Remember Obama Czar, Cass Sunstein? He wanted to give animals the right to sue people. Well, we have good news. If animals were pinning their hopes on Cass, he has failed them.
President Barack Obama’s regulatory czar Cass Sunstein is resigning his position in the Obama administration, the White House announced on Friday.
Sunstein, until now the administrator of the Office of Management and Budget’s powerful Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, will return to Harvard Law School to resume the position he held before he joined Obama’s administration three and a half years ago. He will be Harvard’s Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law and Director of the Program on Behavioral Economics and Public Policy.
Sunstein and Obama first met when they both taught at the University of Chicago Law School. Sunstein is viewed as a progressive number cruncher who was supposed to rejuvenate regulation to maximize benefit and minimize cost. Essentially, his role was to economically facilitate the Obama administration’s big government plans.
Check out the bald-face lies told about Sunstein in a statement from Obama:
“From putting in place lifesaving protections for America’s families, to eliminating tens of millions of hours of paperwork burdens for our nation’s citizens and businesses, Cass has shown that it is possible to support economic growth without sacrificing health, safety, and the environment,” Obama said.
“Cass has shepherded our review of existing rules to get rid of those that cost too much or no longer make sense, an effort that is already on track to save billions of dollars. With these reforms and his tenacious promotion of cost-benefit analysis, his efforts will benefit Americans for years to come,” Obama said. “I can’t thank him enough for his friendship and for his years of exceptional service.”
Yeah, because if the Obama administration has done anything, it's reduced paperwork and regulations.
Using that logic, this is Sunstein's version of an organized office.
Anyone - and I mean anyone - who is siding with Huma Abedin over the issue of the letters from Reps. Bachmann, Franks, Gohmert, Westmoreland, and Rooney is losing the argument BIG TIME. The latest example comes courtesy of Diana West, whose last four stanzas in her August 3rd column, drive a stake through the heart of any argument Huma's defenders are inclined to put forth.
Bachmann & Co. haven't alleged wrongdoing on Abedin's part. Rather, their question turns on the process that permitted a person with close family ties to an array of world Islamic movements and figures hostile to the United States to gain the security clearance Abedin requires to serve alongside the secretary of state.
I looked over the lengthy Form 86 that federal employees fill out to apply for national security positions. One portion is devoted to an applicant's relatives, with a question about relatives' affiliations with any "foreign movement." If Abedin answered fully -- and there are stiff penalties for failing to do so -- she would have noted, for starters, that her mother, Saleha Abedin, belongs to the Muslim Sisterhood (the Brotherhood's auxiliary, primarily for relatives of prominent Brothers) and serves on the board of the International Islamic Council for Dawah and Relief, a group banned in Israel for supporting Hamas. Saleha Abedin has been a representative of the Muslim World League, whose affiliates have been charged by the U.S. government with funding terrorism. Any ensuing investigation would turn up Saleha's work with the Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs, where she edits the journal that Huma, too, worked on for a dozen years. That same institute was founded by Huma's father in Saudi Arabia with the assistance and long-term involvement of Abdullah Omar Naseef. Naseef was secretary-general of the Muslim World League and also founded the Rabita Trust, a U.S.-designated international terrorist organization with ties to al-Qaida.
There's more, but just imagine the light dawning on the background-checker: So, Ms. Abedin, let me get this straight: Your folks, and you, too, worked with a guy who founded a terrorist organization linked to al-Qaida, your mom's on the board of a group banned in Israel for supporting Hamas, and you want top-secret clearance to work for the secretary of state.
Then what happened?
If there is a signature on that Form 86 belonging to someone who cleared Huma, that person has some explaining to do. If there either isn't a signature on that Form 86 or isn't a Form 86 at all, Huma and Hillary are the ones who have some real tough questions to answer.
It's an age old tradition. Politicians will always choose looking ignorant or stupid over revealing a cold hard truth they don't want to deal with. In politics, being perceived as foolish is preferable to being perceived as cowardly. That's where Senator John McCain and Speaker John Boehner come in. Frankly, it's simply not possible for them to be as ignorant about why Reps. Michele Bachmann, Trent Franks, Louie Gohmert, Tom Rooney, and Lynn Westmoreland have raised questions about Deputy Chief of Staff to Hillary Clinton, Huma Abedin and others.
And if they are as ignorant as they'd like you to believe, they're grossly unqualified to be in the jobs they're in.
John Guandolo over at Breitbart, gives them the benefit of the doubt, concluding that they're just ignorant and foolish when it comes to their defense of Huma Abedin in response to a request by those five Congressmen, for an investigation:
Speaker Boehner said in defense of Abedin, “From everything that I do know of her, she has a sterling character. Accusations like this being thrown around are pretty dangerous.” What is actually dangerous is that the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives remains so grossly ignorant about a threat inside our nation nearly eleven years after 9/11.
