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Senate Votes to Block Obama’s Controversial DOJ Civil Rights Nominee

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In a surprisingly strong vote, the Senate on Wednesday blocked President Barack Obama’s controversial choice to head the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice.

The bipartisan rejection came after the widow of a slain Philadelphia officer pleaded with senators to vote “no.”

On a 47 to 52 tally, Republicans were joined by seven Democrats voting to continue a filibuster of Debo Adegbile’s nomination for the influential post, which enforces the nation’s anti-discrimination laws.

Under new Senate rules that were put in place by the Democrats who control the chamber, only 51 votes were needed to overcome the filibuster, not the 60 that used to be required.

Critics charged Adegbile helped turn the appeals process for Mumia Abu-Jamal, who was found guilty in 1981 of killing police officer Daniel Faulkner, into a racially-charged political cause, and, in doing so, went far beyond his duties as a lawyer.

Read more from this story HERE.

Napolitano: Sequester Cuts Will Make US More Vulnerable To Terrorist Attack

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Photo Credit: U.S. Embassy New DelhiAllowing the $85 billion sequester to go forward will make the United States more vulnerable to a terrorist attack, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano warned Monday.

Napolitano added that the blunt nature of the $85 billion in automatic spending cuts set for March 1 “makes it awfully, awfully tough” to mitigate threats faced by the nation.

“I don’t think we can maintain the same level of security at all places around the country with sequester compared to without sequester,” said Napolitano, whose agency includes the Transportation Security Administration.

The cuts will also hit the Pentagon, the Department of Justice and other national security spending, and the administration has warned the spending reductions will hurt the military’s readiness.

“I think if you look at the combination of the effect on [the Department of Homeland Security], the Department of Justice and the Department of Defense, we are having real impacts on the robustness of our defensive posture,” Napolitano told reporters at the White House on Monday.

Read more from this story HERE.

Jobs Report Corrected: Unemployment Claims Explode

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Obama and his defenders championed the supposed reduction in unemployment to 7.8% this week. Romney attacked the number as not reflecting reality. Some suggested that the Department of Labor was playing games with the unemployment numbers.

Well, not exactly. According to Human Events, there was data left out from the jobs report – because it wasn’t received in time – that just about every media outlet ignored:

Nothing was mischievously “suppressed” in the last report. It was a paperwork glitch, not a dirty trick. Information simply was not received on time. It’s happened before. The strange thing about this particular report was how BLS undersold its incomplete nature, and how virtually every major media outlet simply failed to note that a big fat asterisk belong[ed] next to the number. Instead, it was uncritically presented as proof that after all these years, Obamanomics was finally starting to pump out some jobs.

Well, a new week is upon us, all of the data was evidently received on time, and what do you know? Initial jobless claims are up by 46,000, to a seasonally adjusted 388,000. That would technically make it the biggest one-week percentage increase in jobless claims over the last five years. Of course, a great deal of the percentage increase is due to adjustments correcting last week’s inaccurate numbers.

As the Wall Street Journal notes, even with those adjustments factored in, this week’s claims are well above analyst expectations of 365,000 claims. That’s impossible to square with the utterly delusional September jobs report, and its ostensible reduction of the headline unemployment rate to 7.8 percent. A boatload of people got hired in September, but now they’re all filing for unemployment benefits? There is no “Obama recovery.”

Obama & the NDAA: Actions Speak Louder than Words

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In this Reality Check segment, the Fox commentator talks about the Obama Administration’s stated opposition to NDAA and then interviews the President. But after observing that the Department of Justice is nevertheless challenging federal court orders barring implementation of the NDAA, the Fox commentator concludes that Obama has been lying as “actions speak louder than words”:

American Taliban lawyer Appointed to Third-Highest Position in Obama’s Justice Department

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A lawyer who came to prominence for his full-throated defense of a subsequently convicted terrorist was quietly promoted to the No. 3 slot at the Department of Justice last month, a post that puts him in charge of the administration’s policy regarding Guantanamo Bay detainees.

