Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : I Will Continue to Continue, to Pretend.... -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sully- who wrote (33897)	5/9/2010 3:06:20 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

DOJ Tells Intel Community to Stonewall Members of Congress By: Andy McCarthy The Corner I asked our friend Greg McNeal to send this along: Greg McNeal: It appears that the Department of Justice is playing politics with the Times Square bombing plot by refusing to brief Senator Kit Bond (R-MO), the Vice Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. During a classified briefing on Thursday members of the intelligence community refused to answer one of Senator Bond's questions, according to Bond "We called the agency of the intelligence community that should have that information, and they advised us that the Department of Justice is running it and they told us they should not share it with the Intelligence Committee." Bond further noted that the stonewalling was directed at him personally, "The Intelligence Community has been told they should not speak to the Vice Chairman of the Intelligence Committee -- that's me." Bond suspects politics is behind it, which isn't a stretch given his criticism of the administration's handling of the Christmas Day Bomber, and his comments on Wednesday that Shazad is not entitled to Miranda rights (a bit of a misstatement as, barring some exception, Miranda would be required if prosecutors want to use the fruits of a custodial interrogation against Shazad). In any case, someone may want to tell AG Holder that absent some reason to believe that Vice Chairman Bond will disclose intelligence without authorization, the intelligence community is legally obligated to keep Congress "fully" and "currently" informed. Specifically: <<< the Director of National Intelligence and the heads of all departments, agencies, and other entities of the United States Government involved in intelligence activities shall— (1)keep the congressional intelligence committees fully and currently informed of all intelligence activities, other than a covert action (as defined in section 413b (e) of this title), which are the responsibility of, are engaged in by, or are carried out for or on behalf of, any department, agency, or entity of the United States Government, including any significant anticipated intelligence activity and any significant intelligence failure. (2)furnish the congressional intelligence committees any information or material concerning intelligence activities, other than covert actions, which is within their custody or control, and which is requested by either of the congressional intelligence committees in order to carry out its authorized responsibilities. >>> There's no exception in the statute allowing for a Department of Justice veto of these responsibilities: the intelligence community shall keep Congress fully and currently informed. Moreover, given the fact that Shazad was on a watch list since 1999 the Senate Intelligence Committee is entitled to information about whether this plot could have been detected earlier, that's squarely within its obligation to carry out "its authorized responsibilities." So why is the Department of Justice instructing the intelligence community to not brief Senator Bond? More importantly, why is the Director of National Intelligence complying with such instructions, despite his legal obligation to keep Congress informed? It wasn't that long ago that the main stream media and Congressional Democrats were apoplectic over the fact that President Bush only briefed select members of Congress (the "gang of eight") over our most secretive terrorism surveillance programs. Where is the outrage here when a President and his Justice Department are stonewalling over a plot that seems far less sensitive than a covert surveillance program? Greg McNeal teaches national security law at Pepperdine University and blogs at Law and Terrorism.

To: Sully- who wrote (33897)	5/14/2010 2:18:44 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

