FOX:Holder Disenfranchising Military Voters?

The Department of Justice is ignoring a new law aimed at protecting the right of American soldiers to vote, according to two former DOJ attorneys who say states are being encouraged to use waivers to bypass the new federal Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment (MOVE) Act.
The MOVE Act, enacted last October, ensures that servicemen and women serving overseas have ample time to get in their absentee ballots. The result of the DOJ’s alleged inaction in enforcing the act, say Eric Eversole and J. Christian Adams — both former litigation attorneys for the DOJ’s Voting Section — could be that thousands of soldiers’ ballots will arrive too late to be counted.
 
“It is an absolute shame that the section appears to be spending more time finding ways to avoid the MOVE Act, rather than finding ways to ensure that military voters will have their votes counted,” said Eversole, director of the Military Voter Protection Project, a new organization devoted to ensuring military voting rights. “The Voting Section seems to have forgotten that it has an obligation to enforce federal law, not to find and raise arguments for states to avoid these laws.”
 
Adams, a conservative blogger (www.electionlawcenter.com) who gained national attention when he testified against his former employer after it dropped its case against the New Black Panther Party, called the DOJ’s handling of the MOVE Act akin to “keystone cops enforcement.”
 
“I do know that they have adopted positions or attempted to adopt positions to waivers that prove they aren’t interested in aggressively enforcing the law,” Adams told FoxNews.com. “They shouldn’t be going to meeting with state election officials and telling them they don’t like to litigate cases and telling them that the waiver requirements are ambiguous.”
 
The MOVE act requires states to send absentee ballots to overseas military troops 45 days before an election, but a state can apply for a waiver if it can prove a specific “undue hardship” in enforcing it.
 
Sen. John Cornyn,R-Texas – who co-sponsored MOVE – wrote a letter to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder on July 26 saying he is concerned that the Department of Justice is allowing states to opt out of the new law. 
 
“Military voters have been disenfranchised for decades, and last year Congress acted,” Cornyn said in a statement to FoxNews.com. “But according to recent information, the Department of Justice has expressed reluctance to protect the civil rights of military voters under the new law. All our men and women in uniform deserve a chance to vote this November, and the Obama administration bears responsibility for ensuring that they have it.
 
“For far too long in this country, we have failed to adequately protect the right of our troops and their families to participate in our democratic process. The MOVE Act was supposed to end this sad history. The right to participate in democratic elections is fundamental to the American experience.”
 
In his letter to Holder, Cornyn cites minutes from the 2010 winter meeting of the National Association of Secretaries of State (NASS), during which Rebecca Wertz, deputy chief of the DOJ’s voting section, told state election officials that the legislative language regarding waivers is not completely clear. Wertz described the provisions of the law as “fairly general” and “somewhat of an open question as to what type of information” a state needs to submit in order to for their waiver application to be granted. She said it was also unclear whether waivers are for one election only, or if they apply to future elections.
 
According to the meeting’s minutes, obtained by FoxNews.com, Wertz also said “that the DOJ is working to find effective ways to disseminate any information guidance that can help states with different questions about MOVE interpretation. She invited questions and dialogue from states, and said that litigation is always the last resort.”
 
Cornyn wrote, “If these are the positions of the DOJ, then they fly in the face of the clear statutory language, undermine the provisions in question, and jeopardize the voting rights of our men and women in uniform.”
 
He said the language of the law makes it clear that there is no ambiguity when it comes to states’ eligibility for being granted a waiver, and that the statute does not leave room for the Justice Department to decide whether to enforce its requirements.
 
“If a state is not in compliance with the statute, there is little room for “dialogue” or negotiation, and the Voting Section should take immediate steps to enforce the law and safeguard military and overseas voting rights, including pursuing litigation whenever necessary,” Cornyn wrote. “The comments by the DOJ official, as reported in the NASS minutes, appear to ignore Congress’ clear legislative language and could facilitate the disenfranchisement of our men and women in uniform.”
 
