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Politics : How Quickly Can Obama Totally Destroy the US? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: John who wrote (14415)	3/12/2015 3:09:33 PM
From: joseffy	1 Recommendation Recommended By John Respond to of 16547

Politico sat on allegations Lois Lerner had prior history of targeting conservatives ...................................................................................... Washington Examiner ^ \| 3-12-15 \| T. Becket Adams Politico scored a journalistic coup with its exclusive 2014 profile on Lois Lerner, the former IRS official at the center of the agency's targeting of conservative groups. But a former Illinois lawmaker who said Politico contacted him repeatedly that year with questions regarding claims he was targeted by Lerner in the mid-1990s has been left wondering why the news group chose to ignore his documented dealings with the former federal official. "I was shocked," Al Salvi told the Washington Examiner's media desk, describing what he characterizes as several "lengthy" interviews with Politico reporter Rachael Bade. Lerner went after his 1996 Senate campaign with a lawsuit totaling $1.1 million — an enforcement action that was eventually thrown out of court — when she was working at the Federal Election Commission, according to Salvi. "I spent something like an hour and a half talking to Politico about this," said Salvi, whose dealings with the FEC are well documented by the federal agency. "And I'm nowhere in the story. They had no intention of using anything I said." With its Lerner profile, titled "Exclusive: Lois Lerner breaks silence," Politico became the first news group to gain access to the embattled former bureaucrat, who resigned from the Internal Revenue Service after bombshell revelations in 2013 that the IRS had singled out Tea Party and other conservative nonprofits for exceptional scrutiny and slow-walking of applications for tax exemptions. Lerner headed the tax agency's exempt organizations division at the time. In 1996, Salvi, a representative in the Illinois state house, ran for an open U.S. Senate seat against then-Rep. Dick Durbin, D-Ill. His campaign attracted powerful scrutiny from the Federal Election Commission's enforcement division, creating a scandal that Salvi said cost him the race. The FEC was responding to a complaint lodged by Gary LaPaille, the Democratic Party's state chairman. And the commission's enforcement division was headed at the time by none other than Lois Lerner. On Oct. 22, 1996, Lerner's FEC division found"reason to believe" Salvi misreported nearly $1.1 million in contributions and loans, the agency said in a court filing. Later, in an letter dated Oct. 29, 1996, addressed to Salvi's legal representative at the time, Bobby Burchfield, which shows that Salvi did have some form of contact with Lerner, the FEC announced it had closed its file against the Republican candidate. And although the FEC's case was eventually dismissed that year on technical grounds, Salvi ended up losing to Durbin, who is now a powerful senator. Salvi continues to blame the FEC scrutiny and the negative press it brought his campaign for souring voters in the Prairie State. "Every interview I had, the first thing people would say is: Tell us about your investigation," Salvi told the Examiner. "People thought I was going to jail!" Later, after losing his Senate bid, Salvi announced he would run for Illinois secretary of state. But the charges of financial wrongdoing continued to dog Salvi, even after he secured the nomination of the state's Republican Party. The longtime Republican told the Examiner this was when he came into direct contact with Lerner. "I called [former FEC attorney] Colleen Sealander and said, 'With all due respect, I want to talk to the person who's pulling all the strings here: Lois Lerner," he said, adding that he knew her name because her signature was included on several FEC letters and court documents in his possession. Lerner then reportedly said the following to Salvi in a phone conversation: "Look, we don't want any money. Just promise us you will not run for public office again and we'll drop it. " Salvi said he then asked Lerner to put that in writing, which allegedly prompted her to say: "No. We don't do that." In 1997, after it had already dropped its first case against Salvi, the FEC again charged the Republican with misreporting his 1996 campaign finances. Salvi ignored the renewed case and ran in 1998 for Illinois secretary of state, losing out eventually to Democrat Jesse White. The FEC's second attempt on Salvi was later dismissed in 1998 by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division, on the grounds "it was identical to a case the Commission had previously filed in the court." But the FEC kept at it, appealing the case in 1999 to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, trying again to charge Salvi with misreporting funds. It didn't work: The Appeals Court Decision on March 8, 2000, "affirmed a district court order dismissing a civil enforcement action the FEC had brought against the Al Salvi for Senate Committee and its treasurer," the agency reported. The suit was dropped altogether soon thereafter. Salvi, now a personal injury lawyer, paid no penalty. The Examiner reviewed online records of the complaints filed against Salvi at the FEC's website, as well as an FEC letter bearing Lerner's name that is still in Salvi's possession. Not a word of Salvi's story, or the alleged attempts by Lerner's FEC enforcement division to pressure him out of politics, appeared in Politico's Lerner profile. "I gave all of this to Politico," Salvi told the Examiner. "And I talked with [them] and I talked and I talked. I haven't been in politics for a long time, but you don't spend that much time with somebody. Everything ended up on the cutting room floor. Did they even ask her about this?" "I told the whole story and I wasn't even mentioned in the article. ... I couldn't believe it," he said. "There were three or four lengthy telephone conversations [with] Rachael. She said I was her first interview and asked for names and numbers of people she can go to confirm." "My first conversation was the longest — she called the law office. She would call me again when she bumped into something that needed clarification. She told me it would be a long time before the article was published," he said. Politico declined to comment on why it had left Salvi out of its Lerner profile. Editor Marty Kady told the Examiner, "We're going to refrain from commenting specifically on your questions, other than to say we're not going to discuss our reporting and editing processes on a story that ran many months ago." The former Republican lawmaker's story exists outside of FEC records. In 2013, Rep. Peter Roskam, R-Ill., Salvi's former law partner and the current chairman of the Ways and Means Oversight Subcommittee, brought up Salvi's experience during a hearing on the IRS' targeting of conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status. Following Roskam's remarks during the hearing, Salvi appeared on Fox News to repeat his charge against Lerner. And it seems Politico is not the only news organization to ignore Salvi's story, as conservative columnist George Will recently noted. After the IRS hearing and Salvi's Fox News appearance, the Washington Post's George Will in a 2013 column titled "Lois Lerner, the scowling face of the state," repeated the former lawmaker's story. In another column last week, titled "Rein in the IRS," Will repeated the Salvi story, this time accusing national news organizations of ignoring the serious charge against Lerner. "Roskam's telling of Salvi's story elicited no denial from Lerner," Will wrote. "Neither did the retelling of it in this column. ... No wonder: The story had not been deemed newsworthy by the three broadcast networks' evening news programs, by the New York Times or by the Post." A Lexis search dated June 4-June 11, 2013, of the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune and the New York Times for coverage of the Salvi story produced no results. A similar Lexis search dated March 2-6, 2014, also produced no results. Similarly, a TV Eyes search dated June 4-June 11 2013, revealed that neither NBC News, nor CBS News nor ABC News covered Roskam's claim during the IRS hearing. The same was found for a TV Eyes search dated March 2-6, 2014, for Will's repeating of Roskam's claim. This isn't the first time that Lerner's tenure at FEC has come into question. National Review and The Weekly Standard reported in 2013 that separate parties had claimed similar political intimidation at the hands of the former IRS and FEC official. Lerner's lawyer, William Taylor III, did not respond to the Examiner's request for comment.

