And Watergate wasn’t the defining episode of the Nixon administration. But that’s how desperate Team Obama have become. And with today’s House hearing cancelled after the Solyndra gang phoned in a no-show, methinks this is not the end or even the beginning of the end of what Solyndra will tell us about Obama’s term.

Countering WaPo’s front page story showing deep and intense White House involvement in rushing through $535 million in taxpayer dollars to the brainchild of major Obama contributor George Kaiser, failed solar panel boondoggle Solyndra, today’s E&E Daily has a story (subscription required) “Democrats launch counteroffensive on Solyndra”.

The hand-waiving effort — Schwarzenegger was a fan! A Solyndra exec is a registered Republican! The program Obama abused was originally created by Congress during George W. Bush’s presidency! (untrue, “Sec. 1705″ was a 2009 project in the…stimulus bill…of Henry Waxman (D-CA)) — concludes with the following cry for help, or at least for a good fisking:

Other Democratic leaders were quick to pan the RNC’s attempt to make Solyndra the face of the stimulus effort.

“Solyndra is unfortunate. Did it not work? It didn’t work apparently. But that’s not the face of the Recovery Act,” said House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) in an interview.

I’m sorry…whose effort to make Solyndra the face of ’stimulus’?

Which other project received — on top of the internal push to rush a half-billion dollars to this “NOT ready for prime time” (per an OMB email) project — personal attention and public promotion by the Energy Secretary, Vice President, and President? But, no, it wasn’t the face of ’stimulus.’

But, what of that whole presidential address, whose details make this claim something less than near-fetched:

“So that’s why we’ve placed a big emphasis on clean energy.  It’s the right thing to do for our environment, it’s the right thing to do for our national security, but it’s also the right thing to do for our economy.

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When it comes to defining the meaning of the Republican victory last Tuesday, Marco Rubio got it exactly right: “This is our second chance.” Just four years ago, Republicans were turned out of the majority because they had forgotten the spirit of 1994 that brought them there — succumbing to corruption scandals and accepting runaway spending and bailouts of the financial and automotive sectors. John Boehner has smartly echoed this humble tone both in his Election Night speech and post-election interviews.

The first key test of whether Republicans have learned their lesson will come in the decision on whether to weaken a crucial 1994 reform limiting the terms of Republican committee heads by waiving term limits for Rep. Joe Barton so that he can run for the chairmanship of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

The term limits rule, by the incoming Republican majority in 1994 and enshrined in the Contract with America, was designed to break down the imperial fiefdoms at all important committees built up during 40 years of Democratic rule. When Democrats retook the House, they continued to allow their committee chairmen unlimited rein. The result: unchecked power on committee chairs like Charlie Rangel.

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Sen. Barbara Boxer’s Capitol Hill staff is stonewalling a request by military mother Beverly Perlson for a copy of a reported diplomatic letter provided by the California Democrat to the leftwing group Code Pink/Global Exchange in support of the delivery of $600,000 in cash and aid to the “other side” in Fallujah, Iraq in late 2004.

Perlson, whose son has served four tours in the war on terror, is founder of the pro-troops group The Band of Mothers.

After initially telling Perlson the letter could not be found, Boxer’s staff has given Perlson the run around. Since she first made her request by telephone last week, Perlson says she has been passed from one staffer who, after failing to return several phone calls, referred her to another staffer who has not returned repeated phone messages. The receptionist refuses to give an e-mail address to Perlson so she can send her request in writing.

The stonewalling by Boxer’s office is in stark contrast to California Rep. Henry Waxman’s office which promptly provided Perlson a copy of a similar letter by Waxman.

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It should be noted that the so-called “peace activists” at the Code Pink organization are anything but peace activists. These anti-American radicals and Marxists supported the mass murderer Saddam Hussein who ran one of the most brutal regimes in the 20th century. Code Pink activists currently support the illegitimate Iranian regime, the Marxist Chavez regime in Venezuela and have even met with Taliban Islamists.

