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Conflict of Interest Anyone

Posted by Defend America on Friday, February 26, 2010 10:18:23 AM

Thirty-one House Dems quizzing Toyota execs got UAW campaign cash

February 24, 5:34 PM

Mark Tapscott

Two committees in the U.S. House of Representatives are holding hearings this week concerning allegations of sudden acceleration problems in Toyota cars and trucks sold in this country.

Among the witnesses appearing today at the hearing of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform was Toyota CEO Akido Toyoda, grandson of the company founder seen in the AP Photo to the right. On Tuesday, James E. Lentz, Toyota USA's top sales executive, appeared before the Committee on Energy and Commerce.

There is a combined total of 59 Democrats serving on these two panels, which hold potentially life-and-death power over Toyota's ability to continue offering its products to American consumers. So far this year, 31 of the 59 have received re-election campaign contributions ranging from as low as $500 to as high as $10,000 from the United Auto Workers union.

http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-12977-Cars-Examiner~y2010m2d24-Thirtyone-House-Dems-quizzing-Toyota-execs-got-UAW-campaign-cash?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Morning%2BBell



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Obama Administration Did Not Consult Napolitano Before Deciding to Try KSM in NYC

Posted by Defend America on Friday, February 26, 2010 10:17:03 AM
Obama Administration Did Not Consult Its Own Homeland Security Secretary Before Deciding to Try KSM in NYC
Thursday, February 25, 2010
By Penny Starr, Senior Staff Writer

(CNSNews.com) – At a hearing of the Senate Homeland Security Committee on Wednesday, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said she was not consulted before the decision was made to try 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other terror suspects in U.S. federal court in New York City.
 
She also said she has not taken part in discussions since that decision was made, including any that may have taken place to discuss whether the trials should be moved to another location.
 
“Were you consulted about homeland security risks or costs of providing security for the 9/11 terrorist in New York City before the attorney general made that decision?” Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), chairman of the committee, asked Napolitano.
 
“Mr. Chairman, we were not consulted before but we have been part of a process to give cost estimates of what the security costs would be after the decision,” said Napolitano, who heads the department that was created after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 to protect the United States from future harm.

http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=61878
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Pelosi Losing Control Over House Democrats

Posted by Defend America on Friday, February 26, 2010 10:09:36 AM

A House in chaos



By JONATHAN ALLEN | 2/25/10 11:58 PM EST

For a few hours Thursday night, the House of Representatives was in chaos.

Shortly after dinnertime, New York Democrat Charlie Rangel emerged from his private hideaway after news broke that he would be admonished by the House ethics committee.

Yet reporters in the Capitol rushed right past Rangel to ask House Democratic leaders about a critical intelligence bill that had just been pulled over a torture provision. The language had been inserted in defiance of leadership by House Rules Committee Chairwoman Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.).

At the same time, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was slated to meet with leaders of the Congressional Black Caucus to try to salvage a routine, $15 billion jobs bill that turned into a piñata for progressives, the moderate Blue Dog Coalition and members of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.

Any of these three issues — a floundering jobs bill, a hastily scotched intelligence authorization or an ethics committee admonishment of the powerful chairman of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee — would qualify as mid-level crises.

Together, these incidents illustrated a chamber in a mini-meltdown near week's end.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0210/33569.html



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Sanders: Senate has the Votes to Pass Health Care Bill with Public Option via Reconciliation

Posted by Defend America on Friday, February 26, 2010 10:07:44 AM

Sanders: Senate has the votes to pass public option via reconciliation

By Jordan Fabian - 02/25/10 11:16 AM ET

The Senate has the 50 votes necessary to pass a public health insurance option using the budget reconciliation process, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said Thursday.

Sanders, a self-described "democratic socialist" who supports the government-run plan, urged President Barack Obama to push for the public option even though the possibility of passing it appeared to die this week.

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/83641-sanders-senate-has-the-votes-to-pass-public-option-via-reconciliation
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Majority Believe Obama is Better at Campaigning than Governing

Posted by Defend America on Friday, February 26, 2010 10:06:30 AM

Fox News Poll: Majority Thinks Obama Better at Campaigning Than Governing

By Dana Blanton

 - FOXNews.com

The consensus among American voters is Barack Obama is better at campaigning for the job than at doing the job, according to a Fox News poll released Thursday.

As the president’s approval rating remains in the high forties, the poll finds that voters by a wide 62 to 17 percent margin think Obama is better at campaigning than at governing.

PDF: Click here for full poll results.

It isn’t surprising most Republicans feel this way (83 percent). What may surprise the White House is that nearly seven out of 10 independents say they feel the president is better at campaigning than governing, and so do more Democrats (albeit by a thin 6 percentage-point edge). More than one out of five Democrats was unable to choose between campaigning and governing and volunteered a “both” response (22 percent).

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/02/25/fox-news-poll-majority-thinks-obama-better-campaigning-governing/

Tags: obama   poll  
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'Going Off Senator Graham's Cliff'

Posted by Defend America on Friday, February 26, 2010 6:58:59 AM

February 25, 2010 4:00 A.M.

