Pelosi a Liar? So what else is new?

GOP's torture strategy: Pelosi

Politico: 

For Democrats pushing an investigation into potential criminal wrongdoing in the war on terrorism, the GOP now has a two-word response: Nancy Pelosi.

Republicans say new revelations about a CIA briefing Pelosi received in 2002 have given them their best shot yet at blocking a sprawling probe into Bush administration interrogation techniques by allowing them to insist that its targets would include the speaker of the House.

“If someone is going to schedule hearings, I believe that the first witness should be Nancy Pelosi,” Rep. Pete Hoekstra, the ranking member on the House intelligence committee, told POLITICO. “Clearly, she was involved in policy formulation.”

According to records released last week by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Pelosi and other congressional officials were told in 2002 that enhanced interrogation techniques had been used on terrorist suspect Abu Zubaydah. The report appeared to contradict Pelosi’s claims — made earlier and again after the report was released — that she had been told only that such techniques might be used in the future, not that they had already been used.

According to a 2005 Justice Department memo released this year by the Obama administration, Zubaydah had been waterboarded 83 times by the time Pelosi was briefed in 2002.

In light of the intelligence report, Republicans say that any probe into torture should be broadened to include what Pelosi knew and how much influence she had in shaping the Bush administration’s controversial policies.

The GOP’s goal, according to congressional Republicans, is to dissuade Democrats from pursuing an inquiry that could lead to the prosecution of Bush administration officials by making it clear to Democrats that Pelosi and other lawmakers would have to testify, too.

Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), the top Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee, said in an interview that if Pelosi failed to object to the techniques at the time, she was “an enabler” and “an accomplice” if any crimes were committed. If an investigation goes forward, King said, Pelosi should be forced to divulge what she knew.

In a statement Friday, Pelosi said she had been advised at the 2002 briefing about techniques the Bush administration was “considering using in the future” — and that she’d been assured they were legal. Pelosi also pointed to a letter from CIA Director Leon Panetta saying that the memo’s description of the briefings “may not be accurate.”

Still, Republicans believe they now have Pelosi caught in a jam: To satisfy her liberal base, she’s got to keep pressing for an investigation into potential crimes by the Bush administration. But if Republicans can score points with the “what did she know and when did she know it?” question, Pelosi also may have an interest in putting this issue aside.

“I’ll be very curious to see how she deals with it,” said a senior House GOP aide. “Does she stop talking about it and piss off her left?”

Nadeam Elshami, a spokesman for the speaker, said Saturday that Republicans are “trying to politicize intelligence with irresponsible actions” and that Pelosi still supports an inquiry into the use of the interrogation techniques. The House and Senate intelligence committees have launched internal reviews, but it’s unclear whether they will expand beyond classified inquiries.

Attack On Capitalism! Eyes Front!: Obama Says Wall Street Will Play Less Dominant Role

 H/T Pat Dollard.

AP

WASHINGTON - Wall Street is not going to play as dominant a role in the economy as regulations reduce “some of the massive leveraging and the massive risk-taking that had become so common,” President Barack Obama says.

The changes in the role of Wall Street and the huge profits that came from that risk-taking could mean other adjustments as well, Obama said in an interview in this week’s New York Times Magazine.

“That means that more talent, more resources will be going to other sectors of the economy,” he said. “I actually think that’s healthy. We don’t want every single college grad with mathematical aptitude to become a derivatives trader. We want some of them to go into engineering, and we want some of them to be going into computer design.”

The Obama administration is trying to restore more regulations on the financial sector to avoid some of the risk-taking that helped cause the current economic problems.

“Wall Street will remain a big, important part of our economy, just as it was in the ’70s and the ’80s,” he said. “It just won’t be half of our economy.”

Obama said he expects that government efforts to fix the economy will cause long-term changes.

“What I think will change, what I think was an aberration, was a situation where corporate profits in the financial sector were such a heavy part of our overall profitability over the last decade,” he said.

Obama said he’s confident that people will regain trust and confidence in the financial system, but he believes it will take time.

“I think it’s important to understand that some of that wealth was illusory in the first place,” he said.

Pelosi: Utterly Contemptible

By Charles Krauthammer

WASHINGTON -- Torture is an impermissible evil. Except under two circumstances. The first is the ticking time bomb. An innocent's life is at stake. The bad guy you have captured possesses information that could save this life. He refuses to divulge. In such a case, the choice is easy. Even John McCain, the most admirable and estimable torture opponent, says openly that in such circumstances, "You do what you have to do." And then take the responsibility.

Some people, however, believe you never torture. Ever. They are akin to conscientious objectors who will never fight in any war under any circumstances, and for whom we correctly show respect by exempting from war duty. But we would never make one of them Centcom commander. Private principles are fine, but you don't entrust such a person with the military decisions upon which hinges the safety of the nation. It is similarly imprudent to have a person who would abjure torture in all circumstances making national security decisions upon which depends the protection of 300 million countrymen.

