#1
A federal court ruled Friday that President Obama’s regulation to protect small waterways from pollution cannot be enforced nationwide.
In a 2-1 ruling, the Cincinnati-based Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit delivered a stinging defeat to Obama’s most ambitious effort to keep streams and wetlands clean, saying it looks likely that the rule, dubbed “waters of the United States,” is illegal.
“We conclude that petitioners have demonstrated a substantial possibility of success on the merits of their claims,” the judges wrote in their decision, explaining that the Environmental Protection Agency’s new guidelines for determining whether water is subject to federal control — based mostly on the water’s distance and connection to larger water bodies — is “at odds” with a key Supreme Court ruling.
Probably make the announcement in Roseburg.
President Obama is seriously considering circumventing Congress with his executive authority and imposing new background-check requirements for buyers who purchase weapons from high-volume gun dealers. Under the proposed rule change, dealers who exceed a certain number of sales each year would be required to obtain a license from ATF and perform background checks on potential buyers.
As the president heads to Roseburg, Ore., on Friday to comfort the survivors and families of those killed in last week's mass shooting at Umpqua Community College, the political calculus around his most vexing domestic policy issue is shifting once again. Most vexing issue? Did I tellya this was the WaPo?
"We are hopeful we can find a way to do this," said one senior administration official, who noted that lawyers were still working through details to ensure that the rule could pass legal muster. "It's a lot more clear today than it was a year ago how to work this out." Why not make the announcement in gun-free Chicago, and combine it with the announcement of the release of 6,000 felons?
White House officials drafted the proposal in late 2013 to apply to those dealers who sell at least 50 guns annually, after Congress had rejected legislation that would have expanded background checks more broadly to private sellers. While the White House Office of Legal Counsel and then-Attorney General Holder initially concluded the regulation was legally defensible, according to several individuals involved in the discussions, some federal lawyers remained concerned that setting an arbitrary numerical threshold could leave the rule vulnerable to a challenge. Arbitrary smarbitary! People are dying! My people.
ATF officials, moreover, objected that it would be hard to enforce without a huge increase in budget and that it was unclear how many sellers would be affected by the change. [deep breath] Whew! There ya go. Now no one else needs to hold their nose and cover their eyes to go to the WaPo site.
Posted by: Bobby ||
10/09/2015 07:59 ||
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#1
Under the proposed rule change, dealers who exceed a certain number of sales each year would be required to obtain a license from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and perform background checks on potential buyers.
This all happens already. Gun dealers have to go through a stringent process and background checks to obtain dealer's licenses. They are required to perform background checks on buyers.
Unless, of course, you work for the government and are a part of some illegal boondoggle like "Fast and Furious."
Posted by: Bobby ||
10/09/2015 12:18 Comments ||
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#5
The game is two-fold: first, of course, to accomplish the stated goal, whatever it might be. But second, and actually more valuable, to keep angering the conservatives so they can point at them as nothing more than angry simpletons that reasonable, thoughtful, intelligent people should ignore.
#6
Misuse the executive orders so the public thinks poorly of the tactic so that the next Administration (likely Republican) can't use the tactic often or even openly.
Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump said Thursday that Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl should have been executed for leaving his post in Afghanistan.
"We're tired of Sgt. Bergdahl, who's a traitor, a no-good traitor, who should have been executed," Trump said to cheers at a rowdy rally inside a packed Las Vegas theater at the casino-hotel Treasure Island.
"Thirty years ago," Trump added, "he would have been shot."
It was practically an aside in a litany of complaints at the end of a more than hour long, free-wheeling speech that included a large dose of media-bashing and a claim that he was behind Rep. Kevin McCarthy's decision to drop out of the race for House speaker.
Bergdahl was charged in March with desertion and misbehavior before the enemy. The Army conducted a hearing on his case earlier this month. His attorney, Eugene Fidell, said in a statement that Trump "has become a broken record on this subject."
"If he took the time to study what actually emerged at the preliminary hearing he would be singing a different tune," Fidell said.
Trump has, in the past, pantomimed a firing squad, Fidell said.
Bergdahl has been accused of leaving his post in southeastern Afghanistan in June 2009. He was held prisoner by the Taliban for five years, then exchanged for five Taliban commanders being held by the U.S. Trump has long railed against the deal.
The speech was punctuated by shouts of support from the crowd that filled about 1,620 seats in the Las Vegas Strip casino theater normally reserved for acrobatic Cirque du Soleil productions.
