Palin gaffes

 THE SAVAGING OF SARAH PALIN

“ . . . sadomasochistic, anti-Palin orgy . . . “  * details below

_____________________

True, Palin made some embarrassing gaffes.

She complained that we didn’t have enough “Arabic translators” in Afghanistan — not realizing the natives don’t speak Arabic in Afghanistan, but rather a variety of regional dialects, the most common of which is Pashtun.

Speaking to military veterans one time, Palin said, “Our nation honors its unbroken line of fallen heroes — and I see many of them in the audience here today.”

She bragged about passing a law regulating the nuclear industry that it turned out never became a law at all.

Some days Palin said Venezuela’s dictator Hugo Chavez should suffer “regional isolation” — but then on others she’d say she supported the president’s meeting with Chavez.

She told one audience about recent tornados in Kansas that had killed 10,000 people. In fact, a dozen people were killed in the tornados.

She referred to the “57 states” that make up the U.S.

Speaking of her eldest daughter’s pregnancy, she said Bristol was being “punished” with a baby.

As you probably know — or guessed by now — none of these gaffes were uttered by Palin. They are all Obama gaffes. Luckily, he made them to a star-struck press that managed not to ask him a difficult question for two years.

Sarah Palin: Conservative of the Year

by Ann Coulter

Human Events, 12.22.08

PALIN ON MEDIA MALPRACTICE

____________

Camille Pagila in Salon*

“Liberal Democrats are going to wake up from their sadomasochistic, anti-Palin orgy with a very big hangover. The evil genie released during this sorry episode will not so easily go back into its bottle. A shocking level of irrational emotionalism and at times infantile rage was exposed at the heart of current Democratic ideology — contradicting Democratic core principles of compassion, tolerance and independent thought. One would have to look back to the Eisenhower 1950s for parallels to this grotesque lock-step parade of bourgeois provincialism, shallow groupthink and blind prejudice.”  

Hamas.Jerusalem Post

GREAT IGNORANCE IN THE WEST

There is a great deal of ignorance in the West about what the likes of Ahmadinejad and his colleagues in Iran, Syria, Hizbullah and Hamas stand for. But this isn’t their fault. They tell us every day that they seek the destruction of the Jews and the domination of the West in the name of Islam. And every day they take actions that they believe advance their goals.
The reason that the West remains ignorant of the views and goals of the likes of Hamas and Iran is not that the latter have hidden their views and goals. It is because the leading political leaders and foreign policy practitioners in the West refuse to listen to them and deny the significance of their actions. “

Song of Mary: Merry Christmas!

Luke 1:46-55
Mary’s Song of Praise

And Mary said,
‘My soul magnifies the Lord,
47   and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour,
48  for he has looked with favour on the lowliness of his servant.
Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed;
49  for the Mighty One has done great things for me,
and holy is his name.
50  His mercy is for those who fear him
from generation to generation.
51  He has shown strength with his arm;
he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
52  He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,
and lifted up the lowly;
53  he has filled the hungry with good things,
and sent the rich away empty.
54  He has helped his servant Israel,
in remembrance of his mercy,
55  according to the promise he made to our ancestors,
to Abraham and to his descendants for ever.’

Killing Americans praises God

The ideological foundation of the 9/11 attacks

Must See Documentary

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed,  the al-Qaeda terrorist who planned and executed 9/11, murdering 2,819 Americans that day, was charged in February of war crimes and murder.  He faces the death penalty.   On Dec. 8 in a Guantanamo military court, he pled guilty along with four co-defendants.   If the judge accepts the guilty pleas, essentially confessions, according to Robert Spencer, it will be very difficult for the new President to accommodate an ACLU motion to move the case to federal district court.

The ACLU claims that since the defendants were tortured, any confession or guilty plea must be thrown out.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, 9/11 mastermind

Spencer reports: 

Mohammed stated in 2007: “I was responsible for the 9/11 operation, from A to Z. I was the operational director for Sheikh Usama bin Laden for the organizing, planning, follow-up and execution of the 9/11 operation.” Monday’s letter said that Mohammed and his co-defendants had come to their decision to plead guilty “without being under any kind of pressure, threat, intimidations or promise from any party.” Meanwhile, one less noted but no less important aspect of the case was the ideological foundation of the 9/11 attacks. The defendants made that abundantly clear in their Monday statement: “Our success,” they declared, “is the greatest praise of the Lord.”

