Free Republic

But the sources say the new decision is driven by pragmatism: The president and his team just wrapped up the most expensive campaign in history — with costs topping $1 billion — and they’ve determined that their donors are simply tapped out. The cost of an Inauguration can run into the tens of millions. Obama spent $47 million in 2009. And raising that in a matter of six weeks is too difficult without throwing open the flood gates, said the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The inaugural fundraising team will be screening each corporate donation. Those determined to...

Tuesday, November 13, 2012 GoLocalProv News Team A prominent Rhode Island lobbyist and Democratic fundraiser gave a $300,000 personal loan to the twin sister of Jill Kelley, the woman tied to the love affair that ended CIA Director David Petraeus’ career, court documents show. Bankruptcy records filed by Natalie Khawam last April list Gerald Harrington, the founder of the Capitol City Group, as an unsecured creditor on the loan. Khawam owes nearly $4 million in total. The loan was first reported by the New York Post. A message left at Harrington’s Providence law firm was not immediately returned. The Post...

It’s the latest Leftist talking point: Rick Santorum is a bit dangerous, a bit unhinged, deeply religious and dangerously fanatical, not to be trusted with the governance of our pluralistic republic, and certainly not with guardianship of the First Amendment protection of the freedom of religion. The prominent Leftist Muslim writer Reza Aslan has recently become a foremost exponent of these claims, although they did not by any means originate with him. Leftist journalists and Islamic supremacist spokesmen always march in lockstep, using the same talking points, as I’ve pointed out previously in connection with Islamic supremacist boy Reza Aslan’s...

WASHINGTON: Federal authorities on Monday arrested a prominent US-based pro-Pakistan activist associated with the Kashmiri separatist movement, accusing him of funneling money from the Pakistani spy agency ISI to lobby US decision-makers. In the process, the Obama administration's law enforcement brigade also blew open the Pakistan and its spy agency's two-decade long subversion of the so-called Kashmir cause. The FBI swooped down on the Virginia residence of Dr Ghulam Nabi Fai, a well-known representative of Kashmiri separatists in the US and detained him on charges of ''participating in a long-term conspiracy to act as agents of the Pakistani government in...

WASHINGTON // A Pakistani immigrant who hosted fundraisers for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is being sought by the FBI on allegations that he funneled illegal contributions to Clinton's political action committee and to Sen. Barbara Boxer's 2004 re-election campaign. Authorities say Northridge, Calif., businessman Abdul Rehman Jinnah, 56, fled the country shortly after being indicted on charges of engineering more than $50,000 in illegal donations to the Democratic committees. A business associate charged as Jinnah's co-conspirator has entered a guilty plea and is scheduled to be sentenced in Los Angeles next week. ...The case has transformed Jinnah from a political...

Through their U.S. front groups, Muslim radicals overtaking the Middle East have found support in the Obama administration The last time we saw one whole despotic region of the world come tumbling down we could name the heroes and the moments that propelled it: An electrician named Lech Walesa, jumping a wall at the Gdansk shipyard. Boris Yeltsin atop a tank in front of the Russian White House, defying the Communist old guard in 1991. Pastor Laszlo Tokes, refusing an eviction notice from his Romanian flat as crowds of demonstrators gathered. A playwright named Vaclav Havel before a joint session...

Thursday, July 8, 2010 A former congressman pleaded guilty Wednesday to serving as an unregistered agent in Washington for a Missouri-based Islamic charity that the federal government said had ties to international terrorism. It was an odd outcome for Mark D. Siljander, who said he wanted to help bridge the gulf between Muslims and Christians. A Republican who attained one of Michigan's congressional seats from 1981 to 1987 with assistance from the Moral Majority, Siljander was outspoken about conservative social issues. Siljander confirmed in a Kansas City, Mo., court that he contacted members of Congress in an effort to lift...

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]...

I’m getting sick of the rewriting of 2008 presidential campaign history as K Street Republicans continue to assault Sarah Palin in the fear that a similarly conservative Republican will rise to the top of the VP sweepstakes.   It has been so fashionable in D.C. Republican circles to bash the Palin nomination as a mistake, ill-conceived or even disastrous, that even Dick Chaney has gotten into the act.   These self-serving attempts to change history are nothing more than a smear campaign designed to influence the Romney VP pick by obscuring the truth that the choice of Sarah Palin to...

Providing "suds and grub" at a townhouse on Capitol Hill, a lobbying firm for Barack Obama's ObamaCare is asking supporters to get "gussied up in your Sunday jorts, mullets, and fullets and come on down to the White Trash Reception." Mocking NASCAR is a big belly laugh with elitists on Capitol Hill.  Sounds racist to me. See a Jack Abramhoff video below. Lobbyists are gearing-up for a major push, even though many backed-off awaiting the Supreme Court ruling. Considering that not a single Republican voted for ObamaCare, and every Democrat voted for it, how will lobbying be effective...now? Are they...