Cornyn, who discussed Eversole’s allegations at a meeting with Defense Department officials last week, called for Holder to immediately provide guidelines to state election officials; to ensure that states are required to abide by the law; and to provide Cornyn himself with a state-by-state breakdown of which states have already applied for waivers and which are expected to be in noncompliance with MOVE in the November midterm election. He also called for full transparency in the waiver process.
 
A spokeswoman for the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, Xochitl Hinojosa, declined to comment, other than to say Cornyn’s letter is being reviewed.

Read the full article FoxNews

Team Obama Braces for Upcoming Story Set to Expose Intelligence Spending

The Obama administration is bracing for the first in a series of Washington Post articles said to focus in unprecedented detail on the government’s spending on intelligence contractors.

The intelligence community is warning that the article could blow the cover of contract companies doing top-secret work for the government. At the same time, a senior administration official acknowledged that the kind of wasteful spending expected to be spotlighted in the series is “troubling” and something the administration is trying to address.
“There will be examples of money being wasted in the series that seem egregious and we are just as offended as the readers by those examples,” the official said. The official said some of the information in the story is “explainable,” in that some “redundancy” is necessary in the intelligence community. But the official said the administration has been working to reduce “waste” and that “it’s something we’ve been on top of.”

Other sectors of the administration were on high alert over the piece. A source told Fox News that the series amounts to a “significant targeting document” in that it will apparently bring together unclassified information from the public domain in a single location, making it a one-stop shop for this level of detail. The official said “few intelligence groups have the assets and resources to pool” this kind of information.

This has led to warnings about how the information could be used. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence sent out a memo saying that “foreign intelligence services, terrorist organizations and criminal elements will have potential interest in this kind of information.”
The State Department sent out an e-mail saying the series would include a “graphic representation pinpointing the location of firms conducting top secret work, describing the type of work they perform and identifying many facilities where such work is done.”

Contractors play a huge role in the nation’s intelligence work — a role that has swelled since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. Contractors handle more than half of the Department of Homeland Security’s intelligence duties.

Read the original article FOXNews

The Obama administration’s cuts to the U.S. Navy imperil critical missions

Robert O’Brien

“Megyn Kelly: ‘Racist Media Satan’”

KEVIN MCCULLOUGH

I don’t know the politics of Megyn Kelly. But after a few years of seeing her operate, and occasionally running into her in the hallways at Fox News, I think I’ve learned a tiny bit about her as a person.

For instance, I know that Megyn is a kind person, and someone who demonstrates gratitude for those who have done her kindness. Exhibit A in that bit of evidence is the affection she shares for Brit Hume the retired senior admiral of the Fox News editorial operation. Brit was the one who discovered Megyn and first put her on microphone with a camera and assignment in the beltway.

Obama’s Lawlessness on Immigration

Kris W. Kobach

It is becoming increasingly clear that, when it comes to illegal immigration, the Obama Administration has a disturbingly cavalier approach to what the law requires.   Three recent examples illustrate his disdain for the plain meaning of the law.
First, during an interview in Ecuador, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton let the cat out of the bag about the Obama Administration’s plan to sue Arizona.  In so doing, she revealed who was sitting in the driver’s seat when it came to the Justice Department’s decision:  “President Obama has spoken out against the law because he thinks that the federal government should be determining immigration policy. And the Justice Department, under his direction, will be bringing a lawsuit against the act.”

Clinton was correct in her prediction. On Tuesday, the Obama Justice Department filed suit against the Arizona law, calling the measure “invalid” and saying it interfered with federal immigration responsibilities.

In other words, the same political calculations that drove President Obama to criticize (and mischaracterize) the Arizona law, now drove the Justice Department to bring the suit.  Not to mention the potential embarrassment that would result if the Justice Department came to an independent conclusion that Arizona’s law is on solid ground.  Barack Obama-constitutional scholar that his fans make him out to be — can’t say one thing and have the Justice Department say another.