The second exception to the no-torture rule is the extraction of information from a high-value enemy in possession of high-value information likely to save lives. This case lacks the black-and-white clarity of the ticking time bomb scenario. We know less about the length of the fuse or the nature of the next attack. But we do know the danger is great. We know we must act but have no idea where or how -- and we can't know that until we have information. Catch-22.
Under those circumstances, you do what you have to do. And that includes waterboarding.

Did it work? The current evidence is fairly compelling. George Tenet said that the "enhanced interrogation" program alone yielded more information than everything gotten from "the FBI, the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency put together."

Michael Hayden, CIA director after waterboarding had been discontinued, writes (with former Attorney General Michael Mukasey) that "as late as 2006 ... fully half of the government's knowledge about the structure and activities of al-Qaeda came from those interrogations." Even Dennis Blair, Obama's director of national intelligence, concurs that these interrogations yielded "high value information." So much for the lazy, mindless assertion that torture never works.

Asserts Blair's predecessor, Mike McConnell, "We have people walking around in this country that are alive today because this process happened." Of course, the morality of torture hinges on whether at the time the information was important enough, the danger great enough and our blindness about the enemy's plans severe enough to justify an exception to the moral injunction against torture.

Judging by Nancy Pelosi and other members of Congress who were informed at the time, the answer seems to be yes. In December 2007, after a Washington Post report that she had knowledge of these procedures and did not object, she admitted that she'd been "briefed on interrogation techniques the administration was considering using in the future."

Today Pelosi protests "we were not -- I repeat -- were not told that waterboarding or any other of these other enhanced interrogation methods were used." She imagines that this distinction between past and present, Clintonian in its parsing, is exonerating.

On the contrary. It is self-indicting. If you are told about torture that has already occurred, you might justify silence on the grounds that what's done is done and you are simply being used in a post-facto exercise to cover the CIA's rear end. The time to protest torture, if you really are as outraged as you now pretend to be, is when the CIA tells you what it is planning to do "in the future."

But Pelosi did nothing. No protest. No move to cut off funding. No letter to the president or the CIA chief or anyone else saying "Don't do it."

On the contrary, notes Porter Goss, then chairman of the House intelligence committee: The members briefed on these techniques did not just refrain from objecting, "on a bipartisan basis, we asked if the CIA needed more support from Congress to carry out its mission against al-Qaeda."

More support, mind you. Which makes the current spectacle of self-righteous condemnation not just cowardly but hollow. It is one thing to have disagreed at the time and said so. It is utterly contemptible, however, to have been silent then and to rise now "on a bright, sunny, safe day in April 2009" (the words are Blair's) to excoriate those who kept us safe these harrowing last eight years.

 

letters@charleskrauthammer.com

Ministry Of Propaganda: NY Times Killed Stories Of Obama’s Links To Rigging Of Presidential Election - With Video

H/T Pat Dollard.

Philadelphia Bulletin:

A lawyer involved with legal action against Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) told a House Judiciary subcommittee on March 19 The New York Times had killed a story in October that would have shown a close link between ACORN, Project Vote and the Obama campaign because it would have been a “a game changer.”



Heather Heidelbaugh, who represented the Pennsylvania Republican State Committee in the lawsuit against the group, recounted for the ommittee what she had been told by a former ACORN worker who had worked in the group’s Washington, D.C. office. The former worker, Anita Moncrief, told Ms. Heidelbaugh last October, during the state committee’s litigation against ACORN, she had been a “confidential informant for several months to The New York Times reporter, Stephanie Strom.”

Ms. Moncrief had been providing Ms. Strom with information about ACORN’s election activities. Ms. Strom had written several stories based on information Ms. Moncrief had given her.
During her testimony, Ms. Heidelbaugh said Ms. Moncrief had told her The New York Times articles stopped when she revealed that the Obama presidential campaign had sent its maxed-out donor list to ACORN’s Washington, D.C. office.

Continue

Publius Forum:

According to Congressional testimony by election fraud lawyer Heather Heidelbaugh, The New York Times decided suddenly to drop all efforts last October to publish stories about the Association for Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) because it came to light that ACORN was a big donor to then presidential candidate Barack Obama’s campaign. The Times is said to have told ACORN insider Anita Moncrief that they were dropping the story because it was a “game changer” for the election and might hurt Obama’s campaign.

Heidelbaugh, who worked for the Penn. Republican State Committee in a vote fraud lawsuit against ACORN, told a House Judiciary subcommittee on March 19 that she had found a close link between ACORN, Project Vote and the Obama campaign through the inside information from former ACORN worker Anita Moncrief.

