Obama Arrested for Drunk Driving

MetroWest Daily News of Framingham, MA ran a story, byline Norman Miller, titled “Cops: Illegal Immigrant Drove Drunk in Framingham.”

The alleged operator, Onyango Obama, 67, blew a 0.14 on the breathalyzer.  The Massachusetts limit is 0.08.  Mr. Obama is also accused of driving to endanger, having almost collided with the police car.

The MetroWest Daily News story states:

Obama has a federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement warrant for his arrest. ICE has previously ordered him to be deported back to Kenya.

Kerry Picket of the Washington Times theorizes that this Onyango Obama (born 3 June 1944 according to the police log) is also the half-uncle of President Obama, Omar Onyango Obama, born on 3 June 1944 in Nyang’oma Kogelo, Kenya per Picket’s theory.

President Obama’s aunt also lives in the Boston area.  Howie Carr, the Boston Herald columnist, refers to her as “Auntie Zeituni.”  Howie features her in a column now and again (the latest was 5 August), usually pointing out her status as a welfare recipient living in public housing.

“What family doesn't have its ups and downs?” as Katherine Hepburn says in “The Lion in Winter.”

This post originally appeared in the American Thinker on 28 August 2011. 

A Letter from Lucy - Carol Shea-Porter

Earlier this month, the 'Grok ran a guest piece of mine.  It received several comments, pro and con, and was a totally entertaining experience.  Thanks, Skip [Most welcome, sir!  -Skip].

In due course, the piece rotated off as other pieces were published.  Ten days after the piece appeared, Skip received another comment from Lucy Edwards.  Her comment had two subjects, Bill O’Brien and Carol Shea-Porter (CSP).  This article addresses the CSP comment, shown in part below:

And I suggest Mr. Johnson do some more homework before he writes about Carol Shea Porter [sic] again. The story about having someone removed from her town hall is untrue. James Pindell reported the following after the incident:

Lucy could have saved some of the homework she recommended by providing a link to her reference to Mr. Pindell, but she didn’t so it was off to Google.  Since the incident, Mr. Pindell has been hired by WMUR and his old website now directs the reader to a WMUR site.  Mr. Pindell’s article is not directly available, but a reference can be found on the Democratic Underground.

Lucy, you asked for more homework.  OK, it is an incident that can be remembered with fondness.  If you recall, it was towards the end of August 2009, Obamacare was still being debated, the people were generally opposed to the approach and wanted guidance from their representatives, and CSP ended up on a milk carton – have you seen this woman?

Are NOAA and Other Regulatory Agencies above the Law?

Dr. Brian Rothschild, the prominent fisheries scientist, recently published an op-ed titled "Fish, the intent of Congress, and jobs" in the New Bedford, MA Standard-Times.  He advocates removing the management of our nation's fisheries from NOAA, the regulatory agency currently in charge.  This writer wholeheartedly agrees.

Recently, the cities of New Bedford, MA and Gloucester, MA sued the federal government and NOAA over inappropriate and potentially unlawful interpretations of the Magnuson-Stevens Act that supposedly governs fisheries management.  The courts ruled against the cities.  Dr. Rothschild says that the judge, Judge Rya Zobel, had little choice but to rule as she did.  It is a feature (or a bug) of administrative law.
I looked up administrative law in Nolo's Plain-English Law Dictionary and found the following:

The procedures created by administrative agencies (governmental bodies), including rules, regulations, opinions, and orders. These procedures are often unique to each agency and are usually not found in statutes.

Judge Zobel ended up affirming what Congress never intended.  Per Dr. Rothschild:

Congress never intended to generate a fisheries management system that wastes huge quantities of fish, disregards fishing communities, is inherently unfair and ignores science.

Dr. Rothschild has made a point of far-reaching impact in his opinion piece.

[W]hen the language of the law is ambiguous (as is typical for most laws), [regulatory] agency determinations are always right.

Think of this.  The Congress passes a law that requires regulations to be written after the law is enacted.  The regulatory agency has a free hand.  The courts are powerless with respect to regulations promulgated by the regulatory agency. 

Remember when Nancy Pelosi told us we wouldn't know what was in the Obamacare law until after it was passed?  We still don't know all of it, but we see Kathleen Sebelius making new law (e.g., birth control without co-pay) almost daily as "agency determinations that are always right."

Scarier and scarier.

This post originally appeared in the American Thinker on 16 August 2011. 

Guest Post by Mike Johnson: Carol Shea-Porter and Maggie

Kensington is a bucolic town, horse country, affluent, comfortable, a pretty place for an afternoon’s drive, but with the occasional discordant note.
This is a photograph of a small barn on a large horse farm located on Drinkwater Road near the intersection of North Road.  It was taken on 24 July 2011, some 262 days after the last election, or maybe more apropos, 469 days before the next election.  I drive by the barn twice a day and get emotional every time.

It’s always a pleasure to drive by the barn and it is also highly satisfying that these two women are no longer representing us in the halls of power.  It’s sad that my neighbor is so ideologically obsessed that he needs to maintain this monument to his fallen candidates.  But more than sadness, my fanatical neighbor evokes anger by insisting on subjecting me and mine to this display of ungraciousness in defeat. 

NOAA’s Climate Office – Precursor to Cap and Trade?

What does Obama mean (video) by the fundamental transformation of America?  Is it towards European socialism as postulated by Newt Gingrich?  Is it aimed at destroying the neocolonial America as put forth by Dinesh D’Souza?  Or is it some even more dire goal not yet articulated?  Some three years into his presidency and we still do not fully understand where Barack Obama is taking us, only that it is to a lesser America.

Cap and trade is a key element in Obama’s fundamental transformation.  He knows the consequences.  He promised skyrocketing electricity costs when he was elected in 2008.  To date, we have lucked out.  Obama tried and tried and tried again to get his cap and trade bill through Congress and make good on his promise.  So far he has failed. 

Obama has failed in large measure because the credibility and thus the hysteria of his science have eroded.  Obama has been stymied by a public made skeptical because of the shenanigans of the UN’s IPCC and the self-promoting climate experts in East Anglia and the United States.  Can Obama recover?  Not before the next election, but if he is reelected (bite your tongue) and if he can resuscitate the hysteria by co-opting NOAA, the cream of American governmental science, he has a good shot at it.  Bear in mind, Obama has a predilection for using regulatory agencies (e.g., EPA) as weapons.

Dr. Jane Lubchenco, the environmentalist rock star and former vice chairperson of the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), was appointed as the administrator of NOAA by President Obama.  She has installed a team of ecozealots and they have a Climate Service Office ready and waiting to proceed with only Congressional approval standing in their way.

Dr. Lubchenco first proposed the Climate Service Office on 8 February 2010.  She presented it as a budget-neutral reorganization, a consolidation of existing capabilities.  Any such reorganization requires approval of Congress.  The recent FY2011 Continuing Resolution prohibits NOAA from expending any funds on a Climate Service Office in FY2011.  President Obama included the NOAA reorganization in his FY12 budget issued in February 2011 and so ingloriously voted down (97-0) this spring.