The Heritage Foundation posted a good analysis of what the Obama administration SHOULD be doing about the Gulf oil spill.. of course, they are doing very little.

Here are excerpts from the Article:

The oil spill crisis in the Gulf of Mexico gets worse by the day. Oil spews from the broken well, further polluting our water and shores. The clean-up efforts drag on with bureaucratic interference, making matters worse. And what is the Obama administration doing? It continues to push for unrelated responses that will have a disastrous effect on our economy, especially the economy of the Gulf states most affected.

In fact, President Obama summoned a bipartisan group of senators to the White House on Tuesday to discuss his climate change legislation. When Tennessee Senator Lamar Alexander suggested that any such energy meeting should include a focus on the oil spill and BP, Obama responded: “that’s just your talking point” and refused to discuss the crisis.

Here are the recommendations by the Heritage Foundation think tank:

1. Waive the Jones Act: According to one Dutch newspaper, European firms could complete the oil spill cleanup by themselves in just four months, and three months if they work with the United States, which is much faster than the estimated nine months it would take the Obama administration to go at it alone. The major stumbling block is a protectionist piece of legislation called the Jones Act, which requires that all goods transported by water between U.S. ports be carried in U.S.-flagged ships..

2. Accept International Assistance: At least thirty countries and international organizations have offered equipment and experts so far. According to reports this week, the White House has finally decided to accept help from twelve of these nations. The Obama administration should make clear why they are refusing the other eighteen-plus offers.

3. Lift the Moratorium: The Obama administration’s over-expansive ban on offshore energy development is killing jobs when they are needed most.

4. Release the S.S. A-Whale: The S.S. A-Whale skimmer is a converted oil tanker capable of cleaning 500,000 barrels of oil a day from the Gulf waters. Currently, the largest skimmer being used in the clean-up efforts can handle 4,000 barrels a day.. [note: the S.S. A-Whale is a Taiwanese ship]

5. Remove State and Local Roadblocks: Local governments are not getting the assistance they need to help in the cleanup. For example, nearly two months ago, officials from Escambia County, Fla., requested permission from the Mobile Unified Command Center to use a sand skimmer, a device pulled behind a tractor that removes oil and tar from the top three feet of sand, to help clean up Pensacola’s beaches. County officials still haven’t heard anything back.

6. Allow Sand Berm Dredging: The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has recently prevented the state of Louisiana from dredging to build protective sand berms.

7. Waive or Suspend EPA Regulations: Because more water than oil is collected in skimming operations (85% to 90% is water according to Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen), operators need to discharge the filtered water back into the Gulf so they can continue to collect oil. The discharged water is vastly cleaner than when it was skimmed, but not sufficiently pure according to normal EPA regulations.

8. Temporarily Loosen Coast Guard Inspections: In early June, sixteen barges that were vacuuming oil out of the Gulf were ordered to halt work. The Coast Guard had the clean-up vessels sit idle as they were inspected for fire extinguishers and life vests. Maritime safety is clearly a priority, but speed is of the essence in the Gulf waters.

9. Stop Coast Guard Budget Cuts: Now is not the time to be cutting Coast Guard capabilities, but that is exactly what President Obama and Democratic leaders in Congress are doing. Rather than rebuilding and modernizing the Coast Guard as is necessary, they are cutting back assets needed to respond to catastrophic disasters.

10. Halt Climate Change Legislation: President Obama has placed his focus to the oil spill on oil demand rather than oil in our water. Regardless of political views, now is not the time to be taking advantage of this crisis to further an unrelated piece of legislation that will kill jobs and, in the President’s own words, cause energy prices to “skyrocket.” Less than 5% of our nation’s electricity needs are met by petroleum. Pushing solar and wind alternatives is in no way related to the disaster in the Gulf. It’s time for President Obama to focus on the direct actions he can take in the Gulf rather than the indirect harm he can cause in Congress.

source..

Venezuela’s legislature has voted to nationalize 11 oil rigs owned by the US firm Helmerich & Payne.

The rigs, located in Monagas, Anzoategui and Zulia states, will be taken over by state oil giant Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), the official news agency AVN said.

PDVSA had asked the legislature controlled by supporters of leftist President Hugo Chavez to take over the rigs after the US firm declined to negotiate a new service contract, unlike 32 other foreign firms.

The oil giant is South America’s top oil producer.

Since 2007 Caracas has nationalized companies in industries from oil to utilities, to telecoms, cement, steel and banking.

source..

Comment by American Grand Jury:

This is how the communists do things.. Obama is chomping at the bit to do the same thing here with Oil.. he may even be using the Gulf oil spill crisis to set things up.. who knows with this slimy Usurper?

