Posted on 06/17/2009 8:37:54 AM PDT by Red in Blue PA
The government watchdog President Obama canned for allegedly being "confused" and "disoriented" fired back sharply Wednesday, saying the White House explanation for removing him was "insufficient," "baseless" and "absolutely wild."
Gerald Walpin, who until last week was the inspector general for the Corporation for National and Community Service, told FOXNews.com that part of Obama's explanation was a "total lie" and that he feels he's got a target on his back for political reasons.
"I am now the target of the most powerful man in this country, with an army of aides whose major responsibility today seems to be to attack me and get rid of me," Walpin said.
----
"I would never say President Obama doesn't have the capacity to continue to serve because of his (statement) that there are 56 states," Walpin said, adding that the same holds for Vice President Biden and his "many express confusions that have been highlighted by the media."
Walpin concluded that his firing stems from bad blood between him and the board, as well as with Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson -- an Obama supporter whom he had investigated for alleged misuse of federal funds.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Interesting post. Presumably, Walpin was a holdover from the previous administration?
He appears pretty lucid to me!
LOL
You are Carnac the Magnificent!
I don't think so. They will claim that the school is broke and will never pay a penny.
Obamas scalp would be a nice addition to Mr Walpin’s career .
Hope he gets it !!!
Hooray for this man for not taking it and lying down.
God bless and keep him safe and strong-willed.
Ding ding ding ding ding! We have a winner!! Too bad it's too long for a tagline....
I'm hoping he sensed that he was being "set-up" by how "friendly" the White House was being in the weeks before his firing, and "secured" some his important notes off-site. From his interview with Glenn Beck:
BECK: OK. I read this story. You were in your car. You get a phone call from the White House.
WALPIN: Yes.
BECK: Any idea that they were going to ask you to resign?
WALPIN: No, because I thought they were calling me — I thought the White House had called me already three, four times already in the last two weeks, because I happened to be — you might disagree with this — a supporter of Sonia Sotomayor, even though I'm conservative.
BECK: OK.
WALPIN: And they had asked me for help on that and to support her, and I was doing that. So, I thought this was the same phone call.
On a side note, WHY was the White House so hungry for his support with Sotomayor - even though he's conservative - if he's SO "confused" and "disoriented"?! If Walpin has proof of how they were trying to solicit his "official" support for Sotomayor, IMO, it would be very damning to Obama's charges against him.
May I respectfully point out to you that the polite response to a clearly scripted joke is not a bitter commentary about one of the words in the joke? It's a dead hand on repartee more tedious than a "joke explainer" -- you tell a joke, and then a Joke Explainer analyzes, without a trace of a smile, why the joke should be funny, because it uses irony, because the premise is a logical impossibility, because it contains a play on words, because because......
Beck’s interview with Walpin. He doesn’t sound sonfused to me.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zX3P01r8XIM&feature=related
It was actually 60 states.
He made a mental math mistake. He was going to say he had been to all 50 states, and then he corrected himself to say that it was only ‘57’ cause there were 3 he hadn’t visited yet - one of those being Hawaii cause they were not going to let him go to there.
Obama decided to allow Walpin to stay, I suppose because Walpin might be deemed as an "open-minded" Conservative by Team Obama -- exemplified by his support for Sotomayor.
However, to avoid an ugly scene in DC, IGs are normally asked to resign. If not, they could be fired with impudence -- at least that was the case UNTIL Oct 2008. For example, Bush fired Clark Kent Ervin, formerly the Inspector General at the Department of Homeland Security, in October 2005. Ervin was made acting Inspector General in 2003, "officially" installed in December 2002, as one of Bush’s recess appointments named to the post while Congress was out of session.
However, according to Government Computer News, a former Department of Homeland Security official who wished to remain anonymous, said the White House and Dept of Homeland Security wanted Ervin gone because "He has not been a friend of the department." Bush got frowns from the Left (and Right), but a President could legally fire an IG without any real oversight.
That is, until October 2008.
It was then the law changed so an IG investigation could NOT be HALTED midstream because of an "unfriendly report", and without oversight of another body of government (i.e., Congress):
PUBLIC LAW 110-409 [H.R. 928]
OCT. 14, 2008
INSPECTOR GENERAL REFORM ACT OF 2008
http://www.ignet.gov/pande/leg/pl110-409.htm
[*3] SEC. 3. REMOVAL OF INSPECTORS GENERAL.
