DOES TIME MAGAZINE STILL MATTER?

Propaganda rag sinks to even lower low

Time: ‘Does the Constitution Still Matter?
By Doug Powers

In the past several months, Time Magazine Editor Richard Stengel has answered and asked the same question, in that order.

From the Daily Caller:

On Thursday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Time magazine editor Richard Stengel presented the cover of his new July 4 issue, which features the U.S. Constitution going through a paper shredder and asks does the document still matter. According to Stengel, it does, but not as much anymore.

“Yes, of course it still matters but in some ways it matters less than people think,” Stengel said on “Morning Joe.” “People all the time are debating what’s constitutional and what’s unconstitutional. To me the Constitution is a guardrail. It’s for when we are going off the road and it gets us back on. It’s not a traffic cop that keeps us going down the center. And what our politics are about – politics are about conflict…”

Stengel also claimed the Constitution doesn’t limit the federal government:

“If the Constitution was intended to limit the federal government, it sure doesn’t say so…The truth is, the Constitution massively strengthened the central government of the U.S. for the simple reason that it established one where none had existed before.”

The real answer to the question “does the Constitution still matter” is an unqualified “yes.” But don’t take my word for it. Here’s part of a conversation between Stengel and Howard Kurtz from December of 2010 concerning Time’s publication of Wikileaks documents:

KURTZ: But Rick, you say right here in your editor’s note in “TIME” magazine that these documents released by WikiLeaks “harm national security,” and that Assange meant to do so.

STENGEL: Right. I know. But there’s no way around that.

I mean, I believe that’s Assange’s intention. I believe on balance that they have been detrimental to the U.S. But our job is not to protect the U.S. in that sense. I mean, the First Amendment protects us in terms of releasing this information which does enlighten people about the way the U.S. conducts foreign policy.

If the Constitution did not limit the size and power of government the First Amendment would be moot. Would Stengel be satisfied if the federal government had claimed it had a right to edit parts of his Wikileaks story on the grounds that “the First Amendment matters, but not as much anymore”?

Of course the Constitution matters. Implying that it matters less in every area of life other than journalism is an ultimately self-defeating position, as the “free press” may someday discover thanks to “living Constitution” advocates.

It’s a bad idea to consider the Constitution to be a “guard rail” and then give the government the size and power to move it wherever they like (and probably subsequently brag about how many jobs it saved or created).

Related: Don’t miss the featured article in the next issue of Constitution Monthly: “Does Time Magazine Still Matter?”

**Written by Doug Powers

"Because Bombing Foreigners to Smithereens Is Only Wrong When Republicans Do It!"

Democrats: The Warmonger Party

Today, 149 Democrats voted against defunding Obama’s Illegal War™ in Libya. Our nation now awaits the onset of Code Pink peace protests against such bloodthirsty imperialist warmongers as Nancy Pelosi, Raul Grijalva and Debbie Wasserman-Schultz.

U.S. forces will continue their effort to kill Moammar Qaddafi.

White House spokesman H.R. Haldeman strenuously denied reports that President Obama was planning to re-institute the military draft, mobilize the National Guard, mine Haiphong harbor and invade Cambodia.

Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist could not be reached for comment.

RE-ELECT OBAMA
Because Bombing Foreigners to Smithereens
Is Only Wrong When Republicans Do It!

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Dem. Rep’s Surprising Anti-Obama Speech: President ‘Becoming an Absolute Monarch’

Dem. Rep’s Surprising Anti-Obama Speech: President ‘Becoming an Absolute Monarch’
by TMH

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Read more at The Blaze…

Another Hamas kiddie show teaching children to slaughter Jews

Another Hamas kiddie show teaching children to slaughter Jews

This one is more recent than the last one, from just a couple of years ago. Still terribly vile and hate-filled:

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Nassur, the bear puppet host on a Hamas children's TV program, uses different words for "slaughter" to describe how to rid Israel of Jews.
First, the bear states that all Jews must be "erased from our land." Later he adds, "We want to slaughter them, Saraa, so they will be expelled from our land." He repeats, "...We'll have to [do it] by slaughter." He first uses the Arabic expression for "slaughter," "Nidbah-hom," and later uses the word "Shaht."

Transcript from the children's program Tomorrow's Pioneers:
Nassur: "There won't be any Jews or Zionists, if Allah wills. They'll be erased."
Saraa: "Chased away."
Nassur: "And just like we will visit the Qaaba [in Mecca]... everyone will visit Jerusalem."
[Seven-year old Palestinian child on phone tells how his father, a member of the Hamas Al-Qassam Brigades, "died as a Shahid (Martyr)."]
Nassur to child on phone: "What do you want to do to the Jews who shot your father?"
Child on phone: "I want to kill them."
Saraa: "We don't want to do anything to them, just expel them from our land."
Nassur: "We want to slaughter (Nidbah-hom) them, so they will be expelled from our land, right?"
Saraa: "Yes. That's right. We will expel them from our land using all means."
Nassur: "And if they don't want [to go] peacefully, by words or talking, we'll have to [do it] by slaughter." (Shaht)
[Al-Aqsa (Hamas) TV, Sept. 22, 2009]

http://palwatch.org/main.aspx?fi=472&fld_id=473&doc_id=1340

Pro Tip to Jews...... Kill or be killed!

Forget Cigarettes, These are the Warning Labels America Needs

Given their love of warning labels and the current state of the hard left Democrat Party, I would propose placing at least one of the following warning stickers on every voting machine in America.

Hat tips: Left Coast Rebel, Mark Levin and Doug Ross.

Top 10 Examples Proving Obama Wants High Energy Prices

Top 10 Examples Proving Obama Wants High Energy Price

You may have noticed that gas prices are sky-high as Recovery Summer II begins, and wondered why the cost for a fill-up has more than doubled since President Obama took office, even as the economy remains in the tank. It shouldn’t be a surprise, as Obama has made it clear all along that higher gas prices can help usher in his green utopia of windmills, solar panels and unicorns—all for the sake of his environmental backers. Here are the Top 10 Examples Proving Obama Wants High Energy Prices:

1. Energy dollars wasted on pricey green jobs: During his acceptance speech at the 2008 Democratic National Convention, Barack Obama promised that if elected President, he would “invest $150 billion over the next decade in renewable energy—an investment that will lead to new industries and 5 million new jobs.” Nearly a quarter of the way into that dream, Obama’s own Council of Economic Advisers says that only 225,000 green energy jobs were created or “saved” after an $80 billion down payment from the stimulus package—an astounding $335,000 per job. The President has consistently called for funding his green job plans with measures that would increase the cost of using fossil-fuel energy for everyone.

2. Energy secretary favors higher gas prices: Perhaps the strongest indication that Obama wants higher gas prices is the fact that he appointed Steven Chu as energy secretary. Before his nomination, Chu told the Wall Street Journal, “Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe,” which are considerably higher than the U.S. due to steep levels of taxation. The administration’s obsessive push for alternative fuels prompted the recent release of a report from California Rep. Darrell Issa’s House Government Oversight Committee titled “Rising Energy Cost: An Intentional Result of Government Action.”

3. Pushed cap and tax: In remarks made in January 2008, Obama said that under his cap-and-trade proposal, "energy prices would necessarily skyrocket." Despite that stark admission, he went ahead and made passage of the massive energy bill a cornerstone of his domestic agenda. While the bill passed the House, it died in a Democratic-controlled Senate as Rust Belt liberals bailed due to the economic damage it would have caused their states and higher energy costs everywhere.

4. EPA’s carbon-dioxide regulatory grab: After Republican gains in Congress during the 2010 midterm elections, hopes were dashed for a legislative revival of Obama’s cap-and-trade proposal (see No. 4). Never mind. Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency has decided to take matters into its own hands and implement similar measures administratively, mainly by regulating carbon-dioxide emissions as a pollutant.

5. Gov’t Motors seeks gas tax for slumping Volt sales: Whoa, ho! Here’s a surprise. General Motors Chief Executive Officer Dan Akerson wants a $1 per gallon gas tax on consumers in order to help boost sales of its Chevy Volt, an electric car that nobody is buying. After taking a government bailout, the automaker needs more taxpayer money for its ridiculous venture. Don’t even ask about the Volt’s limited mileage range or its miles-per-gallon in cold weather.

6. Bankrupting the coal industry: During his presidential campaign, Obama made clear his vision: Energy companies must pay. In an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, Obama said: “So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can. It's just that it will bankrupt them because they're going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that's being emitted.” Better get those windmills up and running.

7. Oil company tax to fund clean energy: In President Obama’s 2011 State of the Union address, he called for an Apollo project for clean energy, and wanted to “eliminate the billions in taxpayer dollars we currently give to oil companies” and use the money to subsidize costly and sometimes unproven clean-energy technology. That’s a formula for higher gas prices because the money he claims that taxpayers “give” to the oil companies is mostly tax breaks to enable companies to find new areas for future drilling.

8. Stifles U.S. oil drilling, while subsidizing Brazil’s: The BP oil spill prompted the President to impose a drilling moratorium in the Gulf making deepwater drilling permits impossible to obtain. So when oil companies moved their rigs to areas off the coast of Brazil where they were welcomed, Obama offered billions in U.S. taxpayer money to aid the venture, creating new jobs in South America. By refusing to allow U.S. energy sources to be developed, the President is ensuring increased reliance on expensive and volatile foreign oil.

9. Blocking Canadian pipeline: Canada is trying to run a pipeline from its energy-rich tar sands in Alberta to refineries in Texas and Oklahoma. Leave it to Obama’s State Department to throw a monkey wrench into the project, stalling approval for the jobs- and energy-producing venture with the support of environmentalists opposed to the methods used to extract the tar.

10. Energy hypocrisy: Like Al Gore, who preaches about reducing greenhouse-gas emissions while consuming enormous amounts of energy for his personal use, President Obama is using up all the energy he can. His frequent global excursions and vacations with his large entourage gobble up enough energy to power a small town, or even John Edwards’ house. All the more galling as he recently lectured Georgetown University students to cut back on their gasoline consumption. The double standard only highlights his lack of a real energy policy other than to inflate tires and change lightbulbs.

Big Three Networks Ignore Obama's Medal of Honor Screw-Up

Big Three Networks Ignore Obama's Medal of Honor Screw-Up
By Geoffrey Dickens

Barack Obama's confusing one living American war hero with a fallen one he honored in 2009, has been completely ignored by the Big Three Networks shows, including the same NBC Nightly News that threw a fit over Sarah Palin's recent recounting of an event over 200 years ago, Paul Revere's ride.

On Thursday, at Fort Drum, New York, as reported by the Military Times, Obama told the 10th Mountain Division he had the privilege of meeting "a comrade of yours, Jared Monti" adding it was "the first person who I was able to award the Medal of Honor to who actually came back and wasn't receiving it posthumously." Turns out Monti did receive it posthumously, as Obama presented the award to his parents at a White House ceremony in 2009. After CBN inquired about the gaffe, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney clarified that the President had confused Monti with "Salvatore Giunta, who was the first living recipient of the Medal who served in Afghanistan."

This insensitive blunder by the President was not covered the Big Three Network evening news shows on Wednesday and received zero stories on Thursday's morning shows.

NBC Nightly News, which spent three straight nights mocking Palin on her Revere account, as reported by the MRC's Rich Noyes, ignored Obama's mistake, even as Jim Miklaszewski played clips from the very Fort Drum speech in which Obama made his screw-up. While CBS Evening News also covered Obama's event with the troops they too failed to report Obama's error. On ABC's World News with Diane Sawyer there wasn't even a story on Obama at Fort Drum, but they did air bits of a David Muir interview with First Lady Michelle Obama which Sawyer teased this way: "And still ahead, right here on World News, the First Lady talks to David Muir, what she wants for her daughters when they fall in love."

The following are the relevant excerpts from the June 23 editions of the CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News and ABC World News:

NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams

BRIAN WILLIAMS: Last night President Obama spelled out his plan for withdrawing 33,000 U.S. troops from Afghanistan, bringing them home by next summer. Today the President wasted on time. He hit the road to sell this plan, while back in Washington some of America's military brass weighed in on what they think of it. More tonight from our Pentagon correspondent Jim Miklaszewski.

BARACK OBAMA ENTERING ROOM: At ease everybody.

JIM MIKLASZEWSKI: President Obama took his new strategy today to the Army's 10th Mountain Division at Fort Drum, New York.

OBAMA: Thank you everybody.