A former Justice Department attorney who quit his job to protest the Obama administration’s handling of the New Black Panther Party voter intimidation case is accusing Attorney General Eric Holder of dropping the charges for racially motivated reasons.

J. Christian Adams, now an attorney in Virginia and a conservative blogger, says he and the other Justice Department lawyers working on the case were ordered to dismiss it.

“I mean we were told, ‘Drop the charges against the New Black Panther Party,’” Adams told Fox News, adding that political appointees Loretta King, acting head of the civil rights division, and Steve Rosenbaum, an attorney with the division since 2003, ordered the dismissal.

Asked about the Justice Department’s claim that they are career attorneys, not political appointees, Adams said “obviously, that’s false.”

“Under the vacancy reform act, they were serving in a political capacity,” he said. “This is one of the examples of Congress not being told the truth, the American people not being told the truth about this case. It’s one of the other examples in this case where the truth simply is becoming another victim of the process.”

Adams claimed an unnamed political appointee said if somebody wants to bring these kinds of cases, “that’ not going to be done out of the civil rights division.”

Adams also accused Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez of lying under oath to Congress about the circumstances surrounding the decision to drop the probe.

The Justice Department has defended its move to drop the case, saying it obtained an injunction against one member to keep him away from polling stations while dismissing charges against the others “based on a careful assessment of the facts and the law.”

But Adams told Fox News that politics and race was at play in the dismissal.

“There is a pervasive hostility within the civil rights division at the Justice Department toward these sorts of cases,” Adams told Fox News’ Megyn Kelly.

Adams says the dismissal is a symptom of the Obama administration’s reverse racism and that the Justice Department will not pursue voting rights cases against white victims.

“In voting, that will be the case over the next few years, there’s no doubt about it,” he said.

In an opinion article published in the Washington Times last week, Adams said the dismissal “raises serious questions about the department’s enforcement neutrality in upcoming midterm elections and the subsequent 2012 presidential election.”

Justice Department spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler dismissed Adams’ accusations as a “good faith disagreement” with ulterior motives.

“It is not uncommon for attorneys within the department to have good faith disagreements about the appropriate course of action in a particular case, although it is regrettable when a former department attorney distorts the facts and makes baseless allegations to promote his or her agenda,” she said in a written statement.

In the final days of the Bush administration, three Black Panthers — Minister King Samir Shabazz, Malik Zulu Shabazz and Jerry Jackson — were charged in a civil complaint with violating the Voter Rights Act in November 2008 by using coercion, threats and intimidation at a Philadelphia polling station — with Shabazz brandishing what prosecutors called a deadly weapon.

The Obama administration won a default judgment in federal court in April 2009 when the Black Panthers didn’t appear in court to fight the charges. But the administration moved to dismiss the charges in May 2009. Justice attorneys said a criminal complaint, which resulted in the injunction, proceeded successfully.

The department “is committed to comprehensive and vigorous enforcement of both the civil and criminal provisions of federal law that prohibit voter intimidation. We continue to work with voters, communities, and local law enforcement to ensure that every American can vote free from intimidation, coercion or threats,” Schmaler said Wednesday.

But the Justice Department’s explanation has failed to appease the United States Commission on Civil Rights, which is probing the department’s decision, or Republican lawmakers who say the dismissal could lead to an escalation of voter intimidation.

The commission held a hearing in April in which Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va., who has led the charge for answers from the Justice Department, was among those testifying. The Justice Department did not provide witnesses at that hearing. Instead, Perez testified before the commission in May.

“At a minimum, without sufficient proof that New Black Panther Party or Malik Zulu Shabazz directed or controlled unlawful activities at the polls, or made speeches directed to immediately inciting or producing lawless action on Election Day, any attempt to bring suit against those parties based merely upon their alleged ‘approval’ or ‘endorsement’ of Minister King Samir Shabazz and Jackson’s activities would have likely failed,” he told the commission.

The commission has repeatedly sought information from the Justice Department, going as far as filing subpoenas. Schmaler said the department has provided 2,000 pages of information in response.

But Adams said in the Times article that the department ordered the attorneys “to ignore the subpoena, lawlessly placing us in an unacceptably legal limbo.”

Adams also says that after the dismissal, Justice Department attorneys were instructed not to bring any more cases against racial minorities under the Voting Section.

Adams told Fox News that the New Black Panther case was the “easiest I ever had at the Justice Department.

