The day’s top political news:
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg told law students there could be an opening on the Supreme Court soon but didn't hint at who might be leaving.
In a question-and-answer session at New England Law's annual "Law Day.", she said the nine justices only take pictures together when a new member is added.
She said: "We haven't had any of those for some time, but surely we will soon."
Ginsburg was recently diagnosed with cancer. She has been the most liberal justice of recent times – no surprised given her having been an official of the anti American extremist group – the ACLU.
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D96T9UQG0&show_article=1
Russia could use bases for its strategic bombers on the doorstep of the United States in Cuba and Venezuela to underpin long-distance patrols in the region, a senior air force officer said Saturday.
"This is possible in Cuba," General Anatoly Zhikharev, chief of the Russian air force's strategic aviation staff, told the Interfax-AVN military news agency.
The comments were the latest signal that Moscow intends to project its military capability in far-flung corners of the globe despite a tight defense budget and hardware that experts consider in many respects outdated.
Obsolete aircraft are hardly competitive with the sorts of planes flown by the US Air Force and Navy. In the event of hostility – they would be easy prey for F-22s and others.
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.9776268a25e75ad5b44b4d87e8a32a02.4a1&show_article=1
Surfers on the Internet are at increasing risk from governments and corporations tracking the sites they visit to build up a picture of their activities, the founder of the World Wide Web said on Friday.
Tim Berners-Lee, whose proposal for an information management system at the European Organization for Nuclear Research CERN 20 years ago led eventually to the World Wide Web, said tracking website visits in this way could build an incredibly detailed profile of who people are and their habits.
Technology now being developed will make it easier to decide who can see material one posts on the Web, and in what circumstances.
For instance people may not want prospective employers to see an album of holiday photos, he said.
http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/reuters/MTFH14871_2009-03-13_18-59-20_LD590679.htm
Opinion:
A peek behind the curtain of liberal conspirators – those who plot daily for assassinating those who dare to disagree with the left
We are learning something ominous about the liberals of the Obama administration who are plotting and scheming against normal America.
Hillary whined loudly about a “vast right wing conspiracy” that never existed outside her fertile imagination. A concept requiring her to remain docile and oblivious of her husband’s rabid skirt chasing and dalliances with other woman.
Now we learn there really is a “vast left wing conspiracy” – and the Obama administration is doing to us and our country what Bill Clinton was doing with interns.
(Sorry, but facts are facts and need to be said)
That their primary target of late is a talk show host, reveals how petty they are and just how limited are their options for attack.
To date, Limbaugh has pretty much had his way with liberals who try to attack him – including Obama himself. Obama signals acknowledgement of this through his refusal to accept Limbaugh’s challenge to debate. Obama is clearly not up to it – off teleprompter, Obama is notoriously vulnerable to gaffes of incredible sorts.
Obama is a product of machine politics.
That’s why learning an organized effort to craft, create, and target White House enemies is particularly notable. Not since the Nixon White House have we seen such a cabal. It is important we understand what this is all about and prepare to shoot down with fact and truth the smears, libels and slanders this sad group of extremists will predictably give us.
Here is the story of the background. Enjoy and be prepared.
Buddy
http://www.villagesoup.com//Forums/forums.cfm?TopicID=12850
The new left-wing conspiracy
Ben Smith
The vast new left-wing conspiracy sets its tone every morning at 8:45 a.m., when officials from more than 20 labor, environmental and other Democratic-leaning groups dial into a private conference call hosted by two left-leaning Washington organizations.
The “8:45 A.M. call,” as it’s referred to by members, began three weeks ago, and it marks a new level in coordination by the White House’s allies at a time when the conservative opposition is struggling for a toe-hold and major agenda items like health care reform appear closer than ever to passage.
The call has helped attempts to link the Republican Party to radio host Rush Limbaugh, and has served as the launching ground for attacks on critics of Obama’s policy proposals. It springs from a recognition of what was lacking in the Clinton years, said Jennifer Palmieri, the senior vice president for communications at the Center for American Progress Action Fund, one of the groups hosting the call.
