Did you know Hillary Clinton was a member of the impeachment inquiry staff in Washington, D.C.? Clinton was advising the House Committee on the Judiciary during the Watergate scandal back in 1974. I didn’t either until I read her Wikipedia entry. I also discovered another rather interesting story. Back in 2008 when Clinton was running against Obama in the Democrat primary the Digital Journal ran a revealing story. The story says Hillary Clinton was fired from the committee staff. Jerry Zeifman, supervised Hillary Clinton during the Watergate impeachment inquiry. He refused to give her a letter of recommendation because of her lies and unethical behavior. Clinton obtained a position on the committee staff through her political patronage of her former Yale law school professor Burke Marshall and Chappaquiddick Senator Ted Kennedy. Jerry Zeifman says Hillary Clinton was unethical and a liar (as if we didn’t already know that.) He also described Hillary Clinton as a dishonest lawyer. Finally, Zeifman says Hillary Clinton conspired to violate the Constitution, the rules of the House, the rules of the committee and the rules of confidentiality. Sound familiar? Like Benghazi maybe? Zeifman had this reaction after Hillary Clinton’s phony tears at a campaign rally in 2008:
My own reaction was of regret that, when I terminated her employment on the Nixon impeachment staff, I had not reported her unethical practices to the appropriate bar associations.
Digital Journal also had this on Hillary Clinton:
engaged in a seemingly implausible scheme to deny Richard Nixon the right to counsel during the investigation by stealing Judiciary Committee files on the only precedent case that could have stonewalled their plot and drafting a legal brief that, according to Mr. Ziefman, “was so fraudulent and ridiculous Hillary would have been disbarred if she had submitted it to a judge.”
Isn’t it amazing and ironic? Hillary Clinton who is involved in the worst government cover-up since Watergate was on the Watergate investigation panel as a young pup back in ’74. I guess history does repeat itself.
In 2008, both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton got on the ballot illegally in the presidential primary in Indiana. On Thursday, two Democratic political operatives were convicted on all counts relating to the scheme.
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Former St. Joseph County Democratic party Chairman Butch Morgan Jr. was found guilty of felony conspiracy counts to commit petition fraud and forgery, and former county Board of Elections worker Dustin Blythe was found guilty of felony forgery counts and falsely making a petition. It was apparently a plan hatched by Morgan, who told Democratic officials and workers to fake the names and signatures on petitions so Obama and Clinton would be eligible for the state ballot. Blythe forged scores of names on the petitions.
Former Board of Registration worker Lucas Burkett was originally part of the scheme but then quit; he waited three years before he came clean with the plan. Meanwhile, Obama and Clinton, who both could have been thrown off the ballot if the petitions had been challenged, marched merrily on.
In Indiana, presidential candidates need 500 signatures from each of the state’s nine congressional districts to qualify for the ballot. With the help of the illegal plot, both candidates managed to garner enough signatures in St. Joseph County, which is the 2nd Congressional district; Obama netted 534 signatures, Clinton, 704.
An Indiana State Police investigator said the police perused the Obama petitions and, “selected names at random from each of the petition pages and contacted those people directly. We found at least one person (and often multiple people) from each page who confirmed that they had not signed petitions or given consent for their name and/or signature to appear.” The audacity of the forgers was so great that they even forged the signature of Joe Kernan, a former governor of the state.
The administration has approved 99.5 percent of applications of those who have applied for legal status under President Obama’s nondeportation policy for young adults, granting legal status to more than 250,000 formerly illegal immigrants.
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Officials said they expect the approval rate to drop as more cases make their way through the system, as it takes longer to deny an application than to approve it. Indeed, the approval rate already has dropped from 99.8 percent just a month ago.
But the high rate leaves others wondering whether the administration is doing all it can to weed out fraud or potentially dangerous illegal immigrants in DACA, or the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, as it’s formally known.
“You really have to wonder who they’re giving deferred action to, and what kind of risk they represent to us,” said Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies. “The screening process is much less for DACA than it would be for a green card, and so it’s all that much more susceptible to fraud.”
DACA is seen by many as a test-run should Congress pass a broad legalization for most of the 11 million illegal immigrants in the U.S.
That means the pressure is on Homeland Security to get it right, and officials say they are taking steps to combat fraud, including warning that bogus applicants will be prosecuted and deported.
Mr. Obama created the program last summer to try to help illegal immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children by their parents.
His policy allows them to remain and work in the U.S. on tentative legal status with no fear of deportation, though they do not have a direct path to citizenship. That path could come, though, under the immigration bill senators are beginning to debate, which would give DACA-approved immigrants a speedier chance at citizenship.
On Monday, one of those legalized under DACA pleaded with Congress to give her that chance.
“Legalizing people like me, the 11 million of us, will make the United States stronger and will bring about significant economic gains,” said Gabriel Pacheco, who was brought to the U.S. from Ecuador at age 8 by her parents. “Doing nothing is no longer acceptable.”
Her situation captures the complexities of American immigration: One of her sisters is about to earn citizenship as the wife of a U.S. citizen, with two citizen children; another sister is here illegally and didn’t qualify for DACA because she was too old; and her younger brother, 27, who owns a carwashing business, did qualify. Ms. Pacheco’s husband, meanwhile, is a Venezuelan who has lived in the U.S. for 26 years and earned his green card last year after an 18-year wait.
Mr. Obama announced the DACA policy in June, and the government began taking applications in August.
It was a galvanizing moment for immigrant rights advocates, and Hispanic voters in particular rewarded the president by voting for his re-election in overwhelming numbers.
The policy applies to illegal immigrants who were brought to the U.S. before age 16 and who were not yet 31 when the program was announced.
Illegal immigrants with serious criminal records aren’t supposed to qualify. To be eligible, applicants must have graduated from high school or earned an equivalency degree or served in the military.
Through the first 7 months of the program, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) approved 268,316 illegal immigrants for tentative legal status, while denying just 1,377 applications.
A Homeland Security official said the denials will tick up as time passes. Those whom the department plans to reject are given time to submit more evidence or appeal their denial, while approvals go through immediately.
For example, while USCIS approved 29,793 applications in the first six weeks of the program, it denied just six applications, or one out of every 5,000. But in March, the agency approved about 98.2 percent, meaning it denied nine out of every 500 applications.
“USCIS has issued some denials but expects denial rates to increase once requests for evidence and notice of intent to deny responses are received and reviewed by USCIS,” a Homeland Security official said.
Louis “Don” Crocetti Jr., who retired in 2011 after serving as the head of the USCIS fraud branch, also predicted his old agency’s denial rate will rise because of how it handles cases.
“It’s not uncommon, in fact it is more common than not, that the questionable cases are put on the back end in order to [make sure] the more deserving candidates get the benefit,” said Mr. Crocetti, who now runs the Immigration Integrity Group, a consultancy.
Cesar Vargas, one of those who has gained legal status under DACA and is executive political director of DRM Action Coalition, said the high approval rate makes sense given who is in this pool of immigrants.
“I am not surprised, just as most Americans and senators should not be not surprised, since many of the DACA applicants who applied were youth and students who were committed to their school and work,” Mr. Vargas said. “Dreamers have been in the U.S. for most of our lives such that it was not as difficult to put the paperwork proving our presence and moral character.”
Through the end of March, the department had received 472,004 completed applications and had settled nearly 270,000 of them.