White House Leaning on Its Press Office, Not the Media, to Get Message Out FOXNews.com The White House press office is behaving more and more like an independent media outlet, bypassing traditional news avenues in favor of releasing its own "exclusive" video, voicing administration opinions on its official blog and blasting out updates via Twitter. The administration's use of its myriad new media platforms has raised questions among the press corps about whether the White House is looking to just tap its own resources to make major announcements. President Obama leans more on internal media as he continues to criticize the "24/7" media environment -- singling out cable news, radio and blogs for occasional lectures -- and appears to be abandoning the prime-time press conference forum he used to discuss major developments during his first few months in office. "They're doing a very adept job of using new media in the White House," said Pete Snyder, CEO of New Media Strategies. "Whether it's from the constant updates of information at the White House website to ... bypassing the mainstream news media in answering questions and thoughts via Twitter to their use of the photo-sharing site Flickr, really to show the softer side, the more human side, of the administration." But the White House says the office is just trying to get information out as directly and efficiently as possible. Press Secretary Robert Gibbs used his new Twitter account on Tuesday to distribute an Associated Press article reporting the Minerals Management Service would be split into two agencies -- and seemingly confirm the news at the same time. He used the same account to break the news in March that Obama would be delaying his trip to Indonesia and Australia to work on the health care bill. Asked how heavily his Twitter account would factor into the news cycle, Gibbs bemoaned technical difficulties with his White House e-mail account and said: "I would say Twitter is a quick medium to get information out and we'll probably use it more often." The technologically adroit administration has gone far beyond Twitter in promoting its activities and establishing its own self-sufficient media arm. The administration started its roll-out of Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan with an internally produced video and interview posted to the White House blog. Bereft of hard questions, the video showed Kagan talking about her parents and growing up in New York City. She said in the video that she hopes people will see that she is open-minded, fair, has good judgment and "will faithfully apply the law." The White House even labeled its content as "exclusive footage" when it posted video of first lady Michelle Obama visiting Haiti to survey the earthquake damage last month. The documentary-style video showed footage of the first lady flying over the devastation and scenes from the ground and included a voiceover by Obama. The moves have stirred some protest from within the ranks of the journalists who cover the White House. Josh Gerstein, White House correspondent for Politico.com, said the reliance on new media "is creating a certain amount of resentment among the sort of old-school press corps." "Over time, that resentment can build and, in a crisis, it could be the case that the White House doesn't have the same level of credibility or respect among White House reporters who feel that they're being intentionally cut out of the loop," he said. MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell on Wednesday suggested on air that the White House was "crossing a number of lines here" with the Kagan video. Asked on Tuesday whether the rest of the press might get a crack at a one-on-one interview with the nominee, Gibbs replied: "She's not told me that, no." Meanwhile, Obama has not held a full-blown solo press conference since last July, when he convened the press corps at the White House to discuss health care. He held a joint press conference with Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Wednesday at which two questions from the U.S. press and two questions from the Afghan press were allowed. He also came to the back of Air Force One last month to talk to the media, and he made an appearance at the daily White House briefing in February. Earlier this month Gibbs ridiculed a reporter who complained that none of those constitute a traditional press conference. Gibbs noted that Obama took eight questions at the Nuclear Security Summit on April 13. Asked earlier in the year about the press conference drop-off, Gibbs complained that Obama had previously been accused of being "overexposed." White House Correspondents' Association President Ed Chen has held a sit-down with Gibbs to plead reporters' case for more exposure. Comparisons to recent administrations show that Obama, during his first year, opened up to the press in some venues and shied away from the press in others. Obama had 47 informal, brief question-and-answer sessions with the press corps in the first year of his presidency. By comparison, President George W. Bush had 147 and President Bill Clinton had 252, according to statistics compiled by Towson University professor Martha Joynt Kumar. Obama held four prime-time press conferences in the East Room, according to Kumar -- an unprecedented number for a president's first year, though he has not held one since. But in terms of total press conferences, he and Bush paled in comparison to Clinton. In their first years in office, Obama held 27 total press conferences, Bush held 19 and Clinton held 45. Fox News' James Rosen contributed to this report. .

To: Sully- who wrote (33897)	5/26/2010 8:10:42 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

Senate Takes Up 'Emergency' War Bill Despite Obama Pledge to End Practice FOXNews.com A year after President Obama pledged to end the practice of funding the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq with "emergency" spending bills, the Senate is taking up a $60 billion request that would do exactly that. The spending bill, which includes $33 billion for the two wars in addition to disaster relief funds and aid for Haiti, is running headlong into concern from war-weary Democrats and deficit-conscious Republicans. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has called the bill a "heavy lift" in her chamber. But the Senate, which is taking up the request first, could be the scene of a spending stand-off between Democrats and Republicans. Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., plans to offer an amendment requiring Congress to offset the cost of the package with spending cuts elsewhere. He slammed the administration for continuing to use the "emergency" supplemental to fund the wars -- by designating the spending bill as "emergency," Congress avoids having to find a way to pay for it. "The last day war funding was unforeseen was September 10, 2001," the first-term senator said in a written statement. "This legislation is designed to bail out career politicians who want to avoid the hard work of prioritizing spending." The Bush administration routinely used supplemental spending bills to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Obama criticized the practice as a candidate and when he came into office pledged to keep war funding within the traditional budget request. "For seven years, we have been a nation at war. No longer will we hide its price," he said in his February 2009 address to a joint session of Congress. When Obama requested $83 billion in additional funding last spring for the wars, he said he would draw the line there. "This is the last planned war supplemental," he wrote in April 2009 to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, calling for "an honest, more accurate and fiscally responsible estimate of federal spending" after years of "budget gimmicks and wasteful spending." But while Congress provided $130 billion for Iraq and Afghanistan at the end of last year as part of the traditional budget process, Obama this year came back to Capitol Hill for the additional $33 billion -- mostly to cover the cost of sending 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan. "The irony certainly isn't lost on us," a Senate GOP aide told FoxNews.com. "Obviously they stuck with that pledge about as well as they stuck with most the other pledges they made." But the aide said pending the consideration of the Coburn amendment, "the process for the supplemental could move relatively expeditiously." The aide said House Democrats could pose a bigger hurdle. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said earlier this month that it would be easier to get the legislation passed in the House if it were approved by the Senate first since that would limit a back-and-forth debate. The bill includes money for the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, aid for Haiti earthquake relief and money for flood relief in Rhode Island and Tennessee. The White House Office of Management and Budget defended the package in a statement Monday, calling the funding "essential" and urging Congress to act quickly to approve it. "The administration looks forward to working with the Congress to further refine the bill as the legislative process moves forward and to meet these urgent and essential needs," the statement said. Senate Appropriations Chairman Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, also defended the package after his committee unanimously approved it earlier this month. "This bill is neither a bailout nor a stimulus. Instead it is the minimum necessary to meet emergency requirements and the cost of war," he said. "We recognize that many on both sides of the aisle believe we simply shouldn't spend more, but I say to you the nation still has legitimate needs and a responsibility to act." .

