Defense Secretary Warns Obama Administration has No Long Term Plan for Iran

A secret memo from Defense Secretary Robert Gates warning top White House officials that they lack a long-term strategy for dealing with Iran has prompted the White House, the U.S. military and the country's intelligence agencies to develop one, according to a report The New York Times posted to its website Saturday night.

This yet-to-be completed strategy includes military alternatives if the United States exhausts all diplomatic options and if sanctions fail to dissuade Iran from advancing its nuclear program.

A senior official told the Times the memo, which Gates wrote in January after Iran failed to meet a 2009 deadline, served as "a wake up call." White House officials told the newspaper that the administration has been developing ways to address possible outcomes with Iran for the past 15 months. - CBS News Story

Press Meets with White House on Poor Relations

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs met with a delegation from the White House press corps for 75 minutes on Thursday in an effort to improve frayed relations between the two sides.

Ed Chen, a White House correspondent for Bloomberg News who is president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, said he asked for the meeting “to clear the air because in my 10-plus years at the White House, rarely have I sensed such a level of anger, which is wide and deep, among members over White House practices and attitude toward the press.”

Chen said he feels “very good about the collegial give and take.”

“We had a very good exchange with Robert,” Chen said. “He stayed overtime, and thus was late for his next meeting.”

Gibbs said the meeting in his West Wing office was “comprehensive and productive.”

“I started by thanking the WHCA on behalf of the president and first lady for protecting the privacy of the Obama children,” Gibbs said. “We discussed and made progress n a number of issues important to both.”

Chen recalled that the two sides agreed on “no immediate global solutions,” but said he came away expecting an “improvement in press access.” - Politico Story

GOP Unites to Stop Partisan Banking Bill

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has commitments from every Republican senator to block consideration this week of the Democrats’ Wall Street reform bill, a McConnell spokesman said Saturday.

The unified opposition means Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) at this point lacks the crucial 60th vote to begin debate on the bill as it is currently written. But he could still pick off some Republicans to support the first procedural vote known as a motion to proceed by making some changes to the measure.

“All 41 senators agree on the motion to proceed and that the bill is flawed—but can be fixed,” McConnell spokesman Don Stewart said. - Politico Story

Meteor Fireball April 14th, 2010

Democrats Struggle to Pay for Agenda

Democrats have overcome a series of filibusters and procedural snafus in passing a short-term extension of unemployment benefits and other domestic programs.

But a Senate vote Thursday evening was merely a $9.2 billion band-aid that masks a more daunting problem for Democrats: How to pay for the rest of their domestic agenda — including a long-term unemployment bill — under the strict pay-as-you-go rules they adopted earlier this year.

The short-term unemployment benefits bill, which was headed toward final passage in the House on Thursday night, also includes the COBRA health program and a Medicare reimbursement adjustment known as the “doc fix.” The bill bypassed pay-as-you-go rules because it was designated as a temporary “emergency” spending plan.

But now Democrats are stuck. - Politico Story

Big Democratic Donor Caught in Corruption Case

New charges against a well-connected private equity fund and a top New York political consulting firm raise a curtain on perhaps the most lucrative — and seedy — aspect of the business of American politics, the management of billions of dollars in state pension funds.

The scandal that erupted in the office of former New York State Comptroller Alan Hevesi is a study in contrasts: High flying private equity titans, allegedly caught with their hands in the pockets of teachers, clerks, and sanitation workers. Top politicians whose salaries are stuck in the low six-figures, suddenly in control of pots of money running into the twelve-figures. And top Democratic donors who cast themselves as high-minded, disinterested dabblers in the public good are revealed to have quite a bit of interest after all.

"We've gone from public contracts for buildings to underwriting to now controlling pension funds," said Mitchell Moss, a professor of urban planning at New York University, describing the recent evolution of political corruption. "The state pension funds have become the new honey pot."

The announcements made Thursday by New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo and the Securities and Exchange Commission constituted some of the largest settlements in decades of prosecutions in pension scandals, with the Quadrangle Group - a firm founded by the Democratic mega-donor and former Obama "auto czar" Steven Rattner - paying out $12 million in fines. - Politico Story

Army Lt. Col. Refuses to Deploy Unitl he Sees Obama's Birth Certificate

Lt. Col. Terry Lakin, an Army doctor who’s refusing to serve his second tour of duty in Afghanistan until he sees President Barack Obama’s birth certificate, is under investigation by the Army.

