Posts

Congress Voting 6 to 1 Against Strike

/0 Comments/in , /by

congressSuggesting an uphill fight for President Barack Obama, House members staking out positions are either opposed to or leaning against his plan for a U.S. military strike against Syria by more than a 6-1 margin, a survey by The Associated Press shows. The Senate is more evenly divided ahead of its vote next week.

Still, the situation is very fluid. Nearly half of the 433-member House and a third of the 100-member Senate remain undecided.

By their statements or those of aides, only 30 members of the Republican-led House support intervention or are leaning in favor of authorizing the president to use force against Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government in response to a chemical weapons attack last month.

Some 192 House members outright oppose U.S. involvement or are leaning against authorization, according to the AP survey.

The situation in the Democrat-controlled Senate is better for Obama but hardly conclusive ahead of a potential vote next week. The AP survey showed those who support or are leaning in favor of military action holding a slight 34-32 advantage over those opposed or leaning against it.

Read more from this story HERE.

Biden: We’ll Target Congressmen Who Oppose Gun Control Efforts

/28 Comments/in , /by

images (1)The White House will continue its push to strengthen gun control laws, even if it means targeting members of Congress who oppose its agenda, Vice President Joe Biden said Thursday.

“If Congress doesn’t act, we’ll fight for a new Congress,” Biden said in the Roosevelt Room of the White House as he swore in B. Todd Jones as the new director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. “It’s that simple. But we’re going to get this done.”

In April, a bipartisan gun-control plan that would have expanded background checks and banned assault weapons failed to garner support in the Senate and was killed off, despite polls that showed massive public support in the wake of the Newtown, Conn. school massacre last Dec..

Read more from this story HERE.

On Hill, Deep Skepticism about Syria Entanglement

/3 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Reuters

Photo Credit: Reuters

Despite mounting evidence that President Bashar Assad used chemical weapons on his people, many members of Congress still don’t see a role for the United States military in Syria.

A raft of Republican and Democratic lawmakers — including those directly involved in intelligence oversight — think the U.S. would be wise to take a pass on military intervention in the war-torn country.

Their line of thinking goes like this: Sending in U.S. troops now is too late, too dangerous, too pricey and not guaranteed to be successful. And a bombing campaign won’t do enough. There’s also the fear that the U.S. does not know who would lead Syria if Assad falls.

“Syria is too far gone to pick sides,” said Rep. Tom Rooney (R-Fla.), a member of the House Intelligence Committee who taught at West Point. “The rebels are infiltrated with Al Qaeda. Assad has joined the ranks of history’s most evil despots in what he’s willing to do to stay in power. And Russia won’t help us find a solution because relations [between Washington and Moscow] are as bad as they have been in 30 years. I don’t see a way forward, but U.S. boots on the ground is out of the question in my opinion.”

Rep. Loretta Sanchez of California, the No. 2 Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, said that the situation in Syria is “as complicated as it could be” but added that military intervention in Syria could “have unintended consequences that could, in fact, make the situation worse.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Obama on CNN: Congress Has Two Jobs, But Too ‘Worried About’ Rush Limbaugh to Do Them (+video)

/6 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: mediaite

Photo Credit: mediaite

In an exclusive interview with CNN’s Chris Cuomo on Friday, President Barack Obama said that the upcoming fight over the continuation of a resolution which will fund the government does not have to be a fight at all. He said that enough Republicans in Congress agree that seeking to defund the Affordable Care Act is a bad idea, but they are afraid of angering their base or of conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh.

“Congress doesn’t have a whole lot of core responsibilities,” Obama said. “One core responsibility is passing a budget, which they have not done yet. The other core responsibility that they’ve got is to pay the bills that they’ve already accrued.”…

He said that the notion that Republicans would shut down the government over the ACA is not good for the nation. He said the GOP sees this as “their last gasp.”

“I’ve made this argument to my Republican friends privately, and, by the way, sometimes they say to me privately, ‘I agree with you, but I’m worried about a primary from, you know, somebody in the tea party back in my district’ or, ‘I’m worried about what Rush Limbaugh is going to say about me on radio.”

Watch the clip below via CNN:

Read more from this story HERE.

Texas Councilwoman Under Fire After Secret Recording of Her Slamming Homosexuality as “Disgusting” is Leaked to Media (+video)

/49 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: San Antonio Express-News

Photo Credit: San Antonio Express-News

LGBT activists are calling for the resignation of a Texas city councilwoman after a secret recording capturing her making several anti-gay remarks was leaked to the media late Thursday night.

Gathering on the steps of City Hall on Friday afternoon, angered activists said comments made by council member Elisa Chan were hurtful and clamored for her immediate resignation, according to the Current.

“I was sad—after our talks, to know what was really in her heart…[And that sadness] turned to anger,” Dan Graney, co-chair of the Community Alliance for a United San Antonio reportedly said. “Now, she really needs to step down from council.”

On Thursday night, the San Antonio Express-News published on their website a secret recording of Chan revealing her views on homosexuality. The recording, which captures the council member calling gay individuals “disgusting,” in a May 21 meeting, was provided to the local news outlet by one of her now former aides.

“She’s let down so much of her constituency, we hope she’d resign,” a reportedly emotional Lauryn Farris, president of San Antonio Gender Association and a board member of the Transgender Education Network of Texas-Alamo Region, said.

Read more from this story HERE.

Communists in Congress? Just Count ’em

/5 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit; WND

Photo Credit; WND

New Zealander Trevor Loudon has just published an encyclopedic new 689-page volume, “The Enemies Within: Communists, Socialists and Progressives in the U.S. Congress,” to accompany his 668-page 2011 book, “Barack Obama and the Enemies Within.”