For his part, Senator McCain came to Abedin’s aide by saying that the comments made about her “rest solely on a few unspecified and unsubstantiated associations of members of Huma's family." This necessarily means that Mr. McCain did no study at all of the facts of the matter, because they clearly and specifically reveal the organizations in which her parents and family are involved and their ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.
Guandolo is being too kind. Sometimes the preponderance of evidence lampoons political pleas of plausible deniability. When it comes to the Muslim Brotherhood's presence in American politics, this is one such instance.
If McCain and Boehner are this ignorant, they're beyond incompetent. Therefore, assuming that they're not ignorant, why are they acting this way? Could it be that they're too invested in flawed policies that have, for years, involved welcoming Muslims with ties to nefarious groups (like the ISNA, MSA, CAIR, etc.) into the halls of power? Could it be that they feel duped and are too ashamed to 'fess up?
McCain was first elected to the U.S. Senate in 1986; Boehner was first elected to the U.S. House in 1990. The welcoming of Muslim’s with questionable affiliations into the halls of U.S. power really started in earnest a few yeas later during the Clinton Administration. Abdurahman Alamoudi was actually a State Department employee and served as the Clinton administration's Islamic affairs advisor for years. Alamoudi was arrested in 2003 and sentenced in 2004 for funding terrorism. All of this happened while Boehner and McCain were in Congress.
How about Sami al-Arian? He began to buy influence during the Clinton administration and even had access to the Bush administration. He was later convicted on charges related to funding terrorism.
If they didn't know who he was then, they certainly knew who he was in 2003, when he made major news. Did McCain and Boehner begin looking around and notice that there were potentially a lot of other Sami al-Arians roaming around the Capital? Did they feel partially responsible as members of one branch of our government?
Muslim Brotherhood groups and individuals got access to the Bush administration too. That would be the same Bush administration that belongs to the same Republican Party to which McCain and Boehner belong.
Consider Muzzammil Siddiqi, the former president of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), a Muslim Brotherhood group; that would be the same Muslim Brotherhood to which Huma Abedin's mother belongs. Siddiqi had access to George W. Bush AFTER 9/11. Ditto for the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) Executive Director, Nihad Awad.
How about the man who inspired Fort Hood Jihadist, Nidal Malik Hasan? His name is now infamous; Anwar al-Awlaki; he was given a plush luncheon in 2002 by the D.O.D. Later, he would teach at a University headed by one of Osama bin Laden's buddies, Sheikh Abdel Majeed Zindani.
On whose watch in Congress did all this happen? Uh, yes, McCain's and Boehner's. This is not to say that such things were their fault but if they knew about such things and chose the path of silence and least resistance, their culpability goes up, which could help to explain their inexplicable ignorance today.
As I wrote about here, Alamoudi had access to George W. Bush and Karl Rove both before and after 9/11. At one meeting, believed to be about a year before 9/11, Rove can be seen holding a book authored by the founder of two other Muslim Brotherhood groups. Despite red flags about the individuals Bush and Rove met with, the background of the author of that book - who was killed in 1986 - apparently wasn't studied thoroughly enough. The two Brotherhood groups he co-founded are:
The International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT)
The Association of Muslim Social Scientists of North America (AMSS)
Given all that we know about the Muslim Brotherhood today, are we to believe that McCain and Boehner didn't learn about a lot of this shortly after 9/11, a heinous attack that occurred on their watch? One thing we have come to learn about politicians is that they all know a lot more than they'd like you to think they know. In this case, the American people are supposed to believe that they know more about the Brotherhood / Huma Abedin's background than do McCain and Boehner?!
They're either lying or have descended to a level of incompetence that requires major therapy.
I don't buy their ignorance. It's just not plausible.
Consider the Penn State football program. The more that time passed without Jerry Sandusky being turned into police for raping young boys, the more the inaction of those who knew he was doing it implicated them. It also made them more ardent defenders against the truth about Sandusky being revealed.
In that case, not coming clean led to disaster for a college university.
If Boehner and McCain know the truth about the Muslim Brotherhood in America, their attempt at ignorance could lead to disaster for their country.
Despite the efforts of McCain and Boehner to have you think they're ignorant, they're just choosing to be perceived as fools because the alternative is worse. Believing otherwise is an insult to the intelligence of the American people. The fact that they've remained silent in the face of all the facts now available only underscores that conclusion.
Take a look at when the five congressmen who want answers about Huma Abedin's access to the State Department were first elected to Congress:
Trent Franks - 2002
Louie Gohmert - 2004
Michele Bachmann - 2006
Lynn Westmoreland - 2006
Tom Rooney - 2008
Gee, that would mean they weren't around when all these people connected to the Muslim Brotherhood began getting access to the halls of power, to include both the Clinton and Bush White Houses. How is it that they know more about the Muslim Brotherhood's access to those halls than McCain and Boehner, two men who were roaming them at the time?
Instead of calling McCain and Boehner ignorant, perhaps it's time to demand they come clean because it's really getting difficult to tell the difference between them and Nathan Thurm:
