New E-mail Blows Hole In Obama’s “Fast And Furious” Story

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Discovery of a January 2011 e-mail exchange between then Acting ATF Director Ken Melson and the Bureau’s chief council Steve Rubenstein has put the kibosh on Obama administration elites’ latest “we didn’t know about it” defense concerning the regime’s involvement in Operation Fast and Furious.

On December 22, 2010, a contributor identifying himself as “1desertrat” posted the following to the “CLEANUP ATF” website:
Word is that curious George Gillett the Phoenix ASAC stepped on it again. Allegedly he has approved more than 500 AR-15 type rifles from Tucson and Phoenix cases to be “walked” to Mexico. Appears that ATF may be one of the largest suppliers of assault rifles to the Mexican cartels! One of these rifles is rumored to have been linked to the recent killing of a Border Patrol Officer in Nogales, AZ. Can anyone confirm this information? [1]

Well, Director Melson read this “CLEANUP ATF” post and didn’t appreciate the fact that ATF business had been so willfully shared with the general public. Especially, this business. So, he contacted ATF Chief Council Steve Rubenstein for advice. And the e-mail reply he received from Rubenstein is a beauty. Rubenstein wrote:

The disclosure of this information has a potential deleterious effect on ATF’s undercover operations. In that regard, suspects may alter their behavior if they know that law enforcement is allowing certain firearms to “walk” into Mexico. (my bold text) In addition, public knowledge of this type of operation potentially places informants and undercover agents in jeopardy.

If “1desertrat” is an ATF employee, then he/she is subject to our Orders and Standards of Conduct….[2]

 Read More at Western Journalism By Doug Book

Virginia Primary Debacle Could Seriously Hurt The GOP Nominee

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Only two candidates are slated to be on the 2012 Virginia Republican presidential primary ballot. The mainstream media is choosing to frame this predicament as evidence of which GOP candidates are running “serious” campaigns and which are not. But this media-driven narrative largely misses the mark.

The real loser in this ordeal is likely to be the eventual GOP presidential nominee.

Given that Virginia voters don’t register by party affiliation, the presidential primary is an important tool for identifying potential Republican general-election voters. With only Mitt Romney and Ron Paul on the ballot and no way to write in votes, turnout will likely be low, thereby guaranteeing limited new data.

Add in the fact that the Democrats are not running a competitive primary on the other side, and this situation quickly morphs into a serious predicament for the eventual Republican nominee from a general-election organizing perspective.

Unfortunately for the eventual GOP nominee, knocking Obama out of the White House will be next to impossible without winning Virginia, a state he won in 2008.

 Read More at Western Journalism By Matt Mackowiak and Ford Connell

Obama’s dismal early primary vote support down over 50%

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As Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton went into the Democratic National Convention in 2008 against Barack Hussein Obama, she had received a majority of the popular vote against Obama, 18,045,829 to 17,869,419. Still, Obama and his Chicago machine managers fairly easily wrestled away the nomination for President from her. Yet what is now more amazing, is that in the Iowa and New Hampshire primary elections this Presidential election, Obama is doing far worse in popular vote than during 2008.

True, Obama doesn’t have Hillary Clinton to run against in 2012, but isn’t it strange that not only are none of the vote totals Hillary racked-up transferring over to Obama, but even Obama voters themselves have diminished? Obama voters and other traditional Democratic voters in the early primaries seen to be scurrying away from him like “rats on a sinking ship.”

Here are some popular vote totals and comparisons: in 2008 Obama received 104,404 votes in New Hampshire, finishing second to Hillary Clinton, who had 112,404 votes. But on Tuesday in New Hampshire, Obama, with 81.54% of the vote in the Democratic primary, received only 47,220 total votes. That is less than 50% of his 2008 vote total in the Granite State, not including all the missing Hillary voters! Overall Democratic votes in New Hampshire in 2012 were just 20% of the total in 2008, down from 287,527 in 2008 to just 57,913 in 2012! Not a great sign for voter turnout in November for Obama.

In Iowa, which Obama won in 2008, he won about 24,000 caucus votes in 2012. But in 2008 his total caucus votes were much higher, and though hard to exactly peg because the Iowa Democratic Party did not release actual vote totals for the caucuses in 2008, Obama consistently won over 50% of the vote in tiered district and county caucuses where turnout “shattered records” according to CNN, with 227,000 attendees. Winning those caucuses with over 50% of the vote, Obama ultimately received close to 40% of the total delegates allowed. It is a fair estimate to say that Obama received about 110,000 votes of the 227,000 who participated in caucuses in Iowa in 2008, as compared to about 24,000 in 2012, demonstrating another sharp drop off in voter support, which is down to about 20% of 2008 levels in Iowa, and consistent with the big voter fall-off for Obama in New Hampshire.

 Read More at CA Political Review By James V. Lacy, CA Political Review

Judge tosses suit to keep Obama off Alabama ballot, new case filed

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BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — A state judge agreed with Democrats on Monday and dismissed a lawsuit aimed at keeping President Barack Obama off the ballot in Alabama this year, joining other jurists who have thrown out cases arguing Obama isn’t a natural-born U.S. citizen and can’t legally hold the office.

The fight isn’t yet over whether Obama will appear on the state’s ballot, however, since a similar suit was filed as the time the judge was tossing the first one.

