Lying Conservative Clowns Betsy McCaughey, George Will, Krauthammer and Radicals at Fox News Try To Claim Obama Chipping Away Constitution

Lying Conservative Clowns Betsy McCaughey, George Will, Krauthammer and Radicals at Fox News Try To Claim Obama Chipping Away Constitution

Right-wing media have attempted to manufacture the claim that President Obama is abusing executive power by delaying implementation of the health care law's employer mandate and directing federal prosecutors to avoid maximum drug sentences in some cases, despite the legality of both practices.

Right-Wing Media Claim Health Care Delay Is Unconstitutional

Betsy McCaughey: Obama Is "Chipping Away At The Constitution." In an Investor's Business Daily op-ed, former New York Lieutenant Governor Betsy McCaughey claimed that President Obama's move to delay the employer mandate provision of the Affordable Care Act "reveals how disconnected this president is from this nation's history and constitutional principles":

    With the exception of Richard Nixon, these presidents -- from Eisenhower to Reagan to Clinton and both Bushes -- have not tried to exempt themselves from the Constitution.

    Article II, Sec. 3 of the Constitution commands the president to faithfully execute the law. Courts have consistently ruled that presidents have little discretion about it. Obama can't pick and choose what parts of the Affordable Care Act he enforces and when. [Investor's Business Daily, 8/13/13]

Wash. Post's George Will: "Obama's Unconstitutional Steps Worse Than Nixon's." In an August 14 Washington Post column, George Will claimed that Obama does not have authority to delay the employer mandate, calling his "unconstitutional steps worse than Nixon's":

    Serving as props in the scripted charade of White House news conferences, journalists did not ask the pertinent question: "Wheredoes the Constitution confer upon presidents the 'executive authority' to ignore the separation of powers by revising laws?" The question could have elicited an Obama rarity: brevity. Because there is no such authority.

    [...]

    Neither does the Constitution confer on presidents the power to rewrite laws if they decide the change is a "tweak" not involving the law's "essence." Anyway, the employer mandate is essential to the ACA. [The Washington Post, 8/14/13]

Krauthammer: "Of Course It's Unconstitutional" To Delay The Mandate. On the July 9 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor, host Bill O'Reilly asked Fox News contributor Charles Krauthammer, "Do you think it's unconstitutional for the president to take an existing law that he signed and say we're not going to force part of that law, the employer mandate? Is that unconstitutional?" Krauthammer replied, "Of course it's unconstitutional. The Constitution says the executive has to faithfully execute the laws and here it is faithfully ignoring a law it doesn't like in the same way it wantonly passed the DREAM Act unilaterally, an act that the Congress had rejected. It is absolutely lawless in the things it does. This is only the latest example." [Fox News, The O'Reilly Factor, 7/9/13 via National Review Online]
Experts Argue That Obama Administration Has Authority To Implement Delay

Constitutional Scholar Simon Lazarus: Delay Is "Well Within The Executive Branch's Lawful Discretion." In a post in The Atlantic, Constitutional Accountability Center Senior Counsel Simon Lazarus wrote that the delay is "a sensible adjustment to phase-in enforcement, not a refusal to enforce" and "well within the Executive Branch's lawful discretion":

    The relevant text requires that the President "take care that the laws be faithfully executed." Scholars on both left and right concur that this broadly-worded phrasing indicates that the President is to exercise judgment, and handle his enforcement duties with fidelity to all laws, including, indeed, the Constitution. As McConnell himself notes, both Republican and Democratic Justice Departments have consistently opined that the clause authorizes a president even to decline enforcement of a statute altogether, if in good faith he determines it to be in violation of the Constitution. But, McConnell contends, a president cannot "refuse to enforce a statute he opposes for policy reasons." While surely correct, that contention is beside the point.

    The Administration has not postponed the employer mandate out of policy opposition to the ACA, nor to the specific provision itself. Thus, it's misleading to characterize the action as a "refusal to enforce." Rather, the President has authorized a minor temporary course correction regarding individual ACA provisions, necessary in his Administration's judgment to faithfully execute the overall statute, other related laws, and the purposes of the ACA's framers. As a legal as well as a practical matter, that's well within his job description. [The Atlantic, 7/17/13]

SCOTUSblog's Denniston: Supreme Court Gave Agencies Discretion Regarding

Implementation. In a post on Constitution Daily, legal expert Lyle Denniston pointed out that "Article II does not say that a law shall be carried out at all cost, so every President operates on the assumption that federal agencies can be given some leeway in how they do it." Denniston pointed to a recent Supreme Court case as relevant, writing that the court "just last month went a long way toward requiring federal courts to trust the government agencies that execute the laws to interpret for themselves just what authority Congress has given them in their areas of official activity":

    Given the complexity of modern government operations, very few of the laws that Congress passes are completely self-executing; most if not all of them require regulations to put them into actual effect. And writing regulations is the business of the federal agencies.  An array of government agencies have been working for more than three years, for example, to write the rules for the new Affordable Care Act - the vast new law regulating the entire health care financing system.

    The Supreme Court just last month went a long way toward requiring federal courts to trust the government agencies that execute the laws to interpret for themselves just what authority Congress has given them in their areas of official activity.  What an agency decides is the range of its power, that ruling said, should be given considerable deference by the courts.

