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From: Tom Clarke	5/9/2012 8:18:40 AM
	1 Recommendation of 537993

Unprecedented: Top DOJ Officials Were Obama Bundlers with Wall Street Ties by Peter Schweizer & Wynton Hall Four of the top officials at the Department of Justice were all big money fundraisers for President Obama’s 2008 campaign with strong ties to Wall Street—the very entity the Obama Administration has said must be criminally prosecuted for bringing about the biggest financial crisis in U.S. history. •Attorney General Eric Holder: formerly of Covington & Burling law firm, in 2008 Holder himself represented big banks such as UBS and MBNA Bank. Holder was Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign co-chairman and raised $50,000 for the president’s campaign. •Associate Attorney General Thomas Perrelli: a managing partner at Jenner and Block law firm, whose clients include Merrill Lynch, Perrelli stepped down from his number-three position at DOJ in March. A former member of Obama’s National Campaign Finance Committee, Perrelli bundled $500,000 in campaign contributions. •Deputy Associate Attorney General Karol Mason: Karol Mason of Alston & Bird previously chaired the firm’s public finance group. She also bundled $500,000 for Obama. Holder awarded her a “Distinguished Service Award” for her work at the Department of Justice. Now, after almost three years at the Department of Justice, she has returned to Alston & Bird to work on their real estate finance and capital markets group. •Associate Attorney General Tony West: West was a partner at Morrison and Foerster law firm, whose clients include MF Global, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, and Bank of America. West was also co-chairman of Obama’s campaign and, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, “was instrumental in helping the candidate raise an estimated $65 million in California.” Formerly the head of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, West is now number three at the DOJ and bundled $500,000 for the president’s campaign. Despite Holder and Obama’s “get tough” rhetoric against Wall Street, to date, there has not been a single criminal charge filed by the federal government against any top executive of the elite financial institutions. In the age of presidential bundling, staffing the Department of Justice’s top brass with big money fundraisers is unprecedented. To be sure, William French Smith shared Ronald Reagan’s legal philosophy and was a close political friend. And Janet Reno shared Bill Clinton’s judicial philosophy. But neither were fundraisers. The nexus between big money campaign fundraising and senior appointments at the Department of Justice raises numerous questions and appearances of conflict of interest that go far beyond mere recusal from certain cases. Furthermore, many of the financial institutions the Department of Justice claims to be criminally investigating for financial fraud are former clients of the law firms from which DOJ’s top brass hail. Put simply, the “cops on the beat” come from the very places that represent Big Finance and the big banks. What’s more, as with the case of former Deputy Associate Attorney General Karol Mason, top Justice officials often return to these same law firms after completing their time in public service. “And that’s where they’re going back to,” says William Black, an associate professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri, Kansas City. “Everybody knows there is a problem with that.” breitbart.com

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From: simplicity	5/9/2012 8:37:15 AM
	7 Recommendations of 537993

This very short article was forwarded to me a few days ago, attributed to Thomas Sowell. I did some research and discovered that that attribution is false, but nowhere could I find an author's attribution. So let's just call the author 'anonymous'. Anonymous or not, his analysis is spot on. ____________________________ The current Occupy Wall Street movement is the best illustration to date of what President Barack Obama’s America looks like. It is an America where the lawless, unaccomplished, ignorant and incompetent rule. It is an America where those who have sacrificed nothing pillage and destroy the lives of those who have sacrificed greatly.It is an America where history is rewritten to honor dictators, murderers and thieves. It is an America where violence, racism, hatred, class warfare and murder are all promoted as acceptable means of overturning the American civil society. It is an America where humans have been degraded to the level of animals: defecating in public, having sex in public, devoid of basic hygiene. It is an America where the basic tenets of a civil society, including faith, family, a free press and individual rights, have been rejected. It is an America where our founding documents have been shredded and, with them, every person’s guaranteed liberties. It is an America where, ultimately, great suffering will come to the American people, but the rulers like Obama, Michelle Obama, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, Joe Biden, Jesse Jackson, Louis Farrakhan, liberal college professors, union bosses and other loyal liberal/Communist Party members will live in opulent splendor. It is the America that Obama and the Democratic Party have created with the willing assistance of the American media, Hollywood , unions, universities, the Communist Party of America, the Black Panthers and numerous anti-American foreign entities. Barack Obama has brought more destruction upon this country in four years than any other event in the history of our nation, but it is just the beginning of what he and his comrades are capable of. The Occupy Wall Street movement is just another step in their plan for the annihilation of America.