Mr. Crocetti said DACA is a chance for the administration to test its screening process as it prepares for the possibility of a broad legalization for all 11 million illegal immigrants now in the U.S.
“We are in a post-9/11 world, as most recently evinced by the events in Boston,” he said. “This is a pivotal time that we have to get this right. We have to screen these people accurately, and we really have to know what are the key indicators to look for when these people file.”
Unlike the 1986 amnesty, when every applicant was interviewed in person and there still was double-digit fraud Mr. Crocetti said that’s not likely to be an option this time around. But he said technology has become so advanced that the agency can come up with analytical tools that can predict applications most likely to be fraudulent.
Ms. Vaughan, the policy director at the Center for Immigration Studies, which favors a crackdown on immigration, said that in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombings that should be a priority for any legalization program, including the ongoing DACA system.
“That’s very concerning in light of the most recent reminder namely this terror attack in Boston, near where I live,” she said, “that we simply are not taking enough care in screening the people we admit for legal status whether it’s this kind of deferred action or a green card or an asylum application.”
The trial is underway for a former Democratic official and a Board of Elections worker who are accused of being part of a plot that has raised questions over whether President Obama’s campaign – when he was a candidate in 2008 – submitted enough legitimate signatures to have legally qualified for the presidential primary ballot.
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The two face charges of orchestrating an illegal scheme to fake the petitions that enabled then-candidates Obama, and Hillary Clinton, to qualify for the race in Indiana.
Former longtime St. Joseph County Democratic Party Chairman Butch Morgan Jr. faces multiple felony conspiracy counts to commit petition fraud, and former county Board of Elections worker Dustin Blythe is charged with nine felony forgery counts and one felony count of falsely making a petition of nomination. The proceedings began Monday in South Bend.
Morgan is accused of being the mastermind behind the plot, by allegedly ordering Democratic officials and workers to fake the names and signatures that Obama and Clinton needed to qualify for the presidential race. Blythe, then a Board of Elections employee and Democratic Party volunteer, has been accused of carrying out those orders by forging signatures on Obama’s petitions.
Two former Board of Elections officials have already pleaded guilty to charges related to the scheme and could testify against Morgan and Blythe.
Former board worker Beverly Shelton, who allegedly was assigned the task of forging the petitions for Hillary Clinton, pleaded guilty in March to charges of forgery and falsely making a petition. The board’s former Democratic head of voter registration, Pam Brunette, pleaded guilty in April to felony forgery, official misconduct, and falsifying a petition.
The alleged scheme was hatched in January of 2008, according to affidavits from investigators who cite former Board of Registration worker Lucas Burkett, who told them he was in on the plan at first, but then became uneasy and quit. He waited three years before telling authorities about it, but if revelations about any forgeries were raised during the election, the petitions could have been challenged during the contest. Any candidate who did not qualify with enough legitimate signatures at the time could have been bounced from the ballot.
The Indiana trial has raised questions about whether in 2008, candidate Obama actually submitted enough legitimate signatures to have legally qualified.
Under state law, presidential candidates need to qualify for the primary ballots with 500 signatures from each of the state’s nine congressional districts. Indiana election officials say that in St. Joseph County, which is the 2nd Congressional District, the Obama campaign qualified with 534 signatures; Clinton’s camp had 704.
Prosecutors say that in Obama’s case, nine of the petition pages were apparently forged. Each petition contains up to 10 names, making a possible total of 90 names, which, if faked, could have brought the Obama total below the legal limit required to qualify. Prosecutors say 13 Clinton petitions were apparently forged, meaning up to 130 possibly fake signatures. Even if 130 signatures had been challenged, it would have still left Clinton with enough signatures to meet the 500-person threshold.
An Indiana State Police investigator said in court papers that the agency examined the suspect Obama petitions and “selected names at random from each of the petition pages and contacted those people directly. We found at least one person (and often multiple people) from each page who confirmed that they had not signed” petitions “or given consent for their name and/or signature to appear.” The case was charged citing 20 forgeries – not the total number of possible fake entries – because that was considered a sufficient amount to prosecute.
Numerous voters told Fox News that they never signed the petitions.
“That’s not my signature,” Charity Rorie, a mother of four, told Fox News when showed the Obama petition with her name and signature. She said it “absolutely” was a fake.
Charity told Fox News that her husband’s entry was also a forgery, and that they have not been contacted by investigators or any authorities looking into the scandal.
“It’s scary, it’s shocking. It definitely is illegal. A lot of people have already lost faith in politics and the whole realm of politics, so that just solidifies our worries and concerns.”
Robert Hunter, Jr. said his name was faked, too.
“I did not sign for Barack Obama,” he told us. As he examined the Obama petition in his hands, Hunter pointed out that “I always put ‘Junior’ after my name, every time… there’s no ‘Junior’ there.”
Even a former Democratic Governor of Indiana, Joe Kernan, told Fox News that his name was forged.
The allegations were first uncovered by Indiana native and Yale University senior Ryan Nees, who wrote about the revelations for the political newsletter, Howey Politics Indiana.
“What’s worrisome about this scheme is that it wasn’t a single bad actor going rogue. Rather, four people were charged as co-conspirators, and two of the four have already pleaded guilty,” Nees told Fox News.
Nees believes that had the petitions been challenged during the presidential election, “it’s unlikely either candidate would have qualified for the ballot.”
He said the fraud was clearly evident, “because page after page of signatures are all in the same handwriting.” He noted that no one raised any red flags “because election workers in charge of verifying their validity were the same people faking the signatures.”
Both Morgan and Blythe have pleaded not guilty, and when approached by Fox News in 2011, Blythe refused to talk about the case.
Morgan’s attorney declined our request for an interview, and Blythe’s attorney has not responded to our efforts for comment.
The petition process is vital to candidates’ campaigns.
In the 2012 presidential race, Republican candidate Newt Gingrich was tripped up by that process in Virginia. He failed to qualify for the GOP primary ballot in that state, because authorities said hundreds of signatures on his campaign’s petitions were faked. A Gingrich campaign worker has pleaded guilty, and another still faces charges.
Petition fraud also cost Michigan Republican Rep. Thaddeus McCotter his public office. McCotter, who also ran for the GOP presidential nomination in 2012, has accused former campaign workers of intentionally faking his congressional primary race petition signatures. The result was that McCotter did not submit the legal number of signatures needed to qualify for the ballot, and that failure forced him to resign his congressional seat last July. While McCotter was not implicated in any wrongdoing, two former campaign aides pleaded no contest to criminal charges, and one pleaded guilty.
An Ohio woman concealed her mother’s death by burying her body in the back yard and then collected the dead women’s Social Security for the next 14 years.
According to the Social Security Administration’s (SSA) Office of the Inspector General, Patricia Hodges, 65, of Marietta, Ohio pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court on Feb. 27 to one count of theft of government money for hiding her mother’s death in order to continue receiving her mother’s Social Security benefits.
During testimony in a hearing before the Southern District of Ohio, it was revealed that Hodges lied to the SSA in November 2011, saying her mother was on a cruise and was planning on moving to New York.
“Further investigation by the Social Security Administration and Marietta Police concluded that Hodges’ mother had died in 1997 and that Hodges had buried her mother’s body in the back yard of a house in Lake Worth, Florida where they had lived,” the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) said. “Florida law enforcement investigators recovered the skeletal remains of Hodges’ mother.”
