Posted on 05/09/2010 1:49:55 PM PDT by FTJM
Senate Republicans are determined to block a Democratic Party activist's nomination as ambassador to El Salvador because of questions about a long-ago boyfriend who had contacts with Cuban diplomats, congressional staffers say.
The FBI cleared Mari Carmen Aponte when the issue of the boyfriend, Cuban-born businessman Roberto Tamayo, first became public after President Bill Clinton nominated her as ambassador to the Dominican Republic in 1998.
Aponte withdrew from that nomination after Senate Republicans vowed to ask tough questions about Tamayo. They had dated from 1982 to 1994 and attended social functions with Cuban diplomats in Washington, D.C.
Her Obama administration nomination to the El Salvador job was approved by the Senate Foreign Relations committee April 27, with 10 Democrats endorsing her -- including Cuban-American Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey -- and eight Republicans voting no.
But the Republicans will put a hold on her nomination when it comes up in the full Senate, meaning it will need 60 votes for confirmation unless they lift the hold, said congressional staffers who asked for anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the topic.
``This is clearly a controversial nomination. It was controversial the last time she was nominated, in a different administration,'' the committee's top Republican, Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, said during last month's vote.
The panel's Republicans, led by Sen. Jim DeMint, R-SC., had asked to look at Aponte's full FBI file and a reputed confidential memo on Tamayo's Cuban connections written during her 1998 nomination. Democrats countered that no such memo exists, and that by tradition only one member from each party is allowed to read the full files of nominees.
(Excerpt) Read more at miamiherald.com ...
Go DeMint!!
I think that its entirely unfair to demand that the members of a communist administration avoid romantic relationships with other communists. What would you expect her to do, have a conservative boyfriend. The American people elected a communist, shouldn’t surprise anyone that the White House is now crawling with them.
“by tradition only one member from each party is allowed to read the full files of nominees” ........ WTF??? ........ also noticed these tidbits: “Aponte has been a longtime Hispanic community activist in Washington” and “She has served on the board of directors of the National Council of La Raza”
How about the FBI files on each of the Czars and Zero???
Oh.
That's clintonspeak for, "I shredded it."
Has Zero appointed OBL to a position of honor and pestige yet? Supreme Court, Mid-East Czar, Prime Minister of Israel? Just wondering.
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