More Of That Change Obama Is Promising

It may seem like chump change in the scheme of things, but a $100,000 earmark Sen. Barack Obama obtained for a campaign worker while serving in the Illinois Senate says a lot about the politics Obama represents. Previously, I mentioned a $100,000 grant Obama obtained for a community organization run by an Obama campaign volunteer in 2001 to fund construction of a botanical garden in his district. Obama had promised to raise $1.1 million for the group while he was running for Congress against U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush, who crushed Obama in that race. Obama never followed through on the promise to raise the necessary funds, and now it looks like the $100,000 Obama obtained for the group went directly into the pockets of the campaign supporter and her spouse, prompting a state investigation. The Sun-Times reports:

A $100,000 state grant for a botanic garden in Englewood that then-state Sen. Barack Obama awarded in 2001 to a group headed by a onetime campaign volunteer is now under investigation by the Illinois attorney general amid new questions, prompted by Chicago Sun-Times reports, about whether the money might have been misspent.

The garden was never built. And now state records obtained by the Sun-Times show $65,000 of the grant money went to the wife of Kenny B. Smith, the Obama 2000 congressional campaign volunteer who heads the Chicago Better Housing Association, which was in charge of the project for the blighted South Side neighborhood.

Smith wrote another $20,000 in grant-related checks to K.D. Contractors, a construction company that his wife, Karen D. Smith, created five months after work on the garden was supposed to have begun, records show. K.D. is no longer in business.

Attorney General Lisa Madigan -- a Democrat who is supporting Obama's presidential bid -- is investigating "whether this charitable organization properly used its charitable assets, including the state funds it received," Cara Smith, Madigan's deputy chief of staff, said Wednesday.

In addition to the 2001 grant that Obama directed to the housing association as a "member initiative," the not-for-profit group got a separate $20,000 state grant in 2006.

Madigan's office has notified Obama's presidential campaign of the probe, which was launched this week. But Obama's actions in awarding the money are not a focus of the investigation, Smith said.

Those who will no doubt dismiss this investigation as trivial should understand that this is not an isolated incident. As a state senator, Obama used his influence to steer tens of millions in government housing grants and loans to Rezmar, a company owned by one of his closest friends and political supporters, Tony Rezko, who is now sitting in jail on multiple felony convictions for corrupt influence peddling in Illinois state government. Many of those housing projects were located in Obama's senate district and fell into a state of utter disarray. We also know that shortly after Obama's failed congressional bid he found himself in serious financial trouble. A campaign supporter hired Obama as general counsel for his company and paid him close to $112,000. Obama never disclosed this relationship on his financial disclosure statement he filed as a state senator. Obama used his state senate letterhead to write letters of support and had a legislative assistant in his office help obtain hundreds of thousands of dollars in state grants for the business. After Obama was elected to the U.S. Senate, his wife was promoted to some vice president of diversity and community outreach job at the University of Chicago hospital, making over $300,000 a year. Obama in turn used his Senate position to obtain more than a $1 million in federal earmarks for the hospital. When Obama's financial picture improved dramatically, he obtained the assistance of Tony Rezko in purchasing his million-dollar South Side mansion, allowing Obama to save $300,000 on the purchase price of the home after Rezko purchased the adjoining lot as part of the house deal, improved it with a new privacy fence and then sold part of the lot back to Obama, enhancing the value of Obama's home. Rezko also helped Obama obtain a discounted mortgage on the home from a bank with which he had close personal ties.

If U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald wants to do it, he will have no problem obtaining indictments against Obama for corrupt political influence. With Rezko sitting in jail awaiting sentencing on what could be a long term in prison, his only hope is for Obama to become president of the U.S. Obama can then at least commute his sentence and effectively shutdown Fitzgerald's investigation of political corruption in Chicago. Obama has already pledged he will not fire Fitzgerald if he becomes president, a commitment he made while facing tough questioning from the Sun-Times editorial board about his ties to Rezko. I simply ask people to take a look at Obama's record in Illinois. There is none of the change he's been promising the American people. Obama has never challenged the status quo in Illinois. He's always been a go along to get along guy, who occasionally dips his own cup into the well for a piece of the action. This is not a time to put a corrupt Chicago politician into the White House. We need a real leader with the backbone to stand up to the special interests. Barack Obama is not that man by a long shot.

McCain Sees Opening With Women; MSM Moves Against Him

The deep fraction which developed this primary season between Sen. Barack Obama and women voters who backed Sen. Hillary Clinton has provided an opening for Sen. John McCain to win over more women voters than recent Republican presidential candidates have succeeded in doing. Sen. Barack Obama and his political master David Axelrod understand this. What better way to undermine John McCain than to drag up dirty laundry from his nearly thirty-year old divorce from his first wife. Yes, Obama and Axelrod found friends at the LA Times to dig up the dirt, even though his ex-wife is having no part of it. Earlier this year, friends of Obama at the New York Times feebily tried to make the case that McCain was carrying on an affair with a lobbyist. Of course, there was absolutely no substantiation for the allegations contained in the story, but it ran on the front page of the newspaper anyway.

