toll on the president and his party, according to the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll.

A leftist La Raza activist previously forced out of a U.S. ambassadorship for her close ties to a terrorist-sponsoring foreign government has been nominated by President Obama to a key administration post.

Mari Del Carmen Aponte, a former director at the extremist Mexican group National Council of La Raza (see the press release applauding her nomination) and the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, has been handpicked by Obama to be the U.S. Ambassador to El Salvador. That means Aponte, an attorney and independent consultant, will represent the State Department in the civil war-ravaged Central American country. 

In 1998 Bill Clinton nominated Aponte, who was a member of his transition team, to be U.S. Ambassador to the Dominican Republic but she was forced to withdraw after news broke about her tight relationship with an agent of Communist Cuba’s spy agency. The island nation has appeared on the State Department’s terrorism list since the early 1980s for supporting designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations—from South America and Europe—and for harboring fugitives from U.S. justice, including domestic terrorists. Cuba’s government also maintains close relationships with other state sponsors of terrorism such as Iran and Syria.

http://www.judicialwatch.org/blog/2009/dec/la-raza-activist-named-u-s-ambassador

Obama signs $1.1 trillion spending bill into law

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama has signed into law a $1.1 trillion bill that increases the budgets in many areas of the government by about 10 percent, including health, law enforcement and veterans' programs.

Obama signed the bill privately at the White House on Wednesday after receiving the bill from Congress on Sunday.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091216/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_obama_spending_bill

GOP: Dems Violated Senate Rules By Cutting off Reading of Sanders Amendment

By Philip Klein on 12.16.09

The Senate Republican leadership believes that the parliamentarian allowed Democrats to violate the rules of the Senate by allowing Sen. Bernie Sanders to cut off the reading of his single-payer proposal.

When an amendment is introduced, it has to be read on the Senate floor unless the rest of the Senate agrees to cut off the reading, and typically, the requirement is waived through "unanimous consent." Yet today, Sen. Tom Coburn insisted that Sanders' 767 page bill be read on the Senate floor, which was on pace to take more than 12 hours.

But about three hours into the reading, Sanders withdrew his amendment, and this stopped the reading of the bill -- even without unanimous consent.