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With No Proof Enquirer Reporting Obama Cheated With Aide. Well, we can’t say that we’re surprised ’cause you knew it was only a matter of time. The National Enquirer is claiming that President Obama is supposedly caught up “in a shocking cheating scandal after being caught in a Washington, D.C. Hotel with a former campaign aide.” Here’s what the rag is reporting:
A confidential investigation has learned that Obama first became close to gorgeous 35 year-old Vera Baker in 2004 when she worked tirelessly to get him elected to the US Senate, raising millions in campaign contributions. Now, the investigators are searching for a hotel surveillance videotape. While Baker has insisted in the past that “nothing happened” between them, reports reveal that top anti-Obama operatives are offering more than $1 million to witnesses to reveal what they know about the alleged hush-hush affair.
Armed Man Held After Obama Leaves N.C. Airport. An armed man with a car decked out with police gear was held after being spotted at a North Carolina airport just after President Obama took off. Joseph Sean McVey, 23, had police sirens, flashing lights, four big antennas, and a digital camera mounted on the dashboard in his car, as well as a sidearm. The Ohio man, who is not law enforcement, was charged with going armed in terror of the public, a misdemeanor. Obama had been vacationing in Asheville, N.C., and had just left for the memorial service for the 29 miners killed in West Virginia this month. Airport police saw McVey get out of his car and listen to a handheld scanner and radio with a remote earpiece, which he was using to monitor local agencies. He had formulas for rifle scopes on a note in his car. McVey was questioned by police and Secret Service and said he heard the president was in town and that he wanted to see him.
There will be no glaring lights or TV cameras when President Obama signs an executive order this afternoon affirming the continuing ban on federal funding for abortion. No East Room speeches. Not even a photo op handshake.
He’s unlikely to use 22 pens.
But the 876-word, two-page document may be among the most important of his presidency. The carefully-negotiated document assured passage of his health care legislation by gaining a handful of crucial pro-life votes without shedding pro-choice ones.
“The executive order found a sweet spot, which I’m surprised existed,” said William Galston of the Brookings Institution. “Something that didn’t send the base of the party into a tizzy but seems to have satisfied a very important minority within the party. It was the model of win-win pragmatism.”
A strict reading of the order suggests that it does little more than restate the existing prohibition on abortion funding, known as the Hyde amendment, and make sure that government officials “are aware of their responsibilities, new and old.”
But that didn’t stop pro-choice activists from condemning Obama for agreeing to it, or keep pro-life groups from asserting that it falls short.
The National Organization for Women declared Sunday night that Obama’s commitment to abortion rights is “shaky at best” and said his willingness to sign the order demonstrated that “it is acceptable to negotiate health care on the backs of women.”
For the activist groups, overheated rhetoric is part of the fundraising game. A threat to their core agenda can help them raise enormous amounts of money from their members and supporters. NOW declared Monday that it would launch an effort to repeal the Hyde
Amendment, the more than three-decade-old annual budgetary provision that Obama affirmed.
As Galston notes, the president’s decision to sign the order did not drive a single pro-choice lawmaker to vote against it, suggesting that the substance of the letter was less important than its symbolic value.
But for the president, the order reflects a willingness to ask some of his most devoted constituents — women, gays, unions and African Americans — to swallow a few toads while he battles on behalf of his broader agenda.
Emboldened by the response to President Obama’s face-off with House Republicans last week, the White House is intensifying its push to engage Congressional Republicans in policy negotiations as a way to share the burden of governing and put more scrutiny on Republican initiatives.
Top aides say Mr. Obama intends to follow through quickly on his State of the Union proposal for bipartisan White House brainstorming sessions. Republicans will also be invited to the White House this weekend to watch the Super Bowl, as well as to Camp David and other venues for social visits.
The outreach represents a marked shift in both strategy and substance by Mr. Obama and his allies at a time when Democrats are adapting to the loss of their 60-vote supermajority in the Senate and the president has been losing support among independent voters.
The White House’s goal is to show voters that Mr. Obama is willing to engage Republicans rather than govern in a partisan manner while forcing Republicans to make substantive compromises or be portrayed as obstructionists given their renewed power to block almost all legislation in the Senate.
When you are governor of a state like Virginia, you’ve got to be smooth. When you are a governor attempting to explain how our country should commemorate the Confederacy, you’ve got to be Bill Clinton smooth and pretty damn persuasive. McDonnell wasn’t smooth at all recently when a reporter asked him why he forgot to mention the evils of slavery during his announcement that his state will commemorate Confederate History Month. That’s when his critics really got excited.
Going beyond Bob McDonnell’s own inadequacies as governor, let’s think carefully about why a Republican governor in a southern state might want to remember the Confederacy. One can make the logical argument that Confederates, like other radical groups, were an important part of history and deserve to have their memories preserved. I can almost buy that, but not really.