The Obama administration is stonewalling a Congressional inquiry that's looking into how the 'other $1.3 billion' in ransom money got paid over to Iran.
The Departments of State, Treasury, and Justice have all rebuffed a
congressional probe into the circumstances surrounding the $1.3 billion
payment to Iran, which is part of an additional $400 million cash payout
that occurred just prior to the release of several U.S. hostages and
led to accusations that the administration had paid Iran a ransom.
The Obama administration has admitted
in recent days that the $400 million cash delivery to Iran was part of
an effort to secure the release of these American hostages, raising
further questions on Capitol Hill about White House efforts to suppress
these details from the public.
...
The administration is also withholding key details about the payment
from leading members of Congress, including Sens. Ted Cruz (R., Texas)
and Mike Lee (R., Utah), who launched an inquiry into the matter earlier this month.
The Departments of State, Treasury, and Justice all failed to respond
to the inquiry by Monday’s deadline, according to congressional sources
tracking the matter.
“The already bizarre circumstances surrounding the $1.7 billion
payment to the Islamic Republic have only gotten stranger in the weeks
since we learned of the $400 million in cash that was sent to the
Iranian regime last January 16th,” Cruz said to the Free Beacon. “If
this payment was, as the Obama administration insists, a
straightforward settlement of an old debt that it would have cost
America more to contest, why all the secrecy?”
The State Department said it does not know how the remaining $1.3
billion was transferred or to whom it was transferred. Cruz described
this disclosure as “confounding.”
...
“While we are deeply concerned about the national security
implications of the administration’s cash-for-hostages scheme,
especially in light of reports that Iran has already arrested additional
Americans, the purpose of this letter is to inquire about the legality
of the payment,” the senators wrote in an Aug. 12 letter.
“It is imperative that the administration provide a full accounting
of its conduct with respect to the $400 million cash payment to Iran,”
they wrote. “If the administration violated the law, then Congress and
the American people should be made aware of it so that they can hold the
appropriate officials accountable and take whatever steps necessary to
strengthen the law and prevent any reoccurrence.”
While the administration has remained silent about the circumstances
surrounding the payment, investigative reporter Claudia Rosett recently disclosed that the Treasury Department transferred just under $1.3 billion to the State Department in 13 “large identical sums.”
The funds, allocated for “foreign claims,” could shine a light on how
the administration moved taxpayer funds into the State Department’s
purview in order to provide the additional payment to Iran.
In 13 individual payments of $99,999,999.99, the Treasury Department
moved a total of 1,299,999,999.87, which roughly amounts to the
remaining money owed to Iran.
Walter Russell Mead rips the President's attempt to exclude Congress from any say in approving the Iranian nuclear deal.
Dissing Congress is a risky move for American presidents. There have
been widespread reports that many Democrats on Capitol Hill would like
to support the President’s Iran policy, but are worried about the
political fallout among voters back home. In the end, many of these
waverers would probably support the President on the Iran deal in a
straight up Congressional vote, but if the President does an end run to
the Security Council, the waverers could—and many will—oppose him on
procedural grounds. Both the Senate and the House are jealous of their
Constitutional prerogatives, and voting to uphold the powers of Congress
is a much easier vote for Democrats than voting against the President
on an important foreign policy issue.
This is not likely to end well.
President Obama was stretching both his Constitutional powers and his
political mandate when he decided to short circuit the treaty process
for one of the most important decisions that American foreign policy has
taken in many years. There is precious little doubt that the Founders
would have considered this a threat to the system of checks and balances
they wrote into the Constitution. In modern times, presidential
authority has expanded, largely because American foreign relations have
become so complex and the world moves so quickly that it would be
impractical to subject every significant agreement between the United
States and other countries to the treaty process. But given the length
of this negotiation process and the enormous stakes involved, the Iran
agreement really ought to have been framed as a treaty. The President,
to be fair, knew very well that he could never get a two thirds vote in
the Senate for this agreement, and, believing as he does that this step
is necessary to the safety of the United States, he framed the deal as
an executive agreement to avoid exactly the scrutiny and vote that the
Constitution requires.
