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Speaking at a campaign event on September 22, 2008: "I'll make our government open and transparent so that anyone can ensure that our business is the people's business. As Justice Louis Brandeis once said, sunlight is the greatest disinfectant. As President, I will make it impossible for Congressmen or lobbyists to slip pork-barrel projects or corporate welfare into laws when no one is looking because when I am president, meetings where laws are written will be more open to the public. No more secrecy."

Angelo Mozilo In Star Wars, Obi-Wan Kenobi used an old Jedi mind trick on Stormtroopers to deflect them from their real quarry: “These aren’t the droids you’re looking for.” It worked.It looks as if another mind trick, well known in the Congress — delay and deflection — will now work to make Americans forget one of the biggest scandals of our time: the housing collapse that triggered the 2008 financial meltdown we are still suffering from. We shouldn’t just gaze over the fiscal cliff everyone else is scrutinizing; we should also examine the droids who helped set in motion our...

Just before the Christmas break the Boston Globe published a lengthy postmortem on Mitt Romney’s massive failure as a presidential candidate. Between this, and the constant hand-wringing by Geniuses of the GOP™, I think we have beaten this dead horse to a pulp, but there was one thing that came out of this article that has me as angry as I have ever been over a politician. Before we get to that, let’s step back in time to 2008. Like 2012, the Republican Party didn’t exactly put forth an all-star field of candidates for voters to choose from. In the...

Inouye reported ownership of Central Pacific shares worth $350,000 to $700,000, some held by his wife, at the end of 2007 [5]. The shares represented at least two-thirds of Inouye's total reported assets. Inouye has requested a delay in filing his annual financial disclosure for 2008, which was due this spring, and he declined to provide the current value of his investment. Since the end of 2007, the bank's stock has lost 79 percent of its value. Central Pacific was founded in 1954 by a group of World War II veterans including Inouye who were emerging leaders in Hawaii's Japanese...

More than 3,000 U.S. military personnel have secretly returned to Iraq via Kuwait and 17,000 more are on their way in response to the civil war in Syria that has spilled over into northern Iraq, according to a report published Monday by Iran's Press TV. The news follows by four days a report from the Russian news service RT that the aircraft carrier USS Eisenhower has joined the USS Iwo Jima off the coast of Syria. Both President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton last week issued stern warnings to Syria about unspecified but serious "consequences" that would follow if...

Ajmal Kasab, the sole surviving terrorist from the 2008 Mumbai attacks, was hanged to death on Wednesday at Yerwada Jail in Pune. Kasab was executed at 7:30am at Yerwada jail in Pune in Maharashtra after President Pranab Mukherjee rejected his mercy plea earlier this month. Pakistan had been informed about the hanging of Kasab, home minister Sushilkumar Shinde said on Wednesday. He told reporters that President Pranab Mukherjee had rejected Kasab's mercy petition. "Pakistan has been informed but there is no demand for Kasab's body. The president rejected Kasab's mercy petition Nov 5. I had further forwarded it to the...

We now have a firsthand account that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pledged the Innocence of Muslims filmmaker (Nakoula Basseley Nakoula) would be “arrested and prosecuted” for making the video the administration spent weeks blaming for the Benghazi attack. That means Hillary outwardly expressed a desire to make Nakoula a political prisoner. There is another individual in Hillary’s past who appears to be living the life of a political prisoner right this very second; his name is Peter Paul and his ordeal began in the year 2000. Paul was the individual behind a completely different video trailer. In 2007, a...

Down 16% overall, down from 54,340 in 2008 to 45,337 this year-- down 9,007 or 16%. And most of the decline came from Democratic voters. The numbers show a huge increase in GOP voters here: Democrats: 127,741 53.36% or 89% of 2008 Republicans: 47,091 19.67% or 138% of 2008 Other: 64,544 26.96 or 78% of 2008 Total: 239,376 or 84% of 2008 Compare this with the 2008 results: Obama: 458,422 69.05% McCain: 199,880 30.11% Total difference: 258,242 If GOP voting is up 38% in just the early voting and the Republicans are better prepared for election day, they could narrow...

RUSH: Again, I want to go back. There are two polling groups that have pulled out of Virginia (one of them a month ago) saying that it's over in and North Carolina. Suffolk Polling pulled out. They’re thinking, “It's over there. We're not gonna spend any more money there.” Another poll pulled out of Florida yesterday or the day before. But the Drive-Bys continue to poll these states, obviously, and the Drive-Bys continue to put out polling data. “It's tied! It's Obama here, Obama there, Romney there!” Nobody knows. That's why I say it's a turnout election now. It really...

COLONEL Muammar Gaddafi's regime secretly provided information to Britain and the US on Islamic extremists in the east of Libya, according to leaked diplomatic cables and intelligence sources. The names of hundreds of suspects were passed to the CIA and British intelligence. “There was a strong, shared concern between Gaddafi and the US and UK Governments about radical Sunni jihadist terrorists, including the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG),” Paul Pillar, a CIA veteran who negotiated with Libya over its nuclear program, told The Times. Diplomatic cables obtained by WikiLeaks paint eastern Libya as a fertile ground for radical extremism. One...

