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Politics : Liberalism: Do You Agree We've Had Enough of It? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?


To: FJB who wrote (104152)5/3/2011 4:50:42 PM
From: TideGlider1 Recommendation  Respond to of 224706
 
Just get word to John Hinckley that Ayers is bangin the hell out of Jodie Foster!



To: FJB who wrote (104152)5/3/2011 5:16:27 PM
From: chartseer2 Recommendations  Respond to of 224706
 
He is just one of many good targets for the israelis.
A very good buddy of mine whom I shall just call Dick C. said actually a smart commander-in-chief knows enough to let a covert operation stay covert whether successful or not.

citizen chartseer



To: FJB who wrote (104152)5/3/2011 7:01:33 PM
From: lorne3 Recommendations  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 224706
 
FUBHO...wonder if obama will pick up any illegal votes if he get his way with this.

President Obama to ramp up immigration fight
By CARRIE BUDOFF BROWN
5/3/11
politico.com

President Barack Obama is ramping up his push to overhaul the immigration system, launching a sustained personal campaign that will rely in part on recruiting outsiders to pressure Congress to take up the controversial issue.

“He is committed and will be leaning into this issue in a very serious and very vigorous way,” Melody Barnes, director of the Domestic Policy Council, said Tuesday. “We are upping the intensity on this issue, and hopefully the information and facts about this issue will compel people to act.”

Barnes and Cecilia Munoz, the White House director of intergovernmental affairs, detailed a strategy of pressuring Congress by deploying Cabinet members, senior staff and business, labor and Hispanic groups to make the case. The administration took a similar approach ahead of a surprisingly close Senate vote last year on the DREAM Act, which would have provided a path to citizenship for young illegal immigrants who were brought to the country as children.

The president is also spending more time on the issue. He has hosted three immigration meetings in the past three weeks, including one Tuesday with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and another last week with movie stars, media personalities and activists. On Friday, he renewed his support for the DREAM Act during a speech to graduates of Miami Dade College.

“The past couple of weeks are also prologue,” Barnes said. “You will continue to see him build on this, and he has said to others that he has given his commitment to be both vocal and public on what needs to get done.”

Barnes would not specify what this would entail. She suggested the tactics would not include the White House introducing its own bill, as congressional Republicans wanted.

“Often when the White House just puts something on the table, it can become a point of conflict and not an inflection point to move forward,” Barnes said.

Given the slim Senate Democratic majority and Republican-controlled House, the odds remain long for passage of a bill that includes a legalization program for the country’s estimated 11 million illegal immigrants. Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) attempted earlier this year to restart the debate in the Senate, but amid a series of distractions from the budget, Libya and the economy, they haven’t gotten far.

Obama has faced criticism from the Hispanic community because of his failed campaign pledge to introduce an immigration overhaul bill during the first year of his presidency. The public push by the White House suggests, in part, an attempt to build a political case ahead of the 2012 elections that Obama was committed to passing an overhaul bill but got stymied by an uncooperative Congress.

Obama has declined to use his executive authority to slow deportations of college students who are illegal immigrants or of other undocumented workers, saying he was hamstrung by Congress’s inaction. His refusal to use that power also has disappointed the Hispanic community.

Munoz said the issue can be addressed only by the passage of a bipartisan bill.

The recent White House meetings “are all a reflection of an effort to really engage those folks as vigorously as possible and elevate the debate and creating pressure and a sense of urgency we feel to get this job done,” Munoz said.



To: FJB who wrote (104152)5/4/2011 8:17:38 AM
From: lorne4 Recommendations  Respond to of 224706
 
Congressmen accuse White House of cover-up
Lawmakers blast attorney general for lying about weapons program
May 03, 2011
By Drew Zahn
© 2011 WorldNetDaily
wnd.com

DES MOINES, Iowa – A pair of Republicans in Congress have fired off a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, accusing the administration of lying to cover up a government program that allegedly allowed American firearms to pass into Mexico.

Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, and Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., had sharp words for the Department of Justice after Holder sent a recent letter denying that the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobaco, Firearms and Explosives, or ATF, had knowingly authorized the sale of weapons to gun smugglers as part of what has become known as "Project Gunrunner" and its suboperation, dubbed "Fast and Furious."

In a return letter sent today, the congressmen wrote that the Department's self-exonerating claims were flat-out "false."

"We are very concerned that the Department chose to send a letter containing false statements," wrote the congressmen. "The Department sent a letter on February 4, 2011, claiming that … 'ATF makes every effort to interdict weapons that have been purchased illegally and prevent their transportation to Mexico.' When questioned in transcribed interviews last week in Phoenix, agents with first-hand knowledge of ATF operations contradicted that claim."

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"We are extremely disappointed that you do not appear to be taking this issue seriously enough to ensure that the Department's representations are accurate, forthcoming and complete," the legislators wrote. "We will continue to probe and gather the facts independently, as it has become clear that we cannot rely on the Department's self-serving statements to obtain any realistic picture of what happened."

The program run by the ATF reportedly allowed guns purchased in the United States to be smuggled into Mexico for the purpose of tracking them to high-ranking members of Mexico's drug cartels.

As WND has reported, officials on both sides of the border are fuming over the operation, which is being blamed not only for the infusion of hundreds of guns into the hands of Mexican drug lords but also provision of the weapon that killed U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry.

A statement released by Issa, chairman of the House Committee on Oversight & Government Reform, explains the process of how whistleblowers within the ATF first alerted him and Grassley, ranking member of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, to the controversy:

"Grassley began looking into allegations brought forward by Agent John Dodson, and more than a dozen other ATF agents after the Justice Department Inspector General failed to investigate their concerns," the statement reads. "The agents indicated that their supervisors kept them from stopping gun traffickers with the normal techniques that had been successfully [used] for years. They instead were ordered to only watch and continue gathering information on traffickers instead of arresting them as soon as they could. In the meantime, the guns were allowed to fall into the hands of the bad guys even as agents told supervisors that it could not end well. Many of the guns have subsequently been found in firefights along the border, including a December 14, 2010, firefight where Customs and Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was killed."

Since launching their investigation, however, as WND reported, Issa has said the ATF has been "stonewalling."

The statement continues, "Grassley and Issa's requests for information from the Justice Department have gone mostly unanswered about what transpired at the ATF and the Department of Justice during the time when Terry was killed and the policies instituted during Project Gunrunner that allowed guns to be sold to known straw purchasers and moved across the border without intervention."

In his most recent letter refuting the bureau's whistleblowers, Holder wrote, "It remains our understanding that ATF's Operation Fast and Furious did not knowingly permit straw buyers to take guns into Mexico."

Grassley and Issa, however, are not buying it.

In their response to Holder sent today, they write, "The documents and information previously provided to you demonstrate that the ATF urged gun dealers to go forward with sales to known straw buyers despite the concerns expressed by at least one dealer that the guns would be transferred to the border and possibly used against Border Patrol agents. ATF and Justice officials assured that dealer that unspecified safeguards were in place to ensure that did not happen. Yet, guns from that case were found at the scene of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry's murder and at crime scenes in Mexico."

Issa's statement concludes by insisting that the operation was, despite Holder's denials, implemented by the ATF.

"As chairman of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform," the statement asserts, "Issa has begun issuing subpoenas to uncover the facts about how this reckless policy was approved."