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Aides to President Barack Obama used personal email accounts to contact pharmaceutical companies and deliberately scheduled meetings in coffee shops away from the White House in order to skirt disclosure rules, according to a Congressional report on Wednesday. Among the most damaging findings are emails from Jim Messina – the former White House deputy chief of staff who now manages the president's re-election campaign – to a drugs lobbyist in the days before Mr Obama's health care reforms passed Congress in 2010.In an email from his personal account, Mr Messina promised "I will roll [Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi]...

Adam Smith, former CFO and treasurer of medical supplies manufacturer Vante, riled people up today when he put up a video of himself bullying a Chick-fil-A drive-thru employee in Tucson on YouTube. Smith unsympathetically berates the worker in the video, which was initially titled ”Reduce $’s to Chick-Fil-A’s Hate Groups.” It has since been taken down (though other have uploaded it too). ”I’m a nice guy, by the way … totally heterosexual," he says to the worker. "Not a gay in me, I just can’t stand the hate.” Smith has now been fired from his job at Vante. Here's the...

Amid all the stories about the ongoing violence in Syria, the most disturbing is the possibility that Syrian President Bashar Assad could either deploy the arsenal of chemical and biological weapons that his government claims it has, or provide it to terrorists. There are suggestions that at least some of Assad's supposed stockpile may have come from Saddam Hussein's frantic, 11th-hour efforts in 2002 to hide his own weapons of mass destruction arsenals in nearby Syria. Various retired Iraqi military officers have alleged as much. Although the story was met with general neglect or scorn from the U.S. media, the...

Behold what a prominent politician's "CYA" instinct hath wrought:   Facing questions about why she and other top Congressional officials won’t release their tax returns, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) downplayed her previous demands for presumptive GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney to release his, calling the issue a distraction. As recently as Wednesday, Pelosi had strongly urged Romney to provide further disclosure of his tax returns. But today, while maintaining Romney should release more documents because of “custom” and “tradition,” Pelosi said the issue was trivial compared with economic issues. “We spent too much time on that. We should...

Democratic Convention Benefits From Corporate Cashby The Associated Press July 21, 2012 Shortly after last year's high-profile announcement that the 2012 Democratic National Convention would be the first in history not to rely on special-interest money, organizers in Charlotte quietly set up a nonprofit entity to rake in corporate cash. Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Duke Energy have all sent checks to New American City Inc., a non-profit entity being run by top officials on the convention host committee. Corporate money is bankrolling operations in direct support of the convention, including paying the salaries of the 41 full-time host...

DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz and President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign team have been waging a coordinated effort against Republican Presidential nominee Mitt Romney by repeatedly casting aspersion on the length of his tenure at Bain Capital as well as the limited disclosure of his past personal income tax returns...But now the Shark Tank has come into possession of information that has never been publicly disclosed which completely undermines Wasserman Schultz’ credibility as it pertains to her calls for transparency or the claim that she qualifies as “middle class.” ...on the mainland, Newbury, New Hampshire is a quaint little town...

On the heels of The Weekly Standard’s report yesterday that DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz — a vocal critic of Mitt Romney‘s investing practices, had herself dabbled in the foreign markets — we can add Nancy Pelosi to the list of prominent Democrats to profit from overseas investments. According to Pelosi’s 2011 financial disclosure statement, the Democratic House Minority Leader received between $1 million and $5 million in partnership income from ”Matthews International Capital Management LLC,” a group that emphasizes that it has a “A Singular Focus on Investing in Asia.” A quick trip to the company website reveals a...

You just can’t make this stuff up. Eric Holder gave a talk today at the annual NAACP conference in Houston. The far left Attorney General slammed the recent state voter ID laws. In order to cover the event as a journalist you had to show a photo ID. Via the Joe Pags Show: *******MEDIA ADVISORY******* ATTORNEY GENERAL ERIC HOLDER TO DELIVER REMARKS TOMORROW TO NAACP NATIONAL CONVENTION WASHINGTON – Attorney General Eric Holder will deliver remarks at the NAACP National Convention during the plenary session on TUESDAY, JULY 10, 2012, at 12:00 p.m. EDT/11:00 a.m. CDT. WHO: Attorney General Eric...

Disclosure forms reveal that Democratic National Committee chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a member of Congress from Florida, previously held funds with investments in Swiss banks, foreign drug companies, and the state bank of India. This revelation comes mere days after the Democratic chair attacked presumptive Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney for holding money in Swiss bank accounts in the past. "Americans need to ask themselves, why does an American businessman need a Swiss bank account and secretive investments like that?" the DNC chair, a chief surrogate for President Obama's reelection team, said on Fox News Sunday two days ago. "Just...

Denise Rich, the wealthy socialite and former wife of pardoned billionaire trader Marc Rich, has given up her U.S. citizenship - and, with it, much of her U.S. tax bill. Rich, 68, a Grammy-nominated songwriter, top Democratic donor and glamorous figure in European royalty circles, renounced her American passport in November, according to her lawyer. Her maiden name, Denise Eisenberg, appeared in the Federal Register on April 30 in a quarterly list of Americans who renounced their U.S. citizenship and permanent residents who handed in their green cards. ___Songwriter also has Austrian citizenship through her late father ___ Former husband...