Lakin was supposed to report for duty on Monday at Ft. Campbell, Ky., to a unit deploying to Afghanistan. Instead, he reported to his brigade commander at the Pentagon.

Lakin will be assigned to duty at Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington, pending an investigation into whether he violated two provisions of the Uniformed Code of Military Justice, said Army spokesman George Wright: missing the movement of a unit and violating an order.

Lakin’s brigade commander, Col. Gordon Roberts, read Lakin his Miranda rights and said the doctor was “about to be charged with serious crimes,” according to a press release from the American Patriot Foundation, a birther group coordinating Lakin’s legal defense fund.

Lakin’s decision not to deploy comes after he posted a YouTube video last month outlining his intention to “invite my own court martial” by demanding to see proof that Obama is a natural born citizen of the United States.

“The minimal invasion to any politician’s privacy from having to show an original, signed birth certificate is far less than the harms to our country by someone not qualified whose election would thus subvert the law and the truth,” Lakin said in the video. - Politico Story

Obama Has Biggest Deficits and FEMA is Out of Money

Money’s so short at the Federal Emergency Management Agency these days that it may soon declare an emergency of its own — to raise cash for the next disaster facing the United States.

That’s the upshot of a letter to Congress from FEMA Director W. Craig Fugate, who warns that relief funds are running dry and FEMA is poised to invoke an emergency exception to get around budget statutes and provide limited aid in the event of a new disaster.

The crisis, building for months, is an apt metaphor for many of the ills that beset this Congress. Much as President Barack Obama sees himself as a champion of big ideas, his administration keeps tripping over smaller, practical steps in everyday governance.

Republican obstructionism is surely a factor, but so, too, is the Democratic leadership’s failure — some would say political cuteness — about building in enough floor time on the legislative calendar.

The Senate allowed the estate tax to lapse in December under similar circumstances, costing the Treasury billions. Despite earlier promises, Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) now fears that a must-pass war funding bill won’t clear Congress before Memorial Day.

The White House is not immune. As Obama demands more transparency from Wall Street, his administration is quietly running a disaster relief fund that would be insolvent already if FEMA were to pay the bills owed to states. Five years after Hurricane Katrina — which hurt his predecessor — it’s a growing embarrassment.

Fugate’s letter said that just $693 million remained in the disaster relief fund as of April 7. But $645 million is already owed to 47 states for past disasters; not counted is an additional $1.7 billion to meet settlements on federal payments owed to Gulf Coast state and city governments rebuilding hospitals and schools damaged by Katrina. - Politico Story

Democrats Go After Airlines Bag Fees

An airline's plan to charge up to $45 for passengers to store carry-on luggage in overhead bins has riled two Democratic senators enough for them to write legislation banning such a practice.

Democratic Sen. Ben Cardin of Maryland and Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana introduced the bill, dubbed the "Free of Fees for Carry-On Act," Tuesday.

"Unlike heavy suitcases, that belong down in an aircraft's hold, carry-on luggage is where people keep items essential to their health, work and safety like laptop computers, medications, food to eat on the plane, baby formula, eye glasses and other essentials that need to be kept close at hand," Cardin said in a statement.

Spirit Airlines announced April 6 it will charge passengers $45 at the airport to store baggage in overhead bins. Customers can pay a reduced $30 fee in advance.

"I understand that at this point only one airline has announced plans to charge for carry-on item fees, but we cannot allow these flood gates to open," Cardin said in the statement.

The Cardin-Landrieu bill comes after fellow Democrat Sen. Charles Schumer of New York called the fees a "slap in the face to travelers" Sunday and said he had asked the Treasury Department to rule that carry-on bags are a necessity for travel, which would make them exempt from a separate fee outside the ticket price, the Associated Press reports. - CBS News Story

After Months of Partisan Attacks by Democrats - Now they want Civility

The No. 2 Democrat in the House blasted a Minnesota radio host for calling Democrats lying, thieving, communists at a rally for Rep. Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin in Minneapolis.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said he was “very, very concerned and disappointed” by Minneapolis radio host Chris Baker, who spoke at the rally last week alongside the two Republicans, rallying up the crowd by calling Democrats in Washington “lying, thieving ... bunch of commies.”

“I don’t think that’s very useful, not only do I not think it’s useful, I think it creates an atmosphere and a debate that is neither constructive and can sometimes be dangerous,” Hoyer said at his weekly meeting with reporters.

