David Drake

The Social Security Administration recently sent out over 52 million checks in the amount of $250 as part of the stimulus package. Due to a rushed schedule, the US Government ended up sending 8,000 to 10,000 checks to people who have already died.

In an effort to energize the economy, stimulus checks are being mailed to millions of people. Unfortunately, thousands of the recipients are dead.

[...]

James Hagner, 83, of Orchard Beach, Md., re-ceived a stimulus check for his mother, Rose, who died in 1967. SSA spokesman Mark Lassiter said in a published report that officials rushing to distribute payments didn't thoroughly review all Social Security records.

Even though Ms. Hagner hadn't received a Social Security check since the Johnson administration, the agency didn't have an official record of her death. Therefore, Mr. Lassiter said her records fell into bureaucratic limbo, and she was sent a stimulus check.

It is more than a bit unsettling that it takes the government 40 years to figure out that someone died. And since the SSA has already admitted that thousands of other dead people also received checks, one has to question how many other checks that SSA doesn't know about were sent to the dead. (And who knows how many checks are still to be sent to the unliving.)

In another case, Antoinette Santopadre of Valley Stream, N.Y., received a $250 stimulus check made out not to her, as expected, but to her father, Romolo Romonini.

Mr. Romonini, an American citizen who went to Italy in 1933 and returned to the United States once, for a seven-month visit in 1969, died in Italy 34 years ago.

To make matters even stranger, the SSA later found out that he never even participated in the Social Security system.

Something more than a little odd is going on here. We all expect the enormous federal bureaucracy to spend money stupidly, but sending millions of dollars to the dead is even more wasteful than the $57,000 spent on gold-embossed playing cards for Air Force Two.

Word is out on the Web that Chicago radio talker Erich "Mancow" Muller may have totally faked his waterboarding.

According to Gawker, the whole thing — all six seconds of it — was a stunt.

In the end, there are two incontrovertible data points here: That Muller's publicist called the thing a hoax and said Muller intended to pretend he was drowning, and that the guy doing the waterboarding was by his own admission as unqualified to perform the procedure as one could possibly be.

...when the president hit the road Tuesday for a two-day fundraising tour to pack the party coffers, he also was racking up a $265,000 partisan bill for just one leg of the trip, according to a watchdog group -- part of which taxpayers, regardless of party affiliation, will have to pay.

[...]

But sandwiched between political appearances, Obama squeezed in some quick public remarks on energy, ironically before burning fuel to Los Angeles, at Nevada's Nellis Air Force Base. It was a key stop, because it gives the entire trip an air of official legitimacy and allows the White House to write off part of the trip under rules governing travel[.]

[...]

The rest, though, is all politics. And, if history is any gauge, the American taxpayer will pick up a large portion of the tab.

[It is] estimated that the purely political part of the trip -- the distance from Las Vegas to Los Angeles and back, with no public events -- would cost at least $265,000, just for air travel expenses.

[...]

White House spokesman Tommy Vietor said the Democratic National Committee is paying its share for this trip.

"The DNC is paying 100 percent of the legally mandated costs for the trip from Nevada to California, and we are complying fully with all legal requirements," Vietor wrote in an e-mail to FOXNews.com.

But reimbursement for political activities involves a tricky formula, and actual reimbursements typically come nowhere close to compensating the government for the cost of such trips. Secret Service costs, for one, are always footed by the government.

[...]

"No one would suggest he not travel," said Leslie Paige, media director for Citizens Against Government Waste. "What is most important for taxpayers is how much is it costing for this stuff."

Sotomayor on the Supreme Court: A Gun-grabber’s Dream Come True

Obama Supreme Court pick Sonia Sotomayor believes that suspects captured on the battlefield must receive all rights afforded to American citizens under the Constitution. That’s the good news. Now here’s the bad. She thinks American citizens don’t have the right to own firearms.

As a graduate student at Princeton University, Sotomayor wrote a these entitled “Deadly Obsession: American Gun Culture.” In the text, Sotomayor makes the argument that the Second Amendment does not actually afford individual citizens the right to bear arms. She believes only the military has this right. According to Sotomayor, it has been illegal for individuals to own firearms since the passing of the Bill of Rights.

In 2004, in U.S. v. Sanchez-Villar, a three-judge panel that included Sotomayor wrote that “the right to possess a gun is clearly not a fundamental right.” In another case, Sotomayor ruled that it is illegal for citizens to keep nunchakus in their homes.