    Very telling in that decision in the case of City of Arlington, Texas, v. Federal Communications Commission is that it was written by Justice Antonin Scalia, the Court's strongest believer that the courts should be very strict in following the letter of the laws that Congress passes.  The actual text, not what someone said about it, is what controls, he has said, over and over. Scalia, a former professor of administrative law, seems quite tolerant of agency discretion. [Constitution Daily, 7/10/13]

Fox Claims Drug Sentencing Guideline Change "Unlawful"

Krauthammer: Obama Administration Decision To Avoid Mandatory Minimum Sentence Is "Unlawful." On Fox News' Special Report, Charles Krauthammer reacted to Attorney General Eric Holder's decision to direct federal prosecutors to avoid triggering mandatory minimum sentences for certain drug-related charges by claiming the change is "unlawful":

    KRAUTHAMMER: What he's done now, what he's proposed with these drug laws is worse than just suspending the parts of the law and instructing prosecutors not to prosecute. He also is telling prosecutors who already have prosecutions in place that they can withhold evidence so that the defendant won't get a maximum or a mandatory penalty. I mean, that is illegal. That's unlawful, that's -- I mean, that is simply shocking that that would be the instruction from an attorney general.

    I think as one former attorney general, deputy attorney general said, if you did that in a private case, you would be accused of a felony if you were prosecuting it and you were withholding evidence. And it is epidemic. It isn't only in this, it is in the Obamacare law, the administration's own law, the parts of which it is suspending. It is in the DREAM Act, which is a unilateral suspension. [Fox News, Special Report with Bret Baier, 8/12/13 via Media Matters]

Fox & Friends Lists "Overruling Congress On Drug War Sentences" As Evidence Of Abuse Of Power. On the August 16 edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends, guest host Shannon Bream claimed that "there are questions about abuse of power" and that "we've seen this administration, not just the president but others in the administration, decide when they're going to" uphold Article II of the constitution "and when they aren't." Co-host Brian Kilmeade asked if he's "breaching the Constitution," listing, among other things, "overruling Congress on drug war sentences." [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 8/16/13]
Holder Advised Prosecutors To Exercise Authority They Currently Possess

NY Times: Prosecutors Have Broad Discretion On Charges. In a 1988 article on the decision to not bring charges against Reagan Attorney General Edwin Meese over his involvement in the Iran-Contra Affair, The New York Times noted that prosecutors have "almost unfettered authority to decide" how to prosecute cases, including "what evidence to present":

    The decision of an independent prosecutor this week not to seek criminal charges against Attorney General Edwin Meese 3d has focused new attention on the broad and controversial power granted to American prosecutors in deciding who shall be brought to justice.

    Far more than in any other democracy, American prosecutors have almost unfettered authority to decide whom to charge, what crimes to identify, what penalties to seek, what bail to urge, what witnesses to call, what evidence to present, what persons to give immunity from prosecution, what plea bargains to make and what sentences to negotiate.

    [...]

    The discretion afforded American prosecutors is defended on the ground that it provides for case-by-case flexibility and ultimately more leniency for deserving defendants. But critics say it has been abused with considerations of race, class and political affiliation. Draft protesters, users of small amounts of marijuana and minor traffic offenders have challenged verdicts and sentences by showing that others were not prosecuted for similar crimes, and prosecutorial bias has been charged in jury selection and death penalty cases.

    The subject has grown so controversial in recent years that it has been the focus of more than 200 law review articles and 280 Federal court cases since 1985. That does not count the thousands of scholarly law articles, speeches and the cases in state and local courts.

    ''It's a fundamental topic in the criminal justice system,'' said Philip B. Heymann, a professor of law at Harvard who was the Assistant United States Attorney General in charge of the criminal division from 1978 to 1981.

    Mr. Heymann, who heads the Center for Criminal Justice at Harvard, said prosecutors have the authority not to bring charges even when they think they can prove a crime has been committed. He noted that such decisions are necessary in part because there is so much crime in the United States; prosecutors could not possibly process all of it.

    The Federal courts have consistently upheld a prosecutor's powers. ''The discretion allowed prosecutors,'' the Supreme Court said last year in a trademark infringement case, Young v. United States, ''is so broad that decisions not to prosecute are ordinarily unreviewable.'' Only in cases of flagrant abuse, including criminal activity by a prosecutor, may a court overrule a prosecutor's decision, the Court has said. [The New York Times, 7/22/88]

Wash. Post: Decision To Change How Criminal Complaints Are Made Is A Change He Can Make On His Own; Other Initiatives Require Legislative Action. The Washington Post reported that Holder's memo to prosecutors represents a change to drug policy he can do on his own authority:

    The attorney general can make some changes to drug policy on his own. He is giving new instructions to federal prosecutors on how they should write their criminal complaints when charging low-level drug offenders, to avoid triggering the mandatory minimum sentences. Under certain statutes, inflexible sentences for drug crimes are mandated regardless of the facts or conduct in the case, reducing the discretion of prosecutors, judges and juries.

