Last week’s State of the Union address was a sad and pathetic affair, full of transparent rhetoric and demagoguery, brimming with incandescent hypocrisies, variegated with an expansive assortment of half-truths and lies, palled by a mediocrity that almost seemed intentional, detached from reality like an unmoored hot-air balloon that slowly ascends to the heavens, stuffed with dense and infuriating arrogance, and draped over our nation like a several-sizes-too-small coat with promises and ideas rendered diminutive in the shadow of the historical moment.

All this was clear last Tuesday night. And yet somehow over the past week, the address actually grew worse.

The president’s speech was less a factual information session about the current American condition than it was a mawkish parade of political images and symbols, meant to make us identify with the president’s vision and feel at safe harbor with his leadership. It was less a speech than a play, lavish with props and masquerading actors tasked with immersing the audience in an alternate version of reality. But over the past week, key scenes of the drama have fallen apart. The president now looks less like a seasoned political actor than like Quince at the end of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, farcically fumbling his lines.

One of the supporting thespians was the Indiana-based electric car battery-maker Ener1, whose subsidiary EnerDel received a $118.5 million grant under the stimulus bill. EnerDel was also showered with more than $4 million in federal gifts under the Bush Administration. The scrappy little green boutique was meant to symbolize the flowering benefits of the sort of business-government handshaking that the rest of the civilized world calls “crony capitalism.” “In three years, our partnership with the private sector has already positioned America to be the world’s leading manufacturer of high-tech batteries,” Obama declared last Tuesday.

Precisely two days later, Ener1 filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The company had been an encore actor in the president’s campaign theatrics. Almost one year ago, Vice President Joe Biden visited the Ener1 facilities, effervescent about the administration’s promise to airlift 1 million electric cars onto the road by 2015. That pledge has since crashed on the shoals of reality and the cardboard prop that is Ener1 has blown over.

Watching Ener1 fold, it’s hard not to recall that last great monument to the progress of the green revolution: Solyndra. President Obama lauded that company in his 2010 State of the Union and it promptly imploded last year. One imagines executives at Pepsi placing urgent phone calls to the White House, encouraging the president to mention Coca-Cola in next year’s address. If you’re employed by a business receiving checks from the Department of Energy, you may want to dash off a few copies of your résumé this afternoon.

But the star of the State of the Union show, the leading lady, was Warren Buffett’s Secretary. “Right now, Warren Buffett pays a lower tax rate than his secretary,” Obama declared. “Do we want to keep these tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans? Or do we want to keep our investments in everything else — like education and medical research; a strong military and care for our veterans?” So central was Warren Buffett’s Secretary to the performance, she attended as the special guest of the president and belle of the ball, standing in the audience as a quiet testament to the grinding, Dickensian class divide that darkens the backstreets and alleys of modern America.

Warren Buffett’s Secretary was played by Debbie Bosanek, who is Warren Buffett’s actual secretary, and who makes between $200,000 and $500,000 per year, according to the calculations of Paul Roderick Gregory over at Forbes. It was a brilliant dramatic portrayal. While Bosanek herself is a creature of the upper classes, she effortlessly slipped into the part of Warren Buffett’s Secretary, a downtrodden proletarian exploited by the tax code, reminiscent of Peggy Olson in Mad Men.

This, by the way, presents a knotty conundrum for progressives. If Gregory’s deductions are correct, then Bosanek is likely a member of that charter club known as the “wealthiest 2%,” a coven of blackhearted plunderers and blue-blooded aristocrats that looted the country for all it was worth in 2008. Progressives have demanded higher taxes on the wealthiest 2%, yet hailed Bosanek as an overtaxed hero. They’ve blamed the wealthiest 2% for all the nation’s ills, but hoisted up this secretary as an emblem of justice in the class wars. Well, which is it? Should we add her image to theTwo Minutes Hate tape, or no? And should we raise her taxes? Lower them? Maybe we should just raise everyone’s taxes.

The overarching themes pervading the president’s State of the Union drama were America’s greatness and stifling inequality. America was great when it allowed for the president’s accomplishments, like killing Osama bin Laden. But when it came to the president’s failures, most notably three years of a doldrums job market, it was all the fault of that yawning canyon of economic class. Wealthy Americans — for whom Debbie Bosanek’s membership application is still pending — were cast as the villains, cackling all the way to their banks with insufficiently punitive Treasury receipts.

The only solution was to sock it to them, specifically with a 30% net tax on millionaires. This (along with solar batteries) was the Big Idea, the great glowing light bulb of the president’s address. And according to an analysis by the Fiscal Times, it would raise $30 billion in revenue — and that’s assuming that the sledgehammer of adding yet another tax didn’t further stall the economy. Of course, $30 billion isn’t immaterial, but the Tea Party Caucus could cut that much from the federal budget during a bad hangover. Meanwhile, the national debt is $15.2 trillion.

And Democrats have already booby-trapped the tax code for the wealthiest Americans. With current tax rates set to expire at the beginning of 2013, taxes on capital gains will shoot up from 15% to 20%. And thanks to a pernicious little slice of the Obamacare legislation, taxes on capital gains will further increase to almost 24% in 2013. All this will happen unless the federal government takes action to prevent it. It’s piquantly fitting, isn’t it? If the president wants to see tax rates tighten for millionaires, his easiest course is simply to get reelected.

