Tag Archives: Topic: White House

Politico: What should Obama do to take advantage of this momentum? It is time for him to focus on a neglected but important part of the nominations process: the problems with how senators supply the president with candidates to be nominated to the federal bench.

Politico: The 2-1 decision Thursday from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit (posted here) found that the presidential recess appointment power is limited to breaks between sessions of Congress, not breaks within sessions or other adjournments during which the Senate might meet in pro forma sessions. The reasoning mirrors that in a ruling of the D.C. Circuit Court in January.

Politico: Larry Conners, a veteran local news anchor at KMOV Channel 4 in St. Louis, says that the Internal Revenue Service has been targeting him since an April 2012 interview he conducted with President Obama — a fact that he dismissed as coincidence until the recent reports about the IRS targeting conservative groups.

The Hill: “If you’ve got the IRS operating in anything less than a neutral and nonpartisan way, then that is outrageous. It is contradictory to our traditions, and people have to be held accountable,” Obama said at a joint press conference with British Prime Minister David Cameron.

Sally Quinn at the Washington Post: Weinstein told me after the Pentagon meeting that military leaders need to understand that “there is systematic misogyny, anti-Semitism and Islamophobia in the military.” He said it is all part of the same culture. “This is a national security threat. What is happening [aside from sexual assault] is spiritual rape. And what the Pentagon needs to understand is that it is sedition and treason. It should be punished.”

Ken Klukowski at Breitbart: The Pentagon has released a statement confirming that soldiers could be prosecuted for promoting their faith: “Religious proselytization is not permitted within the Department of Defense…Court martials and non-judicial punishments are decided on a case-by-case basis…”.

The Hill: President Obama telephoned professional basketball player Jason Collins on Monday to congratulate him for coming out as the first openly gay player on a major U.S. sports team.

Elise Italiano at Public Discourse: President Obama’s recent address to Planned Parenthood’s National Conference sweepingly mischaracterized abortion restrictions and pro-life views as culturally inaccurate and outdated.

Anglican Ink: The Anglican bishops of the West Indies have urged their governments to hold fast and resist pressure from Britain and the United States to legalize gay rights and gay marriage.

Rush Limbaugh Transcript: He praised their nearly 100 years of service to women. This makes me ill, by the way. That a president of the United States shows up at an abortion factory, essentially, and praises their work. You know what else he said? He said the opponents of abortion want to return to the 1950s.

LifeNews: “As long as we’ve got to fight to make sure women have access to quality, affordable health care, and as long as we’ve got to fight to protect a woman’s right to make her own choices about her own health, I want you to know that you’ve also got a president who’s going to be right there with you, fighting every step of the way,” said Obama. “Thank you, Planned Parenthood. God bless you.”

Lyle Denniston reports at SCOTUS Blog: The Obama administration asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to restore the President’s power to fill vacancies in government posts when the Senate is out of town. The petition argued that the D.C. Circuit Court got it wrong in January in sharply curtailing that authority.  (The Circuit Court’s ruling — discussed in this earlier post – is attached as an appendix to the petition but also can be read here.)

C-FAM: European leaders pressing President Obama to fund African abortions argue that a novel interpretation of laws governing war should trump US restrictions on abortion funding. To make their case, they are elevating the views of a few experts from a different body of law—human rights.

LifeNews: President Barack Obama has backed out of giving a keynote speech at a Planned Parenthood fundraiser on Thursday night after massive pro-life pressure. As the Washington Times reports . . .

Executive.gov: Eric Fanning Confirmed As Af Under Secretary LGBTQ Nation: Senate confirms Eric Fanning as Under Secretary of the U.S. Air Force Fanning, who is openly gay, was nominated to the second-highest civilian position in the Air Force by President …

LifeNews: Michigan is in the national news because of a disturbing development in human fetal stem cell experimentation. Neuralstem, Inc. announced that it has received approval from the Food and Drug Administration to expand an amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig’s disease) Phase II study to the University of Michigan.

Religion Clause: However, according to an article from the Wall Street Journal yesterday, some argue that this promotion of yoga crosses the line of permissible church-state relationships.

Reuters: President Barack Obama may have made a slow start on gay rights issues, but by the end of his first term his record was such that a news magazine dubbed him the nation’s “first gay president.” Now activists want more.

