Out of respect for President Hugo Chavez, Venezuelan-owned oil refinery Citgo flew its flags at half staff outside its Houston and Lake Charles, La., offices Wednesday, sparking outcry from drivers passing by.
In Houston, the flags at the refinery were lowered to half staff as late as this afternoon, and caused a number of people to look twice as they drove by. James Post, an assistant project manager at an engineering and construction firm in Harris County, told FoxNews.com the sight was "jarring" and "deeply disappointing."
U.S. protocol allows for flags to be lowered for foreign dignitaries and Post recognized Citgo's right to do so as a private company. However, he said upon seeing the American or Texas flag at half staff, he questioned the person being honored; and said his mind "immediately jumped to the last time we did this in the Houston-area and it was for Neil Armstrong, so, you wonder."
As much as the outcry from "drivers passing by" was warranted, there is simply still not enough outrage from Americans.
In this interview with a local Fox affiliate, newly sworn-in Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren literally denies that the middle class can be quantified. No, really. After being given the opportunity by the reporter to concede that no matter how you measure it, a middle class should be easy to define based on whatever criteria one uses.
The implication of Warren's thinking is what should be alarming. If, for example, she can't define the middle class, that at least leaves open the possibility that one doesn't exist. If there is no middle class, there are only two classes left - upper and lower.
Is not the goal of of far left progressives like Warren to destroy the middle class?
Incidentally, I believe that woman defeated Scott Brown not because Brown wasn't liberal enough for Massachusetts. She beat him because he was too moderate and all but abandoned the Tea Party that was responsible for putting him in office back in 2010. Brown was elected to prevent a super majority vote on Obamacare. While he was the 41st Republican vote in that fight, he did little else after that.
As for Warren, her comments above about being unable to concede that a middle class can be defined may just be a moment on par with this from Maxine Waters in 2009:
What do Al Armendariz and Van Jones have in common? Both resigned from the Obama administration after revealing beliefs being so disturbing that they became radioactive to the administration. However, in Jones' case, he just hopped on over to a fellowship position in George Soros' Center for American Progress (CAP).
The Dallas News has the Armendariz resignation letter:
Dear Friends,
I have been honored to serve as your regional administrator for EPA's region 6 office the last 2 and ½ years. I never once forgot that the reason I was appointed was to serve you, to act as your voice, and to work day and night to better protect the environment and your safety.
Today I am resigning my position as regional administrator. This was not something that was asked of me by Administrator Jackson or the White House. It is a decision I made myself. I had become too much of a distraction, and no one person is more important than the incredible work being done by the rest of the team at EPA.
I leave with an incredible sense of pride for the things the Agency accomplished and it was fantastic to be a part of the effort. Administrator Jackson has overseen a renaissance in the Agency and it is again the global leader in environmental protection. President Obama has been incredibly supportive of me and my work and the Agency. He'll undoubtedly go down as the most environmental president we have ever had.
Thank you all for letting me into your homes and communities, and showing me the challenges you face every day from pollution and lack of infrastructure. Your stories are now part of my fabric and the fabric of the Agency.
Best always,
Al Armendariz
Something else Armendariz and Jones share in common. Both said they resigned of their own volition without any encouragement from the White House. In Jones' case, that meant the Obama administration was perfectly content with having an avowed communist and 9/11 Truther on its staff. In the case of Armendariz, the White House had no problem with a guy who viewed his job as one that involves "crucifying" oil companies. It also indicates that the administration has no problem with what Armendariz was doing - crippling oil companies over ideology.
Here is the video that led to Armendariz's resignation:
No one uses misdirection more than the Obama administration and when it comes to an evil, evil man named Joseph Kony, misdirection is in full swing. However, in this case, Kony is the object of the administration's spotlight, not Sudan, where it should be.
As Omar al-Bashir, the Muslim Brotherhood-backed president of Sudan is beating the drums of war louder, almost by the day, against Christian South Sudan, reports about the search for Kony, the leader of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), are distracting attention from them. By nearly all accounts, Kony is far less of a factor than he was years ago. Most suspect he's not even in Uganda anymore, the country where he perpetrated the most evil. Many wonder whether Kony is even alive.
Bashir's propaganda machine is in full gear; it is whipping the Muslim masses up into a frenzy by pointing to South Sudan's withdrawal from Heglig, an oil rich border region. South Sudan claims it took over that area because Bashir's forces were launching attacks from there. Bashir is pointing to South Sudan's exit as a major victory and is fanning the flames of hate against South Sudan.