But I regret that I’ve disposed of two paragraphs trying to refute the president’s numbers when the numbers are nugatory here. Obama is fully aware that his tax increase would do little to arrest the deficit and less to catalyze the economy. His purpose is to blacken the wealthy into villains and portray himself as the eminently reasonable hero; to siphon all the laws and details of politics and economics into a simple, dramatic dichotomy and cast himself on the side of good. He is, with total self-awareness, jousting with phantoms and trying to bring the rest of us along for the ride. It may make for a spectacular show, but at the end of the day, that’s all it is: cheap lines and theatrics cluttering the stage floor.

View original article.

Liberals had a dim view of Herman Cain’s character long
before this week. They automatically ascribed bad motives to him
and to his GOP supporters. His political views couldn’t possibly be
sincere, they pronounced. He is clearly pandering to racists.
Democratic strategist Karen Finney summed this attitude up by
saying: “One of the things about Herman Cain is, I think that he
makes that white Republican base of the party feel okay, feel like
they are not racist because they can like this guy. I think he is
giving that base a free pass. And I think they like him because
they think he’s a black man who knows his place.”

This is a rich charge, given that putting black
conservatives in their place is one of the chief preoccupations of
liberals. Holding black conservatives to a higher standard than
others in public life is a form of discrimination liberals have
perfected. They consider it very enlightened to ridicule black
conservatives, call them vicious names, even wish for their speedy
death. “I hope his wife feeds him lots of eggs and butter and he
dies early like many black men do of heart disease,” pundit
Julianne Malveaux said about Clarence Thomas in the 1990s. “He is
an absolutely reprehensible person.” Liberals didn’t expel Malveaux
from polite society for this comment that might have even given
David Duke pause. Instead, they feted her in academia. These days
she is a college president at Bennett.

Regulating the blackness of black conservatives is the
divine right of liberals. And so almost anything Cain says or does
is fair game. A white liberal like MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell
feels so empowered by this divine right that he can question the
quality of Cain’s participation in the Civil Rights movement. Why,
he badgered Cain a few weeks back, didn’t you do more to promote
Civil Rights?

The exceedingly smug O’Donnell, however, couldn’t quite
bring himself to demean Cain as “minstrelsy” and musical.
For that task, he needed a black liberal and found one this week in
the single-name fraud Touré, a peddler of quasi-intellectual mumbo
jumbo and cheap shots that he regards as cutting-edge cultural
criticism. Using the pretentious patter of a Henry Louis
Gates, Touré unburdened himself of the deep

insight that “I think that Cain, interestingly, does not exist
without Obama preceding him.” Mortified by having to live under a
smart black man like Obama, conservatives needed to “right the
scales” with the elevation of a “lightweight” like Cain, said
Touré.

Unable to contain his brilliance, Touré continued that
there “is this constant minstrelsy aspect that he keeps bringing
up. This is not something that we’re just making up out of whole
cloth. He is the one who says he wants the Secret Service to call
him Corn Bread. He is the one who says things like ‘oh, shucky
ducky’ when he starts. This is deep black slang that he is using,
that we have not seen on a national public stage before.” This
sounds like a potential doctoral dissertation for Touré under Henry
Gates — the troubling implications of “shucky ducky” in American
politics.

Cain isn’t the first black man to run for the GOP
nomination, though one might think so listening to this nonsense.
In 2000, the Plato-quoting Alan Keyes ran for the GOP nomination.
Where does he fit into Touré’s analysis? Toure didn’t mention him
in his list of “serious intellectuals” who have run for president
even as he numbered Colin Powell, who didn’t run for president, as
one of them: “…Colin Powell, Jesse Jackson, Barack Obama, the
blacks who are running for president have presented themselves as
serious intellectuals…” Notice, by the way, that
he includes Jesse Jackson on the list. Apparently Cain
lacks the dignity, thoughtfulness, and moral probity of that former
aspirant.

Black conservatives just can’t win. Whether they are
“entertainers” like Cain or philosophers like Keyes, they are
marked down as “wacky,” as Maureen Dowd
described the two this week.

The left’s excitement over the sex harassment charges
dogging Cain can’t be explained by moral philosophy, unless
liberals plan to recant eight years of Clintonian apologetics. The
same people who still whine about the “prurient” Ken Starr are now
clamoring for the release of confidential files from twelve years
back. The less actual sex involved in a scandal, the more
interested liberals become in it, particularly if it taints a
conservative and even better if it taints a black one. Clinton’s
cavortings, fumblings, and passes in the Oval Office itself didn’t
interest them. Those were a “private matter.” But the Cain charges
have the potential to be disqualifying, they say.

Even if one were to put the worst possible construction on
the charges, they would constitute a relatively moral day for
Clinton. Nevertheless, Clinton’s boosters eagerly await the
appearance of Cain’s accusers. They want their Anita Hill. They say
that Cain is besmirching the good names of these women even though
the public doesn’t know their names yet. The press is working hard
to correct this injustice so that the names can be known and
properly besmirched.