LifeNews: White House spokesman Jay Carney today said President Barack Obama has no comment on the murder trial involving late-term abortion practitioner Kermit Gosnell.

Reuters: Lawmakers held a spirited discussion on the immediate future of the National Labor Relations Board on Wednesday, after a recent appeals court ruling that cast doubt on the board’s authority to make decisions.

Religion Clause Blog: Yesterday the President’s Advisory Council on Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships presented its recommendations on combating human trafficking in a 35-page report titled Building Partnerships to Eradicate Modern-Day Slavery.

Politico: Since 1948, every president except for Obama has had at least one of his nominees confirmed to the court. Obama cannot tolerate a filibuster of Srinivasan. If Republicans filibuster, he should break it. After the hearings, Obama should nominate a judge for each of the court’s remaining three vacancies.

Gateway Pundit: Shouldn’t we be able to see an audit of every taxpayer dollar spent on the Muslim Brotherhood? Between the F-16′s, US millions of dollars wasted on Afghanistan police cars, direct money aid, and now this.

Washington Post: President Obama nominated three candidates for full terms to the National Labor Relations Board on Tuesday, urging the Senate to confirm the nominees quickly.

LifeNews: Planned Parenthood’s recent opposition to Florida legislation seeking to protect abortion survivors sent shock waves around the country. But this wasn’t the first time Planned Parenthood had opposed such legislation.

Washington Times: The CNN/ORC poll released Monday showed that 52 percent of Americans approve of Mr. Obama’s policies toward gays and lesbians, while 42 percent disapprove.

Washington Post: While Obama has also been slow to fill some court vacancies, many nominations have stalled even after making through the Judiciary Committee unanimously. At this moment 15 such nominations are awaiting a Senate floor vote, 13 of which made it out of committee unanimously.

Washington Post: The effort reflects a new White House effort to tilt in its favor the conservative-dominated U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which is one notch below the Supreme Court and considers many challenges to executive actions.

Bloomberg: President Barack Obama is pressing Republicans to stop obstructing federal judicial nominees, protesting the delays in private conversations with senators and in public declarations by administration officials

LifeNews: Planned Parenthood has been condemned for what many see as promoting infanticide — but its position is very similar to the one President Barack Obama had when he was an Illinois state senator.

White House: As Christians, my family and I remember the incredible sacrifice Jesus made for each and every one of us – how He took on the sins of the world and extended the gift of salvation. And we recommit ourselves to following His example here on Earth. To loving our Lord and Savior. To loving our neighbors. And to seeing in everyone, especially “the least of these,” as a child of God.

Bloomberg: President Barack Obama’s reelection campaign — a political powerhouse with 20 million e-mail addresses and 4 million volunteers — is setting its sights on state-level battles such as gay marriage legislation in Illinois.

Politico: Halligan had been nominated to serve on the U.S. Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit, but Senate Republicans blocked her confirmation for the second time earlier this month despite lamentations from the White House that she was enormously qualified and had waited more than 700 days since being nominated the first time in 2011.

Bloomberg: President Barack Obama’s appointment of labor board members last year while most senators were out of town met skepticism from appeals court judges weighing whether he overstepped his constitutional powers.

Washington Blade: A total of 110 U.S. House members have signed a letter calling on President Obama to take action to protect LGBT workers from discrimination — although the letter has the notable absence of members of Democratic leadership and Republican lawmakers.

LifeSiteNews: I can’t imagine President Bush’s Council on Bioethics ever countenancing this, but President Obama’s bioethics advisory commission has given conditional approval to test anthrax vaccine on children! From the Reuters story . . .

Washington Post: Church-state expert Melissa Rogers will be the new director of the White House Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships.

Talking Points Memo: In a closed door lunch meeting with Senate Democrats on Tuesday, President Obama expressed his frustration with Republican slow-walking and filibustering of key nominees, and urged them to address the issue, according to a senior Senate Democratic aide.

James Taranto at Wall Street Journal: “President Barack Obama said he could not imagine a circumstance in which a state banning gay marriage was legal,” the Puffington Host reports. The comment came during an interview with Clinton aide turned ABC Newsman George Stephanopoulos, who asked Obama, in the Puffington paraphrase, “whether gay marriage was a right under the Constitution.”

