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Posts Tagged ‘Democratic Member’

Wow: GOP Congressman Issa Set to Call for Special Prosecutor to Investigate Obama Administration

Thursday, March 25th, 2010

House Congressman Darell Issa (R-CA) Is Prepared to Call for the Appointment of a Special Prosecutor To Investigate White House Promise of Job for House Member Joe Sestak (D-PA) In Exchange For Ending His Bid to Defeat Democratic Incumbent Senator Arlen Spector (D-PA)

In a story that could snowball into a major national issue overnight, House GOP Member Darrell Issa (R-CA) is now prepared to call for the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate House Democratic Member Joe Sestak (D-PA) claim that someone in the White House offered Sestak a job (reportedly Secretary of the Navy) in exchange for Sestak abandoning his quest to unseat incumbent Democratic Senator Arlen Spector (D-PA):

Rep. Darrell Issa, the top Republican on the House Oversight committee, told CBS News Wednesday that he will call for a special prosecutor to investigate the White House if it does not address Rep. Joe Sestak’s claim that he was offered a federal job in exchange for dropping out of the Pennsylvania Senate primary.

“If the public doesn’t receive a satisfactory answer, the next step would be to call for a special prosecutor, which is well within the statute,” Issa (pictured) told Hotsheet.

The California Republican has been pushing for the White House to provide details of conversations between Sestak and administration officials in the wake of Sestak’s comment during a radio interview last month that he was offered a high-ranking administration job in exchange for dropping his primary challenge against Sen. Arlen Specter.

Asked if that job was secretary of the Navy, Sestak declined to comment. His press secretary told CBS News that the lawmaker stands by his original statement that he was offered the job in exchange for an administration post. Sestak did not drop out of the race.

White House Spokesman Robert Gibbs Has Stonewalled for Months Regarding Questions About Possible Criminal Conduct by White House Officials in Offering Joe Sestak a job in exchange for dropping out of the race against Senator Arlen Specter

As noted above, Sestak is sticking by his claim that the White House made the possibly illegal offer, despite substantial White House pressure to back off. Here’s the blow by blow from CBS News regarding the White House response to Seskak’s claim of the job offer, which, if true, may amount to a federal crime under bribery statutes and possibly the Hatch Act:

On March 10th, Issa sent a letter to White House lawyer Robert Bauer asking for details about communications between Sestak and the White House. In the letter, he pointed to statutes he said could have been violated if Sestak was offered a quid pro quo arrangement in which he would be given an administration job in exchange for leaving the race.

Issa said the move may have violated anti-bribery provisions of the federal criminal code as well as prohibitions on government officials interfering in elections and using federal jobs for a political purpose. Violation of each provision is punishable by up to one year in jail.

The White House did not respond to Issa’s letter by its March 18 deadline. Reporters have asked White House press secretary Robert Gibbs about the inquiry on six occasions.

On February 23rd, Gibbs said he had not looked into the matter. On March 1st, he said he had not made any progress on it. On March 9th, he said he did not have an update with him. On March 11th, he said he did not have anything additional on the matter. On March 12th, he said he did not have any more information on it.

On March 16th, Gibbs finally addressed the situation.

“Look, I’ve talked to several people in the White House; I’ve talked to people that have talked to others in the White House,” he said. “I’m told that whatever conversations have been had are not problematic.”

The Controversy Over the Allegedly Illegal Joe Sestak Job Offer Has Led Some to Wonder "What Did President Obama Know, And When Did he Know it?

Gibbs and the rest of the White House obviously do not want to disclose all relevant information regarding when the offer was made to Sestak, what the Obama Administration’s version of the terms offered were, and, of course, what President Obama knew and when he knew it. Issa has now sent two letters to the White House on the subject, and Issa yesterday stood by his claim of a White House cover up and demanding full disclosure by April 5th:

In an interview Wednesday, Issa stood by the notion that the White House is engaged in a cover up.

“I believe not answering our questions when in fact they have asked and gotten them answered” meets the standard for a cover up, he said. He compared the Obama White House to that of former President Richard Nixon and said it was not living up to its promises of transparency.

“Democrats, when they were not in the White House, had real objections to that idea of, ‘whatever I want to do is OK,'” he said, referencing objections to Bush administration policy. “The public has a right to know who asked what, when. A congressman has made an allegation that is likely a felony.”

Issa said that if he doesn’t receive “satisfactory answers” to his letter by its April 5th deadline, “then the next step would be to call for a special prosecutor to investigate.”

He said it is now “a lot easier” for the White House to respond because Gibbs “has the raw information that we asked for.” Asked if he expected his call for a special prosecutor to be answered, Issa said, “I’m a practicing Christian, I have always believed in the redemption of souls.” He said that if the issue generates enough publicity Democrats may feel forced to appoint a prosecutor out of “the fear of the voters.”

Issa said that while backroom dealing is not uncommon in politics, an explicit quid pro quo arrangement crosses the line, and that there is no way to know exactly what happened until either Sestak or the White House provides details. Asked why he was taking up the fight, he pointed to efforts by Democrats on the House Oversight committee to examine Bush administration e-mails and the Valerie Plame matter and said he had the right to look into any potential violation of the Hatch Act.

For a President and White House that has made repeated claims to be the most transparent Administration in history, the facts of the Sestak job offer stonewalling are quite jarring. The Obama Adminisration should wise up to the fact (as proven by the Nixon and Clinton Administrations) that it is not the crime, but the cover up that is most dangerous to the long term political stability of Obama Administration. Americans deserve full disclosure of all information the White House has about Sestak’s claim of an improper job offer, and most importantly, a full disclosure of what top White House officials and President Obama himself knew, and when they knew it.

