President's attorneys file motion demanding birth, college records be withheld from public

(Compiler's note: This nation must simply come to the truth about this situation. Should the charges be true, every day it goes on, the bigger the Constitutional crisis for our nation. Must read.)

by Bob Unruh

A high-powered team of Los Angeles attorneys representing President Obama in his effort to keep his birth certificate, college

records and passport documents concealed from the public has suggested there should be "monetary sanctions" against a lawyer whose clients have brought a complaint alleging Obama doesn't qualify for the Oval Office under the Constitution's demand for a "natural born" citizen in that post.

The suggestion came in an exchange of e-mails and documents in a case brought by former presidential candidate Alan Keyes and others in California. The case originally sought to have the state's electors ordered to withhold their votes for Obama until his eligibility was established. Since his inauguration, it has been amended to seek a future requirement for a vetting process, in addition to the still-sought unveiling of Obama's records.

In the case, being handled largely by Gary Kreep of the U.S. Justice Foundation, he recently subpoenaed the records documenting the attendance by Obama, or possibly the student when he was known as Barry Soetero, from Occidental College.

The lawyer for the college, Stuart W. Rudnick of Musick, Peeler & Garrett, urgently contacted Fredric D. Woocher of Strumwasser & Woocher.

"This firm is counsel to Occidental College. The College is in receipt of the enclosed subpoena that seeks certain information concerning President-Elect Barack Obama," he wrote via fax. "Inasmuch as the subpoena appears to be valid on its face, the College will have no alternative but to comply with the subpoena absent a court order instructing otherwise."

Within hours, Woocher contacted Kreep regarding the issue, telling him, "It will likely not surprise you to hear that President-elect Obama opposes the production of the requested records.

"In order to avoid the needless expense of our bringing and litigating a Motion to Quash the subpoena, I am writing to ask whether you would be willing to agree voluntarily to cancel or withdraw the subpoena…"

Woocher warned, "Please be advised, in particular, that in the event we are forced to file a motion to quash and we prevail in that motion, we will seek the full measure of monetary sanctions provided for in the Code of Civil Procedures."

With Kreep out of town for a business trip, he did not respond immediately and the motion eventually was filed. It states that the records, which could reveal on what name Obama attended classes at Occidental and whether he attended on scholarship money intended for foreign students, "are of no relevance to this moot litigation."

It also claims the petitioners failed to serve the subpoena properly.

Where's the proof Barack Obama was born in the U.S. or that he fulfills the "natural-born American" clause in the Constitution? If you still want to see it, join more than 235,000 others and sign up now!

"The subpoena directed to Occidental College should therefore be quashed. Alternatively, this court should issue an order directing that the deposition of the custodian of records of Occidental College not take place," the firm working on Obama's behalf stated.

"The central issue in this lawsuit … is whether any Respondent had a legal duty to demand proof of natural born citizenship from Democratic Party's nominee," the motion said. "None of the documents sought by petitioners could possibly assist in answering this question."

The motion then cited a precedent from a case involving a "former law firm client who brought malpractice action against firm claiming unconscionable rates was not entitled to discovery regarding amount paid by law firm to contract staff attorney because such information is irrelevant to unconscionability claim."

The case, with Keyes, Wiley S. Drake and Markham Robinson as plaintiffs, names California Secretary of State Debra Bowen, Barack Hussein Obama, Joe Biden and the state's electors as defendants.

"OBAMA has been inaugurated as the president of the United States. However, to properly assume such office, OBAMA must meet the qualifications specified in Article II, Section 1 of the United States Constitution for the Office of the President of the United States, which includes that he must be a 'natural born' citizen," the amended complaint states.

"OBAMA has failed to demonstrate that he is a 'natural born' citizen. There have been a number of legal challenges before various state and federal courts regarding aspects of non-, lost, or dual citizenship concerning OBAMA. Those challenges, in and of themselves, demonstrate Petitioners' argument that reasonable doubt exists as to his eligibility to serve as President of the United States.

"To avert a constitutional crisis which would certainly accrue after such an election through laborious legal challenges, this writ seeks to require SOS (Secretary of State) to verify the eligibility of a Presidential candidate prior to the candidate appearing on the California ballot. It is incumbent on the candidates to present the necessary documentation confirming his or her eligibility, but, to date, for this past election, OBAMA has failed to do so," the complaint continues.

"An unprecedented and looming constitutional crisis awaits if a President elected by the popular vote and the electoral vote does not constitutionally qualify to serve in that capacity," the case said. "In addition, if OBAMA is not a 'natural born' citizen and not eligible for presidency, OBAMA will be subject to the criminal provisions of the California Elections Code, stating, 'Any person who files or submits for filing a nomination paper or declaration of candidacy knowing that it, or any part of it, has been made falsely, is punishable by a fine not exceeding one thousand dollars ($1,000) or by imprisonment in the state prison for 16 months or two or three years or by both the fine and imprisonment,'" the complaint states.

WND has reported on multiple legal challenges that have alleged Obama does not meet the "natural born citizen" clause of the U.S. Constitution, Article 2, Section 1, which reads, "No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President."

Some claim he was not born in Hawaii, as he insists, but in Kenya. Obama's American mother, the suits contend, was too young at the time of his birth to confer American citizenship to her son under the law at the time.

Other challenges have focused on Obama's citizenship through his father, a Kenyan subject to the jurisdiction of the United Kingdom at the time of his birth, thus making him a dual citizen. The cases contend the framers of the Constitution excluded dual citizens from qualifying as natural born.

Several details of Obama's past have added twists to the question of his eligibility and citizenship, including his family's move to Indonesia when he was a child and on what nation's passport he traveled to Pakistan in the '80s, as well as conflicting reports from Obama's family about his place of birth.

In just the last few days, WND has reported on a developing lawsuit by a team of state lawmakers as well as military officers, both of whom would be bound to follow orders from the president and would need to know whether the orders were legitimate.

WND also reported this week on a separate case that accuses Congress of failing to investigate President Obama's birthplace before approving the Electoral College vote giving him the presidency, after going through that very investigative process for GOP candidate Sen. John McCain.

Several of the cases – including those brought by Orly Taitz, Cort Wrotnowski, Leo Donofrio and Philip Berg, already have been discussed in conference at the U.S. Supreme Court, which has failed to have a hearing on any of the merits involved.