The problem with Obama’s strategy is that the federal judges will actually read the Arizona law and they will find that there is precious little for the Justice Department to attack.  Put simply, there is no federal statute that Arizona’s law conflicts with.  The opinions of the Fourth, Fifth, Eighth, Ninth, and Tenth Circuits of the U.S. Court of Appeals (which are all of the circuits that have addressed the issue) support the authority of Arizona to enact its law.  Another obstacle for the Obama Administration is the fact that the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel in 2002 authored an opinion holding that state police officers have the authority to arrest illegal aliens-the same authority underlying the Arizona law.  In short, the Obama Administration’s suit is on very thin ice.

But even if one were to imagine that the administration had a strong legal argument, there would have been yet another reason not to file the lawsuit:  It is completely unnecessary.  Five suits have already been filed by the ACLU and its fellow travelers  The issue is already teed up for the federal courts to decide.  The administration achieves nothing by launching its own litigation, except for rallying the Democrats’ open-borders base before the 2010 elections.  The Justice Department should never be abused in this blatantly-political manner.

Case No. 2:  According to Arizona Sen. John Kyl, Obama told him in a one-on-one conversation that the administration was not going to secure the border until Republicans agreed to go along with an amnesty for illegal aliens.  In other words, enforcing the law is optional in the eyes of the President-just another bargaining chip for him to use in order to get what he wants.  The White House (not Obama himself) now claims that Sen. Kyl is lying.  But given Kyl’s reputation for honesty, and the fact that the Obama Administration has radically reduced immigration enforcement since taking office, Kyl’s account of the conversation has more credibility.

Obama’s statement reveals that he has very little regard for his obligation under Article II, Section 3, of the Constitution to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.”  He may not like federal immigration laws, but that does not entitle him to suspend them.

Case No. 3: According to eight Republican senators, the Obama Administration is now contemplating the possibility of unilaterally granting an amnesty to illegal aliens by executive action.  How would the administration pull this off?  Apparently by granting “parole” to millions of illegal aliens, en masse.

The problem with this scheme is that federal law doesn’t allow it.  The avenue of granting an illegal alien parole-and lawful presence in the United States-was created by Congress to be used on a case-by-case basis.  If, for “urgent humanitarian reasons” or “significant public benefits,” a particular alien needed to be allowed to remain in the United States, then the executive branch has the authority grant that alien parole.

The meaning of the law has been clear for decades.  But now Obama is considering changing it to give himself unprecedented power to grant amnesty to millions with the wave of his hand.  Never mind that the granting of a mass amnesty is plainly a legislative action-altering the legal rights of millions-and the Constitution reserves such legislative powers to Congress.

Taken together, these three episodes paint a picture of lawlessness.  The Obama Administration seems to believe that the President has the authority to set aside a state law because it is contrary to his political agenda, suspend the enforcement of federal laws for political reasons, and seize from Congress the legislative power to grant an amnesty.  So much for a country governed by the rule of law, not the rule of man.

Read the original article HumanEvents

Olivastro:The perfect summer storm

Richard Olivastro

Summer begins June 21; for our nation, the long hot summer has already begun.

The industrial accident in the Gulf of Mexico—being reported 24/7 by the media as an “environmental catastrophe,” as it may indeed turn out to be—has made it worse. Whether you watch the Weather Channel or the news channels, respective forecasts and commentaries alike seem designed to seed both the clouds and viewer perceptions. All of which affects political atmospherics and has contributed to the level of heat felt by Mr. Obama and others inside the White House.

The presidential game was not supposed to be like this.

Everything Barack Obama touched, said, did—or even tried to do—was supposed to be “perfect.”

That was the script; and, for some, will remain the progressive fiction purveyed as an article of faith.

Such fiction will persist despite reality, facts, and poll numbers that confirm citizens have stopped buying the Chicago packaged and published fairy tale distributed nationally. What was introduced and originally sold as biography—auto and otherwise—is now off even the N.Y. Times fiction list.

* * * * *

Secular progressives may be shocked to learn that ‘Only God is Perfect.’

