Politics, Supreme Court

Clarence Thomas’s Wife to Step Down From Tea Party Group


Virginia Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, is stepping down from the conservative organization she founded last year.

Ms. Thomas plans to resign as CEO of Liberty Central, a group designed to be a clearinghouse for conservative activists and the Tea Party movement, according to a person with knowledge of the group’s plans.

The Washington Post this morning quoted a spokeswoman for the group as saying that Ms. Thomas will take a “a back seat so that Liberty Central can continue with its mission without any of the distractions.” The spokeswoman, Caitlin Carroll, told the Post that “after discussing it with the board, Mrs. Thomas determined that it was best for the organization.”

The Post also reported that the group will be merging with the Patrick Henry Center, another conservative organization based in Manassas, Va. But Sarah Field, the chief operating officer for Liberty Central, said in an email to the Times Monday evening that no decision had been made about a merger.
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/15/clarence-thomass-wife-to-step-down-from-tea-party-group/?hp

I bet this has something to do with repeal of Healthcare reform...Now Clarence wont have a conflict of interest

History of the Patrick Henry Center

Using the hard-won resources gained from the Clinton revelations in 1997, Gary Aldrich went on to establish the Patrick Henry Center for Individual Liberty.

Inspired by the determination of our namesake and his famous rousing call to arms, the Center was born with the intent of protecting and supporting all those who participate in Patrick Henry’s powerful legacy of free speech, political courage, and individual liberty.

While the Patrick Henry Center has grown in influence and scope over the years, our current primary focus is on the issue closest to our founder’s heart— the restoration of LIBERTY as the primary object of American society.


Board of Directors

The Honorable Edwin Meese, III

Mr. Meese holds the Reagan Chair in Public Policy at The Heritage Foundation (www.heritage.org), a Washington-based public policy research and educational institute. Mr. Meese served as the 75th Attorney General of the United States during the Reagan Administration.



Mr. Antonio Benedi

Mr. Benedi, a former Special Assistant to President George H. W. Bush, worked for years in the Reagan and Bush Administrations. He is active in community service and Conservative causes. Mr. Benedi is the son of a Cuban refugee and has first hand experience with the deadly, evil nature of communism.




Mr Henry Granberry, III

A private lawyer concentrating in civil litigation, labor, and commercial law; Mr. Granberry served from 1995-1997 as Vice President/General Counsel of the Atlanta-based Southeastern Legal Foundation, a non-profit, public interest law firm dedicated to the vindication of Conservative causes through constitutional litigation.



Mr. John H. Scribante

John Scribante is the Senior Vice President, of Business Development of Orion Energy Systems, LTD; former CEO and Chairman of the Board of Innovize, Inc.; President of EdWatch and EdAction; Finance Chairman of the Council for National Policy; and a member of the Board of Directors of the Conservative Caucus Foundation.



Mr. Gary Aldrich

Current board member and President of the Patrick Henry Center, for a biography of Mr. Aldrich please click here
http://www.patrickhenrycenter.com/Meet%20the%20Staff.aspx

Changes Afoot at the White House

Call it a shakeup or call it a natural turnover halfway through the term, but the White House is preparing for significant change throughout its top ranks. Much of the movement, though, will involve new posts for longtime aides to President Barack Obama.

snip
Ms. Tchen, who is now director of the White House Office of Public Engagement, would replace the first lady’s longtime friend and confidant Susan Sher. Ms. Sher, a Chicagoan, had been a vice president at the University of Chicago Medical Center and previously the top attorney for Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley. A White House official noted that her family remains in Chicago and said she had not planned to stay beyond two years, but cautioned that the move is not quite a done deal.

On Sunday, David Axelrod, a senior adviser to President Barack Obama, said his long-anticipated decamping to Mr. Obama’s re-election effort, will come in “late winter, early spring.” Coming into the White House in a senior advisory role will be David Plouffe, who managed Mr. Obama 2008 campaign.

Jim Messina, a deputy chief of staff, is expected to move to the re-election effort as well. And the other deputy chief of staff, Mona Sutphen, is also likely to depart at the midway mark, officials close to the White House said.

In addition, it’s long been rumored that Robert Gibbs, the press secretary, would vacate the podium where he briefs reporters for a senior advisory role inside the White House.
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2010/11/15/changes-afoot-at-the-white-house/

dont let the door hit ya in the ass.....

problem is once one goes another takes his place

No Labels movement launches in N.Y., pledges to fight partisanship

A mishmash coalition of Democrats, Republicans and independents came together here Monday to launch a political organization that the members hope will change behavior in what they decried as an increasingly hyperpartisan system.

