House Resignations Compound Democrats’ Troubles Ahead of 2010 Election
FOXNews.com
By Judson Berger
Congressional Democrats could soon have a retirement problem on their hands, with several representatives in vulnerable districts stepping down ahead of an election year where the party’s incumbents are already threatened by discontent over the economy.
Democratic leaders, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Majority Whip James Clyburn and Rep. Steny Hoyer, seen here in November, are working to limit losses of Democratic seats in the 2010 election, but recognize the historic challenges. In the back are Rep. Chris Van Hollen, Rep. John Larson and Rep. Xavier Becerra (AP Photo).
Congressional Democrats could soon have a retirement problem on their hands — several representatives in vulnerable districts are stepping down ahead of an election year in which the party’s incumbents are already threatened by discontent over the economy.
In the course of less than a week this month, three Democratic representatives announced their resignations: Rep. Bart Gordon, D-Tenn.; Rep. Neil Abercrombie, D-Hawaii; and Rep. Brian Baird, D-Wash.
That brings the total number of open House seats to 11 for the Democrats, presenting Republicans with a plethora of attractive targets. While House Republicans have 12 members stepping down, many to run for higher office, most of them are leaving behind seats in reliably Republican districts.
By contrast, as many as seven seats left behind by Democrats are considered vulnerable. Two retirements, for instance, in conservative-leaning Tennessee, do not bode well for the Democratic Party.
“We’re playing to win,” said Ken Spain, spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee, saying Republicans are looking to bring between 70 and 80 total House seats into play. “Immediately the retirement districts go to the top of the list.”
But Democratic Congressional Committee Chairman Chris Van Hollen said Sunday that Democrats are prepared for the challenge.
“We’re not going to be surprised like in 1994,” Van Hollen told Fox News Sunday, citing the year Republicans swept into the majority in Congress under President Clinton’s watch.
Obama Surrenders U.S. Sovereignty: His INTERPOL Executive Order
PajamasMedia.com
Quietly, Obama just made it much easier for the International Criminal Court to go after American “war criminals.”
At ThreatsWatch.org, Steve Schippert and Clyde Middleton have dug up the bizarre and unsettling issuance of an executive order recently signed by President Barack Obama. Executive Order — Amending Executive Order 12425, signed December 16 and released a day later, grants the International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL) rights on American soil that place it beyond the reach of our own law enforcement agencies, such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
Schippert and Middleton note that Obama’s order removes protections placed upon INTERPOL by President Reagan in 1983. Obama’s order gives the group the authority to avoid Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests — which means this foreign law enforcement organization can operate free of an important safeguard against governmental abuse. “Property and assets,” including the organization’s records, cannot be searched or seized. Their physical locations and records are now immune from U.S. legal or investigative authorities.
If the president of the United States has an aboveboard reason for making a foreign law enforcement agency exempt from American laws on American soil, it wasn’t shared by the White House.
Andy McCarthy, former assistant United States attorney for the Southern District of New York and senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, notes at National Review that the limitations that Obama removed are “what prevents law-enforcement and its controlling government authority from becoming tyrannical.”
A paragraph later, McCarthy describes Obama’s actions in the starkest of terms:
This international police force (whose U.S. headquarters is in the Justice Department in Washington) will be unrestrained by the U.S. Constitution and American law while it operates in the United States and affects both Americans and American interests outside the United States.
Some bloggers covering this story are noting that the law enforcement agency to which Obama has extended such extraordinary powers to has had a dismal past.
INTERPOL’s senior leadership was flush with Nazis from the late 1930s all the way into the 1970s. That fact allowed, going Godwin isn’t necessarily relevant to today’s organization. Khoo Boon Hui of Singapore is the current president of the organization, and the current secretary general is American Ronald Noble. Noble is perhaps best known in America for overseeing the Treasury Department’s review of the disastrous 1993 raid and siege of a Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, that left nearly 80 people dead. Noble had cautioned against the initial raid plan as being too dangerous, but the lack of any significant ramifications for federal officials that approved of the raid and allegations of a cover-up have inspired conspiracy theorists to derisively dub Noble “the Enforcer.”
Obama Administration: Time Running out on Healthcare Reform
Tuesday, 15 Dec 2009 01:24 PM
LIBERAL HEALTHCARE is a down payment on Socialism.
By: David A. Patten
The Obama administration is warning Democrats and the media that healthcare reform has reached a do-or-die stage and is in danger of imploding unless a deal is struck soon.
Vice President Joe Biden sounded the alarm on today’s Morning Joe program: “If health care does not pass in this Congress — and every day gets closer to the election as opposed to having more breathing room to actually have discussions and real open fights here – it’s gonna be kicked back for a generation,” he said.
Political analysts have seen little sign in recent days that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., whose Hail Mary insistence on a public option has altogether collapsed, has a workable plan to achieve a compromise before year’s end. And the coming New Year will drastically escalate Democrats’ fears that healthcare reform, which is increasingly unpopular in most opinion polls, could be a political millstone come November.
