Friday, March 6, 2015

Barker's Newsbites: Friday, March 6, 2015


I can't FRIGGIN' believe I'm fighting another damn cold...!!!


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6 comments:

William R. Barker said...

* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)

http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/06/politics/robert-menendez-criminal-corruption-charges-planned/

The Justice Department is preparing to bring criminal corruption charges against New Jersey Sen. Robert Menendez, a Democrat, alleging he used his Senate office to push the business interests of a Democratic donor and friend in exchange for gifts.

* MENENDEZ IS A CLINTON CRONY. OBAMA IS GOING AFTER CLINTON CRONIES. IT'S THAT SIMPLE. THIS IS ABOUT 2016.

People briefed on the case say Attorney General Eric Holder has signed off on prosecutors' request to proceed with charges, CNN has learned exclusively. An announcement could come within weeks. Prosecutors are under pressure in part because of the statute of limitation on some of the allegations.

The case could pose a high-profile test of the Justice Department's ability to prosecute sitting lawmakers, having already spawned a legal battle over whether key evidence the government has gathered is protected by the Constitution's Speech and Debate clause.

The FBI and prosecutors from the Justice Department's public integrity section, have pursued a variety of allegations against Menendez, who has called the probe part of "smear campaign" against him.

* MENENDEZ IS A PIECE OF HUMAN GARBAGE...

The government's case centers on Menendez's relationship with Salomon Melgen, a Florida ophthalmologist who the senator has called a friend and political supporter. Melgen and his family have been generous donors to the senator and various committees the senator is associated with.

* IT'S ALSO A SEX SCANDAL... (AND I WONDER IF BILL CLINTON WILL GET DRAGGED IN...)

Investigators have focused in part on plane trips Menendez took in 2010 to the Dominican Republic as a guest of Melgen. In 2013, after word of the federal investigation became public, Menendez paid back Melgen $58,000 for the 2010 plane trips calling his failure to properly disclose the flights an "oversight."

* TO ORGIES IN THE D.R. FEATURING UNDERAGE GIRLS...

(*SIGH*)

Menendez has denied any wrongdoing in his ties to Melgen. His spokeswoman did not immediately comment on CNN's report that the Department of Justice is preparing charges against him.

One of the highest ranking Hispanic members of Congress, Menendez is a former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He has become one of the Obama administration's most vocal Democratic opponents on two key foreign policy matters - President Obama's decision to ease the trade embargo against Cuba and also his effort to engage direct negotiations with Iran over that country's nuclear program.

Menendez advocated on Melgen's behalf with federal Medicare administrators who accused Melgen of overbilling the government's healthcare program, according to court documents and people briefed on the probe. Melgen was among the top recipients of Medicare reimbursements in recent years, during a time when he was also a major Democratic donor. Melgen's attorneys have denied any wrongdoing.

Prosecutors also are focusing on whether Menendez broke the law in advocating for Melgen's business interest in a Dominican Republic government contract for a port screening equipment. The U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency, at the time, considered donating port screening equipment to the Dominican Republic, which would have hurt the contract of Melgen-controlled company.

* TO BE CONTINUED...

March 6, 2015 at 2:58 PM
William R. Barker said...

* CONTINUING... (Part 2 of 2)

During a Senate subcommittee hearing in 2012, Menendez didn't mention ICSSI, Melgen's company, by name, but he did press Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Matthew Rooney about an unnamed company who had a contract to X-ray cargo that went through all Dominican ports - a contract that, he said, Dominican authorities "don't want to live by." "If those countries can get away with that, they will," the senator said. "And that puts American companies at a tremendous disadvantage."

* AMERICAN COMPANIES WHICH JUST "HAPPEN" TO DONATE TO MENENDEZ... AND SUPPLY HIM WITH UNDERAGE GIRLS... PROBABLY DRUGS AS WELL. (OH, FOLKS... GOOGLE IT! I'M CERTAINLY NOT MAKING BASELESS CHARGES! RESEARCH IT FOR YOURSELVES!)

Menendez's office said at the time the senator's interest was based on his efforts to combat narco-trafficking in the region.

* UH-HUH...

Other lines of inquiry against Menendez had included allegations he solicited prostitutes in the Dominican Republic...

(*SHRUG*)

...and that he violated the law helping win permanent U.S. residency for two Ecuadorian banking magnates, the Isaias brothers. The prostitution allegations collapsed after the purported prostitutes recanted their story, and the FBI didn't find evidence of wrongdoing in the Isaias matter, according to people briefed on the probe.

* YES... THEY "RECANTED." (I WONDER IF THEY'RE LIVING THE GOOD LIFE NOW... OR MISSING... NEVER TO BE HEARD OF AGAIN?)

The FBI probe has already spawned a legal battle between the government, Menendez and his former aides. Last week, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals briefly posted, apparently by accident, documents detailing legal efforts to block certain evidence and testimony the government wants to use.