Obviously Mohammed and his co-defendants are glad to be martyred which will contribute to al-Qaeda recruiting efforts. Waterboarding is a controversial interrogation technique.  In a recent interview VP Cheney indicated waterboarding produced the desired results, the acquisition of information useful in saving American lives.  Critics have condemned the Bush administration for using waterboarding, stress position, sensory and sleep deprivation to extract information from terrorist detainees at Guantanamo.  The Administration has argued terror detainees do not qualify for consideration under terms of the Geneva Conventions, a legal determination supported by Obama’s nominee for Attorney General.   Those opposed to this position insist waterboarding and other techniques amount to torture, violations of Geneva.

Some intelligence sources indicate the entire matter is overblown and misses the point.   They say waterboarding has been used three times, that the other techniques are not torture, and in the main, a combination of drugs and deprivation techniques ordinarily produces desired results.

Recently the Supreme Court issued a ruling saying all Guantanamo detainees have a right to be charged and tried in American courts.  Military experts have said this will make it more difficult for them to get a hold of crucial intelligence required to continue protecting Americans.  Others say the ruling will mean detainees will be release to terrorize again, or they will be sent to prisons in other countries where they face real torture.

This writer has suggested the following hypothetical to challenge those who agree with the thinking at the ACLU:  

You are President.  You have three detainees in custody and you know they are fully aware of at least one imminent attack on American soil.  They have detailed knowledge: the when, the where, the who, the how.  Al Qaeda is behind the attack, and these detainees know it will happen soon, it will involve WMD, and it will kill 100,000 Americans, minimum.  You are running out of time.  All your intelligence and military advisors tell you none of the detainees are responding to traditional interrogation techniques, including drugs.  They unanimously recommend water boarding.  What do you do?

 

So far without exception, the vote is “waterboard.”

 

President Elect Obama has indicated he will look into prosecuting Bush administration officials, centering on the issues surround torture and the prosecution of the war on terror.  Sen. Carl Levin is calling for an investigative commission toward those ends as well. 

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Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch, a program of the David Horowitz Freedom Center, and the author of eight books on Islam and jihad. Spencer is a weekly columnist for Human Events and the website Front-Page Magazine, and has led seminars on Islam and jihad for the United States Central Command, United States Army Command and General Staff College, the Joint Terrorism Task Force, and the U.S. intelligence community.

YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK, IN THE GAY COMMUNITY

Fannie.Freddie bailout $ granted to gay groups

NO WORD YET ABOUT HOW MUCH BARNEY FRANK WAS INVOLVED WITH SIPHONING OFF TAX DOLLARS TO SUPPORT GAY ACTIVISM.

Prosecute Bush: Torturing the Facts

“We know that the most aggressive tactic ever authorized was waterboarding, which was used in only three cases against hardened, high-ranking al Qaeda operatives, including Abu Zubaydah after he was picked up in Pakistan in 2002.  As for ’stress positions’ allowed for a time by the Pentagon, such as hooding, sleep deprivation or exposure to heat and cold, they are psychological techniques designed to break a detainee, but light years away from actual torture.”   [WSJ 12.19.08]

We have heard the endless drumbeat from the Left for years: Bush and Cheney are war criminals. They torture people. We should be ashamed. They should be prosecuted.

Never you mind about the facts and the truth.  Bush and Cheney are already convicted by many people in D.C., in media, and in the minds of many average citizens.  Repeat something frequently enough and it becomes the accepted narrative, like global warming is man-made, evolution defies the existence of God, capitalism is inherently evil, and so are Republicans, the war in Iraq is illegal, the surge failed, it’s a civil war, the war is lost.

Now comes a comprehensive report in the WSJ shining light of various facts that, when taken together, present an entirely different picture than the ones painted by the NY Times, Salon, Huffington Post, Daily Kos, and MSNBC and the rest.

