In another embarrassment for the Obama administration. The Sunday Times has gotten hold of correspondence which reveals that the White House favored “compassionate release” over letting Abdel Baset al-Megrahi rot in a Libyan prison:

The intervention, which has angered US relatives of those who died in the attack, was made by Richard LeBaron, deputy head of the US embassy in London, a week before Megrahi was freed in August last year on grounds that he had terminal cancer.

The document, acquired by a well-placed US source, threatens to undermine US President Barack Obama’s claim last week that all Americans were “surprised, disappointed and angry” to learn of Megrahi’s release.

Scottish ministers viewed the level of US resistance to compassionate release as “half-hearted” and a sign it would be accepted.

The US has tried to keep the letter secret, refusing to give permission to the Scottish authorities to publish it on the grounds it would prevent future “frank and open communications” with other governments.

In the letter, sent on August 12 last year to Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond and justice officials, Mr LeBaron wrote that the US wanted Megrahi to remain imprisoned in view of the nature of the crime.

The note added: “Nevertheless, if Scottish authorities come to the conclusion that Megrahi must be released from Scottish custody, the US position is that conditional release on compassionate grounds would be a far preferable alternative to prisoner transfer, which we strongly oppose.”

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee is looking into the circumstances surrounding Megrahi’s release, and questions have arisen concerning whether whether British Petroleum lobbied to free the convicted Lockerbie bomber. BP admitted earlier this month that it had told British officials in 2007 that a stalled prisoner-transfer agreement between Britain and Libya could negatively impact a lucrative BP oil deal with Libya, but the oil giant has publicly denied pushing for Megrahi’s release.

- JP

Sharron Angle has been attacked by Harry Reid for endorsing some non-mainstream ideas in the past (or present). But a lot of these ideas are radical ideas that should be done:

Abolish The Department of Education: Why should the Federal Government have any influence over education? States and localities are more than capable of handling it themselves. The federal government just adds a layer of useless bureaucracy that wastes taxpayer money.

Transforming (or perhaps eliminating) Social Security: All social security is a ponzi scheme that transfers money from young workers to old retirees. The FICA tax has had to be gradually increased over the years to pay the same benefits. When the boomers retire, it’s estimated the FICA tax will have to be doubled or the retirement age pushed back. Either way you put it, older retirees will receive more money from the system and have had put in less money (lower FICA taxes during their days) compared to younger workers.

ach year Gallup conducts a poll to measure America’s confidence in its institutions, and for 2010, the U.S. Congress has managed to disgust its constituents to the point where it ranks dead last out of the 16 institutions included in the survey. A pitiful 11 (eleven) percent of Americans, reports Gallup, indicated that they have “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in Congress. That’s down from 17 percent in 2009 and a percentage point lower than the previous low for Congress, which was in 2008:

The Gallup poll was conducted July 8-11, shortly before Congress passed a major financial regulatory reform bill, which President Obama signed into law this week.

Underscoring Congress’ image problem, half of Americans now say they have “very little” or “no” confidence in Congress, up from 38% in 2009 — and the highest for any institution since Gallup first asked this question in 1973. Previous near-50% readings include 48% found for the presidency in 2008, and 49% for the criminal justice system in 1994.

The military, which has been No. 1 in Gallup’s annual Confidence in Institutions list every year since 1998, and no lower than second nearly every year since the pollster began measuring confidence in institutions, again tops the list of institutions Americans trust and admire. Small business is ranked second, and the police third:

These three top-tier institutions all earn high confidence from a majority of Americans, something no other institution achieves this year.

The high level of confidence in small business contrasts with the low level of confidence in big business; the latter is tied with HMOs at 19% for next-to-last place. Confidence in organized religion is similar to where it has been since 2002, but is significantly lower than in prior years.

Gallup also measured a 15-point decline in confidence in the presidency, as it fell from 51 percent last year to 36 percent in 2010. Correspondingly, President Obama’s approval rating has dropped 11 points from 2009, down to 47 from 58 percent in June, 2009. Although change is still taking place, hope seems to have taken a beating since this time a year ago.

- JP

When David Weigel’s vicious e-mails attacking Sarah Palin and other conservatives as “rat-____ers” were leaked by The Daily Caller a few weeks ago, a little light was shed on the dark machinations of Journolist, a mailing list collective of left wing “journalists.” The bias that corrupts everything written by these “progressives,” many of whom hold positions of influence in the lamestream media, comes as no surprise to most conservatives. And most everyday Americans, regardless of political orientation, were not shocked by the revelations, as has been repeatedly demonstrated in polls which measure the public’s opinion of the media. What was once the Fourth Estate is now trusted by less than one third of all Americans.

