Wednesday, March 4, 2015

Barker's Newsbites: Wednesday, March 4, 2015


On to newsbiting...


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5 comments:

William R. Barker said...

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/mar/3/100000-amnesty-applications-approved-under-obama-r/

The administration processed about 100,000 applications for amnesty for so-called Dreamers under some of the expanded rules President Obama announced last year, lawyers told a Texas judge late Tuesday, in a move that could complicate their claim that they have halted all action under the amnesty.

* "COMPLICATE THEIR CLAIM...???"

Mr. Obama’s Nov. 20 announcement offered a number of different benefits to illegal immigrants, including expanding eligibility for his 2012 amnesty for Dreamers and boosting the amount of time he was granting an amnesty form deportation and permits for legal work from two years to three years.

* NONE OF THESE "ORDERS" HAVING LEGAL STANDING...

While the administration hadn’t begun collecting applications under the expanded eligibility, it had awarded tens of thousands of three-year permits to applicants who had qualified as Dreamers under the original rules from 2012.

* AGAIN... ILLEGALLY... (RECALL - THE SO-CALLED "DREAM ACT" NEVER PASSED!)

Federal District Judge Andrew S. Hanen last month halted the new amnesty, ruling that it likely violated federal law, but it was unclear what that meant for the three-year adjustment.

* "UNCLEAR?" IF SO... ASK THE JUDGE! (RIGHT?!)

The Justice Department, in an advisory to Judge Hanen late Tuesday, said they didn’t think they needed to revoke the three-year authorization, saying they didn’t think the judge intended to halt that part of the amnesty.

* "...IN AN ADVISORY..."

(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)

They said the issued the advisory to the court to clear up “any potential confusion.”

Earlier Tuesday, Texas and the 25 fellow states that successfully sued to stop the amnesty filed their own court papers urging the judge to keep his injunction in place nationwide.

They said Mr. Obama is still free to refuse to deport illegal immigrants under Judge Hanen’s order, but he cannot — and should not be allowed to — proactively grant future legal status and work permits.

* DUH!

“In short, there is no emergency need to institute this sweeping new program, and the stay can be denied for that reason alone,” Texas said.

Texas lawyers also said Mr. Obama’s own words continue to prove he’s acted outside the law. Last week the president told a Spanish-language television audience his moves “expanded my authorities” and said agents who don’t follow his new guidelines will be punished.

* FOLKS... OBAMA IS A CANCER... AND NO MATTER HOW BAD THE REPUBLICANS ARE, THE DEMOCRATS ARE WORSE; ONLY THE DEMOCRATS CAN TOPPLE THIS WOULD-BE DICTATOR; INSTEAD... THEY CONTINUE TO BACK HIM NO MATTER WHAT.

* IS REVOLUTION NECESSARY... IN DEFENSE OF THE CONSTITUTION...?

The states said that made clear the president views his policies as binding directives that leave agents and officers no discretion — undercutting Mr. Obama’s claim that he is relying on prosecutorial discretion and that not all illegal immigrants who qualify will be granted status.

(*NOD*)

March 4, 2015 at 11:20 AM
William R. Barker said...

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

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/04/us/politics/using-private-email-hillary-clinton-thwarted-record-requests.html?_r=1

In 2012, congressional investigators asked the State Department for a wide range of documents related to the attack on the United States diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya. The department eventually responded, furnishing House committees with thousands of documents.

But it turns out that that was not everything.

The State Department had not searched the email account of former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton because she had maintained a private account, which shielded it from such searches, department officials acknowledged on Tuesday.

* ILLEGALLY...!!! ILLEGALLY MAINTAINED IN THE SENSE OF ILLEGALLY MISUSED!

Hillary Rodham Clinton had no government email address.


* EXACTLY...!!!

It was one of several instances in which records requests sent to the State Department, which had no access to Mrs. Clinton’s emails, came up empty.

(*PURSED LIPS*)

Mrs. Clinton’s aides on Tuesday sought to play down the significance of her exclusive use of a personal email account for State Department business. But an examination of records requests sent to the department reveals how the practice protected a significant amount of her correspondence from the eyes of investigators and the public.

Mrs. Clinton’s exclusive use of personal email for her government business is unusual for a high-level official, archive experts have said. Federal regulations, since 2009, have required that all emails be preserved as part of an agency’s record-keeping system. In Mrs. Clinton’s case, her emails were kept on her personal account and her staff took no steps to have them preserved as part of State Department record.

* "UNUSUAL...???" AS FAR AS I KNOW IT'S UNIQUE! UNHEARD OF!

The White House, in its first response to the news, said it frowned on the practice of officials using their personal email accounts.

“What I can tell you is that very specific guidance has been given to agencies all across the government, which is specifically that employees of the Obama administration should use their official email accounts when they’re conducting official government business,” the White House spokesman, Josh Earnest, said. “However, when there are situations where personal email accounts are used, it is important for those records to be preserved consistent with the Federal Records Act.”

* AS IF THE WHITE HOUSE DIDN'T KNOW...

(*SNORT*)

* TO BE CONTINUED...

March 4, 2015 at 11:22 AM
William R. Barker said...

* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)

America Rising, [a so-called] “super PAC,” has submitted a dozen FOIA requests for State Department records beginning last June. Requests included correspondence between Ms. Mills and Clinton Foundation leadership and Ms. Abedin’s communication with members of Teneo, a private consultancy partly run by Doug Band, a longtime aide to former President Bill Clinton.

* RECALL, FOLKS...

Ms. Abedin had a "special arrangement" that allowed her to "work" at the State Department and be paid by Teneo, which offers strategic advice to major global corporations. America Rising also requested Mrs. Clinton’s schedule during the annual Clinton Global Initiative gatherings in New York.