According to the OIG, “Hodges admitted that she concealed her mother’s death in order to collect $141,962 in Social Security benefits she was not entitled to receive between 1997 and October 2011.”
Hodges faces up to 10 years in prison, a $250,000 fine and 3 years of supervised release. Hodges is free on bond until her sentencing date is scheduled.
The Social Security Administration has administered payments to deceased individuals before. CNSNews.com previously reported at least 30 dead people received benefits totaling $405,357, in 2012.
Nine current or former Philadelphia Traffic Court judges were charged today with conspiracy and fraud after a three-year FBI probe into ticket-fixing in the beleaguered court.
A 77-count indictment, returned Tuesday but sealed until Thursday, said judges and their assistants routinely shredded documents, used code words and practiced “a well-understood conspiracy of silence” that turned the court into two systems: One where the average citizen paid for their infractions, while the connected saw tickets disappear, costing the Commonwealth an untold amount.
“For years, even beyond the conspiracy charged, there existed a culture of ticket fixing at Traffic Court,” the indictment said. “The ticket fixing was pervasive and frequent.”
Charged were two of the court’s three sitting judges, Michael Lowry and Michael Sullivan, as well as seven former judges: Fortunato Perri Sr., Robert Mulgrew, Willie Singletary and Thomasine Tynes, elected by Philadelphia voters.
The other three were former suburban district judges who were appointed to serve for a period of time in Philadelphia Traffic Court: Mark A. Bruno of a Chester County, H. Warren Hogeland of Bucks County, and Kenneth Miller of Delaware County.
Unlike those who were indicted Thursday, Hogeland, Miller and Perri were charged separately by informations. The process is typically used for defendants who have agreed to plead guilty.
Also indicted were Traffic Court administrator William Hird; and two local businessmen, Henry P. Alfano and Robert Moy. Alfano owned a towing service that won a no-bid contract from traffic court.
Each are scheduled to appear before a magistrate judge Thursday afternoon. U.S. Attorney Zane David Memeger will hold a news conference later today.
Hird declined to comment as he left the federal building this morning, but his lawyer, Greg Pagano, told reporters: “My client is a taxpaying, hardworking citizen who goes to work every day and who is being indicted essentially for doing his job.”
Singletary, who also turned himself in, told reporters only: “My God is able.”
Traffic court has for decades been seen as a patronage mill. Judges earn at least $85,000, and must win election but none do so without the blessing of the local political parties. The court has twice before been the focus of federal probes.
The latest conspiracy and fraud charges uncorked a case that had been bubbling for at least three years, and included raids and, apparently, secret FBI wiretaps.
U.S. Attorney Zane D. Memeger said the system in Traffic Court not only deprived taxpayers of fines that should have gone to the city and state, it completely undermined public confidence in the institution.
“Those who seek to game the system by refusing to follow the rules need to be held accountable by the rule of law they swore to uphold,” Memeger said in a press release.
A preview emerged last fall, when a consultant commissioned by Supreme Court Chief Justice Ronald D. Castille, concluded there was a pervasive culture of corruption within Traffic Court.
That report, prepared by former city prosecutor William G. Chadwick, cited eight former or current judges, and described Hird as the central coordinator for ticket-fixing, or, as the judges called it “consideration.”
The indictment went farther, spelling out in detail how friends, associates and ward leaders arranged to get cases dismissed or fines dropped.
In return, the judges allegedly got more than good will. According to the indictment, Perri accepted free auto services, towing, landscaping, and even a load of shrimp and crab cakes from Alfano, whose company, Century Motors, ran a towing service.
“I see Century on it, it’s gold,” Perri once told Alfano, according to the indictment. “When you call, I move, brother, believe me.”
In February 2010, the indictment said, Alfano called on behalf of a truck driver who faced $442 in fines and court costs after being ticketed along I-95 for not clearing the snow and ice off his tractor-trailer. Twice the drive got notices that his license would be suspended.
“It will be alright, don’t worry about it,” Perri allegedly assured Alfano.
Two months later, the case landed before Sullivan. The driver didn’t even attend the hearing, and was deemed not guilty, the indictment said.
Hird and Singletary are accused of lying to FBI agents, while Mulgrew, Tynes and Lowry are charged with perjury before the Grand Jury.
“You don’t give out special favors, is that right?” a prosecutor asked Lowry before the grand jury in fall 2011, according to the indictment.
“No, I treat everybody the same,” he replied.
Singletary resigned last year in an unrelated scandal, after a court staffer accused him of showing her a picture of his genitals on his cellphone.
Mulgrew was indicted in a separate federal corruption case, charged with defrauding an neighborhood nonprofit.
The Republican floor leader of the state Senate, Dominic Pileggi of Delaware County, said the Traffic Court indictments boosted his resolve to pass legislation abolishing the court.
“They confirm my opinion that the Traffic Court is not an institution that has any reason to continue to exist,” Pileggi told reporters in a conference call. “They accelerate the urgency of enacting the reforms that I proposed.”
Since proposing the court’s abolition three weeks ago, Pileggi said, he had yet to hear from a single state lawmaker or other public official defending the court.
“I would have expected at least a handful of people who would have tried to present some defense of the status quo,” Pileggi said. “I’m pleased with that, because I think the status quo is indefensible.”
Oh those nutty folks at MSNBS, they are finding new and inventive ways to make asses of themselves. Now, Lawrence O’Donnell is challenging Mitt Romney’s son to a fight?
Give me a second while I stop laughing. OK, Lawrence, you despicable bag of filth, if you are going to play a bad ass, you might need some practice. I mean you just are not a real intimidating guy. You do seem like a fraud though, an intellectual fraud, a journalistic fraud, and likely a tough guy fraud too, of course, you do work for a network that is a fraud so, it fits! What you are, Lawrence, is a wannabe, a wannabe intellectual, and wannabe newsman, and a wannabe thug. And, of course, it goes without saying that you are a world-class douche too!
A Mississippi NAACP executive is in jail after being convicted of voter fraud for fraudulently casting absentee ballots, including for four dead people.
Lessadolla Sowers, who is a member of the Tunica County NAACP Executive Committee, was convicted and sentenced in April for what a judge said were crimes that cut “against the fabric of our free society.”
She was given a five-year sentence for each of the ten counts of voter fraud for which she was convicted, but the sentencing judge allowed her to serve the terms concurrently, according to the Tunica Times.
Matthew Vadum, author of Subversion, Inc., notes Sowers’s DNA was found on the inner seals of five envelopes that contained the absentee ballots, and liberal groups like the NAACP and ACORN have had a history of such shenanigans.
Well, I have to out this out there. I am not usually very quick to dislike, or distrust a person based on first impressions. But when I do get a negative feeling about someone I am almost always proven right in my distrust of them if my BS meter goes off. That being said, I have to say my first impression of Wayne Allyn Root was not good. Frankly, my BS meter was pegged immediately. I felt like I was listening to a cheap scam artist, or maybe a televangelist, you know, the ones with the crazy hair, or maybe a used car salesman. Sorry, this guy strikes me as phony, and as someone who is trying way too hard to convince us how “cool” and “relevant” he is. And, most of all he strikes me as a person that is all about publicity, and not too much about substance. In other words, it seems to me he has a PHD in BS.
