Watchdog Action Team

Thanks to all of you who took action this week to raise the issue of domestic violence as a “pre-existing condition” in eight states and Washington, DC. You emailed and called, and people are taking notice. Below are just a few of the things you made happen this week:

1. Rep. Diane Watson (D-CA), a member of Rep. Kucinich’s Subcommitee on Domestic Policy, submitted questions and a written statement on the issue. Rep. Watson wrote:

I was especially horrified to learn that in 8 states and the District of Columbia, insurance companies include domestic violence as a pre-existing condition. With 20 to 35 percent of emergency room visits made by women a result of domestic violence, I can see how this morally appalling practice makes sense for insurance companies trying to spend as little as possible. What I cannot understand is how we can consent to such practices continuing.

She included the following questions to insurance executives:

Q: How do you justify denying coverage to victims of such crimes when they need them the most, and then indefinitely thereafter?

Q: Without being legally obligated to do so would you commit today to permanently stopping this discriminatory practice?

2. First Lady Michelle Obama mentioned the issue of domestic violence as a “pre-existing condition” in her speech on women and health care today.

Watch Michelle speak on what healthcare reform means for women and families, as well as being the next step towards ending gender discrimination:

3. MSNBC shows “Countdown with Keith Olbermann” and “Dr. Nancy” both raised the issue on their shows this week.

4. The insurance commissioner in Mississippi demanded that classifying domestic violence as a “pre-existing condition” immediately be made illegal in his state.

Together, we’re going to end this practice. As Michelle Obama said at the White House today, in order to win health insurance reform, “we’re going to have to mobilize like we’ve never mobilized before.”

This is the port from the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. At the conclusion of the report, you will find a list of 361 affiliates. These are the known affiliates, but I am sure there are probably more.

Click here to read the report.

Indonesia Left to Right:

Lolo Soetoro, Stanley Ann Dunham Soetoro,baby Maya Soetoro, and 9 year old Barry Soetoro

This registration document, made available on Jan. 24, 2007, by the Fransiskus Assisi school in Jakarta, Indonesia,
shows the registration of Barack Obama under the name Barry Soetoro made by his step-father, Lolo Soetoro.

Name: Barry Soetoro
Religion: ….Islam
Nationality: ….Indonesian

How did little INDONESIAN, Barry Soetoro, (A.K.A. Barack Obama) get around the issue of nationality to become president?
Someone who tells lies is a L I A R

PART 2:

In a move certain to fuel the debate over Obama’s qualifications for the presidency, the group “Americans for Freedom of Information” has released copies of President Obama’s college transcripts
from Occidental College .

Released today, the transcript indicates that Obama, under the name Barry Soetoro, received financial aid as a foreign student from Indonesia as an undergraduate at the school. The transcript was released by Occidental College in compliance with acourt order in a suit brought by the group in the Superior Court of California.

The transcript shows that Obama (Soetoro) applied for financial aid and was awarded a fellowship for foreign students from the Fulbright Foundation Scholarship program. To qualify, for the scholarship, a student must claim foreign citizenship.

This document would seem to provide the smoking gun that many of Obama’s detractors have been seeking. Along with the evidence that he was first born in Kenya and there is no record of him ever applying for U.S. citizenship, this is looking pretty grim. The news has created a firestorm at the White House as the release casts increasing doubt about Obama’s legitimacy and qualification to serve as president. When reached for comment in London , where he has been in meetings with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Obama smiled but refused comment on the issue.

Britain ’s Daily Mail has also carried the story in a front-page article titled, “Obama Eligibility Questioned,” leading some to speculate that the story may overshadow economic issues on Obama’s first official visit to the U.K.

In a related matter, under growing pressure from several groups, Justice Antonin Scalia announced that the Supreme Court agreed on Tuesday to hear arguments concerning Obama’s legal eligibility to serve as President in a case brought by Leo Donofrio of New Jersey .

This lawsuit claims Obama’s dual citizenship disqualified him from serving as president. Donofrio’s case is just one of 18 suits brought by citizens demanding proof of Obama’s citizenship or qualifications to serve as president.

Gary Kreep of the United States Justice Foundation has released the results of their investigation of Obama’s campaign spending. This study estimates that Obama has spent upwards of $950,000 in campaign funds in the past year with eleven law firms in 12 states for legal resources to block disclosure of any of his personal records.

Mr. Kreep indicated that the investigation is still on-going but that the final report will be provided to the U.S. attorney general, Eric Holder. Mr. Holder has refused to comment on the matter.

From WorldNetDaily

The interpretation of federal law should be made not by judges

but by the beliefs and commitments of the U.S. president and those around him, according to President Obama’s newly confirmed regulatory czar, Cass Sunstein.

“There is no reason to believe that in the face of statutory ambiguity, the meaning of federal law should be settled by the inclinations and predispositions of federal judges. The outcome should instead depend on the commitments and beliefs of the President and those who operate under him,” argued Sunstein.