Hoyer waded directly into the anger that has been bubbling nationwide over the health care overhaul vote, calling on lawmakers to “urge the American people and conduct ourselves in a way that provides an environment for the civility.” While acknowledging differences between members of Congress and political parties, Hoyer said “debate ought to be civil, ought to be constructive and ought to be designed to educate the public, not to incite the public as to the positions of each party.” - Politico Story

Obama Killing the Space Program?

Former astronaut Neil Armstrong has issued a strongly worded rebuke of President Barack Obama, criticizing the president for proposed revisions to the U.S.' space program.

Armstrong, along with astronauts James Lovell and Eugene Cernan, called the proposal “devastating” in a letter obtained by NBC News. Read below for the full text:

"The United States entered into the challenge of space exploration under President Eisenhower’s first term, however, it was the Soviet Union who excelled in those early years," the letter begins."Under the bold vision of Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon, and with the overwhelming approval of the American people, we rapidly closed the gap in the final third of the 20th century, and became the world leader in space exploration. ...

"When President Obama recently released his budget for NASA, he proposed a slight increase in total funding, substantial research and technology development, an extension of the International Space Station operation until 2020, long range planning for a new but undefined heavy lift rocket and significant funding for the development of commercial access to low earth orbit.

"Although some of these proposals have merit, the accompanying decision to cancel the Constellation program, its Ares 1 and Ares V rockets, and the Orion spacecraft, is devastating.

"America’s only path to low Earth orbit and the International Space Station will now be subject to an agreement with Russia to purchase space on their Soyuz (at a price of over 50 million dollars per seat with significant increases expected in the near future) until we have the capacity to provide transportation for ourselves. The availability of a commercial transport to orbit as envisioned in the President’s proposal cannot be predicted with any certainty, but is likely to take substantially longer and be more expensive than we would hope.

"It appears that we will have wasted our current ten plus billion dollar investment in Constellation and, equally importantly, we will have lost the many years required to recreate the equivalent of what we will have discarded. - Politico Story

Obama Kills NASA - Then Revives a Small Part of It

President Barack Obama is set to pump an additional $6 billion over the next five years into NASA's budget, Fox News confirms.

The announcement is expected to come Thursday, before a visit by the president to Cape Canaveral, Fla.

Along with the budget increase, Obama is expected to announce a revival of the NASA crew capsule concept that he had canceled with the rest of the moon program earlier this year, in a move that will mean more jobs and less reliance on the Russians, officials said Tuesday.

The space capsule, called Orion, still won't go to the moon. It will go unmanned to the International Space Station to standby as an emergency vehicle to return astronauts home, officials said.

Administration officials also said NASA will speed up development of a massive rocket. It would have the power to blast crew and cargo far from Earth, although no destination has been chosen yet. The rocket would be ready to launch several years earlier than under the old moon plan. - FOX News Story

American Citizens Join Lawsuit Against Health Care

More than 1500 Americans have joined a lawsuit against President Obama, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid that challenges the constitutionality of the entire health care law. While several lawsuits are pending against the health care law, this lawsuit may be the only one taking broad aim at the law's constitutionality.

Tennessee attorney Van Irion, a Republican candidate for Congress, filed the complaint Thursday in Eastern Tennessee’s Federal District Court. Irion allows concerned citizens to join the lawsuit through a form on his Web site.

"We've been surprised at how many people from across the country want to join," Irion said in an e-mail to Fox News.

Eighteen state attorneys general and other individuals have filed suits that attack only the specifics of the health care law. This is an attack on the law's very foundation, claiming that nothing in the Constitution grants the federal government authority to regulate health care. Therefore the plaintiffs claim the law violates the 10th Amendment that reserves powers not granted to the national government to the states.

The complaint claims that the high-profile Democratic defendants abused their power and violated their oaths of office. The suit claims they failed to uphold and defend the Constitution by supporting legislation the plaintiffs say is unconstitutional. The plaintiffs argue the defendants violated their constitutional rights, and they are seeking “injunctive relief, declaratory relief,” and “damages to redress and remedy of the violations” to prevent “irreparable harm and future violations” of their rights and the rights of others. - FOX News Story

Obama's Mortgage Aid Program a Dramatic Failure

WASHINGTON -- A watchdog panel overseeing the financial bailouts says the Obama administration's flagship mortgage aid program lags well behind the foreclosure crisis and leaves too many families out.