While Obama's campaign team called the cases garbage, here is a partial listing and status update for several of the cases:

• Philip J. Berg, a Pennsylvania Democrat, demanded that the courts verify Obama's original birth certificate and other documents proving his American citizenship. Berg's latest appeal, requesting an injunction to stop the Electoral College from selecting the 44th president, was denied.
  


• Leo Donofrio of New Jersey filed a lawsuit claiming Obama's dual citizenship disqualified him from serving as president. His case was considered in conference by the U.S. Supreme Court but denied a full hearing.


• Cort Wrotnowski filed suit against Connecticut's secretary of state, making a similar argument to Donofrio. His case was considered in conference by the U.S. Supreme Court, but was denied a full hearing.


• Former presidential candidate Alan Keyes headlines a list of people filing a suit in California, in a case handled by the United States Justice Foundation, that asks the secretary of state to refuse to allow the state's 55 Electoral College votes to be cast in the 2008 presidential election until Obama verifies his eligibility to hold the office. The case is pending, and lawyers are seeking the public's support.


• Chicago attorney Andy Martin sought legal action requiring Hawaii Gov. Linda Lingle to release Obama's vital statistics record. The case was dismissed by Hawaii Circuit Court Judge Bert Ayabe.
  
  
• Lt. Col. Donald Sullivan sought a temporary restraining order to stop the Electoral College vote in North Carolina until Barack Obama's eligibility could be confirmed, alleging doubt about Obama's citizenship. His case was denied.
  
  
• In Ohio, David M. Neal sued to force the secretary of state to request documents from the Federal Elections Commission, the Democratic National Committee, the Ohio Democratic Party and Obama to show the presidential candidate was born in Hawaii. The case was denied.
  
  
• In Washington state, Steven Marquis sued the secretary of state seeking a determination on Obama's citizenship. The case was denied.
  
  
• In Georgia, Rev. Tom Terry asked the state Supreme Court to authenticate Obama's birth certificate. His request for an injunction against Georgia's secretary of state was denied by Georgia Superior Court Judge Jerry W. Baxter.


• California attorney Orly Taitz has brought a case, Lightfoot vs. Bowen, on behalf of Gail Lightfoot, the vice presidential candidate on the ballot with Ron Paul, four electors and two registered voters.

In addition, other cases cited on the RightSideofLife blog as raising questions about Obama's eligibility include:

• In Texas, Darrel Hunter vs. Obama later was dismissed.
  
  
• In Ohio, Gordon Stamper vs. U.S. later was dismissed.
  
  
• In Texas, Brockhausen vs. Andrade.
  
  
• In Washington, L. Charles vs. Obama.
  
  
• In Hawaii, Keyes vs. Lingle, dismissed.

WND senior reporter Jerome Corsi had gone to both Kenya and Hawaii prior to the election to investigate issues surrounding Obama's birth. But his research and discoveries only raised more questions.

The governor's office in Hawaii said there is a valid certificate but rejected requests for access and left ambiguous its origin: Does the certificate on file with the Department of Health indicate a Hawaii birth or was it generated after the Obama family registered a Kenyan birth in Hawaii, which the state's procedures allowed at the time?

Related offers:

Sign the petition

Get "The Audacity of Deceit," and learn about the looming hostile attack on Judeo-Christian values and freedoms Americans hold dear

Will Obama bring the end of prosperity? How higher taxes will doom the economy – if we let it happen

Look who's seething over anti-Nazi warning! Comparisons between Nazi leader, Obama draws strong reaction

Whistleblower magazine's "THE SECRET LIFE OF BARACK OBAMA"

---

Previous stories:

State lawmakers: Prove you're president, Mr. Obama

Congress sued to remove prez from White House

More challenges fail in Supreme Court

Supreme Court refuses 2nd challenge to eligibility

Status report: The eligibility issue

Supremes turn down request to stop Electoral vote

Join exploding demand for citizenship documentation

Electors challenged to investigate birth dispute

Last few hours to FedEx Electoral College voters

Supremes turn down request to stop Electoral vote

Eligibility question? FedEx Electoral College members

Not even Supreme Court can kill citizenship dispute

Supreme Court denies citizenship challenge

More than 60,000 letters sent to U.S. Supreme Court

Petition to see the birth certificate

Will Supremes review citizenship arguments?

Imaging guru: 'Certification' of birth time, location is fake

Chasm dividing Americans over birth certificate widens

WND launches new forum on Obama's eligibility

Supremes to review citizenship arguments

'Constitutional crisis' looming over Obama's birth location

Obama camp: Lawsuits by citizens are 'garbage'

Will Supreme Court have say in presidency?

Obama's outrageous oversight

(Compiler's note: Must read --- yes, we got change ... and we can see from this article the one of the paths it will take.)

from editorial Washington Times

President Obama clearly didn't do his homework before ordering the suspension of military tribunals to try terrorist suspects. We have learned that even his own legal counsel admitted that Mr. Obama erred in discussing details about terrorism with families of victims last week, and that the administration was ignorant of a key point that terrorists exploit to their advantage. In his rush to fulfill a campaign promise to his more fervid anti-war supporters, the president's legal oversights risk the disclosure of some highly classified information to terrorists.

Debra Burlingame, sister of Charles Burlingame III, the pilot of American Airlines Flight 77 that was flown into the Pentagon on 9/11, was present at last Friday's White House meeting of families of terrorism victims. Her impression was that President Obama was saying the right words in general, but when it came to specifics he was uncertain, uninformed, and sometimes just plain mistaken. Ms. Burlingame is an attorney who has followed closely the legal aspects of the terrorism cases, and her detailed, probing questions were met with stammers, stares, and statements that betrayed an understanding of the law that was, she said, "flat out wrong."

Case in point: the president's knowledge of the role of the Classified Information Procedures Act or CIPA. This law governs the way in which classified information is used in trials. The Sixth Amendment guarantees defendants the right to confront their accusers and the evidence against them, but the government has an important interest in cases such as these in keeping sources and methods secret. Under CIPA rules, in cases where classified information is used, the government has the option of sharing the information with the defendant, or not using it.

The Bush administration sought to avoid this potential national security threat by resorting to other procedures in which 6th Amendment issues did not arise. But President Obama believes that the model for terrorism cases is the prosecution of the 1993 World Trade Center bombers. Of course a number of those plotters escaped justice (some were found later hiding in Saddam's Iraq, but that's another story). More important, because of the openness of that process, al Qaeda learned a great deal about how to do a much better job next time - and even the classified information from that trial was in Osama bin Laden's hands within weeks.

