World's Shortest Thread - Evidence the "Communists have won"

[Flummoxed Lummox]

The DOJ?    You can't be serious right?  That's like letting the football players throw the yellow flags.

And especially this DOJ, that sees no problem at all with automatic weapons walking across the border and into the hands of terrorist drug dealers.  Yeah, I feel so much better now that Holder's DOJ has said Obama isn't speeding.  

Whatever.

The DOJ released a LEGAL OPINION that says Obama's actions were constitutional. If the wingnuts want to challenge it, then by all means be my guest. I suspect this will be the end of the issue because the GOP has no interest in arguing why they blocked his confirmation, not because of any flaws in Richard Cordray, but because they opposed the CFPB, which was created by the 111th Congress. The GOP opposition to Cordray (more accurately the CFPB) was purely political. They were more concerned about protecting money lenders and their rich donors than the general public. They will not challenge the recess appointment because they have to explain why they oppose an agency whose sole job is protect consumers from fraud and abuse from credit card companies, money lenders, banks, etc. The GOP doesn't need yet another example of how they don't give a damn about the average American brought to light.

GOP: the party who is more interested in protecting their rich donors than consumers.

Like I said, Obama won. The GOP is not going to touch his recess appointment. End of story.

[Sasquatch]

So it will be just like when the dems brought war crime charges against Bush/Cheney? 

[Jeremy Roenick]

Whatever.

Nothing screams "substance" like whatever.

Holder's DOJ is corrupt to the core.  You know it, I know it and the world knows it.  But I'm not holding my breath for Holder to be put up on charges.  That's the world we live in.  Corruption is good for everyone, and there is no accountability.  Holder is guilty of perjury, smuggling guns across international borders, and involuntary manslaughter.  So yeah, this DOJ is null and void to me until they can finds someone of integrity and accountable to run it.

[Dementia_Madness]

http://www.politico.com/blogs/joshgerstein/0311/Justice_Department_details_legal_blessing_of_warrantless_wiretapping_in_2004.html

The Justice Department has released portions of a detailed legal analysis from 2004 of President George W. Bush's warrantless wiretapping program — an opinion which concluded that a law Congress passed restricting surveillance in the U.S. was unconstitutional if it barred Bush's program.

At its core, the 74-page opinion by Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel chief Jack Goldsmith (viewable here) makes two legal arguments — both highly controversial. First, that the Authorization for the Use of Military Force passed by Congress in 2001 implicitly authorized surveillance like that under the warrantless wiretapping program. Second, if the AUMF was read not to authorize such surveillance, the 1978 law Congress passed setting out the "exclusive" means for domestic electronic surveillance was unconstitutional.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123638765474658467.html

The Obama Justice Department has adopted a legal stance identical to, if not more aggressive than, the Bush version. It argues that the court-forced disclosure of the surveillance programs would cause "exceptional harm to national security" by exposing intelligence sources and methods. Last Friday the Ninth Circuit denied the latest emergency motion to dismiss, again kicking matters back to Judge Walker.

 

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/may/29/protecting-black-panthers/

The Voting Rights Act is very clear. It prohibits any “attempt to intimidate, threaten or coerce” any voter or those aiding voters.

The explanation for moving to dismiss the case is shocking. According to the Department of Justice: “These same Defendants have made no appearance and have filed no pleadings with the Court. Nor have they otherwise raised any other defenses to this action. Therefore, the United States has the right … to dismiss voluntarily this action against the Defendants.” In other words, because the defendants haven’t tried to defend themselves, the Justice Department won’t punish them.

By that logic, if a murderer doesn’t respond to the charges, he should be let free. That’s crazy.

The Obama Justice Department did take one action against one of the four defendants: It forbade him from again “displaying a weapon within 100 feet of any open polling location” in Philadelphia. Given that it already was illegal to display a weapon at a polling place and that he was not even enjoined from carrying a weapon at polling places outside of Philadelphia, it is hard to see what this order accomplished.

We asked the Justice Department if it was unable to provide any explanation for dropping the case. Justice press aide Alejandro Miyar merely said: “That is correct.” Multiple times we asked both the department and the White House to comment on charges that the dismissals represented political bias. We received no substantive response.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/may/29/career-lawyers-overruled-on-voting-case/?feat=home_cube_position1

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/mar/31/lack-of-black-panther-transparency/

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/oct/20/justice-dept-blocks-ncs-nonpartisan-vote/?source=newsletter_must-read-stories-today_photo_feature

The Justice Department’s ruling, which affects races for City Council and mayor, went so far as to say partisan elections are needed so that black voters can elect their “candidates of choice” - identified by the department as those who are Democrats and almost exclusively black.

The department ruled that white voters in Kinston will vote for blacks only if they are Democrats and that therefore the city cannot get rid of party affiliations for local elections because that would violate black voters’ right to elect the candidates they want.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/02/19/86581/no-penalty-recommended-for-lawyers.html

Two former high-level Bush administration officials who provided legal justification for harsh interrogations of overseas terror suspects are likely to escape any formal punishment now that the Justice Department has concluded they should not be held legally responsible.