-Songwriter also has Austrian citizenship through her late father -Former husband Marc Rich fled the country when indicted on charges of tax evasion - but was pardoned by President Clinton in 2001 -House of Representatives committee later found Denise Rich had swayed the decision through donations to Clinton campaign -Comes as the latest wealthy American to denounce citizenship Denise Rich, the wealthy socialite and former wife of pardoned billionaire trader Marc Rich, has given up her U.S. citizenship - and, with it, much of her U.S. tax bill. Rich, 68, a Grammy-nominated songwriter, top Democratic donor and glamorous figure in...

What a difference four years make. Around this time in 2008, Sen. Barack Obama was well on his way to shattering every campaign fundraising record on the books. Before his campaign was over, the great reformer from Chicago decided public campaign financing wasn't so great after all — and he passed it up in favor of accepting almost three-quarters of a billion dollars in contributions. But for a handful of muted good-government voices, the entire political left celebrated Obama's fundraising as proof of his extraordinary support and mass appeal. When it was over, the president-elect outspent his political opponent, John...

The leaks have started. The Daily Caller's Matthew Boyle writes that Javiar Manjarres of the Shark Tank political blog reported Sunday that "Wasserman  Schultz will not be back as DNC Chairwoman after the November elections." On top of that, her own insiders are leaking the same information to several bloggers and reporters. Of course you know the drill-- they say that " The Congresswoman seeks" to concentrate on saving America as a Congresswoman and blah, blah and more blah.I would have to say that, all of the above is "Nothing is further from the truth"! I would have to contend...

Female employees in the Obama White House make considerably less than their male colleagues, records show. According to the 2011 annual report on White House staff, female employees earned a median annual salary of $60,000, which was about 18 percent less than the median salary for male employees ($71,000). Calculating the median salary for each gender required some assumptions to be made based on the employee names. When unclear, every effort was taken to determine the appropriate gender. The Obama campaign on Wednesday lashed out at presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney for his failure to immediately endorse the Lilly Ledbetter...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Now here comes the cover-up. I want to take you back to March 19th, 2007. You might remember that Alberto Gonzales, a member of the Bush administration as attorney general who fired the eight US attorneys. The Democrats were after Albert Gonzales and other Hispanics that the Bush administration sought to elevate, because Hispanics do not get elevated in a Republican Party. It just doesn't happen. Democrats say they can't allow that to be seen. So Alberto Gonzales became attorney general. He was a good friend of Bush's, really had a lot of respect for him. Miguel...

Video from 1994 has surfaced of David Axelrod, President Obama’s chief campaign strategist, calling former President George H.W. Bush “out of touch” for “tastelessly” playing golf while trying to convince voters that the economy is improving. “Bush tastelessly did it, often from the ninth hole, and from the cigar boat and other places,” Axelrod said. Added the adviser: “The impression you got was that he was out of touch.” Throughout his presidency, Obama has been known to hit the links nearly every week. Axelrod explained in the 1994 interview that if “you cite these statistics that say the economy is...

Rep. Nan Hayworth's campaign spokesman has come under fire for some ill-chosen words he used last week while trading barbs with Hayworth critics on Facebook. Hayworth spokesman Jay Townsend had just swatted back at an opponent and was trying to steer the argument in a new direction when he wrote, "Let's hurl some acid at those female democratic senators who won't abide by the mandates they want to impose on the private sector." However sarcastic or figurative he meant to be, the mere suggestion of throwing acid at women — a real and gruesome form of attack in Afghanistan and...

<p>One of President Barack Obama’s top campaign spokesmen is a private equity manager whose firm has shut down several factories and laid off hundreds of people amid a stalled economy.</p> <p>Federico Pena’s role at Vestar Capital Partners has emerged as Obama’s aides and deputies continue their effort to portray former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney‘s investment career as ruthless, job-destroying, profit-maximizing “vulture capitalism.” Pena has been a partner at Vestar since 2000.</p>

If the presidential election can come down to whether it's more offensive to eat dogs or put one in a kennel on top of your car, I guess it's fair for a Senate election to come down to whether Elizabeth Warren is 1/10,000th Cherokee.The newest front in the "war on women," apparently: Calling a female pol out on her self-serving B.S. Despite claiming she never used her Native American heritage when applying for a job, Elizabeth WarrenÂ’s campaign admitted last night the Democrat listed her minority status in professional directories for years when she taught at the University of Texas...

Earlier this week Elizabeth Warren was asked by the Boston Globe a seemingly simple and straightforward question about her taxes: In 2011, did she pay the 5.85% rate (which is voluntary) on her Massachusetts state tax form? Since 2001, as I explained in a previous post, residents of the Commonwealth have had the option – if they so choose – to pay a higher tax rate than the 5.3% minimum. And since the former consumer advocate raked in more than $700,000 last year, the Globe believed their inquiry was an appropriate and reasonable one. At the time, however, she refused...