So, anyone else get that vibe? Or am I just off base here? Because when I look at this
The Black dirtbag loser bitch headline I got from Donald Douglas, because, well, it fits this waste of human skin. And this reporter who interviews her acts so sympathetic to her! Give me a break! This foul woman can take her phony apology and stick it frankly! She is sorry, sorry the phone call was taped and made public! All she does is play the victim here, she is “angry” , and blah, blah, blah! No, she is simply a racist piece of filth who has been exposed. And, would you believe it? She has had trouble with the RAAAAACIST police too!
Michelle Williams, who was once known as Michelle Conyers, has had several run-ins with the law. She’s been arrested on charges ranging from aggravated assault with a handgun to fraudulent use of personal information, fraudulent use of a credit card, petty theft, two counts of grand theft, two counts of forgery and exploitation of an elderly person.
She entered guilty pleas to several of the charges and was sentenced to restitution and probation, which she completed successfully. Williams hasn’t been involved with the court system since 2005.
This is why Republican support voter ID laws. Democrats are opposed to those laws because they say such laws are, wait for it, RAAAAACIST! They insist, repeatedly, that there is no voter fraud, Matt calls BS!
. I’ve been covering voter registration fraud and voter fraud since 2009. There are dozens of examples listed here, and there are probably stories that I have missed altogether. So, when the regressives tell us that there is no problem, I get a tad snarky. No one should be able to get away with such blatant lies.
Once more, facts trump Democrat talking points and race baiting
House investigators will hold a hearing this week on President Obama’s immigrant visa application policy following an inspector general report that immigration enforcement bureaucrats pressure officers to approve potentially fraudulent immigrant visa applications.
“It’s outrageous that administration officials would compromise national security for their own political agenda and gain,” said House Judiciary Committee chairman Lamar Smith, R-Texas. “The Immigration Subcommittee plans to hold a hearing in February on visa fraud and will investigate these alleged abuses by the administration,” he added.
Smith was responding to “a recent Inspector General report that Obama administration officials at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services [USCIS] have pressured officers to rush questionable immigrant visa applications,” saying that such a policy “undermines the integrity of our immigration system and threatens national security.”
The Dailyreported today that “A 40-page report, drafted by the Office of Inspector General in September but not publicly released, details the immense pressure immigration service officers are under to approve visa applications quickly, sometimes while overlooking concerns about fraud, eligibility or security.”
The Daily added that at least five immigration enforcement officers had faced reassignment or demotion for denying too many visa applications.
“These applications need thorough vetting because they often lead to U.S. citizenship,” Smith also said in his statement.
Higher-ups within U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services are pressuring rank-and-file officers to rubber-stamp immigrants’ visa applications, sometimes against the officers’ will, according to a Homeland Security report and internal documents exclusively obtained by The Daily.
A 40-page report, drafted by the Office of Inspector General in September but not publicly released, details the immense pressure immigration service officers are under to approve visa applications quickly, sometimes while overlooking concerns about fraud, eligibility or security.
One-quarter of the 254 officers surveyed said they have been pressured to approve questionable cases, sometimes “against their will.”
The report does not call out any particular officials and indicates that the agency has had a problem with valuing quantity over quality since at least the 1980s.
But high-ranking USCIS officials said the pressure has heightened after the Obama administration appointed Alejandro Mayorkas as director in August 2009 during an effort to pass comprehensive immigration reform, bringing with him a mantra of “get to yes.”
Internal communications provided to The Daily indicate that the new leadership seemed to fundamentally clash with career agency employees over when to afford the benefit of the doubt, culminating in a whistle-blower investigation into a senior appointee and, ultimately, the agency-wide inspector general inquiry that produced the report.
“We recognize their right to interpret things as liberally as possible, but you still have to follow the law,” said one high-ranking official who was unhappy with the current push.
At least five agency veterans seen as being too tough on applicants were either demoted, or given the choice between a demotion or a relocation from Southern California – where their families were – to San Francisco and Nebraska, according to sources and letters of reassignment provided to The Daily.
Those kind of threats have caused lower-level employees to fall in line, sources said.
“People are afraid,” said one longtime manager, who requested anonymity for fear of being fired. “Integrity only carries people so far because they’ve got to pay the rent.”
A rank-and-file officer who was not involved in the investigation claimed he was demoted to working on less technical cases because he had a high denial rate. “They don’t reprimand you, they just move you,” he said.
“They attempted to basically get me to come into line and approve a bunch of cases. And I just wouldn’t compromise myself because the approvals they ordered, they weren’t in line with the laws,” said the officer.
These employees’ claims are reflected in the inspector general report, which found that 14 percent of respondents had “serious concerns” that employees who focused on fraud or ineligibility were evaluated unfairly. The report also found that supervisors sometimes take cases away from an unwilling officer and assign them to someone else, against agency rules.
Recommendations for improvements in the report included raising the burden of proof and doing away with the popular informal and special appeals practices, which immigration lawyers said would only lengthen an already onerous process.
Attorney David Leopold, who was recently president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said the formal appeals process can take up to two years.
“When you’re dealing with business visas, those visas cannot wait around a year, or two years, for review. They needed an answer yesterday,” said Leopold. “I think when they’ve [the officers] made a mistake at that level… sometimes you can just reason with people and ask them to take a look at it again.”
Nevertheless, USCIS approved 86 percent of the 3.9 million immigration cases it reviewed between October 2008 and October 2009 – a 4 percent drop from the year before, according to the most recent data provided to The Daily.
And immigration attorneys complained that it seems like officers are just looking for reasons to deny a case, and already demand a higher standard of proof than what is required. That standard is now considered a 51 percent likelihood that a fact is true.
“We’re getting ridiculous denials and requests for evidence on things that should be approved very easily,” said immigration attorney Deb Notkin, adding that it’s particularly tough for specialty industries like fashion, software development and graphic design.
The attorneys applauded Mayorkas’ more open dialogue with them, and other proponents of immigration reform, who had previously felt shut out of the bureaucracy. “Mayorkas, to his credit, is very accessible, so we are able to express our concerns about the adjudication process,” said Leopold.
But sometimes, the openness led to a perception that private attorneys were “running” the agency, according to the inspector general’s report, which cited emails in which individual cases were granted special review after private attorneys complained to management.
Mayorkas and Homeland Security press officers said yesterday they could not comment on the allegations.
One of the big threats from the global warming moonbat types is that a rise in temperature will melt the polar ice caps causing the oceans to rise, with the cataclysmic result of skyscrapers being under water. Let’s face it, if you think that the commute into Manhattan is bad now… just wait.
There is only one problem with this scenario, Mother Nature isn’t being cooperative. You see it is true that sea level has risen during the 20th century and probably well before that. Scientists estimate that sea level has increased by 7 inches during the 2oth century.
The climate change hoaxers use computer models to predict that sea levels would rise anywhere from 15 inches to 2o feet because of global warming in the 21st century (the consensus number is closer to 3 feet).
But Mother Nature was never good at computer science. Satellite data proved that the first decade of the 21st century sea level grew by only 0.83 inches (a pace of just 8 inches for the entire century). What’s even worse (for the global warming hoaxers) there has been no rise since 2006. Now I know that some Democrats believe that Obama is a miracle worker, but even the the crazies at the Daily Kos would admit that controlling sea level is way above his pay grade. So the scientists at the University of Colorado’s NASA-funded Sea Level Research Group did what any other self-respecting cult members would do, they fudged the numbers. They simply added .3 millimeters per year to its Global Mean Sea Level Time Series. That way they could report that the sea level rise was accelerating, instead of what was actually happening–decelerating.
