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Eric Holder's resignation, just 40 days before the midterm elections, shows how jittery Obama is about losing control of the Senate this November. While Holder likely is getting out of Dodge before federal judges weigh in and order the release of documents showing he covered up the Fast and Furious and IRS email scandals, the timing of his resignation suggests that Obama wants to be sure that he has time for a Democratic lame duck Senate to confirm a replacement. With so much dirty laundry stacked up in the closets of the Justice Department, Obama didn't dare let in an...

WASHINGTON - Former President Barack Obama, talking privately to ex-members of his administration, said Friday that the “rule of law is at risk” in the wake of what he called an unprecedented move by the Justice Department to drop charges against former White House national security adviser Michael Flynn. In the same chat, a tape of which was obtained by Yahoo News, Obama also lashed out at the Trump administration’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic as “an absolute chaotic disaster.” “The news over the last 24 hours I think has been somewhat downplayed - about the Justice Department dropping charges...

Former Obama administration Attorney General Eric Holder defended presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden on Friday night, saying an allegation of sexual assault against the former vice president is "inconsistent with the person I've come to know." HBO's Bill Maher welcomed Holder to his show "Real Time" to discuss the allegation hours after Biden denied the claims in an interview on MSNBC. Biden's interview on "Morning Joe" marked the first time he had addressed Tara Reade's allegation that he sexually assaulted her when she was a Senate staffer in 1993. She first raised the allegation in March. "A couple of months...

Link only - https://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/2020/04/11/can-joe-biden-beat-donald-trump-some-democrats-not-sure/5126130002/

David Plouffe, who oversaw Barack Obama’s storied 2008 bid for the White House, says he has an “overarching concern” about Joe Biden’s campaign strategy against a media-savvy incumbent with a large financial advantage. Plouffe said he is particularly alarmed by the former vice president’s failure to leverage social media and dazzling visuals while President Trump dominates headlines during the coronavirus pandemic. “It’s a challenge for Joe Biden,” Plouffe told “Skullduggery” podcast hosts Michael Isikoff and Daniel Klaidman in an interview. “But Trump gets this, and his campaign gets this: It’s blunt force communication. ... What I’m very worried about is...

WASHINGTON - - As Democrats begin to coalesce around Joe Biden as the moderate alternative to Bernie Sanders, there appears to be a quiet hand behind the rapid movement: former President Barack Obama. Obama spoke with his former vice president after he handily won the South Carolina primary on Saturday, and with Pete Buttigieg on Sunday when he dropped out of the Democratic race, according to people familiar with the calls. People close to Obama said the former president has been keeping close tabs on the race. They said the signal has been sent in the past 36 hours that...

Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is promising retaliation against the U.S. for launching a missile strike in Baghdad that killed his top general, Qassim Suleimani. The New York Times called Suleimani "a powerful strategist who represented Iran's influence across the region." The paper explained the death was "a considerable blow" to Tehran, because, "as the leader of the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, which leads Iran’s operations abroad, Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, who was 62, was the country’s top security and intelligence commander. "He behind nearly all military and intelligence operations orchestrated by Iran in the...

Initially, Obama Foundation officials ambitiously predicted they would break ground on the construction in 2018 and said they expected the center to open in 2021. Then they had to push that timeline back. Most recently, the foundation has hesitated to publicly release an updated timeline.

Former President Barack Obama asserted that many of the world's problems can be attributed to old men refusing to relinquish their power and said women are "pretty indisputably" better than men. "Now women, I just want you to know, you are not perfect, but what I can say pretty indisputably is that you're better than us," Mr. Obama said during a speech at a private event in Singapore, according to BBC News. The former president, who left office in January 2017, added that if women ran every nation in the world, there would be "significant improvements across the board on...

Where was Samantha Power when an unarmed Iranian young woman, Neda Soltan, was shot by Iranian troops, and bled to death in the street? As a member of Team Obama, does anyone recall Power saying anything critical of Iran? Does anyone recall Barack Hussein Obama commenting on that horrific assault on human rights? Oh wait, he did say something: “We’re still waiting to see how it plays itself out….” ... Everyone must hear about this. Every outlet in the world should publicize how the murderous Iranian regime is mowing down protesters. ... Wait until Samantha Power hears about how Samantha...

While promoting his book “Southern Exposure” about architectural design on the South Side, former Sun-Times architecture critic Lee Bey questioned both the design of the Obama Presidential Center and its proposed placement in Jackson Park. “The design of the library, I do not like. I think that that tower is foolishness. I think the design is foolishness,” Bey said. “It’s clad in limestone or granite; it’s shoved in this park. If it’s going to be in a park, I think I say in the book, it needs to be a more organic and alive building.” He further questioned the necessity...

