OBAMA WATCH: Stem Cell, Abortion, Gitmo, Drilling

Obama planning US trials for Guantanamo detainees

By MATT APUZZO and LARA JAKES JORDAN
WASHINGTON (AP)


President-elect Obama's advisers are quietly crafting a proposal to ship dozens, if not hundreds, of imprisoned terrorism suspects to the United States to face criminal trials, a plan that would make good on his promise to close the Guantanamo Bay prison but could require creation of a controversial new system of justice.

During his campaign, Obama described Guantanamo as a "sad chapter in American history" and has said generally that the U.S. legal system is equipped to handle the detainees. But he has offered few details on what he planned to do once the facility is closed.

Under plans being put together in Obama's camp, some detainees would be released and many others would be prosecuted in U.S. criminal courts.

A third group of detainees — the ones whose cases are most entangled in highly classified information — might have to go before a new court designed especially to handle sensitive national security cases, according to advisers and Democrats involved in the talks. Advisers participating directly in the planning spoke on condition of anonymity because the plans aren't final.

The move would be a sharp deviation from the Bush administration, which established military tribunals to prosecute detainees at the Navy base in Cuba and strongly opposes bringing prisoners to the United States.

Obama's Republican challenger, John McCain, had also pledged to close Guantanamo. But McCain opposed criminal trials, saying the Bush administration's tribunals should continue on U.S. soil.

Obama Weighs Quick Undoing of Bush Policy

New York Times
By JEFF ZELENY
November 9, 2008

CHICAGO — President-elect Barack Obama is poised to move swiftly to reverse actions that President Bush took using executive authority, and his transition team is reviewing limits on stem cell research and the expansion of oil and gas drilling, among other issues, members of the team said Sunday.

As Mr. Obama prepared to make his first post-election visit to the White House on Monday, his advisers were compiling a list of policies that could be reversed by the executive powers of the new president. The assessment is under way, aides said, but a full list of policies to be overturned will not be announced by Mr. Obama until he confers with new members of his cabinet....

In January 2001, on his first full day in office, Mr. Bush reinstated the so-called global gag rule, initiated during the Reagan administration and overturned by President Bill Clinton, which prohibited taxpayer dollars from being given to international family planning groups that perform abortions and provide abortion counseling. After Mr. Obama’s victory last week, the Center for Reproductive Rights delivered a 23-page memorandum to his transition team, calling for “bold policy change,” including a repeal of the gag rule....

The idea of turning the auto industry’s crisis into a chance to enact changes with energy and environmental benefits is one that Mr. Emanuel has promoted in Congress. But he said that Mr. Obama had yet to settle on his proposals or whether he would announce them before he was sworn in.

“Rule one: Never allow a crisis to go to waste,” Mr. Emanuel said in an interview on Sunday. “They are opportunities to do big things.”...

The Bureau of Land Management is poised to open about 360,000 acres of public land in Utah to oil and gas drilling, a plan that the Bush administration has argued would not harm the land. Environmentalists have opposed the idea, a sentiment echoed by Mr. Podesta on Sunday. ...They want to have oil and gas drilling in some of the most sensitive, fragile lands in Utah that they’re going to try to do right as they are walking out the door. I think that’s a mistake.”...

Mr. Bush used his first prime-time address, on Aug. 9, 2001, to announce his decision (technically a policy pronouncement and not an executive order) to permit federal financing for human embryonic stem cell research, albeit with strict limitations. Scientists and patient advocates have spent years pressing him to loosen the restrictions; Mr. Bush has twice vetoed legislation that would have done so.

“It will have been eight years that we have been operating in a limited funding environment,” said Larry Soler, a board member of the Coalition for the Advancement of Medical Research, an umbrella group representing 100 organizations. “I think everyone in the scientific community and the patient community is geared up and expecting this and excited to make this happen. It’s been a long struggle.”

Obama Watch: Just another Chicago Thug? Rahm Emanuel

Emanuel Served on Board of Freddie Mac
One News Now

Revelations are coming out about Rahm Emanuel, the man Obama tapped to be his Chief of Staff. Apparently Emanuel was on the Board of Directors of Freddie Mac when the failed institution was in trouble and the board did not spot "red flags." See NewsBusters for more on this. Further, ABC News says that:

According to a complaint later filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission, Freddie Mac, known formally as the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation, misreported profits by billions of dollars in order to deceive investors between the years 2000 and 2002.

Emanuel was not named in the SEC complaint (click here to read) but the entire board was later accused by the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO)(click here to read) of having "failed in its duty to follow up on matters brought to its attention." [...]

This means that Emanuel, as a member of the board, either had a hand in the fraud committed at Freddie Mac, or at the least knew about it and did nothing. This is a revealing piece of information about someone who is going to be the White House Chief of Staff for Barack Obama. I suppose the Chicago politicians have to stick together.

Of course, we already know that Obama is one of the top recipients of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac campaign contributions, receiving $126,349 from those institutions, second only to Christopher Dodd (D) of Connecticut, but this is certainly nothing that you heard about from the mainstream media. I would be surprised if you heard that little tidbit from them now.

On an interesting side note, I watching an TV not sure which channel but it was a 2005 "Roast" of Rahm Emanuel. The speaker just happened to be Hillary Clinton. Even though the nature of her speech was humorous, the revelations were not. Among other things I learned that Rahm Emanuel was to be "feared" and that he loves his profanity, about every 4th word is a profanity for Obama's chief of staff. Additionally he seems to rub almost everyone the wrong way.

Nice

However, "Twenty-two months ago, amid the ruins of the 2004 Kerry campaign, Democrats installed Rahm—nobody calls him Congressman Emanuel—as the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. As we all now know, he did his job better than it has ever been done before. He raised more money than any previous chairman, he ruthlessly recruited handpicked candidates over the objections of local party bosses and liberal activists, and he bulldozed his colleagues over questions of strategy, regularly pissing off many House Democrats with his win-at-all-costs political advice.

Despite the wins by traditionally liberal candidates in several districts, Rahm, with his insistence on playing to the middle, was undeniably the primary architect of the Democratic sweep" GQ

So we know he is tough willing to strong arm to get what he wants, connected to a corrupt Freddie Mac, is abrasive and can't seem to communicate without using profanity and insists on playing to the middle.

Isn't that what Obama did to win? Play to the middle, hide his true agenda,play to fears on the economy and establish himself as the Pied Piper of Change & Hope. Along with a huge war chest and a little help from his friends in the media.

Welcome to the "new socialists" White House