The move has raised red flags on Capitol Hill and elsewhere among national security stalwarts who argue that the promotion could imperil the country’s longstanding war on terrorism.

The Obama administration appointee at the center of the debate is Tony West, a longtime Justice Department lawyer who received national attention for his aggressive defense of John Walker Lindh, the so-called American Taliban who is currently serving 20-years in prison for colluding with al Qaeda in Afghanistan and taking up arms against U.S. troops.

Late last month, President Obama appointed West as the DOJ’s acting associate attorney general, a posting that does not require Senate confirmation. He formally began the job on Monday.

As the department’s third in command, West is tasked with defending a broad array of legal matters, such as Obama’s controversial health care law and civil rights issues. He also will be in charge of “litigating national security cases, such as habeas corpus petitions brought by detainees at Guantanamo Bay,” according to the DOJ.

Read more from this story HERE.

Fox: Long-awaited ‘Furious’ Report Places Blame on ATF, Justice

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Dozens of senior-level U.S. government officials turned a blind eye to public safety as they pursued an ill-conceived and poorly managed investigation into gun trafficking in Mexico, according to a long-awaited inspector general’s report on Operation Fast and Furious.

Portions of the Justice Department IG report, which has not been made public, were obtained exclusively by Fox News Channel.

The report and accompanying accounts cite a failure in leadership and a lack of accountability and oversight up and down the chain of command at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), the Justice Department itself and other offices. It says many senior executives knew the U.S. was helping traffic guns to Mexico that killed people but did nothing to stop it.

“We found no evidence in Operation Fast and Furious that the ATF or the (U.S. attorney’s office) attempted at any point during the investigation to balance the risks to the public safety against the long-term benefits of identifying trafficking networks and participants,” the draft report says.

Fast and Furious was the anti-gunrunning sting that helped send some 2,000 assault weapons to Mexico under the guise of stopping illegal trafficking. The operation ended only after the death of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry — two of the weapons associated with the investigation were found at his murder scene.

Read more from this story HERE.

Eric Holder’s “Severe Mental Deficiency”

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You don’t have to have a severe intellectual disability to work at the Justice Department. But it helps.

According to a July 31 policy memo titled “Hiring of persons with targeted disabilities,” otherwise problematic mental deficiencies are no barrier to jump-starting a career at Justice. The memo lists a number of “targeted disabilities” that trigger special hiring privileges in compliance with President Obama’s Executive Order 13548. Among them are people with “severe intellectual disability,” “psychiatric disability” or other undefined “current severe physical, intellectual or mental conditions.” Most employers would balk at even minor mental disabilities in hiring a lawyer, let alone severe ones. But the policy states that the Cabinet department run by Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. must “achieve a work force from all segments of society,” which includes those who are teetering on the edge of sanity.

Mr. Holder’s crazy new human-resources priority says it’s necessary to ensure that people with targeted disabilities “have equal employment opportunities.” It then goes into detail on all the ways in which they will be given special, exclusive treatment. The disabled are eligible for direct hiring in a “streamlined, non-competitive appointment” process that the policy lauds as a “win-win” for the department and the applicant. Of course, this preferential treatment is a lose-lose for the other, perhaps vastly more qualified applicants who were never let in the door, as well as for American taxpayers who cannot benefit from a superior level of public service.

Targeted mentally challenged individuals may be hired for unadvertised positions in a secret, closed-door process that otherwise would be strictly illegal. Standard requirements for prior work experience may be waived so that those who most need to prove they are up to the task don’t have to. Once hired, some of these special hires may have their privileged Schedule A appointments converted into career civil-service positions.

Read more from this story HERE.

White House: Talk About Anything But Obama’s Record

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Photo Credit: Talk Radio News Service Creative Commons

Ever since the 2009 GM bailout by “progressive” big government ended the pensions of 20,000 retirees at Delphi auto parts manufacturing, the White House and the Department of Treasury have laid the blame on the steps of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation.