But although the Weigel disclosure cost him his Washington Post job, it was merely a firecracker compared to the bombshell that hit Tuesday. Again, it was Tucker Carlson’s website The Daily Caller where more Jounolist e-mails were exposed that prove just how far the media progressives were willing to go to protect then-candidate Barack Obama from his long time association with his radical Marxist former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright:

It was the moment of greatest peril for then-Sen. Barack Obama’s political career. In the heat of the presidential campaign, videos surfaced of Obama’s pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, angrily denouncing whites, the U.S. government and America itself. Obama had once bragged of his closeness to Wright. Now the black nationalist preacher’s rhetoric was threatening to torpedo Obama’s campaign.

The crisis reached a howling pitch in mid-April, 2008, at an ABC News debate moderated by Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos. Gibson asked Obama why it had taken him so long – nearly a year since Wright’s remarks became public – to dissociate himself from them. Stephanopoulos asked, “Do you think Reverend Wright loves America as much as you do?”

Watching this all at home were members of Journolist, a listserv comprised of several hundred liberal journalists, as well as like-minded professors and activists. The tough questioning from the ABC anchors left many of them outraged. “George [Stephanopoulos],” fumed Richard Kim of the Nation, is “being a disgusting little rat snake.”

Others went further. According to records obtained by The Daily Caller, at several points during the 2008 presidential campaign a group of liberal journalists took radical steps to protect their favored candidate. Employees of news organizations including Time, Politico, the Huffington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Guardian, Salon and the New Republic participated in outpourings of anger over how Obama had been treated in the media, and in some cases plotted to fix the damage.

In one instance, Spencer Ackerman of the Washington Independent urged his colleagues to deflect attention from Obama’s relationship with Wright by changing the subject. Pick one of Obama’s conservative critics, Ackerman wrote, “Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists.”

Ed Morrissey makes an important point at Hot Air:

Notice that Ackerman doesn’t even bother to ask people to look for actual evidence of racism, but just suggests to pick a conservative name out of a hat. Tellingly, the pushback from members of Journolist had less to do with the outrageous idea of smearing an innocent person of racism to frighten people away from the story than with whether it would work. Mark Schmitt, now at American Prospect, warned that it “wouldn’t further the argument” for Obama, and Kevin Drum objected because playing racial politics would “probably hurt the Obama brand pretty strongly.”

The only thing about this that we find amazing is the viciousness of the attacks by the Journolisters on Stephanopoulos and Gibson. It’s not like those two are part of any “right wing conspiracy,” to use a favorite Hillary Clintonism. If anything, they are liberals who have been sympathetic to the cause of progressivism. But for daring to demonstrate some small degree of journalistic curiosity and ask Obama something other than a softball question, the listers excoriated them. Poor George and Charlie just weren’t radical enough and leftist enough for their colleagues on the list. They didn’t pass the Obama Loyalty Litmus Test.

Anyone who wonders why the lamestream media is so overwhelmingly leftist should read the full Daily Caller exposé. Professors of journalism and political science from major universities were Journolist members scheming with their former students to protect and promote Obama at all costs. Very few spoke up against the madness, and those who did so only feared their colleagues’ antics might somehow hurt Obama.  None was so brave to even suggest that the job of a journalist is to report news accurately and fairly.

At Newsreal Blog, Michael van der Galien calls the e-mails “truly outrageous”:

They show that the problem with the mainstream media isn’t that they’re biased, but that they’re progressive activists. They choose specific candidates to support, and lobby as hard as they can on their behalf. If they have to spin, lie, distort, create fake news stories and accuse opponents dishonestly of racism, so be it. Heck, they’re not even willing to do so, they’re happy to.

Leftists clearly believe that politics is war. They call conservatives racists, not because they are, but because it harms their reputation beyond repair, after which it’s fairly easy to beat them in elections. Conservatives have to be destroyed – no matter how.

Of course these same progressives pretend to be “objective” journalists, simply doing their jobs. Well, from now onwards, all we have to do to dismiss everything they say is to point at the Daily Caller’s story. All of these members of the ‘Journolist’, and their organizations with them, are nothing more than activists – and not just activists, but of the most despicable and ruthless kind at that.

Andrew Breitbart comments at Big Journalism:

American journalism died a long time ago; today Tucker Carlson got around to running the obituary. What The Daily Caller has unearthed proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that most media organizations are either complicit by participation in the treachery that is Journolist, or are guilty of sitting back and watching Alinsky warfare being waged against all that challenged the progressive orthodoxy. The scandal predictably involves journalists posing as professors posing as experts. But dressed down they are nothing but street thugs. They deserve the deepest levels of public consternation. We must demand that they do.