Congress grudgingly went along with that, passing the
Corker-Menendez law as a way of regularizing the President’s irregular
choice. This tilted the playing field toward the President, as opponents
would need a two thirds majority in both houses (instead of only a one
third majority in the Senate) to block the deal for good.
That the President is blowing off this concession by
Congress is a serious matter—more serious perhaps than the White House
realizes. He is really requiring Congress to accept a permanent and
significant diminution in its power for the sake of an Iran deal that
few members view with enthusiasm. The precedent he is setting changes
the Constitution, essentially abrogating the treaty power of Congress
any time a President can get a Security Council resolution to
incorporate the terms of an executive agreement.
Regardless of the merits or demerits of the Iran deal,
this is the wrong way to proceed. If President Obama chooses to go this
route, he is provoking a constitutional crisis in order to get sanctions
relief to Iran sixty days faster than would otherwise happen. The
Congressional Democrats calling on President Obama to refrain from this
mischievous and foolhardy course are quite right; this is a bridge too
far.
Why would Obama do this? The only reason I can think of is that he is afraid of how clear it could become within 60 days that this is a bad deal, and therefore he's taking the chance that the same Supreme Court majority that slashed Congress' powers in the Zivotofsky case and upheld his overreaching on Obamacare will also let him get away with this. Even impeachment would be too late to prevent the deal from standing with a binding UN Security Council resolution.
Obama: 'Once I sign the agreement, you can read the agreement'
On Monday, nearly 50 Republican Senators sent a letter to Iran, informing that country's regime that once President Obama leaves office in January 2017, no President who succeeds him will continue to abide by any agreement that he enters into with Iran, unless that agreement first passes the Congress (Hat Tip: Memeorandum).
“It has come to our attention while observing your nuclear negotiations
with our government that you may not fully understand our constitutional
system … Anything not approved by Congress is a mere executive
agreement,” the senators wrote. “The next president could revoke such an
executive agreement with the stroke of a pen and future Congresses
could modify the terms of the agreement at any time.”
...
Many inside the Republican caucus, however, hope that by pointing out
the long-term fragility of a deal with no congressional approval --
something Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has also noted -- the
Iranian regime might be convinced to think twice. "Iran's ayatollahs
need to know before agreeing to any nuclear deal that … any unilateral
executive agreement is one they accept at their own peril,” Cotton told
me.
...
The new letter is the latest piece of an effort by Senators in both
parties to ensure that Congress will have some say if and when a deal is
signed. Senators Bob Corker, Lindsey Graham, Tim Kaine and the embattled Bob Menendez have a bill pending that would mandate a Congressional review
of the Iran deal, but Republicans and Democrats have been bickering
over how to proceed in the face of a threatened presidential veto.
The White House reacted furiously, arguing that the bill 'undermines' the President's ability 'to conduct foreign policy.' No kidding. Wasn't that the whole point of the letter (Hat Tip: Memeorandum)?
White House press secretary Josh Earnest was unusually
blunt in ripping the Senate GOP, saying “it’s surprising to me there are
some Republican senators who are seeking to establish a backchannel
with hardliners in Iran to undermine an agreement with Iran and the
international community.”
Earnest said Republicans have a
“long and rather sordid history" of putting military options ahead of
diplomatic ones, and called the letter, signed by 47 GOP lawmakers, “the continuation of a partisan strategy to undermine the president’s authority."
...
Congressional Democrats joined the White House in
denouncing the letter, with Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) calling it “a
cynical effort by Republican Senators to undermine sensitive
international negotiations — it weakens America’s hand and highlights
our political divisions to the rest of the world.”
“Understand
that if these negotiations fail, a military response to Iran developing
their nuclear capability becomes more likely,” added Durbin, the
second-ranking Senate Democrat.
Senate Republicans
“should think twice about whether their political stunt is worth the
threat of another war in the Middle East,” he added.
...
The White House and Democrats appeared to be coordinating
their response, with Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.)
assailing Republicans on the Senate floor as “undermining our commander
in chief while empowering the ayatollahs."
"Republicans need to find a way to get over their animosity of President Obama,” Reid said.
"It's
unprecedented for one political party to directly intervene in an
international negotiation with a sole goal of embarrassing the president
of the United States."
