Posts Tagged ‘Richard Shelby’

The Story That Won’t Go Away

Posted: February 22, 2009 in 2008 Elections, Barack Obama
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obamabirthcertificate

A month after taking over leadership of the country, questions are still swirling among conservatives about Barack Obama’s citizenship. The latest to try to revive the issue, which was thoroughly investigated and debunked, is Alan Keyes – the man Obama defeated in 2004 when he was elected to the U.S. Senate.

This isn’t the first time Keyes has raised the issue of his former rival’s birthplace. After the 2008 elections, he filed a lawsuit against Obama, Joe Biden, the California Secretary of State, and the state’s 55 electors.

Keyes has not been a mainstream conservative for some time. He wasn’t even getting 1 percent in Republican primary polls in 2008, and defected to the Constitution Party, and promptly lost their nominating contest as well.

Most Republicans don’t believe this conspiracy theory. But it won’t stop an extreme minority from continuing to raise the subject and keep it alive. I have a feeling it will come up again when Obama runs for re-election in 2012, in a similar way that George W. Bush’s service in the Texas Air National Guard did in 2004.

Update: Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama caused a bit of a stir over the weekend in discussing the issue. The quote, attributed to him and if accurately reported by a local Alabama newspaper, leaves the citizenship issue unanswered.

Another local resident asked [Alabama Senator Richard] Shelby if there was any truth to a rumor that appeared during the presidential campaign concerning Obama’s U.S. citizenship, or lack thereof.

“Well his father was Kenyan and they said he was born in Hawaii, but I haven’t seen any birth certificate,” Shelby said. “You have to be born in America to be president.”

Shelby’s spokesman is saying the senator was misquoted. The paper’s editor and his reporter say they stand by their reporting and that the senator was quoted accurately.

Politico’s Ben Smith warns there may be video of this.

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A Hint of Investigations To Come

Posted: February 11, 2009 in Uncategorized
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If you needed any more evidence that the heyday of unregulated excess in American capitalism is over, check out this report in the Wall Street Journal.

Public anger over taxpayer-funded financial bailouts is prompting Congress to look for ways to better police the billions of dollars being injected into the same Wall Street firms that many critics believe caused the current economic crisis.

Sens. Charles Schumer (D., N.Y.) and Richard Shelby (R., Ala.) are sponsoring a bill to hire hundreds of new Federal Bureau of Investigation agents and Securities and Exchange Commission investigators to investigate financial fraud. The Senate Judiciary Committee is holding a hearing Wednesday to highlight the issue.

The proposal would provide $80 million to hire 500 new FBI agents and $10 million to add new federal prosecutors and $20 million for 100 new SEC employees. All are going to be focused on investigating white-collar crime, including mortage and financial fraud that many believe helped cause the current global crisis.

The increase in resources is intended to remedy cuts that were made after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attack, which prompted federal law enforcement to focus more on terrorism.

Schumer says the FBI’s mortgage and financial fraud unit has 348 agents, down from 1,000 following the Savings and Loan crisis in the 1980s and 1990s.

If this happens, there will be some very nervous business executives on Wall Street and throughout America, and white collar defense attorneys in the private sector will make an obscene amount of money defending their clients. I would also expect big business to lobby heavily against this proposal and will promise to do a better job at policing itself, but the political reality is that the uproar over the economy and the multiple taxpayer-funded bailouts have Congress and the American people in a very foul mood. They won’t be very sympathetic.

Hey, Can You Spare $78 Billion?

Posted: February 6, 2009 in Beltway Drama, Bush Administration, Economy, Wall Street Bailout
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This story in the Washington Post is unbelievable. If this had happened in the private sector, people would have been fired immediately.

This exchange really captures the severity of it all:

“Isn’t that a terrible way to look after the taxpayers’ money and to make purchases anywhere?” Sen. Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.), ranking member on the Senate Banking Committee, said at a hearing on oversight of the bailout.

Warren replied, “Senator, Treasury simply did not do what it said it was doing.”

“In other words, they misled the Congress, did they not?” said a visibly flustered Shelby.

When a Republican senator is openly accusing the Bush Treasury Department of misleading Congress, you know it’s bad.