The only way that the media will recover from the horrifying discoveries found in the Journolist is to investigate and investigate until every guilty reporter, professor and institution is laid bare begging America for forgiveness. Will they do it?

We wouldn’t bet on it. A much safer wager is that Journolist, which was supposedly disbanded in the wake of the Weigel flap, simply moved to another server and is operating with a new identity in a bizarre sort of Witless Protection Program. It’s not like the Journolisters are operating without the consent of the “news” organizations which employ them. No, the lamestream media will continue on its death march into oblivion as if nothing was revealed. And the percentage of Americans who do trust the lamestreamers will continue to shrink. Like Andrew Breitbart said, journalism, as we who were trained in the old school knew it, is dead.

- JP

An audit by the special inspector general of the Treasury Department’s Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) admits that President Obama’s automotive task force killed “tens of thousands of jobs” by pressuring General Motors and Chrysler to close many of the two automakers’ dealerships quickly. In his report, IG Neil Barofsky said the president’s panel failed to take into consideration the jobs that would be lost and had no realistic idea of the cost savings that the move would produce:

“It is not at all clear that the greatly accelerated pace of the dealership closings during one of the most severe economic downturns in our nation’s history was either necessary for the sake of the companies’ economic survival or prudent for the sake of the nation’s economic recovery,” the report said.

The report does not make any recommendations, and serves more as a review of the process. It does not carry the authority to initiate any corrective action.

But it comes at a politically delicate time for the Obama administration, which is facing skepticism from the public about the strength of the recovery and criticism from Republicans who are seizing on the economy — including the effectiveness of the federal bailout — as an issue heading into the midterm elections.

G.M. and Chrysler, which went through separate six-week stays in bankruptcy protection last year, received a total of $62 billion under the Troubled Asset Relief Program. G.M. repaid $6.7 billion in April, but the remainder of its government debt was converted into a 61 percent equity stake. The Treasury owns 8 percent of Chrysler.

Last year more than 2,000 GM dealers received letters from Detroit that some or all of their franchise agreements would not be renewed in 2010. Chrysler cut loose 789 of its dealers — about a fourth of its retail network — with less than a month’s notice.

At Hot Air, Ed Morrissey comments:

This doesn’t come as any great shock. Barack Obama put Steve Rattner in charge of running his auto bailout program, a man who had just as much experience in the auto industry as Obama did: he drove a few cars. Rattner had to make a quick exit after just a few months when it became known that he was the target of a federal probe into questionable activities regarding the New York pension fund — and his replacement had just as much experience in the auto industry as Rattner did.

What was the main entry on Ron Bloom’s resume? He was a union negotiator.

Let’s keep this in mind when Democrats insist that government can run industries better than the markets themselves. Not only did the White House purposely evade bankruptcy laws in cutting sweet deals for unions during the bailout, but they also destroyed jobs in the process out of incompetency. I’d bet that a number of union members are none too pleased with that outcome, even if the union bosses are.

- JP

Barack Obamaville

To the tune of “Margaritaville”
With apologies to Jimmy Buffett

He raised the plant’s taxes
We made hachets and axes
Company closed down and moved overseas
Now I’ve got no paycheck
I’m just a broke redneck
Livin on free government cheese

Chorus:
Wastin away in Barack Obamaville
Searching for my long lost U-S of A
Some people claimed that we’d get hope and change
But I know it’s gone away

There ain’t no more free speech
And the things that the schools teach
Would make your grandma spin in her grave
But nobody stood up
We’re broke down with the hood up
What happened to the free and the brave?

Chorus:
Wastin away in Barack Obamaville
Searching for my long lost U-S of A
Some people claimed that it would be hope and change
But I know it just ain’t that way

If they round up our firearms
We’ll hide all the best ones
Might need to use them some fateful day
Keep all that ammo hidden
So it can be riddin
Us of these Marxists who stole freedom away

Chorus:
Wastin away in Barack Obamaville
Searching for my long lost U-S of A
Some people claimed that it would be hope and change
But I know it’s all gone astray

Yes, wastin away in Barack Obamaville
Searching for our long lost Bill of Rights
Some people say it’s the same USA
But I know it’s gone from our sight

Yes, some people say it’s the same USA
We won’t give it up without a fight

Disclaimer: This parody is intended for humorous entertainment
only and should not be construed by hysterical liberals to be
advocating violence or incitement to acts of physical violence.
Like the founders, we abhor violence and believe that an armed
uprising should be the last course citizens should pursue for a
redress of any grievances against any government as set forth
in the U.S. Declaration of Independence. So get over it, already.

- JP