To: John who wrote (14415)	3/13/2015 3:52:21 PM
From: joseffy	1 Recommendation Recommended By John Respond to of 16547

Conan O’Brien Proves ‘Useful’ To The Castro Regime ...................................................................................................... Miami Herald By A.J. DELGADO 3/10/2015 6:26 PM Excerpt: In 1959, Jack Paar, then host of The Tonight Show, interviewed Fidel Castro in Havana. That was the last time an American late-night host filmed in Cuba — until, that is, Conan O’Brien hightailed it down to Havana recently. The one-hour episode, aired last week, featured the Harvard-educated comedian in a variety of hilarious — and predictable — fish-out-of-water scenarios: a rhythmless O’Brien at a dance class; freestyling with a Cuban band; dining at a paladar; touring a rum museum; learning to roll cigars; and, my favorite, hanging with teens at El Malecón, smoking cigarettes and swigging rum out of a box. Viewers no doubt laughed out loud, cheered as O’Brien (twice) exclaimed “Viva Cuba!” and came away with a fuzzy feeling. And therein lies the problem. While no one expects O’Brien, an entertainer, to stealthily interview dissidents — that would be ridiculous — presenting the happy-go-lucky view of Cuba, reduced to rum, music, and dancing, is, however, equally ridiculous. Sure, O’Brien issued a quickie disclaimer that Cuba has “many complicated social and political problems,” but he then commences what PJ Media called an “80-minute infomercial for the Western hemisphere’s longest running and bloodiest dictatorship.” Some of it seemed carefully staged by the Cuban regime, right down to the curiously English-fluent Cubans O’Brien repeatedly encountered and the well-dressed, well-fed bystanders milling about. Even the brief historical information was straight out of a regime-approved book, with O’Brien explaining: “In the 1940s and ’50s, [Cuba] was the Las Vegas of the Caribbean, but in 1959 Fidel Castro led a revolution that toppled the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista, which led to a U.S. economic blockade that has lasted for 53 years.” Close, but no cigar. “Las Vegas of the Caribbean”? What an interesting way to describe all of pre-Castro Cuba. A large land (roughly the size of England) abundant in natural resources, Cuba was much more than just the nightlife in Havana. Sure, glitzy casinos in the capital helped its riches, but so did an enormous economy of sugar, tobacco, textiles and cattle. In 1950, the Cuban peso was worth as much as the U.S. dollar. Yet the notion of Cuba simply as a playground dominated by the mob is a myth long pushed by the regime and its sympathizers to illustrate nonexistent Batista-era ills. Chicago and New York were far more mob-ruled than Havana ever was. O’Brien’s remark also implies the embargo was simply a reaction to Castro ousting Batista. He even uses the regime-favored term “blockade” rather than “embargo.” snip The Rest

