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Obama's lobbyists

Wed, 16 Apr 2008 15:28:06 GMT

clipped by: n2sooners

Clip Source: usatoday.printthis.clickability.com

WASHINGTON — Barack Obama often boasts he is "the only candidate who isn't taking a dime from Washington lobbyists," yet his fundraising team includes 38 members of law firms that were paid $138 million last year to lobby the federal government, records show.

Those lawyers, including 10 former federal lobbyists, have pledged to raise at least $3.5 million for the Illinois senator's presidential race. Employees of their firms have given Obama's campaign $2.26 million, a USA TODAY analysis of campaign-finance data shows.

Thirty-one of the 38 are law firm partners, who typically receive a share of their firms' lobbying fees. At least six of them have some managerial authority over lobbyists.

"It makes no difference whether the person is a registered lobbyist or the partner of a registered lobbyist, if the person is raising money to get access or curry favor," said Michael Malbin, director of the Campaign Finance Institute, a non-partisan think tank.

Tags: obama, politics, election, money

Government cracks down on illegals

Wed, 16 Apr 2008 06:28:03 GMT

clipped by: n2sooners

Clip Source: minx.cc

Oh no, not on Mexicans coming into the US, that would be racist. They are cracking down on Central Americans coming into Mexico illegally.

Central Americans without documents now face increased security within Mexico, including checks on the train for stowaways.

The result: The number of non-Mexican migrants stopped by the U.S. Border Patrol has dropped almost 60 percent from 2005, despite increased detention efforts.

Mexico itself is also seeing fewer illegal immigrants — 120,000 were arrested last year, a 50 percent drop from 2005

Since President Felipe Calderon took office two years ago, Mexico has added more soldiers and federal police on its border with Guatemala and more immigration and military checkpoints throughout the south.

the same President Calderon who famously said last fall that the Mexican government would…

“energetically protest unilateral actions” of the U.S. Congress on the immigration front that he said “exacerbate the persecution of undocumented Mexicans in the U.S.”

Tags: illegal immigration, politics, mexico, hypocrisy

Obama finds his flag pin

Wed, 16 Apr 2008 06:22:03 GMT

clipped by: n2sooners

Clip Source: hotair.com

I lost track of this very stupid story after the initial dust-up last October. Evidently a disabled vet handed it to him at this morning’s speech, thereby magically ridding it of the Iraq cooties that had rendered it unfit to grace the chest of the Messiah until today. Read this prescient column from the AJC a few weeks ago predicting that the pin would soon reemerge in the wake of Wright’s “chickens coming home to roost” clip entering near-permanent rotation on cable news. Conservatives naturally were blamed for making an issue of this last fall but in fact Obama’s the one who politicized it by investing the pin with such grandiose meaning that he simply had to stop wearing it in good conscience.

Tags: obama, flag, politics, hypocrisy

Leave Barry Alone!

Wed, 16 Apr 2008 06:15:43 GMT

clipped by: n2sooners

Clip Source: conservativeintelligencer.com

[Video]

Tags: obama, politics, election, humor