The group, No Labels, is not a third party, its founders say, but rather a home for Americans who have felt homeless amid the recent growth of the liberal netroots and tea party movements, as well as the deepening partisan divide in Congress.

"What strikes me when I leave Washington is the extent to which there's a huge disconnect between Washington and the rest of the country," one of the group's founders, Mark McKinnon, said in an interview. "The rest of the country is not hyperpartisan. They say: 'There's MoveOn on the left, the tea party on the right and nothing in the middle for me.' We're trying to become a microphone for those voices, to create a system that rewards and gives a shout-out for good behavior."

No Labels is building a grass-roots base of citizen activists and establishing offices in all 435 congressional districts. Beginning in January, members plan to police the new Congress, calling out lawmakers they believe are too partisan and speaking up for those they believe are crossing party lines to find solutions.

snip
No Labels will form a political action committee to participate in competitive primary campaigns to help defend moderate candidates against attacks from the far-right or far-left bases of their respective parties, said political columnist John Avlon, another founding member

snip
No Labels is a 501(c)4 group and has raised about $1 million from seed donations, the founders said, with most organizers working as volunteers.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/13/AR2010121302365_2.html?hpid=artslot&sid=ST2010121302452

a nonpartisan feel-good group that claims to have no political agenda...just donate and be happy. Some are speculating this will be Bloomberg's support for 2012. We shall see
here is their website
http://nolabels.org/

bloomberg wont run i reckon..

The 111th Congress's Final Insult

The 111th Congress began with an $814 billion stimulus that blew out the federal balance sheet, so we suppose it's only fitting that the Members want to exit by passing a 1,924-page, $1.2 trillion omnibus spending bill. The worst Congress in modern history is true to its essence to the bitter end.

Think of this as a political version of the final scene in "Animal House," when the boys from the Delta frat react to their expulsion by busting up the local town parade for the sheer mayhem of it. Bluto Blutarsky (John Belushi) did go on to be a U.S. Senator in the film, and a man of his vision must have earned a seat on Appropriations.

Democrats have had 11 months to write a budget for fiscal 2011, which began on October 1. But Majority Leader Harry Reid and Appropriations Chairman Daniel Inouye have dumped this trillion-dollar baby on Senators at the very last minute, when everyone is busy and wants to go home for the holidays. No doubt that was the plan. The continuing resolution to fund the government expires on Saturday, so Mr. Reid wants to squeeze Senators against the deadline. And with the press corps preoccupied by the tax debate, the spending bill is greased to slide through with little or no public scrutiny.

At least "Animal House" was funny
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704828104576021663290880614.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_sections_opinion


At least "Animal House" was funny...it's a classic

i bet 1.2T is the minimum amount as well

Colleges Rethink R.O.T.C. After ‘Don’t Ask’ Repeal

The Senate vote to repeal the 17-year old “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy against gay men and lesbians serving openly in the armed forces removes a reason that many elite colleges have cited for barring the Reserve Officers Training Corps from recruiting on their campuses.

Already, the presidents of Harvard, Yale and Columbia have issued statements expressing interest in bringing back the R.O.T.C.. But it is not clear whether there will be enough student interest on those campuses to warrant its presence.

The R.O.T.C., which has units on 327 campuses nationwide, was sent packing from several Ivy League and other prominent campuses in the late 1960s and early 1970s, in the firestorm of student protests against the Vietnam War. More recently, though, it has faced opposition because of discrimination against gay men and lesbians in the military.

snip
When Stanford’s R.O.T.C. was shut down in 1973, he said, the stated reason was not the politics of the Vietnam War, but rather academic standards: the low-quality intellectual content of R.O.T.C. courses, Stanford concluded, did not meet university standards.

“Of course, you have to distinguish between what was said, and the political climate,” Dr. Thomas said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/22/education/22colleges.html?hp

looks like a huge recruiting effort is coming...

ACLU Asks Obama Admin to Force Catholic Hospitals to Do Abortions


The ACLU has again asked the Obama administration to force Catholic and other religiously-affiliated hospitals to do abortions in cases where the mother’s life is supposedly in danger.

The new letter to the federal government is the second the pro-abortion legal group has sent and this one concerns the debate over the controversial abortion a Phoenix-based Catholic hospital did. The abortion earned the medical center condemnation from Bishop Thomas Olmsted, who decided this week to revoke the Catholic status of the hospital.