The Arab League on Thursday condemned South Sudan's "military aggression" against an oil-rich border region claimed by Sudan while also supporting Sudan's right to defend itself. The statement came as some fear growing disputes between the two countries may soon lead to an all-out war.
South Sudan seceded from Sudan last year after a referendum held as part of a 2005 peace deal that ended more than 20 years of civil war, but unresolved issues such as the sharing of oil revenues and demarcation of the border have led to tensions and clashes.
Earlier this month, South Sudanese troops attacked and captured the oil-rich Heglig area. Sudan says it has since recaptured it. Earlier this week, after South Sudan said it was withdrawing its troops from Heglig, Sudan dropped bombs on the South. The U.N. said the bombs killed 16 civilians.
Sudan is a member of the Arab League, whose foreign ministers were meeting in Cairo. Their statement called on South Sudan to respect the borders between the two nations and to stop supporting rebel movements in Sudan's western Darfur region, south Kordofan and Blue Nile.
More rhetoric that should be garnering the attention of the international community is coming from Sudan's governing party, the National Congress Party (NCP). The political secretary says that South Sudan's exit from Heglig is spawning a "Sudanese Spring."
State media broadcast footages of massive crowds pouring to the streets in celebration of Heglig takeover by the Sudanese army on Friday, 20 April.
According to the NCP’s political secretary, Hasabu Mohamed Abdel-Rahman, the scenes were evidence of a “Sudanese spring” that silenced voices of internal dissent.
Meanwhile, though Barack Obama has publicly encouraged Sudan and South Sudan to do everything possible to avoid war, he only seems to be using one of the Alinsky tactics on Kony, and not al-Bashir. That would be Rule #11:
Rule 11: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, polarize it. Don’t try to attack abstract corporations or bureaucracies. Identify a responsible individual. Ignore attempts to shift or spread the blame.
Obama has obviously picked a target in Joseph Kony. He has chosen to shift and spread the blame when it comes to al-Bashir and South Sudan. Why?
Sam Childers, a man who has fought for the safety of Ugandan and South Sudanese children for nearly a decade and a half, argues that Kony has been funded by al-Bashir for years. Yet, Obama seems to be more interested in pursuing the path of moral equivalency between Sudan and South Sudan instead of identifying al-Bashir as the real problem.
Here is Childers in a video message that came out when Invisible Children's Kony 2012 went viral back in March:
This video is from 2010 and it validates much of what we already know about the bureaucratic minions that operate inside the Obama administration but an extremely crude and graphic metaphor is used here by EPA Region VI Administrator Al Armendariz. While admitting that his analogy is "crude," Armendariz proceeds to repeat it here.
In this video, this pathetic EPA bureaucrat compares what he does to what the Romans did when they went into a town or village; they randomly captured five people and crucified them so that the rest of the town would fall in line.
Alinsky tactics on steroids. Perhaps a Nazi metaphor that describes what Armendariz is advocating is in order.
Since that video was released, Armendariz has made a feeble attempt at an apology.
A top official at the Environmental Protection Agency has apologized after being captured on video saying his agency’s method of enforcing oil and gas regulations was to find a few bad actors to “crucify” and hold up as examples.
“I apologize to those I have offended and regret my poor choice of words,” Region 6 EPA Administrator Al Armendariz said in a statement first provided to the Daily Caller. “It was an offensive and inaccurate way to portray our efforts to address potential violations of our nation’s environmental laws. I am and have always been committed to fair and vigorous enforcement of those laws.”
Tensions between Sudan and South Sudan have been rapidly increasing over the last few months. South Sudan, which isn't even one year old, is led by a devout Christian man named Salva Kiir. To the north, Sudan is run by the Muslim Brotherhood's Omar al-Bashir. South Sudan, which holds the majority of the oil reserves between the two countries, shut off the spigot going to the Port of Sudan, saying that Bashir's men were stealing much of it.
South Sudan then took control of the Heglig region - just north of its border with Sudan - after saying that Bashir's SLA was launching attacks from there. Naturally, Bashir painted South Sudan's actions as aggressive and threatened to declare war. Kiir's SPLA pulled out of Heglig to prevent war and Bashir exploited the situation, saying that his forces drove the SPLA out of Heglig.
Two very significant events transpired this weekend. First, a Catholic church in Khartoum, was torched by a Muslim Mob. Via the AP:
A Muslim mob has set ablaze a Catholic church frequented by Southern Sudanese in the capital Khartoum, witnesses and media reports said on Sunday.