“Code Pink Kills American Troops Giving Money to Terrorists” (Target of Opportunity photo)

On November 22, 2004, the socialist anti-American group Code Pink sent out a plea to supporters to help send assistance to the “refugees” from Fallujah, Iraq.

Today, as CODEPINK was busily preparing a year-end humanitarian mission to Iraq, we received an urgent message. It was from our dear friend Dahr Jamail, an amazing American independent journalist who has been risking his life to get the true story of Fallujah to the American public:

“I have just come from a refugee camp in Baghdad with families from Fallujah. The suffering is beyond description. It’s worse than anything you’ve read or anything I’ve written so far.

This is a humanitarian crisis. They need medicines for their camp and the other camps immediately. We have an organization set up of doctors who can distribute the medicines and supplies. BUT WE NEED THEM NOW! THIS CANNOT WAIT!”
Solidarity,
Dahr

The next day, on November 23, 2004, Code Pink announced that they had raised nearly $20,000 in one day for “refugess” from Fallujah.

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Word has it that the Internet is on the brink of a takeover.

Egged on by radical interests, the FCC is poised to impose onerous regulations to guide the medium to a more “open” future.  No matter that the Internet is perhaps one of the greatest success stories ever.  And that a key to its success rests in the fact that government has stepped out of the way, letting developers and networks do what they do best – serve Americans with cutting-edge communications tools at affordable prices.

All of this is meaningless, of course, when the whip count and brute bureaucratic force are in your favor.

You see, Washington just learned that a bill, which could stop the FCC’s plans, is in deep jeopardy.  The bill’s sponsor – Representative Henry Waxman – doesn’t have enough Republican support to credibly move the legislation through Congress.  Lacking this, the proposal is basically dead in the water (even before formal introduction), having virtually no practical effect on the rogue FCC.

On any other day I wouldn’t shed a single crocodile tear hearing this news.  Not today, however.  Said Waxman, “If our efforts to find bipartisan consensus fail, the FCC should move forward.”

This will have significant repercussions.

I have long advocated that the Internet does not need regulating.  Technology, marketplace dynamics, consumer education, reputation management, current competition law and industry best practices all work together to make sure that the Internet remains open.  Though the naysayers cry otherwise, the still-unregulated Internet is anything but broken.  With each day, new services come on line, serving more and more Americans with Internet services.

But since the present Administration came to town, radical interests have captured policymakers at the FCC.  Over the past two years, they have enjoyed immense success in peddling the idea that the Internet is in danger of breaking unless Washington comes to the rescue.

How so?

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The Hill  reports the latest attempt by the Democrats to deflect the outrage of the American people by blame shifting the cause of the Gulf oil spill disaster to former VP Dick Cheney and the Bush administration:

Members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee traded partisan blows Tuesday over whether the Obama administration or the former Bush administration deserves more blame for the catastrophic Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

Senior Democrats on the panel — Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) — used a hearing on the Interior Department’s role to trace the disaster back to former Vice President Dick Cheney’s energy policy task force.

Waxman said that task force — which was assembled early in the Bush administration — set the stage for policies that pushed drilling at the expense of tough safety oversight of rigs and review of environmental risks.

“The cop on the beat was off-duty for nearly a decade and this gave rise to a dangerous culture of permissiveness,” Waxman said. “In many ways this history begins with Vice President Cheney’s secretive energy task force.”

Waxman said that under the Bush-era Interior Department, “the priority was more drilling first and safety second,” although he added that the current administration was also too hands-off before the spill.

Seriously?   Waxman and Markey obviously did not have access to this outstanding timeline and writeup by Kevin McCullough, which details the events dating back to February 13, 2010:

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One way or the other, one of us is going to go down. President Obama, by insisting that he will go to the mat on his “green jobs” agenda, which is simply central planning with a coat of green paint, indicates he will risk his presidency on getting the cap-and-trade, gas tax and windmill mandate through the Senate (with a stranglehold on domestic energy production to boot), then through the House again on a conferenced bill.