MIKLASZEWSKI: The division which led the surge of 33,000 additional forces into Afghanistan. The President tried to assure these soldiers that his plan to now begin withdrawing U.S. troops would not put them or the gains they fought for, at additional risk.

OBAMA: To all of you who are potentially gonna be redeployed, just know that your commander-in-chief has your back.

CBS Evening News with Scott Pelley

SCOTT PELLEY: President Obama said today the withdrawal from Afghanistan will not mean giving up the gains that America has fought for. He was speaking to some of the men and women who have fought the most at Fort Drum. Combat brigades from the 10th Mountain Division had deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan 16 times in the 10 years. At this historic turning point in the war we asked Mandy Clark what the troops in Afghanistan are saying and she found them at the hospital at the Bagram Airbase - the first stop for wounded warriors on a long trip home.

ABC World News With Diane Sawyer

DIANE SAWYER: And still ahead, right here on World News, the First Lady talks to David Muir, what she wants for her daughters when they fall in love.

...

DAVID MUIR: All of the children here, when you walk into a room their faces light up and back home we see the same thing, all of your work with children. And I'm curious, politics aside, if I could ask you personally if you would like another four years to continue your work as First Lady?

Biggest Spending House Speaker in History: Tax Cuts Produce Deficits, Not Jobs

Biggest Spending House Speaker in History: Tax Cuts Produce Deficits, Not Jobs
**Written by Doug Powers

What do you think… should we give her the gavel back? I’m in the middle on that… somewhere in between “not in a billion years” and “never, no matter how long.”

CNN Political Ticker:

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-California, said Friday that history has shown that tax cuts produce deficits, not jobs, and questioned the patriotism of those at the receiving end of generous corporate tax breaks.

“All this talk about tax cuts. The – in the Bush years the Republicans said that tax cuts will produce jobs. They didn’t. They produced a deficit,” Pelosi told CNN Chief Political Correspondent Candy Crowley.

When Crowley responded that two wars also contributed to the deficit, Pelosi assented, “two unpaid for wars.”

“What are these people not patriotic?” Pelosi continued.

“They want their special interest tax cuts, and they don’t want to pay for the war in Iraq to protect our great country and our freedom,” Pelosi said in an interview set to air Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union.

Maybe there are some who don’t want to pay for the war in Iraq because they heard Nancy Pelosi call it a “grotesque mistake” and a “failure.” After all, some of those 8% who have a very favorable impression of Pelosi could have been easily swayed by her choice of words.

In any case, no Nancy, tax cuts don’t produce massive deficits — this is what produces massive deficits:

When the Pelosi Democrats took control of Congress on January 4, 2007, the national debt stood at $8,670,596,242,973.04. The last day of the 111th Congress and Pelosi’s Speakership on December 22, 2010 the national debt was $13,858,529,371,601.09 – a roughly $5.2 trillion increase in just four years. Furthermore, the year over year federal deficit has roughly quadrupled during Pelosi’s four years as speaker, from $342 billion in fiscal year 2007 to an estimated $1.6 trillion at the end of fiscal year 2010.

The 111th Congress, from January 2009 to January 2011, accumulated more debt than the first 100 congresses combined. Using Pelosi’s line of reasoning, this must mean that Obama and the Democrats cut taxes to levels not seen since the founding of the country.

Hypothetical: Would Pelosi be such a big U2 fan if they were a US-based band, or would she be calling them unpatriotic?

Van Jones Is Creating the Milli Vanilli of Tea Parties

Truther, Self-described communist, and former Obama Green Jobs Czar Van Jones has a new mission, to start a progressive version of the Tea Party movement. Just like the real tea party, the Van Jones creation is based on economics. There are major differences though, being a progressive movement its basic premise is a lie, and instead of being a bottom up grass roots organization like the tea party, the Van Jones version is top down similar to the progressive philosophy that everything must be run by a central government.

The Van Jones "tea party" is called “The American Dream Movement.” Jones is says he is forming the movement because liberal activists expressed frustration that they lacked the political power or media focus given to the conservative tea-party movement.

Does he really want the same media focus? That means his group will be known by some sort of sexual reference, slandered with untrue charges of racism or violence, and of course the official mainstream media attendance tally for any demonstration will equal one tenth of one percent of the real number.

A big theme of the Van Jones effort is Americans are being lied to, the federal government is not running out of money.
“We are being lied to,” Jones said. “We are not broke. We’re the richest country in the history of the world.”

The “Rebuild the Dream” website once echoed the same meme. “MoveOn Civic Action; The Other 98% teamed up to keep the message going: We Are Being Lied To,” read the movement’s mission statement on rebuildthedream.com. “The country isn’t broke and the last thing we should be doing is gutting workers’ rights and cutting vital services American families depend on.”
Just like the guy whose checking account is over drawn but denies it because he still has blank checks left.
“We think we can do what the tea party did,” Jones said in an interview with The Fix. “They stepped forward under a common banner, and everybody took them seriously. Polls suggest there are more people out there who have a different view of the economy, but who have not stepped forward yet under a common banner.”

“There's a lot of organizational muscle behind the initiative, and Van is one of the most inspiring figures in the progressive movement, so I'm looking forward to these efforts, and they certainly come at a time when Republican overreach has primed progressives to take action” said Markos Moulitas, the founder of the liberal blog network Daily Kos.
Jones launched his group last night with a one and a half hour long event live streamed from NY. He called the the fact that the US has a major debt and deficit problem “a dangerous lie” and led the crowd in chants of “America is not broke!”

Somebody should tell that to the CBO, who reported this week that our long term debt is going to doom the economy.

Without providing any facts, Jones compared fiscal conservatives to al Qaeda,
“Paul Ryan’s budget would knock out more critical American infrastructure than our sworn enemies ever dreamed of knocking out.
Most of his speech was the same old progressive schpeil, the rich don't pay their fair share, unions built middle-class America, people do not make enough money, yada, yada, yada. He even used the SHMOTUS' line about paying taxes being patriotic.

Jones' project demonstrates how little the progressives learned from the tea party movement. The tea party movement is all about empowering the individual, it would not have had the same passion and staying power if the organization and the message came down from a central organization. To this day there is not one united tea party group and the national organizations that do exist are more bottom up than top down.

Part of the reason the tea party movement grew is that voters were sick and tired of being lied to by their representatives and other politicians. Starting with an obvious lie, that the US is not being strangled by its debt, will not win them many supporters.

Despite what Van Jones and the progressive movement believes, Americans are not stupid. Sure The American Dream Movement may pick up some support at the beginning, but it wont take long to realize that the Van Jones-led group is to the tea party movement, what Milli Vanilli was to music. And in the end, Americans do not like fakers.

The Over-Employed and the Mal-Employed

Roughly 14 million people are formally labeled as unemployed, but “there’s probably 22 million to 23 million people who are unemployed, mal-employed or under-employed,” said Andrew Sum, an economics professor at Northeastern University in Boston, as reported by DailyCaller.com.

The professor didn’t define “mal-employed,” but I’m thinking it includes the over-employed—those in full-time jobs way over their heads who screw up life for the rest of us.

Consider Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve, who’s blown through nearly $2 trillion taxpayer dollars trying to fix the economy. He admitted Wednesday that he’s clueless about why the economy has a “soft patch,” and insists that Congress increase the debt ceiling. He said that “the Fed still had several tools at its disposal to pump up the economy.”

Can somebody get word to him that a monkey wrench isn’t a fiscal tool?

Next are members of the House of Representatives who supposedly have the expertise on gainful employment—but not so much in their own houses.

Rep. John F. Tierney (D-Mass.) sits on the House Committee on Education and the Workforce. He also tinkers at reforming the tax code. His wife Patrice, a jewelry designer, can’t attend his “Women Taking the Lead for Tierney” fundraiser because she’s under house arrest after pleading guilty to “aiding and abetting the filing of false tax returns by her brother,” according to Redstate.com.

Maybe her failed venture as a tax-preparer will revive her career as a jewelry designer. There’s a huge underserved market for designer GPS ankle bracelets.

Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) is understandably “committed to a full employment economy.” His wife will increase Detroit’s 11.1 percent unemployment rate when she completes her three-year federal prison sentence for bribery and corruption during her tenure on the Detroit City Council.

Conyers could create jobs by hiring a crew to mow his grass and paint his dilapidated house. Better still, he could stay home and do it himself. Instead, he’s in the People’s House pushing his 22-year-old reparations bill, “H.R. 3745, “Commission to Study Reparation Proposals for African Americans Act,” and trying to increase taxes on the rest of us.

Despite being kicked off the federal bench by the Senate following his impeachment by the House for bribery, Democrat Alcee Hastings got himself another federal job in 1992 representing Florida’s 23rd District in Congress. The Office of Congressional Ethics is investigating Hastings on a charge of sexually harassing a woman on his staff.

Rest assured. Hastings says he’s “committed to improving women’s lives, empowering them in the workforce, and ending gender inequality.”

Over in the taxpayer-funded “private” sector, Al Gore, CEO of Greening Gore, announced his latest theory on what’s overheating the planet—Women are stupid.

The Goracle said in a New York appearance Monday that we have to “stabilize the population. … You have to have ubiquitous availability of fertility management so women can choose how many children [they] have, the spacing of the children,” according to The DailyCaller.com.

The father of four is channeling the infamous population control eugenicist Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood. Gore wants girls and women educated about where babies come and where to go to get rid of them.

The average number of children under 18 per family household in the United States is .94. The peoples of Europe are dying in the literal sense of the word. In Germany and Italy the annual number of deaths exceeds the number of births. Gore should stop spreading his gasbag global warming theories and start funding rehab facilities for sexually harassed massage therapists.

“We now have more idle men and women than at any time since the Great Depression,” according to Mort Zuckerman, editor in chief of U.S. News & World Report. As the adage warns, however, some of the “idle” are busy in the “Devil’s workshop.”

New York Atheists President Ken Bronstein is hell bent on renaming a street that was named in honor of seven Brooklyn firefighters killed on 9/11. Bronstein claims that changing Richard Street to “Seven in Heaven Way” violates the “separation of church and state,” according to Fox News. He says that atheists have concluded “there’s no heaven and there’s no hell.” David Silverman, president of American Atheists, also wants the city to remove the sign. “It implies that heaven actually exists,” Silverman told Fox News Radio.

You can tell they’ve never been in a falling building, which is a lot like a foxhole.

Some over-employed lawyers on the Supreme Court, past and present, share the blame for opening the door to absurd “separation of church and state” claims such as Bronstein’s. The Court’s Establishment Clause jurisprudence is convoluted and virtually incomprehensible.

Lastly, we have a poster boy for Prof. Sum’s “mal-employed.”

A 65-year-old cross-dressing business consultant clad in women’s blue underwear, black stockings and spike heels boarded a US Airways flight from Ft. Lauderdale to Phoenix on June 9. I’m guessing he chose the TSA grope instead of the scan. One of several objecting passengers snapped his picture, a striking pose, indeed.

He doesn’t want his name published, according to the San Francisco Chronicle: “I have a lot at stake here. I'm a business consultant and would be extremely vulnerable to being discredited.” Yes, especially if his client is the Men’s Wearhouse.

It’s probably better if he stays employed. The last thing the jobless need is seeing this guy in line at the unemployment office.

And about that monumental mal-employment problem on Pennsylvania Avenue, don't get me started.

Janet M. LaRue

Willimantic CT Democratic/Socialist Party Catastrophe

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What a parasite 'entitlement' 'culture' did to a fine working class town. A microcosm of America today.

Sex slave at age 11, little girl bravely tells her horror tale to save others

Sex slave at age 11, little girl bravely tells her horror tale to save others
BY MIKE JACCARINO
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

It's been seven months since an 11-year-old vanished from her Bronx home for five days - but horrific details of how she was turned into a sex slave are just emerging.

Lured from home by a sexual predator, the fifth-grader was pimped out to a series of men in a lower East Side flat.

"One man gave me $700, another gave me $1,000 and another gave me $500," the girl told the Daily News, which is withholding her name.

"Maybe there were five or six men, in all."

The ordeal ended after the victim managed to call her grandmother.

When the phone rang, there was silence on the other end, but Yolanda Agostini knew it was the grade-schooler.

"Talk to me," Agostini pleaded. "If it's you, please tell me where you are."

Finally, after 20 minutes, a faraway voice murmured: "Mommy, it's me. They're hurting me. Please, I need you ... I'm in a house, I don't know where."

"Get out," Agostini ordered and the girl ran from her captors, who were sleeping in the next room, onto Delancey St.