The ineluctable realities of the electoral calendar have apparently led the administration to conclude that its best chance to get a reform bill through Congress is to light a fire of urgency on Capitol Hill. This is the “do or die” message President Obama that is expected to deliver at a special meeting of all Senate Democrats at the White House this afternoon.
According to Mike Allen’s Politico Playbook: “Look for [Obama] to make the case that this is the last chance for healthcare reform.”
The White House is privately warning that if President Obama and congressional Democrats, who enjoy a supermajority and 60 votes in the Senate, can’t pass healthcare reform soon, future presidents may view the issue as a political third rail, avoiding reform altogether.
“If President Obama doesn’t pass health reform,” said White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer, “it’s hard to imagine another president ever taking on this herculean task. For those whose life’s work is reforming health care, this may be the last train leaving the station.”
Most observers still believe Democrats will still achieve a compromise, finally embarking on the legislative march toward a successful vote in the Senate. But with Connecticut Sen. Joseph Lieberman’s declaration that he will not support either a public option or a massive expansion of Medicare coverage, the White House for the first time sees a scenario where Democrats become so ensnared in squabbles over various aspects of the incredibly complex, 2,100-page bill that reform implodes altogether.
Yesterday, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs sidestepped a question about a report that the White House had urged Reid to cut a deal acceptable to Lieberman, in order to move reform forward.
Asked to confirm the report, Gibbs would only say with a canny smile: “The president is anxious to see progress, and we’ll continue to work with Democrats and Republicans and independents and everyone in between to make that progress.
Lieberman’s support is vital because he represents the 60th vote that would be needed to cut off a Republican-led filibuster. The administration’s willingness to jettison the expansion of Medicare coverage has been generally viewed as a signal that any bill passed by the Senate is not likely to include any form of the controversial public option, which conservatives fear would be a step toward single-payer, government run healthcare.
The Fundamental Transformation of America! IT MATTERS!
From: Conservative Viewpoint Blog
Posted by Producer in Congress & Government, December, Website Archive
Obama the Socialist?This is quite a list!
When Hussein Obama wrote a book and said he was mentored as a youth by Frank, (Frank Marshall Davis) an avowed Communist, people said it didn’t matter.
When it was discovered that his grandparents, were strong socialists, sent Obama’s mother to a socialist school, introduced Frank Marshall Davis to young Obama, people said it didn’t matter.
When people found out that he was enrolled as a Muslim child in school and his father and step father were both Muslims,
people said it didn’t matter.
When he wrote in another book he authored “I will stand with them (Muslims) should the political winds shift in an ugly direction.” people said it didn’t matter.
When he admittedly, in his book,said he chose Marxist friends and professors
in college, people said it didn’t matter.
When he traveled to Pakistan , after college on an unknown national passport,
people said it didn’t matter.
When he sought the endorsement of the Marxist party in 1996
as he ran for the Illinois Senate, people said it doesn’t matter.
When he sat in a Chicago Church for twenty years and listened to a preacher spew hatred for America
and preach black liberation theology, people said it didn’t matter.
When an independent Washington organization, that tracks senate voting records, gave him the
distinctive title as the “most liberal senator”, people said it didn’t matter.
When the Palestinians in Gaza, set up a fund raising telethon to raise money for his election campaign,
people said it didn’t matter.
When his voting record supported gun control, people said it didn’t matter.
When he refused to disclose who donated money to his election campaign, as other candidates had done,
people said it didn’t matter.
When he received endorsements from people like Louis Farrakhan and Mummar Kadaffi and Hugo Chavez,
people said it didn’t matter.
When it was pointed out that he was a total, newcomer and had absolutely no experience at anything except community organizing, people said it didn’t matter.
When he chose friends and acquaintances such as Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn who were revolutionary radicals, people said it didn’t matter.
When his voting record in the Illinois senate and in the U.S. Senate came into question,
people said it didn’t matter.
When he refused to wear a flag, lapel pin and did so only after a public outcry,
people said it didn’t matter.
When people started treating him as a Messiah and children in schools were taught
to sing his praises, people said it didn’t matter.
When he stood with his hands over his groin area for the playing of the National Anthem and Pledge of Allegiance,
people said it didn’t matter.
When he surrounded himself in the White house with advisors who were pro gun control, pro abortion,
pro homosexual marriage and wanting to curtail freedom of speech to silence the opposition
people said it didn’t matter.
When he aired his views on abortion, homosexuality and a host of other issues,
people said it didn’t matter.
When he said he favors sex education in Kindergarten, including homosexual indoctrination,
people said it didn’t matter.
When his background was either scrubbed or hidden and nothing could be found about him,
people said it didn’t matter.
When the place of his birth was called into question, and he refused to produce a birth certificate,
people said it didn’t matter.
When he had an association in Chicago with Tony Rezco, a man of questionable character, who is now in prison
and had helped Obama to a sweet deal on the purchase of his home, people said it didn’t matter.
When it became known that George Soros, a multi-billionaire Marxist, spent a ton of money to get him elected,
people said it didn’t matter.
When he started appointing czars that were radicals, revolutionaries, and even avowed Marxist/Communist,
people said it didn’t matter.
There’s more, please continue reading…
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