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Senior Democrat Dingell: Obamacare Prepping “to Control the People” by 2014

Wednesday, March 24th, 2010

Senior Democratic House Democrat John Dingell, seen here with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Former President Bill Clinton, Has Stirred Controversy with his comment that Obamacare will "control the people" by 2014

Senior Democratic House Congressman John Dingell (D-MI) made some incredible admissions on WJR 760AM, a local Michigan station, on Tuesday morning in response to a question from local radio host Paul W. Smith.   Smith asked, starting at about the 6:00 point on the tape, if the leftist rhetoric is correct that tens of thousands of Americans die per year because of a lack of health insurance, “are we are ready to let 72,000 more people die” between now and the implementation of Obamacare in 2014.  Dingell then shockingly responded as follows:

“We’re not ready to be doing it.  But let me remind you, this has been going on for years. We are bringing it to a halt. The harsh fact of the matter is when you’re going to pass legislation that will cover 300 [million] American people in different ways it takes a long time to do the necessary administrative steps that have to be taken to put the legislation together to control the people.”

Basically Dingell is saying there is so much to do to prepare the massive new federal health care system that the Democrats are “not ready to be doing it” now and four years are needed to prepare to launch the new system by 2014. Indeed, Dingell explicitly states that the Democrats need the next four years to prepare the “necessary administrative steps” to bring Obamacare online “to control the people” of America. Such commentary by such a senior Democratic insider is truly discomforting to centrists and independents, as well as some ideologues on both sides.

Further, it is quite revealing to hear the senior Democratic member of Congress, someone who was a featured speaker at the Democratic House leadership press conference on Sunday night after the historic passage of Obamacare by a 219-212 margin, make these admissions as GOP critics have been condemned harshly by the establishment media and many Democratic politicians for making claims similar (if not less sweeping ) to what Dingell admits here. Dingell’s frank admissions may spur another round of political acrimony between the Democrats and Republicans regarding the “big government” aspects of the Obamacare legislation and the plans for implementation as the Senate reconciliation debate begins.

Dingell then goes on to condemn the GOP just after the quote above for “not helping“, “carping and delaying” and “contributing nothing to this.” Perhaps the GOP is happy to have nothing to do with the wacky Obamacare scheme, as described by Dingell, to “control the people” after four years of preparing the “necessary administrative steps”. Considering the legislation is now the law of the land, and the “necessary administrative steps” referred to by Dingell are unknown outside of the close-knit Democratic power structure, Americans now need full disclosure of what exactly the Democrats have planned “to control the people” via the federal government’s newly minted comprehensive health care reform law.

Dingell's Comments Regarding Obamacare's Goal to "Control the People" by 2014 Have Invoked Comparisons to the World Envisioned by George Orwell in his classic book, "1984"

Indeed, Dingell is part of a small group of Democratic politicians that are the insiders as to the true intent of the massive 2407 page long bill, receiving one of President Obama’s 20 signing pens he used to sign Obamacare today and further described by Obama-worshipping Newsweek as the biblical figure Aaron, who was the brother of Moses (Obama’s role as cast by Newsweek) and who played a critical role to get to the “promised land” of nationalized health care:

If Obama is the Moses of the new health-care law, Dingell is the Aaron—except that, unlike Aaron, he’s happily alive to reach the (incremental) promised land. “There is a certain satisfaction,” said Dingell as he kept an eye on the TV.

Dingell’s own father was a New Deal Democratic congressman and champion of a New Deal–style national health-care system, a bill he first introduced in 1943. When Dingell took over the seat from his late father in 1955, the old man’s bill was in the hopper—but never voted on. The son introduced a similar bill every year, starting in 1957. Every year, including this year. The new Obamacare law is far different from—and short of—that government-run New Deal vision.

But it’s fair to say that Obama and the Dems wouldn’t be where they are today (for good or ill, depending on your politics) had it not been for the efforts of Dingell over the years. In his youth and then heyday as a committee chairman and party leader, he helped pass Medicare in 1965—Nancy Pelosi used his ceremonial gavel on Sunday night—and every other expansion of health-care law and legislation.

Further, Dingell played a key part in pushing the winning block of anti-abortion swing votes, led by Bart Stupak (D-MI), to vote for Obamacare:


“Mr. Dingell had a piece of me (Saturday) for quite some time,” Stupak said.

Stupak said the dean of the House of Representatives was chief among a group of Democratic leaders who put pressure on him to reach a deal with the White House so he would switch to a “yea” vote on the bill.

Once it passed, Dingell’s Democratic colleagues acknowledged his long push for an overhaul of the nation’s health care with a standing ovation Sunday night.

Dingell called the final outcome “a long stride forward” in achieving his career-long goal of national health care coverage.

“I’m very, very happy,” said the beaming 83-year-old Dearborn Democrat, who got to bed well after 1 a.m. Monday but was up early to do his first TV interview at 6:45 a.m. A flood of TV, radio and newspaper interviews followed, underscoring how much credit he is given for helping the Democrats score the legislative victory.

Considering Dingell’s critical role in drafting and obtaining passage of Obamacare, as described by Newsweek and others, and the insider knowledge he must therefore hold regarding the “necessary administrative steps” planned by the Democrats to ramp up Obamacare so as “to control the people” starting in 2014, one can only hope that the establishment media awakens from its celebratory stupor and does a serious investigation as to what exactly the Democrats have planned for this country between now and 2014 so that the American people are fully informed and able to make appropriate decisions in November 2010 and 2012 at the ballot box. Should the Dingell interview end up disappearing from WJR 760AM, a copy can be found here on this site.

UPDATE: Ed at Hotair links over and wonders if Dingell’s crazy statements about Obamacare being designed to “control the people is a “Freudian” slip.

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