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The decision on granting a hearing challenging President-elect Barack Obama's U.S. citizenship is still pending. The "Washington Times" reports that the U.S. Supreme Court held a private conference Friday morning to discuss whether to take up a lawsuit but it was not on the list of court orders for the day. According to the "Times" a Supreme Court spokesman said the decision to hear the case will most likely be announced next week.

...Obama reported raising $104 million in more than five weeks immediately before and after Election Day. It was his second biggest fundraising period and a fitting coda to a successful presidential bid that shattered fundraising records. ...Obama exceeded the combined finances of the two major parties' nominees four years ago. George W. Bush and John Kerry pulled in a total of $653 million in the 2004 primary and general election campaigns, including federal public financing money. Obama's prowess at attracting money, one of the many characteristics that defined his campaign, could well spell the end of a 30-year experiment in...

Published: 12/05/08, 3:38 AM Blair Urges Council on Foreign Relations to Pressure Israel by Baruch Gordon (IsraelNN.com) Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair called for United States President-elect Barack Obama to press hard for Israel to make further territorial concessions to the Palestinian Authority. Blair, speaking at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York on Wednesday, also praised Obama’s selections to lead his national security team, most notably former NATO commander General James L. Jones as National Security Advisor for the incoming administration. Jones was until recently the US special envoy for Middle East security and in that role...

x-Fed Chief to Lead New Economic Panel of Outside Experts Who Will Brief Obama President-elect Barack Obama appointed former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker on Wednesday to be the chairman of a new White House advisory board tasked with helping to lift the nation from recession and stabilize financial markets. University of Chicago economist Austan Goolsbee, one of Mr. Obama's longest-serving policy advisers, will serve as the board's staff director, along with his duties as a member of the White House Council of Economic Advisers. Members of the panel will be drawn from a cross-section of citizens outside the government,...

President-elect Barack Obama and his former general election rival, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz), have come to an agreement on immigration, Senate Majority leader Harry Reid told the Detroit Free Press in a recent interview. Reid said the two standard-bearers have agreed to move forward on immigration legislation during Obama's White House tenure. "On immigration, there's been an agreement between Obama and McCain to move forward on that," Reidsaid when how Congress would handle immigration and healthcare with expanded Democratic majorities and Obama in the White House. Early on in their general election campaign, both McCain and Obama pledged to enact...

Quote from Jesse Helms in 1987 to the President. "A careful examination of what is happening behind the scenes reveals that all of these interests are working in concert with the masters of the Kremlin in order to create what some refer to as a “New World Order.” Private organizations such as the Council on Foreign Relations, the Royal Institute of International Affairs, the Trilateral Commission, the Dartmouth Conference, the Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies, the Atlantic Institute, and the Bilderberg Group serve to disseminate and to coordinate the plans for this so-called new world order in powerful business, financial,...

PRESS RELEASE November 14, 2008 Contact: James Bopp, Jr. Cell Phone 812/243-0825; Phone 812/232-2434; Fax 812/235-3685; jboppjr@aol.com Supreme Court to Review Citizens United’s Hillary:The Movie Case Today the U.S. Supreme Court accepted the case of Citizens United v. FEC for review. The case concerns Citizens United’s desire to broadcast television advertisements for its documentary titled Hillary: The Movie (hillarythemovie.com). Because the ads qualify as “electioneering communications” under McCain-Feingold, Citizens United is required to report its donors and put political disclaimers on the ads. Citizens United objects to these requirements because its advertisements are “political speech” that is fully protected from...

The Republican Party will file federal lawsuits Thursday seeking to overthrow the McCain-Feingold federal campaign finance regulations, Republican National Committee Chairman Robert M. "Mike" Duncan revealed Wednesday night at a private dinner with the nation's Republican governors. The move is considered a slap in the face of the Republican Party's failed 2008 presidential candidate, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, who was dramatically outspent by Democrat Barack Obama, and of President Bush, who signed McCain-Feingold into law in 2002. "We will bring two federal suits tomorrow to strengthen the Republican Party," Mr. Duncan told The Washington Times. Mr. Duncan said one...