The letter is just the latest
instance of Republicans using control of Congress to challenge Obama on
foreign policy, in part by going over his head.
A member of the press asked Obama, "Can you comment on the Republican letter to Iran? Can you comment on that?"
"I think it's somewhat ironic to see some members of Congress wanting
to make common cause with the hardliners in Iran. It's an unusual
coalition," Obama told the reporter.
"I think what we’re going to focus on right now is actually seeing
whether we can get a deal or not. And once we do -- if we do -- then
we’ll be able to make the case to the American people, and I'm confident
we’ll be able to implement it."
That reminded me of this from then-Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi.
Jeff Dunetz explains why President Obama got left behind in the line-up to make a call of support to Prime Minister Netanyahu.
President Obama has drawn much criticism for not calling Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu as Israel has been defending herself from the onslaught of rockets from the terrorist Hamas.
Before yesterday afternoon leaders from almost all of Israel's friends called Netanyahu, heck even France, and even the Secretary-General of the United Nations of the anti-Israel Ban Ki-moon called Bibi during this crisis but the leader of the United States, Israel's very, very, "bestest" friend didn't call. Finally yesterday evening Jerusalem time the president called.
I would suggest that we are not being fair to President Obama. He had a very good reason not to call America's best friend in the Middle East. You see Israel reminds him of some of his Administrations scandals.
New York Times presents Obama lies on Benghazi as 'news'
The New York Times has published a 'report' that claims that the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi was the result of an anti-Islam video that was posted on the internet.
How non-credible is this report?
Let's go to the videotape (Hat Tip: David K).
You don't think that the Obama administration ordered this report, do you?
Consider this: The Democratic National Committee sent out emails on Saturday night, urging recipients to support Democrats in next fall's Congressional elections to keep the Republicans from impeaching President Obama (Hat Tip: Jack W).
The email, subject line “Impeachment,” was sent to Obama for America
supporters, imploring them to contribute to the DNC’s 2014 efforts.
“What do these people all have in common?,” the email asked, featuring
quotes from Republican Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma, Rep. Michele
Bachmann of Minnesota, Rep. Kerry Bentivolio of Michigan, and Rep. Blake
Farenthold of Texas discussing the possibility of impeaching Obama for
one of his numerous instances of presidential misconduct.
The DNC email discussed the “I-Word” and said that “Republicans are actually excited about the idea.”
“Show these Republicans that they are way, way off-base, and give
President Obama a Congress that has his back,” according to the DNC
email, noting that Democrats need to win 17 GOP House seats to reclaim a
majority.
The DNC, which recently expanded its political tactics to include boycotting independent news outlets, previously supported the last president to be impeached: Bill Clinton.
Obama’s staff changed key talking points on the 2012 Benghazi
terrorist attack; his Internal Revenue Service targeted conservative
groups during the 2012 election cycle; and Obama personally lied to the
American people when he told them that they could keep their existing
doctors and health insurance plans under Obamacare.
Obama’s expansion of executive branch authority is “setting the stage for something very dangerous in the future” according to Republican Rep. Justin Amash.
Not to mention that Obama is promoting the very dangerous agreement which will lead to a nuclear Iran, and are trying to pummel the United States' sole reliable ally in the Middle East into endangering its security....
The picture at the top of this post is probably the biggest laugh on Twitter this morning. But the connections between Obamacare and Middle East 'peace' are definitely not funny. I have already written about the pressure that will be brought to bear on Israel as a result of Obamacare's impending failure. Now, Arnold Trebach worries that the Obama administration is quietly 'negotiating' with Israel just like it's cajoling the American people into Obamacare.
[I]t is much more difficult to learn what is actually happening in the
closed meetings involving John Kerry and Bibi Netanyahu in the Middle
East. Kerry just reported that great progress was being made between the
Israelis and the Palestinians looking toward a comprehensive settlement
in the near future.
It is at this juncture that my fears come to the fore – and so also
should the fears of all sensible people. As the leopard cannot change
its spots so also Mr. Kerry and the entire American negotiating team in
Israel do not know how to operate differently in Jerusalem than they do
in Washington. They follow Chicago rules which focus on winning and
imposing their visions regardless of ethics or laws or practicalities.