Internal government emails have been obtained that show the U.S. Treasury Department, run by Timothy Geithner, was behind those termininations. All 20,000 of the pensions seem to have been ended strictly for the reason that those retirees did not belong to labor unions.

Perhaps the National Labor Relations Board was too busy preparing to harass another private sector company planning to hire non-union workers to get involved.

Meanwhile, Attorney General Eric Holder has yet to file any criminal charges against top Wall Street bankers with connections inside the Department of Justice or who had made political donations to the 2008 presidential campaign of the current White House occupant.

Over the years, both the Oval Office and Holder have talked tough, aggressively attacking big fat cat bankers, blaming their reckless speculation for the 2008 financial collapse. The Government Accountability Institute has found that Holder still has not “filed a single criminal charge against any top executive of an elite financial institution.”

All talk, no action. Sound tough for the union organized OWS crowd, but do nothing to upset potential campaign donors. The heck with credibility, the “progressive” Party Pravda will run interference for the re-election campaign.

Overseas, Iran has vowed it will not allow Assad to fall in Syria.

“Iran will never allow the resistance axis – of which Syria is an essential pillar – to break,” said Saeed Jalili, Iran’s Supreme National Security Council secretary. The “axis of resistance” includes Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas, all of which are anti-Western and openly hostile towards Israel and the United States.

Assad reassured Jalili by saying: “The Syrian people and their government are determined to purge the country of terrorists and to fight the terrorists without respite.”

If Assad is overthrown, Iran will lose influence over Syria and a crucial link to Hezbollah.

Could it be that Muslim Brotherhood influence over the White House has surreptitiously led to policies that support the creation of a regional Caliphate? What other way is there to logically explain policies that support rebellions to overthrow some Middle Eastern dictators, but not support rebellions hostile to the Iranian regime or its allies?

With so much baggage for the White House to carry through the campaign, their “Priorities” are to have their “progressive” allies run misleading ads that attempt to tie Mitt Romney to death.

Priorities USA Action, a super PAC supporting the Oval Office is running a new ad that blames Mitt Romney for a family losing health insurance which contributed to a woman dying from cancer.

It apparently makes no difference to the “progressive” super PAC that Romney left Bain Capital years before the GST Steel bankruptcy in 2001. In addition, the cancer casualty Ranae Soptic died in 2006, long after the GST plant had been closed.

In another move to distract attention away from the dismal economic performance of the White House, the Oval Office occupier was overheard whispering to a top fundraiser that GOP presidential challenger Mitt Romney wanted to name Gen. David Petraeus as his choice for Vice President.

The White House was more than happy to clutter the news cycle by dismissing the Drudge Report. Anything to keep the pathetic economic record of the White House out of the headlines will suffice.

Press Secretary Jay Carney reminded reporters to “be mindful of your sources” when asked about the Petraeus rumor. “I can say with absolute confidence, such an assertion has never been uttered by the president. And again be mindful of your sources” said Carney.

And so it goes for the most open, transparent White House in American history. They are more than happy to talk about anything but their own record.

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Michael Fell is a former MCA recording artist from the seminal punk rock era who toured America from coast to coast. Today, he’s a leading voice in the L.A. Tea Party movement, active since the February 2009 inception. Mr. Fell currently chairs the Westwood Tea Party, is a founding member of the L.A. Metro Tea Party Coalition, serves as the Vice Chairman of the Westside Republicans Club in L.A. CA, and is an elected Republican delegate to the L.A. 47th AD Central Committee. He’s been Campaign Manager for a primary winning Congressional candidate, as well as Santa Monica and L.A. City Council candidates. Mr. Fell is a contributing writer for https://conservativedailynews.com/, https://rightwingnews.com/, https://www.hollywoodrepublican.net/, https://beforeitsnews.com, https://www.redcounty.com/, https://www.uspatriotpac.com and, https://westsiderepublicans.com/. His opinions on today’s news events and political climate can be found on his blog: https://mjfellright.wordpress.com/