Cops found her and doctors at Jacobi Medical Center determined she'd been raped. The girl told her family she had been forced to have sex with strangers.

The damage has been lasting. The girl is in treatment at a Westchester clinic and comes home only on weekends.

Five-foot-four with the bearing of an adult, she has brown eyes, a round face and shoulder-length black hair. She speaks matter-of-factly, but without eye contact.

"I want them to go through pain 24 hours a day," she said tearfully of her abductors while sitting in her family's living room in a northeast Bronx housing project.

"I want someone to make them do stuff the way they made me do stuff...I want them to go through what I went through. I think about nothing but anger."

Her story illustrates the grotesque underbelly of sex trafficking in the city - the cases that don't make headlines like the ordeal of a young Bronx runaway who was pimped out to ex-New York Giant Lawrence Taylor.

"This happens more times than society is willing to admit," said Gloria Allred, the famed lawyer for the 16-year-old girl in Taylor's case. Taylor got probation.

The NYPD reported 6,544 missing-kid cases - all but 100 involving runaways - last year, the state Division of Criminal Justice Services says. It solved 6,320.

Joe Mazzilli, a private investigator and former NYPD detective, says some 40% of the hundreds of missing kid and runaway cases he's worked on involve prostitution or pornography.

"There are very few cases that involve someone as young as 10 or 11 years old," he said. "But on the flip side, once they hit 13, there are thousands of cases like that. It's so sad."

"These girls are vulnerable," said Brian Conroy, chief of the NYPD's vice enforcement division. "You can't help but feel compassion. There are other girls out there in similar straits. We have to find them."

The Bronx 11-year-old was indeed vulnerable.

She and two sisters had been placed in Agostini's care after their mother was busted for marijuana possession; their father lives in Florida.

In August 2009, after Agostini, 48, was busted for drugs, the girl and her sisters went to a foster home in Hunts Point.

That's where she met Dawud McKelvin, 30.

"The [foster parent] let her sit on the front of the building by herself and that's how she met him," Agostini said. "I guess he was walking by and approached her."

After the charges against Agostini were dropped, she got the sisters back on Dec. 1, 2009.

The granddaughter - then just 10 - was secretly seeing McKelvin, who, cops say, preyed on her sexually.

"He threatened her, told her that if she ever told us about him he would kill me, her mother and her siblings," Agostini said. "He had her manipulated very well. He bent her mind."

It went on for months - until Sept. 14, when the girl failed to come home from school.

Police were called and helicopters searched from the sky while K-9 unit dogs sniffed Dumpsters.

"The worst thoughts go through your mind," Agostini said. "I asked God to hold her, protect her. So many things I promised God for her return."

"David," as the girl calls McKelvin, lured her into a car and "took me," she said. "He called me the day before and asked me if I wanted to come live with him."

She was taken to an apartment on W. 110th St. in Manhattan, where she was raped several times by McKelvin's cousin, Lee McKelvin, 37, court papers say.

From there, the youngster said, she was taken to the lower East Side, where she was held by a man named Frankie and two women named Tiny and Jenna.

Cops zeroed in on Dawud McKelvin, who had sent explicit photos of himself to Agostini's cell phone. He was charged with aggravated harassment but denied knowing the girl's whereabouts.

After she escaped, Dawud McKelvin was indicted on charges of rape and predatory sexual assault against a child and other crimes.

His lawyer, Jodi Morales of the Bronx Defenders, did not return calls for comment.

Lee McKelvin was indicted on charges of rape, criminal sexual assault and predatory sexual assault by a Manhattan grand jury. His Legal Aid lawyer did not return calls.

The girl prays for solace and hopes her story can save another young victim.

"If something bad is happening, open your mouth," she cautioned. "Tell your mom. Don't be scared. Don't ever be scared."

Obama's Unhostile War

Obama's Unhostile War
Stephanie Hessler

President Obama has distorted the plain meaning of a war powers statute to reach the conclusion that he does not need Congressional authorization for the military operation in Libya. Regardless of ones views on the Libyan mission, this legal tactic undermines the rule of law.

The War Powers Resolution, a 1973 law, requires the President to report to Congress "in any case in which United States Armed Forces are introduced...into hostilities or into situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances." The statute requires the President to "terminate any use of United States Armed Forces" within 60 days after hostilities begin unless Congress authorized the action. It allows for an additional 30-day extension for termination if there is no congressional consent after the 60-day mark.

On March 19th, the President ordered US armed forces to commence a military assault in Libya. Recognizing the obvious fact that the War Powers Resolution had been triggered, President Obama sent a letter to Congress on March 21st to comply with the law and explain his military action. But since then, he has failed to seek congressional approval, and meanwhile the 90-day extension deadline passed this Sunday.

As the deadline approached, President Obama had two valid options. He could ask for Congress's consent on Libya or he could have determined that the War Powers Resolution unconstitutionally infringes on his commander-in-chief powers. He did neither.

Instead, he made the implausible claim that he does not need Congress’s consent because United States Armed Forces are no longer engaged in "hostilities."

This will surely come as a shock to the service members deployed to Libya. The United States military has been bombing Muammar al-Qaddafi's compound; our bombing campaign has involved thousands of sorties; we have been firing missiles from drone aircrafts; we have helped target and destroy regime forces; our military has struck at Libyan air defenses; we provide aerial refueling to NATO forces; and we are supplying key intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance to our allies. According to the Obama administration, we have provided “unique assets and capabilities” that are "critical" to NATO’s operation. The cost of this is 10 million dollars a day with an estimated bill of 1.1 billion by the end of September.

Surely the Libyan people would also consider our actions decidedly “hostile.” Al-Qaddafi’s militants have had nearly a hundred US missiles dropped on them. Thousands of targets have been stuck. Numerous buildings have been shattered. And, thousands have been wounded or killed. It is hard to argue that this does not amount to "hostilities." But, Obama claims just that. In a report sent to Congress last week, the Obama Administration says that the Libyan mission falls short of “hostilities” in part because "U.S. operations do not involve sustained fighting or active exchanges of fire with hostile forces, nor do they involve the presence of U.S. ground troops, U.S. casualties or a serious threat thereof, or any significant chance of escalation into a conflict characterized by those factors."

In other words, because US troops are in little danger, there are no "hostilities." This is a non-sensical reading of the term. Under Obama’s interpretation, as soon as we switch from bombing with piloted fighter jets to sending missiles in drones, we have ceased "hostilities." But there should be little doubt that remote warfare is equally "hostile." Moreover, there is nothing in the common understanding of the word “hostilities” that suggests that both sides in a conflict must be equally at risk. Indeed, by this logic, President Obama could unilaterally decide to drop a nuclear bomb on Tripoli and that would not amount to “hostilities” under the War Powers Resolution.

Furthermore, even if risk to our troops is relevant to whether our actions are “hostile,” the conflict in Libya fails Obama’s test. As the Washington Post revealed this week, troops who fly planes over Libya or serve on ships off of its shores currently receive $225 a month in "imminent danger pay." Under Defense Department regulations, this means that the Pentagon has determined that those service members are “subject to the threat of physical harm or imminent danger because of civil insurrection, civil war, terrorism or wartime conditions.” The conclusion that our troops are in "imminent danger" is inconsistent with the conclusion that we are not involved in "hostilities," even under President Obama’s convoluted definition of the term.

But how could the President come up with such a preposterous reading of the plain language of the War Powers Resolution? Surely the Department of Justice would have advised him that this interpretation flies in the face of common sense?

Actually it did. This weekend, the New York Times revealed that Attorney General Eric Holder and Acting Head of the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) Caroline Krass advised the President that the United States is engaged in "hostilities" in Libya which require him to gain congressional consent under the War Powers Resolution. For nearly 80 years, OLC, an elite division of the Justice Department, has been the ultimate authority for providing detached legal advice to the President. As Eric Holder explained, OLC's advice is "the best opinions of probably the best lawyers in the [Justice Department]...It will not be a political process, it will be one based solely on our interpretation of the law." The President is not bound by OLC but it is extremely rare for a President to reject its legal advice and it is virtually unprecedented for him to do so on a question of statutory interpretation.

But this time, the Obama administration flouted OLC and orchestrated a results-based process. Once it was clear that OLC thought the President was legally bound to obtain congressional authority in Libya, the White House declined to ask it for a formal legal opinion. Instead, White House Counsel Robert F. Bauer invited lawyers from other departments to support his view (and presumably that of the President) that congressional consent was unnecessary. Such an outcome-based approach is bound to result in lawlessness since a President will almost always be able to find someone in his administration to tell him what he wants to hear.

It is especially striking that President Obama would go to such lengths to circumvent Congress's role on military matters, given his campaign rhetoric to the contrary. As a candidate, Obama said, "The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation." Military action should be "authorized and supported by the Legislative branch" and it is always best to have "the informed consent of Congress prior to any military action."

So much for all that. Under Obama's strained reading of the law, Congress's war power has essentially been nullified.

Stephanie Hessler is an adjunct fellow at the Manhattan Institute. She served as a national security and constitutional lawyer for the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Alleged abduction attempt leads to arrests of 16 residents allegedly in country illegally

Alleged abduction attempt leads to arrests of 16 residents allegedly in country illegally
By MARK MARONEY

Within hours of a Mexican man living here illegally trying to abduct a local 12-year-old girl, law enforcement officers scooped up 15 other Mexicans boarding at two city apartment complexes and working for a company that does surveying for the natural gas industry, federal and local authorities said Friday.

One of those men, Adrian Arriaga Castro, 27, of 345 W. Third St. faces charges of allegedly luring a child into a motor vehicle and harassment, according to an affidavit by Patrolman Marlin L. Smith II.

Castro's arrest and the detainment of the other Mexicans occurred when Smith responded shortly after 11 p.m. Thursday to a call about a girl being lured into a truck by a Hispanic man, police said.

Smith responded to the parking lot across from the River Valley YMCA in the 300 block of Elmira Street, after getting a call about a parent who has seen her 12-year-old daughter in a pickup truck with a man.

Smith spoke with the woman and her daughter and asked where the truck was at, and the girl and woman pointed toward a truck bearing a Texas license plate. The girl informed the officer that was the truck she was in. A records checked showed police the truck was registered to Castro of Houston, Texas.

The girl then told the officer she had seen the man before and waived to him. She also said she knew where the man lived, police said.

Castro had allegedly pulled his truck near her and opened the passenger's side door and began to speak in Spanish to her while gesturing for her to get into the vehicle, police said.

The girl said she got into the truck and that Castro allegedly began to talk to her, calling her "pretty," police said. The girl said Castro began to rub her arm, according to the affidavit. The girl told police she got out of the truck as her mother arrived and Castro ran in the direction of 345 W. Third St.

The girl then told police the direction he ran and police investigated the building.

The girl pointed toward Castro as the man who lured her into the vehicle, police said.

Castro was arraigned Friday morning about an hour before city police and officials with U.S. Immigration Customs and Enforcement, an arm of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, raided the apartment in the 300 block of Elmira Street, police said. Castro was committed to the County Prison in lieu of $100,000 bail. Castro and a second man boarding at the apartments, Leoncio Rodriguez Monsivars, 23, were sought on federal immigration detainers issued by an agent from Miami, Fla., police said.

Castro is a Mexican national with no papers to prove he is in this country legally, according to police spokesman Capt. Raymond O. Kontz III. Through the investigation, police determined there were other men in the apartments boarding there without proof of citizenship who later indicated they worked for a gas company that does surveying in the area, Kontz said.

About 5:30 a.m. the operation to round up the immigrant workers commenced. Two vans carrying immigration agents took the men into custody without incident, Kontz said.

Officials with the U.S. Attorney's office in the Middle District confirmed to the Sun-Gazette the processing of the alleged illegals had not taken place Friday and they didn't know whether it would or when it would happen.

"ICE scoops them up, detains them and calls us if they want," an attorney with the court said. Attempts to reach ICE at its public law enforcement support center also were unsuccessful.

However, police identified the owner of the apartments who was leasing to the gas company as Enrique Castillo, 31, of 309 Elmira St.

The gas company was identified by police at GPX Surveyors of Texas. A GPX spokesman hung up the telephone when reached by the Sun-Gazette.

Castillo told the Sun-Gazette in a telephone interview he was not aware that illegal immigrants were renting the apartments. He leased to the gas company and trusted them, he said.

"They bring whoever they want," Castillo said. "The police were just doing their job. I don't know the whole situation. I am not for illegal aliens living here. I have been buying old buildings and fixing them up and have good relations with the city."