The church in Khartoum's Al-Jiraif district was built on a disputed plot of land but the Saturday night incident appeared to be part of the fallout from ongoing hostilities between Sudan and South Sudan over control of an oil town on their ill-defined border.
Last week, South Sudanese troops seized Heglig, which the southerners call Panthou, sending Sudanese troops fleeing. The Khartoum government later claimed to have regained the town.
One day later, Bashir's forces bombed the capital city of Unity State (Bentiu), which sits just south of the border that separates the two countries.
Sudan Armed Force (SAF) warplanes carried out an intensive bombardment of the Unity state capital town of Bentiu and neighboring Rubkotna, Sudan Tribune reporter says.
The attacks by Mig 29 fighters started at 8:50 am.
A Reuters reporters at the scene, outside the oil town of Bentiu, said he saw a fighter aircraft drop two bombs near a river bridge between Bentiu and Rubkona.
"I can see market stalls burning in Rubkona in the background and the body of a small child burning," he said.
The Secretaries inside the Obama administration have become noticeably incoherent and incapable of answering very basic questions lately. Last week, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius appeared to be intellectually vacant in the face of very basic questions about the implementation and costs of Obamacare.
That leads us to Energy Secretary Stephen Chu, whose views about gasoline prices were highlighted in a Wall Street Journal article one month after Obama's election in 2008:
In a sign of one major internal difference, Mr. Chu has called for gradually ramping up gasoline taxes over 15 years to coax consumers into buying more-efficient cars and living in neighborhoods closer to work.
"Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe," Mr. Chu, who directs the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal in September.
Fast forward to yesterday. Amidst rising gasoline prices in a very down economy, Chu took questions from the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee and was so incoherent in response to questions about gas prices from Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) that he almost appeared to be speaking a language other than english.
Yes, this is the guy whose fingerprints are all over Solyndra.
As high gas prices are becoming a central issue these days, the content of this ad is timed very well. From Winning Our Future, here's a montage of Newt's finer moments when it comes to talking about energy policy. It also contains a smack down of Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA). It's an ad that clearly highlights Newt's stronger points. As you watch, imagine what a debate between Newt and Obama on energy policy might look like.
The Keystone oil pipeline extension from Canada to Houston would create tens of thousands of jobs and the Obama administration is blocking its construction while publicly saying more analysis needs to be done. Canada is threatening to re-direct the pipeline westward.
While on Meet the Press, House Speaker John Boehner clearly demonstrated that the Republicans are winning this debate. The only people who don't want the pipeline built are the Eco-wackos in Obama's base; we all know that's the reason for the delay.
It's very clear what's going on and even NBC's David Gregory knows it, despite his attempts to run interference for the Obama administration here.
One of the most egregious narratives Barack Obama has been putting forward is that he has to do things on his own because he would otherwise have to deal with a 'do-nothing' Congress. It's fallacious because it's a 'do-nothing' Senate that is to blame for legislation not reaching his desk. Here's another example. The House has passed a bill that would extend the payroll tax cuts while tying it to the mandated construction of the Keystone pipeline from Canada to Texas.
Passage, on a largely party-line vote of 234-193, sent the measure toward its certain demise in the Democratic-controlled Senate, triggering the final partisan showdown of a remarkably quarrelsome year of divided government.
The legislation "extends the payroll tax relief, extends and reforms unemployment insurance and protects Social Security — without job-killing tax hikes," Republican House Speaker John Boehner declared after the measure had cleared.
Referring to the controversy over the Keystone XL pipeline, he added, "Our bill includes sensible, bipartisan measures to help the private sector create jobs."
On a long day of finger pointing, however, House Democrats accused Republicans of protecting "millionaires and billionaires, " and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., derided the GOP-backed pipeline provision as "ideological candy" for the tea party-set.
Not only does this provide another example that the House continues to pass legislation the Senate lets die but this bill was bi-partisan in both its support and opposition.
Voting in favor of the legislation were 224 Republicans and 10 Democrats, while 179 Democrats and 14 Republicans opposed it.
At its core, the measure did include key parts of the jobs program that Obama asked Congress to approve in September.
This bill will do two things Obama says he wants to do. First, it will create jobs. Second, it will keep taxes from rising on the middle class. Despite this, Obama has pledged to veto the bill and the Eco-whacko vote has a lot to do with it.