    Some of Holder's other initiatives will require legislative change. Holder is urging passage of legislation with bipartisan support that is aimed at giving federal judges more discretion in applying mandatory minimum sentences to certain drug offenses. [The Washington Post, 8/12/13]

Conservative Policy Analysts: Holder Has Authority For His Directive. On National Review Online's The Corner blog, Vikrant P. Reddy and Marc A. Levin from the Texas Public Policy Foundation's Right On Crime initiative explained that the attorney general has the authority to suggest prosecutors use their discretion to reduce sentences, but recommended it be followed up with legislation:

    The attorney general has exercised his authority to provide guidance to federal prosecutors to exercise discretion in applying mandatory minimums in drug cases to ensure that the longest sentences are reserved for kingpins. Nonetheless, this administrative action comes five years into this presidency and could be undone at the whim of this or any future attorney general. Therefore, statutory reforms are still needed to ensure that the law provides a reasonable range of punishment for low-level federal drug offenses such that there is enough prosecutorial and judicial flexibility to craft sentences that fit the crime. [National Review Online, The Corner, 8/13/13]

Gosh, conservatives keep telling us they are experts on the Constitution and legal theory, yet these conservative zealots are not even familiar with legal actions and precedents set by conservatives. Could it be that Betsy McCaughey, George Will, Krauthammer and Radicals at Fox News are acting like petulant anti-American brats who think its fine when conservatives do it, but the end of the world when Democratic patriots do the same thing.

Spying Program Doesn’t Make Us Safer, and Spying Leaks Don’t Harm America

Spying Program Doesn’t Make Us Safer, and Spying Leaks Don’t Harm America

America’s top national security experts say that the NSA’s mass surveillance program doesn’t make us safer … and that whistleblowers revealing the nature and extent of the program don’t harm America.

The top counter-terrorism czar under Presidents Clinton and Bush – Richard Clarke – notes:

    The just-revealed surveillance stretches the law to its breaking point and opens the door to future potential abuses

    ***

    I am troubled by the precedent of stretching a law on domestic surveillance almost to the breaking point. On issues so fundamental to our civil liberties, elected leaders should not be so needlessly secretive.

    The argument that this sweeping search must be kept secret from the terrorists is laughable. Terrorists already assume this sort of thing is being done. Only law-abiding American citizens were blissfully ignorant of what their government was doing.

    ***

    If the government wanted a particular set of records, it could tell the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court why — and then be granted permission to access those records directly from specially maintained company servers. The telephone companies would not have to know what data were being accessed. There are no technical disadvantages to doing it that way, although it might be more expensive.

    Would we, as a nation, be willing to pay a little more for a program designed this way, to avoid a situation in which the government keeps on its own computers a record of every time anyone picks up a telephone? That is a question that should have been openly asked and answered in Congress.

The author of the Patriot Act and chairman on the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, Homeland Security, and Investigations – Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner – says:

    Lawmakers’ and the executive branch’s excuses about recent revelations of NSA activity are “a bunch of bunk”

    The government has gone far beyond what the Patriot Act intended, and that section 215 of the act “was originally drafted to prevent data mining” on the scale that’s occurred

    Whistleblower Edward Snowden is not a traitor, and Sensenbrenner would not have known the extent of abuse by the NSA and the FISA court without Snowden’s disclosures

    The Patriot Act needs to be amended to protect Americans’ privacy

The former head of the NSA’s global digital data gathering program, William Binney:

    Confirms Snowden’s allegations about the mass surveillance program

    Says that revealing the details of the spying program will not harm national security … and that government officials are only mad because it exposes their overreaching

    Says that massive surveillance doesn’t work to make us safer

    Says that he set up the NSA’s system so that all of the information would automatically be encrypted, so that the government had to obtain a search warrant based upon probably cause before a particular suspect’s communications could be decrypted. But the NSA now collects all data in an unencrypted form, so that no probable cause is needed to view any citizen’s information. He says that it is actually cheaper and easier to store the data in an encrypted format: so the government’s current system is being done for political – not practical – purposes.  Binney’s statements have been confirmed by other NSA whistleblowers...

But hey I have nothing to hide so what's the big deal. It has nothing to do with whether individuals do not care if the NSA listens to your phone calls or reads your e-mail. Whether you personally care about your rights and how they relate to the 4th Amendment and democracy, has nothing to do with hiding something. It has to do with a basic right to privacy. Anyone who loves big brother and does not think such programs should be closely monitored and have become excessive, by all means move to the 24 or so authoritarian regimes in the world, they love cooperate sheep like you. Are They Allowed to Do That? A Breakdown of Selected Government Surveillance Programs

Rand Paul(R-TN) Exploits Drones Grandstanding With Fake Fundraising Letter

Rand Paul(R-TN) Exploits Drones Grandstanding With Fake Fundraising Letter

Though foes of drones on the right and left cheered Sen. Rand Paul's filibuster this week, with the tea partier delaying confirmation of CIA director John Brennan for a day, Paul's rant targeted a nonexistent dispute: whether or not Obama administration officials believed they could use drones (or other weapons) to kill American citizens within the borders of the United States without due process. Take away all Paul's hyped-up hysteria—watch out, Jane Fonda!—and he didn't truly disagree with the administration's position that in an extraordinary circumstance, such as an ongoing terrorist attack, the US government can deploy lethal force against evildoers who happen to be American citizens. So why did Paul go ballistic? Here's a clue: The day after he ended one of the longest filibusters in US history, he tried to cash in on his stunt by zapping out a fundamentally inaccurate fundraising email for his 2016 reelection campaign.

The note begins:

    Dear Patriot,

    My 13-hour filibuster yesterday is being called one of the longest in U.S. history.

    I had been trying for more than a week to get a straight answer on whether or not the Obama administration believed it had the authority to use drones to target and kill American citizens on American soil – without due process.

    And after receiving a letter from Attorney General Eric Holder claiming they DO have that authority, I could no longer sit silently at my desk in the U.S. Senate.

    So I stood for thirteen-straight hours to send a message to the Obama administration, I will do everything in my power to fight their attempts to ignore the Constitution!