Alan Gottlieb, chairman of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, said on Wednesday that “Judge Sotomayor’s position on the Second Amendment is a clear signal that Mr. Obama’s claim that he supports gun rights is nothing but lip service,” reports CBS News.

“Judge Sotomayor’s record suggests hostility, rather than empathy, for the tens of millions of Americans who exercise their right to keep and bear arms,” said Dave Kopel of the Independence Institute.

Ken Blackwell of the Family Research Council believes her nomination amounts to “a declaration of war against America’s gun owners.”

Earlier this year, Sotomayor ruled that states do not have to obey the Second Amendment’s commandment that the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed, according to CNSNews. In Maloney v. Cuomo, Sotomayor signed an opinion of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit that said the Second Amendment does not protect individuals from having their right to keep and bear arms restricted by state governments.

Failing to get traction for his anti-gun agenda in Congress, Barack Obama is trying instead to stack the federal courts with liberal anti-gunners, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms said today.

"President Obama's gun prohibitionist agenda has fallen on deaf ears on Capitol Hill," said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb. "His administration's attempt to revive the ban on semiautomatic sporting rifles by exploiting the Mexican drug war was a bust. He had to sign legislation allowing guns for personal protection in national parks, even after his Justice Department refused to defend the Interior Department against a lawsuit that prevented an earlier firearms rule from taking effect.

"But now he is picking judicial nominees that will almost certainly legislate from the bench," he continued. "Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor has already ruled that the Second Amendment does not apply to the states. We've learned that Sotomayor's nomination is supported by ACORN, the publicly-funded anti-gun group that supported a Jersey City gun control ordinance that was struck down by the court.

"Obama's nomination of David Hamilton to a position on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals is equally troubling," Gottlieb added, "because Hamilton reportedly is a former ACORN fundraiser. Even the president once worked with the anti-gun rights ACORN as a leadership trainer."

Three of President Obama's top fundraisers are getting plum jobs as United States ambassadors.

Among the 12 ambassadors named last night by the White House, three -- Charles Rivkin, Louis Susman and John Roos -- were so-called "bundlers" for candidate Obama.

Rivkin (named ambassador to France) and Roos (named ambassador to Japan) both raised $500,000 or more for Obama, according to data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics.

Susman (named ambassador to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland) raised between $100,000 and $200,000 for Obama's campaign.

[...]

Several administration officials, including Valerie Jarrett, Greg Craig, Eric Holder and Tina Tchen, for example, were also Obama bundlers.

The beginning of the Atlantic Ocean hurricane season is still a few days away, but the first tropical depression has formed in the Atlantic Ocean, off of the Virginia coast. According to the National Hurricane Center (NHC) in Miami, Florida, tropical depression No. 1 isn't predicted to make landfall as it travels north along the East Coast.

A reporter for a small newspaper was forcibly removed from a press area near Air Force One shortly before President Barack Obama arrived at Los Angeles International Airport to depart California early Thursday.

Secret Service personnel remove Brenda Lee from near Air Force One after Lee attempted to give President Obama a letter, Thursday May 28, 2009, at LAX.

Airport security officers carried the woman away by the feet and arms as she protested her removal.

She later identified herself as Brenda Lee, a writer for the Georgia Informer in Macon and said she has White House press credentials. The newspaper's Web site says it is a monthly publication, and a Brenda Lee column is posted on it.

Calls to the newspaper and the White House press office were not immediately returned.

Lee said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press that she wanted to hand Obama a letter urging him "to take a stand for traditional marriage."

She said she asked a Secret Service agent to give the president her letter, but he refused and referred her to a White House staffer. Lee said she refused to give the staffer the letter.

"I said, 'I'll take my chances if (the president) comes by here,'" said Lee, who identified herself as a Roman Catholic priestess who lives in Anaheim, Calif. "He became annoyed that I wouldn't give him the letter."

Lee, who was wearing what she described as a cassock, said she protested when she was asked to leave.

"I said, 'Why are you bothering me?' They escorted me outside the gate," she said.

She said security officers allowed her to return when she promised she would not yell or wave, but then other officers arrived and told her to leave.

"I said, 'I'm not leaving,'" she said. "They tried to drag me out."

Two officers then picked her up and carried her out. An Associated Press photographer photographed the incident.

"I was afraid you could see under my clothes," she said, her voice choking up.