Castillo said he began leasing apartments about seven years ago and claims the gas company lease was signed about two months ago.

The apartments where the men were living were two- and three-bedroom units. The gas company was paying between $1,500 and $2,000 a month for the building lease and was on time with payments, he said.

City leaders are not happy about the alleged illegal aliens living in the city.

"This is an example of the illegal aliens exploring whether they can move into Williamsport," said Mayor Gabriel J. Campana.

Campana was joined by city Police Chief Gregory A. Foresman and Kontz for a brief statement inside City Hall following the arrests.

"I don't want illegal aliens living here and I want the gas industry or any companies to know - whether they are used for labor or living in housing complexes - we will do everything in our power to prevent this," Campana said.

"Landlords working with gas companies need to protect themselves," Kontz said. "It is the responsibility of the companies to ensure individuals they hire are legal citizens." But the landlords need to do a better job of knowing who is residing on their properties, he added.

Campana said he will be informing U.S. Rep. Lou Barletta, R-Hazleton, of the situation. Barletta, a fellow Republican, has had experience with problems associated with illegal aliens from his years as mayor of Hazleton.

"We don't want Williamsport to undergo the Hazleton dilemma," Foresman said. "Gas companies better make sure they do the proper background checks and anyone with suspicious backgrounds should not be hired."

Clearing the Air

Clearing the Air
Paul Driessen

Trying to correct all the disinformation about "mercury and air toxics" is a full-time job.

Ever since public, congressional and union anger and anxiety forced the Environmental Protection Agency to postpone action on its economy-strangling carbon dioxide rules, EPA has been on a take-no-prisoners crusade to impose other job-killing rules for electricity generating plants.

As President Obama said when America rejected cap-tax-and-trade, "there's more than one way to skin the cat." If Congress won't cooperate, his EPA will lead the charge. Energy prices will “skyrocket.” Companies that want to build coal-fired power plants will “go bankrupt.” His administration will “fundamentally transform” our nation’s energy, economic, industrial and social structure.

EPA’s proposed “mercury and air toxics” rules for power plants are built on the false premise that we are still breathing the smog, soot and poisons that shrouded London, England and Gary, Indiana sixty years ago. In reality, US air quality improved steadily after the 1970 Clean Air Act was enacted.

Moreover, since 1990, even as US coal use more than doubled, coal-fired power plant emissions declined even further: 58% for mercury, 67% for nitrogen oxides, 70% for particulates, 85% for sulfur dioxide – and just as significantly for most of the other 80 pollutants that EPA intends to cover with its 946-pages of draconian proposed regulations.

It’s time to clear the political air – and scrub out some of the toxic disinformation that EPA and its allies have been emitting for months, under a multi-million-dollar “public education” campaign that EPA has orchestrated and funded, to frighten people into supporting its new rules. PR firms, religious and civil rights groups, environmental activists and college students are eagerly propagating the myths.

EPA’s “most wanted” outlaw is mercury. But for Americans this villain is as real as Freddy or Norman Bates. To turn power plant mercury emissions into a mass killer, EPA cherry-picked studies and data, and ignored any that didn’t fit its “slasher” film script. As my colleague Dr. Willie Soon and I pointed out in our Wall Street Journal and Investor's Business Daily articles, US power plants account for just 0.5% of mercury emitted into North American’s air; the other 99.5% comes from natural and foreign sources.

Critics assailed our analysis, but the studies support us, not EPA – as is abundantly clear in Dr. Soon's 85-page report, available at www.AffordablePowerAlliance.org. The report and studies it cites fully support our conclusion that America’s fish are safe to eat (in part because they contain selenium and are thus low in biologically available methylmercury, mercury’s more toxic cousin), and blood mercury levels for American women and children are already below FDA’s and other agencies’ safe levels.

Not only are EPA’s mercury claims fraudulent. They are scaring people away from eating fish, which are rich in essential fatty acids. In other words, EPA is actively harming people’s nutrition and health.

One of the more bizarre criticisms of our analysis contends that mercury released in forest fires “originates from coal-burning power plants,” which supposedly shower the toxin onto trees, which release it back into the atmosphere during arboreal conflagrations. In fact, mercury is as abundant in the earth’s crust as silver and selenium. It is absorbed by trees through their roots – and their leaves, which absorb those 0.5% (power plant) and 99.5% (other) atmospheric mercury components through their stomata.

Another bizarre criticism is that mercury isn’t the issue. The real problem is ultra-fine (2.5 micron) soot particles. So now the “power plant mercury is poisoning babies and children” campaign was just a sideshow! Talk about changing the subject. Now, suddenly, the alleged health benefits and lives saved would come from controlling soot particles. That claim is as bogus as the anti-mercury scare stories.

Even EPA and NOAA data demonstrate that America’s air already meets EPA’s national standard, which is equivalent to disseminating an ounce of soot (about one and a quarter super-pulverized charcoal briquettes) across a volume of air one-half mile long, one-half mile wide and one story high. That’s less than you’re likely to get from sitting in front of a campfire, fireplace or wood-burning stove, inhaling airborne particulates, hydrocarbon gases and heavy metals. (Search the internet for Danish, EPA and Forest Service studies and advisories on these popular “organic” heating and cooking methods.)

Simply put, EPA’s proposed rules will impose huge costs – for few health or environmental benefits, beyond what we are already realizing through steadily declining emissions under existing regulations.

Besides bringing mythical health benefits, EPA claims its lower national emission standards will simply put all states and utility companies “on the same level playing field.” This pious rhetoric may be fine for states that get little electricity from coal. However, for states (especially manufacturing states) that burn coal to generate 48-98% of their electricity, the new rules will be job, economy and revenue killers.

Energy analyst Roger Bezdek estimates that utilities will have to spend over $130 billion to retrofit older plants, under the measly three year (2014) deadline that EPA is giving them, under a sweetheart court deal the agency worked out with radical environmental groups. On top of that, utilities will have to spend another $30 billion a year for operations, maintenance and extra fuel for the energy-intensive scrubbers and other equipment they will be forced to install.

Many companies simply cannot justify those huge costs for older power plants. Thus Dominion Power, American Electric Power and other utilities have announced that they will simply close dozens of generating units, representing tens of thousands of megawatts – enough to electrify tens of millions of homes and businesses. Illinois alone will lose nearly 3,500 MW of reliable, affordable, baseload electricity – with little but promises of intermittent pixie-dust wind turbine electricity to replace it.

Electricity costs are set to skyrocket, just as the President promised. Consumers can expect to pay at least 20% more in many states by 2014 or shortly thereafter. According to the Chicago Tribune, Illinois families and businesses will shell out 40-60% more! How’s that for an incentive to ramp up production and hire more workers? How’s that “hope and change” working out for families that had planned to fix the car, save for college and retirement, take a nice vacation, get that long-postponed surgery?

For a mid-sized hospital or factory that currently pays $500,000 annually for electricity (including peak-demand charges), those rate hikes could add $300,000 a year to its electricity bill. That’s equivalent to ten full-time entry-level employees … that now won't get hired, or will get laid off.

And it’s not just private businesses that will get hammered. As the Chi Trib notes, if the Chicago public school system wants to keep the lights on and computers running for two semesters, by 2014 it will get hit for an extra $2.7 million it doesn’t have, to pay for skyrocketing electricity costs.

Carry those costs through much of the US economy – especially the 26 states that get 48-98% of their electricity from coal-fired power plants – and we are talking about truly “fundamental transformations.” Millions will be laid off, millions more won't be hired, millions of jobs will be shipped overseas – and millions will endure brownouts, blackouts and social unrest.

EPA generally refuses to consider the economic effects of its regulations, except to insist that even its most oppressive rules will generate benefits “far in excess” of any expected costs. Perhaps it will at least consider the obvious, unavoidable and monumental adverse physical and mental health impacts of its rate hikes and layoffs – on nutrition, healthcare, depression, family violence and civil rights progress.

The Environmental Protection Agency has always had a horse-blinder attitude about environmental policy. Under Administrator Lisa Jackson, it has become a truly rogue agency.

It’s time for Congress, state legislatures, attorneys-general and courts to bring some balance and common sense back into the picture. Otherwise 9.1% unemployment – with Black and Hispanic unemployment even higher – will look like boom times.

Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow and Congress of Racial Equality, and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power - Black death.

Chicago water has high lead levels? Who knew?

McCarthy: NRA, Palin a part of 'government-sponsored racism'

Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy speaking to parishoners at St. Sabina Church in June. (YouTube)

WLSAM.com's Adam Zielinski Reports
CHICAGO (WLS) - Chicago's new top cop says the accessibility to firearms in America is an extension "of government-sponsored racism" that goes back to the days of slavery and Jim Crow.

Speaking to parishoners at St. Sabina Church earlier this month, Chicago Police Supt. Garry McCarthy took to the microphone after Father Michael Pfleger spoke about gun control.

McCarthy said the topic of race is a sensitive issue "because everybody's afraid of race" but that he wasn't afraid to broach the subject.

"> McCarthy was acting in his official capacity as Police superintendent, the citizens of Chicago have a right to hear and see what was said.

"So here’s what I want to tell you. See, let’s see if we can make a connection here. Slavery. Segregation. Black codes. Jim Crow. What, what did they all have in common? Anybody getting’ scared? Government sponsored racism."

"Now I want you to connect one more dot on that chain of the African American history in this country, and tell me if I’m crazy. Federal gun laws that facilitate the flow of illegal firearms, into our urban centers across this country, that are killing our black and brown children," he said.

"The NRA does not like me, and I’m okay with that. We’ve got to get the gun debate back to center, and it’s got to come with the recognition of who’s paying the price for the gun manufacturers being rich and living in gated communities," McCarthy said.

McCarthy illustrated his point by recalling a crime scene investigation while he was a police official in Newark, New Jersey where five children were shot, two of whom were killed. McCarthy said when he got home, he turned on his television to unwind and found an episode of "Sarah Palin's Alaska" showing.

"She was caribou hunting and talking about the right to bear arms. Why wasn't she at the crime scene with me?"

Politico Reporter Vogel Worked For Soros-Funded Group

Politico Reporter Vogel Worked For Soros-Funded Group
By Jeffrey Lord

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh. But of course.

You knew there had to be more.

Can you say "George Soros"????

The Media Research Center's Dan Gainor, the MRC VP for Business and Culture, points out an interesting fact about Politico's Ken Vogel.

We've posted here and here and here about the saga of the fake talk radio scandal. Pointing out that these stories are coming from Politico "reporter" Vogel who seems to have, as Jeff Poor over at The Daily Caller politely termed it, a "lefty" agenda.

Mark Levin, shy and retiring talk radio host that he is, posted this about Vogel.

But now there's more.

Gainor has provided more substance on Poor's instinct.

"Reporter" Vogel is in fact a former staffer for the George Soros funded Center for Public Integrity. Says Politico itself (albeit well down in the bio) in this staff bio found here:

Before joining POLITICO prior to its 2007 launch, Vogel reported for …. The Center for Public Integrity in Washington, D.C.

In other words, what we have here, unacknowledged to the general public by Politico, is a former Soros guy using the cyber pages of Politico to take a swing at the integrity of Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, the Heritage Foundation, Americans for Prosperity and so on. Everyone on the list being a Soros target in one form, fashion or another.

Did David Frum tell you this?

No.

Did Politico tell you this? No.

We're happy to tell you here, though. And a decided hat tip to Dan Gainor and the Media Research Center.

Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. We wouldn't want word to get out on how things really work at Politico, would we?

Oh yes…that headline cited earlier in our last post…the one Vogel had for his story on the judgeship race in Wisconsin that features the idea that a "conservative" is losing? It turns out Vogel is a graduate of that right-wing bastion known as…the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Gollllllllllllleeeeeeeeeeeeee Ned, as Gomer Pyle used to say. Imagine that. From the University of Wisconsin-Madison to George Soros to Politico, give or take a few stops.

And they wonder why the MSM has lost all credibility.

Our Blood, Our Sweat, Our Tears, Their Oil

John Ransom
Our Blood, Our Sweat, Our Tears, Their Oil

Obama moved on from incompetent to reckless when he released 30 million barrels of oil from the U.S. strategic reserve in a bid to save the summer tourist season.

But he told us he would do that in his first prime-time press conference.

"That whole philosophy of persistence, by the way, is one that I'm going to be emphasizing again and again in the months and years to come as long as I'm in this office. I'm a big believer in persistence."

