TheWashingtonTimes: The House of Representatives is moving forward with proceedings to hold Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. in contempt of Congress — a major escalation in the separation-of-powers battle over “Fast and Furious,” the Obama administration’s botched gun-walking operation.
Rep. Darrell E. Issa, California Republican and chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said his panel will take up the contempt issue next week, and the move has the blessing of House Speaker John A. Boehner, Ohio Republican.
“The Justice Department is out of excuses,” Mr. Boehner said in a statement Monday morning. “Either the Justice Department turns over the information requested, or Congress will have no choice but to move forward with holding the Attorney General in contempt for obstructing an ongoing investigation.”
Good to see Boehner finally agreeing to give Issa the go-ahead...I only wished it had happened sooner.
And unfortunately, this ship is becoming laden with chatterboxes.
The avalanche of leaks on the drone program and the Stuxnet computer virus are just the latest in a series of leaks that are extremely troubling for our national security. And no matter how much they're denying it, this White House has a major plumbing problem. By now, you're probably aware that Obama's 'the private sector is doing fine' statement wasn't the only uh-oh moment for the President during Friday morning's press conference.
HotAir: Asked during the [Friday] morning event about the series of leaks from his administration and their oh-so-coincidentally complimentary view of his own leadership, Obama pronounced himself offended by the insinuation that his team would leak sensitive information in an election year to save their jobs:
So offensive...as if the feigned outrage isn't? Also coincidentally later Friday evening, the DoJ opened an investigation into these leaks. Who, Holder? Investigate his administration? Yeah, right. Well, leave it to the Great One to cut through the facade of urgency...
theRightScoop: Mark Levin said [Friday] on his radio show that Eric Holder appointing two of his prosecutors to investigate the executive branch as well as the legislative branch to uncover the origination of all the recent leaks is simply “intended to diffuse the situation and create ambiguity”. But even more than that, he says that if this were a Republican administration that a special prosecutor would be demanded over a by Democrats like Chuck Schumer as well as the media, just like it was in the Scooter Libby case.
With this number of leaks, I've gotta go with Ed Morrissey on this and insist that Congress get involved with this investigation as well: "The DoJ is part of the executive branch, and it’s Congress’ duty to ensure that the executive branch hasn’t indulged in corruption or worse in pursuit of its own power. The Senate and the House could follow up on Holder’s actions by appointing ad hoc bipartisan panels of inquiry into White House leaks..." I just wished there were more resembling a certain plumber residing in Washington to confidently (and competently) pursue that route.
The gift of Obama's Big Government arrogance just keeps on giving. We pick up where we left off a few posts ago...
During his press conference this morning, Obama sad, “The private sector is doing fine.” Really? Don't believe me? Here, listen...
And in its full context, it's even more offensive:
Question: What about the Republicans saying you are blaming the Europeans for the failures of your own policies?
Obama: The truth of the matter is that, as I’ve said, we’ve created 4.3M jobs over the last 27 months, over 800K just this year alone. The private sector is doing fine. Where we’re seeing weaknesses in our economy have to do with state and local government, often times cuts initiated by governors or mayors who are not getting the kind of help they have in the past from the federal government and who don’t have the same flexibility as the federal government in dealing with fewer revenues coming in.
Can't say it any better than theRightScoop frames it: "So, Obama is more concerned about the public sector? With real unemployment in the mid-teens or the filtered one over 8%, Obama has the gall to point out public sector hiring over the private sector? Wow, this really is a gift to Republicans. I think Obama just pulled a ‘Clinton’ on himself."
Both the RNC & Romney quickly jumped on this:
By George, I think they've actually realized that they can win this thing. Here's another message that should be repeated in every Republican advertisement from now until election day!
UPDATES: Axelrod appeared on CNN's State of the Nation yesterday, and dodged the question no less than three times when asked if he agreed with President Obama that “the private sector is doing fine.”
And the Carney barker scolded the WH Press Corp for actually reporting on the comment.