Perhaps Cain is lying and he did speak improperly to these
women, though that would still fall well short of the Clinton
standard. Remember, “competence” alone qualifies one for the
presidency; crummy character doesn’t matter. Also, Clinton taught
the nation that “lying ” about sex and alleged sexual harassment
(Paula Jones) is no big deal. The press knew Clinton sexually
harassed his way through Arkansas and didn’t care. A few female
reporters, so grateful to him for protecting their right to
abortion, indicated they wished to be harassed too.

Cain enjoys no such ideological immunity. He is an odious
black conservative who threatens the left’s monopolistic hold on
blacks. Also, he is some kind of pro-lifer, which means he is
anti-woman from the start. Political figures are to be judged by
the content of their ideology, decrees the left. The seriousness of
a charge is determined by the rightness of a public figure’s
political views. A Ted Kennedy was entitled to a mulligan or two
after an unwelcome advance since he had done so much to help women
already.

Not so with Cain. The left can’t rest until black
conservatives are put in their place.

View original post.

Well.

“Conservative” Iowa radio host Steve Deace is in the news
cycle accusing Herman Cain of sexual harassment — specifically
saying,
according to Politico, that Cain had
said “awkward/inappropriate things… to two females on
my staff.” Deace also said he was concerned about “the fact the
guy’s wife is never around.”

The American Spectator contacted
Deace directly tonight to ask two questions:

1. What did Herman Cain say to the woman or women on
Deace’s staff?

2. Was Deace present when Cain did whatever
“awkward/inappropriate things” Deace is accusing him of?

This evening Steve Deace responded as follows, his
response printed in its entirety:

No one affiliated with our radio program has anything else
to say about Herman Cain’s awkward and inappropriate
comments made to our staff referenced in a recent
Politico story beyond what we have already said.

Sadly, those comments are no more inappropriate and
awkward than Mr. Cain’s multiple positions on the
sanctity of human life, his support of the TARP, his
not knowing China already has nuclear weapons, and his
refusal to defend marriage. The fact that someone so
uninformed and morally inconsistent has made it this
far in a crucial Republican presidential primary, only
to finally be vetted by his personal life, is an
example of why so many Americans have lost faith in the system.
Instead of debating issues we debate cults of
personality. This sort of personality-driven politics
helped Obama get elected four years ago, and look how
well that turned out.

Steve Deace

The response has also now hastily gone up on the Deace website.

One doesn’t have to support Herman Cain or anyone else in
this race for the GOP nomination to realize quickly that Mr. Deace
seems to have a political axe to grind against Herman
Cain.

To make the accusation — and then go silent to let people
imagine the worst (is Herman Cain, like Bill Clinton, running
around America leaving a trail made up of a woman accusing rape,
another saying he groped her in the Oval Office, a third saying he
dropped his pants and asked her to “kiss it” — is the height of
moral irresponsibility. Mr. Cain may or may not have the experience
to sit in the Oval office. He may or may not have good positions
from a conservative point of view on any number of
issues.

But whether he’s president or not, this is spectacularly
unfair.

And Mr. Dease, now having walked himself and his Christian
beliefs all the way out on a limb, perhaps needs to have another
look at the 9th Commandment.

That would be the one about bearing false
witness.

Mr. Deace somehow believes this statement of his, also on
his website, will be ignored. It reads:

If you have courage and convictions, your new soul mate
will be Steve Deace. He delivers.

What Steve Deace apparently delivers is Establishment
make-believe decidedly without the courage of his convictions. If
Herman Cain sexually harassed the Deace staff in Deace’s presence
– or otherwise — step up. Who, when, where, what was said.
Otherwise, it’s fair to ask of Deace:

What would Jesus do?

Not this.

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While being grilled by co-host Ann Curry on Wednesday's NBC Today on Arizona's illegal immigration law causing racial discrimination, Governor Jan Brewer hit back and declared: “I believe truly that the media and others have tried to throw out that race card to shut down the debate. It's not about that. It's about illegal immigration.” Audio available here

Earlier, Curry fretted: “Now what would justify such a law that required people, essentially, to carry papers, identification, something that proved that they're American citizens?” Brewer replied: “…it's under reasonable suspicion, it's no different than what law enforcement actually does today….So it's a simple issue, and the press, the liberal media tried to blow that completely totally out of perspective.” View video after the jump

Curry pressed Brewer on whether police in Arizona would racially profile: “You say the people in Arizona are not racist or bigots. And so the question has been raised, why wouldn't an officer…not take into account the color of someone's skin in weighing whether or not to believe that someone might be an immigrant, an illegal immigrant?…wouldn't they weigh in the color of a person's skin in deciding whether or not that person?”

---

Here is a full transcript of the November 2 interview:

8:44AM ET

ANN CURRY: Illegal immigration is one of the hot button issues in the presidential campaign and the state of Arizona is right in the middle of that debate. More than a year after its Republican governor signed a controversial illegal immigration bill into law. Well now, Governor Jan Brewer has written a book about her struggle called “Scorpions for Breakfast: My Fight Against Special Interests, Liberal Media, and Cynical Politicos to Secure America's Border.” Governor Brewer, good morning to you.

JAN BREWER: Good morning to you, Ann.

CURRY: First, let me ask you about what you wrote about in this book about Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. You describe her as a good friend despite your political differences. As such, she appears to be making a remarkable recovery.

BREWER: She does.

CURRY: Would you like to see her run for re-election?