    Millions of Americans chose to stand with me and put President Obama, Attorney General Holder, and Congress in the spotlight...

    And the good news is, it worked!

    Just hours ago, I received a letter from Attorney General Holder declaring the President DOES NOT have the authority to use drones to kill Americans on U.S. soil.

    Patriot, this shows what we can do when stand together and fight.

    So won't you help me continue the fight to protect our Constitutional liberties today?

This is a false account. In his first letter to Paul, Holder noted the obvious: If the United States were under attack from within, the president might have to order the use of lethal military force within the territory of the United States. This is how Holder put it:

    [T]he US government has not carried out drone strikes in the United States and has no intention of doing so. As a policy matter moreover, we reject the use of military force where well-established law enforcement authorities in this country provide the best means for incapacitating a terrorist threat…The question you have posed is therefore entirely hypothetical, unlikely to occur, and one we hope no president will ever have to confront. It is possible, I suppose, to imagine an extraordinary circumstance in which it would be necessary and appropriate under the Constitution and applicable laws of the United States for the President to authorize the military to use lethal force within the territory of the United States. For example, the president could conceivably have no choice but to authorize the military to use such force if necessary to protect the homeland in the circumstances like a catastrophic attack like the ones suffered on December 7, 1941, and September 11, 2001.

Consider a Mumbai-style attack on Washington, DC; as the assault is under way perhaps military force—with or without drones—might be used against the perpetrators, which could include terrorists holding American citizenship. In fact, during his filibuster, Paul conceded the point: "Nobody questions if planes are flying towards the Twin Towers whether they can be repulsed by the military. Nobody questions whether a terrorist with a rocket launcher or a grenade launcher is attacking us, whether they can be repelled."

So just as he did on the Senate floor, in this email, Paul is ginning up a quarrel that did not exist. Then the give-me-money note goes on to claim that due to Paul's heroic filibuster, Holder wrote a second note to the senator stating the president cannot use drones to kill Americans on US soil. That's wrong.

On Thursday, Holder sent Paul a curt two-sentence letter:

    It has come to my attention that you have now asked an additional question: "Does the President have the authority to use a weaponized drone to kill an American not engaged in combat on American soil?" The answer to that question is no.

Funny how Paul was an anti-Iraq invasion conservative-libertarian, yet uses the same mentality to juice up his wacko supporters and their endless paranoia. Tomorrow it will be Chinese military hiding  int eh sewers of new York waiting directions to invade America from below. Is there such a thing as a conservative who is not one part wacky and one part evil.

Neo-Nazi Conservative Site The Daily Caller Opinion Page An Embarrassing Spectacle Of Conspiracy Theories

Neo-Nazi Conservative Site The Daily Caller Opinion Page An Embarrassing Spectacle Of Conspiracy Theories

The Associated Press and CNN recently debunked an op-ed featured at The Daily Caller that suggested a recent ammunition purchase by the Social Security Administration evidenced an Obama plot to kill American citizens en masse. The bizarre theory is hardly the first conspiratorial idea to be promoted on the opinion page of The Daily Caller.
The AP And CNN Eviscerate Op-Ed Suggesting Obama's Mass Murder Plot

Regular Contributor Jerry Curry: Each Round Of Ammo Procured By SSA "Represents A Dead American." From an August 17 op-ed published by The Daily Caller discussing the procurement of 174,000 rounds of ammunition by the Society Security Administration for its law enforcement arm:

    What would be the target of these 174,000 rounds of hollow point bullets? It can't simply be to control demonstrators or rioters. Hollow point bullets are so lethal that the Geneva Convention does not allow their use on the battle field in time of war. Hollow point bullets don't just stop or hurt people, they penetrate the body, spread out, fragment and cause maximum damage to the body's organs. Death often follows.

    Potentially each hollow nose bullet represents a dead American. If so, why would the U.S. government want the SSA to kill 174,000 of our citizens, even during a time of civil unrest? Or is the purpose to kill 174,000 of the nation's military and replace them with Department of Homeland Security (DHS) special security forces, forces loyal to the Administration, not to the Constitution? [The Daily Caller, 8/17/12]

Associated Press: SSA Conspiracy Theory "Illustrates What Can Happen When A Seemingly Salacious Tidbit Gets Amplified And Embellished On The Internet." From a September 4 article by AP reporter Stephen Ohlemacher:

    It didn't take long for the Internet to start buzzing with conspiracy theories after the Social Security Administration posted a notice that it was purchasing 174,000 hollow-point bullets.

    Why is the agency that provides benefits to retirees, disabled workers, widows and children stockpiling ammunition? Whom are they going to use it on?

    "It's not outlandish to suggest that the Social Security Administration is purchasing the bullets as part of preparations for civil unrest," the website Infowars.com said.

    Another website, The Daily Caller, said the bullets must be for use against American citizens, "since the SSA has never been used overseas to help foreign countries maintain control of their citizens."

    The clamor became such a distraction for the agency that it dedicated a website to explaining the purchase. The explanation, it turns out, isn't as tantalizing as an arms buildup to defend against unruly senior citizens.

    The bullets are for Social Security's office of inspector general, which has about 295 agents who investigate Social Security fraud and other crimes, said Jonathan L. Lasher, the agency's assistant IG for external relations.

    [...]

    The episode illustrates what can happen when a seemingly salacious tidbit gets amplified and embellished on the Internet. [Associated Press via Huffington Post, 9/4/12]

Conservatives have such an unhinged hatred of government - when there is a Democratic president anyway - that their heads becomes so infused with hatred and paranoia they cannot even think of a conspiracy theory that is marginally plausible.