Homeland Security: President Obama promised lobbyists wouldn't run his White House. They're just doing it from across the street — at a Shariah-compliant coffee chain tied to a radical jihadist group. That's right: According to the New York Times, prominent K Street lobbyists are buttonholing Obama officials at a Caribou Coffee shop on Pennsylvania Avenue, raising far more than just ethics questions. What the Times story neglects to mention is that Caribou Coffee is a Shariah-compliant firm owned by an Islamic bank based in Bahrain. One of its founders and a current adviser are leaders in the radical Muslim Brotherhood....

An interactive and searchable database of White House visitor logs is turning up some interesting findings and reveals a “steady stream of lobbyists” visiting the Obama White House, reports the Washington Post. For example, AFL-CIO lobbyist Bill Samuel visited the White House over 50 times, and American Civil Liberties Union lobbyist Laura Murphy visited almost as frequently. By comparison, Speaker of the House John Boehner has only visited the White House 23 times.

Corruption: A new study documents that access to the White House is based on how much money is put into the president's campaign coffers. At least the Lincoln Bedroom isn't for rent — yet. During the Clinton administration, when the Lincoln Bedroom in the White House became a favorite place for campaign contributors to rest their weary wallets, the infamous Johnny Chung made the observation that the White House was like a subway turnstile: You put your token in and you got inside. An analysis of White House access by the New York Times suggests that hope and change has...

Report highlights which lobbying firms back Romney in 2012 Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney is the clear front-runner in picking up support from lobbyists at some of K Street’s most profitable firms, according to a report released last week by First Street Research Group. That’s based on the number of lobbyists in those firms who are advising Romney’s campaign, collecting or “bundling” contributions for him, and contributing money to the campaign. First Street, the political intelligence unit of CQ Press, compiled data from Federal Election Commission filings and conducted independent research on individual lobbyists who Romney and Rick Santorum have...

In the months leading up to the Federal Communications Commission’s December 21, 2010 “net neutrality” vote, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski’s appointment book contained two key meetings not listed in Commission’s legal filings, The Daily Caller has learned. Genachowski’s appointment book, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request and provided to TheDC by the National Legal and Policy Center, showed two meetings that were not listed in the Commission’s ex parte filings in the month prior to the “net neutrality vote.” “Net neutrality” is where Internet traffic management policies of Internet service providers (ISPs) are governed by the FCC....

He promised there wouldn’t be lobbyists. Not a one. But less than a week into Barack Obama’s presidency (a week!), the White House had hired at least a dozen of them. They granted exceptions for some, and for others they exploited loopholes in the administration’s own self-written, self-imposed rules. Anyone taken by surprise by the more recent White House scandals—Solyndra, Operation Fast and Furious, the downfall of Obama’s “Wall Street Guy” Jon Corzine—really shouldn’t have been surprised at all. That early ethical backpedalling was excellent, if not unfortunate, foreshadowing of what was to come. Over the last three years, Barack...

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Now that Rick Perry and Herman Cain are seeing their stars fade, at least among the pundit class that shapes the popular news, some political observers are speculating that Newt Gingrich could be the next conservative hope for President. In the CNBC Republican Debate on Wednesday evening in MIchigan, Wall Street Journal Editorial writer John Harwood asked Newt Gingrich about his former consultant relationship with the mortgage facilitator Freddie Mac. Conservatives and Libertarians blame the Federal Government for the housing crisis that hit in 2007 and continues today. They believe the Federal Government created the housing bubble by mandating that...

The bipartisan debt panel to nowhere is exactly where K Street lobbyists want it to be: hopelessly deadlocked. A November 23 deadline for agreement on $1.2 trillion in budget savings is looming, but no real reductions in the size, scope or spending of government are on the table. Instead, we are witnessing another obscene special-interest splurge to preserve the status quo. All in the name of "reform," of course. The only thing "super" about the so-called budget control super committee is the size of lobbying muscle exerted on its members. Almost 100 registered lobbyists who are former employees of super...

In 2007, the year before Barack Obama was elected President, the liberal advocacy organization Public Citizen’s “White House For Sale” website was actively seeking change in what it viewed as onerous lobbying activities, particularly bundling.  Its lead headline read: Bundling for Favors:  Open the Books on Bundled Campaign Contributions And its opening paragraph succinctly described bundling as: “the activity of fundraisers who pool a large number of campaign contributions from political action committees (PACs) and individuals. Bundlers, who are often corporate CEOs, lobbyists, hedge fund managers or independently wealthy people, are able to funnel far more money to campaigns than they could...