BREWER: I would like to see what Gabby do whatever she can do and what she wants to do. She's a terrific gal, she's a wonderful elected official in Arizona, and more than that, she's been terrific for Arizona in the United States Congress. So I certainly hope that she can do whatever she chooses to do.

CURRY: Given all that she's endured, I imagine for a lot of people and maybe even for you, there would be sort of a sweet smile if you see her do something like that.

BREWER: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. She's a terrific – she really is terrific and it was such a tragic thing that happened down in Tucson. Our hearts were just broken for all, everybody that was murdered and injured down there. It was just a terrible day.

CURRY: You also write in this book, as we just mentioned, a lot about illegal immigration.

BREWER: I do.

CURRY: Why would you want to write a book about your experiences during this huge controversy that started to rage after the signing of this bill?

ON-SCREEN HEADLINE: “Scorpions for Breakfast”; Controversial Battle to Secure America's Border

BREWER: Well, it was really important to me that I was able to put down what I believe was the truth about what we were doing in Arizona, and what we were more or less forced to do because the federal government wouldn't do their job. We are the gateway for illegal immigration into America, bottom line is, is that we can't afford it, we can't tolerate it, and we are the recipient of a lot of criminal acts. And the bottom line is, if the federal government won't protect our borders then Arizona will.

CURRY: You know, let's be very specific about what the bill said. The bill you signed, which is still being challenged in court, would let law enforcement check the immigration status of a suspected illegal immigrant if stopped during a lawful traffic stop, detention, or arrest. And it would require that suspected illegal immigrants show proof that they're here legally. Now what would justify such a law that required people, essentially, to carry papers, identification, something that proved that they're American citizens?

BREWER: Well, first of all, let me just say, Ann, that, you know, it's under reasonable suspicion, it's no different than what law enforcement actually does today. And you know, if you're here in our country or if you're in any other country, it's your responsibility to carry identification with you. So it's a simple issue, and the press, the liberal media tried to blow that completely totally out of perspective.

So I try to talk about that in my book, I'm trying to explain to people, that the people in Arizona are not racist, they are not bigots. We have tried to do the best that we can given the circumstances that we have been given. They closed down the borders in California, they closed down the borders in Texas, and they funneled everybody through Arizona. And we just can't expect our citizens to continue to pay the price. It's costing us $1.6 billion out of an $8 billion budget a year to take care of that issue.

CURRY: You say the people in Arizona are not racist or bigots. And so the question has been raised, why wouldn't an officer, if he's looking under these words, if he's thinking about a suspected illegal immigrant, are you saying that he would not, he or she would not take into account the color of someone's skin in weighing whether or not to believe that someone might be an immigrant, an illegal immigrant?

BREWER: Well, and in the law, it says, you know, it has to be under reasonable suspicion, meaning they have to have already committed something, another crime or illegal-

CURRY: Or be suspected of, I mean they're not necessarily committed, they may have had a-

BREWER: Of course, they're law enforcement. They've been trained. They know what to look for. But it's reasonable suspicion. You can't just walk up to somebody and arrest anybody. And when I signed this bill-

CURRY: But wouldn't they weigh in the color of a person's skin in deciding whether or not that person?

BREWER: No.

CURRY: Why wouldn't they?

BREWER: Why would they? I mean, we have grown up in the southwest, we have grown up – these are our friends, these are our neighbors, they're part of our families, it's just ridiculous and it's – you know what? I believe truly that the media and others have tried to throw out that race card to shut down the debate. It's not about that. It's about illegal immigration. It's about the spillover from Mexico and we're just asking the federal government to do their job.

And when I signed Senate Bill 1070, I wanted to make absolutely sure that it would work, that it would be constitutional, and nobody's civil rights would be offended. That was my main goal and that's why I wrote the book “Scorpions for Breakfast,” I want to tell the truth. And I hope everybody that reads it, that they get that story and they understand we are just simply trying to do the job the federal government won't do. And if the federal government doesn't want to do it, well then they ought to change their laws.

CURRY: What do you say to the Obama administration, that has put out this information that under President Obama more people have been deported for illegal immigration status than under any other president since Eisenhower?

BREWER: Well, I say that's good, if that's factual and if that's true. The General Accounting Office, the GAO, says 55% of our border is not secured, and only 15% of those illegals that are coming across are arrested. That's not a secure border. That's not doing your job.

CURRY: We know you're feisty, Governor Jan Brewer, and in this book you're a fighter. Thank you so much…

BREWER: Thank you.

CURRY: …for speaking to us, and really it's been a pleasure.

BREWER: Thank you.

CURRY: The book is called “Scorpions for Breakfast.”

View source page.

One of the largest landslide elections in the history of the United States took place one year ago today. Free-market Republicans, riding a wave of public anger at bailouts, stimulus, and big-government programs, swept into power, capturing 63 seats and control of the U.S. House of Representatives, not to mention six U.S. Senate seats and over 675 state-legislative seats all over the country — with control of 21 state legislative chambers shifting to GOP hands. It was a truly historic landslide that the American people rightly expected would put an end to the Obama agenda that had been fundamentally transforming America before our eyes. Politicians and pundits alike looked on in awe. But one man was unconvinced: Barack Obama.

The day after the election, Obama held a press conference to spin the meaning of the historic landslide. He explained: “I think we’d be misreading the election if we thought that the American people want to see us for the next two years relitigate arguments that we had over the last two years.”