For instance, in the Dec. 19 article The Real ‘Torture’ Disgrace, the WSJ reports:

“Not one of the 12 nonpartisan investigations in recent years concluded that the Administration condoned or tolerated detainee abuse, while multiple courts martial have punished real offenders. None of the dozen or so Abu Ghraib trials and investigations have implicated higher ups; the most senior officer charged, a lieutenant colonel, was acquitted in 2006. Former Defense Secretary Jim Schlesinger’s panel concluded that the abuses were sadistic behavior by the ‘night shift.’ “

Nonetheless, Sen. Carl Levin is pressing for further investigation and prosecution of Administration officials, claiming Bush and Cheney pushed for torture in defiance of American Law and Geneva Convention rights, denying terror suspects their legal rights and committing illegal and immoral acts of interrogation abuse.

Never mind the facts do not bear any of this out. 

Furthermore, even Obama’s nominee for attorney general, Eric Holder, was agreeing with the Administration that terrorists do not qualify under Geneva stipulations.

“Nearly every element of this (Levin’s) narrative is dishonest. As officials testified during Mr. Levin’s hearings and according to documents in his possession, senior officials were responding to requests from the CIA and other commanders in the field.   The flow was bottom up, not top down. Those commanders were seeking guidance on what kind of interrogation was permissible as they tried to elicit information from enemies who want to murder civilians. At the time, no less than Barack Obama’s Attorney General nominee, Eric Holder, was saying that terrorists didn’t qualify for Geneva protections.

“This was the context in which the Justice Department wrote the so-called ”torture memos’ of 2002 and 2003. You’d never know from the Levin jeremiad that these are legal — not policy — documents. They are attempts not to dictate interrogation guidelines but to explore the legal limits of what the CIA might be able to do.

“It would have been irresponsible for those charged with antiterror policy to do anything less. In a 2007 interview former CIA director George Tenet described the urgency of that post-9/11 period:  ‘I’ve got reports of nuclear weapons in New York City, apartment buildings that are going to be blown up, planes that are going to fly into airports all over again . . . Plot lines that I don’t know — I don’t know what’s going on inside the United States.’  Actionable intelligence is the most effective weapon in the war on terror, which can potentially save thousands of lives.”

Saving American lives was the business of the Bush Administration from 9/11 forward.   Protecting the country was the priority.  The success of their efforts on our behalf is obvious, and as thanks, Sen. Levin and others prepare to prosecute.   What a disgrace.  

Wouldn’t it be more appropriate to prosecute the following for sedition: Harry Reid, John Murtha, Dick Durban, Carl Levin, John Kerry, Barbara Boxer, Nancy Pelosi, to name a few?

The same WSJ report reveals the duplicity of Congress:

“Starting in 2002, key Congressional leaders, including Democrats, were fully briefed by the CIA about its activities,  amounting to some 30 sessions before “torture” became a public issue. None of them saw fit to object. In fact, Congress has always defined torture so vaguely as to ban only the most extreme acts and preserve legal loopholes.

At least twice it has had opportunity to specifically ban waterboarding and be accountable after some future attack. Members declined.”

Obama has said he will look into prosecuting Bush administration officials and Levin welcomes the establishment of a commission to lay the ground work for such prosecutions.

The WSJ again:

“Obama and Holder would be foolish to spend their political capital on revenge, but Mr. Levin is demanding an ‘independent’ commission to further politicize the issue and smear decent public servants.”

Perhaps the new administration will determine we have better things to do than punish the very people who’ve worked hard for seven years protecting us from further attack, but then again, expecting non-partisan reasonable policy out of D.C. is comparable to expecting terrorists to give us information because we ask real nice, pretty please.

Butthead of the Year Award

by Allan Erickson 12.22.08

O’Reilly has his nightly Pinhead award.  Dennis Miller recently helped O’Reilly with  his top ten Pinheads of the year list, which actually included something like 16 worthy Pinheads (we must have a surplus).  Harry Reid topped the Miller list, and most deservedly so.  Despicable human being.  An incomparable waste of space and good oxygen.   ”The war is lost.”   Reid should be made to run the gauntlet in his underwear. 

I’d like to chime in with a list of nominees and my selection for Butthead of the Year. It is altogether appropriate to craft some guidelines for this most auspicious nominating process.

