Palin's husband refuses to testify...ignores subpeona!

• Palin's husband refuses to testify...ignores subpeona! - I scoff at your subpeona says Mr. Palin!
  • He was advised to do so by the attorney general's office... - sam
  • Again, I apologize, Moderator. - Bad Girl
    • Just keep it about the politics, not the posters. - Javabean
      • Point well taken! Thank you! (nm) - Good Girl
  • Correcting my spelling...should be subpoena (nm) - I scoff at your subpoena

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and conducts illegal PHYSICAL searches of not just suspected terrorists (i.e. any American who disagrees with his policies), but breaks into the homes of the ATTORNEYS for these suspects, as well.

If you have any fondness for the Constitution, this might chill your bones a bit.

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2006/03/17.html#a7564

President Has Issued 750 Statements That He May Revise or Disregard Measures.

WASHINGTON (June 27) -- The White House on Tuesday defended President Bush's prolific use of bill signing statements, saying There's this notion that the president is committing acts of civil disobedience, and he's not, said Bush's press secretary Tony Snow, speaking at the White House. It's important for the president at least to express reservations about the constitutionality of certain provisions.

Snow spoke as Senate Judiciary Committe Chairman Arlen Specter opened hearings on Bush's use of bill signing statements saying he reserves the right to revise, interpret or disregard a measure on national security and consitutional grounds. Such statements have accompanied some 750 statutes passed by Congress -- including a ban on the torture of detainees and the renewal of the Patriot Act.

There is a sense that the president has taken signing statements far beyond the customary purview, Specter, R-Pa., said.

It's a challenge to the plain language of the Constitution, he added. I'm interested to hear from the administration just what research they've done to lead them to the conclusion that they can cherry-pick.

A Justice Department lawyer defended Bush's statements.

Even if there is modest increase, let me just suggest that it be viewed in light of current events and Congress' response to those events, said Justice Department lawyer Michelle Boardman. The significance of legislation affecting national security has increased markedly since Sept. 11..

Congress has been more active, the president has been more active, she added. The separation of powers is working when we have this kind of dispute.

Specter's hearing is about more than the statements. He's been compiling a list of White House practices he bluntly says could amount to abuse of executive power -- from warrantless domestic wiretapping program to sending officials to hearings who refuse to answer lawmakers' questions.

But the session also concerns countering any influence Bush's signing statements may have on court decisions regarding the new laws. Courts can be expected to look to the legislature for intent, not the executive, said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas., a former state judge.

There's less here than meets the eye, Cornyn said. The president is entitled to express his opinion. It's the courts that determine what the law is.

But Specter and his allies maintain that Bush is doing an end-run around the veto process. In his presidency's sixth year, Bush has yet to issue a single veto that could be overridden with a two-thirds majority in each house.

The president is not required to (veto), Boardman said.

Of course he's not if he signs the bill, Specter snapped back.

Instead, Bush has issued hundreds of signing statements invoking his right to interpret or ignore laws on everything from whistleblower protections to how Congress oversees the Patriot Act.

It means that the administration does not feel bound to enforce many new laws which Congress has passed, said David Golove, a New York University law professor who specializes in executive power issues. This raises profound rule of law concerns. Do we have a functioning code of federal laws?

(Okay.  Everyone in Congress and the White House, empty your pockets.)

Fed Refuses to Disclose Recipients of $2 Trillion (Update1)

By Mark Pittman

Dec. 12 (Bloomberg) -- The Federal Reserve refused a request by Bloomberg News to disclose the recipients of more than $2 trillion of emergency loans from U.S. taxpayers and the assets the central bank is accepting as collateral.

Bloomberg filed suit Nov. 7 under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act requesting details about the terms of 11 Fed lending programs, most created during the deepest financial crisis since the Great Depression.

The Fed responded Dec. 8, saying it's allowed to withhold internal memos as well as information about trade secrets and commercial information. The institution confirmed that a records search found 231 pages of documents pertaining to some of the requests.

"If they told us what they held, we would know the potential losses that the government may take and that's what they don't want us to know," said Carlos Mendez, a senior managing director at New York-based ICP Capital LLC, which oversees $22 billion in assets.

The Fed stepped into a rescue role that was the original purpose of the Treasury's $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program. The central bank loans don't have the oversight safeguards that Congress imposed upon the TARP.

Total Fed lending exceeded $2 trillion for the first time Nov. 6. It rose by 138 percent, or $1.23 trillion, in the 12 weeks since Sept. 14, when central bank governors relaxed collateral standards to accept securities that weren't rated AAA.

'Been Bamboozled'

Congress is demanding more transparency from the Fed and Treasury on bailout, most recently during Dec. 10 hearings by the House Financial Services committee when Representative David Scott, a Georgia Democrat, said Americans had "been bamboozled."