To: Sully- who wrote (33897)	6/29/2010 1:33:51 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

How do you keep your meetings with lobbyists out of the White House visitor log? By: J.P. Freire Associate Commentary Editor 06/25/10 9:30 AM EDT Go to Starbucks. <<< [B]ecause the discussions are not taking place at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, they are not subject to disclosure on the visitors’ log that the White House releases as part of its pledge to be the “most transparent presidential administration in history.” >>> We keep hearing so much about this administration’s “unprecedented” levels of transparency. We should start calling him Precedent Obama. Read more at the Washington Examiner: washingtonexaminer.com

To: Sully- who wrote (33897)	6/29/2010 1:50:23 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

NYT pulls back the curtain on Obama’s transparency and anti-lobbyist talk By: Timothy P. Carney Examiner Columnist 06/25/10 2:10 PM EDT Around these parts, we’ve been making the case for a while that President Obama’s reformer rhetoric was mostly talk, that his anti-lobbyist image was a facade, and that his transparency reputation was overblown. Today, the New York Times’s Eric Lichtblau delivers a devastating blow to the Obama-Good-Government myth. Here are the most important nuggets of a story set in a coffee shop across the street from the White House: <<< because the discussions [between WH staff and K st. lobbyists] are not taking place at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, they are not subject to disclosure on the visitors’ log that the White House releases as part of its pledge to be the “most transparent presidential administration in history.” >>> The White House said this was okay, because in their offsite meetings, nobody broke any ethics rules. This next one might sound familiar if you followed the stories about how evil Karl Rove was: <<< Some lobbyists say that they routinely get e-mail messages from White House staff members’ personal accounts rather than from their official White House accounts, which can become subject to public review. >>> My favorite, by far, was this one: <<< Two lobbyists also cited instances in which the White House had suggested that a job candidate be “deregistered” as a lobbyist in Senate records to avoid violating the administration’s hiring restrictions. >>> And Obama’s concern about the influence of foreign companies: <<< One lobbyist recounted meeting with White House officials on a side lawn outside the building to introduce them to the chief executive of a major foreign corporation. >>> Read the article. And for good measure, also keep an eye on my K Street page in the Washington Examiner every Wednesday. Read more at the Washington Examiner: washingtonexaminer.com

To: Sully- who wrote (33897)	7/1/2010 3:20:28 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

