And as you will see, this month’s review and discussions do nothing to prove that this thesis is wrong in any way:
1) Obama promised, with great fanfare, that he would run the most transparent Presidency of all time. Like many, many of his promises, this turned out to be either a gross exaggeration or another outright lie:
- His administration has gone to great lengths to delay or kill Freedom of Information Act requests, often breaking both the spirit and letter of the law in those delays.
- His administration has spied on journalists and often tried to deter their investigative reporting.
- At least once his administration tried to charge a news organization for the information they requested in a Freedom Of Information Act, clearly against the law.
- His Justice Department has road blocked and delayed investigations into a number of scandals including the IRS harassment of citizens and the Fast and Furious gun running operation.
This is like saying that an organized crime figure gets to say whether or not a grand jury should investigate his actions. The Times article writes that this “severely limits the watchdogs’ oversight capabilities, independence and power to uncover fraud.” A classic "fox watching the hen house" situation.
Not surprisingly, the Department of Justice’s Office Of Legal Counsel came up with this new rule and restriction. Much of the recent shenanigans and illegal activities in the Federal government has its roots in the Justice Department and one could easily draw the line between the need to investigate the goings on of the Department and the Department’s need to shut down such investigations. The inspector general law was written in 1978, 37 years ago, and to my knowledge this is the first time that anyone has tried to put such a road block in front of the few functions in government that try to do the right thing for citizens and taxpayers.
To his credit and courage, Michael Horowitz, the Justice Department’s inspector general had harsh words for his own organization: “I strongly disagree with the OLC opinion. Congress meant what it said when it authorized Inspectors General to independently access ‘all’ documents necessary to conduct effective oversight. Without such access, our office’s ability to conduct its work will be significantly impaired, and it will be more difficult for us to detect and deter waste, fraud, and abuse, and to protect taxpayer dollars.”
As suspected, Mr. Horowitz has had trouble, within his own organization, getting access to material and data relative to major cases including Fast and Furious and other important investigations. Both Democrats and Republicans in Congress had serious problems with this directive: “The Office of Legal Counsel’s efforts to reduce transparency will leave the Department of Justice vulnerable to mismanagement and misconduct. This is not the type of government the American people deserve,” said Congressman Bob Goodlatte, Virginia Republican and House Judiciary Committee Chairman, in a statement to The Washington Times.
But given the lawlessness insanity of this administration, this act to hide government misdeeds and illegal actions should not be a surprise.
2) In light of the recent murder of Kate Steinle in San Francisco, a so-called “sanctuary city,” by a seven time convicted felon who had been deported five times, it is no longer a surprise when you come across the following immigration numbers, as reported by the Center For Immigration Studies:
- In one eight-month period in 2014, more than 8,100 deportable illegal immigrants were released by sanctuary city governments across the country rather than being turned over to the Federal government for deportation.
- Three thousand of those 8,100 deportable illegal immigrants were felons.
- Sixty two percent had a prior criminal record.
- Nineteen hundred of the 8,100 were later rearrested a total of 4,300 times on 7,500 different offenses.
But it gets even worse. According to recent reporting by the Boston Globe:
- Among those illegal immigrants released, there were a number of convicted sex offenders.
- Not only were these offenders released onto the streets of America, the government had no ability and/or no plans to track where they were headed or where they were living.
- Unlike American citizens who are classified as sex offenders, the illegal immigrant sex offenders were not even required to register in the National Sex Offender Public Registry.
- The Globe reporting included examples of how this situation resulted in additional sex crimes perpetrated on American citizens by those released:
- Immigration officials tried to deport Luis-Leyva Vargas, 47, to Cuba after he served three years in a Florida prison for unlawful sex with a teen. In 2008, officials released him. Two years later, he kidnapped an 18-year-old in Rockingham County, Va., at knife point and raped her. Now he is serving a 55-year prison sentence.
- Felix Rodriguez, a 67-year-old sex offender convicted of raping children as young as 4 in the 1990s, was freed in 2009, also because Cuba would not take him back. Months later, he fatally shot his girlfriend in Kansas City. He pleaded guilty and is serving 10 years in a Missouri prison.
- Andrew Rui Stanley, convicted in 2000 of multiple counts of sodomizing a child when Stanley was 14, was released in 2009 after Brazil failed to provide a passport needed to send him home. For the next two years, he viciously abused three children in St. Louis and now, at age 31, will be in prison for the rest of his life.
3) Recent undercover video has shown Planned Parenthood employees and executives discussing and negotiating for baby parts from babies that have been aborted in clinics under their control. While I believe that their attitudes and desire to negotiate for the highest prices available for dead baby parts approaches the Mengele line as far as medical savagery is concerned, I am not going to discuss that subject directly.
However, I was pretty repulsed by the reaction of Nancy Pelosi to it. Ms. Pelosi was not worried, concerned, or interested in getting to the bottom of this story which very well could include the breaking of Federal law which prohibits the selling of fetal body parts under most conditions and which prohibits the variation of abortion procedures to keep fetal baby parts intact. She is more concerned about the legality of the videotaping: “Let’s have an investigation of those people [the ones who took the videotape] who were trying to ensnare Planned Parenthood in a controversy which doesn’t exist,” Pelosi recently told reporters.
First of all, she has no clue if a controversy does or does not exist or if any laws were broken, there has been no investigation. But in her mind, the potential of breaking of Federal abortion law, the negotiating the price of spare baby parts, the illegal changing of abortion procedures to get at intact baby parts, the joking of a Planned Parenthood employee in the midst of negotiating baby part prices that she needed a new Lamborghini, etc. is less important than the videotaping action. Pathetic and insane set of priorities of this Washington politician.
May I suggest that Ms. Pelosi start worrying about some more important issues, issues that we have discussed this week. These include the reality that over 20% of American kids now live in poverty, a trend that has occurred while Ms. Pelosi has been a powerful member of Congress, that she worry about how American kids are getting lousy educations in our public schools, how veterans are dying before they get the needed medical care they were promised, how the economy is still pretty anemic, etc. rather than worrying about a couple of people who did some secret videotaping.
That wraps up today’s insanity. More anti-transparency actions from the Obama administration, crime waves in American streets as a result of our failed immigration and deportation processes, a reality that endangers American lives and property, and failed priorities again from Nancy Pelosi, one who speaks before having all of the facts at hand. More political class insanity at least for the next few days.
Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:
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It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.
Please visit the following sites for freedom:
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http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w
It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.
Please visit the following sites for freedom:
Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w