In all cases, the State Department acknowledged receipt of the FOIA requests and assigned case numbers but did not produce any of the requested documents.

* "BUT DID NOT PRODUCE ANY..." (AS IN "NONE," "ZERO," "ZILCH!")

Mrs. Clinton’s aides have said her use of private email was not out of the ordinary, pointing to the fact that former Secretary of State Colin Powell also used a personal email account, before the current regulations went into effect.

* POWELL'S ACTIONS WERE B*E*F*O*R*E REGULATIONS WENT INTO EFFECT! (INDEED, NO DOUBT IT WAS POWELL'S PRACTICE - LEGAL AT THE TIME - WHICH WAS PARTLY RESPONSIBLE FOR THE REGULATORY REFORM... THE L*E*G*A*L REFORM... WHICH CLINTON KNOWINGLY AND DELIBERATELY OPERATED OUTSIDE OF!

But since 2009, said Laura Diachenko, a National Archives and Records spokeswoman, federal regulations have stated that “agencies that allow employees to send and receive official electronic mail messages using a system not operated by the agency must ensure that federal records sent or received on such systems are preserved in the appropriate agency record-keeping system.”

The rules are designed to ensure a contemporaneous record of government activity is being kept so it will be available to members of Congress, the news media, historians and ordinary citizens.

Secretary of State John Kerry uses a government email account, and his correspondence is preserved as part of the department’s record-keeping system.

* FOLKS... THOUGH THEY'RE REPORTING IT NOW... HOW MANY YEARS DID THE MSM IGNORE THIS?

(*SIGH*)

March 4, 2015 at 11:22 AM
William R. Barker said...

http://washington.cbslocal.com/2015/03/04/clinton-private-server-listed-under-mysterious-untraceable-name/

The computer server that transmitted and received Hillary Rodham Clinton’s emails — on a private account she used exclusively for official business when she was secretary of state — traced back to an Internet service registered to her family’s home in Chappaqua, New York, according to Internet records reviewed by The Associated Press.

* ANYBODY STILL INSISTING THERE'S NO "FIRE" HERE...?

It remains unclear exactly who set up and maintained the private email server for Clinton, but the AP traced it back to Eric Hoteham – a mysterious identity that “does not appear in public records databases, campaign contribution records or Internet background searches.”

(*SMIRK*)

Operating her own server would have afforded Clinton additional legal opportunities to block government or private subpoenas in criminal, administrative or civil cases because her lawyers could object in court before being forced to turn over any emails. And since the Secret Service was guarding Clinton’s home, an email server there would have been well protected from theft or a physical hacking.

* "WOULD HAVE...???" HOW'BOUT "DID?!"

But homemade email servers are generally not as reliable, secure from hackers or protected from fires or floods as those in commercial data centers. Those professional facilities provide monitoring for viruses or hacking attempts, regulated temperatures, off-site backups, generators in case of power outages, fire-suppression systems and redundant communications lines.

* FOLKS... WE'RE TALKING A SECURITY NIGHTMARE - AND I'M TALKING NATIONAL SECURITY... NOT CLINTON'S POLITICAL SECURITY!

Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., chairman of the special House committee investigating the Benghazi attacks, said the committee learned last summer — when agency documents were turned over to the committee — that Clinton had used a private email account while secretary of state. More recently the committee learned that she used private email accounts exclusively and had more than one, Gowdy said.

* AND... WHY WASN'T THIS INFORMATION MADE PUBLIC IMMEDIATELY?

(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)

March 4, 2015 at 11:22 AM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.wsj.com/articles/offensively-unapologetic-at-the-epa-1425429233

Hillary Rodham Clinton isn’t the only one apparently baffled by newfangled technologies such as email. In a withering ruling on Monday, a federal judge scored the Environmental Protection Agency for its contempt for its legal obligation to disclose documents and then lying to the courts about its stonewalling.

In 2012 the Landmark Legal Foundation made a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for emails related to regulations and the forthcoming election. As many suspected at the time and we now know, the White House commanded the agency to delay major anti-carbon rules so the details couldn’t be debated in front of voters, thus undermining political accountability for the economic damage.

The EPA spent years attempting to deny Landmark a meaningful response, starting with the receipt of the FOIA request. The agency’s FOIA officer waited weeks before informing the offices of then EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson and her deputies of the obligation to retain documents. The agency subsequently refused to search either the official email accounts of top officials or the alias personal email addresses they used to conduct government business — “for reasons still unexplained,” Judge Royce Lamberth observes in a 25-page finding against the agency.

Not until December 2014 did Judge Lamberth force the EPA to conduct a more than perfunctory search, whereupon the agency suddenly produced some 365 documents responsive to Landmark’s request.

All the while the EPA misrepresented its search efforts to Judge Lamberth, moving to withdraw these statements of fact only after it was obvious they were false.

The judge concludes that the EPA either “intentionally sought to evade Landmark’s lawful FOIA request so the agency could destroy responsive documents, or EPA demonstrated apathy and carelessness toward Landmark’s request. Either scenario reflects poorly upon EPA and surely serves to diminish the public’s trust in the agency.” He denied Landmark’s petition for punitive sanctions only because there is no conclusive proof the agency acted in bad faith.

Judge Lamberth also notes that EPA hasn’t offered “any indication of regret” and is “offensively unapologetic.”

The next time this happens, and it will, he should hold the EPA’s lawyers in contempt.

* LISTEN. UNTIL PEOPLE ARE SENT TO JAIL FOR BEHAVIOR LIKE THIS IT'S SIMPLY GONNA OCCUR AGAIN AND AGAIN. PERIOD. (THIS IS WHAT A NATION ABSENT THE RULE OF LAW LOOKS LIKE.)

March 4, 2015 at 2:45 PM

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