Keep reading this post . . .

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Washington Democrats are not just out to lunch on jobs. They have devoured the entire buffet table.

“It’s very clear that private-sector jobs have been doing just fine,” Senate majority leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) declared on October 19, while debating Pres. Barack Obama’s American Jobs Act. “It’s the public-sector jobs where we’ve lost huge numbers, and that’s what this legislation is all about.”

Keep reading this post . . .

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U.S. District Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle, a Clinton appointee, has ruled that the Justice Department does not need to release emails Solicitor General Elena Kagan sent from her DOJ email account to people in the White House—in which she discussed her recusal decisions as solicitor general—because the emails were “used for a purely personal objective.”

CNSNews.com and Judicial Watch were seeking public release of the emails through lawsuits filed under the Freedom of Information Act. The “purely personal objective” cited by the judge was Kagan’s goal of being confirmed to the United States Supreme Court. At issue is whether Kagan must recuse herself as a Supreme Court Justice when the cases challenging the constitutionality of Obamacare reach the court.

Kagan was the Obama administration’s solicitor general—charged with defending the administration’s positions in federal court cases–at the time President Obama’s health-care plan was enacted and when Virginia and Florida filed lawsuits against that health-care plan in federal court.

Internal DOJ emails that CNSNews.com did obtain via FOIA revealed that in January 2010 Kagan had personally assigned her then-top deputy, Neal Katyal, to handle the anticipated lawsuits against Obama’s health-care plan. The emails also showed that Katyal at that time believed Kagan “definitely” wanted her office involved in the administration’s defense against those legal challenges.

Katyal later signed Justice Department briefs countering lawsuits filed against Obamacare and argued some of the cases in federal court.

Under federal law—28 U.S.C. 455—any “justice, judge or magistrate judge of the United States shall disqualify himself in any proceeding in which his impartiality might be reasonably questioned.” The law further states that any justice “shall also disqualify himself … where he has served in governmental employment and in such capacity participated as counsel, adviser or material witness concerning the proceedings or expressed an opinion concerning the merits of the particular case in controversy.”

On May 25, 2010, CNSNews.com filed a FOIA request with the Justice Department asking for any communications to or from then-Solicitor General Kagan, or records of any meeting she personally or electronically attended, that involved any of three things: 1) discussion of pending health-care legislation, 2) any legal challenge to the health-care bill signed by President Obama, and 3) any discussion of the question of whether Kagan ought to recuse herself from involvement in any particular case in her role as solicitor general due to the prospect that it might later come before her were she confirmed to a seat on a federal court.

When the Justice Department failed to respond to CNSNews.com’s FOIA request by late November 2010, the Media Research Center (MRC), of which CNSNews.com is a division, filed suit against the department in federal court.

In a subsquent search of Kagan’s email files pursuant to CNSNews.com’s FOIA request, the Justice Department found 8 documents that represented a chain of emails that had gone back and forth between Kagan and officials at the White House on May 17, 2010—a week after Obama had nominated Kagan to the Supreme Court.

In addition to Kagan herself, parties to the email chain included, among others, White House Counsel Robert Bauer; Ronald Klain, Vice President Joe Biden’s chief of staff; and Joshua Earnest, a White House spokesman.

“These documents consist of an email exchange between Kagan, in her capacity as a nominee to the United States Supreme Court, and staff members of the Executive Office of the President,” the Justice Department said in a “Vaughn Index” it submitted to the federal court listing documents it was declining to release in response to CNSNews.com’s FOIA.

“The email exchange concerns drafting and revising a proposed answer Kagan might give to a possible question she might be asked, during the Senate confirmation process, about recusal decisions as Solicitor General,” the Justice Department told the court. “A review of the hearing record of Ms. Kagan’s confirmation by the U.S. Senate reveals that the question at issue in this email exchange was never asked or answered.”

The Justice Department argued that it did not have to release these emails because they were not “agency documents” but “personal” ones.

“The emails at issue here do not concern the ‘official duties’ of the OSG, but rather concern then-Solicitor General Kagan’s nomination to fill a seat on the United States Supreme Court,” the Justice Department told the court.

“Further,” the Justice Department said, “contrary to plaintiff MRC’s suggestion, emails SG Kagan sent or received concerning her nomination were not ‘created by the OSG’ but rather sent or received by SG Kagan in her personal capacity as a nominee to the Supreme Court rather as opposed to her official capacity as Solicitor General.”

Judge Huvelle agreed with the Justice Department that Solicitor General Kagan’s emails to the White House “about recusal decisions as Solicitor General”—as DOJ had described the emails—were indeed personal and not governmental.

“However,” Judge Huvelle wrote in an opinion issued Thursday, “S.G. Kagan’s correspondence was not relied upon by the OSG in carrying out its business, but rather was used for a purely personal objective … As such, the relevant factors compel the conclusion that the withheld documents were personal, not attributable to the agency, and therefore were not ‘agency records.’”

Read more on Kagan and the MRC lawsuit at CNSNews.com.

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U.S. District Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle, a Clinton appointee, has ruled that the Justice Department does not need to release emails Solicitor General Elena Kagan sent from her DOJ email account to people in the White House—in which she discussed her recusal decisions as solicitor general—because the emails were “used for a purely personal objective.”

