THE DAILY BLADE: Putting The Cart Before The Horse: Part II
An article in today’s edition of The New York Times carries a startling headline: “President-Elect Starts Taking On Burdens of the Job.” Two months before taking the oath of office – and becoming president – we are informed that he is growing “accustomed to draping the presidential mantle across his shoulders” and that the incoming White House press secretary Robert Gibbs and other aides have taken to addressing him as “president-elect.”
And reminiscent of that “presidential seal” with which Barack Hussein Obama’s* campaign festooned a lectern when he spoke before a meeting of Dem Governors at the Chicago History Museum back in June, Obama’s lectern now carries a placard that reads “The Office of the President-Elect.”
But guess what? There is no such office described in the U.S. Constitution, and technically, Obama isn’t even the “president-elect” “until the Electoral College convenes after the second Wednesday in December and elects him based on the results of the Nov. 4 general election, as stated in the Constitution,” as FOX News points out.
The Associated Press notes that Obama may be “[p]ushing the calendar, and maybe his luck” and suggests that “the politically safer route might be to lie low as President George W. Bush finishes his rocky term” instead of “us[ing] the bully pulpit even before he assumes the office.”
See, you don’t get the bully pulpit until you get the job - something Washington Post columnist and unabashed Obama supporter Eugene Robinson needs to be reminded of. He complains that “Having two presidents is starting to feel like having no president, and that's the situation we'll face until Inauguration Day,” and observes:
Even if he wanted to make a real run at righting the economy, at this point Bush has neither the energy nor the credibility to make it happen. Frankly, he comes off as less a lame duck than a cooked goose.
That leaves the other president, who has plenty of energy and credibility - but no authority. Bush said he called Obama to inform him of the Citigroup bailout, but informing isn't the same as consulting. Obama said his new economic team will be monitoring the situation and giving him daily reports on where things stand. He could save them the trouble and just watch CNBC or Bloomberg all day.
For better or worse, there is no “other president” than Bush, no matter how much Robinson wishes otherwise. Obama and his supporters will just have to wait until January 20, 2009 to drape the presidential mantle across his shoulders. Even if Bush were to step aside, Dick Cheney would become president until Obama takes the oath of office.
* It’s OK to use his middle name now; The New York Times says so.
Hopelessly Changeless: Broken Campaign Promises Watch: Part III
Members of Barack Obama’s transition team are suggesting that because of the enormity of the nation’s economic woes he may have to abandon another of his oft-stated campaign promises: To repeal the Bush tax cuts and make the wealthy “pay their share," reports The New York Times. The plan now seems to be to allow the tax cuts to expire on schedule December 31, 2010, thus delaying the resulting tax increase on the investor and entrepreneurial class for another two years.
At the risk of being considered unpatriotic for not wanting more of her income taxed and redistributed - especially during a recession - this is lack of change The Stiletto can believe in!
To read other posts in the "hopelessly changeless" series click here (last item) and here.
Franken Recount Observer Not Frank About Ties To His Campaign
Al Franken campaign worker Maggie Vertin, spent two days assisting in the recount effort in Wilkin County, MN, as a “nonpartisan” observer for Franken – which didn’t sit well with Norm Coleman observer Bob Westfall, who tells the Grand Forks (ND) Herald: “I don’t understand how you can switch from being partisan one day to being neutral today.”
Wilkin County Auditor Wayne Bezenek was unaware Vertin had ties to the Franken campaign, but said he monitored her table because the votes being recounted represented the more populous precincts. Another Coleman observer also said he kept a close eye on Vertin and did not see any funny business.
Meanwhile, with 78 percent of the cotes having been recounted as of Monday night, each campaign has challenged more than 1,500 ballots, reports the Star Tribune (Minneapolis-St. Paul).
Terrorists Brought To Justice
Two big legal wins for the Bush Administration in the War on Terror this week.
A three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals in Manhattan unanimously upheld the 2001 convictions of three Al Qaeda operatives, confirming the U.S. government’s authority to gather evidence against U.S. citizens in foreign countries via warrantless searches, as long as the search meets the Fourth Amendment’s requirement of reasonableness, reports The New York Times: “Judge José A. Cabranes wrote … the government had met that standard in its search of the home and monitoring of the telephone of one defendant, Wadih El-Hage, a close aide to Osama bin Laden, who was a naturalized American citizen living in Nairobi, Kenya.”
El-Hage and Mohamed Rashed Daoud al-’Owhali and Mohammed Saddiq Odeh were convicted of conspiracy in the 1998 terrorist bombings of the American embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, in which 224 people died and thousands more were injured.
And the second time was the charm in the terrorism financing and money laundering case against Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, formerly the nation's largest Muslim charity, reports The Associated Press. After a 42-day trial and 8½ days of jury deliberations, U.S. District Judge Jorge A. Solis announced the guilty verdicts on all 108 counts against the “charity” and five of its former leaders:
Ghassan Elashi, Holy Land's former chairman, and Shukri Abu-Baker, the chief executive, were convicted of a combined 69 counts, including supporting a specially designated terrorist, money laundering and tax fraud.
Mufid Abdulqader and Abdulrahman Odeh were convicted of three counts of conspiracy, and Mohammed El-Mezain was convicted of one count of conspiracy to support a terrorist organization. Holy Land itself was convicted of all 32 counts.
The government’s first attempt to make its case against Holy Land in October 2007 ended in a mistrial because the money trail proved too complicated for the jurors to follow. This time around, prosecutors retooled their case and proved beyond the shadow of a doubt that Holy Land funneled at least $12.4 million to Hamas to finance the schools, hospitals and social welfare programs that maintained grassroots loyalty to the terrorist organization throughout the West Bank and Gaza.
Texas Lawyer reports that “the jury also decided that some of the HLF defendants must forfeit $12.4 million in property to the federal government in relation to the money-laundering counts.”
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