“It doesn’t get any easier than this,” he said. “If this doesn’t constitute voter intimidation, nothing will.”

source..

by John Fritze

The federal debt will represent 62% of the nation’s economy by the end of this year, the highest percentage since just after World War II, according to a long-term budget outlook released today by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office.

Republicans, who have been talking a lot about the debt in recent months, pounced on the report. “The driver of this debt is spending,” said New Hampshire Sen. Judd Gregg, the top Republican on the Senate Budget Committee. “Our existing debt will be worsened by the president’s new health care entitlement programs…as well as an explosion in existing health care and retirement entitlement spending as the Baby Boomers retire.”

At the end of 2008, the debt equaled about 40 % of the nation’s annual economic output, according to the CBO.

The report comes as the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform meets today. The group, created by President Obama, is expected to issue recommendations in December to curb the debt – a point Democrats raised today.

The CBO report “reinforces the importance of the work being done right now by the president’s fiscal commission,” said Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., who chairs the Senate Budget Committee. “We simply cannot allow the federal debt to explode as envisioned under CBO’s projections. The economic security of the country and the quality of life for our children and grandchildren are at stake.”

Comment by American Grand Jury:

The report comes as the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform meets today. The group, created by President Obama, is expected to issue recommendations in December to curb the debt – a point Democrats raised today.

Obama won’t do a damn thing about the debt.. his agenda is to drive this country into more debt.. the game is to kill capitalism.. this is PURE communism at its best..

By Bob Unruh

Three judges on the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals are beginning to review a case that alleges Barack Obama is not eligible to be president – in fact, he may not even be American.

The federal court case was brought by attorney Mario Apuzzo on behalf of plaintiffs Charles Kerchner and others, and had been dismissed at the district court level.

Arguments earlier had been scheduled for June 29 in the dispute, but a court order recently cancelled the hearing and instead announced the case would be decided based on the merits of the legal briefs submitted by attorneys.

A document from court clerk Marcia Waldron said the case will be decided by Judge Dolores Sloviter, who was appointed by Jimmy Carter; Maryanne Trump Barry, who was appointed by Bill Clinton; and Thomas Hardiman, who was appointed by George W. Bush.

The case argues Obama probably is not even a U.S. citizen, much less a “natural born citizen” as required by the U.S. Constitution of the chief executive officer,

On a blog dealing with the case, lead plaintiff Kerchner has delivered updates.

The case filed was against Obama, Congress and others, just before Obama was sworn into office.

The case has argued, “Under the British Nationality Act of 1948 his father was a British subject/citizen and not a United States citizen and Obama himself was a British subject/citizen at the time Obama was born.

“We further contend that Obama has failed to even conclusively prove that he is at least a ‘citizen of the United States’ under the Fourteenth Amendment as he claims by conclusively proving that he was born in Hawaii,” the arguments have claimed.

The claims from Apuzzo came in opposition to government demands that the case be dismissed for lack of “standing” on the part of the plaintiffs.

Apuzzo has argued that standing should be a simple decision.

“How can you deny he’s affecting me?” Apuzzo told WND during an interview. “He wants to have terror trials in New York. He published the CIA interrogation techniques. On and on. He goes around bowing and doing all these different things. His statements we’re not a Christian nation; we’re one of the largest Muslim nations. It’s all there.”

The case was brought by Apuzzo in January 2009 on behalf of Charles F. Kerchner Jr., Lowell T. Patterson, Darrell James Lenormand and Donald H. Nelson Jr.

Named as defendants are Barack Hussein Obama II, the U.S., Congress, the Senate, House of Representatives, former Vice President Dick Cheney and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

The case alleges Congress failed to follow the Constitution, which “provides that Congress must fully qualify the candidate ‘elected’ by the Electoral College Electors.”

The complaint also asserts “when Obama was born his father was a British subject/citizen and Obama himself was the same.” The case contends the framers of the U.S. Constitution, when they adopted the requirement that a president be a “natural born citizen,” excluded dual citizens.

Apuzzo’s latest filing argues Obama’s arguments “are nothing more than presentations of general statements on the law of standing which do not address the specific factual and legal content of plaintiffs’ claims. … The defendants in much of their brief basically tell the court that the Kerchner case should be dismissed because all other Obama cases have been dismissed.”

Apuzzo said it is “self-evident” under the Constitution that “anyone aspiring to be president has to conclusively prove that he or she is eligible to hold that office. Part of that burden is conclusively showing that one is a ‘natural born citizen.’ Hence, the citizenship status of Obama is critical to the question of whether plaintiffs having standing, for it is that very statute which is the basis of their injury in fact.”

He noted the case was filed before Obama became president.