Obama's Coffee-House Loophole for Lobbyists By: Michelle Malkin National Review Online President Obama is finally uniting the Left and the Right -- in joint opposition to his administration’s chronic sabotage of transparency and public-disclosure rules. It won’t be long before liberals disillusioned by Dear Leader’s reveal-as-we-say-not-as-we-conceal policies link arms with me and join in on my two-year-old chant: Obama lied, transparency died. Watchdog groups and Republicans on Capitol Hill want an investigation into hundreds of White House meetings with corporate lobbyists at D.C. coffee houses. K Street influence peddlers told the New York Times last week that they’ve met routinely with Team Obama officials over the past 18 months to discuss policy matters -- at Starbucks, Caribou Coffee, even on a side lawn -- with the express purpose of circumventing the public’s right to know. The Coffee House Ruse comes on top of the latest confession of White House non-disclosure from ex-Big Labor heavy Patrick Gaspard, Obama’s chief domestic policy adviser, who failed to report a $40,000 pension payment from his old employer, the Service Employees International Union in New York. If they keep this up, sunlight-avoiding Obama officials will soon be cast as the next Twilight vampires. “Lobbyists say some White House officials will agree to an initial meeting with a lobbyist and his client at the White House,” the Times’s once-zealous champions of Obama reported, “but then plan follow-up sessions at a site not subject to the visitors’ log.” Said one financial lobbyist who has met more than a half-dozen times off-campus with White House officials: “I’ll call and say, ‘I want to talk to you about X,’ and they’ll say, ‘Sure, let’s talk at Starbucks.’” You see: When Obama promised to “change the way Washington works,” what he really meant was changing where the usual Beltway backroom wheelers and dealers do their business. And when he talked about changing the “culture” in the nation’s capitol, what he really meant was just changing titles. In addition to carving out the coffee-house loophole and using personal e-mail accounts to communicate with the influence industry, White House officials have been advising lobbyists looking for administration jobs to de-register -- shedding their K Street status -- to get around Obama’s vaunted lobbyist hiring ban. With more than 40 ex-lobbyists working in the administration, Obama’s no-lobbyists executive order already has more holes in it than a moth-eaten crocheted sweater. The self-puffery of the double-talker-in-chief on disclosure ethics is inversely proportional to the amount of real transparency he has delivered. In January, irked by criticism of private health-care meetings with Big Labor cronies at the Oval Office, Obama lectured Americans that “it is important to know that the promises we made about increased transparency we’ve executed here in 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.” His legal counsel trumpeted the release of more than 25,000 White House visitor logs (many incomplete, vague, and useless) as “a milestone in the president’s commitment to change Washington. The president believes that this and our many other transparency initiatives promote accountability and keep American democracy vital.” While Obama’s cabinet engaged in the same old precedented meetings with lobbyists, his propagandists patted themselves on the back for providing unprecedented access: <<< “We are excited about the visitor records policy not only because we are breaking new ground for this administration but also because we are establishing a new standard for all future administrations. We know of no comparable initiative in the history of the White House.” >>> Puff, puff, puff. The Obama administration’s incomparable hype and hypocrisy have at last proved too much for good-government liberals. Washington-based Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) has asked the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform to investigate and hold hearings on the Coffee House loophole. CREW head Melanie Sloan lambasted the Democratic White House: “This is what all the administration’s anti-lobbyist rhetoric gets you -- less transparency. Rather than being open and clear about who is influencing White House policy, the White House is trying to hide who it’s really talking to. Even worse, the public is being suckered with lofty rhetoric about the evils of the same lobbyists White House officials are meeting with.” Now that citizen activists are staking out D.C. caffeine hot spots, the White House/special-interest trysts may soon be headed to Washington street-corner hot-dog stands and taquerias. Keep your eyes and ears open. The next cap-and-tax exemption or stimulus slush fund may be hammered out in a public restroom stall or on a Metro subway seat next to you. On the upside, coffee-gate is rousing slow-learning Americans from their Obama-as-Messiah stupor. The best part of waking up is reality in your cup. -- Michelle Malkin is the author of Culture of Corruption: Obama and His Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks & Cronies. © 2010 Creators Syndicate, Inc. .

To: Sully- who wrote (33897)	3/9/2011 12:06:42 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

Obama Transparency Fail: White House will keep secret Big Pharma-ObamaCare meetings secret BELTWAY CONFIDENTIAL By: Timothy P. Carney 03/08/11 11:41 AM Senior Political Columnist Follow Him @TPCarney "The oil companies were allowed to craft energy policy with Dick Cheney in secret ... The industry got everything it wanted." ~Barack Obama, June 22, 2007 Remember Dick Cheney's secret energy task force, and all the nefarious influence Big Oil had over the Bush Administratation? Well, that was completely different, Obama would tell you, and far worse that Obama's secret meetings the drug lobby, the doctor lobby, and the hospital lobby in crafting ObamaCare. Liberal reporter Brian Beutler, who closely followed the entire debate over health-care in 2009 and 2010, has the story at TPM: <<< The White House has rejected a request from the House Energy and Commerce committee for information about "every meeting, briefing or telephone call" the administration had with non-governmental parties in the lead up to, and wake of, passage of the health care law. >>> If you don't recall, the White House had multiple meetings with the health-sector lobbies, and the biggest single-industry lobby in the country, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, had quite the say in the bill, and made out pretty well from the "reform." Also, it's worth recalling the back story on the White House's "transparency" official rejecting this request: Bob Bauer. Here's what I wrote about Bauer: <<< Obama transferred "ethics czar" Norm Eisen to the Czech Republic to serve as U.S. ambassador. Some of Eisen's duties will be handed to Domestic Policy Council member Steven Croley, but most of them, it appears, will shift over to the already-full docket of White House Counsel Bob Bauer. Bauer is renowned as a "lawyer's lawyer" and a legal expert. His resume, however, reads more "partisan advocate" than "good-government crusader." Bauer came to the White House from the law firm Perkins Coie, where he represented John Kerry in 2004 and Obama during his campaign.... On his blog, Bauer derided the notion "that politicians and parties are pictured as forever trying to get away with something," saying this was an idea for which "there is a market, its product cheaply manufactured and cheaply sold." In other words -- we keep too close an eye on our leaders. In August 2006 Bauer blogged, "disclosure is a mostly unquestioned virtue deserving to be questioned." >>> Obama may not be living up to his promises of transparency, but at least Bauer is living up to his principles of opacity. .