The terrorists have learned a great deal about conducting legal guerrilla war, using rules like CIPA to their advantage. Notice that more and more terrorists are dismissing their appointed lawyers and representing themselves. This gives them direct access to the classified documents that will be used in evidence against them. In this way they can learn about U.S. intelligence sources and methods - how they were targeted, what information was collected, and who may have been the traitors in their midst. Even if the names of sources are omitted, for example someone who was present at a key planning meeting, the terrorist defendant will know enough about the circumstances to be able to narrow it down. After all, the terrorist is familiar with every aspect of the events; he knows much more about them than the intelligence community.

The alternative to handing over the secrets is for the government to not use the evidence in question. That creates the incongruous situation in which the defense wants to maximize the amount of evidence that implicates them, and the prosecution wants to minimize it. (Our legal system was not designed to accommodate defendants who welcome being put to death.) According to Ms. Burlingame, Obama's answer to this conundrum was "there is no reason we have to give [the terrorists] everything." Evidently the former editor of the Harvard Law Review seems to think that one of his powers as president is personally to pick and choose which constitutional rights apply to terror defendants and which do not. That's the very thing they were criticizing President Bush for.

White House Counsel Greg Craig, often seen whispering in the president's ear during question periods, admitted later to Ms. Burlingame that the chief executive was getting the facts of the law wrong during the discussion with the families. Craig asked her if CIPA covers a case in which terrorists defend themselves, noting that "this is something we hadn't contemplated." If nothing else, this admission of ignorance is more evidence that the decision to rush ahead with closing Guantanamo and shutting down the military tribunals was ill-conceived, poorly planned, and may ultimately be injurious to our national security. The president may talk a good game about "swift, certain justice," but it is becoming clear that justice will not be swift, is highly uncertain, and in the end may not even be just.

Kidnapping Capital of the U.S.A. - Phoenix Arizona

Brian Ross and ABC News report what officials caution is now a dangerous and even deadly crime wave. Phoenix, Arizona has become the kidnapping capital of America, with more incidents than any other city in the world outside of Mexico City and over 370 cases last year alone. But local authorities say Washington, DC is too obsessed with al Qaeda terrorists to care about what is happening in their own backyard right now....

Kidnapping Capital of the U.S.A. - Phoenix Arizona

Brian Ross and ABC News report what officials caution is now a dangerous and even deadly crime wave. Phoenix, Arizona has become the kidnapping capital of America, with more incidents than any other city in the world outside of Mexico City and over 370 cases last year alone. But local authorities say Washington, DC is too obsessed with al Qaeda terrorists to care about what is happening in their own backyard right now....

Chinese Hackers Attack U.S. Computers, Thompson Says (Update1)

(Bloomberg) -- Chinese government and freelance hackers are the primary culprits behind as many as several hundred daily attacks against U.S. government, electric-utility and financial computer networks, a senior congressman said.

“Sophisticated hackers could really wreak havoc on our financial systems if they were successful,” House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson said in an interview. The threat is “primarily from China.”

While cyber plots to disrupt U.S. computer networks have been thwarted, significant vulnerabilities exist, said Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat.

Many of these problems will be detailed in a 60-day review the Obama administration on Feb. 9 said it would conduct on government cyber-security efforts, Thompson said. President Barack Obama also has said he would appoint a computer-security chief who will report directly to him, a move Thompson supports.

Currency trading is among the financial networks targeted by hackers, Thompson said. An attack would be particularly damaging in light of the financial system’s troubled state, he said.

He said electric utilities’ networks also have several points of weakness.

“We were provided alarming data on the vulnerability of our electrical grid in this country,” he said.

China’s Denial

Wang Baodong, a spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in the U.S., denied that the Chinese government was attacking U.S. computer systems.

“Allegations that the Chinese government is behind cyber attacks against the U.S. computer networks are totally unwarranted and misleading for the America public,” Wang said in an e-mailed statement.

Wang said the Chinese government is “cracking down” on computer hacking and other cyber crimes.

Thompson, during the interview, touched on topics ranging from immigration legislation to terrorism. He called a “cheap shot” former Vice President Dick Cheney’s assertion in an interview Feb. 3 that Obama’s policies make a terrorist attack more likely.

“There’s nothing that I’ve been briefed on in a classified setting that gives me any concern that what the vice president said is true,” he said. “It’s easy to say something is going to happen, so if it happens two years from now, you say, ‘I told you so.’”

Monitoring Threat

Thompson also said that U.S. authorities are monitoring about 20 Somali-American youths who disappeared from Minneapolis last year. The youths are suspected of traveling to Somalia and linking up with al-Shabab, a militant Islamic organization that the State Department considers a terrorist organization, according to Newsweek.

“We know who the suspects are, we pretty much have them under observation, and at this point nothing has risen to the level of bringing these people in,” Thompson said.

Al-Shahab is linked to al-Qaeda, and the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security investigated the threat of an attack by the group around the time of Obama’s inauguration last month.

Immigration Issues

On immigration, Thompson said it’s possible that Congress in the next two years will pass legislation overhauling U.S. immigration law, tightening border security and establishing a temporary worker program. The financial crisis has made it difficult for lawmakers to focus on the measure, and it isn’t the “hot button” that it was before last year’s elections, he said.

In the meantime, Thompson said, he is urging the administration to develop a comprehensive plan for securing U.S. borders against illegal aliens, including a decision on whether to continue building a 670-mile fence along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Thompson, who voted against building the fence, favors using a combination of Border Patrol agents, fencing, cameras, sensors and radar.

He has been critical of progress on the system, known as Secure Border Initiative Net, which has suffered delays because of technical glitches.

Senate support builds for 'Fairness Doctrine'

Harkin 'to squelch' 1st Amendment in favor of 'Chinese-style censorship'

FBI may shift counterterror agents to anti-fraud

(Compiler's note: Now that the global jihad is over ....)

By DEVLIN BARRETT

WASHINGTON – With thousands of fraud investigations under way, the FBI is considering shifting agents away from counterterrorism work to help sort through the wreckage of the financial meltdown.

FBI Deputy Director John Pistole told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday that the bureau may reassign some of the positions that were reallocated to anti-terrorism work after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Such a move would be a further sign of the government breaking with the Bush administration's priorities, which pledged to assign every available resource to averting another terrorist attack.

Pistole told Congress his investigators have 530 active corporate fraud investigations, and 38 of them involve some of the biggest names in corporate finance — cases directly related to the current crisis.

In addition, FBI investigators are tackling an even bigger mountain of mortgage fraud cases in which hundreds of millions of dollars may have been swindled from the system, he told lawmakers.