MIAMI The Republican Party will file federal lawsuits Thursday seeking to overthrow the McCain-Feingold federal campaign finance regulations, Republican National Committee Chairman Robert M. "Mike" Duncan revealed Wednesday night at a private dinner with the nation's Republican governors. The move is considered a slap in the face of the Republican Party's failed 2008 presidential candidate, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, who was dramatically outspent by Democrat Barack Obama, and of President Bush, who signed McCain-Feingold into law in 2002. "We will bring two federal suits tomorrow to strengthen the Republican Party," Mr. Duncan told The Washington Times. Mr. Duncan said...

My friends, If John McCain wins this election (and I pray he does), do you think he will have learned any lasting lessons about, oh, say the media, campaign finance regulations, reaching across the aisle....?Just wondering.

The International Monetary Fund may soon lack the money to bail out an ever growing list of countries crumbling across Eastern Europe, Latin America, Africa, and parts of Asia, raising concerns that it will have to tap taxpayers in Western countries for a capital infusion or resort to the nuclear option of printing its own money. The Fund is already close to committing a quarter of its $200bn (£130bn) reserve chest, with a loans to Iceland ($2bn), Ukraine ($16.5bn), and talks underway with Pakistan ($14.5bn), Hungary ($10bn), as well as Belarus and Serbia. Neil Schering, emerging market strategist at Capital...

WASHINGTON – Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama spent $87.5 million last month and began October with nearly $134 million in the bank. The numbers illustrate his vast financial advantage over John McCain, his Republican rival, in the final stretch of the contest. McCain ended September with $47 million in the bank. Obama, who raised a record-shattering $150 million in September, filed his campaign finance report with the Federal Election Commission overnight. The numbers became available on the FEC Web site Tuesday morning. McCain is accepting public financing and cannot raise money. He is limited to $84 million for the two...

Gregg Jarrett on Fox News Channel just reported that the Obama campaign has $180 million dollars left in their war chest while McCain has $46 million dollars left. Jarrett pointed out that Obama welched on campaign finance agreement that he promised McCain during the primaries and McCain's funds are being depleted faster towards the end because of that.

John McCain suggested that his Democratic rival Barack Obama’s record-shattering fundraising haul will lead to scandal in their presidential race and future races, and he hinted that there may already be funny business going on with Obama’s legions of small donors. Obama announced Sunday morning that he pulled in $150 million in September, which McCain described on “Fox News Sunday” as “completely breaking whatever idea we had after Watergate to keep the cost and spending on campaigns under control. First time, first time since the Watergate scandal. And I can tell you this: that has unleashed now in presidential campaigns...

John McCain's come-from-behind bid for the presidency is being damaged by the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, better known as the McCain-Feingold bill. The workings of McCain-Feingold and the Democratic Party's huge fund-raising advantage have left Mr. McCain debilitatingly dependent on the $85 million in taxpayer financing he received last month. The Politico newspaper reported yesterday that Mr. Obama is outspending the combined McCain campaign/Republican National Committee campaign effort by as much as 8-1, and that probably understates Mr. McCain's disadvantage. In the first three weeks of September, Mr. Obama ran 1,342 television commercials in the Washington media market,...

Some myths refuse to die—like the one brewing now about Goldman Sachs pulling strings in the market meltdown and bailout. Here’s why.

PRESS RELEASE October 3, 2008 Contact: James Bopp, Jr. Cell Phone 812/243-0825; Phone 812/232-2434; Fax 812/235-3685; jboppjr@aol.comCommittee for Truth in Politics Seek Preliminary Injunction Today, the Committee for Truth in Politics, Inc. (“CTP”) filed suit to protect it from FEC investigation and enforcement action for running an ad, titled Basic Rights, which qualifies as an “electioneering communication” under federal election law, but cannot be regulated because it is protected by the “appeal-to-vote” test announce by Chief Justice Roberts in the 2007 decision of Federal Election Commission v. Wisconsin Right to Life ("WRTL II"). The text of the ad is as...