In a long-awaited report released early Friday evening, Deputy Associate Attorney General David Margolis said that former department lawyers John Yoo and Jay Bybee should not have their law licenses revoked as a consequence of their legal advice to the Bush administration signing off on the controversial interrogation methods.

In a 69-page legal memo, Margolis concluded "that these memos contained significant flaws. But as all that glitters is not gold, all flaws do not constitute professional misconduct…. I conclude that Yoo and Bybee exercised poor judgment by overstating the certainty of their conclusions and underexposing countervailing arguments.”

Democrats and civil liberties and human rights advocates had demanded that the lawyers face some legal sanction because their memos were used to justify the use of interrogation techniques such as waterboarding, widely condemned as a form of torture.

The Justice Department’s assessment reverses the recommendations of ethics officials within the department’s Office of Professional Responsibility, which had earlier concluded that state bar committees should determine whether Yoo’s and Bybee’s law licenses should be revoked.

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/02/19/86581/no-penalty-recommended-for-lawyers.html#storylink=cpy

http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/The-ruler-of-law-7141

Today, well beyond the New Deal and the Great Society, the administrative state has reached its apogee—socializing healthcare, micromanaging industry, dictating education standards, taking over automotive and insurance giants, underwriting mortgages and student loans, borrowing trillions of dollars from itself (i.e., printing trillions of dollars for itself), and even mandating coverage for contraceptives and abortifacients. The president oversees a vast expanse of departments and agencies to which Congress delegates seemingly limitless legislative authority in the form of regulation-writing, much of its tens of thousands of pages insulated from judicial review. Presidents issue executive orders to shape Leviathan’s priorities and procedures. The lines blur, and it becomes increasingly difficult to stop a president hell-bent on imposing his political aims as if they were legal duties.

Congress is endowed by the Constitution with the power to impeach a president for serious violations of law (“high crimes and misdemeanors”). But impeachment is a grave remedy on the order of a nuclear strike—it’s only been sparingly invoked against presidents (twice, both times unsuccessfully) and impractical as a response to all but the most egregious abuses of executive power. It is also a political remedy: even if palpably guilty of profound transgressions, a president will not be ousted absent a groundswell of public ire sustained by a hostile media.

In other words, if a president is the type of man who couples his hope with audacity, if, despite his oath to uphold the Constitution, he is willing to play Alinsky-style hardball, there is little that can stand in his way. Law becomes a dispositive weapon in the service of an ideological crusade, never a brake against the crusade’s advance. In the Obama administration, “rule of law” talking-points are just rhetorical camouflage. True law is the moral and ethical consensus of a civil society, reflecting the conscience of free and virtuous people. But “conscience,” to quote Alinsky, “is the virtue of observers and not of agents of action.” For Obamaphiles, their agent of action is the Ruler of Law—its master, not its servant.

http://articles.latimes.com/2011/sep/02/nation/la-na-atf-guns-20110902

Newly obtained emails show that the White House was better informed about a failed gun-tracking operation on the border with Mexico than was previously known.

Three White House national security officials were given some details about the operation, dubbed Fast and Furious. The operation allowed firearms to be illegally purchased, with the goal of tracking them to Mexican drug cartels. But the effort went out of control after agents lost track of many of the weapons.

The supervisor of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives operation in Phoenix specifically mentioned Fast and Furious in at least one email to a White House national security official, and two other White House colleagues were briefed on reports from the supervisor, according to White House emails and a senior administration official.

But the senior administration official said the emails, obtained Thursday by The Times, did not prove that anyone in the White House was aware of the covert "investigative tactics" of the operation.

"The emails validate what has been said previously, which is no one at the White House knew about the investigative tactics being used in the operation, let alone any decision to let guns walk," said the official, who was not authorized to speak about it publicly. "To the extent that some [national security staff members] were briefed on the top lines of ongoing federal efforts, so were members of Congress."

He identified the three White House officials who were briefed as Kevin M. O'Reilly, director of North American Affairs for the White House national security staff; Dan Restrepo, the president's senior Latin American advisor; and Greg Gatjanis, a White House national security official.

"The emails were not forwarded beyond them, and we are not aware of any [additional] briefings related to that email chain," the official said.

The emails were sent between July 2010 and February of this year before it was disclosed that agents had lost track of hundreds of guns. Many are thought to have fallen into criminal hands, and some have turned up at crime scenes in Mexico and the United States, including at the fatal shooting of a U.S. Border Patrol agent.

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Vista) and Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) are trying to determine what the Justice Department and the White House knew about the program.

http://pjmedia.com/blog/every-single-one-the-politicized-hiring-of-eric-holder%E2%80%99s-criminal-section/?singlepage=true

All ten new hires to the Justice Department's Criminal Section have far-left resumes -- which were only released following a PJMedia lawsuit. (This is the tenth of a series of articles about the Justice Department's hiring practices since President Obama took office.

what does the corrupted hiring mean to the average American? It means if you go to the Wisconsin State Fair and are beaten because you are white, your federal government will do nothing for you, even as it would act if attacker and attacked races were reversed. It means if you are Marty Marshall standing in your front yard watching fireworks with your family, and are attacked by a mob yelling “this is our world. This is a black world,” don’t expect DOJ to act. It means if you are Dick Retta and are pepper-sprayed by a liberal for praying and exercising federal rights to protest abortion, don’t expect the law to protect you.