I would agree. No one knows how to double-down on a mistake better than Obama.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner assured everyone that the administration’s decision to release 30 million barrels of oil from the U.S. strategic reserve wasn’t at all political. But he quickly reminded us that the decision was made in an attempt to cover another political mistake by Obama.

From Reuters:

"It's really as simple as this: there's a war in Libya, costs between one and two million barrels a day in lost output, I think 140 million barrels off the market so far," he said in response to a question at Dartmouth College, where he spoke on a panel.

"Reserves exist to help mitigate those kinds of disruptions and we helped to organize a coordinated global international response to help ease some of that pressure," he added.

Oh. It’s the war in Libya that’s the problem. Maybe admitting that Obama is prosecuting a war in Libya is a sign of progress, because the administration told us recently that there was no war in Libya. They told us it was just a time-limited, scope-limited, kinetic military activity.

If it’s a war that’s a problem, I have a suggestion for them: Perhaps the administration should “organize a coordinated global international response to” end the war in Libya.

You know?

I mean since they are organizing the “coordinated global international response” in prosecuting the war in Libya that caused the disruption in the first place.

What was the slogan? No blood for oil.

Soon Obama will be asking the country for more shared sacrifice, in a parody of Churchillian prose, by telling us that he can only offer us “blood, sweat, tears and oil.”

Our blood, our sweat, our tears, and Saudi, Brazilian and Canadian oil.

Would it be too much to ask for one (1) policy to come out of the administration that tries to leave the country better off than we were before the administration took over?

We have an energy policy, a foreign policy, a housing policy, a jobs policy, a banking policy, a healthcare policy, an environmental policy.

These same guys trot out a new policy every 30 days, to little effect.

We have economic policies in place that racked up a record debt and bought us nothing; we have rising inflation; we have slowing growth with no jobs recovery; we have a healthcare policy that’s increasing costs and regulatory burdens, not decreasing them; we have a housing market that’s going in the wrong direction; we have a banking policy that’s ensured that no money is lent, despite taxpayers funding a huge rescue of U.S. banks; we have an energy policy that’s made us more dependent on foreign oil, not less dependent; a policy that’s assured that our energy security is weaker not stronger.

In practically every field of government endeavor we are much, much worse off than we were two years ago.

I’m not asking for Obama to get everything right. But he could start by getting one (1) thing right.

Start with getting out of our way and letting us just live and work. Or propose a budget that gets…um…one (1) vote. Or enforce our laws.

There’s a great deal of room for improvement. It wouldn’t be that hard.

Because what he’s been doing so far, just ain’t right.

It’s reckless.

Union Apologists: Why Keep School Seniority? Older Teachers Have Mortgages!

Union Apologists: Why Keep School Seniority? Older Teachers Have Mortgages!
Kyle Olson

Some people can find an excuse for anything, including the ridiculous practice of “last in, first out,” which protects veteran teachers during periods of layoff in public schools.

We’ve heard unions complain that seniority must be maintained so that “administrators can’t discriminate against certain individuals (based on their age, ethnicity, sexual orientation, for example) or play favorites…”

Further, the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers theorized that efforts to dump the LIFO policy are “an effort to pit union members against each other, to get us sniping and backstabbing to keep our jobs.”

Perhaps the Philadelphia school board is simply interested in retaining the best teachers, regardless of seniority? Nah, that couldn’t be it.

Now consider this doozy from a Michigan newspaper reporter-acting-as-columnist, William F. Ast III:

“What's wrong with observing seniority when forced to lay off some employees?

“Employees with seniority are more likely to be established in the community. They are more likely to be paying mortgages. They are more likely to have children, with all the expenses and responsibilities associated with parenthood. Surely that's worth some consideration, and I'm a little tired of those who say loyal workers deserve no loyalty from the top.”

So teachers with mortgages deserve special job protections. They could be completely worthless at their job – a negative influence, in fact – but they have obligations they must meet. That means taxpayers and parents must tolerate their incompetence to make sure they don’t lose their house, right? Never mind the fact that children aren’t learning.

Unions have also claimed that seniority systems prevent school boards from laying off the highest paid teachers first.

This all, of course, runs contrary to common sense. School leaders want the best teachers, regardless of age, sex or race. Parents and students deserve no less. A seniority-based system is one of the greatest injustices in American public schools. It was adopted from auto companies and has no place in education.

With America’s academic performance in decline, we must make sure we have the best possible educators in every classroom. If that means a lesser teacher with a home mortgage loses their job, so be it.

The Philadelphia Federation of Teachers and Ast once again prove that the fight in America’s public schools really is about adult issues, not students.

Bill Gates Funds Gulen Islamist Movement

The Fethullah Gulen movement, which seeks to restore the Ottoman Empire, has found a friend and benefactor in Bill Gates of Microsoft fame. Mr. Gates is ranked the third wealthiest person on planet earth.

In 2007, through the Texas High School Project, the Gates Foundation shelled out $10,550,000 to the Cosmos Foundation, a Gulen enterprise that operates 25 publicly funded charter schools in Texas.

The Internal Revenue Service Form 990 for Cosmos shows that the Cosmos Foundation received $41,570,721 from taxpayers.

At present, there are 85 Gulan madrassahs (Islamic schools) in the United States, and all operate with public funding.

At the Gulen schools, students are indoctrinated in Turkish culture, language, and religion so that they may be of service in making Fethullah Gulan’s dream of a universal caliphate a reality. The madrassahs sponsor Turkish clubs, Turkish language societies, Turkish dance groups, and annual trips to Istanbul.

According to Stephen Schwartz of the Center for Islamic Pluralism, the 85 Gulen schools advance and promote Islamic beliefs; present the Ottoman Empire, which lasted from 1299 to 1923, as a golden age; and serve to rewrite history by denying the Armenian holocaust under the Turks during World War I.

Many of the teachers at these schools are Turkish émigrés with questionable credentials. Some possess H-1B non immigrant visas which should only be granted to individuals who possess “highly specialized knowledge in a field of human endeavor.” The female faculty members appear in their classrooms wearing hijabs and traditional Islamic attire.

Critics can’t understand why the schools are staffed with imported elementary and secondary school teachers when thousands of trained and certified American educators are begging for teaching positions. But are the schools really subversive?

Rachel Sharon-Krespin writes: “His (Gulen’s) followers target youth in the eighth through twelfth grades, mentor and indoctrinate them in the ışıkevi, educate them in the Fethullah schools, and prepare them for future careers in legal, political, and educational professions in order to create the ruling classes of the future Islamist, Turkish state.”

Even more telling is a comment from Nurettin Veren, Gulen’s right hand man for 35 years, who said: “These schools are like shop windows. Recruitment and Islamization are carried out through nigh classes.

The use of the Islamic practice of taqiyya or deception to mask the true nature of the schools has been upheld by Gulen himself. In a 1999 sermon, the Turkish pasha offered the following advice to his followers:

You must move in the arteries of the system without anyone noticing your existence until you reach all the power centers … until the conditions are ripe, they [the followers] must continue like this. If they do something prematurely, the world will crush our heads, and Muslims will suffer everywhere, like in the tragedies in Algeria, like in 1982 [in] Syria … like in the yearly disasters and tragedies in Egypt. The time is not yet right. You must wait for the time when you are complete and conditions are ripe, until we can shoulder the entire world and carry it … You must wait until such time as you have gotten all the state power, until you have brought to your side all the power of the constitutional institutions in Turkey … Until that time, any step taken would be too early—like breaking an egg without waiting the full forty days for it to hatch. It would be like killing the chick inside. The work to be done is [in] confronting the world. Now, I have expressed my feelings and thoughts to you all -in confidence … trusting your loyalty and secrecy. I know that when you leave here - [just] as you discard your empty juice boxes, you must discard the thoughts and the feelings that I expressed here.

Fethullah Gulen has been called the “most dangerous Islamist” in the world. He has amassed a fortune – thanks, in part, to the CIA – of $25 billion. This money has been used to transform the secular government of Turkey into an Islamic Republic under the Justice and Democratic Party (Adalet ve Kalkinma, AKP) – a party under the Gulen’s control.

Abdullah Gul, Turkey’s first Islamist President, is a Gulen disciple along with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and Yusuf Ziya Ozcan, the head of Turkey’s Council of Higher Education. Under the AKP, Turkey has transformed from a secular state into an Islamic country with 85,000 active mosques – one for every 350 citizens – the highest number per capita in the world, 90,000 imams, more imams than teachers and physicians – - and thousands of state-run Islamic schools.

Despite the rhetoric of European Union accession, Turkey has transferred its alliance from Europe and the United States to Russia and Iran. It has moved toward friendship with Hamas, Hezbollah, and Syria and created a pervasive anti-Christian, anti-Jewish, and anti-America animus throughout the populace.

Gulen has also established thousands of schools throughout central Asia and Europe. Because of their subversive nature, these schools have been outlawed in Russia and Uzbekistan. Even the Netherlands, a nation that embraces pluralism and tolerance, has opted to cut funding to the Gulen schools because of their imminent threat to the social order.

FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Paul L. Williams, Ph.D., is the author of The Day of Islam: The Annihilation of America and the Western World, The Al Qaeda Connection, and other best-selling books. He is a frequent guest on such national news networks as ABC News, CBS News, Fox News, MSNBC, and NPR. Visit his website at http://thelastcrusade.org/.

Paul Williams, PhD

Obama Pledges $500 Million To Reinvent U.S. Manufacturing

Obama Pledges $500 Million To Reinvent U.S. Manufacturing
(Keyword: "Reinvent" Translation: Unionized Nationalization)

"We need to reinvigorate our manufacturing industry to lead the world."
By Frank Andorka

President Obama pledged $500 million to his Advanced Manufacturing Partnership Initiative during a 30-minute speech at Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Engineering Center today.


AMP, as the program is called, will harness the power of public-private partnerships between universities, industry and governmental agencies in an effort to streamline innovation and bring products more quickly to market.

"We need to reinvigorate our manufacturing sector to lead the world," Obama said in the speech. "We need to do it now. Not sometime in the future. Now."

AMP will be co-chaired by Susan Hockfield, president of MIT, and Andrew Liveris, chairman, president and CEO of Dow Chemical.

"I'm enthusiastic about the spirit and content of our joint work," Hockfield said in a press release. "and I'm also very eager to build new connections with our colleagues in industry and government … with a commitment to advancing the manufacturing frontier together."

The universities involved in initially in the program are the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Carnegie Mellon University, Georgia Institute of Technology, Stanford University, the University of California-Berkeley and the University of Michigan.

Industrial partners will include Allegheny Technologies, Caterpillar, Corning, Dow Chemical, Ford, Honeywell, Intel, Johnson and Johnson, Northrop Grumman, Procter and Gamble, and Stryker.

Those recommendations of the President's Council on Science and Technology (PCAST) recommended the launching AMP and made the following recommendations as to how the Federal government could be involved:


investing in shared infrastructure such as Federal and university laboratories;

supporting the development of advanced manufacturing processes; and

participating in partnerships with industry and academia that identify and invest in broadly-applicable, precompetitive emerging technologies.

The President will also outline three compelling reasons why the United States should revitalize its manufacturing leadership: jobs, innovation and national security.

In addition to the Advanced Manufacturing Partnership, PCAST calls for changes in tax and business policies, including a permanent extension of the R&D tax credit; continued strong support for basic research in addition to the new emphasis on public-private partnerships to support pre-competitive applied research; and enhanced support for training and educational activities to create a more highly skilled workforce. PCAST also came out against the government creating a national manufacturing policy in favor of a national "innovation policy" instead.

"If we are to grow our economy, we need a strong manufacturing sector," Obama said. "These investments we make today will create jobs in current industries and spur the growth of new ones."

Obama said that Americans don't just keep pace with changes in the world, they set the pace.

"If we can regain our lead as the manufacturing force in the world, we can make this century the American century just like the last one was," he added.

The Alliance for American Manufacturing President Scott Paul released a statement that read:

"Linking manufacturers with the latest cutting-edge research at universities and federal agencies is one step in brightening the prospects for American manufacturing. But we can't stop there.

We welcome President Obama's support for public-private partnerships to develop new products, innovations, and processes for American manufacturing. Pittsburgh is the right place to make this announcement: home of a modern steel industry, great academic institutions, sophisticated research, a skilled workforce, and a strong industrial union.