The FBI now has more than 1,800 open mortgage fraud investigations, more than double the number of such cases just two years ago.

There are so many mortgage fraud cases to investigate, he said, that the bureau is not focusing on individual purchasers, but industry professionals generating fraud schemes that could total as much as hundreds of millions of dollars.

"It is a matter of lawyers, brokers or real estate professionals that are systematically trying to defraud the system," Pistole said.

Agents have even seen some instances of organized crime getting involved in mortgage fraud, he said.

Also appearing before the committee was Neil Barofsky, the watchdog of the government's $700 billion Wall Street rescue package passed last year.

Senate Democrats are urging more spending to expand the ranks of the FBI's financial fraud investigators.

After the 2001 terror attacks, about 2,000 FBI agents were moved to counterterrorism work, and Pistole said they are considering moving some of them back to beef up anti-fraud efforts.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., urged the FBI and the Justice Department to put people who have committed mortgage fraud behind bars.

"Most people are honest," Leahy said. "The ones who are not honest in this field are creating economic havoc and I want to make sure that we're able to go after them.

"I want to see people prosecuted.... Frankly, I want to see them go to jail," he said.

Barofsky, who was appointed the inspector general of the ongoing financial bailout plan, suggested the best way to clean up mortgage fraud is to pursue licensed professionals in the industry, and make examples of them.

"They have the most to lose, they're the most likely to flip, and they make the best examples," said Barofsky, a former federal prosecutor in New York.

Cheney Attacks!

(Compiler's note: Read it, then you decide ....)

“Unhinged by his fears,” the former veep says outrageous things!....

UNBELIEVABLE!

(Compiler's note: Absolutely must read)

by Roy Beck

Thanks for all your hard work to create a different outcome, but I regretfully have to inform you that:

All protections for U.S. workers were stripped from the Stimulus Bill tonight. Illegal aliens can be hired at the same rate as usual.

House Speaker Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Reid and the Obama White House were absolutely certain about one thing for the House/Senate negotiating committee on the Stimulus Bill:

• There was to be no special restriction to keep illegal aliens from getting new jobs created by the bill at a cost of $250,000 to $500,000 each.

The Democratic leadership of our federal government made it clear that there has been no change from eight years of a Republican White House that let the Chamber of Commerce call the shots on immigration.

Pelosi, Reid and Obama gave the U.S. Chamber of Commerce exactly what it wanted -- freedom for unscruplous businesses to continue to hire illegal aliens at the same rate as in the past, and to use the hundreds of billions of Stimulus dollars to do it.

Pelosi, Reid and Obama also made sure that banks can continue to discriminate against Americans in favor of cheaper more compliant foreign workers.

The pro-illegal-alien Stimulus Bill will now go back to the Senate and House where it is expected to pass.

The only way this type of anti-American-worker, closed-door autocracy is going to be stopped is if all of you reading this do everything possible to spread this story so that all Americans know what happened. If you don't spread it, they won't know because the mainstream media thus far have blacked out the news.

Go to your Action Buffet corkboard and take all actions offered there.

Go to the NumbersUSA home page to read my full blog and our news stories about this incredible betrayal of the American worker.

Our Action Buffet Team will be putting up new action notes on your corkboards for several more hours tonight. If you read this before Thursday morning, know that not everything is posted yet.

THANKS,

Economic Stimulus Bill, all 1400 pages

Source: A friend

Our hard earned tax dollars at work! Partial list - see below.

Full text of the bill, (1400 pages) H.R. 1 at http://www.rules.house.gov/111/LegText/111_hr1_text.pdf

Here is a sampling: bailout

$44 million for construction, repair and improvements at US Department of Agriculture facilties

$209 million for work on deferred maintenance at Agricultural Research Service facilities

$245 million for maintaining and modernizing the IT system of the Farm Service Agency

$175 million to buy and restore floodplain easements for flood prevention

$50 million for "Watershed Rehabilitation"

$1.1 billion for rural community facilities direct loans

$2 billion for rural business and industry guaranteed loans

$2.7 billion for rural water and waste dispoal direct loans

$22.1 billion for rural housing insurance fund loans

$2.8 billion for loans to spur rural broadband

$150 million for emergency food assistance

$50 million for regional economic development commissions

$1 billion for "Periodic Censuses and Programs"

$350 million for State Broadband Data and Development Grants

$1.8 billion for Rural Broadband Deployment Grants

$1 billion for Rural Wireless Deployment Grants

$650 million for Digital-to-Analog Converter Box Program

$100 million for "Scientific and Technical Research and Services" at the National Institute of Standards And Technology

$30 million for necessary expenses of the "Hollings Manufacturing Extension Partnership"

$300 million for a competitive construction grant program for research science buildings

$400 million for "habitat restoration and mitigation activities" at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

$600 million for "accelerating satellite development and acquisition"

$140 million for "climate data modeling"

$3 billion for state and local law enforcement grants

$1 billion for "Community Oriented Policing Services"

$250 million for "accelerating the development of the tier 1 set of Earth science climate research missions recommended by the National Academies Decadal Survey."

$50 million for repairs to NASA facilities from storm damage

$300 million for "Major Research Insrumentation program" (science)

$200 million for "academic research facilities modernization"

$100 million for "Education and Human Resources"

$400 million for "Major Research Equipment and Facilities Construction"

$4.5 billion to make military facilities more energy efficient

$1.5 billion for Army Operation and Maintenance fund

$624 million for Navy Operation and Maintenance

$128 million for Marine Corps Operation and Maintenance

$1.23 billion for Air Force Operation and Maintenance

$454 million to "Defense Health Program"

$110 million for Army Reserve Operation and Maintenance

$62 million for Navy Reserve Operation and Maintenance

$45 million for Marine Corps Reserve Operation and Maintenance

$14 million for Air Force Reserve Operation and Maintenance

$302 million for National Guard Operation and Maintenance

$29 million for Air National Guard Operation and Maintenance

$350 million for military energy research and development programs

$2 billion for Army Corps of Engineers "Construction"

$250 million for "Mississippi River and Tributaries"

$2.2 billion for Army Corps "Operation and Maintenance"

$25 million for an Army Corps "Regulatory Program"

$126 million for Interior Department "water reclamation and reuse projects"

$80 million for "rural water projects"

$18.5 billion for "Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy" research in the Department of Energy. That money includes:

$2 billion for development of advanced batteries

$800 million of that is for biomass research and $400 million for geothermal technologies