This is a continuing pattern in Obama's campaigns. He did this to his leading opponent in the Democratic primary race for the Illinois Senate in 2004. He did it again in the general election against his GOP opponent. Obama and Axelrod peddle dirt about the marriages of his opponents as a matter of course, but just let anyone step forward and raise questions about Obama's own infidelities and the Obama crowd rains down on them with cries of racism and stop at nothing to destroy those who would speak the truth. The mainstream media won't touch sex and drug allegations against Obama, but it will peddle anything handed to it by the Obama organization meant to discredit his opponents. This is how it is for anyone who runs against Barack Obama.

Meanwhile, back home in Chicago, the Sun-Times provides yet another story of Obama's politics as usual aptly entitled, "Obama's Field of Broken Dreams." Read it and learn about a wasted $100,000 grant Obama secured from the State of Illinois for a useless botanical garden promoted by a campaign contributor in a burned-out neigbhorhood in his district. The campaign supporter blamed Obama's failure to get the other $1 million he promised to deliver from the government for the utter failure of the project. Taxpayers got one of those wooden gazebos you can pick up at Home Depot for a few thousand dollars and a patch of weeds for their hundred thousand dollar investment. True to form, a spokeman for Obama blamed someone else for the mess. He blamed the Democratic governor and his Republican predecessor. The spokesman said:

"It is clear that Englewood residents have not been able to benefit from a completed community garden," Obama spokesman Ben LaBolt said. "Sen. Obama will. . . do everything he can to ensure that the Englewood community gets the resources it needs to provide its residents with a livable neighborhood."

But the Sun-Times haunts Obama with his own words from 2000. "On Jan. 14, 2000, Obama and Smith announced the Englewood Beautification Plan at Englewood High School. Obama promised to help raise $1.1 million," the Sun-Times reports. "He was running then to unseat U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush, but lost in the Democratic primary." Nothing is ever Obama's fault, is it? I guess that personal responsibility he likes preaching to fathers doesn't apply to him. It's something you should know about him, and there's plenty of evidence of it. But the mainstream media's love affair with Obama won't let you hear about it now, will they?

Kass: Obama The Big Winner After Blago Decides Not To Put On A Defense

For months former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich told anyone who would listen to his drivel that he would take the stand in his own defense when the government tried him on public corruption charges. When that time came this past week, Blagojevich opted not to take the stand. In fact, his defense lawyers aren't calling a single witness because he claims the government proved his innocence during their case against him. The Chicago Tribune's John Kass describes why Blago's decision to remain silent allowed President Barack Obama to breathe a deep sigh of relief:

Big winner. Picture the leader of the free world, walking the family dog, Bo, on the White House lawn, the plastic bag in the pocket, like some perfect TV dad.


He hears the news that Blagojevich has rested his case and won't testify or call any witnesses.

And that's when — in my purely fictional mental tableau of the president waiting for Bo to do business on the lawn — Obama fishes into his pocket for a smoke and lights up.

Our president takes a big drag, exhales with a satisfied sigh. Ahhhhh.

Why is our president satisfied?

Because with Blago cutting short his defense, Rahm Emanuel, Obama's chief of staff, won't be called as a defense witness to talk about how the Obama White House transcended the old broken politics of the past by haggling with Blago over the Obama Senate seat.

As a lawyer, Obama would know that without a defense case, there's no way that the president's old real estate fairy, Tony Rezko, would come up as a prosecution rebuttal witness.

"My man," he says, thinking of Dead Meat, as he looks to the west, toward Chicago, blowing smoke through that famous smile.

"My man."

Then he and Rahm enjoy some celebratory mojitos in the Rose Garden and toast Blago again.

Soon after U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald swooped in and had then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich arrested for trying to sell Obama's Senate seat, my fellow blogger Debbie Schlussel noted a source in the Chicago law enforcement community who told her Fitzgerald had more than enough evidence to bring charges against Blagojevich months before his post-election move in 2008, but he deliberately avoided bringing charges against Blago to avoid harming the presidential campaign of Obama. Here's what Schlussel quoted her source as saying at the time:

I know for a fact FBI Chicago had enough to indict Blagojevich in June. They were 2 weeks from indictment in June based on cooperation and testimony at the Stu Levine trial. Levine was Tony Rezko’s bud, fund raiser for Blago, and our President-Elect.