America has been falling behind in manufacturing while the rest of the world aggressively supports its industry. We are playing catch-up following decades of neglect. The Advanced Manufacturing Partnership shows a lot of promise, but the effort will be futile unless our manufacturers also have a solid foundation of support for challenges like unfair trade practices, currency manipulation, developing a skilled workforce, and a more efficient infrastructure.

We believe, as we imagine you do, that a strong and vibrant manufacturing base is essential to our nation's economic stability, a strong middle class, and employment opportunities for young men and women across America. We also believe that our nation will never realize its full potential to grow the manufacturing sector of our economy without a robust strategy and aggressive set of public policies to complement private sector efforts by business and labor to maintain a globally competitive industry."

AFL-CIO Union Chief Pledges 12 Million Workers to Van Jones Progressive Tea Party

BREAK OUT THE SHORT BUSSES!!!

AFL-CIO Union Chief Pledges 12 Million Workers to Van Jones Progressive Tea Party
Tiffany Gabbay

Well, according to AFL-CIO president Rich Trumka, only the American “labor movement” is all about the “real” American Dream. I guess that means the rest of us haven’t got a clue.

Opening with Van Jones’ “American Dream” mantra, Trumka announced his pledge of 12 million union laborers and their families to support Van Jones’ “Rebuild the Dream” movement.

Trumka then goes on to explain that the real American Dream is not about a few of us having a lot, but about all of us having a “fair portion.”

“The American Dream is not that a few of us will get to be rich, but that all of us will have a fair portion of the good things in life.”

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Trumka’s announcement coincides with the launch of a Van Jones co-sponsored MoveOn.org campaign titled “Rebuild the Dream.” The Blaze recently reported on the campaign and its new catch-phrase already catching on among leftists like Howard Dean. The movement, which accuses the “slash and burn” GOP of “killing the American dream,” has positioned itself as the left’s answer to the Tea Party.

During Rebuild the Dream’s launch event Thursday, Jones exclaimed to a crowd of followers that “America is not broke” — even encouraging the audience to chant the phrase in unison — and claimed those who suggest otherwise, are “lying.” He also accused people — presumably Tea Party members – who “hate on America’s government“ and ”wreck America’s infrastructure” — of being unpatriotic.

Of course Jones also didn’t fail to misrepresent a GOP platform when he suggested conservatives lie to the American public and lead them to believe that “asking the super-rich to pay taxes hurts America’s economy.” This statement is disingenuous of course, as it implies conservatives suggest high-income earners shouldn’t pay taxes at all. In addition, Jones seems to deceive by omission when he fails to specify who his “super-rich” actually are — then appears to lump small business owners, large corporations, and the individually wealthy into the same category.

But perhaps the best, most ironic moment of the evening came when Jones, aiming to sound like Newt Gingrich, announced his “Contract for the American Dream,” which will come to fruition in mid-July. The “contract,” Jones claims, will be an aggregated list of ideas and suggestions he receives from people across the country, on how to “rebuild the American dream.”

With the help of friends like MoveOn, SEIU, Campaign for America’s Future and AFL-CIO, Jones plans to “build a movement that stands for liberty and justice for all.”

The video below features highlights of Van Jones’ Rebuild the Dream launch event:

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So first we had “hope and change” and “yes we can,” and now it’s “rebuild the American dream.” Platitudes and catch-phrases seem to come easily to the left, but what about substance?

Mexican troops cross into the US at Laredo Bridge Two

Mexican troops cross into the United States at Bridge Two

A convoy of three military trucks loaded with Mexican soldiers crosses the border at Bridge Number Two clearly violating international law.

It happens as Customs and Border Protection inspectors try to figure out what to do.

A CBP spokesperson says they got on the phone with Mexican authorities after being alerted that the military trucks were heading their direction loaded down with soldiers and weapons.

Mexican leaders say the soldiers, who had just been deployed to Nuevo Laredo, didn't know the area, got lost and then made their way through Bridge Two.

It's important to note that CBP did not tell us about the potentially serious situation. It came from another law enforcement agency.

Some callers to our newsroom were upset inspectors allowed the Mexican military to get so close to all those inspection booths over at Bridge Number Two.

Some noted had it been Mexican drug lords they could have taken inspectors by surprise and easily crossed the international border deeper into the United States.

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Release Illegal Immigrants Who Committed Crimes?

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Dick Morris attacks plans in several big states to release illegal immigrants who have committed violent crimes rather than deport them.

The Lid Slams Shut or The Miracle of the Three Stamps

Obama Fraudulent Certificate of Live Birth

June 14, 2011

Final long report is uploaded now, 6-13-2011.

It is no longer necessary to prove where President Obama was born.

The provable crime is now FORGERY of a government document used for identification,

which is a FELONY.

Dear Fellow Americans,

First of all I want to say that it does not matter if you are a Republican, Democrat or Independent . What Obama and company did was lie to all of us and was aided by companies in the media who looked the other way, in essence they covered up for him. What I have presented is irrefutable proof that the Certificate of Live Birth (COLB) that President Obama presented to the world on April 27, 2011 is a fraudulently created document put together using the Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator programs and the creation of this forgery of a public document constitutes a class B felony in Hawaii and multiple felonies under U.S. Code section Title 18, Part 1, Chapter 47, Sec.1028, and therefore an impeachable offense. This whole affair is a serious national security issue and should not be construed as merely partisan politics or a racial issue. When this comes to the public’s attention, it will be the greatest scandal in the country’s history—nothing comes even close. This will surpass all previous scandals including the Watergate scandal of the Nixon administration.

A Obama's Certificate of Live Birth:

First of all I want to state that those of you who are "True Believers" of Obama and the left-wing of the Democratic party and wish to defend him and his COLB, you are stuck with defending what was stated during the April 27, 2011 Pre-news conference held at 8:48 a.m. (see below for the complete transcript), about an hour before Obama gave his news conference. I have included the text from that news conference and have highlighted in red the important facts you are stuck having to defend. That means you cannot bring up the alleged scan and OCR of the hard copy of the COLB because they never said that was done and presented to the public. They later said the document was just scanned, nothing more. To further prove that fact, the PDF file presented by the White House was NOT A SEARCHABLE PDF, got that--so you can't explain away the nine layers found in the COLB PDF as a result of an OCR program. You are stuck having to defend exactly what the White House Spokesmen said during this news conference.

I will later put up a challenge to those, who register we me, and who wish to disprove all nine items. The reason you have to disprove ALL nine items is because if ONLY ONE remains, Obama's Certificate is a fraud and he is then guilty of FORGERY! Also you should also realize that Obama does not deserve your support. I will assume you are all honorable people, you have just been ill taught and think that socialism is the best form of economic policy and government, I for one wish not to be a serf to any bureaucracy. I assume you would not perpetrate a forgery to deceive someone or a whole nation. Ask yourself: Why should you support this behavior? Doesn’t the Democratic party have any honorable people that can run for President?

Links to download and read.
The original Obama Certificate of Live Birth presented on April 28, 2011, a PDF file of 380k.
Revised and Expanded Affidavit of Douglas Vogt, May 22, 2011 Total of 8 items now listed.
Final Report 28-page long preport of Douglas Vogt on the forgery of Obama’s Certificate of Live Birth-News Release written by Douglas Vogt
The 2009 Pentagon report on Economic Terrorism in 2008 entitled: Economic Warfare Risks and Responses by Kevin D. Freeman.

Summary of what is wrong with Obama's Certificate of Live Birth:
Curved and non-curved type on the left-hand edge.
A white haloing around all the type on the form.
The Obama Certificate is loaded with both binary and grayscale letters on the same form supposedly from one scan.
The Sequential Number is a forgery.
Two different colors in Form boxes 17a, 20 and 22 Date Accepted by Reg. General.
The official seal is not part of the Certificate of Live Birth and they used the wrong size impression of a seal.
The hand stamped certification from the current registrar is a forged stamped notice.
Forged signatures of the Mother and Registrar.
Multiple layers in the PDF file from the White House.

Who has been notified:

A formal notice that multiple felonies had been committed under U.S. Code section Title 18, Part 1, Chapter 47, Section 1028. I mailed the notice to Director Robert Mueller III at the FBI headquarters in Washington DC on May 25th and 26th (RE461679786US and EG410045020US). A copy of that notice was also mailed to Special Agent in Charge Frank Montoya in Honolulu, HI (70103090000164047965 and 9410803699300019474252). They were mailed there because that is where the crimes occurred. I have mailed copies of the full report to Republican members of the Senate on the Homeland Security Committee and on the House side the Congressman on the Ethics and Homeland Security Committees. I have also mailed it to additional Congressman.
What you can do is write to your congressman and ask them to have hearing on this very serious matter. Write to Director Mueller of the FBI and ask him to please do an investigation and secure the evidence as soon as possible. The country is in great danger because of the actions this administration has done.
It does not matter if you are a Democrat, Republican or Independent; Obama has deceived all of us and has lied his way to the top with the help of many leftists in and out of government. This should be a nonpartisan issue and should be examined as a grave national security issue.

The Laws that Have Been Broken
I am not an attorney but was an accountant and worked for three CPA firms before I went into business for myself. I have read and understood the Federal Tax code, so understanding Title 18 is no problem. I have listed in Appendix D the entire section of the Federal Code that directly covers the seriousness of this fraud.
Under Hawaii State code §708-851, it would be forgery in the first degree which is a Class B Felony (Appendix B).
The Federal charges are much more extensive because of the nature of the crime, and who did it and the ramifications to the country. It would not surprise me that maximum prison sentences were given out but of course a judge and jury would have to determine that. The Federal law is covered under Title 18-Crimes and Criminal Procedures; Part 1-Crimes, Chapter 47- Fraud and False Statements, Section-1028-Fraud and related activity in connection with identification documents, authentication features, and information is the main section that the forgery of a Certificate of Live Birth would be covered under. 1. Forgery of a public document; 2. Conspiracy to commit forgery, because Obama had to have paid someone to create the forgery and it is evident others were involved; 3. Obstruction of Justice if this went to trial; 4 and 5. If the conspirators had bribed a County Clerk(s) to insert this PDF file into the county’s document imaging system, you would have bribery and tampering with government records. All of these are felonies and are impeachable offenses. The penalty for committing document forgery is up to 15 years in prison and for just forging the unique Certificate number is another 5 years. At this point it does not matter if he was born in Kenya or Hawaii. He is now facing forgery charges and much more.

If Congress does not hold a hearing on this forgery, the vast majority of Americans will lose faith in our country’s legal system and governmental institutions. As it is, the public poll numbers for Congress are in the low two digits. Congress and the ruling elite have to decide whether we are a country of laws or are the laws only enforced on the little people and those outside of the ruling political party.

My Credentials

I have a unique background that enables me to analyze this document in a competent, detailed, and extensive manner. I owned a typesetting company (Nova Typesetting) for eleven years, and thus have extensive knowledge and experience in type and form design. I have owned Archive Index Systems since 1993, a company that sells a wide selection of document scanners worldwide, and which also developed and sold document imaging software (TheRepository). Additionally, I have an extensive knowledge of how scanners function and their capabilities. I have also sold other document imaging programs, such as Laser Fiche, Liberty and Alchemy. I have sold and installed document imaging systems in city and county governments, and thus have extensive knowledge of municipal and county document imaging programs and procedures, including the design and implementation of such programs. Additionally, I have a good working knowledge of Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator. These factors will be crucial in understanding what has occurred with Obama’s Certificate of Live Birth.