To: John who wrote (14415)	3/13/2015 3:55:39 PM
From: joseffy	2 Recommendations Recommended By John Woody_Nickels Respond to of 16547

Did Hillary let friends use State Department gigs as a piggy bank? By: streiff ( Diary) \| March 12th, 2015 at 03:00 PM \| 24 Hillary Clinton had good reason for operating on a private email server. She had an even better reason for deleting some 30,000 email that she and her paid staffers deemed to be “personal.” The reason is that Clinton and a coterie of favored fluffers appear to have used their time at the State Department as a piggy bank; a position from which they could draw a federal salary and extract information and turn it into cash. [ And when they weren't on the government payroll, they were on the staff of the Clinton's family foundation paid for by all those multi-million dollar contributions from foreign goverments. ] Nearly two years ago, the New York Times reported on the unusual arrangement whereby Huma Abedin, Hillary’s ::cough deputy chief of staff ::wink-wink was allowed not only to be an employee of the State Department but she was also allowed to be an employee of the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton foundation and a consultant to Teneo, ” a strategic consulting firm, which was founded by Doug Band, a former adviser to President Bill Clinton.” It is not clear what role Mrs. Clinton played in approving the arrangement. Some good-government groups have been critical of such situations, saying public employees’ loyalty should be solely to the public and their government work, rather than private firms and figures. Ms. Abedin reached her new working arrangement in June 2012, when she returned from maternity leave, quietly leaving her position as deputy chief of staff and becoming a special government employee, which is essentially a consultant. A State Department official said that change freed her from the requirement that she disclose her private earnings for the rest of the year on her financial disclosure forms. Still, during that period, she continued to be identified publicly in news reports as Mrs. Clinton’s deputy chief of staff. Officials in the State Department and Clinton circles seem especially sensitive about the arrangement, and no one would speak about it on the record. Earlier this month, Mr. Weiner released a copy of the couple’s 2012 tax return showing that they had income of more than $490,000. Abedin was not alone. Earlier this year, the Washington Post expanded upon what we know: Questions about Clinton’s use of the special program were first raised in 2013, when it became public that Abedin was being paid by the State Department while also working for an international consulting firm with close ties to Bill and Hillary Clinton. Through a request under the Freedom of Information Act, several news organizations, including The Washington Post, have since learned the extent to which Hillary Clinton used the program. Others granted the special status included a former campaign manager, a longtime legal and personal adviser, a former House member now affiliated with a group backing a Clinton presidential bid, a former pollster and others who have supported the Clintons in their political and philanthropic organizations. In interviews, State Department officials and several of the individuals said the special government status was legitimate and had no relationship to Hillary Clinton’s political ambitions. Some said they declined compensation for their work under the special status. Aside from Abedin, Clinton political allies who were granted the special status included Maggie Williams, Clinton’s 2008 campaign manager; Jeremy Rosner, a former Clinton pollster; Jonathan Prince, a speechwriter for Bill and Hillary Clinton; Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, a former Maryland lieutenant governor who is on the board of American Bridge, a left-leaning political operation that has defended Hillary Clinton against partisan attacks; and Cheryl Mills, a former White House deputy counsel and longtime adviser to Hillary Clinton. Essentially, Hillary was using employment at State as a way of employing Clinton loyalists, while at the same time they were on the payroll of the Clinton Foundation and allowed access to information that would be valuable to paying clients. Their employment category allowed them evade income disclosures which could have exposed conflicts of interest. None of this should be surprising. Bill Clinton’s weakness is rather prosaic and banal. He likes sex. He’s very egalitarian about it. In fact, he’s a sexual omnivore. If the object is vaguely female, he’ll hump it. If Bruce Jenner is ever in the area, keep your eye on Bill. Hillary, on the other hand, is about avarice and secrecy. When you take a look at the scandals she was involved in, cattle futures, Whitewater, etc., the driving force was greed. When she looted the White House of furniture as they moved out in 2001? Greed. The unprecedented rate as which the Clinton Foundation vacuumed cash from nations wishing a favor from the United States while Hillary was Secretary of State? Greed. Her moronic brothers using her name to run fly by night business ventures in Paraguay and Georgia (for you MMfA analysts, this is the country not the state. Yes, there is a country called Georgia, look it up.) shows it is some sort of Freudean or genetic trait in her family. Obviously, Clinton lied through her teeth in her press conference. Even a New York Times reporter can’t believe that the Secretary of State did not send classified information via email a single time in her shameful four-year stint in Foggy Bottom. But even if classified information is festooning her private server, there is no way an Obama Justice Department will do anything about it. They don’t care about crime. They care about punishing enemies. The real vulnerability lies with those “special employees” who were able to use the State Department and the information to which they had access to earn big money. Most were employees of the Clinton Foundation as well. Their emails will be on that server, too. And they don’t have a Get Out Of Jail Free card. http://www.redstate.com/2015/03/12/hillary-let-friends-use-state-department-gigs-piggy-bank/