Conservative Republicans Regularly Promote Hate Speech, Then Complain That Normal Patriotic Americans Are Intolerant of Them

Conservative Republicans Regularly Promote Hate Speech, Then Complain That Normal Patriotic Americans Are Intolerant of Them

On Wednesday, the National Hispanic Media Coalition and UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center released a study showing that guests and topics discussed during "The Rush Limbaugh Show," "The Sean Hannity Show," "The Glenn Beck Program," The Savage Nation" and "The John and Ken Show" overwhelmingly marginalized minority groups.

As the study explains:

    The findings reveal that the hosts promoted an insular discourse that focused on, for example, anti-immigration, anti-Islam, and pro-Tea Party positions and that this discourse found repetition and amplification through social media.

These viewpoints have far reaching consequences. NHMC President and CEO Alex Nogales told Fox News Latino that the social network surrounding conservative talk radio and Fox News has spread to social media websites resulting in "an echo-chamber of voices, both online and off, that promotes hatred against ethnic, racial and religious groups and the LGBT community on social media web sites."

Using hateful rhetoric, these hosts have cast immigrants as disease ridden, equated pro-immigrant organizations with neo-Nazis, called Islam an "evil religion," claimed the Obama administration is promoting "race riots" and made fun of the ethnicity of Asian-American politicians.

Yet is a descent American with a conscience objects to their fair mongering, ethnocentrism and greatly oversimplified rhetoric, that descent individual(s) is labeled intolerant. You have to hand the Anti-American Republican movement credit for their twisted logic along with their twisted values.

Romney cannot run on his record at Bail where he was a leach who exported American jobs, made a profit even when the businesses themselves went down the toilet. he can't run on his economic ideas because they are just a rehash of the Dubya Bush and Republican policies that caused the financial collapse he is trying to hold Obama responsible for. So what can he run on. The same radical right-wing crap that you hear on the proto-fascist conservative radio shows, Romney Smears Obama, Falsely Claims He Filed Lawsuit To Restrict Military Voting In Ohio

Today on Facebook, Mitt Romney claims that the Obama campaign is trying to “undermine” the ability of members of the military to vote in Ohio:

    President Obama’s lawsuit claiming it is unconstitutional for Ohio to allow servicemen and women extended early voting privileges during the state’s early voting period is an outrage. The brave men and women of our military make tremendous sacrifices to protect and defend our freedoms, and we should do everything we can to protect their fundamental right to vote. I stand with the fifteen military groups that are defending the rights of military voters, and if I’m entrusted to be the commander-in-chief, I’ll work to protect the voting rights of our military, not undermine them.

This certainly sounds outrageous, but it is not true. Since 2005, Ohio has had in person early-voting in the three days prior to the election. This year, however, the Republican legislature in Ohio eliminated early voting during this period, except for members of the military. The Obama lawsuit is attempting to restore voting rights for all Ohioans, not restrict them for the military or any other group. From the Obama lawsuit, filed in federal court:

    Plaintiffs bring this lawsuit to restore in-person early voting for all Ohioans during the three days prior to Election Day – a right exercised by an estimated 93,000 Ohioans in the last presidential election. Ohio election law, as currently enacted by the State of Ohio and administered by Defendant Ohio Secretary of State, arbitrarily eliminates early voting during the three days prior to Election Day for most Ohio voters, a right previously available to all Ohio voters.

The Obama campaign’s request for a preliminary injunction does not seek to restrict military voting. Rather, it simply is asking that the full early voting period be open to all citizens, as it was under the law before this year.

Even Fox News acknowledges the purpose of the suit, noting “the lawsuit does not restrict the ability of military personnel to cast their ballots early.”


The Romney campaign is totally unable to back up their candidate’s claim:

    Romney’s spokesman, Ryan Williams, in an interview Saturday could point to no place in Obama’s lawsuit that seeks to restrict the rights of military voters…

Mitt Romney has values? When can America expect to see him display some of those.
…

Mitt Romney Thinks Israel's Universal Health Care System Is Great, But Would Condemn 45,000 Americans To Death With Obamacare Repeal

Mitt Romney Thinks Israel's Universal Health Care System Is Great, But Would Condemn 45,000 Americans To Death With Obamacare Repeal

Throughout his presidential campaign, Mitt Romney has been running away from the individual insurance mandate in the Affordable Care Act — even though a mandate is a cornerstone of the former Massachusetts governor’s health care reform law. “If I’m President of the United States, we’re gonna get rid of Obamacare and return, under our constitution, the 10th Amendment, the responsibility and care of health care to the people in the states,” Romney said during a GOP presidential debate.

But during his trip to Israel, Romney inadvertently praised the individual requirement and universal health care. “[F]or an American abroad, you can’t get much closer to the ideals and convictions of my own country than you do in Israel,” he said. And according to The New York Times, Romney spoke favorably about the fact that health care makes up a much smaller amount of Israel’s gross domestic product compared to the United States:

    “Do you realize what health care spending is as a percentage of the G.D.P. in Israel? Eight percent,” he said. “You spend eight percent of G.D.P. on health care. You’re a pretty healthy nation. We spend 18 percent of our G.D.P. on health care, 10 percentage points more. That gap, that 10 percent cost, compare that with the size of our military — our military which is 4 percent, 4 percent. Our gap with Israel is 10 points of G.D.P. We have to find ways — not just to provide health care to more people, but to find ways to fund and manage our health care costs.”