Meanwhile, the Romney camp is milking this for all it's worth, with a new ad out targeting the terrible jobs numbers from a few weeks back.
Being an early indicator of where November might be heading is not the only lesson from Scott Walker's historic recall win. William Tucker writes in the American Spectator that "the ruling class is the last to know that Americans have had it with big government," in reference to the outcome in Wisconsin. He gives a laundry list of lessons learned from the Walker win, but the most emphatic one is at the top of the list:
The issue was not "labor versus management." Editorial writers steeped in memories of the 1930s inevitably portray the contemporary rebellion against public employees' unions as a replay of the top-hats-versus-factory-workers of yore. It is no such thing. The issue is the public sector versus private economy. ... Unionized or not, private sector workers have no interest in seeing public sector workers pile up retirement and health benefits at their expense. The old union-versus-management arm-wrestle has no relevance in the era of runaway government.
Precisely. Taxpayers have finally realized that public union subsidies are unsustainable, particular off their backs!
I have been most critical of Mitt Romney since the primaries began. He is undoubtedly the establishment's candidate in the race, but has surfaced as the sole remainder of an extremely bruising primary (most of which was inflicted through his campaign). So if he's to be the inevitable Republican nominee, then I find it essential to point out the good with the bad (the latest of the latter in his appointment of that transition leader). And currently, the good is finally stating the obvious (i.e., what conservatives have been saying all along!).
I can put it no better than WeaselZippers pointed out on Thursday, "Romney is doing exactly what he should be doing, hammering Obama on the economy every day from now until November."
TheHill: Mitt Romney delivered a passionate indictment of President Obama’s economic philosophy Thursday in St. Louis, accusing the president of attacking “the cornerstone of American prosperity — our economic freedom.”
In one of the Republican presidential nominee’s liveliest campaign stops of the general election, Romney rallied supporters with a prolonged defense of free market economics. Breaking from his traditional stump speech, Romney decried the president’s economic policies as a “moral failure.”
“Sadly, it has become clear that this president simply doesn’t understand or appreciate these fundamental truths of our system. Over the last three and a half years, record numbers of Americans have lost their jobs or just disappeared from the workforce or can only find part time jobs,” Romney said. “This is not just a failure of policy; it is a moral failure of tragic proportions. Our government has an absolute moral commitment to help every American help himself, him or herself, and that commitment has been broken.”
It appears this tact began the previous day:
TheWashingtonExaminer: In an appearance in Texas Wednesday, Mitt Romney charged that President Obama "knowingly slowed down the recovery in this country…in order to put in place Obamacare." The president's action, Romney said, "deserves a lot of explaining."
Speaking to an audience at USAA, an insurance and financial services company headquartered in San Antonio, Romney cited a book, "The Escape Artists: How Obama's Team Fumbled the Recovery," by the liberal journalist Noam Scheiber. In the book, Scheiber discussed Obama's thinking on the question of whether, early in his term, to focus more attention on passing a national health care law or to devote more energy to bringing about economic recovery. As Scheiber put it, Obama saw health care as a bigger long-term accomplishment. "There was a strain of messianism in Barack Obama, a determination to change the course of history," Scheiber wrote. "And it was this determination that explained his reluctance to abandon his presidential vision." So health care it was.
The bottom line: On Obama's priority list, passing Obamacare ranked higher than economic recovery. Mitt Romney is likely to talk about that a lot more as the campaign goes on.
James Pethokoukis wrote a piece yesterday that elaborates on Noam Scheiber's book, particularly a chapter entitled "The Big Diversion," which Pethokoukis sarcastically asks, "Gee, how could Romney ever conclude from Scheiber’s book that maybe, just maybe, Obamacare was a big distraction from doing more to boost the economy?" Distraction indeed. So instead of maintaining a laser-like focus on the recovery of our economy, or perhaps we should say the health of our nation, Obama unsurprisingly chose to focus on his legacy: Obamacare.
