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Politics : Mainstream Politics and Economics -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Steve Lokness who wrote (23052)	8/13/2012 4:13:42 PM
From: Paul Smith	1 Recommendation Respond to of 85487

It's not just democrats, it's republicans too who want...... .......Eric Holder to big to obey the law! This is a lawless administration. Holder needs to go to jail. He and TurboTax Tim Geitner. --------------------------------------------------------------------- House Republicans on Monday asked the federal courts to intervene and force the Obama administration to turn over documents from the botched Fast and Furious gun-walking operation, escalating what had been a simmering constitutional crisis. House Speaker John A. Boehner said President Obama and his team were ignoring a congressional subpoena — something the courts have long recognized as valid — and said lawmakers were left with no choice but to ask the third branch to referee. "By stonewalling Congress and ignoring a contempt order, the Justice Department has left the House no choice but to take legal action so we can get to the bottom of the Fast and Furious operation that cost border agent Brian Terry his life," Mr. Boehner said. Terry was killed in December 2010 in a gun fight with bandits who had crossed the U.S.-Mexico border. Two of the weapons recovered at the scene were part of Fast and Furious, an Obama administration operation that was supposed to try to track guns being sold to Mexican cartels, but which lost track of the weapons, allowing thousands to stream across the border. The operation was halted in the wake of Terry's death, but left Mexican authorities enraged and members of Congress demanding to know more. In a bipartisan vote in June the House held Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. in contempt of Congress for refusing to turn over documents the House had subpoenaed as part of its official investigation. The administration first said it would try to work out a way to release the documents and said they didn't show anything incriminating. But the White House later reversed course and claimed executive privilege prevented them from having to release the information. Justice Department spokeswoman Tracey Schmaler said the House GOP chose to fight rather than work the matter out. "We were always willing to work with the committee, instead the House and the committee have said they prefer to litigate," she said. Republicans have said they are trying to get answers in part on behalf of the family of the slain Border Patrol agent — and the family has called for more information to be released. But House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat, rallied to the administration's defense, saying the GOP push was misplaced. "This partisan lawsuit wastes taxpayer dollars and resources, and is a distraction from the urgent business before Congress: acting to create jobs and grow our economy," she said. She also repeated her claim that Republicans are using the fight against Mr. Holder in retaliation against his own push to halt GOP-led state laws designed to crack down on voter fraud. Republicans on Capitol Hill want to know who approved the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) operation in the first place, and they have rejected Obama administration assurances that it was lower-level staffers. Emails and documents that have been released paint a complex picture, showing some details either were or should have been noticed by high-level Justice Department officials. Mr. Holder has disputed those characterizations — though he has already had to retract an official communication to Congress that had false information about the operation itself, and has also officially withdrawn part of his own testimony that seemed to suggest one of his predecessors under President George W. Bush had known of a similar operation. washingtontimes.com

To: Steve Lokness who wrote (23052)	8/14/2012 1:45:46 AM
From: Paul Smith	2 Recommendations Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 85487

The Paul Ryan Choice By Thomas Sowell - August 14, 2012 Governor Mitt Romney's choice of Congressman Paul Ryan as his vice-presidential running mate is one of those decisions that seem obvious -- if not inevitable -- in retrospect, even though it was by no means obvious to most of us beforehand. Anyone who wants to get a quick sense of who Paul Ryan is should watch a short video of a February 2010 meeting in which Congressman Ryan politely, but devastatingly, "schools" Barack Obama on the utter fraudulence of the statistics that the Obama administration was using to claim that ObamaCare would reduce the deficit. That video is available on the Drudge Report. As a long-time member, and now chairman, of the Budget Committee in the House of Representatives, Paul Ryan is thoroughly familiar with both the facts and the fictions in the federal government's budget. In recent years, the fictions have grown much bigger than the facts. But, as Congressman Ryan reminded the president, hiding spending is not the same as reducing spending. If this year's election is going to be decided on the basis of hard facts, the Obama administration is doomed. But the Obama campaign is well aware of that, which is why we are hearing so many distracting innuendoes and outright lies about such peripheral issues as what Mitt Romney is supposed to have done while running Bain Capital -- or even what is supposed to have happened at Bain Capital, years after Mitt Romney was long gone. The Obama campaign's big smear, about how Romney is supposed to have caused a woman to die of cancer, has been exposed as a lie by CNN, hardly a Republican network. What smears like this show is that the Obama administration cannot run on its track record, so it has to run on distractions from the country's real problems. When Senator Harry Reid claims that Mitt Romney hasn't paid his income taxes, and demands that Governor Romney disprove this unsubstantiated allegation, that raises an obvious question as to why the Internal Revenue Service has not prosecuted Romney, instead of leaving that to a partisan politician in an election year. What makes this a farce is that Senator Reid himself has not released his own income tax records, while claiming that Romney's release of only two years of his income tax records is not enough, even though it has been enough for other candidates in other years. If Mitt Romney releases all his tax records going back to his childhood, it will not put a stop to this fishing expedition, much less bring an apology when those records show nothing illegal. It will just provide more material for making more distracting claims to change the subject from the track record of the Obama administration. When Ronald Reagan ran against President Jimmy Carter back in 1980, he asked the question that should be asked of the voters when any president is seeking reelection: "Are you better off than you were four years ago?" Four years later, when Reagan ran for reelection, he implicitly asked and answered that same question in a campaign commercial titled "Morning in America," which listed the ways the country was better off than it had been four years earlier. Don't look for any "Morning in America" ads from Obama. "Mourning in America" might be more appropriate. This election is a test, not just of the opposing candidates but of the voting public. If what they want are the hard facts about where the country is, and where it is heading, they cannot vote for more of the same for the next four years. But, if what they want is emotionally satisfying rhetoric and a promise to give them something for nothing, to be paid for by taxing somebody else, then Obama is their man. This is not to say that the public will in fact get something for nothing or that rich people will just pay higher taxes, when it is easy for them to escape taxation by investing overseas -- creating jobs overseas. Even if most Americans do not have their own taxes raised, that means little, if they end up paying other people's taxes in the higher prices of goods and services that pass along the higher taxes imposed on businesses. There are no doubt voters who will vote on the basis of believing that Obama "cares" more about them. But that is a faith which passeth all understanding. The political mirage of something for nothing, from leaders who "care," has ruined many a nation. Copyright 2012, Creators Syndicate Inc. realclearpolitics.com