Extra! Extra! Read All About Me!This is a lot of words, but I want to document all of this on one thread.
Written by Melanie Morgan Wednesday, 11 February 2009 Yes, folks, I have finally busted into Wednesday's editorial page of the revered Washington Times with my very odd, but brilliant take on the world according to Beltway insiders.
MORGAN: Why I stormed Sen. Specter's office
And what you don't know about the “Stimulus Bill”
Melanie Morgan
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
OP-ED:
I went to visit Sen. Arlen Specter to save him from an embarrassing pro-stimulus vote that will damage America's economy and send the nation back to 1970s-style stagflation.
Jim Robinson, founder of FreeRepublic.com, and I arrived at Sen. Specter's office with a group of folks who oppose the $1.5 trillion stimulus package, on this past Monday morning. We asked to see Sen. Specter. The office secretary didn't seem to be happy to see us. I could not blame her. We were there to embarrass her boss. Jim, wearing his Navy cap, asked about the senator's whereabouts, but the secretary wasn't helping. It was distressing to see a wheelchair-bound Navy veteran being treated with such disrespect by a senator's staff.
It is clear that Specter's front-office staff needs to do an internship at Wal-Mart to pick up tips on how to properly work as a greeter. While the staffer told us she didn't know where Specter was, the senator was on Laura Ingraham's national radio program, defending the stimulus bill and snidely calling her "young lady" when she challenged him.
The desk staffer warned me that I couldn't go into the backrooms. It went through my mind that I certainly should be able to walk through the doors because I helped pay for them with my tax money. But diplomacy kicked in, so I yelled some more.
Eventually, Specter's chief of staff emerged and took notes as our group told him how disgusted we were that his boss was favoring a stimulus bill that is overwhelmingly apposed by his constituents.
Liz Colby Harp brought her five homeschooled children so Specter could see whom he is saddling with trillions of dollars of future debts. She was gracious, intelligent and dead on with her remarks.
Here are just a few of the items tucked into the pork bill, as written into the House or Senate versions. (Keep in mind, the Obama administration contends that this bill is to create jobs):
- $300 million for new cars for government bureaucrats;
- $4.8 million for a polar bear exhibit in Rhode Island;
- $3 million in tax benefits for golf carts, motorcycles and ATVS;
- $150 million for honeybee insurance;
- $1.5 million for a water park ride in Miami, Florida;
- $400 million to prevent sexually transmitted diseases.
Sen. Chuck Schumer, a Democrat from New York, said the "American people don't care about pork." Well, as a woman, I recognize ugly fat when I see it. This bill is stuffed with it.
While leaving Specter's office on Monday, I walked past a long line of people wearing ACORN t-shirts. This is the same group that helped get Obama elected. They came to get what the rest of us will be paying for.
Melanie Morgan is chairman of Move America Forward.
What a "Specter-cle"
Written by Melanie Morgan Thursday, 12 February 2009 UPDATE - Senator Specter's office now says he is "unavailable" until tomorrow.
Folks, yesterday I wrote an editorial for the Washington Times that blasted Senator Arlen Specter over his vote on the porkulus bill. Earlier, conservative activists, including myself, stormed his office demanding an explanation.
Now the Senator’s office is asking me to accept his phone call later today.
Please email me any specific questions YOU want answered and I will do my best to wedge it in after my rant! Hurry, as time is of the essence.
p.s. I will forward to Senator Specter ALL emails.
Note: The fun begins at 3:09 into the video.
The Media is Beginning to Catch On ...
Written by Melanie Morgan Thursday, 12 February 2009 ...that President Obama is misguided, ill-informed, and dangerously naive about terrorism, particularly as it relates to the closure of Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The Washington Times reported today in a column by James Robbins what we (Move America Forward) publicized during our press conference in Washington on Tuesday - that the President doesn't have a clear understanding of the law. Also inside the paper was an editorial following up on the diasterous consequences to mis-representing the situation to the American people (exactly what Bush was accused of doing) and the international community.
Read on.
President Obama clearly didn't do his homework before ordering the suspension of military tribunals to try terrorist suspects. We have learned that even his own legal counsel admitted that Mr. Obama erred in discussing details about terrorism with families of victims last week, and that the administration was ignorant of a key point that terrorists exploit to their advantage. In his rush to fulfill a campaign promise to his more fervid anti-war supporters, the president's legal oversights risk the disclosure of some highly classified information to terrorists.
Debra Burlingame, sister of Charles Burlingame III, the pilot of American Airlines Flight 77 that was flown into the Pentagon on 9/11, was present at last Friday's White House meeting of families of terrorism victims. Her impression was that President Obama was saying the right words in general, but when it came to specifics he was uncertain, uninformed, and sometimes just plain mistaken. Ms. Burlingame is an attorney who has followed closely the legal aspects of the terrorism cases, and her detailed, probing questions were met with stammers, stares, and statements that betrayed an understanding of the law that was, she said, "flat out wrong."
Case in point: the president's knowledge of the role of the Classified Information Procedures Act or CIPA. This law governs the way in which classified information is used in trials. The Sixth Amendment guarantees defendants the right to confront their accusers and the evidence against them, but the government has an important interest in cases such as these in keeping sources and methods secret. Under CIPA rules, in cases where classified information is used, the government has the option of sharing the information with the defendant, or not using it.
The Bush administration sought to avoid this potential national security threat by resorting to other procedures in which 6th Amendment issues did not arise. But President Obama believes that the model for terrorism cases is the prosecution of the 1993 World Trade Center bombers. Of course a number of those plotters escaped justice (some were found later hiding in Saddam's Iraq, but that's another story). More important, because of the openness of that process, al Qaeda learned a great deal about how to do a much better job next time - and even the classified information from that trial was in Osama bin Laden's hands within weeks.
The terrorists have learned a great deal about conducting legal guerrilla war, using rules like CIPA to their advantage. Notice that more and more terrorists are dismissing their appointed lawyers and representing themselves. This gives them direct access to the classified documents that will be used in evidence against them. In this way they can learn about U.S. intelligence sources and methods - how they were targeted, what information was collected, and who may have been the traitors in their midst. Even if the names of sources are omitted, for example someone who was present at a key planning meeting, the terrorist defendant will know enough about the circumstances to be able to narrow it down. After all, the terrorist is familiar with every aspect of the events; he knows much more about them than the intelligence community.
The alternative to handing over the secrets is for the government to not use the evidence in question. That creates the incongruous situation in which the defense wants to maximize the amount of evidence that implicates them, and the prosecution wants to minimize it. (Our legal system was not designed to accommodate defendants who welcome being put to death.) According to Ms. Burlingame, Obama's answer to this conundrum was "there is no reason we have to give [the terrorists] everything." Evidently the former editor of the Harvard Law Review seems to think that one of his powers as president is personally to pick and choose which constitutional rights apply to terror defendants and which do not. That's the very thing they were criticizing President Bush for.
White House Counsel Greg Craig, often seen whispering in the president's ear during question periods, admitted later to Ms. Burlingame that the chief executive was getting the facts of the law wrong during the discussion with the families. Craig asked her if CIPA covers a case in which terrorists defend themselves, noting that "this is something we hadn't contemplated." If nothing else, this admission of ignorance is more evidence that the decision to rush ahead with closing Guantanamo and shutting down the military tribunals was ill-conceived, poorly planned, and may ultimately be injurious to our national security. The president may talk a good game about "swift, certain justice," but it is becoming clear that justice will not be swift, is highly uncertain, and in the end may not even be just.