The University of Colorado Sea Level Research Group is coming to their rescue. The NASA-funded group claims glacial melt is removing weight that had been pressing down on land masses, which in turn is causing land mass to rise. This welcome news mitigates sea-level rise from melting glacial ice, meaning sea level will rise less than previously thought. However, it is very inconvenient for alarmist sea level predictions. Therefore, instead of reporting the amount by which sea level is rising in the real world, the Sea Level Research Group has begun adding 0.3 millimeters per year of fictitious sea level rise to “compensate” for rising land mass.
The extra 0.3 millimeters of fictitious sea level rise will add up to 1.2 inches over the course of the 21st century. While this is not monumental in and of itself, it will allow alarmists to paint a dramatically different picture of sea level rise than is occurring in the real world. For example, the current pace of 8 inches of sea level rise for the present century is essentially no different than the 7 inches of sea level rise that occurred last century. However, with an artificially enhanced 9.2 inches of sea level rise, alarmists can claim sea level is rising 31 percent faster than it did last century.
This isn’t the first time NASA climate-change scientists have fudged data. James Hansen is famous for it.
James Hansen of NASA is not just any global warming Moonbat, he is Al Gore’s global warming Moonbat. It was Hansen’s data that was used in Gore’s Oscar/Peace prize winning film. Hansen’s work is ruled by one motto: “If God gives you rotten apples, tell everyone it’s champagne.”
In October of 2008, Hansen made the announcement that it was warmest Oct. in history. A few days later after all the doom and gloom headlines passed he announced “Oops, never mind, I was wrong.” He only admitted the mistake after he was “outed” by other scientists. In reality, Oct. 08 was quite an average October. It Ranked 70th in the last 114 years.
In 2007 Hansen was forced by reporter Stephen McIntyre to revise his published figures for US surface temperatures, to show that the hottest year in history was not 1998 as he had claimed, but 1934.
Well It wasn’t exactly a correction. He fought tooth and nail against correcting the numbers, mislead the press and in the end Hansen didn’t fully make the change. Judicial Watch filed a FOIA request and gained access to all the NASA Documents related to the incorrect data, It showed that unlike an objective scientist, Hansen wasn’t very anxious to correct his mistakes.
According to multiple press reports, when NASA corrected the error, the new data apparently caused a reshuffling of NASA’s rankings for the hottest years on record in the United States, with 1934 replacing 1998 at the top of the list.
These new documents, obtained by Judicial Watch through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), include internal GISS email correspondence as NASA scientists attempted to deal with the media firestorm resulting from the controversy. In one exchange GISS head James Hansen tells a reporter from Bloomberg that NASA had not previously published rankings with 1998 atop the list as the hottest year on record in the 20th century [not true].
Hansen announced recently that “The 12-month running mean global temperature in the Goddard Space Institute analysis has reached a new record in 2010 The main factor is our estimated temperature change for the Arctic region.” The GISS figures show that recent temperatures in the Arctic have been up to four degrees C warmer than the long-term mean.
Those arctic numbers that important to Hansen’s announcement were a figment of his creative imagination.
Art Horn, at the Energy Tribune blog, has blown the whistle on Hansen and GISS. He points out that GISS has no thermometers in the Arctic! It has hardly thermometers that are even near the Arctic Circle. GISS estimates its arctic temperatures from land-based thermometers that supposedly each represent the temperatures over 1200 square kilometers. That’s a pretty heroic assumption.
Meanwhile, the Danish Meteorological Institute is publishing sea-surface temperatures from the Arctic showing a cooling trend in the Arctic oceans during melt season since about 1993. Clearly, we have no accurate measure of the real temperatures and trends in the Arctic at this moment. Probably that’s not very important. The Russians say that the Arctic has its own 70-year climate cycle. The files of the New York Times, in fact, are filled with stories from the 1920s and 1930s, clearly showing that the Arctic was as warm then as now.
But this is the moment when proposed energy taxes would start to scuttle 85 percent of the energy which powers the modern world and its lifestyles. Global climate alarmists, Hansen among them, are playing a desperate and short-sighted game of “pass the energy taxes.”
Or in other word James Hansen is full of crap. He made the temperatures up… there were no thermometers in the Arctic to measure temperatures.
The global warming hoaxers have their backs against the wall, the longer it takes to get their job-killing regulations in place, more information will be discovered proving that their man-made-global warming theory is nonsense.
NASA funded scientists are just trying to speed up the process, by inventing data. Its no wonder that some people believe the moon landing was faked (not me).
With the national debt and federal spending at an all-time high several U.S. government agencies joined forces to make an outlandish $125 billion in “improper payments” last year, an increase of more than $16 billion from the previous year.
This sort of government waste and corruption is hardly an earth-shattering development. Congressional investigators have for years documented the growing crisis of federal agencies making fraudulent payments to those who don’t qualify yet little has been done to correct the situation. In fact, this month’s audit containing the latest figures stresses that previous investigations have “highlighted long-standing, widespread and significant problems with improper payments in the federal government.”
The impropriety is so pervasive that President Obama issued a much-ballyhooed order last summer commanding federal agencies to create a “Do Not Pay List” to protect taxpayer resources and stem abuse. It has done nothing to protect increasingly scarce taxpayer dollars, according to the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the investigative arm of the U.S. Congress.
In its latest report the GAO reveals that federal agencies made $125.4 billion in improper payments in fiscal 2010, marking a substantial increase from the $109.2 billion it dished out in fiscal 2009. The biggest chunk of the fraudulent payments—more than 90%—was made by social spending programs, mainly Medicare (health coverage for the elderly), Medicaid (health coverage for the poor) and the Labor Department’s unemployment insurance.
Improper income tax credits, Social Security and disability payments, free school lunches and food stamps round off the top 10. Incredibly, just a few weeks ago the U.S. Department of Agriculture launched a $5 million campaign to recruit more food-stamp recipients, even though the GAO reveals that the agency doled out nearly $4.8 billion in improper benefits last year due to “incorrect computations, misapplication of an income or resource exclusion and inadequate verification of accounts and wages.”
There seems to be no end in site to the waste, according to GAO investigators, who diplomatically state that “challenges” remain in “determining the full extent of improper payments across the federal government and in reasonably assuring that effective actions are taken to reduce improper payments.” Some agencies don’t even bother reporting improper payments, the GAO says, so the full extent of the problem will never really be known.
During a hearing on Capitol Hill Thursday, the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) admitted to double-counting in the Obamacare budget.
In her first appearance before the House Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee since the health-care law passed, Kathleen Sebelius responded to a line of questioning by Republican Rep. John Shimkus of Illinois about whether $500 billion in Medicare cuts were used to sustain the program or pay for the law.
“There is an issue here on the budget because your own actuary has said you can’t double-count,” said Shimkus. “You can’t count — they’re attacking Medicare on the CR when their bill, your law, cut $500 billion from Medicare.”
He continued: “Then you’re also using the same $500 billion to what? Say your funding health care. Your own actuary says you can’t do both. […] What’s the $500 billion in cuts for? Preserving Medicare or funding the health-care law?
Sebelius’ reply? “Both.”
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The Obama administration and HHS have been criticized previously for double-counting. In a report last summer, HHS claimed a provision in the health-care law would extend the Medicare trust fund by 12 years. The Congressional Budget Office released a memo that said HHS’s math was more than a little off.