Circuit Judge Helen Shores Lee, herself a Democrat, sided with a party lawyer who argued that plaintiff Albert Hendershot Jr.’s claims about Obama’s eligibility to serve are a political dispute, not a legal question, and don’t belong in court.

Hendershot, who filed suit in December, declined comment after a brief hearing, but he previously said he would appeal to the Republican-controlled Alabama Supreme Court.

As the hearing was being conducted, Crenshaw County resident Harold Sorensen filed a similar lawsuit in Jefferson County. That case, too, was assigned to Lee by random draw.

 Read More at The Washington Post By Associated Press, The Washington Post

Santorum Crashes Back to Earth

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Perhaps Rick Santorum should have gone straight from Des Moines to Charleston.

A week after his magical finish at the Iowa caucuses, Santorum crashed back to earth Tuesday night with a disappointing fourth- or fifth-place finish in New Hampshire — the final placing was still in flux late Tuesday — raising questions about his staying power heading into South Carolina.

The paltry 10 percent he registered here sucks away much of the momentum he earned last week and raises the stakes for his campaign heading into the Palmetto State.

“We wanted to respect the process here. We wanted to respect the fact that we were going to campaign in every single state, states that were good for us, and states that may have been a little tougher,” Santorum said to a small gathering of supporters inside a restaurant ballroom.

Santorum’s decision to spend five days campaigning here — instead of bypassing it for South Carolina — is already being second-guessed as he now faces what’s close to a must-win situation in the first southern primary next Saturday.

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Read more at Politico HERE.

Can we beat Obama? Latest Gallup numbers say “Yes we can!”

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Remember just two weeks ago when the media and even many conservative pundits flatly proclaimed Obama’s BIG victory in the payroll tax cut showdown had handed him a BIG edge going into an election year? If you do you are in the minority. The American people were not fooled.

New Gallup survey numbers tell us a Georgia State Judge’s ruling that Barack Obama is not eligible to be president as per Georgia law, may end up being a merciful death to his reelection plans.

In early December Obama’s Gallup survey approve/disapprove numbers were 43/50. His BIG victory just before Christmas got him to 45/47. Immediately after the BIG victory he’s back down to 42/49.

Not only are these numbers bad, they become still worse when broken down into individual voter categories.

Obama’s approval among his “MUST have” core groups is dangerously low. Blacks give him an 83% rating and Hispanics, just 46%.

Read More at Coach Is Right By Kevin “Coach” Collins, Coach Is Right

RON PAUL’S ‘JEREMIAH WRIGHT’?

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WASHINGTON – A bestselling author, speaker and commentator who likes presidential candidate Ron Paul’s “incredibly refreshing principles, ideas, qualities and character” might be the last person you would expect to blow the whistle on holes in Paul’s foreign policy prescriptions and assumptions behind them.

But that’s just what Joel Richardson does today in an exclusive and explosive commentary in WND.

In a WND column, Richardson writes: “Let me begin by making it very clear that there are a lot of reasons to love Ron Paul.”

“But despite the allure of Paul’s constitutional convictions, his perspective concerning United States foreign policy, radical Islam and the nation of Israel are an absolute deal breaker,” Richardson writes. “Paul’s emphatic trademark claim that the present rise of Islamic terrorism globally is the result of ‘blowback’ from American actions abroad is nothing less than ridiculous and an absolute insult to my intelligence. According to Paul, radical Muslims are not radical because they have drunk deeply from the trough of an expansionist, racist and murderous ideology, but rather because American actions abroad have brought about the natural response of resistance.”

Read the column.

Paul attributes his idea that that U.S. “occupation” is the primary motivation of the vast majority of suicide terrorist attacks – including 9/11 – to Robert Pape, author of “The Explosion of Global Suicide Terrorism and How to Stop It,” who studied 2,200 such incidents since 1980.

Read More at WND

Depp, Burton not in W.H. visitor logs

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The White House is under fire for reportedly trying to downplay the role that two Hollywood stars played at a 2009 Halloween party, with press secretary Jay Carney today calling the media’s reporting on the incident “irresponsible” and denying reports of an attempted cover-up. But no record of the two stars, Johnny Depp and Tim Burton, appears in the official White House visitors logs.

An administration source said that entertainers are generally not recorded in the visitors logs. “Entertainers and production crews who are working events are generally not WAVED in since they are not guests visiting the White House, they are working,” the official said.

The initial revelations about the 2009 party come from New York Times reporter Jodi Kantor’s new book “The Obamas.” Kantor reports that staffers were concerned about the White House hosting a Hollywood-style, ‘Alice in Wonderland’-themed Halloween party in the midst of an economic downturn. As a result, Kantor charges, the White House did not publicize the role that director Tim Burton and actor Johnny Depp played at the event. Burton helped decorate and choreograph the party, while Depp attended in costume as the Mad Hatter.

Other stars — even when they are the entertainment — have appeared in the logs. A May 11th poetry reading by the rapper Common, for example, was logged. So were musicians Herbie Hancock and Stevie Wonder when they played at President Obama’s 50th birthday. Singer Beyonce Knowles, however, does not appear in the visitor logs when she performed at a 2010 state dinner.

The White House furiously denied Monday there was any cover-up or attempt to downplay Burton or Depp’s roles, pointing to the fact that the media attended the event and that reports of Depp’s attendance surfaced on fan websites and local press.

Read More at Politico By Byron Tau, Politico