$1 billion in grants to "institutional entities for energy sustainability and efficiency"

$6.2 billion for the Weatherization Assistance Program

$3.5 billion for Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grants

$3.4 billion for state energy programs

$200 million for expenses to implement energy independence programs

$300 million for expenses to implement Energy efficient appliance rebate programs including the Energy Star program

$400 million for expenses to implement Alternative Fuel Vehicle and Infrastructure Grants to States and Local Governments

$1 billion for expenses necessary for advanced battery manufacturing

$4.5 billion to modernize the nation's electricity grid

$1 billion for the Advanced Battery Loan Guarantee Program

$2.4 billion to demonstrate "carbon capture and sequestration technologies"

$400 million for the Advanced Research Projects Agency (Science)

$500 million for "Defense Environmental Cleanup"

$1 billion for construction and repair of border facilities and land ports of entry

$6 billion for energy efficiency projects on government buildings

$600 million to buy and lease government plug-in and alternative fuel vehicles

$426 million in small business loans

$100 million for "non-intrusive detection technology to be deployed at sea ports of entry

$150 million for repair and construction at land border ports of entry

$500 million for explosive detection systems for aviation security

$150 million for alteration or removal of obstructive bridges

$200 million for FEMA Emergency Food and Shelter program

$325 million for Interior Department road, bridge and trail repair projects

$300 million for road and bridge work in Wildlife Refuges and Fish Hatcheries

$1.7 billion for "critical deferred maintenance" in the National Park System

$200 million to revitalize the National Mall in Washington, D.C.

$100 million for National Park Service Centennial Challenge programs

$200 million for repair of U.S. Geological Survey facilities

$500 million for repair and replacement of schools, jails, roads, bridges, housing and more for Bureau of Indian Affairs

$800 million for Superfund programs

$200 million for leaking underground storage tank cleanup

$8.4 billion in "State and Tribal Assistance Grants"

$650 million in "Capital Improvement and Maintenance" at the Agriculture Dept.

$850 million for "Wildland Fire Management"

$550 million for Indian Health facilties

$150 million for deferred maintenance at the Smithsonian museums

$50 million in grants to fund "arts projects and activities which preserve jobs in the non-profit arts sector threatened by declines in philanthropic and other support during the current economic downturn" through the National Endowment for the Arts

$1.2 billion in grants to states for youth summer jobs programs and other activities

$1 billion for states in dislocated worker employment and training activities

$500 million for the dislocated workers assistance national reserve

$80 million for the enforcement of worker protection laws and regulations related to infrastructure and unemployment insurance investments

$300 million for "construction, rehabilitation and acquisition of Job Corps Centers"

$250 million for public health centers

$1 billion for renovation and repair of health centers

$600 million for nurse, physician and dentist training

$462 million for renovation work at the Centers for Disease Control

$1.5 billion for "National Center for Research Resources"

$500 million for "Buildlings and Facilties" at the National Institutes of Health in suburban Washington, D.C.

$700 million for "comparative effectiveness research" on prescription drugs

$1 billion for Low-Income Home Energy Assistance

$2 billion in Child Care and Development Block Grants for states

$1 billion for Head Start programs

$1.1 billion for Early Head Start programs

$100 million for Social Security research programs

$200 million for "Aging Services Programs"

$2 billion for "Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology"

$430 million for public health/social services emergency funds

$2.3 billion for the Centers for Disease Control for a variety of programs

$5.5 billion in targeted education grants

$5.5 billion in "education finance incentive grants"

$2 billion in "school improvement grants"

$13.6 billion for Individuals with Disabilities Education Act

$250 million for statewide education data systems

$14 billion for school modernization, renovation and repair

$160 million for AmeriCorps grants

$400 million for the construction and costs to establish a new "National Computer Center" for the Social Security Administration

$500 million to improve processing of disability and retirement claims

$920 million for Army housing and child development centers

$350 million for Navy and Marine Corps housing and child development centers

$280 million in Air Force housing and child development centers

$3.75 billion in military hospital and surgery center construction

$140 million in Army National Guard construction projects

$70 million in Air National Guard construction projects

$100 million in Army Reserve construction projects

$30 million in Navy Reserve construction projects

$60 million in Air Force Reserve construction projects

$950 million for VA Medical Facilities

$50 million for repairs for military cemeteries

$120 million for a backup information management facility for the State Department

$98 million for National Cybersecurity Initiative

$3 billion for "Grants-in-Aid for Airports"

$300 million for Indian Reservation roads

$300 million for Amtrak capital needs

$800 million for national railroad assets or infrastructure repairs, upgrades

$5.4 billion in federal transit grants

$2 billion in infrastructure development for subways and commuter railways

$5 billion for public housing capital

$1 billion in competitive housing grants

$2.5 billion for energy efficiency upgrades in public housing

$500 million in Native American Housing Block Grants

$4.1 billion to help communities deal with foreclosed homes

$1.5 billion in homeless prevention activities

$79 billion in education funds for states

Water Sector Develops First Voluntary Security Snapshot

by Mickey McCarter

Report serves as a model for other sectors of critical infrastructure to analyze security gaps

The water infrastructure sector's information sharing and analysis center (ISAC) became the first industry sector to release metrics on its security performance at the very end of last year, setting a standard for other industry councils to follow.

"Until now, sector-specific metrics only existed in concept," Vance Taylor, a consultant at Catalyst Partners LLC who served as director of security policy for the Water ISAC, told HSToday.us.

"By voluntarily, developing, defining, analyzing and reporting on our security posture, the water sector has proved the Department of Homeland Security's concept of the partnership model works," he added. "You can work through the partnership model to develop a set of metrics and that the sector would be capable and willing to measure its own security process under a voluntary framework. That's very significant."

The results of the report, titled "Water Sector Measures Analysis," indicate the water sector is rising to meet security challenges. Drinking water and wastewater utilities are incorporating security into their budgets, training personnel on security, actively seeking validated threat information, putting chemical security protocols and safeguards in place, and reviewing their emergency response plans, Taylor declared.

The results as a whole indicated that drinking water and wastewater utilities are making significant progress in awareness, preparedness and resiliency. Ninety percent of responding utilities have incorporated security into their budgets and training; more than 90 percent regularly review their emergency response plans; and more than 90 percent are seeking validated security threat information.

The report also reveals gaps in security measures within the water industry. For example, only 42 percent of utilities had developed business continuity plans. Only 34 percent of wastewater utilities surveyed have a crisis communications plan.

"If we look at those specific areas of business continuity and crisis communications, you can see this is clearly an area where we need to improve," Taylor stated. "But this should not fall onto the shoulders of utility owners and operators or their associations to pick up themselves. We must work as a group-the Water Security Division and the Department of Homeland Security [DHS]. We need to work together to find out how fast to deploy resources to utilities to help them strengthen these efforts."

DHS should allocate dedicated funding to water security projects, Taylor argued. The economic recovery package approved by the Senate Tuesday contains about $2 billion for drinking water infrastructure projects and $6 billion for wastewater infrastructure projects, but none of that money specifically targets security or resiliency, he noted.

But government and industry alike would benefit from a pool of money with allocations for security projects so that utilities are not forced to choose between upgrading infrastructure and meeting security goals. The Water Sector Measures Analysis report provides a list of where the gaps are, enabling DHS and the water sector to work together to close those gaps.

"Utilities need to be able to fail gracefully when an incident occurs and be able to respond, recover and get back online as quickly and as effectively as possible," Taylor asserted.

Taylor, who served as one of the authors of the report, stressed that the water industry completed this security snapshot voluntarily. While the sector was required to conduct vulnerability assessments, the water utilities were very proactive in developing metrics and measuring industry-wide efforts to meet security goals, making security a priority, Taylor argued.

As such, advocates for federal regulation should examine how much more effective voluntary frameworks would be with dedicated resources or funding. Any discussion of federal mandates should arise only after the 18 industry sector coordinating councils identified in the National Infrastructure Protection Plan fail to meet standards voluntarily with enough resources to achieve their goals, Taylor advocated.

"There are some that would like to make federal requirements for security," he said. "To those groups, I would say you must have a willing sector. Before we jump to regulate, let's dedicate some resources there and see how much further we can go with that. If this is a partnership, it needs to be a two-way street."

DHS meanwhile has benefited from a first-of-its-kind voluntary assessment from an industry sector-specific coordinating council, providing it with a model of how the other 17 sectors of critical infrastructure could achieve the same ends.

As such, the federal government can capitalize on the diligence and responsibility of the water sector to spur developments in other sectors, Taylor commented.

The full (51 page) report is available at the Water ISAC's Web site .

Foreign Spies Are Serious. Are We?

By Michelle Van Cleave

Back in 2002, I got an unexpected phone call from the White House. "Would you be interested in serving as the head of U.S. counterintelligence?" they asked.

The Obama administration may already have placed such a call and picked someone to handle my old job: identifying and stopping other nations' spies. But my successor will have his or her work cut out for them.

In 2003, when I began my three years as the first congressionally mandated national counterintelligence executive (known by the unpronounceable acronym NCIX), Washington seemed ready to transform the fight against foreign espionage into a focused, coherent enterprise. But today, this vital national security mission is on life support.

Think this isn't a big deal? Think again. Most Americans would be astonished to learn how successful foreign intelligence services have been at stealing our national security secrets and threatening our vital interests.

The Chinese stole the design secrets to all -- repeat, all -- U.S. nuclear weapons, enabling them to leapfrog generations of technology development and put our nuclear arsenal, the country's last line of defense, at risk. To this day, we don't know quite when or how they did it, but we do know that Chinese intelligence operatives are still at work, systematically targeting not only America's defense secrets but our industries' valuable proprietary information.

The Soviets, of course, were especially aggressive at spying -- a tradition that has roared back to life in Vladimir Putin's Russia. It was bad enough that the KGB learned so much about U.S. vulnerabilities, but scores of hostile intelligence services and terrorist groups have also been schooled in the tradecraft that the Soviets perfected.

If left unanswered, these growing foreign intelligence threats could endanger U.S. operations, military and intelligence personnel and even Americans at home. But across the government, our counterintelligence capabilities are in decay. The struggle against foreign intelligence threats has a national leadership in name only. Nor is it driven by any overall strategy, which means that integrating the efforts of the 16 agencies that make up the U.S. intelligence community has taken a back seat to individual agencies' priorities. Meanwhile, we are losing talent at an alarming pace. Take it from me: This is as unnecessary as it is dangerous.

Given the stakes, it may seem strange that, until very recently, there was no such job as "head of U.S. counterintelligence" -- no one person responsible for identifying foreign intelligence threats to U.S. national security or economic well-being and figuring out what to do about them. Instead, counterintelligence responsibilities were divided among the FBI, the CIA and the three military services, with no central leadership or overarching structure to unite them. That created inherent seams that adversaries could -- and did -- exploit.

Then came the 1994 arrest of Aldrich Ames, a CIA counterintelligence chief who turned out to have been spying for the Soviets for nine long years. Through "dead drops" in Washington and meetings with his handlers abroad, Ames handed over comprehensive blueprints of U.S. collection operations against the Russians, including the identities of the very clandestine agents he was sworn to protect. At least nine people lost their lives because of Ames.

His treachery sparked a searching reexamination: What was wrong with U.S. counterintelligence? That anguished question became even more urgent with the February 2001 arrest of Robert Hanssen, an FBI special agent who had been working for the Russians for more than two decades -- to devastating effect. Hanssen handed over more than 6,000 pages of classified documents on some of our most sensitive national security programs, including details on U.S. nuclear-war defenses. He also revealed the identities of Russian agents working for the United States, two of whom were tried and executed.

How could such spies have operated unseen at the very heart of our national security enterprise for so long and with such success?

The answer was staring us in the face: We had no coherent game plan for identifying, assessing and stopping such threats. As the new head of U.S. counterintelligence, it would be my job to develop and execute the nation's first strategy for finding and neutralizing foreign spies.

This, I knew, would not be easy. I had worked on espionage issues for two presidents and the Senate Judiciary Committee. I knew that counterintelligence was little understood within the national security community, where it was largely overshadowed by the far more familiar world of intelligence gathering.

I also knew that the United States is a spy's paradise. Our free and open society is tailor-made for clandestine operations. And most of the golden eggs worth collecting are found within our borders: military plans and diplomatic strategies, weapons designs, nuclear secrets, even proprietary R&D from companies such as Bell Labs or Dupont.

And business is booming. Today, most of the world's governments (even friendly ones) and roughly 35 suspected terrorist organizations run intelligence operations against the United States. The Russians, for example, still have as many spies here as they did at the height of the Cold War. That's daunting enough. But the counterintelligence challenge isn't just one of sheer numbers. The scope of these activities is an even bigger problem.