The Congressional Oversight Panel says in a report released Wednesday that the administration projects only one million families will end up with lower monthly payments as a result of the program. The report says six million families are more than two months behind with their payments, and 200,000 more families receive foreclosure notices each month.

A year and a half after launching the program, "Treasury is still fighting to get its foreclosure programs off the ground," Elizabeth Warren, who heads the independent panel set up by Congress, told reporters Tuesday.

Warren warned that borrowers who have their monthly payments lowered as a result of the program still could lose their homes because the payments remain high and many Americans are facing new financial strains.

"Redefault signals the single worst form of failure" by the Treasury Department, said Warren, who is a professor at Harvard Law School. "Billions of taxpayer dollars will be spent and families will nonetheless lose their homes." - FOX News Story

AG to Face Congressional Hearings

Attorney General Eric Holder will face a barrage of attacks Wednesday from Republican senators who say he’s made “dramatic mistakes” on everything from paperwork to high-stakes terrorism trials.

There’s no reason to believe Holder’s job is in jeopardy, but his session before the Senate Judiciary Committee may be the toughest public hearing in his tenure as attorney general. It’s the first time he’s appeared in front of the committee since November, when he was forced to explain his since-reversed decision to try accused Sept. 11 co-conspirator Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a civilian court in New York City.

“I think there will be a wide variety of questions for Eric Holder that may or may not be pleasant for him. He’s made some dramatic mistakes, it seems to me,” Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) told POLITICO. “There are some real questions about his tenure. … There’s a lot of us upset about it.”

To be sure, tense congressional hearings are part of the attorney general life cycle in Washington. Holder’s recent predecessors, including Alberto Gonzales, John Ashcroft and Janet Reno, all found themselves in the cross hairs of the opposition party in Congress.

But Holder has come under fire very quickly in his 15 months as the nation’s top law enforcement official.

“I think the attorney general has been a real disappointment, particularly on national security issues,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), a Judiciary Committee member. “The attorney general has gotten way out on a limb” on security issues, Cornyn said, referring to the decisions to try Mohammed in a civilian court and Mirandize the accused underwear bomb plotter. - Politico Story

Union Leader Prays for Governors Death

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie refused to back down Tuesday from his demand that teachers take a pay freeze and start contributing to their health care benefits as the state teachers union declined to take action against a local boss who prayed for the governor's death.

Christie, a first-term Republican, told Fox News that he met with New Jersey Education Association Chief Barbara Keshishian on Monday to discuss the schools funding formula and an e-mail sent by Bergen County Education Association President Joe Coppola that mocked the governor.

In that e-mail to union leaders, Coppola proposed a plan of action to protest Christie's budget proposals, which call for teachers to take a one-year pay freeze and pay 1.5 percent of their salary toward their medical, dental and vision benefits.

At the end, he included the statement: "Dear Lord, you've taken away my favorite actor Patrick Swayze, my favorite actress Farrah Fawcett, my favorite singer Michael Jackson and my favorite salesman Billy Mayes. I just want you to know that Chris Christie is my favorite governor."

Keshishian apologized for the memo but refused to oblige Christie's request that Coppola be fired.

"If a member of my staff ... had said something like that about her, they'd be demanding his resignation. But you know what? They wouldn't have had to wait because I'd have fired him,' Christie said. He said Kershishian responded to the request by saying no. - FOX News Story

Democrats Won't Vote on Budget Until After Election

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer is unsure whether Congress will pass a budget this year, acknowledging that it’s difficult to pass large, complex spending resolutions in the House during election years.

The Maryland Democrat said he and Budget committee Chairman John Spratt (D-S.C.) “both believe that it would be important” to pass a budget but they’re unsure if Democrats have the votes to pass it through the lower body.

Republicans did not pass a budget resolution in 1998, 2002 2004 and 2006 – all years when members of Congress faced re-elections.

“Obviously, as I just pointed out to you, it’s difficult to pass budgets in election years,” Hoyer said.

The budget resolutions are non-binding blueprints for federal spending, but the process is filled with politically perilous votes on taxes and spending levels. - Politico Story

Obama White House Destroys Bipartisanship

The top Republican on the Senate Agriculture Committee accused the White House and top administration officials Tuesday of meddling in bipartisan negotiations over rules governing derivatives trading – a charge that suggests a deal between Republicans and Democrats on the issue won’t happen.

Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) said the administration has interfered with months of delicate talks between him and Agriculture Committee Chairwoman Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.), who is expected to outline a proposal on regulating derivatives this week.

"It is almost too obvious that the White House may not want a bipartisan agreement," Chambliss told reporters Tuesday. He said this has become clear "in just the last few days" through private staff meetings with administration officials and in the administration's public statements.

To win GOP support for Wall Street reform, “the White House has to send a message that they want a bipartisan deal," Chambliss said. - Politico Story

Democrats Look to Politicise Supreme Court

Democrats hope to turn the upcoming Supreme Court confirmation hearings into a referendum of sorts on controversial recent decisions by the Roberts court — portraying the conservative majority as a judicial Goliath trampling the rights of average Americans.

As President Barack Obama mulls possible replacements for retiring Justice John Paul Stevens, the administration and congressional aides are gravitating toward a strategy that goes beyond the goals of a run-of-the-mill confirmation fight – to define a corporations-vs.-the-common-man battle between Democrats and the high court.

In addition to building a defensive perimeter around Obama’s pick — whoever that may be — Democrats will use the hearings to attack what they view as a dangerous strain of conservative judicial activism espoused by Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.

“I don’t think people are going to tell the nominee, ‘It is terrible what the Roberts court has done — what are you going to do to reverse it?’” said Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), laying out the argument to POLITICO on Monday.

“But I think what people are going to do is say, ‘Do you share our concern about the fact that the court always seems to side with the big corporate interests against the average American?’” he added. “I think there’s going to be more of the public realizing they really do have a stake in who’s on the Supreme Court.” - Politico Story

Sen. Reid Strategy - Split the vote enough to win with less than a Majority

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has been hammered for months from the left and right, with prognosticators in both parties predicting that Nevada voters will send him packing come November.

But Reid, his reelection team and some Senate Democratic insiders are eyeing a bank shot to victory — one that involves enough voters picking third-party candidates or even “none of the above” to let Reid win reelection with less than 50 percent of the vote.

Reid trails former Nevada Republican Party Chairwoman Sue Lowden by 8 percentage points in a head-to-head matchup, according to a poll released Sunday by the Las Vegas Review-Journal. That poll shows Reid tied with businessman Danny Tarkanian. The newspaper didn’t test Reid against former Assemblywoman Sharron Angle, but she was beating him by 11 percentage points in the most recent Rasmussen Reports survey.

Yet the Review-Journal poll — like others in this race — fails to factor in the full multicandidate field. It also does not account for Nevadans’ ability to cast their vote for “none of these candidates.” According to Reid and his aides, the Nevada Democrat’s own internal polls show him winning that more complicated race.

“If the election were held today, I’d win,” Reid confidently told a Nevada newspaper last week as he formally launched his reelection campaign. “Do the math.”

In addition to Reid and the Republican nominee, this year’s Nevada Senate race will include a tea party candidate, four candidates with no party affiliation and a candidate from the Independent American Party, a right-wing party that has more than 57,000 registered voters in the Silver State. - Politico Story

Democrats Want the Money

Democratic Sens. Evan Bayh of Indiana, Byron Dorgan of North Dakota and Chris Dodd of Connecticut are all retiring and don’t need the combined $20 million in their war chests this fall.

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, on the other hand, has just over $14 million in the bank at the moment and is playing defense in races across the country. So it could sure use the cash.

Now, as worries grow among top Democratic officials about just how ugly this November could be, the pressure is increasing on this trio of Senate veterans to do right by their party and bequeath their remaining money to help keep the majority.

Of the three, the most intense focus is on Bayh, who stockpiled nearly $13 million before shocking the political world, not to mention many of his Democratic colleagues, by announcing in February that he would retire instead of seeking a third term.

“A lot of people in the caucus are watching what he does,” said a senior Democratic aide, noting that Bayh’s surprise decision “left a bitter taste in some people’s mouth.”

“In order to leave his colleagues on a good note, this is something that would probably be helpful,” said the aide.

Added another senior Democratic aide: “Many people felt blindsided by his decision [to retire] in particular — the question now is whether he is going to take his money with him as well.”

The question, said the aide, “is going to make for some interesting conversations in the caucus lunch- and cloakrooms in the days and weeks to come.” - Politico Story