CNSNews.com and Judicial Watch were seeking public release of the emails through lawsuits filed under the Freedom of Information Act.

The “purely personal objective” cited by the judge was Kagan’s goal of being confirmed to the United States Supreme Court.

At issue is whether Kagan must recuse herself as a Supreme Court Justice when the cases challenging the constitutionality of Obamacare reach the court.

Kagan was the Obama administration’s solicitor general—charged with defending the administration’s positions in federal court cases–at the time President Obama’s health-care plan was enacted and when Virginia and Florida filed lawsuits against that health-care plan in federal court.

Internal DOJ emails that CNSNews.com did obtain via FOIA revealed that in January 2010 Kagan had personally assigned her then-top deputy, Neal Katyal, to handle the anticipated lawsuits against Obama’s health-care plan. The emails also showed that Katyal at that time believed Kagan “definitely” wanted her office involved in the administration’s defense against those legal challenges.

Katyal later signed Justice Department briefs countering lawsuits filed against Obamacare and argued some of the cases in federal court.

Under federal law—28 U.S.C. 455—any “justice, judge or magistrate judge of the United States shall disqualify himself in any proceeding in which his impartiality might be reasonably questioned.” The law further states that any justice “shall also disqualify himself … [w]here he has served in governmental employment and in such capacity participated as counsel, adviser or material witness concerning the proceedings or expressed an opinion concerning the merits of the particular case in controversy.”

On May 25, 2010, CNSNews.com filed a FOIA request with the Justice Department asking for any communications to or from then-Solicitor General Kagan, or records of any meeting she personally or electronically attended, that involved any of three things: 1) discussion of pending health-care legislation, 2) any legal challenge to the health-care bill signed by President Obama, and 3) any discussion of the question of whether Kagan ought to recuse herself from involvement in any particular case in her role as solicitor general due to the prospect that it might later come before her were she confirmed to a seat on a federal court.

When the Justice Department failed to respond to CNSNews.com’s FOIA request by late November 2010, the Media Research Center (MRC), of which CNSNews.com is a division, filed suit against the department in federal court.

In a subsquent search of Kagan’s email files pursuant to CNSNews.com’s FOIA request, the Justice Department found 8 documents that represented a chain of emails that had gone back and forth between Kagan and officials at the White House on May 17, 2010—a week after Obama had nominated Kagan to the Supreme Court.

In addition to Kagan herself, parties to the email chain included, among others, White House Counsel Robert Bauer; Ronald Klain, Vice President Joe Biden’s chief of staff; and Joshua Earnest, a White House spokesman.

“These documents consist of an email exchange between Kagan, in her capacity as a nominee to the United States Supreme Court, and staff members of the Executive Office of the President,” the Justice Department said in a “Vaughn Index” it submitted to the federal court listing documents it was declining to release in response to CNSNews.com’s FOIA.

“The email exchange concerns drafting and revising a proposed answer Kagan might give to a possible question she might be asked, during the Senate confirmation process, about recusal decisions as Solicitor General,” the Justice Department told the court. “A review of the hearing record of Ms. Kagan’s confirmation by the U.S. Senate reveals that the question at issue in this email exchange was never asked or answered.”

The Justice Department argued that it did not have to release these emails because they were not “agency documents” but “personal” ones.

“The emails at issue here do not concern the ‘official duties’ of the OSG, but rather concern then-Solicitor General Kagan’s nomination to fill a seat on  the United States Supreme Court,” the Justice Department told the court.

“Further,” the Justice Department said, “contrary to plaintiff MRC’s suggestion, emails SG Kagan sent or received concerning her nomination were not ‘created by the OSG’ but rather sent or received by SG Kagan in her personal capacity as a nominee to the Supreme Court rather as opposed to her official capacity as Solicitor General.”

Judge Huvelle agreed with the Justice Department that Solicitor General Kagan’s emails to the White House “about recusal decisions as Solicitor General”—as DOJ had described the emails—were indeed personal and not governmental.

“However,” Judge Huvelle wrote in an opinion issued Thursday, “S.G. Kagan’s correspondence was not relied upon by the OSG in carrying out its business, but rather was used for a purely personal objective … As such, the relevant factors compel the conclusion that the withheld documents were personal, not attributable to the agency, and therefore were not ‘agency records.’”

Judge Huvelle also declined to require the Justice Department to unredact a portion of a Jan. 13, 2010 email exchange between a Justice Department lawyer—whose name is redacted from the email in question—and Neal Katyal, who at that time was Solicitor General Kagan’s chief deputy, and whom Kagan had assigned the week before to handle the issue of anticipated legal challenges to the president’s health care bill.

The email, sent by the unnamed lawyer to Katyal, described a meeting that took place that day among Justice Department lawyers to begin planning DOJ’s response to legal challenges to the as-yet-unenacted Obamacare law.

The subject line on the email says: “RE: Health Care Defense.”

The email begins: “I attended the meeting today—Tom P [Associate Attorney General Thomas J. Perelli] led it, and there were some folks from Civil, OLC, and Antitrust. The basic plan is to do some anticipatory thinking about claims that will be asserted and how we will defend against them. It turns out that Civil has already started this, and hopes to produce some model briefs or memos. The big areas of possible litigation are—”

Here the email that was released to CNSNews.com in response to its FOIA request is redacted with black ink blocking about two lines of text.