Going Off Senator Graham’s Cliff
Reaching across the aisle to solve the imaginary problem of Gitmo.

Closing the detention center at Guantanamo Bay is “the pragmatic thing to do.” So says Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) in remarks reported by the Wall Street Journal. And why is that? “It’s an image problem for the United States.” Actually, Gitmo is not a problem at all for the United States. In fact, it’s a boon. It’s an image problem only for leftists, and an irrational one. There is no good reason to give in to their lingering Bush derangement — especially at the cost of endangering the American people.

Senator Graham has evidently been huddling with White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, struggling to find a solution to this imaginary problem that Graham has managed to convince himself is a “practical problem.” And what makes it a practical problem?  “Having a jail where presidents don’t want to send anyone,” says the senator.

But a presidential hissy fit is not a “practical problem.” We have 200 trained alien terrorists who want to kill Americans, and there are many more where they came from. We need a safe place to put them, a place where they cannot threaten anyone. We just happen to have this first-rate, Geneva Convention–compliant detention center that the American people have spent about a quarter-billion dollars to make ultra-safe yet Islamo-friendly. But Barack Obama doesn’t want to send anyone there, because its existence has George Soros’s shorts in a knot? How very practical.

When did it become “practical” to accommodate irrationality? Senator Graham has a name for this syndrome, too. It’s called “bipartisanship.” The “solution” to this imaginary problem, he claims, “has got to be bipartisan.” Near as I can tell, this means we must capitulate to the foolish for the sake of getting along with the senseless. “There’s no way the Democratic party is going to walk off a political cliff here without Republican support,” pronounced Graham, “nor should they.”

http://article.nationalreview.com/426120/going-off-senator-grahams-cliff/andrew-c-mccarthy
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'Obama's Obsession with Reduction'

Posted by Defend America on Friday, February 26, 2010 6:41:36 AM
Obama's Obsession with Reduction
A Prescription for a Weaker America
By John R. Bolton  |  Washington Times
Wednesday, February 24, 2010

The Obama administration recently has launched campaigns advocating its key arms-control initiatives. These public-relations offensives are to support a key treaty being finalized with Russia, the ratification of previously blocked treaties, and the advancement of more arms-control negotiations. Although hitherto overlooked in the media, President Obama's arms-control priorities are major components of his upcoming foreign policy agenda.

Arms control's complexities and dense jargon typically have limited its consideration to a cadre of high priests and priestesses, largely hidden from public view. This obscurity has been most unfortunate because the stakes involved in misguided arms-control policy are extraordinarily high. Precisely because of the stakes, the general public should be as fully informed and involved as in any other national security issue.

Much of arms-control theology rests on mistaken premises whose consequences can be highly detrimental to U.S. national security interests. There is real danger, for example, in negotiating numerical weapons ceilings, such as on numbers of nuclear warheads, unrelated to our real strategic needs. Mere numerical targets typically do not reflect the opposing sides' differing global interests and obligations, their asymmetrical conventional military and intelligence capabilities or their varying economic strengths.

Undeterred by these caveats, however, Mr. Obama will announce imminently a treaty with Russia limiting strategic nuclear weapons. Administration statements (and press leaks) indicate that the new limits on warheads will be below those in the 2002 Treaty of Moscow. There, Russia and America agreed on ceilings of 1,700 to 2,200 operationally deployed strategic nuclear warheads by 2012, with the clear understanding that U.S. warhead holdings would be near the top of that range. The Obama agreement's new limits are said to be 1,500 to 1,675 warheads, meaning that we will face significant reductions--and well before 2012. Even if Russia falls to the bottom of the new range, its reductions will be small compared to ours.

http://www.aei.org/article/101705


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'Liberal Paranoia about Christian Conservatives'

Posted by Defend America on Friday, February 26, 2010 6:39:20 AM
Liberal Paranoia About Christian Conservatives
by David Limbaugh

The left's paranoia about the intersection of Christianity and the public square continues unabated. It's amazing how much they fear something that represents such a little threat to them.

In his column in the British newspaper The Guardian, Northeastern University associate journalism professor Dan Kennedy rails against Republicans' "intolerance" of secularism and accuses them of representing a threat to the First Amendment.

In their penchant for projection, leftists accuse conservatives and Republicans of intolerance, when in fact, their own intolerance dominates the issues of freedom of speech and religion. Liberals accuse conservatives of being theocrats, when they are the ones trying to chill religious freedom and expression.

One would expect that Kennedy, having made these charges, would provide some proof in his column that Republicans have abridged or advocated abridging someone's First Amendment rights -- such as using the authority of government to infringe on citizens' freedom of speech, press, religion, assembly or petition or somehow violating the establishment clause.

I searched in vain for the payoff. He provided no examples, no scintilla of proof that Republicans are even skirting up against an activity that could fairly be considered threatening to Americans' First Amendment guarantees.

http://townhall.com/columnists/DavidLimbaugh/2010/02/26/liberal_paranoia_about_christian_conservatives


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'The Anti-Obama?'