Lee, who said this was the second presidential event she has covered, was later released.

The Inspector General of the Federal Reserve in the video below acknowledges that trillions of dollars cannot be accounted for. The astonishing five-minute clip is taken from a Congressional hearing where Federal Reserve Inspector General Elizabeth Coleman is questioned by Congressman Alan Grayson of Florida on May 6th about huge amounts of money for which the Federal Reserve is responsible.

The Inspector General avoids answering almost every question asked by the Congressman. In fact, she appears in this video clip to know less about the finances of the Federal Reserve than Congressman Grayson.

Among the many important questions raised, Grayson requests information on the Bloomberg report that many trillion of dollars in credit have been extended by the Federal Reserve. When the Inspector General avoids answering, Grayson states, "If you're not responsible for investigating that, who is?" Once again, she avoids the question stating, "We've not gotten to a specific level of detail to really be in a position to respond to your question."

At another point, Coleman answers a further question with, "We are not in a position to say whether there are losses." Yet if the Inspector General of the Federal Reserve cannot account for trillions of dollars extended, who can?

U.S. Sen. Roland Burris today said he shouldn’t be blamed for any lack of candor while under oath earlier this year before a special Illinois House panel about his appointment to the seat because his duty was only to answer the questions posed by the committee members and nothing more.

Briefly speaking to reporters at the Illinois Department of Employment Security, Burris said it was not his responsibility during his January appearance before the panel weighing then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s impeachment to go out of his way to describe how he got Blagojevich’s appointment.

“See, you all have got it all backwards,” Burris said. “It is not upon a person who is testifying to go out of his way on anything. It is the person who has to ask the questions.”

[...]

It was this week's release of a transcript and audio of a Nov. 13 Burris conversation with Robert Blagojevich, secretly recorded by federal investigators, that has led to the latest layer of the senator’s evolving descriptions regarding the Senate appointment. Then-Gov. Blagojevich picked Burris for the Senate three weeks after Blagojevich’s arrest.

On the recording, Burris says giving money to Blagojevich would look like he bought the Senate seat if Burris won the appointment. At the same time, he discusses potential less-obvious fundraising ways to help Blagojevich. Burris now says those offers of help were a ruse to “placate” Blagojevich and keep his appointment chances alive and that there was never any intent to donate money.

During that January impeachment hearing, Burris also was asked if he was aware of any direct or indirect quid pro quo of trading the Senate seat for fundraising dollars. Burris said he was not—although he now says the transcript made clear he didn’t want to be involved in “pay-for-play.”

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama said Tuesday U.S. combat forces should be out of Iraq by spring 2008 to end “a foreign policy disaster,” but he stopped short of endorsing a cutoff in funds.

Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama, in a speech in Iowa Wednesday, called for the immediate drawdown of U.S. combat troops in Iraq.

Under the Illinois senator's plan, combat brigades would immediately begin withdrawing one or two brigades at a time, with a complete withdrawal by the end of 2008, CNN reported.

"Let me be clear: There is no military solution in Iraq, and there never was. The best way to protect our security and to pressure Iraq's leaders to resolve their civil war is to immediately begin to remove our combat troops," Obama said in his speech. “Not in six months or one year -- now.”

As we reported yesterday, President Obama’s Iraq “withdrawal” plan will leave up to 50,000 troops in a warzone engaging in combat missions. Today the president detailed the plans for members of Congress, and said the remnant forces, which would remain for an indefinite period of time, will be in Iraq to “advise Iraqi troops and protect US interests.”

Antiwar groups found him too timid, saying Mr. Obama always has left room for keeping troops in Iraq longer than many voters have anticipated.

"There's a lot of disappointment on the part of the peace movement," said Barbra Bearden, spokeswoman for the national group Peace Action, which has started a "No soldier left behind" program to pressure Mr. Obama to fully remove troops.

The United States could have fighting forces in Iraq and Afghanistan for a decade, the top Army officer said, even though a signed agreement requires all U.S. forces to be out of Iraq by 2012.

Gen. George Casey, Army chief of staff, said Tuesday his planning envisions combat troops in Iraq and Afghanistan for a decade as part of a sustained U.S. commitment to fighting extremism and terrorism in the Middle East.

With Judge Sonia Sotomayor already facing questions over her 60 percent reversal rate, the Supreme Court could dump another problem into her lap next month if, as many legal analysts predict, the court overturns one of her rulings upholding a race-based employment decision.