I wonder what took them so long? My guess is when it started to look like a lock for Obama’s nomination by the Dems, someone at the U.S. Attorney’s Office put it all on hold, so as not to spoil “The Annointed One’s” shot.

I reacted skeptically to Schlussel's take initially, but as the story of the Senate seat bargaining played out during Blago's trial, it clearly appeared from the evidence presented in the case that the Obama folks were in the game playing in typical Chicago political fashion. The timing of Blago's arrest indeed may have prevented the new administration from getting caught red-handed in the act, not that it stopped them from later trying to buy Senate seats in Pennsylvania and Colorado in this year's election buy offering candidates not of their choosing federal jobs.

While so much of the criminal activity in which Blago was engaged as governor involved convicted political fixer Tony Rezko, who was actually much closer to Obama than he was to Blago, he was nowhere to be seen in the government's case against him. Instead, the government opted to use employees of Rezko for testimony. We know that Rezko has been cooperating with federal investigators since his conviction more than two years ago because the government has still not sentenced him in that case. As Blago's trial began, the feds quietly moved Rezko to a prison in Wisconsin instead of keeping him in the Chicago lock-up where he had been held. It looks to me like Fitzgerald actually took a chance on weakening his case against Blago in order to protect Obama from the obvious political corruption in which he was engaged. I still have a lot of respect for Fitzgerald, but it really bothers me that he may have rolled over for him in an effort to keep one of the highest profile prosecutor jobs in the country.

Media Pretends Georgia Eligibility Case Isn't Happening

In the past, every time another court dismissed a lawsuit challenging Barack Obama's eligibility to serve as president because he is not a natural born citizen, the mainstream media always weighed in with snarky coverage sprinkled with the obligatory name-calling of those behind the lawsuits as "birthers", "right-wing conspiracists" and garden variety racists who couldn't accept an African-American as president. When a judge down in Georgia considering a challenge to Obama's eligibility to appear on the state's presidential primary ballot refused to dismiss the case on standing grounds, as had occurred in every single lawsuit to date, the media took a different tact. It just decided the case wasn't newsworthy and ignored it.

A hearing in the case has been scheduled for this Thursday. Obama's lawyers attempted to quash a subpoena requesting Obama's appearance and seeking production of documents establishing his natural born citizenship status. Remarkably, Judge Michael Malihi denied the motion to quash the subpoena and commanded President Obama's appearance at the hearing. The judge's order seemed to reflect his disfavor with the disdain shown by the filings in opposition to the proceedings by Obama's attorneys. Judge Malihi wrote, in part:

Defendant fails to provide any legal authority to support his motion to quash the subpoena to attend. Defendant's motion suggests that no President should be compelled to attend a Court hearing. This may be correct. But Defendant has failed to enlighten the Court with any legal authority. Specifically, Defendant has failed to cite to any legal authority evidencing why his attendance is "unreasonable or oppressive, or that the testimony... [is] irrelevant, immaterial, or cumulative and unnecessary to a party's preparation or presentation at the hearing, or that basic fairness dictates that the subpoena should not be enforced."

In reading Judge Malihi's Order denying Obama's motion to dismiss the proceeding challenging him to prove he is a natural born citizen as required by the U.S. Constitution, you could detect a similar disfavor he was showing to the President's attorney's disdain towards the state proceedings:

In the instant motion, Defendant contends that Georgia law does not give Plaintiffs authority to challenge a political party's nominee for president in a presidential preference primary because Code Section 21-2-5 does not apply to the presidential preference primary.

Statutory provisions must be read as they are written, and this Court finds that the cases cited by Defendant are not controlling. When the Court construes a constitutional or statutory provision, the "first step . . . is to examine the plain statutory language." Morrison v. Claborn, 294 Ga. App. 508, 512 (2008). "Where the language of a statute is plain and unambiguous, judicial construction is not only unnecessary but forbidden. In the absence of words of limitation, words in a statute should be given their ordinary and everyday meaning." Six Flags Over Ga. v. Kull, 276 Ga. 210, 211 (2003) (citations and quotation marks omitted). Because there is no other "natural and reasonable construction" of the statutory language, this Court is "not authorized either to read into or to read out that which would add to or change its meaning." Blum v. Schrader, 281 Ga. 238, 240 (2006) (quotation marks omitted) . . .  

Accordingly, this Court finds that Defendant is a candidate for federal office who has

been certified by the state executive committee of a political party, and therefore must, under Code Section 21-2-5, meet the constitutional and statutory qualifications for holding the office being sought.

