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The Morning Flap: June 20, 2012

These are my links for June 19th through June 20th:

  • Obama grants Holder request on ‘Furious’ documents as contempt vote looms– President Obama has granted an 11th-hour request by Attorney General Eric Holder to exert executive privilege over Fast and Furious documents, a last-minute maneuver that appears unlikely to head off a contempt vote against Holder by Republicans in the House.The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee is expected to forge ahead Wednesday morning with its meeting on the contempt resolution anyway.If the vote proceeds, Republicans have more than enough votes on committee to pass the resolution. However, Holder would not be considered held in contempt of Congress unless and until the full House approves the measure.The move by Holder and Obama to lock down some requested documents only complicates the fight over the botched anti-gunrunning operation between the legislative and executive branches.After Holder made the request to Obama via letter on Tuesday, Deputy Attorney General James Cole wrote to Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., on Wednesday informing him that the president has granted the request.
  • Obama asserts executive privilege on Fast and Furious documents– President Barack Obama has asserted executive privilege over documents sought by a House committee investigating the botched Fast and Furious gun-running sting, according to a letter to the panel Wednesday from Deputy Attorney Gen. James Cole.The move means the Department of Justice can withhold the documents from the House Oversight Committee, which was scheduled to consider a contempt measure Wednesday against Holder.”I write now to inform you that the president has asserted executive privilege over the relevant post-February 4, 2011, documents,” Cole wrote in a letter to committee chairman Rep. Darrell Issa, R-California.”We regret that we have arrived at this point, after the many steps we have taken to address the committee’s concerns and to accommodate the committee’s legitimate oversight interests regarding Operation Fast and Furious,” Cole continued. “Although we are deeply disappointed that the committee appears intent on proceeding with a contempt vote, the department remains willing to work with the Committee to reach a mutually satisfactory resolution of the outstanding issues.”
  • Food Stamp Fiasco – The Senate refuses to cut $20 billion out of $770 billion– The next time someone moans about Washington “austerity,” tell them about the Senate’s food stamp votes on Tuesday. Democrats and a few Republicans united to block even modest reform in a welfare program that has exploded in the last decade and is set to spend $770 billion in the next 10 years.Yes, $770 billion on a single program. And you wonder why the U.S. had its credit-rating downgraded?When the food stamp program began in the 1970s, it was designed to help about 1 of 50 Americans who were in severe financial distress. But thanks to eligibility changes first by President George W. Bush as part of the 2002 farm bill and then by President Obama in the 2008 stimulus, food stamps are becoming the latest middle-class entitlement.
  • So, What’s up with Marco Rubio? – This morning, I reported that Mitt Romney had not asked Marco Rubio to take the first steps in the vice presidential vetting process. As my report said, “He has not been asked to complete any questionnaires or been asked to turn over any financial documents typically required of potential vice presidential candidates.”
    This afternoon the Washington Post matched that reporting. And in a taped interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News, Romney brushed off questions about whether Rubio was being vetted.
    “I get a kick out of some of the speculation that goes on,” Romney told Hannity. “And I’m not going to comment on the process, of course. But I can tell you this. Only Beth Myers and I know who’s being vetted.”
    A few hours later, however, Romney called in reporters traveling with him to give an entirely different response.
    “Marco Rubio is being thoroughly vetted as part of our process,” Romney told reporters, adding reports that said Rubio was not being vetted were “entirely false.”
    “There was a story that originated today, apparently at ABC, based on reports of supposedly outside, unnamed advisers of mine,” Romney said. “I can’t imagine who such people are but I can tell you this. They know nothing about the vice presidential selection or evaluation process. There are only two people in this country who know who are being vetted and who are not, and that’s Beth Myers and myself.”
  • Obama’s grandfather Stanley Armour Dunham tortured by the British?– A new biography of Barack Obama has established that his grandfather was not, as is related in the President’s own memoir, detained by the British in Kenya and found that claims that he was tortured were a fabrication.’Barack Obama: The Story’ by David Maraniss catalogues dozens of instances in which Obama deviated significantly from the truth in his book ‘Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance’. The 641-page book punctures the carefully-crafted narrative of Obama’s life.One of the enduring myths of Obama’s ancestry is that his paternal grandfather Hussein Onyango Obama, who served as a cook in the British Army, was imprisoned in 1949 by the British for helping the anti-colonial Mau Mau rebels and held for several months.
  • Elizabeth Warren loses it, lashes out at “right wing extremist” (me)– As you know, Elizabeth Warren has been caught in a series of at best misleading and at worst false responses since The Boston Herald first broke the story in late April that Harvard Law promoted her as Native American in the mid-to-late 1990s.First she played dumb and said she didn’t know why.  But over the course of several weeks digging by bloggers and newspapers punctured Warren’s story, and revealed or forced Warren to admit she listed herself as Native American to get on a list of “Minority Law Teachers” in the mid-1980s to mid-1990s, that she informed both Penn Law and Harvard Law that she was Native American for federal reporting purposes, and that she was on a list at Harvard during her “visiting year” of “Women of Color in Legal Academia.”Genealogical tracing of Warren’s alleged Cherokee ancestry by a group of Cherokees led by Twila Barnes has shown that Warren has no Cherokee heritage.  The documentation and research has been posted for all to see.  Anger at Warren extends beyond Cherokees.Yet Warren persists in the claim to this day, raising bizarre defenses such as her Aunt Bea told her her ancestors had high cheekbones “like all the Indians” and that her parents supposedly had to elope because her mother was 1/16 Native American.
  • New RNC ad targeting Hispanics focuses on economic message – The Hill’s Video – RT @thehill: New RNC ad targeting Hispanics focuses on economic message
  • Working-Class Whites a Barrier to a Democratic House – Wednesday, June 20, 2012 – Former House Speaker Tip O’Neill famously remarked that all politics is local. But this year, it’s the rhetoric of John Edwards that rings truer–in assessing the House race landscape, there are indeed two Americas. President Obama believes the way to win a second term is by rallying elements of the party base, but House Democrats trying to take back the majority face the added burden of winning the votes of increasingly disillusioned white working-class voters.
  • Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog – Flap’s Comments on Politics, the Dental World and Much More – @Flap Twitter Updates for 2012-06-20
  • Day By Day June 19, 2012 – Banned Acts – Flap’s Blog – Day By Day June 19, 2012 – Banned Acts
  • Flap’s Dentistry Blog: The Morning Drill: June 19, 2012 – The Morning Drill: June 19, 2012
  • The Morning Flap: June 19, 2012 – Flap’s Blog – The Morning Flap: June 19, 2012