Israel spends less on health care because of a universal health system that requires everyone to have insurance. Every Israeli citizen has the obligation to purchase health care services through one of the country’s four HMOs since government officials approved the National Health Insurance Law in 1995. People pay for 40 percent of their HMO’s costs through income-related contributions collected through the tax system, and the state pays the remaining 60 percent. And by many standards, Israelis are getting better health care than U.S. citizens. The infant mortality rate is much lower, and its mortality rate due to heart disease is half the U.S. rate.

Orly Manor, dean of the Hadassah-Hebrew University Braun School of Public Health, said U.S. officials could “learn a lot from the Israeli system. The quality is high, and the outcomes are good.” And it seems that, following his trip to Jerusalem, Romney would agree.

With all of Romney's money one would think he could afford a brain transplant or hire someone smart to think for him. If he succeeds in repealing the ACA (health care reform) he will condemn 45,000 Americans to death. After he hires the smart person he also needs to hire someone who is not morally corrupt to have a conscience for him.

How the U.S. Government Helped Mitt Romney Build His Fortune

 Bain produced stellar returns for its investors--yet the bulk of these came from just a small number of its investments. Ten deals produced more than 70% of the dollar gains.

    Some of those companies, too, later ran into trouble. Of the 10 businesses on which Bain investors scored their biggest gains, four later landed in bankruptcy court.

Put another way, Mitt Romney's investing was almost risk-free. He won when his portfolio companies won and often when they lost. Thanks in large part to the dangerous incentives unleashed by the U.S. tax code.

Which is why other countries like Denmark, the UK and Germany either don't offer--or are trying to limit--the "public subsidy" that William D. Cohan deemed "the mother's milk of a leveraged buyout". As Felix Salmon noted, the United States could lower the rate at which debt interest can deducted or cap the amount of debt to which it applies. (The Obama administration is considering those kinds of changes in its recently proposed "Framework for Business Tax Reform.") In its January 30, 2012 editorial, the Financial Times lamented:

    "The system could be made fairer and more efficient by taxing debt and equity at the same rate...Most of [Romney's] money was made at Bain Capital, which, like all private equity groups, benefits from a federal debt subsidy. It should be eliminated."

U.S. tax payer subsidized every penny that Romney "built".

The Key to Understanding Mitt Romney - He Has Never Earned an Honest Dollar or Done an Honest Day's Work

The Key to Understanding Mitt Romney - He Has Never Earned an Honest Dollar or Done an Honest Day's Work

A splendid accidental benefit of this year’s Republican presidential primary is that one of the most abusive dark corners of American capitalism, so-called private equity, is coming in for belated scrutiny and scorn. Delectably, the disclosures and criticisms are coming from leading Republicans, in a blatant undermining of cherished Republican ideology. Even before Democrats lay a glove on Romney, he will be assaulted by an investigative documentary that is more Michael Moore than Adam Smith. In politics, it doesn’t get much better than this.

“Private equity” was rebranded in the 1990s. It used to be called, more honestly, leveraged buyouts. While the job-killing aspect of many of the deals done by Mitt Romney’s Bain Capital and kindred financial engineers has come in for withering criticism, that is only one part of the mischief.

The phrase “private equity” conjures up images of venture capitalists pooling their funds and backing promising new ventures or contributing new equity and new management to companies in need of restructuring. But that is not how the game really works most of the time. Typically, private-equity companies borrow a ton of money, sometimes in collusion with incumbent management and sometimes in opposition to it, and take a company private. That is, the company’s shares are no longer publicly traded.

This maneuver has several advantages to the new owners. First, despite the picture of investors putting in equity, most of the money is usually borrowed. That produces a huge tax break, since the interest is tax-deductible. Second, the new owners can pay themselves large management fees as well as “special dividends.” Typically, they take out far more than they put in, by incurring debts carried on the books of the operating company.

For instance, when Bain masterminded a private-equity deal for HCA, one of America’s largest for-profit hospital chains (which has gone from private to public twice and which paid a multibillion-dollar fine for defrauding Medicare), Bain paid itself a management fee of $58 million, even though it had only put up 6.3 percent of the buyout fund.

Another big plus: The main regulatory principle protecting investors and by extension, the system as a whole, is disclosure. Under the securities laws administered by the Securities and Exchange Commission, management must disclose information deemed “material” to the interests of the investing public, including salaries, earnings, losses, assets, liabilities, and risks. But these laws flow from the fact that a corporation’s shares are publicly traded. A company owner by a private-equity outfit like Bain can operate completely in the shadows.

Then, there are three possible ways to cash in.  If the company turns out to be a success, like Staples (one of Bain’s big winners), the private-equity owners can take their legitimate share of the reward. But that turns out to be the exception. If the company, newly loaded up with debt, starts to falter, it can be broken up, with massive layoffs and cuts in health and pension benefits, and resold, usually at a profit for the private-equity owners.

Or the company can simply declare bankruptcy under Chapter 11 and shed its debts. Normally, shareholders think twice about incurring risks that could result in  bankruptcy, because one of the consequences is that the stock becomes worthless. But private-equity owners typically have already made their bundle on management fees and special dividend payouts, so even if the operating company goes bankrupt, they are still in the money.

And all of this is legal.

Oddly, as one abuse after another was exposed following the financial collapse, the predations of private equity have sailed merrily on. There is a terrific 2009 book on the subject, which I reviewed for the Prospect, Josh Kosman’s The Buyout of America. Read Kosman, and you will learn chapter and verse about how Bain, Carlyle, Blackstone, Texas Pacific Group, and the others plunder operating companies with taxpayer subsidies thanks to the borrowed money.