“[CAP President John] Podesta’s and my experience was in the White House during the Clinton years, and we didn’t have a coordinated echo chamber on the outside backing us up,” she said. “There’s a real interest on the progressive side for groups to want to coordinate with each other and leverage each other’s work in a way I haven’t ever seen before.”
The call is hosted by Progressive Media, a project of the CAP Action Fund and the Media Matters Action Fund. The project began last year as a launching pad for attacks on John McCain, but failed to raise money for television advertisements, and served in the later days of the presidential campaign as a platform for disseminating opposition research critical of his policy plans. White House officials do not take part in the calls.
The calls are led by its top staffer, Tara McGuinness, who will also head Progressive Media's "communications research and analysis war room" to wage spin and policy wars throughout the day, Palmieri said.
The call has proved particularly effective at coordinating attacks on critics, said Jacki Schechner, the national communications director for Health Care for America Now, a labor-backed alliance of groups that support Democratic ef forts to expand health care.
“There’s a coordination in terms of exposing the people who are trying to come out against reform —they’ve all got backgrounds and histories and pasts, and it’s not taking long to unearth that and to unleash that, because we’re all working together,” Schechner said.
When a new group called Conservative for Patients Rights, for instance, launched an ad campaign featuring former health care executive Rick Scott, “There was a discussion about what do we know about this guy and in a very quick period of time we were able to come up with his background,” she said.
Scott, as progressive groups quickly informed reporters, had reportedly been forced to resign as head of the company became known as Columbia/HCA amid fraud charges, and the company eventually paid a massive settlement in the case.
When Betsy McCaughey, best known for her attacks on Clinton’s 1993 health care plan, published a column criticizing Obama, groups on the call coordinated attacks on her recalling questions about her 1993 article and noting her seat on the board of a medical device maker, in which she also owned stock.
The results of the new coordination are perhaps most obvious in the ongoing effort to saddle the Republican Party and its allies with radio host Rush Limbaugh’s hope that Obama “fails.” The Center for American Progress’s blog seized on Limbaugh’s “fail” comment early, as did congressional Democrats, and participants in the call drove it well beyond its obvious political range.
Media Matters, for instance, launched a “Limbaugh Wire” http://mediamatters.org/limbaughwire/; and even the League of Conservation Voters Tuesday released a video in which Limbaugh’s attacks on conservation and global warming theory are played over the talking heads of Republican leaders.
“We know the oil and coal industry are going to spend $20 million this year trying to get their message out there, so us coordinating to get our message out in terms of trying to advance a progressive agenda is a huge opportunity,” said Navin Nayak, the director of the global warming project at the League of Conservation Voters.
Though White House officials do not participate in the calls, Palmieri said, the new infrastructure is closely tied to the White House. Podesta directed Obama’s transition, and Americans United for Change exists largely to run ads promoting the White House agenda. Some on the left, however, remain skeptical of the White House’s embrace.
“When something works for us we'll pick up on it anyway, like the Rush Limbaugh story -- we don't need to be told,” said Jane Hamsher, the creator of the liberal blog Firedoglake. “I think we serve everyone better if we maintain our independence and preserve our ability to pick up on popular sentiment like that, rather than just bang on the same drum everyone else is.”
© 2009 Capitol News Company, LLC
Now the day’s top blogs:
First an overview:
1.
http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=321749837573290
Stimulating Illegals
INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
Economy: At least 300,000 of those stimulus jobs will go to illegal aliens who are likely to send that money home to their native countries. Just whose economy are we stimulating?
The stimulus package is supposed to stimulate the American economy and create American jobs, but missing from it are measures to guarantee that. As a result, say both the Heritage Foundation and the Center for Immigration Studies, hundreds of thousands of these jobs will go to illegal aliens, and much of the money they earn will not be spent here.
The original House version included a provision requiring employers to check registration status with the E-Verify system before hiring. This provision was missing from the Senate bill and was not in the final version sent to President Obama.
2.
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2009/03/12/20090312fbi-obama0312-ON.html?source=nletter-news
Source: Obama official on leave after FBI raids
Associated Press
WASHINGTON — An aide to President Barack Obama is on leave from his White House job after the FBI raided his old District of Columbia government office Thursday, arresting a city employee and a technology consultant on corruption charges, a White House official said.