In both volumes, Loudon has proved himself to be among the foremost experts in the world investigating and reporting the penetration of communists, socialists and the current group of “progressives” affiliated with Democratic Party politics who portray themselves as liberals.

In his 2011 book, Loudon presented documented evidence that Barack Obama’s rise in politics was not an accident, but a conscious, decade-long effort by the radical left to promote a candidate with African roots. Obama, he said, was packaged as an engaging and seemingly harmless Trojan Horse radical, sent to Chicago to refine his skills running for office as a Democratic Party politician.

It is impossible to read “Barack Obama and the Enemies Within” without being convinced that Obama’s education in communist ideology stretches from the extracurricular education he received from Communist Party mentor Frank Marshall Davis in Honolulu to his recruitment as a New Party candidate in Chicago, with strong ties to the Democratic Socialists of America.

Loudon continues naming names in his current volume, “The Enemies Within,” which documents how extensively communists, socialists and progressives have penetrated the U.S. Congress, running on the Democratic Party ticket.

Read more from this story HERE.

Video: Obama’s Pledge to Boost Oversight of NSA Surveillance Draws Scrutiny

/2 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Fox NewsBy Fox News.

President Obama’s pledge to work with Congress on “appropriate reforms” for parts of the National Security Agency’s surveillance programs came under scrutiny Friday from some Republicans and skeptical Democrats.

Surveillance programs that allow the government to collect basic information about phone calls and email communications have been under scrutiny since NSA leaker Edward Snowden revealed classified programs in June. The government has defended these programs as necessary to prevent terror attacks.

Obama on Friday acknowledged the domestic spying has troubled Americans and hurt the country’s image abroad. But he called it a critical counterterrorism tool.

“I am comfortable that the program currently is not being abused,” Obama said. “I am comfortable that if the American people examined exactly what was taking place, how it was being used, what the safeguards were, that they would say, ‘You know what? These folks are following the law.'”

His most significant proposal would create an independent attorney to argue against the government during secret hearings of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which reviews requests for surveillance inside the U.S. As it stands now, prosecutors alone can go to the court and make their case unopposed.

Read more from this story HERE.

__________________________________________________________________________

NSA Debate a ‘Privileged Discussion’

Rep. Amash: Congress Purposely Kept in Dark on Surveillance Efforts

/1 Comment/in , /by

photo credit: gage skidmoreIt’s “total nonsense” to say Congress was told about the NSA collecting communications data on Americans, and as a matter of fact, efforts are made to keep members of Congress in the dark, says Rep. Justin Amash, a Republican from Michigan.

Members would have a stack of documents hundreds of pages long stacked on a table in front of them and told to read it, Amash said Wednesday on Fox News Channel’s “O’Reilly Factor.”

If congressional members don’t know the definitions of terms used by intelligence agencies such as the National Security Agency, they have no way of knowing what the documents mean, he said. One example: There is a difference between the words “collect” and “acquire.”

Read more from this story HERE.

_________________________________________________________________________________

Former Obama Advisor: President’s Claim of No Domestic Spying Program ‘Ridiculous’

When President Barack Obama went on “The Tonight Show” Tuesday and said America has no domestic spying program, he didn’t convince one of his most ardent supporters — his own former green jobs adviser Van Jones.

“If we don’t have one now, I would hate to see us with one,” Jones said Wednesday on CNN’s “The Lead with Jake Tapper.”

“Everybody knows I love this president,” Jones said, “but this is ridiculous. What we need to do is figure out how we’re going to balance these things, not pretend there’s no balancing to be done.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Congress Wins Relief on Obamacare Health Plan Subsidies

/2 Comments/in , /by

Congress has won some partial relief for lawmakers and their staffs from the “Obamacare” health reforms that it passed and subjected itself to three years ago.

In a ruling issued on Wednesday, U.S. lawmakers and their staffs will continue to receive a federal contribution toward the health insurance that they must purchase through soon-to-open exchanges created by President Barack Obama’s signature healthcare law.

The decision by the Office of Personnel Management, with Obama’s blessing, will prevent the largely unintended loss of healthcare benefits for 535 members of the Senate and House of Representatives and thousands of Capitol Hill staff.

When Congress passed the health reform law known as Obamacare in 2010, an amendment required that lawmakers and their staff members purchase health insurance through the online exchanges that the law created. They would lose generous coverage under the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program.

The amendment’s author, Republican Senator Charles Grassley, argued that if Obamacare plans were good enough for the American public, they were good enough for Congress. Democrats, eager to pass the reforms, went along with it.

Read more from this story HERE.

Obama Promises to Help Congressional Staffers Avoid Obamacare

/5 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: ReutersWashington has been abuzz for months over the fear and loathing that Congressional staffers have for Obamacare. Many staffers and employees on Capitol Hill have been saying they’ll have to quit Washington if they are forced into Obamacare. Now the President is promising to fix it all for them.

At the very beginning of his closed-door meeting with Senate Democrats, the President addressed staffers’ worries that Obamacare will force them to quit working in Washington, promising “I’m on it.”

Currently congressional staffers have 75 percent of their healthcare insurance paid by taxpayers, but if their Cadillac Congressional healthcare plan is ended and staffers are pushed into Obamacare, many Congressional employees fear that their insurance costs will increase by thousands of dollars a year. This cost, many say, will force them to quit working in Washington.

The Republican-sponsored amendment to Obamacare introduced by Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) would require that lawmakers and their staffers must be covered by the same insurance exchanges that the rest of America will be forced into as mandated by Obama’s healthcare law. It is this amendment that staffers are protesting.

Read more from this story HERE.