Chicago Tribune: The Obama administration is drawing up plans to give all U.S. spy agencies full access to a massive database that contains financial data on American citizens and others who bank in the country, according to a Treasury Department document seen by Reuters.

SCOTUS Blog: The National Labor Relations Board will seek to go on to the Supreme Court in a major constitutional test of the President’s power to make appointments to government offices when the Senate is out of town, the Board announced Tuesday.

Human Events: The wife of an American pastor held captive in an Iranian prison for nearly a year tells me the Obama Administration has not done anything to help free her husband – and the law firm representing the family believes it’s because the pastor is a Christian who converted from Islam.

Jonathan Adler at Volokh Conspiracy: Over the weekend, the NYT published a highly misleading story about Republican filibusters of President Obama’s judicial nominees. Consider the very first sentence of the article: “A fresh feud over federal judgeships has again begun to agitate the Senate, with Republicans so far blocking President Obama from filling any of the four vacancies on the nation’s most prestigious and important appeals court.

Wall Street Journal (via Google News): Senate Republicans used a filibuster last week to block the nomination of Caitlin Halligan to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, and Democrats are in full boil. President Obama denounced “the Republican pattern of obstruction,” but Republicans are merely following the filibuster precedent that Democrats set when George W. Bush was President. Turnabout is unfair play.

NPR: It’s not solely Senate Republicans who are to blame for the headless government. Obama has failed to put forward nominees for some posts, and Light says the president is “moving at a snail’s pace” to make other nominations. Light says the administration also has “the longest questionnaire in the presidential history for vetting people who might become nominees. It’s brutal.” That serves to discourage some people from wanting to become nominees in the first place.

Turtle Bay and Beyond: Placing women in combat is touted today by the Obama administration as its primary accomplishment on International Women Day. Inserting women into the most violent situations in the world turns a War on Women into a War With Women. US [Ambassador to the United Nations] . . .  of State Susan Rice released this statement today.

LifeNews: Almost half of the entire budget was allocated to HIV/AIDS – $93 million. Out of the remaining $95 million, $25 million is designated for Family Planning to “improve and expand the use of family planning methods in developing countries” and to “introduce and develop new family planning methods.”

Peter Sprigg at Washington Times: The number of flip-flops President Obama has now performed on the issue of marriage would be impressive for an Olympic gymnast. He was for homosexual marriage (in a 1996 Illinois state Senate campaign), then against it (in his 2008 presidential run), then for it again (in a widely publicized interview last May)

The Hill: In a subcommittee hearing on Tuesday, two legal scholars said that the Regulations From the Executive in Need of Scrutiny (REINS) Act would be held constitutional despite arguments it would infringe upon the power of the Executive Branch.

Washington Times: Facing the stiffest Republican opposition to a judicial nominee in two years, the White House is pushing for a confirmation vote this week on Caitlin Halligan’s appointment to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

CNSNews: The Obama Justice Department is arguing in the United States Supreme Court that children do not need mothers.

Washington Times: Designated terrorist group Hamas has warned President Obama against visiting the holy Temple Mount site in Jerusalem when he visits Israel next month, saying the action would be “a diplomatic catastrophe.”

Blog of the Legal Times: Although stopping short of urging the U.S. Supreme Court to hold that gay couples have a fundamental right to marriage, the Obama Administration brief in the California same-sex marriage case charts a legal path towards the eventual undoing of all state gay marriage bans, said a lawyer for the challengers to that state’s ban.

SCOTUS Blog: Here was the government’s key argument why the Golden State’s ban on same-sex marriage fails the constitutional test the administration suggested: ”California’s extension of all of the substantive rights and responsibilities of marriage to gay and lesbian domestic partners particularly undermines the justifications for Proposition 8.”

Pete Williams at NBC: Obama administration to express support for gay marriage before Supreme Court

Administration officials say the Justice Department will urge the U.S. Supreme Court to allow same-sex marriage to resume in California, wading into the protracted legal battle over Proposition 8 and giving gay-rights advocates a new court ally.

Business Insider: “[A]dministration lawyers worry that taking such an expansive view in legal briefs could unnerve some justices in the Supreme Court’s conservative wing, the people familiar with the matter said,” the Journal reported.