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From: LindyBill	5/9/2012 8:47:19 AM
	3 Recommendations of 537993

North Carolina Voters Pass Same-Sex Marriage Ban By CAMPBELL ROBERTSON As expected, North Carolinians voted in large numbers on Tuesday for an amendment that would ban same-sex marriages, partnerships and civil unions, becoming the 30th state in the country and the last in the South to include a prohibition on gay marriage in the state constitution. About half a million people voted early, a record for a primary in the state, and turnout on Tuesday was unusually high as well. The amendment, which passed by a margin of more than 20 percentage points, was on the ballot along with other party primary races, some of which were closely contested. The vote came after weeks of heated debate in church pews and over the airwaves. More than $3 million was spent on the rival campaigns. Ministers formed coalitions pushing for and against the measure, and cities passed resolutions condemning it. Former President Bill Clinton and the Rev. Billy Graham weighed in on opposite sides, and law professors skirmished over the consequences. North Carolina, a religious but also relatively moderate state on social issues, already has a law banning same-sex marriage. But Republican lawmakers pushed an amendment out of concern that the law was in danger of being struck down by judges. While public opinion is shifting rapidly across the country and same-sex marriage continues to achieve legal recognition state by state, polls in North Carolina before the vote showed a narrowing but comfortable margin for passage. “We are not anti-gay — we are pro-marriage,” Tami Fitzgerald, chairwoman of the executive committee for the pro-amendment Vote for Marriage NC, said at a victory rally in Raleigh, where supporters ate pieces of a wedding cake topped by figures of a man and a woman. “And the point, the whole point is simply that you don’t rewrite the nature of God’s design for marriage based on the demands of a group of adults.” Opponents had raised almost twice as much money as the amendment’s supporters and had a robust network of volunteers and get-out-the-vote workers. “We know that we pushed the needle forward,” Jeremy Kennedy, the campaign manager for the Coalition to Protect All NC families, a group that fought the amendment, said to a group of staff members and volunteers after the vote. “This is just a skirmish, a battle in the war that we will win.” Mr. Kennedy added, “We gave everything we had.” The North Carolina amendment declares that “marriage between one man and one woman is the only domestic legal union that shall be valid or recognized in this state.” A group of family law professors across the state called the language vague and untested, and warned that, in addition to applying to all variations of same-sex unions, it could also apply to the more than 150,000 straight couples in the state who live together but are unmarried. This could invalidate domestic-violence protections, undercut child custody arrangements and jeopardize hospital visiting rights, they said. Three law professors from Campbell University, a Baptist college about 30 miles south of Raleigh, came out with a paper contesting this analysis, saying that this “much broader view of the amendment and its consequences has little support in the amendment’s language or context, or in court decisions from North Carolina or other states.” Polling showed that feelings about the issue were divided in North Carolina as they are across much of the nation: along generational lines, with younger voters opposed to the amendment. nytimes.com

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To: longnshort who wrote (486212)	5/9/2012 8:52:21 AM
From: Bill	2 Recommendations of 537993

The Democrats' War on Cupcakes must end! ‘Boss’ joins school fray By Laurel J. Sweet \| Wednesday, May 9, 2012 \| bostonherald.com \| Local Coverage The Cake Boss is going all Marie Antoinette on the Bay State’s ban on bake sales. “The Boss is definitely saying, ‘Let them eat cake,’ ” said Buddy Valastro, 35, star of the hit TLC reality series “Cake Boss,” echoing the words that helped trigger the French Revolution. New Massachusetts regulations aimed at combating childhood obesity are bringing in a strict regimen for public school fare as of Aug. 1, including a ban on bake sales that student groups have traditionally used to raise much needed money for activities, equipment, trips and charity. “Live a little. Eat a cupcake,” the Cake Boss told the Herald yesterday. Valastro tried to imagine an educational landscape devoid of pastry and even whole milk. “At the end of the day, America is about freedom,” Valastro said. “I don’t think anyone should tell us what or what not we should eat.” The Herald’s coverage this week of the new nutrition mandate — which bans pizza, ice cream and other fatty foods as part of a total war on weight — has sparked a nationwide debate. But state officials have been sticking to their guns despite an outcry from parents, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture is considering its own junk-food ban in schools nationwide. “It’s stupid,” said Valastro, the father of four children ages 1, 5, 7 and 9. “We need to teach our kids that you should be able to eat cake, but in moderation. It’s about having the willpower to say, ‘Hey, I’m going to exercise. I’m not going to overeat.’ Maybe if there was more education about that. You can’t just say it’s because of the cookies from a bake sale. It’s more than that. It’s the video games, it’s the texting ... we’re not going to close down every McDonald’s in America.” Recalling how in his own youth bake sale paid for a class trip to Washington, D.C., Valastro called fundraisers “an American staple that promote family togetherness.” He knows firsthand the frustration of parents, because his famous Carlo’s Bake Shop in Hoboken, N.J., is not nut-free. “I’m the Cake Boss and I’m not allowed to bring cupcakes to my kids’ schools because of allergies and regulations,” he said. “My wife has to make a box mix at home. Can you believe that?” Article URL: bostonherald.com

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From: LindyBill	5/9/2012 8:55:16 AM
	1 Recommendation of 537993

Creeping Sharia Watch By Mark Steyn May 9, 2012 7:40 A.M. Comments 1 From The Herald Sun Down Under: A MUSLIM man is believed to be the first in Australia to have been granted a judge-only trial on the ground a jury may have been biased because of his religious beliefs. The decision can be revealed after Ismail Belghar, 36, yesterday pleaded guilty to detaining and assaulting his sister-in-law after she “dared” to take his wife of 11 years to the beach without his permission. The prosecution was not happy with the judge supporting Mr Belghar’s view that he could not get a fair trial from 12 Aussie citizens: The Crown appealed, arguing if Judge Solomon was correct every Muslim would be entitled to a judge-only trial. Or at least an infidel-free jury. (PS For those interested in the west’s incremental Islamization, I’ve written the foreword to Geert Wilders’ new book, Marked For Death.)

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