Moncrief told Heidelbaugh that she had been involved as an insider informant to The New York Times for several months until she informed Times reporter Stephanie Strom that the Obama campaign was closely linked to ACORN. Once that connection was made, Strom told Moncrief that no more stories would be done by the NYT about ACORN.

“Upon learning this information and receiving the list of donors from the Obama campaign, Ms. Strom reported to Ms. Moncrief that her editors at The New York Times wanted her to kill the story because, and I quote, ‘it was a game changer.’”

During the hearing Representative James Sensenbrenner (R, Wis.) scolded the Times for its partisan bias in the news.

“If true, The New York Times is showing once again that it is a not an impartial observer of the political scene,” he said. “If they want to be a mouthpiece for the Democratic Party, they should put Barack Obama approves of this in their newspaper.”

Once again we see that The New York Times is far less “the paper of record” than the paper of a broken record… the Democratic Party’s broken record. Anything that doesn’t “fit” the Democratic Party agenda isn’t “fit to print.”

Moncrief also has an interesting and deeply detailed website where she discusses her experiences at ACORN and all the criminal activity there. In January, Moncrief also wrote a piece detailing the links.
The Wall Street Journal’s John Fund had an excellent article last October detailing the connections between Operation Vote and the Obama campaign.

The Obama campaign denies it “has any ties” to Acorn, but Mr. Obama’s ties are extensive. In 1992 he headed a registration effort for Project Vote, an Acorn partner at the time. He did so well that he was made a top trainer for Acorn’s Chicago conferences. In 1995, he represented Acorn in a key case upholding the constitutionality of the new Motor Voter Act — the first law passed by the Clinton administration — which created the mandated, nationwide postcard voter registration system that Acorn workers are using to flood election offices with bogus registrations.

 Another great posting on this subject can be seen at Flopping Aces.

Yet, all this in depth and incriminating evidence and reporting has not graced the pages of The New York Times. Imagine that!

While MSM Continues To Suppress Story, Pravda Runs Editorial Laughing At U.S. For Not Verifying If Obama Is A Citizen

Cross posted from Pat Dollard's.

“Obama sold the dream of hope and change so desperately wanted by the Americans. He pushed the greed button by promising to take from the rich to give to the poor. Every con man walking free or in jail is an articulate speaker. Who would give their trust to a man who could not use the right words to convince his targets to trust him? Articulate speaking is no way to judge or rate the integrity of a person.”

World Net Daily:

Questions about Obama’s citizenship status are spreading like wildfire on the Internet, and some media outlets are beginning to run stories on the issue.

Even the Russian online newspaper Pravda featured a column about “the man with no visible past.”

“Barry Sotero, AKA Barack Obama, along with the Democratic National Committee and the Federal Election Commission have successfully ignored a Federal Lawsuit asking him to produce a valid Birth Certificate,” the piece by Mark McGrew states. “When the time to respond to that lawsuit expired, under Federal Court Rules, they all admitted that he was not a citizen of The United States of America and deemed to have committed fraud. A normal man would have been found to have admitted he was not a U.S. citizen.”

While McGrew acknowledges Obama is praised for his way with words, he warns, “Every con man walking free or in jail is an articulate speaker. Who would give their trust to a man who could not use the right words to convince his targets to trust him? Articulate speaking is no way to judge or rate the integrity of a person.”

The writer said every con man sells a “dream,” pushes a “greed button,” stresses “urgency” – and it claims Americans fell for a con man.

“Obama sold the dream of hope and change so desperately wanted by the Americans. He pushed the greed button by promising to take from the rich to give to the poor. And he stressed urgency by himself and his wife telling voters to vote early.”

McGrew explains that Obama’s “certificate of birth” is not a birth certificate, but a certification of live birth that any foreigner can acquire by applying for one in the state’s vital records department, regardless of where the baby was born.

Join more than 158,000 others in signing WND’s online petition calling for release of Barack Obama’s birth certificate and verifying beyond any shadow of a doubt his constitutional eligibility for office.

The column said Obama can easily put the issue to rest by producing the document, rather than spending thousands of dollars on attorneys to defy federal and state lawsuits.

“Barack Obama may just win his place in history as the greatest con man of all time,” the author said. “A hundred million people believed him and spent 600 million dollars to get him ‘elected’ to the highest office in America, without ever knowing if he is or is not eligible to even run as an American citizen. It is either amazing that he will pull it off or it is amazing that so many millions of people believed him.”

So far, major television networks and most mainstream newspapers are continuing to be silent on the matter. Some media outlets have begun reporting on the issue.

