Judd Legum at Think Progress did what appears to be a pre-emptive strike against former Bush White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer claiming that Fleisher was “secretly involved” in the Susan G. Komen Foundations’ strategy on planned parenthood. In fact, according to people I’ve spoken to who are aware of the decision making processes at Komen, Fleischer had nothing to do with Komen’s strategy or decision on this matter. I use the word “pre-emptive” because it seems Think Progress and the left wanted to get this out there quickly, damn the facts, to distract from Brendan Daly. Brandon Daly is Nancy Pelosi’s former press secretary. He now works at Ogilvy Public Relations . According to people close to the Komen Foundation I’ve spoken to, it was not Fleischer who was involved in the strategy and PR related to the Planned Parenthood decision, but rather Nancy Pelosi’s former press secretary and Ogilvy Public Relations executive Brendan Daly. Think Progress seemingly wanted to jump the gun and blame a Republican for a disastrous PR strategy when it was not just any Democrat, but one tied to Nancy Pelosi, who was quick out of the gate condemning the Komen Foundation. Maybe Komen should have gone with Edelman instead.
Read the original here:
Did a Former Nancy Pelosi Aide Screw Up the Komen Decision? Ogilvy Public Relations Should Explain.
That makes one person. Via Daily Caller: White House spokesman Jay Carney today declared that President Barack Obama has full confidence in his controversial Attorney General Eric Holder, despite the controversy over the department’s “Operation Fast and Furious” international gun-running program. “He absolutely stands by the attorney general and thinks he’s doing an excellent job,” Carney said during a midday press conference
See the rest here:
Carney: Obama Thinks Holder Is “Doing An Excellent Job”…
From the diaries by Erick . . . Eric Holder testifies before Congress today on his department’s outrageous Operation Fast and Furious scandal. Eager to provide political cover for Obama’s embattled Attorney General, House Democrats yesterday released a report attempting to exonerate Holder and his political appointees for failing to do their jobs. Of course, their report says Holder’s innocent. The facts say he’s guilty. I say he must resign. This cynical ploy is just the latest effort by Democrats to cover up the truth. Slowly but surely, their web of misstatements, falsehoods, and shifting blame is coming unraveled, revealing a reckless and incompetent administration. First, a recap: The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) lost track of more than 2,000 weapons in a 2010 trafficking sting operation gone bad. Most ended up in the hands of Mexican drug cartels. Many ended up at crime scenes. Some were used in murders, kidnappings, and other violent crimes. Two were found at the murder scene of a U.S. border agent. It’s a disaster and tragedy that could have been prevented, and the Justice Department refuses to take responsibility. First came the denials. ATF chief Kenneth Melson claimed he didn’t know about Fast and Furious until January 2011. But DOJ officials said otherwise in a letter sent to Congress. Melson was briefed in December 2009, before the operation began, and received periodic updates afterward. Attorney General Eric Holder also feigned ignorance when questioned. First he said he hadn’t heard of Fast and Furious until Spring 2011. Then documents showed he received briefings in 2010. When called out, Holder admitted his testimony was “inaccurate” and “imprecise.” Holder frantically backpedalled again when it was discovered that DOJ officials sent a letter with false information to Sen. Chuck Grassley. When asked if they were lying, Holder dodged: “It all has to do with your state of mind.” Democrats will do anything to avoid blame. The DOJ withheld information. The White House accused congressmen of “playing politics.” Officials “screamed” and “cussed at” CBS investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson. The administration sealed the court documents connected to the murder of the border patrol agent. If Holder and Obama’s appointees are innocent, why won’t they hand over relevant documents? Why won’t they answer forthrightly in congressional inquiries? Why won’t they talk politely to investigative reporters instead of screaming and cursing? Why do they seal court documents from public view? It begs a bigger question: What more are they hiding? Amid all this, Obama still insisted in October that he has “complete confidence in Attorney General Holder and how he handles his office.” That’s the biggest problem. Obama has “complete confidence” in a scandal-ridden department. Perhaps it “all has to do with your state of mind.” Americans, meanwhile, have lost their confidence in this administration, and I, along with many other Republicans, have repeatedly called for Holder’s resignation. It’s time he heed those calls. In his State of the Union address, President Obama said, “I am asking my Attorney General to create a special unit of federal prosecutors and leading state attorneys general to expand our investigations into the abusive lending and packaging of risky mortgages that led to the housing crisis.” A new agency run by Eric Holder? I wouldn’t get my hopes up on that one.