And remember our negotiating leopards are wickedly (an adjective based
in the Boston dialect) incompetent beasts. They are losers to the core.
The standard American position on the proper final comprehensive
settlement would involve trusting the good intentions of the Palestinian
leaders, creating a true Palestinian state, ceding East Jerusalem and
the West Bank to the Arabs, moving Israel back close to the 1967 borders
with a few land swaps, and allowing some Arab refugees back into
Israel. That is also the position of the Europeans and of many liberal
Israelis and American Jews.
Such a settlement will practically destroy Israel even though it has
the support of many powerful governments and opinion leaders, including
many in America. My fear is that Kerry and Obama are quietly telling the
Israelis that they have no choice – take this suicidal deal or totally
lose American support now and even in a future conflict with say Iran.
It seems impossible to believe that American leaders could impose such a
destructive policy on our only true ally in this unstable and explosive
region.
Yet it is just as impossible to believe that our leaders could be so
blindly incompetent as to impose the Affordable Car Act on the hapless
American people – and to constantly lie about its true destructive
impact.
Our Prime Minister is going to have to find his spine, or Israel is going to be in serious trouble from this gang of liars and thieves in Washington.
Obamacare's failure will put more pressure on Israel
Unfortunately, this makes too much sense. The massive failure that Obamacare is likely to be next month is also likely to put an awful lot of pressure on Israel.
The current chaos, and
the anxiety many people are feeling about their health insurance
coverage and what happens on Jan. 1, have the makings of another public
relations disaster for the president, and his party, which passed the
Affordable Care Act on a straight party line vote in 2010.
A new poll suggests
that tens of millions of Americans whose coverage is not (yet) at risk
are nervous about the changes caused by Obamacareand
anticipate it will impact them in the future: "The poll found a
striking level of unease about the law among people who have health
insurance and aren't looking for government help. Those are the 85% of
Americans who, the White House says, don't have to be worried about the
president's historic push to expand coverage for the uninsured. In the
survey, nearly half of those with job-based or other private coverage
say their policies will be changing next year -- mostly for the worse.
Nearly four in five (77%) blame the changes on the Affordable Care Act,
even though the trend toward leaner coverage predates the law's
passage."
It should therefore be
no surprise that the president may be looking for another distraction in
January, a blockbuster distraction, that will suggest to some remaining
true believers that there is still a functioning presidency working on
significant things and not screwing them up. The Iran deal was one such
potential blockbuster, but most Americans now seem to expect that Iran
will not observe the agreement, and the deal will not set back their
nuclear program nor change their intentions to develop a nuclear weapon.
The January blockbuster
that the president is hoping for would be an interim deal between
Israel and the Palestinian Authority that Secretary of State John Kerry
can announce at some point, a big enough story that it could drive
Obamacare out of the news for a few days. It is why Kerry continues to
return to Israel and works doggedly on a deal.
What if buying coffee was like buying healthcare? And what does it have to do with Iran?
Yes, there is a connection between the Iran situation and Obamacare, but first, you have to see this video so that you understand what Obamacare is really about.
Let's go to the videotape.
And what does it have to do with Iran? Go here to find out.
Iran said it would not make "any further advances of its activities" on the Arak reactor, according to text of the agreement.
"The
capacity at the Arak site is not going to increase. It means no new
nuclear fuel will be produced and no new installations will be
installed, but construction will continue there," Zarif told parliament
in translated comments broadcast on Iran's Press TV.
But experts have said an apparent gap in the text
could allow Tehran to build components off-site to install later in the
nuclear reactor. It was not immediately clear if Zarif was referring to
this or other construction activity.
Just like when the Obama administration couldn't wait for a vote for long enough to have Congress read the bill.
According to an urgent report issued today by the White House, a
terrified and frantic President Obama is currently trapped inside the
healthcare.gov website.
Early reports indicate the president
inadvertently became physically enmeshed in the inner workings of the
online health insurance exchange at approximately 11:48 a.m. this
morning, and is at this very moment attempting to find any possible
means of escape from the highly unstable and dangerous healthcare.gov
internal network.