Historically, embassies and other diplomatic establishments within the United States have served as ready-made safe houses for foreign spies masquerading as diplomats, which is why the 20,000-strong diplomatic community has traditionally commanded the lion's share of counterintelligence attention. But in America today, there are thousands of foreign-owned commercial establishments, hundreds of thousands of exchange students and visiting academicians, and countless routine trade and financial interactions. Hidden beneath these open and legitimate activities can be darker purposes. With our open, rich society as cover, intelligence officers and their agents can move about freely, develop contacts and operate in the shadows -- a point no more lost on foreign spies than it was on the 19 hijackers that September morning in 2001.

As a result, foreign powers are running intelligence operations throughout the United States with unprecedented independence from the safe havens of their diplomatic establishments, leaving our counterintelligence efforts in the dust.

In the past, America's default strategy has been to wait to engage the adversary in our own backyard, rather than in his. Ninety percent of our counterintelligence resources are concentrated within the United States. We're playing goal-line defense rather than looking for opportunities to get ahead of the game.

The new national strategy approved by President Bush was a sharp departure from the past. It declared that we would no longer cede the initiative to foreign intelligence services working on U.S. soil. Following the age-old wisdom that the best defense is a good offense, the new strategy directed the intelligence community to marshal its resources and go after the most worrisome foreign intelligence services. Our goal was to methodically disrupt their ability to work against the United States, starting by focusing on targets abroad.

But when each of the counterintelligence organizations across the sprawling intelligence community was asked to map out its programs and resource allocations to see whether they squared with these new goals, something miraculous occurred: Somehow, all of those existing plans, programs and budgets just happened to perfectly match the new national priorities. No real changes were needed -- no new starts, no hard choices. It was unbelievable -- literally.

This is where the 2003 law that created my job fell short. As the quarterback of our counterintelligence efforts, I was responsible for providing strategic direction and evaluating how well various agencies were performing. But I had no power to move funds around or establish new programs. The law created a national executive but not the means of execution.

Things got even more confused after 2005, with the creation of the nation's first director of national intelligence (DNI), an idea that arose from the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission. When my office was placed under that of the DNI, I hoped that working for the new overall leader of the intelligence community would give us more clout, especially the ability to give marching orders and fix budgets.

No such luck. In setting up his new office, the first DNI, the veteran diplomat John Negroponte, delegated the authority for much of our work to his own newly created deputies. True, I was named the "mission manager" for counterintelligence and made Negroponte's principal adviser on the problem. But an adviser is not a leader.

With no central leadership of the fight against foreign intelligence threats, the FBI, the CIA and the military services tend to go their separate ways. And my position and staff became just another layer of the weighty bureaucracy of the office of the DNI.

Seven years after we created my old office, there is no central clearing-house to support operations against the spies who are working against us around the globe or to formulate policy options for President Obama and his top aides. And we still know surprisingly little about hostile intelligence services relative to the amount of harm they can do.

How important is all of this, really? Cynics will scoff and say, "There will always be spies." But I have read the file drawers full of damage assessments; I have catalogued the enormous losses in lives, treasure and crucial secrets that foreign intelligence work has caused. The memory of what's in those files -- and the thought of the people and the operations still in harm's way -- can keep me awake at night.

So we have to choose. We can handle these threats piecemeal, or we can pull together a strategic program -- one team, one plan, one goal -- to reduce the overall danger. We can chase individual spies case by case, or we can target the services that send them here. The next devastating spy case is just around the bend. I fear that when it comes, we will all ask ourselves why we didn't stop it. I suspect I already know the answer.

Michelle Van Cleave served as head of U.S. counterintelligence from July 2003 through March 2006. She is a senior research fellow at the National Defense University and a special adviser to the Project on National Security Reform.

Eligibility issue: McCain checked but not Obama

Lawsuit contends Congress failed to qualify Democrat for Oval Office ....

Eligibility issue: McCain checked but not Obama

Lawsuit contends Congress failed to qualify Democrat for Oval Office ....

Murphy's Law, the Peter Principle and Barack Obama

By Kyle-Anne Shiver

What happens when everything that can go wrong in a person's character formation does go wrong, and that person continues to be promoted to his level of incompetence?

President Barack Obama happens.

I'm well into my sixth decade of life and have yet to see a more perfect collision of Murphy's Law with the Peter Principle in a single individual.

Proper character development is the overriding aim of good parents in raising their children. Mature parents, especially those Judeo/Christian parents with faith, believe it sinful to raise a child without strong self-constraint, a well-formed conscience, ingrained humility and an ironclad respect for the rights of others. Children raised thusly become self-supporting adults, honest in their dealings with others and prone to be contributing members of the society at large.

The world is purely chock full of bad parents, however. Plum chock full.

Barack Obama was conceived out of wedlock to an eighteen year-old girl, who was herself the product of non-religious, rebellious parents, intent on unraveling the fabric of WASP America. Stanley Ann Dunham met Barack Obama Sr., an already-married African Muslim man, in a Russian language class at the University of Hawaii in her very first year there. According to President Obama's memoir, his biological father married his mother about three months into the pregnancy, even though he already had a wife and children on his home continent. Hence, very shortly, the father abandoned the new mother and her child to seek his own fortune and yet another wife-to-be at Harvard.

Bigamists are not known for fidelity, are they?

The end result of this convoluted beginning of the man who would become President was that his maternal grandparents became his primary caregivers. With the very best of intentions, I'm sure, these white grandparents doted, scraped and groveled to make the little abandoned child's life as picture-perfect as it could possibly be under the awful circumstances of parental abandonment. This is a recipe for disaster in the area of character development.

Believing that the child, Barry, needed lots of attention and as few hard knocks as possible, these grandparents proceeded to spoil the ever-living daylights out of the precocious, charismatic, bi-racial child of their only daughter. Through his grandmother's connections, Barry got a scholarship to the elite Panahou Academy and became one of only five black children in the posh school, where teachers, too, bent over backwards not to offend, not to discipline. For added umph to this already-disastrous formula, Barry's grandfather made sure the child got lots of father-figure mentoring from a self-proclaimed pedophile and avowed communist, Frank Marshall Davis.

As a young teenager, surrounded by opportunities for drug abuse and tomfoolery, Barry bragged that he had a deal with his doting grandparents which entailed his being able to do whatever he wanted while they looked the other way and pretended not to notice.

After all, they surely reasoned, this pitiful little boy had enough pain in his life.

Paying consequences for delinquent behavior would have been entirely too much. Too much. Oh, just too much to bear.