Interestingly, the number of jobs that will be created as a direct result of the pipeline will be over 100,000 according to Rep. Dave Camp (R-MI). The State Department says it will only total 6,000. That last figure is laughable but even if we assume it's accurate, the economy is in a state where beggars can't be choosers. The figure is on the positive side of zero.
h/t to Hot Air for providing this incredibly ridiculous line of reasoning for not supporting the pipeline construction.
...and the Liberal media just keeps on truckin'. As the Muslim Brotherhood and its willing accomplices continue to seize power in Egypt, bad things continue to happen. There was Lara Logan's sexual assault at Tahrir Square; Coptic Christians continue to be persecuted, tortured, and killed. Now, we're seeing an increase in gas pipeline blasts. For some reason, the mainstream media continues trumpeting the Islamist uprisings as Democracy in Action. At some point, even they will have to admit that Mubarak was nowhere near as bad as what Obama's media minions helped to usher in.
Masked assailants blew up the Egyptian pipeline that carries gas to Israel and Jordan early on Monday, starting a fire that burned for hours and disrupting the flow of the gas, security officials said.
The blast was the third to hit the strategic pipeline since an uprising overthrew Egypt's longtime leader Hosni Mubarak in February.
No one claimed responsibility for the explosion but disgruntled Bedouin tribesmen in the area have been blamed for attacking the pipeline in the past. Islamists opposed to Egypt's 1979 peace treaty with Israel have also been suspected.
Is it me or does it look like they're describing the Muslim Brotherhood perfectly while refusing to acknowledge that's who they're describing.
The security officials said the attackers, armed with assault rifles, arrived in two pickup trucks without number plates and forced the three security guards on duty to leave before placing the explosives and shooting the pipeline's valves to release the gas.
The explosion triggered a blaze that took firefighters at least seven hours to extinguish, they said.
Meanwhile, the Obama administration, along with his media minions, continues to support a repeat of what happened in Egypt - in Libya.
This one has been on the internet for a few days but it's got staying power because of its sheer lunacy. While on Capitol Hill to observe the first anniversary of the BP Gulf oil spill, actress Kate Walsh was polite yet indignant over the fact that drilling is still taking place in the Gulf. She actually wants Obama to repeal all drilling permits. Walsh supported Obama's election in 2008 and defended his performance to this point by saying, 'he's been lowered into a pit of a mess.'
Liberals, in general, do not know where money comes from. This brilliant Hollywood celebrity doesn't know where energy comes from. She obviously has no clue how much oil she's personally responsible for consuming. I'm sure all the petroleum that's used in all of the shoes she's purchased would make quite a puddle.
After visiting Brazil, where he pledged American assistance there relative to oil exploration and drilling, Barack Obama is now pledging to reduce oil imports to the United States by one third over the next ten years. Not only does that mean there will be less Brazilian oil being imported from a country we will have helped drill for it, but the Obama administration continues to hamstring the oil industry here by not issuing permits. The moratorium in the gulf has already caused rigs to move elsewhere.
WASHINGTON — With gasoline prices rising, oil supplies from the Middle East pinched by political upheaval and growing calls in Congress for expanded domestic oil and gas production, President Obama on Wednesday will set a goal of a one-third reduction in oil imports over the next decade, aides said Tuesday.
The president, in a speech to be delivered at Georgetown University, will say that the United States needs, for geopolitical and economic reasons, to reduce its reliance on imported oil, according to White House officials who provided a preview of the speech on the condition that they not be identified. More than half of the oil burned in the United States today comes from overseas and from Mexico and Canada.
Mr. Obama will propose a mix of measures, none of them new, to help the nation cut down on its thirst for oil. He will point out the nation’s tendency, since the first Arab oil embargo in 1973, to panic when gas prices rise and then fall back into old gas-guzzling habits when they recede.
He will call for a consistent long-term fuel-savings strategy of producing more electric cars, converting trucks to run on natural gas, building new refineries to brew billions of gallons of biofuels and setting new fuel-efficiency standards for vehicles. Congress has been debating these measures for years.
At what point will it become clear to Americans that this man's actions are destroying their country? It first became known about Obama's plans to fund Brazilian oil drilling back in 2009. Just last week, Gulf Oil CEO Joe Petrowski blasted Obama for his hypocrisy about helping Brazil while placing moratoriums on domestic drilling.
In light of everything the Obama administration has done to alienate Saudi Arabia since the now infamous bow Obama gave to the Saudi King Abdullah, the specter that the bow was simply an attempt to disarm the king should not be off the table. In the arab world, separating friends and enemies isn't as simple as Shiite vs. Sunni. In the case of Saudi Arabia, it has long held similar views to the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood but it also doesn't want them in charge.