“Please, if anyone can hear me, I need help!”
said Obama, his voice reportedly echoing endlessly in the distance as he
carefully stepped along a green grid of individual and family
enrollment information. “Is anyone there? Can anyone hear me? I’m Barack
Obama, President of the United States of America! I need to get out of
here!”
“Oh, dear God, there has to be a way out,” continued Obama,
ducking as several lines of text guaranteeing coverage for preexisting
conditions flew just inches above his head. “There has to be.”
According
to reports, Obama has spent the last few hours stranded in a dark,
seemingly infinite three-dimensional insurance matrix made entirely of
programming code, scrolling ones and zeroes, and indecipherable
information about government subsidies, and has as yet been unable to
locate a safe exit from the digital infrastructure of healthcare.gov
itself.
White House sources have confirmed that Obama is both
alone and intensely frightened, and that the president may at this
moment be endangered by the complicated, twisting data fields of
healthcare.gov, as well as the terabytes of random eligibility
notifications and policy cost estimations shooting in all directions.
Further reports have warned that any hope of extracting the president from the online marketplace may already be lost.
Those of you who have not been in the US in the past couple of months cannot truly appreciate how much this overpriced, dysfunctional website (over $600 million to develop!) has dominated the news. Maybe they should have just asked Israel to develop it...
As the Obama administration continues its push for a deal with Iran, today the Emergency Committee for Israel released a one-minute TV ad titled "Obama's March to War."
Airing multiple times this week and next on CNN, MSNBC, and FoxNews, the spot shows why Americans and our allies have reason to doubt President Obama's promises on Iran.
A 1964 Democratic campaign advertisement known as Daisy
showed a young girl counting daisy petals, from one to ten.
Immediately following this scene, a voiceover counted down from ten to
one. The child's face was shown as a still photograph followed by
images of nuclear explosions and mushroom clouds.
The campaign advertisement ended with a plea to vote for Johnson,
implying that Goldwater (who was not mentioned by name) would provoke a nuclear war
if elected. The advertisement, which featured only a few spoken words
of narrative and relied on imagery for its emotional impact, was one of
the most provocative in American political campaign history, and many
analysts credit it as being the birth of the modern style of "negative political ads" on television. The ad only aired once, and was immediately pulled, but then was shown numerous times by television stations.
Mooch Obama and Obamacare pal were trustees of group that hosted PLO's Rahman
Michelle "Mooch" Obama and her friend Toni Townes-Whitley - a Senior Vice President at the company that developed the dysfunctional Obamacare website (for those not in the US, you cannot imagine how much of last week's news was dominated by that website's failure) - were trustees of a group called Third World Center at Princeton. In 1981, Third World Center hosted PLO terror supporter Hassan Rahman on the Princeton campus, forcing whites to sit separately from blacks, and raising tensions with Jewish groups on campus (Hat Tip: Jack W).
The two groups stirred considerable tension with Princeton’s Jewish
community by inviting Hassan Rahman, then deputy United Nations observer
for the Palestine Liberation Organization, to speak on campus, according to the Daily Caller, which cited contemporary press accounts.
Rahman “reiterated the PLO’s position that the Palestinians deserve a
homeland and that they are entitled to use terrorism to achieve their
goal, just as American revolutionaries did against the British,”
according to an article in the Princeton Alumni Weekly from Jan. 25, 1982.
During Rahman’s speech, seating was segregated, the Alumni Weekly
reported, with seating in the center reserved for members of the
sponsoring groups – who were mainly black. Other students, mainly Jews,
were seated on the periphery, according to the report.
“It was an ugly scene, but few expected perfect harmony,” the report stated.
Old news, right? Thirty years ago, these two women were part of two
groups that caused a campus contretemps by inviting a speaker who openly
advocated terror in his chosen cause – and segregating seating for the
event on a de facto racial basis.
Trent Lott was driven from the minority leader spot for less than that.
And consider that Townes-Whitely, then a member of a group called the
Third World Center, is now still a close friend of the first lady and a
top executive of the company that obtained the no-bid contract to build the Obamacare website for more than half-a-billion dollars.
Terrorism, corruption, cronyism and ineptitude.
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
