Obama One-Ups G.W. Bush With Assasinations of Americans; Using "State Secrets" Once Again Last Night

Anwar Awlaki, Assassination

GLENN GREENWALD

SALON


At this point, I didn’t believe it was possible, but the Obama administration has just reached an all-new low in its abysmal civil liberties record.  In response to the lawsuit filed by Anwar Awlaki’s father asking a court to enjoin the President from assassinating his son, a U.S. citizen, without any due process, the administration late last night, according to The Washington Post, filed a brief asking the court to dismiss the lawsuit without hearing the merits of the claims.  That’s not surprising:  both the Bush and Obama administrations have repeatedly insisted that their secret conduct is legal but nonetheless urge courts not to even rule on its legality.  But what’s most notable here is that one of the arguments the Obama DOJ raises to demand dismissal of this lawsuit is “state secrets”:  in other words, not only does the President have the right to sentence Americans to death with no due process or charges of any kind, but his decisions as to who will be killed and why he wants them dead are “state secrets,” and thus no court may adjudicate their legality.

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Andrew Breitbart Lies and Distorts as Usual on Bill Maher's Realtime; Does Weird Things With His Jaw

Barack Obama, Iraq, Politics, Suffering Succotash

Hippie-Punching 101 Explained~Susie Madrak Saving Crooks And Liars Every Day

Broadcatching

I ‘ve got to admit-I’m a huge Madrak fan and at this point, unfortunately  she’s the only reason I still check out C and L….

I respect John Amato immensely…

Hippie Punching 101: The Real Story

By Susie Madrak

To say I’m blunt would be an understatement (although if I were a man, I like to think that people would call me “refreshingly direct”, like John McCain)! So when I got to ask the last question on a White House conference call yesterday, I asked two things.

I asked David Axelrod if he knew what I meant by “hippie punching,” and I also mentioned the Mike Lux article on Open Left this week. (Mike says voters are more easily persuaded by ads run by outside groups, but that Obama for America – later to be Organizing for America — starved the liberal groups of needed cash by telling big donors to give them the money instead. That position apparently continued after the election, too).

I asked Axelrod if he saw that now as a tactical error.

That question was a response to a long explanation by Axelrod that the Democrats were under siege because the Republicans had all the outside special interest groups running attack ads for them, and that was why the Dems needed our help. That was why I asked the equivalent of Dr. Phil’s “So how’s that donation block working for ya?” (He said he didn’t know anything about it. Uh huh.)

It was kind of funny to ask a White House advisor if he understood what I meant by “hippie punching”, it amused me. (I needed a diversion, because a dear friend had surgery to remove a brain tumor yesterday and I hadn’t heard from her family yet.)

But I was also trying to help. You know, as in: “If you want help from people, you need to stop bad mouthing them.”

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Lindsay Lohan Handcuffed, Taken to Jail Without Bail

Broadcatching

KTLA News

Lindsay Lohan will spend 30 days behind bars and will not be released early.

September 24, 2010
LOS ANGELES — Troubled actress Lindsay Lohan was handcuffed and ordered to jail after a brief hearing Friday morning in Beverly Hills following a failed drug test.

Superior Court Judge Elden Fox ordered Lohan to be held in jail –without bail — until an October 22 probation hearing.

After the hearing, which lasted less than ten minutes, the 24 year old actress was put into an unmarked squad car, surrounded by a police escort, and then taken to the Century Regional Detention Center in Lynwood — the same facility where she spent time behind bars earlier this summer. She arrived a short time later. Sheets were held up around her to shield her from the media’s glare.

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Stephen Colbert Almost Kicked Out of Hearing on Capitol Hill

Broadcatching, Stephen Colbert

BOSTON GLOBE

By Donovan Slack, Globe Staff

At least one lawmaker was not amused.

Comedian Stephen Colbert had barely seated himself at a House Judiciary subcommittee hearing this morning when US Representative John Conyers, Democrat of Michigan, asked him to leave. Conyers said the committee had not seen so many reporters at a hearing since presidential impeachment proceedings in the late 1990s, and he wanted Colbert to leave so that the committee could carry on with its work.

Colbert, however, did not budge, saying that he was present at the invitation of the hearing chair, US Representative Zoe Lofgren, Democrat of California. But Colbert said if Lofgren wanted him to leave, he would.

Lofgren said she wanted him to stay, and a good portion of Capitol Hill was glued to broadcasts of the hearing.

The hearing was about illegal immigrants and farm work. Colbert, host of The Colbert Report on Comedy Central, recently spent one day working on a farm.

Colbert, who got five minutes to share what he called his “vast knowledge” of farm labor, began by touching on the effect of his presence.

“I certainly hope that my star power can bump this hearing all the way up to C-SPAN1,” he quipped.