The Chicago Tribune published a news article about Robert L. Schultz, chairman of the We The People Foundation, after he ran a full-page ad in the newspaper demanding Obama produce documents proving he is eligible for office. However, the writer attempted to debunk Schultz’s claims paragraph by paragraph.

A Chicago Sun-Times columnist accused the We The People Foundation of having “money to throw away” for posting an “inflammatory ad” in the Chicago Tribune.

NBC Chicago’s website led its story with the following statement: “Critics continue to invest in ads to convince Americans that he is not one of theirs.”

Also, the Kansas City Star featured a news article claiming “legions of anti-Obama bloggers” have filed lawsuits claiming Obama is constitutionally ineligible to be president.

The Star’s story said “skeptics” believe there are several “co-conspirators” in the “tangled web of conspiracy and silence,” including election officials who put candidates’ name on ballots, judges who throw out lawsuits, mainstream media, Obama’s family and Hawaiian authorities.

Even AOL News’ blog featured a “Q&A with Obama birth certificate doubters,” while another entry accused the We The People Foundation of being part of “the cult of Barack Obama’s birth certificate.”

However, amid skeptical reports, the New American reported, “This story has gained credence, separating it from Internet rumors, because Obama has reputedly hired three law firms (firms, not lawyers) to make sure that no one gets access to his birth records in Hawaii or his college transcripts from Occidental College and Harvard.”

Nancy Pelosi is a Liar

Nancy Pelosi on when life begins

On Meet the Depressed...er...Press this morning... 

MR. BROKAW: Senator Obama saying the question of when life begins is above his pay grade, whether you're looking at it scientifically or theologically. If he were to come to you and say, "Help me out here, Madame Speaker. When does life begin?" what would you tell him?

REP. PELOSI: I would say that as an ardent, practicing Catholic, this is an issue that I have studied for a long time. And what I know is, over the centuries, the doctors of the church have not been able to make that definition. And Senator--St. Augustine said at three months. We don't know. The point is, is that it shouldn't have an impact on the woman's right to choose. Roe v. Wade talks about very clear definitions of when the child--first trimester, certain considerations; second trimester; not so third trimester. There's very clear distinctions. This isn't about abortion on demand, it's about a careful, careful consideration of all factors and--to--that a woman has to make with her doctor and her god. And so I don't think anybody can tell you when life begins, human life begins. As I say, the Catholic Church for centuries has been discussing this, and there are those who've decided...
  
From: Hyscience 

August 24, 2008

Nancy Pelosi Lied On National TV About The Catholic Church's Position On Abortion

Topics: Political News and commentaries

Clearly, unequivocally, and no possible doubt whatsoever, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is either a babbling idiot who makes claims and says things with no thought whatsoever as to the validity of her statements, or she callously and blatantly lied on Meet the Press today while attempting to spin the Catholic doctrine on human life.

Pelosi has decided on her own that Pope Benedict's warning that Catholic politicians that support abortion risked excommunication from the Church and should not receive communion if they support abortion. She actually told Tom Brokaw that as an ardent, practicing Catholic, she has studied the issue of abortion for a long time and she knows that over the centuries, the doctors of the church have not been able to "make that definition."

... St. Augustine said at three months. We don't know. The point is, is that it shouldn't have an impact on the woman's right to choose. Roe v. Wade talks about very clear definitions of when the child-first trimester, certain considerations; second trimester; not so third trimester. There's very clear distinctions. This isn't about abortion on demand, it's about a careful, careful consideration of all factors and-to-that a woman has to make with her doctor and her god. And so I don't think anybody can tell you when life begins, human life begins. As I say, the Catholic Church for centuries has been discussing this, and there are those who've decided...

She even goes on to say that the Catholic Church's present position on the pill began 50 years ago with the event of the pill.
Pelosi is so typical of the liberal Democrats. They see the world and life as they want to see it, and express their distorted perceptions as such, and seldom, if ever, see the world and life as it really is based on the facts and uncontested truth.

For the benefit of Madam Pelosi and the Democratic Party, Church writings specifically naming abortion as murder appear as early as 70 AD in the Didache, the first written catechism of the Christian church, and in spite of the attempts of various writers and groups, and even some church authorities and a few popes to the contrary, the history of the position of the Catholic Church that abortion is murder and that it is evil dates back as early as the Didache and remains the same to this day. And as for Pelosi deciding on her own what the position of the Church is at the time of her sitting before Brokaw based upon her own readings and interpretations - if in fact she actually did so, perhaps as a practicing Catholic, as she so claims to be, instead, might consider following her faith as her Pope and mine, Pope Benedict XVI, proclaims. (Which is what a "practicing" Catholic does)

By the way, one cannot honestly say they are a "practicing catholic" and support abortion. Each position unequivocally disqualifies the other.

Related:
Pope warns Catholic politicians who back abortion.
Abortion is crime against society