Bloomberg News, a unit of New York-based Bloomberg LP, on May 21 asked the Fed to provide data on collateral posted from April 4 to May 20. The central bank said on June 19 that it needed until July 3 to search documents and determine whether it would make them public. Bloomberg didn't receive a formal response that would let it file an appeal within the legal time limit.

On Oct. 25, Bloomberg filed another request, expanding the range of when the collateral was posted. It filed suit Nov. 7.

In response to Bloomberg's request, the Fed said the U.S. is facing "an unprecedented crisis" in which "loss in confidence in and between financial institutions can occur with lightning speed and devastating effects."

Data Provider

The Fed supplied copies of three e-mails in response to a request that it disclose the identities of those supplying data on collateral as well as their contracts.

While the senders and recipients of the messages were revealed, the contents were erased except for two phrases identifying a vendor as "IDC." One of the e-mails' subject lines refers to "Interactive Data -- Auction Rate Security Advisory May 1, 2008."

Brian Willinsky, a spokesman for Bedford, Massachusetts- based Interactive Data Corp., a seller of fixed-income securities information, declined to comment.

"Notwithstanding calls for enhanced transparency, the Board must protect against the substantial, multiple harms that might result from disclosure," Jennifer J. Johnson, the secretary for the Fed's Board of Governors, said in a letter e-mailed to Bloomberg News.

'Dangerous Step'

"In its considered judgment and in view of current circumstances, it would be a dangerous step to release this otherwise confidential information," she wrote.

New York-based Citigroup Inc., which is shrinking its global workforce of 352,000 through asset sales and job cuts, is among the nine biggest banks receiving $125 billion in capital from the TARP since it was signed into law Oct. 3. More than 170 regional lenders are seeking an additional $74 billion.

Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said in September they would meet congressional demands for transparency in a $700 billion bailout of the banking system.

The Freedom of Information Act obliges federal agencies to make government documents available to the press and public. The Bloomberg lawsuit, filed in New York, doesn't seek money damages.

'Right to Know'

"There has to be something they can tell the public because we have a right to know what they are doing," said Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Arlington, Virginia-based Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.

"It would really be a shame if we have to find this out 10 years from now after some really nasty class-action suit and our financial system has completely collapsed," she said.

The Fed lent cash and government bonds to banks that handed over collateral including stocks and subprime and structured securities such as collateralized debt obligations, according to the Fed Web site.

Borrowers include the now-bankrupt Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., Citigroup and New York-based JPMorgan Chase & Co., the country's biggest bank by assets.

Banks oppose any release of information because that might signal weakness and spur short-selling or a run by depositors, Scott Talbott, senior vice president of government affairs for the Financial Services Roundtable, a Washington trade group, said in an interview last month.

'Complete Truth'

"Americans don't want to get blindsided anymore," Mendez said in an interview. "They don't want it sugarcoated or whitewashed. They want the complete truth. The truth is we can't take all the pain right now."

The Bloomberg lawsuit said the collateral lists "are central to understanding and assessing the government's response to the most cataclysmic financial crisis in America since the Great Depression."

In response, the Fed argued that the trade-secret exemption could be expanded to include potential harm to any of the central bank's customers, said Bruce Johnson, a lawyer at Davis Wright Tremaine LLP in Seattle. That expansion is not contained in the freedom-of-information law, Johnson said.

"I understand where they are coming from bureaucratically, but that means it's all the more necessary for taxpayers to know what exactly is going on because of all the money that is being hurled at the banking system," Johnson said.

The Bloomberg lawsuit is Bloomberg LP v. Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, 08-CV-9595, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).

To contact the reporters on this story: Mark Pittman in New York at mpittman@bloomberg.net;

Last Updated: December 12, 2008 11:35 EST

This again from the McClatchy news group, which is not conservative by any means:

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/65195.html

works for BP. Oil, you know.

employees would have said what was said to you, he would have fired them.....period. 

Especially with times right now, these salesmen need to wise up.  It isn't like it used to be.  Salesmen used to be able to sit at their desk and wait for the customers to come to them.  Now they actually have to work hard to get people in, get them interested in a vehicle, etc.  This economy is definitely going to weed out the bad salesmen because they won't be able to survive.

sky high health care is something that affects all of us.  My husband and I, retirees, for Medicare and medical supplement plus drug coverage pay right at $800 per month in premiums.  We know other retirees who pay more than that.  No one seems able to see that much of this health care cost is due to several things:   Used to be that doctors had private practive and hospitals were not for profit.  Is it any wonder that now that hospitals are for profit, they get greedier and greedier?

Everyone (and everyone doesn't necessasrily mean YOU) has their hand out for a handout.  People waiting for those Obama free money checks they think will feather their nest.  Well, I think they'd do well to keep their day job....or get one...because I don't think the free money is going to be forthcoming.

We need to go back to something called personal responsibility to start with.