Wintery Knight

…integrating Christian faith and knowledge in the public square

Federal court: Obama appointees interfered with New Black Panther prosecution

From the Washington Examiner.

First, recall the details of the incident that got the New Black Panthers into trouble:

The New Black Panthers case stems from a Election Day 2008 incident where two members of the New Black Panther Party were filmed outside a polling place intimidating voters and poll watchers by brandishing a billy club. Justice Department lawyers investigated the case, filed charges, and when the Panthers failed to respond, a federal court in Philadelphia entered a “default” against all the Panthers defendants. But after Obama was sworn in, the Justice Department reversed course, dismissed charges against three of the defendants, and let the fourth off with a narrowly tailored restraining order.

Now here’s the latest:

A federal court in Washington, DC, held last week that political appointees appointed by President Obama did interfere with the Department of Justice’s prosecution of the New Black Panther Party.

[...]Obama’s DOJ had claimed Judicial Watch was not entitled to attorney’s fees since “none of the records produced in this litigation evidenced any political interference whatsoever in” how the DOJ handled the New Black Panther Party case. But United States District Court Judge Reggie Walton disagreed. Citing a “series of emails” between Obama political appointees and career Justice lawyers, Walton writes:

The documents reveal that political appointees within DOJ were conferring about the status and resolution of the New Black Panther Party case in the days preceding the DOJ’s dismissal of claims in that case, which would appear to contradict Assistant Attorney General Perez’s testimony that political leadership was not involved in that decision. Surely the public has an interest in documents that cast doubt on the accuracy of government officials’ representations regarding the possible politicization of agency decision-making.

In sum, the Court concludes that three of the four fee entitlement factors weigh in favor of awarding fees to Judicial Watch. Therefore, Judicial Watch is both eligible and entitled to fees and costs, and the Court must now consider the reasonableness of Judicial Watch’s requested award.

The Obama administration thought that this incident was nothing to be concerned about. Obama used to work for ACORN, an organization famous for voter fraud schemes.

Excerpt:

The radical activist group ACORN “works” for the Democratic Party and deliberately promotes election fraud, ACORN employees told FBI investigators, according to an FBI document dump Wednesday.

The documents obtained by Judicial Watch, a watchdog group, are FBI investigators’ reports related to the 2007 investigation and arrest of eight St. Louis, Mo., workers from ACORN’s Project Vote affiliate for violation of election laws. All eight employees involved in the scandal later pleaded guilty to voter registration fraud.

Project Vote is ACORN’s voter registration arm. Project Vote continues to operate despite the reported dissolution of the national structure of ACORN.

The handwritten reports by FBI agents show that ACORN employees reported numerous irregularities in the nonprofit group’s business practices.

Why should we be surprised that the Obama administration would turn a blind eye to this New Black Panther incident?

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Obama administration sues Florida for purging non-citizens from voter rolls

From Breitbart. (H/T Dr. G)

Excerpt:

The US Department of Justice announced Monday it will sue Florida to stop the state from purging ineligible voters from its voter rolls. The DOJ statement came after Florida filed suit against the Department of Homeland Security for failing to cooperate with efforts to clean up the state’s voter registration records.

A preliminary comparison between drivers license records and voter registration has flagged as many as 182,000 registered voters who may not be US citizens.  Florida officials sought access to the DHS immigration database (SAVE) to verify their matches but DHS has refused to respond to the state’s requests.

At least 141 non-citizens have been found on the voter rolls and 47 on this list have cast ballots in previous elections. More than 500 on the list have been identified as citizens and lawful voters.

Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner released a statement after filing the suit in Washington DC:

For nearly a year, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has failed to meet its legal obligation to provide us the information necessary to identify and remove ineligible voters from Florida’s voter rolls… We can’t let the federal government delay our efforts to uphold the integrity of Florida elections any longer. We’ve filed a lawsuit to ensure the law is carried out and we are able to meet our obligation to keep the voter rolls accurate and current.

Let this be a lesson to conservatives. The first thing you do when you get power is pass a voter identification law. Some form of state-issued photo ID that can be checked in a database, and purple ink on the fingers after voting. Democrats love to cheat in elections, and they are quite open about their desire to do so.