What does it mean? It means we have reached that dangerous line crossed in past civilizations where the law appears to apply to some, but not to all. This is un-American, and must stop. Otherwise, Americans will stop it next year at the ballot box.

[Flummoxed Lummox]

No laws were broken. The Constitution was not trampled.

Obama beat the GOP at their own game. If they truly believe he did something illegal or unconstitutional they should sue. They won't. Richard Cordray will remain as head of the CFPB. This issue is over.

Your side lost. Deal with it.

[Jeremy Roenick]

No laws were broken. The Constitution was not trampled.

See NDAA.  No more habeus corpus.  No more posse comitatus.  Military arrest, indefinite detainment and rendition.

This DOJ.  Operation Fast 'n Furious.  Transporting arms across international borders to known terrorist/drug dealers.

And you trust this President and DOJ?  "No laws were broken, the Constitution wasn't trampled"

Seriously?  This isn't about "my side" or "your side".  When the office of the President becomes a focal point of unprecedented executive power, we ALL LOSE.

[CD]

Reading this thread, I am reminded of this that I read yesterday in Liberty (a Libertarian publication):

“What I am offering is not an empirical claim but a deductive argument: the wealthy are inherently better positioned than the poor to exploit the state’s power; therefore, the more powerful the state becomes, the more advantage the rich have over the poor in terms of the opportunity to make money. Ayn Rand hinted at this idea when she contrasted “the aristocracy of money,” that of people who earn wealth, with “the aristocracy of pull,” that of people who exploit the state to obtain wealth. But in the end I think Rand loved the rich so much that she failed to see how socialism may actually be a plot by the rich against the poor. . .

It is true that the higher taxes championed by modern liberals would hurt the rich. But the bottom line is that in the American capitalism-socialism hybrid, the leftist rich retain the ability to own their vast fortunes while also exploiting the advantages of socialism to prevent ambitious poor people from competing with them. While socialist interference in the economy drives up prices and eliminates jobs, the rich retain their connections, their ability to land good jobs, and their ability to pay for what they want to buy. By contrast, the poor have no choice other than to accept whatever goods and services the government-ruined markets have to offer, and they must desperately seek jobs in a market crippled by taxes and regulations.” – Russell Hasan

IMO, the irony is that the policies of the Left have made life for the poor more hopeless than ever, while at the same time creating a sense amongst the poor that they need the very leftist policies that have ruined their opportunities for successful lives, and that will continue to do so. A sad irony indeed.

[NCVol]

The only problem with that analysis is it's divorced from reality, what the evidence shows us. 

Seriously, you can't back a thing of what you say with what the evidence is of how the economy has progressed.  For example, the fate of workers has worsened considerably since the 1970s.  That's fact.  So you'd have to argue that the reason for this is the economy took a turn towards MORE socialism with Reagan, then Bush, Clinton, etc. and the evidence is simply THE OPPOSITE.  Both parties have adopted neoliberal economic policies, aka Chicago economics, aka "free market" economics, which has seen the Feds take their hands OFF huge parts of the regulatory apparatus, taxes cut on the Jobs Creators, and although we've had tariffs and protected domestic industry from the founding of the country, "free trade" is now gospel, etc. 

So you're alleging workers got worse as "conservative" economic policies took hold, which is proof that socialism is the cause.   

It's just not based on facts, history, evidence, what happened in this reality based world. 

Furthermore, the clearly more "socialist" economies in Europe have MORE ECONOMIC MOBILITY than we do.  Which is not all that surprising, since in every economy since the dawn of time, what happens without Big Government is monopolies emerge, abuse their economic power, funnel most of the gains to a tiny few, while the masses work for subsistence.  And "socialist" policies, such as free or highly subsidized public education equalize opportunity.  The best example are the millions of GIs who got an essentially free college education post WWII, regardless of their economic status.  Millions and millions of poor kids were the first in their families to go to college, graduate debt free or nearly so, able to start businesses, and change their family fortunes for generations. 

Post WWII, we were just a couple years from radical socialist commie lover FDR, and with much of his "reforms" in place, we proceeded to have the best 30 years for the middle class in world history.  Reagan WAS revolutionary, it WAS a break from the FDR worldview, and the 30 years post Reagan have seen workers' fortunes devastated, while the rich have never in history been richer.   

Sorry, but at some point you right wingers have to address those facts and explain how they fit into this false narrative that you've been sold.  Maybe I'm wrong, but if so, you have to show me where I'm wrong and hit these points head on. 

[Flummoxed Lummox]

What happened to all the conservative outrage and gnashing of teeth over Obama's "unconstitutional" recess appointment of Richard Cordray at the CFBP? Hmmmmm?

I told you clowns that the GOP wouldn't do a damn thing, despite the clamor and protesting when it happened. The "pro forma" recess was a stunt, and Obama called their bluff. When no business is being done in the Senate and Senators are nowhere near Washington, they are in recess and the President has the power to make recess appointments.

Obama won. End of story.