I was doing research for a Free Republic election project I am working on and came away with this fascinating political treasure trove of Obama's entire 2008 campaign map of the US showing every political rally of his campaign with video of each stop, listed by date along with video of his appearance. For example,clicking on the New Orleans icon will list the appearance date of February 7, 2008 and the campaign speech he made during his New Orleans campaign stop. There are some cities in which the videos have been removed. But for the most part the information provided,...

SNIPPET: "Actually, two have been convicted by a jury for using their nightclubs to launder the proceeds of drug and weapons deals, one was acquitted of money laundering but has pled guilty to a drug trafficking charge, and one of those convicted of money laundering has now been charged with tax evasion. And that's not to mention the failure to pay state liquor taxes and fees, the unsolved murder of a one-time business partner, and various immigration-related issues. Money was transferred in to a relative and known Hizballah operative in Lebanon, and there are strong ties to the Lebanese expat...

DARNA, Libya—Two former Afghan Mujahedeen and a six-year detainee at Guantanamo Bay have stepped to the fore of this city's military campaign, training new recruits for the front and to protect the city from infiltrators loyal to Col. Moammar Gadhafi... Abdel Hakim al-Hasady, an influential Islamic preacher and high-school teacher who spent five years at a training camp in eastern Afghanistan, oversees the recruitment, training and deployment of about 300 rebel fighters from Darna... Sufyan Ben Qumu, a Libyan army veteran who worked for Osama bin Laden's holding company in Sudan and later for an al Qaeda-linked charity in Afghanistan,...

Springfield’s budget director says the city is out of options to be reimbursed for expenses associated with hosting then-Sen. Barack Obama’s presidential campaign stop in the fall of 2008. “Short of suing the campaign, which isn’t really going to do anything — it would drag on forever — there’s really nothing we can do,” said Bill McCarty. “We’ve tried.”. Obama introduced his running mate, Joe Biden, at the Old State Capitol in August 2008. About 160 police officers and nine civilians helped provide protection for Obama’s visit, according to an invoice from the city. Obama’s presidential campaign was sent a...

As the administration’s false narrative about the events leading up to the sacking of our consulate in Benghazi and the killing of our ambassador continues to unravel, a sordid detail has come to light. The leader of the the attack is believed to be an alumnus of Guantanamo Bay who was released from custody via an anti-American left wing group headed by an Obama donor. First, the terrorist: Abu Sufian bin Qumu. Bin Qumu, according to his Guantanamo file, was picked up in Pakistan in early 2002 after being identified by the Libyan government (that would be the same government...

Since 1952, only one other Republican candidate did as well among union voters -- Ronald Reagan in 1980, who also had a gap of just 7 points between overall support and union support. But Reagan wasn’t able to repeat his magic in 1984 -- his union vote trailed his national vote by 13 points. And that pattern continued until McCain in 2008, with the gap bouncing between 11 and 13 points from 1984 to 2004. So there’s some support for the notion that Republicans are doing pretty well among union voters these days.

There is more to the story of Nakoula Basseley Nakoula than what we are told by the media. Court documents reveal that Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, producer of the movie Innocence of Muslims, partnered in a scheme with Eiad Salameh, my first cousin, a Palestinian Muslim from Beit Sahour in the Palestinian district of Bethlehem. To prove my claim, I revealed Eiad Salameh long before this whole fiasco erupted—in 2008 and the first real reportage of Eiad and Nakoula was revealed on September 14th, 2012. Now do I have your attention? The narrative that circulates the media fails to answer crucial...

Iran May Consider American's Request August 05, 2007 Associated Press Nasser Karimi TEHRAN, Iran -- Iran's Foreign Ministry said Sunday it would consider allowing the wife of an American man who vanished in Iran earlier this year to visit the Islamic country to search for him. "The request has not officially been relayed to us yet. If it is conveyed, we will review it," ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini told reporters. On Thursday, Christine Levinson, the wife of missing former FBI agent Robert Levinson said she was planning to travel to Iran in search of her husband even though she...

Americans were stunned on October 11 when the Justice Department unsealed its complaint against Mansour Arbabsiar, a 56-year-old used-car dealer from Corpus Christi now in federal custody, and Ali Gholam Shakuri, a member of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force. Shakuri remains inside Iran. The pair have been charged with conspiring to kill the Saudi ambassador in Washington, Adel Al-Jubeir. As disclosed by the Treasury Department, the plot was coordinated by Arbabsiar’s cousin, Abdul Reza Shahlai, a top Quds Force functionary whom the Treasury designated in 2008 as one of several “individuals and entities fueling violence in Iraq.” Shahlai was...

There is more to the story of Nakoula Basseley Nakoula than what we are told by the media. Court documents reveal that Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, producer of the movie Innocence of Muslims, partnered in a scheme with Eiad Salameh, my first cousin, a Palestinian Muslim from Beit Sahour in the Palestinian district of Bethlehem. To prove my claim, I revealed Eiad Salameh long before this whole fiasco erupted—in 2008 and the first real reportage of Eiad and Nakoula was revealed on September 14th, 2012. Now do I have your attention? The narrative that circulates the media fails to answer crucial...