3.
Obama's neighborhood pal now an accused cop-killer
"There is no statute of limitations on murder"
Barack Obama's relationship with Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers nearly sabotaged his presidential campaign when it came to light. Only the protection of the mainstream media, which refused to report on the Obama-Ayers relationship, salvaged his run for the presidency.
After all, Ayers is an unapologetic terrorist and a member of a group that killed at least three police officers.
The Weather Underground also supported other radical groups that murdered nine other police officers in cold blood
Now the complete articles:
1.
http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=321749837573290
Stimulating Illegals
INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
Economy: At least 300,000 of those stimulus jobs will go to illegal aliens who are likely to send that money home to their native countries. Just whose economy are we stimulating?
The stimulus package is supposed to stimulate the American economy and create American jobs, but missing from it are measures to guarantee that. As a result, say both the Heritage Foundation and the Center for Immigration Studies, hundreds of thousands of these jobs will go to illegal aliens, and much of the money they earn will not be spent here.
The original House version included a provision requiring employers to check registration status with the E-Verify system before hiring. This provision was missing from the Senate bill and was not in the final version sent to President Obama.
The Obama administration has also delayed at least until May 21 a Bush administration executive order requiring federal contractors to use E-Verify. It was supposed to take effect in January.
Last Tuesday, 75 representatives of both parties sent a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Minority Leader John Boehner urging them "to protect taxpayers and legal workers by including these critical jobs protection provisions in any future economic recovery legislation."
In a February report by the Heritage Foundation, senior research fellow Robert Rector looked at the 2 million construction jobs the stimulus is supposed to create. "Without specific mechanisms to ensure that workers are U.S. citizens or legal immigrants authorized to work," he concluded, "it is likely that 15% of these workers, or 300,000, would be illegal immigrants."
Steven Camarota, director of research for the Center for Immigration Studies, comes up with the same figure for construction jobs based on data from the U.S. Census Bureau's Current Population Survey and other independent findings that 15% of all construction workers in the U.S. are illegal aliens.
Camarota says the total number of stimulus jobs going to illegals may be higher. At least a million more jobs are said to be created by the stimulus, and with 5% of the overall U.S. work force consisting of illegals, they could get another 50,000 non-construction jobs.
Rector sees another downside. "The fact that illegal aliens send a substantial portion of their earnings abroad reduces the stimulus effect that their employment has in the United States," he says.
Remittances, Mexico's second-largest source of foreign income after oil, dipped 3.6% to $25 billion in 2008, compared with $26 billion the previous year, according to Mexico's central bank. Will our stimulus improve Mexico's economy?
"It's outrageous that in a bill designed to provide employment for Americans, Congress has deliberately chosen to allow jobs to be given to illegal immigrants," Rector adds.
We think so too.
2.
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2009/03/12/20090312fbi-obama0312-ON.html?source=nletter-news
Source: Obama official on leave after FBI raids
Associated Press
WASHINGTON — An aide to President Barack Obama is on leave from his White House job after the FBI raided his old District of Columbia government office Thursday, arresting a city employee and a technology consultant on corruption charges, a White House official said.
The charges were lodged against the two men at a federal court hearing as the FBI finished searching the city's technology office, which was led until recently by Obama's new computer chief, Vivek Kundra.
Kundra is on leave from his White House job until further details of the case become known, according to a White House official speaking on condition of anonymity because the official did not want to publicly discuss personnel matters.
At the court hearing, Yusuf Acar, the acting chief security officer in the city's technology office, was ordered held without bond pending a hearing Tuesday. Prosecutors said $70,000 in cash was found during a search of Acar's Washington home and that he posed a serious flight risk.
Technology consultant Sushil Bansal of Dunn Loring, Va., was released but was ordered not to conduct overseas financial transactions or leave the Washington metropolitan area. Bansal is due back in court on April 21, and prosecutors said they were hopeful that a plea agreement could be reached in his case.
Acar worked under Kundra, Obama's pick to coordinate federal computer systems. Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs would not say whether the White House knew the investigation was under way when it named Kundra last week, but called the case “a serious matter.”