At one point, in a moment that appeared to be impromptu, Trump brought a supporter in the audience to the stage who declared she is Hispanic and voting for Trump. Myriam Witcher, 35, of Las Vegas, waved an issue of People magazine with Trump and his family on the cover, asking Trump to sign it.
Afterward, the Colombian immigrant, who noted she came to the United States legally, called Trump her "No. 1 person in the United States."
His speech spanned a spider-web of topics that included his disdain for media coverage, many of his fellow Republican presidential candidates and current political leadership as well as Thursday's news that McCarthy had dropped out of a race for House speaker.
"You know, Kevin McCarthy is out. You know that, right?" he asked the crowd. "And they're giving me a lot of credit for that because I said you really need somebody very, very tough and very smart. ... We need smart, we need tough, we need the whole package."
Trump didn't identify who had given him credit for McCarthy dropping out.
[Al Ahram] The Republican frontrunner to be the new speaker of the US House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy ...the GOP house majority whip. He replaces Eric Cantor, who got whupped because his politix are like Kevin McCarthy's... , abruptly dropped out of the race Thursday, politicians said, amid a revolt by the party's hard-line conservatives.
McCarthy, currently the party's number two in the House behind outgoing speaker John It is not pronounced 'Boner!' Boehner ... the occasionally weepy leader of House Republicans... , had appeared to have the backing of most of the chamber's Republican politicians for the top job in Congress.
"He said he didn't think he is the right man to be the face of the party," congressman Walter Jones told news hounds as he left a party conference meeting where Republicans were expected to nominate McCarthy.
House leadership announced a postponement of the party election for speaker until a later date.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/09/2015 00:00 ||
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So Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) 80% sent a formal letter to Elijah Cummings over the latter's intolerably and pettily partisan hackwork with regard to the Benghazi Committee (@RBPundit categorizes it as 'BEASTMODE,' which is highly accurate). There are a lot of interesting things in this letter. A lot of brutal commentary on Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) 16%' willingness to say one thing in private and another in public, for example. But I found this part about Sidney Blumenthal to be highly entertaining reading:
Beyond the pure politics that were occurring at this time, perhaps more disturbing it that at the same time [Sidney] Blumenthal was pushing Secretary Clinton to war in Libya, he was privately pushing a business interest of his own in Libya that stood to profit from contracts with the new Libyan government -- a government that would exist only after a successful U.S. intervention in Libya that deposed Qaddafi. This business venture was one he shared with Tyler Drumheller and Cody Shearer, the authors of the information sent to Secretary Clinton. It is therefore unsurprising that somebody who knew so little about Libya would suddenly become so interested in Libya and push an old friend in a powerful place to action -- for personal profit.
While Blumenthal and Drumheller have both acknowledged a personal stake in the business venture, known as Osprey Global Solutions, they have downplayed their involvement to the Committee. New documents received by the Committee, however, indicate more extensive involvement than previously known.
As a reminder: Sidney Blumenthal was not some mere hanger-on to Secretary Clinton. He was supposed to become a formal adviser when Clinton became Secretary of State, only to be told no by the White House. Blumenthal still operated as a confidant afterward, only informally. The record shows that he was a constant presence in Hillary Clinton's utterly non-secure online discussion of Libya. He had influence over the decision making process. And a company that Sidney Blumenthal ran allegedly benefited from it.
Pay close attention to everybody -- on either side of the nominal aisle -- who sprints past that point. And pay even more close attention to anybody who attempts to change the subject from just how awful our foreign policy decision-making policy was, under Hillary Clinton. This is, in the end, about people dying. And not just Americans; Sidney Blumenthal allegedly profited off helping to start a civil war. The Democrats are focused on the absolute essentials in this situation: do the same, or you will lose. And you will have lost stupidly. We have no more time for stupid.
#1
The letter assume far too much. First, it addresses Cummings as "Honorable." He is anything but honorable. He is part of the problem of the permanent ruling class in Washington. Secondly, he doesn't serve the American public but he serves his party first and foremost.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
resident Obama is seriously considering circumventing Congress with his executive authority and imposing new background-check requirements for buyers who purchase weapons from high-volume gun dealers. Under the proposed rule change, dealers who exceed a certain number of sales each year would be required to obtain a license from ATF and perform background checks on potential buyers.