This statement was the central thesis of Sunstein’s 2006 Yale Law School paper, “Beyond Marbury: The Executive’s Power to Say What the Law Is.” The paper, in which he argues the president and his advisers should be the ones to interpret federal laws, was obtained and reviewed by WND.

Sunstein debated the precedent-setting 1803 case, Marbury v. Madison, which determined it is “emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is.”

He lamented multiple recent examples of U.S. presidents interpreting law only to have their interpretations overturned by the Supreme Court.

“Why is the excutive not permitted to construe constitutional ambiguities as it sees fit?” asks Sunstein. “The simplest answer is that foxes are not permitted to guard henhouses … but who is the fox?”

He concludes “the executive should usually be permitted to interpret (law) as it reasonably sees fit.”

“The allocation of law-interpreting power to the executive fits admirably well with the twentieth-century shift from common law courts to regulatory administration if the governing statute is ambiguous,” he writes.

Sunstein is not shy about expressing his radical beliefs in papers and books, although many of his controversial arguments have received little to no news media attention or public scrutiny.

Earlier this week, WND first reported Sunstein drew up in an academic book a “First Amendment New Deal” – a new “Fairness Doctrine” that would include the establishment of a panel of “nonpartisan experts” to ensure “diversity of view” on the airwaves.

WND also reported Sunstein proposed a radical new “bill of rights” in a 2004 book, “The Second Bill of Rights: FDR’S Unfinished Revolution and Why We Need It More than Ever,” in which he advanced the radical notion that welfare rights, including some controversial inceptions, be granted by the state.

WND has learned that in April 2005, Sunstein opened up a conference at Yale Law School entitled “The Constitution in 2020,” which sought to change the nature and interpretation of the Constitution by that year.

Sunstein has been a main participant in the movement, which openly seeks to create a “progressive” consensus as to what the U.S. Constitution should provide for by the year 2020. It also suggests strategy for how liberal lawyers and judges might bring such a constitutional regime into being.

Just before his appearance at the conference, Sunstein wrote a blog entry in which he explained he “will be urging that it is important to resist, on democratic grounds, the idea that the document should be interpreted to reflect the view of the extreme right-wing of the Republican Party.”

In his book, Sunstein laid out what he wants to become the new bill of rights, which he calls the Second Bill of Rights:

Among his mandates are:

• The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation;

• The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;

• The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;

• The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;

• The right of every family to a decent home;

• The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;

• The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;

• The right to a good education.

On one page in his book, Sunstein claims he is “not seriously arguing” his bill of rights be “encompassed by anything in the Constitution,” but on the next page he states that “if the nation becomes committed to certain rights, they may migrate into the Constitution itself.”

Later in the book, Sunstein argues that “at a minimum, the second bill should be seen as part and parcel of America’s constitutive commitments.”

From WorldNetDaily

SPLC alarm: ‘Militiamen, white supremacists, anti-Semites, nativists, tax protesters coalescing’

A private activist organization apparently is picking up where the federal government left off when the Department of Homeland Security issued its “Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment” warning that returning veterans and people in a long list of other categories were potential terrorists.

Only the new warning, delivered recently to police officers, sheriffs and other law enforcement personnel across the country, is lumping those dedicated to the constitutional principles on which the nation was founded together with crazed killers.

The fall 2009 “Intelligence Report” was issued recently by the Southern Poverty Law Center, where officials confirmed to WND it was published specifically for and delivered to law enforcement personnel across the nation. The SPLC did not respond to a WND request for other comment

But the article groups members of various organizations such as Oathkeepers – whose mainly military and law enforcement members pledge to uphold their constitutional duties, including the duty to question and refuse what appear to be illegitimate orders – with a man “said to be interested in joining a militia” who is accused of killing two deputies in Florida.

But the article groups members of various organizations such as Oathkeepers – whose mainly military and law enforcement members pledge to uphold their constitutional duties, including the duty to question and refuse what appear to be illegitimate orders – with a man “said to be interested in joining a militia” who is accused of killing two deputies in Florida.

“The situation has many authorities worried,” the report to police officers says. “Militiamen, white supremacists, anti-Semites, nativists, tax protesters and a range of other activists of the radical right are cross-pollinating and may even be coalescing.”

Garbage, says a supporter of the individual rights of gun ownership contained in the Second Amendment.

Mike Vanderboegh is with the Sipsey Street Irregularsm who describe themselves as among the 3 percent as in: “During the American revolution, the active forces in the field against the King’s tyranny never amounted to more than 3 percent of the colonists.”

The SPLC “are conflation experts,” he told WND. “They have a pot and they throw everyone in it in an attempt to tar the rest of us with the racists and terrorists they throw in there.”

He said the largest number of active members of various “militias” are constitutionalists, libertarians and conservatives who simply fear the government’s swift advances toward federal ownership of banks and auto companies, intervention in personal rights such as health care and obstruction of constitutional provisions with gun regulations.

Only the minority are focused on conspiracy theories and the like, he said.