This article was written by Robert Moore:
The Lid Slams Shut or The Miracle of the Three Stamps

Here are the sides of the box:
1. April 25th Judith Corley, by order of the PRESIDENT retrieves from Fuddy and Onaka TWO hand made indisputably authenticated for the PRESIDENT Documents. We can call these Documents A & B.
2. April 27th Prior to the hasty special PRESIDENT”S news conference on the morning of the 27th Attorney Savannah Guthrie, NBC News super star, legal analyst and soon to be host of the G.E. affiliated network’s Today Show and Obama approved document wizard, reviews and inspects, as the only human on the planet qualified, one of the TWO Documents. It has no smiley face and she proclaims it's embossed. No smiley face is: Document A. I believe.
3. April 27th. Obama guarantees and authenticates the process, procedure and officiates at the baptism of the authentic documents just handed out to the White House press Corps. He asks for an end to this silliness. He orders a posting on the White House Web page of a document: a simple scan to Adobe pdf. and a web publish. No problemo. It has to be Document A or B.
4. This side is no problem. We all have access. Maybe we have a copy. It’s the publishing of the White House pdf. The official Obama approved, handled, ordered, Attorney retrieved and scanned and uploaded Document. We see it matches the handout. And as we see it doesn’t match the Guthrie photo. This document has a smiley face as does the handout. The Guthrie photo does not. Which document is this? It has no smiley face. It does match the handout’s smiley face. The Guthrie photo has no smiley face and it’s Document A. Therefore it’s Document B, the missing Document of TWO. I believe. And now so should you.
.
Let me tell you about the miracle of the three stamps. It is completely impossible for a human being to place 2 pieces of paper side by side and strike them both in the same exact identical place with a rubber stamp. Try it. Get your bank deposit stamp, a date stamp, even your kids’ toy stamp kit that stamps a flower, ink it, stamp it once on a sheet of paper and strike it again on a piece of paper along side, one that’s the same size, try it on lined paper. Place the 2 sheets afterwards in perfect alignment on top of each other, edge to edge, as one, and hold them up to the light. Do you see one stamp? Are they perfect overlapping mates? Or did you miss the spot? Now imagine that you have TWO documents that require three hand applied stamps. Each one stamped for date. Each one stamped for registrar. Each one crimped and therefore embossed by hand or in an electric official embosser. And they are for the PRESIDENT, That’s 6 stamps hand applied. Try it, ask your notary to do this, and you will see it’s impossible for a human to hand stamp 2 individual documents each in 3 places in the identical and perfect same place. This can only occur in printing. It can only be like matching labels or 2 aces of whatever from separate but alike decks of cards. It cannot happen by hand. I beg you to try, for the PRESIDENT. This is the lid and it slams shut here. The Guthrie photo when enlarged to the same exact size as the White House pdf. and both of them as I have pointed out are different: Document A is the Guthrie photo, no smiley face, Document B is the White House pdf with a smiley face, and while these are clearly TWO distinguishable documents A& B they happen to have 3 stamps in the exact same place and when they are overlapped or superimposed or measured by any means possible are like the labels of 2 mayonnaise jars or copies made at the same time. This is a miracle or final proof of a forgery. You can’t have exactly mapped stamps times one let alone times three on TWO different documents. But by Obama’s truth we have the miracle of the 3 stamps. I believe and so should you. Try it for yourself. If you succeed you are a forger or Obama.

Now start thinking about what Douglas Vogt has to say.

The statutes mentioned in this news conference are included in my final report linked on this page.



The White House

Office of the Press Secretary
For Immediate Release
April 27, 2011
Press Gaggle by Press Secretary Jay Carney, 4/27/2011
James S. Brady Press Briefing Room

8:48 A.M. EDT

MR. CARNEY: Good morning, everybody. You can read the paperwork we just handed out in a minute. Let me just get started. Thank you for coming this morning. I have with me today Dan Pfeiffer, the President’s Director of Communications, as well as Bob Bauer, the President’s White House Counsel, who will have a few things to say about the documents we handed to you today. And then we'll take your questions. I remind you this is off camera and only pen and pad, not for audio. And I give you Dan Pfeiffer.

MR. PFEIFFER: Thanks, Jay. What you have in front of you now is a packet of papers that includes the President’s long-form birth certificate from the state of Hawaii, the original birth certificate that the President requested and we posted online in 2008, and then the correspondence between the President’s counsel and the Hawaii State Department of Health that led to the release of those documents.

If you would just give me a minute to -- indulge me a second to walk through a little of the history here, since all of you weren't around in 2008 when we originally released the President’s birth certificate, I will do that. And then Bob Bauer will walk through the timeline of how we acquired these documents.

In 2008, in response to media inquiries, the President’s campaign requested his birth certificate from the state of Hawaii. We received that document; we posted it on the website. That document was then inspected by independent fact checkers, who came to the campaign headquarters and inspected the document -- independent fact checkers did, and declared that it was proof positive that the President was born in Hawaii.

To be clear, the document we presented on the President’s website in 2008 is his birth certificate. It is the piece of paper that every Hawaiian receives when they contact the state to request a birth certificate. It is the birth certificate they take to the Department of Motor Vehicles to get their driver’s license and that they take to the federal government to get their passport. It is the legally recognized document.

That essentially -- for those of you who followed the campaign closely know that solved the issue. We didn’t spend any time talking about this after that. There may have been some very fringe discussion out there, but as a campaign issue it was settled and it was --

Q When you posted this did you post the other side of it where the signature is?

MR. PFEIFFER: Yes.

Q Because it is not here and that's been an issue.

MR. PFEIFFER: We posted both sides and when it was looked at it was looked at by -- the fact checkers came to headquarters and actually examined the document we had.

That settled the issue. In recent weeks, the issue has risen again as some folks have begun raising a question about the original -- about the long-form birth certificate you now have in front of you. And Bob will explain why -- the extraordinary steps we had to take to receive that and the legal restraints that are in place there.

But it became an issue again. And it went to -- essentially the discussion transcended from the nether regions of the Internet into mainstream political debate in this country. It became something that when both Republicans and Democrats were talking to the media they were asked about. It was a constant discussion on mainstream news organizations. And the President believed that it was becoming a distraction from the major issues we're having in this country.

And he was particularly struck by the fact that right after the Republicans released their budget framework and the President released his, we were prepared to have a very important, very vigorous debate in this country about the future of the country, the direction we’re going to take, how we’re doing to deal with very important issues like education, Medicare, how we’re going to deal with taxes in this country. And that should -- that’s the debate we should be having yet.

What was really dominating a lot of discussion was this fake controversy, essentially, a sideshow, that was distracting from this real issue. And an example of that would be when major Democrats and Republicans went onto mainstream news organizations to talk about their budget plans -- including the President -- they were asked about this. They were asked about what they thought about the controversy. They were asked if they believed the President was born in the United States. And it was really a distraction.

That really struck the President, led him to ask his counsel to look into whether we could ask the state of Hawaii to release the long-form certificate, which is not something they generally do. And he did that despite the fact that it probably was not in his long-term -- it would have been in his -- probably in his long-term political interests to allow this birther debate to dominate discussion in the Republican Party for months to come. But he thought even though it might have been good politics, he thought it was bad for the country. And so he asked counsel to look into this.

And now I’ll have Bob explain that, and then we’ll take your questions.

MR. CARNEY: I just want to -- sorry, I meant to mention at the top, as some of you may have seen, the President will be coming to the briefing room at 9:45 a.m., making a brief statement about this -- not taking questions, but just wanted to let you know.

MR. PFEIFFER: And he will use this as an opportunity to make a larger point about what this debate says about our politics.

Go ahead, Bob.

MR. BAUER: Early last week the decision was made to review the legal basis for seeking a waiver from the longstanding prohibition in the state Department of Health on releasing the long-form birth certificate. And so we undertook a legal analysis and determined a waiver request could be made that we had the grounds upon which to make that request.

And by Thursday of last week, I spoke to private counsel to the President and asked her to contact the State Department of Health and to have a conversation about any requirements, further requirements, that they thought we had to satisfy to lodge that waiver request. She had that conversation with the state Department of Health on Thursday -- counsel in question is Judy Corley at the law firm of Perkins Coie, and you have a copy of the letter she subsequently sent to the department with the President’s written request.

The department outlined the requirements for the President to make this request. He signed a letter making that request on Friday afternoon upon returning from the West Coast. And private counsel forwarded his written request -- written, signed request -- along with a letter from counsel, to the state Department of Health on Friday.

The department, as I understood it, after reviewing the law and reviewing the grounds asserted in the request, came to the conclusion that a waiver could be appropriately granted. We were advised that the long-form birth certificate could be copied and made available to us as early as Monday, April 25th -- the day before yesterday. And we made arrangements for counsel to travel to Honolulu to pick it up and it was returned to the White House yesterday afternoon.

Let me emphasize again, there is a specific statute that governs access to and inspection of vital records in the state of Hawaii. The birth certificate that we posted online is, in fact, and always has been, and remains, the legal birth certificate of the President that would be used for all legal purposes that any resident of Hawaii would want to use a birth certificate for.

However, there is legal authority in the department to make exceptions to the general policy on not releasing the long-form birth certificate. The policy in question, by the way, on non-release has been in effect since the mid-1980s, I understand. So while I cannot tell you what the entire history of exceptions has been, it is a limited one. This is one of very few that I understand have been granted for the reasons set out in private counsel’s letter.

MR. PFEIFFER: We'll be happy to take some questions.

Q I guess I just want to make sure that we’re clear on this. Even though this one says “certificate of live birth” on here, this is different than the other certificate of live birth that we’ve seen?

MR. PFEIFFER: Yes. The second page there is the one that was posted on the Internet.

Q Okay.

MR. PFEIFFER: And that is a copy of the one that has been kept at the Hawaii Department of Health.

Q Okay. And this is the one that would be referred to -- that people have been asking for that is the birth certificate?

MR. PFEIFFER: They are both -- the second one is the birth certificate. The one on the top is what is referred to as the long-form birth certificate. As you can see -- and Bob can walk you through it -- it contains some additional information that is not on the second page, which was the birth certificate which was released during the campaign.

If you could just explain the difference.

MR. BAUER: There’s a difference between a certificate and a certification. The certification is simply a verification of certain information that’s in the original birth certificate. The birth certificate, as you can see, has signatures at the bottom from the attending physician, the local registrar, who essentially oversees the maintenance of the records. It contains some additional information also -- that is to say, the original birth certificate -- it contains some additional information like the ages of the parents, birthplaces, residence, street address, the name of the hospital.

The core information that’s required for legal purposes and that is put into the actual certification that’s a computer-generated document, which we posted in 2008, that information is abstracted, if you will, from the original birth certificate, put into the computerized short-form certification, and made available to Hawaiian residents at their request.

So the long form, which is a certificate, has more information, but the short form has the information that’s legally sufficient for all the relevant purposes.

Q This first one has never been released publicly, correct?

MR. BAUER: That’s correct. It is in a bound volume in the records at the state Department of Health in Hawaii.

Q Bob, can you explain why President Obama let this drag on for four years? Was it Donald Trump that prompted you to issue this?

MR. BAUER: I’ll let Dan --

MR. PFEIFFER: Sure.

Q I know you expected that question, right? (Laughter.)
MR. PFEIFFER: He even said you would be the one who would ask it. (Laughter.)

I don’t think this dragged on for four years because this was a resolved -- for those of you who remember the campaign, this issue was resolved in 2008. And it has not been an issue, none of you have asked about it, called about it, reported on it until the last few weeks.

And as I said earlier, it probably would have been -- a lot of the pundits out there have talked about the fact that this whole birther debate has been really bad for the Republican Party and would probably be good for the President politically. But despite that, the President, as I said, was struck by how this was crowding out the debate, particularly around the budget, on important issues, and was an example of the sort of sideshows that our politics focuses on instead of the real challenges that we have to confront as a country.

And so that’s why he made this decision now, because it became an issue that transcended sort of this -- it essentially was something that was talked about, as I said, from the nether regions of the Internet onto mainstream network newscasts. In fact, Jay has been asked about this just yesterday in this room.

Q So I guess the implication is that you did get political advantage by having not released this until today, over the course of the last four years?

MR. PFEIFFER: There has been -- no one that I can recall actually asked us to -- we were asked to release the President’s birth certificate in 2008. We did that. And then no one -- it never -- up until a few weeks ago, there was never an issue about that that wasn’t the birth certificate from any credible individual or media outlet. And it hasn’t been until -- I mean, Jay was asked about this yesterday --

Q When you say that, you mean certification -- you released the certification?

MR. PFEIFFER: When any Hawaiian wants -- requests their birth certificate because they want to get a driver’s license, they want to get a passport, they do exactly what the President did in 2008. And that’s what that is. And we released that. And that’s what any Hawaiian would do to release their birth certificate. And that was good enough for everyone until very recently this became a question again. And so the President made this decision. He’ll talk to you more about his thinking on that.

Q And this is going to sound -- I mean, you can just anticipate what people are going to -- remain unconvinced. They’re going to say that this is just a photocopy of a piece of paper, you could have typed anything in there. Will the actual certificate be on display or viewable at any -- (laughter.)

Q Will the President be holding it?

MR. PFEIFFER: He will not, and I will not leave it here for him to do so. But it will -- the State Department of Health in Hawaii will obviously attest that that is a -- what they have on file. As Bob said, it’s in a book in Hawaii.

MR. BAUER: And you’ll see the letter from the director of the Health Department that states that she oversaw the copy and is attesting to --

Q But do you understand that this could quiet the conspiracy theorists?