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GAO: Green River Formation has more oil than the rest of the world combined

Remember when Obama said that we have “2 percent of the world’s oil reserves”?

This is an excerpt from his own speech:

As a country that has 2 percent of the world’s oil reserves, but uses 20 percent of the world’s oil — I’m going to repeat that — we’ve got 2 percent of the world oil reserves; we use 20 percent.  What that means is, as much as we’re doing to increase oil production, we’re not going to be able to just drill our way out of the problem of high gas prices.  Anybody who tells you otherwise either doesn’t know what they’re talking about or they aren’t telling you the truth.

Now let’s find out who doesn’t know what they’re talking about and who isn’t telling the truth.

The Government Accountability Office – a department of the federal government – tells us the facts.

Excerpt:

The Green River Formation, a largely vacant area of mostly federal land that covers the territory where Colorado, Utah and Wyoming come together, contains about as much recoverable oil as all the rest the world’s proven reserves combined, an auditor from the Government Accountability Office told Congress on Thursday.

The GAO testimony said that the federal government was in “a unique position to influence the development of oil shale” because the Green River deposits were mostly beneath federal land.

[...]It also noted that developing the oil would have an environmental impact and pose “socioeconomic challenges,” that included bringing “a sizable influx of workers who along with their families put additional stress on local infrastructure” and “making planning for growth difficult for local governments.”

“The Green River Formation–an assemblage of over 1,000 feet of sedimentary rocks that lie beneath parts of Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming–contains the world’s largest deposits of oil shale,”Anu K. Mittal, the GAO’s director of natural resources and environment said in written testimony submitted to the House Science Subcommittee on Energy and Environment.

“USGS estimates that the Green River Formation contains about 3 trillion barrels of oil, and about half of this may be recoverable, depending on available technology and economic conditions,” Mittal testified.

“The Rand Corporation, a nonprofit research organization, estimates that 30 to 60 percent of the oil shale in the Green River Formation can be recovered,” Mittal told the subcommittee. “At the midpoint of this estimate, almost half of the 3 trillion barrels of oil would be recoverable. This is an amount about equal to the entire world’s proven oil reserves.”

In her oral statement before the subcommittee, Mittal said that developing the shale oil would create wealth and jobs for the country, but also challenges for government.

“Being able to tap this vast amount of oil locked within this formation will go a long way to help to meet our future demands for oil. The U.S. Geological Survey, as you noted, estimates that the formation contains about 3 trillion barrels of oil of which half may be recoverable,” she said.

“As you can imagine having the technology to develop this vast energy resource will lead to a number of important socioeconomic benefits including the creation of jobs, increases in wealth and increases in tax and royalty payments for federal and state governments,” she said.

[...]In her written testimony, Mittal noted that three-fourths of the Green River shale oil is under federal land.

Is Barack Obama a good President? Does he know how to be President? Does he understand economics?

Let’s look at the national debt and the labor force participation rates in Obama’s first term. Recall that the Republicans lost the House and Senate in January of 2007. At the time of the Pelosi/Reid takeover, the national debt was $8 trillion. It is now almost double that at $16 trillion.

Obama added 5 trillion dollars to the debt since he took office

Obama added 5 trillion dollars to the debt since he took office

US Labor Force Participation down 4.9 million people

US Labor Force Participation down 4.9 million people

If these numbers seem bad to you, then I don’t think you should vote for Obama.

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College student discovers election fraud in Indiana’s 2008 primary

From Fox News.

Excerpt:

Shocking election fraud allegations have stained a state’s 2008 presidential primary – and it took a college student to uncover them.

“This fraud was obvious, far-reaching and appeared to be systemic,” 22-year-old Ryan Nees told Fox News, referring to evidence he uncovered while researching electoral petitions from the 2008 Democratic Party primary in Indiana.

Nees’ investigation centered on the petitions that put then-senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton on the ballot. As many as 150 of the names and signatures, it is alleged, were faked. So many, in fact, that the numbers raise questions about whether Obama’s campaign had enough legitimate signatures to qualify for a spot on the ballot.

“What seems to have happened is that a variety of people in northern Indiana knew that this fraud occurred, and actively participated and perpetuated the fraud, and did so on behalf of two presidential campaigns,” according to Nees.