He said, for example, he was at the Oathkeepers April ceremony in Lexington, and the members with no significant exceptions were highly decorated and long-term serving military members and police. The group’s principles include statements they will uphold their oath to support the Constitution.

“What I saw there was quintessentially America,” he said.

The warning from the SPLC echoes the alarmism from the earlier federal report. WND has posted the report online.

It warned of potential terrorism threats from those who:

• Oppose abortion

• Are returning veterans

• Oppose same-sex marriage

• Oppose restrictions on firearms

• Oppose lax immigration laws

• Oppose the policies of President Obama regarding immigration, citizenship, and the expansion of social programs

• Oppose continuation of free trade agreements

• Are suspect of foreign regimes

• Fear Communist regimes

• Oppose a “one world” government

• Bemoan the decline of U.S. stature in the world

• Are upset with loss of U.S. manufacturing jobs to China and India, and more

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano later apologized to veterans for including them in the list but not to other groups of people, not even when WND also reported later that the “extrmism” report was confirmed to have been based on Internet “chatter”.

Under the headline “Going Feral,” the SPLC warning to police quotes personalities such as Fox News host Glenn Beck, U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann and actor Chuck Norris.

“It’s like Thomas Jefferson said, a revolution every now and then is a good thing. We are at the point … of revolution. And by that, what I mean [is] an orderly revolution, where the people of this country wake up and get up and make a decision that this is not going to happen on their watch,” the warning quoted Bachmann, R-Minn., saying.

Norris, in a WND column in March, wrote, “How much more will Americans take? When will enough be enough? And, when that time comes, will our leaders finally listen or will history need to record a second American Revolution?”

Beck’s “threat” was, “If this country starts to spiral out of control and, you know, and Mexico melts down or whatever, if it really starts to spiral out of control … Americans … just won’t stand for it. There will be parts of the country that will rise up.”

In a later column, Norris addressed the issue in a discussion of the 9/12 rally in Washington, where hundreds of thousands of people assembled to protest uncontrolled spending by government and its interference in individual lives.

“On Sept. 12, 2001, we sought to protect our nation against terrorists from without. Beginning on Sept. 12, 2009, we are seeking to protect our nation against enemies of our republic from within. Many of us are protesting the present political direction of Washington. Outrageous borrowing, excessive bailouts, massive spending, speedball stimulus plans … swings toward socialism are just a few of things that were protested that day. Of course, economics is far from America’s only problem, as large as it appears to loom,” Norris wrote.

“I want to emphasize: this revolutionary movement is not solely an independent, Republican or Democrat fight. It represents patriots fed up against modernists who seek to overturn almost every principle and tenet laid down by our country’s founders at the inception of our republic. From the East Coast to the ‘Left Coast,’ America seems to be moving further and further from its founders’ vision and government,” he said.

A column by gun rights author David Codrea said, “SPLC’s Larry Keller asserts they are ‘particularly worrisome.’ A fair question might be ‘why’ or ‘to whom?’ It’s not like they’re associated with anything other than patriotism, in spite of his attempts to insinuate racist ties.”

Codrea said a militia was important enough for the Founding Fathers to declare them “necessary to the security of a free state.”

The terror theme also was raised recently by Democrats. WND reported when an “Organizing for America” campaign document outlined a plan to have activists telephone their state’s senators Sept. 11 to demand a “public option,” which critics say would lead to a government health-care monopoly.

Bobby Eberle, posting on a Republican Party site called The Loft said Obama “and his team have no limits on what they will do or say in order to inject socialist views into the minds of Americans.”

“They also have absolutely no respect or appreciation for the American way and the sacrifices Americans have made in order to stay free and to promote the American way of life across the globe. Just take the latest effort being pitched at BarackObama.com. Rather than remembering the Americans who lost their lives during the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, Obama’s political team wants you to make phone calls on 9/11 to fight back against ‘Right-Wing Domestic Terrorists,’” Eberle wrote.

The OFA plan said, “All 50 states are coordinating in this – as we fight back against our own Right-Wing Domestic Terrorists who are subverting the American Democratic Process, whipped to a frenzy by their Fox Propaganda Network ceaselessly reseizing power for their treacherous leaders.”

Shortly after the “extremism” report was released, WND reported, the Department of Defense was describing protesters as “low-level terrorists.”

WND later reported when the DoD eventually withdrew a training manual question that linked protesters across the U.S. to terrorism.

The Thomas More Law Center has filed a lawsuit against Napolitano and the DHS on behalf of nationally syndicated conservative radio talk show host Michael Savage, Gregg Cunningham of the pro-life organization Center for Bio-Ethical Reform Inc. and Iraqi War Marine veteran Kevin Murray.

The lawsuit alleges the federal agency violated the First and Fifth Amendment constitutional rights of the three plaintiffs by targeting them for disfavored treatment and chilling their free speech, expressive association and equal protection rights. The lawsuit further claims DHS encouraged law enforcement officers throughout the nation to target and report citizens to federal officials as suspicious rightwing extremists and potential terrorists because of their political beliefs.