------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Big Peace reports: In the president’s signing statement issued Saturday in passing into law the fiscal 2012 defense authorization bill, Mr. Obama said restrictions aimed at protecting top-secret technical data on U.S. Standard Missile-3 velocity burnout parameters might impinge on his constitutional foreign policy authority.
As first disclosed in this space several weeks ago, U.S. officials are planning to provide Moscow with the SM-3 data, despite reservations from security officials who say that doing so could compromise the effectiveness of the system by allowing Russian weapons technicians to counter the missile. The weapons are considered some of the most effective high-speed interceptors in the U.S. missile defense arsenal.
There are also concerns that Russia could share the secret data with China and rogue states such as Iran and North Korea to help their missile programs defeat U.S. missile defenses. http://bigpeace.com/jpollak/2012/01/04/obama-to-share-missile-defense-secrets-with-russia/
Bloomberg reports: President Barack Obama bypassed the U.S. Senate and summarily installed Richard Cordray, the former Ohio attorney general, as director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau yesterday.
Hours later, Obama filled three vacancies on the National Labor Relations Board, possibly the only agency Republicans dislike more than the consumer bureau.
The White House called these “recess appointments,” even though Congress technically wasn’t in recess. In doing so, the president is playing with fire. He risks an election-year legal challenge that could hamstring the consumer bureau and several other financial regulators whose pending confirmations will probably now stall. The president’s authority -- and that of future executives -- to fill administration posts without Senate approval may be limited by the courts.
We understand why the president, out of deep frustration, went around Republican senators. Under the Dodd-Frank law that created the consumer bureau, it can’t issue rules or regulate many financial firms, including payday lenders, debt collectors and mortgage brokers, absent a full-time director. The NLRB, which enforces labor laws, is stymied with three out of five seats vacant -- not enough for a quorum.
Nevertheless, our desire to have effective regulation doesn’t trump our reservations over the president’s unusual methods. If the goal was to improve government function, Obama might have achieved the opposite by all but inviting Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to sue.
Nevertheless, our desire to have effective regulation doesn’t trump our reservations over the president’s unusual methods. If the goal was to improve government function, Obama might have achieved the opposite by all but inviting Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to sue.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-01-05/obama-chooses-politics-over-principle-in-naming-consumer-bureau-head-view.html ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
AP reports: President Barack Obama is bypassing GOP opposition to make three more recess appointments - this time to the National Labor Relations Board.
The move came hours after Obama used a similar tactic to install former Ohio Atty. Gen. Richard Cordray to head the new Consumer Financial Protection Agency.
Both moves infuriated GOP leaders, who threatened legal action and warned that Obama was setting a dangerous precedent by ignoring the will of Congress. http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_LABOR_BOARD_APPOINTMENTS?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2012-01-04-15-24-18
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Washington Times reports: The president acted just a day after the Senate held a session — a move that breaks with at least three different precedents which have held that the Senate must be in recess for at least three days before a president can act. Mr. Obama himself was part of two of those precedents, both during his own time in the Senate and again in 2010 when one of his administration’s top lawyers made the three-day argument to the Supreme Court.
Using sharp language, congressional Republicans said the Senate considers itself still in session for purposes of blocking recess appointments, and the move threatened to become a declaration of war against Congress.“Although the Senate is not in recess, President Obama, in an unprecedented move, has arrogantly circumvented the American people,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Kentucky Republican. .http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/jan/4/obama-unprecedented-recess-appointment/
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MSNBC writes: President Barack Obama announced a recess appointment to name Richard Cordray as the nation's chief consumer watchdog despite strong Republican opposition, bypassing Senate approval.
"I refuse to take `no' for an answer," the president said told a cheering crowd in Ohio.
The announcement drew immediate fire from Republicans who have blocked Cordray's appointment since it was announced in July.
This is a very grave decision by this heavy-handed, autocratic White House," said Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah. http://bottomline.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/01/04/9947364-obama-defies-gop-by-naming-new-consumer-watchdog
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Salon reports: Here is an actual Rick Santorum quote: “One of the things I will talk about, that no president has talked about before, is I think the dangers of contraception in this country.” And also, “Many of the Christian faith have said, well, that’s okay, contraception is okay. It’s not okay. It’s a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be.”