Prosecutors are now investigating. The scandal has already led to the sudden resignation Monday night of Butch Morgan, chairman of the St. Joseph County Democratic Party. He denied any wrongdoing, saying he looks “forward to an investigation that will exonerate me.”

Nees, a junior at Yale University, served as an intern in the Obama White House last year and supports the president’s re-election. But as an intern at the non-partisan political newsletter Howey Politics Indiana, he delved into the Byzantine and complicated world of petition signatures and found reams of signatures that he says appeared to be written in the same handwriting, some apparently copied from previous petitions.

This is why we need to have a mandatory government-issued photo ID presented by anyone who wants to vote. But Democrats oppose voter identification laws.

Excerpt:

Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, saying that voter fraud in the U.S. is almost nonexistent, vowed Thursday to “get photo IDs into the hands” of people in states with Republican-sponsored voter-ID laws.

“Republicans across the country have engaged in a full-scale attack on the right to vote, seeking ways to restrict or limit voters’ ability to cast their ballots for their own partisan advantage,” said Rep. Wasserman Schultz, Florida Democrat. “Democrats refuse to stand by and watch this happen.”

This year, 17 states controlled by Republicans have approved tougher laws to prevent voter fraud, some including measures that require voters to present a government-issued photo ID at the polls. A total of 31 states now require voters to show a photo ID, and similar laws are pending in Illinois, Iowa, Massachusetts, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania.

Republican officials say the new laws have been necessary in light of recent examples of voter fraud linked to the Democratic Party and its supporters, such as the now-defunct group ACORN, which was responsible for an estimated 400,000 fraudulent registrations in 2008.

Other recent examples of voter fraud include a case in Wake County, N.C., where three voters were charged in August with voting twice in the 2008 presidential election, and a member of the executive committee of the NAACP in Tunica County, Miss., who was sentenced in April to five years in prison for fraudulently casting absentee ballots. She was convicted of voting in the names of six other voters, as well as in the names of four dead voters.

[...]Mrs. Wasserman Schultz dismissed evidence of past voter fraud as isolated.

The truth is that Democrats get a huge boost from voter fraud, probably in the neighborhood of 3-5%.

Filed under: News, , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Is it “racial discrimination” to ask someone for a photo ID before they vote?

Does Obama want a fair vote on these results?

Can Obama get re-elected based on these results?

From National Review.

Excerpt:

Once you get past the race-baiting, you will find that opponents of voter ID generally rely on two arguments, equally specious: 1) There is no need for photo ID, because there is no voter fraud in the United States; 2) This is a deliberate effort to suppress the turnout of minority voters, who often don’t have photo ID. Liberals keep repeating these false claims despite the fact that they have been disproved both in the courtroom and at the polling place.

[...]The claim that there is no voter fraud in the U.S. is patently ridiculous, given our rich and unfortunate history of it. As the U.S. Supreme Court said when it upheld Indiana’s photo-ID law in 2008, “Flagrant examples of such fraud . . . have been documented throughout this Nation’s history by respected historians and journalists.” The liberal groups that fought Indiana’s law didn’t have much luck with liberal justice John Paul Stevens, who wrote the 6–3 decision. Before being named to the Supreme Court, Justice Stevens practiced law in Chicago, a hotbed of electoral malfeasance . . .

[...]Election data in Georgia demonstrate that concern about a negative effect on the Democratic or minority vote is baseless. Turnout there increased more dramatically in 2008 — the first presidential election held after the state’s photo-ID law went into effect — than it did in states without photo ID. Georgia had a record turnout in 2008, the largest in its history — nearly 4 million voters. And Democratic turnout was up an astonishing 6.1 percentage points from the 2004 election, the fourth-largest increase of any state. The black share of the statewide vote increased from 25 percent in 2004 to 30 percent in 2008, according to the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. According to Census Bureau surveys, 65 percent of the black voting-age population voted in the 2008 election, compared with only 54.4 percent in 2004, an increase of more than ten percentage points.

Read the full refutations of those two arguments in the post, currently the second most popular post on National Review. This is a very, very good article, and it references the relevant studies.

If it’s not close, they can’t cheat. Remember that in 2012.

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