If he succeeds he will have doomed us; if he fails, politically the effort will have finally, fully exposed him for what he is: a Power Grabbing Statist whose economics are recklessly dogmatic while at the same time ignoring those societies he claims are his model.

Obama reminded us how as a candidate he set out what he called a set of principles, which he acknowledged were passed by the House, in a vote almost precisely one year ago today.

Here is what he said then about cap-and-trade, which the House passed. This discussion occurred in the apparent context of how to mount his and his team’s big-ticket agenda items:

“The problem is, can you get the American people to say this is really important, and force their representatives to do the right thing. That requires mobilizing a citizenry…And climate change is a great example.”

You got it: this is the community organizer, refusing to allow a crisis to go to waste, but instead seeking to use it to do what he’s trying to do.

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The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) recently hit a major stumbling block in its effort to impose net neutrality via the “reclassification” of broadband services.  Following months of civil rights groups, artists, and a major union voicing their opposition to net neutrality as a policy and a federal appeals court ruling that the FCC’s regulatory power was more limited than the agency had believed, 248 members of the U.S. House of Representatives went on the record to oppose the FCC’s plans.

But that hasn’t stopped the FCC from continuing to pursue reclassification.  Last week, Commissioner Mignon Clyburn unveiled herself as a supporter of designating broadband a telephone service under Title II of the Communications Act.

In a speech to the Media Institute, Clyburn rejected the notion that reclassification constituted a power grab saying that “The chairman is proposing that we reestablish the authority that the commission and most observers thought we had.”

But opponents say that the FCC’s proposed action is exactly that—a naked power grab, aimed not at reestablishing something “stripped” of the FCC, but rather extending the agency’s reach to impose heavy regulation on Internet services, in possible usurpation of Congress’ authority.

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Here we go again. Harry Reid intends to force a vote at 5pm on Monday in a desperate attempt to push yet another bloated bill that will do more harm than good.

This time, the Democrats seem to have zeroed in on reforming the entire American finance system without bothering to read, or even consider, the many, negative, unintended consequences to our economy (and especially to small businesses) that this legislation will unleash.

Once again, the Democrats are keen to push a flawed agenda to capitalize on the remarkably convenient timing of the ever-so-welcomed, SEC fraud charges levied against Goldman Sachs.

Once again, Democrats are keen to push long standing, left-wing, ideological dreams that Americans have long resisted.  But, pity the poor small business community that will, once again, be forced to pay a disproportional cost of the 1336 page monstrosity of a financial reform bill.

Embedded deep within the Democrats’ financial bill is an inexplicable assault on Angel Investors who help drive small business expansion and entrepreneurialism.  Sections 412 and 413 (p.380-381) adjust (i.e.increase) the “Accredited Investor” dollar threshold to $1 million dollars—which could affect the amount of angel investing, especially those that invest in small businesses.

If that isn’t enough bad news, in Section 740B“Small Business Loan Data Collection”, (p.1219-1224), Congress requires the collection of proprietary data, and storage for three years of data that must be obtained from any small business attempting a loan.

Then, Congress stipulates that this information about the small business must be made available to the public upon request.  These are the kinds of intrusive requirements that could only be drafted by persons who have no experience in what it takes to start, maintain and grow a business.

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One of the dirty little secrets of Capitol Hill is that most politicians – even the ones the horserace-focused media depicts as irredeemably ideologically divided – actually have no coherent driving ideology. The secret is revealed only occasionally. If powerful oversight chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) hadn’t reconsidered his plans this week to call the CEOs of major companies into committee chambers for his version of Beltway blackmail, the American people might have had an opportunity to witness it being revealed.

