Suppose you don’t like dogs too much and your boss walks up to you and says: “hey, about that raise you requested…. I’m going to be considering it this weekend during my golf trip to Florida and I need someone to watch my dog – will you look after him while I’m away” ?   Would you feel pressure to do it ?

It seems like Ms. Sebelius announced her resignation just before this GAO report surfaced. Hmmm, curiosor and curiosor….
WASHINGTON DC – Former Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius maneuvered one of America’s richest liberal philanthropies into contributing $13 million to Enroll America, a group founded by a former Obama White House staffer to drive up insurance enrollment numbers under the Affordable Care Act.
A report issued Monday by the Government Accountability Office shows what Republican members of Congress ave anticipated learning since 2013: that Sebelius called a total of five organizations a year ago and urged them to help Enroll America reach its goals.
One call went to the CEO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which made $3 million and $10 grants to the group after hearing her request. That amount was a dramatic increase from the $150,000 it had contributed the previous year.
(more…)

Finally someone, actually Howard Kurtz, asks the question that many people want to know the answer to.

BACKSTORY – For those who might not have paid attention over the past two years, Sharyl Attkisson was doing some great investigative reporting on the DOJ, Eric Holder and Fast n Furious gun running scandal. Her reporting then shifted to look into what actions were taken by the DOJ *AFTER* the scandal broke, and the wagon circling around the White House began.
Then, in the fall and winter of 2012 and 2013 Sharyl began looking closely at the Benghazi fiasco.
In the midst of her investigative reporting (May 2013) a mysterious series of hacks began into her computers both at home and at work, in addition her phone was tracked and hacked.
CBS publically admitted in June of 2013 something nefarious was going on.   Sharyl reported after several weeks of looking at the issue she knew ‘what’ and/or ‘who’ was to blame.
Howard Kurtz asks what was the outcome of all of this ?

Back in 2011 the Obama administration and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geitner were furious that S&P downgraded the U.S. bond rating based on debt and inability to confront through budgetary reforms. A few months after the downgrading announcement the DOJ announced a $5 Billion lawsuit against S&P.
Last week a federal judge, David Carter, ordered the Justice Department to provide documents relevant to S&P’s contention of retaliation.   Not surprisingly this inconvenient legal matter skipped the nightly news cycle.
[Judge] Carter ruled that S&P was entitled to find out whether the administration’s angry reaction to the downgrade contributed to the decision to sue only S&P. The judge cited an August 2011 phone call allegedly placed by then-Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to Harold McGraw III, the chairman and chief executive officer of McGraw-Hill, S&P’s parent company.
In a sworn affidavit, McGraw said that Geithner deplored the downgrade as wrongheaded and unpatriotic. Carter said S&P deserved access to documents that might shed light on whether Geithner’s pique, as McGraw has described it, had any connection to the subsequent decision to sue S&P. (more…)

Harry Reid did more than double down today, he went “all in” with his attacks against the Bundy family and anyone who would support them.    Reid now claims the Bundy family, and all those who support them, in addition to being “domestic terrorists”, “don’t pay their taxes”:

Harry REID: Bundy doesn’t believe that the American government is valid, he believes that the United States is a foreign government.

He doesn’t pay his taxes. He doesn’t follow the law. He doesn’t pay his fees.

And if anyone thinks by any figment of their imagination what happened up there last week was just people rallying to somebody that was oppressed — 600 people came in, armed. They had practiced, they had maneuvered, they knew what they were doing. They set up snipers in strategic locations with sniper rifles. They had assault weapons. They had automatic weapons. And they boasted about the fact that they put women in children — in fact one retired sheriff from Arizona boasted that he put women and children so that they would get hit first. (more…)

Five years ago many of us were talking about why the White House would take Census Polling responsibility away from the Dept. of Commerce.  At the time we did not know specifically why they were doing it – but we sensed it was nefarious.    We predicted it was a typical Chicago Politics strategy to mold comparative data that directly would show consequences to long-term policy.  We were right. 
WASHINGTON DC – In 2009, in the earliest weeks of President Barack Obama‘s administration, the White House made the controversial decision to take the unprecedented step of moving the Census Bureau from control of the commerce secretary over to the White House ahead of the decennial 2010 census.
Conservatives sounded alarm bells. “It takes something that is supposedly apolitical like the census, and gives it to a guy who is infamously political,” said Rep. Rob Bishop (R-UT) of then White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. […]
The White House dismissed the concerns of conservatives which were, indeed, unfounded insofar as they related to the 2010 census. But the fears of some that the Census Bureau could be corrupted by the imperatives of the political operatives in the White House was today proven accurate. (more…)

RENO, Nev. (MyNews4.com & KRNV) — Senate majority leader Harry Reid hasn’t been very vocal about the cattle battle showdown in recent days, but says “it’s not over.”
Reid tells News4′s Samantha Boatman his take on the so-called cattle battle in southern Las Vegas. “Well, it’s not over. We can’t have an American people that violate the law and then just walk away from it. So it’s not over,” Reid said. 

Senator Reid had just wrapped up a speech and question and answer session with students at UNR.   (link)
(more…)

Politico has an interesting summary of the Israeli / Palestinian talk collapse filling in some timelines to the analysis we previously presented.   Even if you are not a global political news junkie it’s worth the read.

While the Politico story doesn’t directly outline the ego of John Kerry as the impetus for the framework, and subsequent collapse, it’s still there and you can catch glimpses of it throughout the article.

Even among senior Obama aides, there’s disagreement about how wary the president actually was all along about taking another shot at the peace process, how much distance he was really trying to keep, and how much of his actions were about humoring an ambitious Kerry’s swing at the history books.

As we previously shared the entire construct of the Kerry spearheaded peace talks originated from Secretary Kerry’s desire to be something legendary, and do something on a grand scale worthy of his own opinion of himself.
John Kerry was not so much interested in the construct of Israeli security, or foundationally finding a substantive ‘two state’ solution; for Kerry -the ideologue- he wanted to carve the mold, and then watch the global media cast the brass bust.
(more…)

In a rather direct conversation former CBS investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson talks about her decision to leave CBS News.
Some of the interesting aspects she discusses are how CBS was uninterested in airing numerous reports on scandals that surround the Obama administration and White House. She also talks about how the White House would call CBS to pressure the network to stop airing information, and how even her print reporting would find White House officials calling to express their concerns.

In perhaps the least shocking surprise of the year (so far) Health and Human Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has resigned her position.    The White House has announced a replacement in Sylvia Mathews Burwell the current Director for The Office Of Management and Budget.

The timing of her resignation was widely anticipated after President Obama’s duplicitous  Rose Garden speech outlining successful ObamaCare registrations where Sebelius was conspicuously absent in appearance and mention.
Removing her now is seen as surgically removing the flawed ObamaCare rollout embarrassment from the ongoing narrative.   Nominating a female replacement for the upcoming confirmation process also provides President Obama with both a feminism shield and a sexist sword. (more…)

Remember this ?  (February 2013) Conservative activist and founder of True the Vote, Catherine Engelbrecht, filed an ethics complaint against far left Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD).    Ms. Engelbrecht accused Cummings of harassment and intimidation.

Democrat House Committee Member Elijah Cummings denied he, nor his staff, ever had contact with leadership in the IRS about targeting or getting documents for Ms. Engelbrecht’s group, “True The Vote”.

However, today (Via WFB)  The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) sent tax documents on a targeted conservative group to Democratic staff on the House Oversight Committee, newly released emails show, despite previous denials by ranking Oversight Democrat Elijah Cummings (D., Md.) that such contact had occurred. (more…)