As a result, Saudi Arabia is made very uncomfortable when it sees the Obama administration continuing to take the side of the Muslim Brotherhood in the various uprisings in the Muslim world; intentional or not, the consequences of White House policy have been to embolden the Brotherhood, which very much would love to topple the House of Saud. Another example is the relationship developing between the Brotherhood and Iran, which views Saudi Arabia as a virtual enemy. Harken back to 2009. Did the United States support the uprising in Iran? No.
The Saudi monarchy, which itself has been loathe to introduce democratic reforms, watched with deepening alarm as the White House backed Arab opposition movements and helped nudge from power former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, another long-time U.S. ally, according to U.S. and Arab officials.
That alarm turned to horror when the Obama administration demanded that the Saudi-backed monarchy of Bahrain negotiate with protesters representing the country's majority Shiite Muslim population. To Saudi Arabia's Sunni rulers, Bahrain's Shiites are a proxy for Shiite Iran, its historic adversary.
"We're not going to budge. We're not going to accept a Shiite government in Bahrain," said an Arab diplomat, who spoke frankly on condition he not be further identified.
Saudi Arabia has registered its displeasure bluntly. Both Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Defense Secretary Robert Gates were rebuffed when they sought to visit the kingdom this month. The official cover story was that aging King Abdullah was too ill to receive them.
The true intentions of the Obama administration have not been easy to discern but one thing is clear. He tends to pick favorites and when he picked the rebels in Libya against Gadhafi, he threw several of his oldest and closest associates under the bus, Louis Farrakhan and Jeremiah Wright among them. It is quite curious that virtually every stance this administration has taken in the Arab world has served the interests of the Muslim Brotherhood.
What a coincidence! As the Mubarak regime falls, an Iranian flotilla pays a visit to the Saudi Arabian port of Jeddah. I'm sure the two events have nothing to do with each other. Warships visit a Saudi Arabian port at the same time Saudi ally Mubarak cedes power to the Muslim Brotherhood. Ahmadinejad is all too willing to ally with the Muslim Brotherhood in light of his hatred for Saudi Arabia. With Mubarak gone, Iran can flex a bit more muscle in the Red Sea.
TEHRAN (ISNA)-Iranian peace and friendship flotilla have reached Jeddah port to continues navigation activities.
"Islamic Republic of Iran's navy flotilla arrived in Jeddah port on Sunday to continue mighty presence in high seas with the aim of fostering amicable relations and sending message of peace and friendship to regional countries," said Iranian naval force commander Habibollah Sayyari.
The flotilla involve Islamic Republic of Iran's Khark warship and Alvand destroyer.
This would also explain Saudi King Abdullah's phone call to Barack Obama, ordering him not to 'humiliate' Mubarak. Via Gateway Pundit, which posted from UK Times:
Saudi Arabia has threatened to prop up President Mubarak if the White House tries to force a swift change of regime in Egypt. In a testy personal telephone call on January 29, King Abdullah told President Obama not to humiliate Mr Mubarak and warned that he would step in to bankroll Egypt if the US withdrew its aid programme, worth $1.5 billion annually. America’s closest ally in the Gulf made clear that the Egyptian President must be allowed to stay on to oversee the transition towards peaceful democracy and then leave with dignity. “Mubarak and King Abdullah are not just allies, they are close friends, and the King is not about to see his friend cast aside and humiliated,” a senior source in the Saudi capital told The Times.
Let's not also forget that Wikileaks revealed that Saudi Arabia is tremendously fearful of Iran and has pleaded with the United States to take out their nuclear capabilities.
In the wake of the ruling by Florida U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson that Obamacare is Unconstitutional in its entirety, the administration could be ruled in contempt if it continues to ignore the decision but it's already been ruled in contempt by another U.S. District Judge, this one in New Orleans. After a ruling this past summer that the Department of Interior had to lift the drilling ban in the Gulf of Mexico, the administration played games by refusing to issue permits. The judge has ruled Obama and company to be in contempt.
The Obama Administration acted in contempt by continuing its deepwater-drilling moratorium after the policy was struck down, a New Orleans judge ruled.
Interior Department regulators acted with “determined disregard” by lifting and reinstituting a series of policy changes that restricted offshore drilling, following the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history, U.S. District Judge, Martin Feldman of New Orleans ruled yesterday.
“Each step the government took following the court’s imposition of a preliminary injunction showcases its defiance,” Feldman said in the ruling.
“Such dismissive conduct, viewed in tandem with the re-imposition of a second blanket and substantively identical moratorium, and in light of the national importance of this case, provide this court with clear and convincing evidence of the government’s contempt,” Feldman said.
This ruling may expedite efforts on the part of the state of Florida to petition Vinson's court for a contempt ruling relative to the administration's refusal to cease and desist relative to the implementation of Obamacare. If Obama keeps this up, he'll have multiple contempt orders to deal with. Judges, regardless of ideological leanings, do belong to a fraternity and it's quite likely that said fraternity will not take kindly to an administration that ignores the judicial branch with such reckless abandon.
It wouldn't be all that surprising if this administration were to ignore a Supreme Court ruling that Obamacare is Unconstitutional. I think it's safe to say that such a scenario would justify impeachment proceedings.
What's that saying about pride coming right before the fall?
It appears the massive oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico is shrinking and those charged with cleaning up the mess are at a loss to explain why. Some have suggested the oil is beneath the surface, though that would be a curious happenstance since oil floats when mixed with water. We could be seeing how powerful mother nature - created by God - can be. It appears the oil is evaporating as it disperses the farther away it moves from the spill site.
The numbers don't lie: two weeks ago, skimmers picked up about 25,000 barrels of oily water. Last Thursday, they gathered just 200 barrels.
Still, it doesn't mean that all the oil that gushed for weeks is gone. Thousands of small oil patches remain below the surface, but experts say an astonishing amount has disappeared, reabsorbed into the environment.
"[It's] mother nature doing her job," said Ed Overton, a professor of environmental studies at Louisiana State University.
This explanation makes as much sense as anything else:
The oil that did make it to the ocean's surface was broken up by 88-degree water, baked by 100-degree sun, eaten by microbes, and whipped apart by wind and waves.
Considering we have a president who has a big problem accepting responsibility and no problem at all taking credit, Vegas should take bets on how long it will take him to champion his mastery of the clean-up.
Then again, this might make his argument for the drilling moratorium even more ridiculous.
This time it has to do with what the White House knew about the release of Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, convicted of the Pan Am 103 bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland. When al-Megrahi was released in August of 2009, it was under the pretense that he was sick with cancer and wouldn't be alive today. Since then, doctors have conceded that he might live for another ten years or more. At the time, the Obama White House was indignant over his release, saying it was a 'mistake'.
The US government condemned the decision to release him, as did US relatives of some of the victims of the 1988 atrocity.
One US Senator said that by releasing Megrahi, Scottish ministers had increased the threat of international terrorism, and internet campaigners threatened a US boycott of Scottish products.
Mr Obama said: "We have been in contact with the Scottish government, indicating that we objected to this, and we thought it was a mistake."
Now the Australian is reporting that the Obama administration supported the decision to release the Lockerbie bomber over sending him to a Libyan prison:
Correspondence obtained by The Sunday Times reveals the Obama administration considered compassionate release more palatable than locking up Abdel Baset al-Megrahi in a Libyan prison.
The intervention, which has angered US relatives of those who died in the attack, was made by Richard LeBaron, deputy head of the US embassy in London, a week before Megrahi was freed in August last year on grounds that he had terminal cancer.
The document, acquired by a well-placed US source, threatens to undermine US President Barack Obama's claim last week that all Americans were "surprised, disappointed and angry" to learn of Megrahi's release.
This one may just rival that Hide the Decline video from last Christmas, which incidentally consisted of a polar bear wearing a graduation cap. As far as this guy's voice matching that of David Byrne, you can't get much closer. Weird Al Yankovic could be getting worried. Robert Gibbs kicks it off with his patented stammering.
This story, though tragic, is made potentially far more important in light of the public anger at Big Oil that has been fueled and exacerbated by the Obama administration; the BP oil spill response, though totally bungled and encumbered by the White House, has also served to inflame tensions. It is not yet known if the package containing a bomb - left at the door of a home owned by an oil executive and his wife - was placed there because of the oil connection.
The potential exists but is not confirmed and it should not be assumed that's what happened until a suspect is identified.
That said, an updated report from KTRK provides a bit more information, saying that the bomb consisted of tacks, nails, and batteries. It sounds reminiscent of the kind the Weather Underground would make. It will be interesting, to say the least, if this turns out to be a leftwing lunatic who specifically targeted the wife of an Oil Executive. If that ends up being what happened, it will be interesting to see how it's handled. Hopefully, not like the case of Kenneth Gladney or the Black Panthers was dealt with. The woman was targeted because the box had her name on it. The only question now is, why?