Waxman originally called the hearing in a characteristic fit of pique. After more than nine months of labor, the House of Representatives had finally given birth to the gargantuan ogre of Obamacare. Yet before the Democratic leadership could finish tousling the hair of the prop children at their signing ceremonies, corporate America started following the law, in the most inconvenient manner possible: they reported to their investors and employees the effects the new legislation would have on their benefit plans.

In each case, the analysts employed by major companies like AT&T, Verizon Communications, Caterpillar, Deere & Co. and others did their job: they delivered reports detailing the ramifications – higher premiums, dropped drug coverage, and forcing their employees into taxpayer-funded plans – thanks to the new bill. Waxman, infuriated, demanded the CEOs of these troublesome companies turn over all internal communications about the predicted results, as if he thought they would reveal some devious Republican plot, instead of the simple mathematical calculations of the green eyeshades and the diligent efforts of company lawyers to ensure that the companies complied with federal disclosure laws.
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What is the most important issue facing the American people today? Until late last Fall, Al Gore, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Henry Waxman, the presidents of our major universities, and the editors and reporters at The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, Newsweek, Time, The New Yorker, CBS, ABC, NBC, CNN, WNBC, and the like –  not to mention the scientific establishment in the United States – were as one in telling us that global warming was a profound threat to our well-being and that of the rest of mankind. And John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and sadly, in the end, a hapless George W. Bush were willing to lend the hysterics a measure of aid and comfort.

In the United States Senate, the indomitable James M. Inhofe of Oklahoma was very nearly alone in standing up to denounce the whole enterprise as a hoax, and in turn he was himself denounced by all right-thinking people as a scoundrel and a fool. There were, of course, scientists proficient in meteorology who entertained grave doubts, and some of them made a great fuss, but they were soon denied federal funding for further research, and young entrants into the profession quickly learned that if they wished to have successful careers it was incumbent on them to join the chorus who denounced global-warming skeptics as lackeys of the fossil fuels industry. The global-warming cabal was to the liberal democracies of our time what  Trofim Denisovich Lysenko and his disciples were to biology in the Soviet Union of Josef Stalin.

When he became President, Barack Obama pledged to “roll back the specter of a warming planet” and “restore science to its rightful place,” implying – graceless as always – that the administration of George W. Bush had suppressed inconvenient scientific truths in the interests of ideology. In fact, Obama seems not to have understood what he was saying, for a specter is “an apparition inspiring dread,” and it is one of the principal functions of science to dispel illusions of this very sort; and, instead of debunking “the specter of a warming planet” and restoring “science to its rightful place” thereby, he embraced that specter and sought by way of inspiring dread in the American people to railroad his compatriots into subjecting the entire economy to the supervision of the administrative state.

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In modern day America, if you criticize the government you are now fair game to be called upon to explain yourself in front of it.  As Byron York reported in a recent Washington Examiner column, Rep. Henry Waxman sent letters to executives of major corporations such as Verizon and Caterpillar, requesting their testimony at hearings of the Subcomittee on Oversight and Investigations of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, chaired by none other than Rep. Bart Stupak, as each of the companies “announced that provisions in the [healthcare] law could adversely affect” their “ability to provide health insurance.”  AT&T for instance had disclosed in an SEC form that changes in the tax treatment of a Medicare subsidy would lead to a $1 billion write-off in earnings from the first quarter of 2010, and said it was considering changes to the health care benefits it provides for its employees.

That the legislation would negatively affect the earnings of these corporations and potentially hamper their ability to provide healthcare is for Rep. Waxman “a matter of concern,” as the “new law is designed to expand coverage and bring down costs.”

But I wonder, for whom are the negative effects of this legislation really a concern?  For Rep. Waxman and his fellow Democrats who already forced the egregious bill on the public?  For the private enterprises pummeled seemingly on a daily basis by these same politicians?  Perhaps for the American people faced with all kinds of economy-crippling unintended consequences as a result of the legislation, on top of the higher costs and worse healthcare they will ultimately receive?