Among the tales Kosman tells: Thomas H. Lee Partners buys Warner Music, the world's fourth-biggest music company, and loads up the company with debt to finance the buyout and to pay itself $1.2 billion in dividends. One-third of the workforce is fired. CD&R, The Carlyle Group, and Merrill Lynch buy Hertz, the nation's largest auto-rental company, putting up just $2.3 billion in cash out of a $15 billion deal. The private-equity owners quickly recoup more than half of their down payment by loading up the company with even more debt. Funds for rental operations are cut by 39 percent, and Hertz's market share falls. In another example, Bain Capital, the company that made Mitt Romney rich, invests just $18.5 million in KB Toys, extracts $85 million in dividends, then takes the company into bankruptcy, stiffing employees, investors, and creditors.

The media, especially Fox News and Anti-American mogul Rupert Murdoch's many newspapers, keep telling us that Romney and his elite business elite take risks. When a nurse or carpenter leaves for work in the morning they take more risks in one day than Romney has his entire life. What private equity does guarantees a profit almost no matter what happens. On top of that the taxes the nurse and carpenter pay subsidize Romney's crony capitalism. During the primaries some Republicans had the nerve to speck the truth about Romney. They have all since drink the kool-aid and behave like good little well trained mice,

Here are the top 10 comments about Bain from Romney’s Republican rivals:

    1. “The idea that you’ve got private equity companies that come in and take companies apart so they can make profits and have people lose their jobs, that’s not what the Republican Party’s about.” — Rick Perry [New York Times, 1/12/12]

    2. “The Bain model is to go in at a very low price, borrow an immense amount of money, pay Bain an immense amount of money and leave. I’ll let you decide if that’s really good capitalism. I think that’s exploitation.” — Newt Gingrich [New York Times, 1/17/12]

    3. “Instead of trying to work with them to try to find a way to keep the jobs and to get them back on their feet, it’s all about how much money can we make, how quick can we make it, and then get out of town and find the next carcass to feed upon” — Rick Perry [National Journal, 1/10/12]

    4. “We find it pretty hard to justify rich people figuring out clever legal ways to loot a company, leaving behind 1,700 families without a job.” — Newt Gingrich [Globe and Mail, 1/9/12]

    5. “Now, I have no doubt Mitt Romney was worried about pink slips — whether he was going to have enough of them to hand out because his company, Bain Capital, of all the jobs that they killed” — Rick Perry [New York Times, 1/9/12]

    6) “He claims he created 100,000 jobs. The Washington Post, two days ago, reported in their fact check column that he gets three Pinocchios. Now, a Pinocchio is what you get from The Post if you’re not telling the truth.” — Newt Gingrich [1/13/12, NBC News]

    7. “There is something inherently wrong when getting rich off failure and sticking it to someone else is how you do your business, and I happen to think that’s indefensible” — Rick Perry [National Journal, 1/10/12]

    8. “If Governor Romney would like to give back all the money he’s earned from bankrupting companies and laying off employees over his years, then I would be glad to then listen to him” — Newt Gingrich [Mediaite, 12/14/11]

    9. “If you’re a victim of Bain Capital’s downsizing, it’s the ultimate insult for Mitt Romney to come to South Carolina and tell you he feels your pain, because he caused it.” — Rick Perry [New York Times, 1/8/12]

    10. “They’re vultures that sitting out there on the tree limb waiting for the company to get sick and then they swoop in, they eat the carcass. They leave with that and they leave the skeleton” — Rick Perry [National Journal, 1/10/12]

Romney is not so much running for president based on his accomplishments or ideas ( he has none of either) , he is simply telling the nation he deserves to be president because he is so special.

Exclusive Timeline: Bush Administration Advanced Solyndra Loan Guarantee for Two Years, Media Blow the Story. Republicans have been trying desperately to pin a scandal on President Obama for going on four years. They can't find anything so they just make stuff up. So much for morality and values.

The Moral Corruption of Conservative Republicans Seems To Have No Limits


Mitt’s Offshore Shenanigans: The Bigger Story

Mitt Romney morphs into Conservative Republican Pervert James O'Keefe,  To Release Misleadingly Edited Obama Video As An Ad

The Media Let Darrel Issa (R-CA) Get Away With Fast and Furious Witch Hunt. Will They Now Call For an Investigation Into Issa's Criminal Abuse of Power

The Media Let Darrel Issa (R-CA) Get Away With Fast and Furious Witch Hunt. Will They Now Call For an Investigation Into Issa's Criminal Abuse of Power

Since Fortune published "The Truth about the Fast and Furious Scandal" on June 27, thousands of comments have been posted on Fortune.com either praising or vilifying the article. Among the questions often raised by critics of the article (including Sen. Charles Grassley) concern assertions that the ATF encouraged gun dealers to sell weapons to known traffickers. If the ATF was encouraging such sales, the argument goes, it would be proof that the agency had a policy to allow weapons to fall into the hands of Mexican drug cartels, the core contention in what is known as the Fast and Furious scandal.

In the six months of investigations that led Fortune to conclude that the ATF had no policy to intentionally permit weapons to be trafficked, we examined 2,000 pages of ATF records, Congressional reports and testimony, and interviewed 39 people involved in or knowledgeable about the case. That body of evidence shows the ATF did not have a policy of encouraging gun dealers to sell to traffickers. Until now, the alleged encouragement of gun-dealers has not been a central focus of the Fast and Furious scandal. As a result, we did not address those points in the article. However, given the interest in this question, we thought it was worth taking readers through the evidence on this point.