Baseball fans of all political stripes might wonder: Even during summer?

Yes, no man, woman, or president is—or ever will be—perfect in all aspects of life’s innings.

Philadelphia Phillies pitching ace Roy Halladay understands this reality despite achieving perfection over nine full baseball innings on May 29. Four days later, Armando Galarraga of the Detroit Tigers performed the same; but, unfortunately, in his reality, veteran baseball umpire Jim Joyce did not. You likely already know those sports stories.

Mr. Obama, and erstwhile supporters, should accept reality and start behaving accordingly in all aspects of presidential innings during summer and all seasons.

* * * * *

In defense of Mr. Obama, the industrial accident in the Gulf was not his fault.

In spite of that, the president’s statement that he “takes responsibility” may be admirable—on the surface. That is, if all federal government actions are properly limited and in appropriate support of necessary state initiatives and BP responsibilities. If Mr. Obama does it only that way, maybe… a Roy Halladay?

However, if any federal actions overreach constitutional authority, or can be rightly viewed as indicative of nefarious intent, then citizens will, however reluctantly, conclude those federal government actions were planned and existed below the president’s surface-level “takes responsibility” statement.

And, pray tell, if that proves to be the case, then such federal government actions are yet another example of the Chicago school of political training in which, as Rham Emmanuel originally said in his own signal ‘surface statement,’ “…crisis provides the opportunity for us to do things that you could not do before.”

The opportunity afforded the incoming Obama administration 17 long months ago was to use a steady hand to weather the domestic economic storm. Instead, from the outset, the president seems to have always purposefully pursued what he always calls a “transformational” agenda that—simply and accurately stated—has been “takeover” at the core.

In the beginning, Chief of Staff-to-be Rahm Emanuel’s signal ‘surface statement’ energized Obama supporters. Perhaps, back then, only aggressive-progressives understood, knew, or could see beneath the water line what lie ahead?

In retrospect, when Mr. Emanuel made his infamous “crisis is opportunity” statement, he—and others—outlined the shape of things to come in the Obama ‘transformation’ iceberg.

Here’s a recap for you:

Emanuel declared the “U.S. largely squandered the opportunity the oil shocks of the 1970s presented to make serious, long-term changes in its energy habits.”

And, back then, analysts talked about pent up “yearning for government spending on infrastructure to stimulate economic activity” and that the incoming president should “push the kind of green projects” that are consistent with calls during the campaign for “a transition to alternative energy sources including new kinds of mass-transit systems” and “government investment” in all market arenas.

And, this gem: “of course, all of this would be easier to push through if it was called stimulus spending.”

And, finally, “with rising levels of unemployment” and stress among the masses “health care reform could be rammed through along with more regulatory…” oversight of financial markets and industries.

All of that is exactly what has happened.

What might be next on the horizon?

Answer: The Perfect Summer Storm!

That’s the way aggressive-progressives would view it. After all, the aggressive-progressive mindset self-justifies unilateral action for any and all purposes whether based on responsibilities real or assumed.

What is the Perfect Summer Storm?

The Feds begin using the oil spewing from the BP Deep Water well as part of their justification for taking over control of all private oil drilling operations.

When will the Perfect Summer Storm begin?

If you live on or near the Gulf Coast, go to the shoreline, pick up a seashell, cup it to your ear, listen very carefully. Beyond the sound of the surf… you just might here: “I take this action because it is my responsibility as….”

Read the original article Daily Caller

Peters:We can’t appease Islamists

Ralph Peters

Appeasement doesn’t work. It doesn’t work with dictators, and it doesn’t work with terrorists. The attempted Times Square bombing was yet more proof.

We’ve allowed Islamist extremists to dictate what we can say, print or portray. We don’t want to offend them. The First Amendment bows before Islam.

The Obama administration has ducked all unwelcome evidence that such appeasement doesn’t work. Instead, it goes to absurd lengths to convince Muslim radicals that we respect their views.