As President Obama's school transcripts (all of them, from start to finish!) remain among his stack of unreleased documents, we have no way of knowing how our current President did in school. However, we do know that he was doing drugs, that he was not involved in any demanding athletic program and that he was not otherwise making a big name for himself on campus. We know also that Obama's first gig on the mainland was at Occidental College, which is a fine school I am sure, but far from Ivy League. I'm fairly certain that those grades at Panahou were nothing to brag about, and there is no evidence whatsoever that there was anything else to brag about either.

At Occidental, however, young Barry Obama discovered the one gift that would eventually make up for all other deficiencies: his oratorical talent. Coupled with natural charisma and an Eddie-Haskell styled ability to guile, Barry Obama had arrived.

This was the story hailed by Axelrod as bedrock, middle-class, Kansan upbringing.

And 52% of the American electorate bought it faster than you can say prime-Florida-swampland-with-a-view-sold-to-dumber-than-dumb-Yankees.

Barry Obama made his entrance into mainland politics by frequenting all the Occidental socialist clubs, rallies and protests, and the first time he took to a podium, his rhetorical talent unveiled itself. Then, it was off to Columbia and a shadow existence, which eventually culminated in President Barack Obama, the first African-American President and the first man to ever assume the highest office in the land without one whit of experience other than running for office and beguiling a public begging to be beguiled.

Along the always-sunny yellow brick road to the White House, Barry was hailed as brilliant-beyond-brilliant, the veritable savior of his people and in the words of his now Vice President, a "clean, articulate and bright" black man. Nowhere, at any time during Barack Obama's near-miraculous rise to power, did he come into contact with anyone that would have demanded a character test.

The characters in this President's closet are too strange for fiction -- Jeremiah Wright, Tony Rezko, the New Party, Billy Ayers, Bernadine Dohrn, Louis Farrakhan, Mayor Daly, Rod Blagojevich, George Soros, assorted tax cheats and pay-to-play schemers of every variety. When any sentient person adds it up, he gets a man without principle, someone so enabled in his avoidance of reality about himself that one can only call it Murphy's Law applied to character development.

Every single thing that could go wrong has indeed gone wrong.

Enter a mainstream media so swept off its feet with tingles and its own utter lack of religiosity -- a group purely primed for false-savior seeking -- and what one could call the Murphy's Law of picking a President is perfectly, positively, poignantly complete.

From Stage right and Stage left, and from below and above, we see the Peter Principle in all its inglorious dimensions set to wreak havoc upon this entire Country.

In only three weeks' time, this President has signaled to every terrorist on the planet that we are a sorry, groveling, ashamed Nation ready to come to the diplomatic confessional. He is closing Gitmo within one year, has suspended trials there, and dismissed the charges against the U.S.S. Cole plotter. American penance is coming and it's coming fast and feebly on its knees.

President Obama has just put our money where his mouth is and is using $20.3 million to bring in Palestinian refugees from Gaza, the Hamas-controlled region where folks prefer bomb-making to bread-baking. Instead of helping Israel defeat them, this President brings them here.

As if we did not have enough home-grown terrorists.

The new politics of "hope & change" is looking like a Hollywood remake of "Larger-than-life Dopes and Same-ole-same-ole Corruptocrats" with tax cheats flanking the new Cabinet, an Attorney General who never saw a pardon he didn't like or a terrorist he couldn't love, a porn-protection guru as his Deputy, and a man without an ounce of intelligence knowledge or experience now the wartime head of the CIA. Add to this mess a Secretary of State whose husband owes far more than any other American alive to foreigners. The new Secretary of Education was in charge of Chicago schools, where more than 500 verified acts of child battering by teachers went unpunished and teacher unions trumped student rights. This Cabinet is shaping up to be worse than Bill Clinton's and Jimmy Carter's combined, while President Obama throws cocktail parties with $100/pound steak.

President Obama's definition of bipartisanship: "I won."

President Obama's definition of leadership: "Nancy can handle the details."

Our new President had the gall to pronounce the so-called economic stimulus bill absolutely free of "earmarks" and "make-do work," while spinning his prosaic campaign rhetoric before an international audience in a prime-time "press conference." This bill has close to a trillion-dollar price tag, but according to the Congressional Budget Office will do worse to our overall economy than no government action whatsoever. So, if this bill has no pork or earmarks in it, then it is pure socialist folderol run amok before it even gets implemented - in the face of the "worst economic crisis since the Great Depression."

The Peter Principle has reached its pinnacle in President Barack Obama.

If one wants a hawks-eye view into the minds of Obama voters, all one need do is read this piece published by the New York Times last week, detailing the fantasies, dreams and drooling-envy delusions of his followers. Their celebrity is now their President.

The perfect collision of Murphy's Law with the Peter Principle has arrived to explode in our faces.

Unprecedented Global Alert Issued In Saudi Arabia Terror Threat

from The National Terror Alert Center

In what is being described as an “unprecedented global alert,” the International Criminal Police Organization today issued its largest-ever most wanted list for 85 terrorist suspects, who are sought by Saudi Arabia for allegedly plotting attacks against the country and for suspected links to al Qaeda.

“Never before has INTERPOL been asked to alert the world about so many dangerous fugitives at one time,” said Secretary General Ronald K. Noble in a statement. “We know that we are approaching the 16th anniversary of the first World Trade Center bombing on Feb. 26, 2009 and therefore must be especially vigilant of fugitive al Qaeda terrorists.”

Many terrorism experts are concerned that al Qaeda will strike again shortly, said former FBI Agent Brad Garrett, an ABC News consultant. He speculated that the record alert – which was requested by Saudi Arabia – is a possible effort by the country to look like a team player on the terrorist-fighting front, after long being criticized for its lax security and funding of extremist groups.

[...]

Today’s security alert is known as an “Orange Notice” – which was originally intended to warn authorities of potential threats, but can be released publicly “for any act or event which poses a risk to the safety and security of citizens around the world,” according to the agency.

The alert today was sent by the INTERPOL Secretary General at the request of the agency’s National Central Bureau in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The suspected terrorists are 83 Saudis and two Yemenis, according to INTERPOL.

Source

John Kerry: Government Better Trusted With Your Money Than You Are (Video)

from the Gateway Pundit

Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) explains who he trusts to spend American's hard-earned dollars.
It's not you:

Via Sen. Jim Demint
John Kerry: "So government, yes government, has the ability to make a decision that the private sector won't necessarily make today."
Can we call them socialists, yet?