President Obama made several recess appointments …even though Congress was not in recess…. (T)he president signed a $1 billion omnibus spending bill, but notified Congress that he might not abide by some of the very provisions he had just signed into law. During the Libya war, Obama felt that bombing Qaddafi’s forces did not really constitute military operations, and therefore he had no need to notify Congress under the War Powers Act…. Obama decided to reverse the legal order of creditors in the bailout of a bankrupt Chrysler Corporation in favor of more politically suitable constituencies. The administration does not like the Defense of Marriage Act, and therefore announced that it won’t enforce it.

(T)here is a new sort of lawlessness unseen in recent governments…. To the degree that he can, on any given challenge Obama assesses the politics of favoring his constituency of the ‘poor’ and ‘middle class,’ and then uses the necessary legal gymnastics post facto to offer the veneer of lawfulness….

(W)hy has the Obama administration shown such a disdain for the integrity of the law? In a word, Obama is a postmodernist. That is a trendy word for someone who (believes) that there are not really absolute facts, but merely competing ideas and discourses. In this view, particular ideologies unfortunately gain credibility as establishment icons only from the relative advantage that arises from race, class, and gender biases. In postmodern jurisprudence, ‘critical legal theory’ postulates that law and politics are inseparable. Those with power call their self-serving rules ‘the law.’ But ‘laws’ are not sacrosanct. Instead, they are mere embedded reflections of wealthy, white, and male privilege—dressed up in some bogus timeless concept of ‘justice….’ In other words, we are witnessing with this administration the ancient idea of the supposedly exalted ends justifying the somewhat ambiguous means—albeit dressed up in trendy Ivy League legalese and progressive moralizing. Our postmodern president is not content with just picking and choosing which laws he will follow in advancing his social agenda. The war against the myth of disinterested Western jurisprudence extends also to free-market economics, as we see with the monotonous demonization of the so-called 1 percent and those who make over $200,000 per year.

President Barack Obama said resolving the European debt crisis is of “huge importance” to the U.S. and his administration is “ready to do our part” in stabilizing the global economy. Obama said a “large part” of the annual U.S.-European Union summit was spent on the impact of the crisis in the euro- zone. He spoke at the White House after meeting with European Council President Herman Van Rompuy and European Commission President José Manuel Barroso.

(T)he American people have every reason to believe that the Obama Administration has not lived up to expectations on health care–because it hasn’t….(C)andidate Obama said repeatedly (Obamacare) would CUT (health care) premiums by an average of $2,500 per family–meaning premiums would go DOWN, not merely just “go up by less than projected.”  The campaign also promised that that those reductions would occur within Obama’s first term.  However, the annual Kaiser Foundation survey of employer-provided insurance found that average family premiums totaled $12,860 in 2008, $13,375 in 2009, and $13,770 in 2010 and $15,073 this year.  In other words, while candidate Obama promised premiums would fall by $2,500 on average, premiums have already risen by $2,213 during the Obama Administration.

One of the prime reasons Americans (cite) health care as their largest personal worry is skyrocketing costs…. (S)pending will actually rise thanks to (Obamacare), as will premiums.  It’s one of the most damaging of all the broken promises made by the President on health care, one which will hit millions of struggling families directly in the wallet.

Federal regulators have discovered that hundreds of millions of dollars in customer money has gone missing from MF Global in recent days, prompting an investigation into the brokerage firm, which is run by Jon S. Corzine, the former New Jersey governor, several people briefed on the matter said on Monday. … Regulators are examining whether MF Global diverted some customer funds to support its own trades as the firm teetered on the brink of collapse. [emphasis added] The discovery that money could not be located might simply reflect sloppy internal controls at MF Global. It is still unclear where the money went. At first, as much as $950 million was believed to be missing, but as the firm sorted through its bankruptcy, that figure fell to less than $700 million by late Monday, the people briefed on the matter said. (B. Protess, M. De La Merced, S. Craig, DealBook, New York Times)

Say you are the head back office guy at MF Global, it is the close of trading on Thursday, the firm has already completely drawn down on its revolver [credit line], and all the resulting cash in addition to all the firm’s cash at your disposal in affiliated bank accounts, up to and including petty cash, has been used to satisfy margin demands due to declining collateral value, yet the collateral calls just won’t stop, and impatient voices on the other side of the phone line demand you transfer even more cash over immediately or else risk default proceedings commenced against you within minutes. What do you do? Do you go ahead and tell your superior that the firm is broke even though the co-opted media is trumpeting every 5 minutes that “MF Global is fine”, knowing full well you will be immediately fired for being the bearer of bad news, or do you assume that courtesy of your uber-boss being the former head of the Vampire Squid [Goldman Sachs], and thanks to infinite moral hazard which after Lehman made sure nobody would ever fail ever again, that there is simply no way that you will be left without some miraculous rescue, if only you can last one more day, and as a result proceed to “commingle” some client funds with the firm’s cash. It turns out that at MF Global you do the latter… over and over… until you have literally stolen hundreds of millions from the firm’s client accounts in hopes that the miracle rescue will come on Friday… then over the weekend… and then you realize no miracle is coming, partly because your actions have been exposed, partly because miracles only exist in fairy tales. The next thing you know, your firm is bankrupt and hundreds of clients are about to learn that all their money is gone. Poof. This is not a fictional tale. This is precisely what very likely happened at MF Global in the past 72 hours. And someone has to go to jail. That someone, if indeed this criminal act is proven to have taken place, should be none other than Jon Corzine himself.

Illinois Democratic Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. told The Daily Caller on Wednesday that congressional opposition to the American Jobs Act is akin to the Confederate ‘states in rebellion.” “We’ve got to go further. I support what [Obama] does. Clearly, Republicans are not going to be for it but if the administration can handle administratively what can be done, we should pursue it. And if there are extra-constitutional opportunities that allow the president administratively to put the people to work, he should pursue every single one of them,’ Jackson suggested.”

In an obvious effort to protect President Barack Obama, a group of congressional Democrats has introduced legislation to create an official process that will allow the commander-in-chief to keep presidential records secret after he leaves office. Ironically, Obama revoked a similar George W. Bush order in one of his first official acts as president. In 2001 Bush penned an executive order severely limiting public access to his presidential records. Shortly after swearing in, Obama killed it as part of his much-ballyhooed commitment to government transparency. At the time, the new president claimed that he was giving the American people greater access to ‘historic documents.’ If the Democrats’ proposed measure (Presidential Records Act Amendments of 2011) becomes law, former presidents will be allowed to assert a new ‘constitutionally based privilege’ against disclosing records of their liking. Here is how it would work; the Archivist of the United States would be required to notify the former president, as well as the incumbent, of intentions to make records public. Anything that either the former or current president claims should be kept private won’t be released.

By Elizabeth Flock,  Washington Post,  blogPost

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RALLY AT UNIVERSITY OF RICHMOND Friday, September 9th 10:00 a.m. Meet at Parking Lot Directly Across Robins Center Campus Drive, Richmond, VA 23173

LET’S MAKE SURE PRESIDENT OBAMA KNOWS VIRGINIA WILL NOT BE SILENT! Let’s not waste this opportunity!

**Signs will be available for everyone!**

Let’s join forces and meet tomorrow morning at 10:00 a.m. Contact Becky Greene for further details. Magreene714@aol.com