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A member of the terrorist support group Code Pink assaults then Sec. of State Condoleezza Rice at a Congressional hearing, Oct. 24, 2007. AP Photo by Charles Dharapak

Code Pink co-founder and Democrat activist Jodie Evans and President Barack Obama, Oct. 15, 2009.

[Note: This is the latest segment in an ongoing series about Code Pink and its co-founder Jodie Evans. Click here to read earlier articles.]

House Majority Whip Rep. James Clyburn (SC)  recently accused Republicans of “aiding and abetting terrorism” because of their support for the Tea Party movement. With all due respect, Rep. Clyburn needs to clean out his own party first before he has standing to say anything on the subject.

Top Democrat Party activists Jodie Evans and Medea Benjamin, through their group Code Pink, have spent the past eight years terrorizing soldiers, their families and public officials on the homefront while working with terrorists and state sponsors of terrorism abroad. Rather than being condemned and disowned, Code Pink is embraced by President Barack Obama and leading Democrats while being celebrated by the media.

The Code Pink Democrats have harassed wounded soldiers and their families at military hospitals in Washington, D.C. and San Diego; they have repeatedly targeted military recruiting centers for abuse; they cruelly taunted the children of military families at a White House Halloween party; they have terrorized government officials at their homes and they have led a campaign for the kidnapping of former President Bush and his wife Laura (for this they enlisted the support of the Muslim Brotherhood).

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This week (March 3, 2010) was the deadline Reps. Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Ed Markey (D-MA) set for Mark Crisson, President and CEO of the American Public Power Association (APPA), to explain why APPA is urging Senators to support Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s Congressional Review Act resolution to veto the EPA’s finding that greenhouse gas emissions endanger public health and welfare. The Senate may vote on the Murkowski resolution as soon as next week.

Now, aside from the merits of the issue, which I’ll get into in a moment, Waxman and Markey’s behavior is out of line. Waxman and Markey (W/M) are Members of the House of Representatives. What business is it of theirs if the APPA lobbies Senators about a bill pending in the Senate? Senators can conduct their own inquiries without any assistance from W/M. And why didn’t W/M copy Sen. Murkowski or at least Senate Energy Chairman Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) on their Feb. 25 letter to Mr. Crisson? Failure to “cc” any of the principals in the Senate flouts one of the most basic rules of legislative courtesy.

Besides being busybodies, Waxman and Markey are bullies.

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Isn’t it finally time for the behind-closed-door racial slurs to die?  If our legislators truly do represent the people, then, how is it possible that in this nation, with so many people, of so many different ethnicities and races, an individual could  be castigated for accented speech or the texture of their hair or the color of their skin?

I was born in 1958, at the cusp of one of the biggest change in our country’s ideology– the civil rights movement.  But, six years later, desegregation had still not infiltrated all aspects of our national society and in Louisiana, it had had almost no effect at all.

As  a six year old, desegregation had little impact, until the day that Bobby Kennedy came to our house and, sitting at our kitchen table, convinced my dad to “try once more” and apply to have me attend an all-white, private school in New Orleans.  That day changed my life.

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The success of the Chicago-style politics of Dick Durbin, Rahm Emmanuel and Barack Obama, characterized by brass knuckles, intense bullying, finger pointing and public attacks has been mesmerizing.  Meanwhile, very  little attention has been focused on the California-style politics of obfuscation and intimidation practiced by Nancy Pelosi and her sidekick, Henry Waxman.  Ignoring California-style politics is a mistake: these guys are good!

The art of obfuscation is central to California-style politics.  Think back on Speaker Pelosi’s byzantine explanation of why she called career CIA employees liars.  Incomprehensible, deliberately vague misdirection characterizes the California-style of politics.  Never be precise; never say what you mean, and certainly, never let facts interfere with the spin.