“This confrontation never should have happened in the first place, because no hospital– religious or otherwise– should be prohibited from saving women’s lives and from following federal law,” the ACLU letter said.

The Wednesday letter went to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and it applauded the abortion St. Joseph’s Hospital did saying it is “what is right by standing up for women’s health and complying with federal law.”

“The Bishop’s drastic and heavy-handed actions send a chilling message to Catholic hospitals throughout the country, as well as their employees: If hospitals comply with federal law and provide emergency abortion care there will be consequences,” the letter states. “The dioceses cannot be permitted to dictate who lives and who dies in Catholic-owned hospitals.”

snip
The letter asks federal officials to interpret the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA) and the Conditions of Participation of Medicare and Medicaid — which require hospitals to provide appropriate medical care to all patients.

The ACLU says the portion of the ACT concerning “emergency reproductive health care” includes abortions.

The Catholic Church has a longstanding pro-life policy against abortions but says it is morally permissible to treat women for life-threatening conditions and that that treatment could result in an “abortion” such as in the case of an ectopic pregnancy.
http://www.lifenews.com/2010/12/23/nat-6961/

setting the stage? Note Prolife, Justice Clarence Thomas, legatus...coming soon

OpenBSD Founder Highlights FBI Backdoor Rumors

Former government contractor alleges FBI encryption practices
The founder of the security-centric UNIX-inspired OpenBSD operating system Theo De Raadt has said that there may have been efforts made to plant backdoors in the open-source operating system. Suggesting that OpenBSD may have been compromised by a former "government contractor," the operating system is normally held in high regard by developers who themselves typically audit the source code and perform necessary debugging steps as a matter of course.

In a letter that De Raadt has made public here Gregory Perry, who is now CEO of GoVirtual Education, wrote: "My NDA with the FBI has recently expired, and I wanted to make you aware of the fact that the FBI implemented a number of backdoors and side channel key leaking mechanisms into the OCF, for the express purpose of monitoring the site to site VPN encryption system implemented by EOUSA, the parent organization to the FBI. Jason Wright and several other developers were responsible for those backdoors, and you would be well advised to review any and all code commits by Wright as well as the other developers he worked with originating from NETSEC."
http://www.drdobbs.com/open-source/228900137;jsessionid=VEIW4YZJHUSZFQE1GHPSKH4ATMY32JVN

and we should be surprised?

Biden says gay marriage 'inevitable'

Vice President Joe Biden says the country is evolving on the issue of gay marriage and he thinks it's inevitable there will be national consensus.

He said on ABC's "Good Morning America" Friday the same thing is happening with the issue of marriage that happened with gays' service in the military.

Changes in attitudes by military leaders, those in the service and the public allowed the repeal by Congress of the "don't ask, don't tell" policy that will eventually allow gays to serve openly in the military.

Gay marriage is still not legal in most states. President Barack Obama recently said his feelings on the gay marriage issue are evolving, but he still believes in allowing strong civil unions that provide certain protections and legal rights that married couples have.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/24/AR2010122401242.html?hpid=moreheadlines

Hawaii's governor wants to reveal Obama birth info

Democratic Gov. Neil Abercrombie wants to find a way to release more information about President Barack Obama's Hawaii birth and dispel conspiracy theories that he was born elsewhere.

Abercrombie was a friend of Obama's parents and knew him as a child, and is deeply troubled by the effort to cast doubt on the president's citizenship.

The newly elected governor will ask the state attorney general's office about what can be done to put an end to questions about Obama's birth documentation from Aug. 4, 1961, spokeswoman Donalyn Dela Cruz said Tuesday.

snip
It's unclear what Abercrombie could do because Hawaii's privacy laws have long barred the release of a certified birth certificate to anyone who doesn't have a tangible interest.

Hawaii's health director said last year and in 2008 that she had seen and verified Obama's original vital records, and birth notices in two Honolulu newspapers were published within days of Obama's birth at Kapiolani Maternity and Gynecological Hospital in Honolulu.

So-called "birthers" claim Obama is ineligible to be president because they say there's no proof he was born in the United States, with many of the skeptics questioning whether he was actually born in Kenya, his father's home country.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jVvzGsSMmbEAZ6p1vr1hcwPPmnTw?docId=4a74dffeeb6d474cb26411721149ba61

Why now? Had to wait for Democrat to win the Gov spot in Hawaii Barry? Doesnt everyone have a valid copy of their own birth certificate. Read today his trip home has been delayed a day...from Monday to Tuesday. hmmmm

distraction most likely