It should be noted at the outset that the Congressional committee investigating Fast and Furious has never claimed the ATF had any official, written policy to encourage gun dealers to sell to traffickers. No documents, emails, or testimony mentioned in Congressional reports show signs of an agency-wide policy, or even a policy within Phoenix Group VII, the unit that worked on Fast and Furious.

What the allegations in the Congressional hearings and reports boil down to are two specific situations. In one, as we'll see, the allegations are true -- but misleading and incomplete -- and in the second, the evidence is contradictory. It's possible that the Congressional investigators have other evidence, but these two episodes are the only ones that have surfaced to date.

Claim No. 1

In August 2010, after a successful wiretap led Phoenix Group VII to seize 114 weapons in a single month, an employee at a gun dealership informed Group VII supervisor Dave Voth that one of their chief suspects was looking to purchase 20 9mm pistols. Based on evidence it had gathered on the wiretap, the ATF had enough probable cause to immediately arrest the suspect if he purchased the weapons. So -- in the only such instance known to date -- Voth wrote back and asked the dealer to make this particular sale. Voth says he encouraged the sale so that the agents could arrest the suspect outside the gun dealership. In the end, however, the suspect did not make the purchase and the arrest did not take place. No evidence has emerged that Voth ever made such a statement to any other gun seller.

Claim No. 2

This allegation involves a gun store called Lone Wolf Trading Company and shifting assertions made by its owner, Andre Howard. ATF records and Justice Department correspondence show that Voth and federal prosecutor Emory Hurley met with Howard soon after Voth arrived in Arizona. According to those records, Hurley advised Howard that, obviously, he could not make illegal sales (which he wasn't), and needed to use his judgment regarding legal sales, but that the government would appreciate any information about the purchasers and the sales to aid the investigation. Lone Wolf cooperated with the ATF, according to agency documents, regularly providing records of gun sales and permitting the ATF to install a surveillance camera in the store.

Lone Wolf was in a sensitive position. From 2006 to 2011, it was the No. 1 seller in Arizona of weapons that were later found at Mexican crime scenes, according to ATF data. The store, which had been prominently mentioned in a Washington Post article on indiscriminate firearms sales, also sold the weapons found at the murder scene of U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry. On Feb. 1, 2011, six weeks after Terry's death, Howard released a press statement that defended the ATF: "These federal agencies," it noted, "conduct themselves in a very professional and proper manner…. Senator Grassley's office contacted us regarding 'any' impropriety by ATF and we have stated that their [sic] exists no indication to that effect." Howard went on to conclude that people should "stop pointing blame at either Federal or state agencies attempting to do their job" and instead "give them the tools to accomplish this monumental problem confronting them."

However, as the scandal heated up and the ATF was deluged with criticism, Howard revised his account and directed the blame at the agency. In September 2011, he told the Los Angeles Times that he was directed by ATF to sell guns -- as many as possible, regardless of the legality, and that selling so many guns made him feel "horrible and sick." This contention is the second element that backs the claim that the ATF encouraged gun dealers to sell to traffickers.

Fortune visited Lone Wolf in January and requested an interview. The owner declined, but denounced the ATF, accused its agents of murder, and said answers would more likely be found on Constitution Avenue, the address of the Justice Department in Washington, D.C.

The totality of the evidence -- including the ATF and Justice Department documents that directly contradict Howard's revised position, and his own earlier defense of ATF -- undermines his subsequent claims. And neither the Lone Wolf case, nor the one episode in which Voth encouraged a gun sale in the hopes of making an arrest in the parking lot of the store right after the sale, support the assertion that the ATF had a policy to intentionally permit gun-trafficking to Mexico.

One can see why the gun seller would lie. It is not unusual for people to lie to save their a*s and in this case reputation among the more radical anti-American conservative community. Conservatives - see Iraq's nonexistent WMD and the Iran-Contra scandal - have never been big on taking responsibility for their criminal enterprises. Issa admits he has no evidence of wrong doing by ATF or the DOJ even though Attorney General Holder has handed over 100,000 documents. Not having found any evidence he has accused the AG of withholding information. An old political trick - you have not given me evidence to support the conclusion I would like to come to so you're a bad person. In the justice system - rather than Congress, Darrel Issa R-Ca would be held criminally liable for prosecutor  misconduct, but since he is a Republican who heads a political committee, he can get away with just about anything. Congress and the media need to hold Issa accountable for the witch-hunt of AG Holder and the millions of tax dollars he has wasted on his wacky political game show.

U.S. Drought Monitor shows record-breaking expanse of drought. Republicans can just keep tapping their silver slippers together repeating there is no global warming over and over again and we'll be OK.

President Obama Consoles Woman Whose Uninsured Sister Died Of Colon Cancer. Republicans probably cheered when they heard the news that another person without health insurance died.


Ashleigh, Ashleigh, Ashleigh. Rep. Joe Walsh (R-IL) is what evil looks and sounds like.
This afternoon, CNN host Ashleigh Banfield took Rep. Joe Walsh (R-IL) to task over his comments concerning his opponent, Tammy Duckworth. Walsh responded with a condescending repetition of the host’s name that topped out at 93 times. ThinkProgress has the video, with the counter to confirm. Watch it: