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Chuck Grassley Demands Legal Arguments Behind Obama’s ‘Pen and Phone’ Strategy

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Photo Credit: APA top Senate Republican wants access to the legal opinions that justify President Obama’s plans to step up his use of executive orders.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, sent a letter Monday to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, asking for the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) to disclose to the public its opinions and analyses of the president’s executive orders.

Grassley’s request comes a week after Obama promised “a year of action,” which he would undertake even if Congress does not vote in favor of his proposals.

“In his State of the Union address earlier this week, the President made plain his intention to implement his agenda through aggressive use of these orders, whether or not the Congress and the American people agree,” Grassley wrote to Holder. “I am gravely concerned that the system of checks and balances enshrined in the Constitution is threatened by the President’s determination to take unilateral action if he cannot persuade Congress and the American people of the merits of his ideas.”

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Obama on IRS Scandal: ‘Not Even a Smidgen of Corruption’

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Photo Credit: APPresident Obama, in an interview with Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly, tried to put behind him the scandals that have hung over his second term, suggesting his administration did not mislead the public on the Benghazi attack and going so far as to say the IRS targeting scandal had “not even a smidgen of corruption.”

Obama addressed concerns over Benghazi, the launch of HealthCare.gov and the IRS, during the interview Sunday before the Super Bowl. He adamantly rejected the suggestion that the IRS was used for political purposes by singling out Tea Party groups seeking tax exemption.

“That’s not what happened,” he said. Rather, he said, IRS officials were confused about how to implement the law governing those kinds of tax-exempt groups.

“There were some bone-headed decisions,” Obama conceded.

But when asked whether corruption, or mass corruption, was at play, he responded: “Not even mass corruption — not even a smidgen of corruption.”

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Obama to O’Reilly: Fox News Reason for My Problems

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President Barack Obama twice blamed Fox News Channel for misinforming the public on issues that have bedeviled his presidency in the past year during a pre-Super Bowl interview with the network’s Bill O’Reilly.

The two sat down in the White House on Sunday for a live pregame interview that started about 4:35 p.m. and aired for about 10 minutes.

O’Reilly first noted that Obama’s detractors believe he did not initially say the Sept. 11, 2012, attack in Benghazi, Libya, that left U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans dead was terrorism because it happened in the heat of an election.

Obama had just weeks earlier said al-Qaida was on the run after U.S. Navy SEALs assassinated its leader, Osama bin Laden.

“That’s what they believe,” O’Reilly said of Obama’s detractors.

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Obama Won’t Take Executive Action to Remove Pot from Narcotics List (+video)

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Photo Credit: APPresident Barack Obama in an exclusive interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper said it is up to Congress to decide whether marijuana should continue to be classified as a Schedule I narcotic.

“What is and isn’t a Schedule I narcotic is a job for Congress,” Obama said when Tapper asked if he was “considering not making marijuana a Schedule I narcotic.”

“I think it’s the DEA that decides that,” Tapper interjected.

“It’s not something by ourselves that we start changing. No, there are laws undergirding those determinations,” the president responded.

According to the U.S. Controlled Substances Act, Schedule I drugs are described as having a high potential for abuse, no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the U.S., and lack of accepted safety for use of the drug or other substance under medical supervision.

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D’Souza Responds to Allegations, Tells Hannity He Got ‘Under Obama’s Skin’ With Film (+video)

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Photo Credit: Fox News Conservative filmmaker and author Dinesh D’Souza was recently indicted for alleged campaign finance violations. But is he being unfairly targeted by the Obama administration due to the content of his successful film “2016: Obama’s America?”

D’Souza discussed the allegations with Sean Hannity tonight, but made it clear that he was “undeterred,” and said that he is determined to continue his work. “I’m marching full-speed ahead,” said D’Souza.

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Cruel, Heartless Obama Mocks his Most Loyal, Unquestioning Supporters

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Photo Credit: YahooIn a speech in Wisconsin on Thursday, President Barack Obama insulted perhaps the most fervent members of his political base: art history majors.

The politically clumsy moment occurred during the president’s remarks at General Electric’s Waukesha Gas Engines facility.

After extolling his own economic policies at some length, Obama observed that “manufacturing jobs typically pay well” in the United States. “We want to encourage more of them,” he said.

Then, he began to speak — apparently extemporaneously — about the benefits of working in America’s ever-diminishing manufacturing sector.

“A lot of parents, unfortunately, maybe when they saw a lot of manufacturing being offshored, told their kids you don’t want to go into the trades, you don’t want to go into manufacturing because you’ll lose your job,” the president opined. “Well, the problem is that what happened — a lot of young people no longer see the trades and skilled manufacturing as a viable career.”

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Obama Will Take ‘Executive Action’ to Reduce Prison Population

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Photo Credit: APCongress can pass legislation giving judges more discretion in the sentencing of prisoners, but President Obama “also has the ability to take executive action” to commute the sentences of “low-level” drug offenders — and that’s just what he plans to do, Deputy Attorney General James Cole told the New York State Bar Association annual meeting on Thursday.

“A little over a month ago, the President commuted the sentences of eight men and women who were sentenced under severe — and out of date — mandatory minimum sentencing laws,” Cole said.

“But the President’s grant of commutations for these eight individuals is only a first step. There is more to be done, because there are others like the eight who were granted clemency. There are more low-level, non-violent drug offenders who remain in prison, and who would likely have received a substantially lower sentence if convicted of precisely the same offenses today. This is not fair, and it harms our criminal justice system.

“To help correct this, we need to identify these individuals and get well-prepared petitions into the Department of Justice. It is the Department’s goal to find additional candidates, who are similarly situated to the eight granted clemency last year, and recommend them to the President for clemency consideration.”

Although commutation of sentence is an “extraordinary remedy that is rarely used,” that’s about to change.

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Barack Obama: Patron Saint of the Press

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Photo Credit: APDuring this week’s State of the Union address, the President of the United States concluded his remarks telling the story of Sgt. 1st Class Cory Remsburg. Sgt. Remsburg, on his 10th tour in Afghanistan, nearly lost his life when a roadside bomb exploded.

Sgt. Remsburg suffered brain damage and paralysis on his left side, is now partially blind and has difficulty speaking. It was a touching ending to an otherwise shabby speech. More striking than President Obama’s tribute was the press corps’ reaction. NBC News Senior Political Editor Mark Murray declared on twitter that, “Obama’s ending on Remsburg wasn’t just a story about America — it also was a story about Obama. Nothing has ever come easy.”

Former White House speechwriter Jon Favreau chimed in and agreed. Certainly Barack Obama is incapable of saluting others without making it about himself. After Nelson Mandela died, President Obama saluted him by sending out a picture of the President in Mandela’s jail cell. Honoring the men who died at Pearl Harbor, the president sent out a picture of himself at the USS Arizona. It was then natural to conclude that a narcissist like that would intend to make Cory Remsburg’s story about himself.

Had Mark Murray meant that, it would have been all well and good. But that is not what Murray meant. Writing at NBC News, Murray expanded his tweet, writing, “That story could also apply to Obama himself: Nothing in his seven years on the national political stage … has come easy. … And now the president’s current situation in which he finds himself bloodied and bruised after the botched health-care rollout.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Robert Redford Lays Into Republicans on CNN: They Want to Destroy Motives of President (+video)

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Photo Credit: NewsbustersLeftist actor-director Robert Redford laid into Republicans in a Sunday interview on CNN’s “Reliable Sources.” Try not to notice this journalism show began with a Justin Bieber segment and included a Redford interview. Host Brian Stelter first asked how Redford felt about Obama. “I think he’s a good human being. That’s, I think, clear,” Redford replied. “He’s a humanitarian at heart, and that’s good. He’s trying to manage an extremely difficult situation. I mean, it’s — it’s almost too much for one person.”

He wouldn’t say the same for the GOP: “When you have one half whose only motive is to destroy the motives of the president of the United States, then you have a diseased system. And I don’t think that’s his fault. I think it just makes his job tougher.” Redford lamely claimed there was bipartisanship in getting to “truth” in Watergate: [See video after jump.]

REDFORD: We spoke a while back on “All the President’s Men Revisited.” There’s a moment in that film I’d like to point out that illustrates my point, which is remember the hearings, the Watergate hearings? And we have some archival footage in there where you had the panel, Sam Ervin, Sam Dash — you had all these guys, and you have the senator from Tennessee [Howard Baker], and he was conservative. He was a Republican.

You had Republicans and Democrats on this panel. And what you got out of it was how hard all of them were working together to get to the truth of something. And I thought, I’m seeing something we don’t see today, bipartisanship, working together to get to the truth for the public good.

Earth to Redford: In Watergate, can’t it look quite obviously like the Democrats and their media collaborators had the motive to “destroy the motives of the President of the United States”? The Republicans were cooperative in exposing what happened then. Do the Democrats look cooperative today on Obama scandals like the Benghazi fiasco or Fast & Furious? Are they interested in the “truth” when the Attorney General lies before Congress about his knowledge of Fast & Furious?

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Senate Democrats Have Reason to Freak Out

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Photo Credit: J. Scott Applewhite/Associated PressBy Jennifer Rubin.

Senate Democrats on the 2014 ballot who were sitting in the House chamber last night had reason to worry — a lot.. Here are eight reasons they should be nervous:

1. The president is already a drag on the ticket in 2014 in swing states. Gallup reports that among the twelve states in which Obama is most unpopular (ranging from 22.5 percent to 35 percent approval) there are four hotly contested Senate seats where the Republican can lasso his opponent to the president (e.g. West Virginia, Montana, South Dakota and Alaska). In other competitive states, the president is also a drag. (Arkansas 34.9 percent, Louisiana 40 percent, New Hampshire 44.6 percent, Colorado 42.3). In the top 12 battleground states, his approval averages 36 percent.

2. Whatever you thought of the State of the Union address it was no game changer, and the Democratic candidates will have to defend a “more of the same” message.

Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: Fox NewsVulnerable Dems avoiding Obama? Itinerary skips over battlegrounds

By Fox News.

His poll numbers are diving, he just gave a State of the Union address that even his own supporters panned as flat, and with three years left to run the country he’s fending off the term “lame duck.”

So as Democrats fight to keep control of the Senate and make gains in the House, are they giving President Obama the cold shoulder?

Over the past six months, the president only has visited two states — North Carolina and Louisiana — where a vulnerable Senate Democrat is facing a tough race. And none of the states Obama was visiting on his latest two-day tour have Senate Democrats up for reelection in the fall.

The president’s itinerary has led to Republican jeers that vulnerable and moderate Democrats are intentionally avoiding him, keeping their distance as they try to hold their seats in November.

Democrats themselves aren’t exactly challenging that narrative.

Read more from this story HERE.