The documents were quickly put back under seal, but not before a reporter with the New Jersey Law Journal secured a copy and later published a story.

According to the documents, Menendez's lawyers have sought to claim emails and testimony from aides is protected by the constitutional protections given to members of Congress in carrying out their duties. The speech and debate clause prohibits questioning of members of Congress about "legislative acts or the motivation for legislative acts."

(*ROLLING MY EYES*)

* NOT THE CRIMINAL MOTIVATION FOR "LEGISLATIVE ACTS."

(*SNORT*)

The fight centers in part on the Justice Department's attempt to compel testimony from Menendez's aides, some of whom have refused to answer questions to a grand jury.

(*SMIRK*)

According to the documents, the government wants to question aides about a series of 2012 calls and meetings on Melgen's fight with the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, a federal agency. Among these is a meeting among Mendedez, Sen. Harry Reid and then Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. The government is also pushing to use emails between Menendez's office and a CBP official about the Dominican ports issue.

A federal district court ruled in favor of the government to compel testimony from Menendez's aides, but the appeals court reversed the ruling and ordered a hearing.

March 6, 2015 at 2:59 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://cnsnews.com/news/article/ali-meyer/628-labor-force-participation-has-hovered-near-37-year-low-11-months

The labor force participation rate hovered between 62.9% and 62.7% in the eleven months from April 2014 through February, and has been 62.9% or lower in 13 of the 17 months since October 2013.

Prior to that, the last time the rate was below 63% was 37 years ago, in March 1978...

* THE CARTER YEARS...

The labor force participation rate is the percentage of the civilian non-institutional population who participated in the labor force by either having a job during the month or actively seeking one. 92,898,000 Americans were not in the labor force in February, according to data released from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) on Friday.

In February, according to BLS, the nation’s civilian non-institutional population, consisting of all people 16 or older who were not in the military or an institution, reached 249,899,000. Of those, 157,002,000 participated in the labor force by either holding a job or actively seeking one.

March 6, 2015 at 3:27 PM
William R. Barker said...

* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)

http://www.wsj.com/articles/stuck-in-scandal-land-1425598263

* BY PEGGY NOONAN

Is it too much to imagine that Mrs. Clinton wanted to conceal the record of her communications as America’s top diplomat because she might have been doing a great deal of interesting work in those emails, not only with respect to immediate and unfolding international events but with respect to those who would like to make a positive impression on the American secretary of state by making contributions to the Clinton Foundation, which not only funds many noble causes but is the seat of operations of Clinton Inc. and its numerous offices, operatives, hangers-on and campaign-in-waiting?

What a low and embarrassing question.

It is prompted by last week’s scandal — that the Clinton Foundation accepted foreign contributions during Mrs. Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state. It is uncomfortable to ask such questions, but that’s the thing with the Clintons, they always make you go there.

The mainstream press is all over the story...

(*PAUSE*)

...now that it has blown.

(*SILENCE*)

Everyone at State, the White House, and the rest of the government who received an email from the secretary of state would have seen where it was coming from — a nongovernmental address. You’d think someone would have noticed. It’s... odd... that it took so long.

* YEAH. "ODD." UH-HUH.

With the exception of the moment Wednesday when a hardy reporter from TMZ actually went to an airport and shouted a query at Mrs. Clinton [she] hasn’t been subjected to any questions from the press.

She’s slide, she’ll glide, she’ll skate. (With TMZ she just walked on, smiling.)

Why would she ignore regulations to opt out of the State email system? We probably see the answer in a video clip posted this week on Buzzfeed. Mrs. Clinton, chatting with a supporter at a fundraiser for her 2000 Senate campaign, said: “As much as I’ve been investigated and all of that, you know, why would I . . . ever want to do email?”

* BECAUSE... er... THE LAW REQUIRED IT OF SOMEONE IN YOUR POSITION?

When you’re secretary of state you have to.

* AT LEAST... UNLESS YOU'RE HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON!

She did it her way - with complete control. It will make it harder, if not impossible, for investigators.

* YOU DON'T THINK THAT... er... THAT WAS THE POINT... DO YOU?

(*SNORT*)

* TO BE CONTINUED...

March 6, 2015 at 5:32 PM
William R. Barker said...

* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)

The press is painting all this as a story about how Mrs. Clinton, in her love for secrecy and control, has given ammunition to her enemies. But that’s not the story. The story is that this is what she does, and always has. The rules apply to others, not her. She’s special, entitled, exempt from the rules — the rules under which, as the Federalist reports, the State Department in 2012 forced the resignation of a U.S. ambassador, “in part for setting up an unsanctioned private e-mail system.”

* WILL THIS BE REPORTED IN THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA?

Why doesn’t the legacy press swarm her on this?

Because she is political royalty. ... Mrs. Clinton is not to be harried, not to be subjected to gotcha questions or impertinent grilling. She is a Democrat, a star, not some grubby Republican governor from nowhere.