“[…] They cannot be set aside to pay for future Medicare spending and, at the same time, pay for current spending on other parts of the legislation or on other programs … To describe the full amount of HI trust fund savings as both improving the government’s ability to pay future Medicare benefits and financing new spending outside of Medicare would essentially double-count a large share of those savings,” said the CBO memo.
“I was shocked to hear the secretary admit that $500 billion is double-counted in the health-care law,” said Shimkus after Thursday’s hearing. “We knew the health-care law’s actual cost was much greater than originally told to the public. And now, the truth is slowly coming out in administration reports and testimony.”
Rep. Joe Pitts of Pennsylvania , the chairman of the subcommittee added, “The same dollar can’t be used twice. This is the largest of the many budget gimmicks Democrats used to claim Obamacare would reduce the deficit.”
UPDATE: When contacted by The Daily Caller, Richard Sorian, Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs had this to say:
“The scoring of the Affordable Care Act is entirely consistent with how legislation has been scored for the 30 years, under Presidents of both parties, and Congresses of both parties. Savings in programs like Medicare and Social Security are scored as improving the solvency of those programs and reducing the deficit.”
The Obama administration has quietly forged ahead with its proposal to sell $60 billion worth of fighter jets and attack helicopters to Saudi Arabia unhampered by Congress, despite questions raised in legislative inquiries and in an internal congressional report about the wisdom of the deal.
The massive arms deal would be the single largest sale of weapons to a foreign nation in the history of the U.S., outfitting Saudi Arabia with a fully modernized, potent new air force.
“Our six-decade-long security relationship with Saudi Arabia is a primary security pillar in the region,” Defense Sec. Robert M. Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton wrote in a Nov. 16 letter to congress. “This package continues that tradition.”
But some critics are questioning the deal, and the stealthy effort by the Obama administration to avoid a more probing congressional review by notifying Congress last month, just as members were headed home for the November elections. Congress had 30 days to raise objections – a review period that concludes Saturday. With most members leaving Washington today, any significant effort to block the deal appears dead for now, officials said.
“I do not think there will be any action” to hold up the sale, Rep. Howard Berman, the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told Bloomberg News Thursday.
Rep. Anthony Weiner, a New York Democrat, submitted a resolution this week to try and block the deal, and was among those who objected to the way the administration approached the required congressional review.
“Hiding this in a recess announcement is a sign of how unpopular it is,” he said. “It’s bad policy that now is further tainted by shameful process.”
The Obama administration has touted the deal as a boon for American jobs, and as a move to solidify the alliance between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia at a time when American intelligence is dependent on the Islamic nation for help in the war on terror. Earlier this month, it was a tip from Saudi intelligence that helped foil an al Qaeda plot to hide a bomb in a desktop printer aboard a UPS cargo plane.
The arrangement would ship 84 F-15 fighter jets and more than 175 attack helicopters to the Saudis over the next 15 years. The choppers, in particular, would “bolster Saudi Arabia’s counterterrorism capabilities,” Gates and Clinton wrote in their letter this week to congressional leaders.
Missouri Sen. Kit Bond, a Republican who will soon retire as his party’s ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, supports the arms sale, and told ABC News that the Saudis offered ample evidence of the value of the alliance when they provided tracking numbers for the parcels that contained the concealed bombs.
“If any of my colleagues have doubt that they can be friendly, I suppose this would send a strong signal that they can be friendly,” Bond said. Gates and Clinton also touted Saudi Arabia’s “significant” counterterrorism cooperation in their letter to congressional leaders, specifically citing help in thwarting the cargo bomb plot.
The day after the House Ethics Committee recommended a censure for Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-N.Y.), the committe announced it will not hold the trial of Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) on Nov. 29, as scheduled.
Instead, committee chairs Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) and Jo Bonner (R-Ala.) said they have decided to send Ms. Waters’ case back to the panel’s subcommittee for further investigation.
Before boarding a flight in Grand Rapids, a woman says the search at the airport security checkpoint was violent, unnecessary and extremely upsetting. “When I got on the plane all I wanted to do was sob,” says traveler Ella Swift.
Swift was one of an increasing number of passengers Transportation Security Administration officers are thoroughly searching by hand.
North Carolina Democrat Bob Etheridge is conceding his House race, National Journal’s Tim Sahd reports. Republican Renee Ellmers, consequently, will enter the House in January.
This leaves only five House races yet to be decided, with one recount underway and absentee ballots being counted in the other four. This gives Republicans a total of 61 seats gained in the 2010 midterms so far.
The Senate Judiciary Committee has unanimously approved a bill that would give the Attorney General the right to shut down websites with a court order if copyright infringement is deemed “central to the activity” of the site, regardless if a crime has actually been committed.
The Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA) is among the most draconian laws ever considered to combat digital piracy.
“The government’s reaction to General Motors and the bailout from the government I think could have been handled in a more orderly way from a bankruptcy judge,” Boehner said.
“When you look at the people who lost because of the government’s actions, we’re talking about tens of thousands of Americans who were punished as a result of the government’s action,” he added.
A moment of national pride took place recently in the White House when Staff Sgt. Salvatore Giunta received the Medal of Honor for bravery above and beyond the call of duty in combat in Afghanistan.
Sgt. Giunta became the first living American soldier to receive the Medal of Honor since the Vietnam War. He is now one of only eighty-eight (88) living holders of the Medal of Honor.
A federal judge ruled Friday in favor of Republican Joe Miller to halt the certification of the election results – at least provisionally – in his race against Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski.
Judge Ralph Beistline granted a temporary injunction to stop election officials from certifying the results of the Senate race. Beistline granted the injunction as long as Miller moves his case to state court by Monday.
Ricky New,45, was jailed Thursday after he allegedly robbed a convenience store and then attempted to flee the scene on a riding lawn mower. According to police, New entered the Kent’s Corner convenience store armed with a stick and demanded cash.
After assaulting the female clerk, he left with an undisclosed amount of cash, hopped on a Craftsman riding lawn mower and fled the scene.
A D.C. woman admitted that she pretended to be her dead mother to collect more than $35,000 in federal retirement benefits.
Yolanda Powers, 31, will likely receive a sentence of six to 12 months of home detention under federal guidelines, prosecutors said. Prosecutors said Carol Powers died on April 1, 2008, shortly after retiring, and retirement payments were deposited into her account.
Two undertakers in Cologne Germany are trying to tap into the gay market by selling coffins adorned with images of male nudes.
“We believe you should be able to have a coffin that lets you embark on your last journey in a way that reflects how you lived your life,” undertaker Thomas Brandl told Reuters. The unconventional coffin, which costs 1,650 euros, has aroused fascination among customers, said Brandl.
An Iowa City man accused of giving vodka to a puppy and nearly killing it has been sentenced to 90 days in jail for animal abuse. The Iowa City Press-Citizen reports that Jared Colony agreed to plea guilty in exchange for a 90-day jail sentence.
He also agreed to pay a $625 fine and nearly $2,500 to the dog’s owner. According to police, Colony was watching the puppy for a friend in October 2009.
In a stunning setback to President Obama’s approach to trying terrorism suspects, the first Guantanamo detainee to be prosecuted in civilian court nearly walked free when a jury found him not guilty on all but one of 285 terror-related counts yesterday.
Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, a Tanzanian, beat weighty charges such as conspiracy to kill US nationals and conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction in the 1998 attacks on US embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, which claimed 224 lives.
He was convicted only on Count 5, a minor charge of conspiracy to damage or destroy US property with explosives.
But that count includes a subsection that asks jurors if the defendant’s conduct caused death of persons other than his co-conspirators – and the jury said “yes.”
That lone guilty verdict is enough to send the terrorist to jail for at least 20 years under federal sentencing guidelines, and maybe for the rest of his life.
Ghailani, 36, smiled during the eight minutes it took to read all the charges.
“We respect the jury’s verdict and are pleased that Ahmed Ghailani now faces a minimum of 20 years in prison and a potential life sentence,” the Justice Department said in a statement.
The failure to pin more serious convictions on Ghailani is likely to be seen as a setback for Obama’s plans to close Guantanamo and try 174 terrorism suspects in civilian courts.
The detainees at Guantanamo include Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the accused mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks.
While the feds obtained a conviction, it was not on the more serious charges they needed to set a precedent for future prosecutions.
The major problem was prosecutors’ inability to establish how much Ghailani knew about the attacks or his involvement in the bombings.
Defense attorneys were elated at the jury’s conclusion, and said they plan to appeal the single conviction.
“This verdict is a reaffirmation that this nation’s judicial system is the greatest ever devised. It is truly a system of laws and not men,” said defense lawyer Peter Quijano.
Ghailani was transferred from Guantanamo Bay to New York in June 2009.
Following several tense days of deliberations, prosecutors were lucky to get even the one conviction, after seeing their case nearly implode in a mistrial.
The panel, which deliberated for a week, reached its decision two days after one juror asked to be excused, saying she was being “attacked” for her dissenting opinion.
But the jurors went back to work and reached the single unanimous verdict.
“You have reason to feel proud,” said Judge Lewis Kaplan. “You have all done your duty. Our nation is a better place. I and everyone else have been struck by the way you did your duty. You reviewed the evidence with great care.”
The government accused Ghailani of buying seven gas cylinders used in the bombs and the truck used to transport them.
The San Mateo district attorney’s office has a warning for all TSA personnel at SFO – anyone inappropriately touching a passenger during a security pat down will be prosecuted.
“The case would be reviewed and if we could prove the elements of it, that it was inappropriately done with a sexual or lewd intent, that person would be prosecuted,” incoming San Mateo DA Steve Wagstaffe said.
An Ohio woman traveling with her infant son says a pat-down by a TSA screener went too far. “She sexually assaulted me,” Erin Chase complained Wednesday of the intrusive search.
“She needs to lose her job,” she said of the TSA employee. Chase’s complaint is just one of thousands pouring in from frustrated air passengers over the TSA’s recently implemented security checks.
A state-owned Chinese telecommunications firm “hijacked” Internet traffic in April, affecting traffic from U.S. government domains and raising serious implications for Internet safety.
For about 18 minutes on April 8, 2010, China Telecom diverted U.S. and other foreign Internet traffic through servers in China, according to a report by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission.
The federal government’s improper payments totaled about $125 billion in fiscal 2010 as unemployment insurance and Medicaid payments increased, officials said Tuesday.
The total improper payment amount climbed $15 billion from the previous year. The payments included about 89,000 checks sent to dead or incarcerated people as part of the economic stimulus program.
The popular student body president at California State University, Fresno has publicly revealed a personal detail he long sought to keep secret: He is an illegal immigrant.
Pedro Ramirez, 22, previously told campus administrators in confidence that he was concerned about going public with his immigration status after winning the top post in student government.
A Swedish prosecutor said Thursday she had requested the arrest of Julian Assange, the founder of whistleblower website WikiLeaks, to face charges of rape and sexual molestation.
“I request the District Court of Stockholm to detain Mr. Assange in his absence, suspected of rape, sexual molestation and unlawful coercion,” Swedish director of prosecutions Marianne Ny said in a statement.
In an astonishing breakthrough, a team of British and international physicists were able to ‘trap’ 38 atoms of anti-hydrogen in a laboratory for a fraction of a second.
While the experiment is unlikely to lead to the warp engines, anti-matter drives or the faster than light travel of Star Trek, it could shed light on the nature and origins of the Universe.
Police arrested a woman in Idaho’s capital city after they say she impersonated a plastic surgeon and conducted breast exams on at least two women in local bars.
Kristina B. Ross was arrested and jailed on accusations of unlicensed practice of medicine. It all started when Boise police were called to a downtown medical office by employees of a licensed plastic surgeon.
A disagreement over the budget erupted into fisticuffs when Graciela Camano punched opposition politician Carlos Kunkel in the mouth.
Two TV news channels were broadcasting the session in the capital Buenos Aires when Ms Camano got out of her chair to confront Mr Kunkel. The two exchanged words, then Ms Camano slapped Mr Kunkel in the mouth and walked out of the chamber.
Steven N. Cowan, a 66-year-old Verona man was jailed Tuesday after he allegedly shot his television and created a 15-hour standoff with police, all because Bristol Palin had not yet been voted off Dancing With The Stars.
Cowan and his wife were watching the show when he became irate because Bristol Palin was still on the show, and he did not think that she was a good dancer.
A mother told Russian airport officials her daughter was a suicide bomber in a desperate bid to stop her flying away to get married.
Police scrambled to intercept the unsuspecting bride-to-be as her plane was prevented from taking off from Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport. But when authorities realised the tip-off was bogus they traced the anonymous call back to the woman’s mother.
The euro is facing an unprecedented crisis after another country indicated on Monday night that it was at a “high risk” of requiring an international bail-out.
Portugal became the latest European nation to admit it was on the brink of seeking help from Brussels after Ireland confirmed it had begun preliminary talks over its debt problems.
Greece also disclosed that its economic problems are even worse than previously thought.
Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, raised the spectre of the euro collapsing as she warned: “If the euro fails, then Europe fails.”
European finance ministers will meet in Brussels on Tuesday to begin discussions over a new European stability plan that is expected to result in billions of pounds being offered to Ireland, Portugal and possibly even Spain.
David Cameron said he was thankful that Britain had not joined the euro, but indicated his displeasure that taxpayers in this country face a pounds 7?billion liability in any bail-out package.
The veteran Conservative MP Peter Tapsell warned that the “potential knock-on effect” of the Irish crisis “could pose as great a threat to the world economy as did Lehman Brothers, AIG and Goldman Sachs in September 2008″.
Ireland has resisted growing international pressure to accept EU financial assistance amid concerns that this would lead to a surrender of political and economic sovereignty.
However, the German government is expected to signal that Ireland may have to accept a pounds 77?billion bail-out, along with a loss of economic and political independence, as the price of preserving the euro.
Mrs Merkel said that the single currency was “the glue that holds Europe together”.
Her words came as fellow eurozone members Portugal and Spain rounded on Ireland. They fear that international concerns over the euro will lead to so-called market contagion spreading to them.
Fernando Teixeira dos Santos, the Portuguese finance minister, said: “There is a risk of contagion. The risk is high because we are not facing only a national problem. It is the problems of Greece, Portugal and Ireland. This has to do with the eurozone and the stability of the eurozone, and that is why contagion in this framework is more likely.”
Mr Teixeira dos Santos added: “I would not want to lecture the Irish government on that. I want to believe they will decide to do what is most appropriate together for Ireland and the euro. I want to believe they have the vision to take the right decision.”