Heritage Foundation: President Obama has so many flip-flops in his policy positions that it’s hard to keep track. After running for President supporting traditional marriage, he “evolved” to support same-sex marriage—and now his Justice Department has officially urged the Supreme Court to overthrow the law of the land.

Star Herald (AP): “There’s a critical mass of states that have spoken out and believe states should continue to have the right to define marriage as between one man and one woman,” said Jim Campbell, legal counsel for the Alliance Defending Freedom, which represents supporters of Proposition 8. [This AP report is widely distributed]

Pink News: “There’s a critical mass of states that have spoken out and believe states should continue to have the right to define marriage as between one man and one woman,” said Jim Campbell of the anti-equal marriage Alliance Defending Freedom.

Washington Post: “There’s a critical mass of states that have spoken out and believe states should continue to have the right to define marriage as between one man and one woman,” said Jim Campbell, legal counsel for the Alliance Defending Freedom, which represents supporters of Proposition 8.

The Daily Caller: The pro-abortion organization NARAL Pro-Choice America hired a consulting firm linked to President Barack Obama to conduct extensive video interviews with young pro-life activists in their homes more than a year ago, without informing the pro-life activists that the videos were intended for NARAL’s use.

AP: President Barack Obama is trying to change the face of a federal judiciary that has a long tradition of white men passing judgment on parties from all walks of life – if he can get his nominees past the Senate.

American Federation for Children:For the past four years, supporters of educational choice have wondered why the Obama Administration has so vigorously opposed providing children in low-income families with access to more educational options. Right here in Washington, D.C., the highly successful D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program (OSP) has given thousands of children hope for a better future and yet the Obama Administration has consistently opposed it. In fact, despite signing the FY 2011 budget agreement which included a five-year reauthorization of the program, the President’s subsequent budget proposals zeroed out funding for the program.

LifeSiteNews: If the U.S. Catholic bishops cannot rely on the president to protect religious liberty, they will instead lobby Congress. That’s the message of a letter written to Congress by Archbishop William E. Lori lobbying for two legal provisions on behalf of the U.S. Council of Catholic Bishops (USCCB).

Daily Mail: The incoming head of the CIA converted to Islam while working as a station chief in Saudi Arabia in the 1990s, a former FBI agent has claimed. John Guandolo, who retired from the FBI in 2008, said in a radio interview that John Brennan – who has been nominated by Barack Obama as the new director of the CIA – visited the Islamic holy cities of Mecca and Medina accompanied by Saudi officials who may have persuaded him to convert.

WSJ Market Watch carries the text of the speech.

U.S. News and World Report: Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul delivered the Tea Party rebuttal to Obama’s State of the Union speech

AP: President Barack Obama is telling Congress that he will take action to combat climate change if lawmakers don’t do it themselves.

AP: “It has turned into a childish spectacle. I don’t want to be there to lend dignity to it,” Scalia said, with a certain amount of mischief.

Daily Beast carries the video and text.

Washington Times: Supreme CourtJustice Antonin Scalia is skipping President Obama’s State of the Union address Tuesday night and will be giving his own speech at an event hosted by National Public Radio at George Washington University.

Washington Post: The White House is also reviewing whether the president should issue an executive order offering protections to gays and lesbians who work for government contractors. Obama decided against issuing such an order during the presidential campaign last year, disappointing many gay-rights activists.

Nina Totenberg at NPR: The Obama administration faces tricky political and legal questions on the subject of gay marriage. By the end of this month, the federal government is expected to file not just one but two briefs in a pair of same-sex marriage cases at the U.S. Supreme Court.

LifeSiteNews: One of the country’s leading legal experts and political commentators says that pro-life activists may have a personal reason to be concerned about a new Justice Department white paper outlining some of the criteria the Obama administration use to select Americans it can assassinate without a trial — because the administration has repeatedly labeled the pro-life movement as one of the primary sources of domestic terrorism. Some are asking specifically whether the policy could one day apply to the pro-life movement, gun enthusiasts, preppers, or small government conservatives.

James Taranto at the Wall Street Journal: If you can’t force people to do what you want, force them to buy insurance: That seems to be the strategy of the liberal left in the Obama era. We refer not only to the ObamaCare health-insurance mandate but to the latest bright idea under consideration in mostly Democrat-dominated state capitals.