Three of the five majority opinions written by Judge Sotomayor for the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals and reviewed by the Supreme Court were reversed, providing a potent line of attack raised by opponents Tuesday after President Obama announced he will nominate the 54-year-old Hispanic woman to the high court.

"Her high reversal rate alone should be enough for us to pause and take a good look at her record. Frankly, it is the Senates duty to do so," said Wendy Wright, president of Concerned Women for America.

Judge Sonia Sotomayor of the Court of Appeals on New York's second circuit, will become a Justice of the United States Supreme Court. But before that happens, you'll hear a lot about a man called Frank Ricci.

Ricci is a fireman who happens to be dyslexic but still managed to come sixth out of 77 candidates who took an exam to become a lieutenant. But the city of New Haven, Connecticut - home of Yale, where Judge Sotomayor studied law - threw out the test because none of the 19 black firefighters who took it qualified for promotion.

After no one was promoted, Ricci and 17 other non-black firefighters, including one Hispanic, sued the city alleging racial discrimination. Sotomayor was one of seven judges (six were against) who wrote a one-page judgement throwing the test results out and denying Ricci his promotion.

[...]

Sotomayer has a powerful life story, so too does Ricci, whose case has already been heard by the Supreme Court. Most analysts believe the ruling of Sotomayor and her colleagues will be overturned.

Sen. Orrin Hatch said Tuesday Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor may be an "activist judge," and that just because he voted previously to confirm her to other courts doesn't mean he will vote for her now.

[...]

When Hatch was chairman of the Judiciary Committee 11 years ago, he (and Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah) voted to confirm Sotomayor to the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals — even though other Republicans held up her nomination for a year. Hatch also earlier voted to confirm her as a federal district-court judge.

But he told MSNBC that does not necessarily mean he will vote for her now.

"In 1998, I did vote to confirm her, because I believe in giving the president (Bill Clinton at the time) due deference, especially for circuit courts of appeals nominations. But now we are talking about the most important court on earth. We're talking about the court of last resort," Hatch said.

For one Arlington woman, the answer was "no" after she hung an American flag in her office just before the Memorial Day weekend.

Debbie McLucas is one of four hospital supervisors at Kindred Hospital in Mansfield. Last week, she hung a three-by-five foot American flag in the office she shares with the other supervisors.

When McLucas came to work Friday, her boss told her another supervisor had found her flag offensive. "I was just totally speechless. I was like, 'You're kidding me,'" McLucas said.

McLucas' husband and sons are former military men. Her daughter is currently serving in Iraq as a combat medic.

Stifling a cry, McLucas said, "I just wonder if all those young men and women over there are really doing this for nothing."

McLucas said the supervisor who complained has been in the United States for 14 years and is formerly from Africa. McLucas said that supervisor took down the flag herself.

"The flag and the pole had been placed on the floor," McLucas said. But McLucas also said hospital higher-ups had told her some patients' families and visitors had also complained.

"I was told it wouldn't matter if it was only one person," she said. "It would have to come down."

McLucas said hospital bosses told her as far as patriotism was concerned, the flag flying outside the hospital building would have to suffice.

"I find it very frightening because if I can't display my flag," McLucas asked, "what other freedoms will I lose before all is said and done?"

Kindred Hospital and its corporate bosses in Kentucky got a lesson in patriotism Wednesday.

After a thorough roasting in the blogosphere, Kindred officials decided to let hospital supervisor Debbie McLucas put an American flag back on her office wall.

"We have invited the employee (McLucas) to put the flag back up," Kindred said in a brief press release.

[...]

The Kindred Hospital press release said the company is working to resolve this "isolated incident between two employees."

With budget deficits soaring and President Obama pushing a trillion-dollar-plus expansion of health coverage, some Washington policymakers are taking a fresh look at a money-making idea long considered politically taboo: a national sales tax.

Common around the world, including in Europe, such a tax -- called a value-added tax, or VAT -- has not been seriously considered in the United States. But advocates say few other options can generate the kind of money the nation will need to avert fiscal calamity.

At a White House conference earlier this year on the government's budget problems, a roomful of tax experts pleaded with Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner to consider a VAT. A recent flurry of books and papers on the subject is attracting genuine, if furtive, interest in Congress. And last month, after wrestling with the White House over the massive deficits projected under Obama's policies, the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee declared that a VAT should be part of the debate.