Continued here:
The Fast and Furious Cover Up
WASHINGTON — Ah, yes, Newt Gingrich did in the last days of the Florida primary precisely what I predicted he would do. He hurled wild charges at Mitt Romney that suggested Newt was losing his grip. He charged Romney with lying and falling into the hands of George Soros and Goldman Sachs, and he did this while seeking the Republican presidential nomination! Newt quoted Soros as saying, “We think either Obama or Romney’s fine, but Gingrich, he would change things.” Citing Goldman Sachs’ profiting from the bailout, he linked the Wall Street firm to anti-Gingrich ads, filling in the dots: “Those ads,” he averred, “are your money recycled to attack me.” On Sunday, he suggested that Rick Santorum drop out of the race and support him. Santorum had left the campaign trail to be with his desperately ill daughter. That is the kind of grace we have come to expect from Gingrich, who, by the way, supplied no evidence of Goldman Sachs’ or of Soros’s aiding Romney. Newt lost support in his last week in Florida because conservatives gave him a closer look. Sure we loved his one-liners singeing the tail feathers of the Liberal media and politicians. Yet, we have to put someone up against President Barack Obama who can win. Moreover, we have to put someone in the White House who can govern. With Newt we would be explaining his gyrations every few days during the campaign. And in the unlikely event that he should win we would be spending the next four years apologizing for his extravagance. I did it once before in the 1990s, and I can tell you it was a thankless task. As I wrote last week, Newt is a 1960s generation kid. Allow me to elaborate. That generation — my generation — was the most ballyhooed generation raised in the 20th century, and it was — at least in politics — a failed generation. Gingrich, the Clintons, Al Gore, and the rest of the 1960s hustlers began their political careers in college when they were the first generation to actually believe that student government was on campus to govern. The weak Liberal administrators went along with them and gave them a say in the running of their universities. The universities have yet to recover. Yet, beyond the damage they did to the universities was the damage they did to themselves. They became the most self-absorbed generation of narcissists ever heard of. From their student government days to their days in national politics they all lived out a fantasy. Now it is over. It would be eminently fitting if Romney won the presidency and set the country on course in 2012. He is from the normal half of that generation, a man who was a student in the 1960s and afterwards a businessman, until he had secured his fortune and entered public life in middle age. By then the Clintons and Newt had been supping at the public trough for years. The unreported aspect of last week’s story of the conservative writers and politicos turning on Gingrich was the role played by the Episodic Apologists. They are the media types who have been covering for the Clintons for years. They have high hopes for the Clintons’ talents. Then they are crestfallen by one of the Clintons’ scandals: the pilfering of the White House, the last-minute pardons, Monica Lewinsky. Then their high hopes rekindle anew. They were loath to report my attack on Newt as being the Republican’s Bill Clinton, but they jumped at the “conservative Establishment’s” attacks on his veracity and his other wayward traits. Yet, Newt’s failure is part of a larger failure, the infantilism of the 1960s generation. In his narcissism, impulsiveness, and deviancy he is at one with the Clintons. Mitt, and for that matter Santorum, are just the opposite. They are straight arrows and duty-bound. They would not be a riot of scandals in the White House, but is it not about time that we leave the scandals to Hollywood? This country is facing its worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. President Obama offers us what Romney calls Crony Capitalism. Romney is right and Crony Capitalism means more Solyndras. Congressman Paul Ryan, the chairman of the House Budget Committee, has served up a budget to cure the nation’s ills and head us on a course that will not end like Greece has ended. Romney is not far from the Ryan budget and he can move even closer. Newt can be forgotten.
The rest is here:
Exit Newt
Well, of course they’re going to smack me. The other day I looked into a post at National Review on Newt Gingrich by the estimable Elliot Abrams. In short, after reading the Gingrich Special Order cited by Abrams I found his post to be grossly misleading. And reporting what I found, so too did others who took a look at the same Special Order from start to finish. Mark Levin read it and agreed completely. He’s a Santorum fan… but he was incensed at the misrepresentation of Newt’s ties to the Reagan-era. He was there in the day, as was I. I heard from others as well, and not all Newt Gingrich people. Yes, Rush was so amazed he read a good bit of the piece on air, doubtless adding to the heat. Sean Hannity discussed, Mr. Levin was furious — and Mr. Hannity was more than kind to go on the Levin show moments before his own TV show to defend me. A personal and public thanks to all of them for