Our counterfactual assumption is that, if we’re really, really nice, the fanatics will stop being grumpy and blowing us up. But Islamist extremists haven’t read our actions (or inactions) as an admirable exercise in tolerance. They read our bowing and scraping and apologizing as weakness.

The mean-dog law applies: Let that pit bull sense that you’re afraid, and you’re going to feel its teeth.

Instead of applauding our ecumenical decency, terrorists just smell fear.

So we’ve had yet another attempt to ignite an inferno in the heart of Manhattan, to slaughter the innocent and teach America a lesson.

Since the Obama administration deepened our submissive attitude toward Islam — banning all references to “Islamist terror” or “Muslim radicalism” from government documents and statements — the number of terror attacks on our soil has gone up. Does any reader believe this is just a coincidence?

The dogs of terror smell fear. Terror’s response to our president’s Cairo valentine to fanaticism last year was the Fort Hood massacre, the attempted Christmas Day bombing, now the botched bombing of Times Square — and a swelling number of foiled plots.

The Times Square near-miss was particularly revealing. When it looked like the bomber might be a forty-something white male, the media’s delight and the relief of our politicians was palpable: At last, another Timothy McVeigh! It isn’t only Muslims!

Boo-hoo. The perp turned out to be another Islamist terrorist we can’t call an “Islamist terrorist.”

Now the question of most interest about the terrorists’ latest Manhattan Project is whether Faisal Shahzad, a newly naturalized citizen (great vetting job!), chose Times Square just because it’s a powerful symbol and always crowded — or if he also hoped to hit Viacom’s headquarters as punishment for South Park’s (promptly self-censored) lampoon of Mohammed.

This matters. South Park may not embody all that I admire about America, but its irreverence is an important manifestation of our freedom of expression. What politically correct and cowardly madness have we come to, when we allow murderous Muslim fanatics to censor our laugh lines?

I don’t like gratuitous provocations directed at any religion. But freedom of speech applies: We can’t have an anything-goes rule for every other faith, and a don’t-touch rule for Islam.

When those Danish cartoons mocking Mohammed were first published several years ago, I found them tasteless, stupid and gratuitous. But the moment Islamist bullies reached into our civilization to threaten the cartoonists and publishers with death, we should have dug in our heels.

If the Saudis, or the Pakistanis, or the Iranians in their respective spiritual tenements don’t want to watch South Park or look at cartoons of Mohammed, fine. They’re entitled to their own house rules.

But they are not entitled to dictate to us what we can depict, describe or, yeah, laugh at. In our house, you have to play by our rules.

We should have taken a stand years ago. Now our appeasement-addicted administration won’t. Comics will go on ripping up other faiths for their stand-up routines, but the religion that’s spawned such ungodly terror will get a pass.

All of our self-censorship, bowing, kowtowing and apologizing has had no positive effect, whatsoever, on our enemies. Not one terrorist organization has disbanded, nor has one terrorist converted to the Malibu lifestyle.

The only thing we’ve done by caving in to every cultural demand from Islamist fanatics has been to encourage them to make more demands.

Our enemies believe we’re cowards. We’re also fools.

Read the original article New York Post

Did General Motors Really Repay Its Taxpayer Bailout?

Chuck Grassley

General Motors announced this week that it repaid its multibillion-dollar taxpayer-backed TARP loans. GM even bragged that it was able to “repay the taxpayers in full, with interest, ahead of schedule, because more customers are buying [GM] vehicles.” There was great fanfare, including expensive, around-the-clock GM TV commercials nationwide. But, the hype is not the reality. In fact, GM did not repay the loans with money it earned from selling cars. Instead, GM repaid the TARP loans with money it withdrew from another TARP fund at the Treasury Department.

The day before the GM story broke, Neil Barofsky, the government TARP watchdog, testified before the Senate 

Finance Committee. He explained that GM did not use earnings to repay its TARP debt. The April quarterly report to Congress from his office stated: “The source of funds for these quarterly [debt] payments will be other TARP funds currently held in an escrow account.”