Sixteen years ago, when she was first running for the Senate, I wrote a book called “The Case Against Hillary Clinton.”

I waded through it all — cattle futures, Travelgate, the lost Rose law firm records, women slimed as bimbos, foreign campaign cash, the stealth and secrecy that marked the creation of the health-care plan, Monica, the vast right-wing conspiracy. As I researched I remembered why, four years into the Clinton administration, the New York Times columnist William Safire called Hillary “a congenital liar . . . compelled to mislead, and to ensnare her subordinates and friends in a web of deceit.”

In 1992 the Clintons were new and golden. Now, so many years later, their reputation for rule breaking and corruption is so deep, so assumed, that it really has become old news. And old news isn’t news.

An aspect of the story goes beyond criticism of Mrs. Clinton and gets to criticism of us. A generation or two ago, a person so encrusted in a reputation for scandal would not be considered a possible presidential contender. She would be ineligible. Now she is [supposedly] inevitable.

* ANY PERSON WHO WOULD SUPPORT HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON FOR PRESIDENT IS A LOW HUMAN BEING INDEED. THERE'S SIMPLY NO OTHER WAY TO LOOK AT IT OR SAY IT.

What happened? Why is her party so in her thrall?

Do we really have to return to Scandal Land?

It’s what she brings wherever she goes... and it’s not going to stop.

March 6, 2015 at 5:33 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.wsj.com/articles/kimberley-strassel-hillarys-email-escapade-1425600459

You can almost picture Mrs. Clinton smiling.

Congress’s entire investigation of Benghazi has been based on an incomplete record.

(*PURSED LIPS*)

* AS PER HER PLAN ALL ALONG... (NOT JUST WITH REGARD TO BENGHAZI - BECAUSE LET'S FACE IT, SHE COULDN'T HAVE PREDICTED BENGHAZI AS SUCH - BUT WITH REGARD TO ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING THAT HAPPENED WITH REGARD TO HER TENURE AT STATE.)

Hillary Clinton has made some disingenuous statements over her political career, but none remotely compare to the tweet she issued Wednesday night: “I want the public to see my email,” she said.

This requires — how to say it — a willing suspension of disbelief.

Mrs. Clinton was referring to the gracious permission she had just bestowed upon the State Department to release her email correspondence as the nation’s former top diplomat. She’s only in a position to grant such favors because it turns out all of her correspondence as Secretary of State was conducted on private email, run out of a server she alone controlled. The Clinton camp has spent this week explaining that none of this was untoward, that no laws were broken, and that she’s being transparent.

Were you just awakening from a 40-year coma and still a bit fuzzy, this might strike you as remotely plausible. For everyone else who has lived through the Bill and Hill years, this email caper is pure Clinton.

First, historical context. There are few politicians alive today who have a better understanding than the Clintons of the perils of paper trails — and the benefits of not having them. It really wasn’t all that long ago that Mrs. Clinton was failing to answer questions about how her Rose Law firm billing records vanished. Or using executive privilege to sit on documents that showed her involvement in the Travel Office firings. Or grappling with testimony from a Secret Service agent who said Mrs. Clinton’s top aide had removed files from Vince Foster ’s office. Or explaining her connection to Sandy Berger, who was prosecuted for stealing Clinton-related National Archives records.

The chairman of the House Select Committee on Benghazi, South Carolina Rep. Trey Gowdy, claims to have evidence of a second Clinton email account. Her team says that’s not true. There’s no way to find out.

* SURE THERE IS! START QUESTIONING PEOPLE UNDER OATH! SOMEONE WILL BREAK RATHER THAN RISK GOING TO JAIL FOR PERJURY; WORST CASE THEY'LL GO THE "LEARNER" ROUTE AND PLEAD THE FIFTH.

The Clinton folks are pointing out that there is a record of any email Mrs. Clinton sent to people with government accounts. But how many personal emails did she send to actors who were also using personal accounts (as she did with political operative Sidney Blumenthal )? There’s no way to find out.

Mrs. Clinton is the sole arbiter here of what is “preserved,” made public, or available to freedom of information requests or to congressional overseers. Don’t think any of this was by accident.

The timing is also notable. Mrs. Clinton only sent those 55,000 pages in December, and only after congressional investigators discovered the private address and demanded State explain what exactly had happened to all the emails from the nation’s top diplomat. In short, Congress’s entire investigation of Benghazi has been based on an incomplete record.

(You can almost picture Mrs. Clinton smiling.)

State has meanwhile said it will release the (selective) 55,000 pages, though only after a review, which will “take some time to complete.”

Here’s to betting it finishes in December of 2016.

(*SILENCE*)

As for the fight over Mrs. Clinton’s server, and what it contains, that may never be resolved.

All of which is fortunate for Mrs. Clinton. Mrs. Clinton is good at creating her own fortune.

March 6, 2015 at 5:53 PM

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