We should avoid nominating morons.   Morons are not Buttheads.  Morons are people who are genetically predisposed.  It would be unfair to nominate people who simply can’t help it, folks who admittedly need serious counseling and or intervention. You know, people like Rosie O’Donnell, Gary Busey, Keith Olbermann, Ahmadinejad, Courtney Love, Al Gore, Sen. Robert Byrd, Madonna and Matt Damon.  These are the kind of folks who need love and counseling.  Our derision only seems to encourage them and that is counterproductive.

People who deserve nomination are those who know better, but go ahead anyway, becoming giant pains in the ass regardless.  These are the people who were not born buttheads, but, so far as we know, decided to perfect buttheadedness, professionally, or as avocation. 

It is appropriate to define ’Butthead’ for the purposes of this process as well. 

Butthead: n – a person who willfully becomes a consumate nuisance, someone who ignores all factal evidence expressing opinions that are spewed endlessly to the great injury of all listeners; in short, an individual whose life is purposefully driven by selfishness, greed, cynicism and disregard to his fellow man.   A butthead is not necessarily unintelligent or inarticulate.  In fact some are highly intelligent and well-spoken.   However, all Buttheads have this much in common:  they enjoy aggravating and mocking other people, and if there is money in it, all the better! The professional Butthead makes it a quest 24/7 to engage personal attacks, posturing eradite, but remaining idiotic, a gross hypocrite of the highest order.

Hugo Chavez comes to mind.  Castro and his brother too of course.  Sean Penn is high on the list as is Alec Baldwin.  No doubt Randi Rhodes is in the running, along with fellow airhead Al Franken.  Michael Moore might top them all in many categories.   Bill Maher is a serious contender.  (“Palin: a M.I.L.F.”) There’s Bill Ayers and Jeremiah Wright.  Joy Behar is another good nominee.   She is an outstanding Butthead, proving it daily on The View.  In fact, I’m having a hard time deciding between Behar and Arianna Huffington.   For sheer arrogance and duplicity, few can exceed Huffington.  Barbra Streisand comes to mind however. 

Various quotes from both ‘ladies’:

Behar, referring to Palin:  “We all know the woman is an airhead.”   Palin is “Dick Cheney in a dress.”    “Rush Limbaugh is a terrorist.”

On Obama selecting Rev. Rick Warren to do the inaugural invocation:  “I don’t think it’s appropriate. It’s like putting, you know, Cheney in charge of gun control. It’s wrong….it’s just wrong.”

“I think that the old days the saints were hearing voices and they didn’t have any thorazine to calm them down. [laughter] Now that we have all of this medication available to us, you can’t find a saint any more.”

Suggesting Republicans have a racist double-standard concerning teen pregnancy:  “Stay out of my uterus. Stay out of my e-mail. Stay out of my blog.”

“A lot of homeschool kids are demented. They learn to be scared of other children.”

Taking children to church?  “Why would you bully your child?!”

AND, the wit and wisdom of Huffington:

“I am a former right-winger who has evolved into a compassionate and progressive populist.”  [Arianna as self-aware prophet.]

“The collapse of Communism as a political system sounded the death knell for Marxism as an ideology. [Yet she promotes BHO.]

“Bristol Palin can use a blue fur-lined onesie (plus a good lawyer for her future mother-in-law).”  [Arianna as benevolent mother.]

“The Bushies have always had a detached response to the human cost of their policies.”   [Arianna as  judge, divining motivation. You know, torture and all that stuff. http://allanerickson.wordpress.com/2008/12/23/prosecute-bush-torturing-the-facts/]

BTW Arianna: Bush, Cheney comfort troops privately

“Bush shredded the Constitution.”  [Impeachable offense Arianna?]

Talking about Bill Maher, on Maher’s program:  “He has slept with more Black women than Barack Obama.”   [Arianna the unifier.]

“I couldn’t be more thrilled than to have Bill Maher as my first guest on my show tonight.”  [Arianna substituting for Rachel Maddow, agreeing with Maher the two of them are 'members of the press' ?!  Remember she called Tony Snow a liar, and Tim Russert, a slouch interviewer.]

To Bill Maher:  “It seems Barack Obama has succeeded in tapping in to the better angels of your nature.”   [Arianna as comedianne?!]

“We are ready to reclaim patriotism from the Jingoists and the Religious Right.”  [Arianna, patriot.]