His testimony at times bordered on the absurd.

“The obvious answer is for all of us to stop eating fruits and vegetables,” he said at one point. At another, he said, “Maybe the easier answer is to have scientists create vegetables that pick themselves.”

Colbert did include one seemingly serious notion.

“Maybe we could offer more visas to the immigrants, who lets face it, will probably be doing these jobs anyway,” he said before thanking the committee for allowing him to testify.

Randy Quaid, Wife Face Burglary Charges in Calif.

The Randy Quaids

ASSOCIATED PRESS

SANTA BARBARA, Calif. (AP) — Actor Randy Quaid and his wife are facing burglary charges in California after the owner of the couple’s old house reported they had been living there without permission.

A representative of the property owner called Santa Barbara County sheriff’s deputies Saturday afternoon to report that squatters had been staying in the guest house illegally. When deputies arrived at the house that evening, they found Randy and Evi Quaid, who said they had owned the property since the 1990s.

The property owner’s representative provided documents that showed his client had bought the home in 2007 from a man who had purchased it from the Quaids several years earlier. A contractor showed police more than $5,000 in damages to the guest house that he believed was caused by the Quaids.

Police arrested the Quaids on charges of felony residential burglary and entering a noncommercial building without consent, a misdemeanor. Police also charged Evi Quaid, 47, with resisting arrest.

Bail was set at $50,000 each.

Last September, the couple was charged with defrauding an innkeeper of more than $10,000 as well as conspiracy and burglary after an invalid credit card was used at San Ysidro Ranch in Montecito.

Senior Deputy District Attorney Arnie Tolks had said an invalid card also was used at The Biltmore, a luxury resort in Santa Barbara.

Felony charges were later dropped against Randy Quaid, 59. Evi Quaid pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor count of defrauding an innkeeper and was sentenced to three years’ probation. She was also ordered to perform 240 hours of community service.

Randy Quaid won a Golden Globe Award and was nominated for an Emmy for his portrayal of President Lyndon Johnson in “LBJ: The Early Years,” but he’s perhaps best known for his roles in the “National Lampoon’s Vacation” movies, “Independence Day” and “Kingpin.”

He is the older brother of fellow actor Dennis Quaid.

Palin Advises O’Donnell to "Speak Through Fox News"

Broadcatching

RAW STORY

By David Edwards and Muriel Kane
Thursday, September 16th, 2010

Fox News has been accused at times by progressives of acting as an arm of the Republican Party, particularly in the wake of its parent company’s $1 million donation last month to the Republican Governors Association. During the current election season, however, that support has become particularly noticeable.

When Sarah Palin spoke with Fox’s Bill O’Reilly on Wednesday about Tea Party candidate Christine O’Donnell’s campaign in Delaware, the two of them sounded less like a host and a news analyst than like a pair of political strategists hashing over plans for how Fox could best serve the Republican Party.

Palin even went so far as to advise that if O’Donnell is going to overcome negative perceptions of her, “She’s going to have to … get out there, speak to the American people, speak through Fox News.”

O’Reilly had begun by citing recent harsh criticism of O’Donnell by former White House adviser Karl Rove, who told Fox’s Sean Hannity on Tuesday night, “I wasn’t frankly impressed by her abilities as a candidate. … There were a lot of nutty things she has been saying that don’t add up.”

“What Rove is afraid of,” O’Reilly suggested, “is that Miss O’Donnell is so inexperienced, and not able to make her points in a way that will persuade the independents in Delaware — which absolutely have to vote for her — so she can’t win.”

“I don’t buy that at all,” Palin replied.

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Delaware Senate Candidate Christine O'Donnell on Politically Incorrect ~ 1998

Christine O'Donnell

Allegations of a checkered financial past were not enough to keep Christine O’Donnell from a surprise victory in Tuesday’s Republican Senate primary in Delaware. But as the Tea-Party-backed candidate  enters the general election and the national spotlight, the trickle of accusations, from unpaid student debts and income taxes to IRS liens and improperly used campaign funds, has become a steady stream.

O’Donnell, a former marketing executive and conservative pundit, has twice before run for Senate and lost, leaving in her wake a lengthy paper trail. Her defeat of Mike Castle, a longtime Republican congressman heavily favored to win, has earned her enemies in both the Democratic and Republican parties, all of whom are digging into her financial history looking for mud to sling.

Just before voters went to go the polls, Delaware residents received a robocall, paid for by the state’s Republican party. It was a recorded message from O’Donnell’s 2008 campaign manager, Kristin Murray, alleging that O’Donnell “was living on campaign donations — using them for rent and personal expenses, while leaving her workers unpaid and piling up thousands in debt. She wasn’t concerned about conservative causes. O’Donnell just wanted to make a buck.”

ABC NEWS