These comments were not dug up from some bygone moment of ideological purity, before dreams of a presidential campaign. He said it in October, to a blogger at CaffeinatedThoughts.com (they met at Des Moines’ Baby Boomers Cafe).
It’s pretty basic: Rick Santorum is coming for your contraception. Any and all of it. And while he may not be alone in his opposition to non-procreative sex, he is certainly the most honest about it — as he himself acknowledged in the interview. http://www.salon.com/2012/01/04/rick_santorum_is_coming_for_your_birth_control/
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ABC News: A new partnership aimed at helping a quarter of a million young people find summer jobs.
The initiative, part of Obama’s “We Can’t Wait” campaign, is intended to replace a youth jobs fund that would have been enacted had Congress passed the president’s $447 billion jobs bill.
“America’s young people face record unemployment, and we need to do everything we can to make sure they’ve got the opportunity to earn the skills and a work ethic that come with a job. It’s important for their future, and for America’s. That’s why I proposed a summer jobs program for youth in the American Jobs Act — a plan that Congress failed to pass. America’s youth can’t wait for Congress to act. This is an all-hands-on-deck moment,” Obama said in a written statement.
The new partnership between the federal government and the private sector commits to creating nearly 180,000 employment opportunities for low-income youth in the summer of 2012, with a goal of reaching 250,000 employment opportunities by the start of summer. http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/01/white-house-cant-wait-to-help-young-people-get-summer-jobs/
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- American Thinker writes on the Democrat list of rights: the State of the Union address delivered by Franklin Roosevelt in 1944 in which he laid out what is commonly referred to as the "Second Bill of Rights." It is a consolidation of socialist thinking begun in the mid-nineteenth century.
These tenets, never contemplated by the founding fathers as God-given rights, have nonetheless become the foundational principle of the Democratic Party. Democrats' successful attempt, along with the tacit concurrence of many in the Republican Party, to force this dogma on American society has entailed at least partial realization of the following:
- The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation;
- The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;
- The right of every family to a decent home;
- The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;
- The right to adequate protection from economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment; and
- The right to a good education.
The Blaze reports: Although it happened back in September, 2011, it appears many American taxpayers are unaware that General Motors struck a deal in Shanghai wherein the company has agreed to develop an electric vehicle (EV) platform with its longtime Chinese partner SAIC.
What else was included in this deal? GM has agreed to effectively move all future EV development to China. It could also mean that production of the vehicle itself will be moved overseas.
The agreement is the result of the Chinese government coercing foreign automakers into giving Chinese companies the EV technology they lack, according to an Associated Press report. Unsurprisingly, some U.S. lawmakers have voiced concerns that the deal is little more than a “shake down” from the Chinese to get GM’s Volt secrets. GM has denied reports that it will hand over the intellectual property underlying the Volt. http://www.theblaze.com/stories/after-receiving-bailout-gm-may-move-volt-production-to-china/
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World Net Daily reports: Several New Hampshire legislators declared at a press conference today that President Barack Obama is not a “natural born citizen” of the United States and that New Hampshire voters were defrauded by Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign.
“The Ballot Law Commission held a hearing on November 18, and it refused to hear our request,” he continued. “We asked for a rehearing; it was denied. We asked for an override by the New Hampshire Supreme Court, and it refused to hear our case. We went to the Supreme Court of the United States, and that’s where it stands now.”
As WND reported, a federal judge has ruled that President Obama must be “constitutionally eligible.”
The legislator’s petition was denied by the Ballot Law Commission because the commission said it didn’t have the authority to rule on the issue, noting that it can only ensure the accuracy of the petitions and whether the document is accompanied by the filing fee.
“The Ballot Law Committee says it doesn’t have jurisdiction over this issue, but it does. It disqualified two other candidates for office because those candidates weren’t ‘natural born citizens,’” he said. .http://wp.wnd.com/2012/01/lawmakers-dispute-obama-ballot-eligibility/
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