Mafara Hobson, a spokeswoman for Washington Mayor Adrian Fenty, said she was “very confident” Kundra is not a target of the investigation.
Bansal's lawyer, David Lamb declined to comment. It was not immediately clear who would represent Acar in the case.
Acar, a 40-year-old native of Turkey, had a $127,468-a-year position purchasing the city's computer equipment and lining up contract workers for numerous city agencies, according to court documents.
Authorities say Acar and Bansal, along with others, defrauded the government through a variety of schemes, including billing the city for items that were never delivered and “ghost” contract employees who did not work. The scheme involved Acar approving falsified bills and splitting the money with vendors including Bansal, who submitted them, court documents alleged.
Bansal, a native of India who turns 42 next week, is a former city employee and the founder and chief executive of Advanced Integrated Technologies Corp. The company has offices in Washington and India and did more than $13 million in business with the District of Columbia government in the past five years, according to court documents.
One contract involved providing computer support for the city's Department of Motor Vehicles. The company also was given a contract to upgrade the city's human resources computer records and sold virus detection software to the city.
In August Bansal was named entrepreneur of the year by the Association of Indians in America.
An FBI affidavit supporting the arrest warrants indicates that several other businesses and individuals were involved in the alleged schemes, but the other people are identified only by their initials.
The FBI worked with another employee in the city's technology office, who was in on the scheme and secretly recorded conversations with Acar and Bansal as part of the investigation.
In 2007, federal investigators uncovered a massive embezzlement scheme in the city's tax office.
Men and women dressed in suits and wearing latex gloves could be seen entering and leaving the glass-enclosed lobby of the Office of the Chief Technology Officer on Thursday afternoon.
Even as the raid was taking place, Kundra was giving a speech at FOSE, an annual government technology expo. Kundra said part of his focus is to change the way the government buys technologies from vendors.
3.
Obama's neighborhood pal now an accused cop-killer
"There is no statute of limitations on murder"
Barack Obama's relationship with Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers nearly sabotaged his presidential campaign when it came to light. Only the protection of the mainstream media, which refused to report on the Obama-Ayers relationship, salvaged his run for the presidency.
After all, Ayers is an unapologetic terrorist and a member of a group that killed at least three police officers.
The Weather Underground also supported other radical groups that murdered nine other police officers in cold blood.
The relationship between Ayers and Obama was not a casual one. From 1995 to 2001, they served together as directors of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. This leftist board (funded by a wealth Republican, interestingly enough) doled out more than $100 million, much of it to radical groups. In fact, during his failed run for Congress in 2000, Obama claimed this experience with Ayers as his central qualification.
Ayers and Obama also served on the board of the Woods Fund, which funneled money to controversial groups like ACORN -- infamous for rampant voter registration fraud.
Ayers, to this day, is unapologetic about his terrorism and his revolutionary goals. He vocally supports the overthrow of the U.S. government on his blog. And in his memoir, Ayers declines to specify the bombings he participated in, writing that "some details cannot be told."
Speaking at the National Press Club today, representatives of the San Francisco Police Officers Association stated that they believe Bill Ayers and his wife Bernadine Dohrn arranged the 1970 nail-bombing that killed San Francisco police officer Sgt. Brian McDonnell.
Larry Grathwohl, an FBI informant who infiltrated the Weather Underground, stated, "I have testified, spoken, and written about the involvement of Weather Underground terrorist leaders Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn in [the] bombing on February 16, 1970, [that] took the life of Sergeant Brian V. McDonnell. There is no statute of limitations on murder."
"Bill Ayers had debriefed me regarding every aspect of the plans we had developed before telling me I was being reassigned to Madison. Bill’s two major requirements were that the bombs go off at the same time and that the greatest number of police officers would be killed or injured. Both bombs were to contain fence staples or roofing nails to ensure this effect. Bill Ayers didn’t care if innocent people were also killed or injured. Bill had even gone so far as to tell us that the bomb at the 13th precinct should be placed on a window ledge."
