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Politics : The Obama - Clinton Disaster -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: GROUND ZERO™ who wrote (2413)	11/30/2008 9:19:26 AM
From: clutterer	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 103300

Obama likely to name Hillary Clinton to Cabinet. But wait! Can he? The president-elect, no-drama Barack Obama, is expected to name his new secretary of State, all-drama Hillary Clinton, as early as tomorrow as part of the week's rollout for his national security team. But can he? As pointed out by a number of bloggers in recent hours, including our eloquent friend Susan over at Wake Up America, there's a clause in the U.S. Constitution (Article One, Section Six) that prohibits senators (or representatives) from taking a civil office if the legislator has voted to increase the pay for that job. "No Senator or Representative shall, during the Time for which he was elected, be appointed to any civil Office under the Authority of the United States which shall have been created, or the Emoluments whereof shall have been increased during such time; and no Person holding any Office under the United States, shall be a Member of either House during his Continuance in Office." A president-elect who's a former part-time constitutional law professor, even one without his BlackBerry, presumably is aware of this prohibition, obviously designed to prevent double-dipping and raising your own salary, which is only allowed in Wall Street banks. And Obama surely knows of its historical precedents. And if Obama makes the appointment of his former bitter rival, she'll no doubt take office as the point person for U.S. foreign policy. But the appointment of the loser of the Democratic presidential nomination by the winner of that nomination and of the subsequent general election wouldn't be properly Clintonian without some extra dramatic flourishes. This is likely only the beginning of such chapters. Apparently, President Nixon ran into the same problem when he wanted to appoint Ohio's Republican Sen. William Saxbe as attorney general. The solution back then, since dubbed the "Saxbe fix," was for Congress to pass another law (not without some outspoken dissent from Democratic senators, by the way) reducing the AG's pay so Saxbe wouldn't benefit financially from the higher salary he'd previously voted on. Similar fixes occurred when President Jimmy Carter named Edmund Muskie secretary of State and H. Clinton's own husband Bill named Lloyd Bentsen to head Treasury. So much for the actual money aspect and strict construction. We're not lawyers. But we do speak English. And to our eyes that constitutional clause doesn't say anything about getting around the provision by reducing or not benefiting from the increase of said "Emoluments." It flat-out prohibits taking the civil office if the pay has been increased during the would-be appointee's elected term. Period. Which it has. This seems more like a TV scriptwriter's trick to keep everyone hanging around through the commercials starting tomorrow. latimesblogs.latimes.com

To: GROUND ZERO™ who wrote (2413)	11/30/2008 9:17:08 PM
From: puborectalis	2 Recommendations Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 103300

On July 20, ABC radio host Sean Hannity thrice repeated the false claim that former President Bill Clinton refused a 1996 offer from Sudan to hand Osama bin Laden over to the United States. Hannity has previously propagated this claim, for which the 9-11 Commission found "no reliable evidence to support." As Media Matters for America has noted, the false claim originated in an August 11, 2002, article on right-wing news website NewsMax.com that distorted a statement Clinton made on February 15, 2002. While addressing the Long Island Association's annual luncheon, Clinton said he "pleaded with the Saudis" to accept Sudan's offer to hand bin Laden over to Saudi Arabia. Sudan never offered bin Laden to the United States, and Clinton did not admit to the Sudan offer in that speech or anywhere else. (Clinton's statements are posted here). From the July 20 edition of The Sean Hannity Show: HANNITY: [W]e've got Bill Clinton on tape admitting he was offered by the Sudan to get Osama bin Laden and he didn't take them. They have the video tape and they ignored it. [...] HANNITY: How can you plead with the Saudis to take Osama bin Laden if you don't have Osama bin Laden? How can you say, [imitating Bill Clinton] "At the time, he committed no crime against America, so I couldn't bring him here." How could you even contemplate bringing him here if that offer from the Sudan wasn't real and viable? Hannity attempted to bolster his assertion that the Sudanese offer of bin Laden was "real and viable" by citing "evidence gathered by the 9-11 Commission": HANNITY: I think another source of potentially damaging revelations as far as the Clinton people would be concerned, evidence gathered by the 9/11 Commission backing up the allegation that President Clinton refused the offer from the government of Sudan for Osama bin Laden, which is a tape that we have been pointing out to you often. The "evidence" to which Hannity referred is the 9-11 Commission report's statement: "[F]ormer Sudanese officials claim that Sudan offered to expel Bin Ladin to the United States." But the report immediately continued: "Clinton administration officials deny ever receiving such an offer. We have not found any reliable evidence to support the Sudanese claim." Hannity, therefore, endorsed the claims of former officials of Sudan -- a country that the U.S. Department of State has designated as a state sponsor of terrorism every year since 1993 -- rather than the testimony of Clinton administration officials and the findings of the 9-11 Commission. While Hannity had asserted on his radio program that the 9-11 Commission had "gathered" evidence "backing up the allegation" that Clinton had refused an offer for bin Laden, two days later -- on FOX News Channel's Hannity & Colmes -- he claimed the commission had "ignored" the allegation. Referring to Clinton's 2002 address to the Long Island Association, Hannity said: "[D]oesn't that seem to validate the idea that the Sudan in fact did offer us bin Laden and we passed on him and that the commission ignored that? Are they not ignoring one of the most important failures of our intelligence leading up to this attack?" As Media Matters for America has noted, Clinton further refuted the allegation in a June 20 interview on CBS's 60 Minutes. He said: "There was a story which is factually inaccurate that the Sudanese offered bin Laden to us. ... As far as I know, there is not a shred of evidence of that."

To: GROUND ZERO™ who wrote (2413)	11/30/2008 9:18:50 PM
From: puborectalis	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 103300

While the war on terror has cost the United States some $1 trillion, al-Qeada remains a global threat. In fact, in August 2008, Ted Gistaro, the U.S. government's senior terrorism analyst, said in a report that by forging closer ties to Pakistani militants, al-Qaeda is more capable of launching an attack in the United States than it was in 2007. The Pakistani militants have given al-Qaeda leaders safe haven in remote areas to train recruits.