The San Francisco community organizer who illegally funneled state grant money into a campaign account of former California Secretary of State Kevin Shelley was sentenced this morning to a year and a day behind bars. In July, a federal court found Julie Lee guilty of mail fraud and witness tampering charges. Shelley resigned months after The Chronicle broke news of the money-funneling scheme that involved a $500,000 grant for a Sunset District community center that was never built. Shelley was never charged with any crimes and denied knowing about Lee's intentions. Lee made an emotional plea for leniency in court,...

Ethan Winner Responds: Claims He Produced Video Ethan Winner responds. Written like a VP in a public relations firm that specializes in crisis management and grassroots organization. I'll post the whole thing below. He produced the video? He paid for the voice-over narration which he found through a talent agency? The voice-over artist has never done any work for the Obama campaign? Uh, yeah, right.He then goes on to sidestep the question of the lie he puts forth in the video: that Palin was a member of the Alaskan Indepence Party -- which she wasn't. That is empirical fact. Instead,...

"Fresh off of the 2008 Bilderberg Meeting, it looks as if New York Federal Reserve president Timothy Geithner is set to push a new agenda in the world of central banking that was likely decided upon at Bilderberg. Geithner yesterday, wrote an article in the Financial Times calling for a global regulatory banking framework. In addition, Geithner called for the Federal Reserve to have an instrumental role in this new framework. Geithner cites all of the problems that were actually created by the central bankers in the first place as the rationale for having greater centralized power. It is interesting...

McCain or Obama - Secret Government Still in Control In Chapter One of The Shadows of Power by James Perloff, titled “A Primer on the CFR,” we glean the following details. Sir William Pitt, before the House of Lords in London in 1770, said, “There is something behind the throne greater than the king himself.” This gave birth to the phrase “power behind the throne.” In 1844, Benjamin Disraeli, England’s great statesman, wrote a novel entitled Coningsby in which he wrote: “The world is governed by very different personages from what is imagined by those who are not behind the...

COMMENTARY "When the heavy hand of the state is imposed on the press, all of us lose," Barack Obama told a group of Kenyan journalists during an August 2006 trip to Africa. "The media does not have a formal role in the government, but it serves a critical function in providing information to the public so that they can hold the government accountable," he said. Mr. Obama's remarks implied he supports the First Amendment. His comment that "Democracy can't function properly without a free press," suggested he understood the importance of robust scrutiny of elected officials. Yet, when given the...

Free to Blog It isn't every Tuesday that DailyKos and the Heritage Foundation find common cause, but that was the case after a Federal Election Commission ruling last week that exempts political bloggers from rules governing political organizations. The decision, great news for bloggers, also highlights the proliferation of chronic whiners that the campaign finance laws have produced. Politicians and their allies increasingly are resorting to lawsuits and regulatory complaints in an attempt to silence opponents and critics. In this case, the whining was done by a Hillary Clinton supporter who complained that a pro-Obama blog called Iowa True Blue...

Answering a question at the Saddleback Forum hosted by Rick Warren, presumptive Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain gave the names of four sitting Supreme Court justices that he would not have nominated were he president: Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer; David Souter and John Paul Stevens.Those for justices, along with McCain's fellow Arizonan, the now-retired Sandra Day O'Connor, made up the majority that decided in 2003 in favor of the constitutionality of the sweeping abridgement of free speech known as McCain-Feingold, under the guise of limiting the perceived corruption of politics and politicians.The bill was signed into law by...