MR. PFEIFFER: There will always be some selection of people who will believe something, and that's not the issue. The issue is that this is not a discussion that is just happening among conspiracy theorists. It’s happening here in this room; it’s happening on all of the networks. And it’s something that, as I said, every major political figure of both parties who’s actually out trying to talk about real issues is asked about this by the media. And so the President decided to release this. And I'll leave it to others to decide whether there’s still -- there will be some who still have a different -- have a conspiracy about this.

Q You’ve got two certified copies, according to this study. You have these physical --

MR. PFEIFFER: Yes. I showed you one. Just one.

Q You showed us a photocopy of one.

MR. PFEIFFER: No, I showed you --

Q Does that have a stamp?

MR. PFEIFFER: It has a seal on it.

Q Why does this rise to the level of a presidential statement?

MR. PFEIFFER: The President -- this in itself -- when you hear the President I think you’ll understand the point he’s making. That will be in not too long.

Q Did the President change his own mind about this? In other words, was he advocating during the campaign let’s just put it out there and get it over with, or was this an internal shift in thinking based -- in other words, was it the President who steadfastly during the campaign said this is ridiculous, I don't want to give this any more ground, and has now changed his mind? Or is this the --

MR. PFEIFFER: Let’s be very clear. You were there for the campaign. There was never a question about the original birth certificate during the campaign. It was a settled issue. I was there for the original decision to release the birth certificate. I was there when we posted it online. I'm not sure I even knew there was an original one that was different than the one we posted online because it wasn’t an issue. So it wasn’t like -- let’s be very clear. We were asked for the President’s birth certificate in 2008; we released the President’s birth certificate; and it was done. That was it.

And so there hasn’t been a discussion about this other document for years. It’s only been in the last few weeks. And so to your second question, the President decided to do this and he'll talk about this when he gets here -- decided to do it at the timeline that Bob laid out because it was a -- this was a sideshow that was distracting from the real challenges that we're facing.

It’s not just a sideshow for him; it’s a sideshow for our entire politics that have become focused on this.

Q Not to give Donald Trump more publicity than he has, but is he the person who sort of -- sort of that bridge between what you're calling a fringe and the mainstream? Do you think that he’s the reason why this tripped the switch to a level where you now have to deal with something you thought was dealt with?

MR. PFEIFFER: It’s not for me to say why mainstream media organizations began to cover this debate. They’ll have to answer that for themselves.

Q How concerned were you about running against Donald Trump in a general election?

MR. PFEIFFER: I'd refer any questions on the election to the campaign.

Q Can you address the reports of Petraeus to the CIA and DOD --

MR. PFEIFFER: You get points for that, Carol. (Laughter.)
MR. CARNEY: Yes. I don't have -- but you’ll be disappointed to learn that I don't have a personnel announcement for you. The President will be addressing this -- questions about personnel tomorrow.

Q Dan, was there a debate about whether or not this deserved being discussed by the White House, whether or not -- and I'm going back to the birth certificate. I lose points, I understand. But was there debate about whether or not this was worthy of the White House?

MR. PFEIFFER: The point I'd make is that we weren't the ones who -- we're not the first ones to bring this up in this room. Jay has been asked questions about this; the President has been asked about it in media interviews. And so that wasn’t a decision that we made, and the President made the decision to do this and he made the decision to -- and when he comes down here this morning he'll talk to you about why he thinks there’s an important point to be made here.

Q Getting back to the personnel announcements, does the President understand that these announcements have been made and sourced satisfactorily for most news organizations before he speaks up and he’s not letting his White House corroborate?

MR. CARNEY: I don't have a comment on that for you, Bill. (Laughter.)

Q I mean, this is such BS. It’s all out there and you guys are -- okay, the President is going to talk about this tomorrow so we can't say anything.

MR. CARNEY: Bill, you're free to make phone calls everywhere you can. I'm just saying that we don't have a personnel announcement for you today.

Q And he'll tomorrow, he'll cover all the aforementioned switches?

MR. CARNEY: We'll have a personnel announcement tomorrow.

Q Jay, yesterday you talked about failsafe triggers as sort of a positive alternative to spending cuts. I'm wondering if the White House has any openness to including that, because it’s a White House proposal, including that in any legislation that would raise the debt ceiling limit.

MR. CARNEY: Well, what we've said very clearly, and I think Secretary Geithner said it eloquently yesterday, it is a dangerous, risky idea to hold hostage any other -- hold hostage, rather, raising the debt ceiling, a vote on raising the debt ceiling, to any other piece of legislation. The commitment this President has to moving aggressively towards a comprehensive deficit reduction plan is clear. It will be clear again when the Vice President convenes a meeting, bipartisan, bicameral meeting, next week. And he hopes that progress will be made on that very quickly.

In terms of negotiating what that would look like, I think the negotiators should do that, led by the Vice President, Republicans and Democrats together. But again, explicitly linking or holding hostage the absolute necessity of raising the debt ceiling to any other piece of legislation and declaring that we'll tank the U.S. economy and perhaps the global economy if we don't get this specific thing that we want, I think is a dangerous and unprecedented thing to do.

And we're confident, remain confident, that the leaders of both parties in Congress, as well as the President, will agree with the President, as I have said many times, that we do not have an alternative to raising the debt ceiling because, as many have said, outside observers, economists and businessmen and women, the impact of that would be calamitous at best.

Q So even though it’s your own proposal that you guys endorsed you don't want to see it as part of the final package?

MR. CARNEY: I'm not negotiating individual pieces of a package that we hope Republicans and Democrats can come together around from this podium. But again, we believe it’s essential to -- the President believes -- that's one of the reasons why we're doing this right now -- we believe that these are big debates that need to be had. They can be contentious, argumentative, serious, comprehensive, detailed, because they’re important; they’re all about America’s future. And they’re about visions of this country and where we're going that need to be debated. And this debate was being crowded out in many ways by a sideshow.

And he looks forward to having a debate on the real issues that Americans want us to talk about -- long-term economic plans, deficit reduction, investments in the kinds of things that will help this economy grow and create jobs, dealing with our energy needs, a long-term energy plan. These are all issues that have been sidetracked at least in the public debate by some of the issues that we're talking about this morning.

Q Is there a concern that more and more people were actually starting to believe its sideshow -- I mean, people have been asking about --

MR. CARNEY: I will let the President speak for himself, but what Dan was saying and I think is important is that the issue here is that the President feels that this was bad for the country; that it’s not healthy for our political debate, when we have so many important issues that Americans care about, that affect their lives, to be drawn into sideshows about fallacies that have been disproven with the full weight of a legal document for several years.

So, again, as Dan said, and a lot of political pundits have said, you could say that it would be good politics, smart politics, for the President to let this play out. He cares more about what’s good for the country. He wants the debate on the issues. He wants the focus on the issues that Americans care about.

Q Jay, the President yesterday said that he had been talking to oil exporters about increasing output. Who specifically has he been talking --

MR. CARNEY: Well, I said -- I want to clarify. I said several times I believe from this podium when asked questions about our overall handling of the issue of high gas prices that we've had conversations with oil-producing states and allies and those conversations continue. I don't have specific “the President spoke with this leader or other government officials spoke with others,” but those are ongoing conversations that, of course, we would be having in a situation like this.

Q Do you guys have any comment on the NATO soldiers that were killed in Afghanistan and any confirmation on whether there were Americans?

MR. CARNEY: I don't have anything for you on that this morning.

Q Just quickly, back on the birth certificate, yesterday you said this was a settled issue. So --

MR. CARNEY: Well, as Dan said, again, it has been a settled issue.

MR. PFEIFFER: From a factual point of view, it’s absolutely a settled issue. But the fact that it was a settled issue did not keep it from becoming a major part of the political discussion in this town for the last several weeks here. So there’s absolutely no question that what the President released in 2008 was his birth certificate and answered that question, and many of your organizations have done excellent reporting which proved that to be the case. But it continued; the President thought it was a sideshow and chose to take this step today for the reasons Bob laid out.

Q Aside from the policy distractions that was presented, did you have some concern because it was sort of reaching back into the mainstream news coverage that this could become a factor in the 2012 election with centrist voters?

MR. PFEIFFER: No.

Q Just to clarify what this document is --

MR. PFEIFFER: This is the -- the letter first and the two certified copies -- this is one of those. This is the same thing you have a copy of as the first page of your packet.

Q How did it get here?

MR. PFEIFFER: As Bob said, it arrived by plane -- the President’s personal counsel went to Hawaii and brought it back and we got it last night.

Q Last night?

MR. PFEIFFER: Last night.

Q What time?

MR. PFEIFFER: Between 4:00 p.m. and 5:00 p.m.

Q When did you decide to do this gaggle?

MR. PFEIFFER: What’s that?

Q When was this gaggle put on -- when was this planned?

MR. PFEIFFER: Whatever time you received your guidance suggesting that it would be “this time tomorrow morning.”

Q Are these letters supposed to demonstrate the legal steps that were involved in releasing it to the White House counsel?

MR. BAUER: The letters that you have, the personal request from the President, along with the accompanying letter from private counsel, is merely meant to document the legal path to getting the waiver of that policy so we could get the long-form certificate.

Q The waiver of Hawaii state government policy?

MR. BAUER: Right. The non-release of the long-form certificate, which has been in effect since the 1980s -- a natural question would have been, well, what did you do to obtain the waiver, and those letters represent the request.

Q Well, isn’t it true that anybody who was born in Hawaii can write this letter? I mean, that's all there is to the waiver process?

MR. BAUER: No. Let me just explain once again because I also noticed, by the way, in one report already the wrong certificate was actually posted on the website. The certificate with the signatures at the bottom -- and that's a key difference between the short form and the long form -- the long form has signatures at the bottom from the attending physician, the local registrar, and the mother, is the original birth certificate, which sits in a bound volume in the State Department of Health.

The short from is a computerized abstract, and that's the legal birth certificate we requested in 2008 and that Hawaiians are entitled to. Since the mid-1980s, the State Department of Health, for administrative reasons, only provides to people who request their birth certificate the short form. They do not provide the long form.

So in order for us to obtain the long form, we had to have a waiver. We had to actually determine that there was a legal basis for providing it, and then ask them to exercise their authority to provide us with the long form. The steps required to accomplish that were a letter from the person with the direct and vital interest -- the President -- so you have a letter from the President, and then there was an accompanying letter from counsel basically formalizing the request. So the reason we included that is that those were legal steps we took to obtain the long form by way of this waiver.

Q Do we have the letter from the President --

MR. BAUER: It’s in the packet.

Q And you went to Hawaii?

MR. BAUER: I did not go to Hawaii. The counsel, Judy Corley, who signed the -- the President’s personal counsel at Perkins Coie, Judy Corley, whose letter -- signed letter of request is in your packet, traveled to Honolulu and picked up the birth certificate.

Q A question on the situation regarding the Defense of Marriage Act. Yesterday Attorney General Eric Holder rejected attacks on Paul Clement, who is taking up defense of the statute on behalf of the U.S. House. Paul Clement has taken a lot of heat from the LGBT community for volunteering to take up defense of DOMA. Eric Holder said, “Paul Clement is a great lawyer and has done a lot of really great things for this nation. In taking on the representation -- representing Congress in connection with DOMA, I think he is doing that which lawyers do when we’re at our best. That criticism I think was very misplaced.” And Holder went on to compare the criticism of Clement to attacks on the Justice Department lawyers for their past for detainees at Guantanamo Bay. Does the President share Eric Holder’s views on this?

MR. CARNEY: We do share Eric Holder’s views on this. We think -- as we said from the beginning when we talked about -- when I did from this podium -- about the decision no longer from the administration to defend the Defense of Marriage Act, that we would support efforts by Congress if they so chose to defend it. And so I have nothing to add to the Attorney General’s comments.

Q Following Monday’s Af-Pak Situation Room meeting, what is the President’s assessment of the situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan? And does he think that July drawdown is still on?

MR. CARNEY: The President’s policy, which included the beginning of a transition -- beginning of a drawdown of American troops, is absolutely still on track. I don’t have anything additionally from the meeting yesterday beyond what we’ve said. But the policy remains as it was.

MR. EARNEST: Jay, we should wrap it up here.

MR. CARNEY: Yes. Last one, yes.

Q Given the comments of the Pakistani official quoted in the Wall Street Journal, is Pakistan still a U.S. ally, and to what extent?

MR. CARNEY: Pakistan is still a U.S. ally.

Thanks.

END 9:18 A.M. EDT