“I think the Kurds were free before we invaded Iraq.”  [Arianna fashions her own reality.  Once gassed a Kurd is free indeed.]

Republicans . . . “they don’t believe in evolution but believe in torture.”  [Arianna, promoter of the Fairness Doctrine, so long as it doesn't involve bloggers, and HuffPo.]

So, does my award go to Behar the Horrible, or Huffington the PuffDragon?    (Drum roll please!)

THE 2008 BUTTHEAD OF THE YEAR AWARD GOES TO . . .

 

 

BOTH OF ‘EM!

Rationale:

While Behar is obviously the bigger Butthead of the two, Arianna deserves credit for so frequently going all girly in the presence of a scumbag like Bill Maher!

Twas the Night

 

 

Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the land,

The Democrats were purring, and all shaking hands.

Campaign promises were hung by the Capitol with care,

Expecting the Chosen One to deliver, with flare.

 

The entitled were snuggled all warm in their beds,

Visions of free healthcare dancing in their heads.

With me in my satin, and mamma in mink,

We’d just settled down, and noticed a stink!

 

Out on our lawn there arose a huge clamor,

A crowd of gay protestors gathered to hammer!

Away to the window I flew like an eagle,

Tore open the shutters, tripped over our beagle!

 

Mooning me from the landscape below,

The rioters hurled insults and balls of snow.

When what to my bloodshot eyes did appear,

But Barney Frank, and eight tiny queers!

 

That little old driver, so lively and sleazy,

I felt in a flash my stomach go queasy.

More rabid than jackals his minions they marched,

And he ranted and raved ‘til his throat was all parched.

 

“Now Smasher, now Fancy, now Prancer, now Vixen!

Doggone-it, on Stupid, on Donny, Wolf Blitzer!

To the top of the closet, to the top of the Mall!

Now sashay, sashay, sash-a-way all!

 

As dry bones before wild fires ashen,

When they burn with a vengeance, uncontrollable passion,

So up did Barney and Friends consume,

With a spark, and a flame, and smoky plume.

 

And then, in a twinkling, a news flash on telly,

The Chosen had chosen a preacher foul-smelly!

And Barney swooped down to condemn the proceedings,

Despite all the tolerance and diversity pleadings.

 

“A bigot!” they called The Chosen at Time,

“He doesn’t love us, it’s another hate crime!”

The preacher, a bundle of blessings on his back,

Tried kindness and mercy in the face of attack.

 

The eyes of The Chosen looked premature weary,

Not even sworn in, already the fury.

The trolls with their mouths all snarling and sneerful,

A herd in the din of screeching sad tearful.

 

The season of Hope was marred by the Change,

The change in men’s hearts when demanding free range.

No loving, no kindness, no mercy, no space,

To consider the Christ child, his Wonder, His grace.

 

His nail-pierced hands, his broken teeth,

The thorns encircling his head like a wreath,

They battered and bruised his wonderful face,

For the joy set before Him, he suffered disgrace.

 

And to those who still crucify Him, even today,

In a voice like rushing waters he will lovingly say,

“You think you hate me, but that’s a lie,

I came to save you: to live is to die.

Come home, oh sinner, come home even now,

You want to live: I’ll teach you how.”

 

Forever He rides in the sky overhead,

Bringing blessing and hope, even raising the dead.

And I hear Him exclaim as he gives us new sight: 

Merry Christmas to all, now go fight the good fight!”

Warren slammed by Christians:UPDATE

Reverend Warren in his own words, his view on homosexuality, gay marriage, contemporary debates and hate speech.  (Recorded 12.22.08)

Rachel Maddow calls Warren a hypocrite: insisting Warren equated homosexuality with pedophilia and polygamy.  If you listen carefully, Warren was saying redefining marriage other than traditional heterosexual monogamy was wrong in any case, using other instances as examples.  He was not saying the examples are direct comparisons.   One would think Dr. Maddow could detect the nuance, but no.

WND and LivePrayer.com also condemn Rev. Warren.

We don’t.  Rev. Warren, God bless you for speaking the truth in love, and turning the other cheek in the face of your enemies.  Most people don’t appear to know what love is, nor do they understand Scripture, or the person of Christ.  We are praying for you!

- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - -update 12.24.08

Operation Rescue & Catholic Priest criticize Pastor Rick Warren for accepting invitation to speak at inaugural

by Allan Erickson

12.19.08

Christians shooting Christians especially at Christmas.  What a disgrace.

Merry Christmas Pastor Warren. 

The far Left and LGBT activists want your hide.  And now, so do certain Christians!   As a conservative Christian I want to tell all of them to eat yellow snow, but, that is not what Jesus would do, or would he?  His harshest words were reserved for religious hypocrites and wolves’ in sheep clothing.  (Matthew 23)

Operation Rescue recently issued this statement (excerpt):

“Yesterday, Pastor Rick Warren issued a statement attempting to excuse his act of support for Mr. Obama, an ardent supporter of abortion, by saying, ‘The Bible admonishes us to pray for our leaders.’ However, Pastor Warren’s participation in Obama’s Inauguration is tantamount to placing his stamp of approval on Obama and his policies that stand in direct opposition to Biblical truths. The Bible clearly states in Ephesians 5:11 that as Christians we should have ‘nothing to do with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them.’  Barack Obama not only supports the grievous sin of abortion, but has vowed to promote, subsidize, and protect it.  The hands that shed innocent blood are among the things God particularly detests. As a minister of the Gospel, it is a betrayal of innocent children and, more importantly, betrayal of the God in whose image they are created to turn a blind eye to the shedding of innocent blood and join hands with those that are responsible for shedding it.”

Here is the statement from Rev. Thomas Euteneuer, president of Human Life International.

“We applaud Pastor Warren’s support of pro-life causes as well as his defense of traditional marriage. This is why we are concerned that his high-profile and explicitly Christian prayerful invocation at President-elect Obama’s inauguration may be perceived as an endorsement, even a blessing, of what will likely be the most anti-life administration in the history of this country.”

If Rev. Warren would be endorsing Obama’s abortion policies by praying at the inauguration, Operation Blessing and Father Euteneuer might have a point.   It is silly to assert Rev. Warren’s presence will be perceived as being supportive of Obama’s pro-choice agenda.

The truth is, Warren will be asking God to give us all wisdom, asking that God’s will be the guiding force of our national life.    No doubt he sees this as an opportunity to witness for Christ and pray for the nation, nothing more. 

Rev. Warren’s critics are out of line, in every respect.   Sinners are expected to behave like sinners: it’s what they do; they’ve not been set free, yet.  Believers however have an obligation to comport themselves differently.  Condemning Warren is not being salt and light in this writer’s view.

Warren has been vocal about moral issues including abortion.   Indeed, his presence at the inaugural will bear witness to the need for all Christians to stand against the unfruitful works of darkness. 

Part of the reason this country is in moral freefall is because Christians moved to the suburbs, closed their eyes to the suffering in the world, got fat and comfortable in their mega churches, and let the works of darkness take over.   We left the public square and public service to the secularists, and they have virtually run Christ out of government, education, media and the hearts of too many Americans.

Rev. Warren is on the front lines fighting the good fight and we should pray for him, encourage him, and follow his example, for the sake of the Gospel, and for the sake of this country.

Applying Operation Rescue’s reasoning, John the Baptist never would have confronted Herod, and Christ Jesus would have stayed in heaven, leaving all of us mired in sin and death.   Rev. Warren has made it clear he opposes Obama’s abortion policies.   Both men oppose gay marriage.  They proceed with civility in both their agreements and disagreements.   We would do well to follow their example.

Dear Pastor Warren: be of good cheer.   Most of us love you and support you and we will be praying for you.  As for your critics, the Spirit is capable of disciplining you without their input, and the Lord will repay all who come against His anointed.

HRC Sec. of State prospects dim? UPDATE

Question and Answer in one day UPDATE

Earlier we asked: Will the “Saxbe Fix” clear the way and will Congress ignore Bill’s foreign donors?

Late in the day comes the answer:  SAXBE FIX IS IN, THANKS TO GWB !

December 19, 2008

Bush signs off on Clinton pay cut

Posted: 06:41 PM ET

CNN Radio’s Lisa Desjardins

Hillary Clinton’s salary will drop to pre-2007 amount.