Encouraged by the U.S. Supreme Court, conservatives are launching a wholesale legal assault on campaign finance laws. And among the leaders is a man once charged with enforcing those laws: former Federal Election Commission Chairman Bradley Smith. His goals are big. He doesn’t want to just scale back the laws; he wants to pretty much wipe them out. “Are we better off with McCain-Feingold?” Smith asks. If it were overturned, he adds, “that would put us in a system that existed before Jack Abramoff, William Jefferson, Bob Ney, Mark Foley and Ted Stevens. Those scandals happened during the McCain-Feingold era.”...

Bloggers and web site operators may support, oppose, link to, and work cooperatively with federal political candidates. This freedom was reaffirmed when the newly re-constituted Federal Election Commission released its first two enforcement cases August 12. The Commission’s refusal to regulate blogging and internet sites is not new, but it is notable is that the pro-blogger decision was made within a week or two of the new Commission taking office. Of the scores of items on its docket, the new Commission chose to address this one first: quite likely because they wanted to send a signal to that bloggers are...

From The Sunday Times August 10, 2008 Oliver Stone's George Bush biopic Oliver Stone's Bush biopic plays it for laughs, but it's every bit as controversial as JFK and Nixon Christopher Goodwin You have to admit it’s a great question: “How did George W Bush go from alcoholic bum to the most powerful figure in the world?” That’s what the American film-maker Oliver Stone says he wants to explain in his forthcoming movie biopic, entitled, simply enough, W. Not surprisingly, Texas-sized dust storms have already blown up in Hollywood and Washington over the film, which is being rushed through production...

WASHINGTON – Rick Warren, the superstar mega-church pastor and bestselling author of ''The Purpose Driven Life,'' had a Damascus Road experience last week – and like Saul of Tarsus, one of the after-effects appears to be blindness. Warren went to Syria and could find no persecution of Christians. He could find no persecution of Jews. He could find no evidence of extremism. He could find no evidence of the sponsorship of terrorism. Despite the temporary loss of vision that prevented him from seeing any evil in the totalitarian police state, Warren's hearing was apparently not affected – for his ears...

Voters overwhelmingly believe that politicians will “break the rules to help people who give them a lot of money,” but most say there’s a bigger problem in politics today—media bias. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 55% believe media bias is more of a problem than big campaign contributions. Thirty-six percent (36%) disagree and think that campaign cash is a bigger problem. People believe media bias is a bigger problem even though 63% believe most politicians will break the rules to help campaign contributors. Just 14% believe most politicians would refrain from breaking the rules for a...

When launched last fall, the Foundation for a Secure and Prosperous America (FSPA) was labeled an evil," "soft-money" group; it was no surprise its activities would immediately be denounced by Sen. John McCain. After all, for years Mr. McCain has been a vocal opponent of soft-money groups operating independently of federal campaigns. Unfortunately, it is McCain-Feingold "campaign finance reform" that reconfigured the playing field and created these groups. And, what is even more unfortunate for the GOP is that the vast majority of funds are being amassed by liberal groups such as Moveon.org to help Sen. Barack Obama. Reports indicate...

It was supposed to be a nice bonus for people who paid $1,500 to attend a fundraiser for U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) -- a ticket to the Bruce Springsteen concert Sunday at Giants Stadium. But the Lautenberg campaign canceled its order for 40 tickets yesterday after it came under review by the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority, which is promoting the concert, and drew fire from Republicans.

McCain Allies Find Finance-Law Holes Governors' Fund Recruits Big Donors; Bid to Catch Obama Allies of Sen. John McCain have found new loopholes in the campaign-finance law he helped write -- and they're using them to reel in huge contributions to help him compete with Sen. Barack Obama. In one method, a Republican Party fund aimed at electing governors has started marketing itself as a home for contributions of unlimited size to help Sen. McCain. His 2002 campaign law limits donations to presidential races to try to curtail the influence of wealth. The Republican Governors Association isn't subject to those...

The Senate confirmed five new commissioners for the Federal Election Commission last night, ending a six-month impasse during which the agency was paralyzed by its lack of a quorum. "We're finally going to restore the FEC," Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) said as the chamber prepared for the voice vote. The six-member panel has been unable to consider action this election year because only two commissioners were left after three recess appointments expired in December. Democrats blocked consideration of any replacements over objections to one of President Bush's choices, former Justice Department official Hans von Spakovsky, whom they...