When the redaction ends, the email continues as follows: “The expectation is that a bill could pass and be signed by mid-February, so we could be in litigation soon after. There is the possibility of both well-financed, sophisticated challenges, as well as numerous pro se and frivolous claims.

“Ian G. [Deputy Assistant Attorney General Ian Gershengorn of the Civil Division] and [Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division] Tony West will make a recommendation to Tom on how to structure the process going forward, i.e., should there be weekly meetings, etc.,” the email continued. “I spoke to Ian afterwards and told him we would like to be involved and to please keep us in the loop.

“Please let me know if you have any questions or want to discuss,” the email concluded.

The Justice Department argued that the redacted section of this email should remain redacted because of the attorney work-product privilege. Judicial Watch, whose own lawsuit against DOJ seeking the further release of documents had been joined with the MRCs, argued that this privilege should not apply because at the time the email was written the health-care law itself had not yet been enacted let alone challenged in court.

Judge Huvelle rejected this argument, saying that the Justice Department lawyers who were involved in this email–at least one of whom worked under Kagan’s supervision in the Office of Solicitor General—were, in effect, already involved in developing the legal defense for the health care law.

“JW’s argument fails as a matter of law. A specific claim is not in fact essential for an agency to properly invoke the attorney work-product privilege,” the judge wrote. “Rather, when government attorneys act as ‘legal advisers’ to an agency considering litigation that may arise from [sic] challenge to a government program, a specific claim is not required to justify the assertion of this privilege.”

“In such a situation, the privilege may be invoked if the agency documents were prepared ‘because of the prospect of litigation’ and by attorneys who ‘subjective[ly] belie[ved] that litigation was a real possibility, and that belief [was] objectively reasonable.’”

“In this case, DOJ has explained—and the unredacted material makes clear—that the emails, including the redacted material, discussed legal defense of the forthcoming health care legislation in response to an anticipated court challenge. … This is precisely the type of communication that is protected by the attorney-client work-product privilege.”

While this argument protects the Justice Department from unredacting the email in question, it may raise a renewed question about whether Justice Kagan needs to recuse herself from the Obamacare lawsuits. It is now stated in a federal court opinion that while Kagan was solicitor general, an email communication to which her top deputy was party is protected by the attorney work-product privilege because it “discussed legal defense of the forthcoming health care legislation in response to an anticipated court challenge.”

New York Times media reporter Brian Stelter was in St. Petersburg, Fla., but that didn’t stop him from marking his media colleague’s burgeoning coverage of the Occupy Wall Street movement for Thursday’s “A News Story Is Growing With ‘Occupy’ Protests.” Stelter hyped the increasing media coverage that the lefty aggregation “Occupy Wall Street” has been granted as it spreads to other cities, including in Florida.

But Stelter wasn’t nearly so accomodating to the conservative Tea Party when it first broke through in early 2009.

Splashed across the front page of the local newspaper here on Tuesday was the story of a 24-year-old Occupy protester named Keith Cuesta. He was not in New York, where some have been living in a park near Wall Street for nearly four weeks, but about 1,000 miles away in Tampa, where a small group of self-described “99 percenters” have decided to camp out in solidarity.

Mr. Cuesta told the newspaper, The St. Petersburg Times, that he had never participated in a protest before. The reporter, John Barry, said he was drawn to Mr. Cuesta because the young man had “finally found something he cared enough about to sleep on a sidewalk.”

As the Occupy Wall Street message of representing 99 percent of Americans has spread across the country, news media coverage of the Occupy movement has spread, too, to the front pages of newspapers and the tops of television newscasts. Coverage of the movement last week was, for the first time, quantitatively equivalent to early coverage of the Tea Party movement in early 2009, according to data released Wednesday by the Pew Research Center.

Actually, a new study from the Media Research Center shows how the Tea Party movement was initially ignored by the media, before hostile coverage began after the nationwide rallies on Tax Day 2009.

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Stelter saw momentum for the movement, which he refused to characterize as liberal or left-wing.

The spike in news media coverage is significant because, among other reasons, it may lend legitimacy to the movement and spur more people to seek out protest information on Facebook and other Web sites.

On those sites, organizers are sharing information about a swarm of protests that will take place on Saturday in cities across the country. In central Florida, for instance, hundreds of people have electronically signed up on Facebook for weekend events in St. Petersburg, Tampa, Sarasota, Orlando, and other locales.

So how did Stelter react at the birth of another protest movement, the conservative Tea Party? With distrust.

“CNBC Replays Its Reporter’s Tirade” was the headline over Stelter’s February 23, 2009 report on CNBC reporter Rick Santelli’s famous outburst against the government paying off mortgages and calling for a “Tea Party” protest in Chicago, a moment many trace as the beginning of the national outcry against excessive government spending and unfair bailouts. Stelter called it a “rant.”

Stetler put CNBC reporter Rick Santelli on the defensive in a follow-up story on March 3, “Reporter Says His Outburst Was Spontaneous.”

Rick Santelli, the CNBC reporter whose on-air suggestion of a “Chicago Tea Party” to protest President Obama’s housing plan sparked an Internet sensation and a smattering of actual protests across the country, found himself on the defensive Monday. Mr. Santelli published a long blog post on CNBC’s Web site Monday evening denying any affiliation with the “tea party movements that have popped up” since his comments were broadcast. A number of blogs had questioned whether Mr. Santelli had coordinated his on-camera commentary with right-wing groups.