Posted by Defend America on Friday, February 26, 2010 6:38:03 AM
The Anti-Obama?
by Mona Charen

On the morning of Nov. 5, 2008, the world rocked to news that the United States had elected Barack Obama to the presidency. That same morning, Mitch Daniels, governor of Indiana, joined the list of those most often mentioned as potentially defeating President Obama in 2012.

In what may be a sign of unusual mental health and emotional balance, Daniels persistently declined to be considered a candidate. Among his many reasons, he told Brian Lamb, was reluctance to subject his family to the "savagery" of presidential politics. It is great news for the country, if not for him, that he has at last relented and agreed to keep the door open -- if only a crack.

He earned his spot on the short list of possibilities the hard way: In a quicksand year for Republicans, he managed to win re-election as governor by 18 points (in a state Obama carried). His margin of victory included 24 percent of Democrats, 20 percent of African-Americans, 51 percent of the youth vote, 67 percent of the elderly, and 57 percent of independents.

When Daniels took office in 2004, Indiana, which had been enduring Democratic governors for 16 years, was running an $800 million deficit. Four years later, it had a $1.3 billion surplus. Daniels accomplished this without raising taxes (as 66 percent of states have done); in fact, he passed the largest tax cut in state history. Nor did he cut essential services like education, as 40 states have done. As Mark Hemingway reported in National Review, "In the last three years, the state has repaid $760 million to schools and local governments that had been appropriated to finance the state's deficit spending." Additionally, Indiana has hired 800 new child welfare caseworkers and 250 state troopers, all while cutting the rate of increase in state spending from 5.9 to 2.8 percent annually.

http://townhall.com/columnists/MonaCharen/2010/02/26/the_anti-obama


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'The Democrats Can't Explain Away the Gimmicks in Their Health Bill'

Posted by Defend America on Friday, February 26, 2010 5:44:00 AM

February 25, 2010 8:00 P.M.

Ducking and Dodging
The Democrats can’t explain away the gimmicks in their health bill.

‘We have some strong disagreements on the numbers,” President Obama said after Rep. Paul Ryan (R., Wis.) concluded his devastating critique of the Democrats’ budget claims, “but I don’t want to get too bogged down.” In the ensuing debate, what became clear is that the Democrats just don’t have an answer to Ryan’s arguments. They ducked, dodged, and changed the subject repeatedly, because Ryan’s numbers themselves are unimpeachable.

The Democrats are touting an estimate from the Congressional Budget Office that their health-care bill would reduce the deficit by around $130 billion over the next ten years. What Ryan pointed out — and what no Democrat even attempted to counter — is that this is because the legislation front-loads tax hikes and Medicare cuts and defers costs, forcing the CBO to score ten years of offsets with only six years of spending. Looked at on a level playing field, the true ten-year cost of the bill is $2.3 trillion rather than $950 billion, Ryan said.

Then he brought up another gimmick: The bill is full of double-counting. “Savings” are counted as offsets for new health-care spending and at the same time set aside to pay for future entitlements. For instance, the Democrats claim $52 billion in offsets as a result of increasing Social Security payroll-tax revenues. But these dollars are already claimed for future Social Security beneficiaries. They can’t pay for both. The Democrats take another $72 billion in premiums intended to fund a new long-term-care program and count them as offsets for other spending. Ryan pointed out that Senate Budget Committee chairman Kent Conrad has called this “a Ponzi scheme of the first order, the kind of thing that Bernie Madoff would have been proud of.”

http://article.nationalreview.com/426321/ducking-and-dodging/stephen-spruiell
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Voters Did Not Want "Bold Kerry" and They Do Not Want "Bold Obama"

Posted by Defend America on Friday, February 26, 2010 5:41:41 AM

Why Obama defies the public on health care

By: Byron York
Chief Political Correspondent
February 26, 2010

"There have been a lot of comments from every Republican about the polls," President Obama said near the end of the mind-numbing White House summit on health care reform. "What's interesting is when you poll people about the individual elements in each of these bills, they're all for them."

What Obama was addressing was a dilemma that drives Democrats crazy. Polls show the public supports some parts of the Democratic national health care reform plan, but adamantly opposes the comprehensive bill now dying a slow death on Capitol Hill.

Just look at the latest survey from CNN and Opinion Research. When asked if they support "preventing health insurance companies from dropping coverage for people who become seriously ill," 62 percent say yes. When asked whether they support "requiring all large and midsized businesses to provide health insurance for their employees," 72 percent say yes. And when asked if they support "preventing health insurance companies from denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions," 58 percent say yes.

On the other hand, asked what Congress should do on health care -- pass the current bill, start work on an entirely new bill, or stop working on the issue altogether -- a huge majority opposes the Democratic proposal now on the table. Just 25 percent of those surveyed want to see the bill passed. Forty-eight percent want Congress to start over, and 25 percent want lawmakers to stop working on health care altogether. Put those last two together, and an overwhelming majority of 73 percent do not want Congress to pass the current bill.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/Why-Obama-defies-the-public-on-health-care-85426622.html

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