GM filings with the SEC reveal that GM was paying 7 percent interest on a $6.7 billion TARP debt. The filings also confirm that the source of funds for GM’s debt repayments was a multibillion-dollar TARP-funded escrow account at Treasury; that means it was taxpayer money — not earnings.

Meanwhile, in all the fanfare and patting themselves on the back, Treasury and GM made no mention of what happened to the $2.5 billion loan GM owes its union health care plan. The union loan carries a 9 percent interest rate and runs until 2017. Don’t most Americans try to pay off their higher-interest debts first? Well, the union loan was not paid off. Why not? Does the union get to keep collecting 9 percent from GM until 2017, courtesy of the American taxpayer, while taxpayers give up a 7 percent return over the next five years in exchange for the hope that GM stock will be worth more than what we paid for it, someday down the road?

It is far from clear how GM and the Obama administration could honestly say, much less trumpet in prime-time television ads, that GM repaid its TARP loans in any meaningful way. The reality is that GM got additional TARP billions from a Treasury escrow account filled with taxpayer dollars. Taxpayers have not been paid back “in full” and are still on the hook for the TARP stock investment in GM. Whether taxpayer funds are ultimately recovered depends upon the administration’s ability to sell GM stock at a profit some day. Of course, we all hope it works out that way, and it might. But, the American people deserve more than puffed-up press releases and misleading commercials claiming that GM paid its loans back to the government with money it earned. I recognize that one of the goals of the GM ad campaign is to build trust, but GM did it all wrong, apparently with some help from the administration. Shifting bailout money from GM debt to GM stock is not the same as repaying it. Stock is riskier than debt. Maybe it’s a good idea. Maybe it’s a step in the right direction, maybe not. Only time will tell. But, we should be clear with the American people about what happened here.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Treasury is beginning to admit the truth. Treasury claims the source of the funds was “clearly disclosed” all along. Well, that might be technically true. However, to understand the disclosure you have to be a sophisticated investor with time to pore over the fine print buried in massive SEC filings and government reports prepared by independent watchdogs with teams of auditors. The average citizen, on the other hand, just sees the GM CEO saying that GM has paid back the taxpayer “in full.” The truth is that GM originally received over $49 billion from the US government and many billions remain to be recouped. That is why we were told at the Senate Finance Committee hearing that TARP losses related to the auto companies are expected to exceed $30 billion.

The timing of this maneuver also is troubling. The administration’s so-called Financial Crisis Responsibility Fee, a TARP excise tax intended to recover TARP losses, was the subject of the Finance Committee hearing. The Office of Management and Budget, and the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, estimate that overall taxpayer TARP losses will exceed $100 billion, and the auto companies will account for over 30 percent of that amount, more than $30 billion. So why does the president exclude the auto companies from his TARP excise tax proposal? I raised this issue at the hearing. I noted that GM refused to testify. The next day we learned that GM, with the permission of Treasury, withdrew billions from the TARP escrow fund and accelerated the repayment of the entire GM TARP loan. Immediately, GM and the administration launched a public relations campaign touting “repayment.”

Regardless of the motive, this situation is a perfect example of the shenanigans caused by excessive government intervention in the economy. Being honest with the American people is not optional. The sooner these extraordinary entanglements between taxpayer and the private sector are over, the better.

Read the original article FOXNews

Lieberman subpoenas records on Fort Hood

J. Taylor Rushing and Roxana Tiron

Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) on Monday issued the first congressional subpoena of the Obama administration.

It’s rare for Congress to subpoena an administration controlled by the same party  and, in doing so, Lieberman followed through on a threat he made last week. The senator, an Independent who caucuses with Democrats, has increasingly become a thorn in the side of the administration.

He has accused the administration of stalling a congressional probe into the November shootings at Fort Hood, Texas, saying the departments of Defense and Justice have turned down four requests for documents over the course of five months.

Last week Lieberman said he would take the White House to court over the issue of whether to share information about the murders, allegedly committed by Maj. Nidal Hasan.

