Category — News

Politico: “Attorney General Michael Mukasey collapsed Thursday night while giving a speech to the Federalist Society in Washington, according to three senior administration officials.” [Read More]  [Video]

DOJ Statement:

“The Attorney General is conscious, conversant and alert. His vital statistics are strong and he is in good spirits. He is receiving excellent care and appreciates all of the good wishes and prayers he has received. The doctors will keep him overnight for further observations.”

From Breitbart:

WASHINGTON (AP) – President-elect Barack Obama is on track to nominate Hillary Rodham Clinton as secretary of state after Thanksgiving, an aide to his transition said Thursday.

One week after the former primary rivals met secretly to discuss the idea of Clinton becoming the nation’s top diplomat, the two sides were moving quickly toward making it a reality, barring any unforeseen problems. [Read More]

Politico: “Former President Bill Clinton authorized unprecedented disclosures about his finances to Obama’s vetting team, and transition lawyers are satisfied, officials said.”

From the American Thinker:

By Humberto Fontova

Among the throng of Clinton regime retreads recruited for the Obama administration we find Gregory Craig. Craig served as Obama’s advisor on Latin American during the campaign, and was appointed last week as chief White House Counsel.
The MSM has mentioned Craig’s role as Bill Clinton’s impeachment lawyer, but mostly has omitted mention of Craig’s role as chief facilitator for Fidel Castro’s shanghaiing of Elian Gonzalez.
Officially Craig served as attorney for Elian’s father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez. This humble man worked as a hotel doorman in a nation where the average monthly salary is $16. The high-rolling Gregory Craig worked for Washington D.C.’s elite firm, Williams & Connolly, one of America’s highest-priced law firms.
Upon accepting the case, Gregory Craig had flown to Cuba for a meeting with Fidel Castro. Craig’s remuneration, we learned shortly after his return, came from a “voluntary fund” set up by the United Methodist Board of Church and Society and “administered” by the National Council of Churches. The same reporters and pundits, who routinely erupt with snide snorts midway through any statement by a Republican press secretary, reported this item with a straight face. [Read More...]

The California Supreme Court agreed today to hear legal challenges to Proposition 8, which protects traditional marriage as the only form that is “valid and recognized” in the state and won on Nov. 4th with 52% of the vote.

The court will hear three issues: (1) “Is Proposition 8 invalid because it constitutes a revision of, rather than an amendment to, the California Constitution?” (2) “Does Proposition 8 violate the separation of powers doctrine under the California Constitution?” (3) “If Proposition 8 is not unconstitutional, what is its effect, if any, on the marriages of same-sex couples performed before the adoption of Proposition 8?”

From Ed Whelan:

I don’t know what significance, if any, to assign to the court’s procedural step. The three dissenters from the May marriage decision joined the court’s order, so that would suggest that the order itself doesn’t signal any predisposition on the court’s part. Further, Justice Kennard, who joined the majority ruling in May, voted to deny the petitions without prejudice, so that would seem to suggest that she’s not eager to take the extraordinary action of invalidating Proposition 8. But all of this is reading tea leaves from afar.

Some very quick thoughts on the merits of the issues: On issue 1, Eugene Volokh and Stephen Bainbridge have explained why they believe Proposition 8 is an amendment, not a revision; Dale Carpenter finds the question a closer one.

I don’t see how issue 2 has any independent force: even if one were to assume that Proposition 8 somehow implicates separation of powers, how can a constitutional amendment violate the constitution (unless, say, the constitution itself specifies that its separation of powers is unamendable)?

On issue 3, I think that there’s a lot of confusion about prospectivity versus retroactivity. Proposition 8 states: “Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.” From the effective date of Proposition 8 forward, that rule ought to govern state actors prospectively, both as to same-sex marriages performed before its effective date and any purported to be performed after.

I make no predictions as to how the court will actually rule, as a court that can render the May marriage decision is capable of any sort of judicial malfeasance.

From Breitbart:

ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) – City and county workers across Minnesota began a laborious recount Wednesday of more than 2.9 million ballots in the tight U.S. Senate contest between incumbent Republican Norm Coleman and Democrat Al Franken.They have until Dec. 5 to complete the recount.

The Minnesota recount is required under state law because the votes cast for Coleman and Franken differed by less than one-half of 1 percent. Coleman’s 215-vote lead heading into the recount translated to 0.008 percent. [Read More]

From the LA Times:

Wow, has Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger bounced back quickly from the devastation of his good friend John McCain losing the presidential election to this Democrat Barack Obama fellow. (See video below.)

Today at a climate-change summit he’s sponsoring at the Beverly Hilton, where the climate never changes, California’s GOP chief executive, who’s tangled with the nation’s GOP chief executive over environmental issues, sounded downright giddy over the impending coronation of Obama into the White House.

“I’m excited to report,” Schwarzenegger told the session, “that in January all of this will change, because now there is a new administration coming in.”

Schwarzenegger played a videotaped greeting from the president-elect and said the two men were “in sync.” The Ticket has the video greeting below, showing Obama praising several governors’ environmental work, including the Republicans heading up California and Florida.

Our colleague Michael Rothfield has a full story over on L.A. Now.

Next time, lets vote for some real conservatives.

Mitt Romney in a New York Times op-ed yesterday:

IF General Motors, Ford and Chrysler get the bailout that their chief executives asked for yesterday, you can kiss the American automotive industry goodbye. It won’t go overnight, but its demise will be virtually guaranteed.

Without that bailout, Detroit will need to drastically restructure itself. With it, the automakers will stay the course — the suicidal course of declining market shares, insurmountable labor and retiree burdens, technology atrophy, product inferiority and never-ending job losses. Detroit needs a turnaround, not a check.

I love cars, American cars. I was born in Detroit, the son of an auto chief executive. In 1954, my dad, George Romney, was tapped to run American Motors when its president suddenly died. The company itself was on life support — banks were threatening to deal it a death blow. The stock collapsed. I watched Dad work to turn the company around — and years later at business school, they were still talking about it. From the lessons of that turnaround, and from my own experiences, I have several prescriptions for Detroit’s automakers. [Read more →]

Newsweek reports:

President-elect Obama has decided to tap Eric Holder as his attorney general, putting the veteran Washington lawyer in place to become the first African-American to head the Justice Department, according to two legal sources close to the presidential transition.

As a US Attorney, Holder chose not to prosecute the head of Hillary Clinton’s healthcare task force. The Obama campaign attacked Clinton for the secrecy surrounding the task force during the primaries… Eric Holder facilitated that secrecy.

He also completely missed the Mark Rich pardon. During the investigation, Holder commented,”I’m done. Public life’s over for me,  I had a moment in time. That moment has passed.” Holder continues, “If I had focused on this in a way that I could have, should have, the recommendation I would have given him would have been, ‘Don’t do this, Mr. President.”

Holder was also involved in kidnapping and sending an innocent refugee child to an oppressive, tyrannical regime. Holder even argued for the use of weapons in the Elian Gonzales seizure.

h/t Campaign Spot

From Human Events:

Three days after he announced his insurgent bid for House Republican Leader and two days before the vote by GOP lawmakers, Rep. Dan Lungren (R.-Cal.) got what he wanted most next to a victory on Wednesday: a debate before the House Republican Conference between himself and the man he is challenging, Ohio Rep. and present House Minority Leader John Boehner.

A spokesman for Lungren called last night and said that, after insisting rules did not permit such a debate, “Mr. Boehner called Mr. Lungren and has agreed to debate him before the Conference on Wednesday morning at 8:30, before the vote for Leader.”

[Read More]