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Left-wing financier George Soros is at it again. While he may claim he’s not behind the Occupy Wall Street protests, funding from his foundations says otherwise. Soros threw his support behind the movement at a United Nations panel on Oct. 3, “I can sympathize with their grievances.” But he does more than just sympathize, his foundations funded groups that back the protests and steer their “progressive” message.

Reuters even posed the question “Who’s behind the Wall St. protests?” on Oct. 13, but downplayed Soros’s actual financial involvement. Even though “Soros and the protesters share some ideological ground,” the story added. But Reuters undersold the connection significantly.

The protesters stand by their claim that theirs is purely a grassroots movement. But it is hard to ignore the concerted effort by liberal groups, unions, and other Soros-funded entities that prop-up and fuel the Occupy movement. An echo-chamber of left-wing blogs and news sites that receive Soros cash continues to push the anti-capitalist protest story. Articles repeatedly praise labor and climate activists for their support while denigrating police for their efforts to keep the peace.

Organizations that joined the protesters were granted more than $3.6 million from Soros’s Open Society Foundations. On Oct. 5 there was a “march in solidarity with #occupywallstreet” that listed seven such groups out of the 16 overall supporting the protest. Those seven organizations received $3,614,690 from Soros’ Open Society Foundations since the year 2000, with more than $2 million going to Common Cause Education Fund, part of Common Cause, and another $1.1 million to MoveOn.org.

Even the protesters admit the hypocrisy of having billionaire Soros and MoveOn.org “joining forces to voice their ‘support’ for an anti-Wall Street movement” and that it ‘should set alarm bells ringing.” Additional funding went to the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), Community Voices Heard, Coalition for the Homeless, Neighborhood Economic Development Advocacy Project (NEDAP), and 350.org.

Those left-wing organizations were joined by their friends in the progressive media. A publication for the protesters, the “Occupy Wall Street Journal,” is supported by the Independent Media Center which received more than $70,000 from two parts of the Tides organization. This group donates millions of dollars to liberal causes and is partially funded by Soros. Since 2000, Tides received $25,991,845 from his Open Society Foundations. Reuters only noted the $3.5 million from 2007-2009 but failed to mention the long history of funding and the other $20 million.

Tides is made up of the Tides Center, which received $7,537,482, and the Tides Foundation, which got an additional nearly $18,454,363. Adbusters, which Reuters called “an anti-capitalist group in Candada which started the protests,” received $184,721 in Tides money.

Soros-funded progressive media also championed the protest. The liberal echo-chamber that reaches more than 300 million people every month has been hard at work promoting the protests. The Media Consortium received $425,000 from Soros’s Open Society Foundations, and affiliates have been busy promoting Occupy Wall Street. These sites promoted stories about big labor support, climate activists’ support, and police brutality.

Media Consortium member AlterNet, which is part of the Independent Media Institute that got an extra $495,000 from Soros, has a section of their website for “Special Coverage: Occupy Wall Street.” Here it has articles that bust “5 conservative economic myths” such as “regulations kill jobs” and “business does everything better than government.” It also lauds big labor for joining the protests. AlterNet’s Kristen Gwynne was even arrested during a protest.

The Center for American Progress received $7.3 million from Soros’s Open Society Foundations. CAP is also where former Green Jobs Czar Van Jones, now a senior fellow, landed after being forced out of the Obama Administration,. Two of their blogs, that also happen to be part of the Media Consortium, helped promote the protest, Campus Progress and Think Progress. They also wrote about climate activists that support the movement. Campus Progress described “police brutality” at the protests while Think Progress thinks there is a “double standard on occupy wall street and the tea party.” They criticized how conservative pundits vilify the 99 Percent Movement as “misguided, irrelevant, or even dangerous” while embracing the Tea Party as part of the “conservative echo chamber.”

As the Business & Media Institute has reported, a study by the Media Consortium detailed how progressives had created an “echo chamber” of outlets “in which a message pushes the larger public or the mainstream media to acknowledge, respond, and give airtime to progressive ideas because it is repeated many times.” Ironic how Think Progress used the same “echo chamber” term to write-off the so-called conservative “double standard”. According to the report called “The Big Thaw,” “if done well, the message within the echo chamber can become the accepted meme, impact political dynamics, shift public opinion and change public policy.”

Consortium members used this methodology once again when they covered the protests. One common theme was the celebration of big labor when they joined the Occupy movement. Left-wing magazine Mother Jones praised plans to offer manpower and resources, stage marches, and add “organizing muscle” to the protests. A similar article by In These Times quoted AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka that they will support the protest “in every way.”

Climate activists were also hailed for their support while police efforts were sharply criticized. Grist celebrated climate activists for getting involved. A coalition led by 350.org founder Bill McKibben embraced the movement, which Soros gave $8,900. However, Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman went down to the protests for a closer look and proceeded to write how the protest expanded “despite police effort to ‘silence’ demonstrations.” More examples of “police brutality” were covered by Alternet while Think Progress posted an update on the Transport Workers Union refusal to bus protesters that the police arrested to show support.

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