Retired San Francisco police officer James Pera also spoke earlier today. "I was working the 7pm to 3am shift, with my partner, Bob Fife... While on Haight Street and several blocks from the station, an emergency call came out over our police radio... "406 Park Station. Send six ambulances. We just had a bombing!"'"
"...There had, indeed, been a bombing and the first thing that my eyes beheld were two of my fellow police officers, Ron Martin and Al Arnaud... Martin and Arnaud had been about to enter their police vehicle... when the bomb went off, its deadly fragments barely missing them. Fortunately, for them, the Sergeant’s Police vehicle... took the brunt of the outward blast, saving the two officers from death."
"...My partner and I stood outside, cordoning off the area, for several hours, as investigators and brass arrived and started collecting evidence and towing vehicles. We watched as the ambulances came and left, carrying our wounded coworkers... Once released from perimeter security, I went into the station, along with my partner and saw first-hand the carnage that the bomb had reaped upon my work place and friends..."
"...Blood was all over the floor, desks and walls and was heaviest where Sergeant Brian V. McDonnell suffered mortal wounds to his neck, eyes, face and brain... The station looked like a scene one might expect to see in a war, with wounded officers, blood, shattered windows, damaged walls, floors and ceilings, but then -- it was a war..."
"The bomb had been set to explode at the change of watch, when the largest number of police officers would be in the business office, coming on and going off duty. The oncoming officers would be filling out hot sheets, making entries in their notebooks and checking teletypes for wanted criminals and crimes that had occurred. The officers going off duty would be wrapping up their paper work and finishing up reports, prior to reporting off duty... The bomb went off prematurely by a few minutes and many of the officers were still upstairs in the locker room or just coming down and the office wasn't loaded with the full capacity that it would have been a few minutes later."
"...When the bomb exploded, Sergeant Brian McDonnell, along with Officer Fogarty, took the brunt of the blast. The sergeant took shrapnel, which consisted of barbed wire fence post staples through his eyes, throat and brain. Officer Fogarty took nineteen of the staples in his body, miraculously none of them hitting any vital organs, but blinding him in one eye, an injury that ultimately led to his retiring on disability."
"...the sergeant died a couple of days later, without regaining consciousness. He left a wife and two kids. He was forty-five years old, his life snuffed out by the murderous cowards of the Weather Underground... Think about the tragedy that befell the McDonnell family, a family that had already lost two other members, in the line of duty, the first in the 1930s and another in the 1950s... Think of Sgt. McDonnell, his life stolen from him, at the age of 45, and his wife and children being left without a father and husband..."
"Think about all the wounded and maimed officers and their families... Think about the ignorant and clueless people who believe that just because this incident happened thirty nine years ago that "we should just all move on and let the past stay in the past." I've got news for them. The dead don't rise. They stay dead."
"Think about Sergeant McDonnell and all the murdered and maimed victims, of the Weather Underground, when you see the smug, unrepentant face of the sniveling, gutter crawling rat, who goes by the name of Professor Bill Ayers... Think about his loathsome wife, Bernardine Dohrn, who has been named by former undercover informant, Larry Grathwohl, as the wretched sub-human scumbag who planted the bomb that killed Sergeant McDonnell."
"Think about these two criminals, Ayers and Dohrn, who got off on technicalities because a judge ruled that evidence against them collected by the FBI was inadmissible... Think about Ayers' statement, after the dismissal of criminal charges, when he said, 'Guilty as hell and free as a bird.' ....Think about Ayers and Dohrn and their positions, as educators, at two different prestigious universities, the University of Illinois at Chicago and Northwestern University..."
"...Think of how they have access to the minds of impressionable young students, in the controlled environment of academia, free to spread the radical ideas that they espouse, some of which were developed and nurtured on trips to Cuba and in consultation with agents from other communist countries. Think about the role that they play as they endeavor to corrupt a whole new generation of young, impressionable people, to their radical Marxist ideas..."
"...Think about how Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn and others of their ilk have lived and prospered in our society, a society that they had hoped to destroy..."
"You will find that under those calm facades and intellectual masks, that Bill Ayers and his wife, Bernardine Dohrn, are vicious, cowardly terrorists."
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