(a) Establishments.—Section 3(b) of the Inspector General Act of 1978 (5 U.S.C. App.) is amended by striking the second sentence and inserting “If an Inspector General is removed from office or is transferred to another position or location within an establishment, the President shall communicate in writing the reasons for any such removal or transfer to both Houses of Congress, not later than 30 days before the removal or transfer. Nothing in this subsection shall prohibit a personnel action otherwise authorized by law, other than transfer or removal.”So, yeah -- I think there's some potential hazard for Team Obama ... as long as his "loyal opposition", and Walpin, wish to pursue it.
After being called "Confused" and "Disoriented", I can't see why Walpin would just quietly go away. IMO, he seems like a guy that would fight to uphold the integrity of the IG process.
lol, eggzactly, but the old boy had life in him yet
In which case the next step is what I call the Jennifer Flowers defense, where one goes so public as to become a difficult target (which is what I think is happening here). Still, I see the O-bot as enough of a hard ass that when he's dissed he blows away the opponent in order to intimidate the rest. "See, I'll do you anyway."
This will be interesting. My bet is he'll use the media and the courts to cover in exactly the same manner as related to his natural born citizenship.
Yes, that would be VERY interesting. At least he's seems to be sensitive to the topic of citizenship. THIS is from Page 6 of Inspector General Gerald Walpin’s 2007 Report he submitted to Congress:
http://www.cncsig.gov/PDF/SAR/SAR07-02.pdf
Office of Inspector General
Corporation for National and Community Service
Semiannual Report to Congress
April 1, 2007 - September 30, 2007
AmeriCorps Member Eligibility Not Documented
To serve as an AmeriCorps member, an individual must be a U.S. citizen, U.S. national or lawful permanent resident alien of the United States, be at least 17 years of age at the commencement of service and have a high school diploma or an equivalency certificate. Our audits found that some grantees did not have eligibility documentation for all of their members available during the audit, leading us to question grant costs and education awards for those members.
I stated a simple fact.
It'll be very interesting to see if anybody "leaves" over the next few weeks. My guess is that almost everybody inside "knows too much."
From:
The Journal of the Federalist Society’s Practice Groups
October 2006
INTERNATIONAL LAW & NATIONAL SECURITY: THE PRESIDENT’S WIRETAP IS CONSTITUTIONAL
BY GERALD WALPIN, starting on page 121
Here's a snippet of his essay:
As when Hitler candidly telegraphed his threatening intentions to the world, initial Islamic militants’ threats left the world unmoved. In 1998, Osama bin Laden declared a religious war against the United States, calling on all Muslims to assume the moral obligation to kill U.S. civilians and military personnel. Even al Qaeda’s implementation of that crusade in the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole in Yemen and the U.S. embassy in Nairobi did little to awaken our country from its lethargy. The result was the 9/11 devastation, killing over 3,000 innocent U.S. civilians.As the bipartisan 9/11 Commission’s Report later found, our “institutions charged with protecting our ... national security did not understand how grave this threat could be, and did not adjust their policies, plans and practices to deter or defeat it,” but rather continued to follow practices used “in a different era to confront different dangers.”
The threat has not dissipated, but increased, since 9/11. In 2003, Osama bin Laden promised to “continue to fight” America and to “continue martyrdom operations inside and outside the United States.” His cohort, al-Zawahiri, declared war “in the crusaders’ own homes.” And, true to their word, their large-scale attacks in various parts of the world have resulted in the death and serious injury of large numbers of innocent people in Madrid, London, Amsterdam, Indonesia, Egypt, and Iraq. More recently, both bin Laden and al-Zawahiri have repeated their purpose to inflict devastation on the United States and other western democracies.
Has the reality of this threat shaken this country from its complacency? Immediately after 9/11, important steps were taken to strengthen our defense against terrorism. Congress enacted the Patriot Act, which removed many of the handcuffs imposed on our intelligence capabilities: the most famous example being a still-difficult-to-understand prohibition against law enforcement agencies working with intelligence agencies in full cooperation ....
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