It has been a splendid week for the Bill of Rights at the Supreme Court. In addition to their landmark gun rights ruling, the same five Justices took another whack at Congress's attempts to limit political speech via campaign-finance limits. John McCain, call your office. In Davis v. FEC, a 5-4 majority overturned a portion of the 2002 McCain-Feingold law that exempted the political opponents of rich candidates from the usual fund-raising limits in order to "level the playing field." Known as the Millionaire's Amendment, the law saddled wealthy, self-financing candidates with burdens designed to help their opponents. Millionaires had...

Supreme Court strikes down part of campaign finance law Thu Jun 26, 2008 12:15pm EDT By James Vicini WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Supreme Court struck down on Thursday part of a U.S. campaign finance law that relaxes contribution limits for candidates facing wealthy, self-funded opponents, a ruling that could affect congressional elections in November. By a 5-4 vote, the high court declared unconstitutional the provision known as the "millionaire's amendment" that Congress adopted out of concern that rich, self-financing candidates would have a competitive advantage. It allows congressional candidates to accept higher contributions when they face opponents who spend large...

"I was struck when I got to Iowa and New Hampshire in January," said Joan Walsh, editor-in-chief of the liberal Web site Salon.com, "by how our media colleagues were just swooning over Barack Obama. That is not too strong a word. They were swooning. The downside, though, is that they hate -- hate Hillary Clinton, most of them. Hate is not too strong a word." What, media bias in favor of Obama, a leftist Democrat? Yet the same left-leaning media "hates" Hillary Clinton? Really? How about a little evidence? From January 2007 through May 2007, Harvard, along with the Project...

WASHINGTON, June 18 (UPI) -- A new television ad blasting likely Republican presidential nominee John McCain is only the beginning of liberal "independent group" ads, union officials say. The spot, produced independently of Illinois Democratic Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign, financed by the liberal activist group MoveOn.org and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, features a young mother with a baby criticizing McCain's determination to keep troops in Iraq. It began airing Tuesday in Ohio, Wisconsin and Michigan, USA Today reported. Pro-Democrat labor union leaders told the newspaper they have assembled millions of dollars for so-called independent...

A29-MEMBER independent task force of the Council on Foreign Relations released a report Friday that adds another authoritative voice to the clamor for U.S. leadership on climate change. Co-chaired by former New York governor George E. Pataki (R) and former Iowa governor Tom Vilsack (D), the bipartisan document makes an argument that has fallen on deaf ears at the White House. "As the United States takes increasingly aggressive action at home," the authors correctly note, "it will be in a stronger position to ask more of others." "Confronting Climate Change: A Strategy for U.S. Foreign Policy" endorses a reduction in...

The FEC Can't Handle Obama's Not-So-Transparent Fundraising by Rob Port May 26, 2008 01:48 PM EDT views: 37 | rating: 10/10 (2 votes) | comments: 1 Not because of the amount, but rather because of the sheer number of individual transactions.  It creates a database of rows and columns too large for FEC bureaucrats to open on their computers.  Because they apparently don’t have Microsoft Excel 2007 or something.Anyway, that’s interesting news in light of earlier stories about small-money contributions to the Obama campaign ruining transparency in political contributions.  See, any contributor giving less than $200 doesn’t have to report...

I never imagined that in America, I could be sued for speaking about politics. My ordeal began in early 2006 when my husband, Wes, and I heard about a petition being circulated seeking to annex our unincorporated neighborhood ... We researched the issue and decided that the extra layer of government wouldn't provide better services, while our sales tax would skyrocket. We'd be paying more for less. We own a print shop, so Wes used some scraps and made a couple of yard signs. One said "No Annexation" and the other said "Annexation Is A Permanent Tax Increase." We planted...

