Free Republic

The White House is trying to recast president Obama’s image- again. This time he's an eager reformer just trying to do away with all the red tape getting in the way of the economy. Since the class warfare thing didn’t work, the Sandra Fluke thing alienated the very voters- Catholics- who provided Obama his margin of victory in 2008 and Americans are becoming disenchanted with a president who, honest-to-goodness, thinks everything is “fine”- except that taxes are too low- why not try casting Obama in a part wholly and utterly unbelievable? Obama wants to be known as the president who...

A proposed revision to Freedom of Information Act rules would allow federal agencies to lie to citizens and reporters seeking certain records, telling them the records don’t exist. The Justice Department has proposed the change as part of a large revision of FOIA rules for federal agencies. Specifically, the rule would direct government agencies who are denying a request under an established FOIA exemption to “respond to the request as if the excluded records did not exist,” rather than citing the relevant exemption. The proposed rule has alarmed government transparency advocates across the political spectrum, who’ve called it “Orwellian” and...

Over at the Lawfare blog, Jack Goldsmith has some thoughts on the Obama administration’s war powers argument. Whatever you think of the War Powers Act, Goldsmith’s second point is of particular interest: The Administration argues that its operation is legitimated and limited by the U.N. Security Council Resolution. It does not really explain why it thinks this. But in any event, the “no danger to troops” theory, combined with the heavy reliance on the Security Council Resolution, suggest that the Administration is creating a principle of unilateral presidential war power for U.N.-sponsored interventions from a distance. In practice, this principle...

Video at link. (CNSNews.com) - Louis Fisher, a scholar in residence at the Constitution Project who served for 40 years as a constitutional law expert at the Library of Congress, says Americans and members of Congress should understand that President Barack Obama committed a “very grave offense” against the Constitution in taking military action in Libya without congressional authorization. “I am not going to recommend that the House Judiciary Committee hold impeachment hearings, but I would like members of Congress and the public to say that nothing would be more impeachable than a President who takes the country to war...

The White House is telling Congress that President Obama has the legal authority to continue American participation in the NATO-led air war in Libya, even though lawmakers have not authorized it. In a broader package of materials the Obama administration is sending to Congress on Wednesday defending its Libya policy, the White House, for the first time, offers lawmakers and the public an argument for why Mr. Obama has not been violating the War Powers Resolution since May 20. On that day, the Vietnam-era law’s 60-day deadline for terminating unauthorized hostilities appeared to pass. But the White House argued that...

Pending legislation that would grant the President of the United States the power to pull the plug on the country’s internet access in a declared “emergency” returned to the forefront this week on the same day Egyptians faced a nation-wide blackout designed to curtail widespread government protests. Egypt flipped it’s so-called “kill switch” — will the U.S.? The bipartisan bill is sponsored by Maine Sen. Susan Collins, the ranking Republican on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. The bill — called “The Protecting Cyberspace As A National Asset Act of 2010” S.3480 — was approved by a Senate panel...

According to an article in the United Kingdom's Telegraph, in October of 2009, President Barack Obama's adivsor on Muslim affairs, Dalia Mogahed, went on Islamic television with members of the radical Islamic group Hizb ut Tahrir and defended their blatant call for the overthrow of all "man-made law"—which includes the United States Constitution—and the adoption of Islamic Sharia law as "the source of legislation"