He later sought to clarify his comments, insisting that Portugal was not preparing to seek assistance.
Greece had earlier added to the growing uncertainty when it said it would breach the conditions for the bail-out it was granted by the EU earlier in the year. The Greek government said its debt problem was far worse than previous dire forecasts.
The California Supreme Court upheld a state law on Monday allowing illegal immigrants who attend high school in California for three years and graduate to pay lower in-state tuition rates at state colleges.
The ruling reverses a lower-court decision siding with opponents of the law who said it unfairly favors illegal aliens over U.S. citizens who live outside California and are charged much higher tuition rates.
Charles Rangel, the New York Democratic congressman accused of violating ethics rules, looked likely to face a guilty verdict after a House panel accepted a prosecutor’s case against him on Monday.
The panel retired to deliberate on Mr Rangel’s fate, but analysts said the fact that it had accepted all the evidence presented by the ethics committee’s lawyers meant a guilty finding looked very likely.
Before the midterm election, the open-borders group (funded by Soros, SEIU, and the usual progressive suspects) sent out illegal alien canvassers to drum up Democrat votes in Washington state.
The story isn’t over. My friend and Washington state blogger/watchdog Stefan Sharkansky scoured campaign finance records and found that OAV apparently failed to file as a registered political committee.
Breast cancer surgeon Kathryn Wagner has posted a warning in her waiting room about a different sort of risk to patients’ health: She’ll stop taking new Medicare cases if the U.S. Congress allows looming cuts in doctors’ pay to go through.
The potential cuts have raised alarms that real damage to Medicare could result if the lame-duck Congress fails to act by Dec. 1.
At least 64 people were killed, and nearly 80 injured, as a five-story building collapsed in New Delhi, India. Relatives crowded around the building as workers raced to rescue those trapped in its debris.
The building caved in Monday night. But rescue efforts were slow because ambulances and heavy equipment needed to clear the rubble could not easily navigate the narrow alleys in the congested neighborhood.
State lawmakers on Monday sharply criticized new fullbody scanning devices and pat-downs now in place at airports as they introduced resolutions urging federal officials to reverse the changes.
The opposition is part of a growing chorus of criticism that the tactics, which the TSA says can help prevent terrorist attacks that use nonmetallic explosives, are intrusive and potentially dangerous.
Nine people, including three Prince George’s County cops, were arrested Monday on charges involving drugs, guns, and black-market alcohol and cigarettes as authorities ratcheted up a corruption probe.
The nine suspects were arrested three days after County Executive Jack B. Johnson (D) and his wife were led from their home in handcuffs, accused of evidence-tampering in a probe of sweetheart land deals.
A serial burglar was in a “drug-induced stupor” when he photographed his penis with mobile phones he stole and sent the images to the owners’ contacts, a court has been told.
Shane Anthony Willis, 33, has been jailed for a minimum four-and-a-half years for a string of burglaries in inner Melbourne and regional Victoria between January and April this year.
Bay County Sheriff’s deputies report that a fire that broke out Wednesday night in Callaway Heights was set by one of the residents who was mad that his wife hadn’t cleaned up.
Deputies allege that Rachel Dorch claims her husband, Michael Dorch, became irate that she hadn’t cleaned the house, and threw a match onto the couple’s bed, saying “There’s your house,” before leaving the premises.
A restaurant in the US has been criticized for offering free food to customers weighing over 159kg. The Heart Attack Grill in Arizona has launched a new offer where anyone who weighs over 159kg can dine for free at the famous eatery.
The restaurant employs waitresses dressed as nurses, with food such as the Quadruple Bypass Burger and Flatline Fries on the menu.
A man has told how two ‘friends’ cut off his beard and forced him to eat it in a fight over a lawnmower. Harvey Westmoreland told police that James Hill and Troy Holt had invited him and his brother to their house.
“They called and wanted me to come around there and when I got there, I realized they were already drunk,” he said. Holt apparently offered to buy Westmoreland’s lawnmower for $250.
Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, today released its 2009 list of Washington’s “Ten Most Wanted Corrupt Politicians.” The list, in alphabetical order, includes:
1: Senator Christopher Dodd (D-CT): This marks two years in a row for Senator Dodd, who made the 2008 “Ten Most Corrupt” list for his corrupt relationship with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and for accepting preferential treatment and loan terms from Countrywide Financial, a scandal which… Click HERE For Complete Comments
2: Senator John Ensign (R-NV): A number of scandals popped up in 2009 involving public officials who conducted illicit affairs, and then attempted to cover them up with hush payments and favors, an obvious abuse of power. The year’s worst offender might just be Nevada Republican Senator John Ensign. Ensign admitted in June to an extramarital affair… Click HERE For Complete Comments
3: Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA): Judicial Watch is investigating a $12 million TARP cash injection provided to the Boston-based OneUnited Bank at the urging of Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank. As reported in the January 22, 2009, edition of the Wall Street Journal, the Treasury Department indicated it would only provide funds to healthy… Click HERE For Complete Comments
4: Secretary of Treasury Timothy Geithner: In 2009, Obama Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner admitted that he failed to pay $34,000 in Social Security and Medicare taxes from 2001-2004 on his lucrative salary at the International Monetary Fund (IMF), an organization with 185 member countries that oversees… Click HERE For Complete Comments
5: Attorney General Eric Holder: Tim Geithner can be sure he won’t be hounded about his tax-dodging by his colleague Eric Holder, US Attorney General. Judicial Watch strongly opposed Holder because of his terrible ethics record, which includes: obstructing an FBI investigation of the theft of nuclear secrets from Los Alamos Nuclear Laboratory; rejecting multiple requests… Click HERE For Complete Comments
6: Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. (D-IL)/ Senator Roland Burris (D-IL): One of the most serious scandals of 2009 involved a scheme by former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich to sell President Obama’s then-vacant Senate seat to the highest bidder. Two men caught smack dab in the middle of the scandal: Senator Roland Burris, who ultimately got the job, and Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. According to… Click HERE For Complete Comments
7: President Barack Obama: During his presidential campaign, President Obama promised to run an ethical and transparent administration. However, in his first year in office, the President has delivered corruption and secrecy, bringing Chicago-style political corruption to the White House. Consider just a few Obama administration “lowlights” from… Click HERE For Complete Comments
8: Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA): At the heart of the corruption problem in Washington is a sense of entitlement. Politicians believe laws and rules (even the U.S. Constitution) apply to the rest of us but not to them. Case in point: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her excessive and boorish demands for military travel. Judicial Watch obtained documents… Click HERE For Complete Comments
9: Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) and the rest of the PMA Seven: Rep. John Murtha made headlines in 2009 for all the wrong reasons. The Pennsylvania congressman is under federal investigation for his corrupt relationship with the now-defunct defense lobbyist PMA Group. PMA, founded by a former Murtha associate, has been the congressman’s largest campaign contributor. Since 2002, Murtha… Click HERE For Complete Comments
10: Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY): Rangel, the man in charge of writing tax policy for the entire country, has yet to adequately explain how he could possibly “forget” to pay taxes on $75,000 in rental income he earned from his off-shore rental property. He also faces allegations that he improperly used his influence to maintain ownership of highly coveted rent-controlled apartments in Harlem, and misused his congressional office… Click HERE For Complete Comments
darcprynce
Dave C
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