"There is a growing awareness of the need for fundamental tax reform," Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) said in an interview. "I think a VAT and a high-end income tax have got to be on the table."

A VAT is a tax on the transfer of goods and services that ultimately is borne by the consumer. Highly visible, it would increase the cost of just about everything, from a carton of eggs to a visit with a lawyer. It is also hugely regressive, falling heavily on the poor. But VAT advocates say those negatives could be offset by using the proceeds to pay for health care for every American -- a tangible benefit that would be highly valuable to low-income families.

President Obama has checked the accounting ledgers and come to a disturbing conclusion: The government is broke.

"We are out of money," Obama said during a lengthy interview with C-SPAN that aired [on the morning of May 23].

He was responding to a question about the country's $11 trillion national debt, which is the money the government borrows long-term, and the potential $1.7 trillion budget deficit, which is the gap between tax revenue and current spending.

Napolitano was trying to get past the diplomatic gaffe after an interview last month with the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. in which she said—incorrectly—that the Sept. 11 terrorists crossed into the U.S. from Canada. The comments caused an uproar in America's neighbor to the north.

The Sept. 11 commission found that none came through Canada. But other extremists have, such as the would-be millennium bomber Ahmed Ressam, an Algerian convicted on multiple counts for plotting to bomb Los Angeles International Airport around Jan. 1, 2000.

"We know, and I know, that 9-11 terrorists did not cross the Canadian border. I regret that the Canadian media only seems to hear that earlier misstatement by me to that effect," Napolitano said at a brief news conference, adding that she wants to move on.

In 2001, Sonia Sotomayor, an appeals court judge, gave a speech declaring that the ethnicity and sex of a judge “may and will make a difference in our judging.”

In her speech, Judge Sotomayor questioned the famous notion — often invoked by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and her retired Supreme Court colleague, Sandra Day O’Connor — that a wise old man and a wise old woman would reach the same conclusion when deciding cases.

“I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life,” said Judge Sotomayor, who is now considered to be near the top of President Obama’s list of potential Supreme Court nominees.

Her remarks, at the annual Judge Mario G. Olmos Law and Cultural Diversity Lecture at the University of California, Berkeley, were not the only instance in which she has publicly described her view of judging in terms that could provoke sharp questioning in a confirmation hearing.

This month, for example, a video surfaced of Judge Sotomayor asserting in 2005 that a “court of appeals is where policy is made.” She then immediately adds: “And I know — I know this is on tape, and I should never say that because we don’t make law. I know. O.K. I know. I’m not promoting it. I’m not advocating it. I’m — you know.”

Just why did the first President Bush nominate Sotomayor to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York? The answer, after discussing the issue with veterans of the first Bush administration, is pure politics, with a generous helping of horse-trading thrown in.

[...]

The first thing you have to understand is how judges are nominated to the federal district courts, which are below the circuit courts of appeal and the Supreme Court. The higher courts are often the stage for ideologically-based confirmation fights. The lower district courts, are, in the words of one former Bush official, "darn near patronage jobs."

[...]

...in 1991, when Sotomayor was nominated, the Senate was controlled by Democrats, and the two senators from New York were Democrat Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Republican Alphonse D'Amato.

By a number of accounts, Moynihan and D'Amato had a longstanding arrangement. "It was a special deal whereby D'Amato agreed to defer to the pick of Moynihan for one out of every four district court seats," another former Bush official told me. "That was a deal that preceded President Bush I, so basically Moynihan was picking one of four district court nominees." That deal stood even though Republicans controlled the White House and thus (theoretically) the right to choose judges for the federal courts.

And at that moment, in 1991, it was Moynihan's turn to choose, and his choice was Sotomayor. There is no evidence that anyone in the Bush I White House or Justice Department thought Sotomayor was a conservative, or even a moderate, but no one wanted a fight with Moynihan. "She was not our first choice," recalls a third Bush I official, "but she was someone who was, if we were going to get a nominee confirmed to that position -- essentially someone we had to go with."

President Obama is expected to announce late this week that he will create a "cyber czar," a senior White House official who will have broad authority to develop strategy to protect the nation's government-run and private computer networks, according to people who have been briefed on the plan.

The adviser will have the most comprehensive mandate granted to such an official to date and will probably be a member of the National Security Council but will report to the national security adviser as well as the senior White House economic adviser, said the sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the deliberations are not final.

The California Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld same sex marriages that were already performed but upheld voters' rights to ban gay marriage through the state constitution.