Cumbersome, incoherent  legislation is another example of obfuscation, California-style: thousands of pages of  gobble-de-gook, the Stimulus, at 1000 pages, the Energy bill at 1100 pages and the Healthcare bill version #1 at 1300 pages and the latest House healthcare bill at a whopping 1990 pages.

Pelosi seems to have assembled these monstrosities so that few in Congress can read the legislation in its entirety before she calls the vote.   Deceptive executive summaries, with left wing talking points, attached to these gargantuan documents are yet another form of obfuscation.

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The Democratic majority objected to my appearing at a House hearing this morning addressing AstroTurfing in the global warming advocacy industry. The majority were not amused by the prospect of a discordant note being struck. As such, the Republicans will have no witnesses. They have agreed to this after being challenged. In Washington, we call times such as these “weekdays”.

The hearing actually has devolved into something of an effort to rehabilitate certain Members who are now imperiled by their vote for the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill, particularly Tom Periello of Central Virginia (my Congressman, who has been hoodwinked by someone into stating, in defense of his vote, that the reason we are losing jobs to India and China is because they’ve already passed Waxman-Markey-type laws. Really. I agree we need to find out who is spreading such scurrilous tales to our lawmakers).

So, Rep. Periello will open the proceedings with a statement. The hearing was already delayed once because he refused to let anyone see what he was going to say in advance. They might ask questions. I don’t think that’s much of a threat.

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This is pretty pathetic. CNN commissions a poll to assist with a week’s worth of Senate hearings and one in the House all designed to breathe life into the Senate’s counter to Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade energy rationing legislation. The express point of that scheme is to raise energy prices, which outcome our president has boasted as being to cause electricity (actually, all) energy prices to “necessarily skyrocket”, “bankrupt[ing]” many firms.

The poll, splashed with a pretty clear headline, ran to one question.  Er, wait. They’re only pushing one question and its answer. No drilling down provided, though it may have been pursued. The poll actually appears to be at least 16 questions long, though when linking to the pdf for the “full results”, you get one question and answer.

How much editorializing/cheerleading does CNN do about this apparently selective snapshot? Well, the question-and-answer in their entirety total 68 words, which led to CNN providing, ah, context and texture to the public’s voice– to sell the question-and-answer to the public if not to add any meaning or context to the question itself for those responding to the poll — nearly six times as many (390 words plus headline).

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The allegations raised in “White House Creates ACORN for the Arts” and prior stories about the NEA enlisting artists who receive government grants to support President Obama’s political goals certainly raise a number of issues.  Foremost among them is whether such actions violate White House policy and potentially federal law.  The White House Counsel was concerned enough about the conference call that it was compelled to issue new guidelines for public outreach meetings, noting that some of the comments on the call may have been “misunderstood as seeking to inappropriately politicize activities of the NEA.”  But beyond violating these White House guidelines, which could result in further forced resignations but little else, what is really at issue with the alleged conduct?

By seeking to enlist the private sector in lobbying for the President’s agenda, the alleged conduct may have violated the Anti-Lobbying Act (18 U.S.C. §1913), which as Ben Shapiro pointed out in a previous piece, explicitly provides:

No part of the money appropriated by any enactment of Congress shall, in the absence of express authorization by Congress, be used directly or indirectly to pay for any personal service, advertisement, telegram, telephone, letter, printed or written matter, or other device, intended or designed to influence in any manner a Member of Congress, a jurisdiction, or an official of any government, to favor, adopt, or oppose by vote or otherwise, any legislation, law, ratification, policy, or appropriation, whether before or after the introduction of any bill, measure or resolution proposing such legislation, law, ratification, policy or appropriation.

The Anti-Lobbying Act, according to government handbooks, prevents government employees from engaging in “substantial ‘grass roots’ lobbying campaigns … expressly urging individuals to contact government officials in support of or opposition to legislation …. Provid[ing] administrative support for lobbing activities of private organizations”

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