 “We regret there was no change in position,” Lieberman said on a conference call with reporters. “We have signed and are serving subpoenas today.”
Acting as chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, Lieberman issued the subpoenas after a noon deadline came and went with no resolution. The subpoenas were issued to Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Attorney General Eric Holder.

 In a letter accompanying the subpoenas, Lieberman and Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), the committee’s ranking member, gave the administration until 10 a.m. on Monday, April 26 to comply.

 “Unfortunately, it is impossible for us to avoid reaching the conclusion that the departments simply do not want to cooperate with our investigation. It is with great disappointment and reluctance that we have directed service of subpoenas to you which demand disclosure of the requested information. … We fully expect that your departments will fulfill their legal obligation under these subpoenas and comply by the appointed time.”

 “Obviously, we’re open to discussions before then, but we think our request is quite reasonable,” Lieberman told reporters on Monday.

 Senate Democratic leaders had hoped Lieberman and White House officials would be able to resolve the dispute without legal action, but neither side backed down over the weekend.

The Pentagon has been concerned that releasing the information requested by Lieberman’s committee would jeopardize the integrity of the military justice process and the criminal prosecution of Hasan.

Instead, senior Pentagon legal experts indicated that the Department of Defense has tried to offer the panel alternatives, particularly with regard to Hasan’s personnel file and potential witnesses in his trial. Pentagon officials said they tried to provide the committee with the names of people in the chain of command, who would not be potential witnesses, but would have pertinent information. The panel rejected that.

Additionally, because of privacy concerns, the panel that traditionally has jurisdiction to look into military personnel files is the Senate Armed Services Committee. Eight members of the Homeland Security Committee are also on that committee, including Lieberman and Collins. The Pentagon made the offer to view the personnel files through Armed Services, but Lieberman and Collins have not requested to view the documents as part of their Armed Services membership, the Pentagon officials said.

“We will continue to cooperate with the committee in every way, with that single caveat that whatever we provide does not impact our ability to prosecute,” said Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman. “The Department has and continues to cooperate with Congress while ensuring the integrity of both our own investigation as well as the criminal investigation and prosecution of Nidal Hasan.”

The Pentagon can say no to the subpoena, but would likely try to engage Congress in trying to work out alternatives, officials said. If the Pentagon does not comply with the subpoena, Congress can ultimately issue articles of contempt, the officials noted.

Lieberman and Collins notified the Pentagon on March 23 of their subpoena threat.

 Lieberman has described the murders as a potential act of terrorism because Hasan had been in contact with Islamic clerics and may have acted out of opposition to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

 The administration has maintained that a congressional inquiry into the shootings would jeopardize the criminal case against Hasan, and has launched its own review of the incident.

 Lieberman on Monday rejected  that claim anew, saying that he and Collins plan no specific hearings to publicize the information. He also repeated his claim that the committee has held previous oversight hearings that did not affect a criminal prosecution.

Lieberman, who left the Democratic Party after losing a Senate primary in 2006, has had a tempestuous relationship with his former party.

He endorsed and vigorously campaigned for Republican Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) in the 2008 presidential campaign, and many Democrats fumed over his criticism of President Barack Obama.

Liberal Democrats were upset further with Lieberman after he fought against the public health insurance option during the healthcare debate.

Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) was under pressure in January 2009 to yank Lieberman’s chairmanship of the Homeland Security Committee, but decided against it — after Obama intervened and suggested Lieberman should stay.

Asked last week if his subpoena threat exemplifies a further rift with Democrats, or if his chairmanship could be jeopardized anew, Lieberman said he simply felt responsible to push the administration into compliance with his committee.

“This is so different in the sense that this is really about carrying out what I see as my responsibility as a committee chair to obtain information to complete an investigation,” he said. “To me, that’s different from taking a position on an issue on which I may disagree with the Democratic Party. And we really tried every which way to work this out, but they’ve just been stonewalling us.”

Read the original article TheHill

Payoffs to Big Labor continue

By Katie Packer