Obama Administration Scandals
January 4, 2016 — John Hinderaker
On New Year’s Eve, the Obama administration published a 200-page proposed rule in the Federal Register. The proposed rule is another executive order, in plain violation of the immigration laws. Obama’s executive order would illegally ignore the immigration caps that are enshrined in law. Senator Jeff Sessions denounced Obama’s usurpation, which, interestingly, was covered by hardly any “mainstream” news sources. Sessions wrote: The President has announced another brazen, illegal executive
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December 30, 2015 — Paul Mirengoff
At NR’s Corner, Elliott Abrams gives his take on the report that the Obama administration spied on the Israeli government. Abrams served for many years as a U.S. foreign policy official and is, of course, a leading pro-Israel advocate. Thus, his is a voice I wanted to hear on this potential scandal. Abrams believes there should be a strong presumption against spying on allies. He also believes that we should
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December 30, 2015 — Paul Mirengoff
Last night, I wrote about a Wall Street Journal report that the NSA spied on Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and members of his government, and that the spying included intercepting communications with members of Congress. I included in the post the Journal’s brief discussion of the rules that apply to U.S. surveillance that reaches such members. According to the Journal: A 2011 NSA directive said direct communications between foreign intelligence
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December 22, 2015 — Paul Mirengoff
On Sunday, I posted a letter from former DHS employee Phillip Haney to members of Congress. Haney’s letter alleged that, under pressure from the Department of State, his superiors closed down his work on terrorist outfits with which the San Bernardino murderers were affiliated. In addition, DHS deleted the records of Haney’s work on these groups from the shared DHS database. This, Haney says, precluded the government from realizing the
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December 20, 2015 — Paul Mirengoff
In an open letter to members of Congress, retired DHS employee Philip Haney says that, under pressure from the Department of State, his superiors closed down his work on terrorist outfits with which the San Bernardino murderers — Sayed Farook and Tashfeen Malif — were affiliated. According to Haney, if this work had not been shut down, the Sen Bernardino killings might have been prevented. Here, via Ginni Thomas at
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December 14, 2015 — John Hinderaker
Today on Good Morning America, John Cohen, a former acting under-secretary of the Department of Homeland Security and now a national security consultant for ABC News, dropped a bombshell: over the objections of security-minded DHS personnel, the Obama administration secretly barred DHS from looking at postings on social media by visa applicants like Tashfeen Malik: Fearing a civil liberties backlash and “bad public relations” for the Obama administration, Homeland Security
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December 3, 2015 — Paul Mirengoff
I don’t think any serious observer believes that Susan Rice’s false claim in September 2012, presented on network talk show after network talk show, that the Benghazi attacks were the product of a video originated with Rice. Rice was merely our ambassador to the U.N. at the time. Thus, she had no responsibility for the security of the compound in Benghazi, and was not in a good position to assess
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September 24, 2015 — John Hinderaker
Today Admiral Michael Rogers, head of the National Security Agency, testified before the Senate Select Intelligence Committee on cybersecurity. Senator Tom Cotton asked him two questions, the second of which was brilliant: 1) Are the communications of the president’s most senior advisors, including those that may be unclassified, a “top priority for foreign intelligence services?” and 2) What would he think if he learned that Russia’s Foreign Minister, or Iran’s,
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September 12, 2015 — John Hinderaker
It is now generally taken as a given that Russian and Chinese spies were reading Hillary Clinton’s official email correspondence while she was Secretary of State. Breaking into an unsecured home server is child’s play for those countries’ intelligence agencies. But this story from Great Britain raises an even more chilling possibility: Jihadists in Syria have hacked into ministerial email accounts in a sophisticated espionage operation uncovered by GCHQ, the
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September 9, 2015 — John Hinderaker
The Animas River spill has shone a spotlight on ineptitude at the Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA allowed three million gallons of toxic water to spill into the Animas, causing enormous pollution problems for those downstream. A Congressional investigation has revealed that EPA staff had failed to accurately gauge the water pressure within the mine they were cleaning up, “thus increasing the chances for a ‘blowout’ like the one that
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August 31, 2015 — John Hinderaker
This is one of the great scandals of the Obama administration–really, of the post-war era. But our Democratic Party media, fearful of what may be coming in next year’s presidential election, have consistently downplayed it. The Los Angeles Times reports: “Foreign spies use hacked data to identify U.S. intelligence agents.” Foreign spy services, especially in China and Russia, are aggressively aggregating and cross-indexing hacked U.S. computer databases — including security
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August 30, 2015 — John Hinderaker
The Obama administration has proved to be the least transparent in our modern history. To an unprecedented degree, the administration is staffed by scofflaws who flout their legal obligations. When confronted with requests for information, let alone actual investigations, Obama’s habitual response is to stonewall. This strategy has been remarkably successful in avoiding accountability, in part because legal processes are so slow. We have seen this pattern dozens of times.
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August 28, 2015 — Steven Hayward
Last year we reported on the case of John Beale, the career EPA employee who was busted for fraud for claiming to be a covert CIA operative while bilking the EPA for years as one of its highest paid employees, who was spending his time at home figuring out how to, in his own words, “modify the DNA of the capitalist system…” Because government bureaucrats like Beale are just so
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August 25, 2015 — Scott Johnson
The IRS has disclosed another private email account on which Lois Lerner conducted official business. The disclosure occurred in the Judicial Watch FOIA lawsuit for Lerner emails. The newly disclosed email account is under the name of Toby Miles. Stephen Dinan reports the story on the incredibly annoying Washington Times site here. One can circumvent the Times site via Thomas Lifson’s American Thinker post here. Dinan reports: “In addition to
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August 24, 2015 — John Hinderaker
That is actually a fair summary of this report by the Energy and Environment Legal Institute. I have not yet had time to study the document, but will report on it more fully in due course. In the meantime, Anthony Watts writes: Today, the Energy & Environment Legal Institute, a 501 (c) (3) watchdog group, released an investigative report, Private Interests & Public Office: Coordination Between Governors, the Obama White
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August 15, 2015 — Paul Mirengoff
If you think about it, the government’s nonchalance over Hillary Clinton’s security breaches probably extends back to the beginning of the Obama administration. The White House likely knew early on that Clinton was using an extra-governmental server. It is implausible to believe that Hillary had no email correspondence, incoming or outgoing, with anyone at the White House. And her email address would have made it clear to correspondents that she
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August 12, 2015 — John Hinderaker
We wrote here and here about the Environmental Protection Agency’s colossal, three million gallon spill of mining waste containing lead, arsenic and other toxic substances into the Animas River in Colorado. EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy says the agency is very sorry: “We want to reassure everyone that the EPA does take full responsibility for the spill,” which took place at the long-closed mine north of Durango, she said. “No agency
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