WASHINGTON (CNN) – President Bush cleared the way Friday for Hillary Clinton to become secretary of state, signing a law that removes a potential constitutional barrier for the New York senator’s nomination by reducing her prospective pay as the nation’s top diplomat.

 

 

——————————————————————-

By Allan Erickson

12.19.09

It has been said before: Clinton (Bill or Hill, take your pick), the gift that keeps on giving, or taking.

Further, it has been asserted HRC cannot serve as Secretary of State according to the Constitution.  With recent revelations about Bill’s foreign contributors to his foundation and library, the waters muddy further.  Bill has received $46M from foreign contributors.

Detail B. Clinton donors

As to the constitutional question:

Article 1, Section 6  -   U.S. Constitution

No Senator or Representative shall, during the Time for which he was elected, be appointed to any civil Office under the Authority of the United States which shall have been created, or the Emoluments* whereof shall have been increased during such time; and no Person holding any Office under the United States, shall be a Member of either House during his Continuance in Office.

*Emolument n : the product (as salary or fees) of an employment

Therefore, according to a strict interpretation, any Senator in office during an increase in the salary of the Secretary of State cannot assume that position while still holding the office of Senator.   Secretary of State Rice’s salary was increased by executive order in January 2008. 

 

Intriguing elaboration is found in a recent WSJ report:

“. . . if the emoluments for a certain cabinet position increase, all members of the Congress in office during that time of the increase shall be disqualified from later holding that position. According to Volokh, the Emoluments Clause is in play because the Secretary of State got a cost-of-living adjustment in January of this year, at which time Hillary Clinton was a senator from New York. As John O’Connor, the author of an 1995 Hofstra Law Review article on the Emoluments Clause puts it: “[U]nder a straightforward application of the Emoluments Clause, Senator Clinton is ineligible for appointment as Secretary of State because the emoluments of that office ‘have been increased’ during Senator Clinton’s current Senate term, and this disability continues until the end of ‘the time for which [she] was elected,’ or until January 2013.”

However, other legal scholars cite the “Saxbe Fix.” 

 

Further in the WSJ article:

“President Nixon was confronted with it [Article 1, Section 6] when he wanted to appoint Senator William Saxbe to Attorney General. The solution derived, called the ‘Saxbe Fix,’ reduced the pay level of the cabinet position back to where it was before the hike. Later, Lloyd Bentsen served as Treasury Secretary after the ‘Saxbe Fix’ legislation reduced the salary of that office to its level immediately before Senator Bentsen’s Senate term had begun.”

Some say the Saxbe Fix is constitutional, others say it is not, and still others say it doesn’t matter, the courts will refuse to hear the case, insisting the Executive and Legislative branches work this thing out. 

The problem with this later ‘solution’ of course is it leaves the foxes in the chicken coup. 

If the Saxbe Fix becomes HRC’s salvation, the cloud of Bill’s foreign contributions still casts a compounding shadow.

Given Bill’s financial disclosures ($500M in contributions) this week, the glaring problems centering on conflicts of interest and the potential for corruption further complicate Hillary’s prospects, as best explained by Dick Morris.

500M Problems for Madame Secretary 

by Dick Morris & Eileen McGann, 12.19.08

 

EXCERPTS:

“How can Hillary Rodham Clinton mediate and negotiate conflicts in the Middle East impartially when her husband’s library and foundation – over which he has total control – have been bankrolled by the very nations with whom she must negotiate?

“How could a US senator possibly serve dispassionately while her husband was collecting money from these donors on this kind of scale? And how could we have almost elected a president without realizing these conflicts existed? And how on earth can a secretary of state function with these conflicts hanging over her head?

On January 20, 2009, President-Elect Obama takes the oath:

“I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

                                                                                                                                              – Article II, Section I of the U.S. Constitution

 

THE ULTIMATE QUESTION THEN BECOMES: IS THE NOMINATION AND CONFIRMATION OF HRC AS SECRETARY OF STATE THE BEST WAY TO PROTECT AND DEFEND THE CONSTITUTION, OR WILL IT BE SEEN AS A SLICK WAY TO PAY OFF POLITICAL DEBTS EVEN AT THE RISK OF UNCONSTITUTIONAL ACTION?