WASHINGTON — John McCain and Barack Obama, the two leading presidential candidates, have set out sharply contrasting views on the role of the Supreme Court and the kind of justices they would appoint. Sen. McCain (R-Ariz.), in a speech two weeks ago, echoed the views of conservatives who say "judicial activism" is the central problem facing the judiciary. He called it the "common and systematic abuse . . . by an elite group . . . we entrust with judicial power." On Thursday, he criticized the California Supreme Court for giving gays and lesbians the right to marry, saying he...

Senator Barack Obama's campaign is steering the candidate's wealthy supporters away from independent Democratic groups, calling into question what had been expected to be the groups' central role in this year's Democratic offensive against Senator John McCain. Obama's national finance chairwoman, Chicago hotel mogul Penny Pritzker, told supporters at a national finance committee meeting in Indianapolis May 2, and in other conversations, not to give money to the groups, people familiar with her comments said. "From the beginning of this race Obama has told supporters that if they want to help his effort, they should do so through his campaign,"...

John McCain's campaign asked a prominent Republican consultant, Craig Shirley, to leave his official campaign role Thursday after a Politico inquiry about Shirley's dual role consulting for the campaign and for an independent "527" group opposing the Democratic presidential candidates. The campaign also released a new conflict of interest policy barring such arrangements. Shirley, a conservative public relations veteran, doubled as a consultant to McCain and to the group Stop Her Now, a 527 group barred from coordinating its activities with presidential campaigns. He is not currently on the McCain campaign’s payroll, but would also step down from his role...

Sen. Barack Obama's top fundraisers have asked his campaign donors to refrain from contributing to liberal independent political organizations in hopes of controlling the tone and message of the general-election campaign. At a meeting in Indianapolis on May 2, members of the Democratic front-runner's finance committee made it clear Obama (Ill.) is worried that overtly negative advertising from outside organizations could undermine his themes of unity and hope. "If people want to support our campaign, they should do it through our campaign," Obama spokesman Bill Burton said. The meeting was only the most overt effort by Obama or Sen. John...

Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama are both darlings of the campaign finance reform community. But this year’s intense money race – and the corners candidates typically cut to stay competitive – have ratcheted up scrutiny of those relationships and exposed both the candidates and the groups to occasional charges of hypocrisy. The bonds between reformers and two of their top Senate allies will be tested further as the campaign moves into its general election phase, with the two men poised to square off against each other. Each of the candidates is expected to use reform credentials to appeal...

George Soros talked about domestic and international financial markets, and the impact of a recent mortgage crisis on other sectors of the economy. In his remarks he said the worst of the financial crisis might be over but the effects of he crisis might be felt for some time to come by various sectors of the economy. Mr. Soros is the author of The New Paradigm for Financial Markets: The Credit Crash of 2008 and What It Means, published by PublicAffairs.

John McCain is abandoning any hope of catching the Democrats in fundraising.Based on new financial disclosure reports released Sunday, and interviews with his finance team, the Republican Party’s presumptive nominee will instead accept taxpayer money to finance his general election and share other costs with the Republican National Committee. The strategy will allow McCain to stretch his campaign dollars by splitting the cost of television advertising and other campaign activity with the RNC. But the decision also puts the Arizona senator at risk of being badly outspent – even with RNC help – by a Democratic nominee who will be...

OBAMA SAID: "Well, I don't actually think there are Council On Foreign Relations 'MEMBERS...' He thinks we are STUPID!

To help ease their fund-raising woes, John McCain’s campaign has devised a new system to increase the maximum amount an individual can donate to the unofficial Republican nominee’s election efforts. Campaign manager Rick Davis released the details of the “McCain Victory 08” fund on Friday. He said the entity is a joint committee, combining the McCain campaign, the Republican National Committee and four key states under a “hybrid legal structure.” The idea is to tap donors for more than the $2,300 limit set by campaign finance laws. Under legislation pushed by McCain in his role as a senator from Arizona,...