In what one community leader called a “breakthrough,” the city’s law department will meet with aldermanic sponsors of a community benefits agreement for the area around the proposed Obama Presidential Center in order to iron out legal issues with their proposed ordinance. The city’s housing department agreed to facilitate the process at a meeting of community stakeholders Tuesday after members of the Obama CBA Coalition held a prayer vigil outside the meeting, said Alex Goldenberg, executive director of Southside Together Organizing for Power and a coalition leader. Goldenberg said he hopes legal guidance on the ordinance from city attorneys will...

**SNIP** Although none of the Democratic candidates explicitly rebuked Mr Obama's comments, Mr Sanders mounted the strongest defence of his policy platform. Answering questions on a forum aired by Univision , a Spanish-language TV network, he was asked whether Mr Obama was "right" to say voters didn't want systemic change. Mr Sanders, who describes himself as a democratic socialist and progressive, laughed and said: "Well, it depends on what you mean by tear down the system." "The agenda that we have is an agenda supported by the vast majority of working people," he said. "When I talk about raising the...

Why, in the words of a Sun-Times editorial, is it “hard to buy” the Trump administration rationale of “underused” to justify allowing businesses in the national parks when columnist Mary Mitchell has characterized Chicago’s Jackson Park as “underused” to justify construction there? Why object to the Trump administration’s commercialization of the national parks but support the construction of the Obama Presidential Center in Jackson Park, turning it into a tourist attraction? Why acquiesce to the Obama Center’s entrance and parking fees? Plenty of ordinary people can’t afford it.

President Trump on Tuesday painted a rosy picture of the booming US economy, but slammed the Federal Reserve in a rousing speech to the Economic Club of New York. “Today, I am proud to stand before you as president of the United States to report that we have delivered on our promises and exceeded our expectations by a very wide margin. We have ended the war on American workers, we have stopped the assault on American industry, and we have launched an economic boom the likes of which we have never seen before,” the president said at a luncheon at...

Attorney General Bill Barr first proved his value to President Trump by pre-spinning the Mueller report to falsely “exonerate” his White House patron of collusion and obstruction. Weeks after, calling for a review of the Russia probe’s origins, Trump gave Barr broad powers to declassify intelligence documents and question various members of the intelligence community, powers Barr proceeded to run with. Last week the errand boy delivered his biggest favor yet: That Justice Department review reportedly blossomed into a full-on criminal probe; targets for questioning may include former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and ex-CIA director John Brennan, both...

Lately, there has been much attention paid to the topic of climate change, and what we are doing about it. We can start by taking a stand to save Jackson Park. **SNIP** There are locations directly across the street on Stony Island. There are properties owned by the University of Chicago near Washington Park. These properties are outside of the parks themselves, and would both enlarge as well as bring businesses into the community. Parks like Jackson and Washington provide much-needed contact with nature and many benefits to the public, including trees, which are the lungs of a city.

More Huawei defiance was aimed at U.S. President Trump on Sunday, but this time it was coming from much closer to home. Brad Smith, the President and Chief Legal Officer of America’s own Microsoft has criticized his government’s treatment of the Chinese tech giant—suggesting that the company’s U.S. supply chain restrictions should be revisited. In an interview, Smith suggests that the action taken against Huawei should be revisited, ensuring that anything done has a “sound basis in fact, logic, and the rule of law.” He has seen this first-hand, when Microsoft has itself engaged with the U.S. bodies enforcing the...

Democratic pollster and political consultant Doug Schoen took the stand at former Obama White House counsel Greg Craig’s trial Friday, telling jurors how he enlisted Craig in the Ukraine-related project that led to the veteran Washington lawyer facing a felony charge of trying to mislead Justice Department officials. **SNIP** Craig’s revered status in the Washington legal community is a key part of both the prosecution and the defense at his trial for allegedly trying to obscure his role when the Justice Department began looking into the report seven years ago. Defense lawyers contend such an effort would be entirely out...

Warren, Harris stand with activists against Obama officials Democratic presidential candidates continue to throw shade on the legacy of former President Barack Obama. They rarely criticize him by name, but many of the 2020 hopefuls have implicitly attacked Obama's record on health care, immigration, and climate change, among other issues. The latest example of implied criticism, courtesy of two prominent contenders, focuses on the Obama administration's investigation into the controversial police-involved shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., in 2014. Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass) and Kamala Harris (D., Calif.) marked the five-year anniversary of Brown's death on Twitter...