On this, we must find agreement...and if Romney genuinely wants to be our next President, he must drive this message home every day from now until November.
Wow. Pure awesomeness. Oversight Committee chairman Darrell Issa rips the lid off the phoniness of the 'green' jobs classification yesterday, taking Bureau of Labor Statistics director John Galvin to task on this sham...
What won't this administration do to score political points with voters? That's a rhetorical question...
Surprise. (not really) The following new revelations via Stanley Kurtz...
NationalReview: In late October 2008, when I wrote...that Obama had been a member of the New Party, his campaign sharply denied it, calling my claim a “crackpot smear.” Fight the Smears, an official Obama-campaign website, staunchly maintained that “Barack has been a member of only one political party, the Democratic Party.” I rebutted this, but the debate was never taken up by the mainstream press.
Recently obtained evidence from the updated records of Illinois ACORN at the Wisconsin Historical Society now definitively establishes that Obama was a member of the New Party. He also signed a “contract” promising to publicly support and associate himself with the New Party while in office.
Minutes of the meeting on January 11, 1996, of the New Party’s Chicago chapter read as follows:
Barack Obama, candidate for State Senate in the 13th Legislative District, gave a statement to the membership and answered questions. He signed the New Party “Candidate Contract” and requested an endorsement from the New Party. He also joined the New Party.
Consistent with this, a roster of the Chicago chapter of the New Party from early 1997 lists Obama as a member, with January 11, 1996, indicated as the date he joined.
Yet, too many continue to excuse the man's Marxist roots. Go figure. And on that note, Kurtz concludes:
I have more to say on the New Party’s ideology and program, Obama’s ties to the party, and the relevance of all this to the president’s campaign for reelection. In the meantime, let us see whether a press that let candidate Obama off the hook in 2008 — and that in 2012 is obsessed with the president’s youthful love letters — will now refuse to report that President Obama once joined a leftist third party, and that he hid that truth from the American people in order to win the presidency.
Here, here.
ADDENDUM: Rush weighed in on this story during Thursday's program...
NewYorkTimes: More than two-thirds of Americans hope the Supreme Court will overturn some or all of the 2010 health care law, according to a new poll conducted by The New York Times and CBS News. Just 24 percent said they hoped the court “would keep the entire health care law in place.”
The Supreme Court is expected to decide a challenge to the law by the end of this month.
Forty-one percent of those surveyed said the court should strike down the entire law, and another 27 percent said the justices should overturn only the individual mandate, which requires most Americans to obtain health insurance or pay a penalty.
GREAT monologue from Levin's show last night (via theRightScoop):
Mark Levin says the Tea Party is “the most significant and powerful force in this nation today” and that it is more powerful than ever. He points out the telling signs outside of Wisconsin, in Kentucky and Arkansas Democrat primaries, that point to a potential loss in November for Obama and the Democrats.
However, Levin advises that “we cannot sit here and pretend that there is a landslide in our future because we want there to be one.” He says that the Democrats now know how weak they are and that we must “double and triple our efforts” and keep the Democrats from stealing close elections, that we must build a fraud factor into our margin of victories in order to overcome left. But Levin believes that we will do so.
Transforming from a public spending spree over the past 3-1/2 years to a historic personal fundraising spree since last year...really, no new news here (for most Americans, that is)...
Politico: No, it’s not your imagination: President Barack Obama is spending a whole lot of time fundraising, perhaps more than any incumbent president in history.
Including this week’s trip to California, he will have spent eight of 24 weekdays during the past month – that’s a third of them - on the road and collecting cash.
His event Thursday morning will mark his 153rd fundraiser since announcing his reelection bid last year. That’s nearly double the number that his predecessor George W. Bush had attended by this point in his reelection campaign, according to CBS’s Mark Knoller, who put 43’s early June number at 79.
...but it is important to point out that most of this fundraising has taken place under the guise of taxpayer-funded junkets. A modus operandi that should also be clear to most Americans by now.