Despite the significance of the case playing out in Georgia, the state's newspaper of record, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, has not filed one independent story on the case. Instead, it ran a brief, three-paragraph story filed by the Associated Press, the same story reported in some major newspapers and news organizations across the country. One Atlanta TV station ran a story claiming the persons behind the lawsuit contend that Obama is not a U.S. citizen, an often-repeated lie by the mainstream media throughout the country who count on the American people being too stupid to understand our constitution makes a distinction between ordinary citizens and natural born citizens when it comes to serving as president of the United Sates. Only the latter are eligible to hold the highest office in the land. The American Thinker's Cindy Simpson futilely tried to make the point of explaining the narrowly-drawn contention of the citizens filing the Georgia complaint against Obama in an earlier post:

The matter before this Court has nothing to do with the birth place of the Defendant, nor does it assert that he is not a citizen of the United States. In fact, limited to this challenged primary election, the Plaintiff will stipulate that the Defendant was born in Hawaii, that the Defendant is a U.S. Citizen, and that the Defendant was Constitutionally-qualified to serve as a U.S. Senator. The Plaintiff makes no assertion regarding the Defendant's passports, or social security number, or any other fact related to the Defendant, other than the one fact asserted at the beginning of this opposition: that the Defendant's father was not a U.S. citizen.

Contrary to the Defendant's assertions, the issue presented by the Plaintiff is grounded on one uncontestable fact, and one clear definition from the U.S. Supreme Court. See Minor v. Happersett, 88 U.S. 162, 167 (1875).

New Jersey attorney Leo Donofrio has been doing yeoman's work researching the relevant law and history in an effort to teach people the true meaning behind the words, "natural born citizen" at his blog. Donofrio has filed a compelling amicus brief in the Georgia case that's well worth the read. You can view it here. Donofrio's brief makes clear the Minor v. Happersett decision is the only controlling case from the U.S. Supreme Court on the meaning of those words, a case that has been repeatedly reaffirmed by the court over the years. He also does a thorough job of explaining why the argument proffered by a number of legal observers that the U.S. adopted the British common law view on natural-born subjects simply doesn't hold water.

The American Thinker's Cindy Simpson reports that Obama has no intention of going anywhere near the Atlanta hearing on Thursday despite the court-ordered appearance. In case you haven't figured it out yet, Obama is above the law. Instead, he plans to promote his agenda for re-election in Las Vegas and Denver. Last week, the media melted when Obama sang a small line from Al Green's "Let's Stay Together" at New York's Apollo Theater. Simpson thinks the song "Georgia On My Mind" should be the song Obama is humming during his trip out west while the hearing in Atlanta proceeds in his absence.

Obama Re-Election Campaign No Different Than 2008 Campaign; Financed By Illegal Contributions

Conservative bloggers and journalists documented during the 2008 presidential election how only the campaign of Barack Obama utilized an online contribution system that permitted illegal campaign donations by disabling key edit and audit procedures to ensure that only persons who can make legal campaign donations to a federal candidate were able to contribute. Those same reports uncovered numerous cases of people using phony identities and foreign addresses to donate to Obama's campaign. The Obama campaign essentially was financed, in large part, by illegal campaign contributions that originated from overseas. The FEC refused to investigate the undisputed evidence that this had occurred.

Flash forward to Obama's 2012 re-election. The same intentionally flawed online system is being utilized by his campaign that made possible all those illegal campaign contributions. The Omedia will again refuse to report on the fact that the impostor's campaign is financed by illegal foreign contributions. It is estimated that Obama, who broke all campaign fundraising records in his 2008 campaign, will raise at least $1 billion for his re-election campaign. It's no small wonder that it would be reported yesterday that a large Obama campaign bundler and African immigrant, Abake Assongba, would turn out to be someone who defrauded a Swiss businessman out of $657,000 while impersonating a bank official in order to build a $2 million home in Florida. According to the Washington Post, Assongba has helped raise $50,000 for Obama's re-election and another $40,000 for Democratic House and Senate candidates since 2009. Assongba and her husband operate a charity that supposedly benefits causes in Benin, Africa. The office for the foundation has been closed for some time and officials in the country seem to know nothing about Assongba's foundation.

Naturally, the Obama campaign uses the excuse that it can't be expected to know everything about its contributors, particularly when you intentionally make no effort to discern their true identity as evidenced by the online finance system utilized by Obama's campaign, a fact noticeably not mentioned in the Post story.

. . . “More than 1.3 million Americans have donated to the campaign, and we constantly review those contributions for any issues,” said campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt. “Some issues are easy to identify, others more difficult, but once an issue has been raised, we address it promptly, as we will do in this case. ” . . .

Campaign finance experts say that no campaign can examine every donor who mails in a check but that bundlers, who have special access to the candidate and serve at times as an informal campaign cabinet, require deeper examination to protect a campaign’s integrity .

“You can’t have much of a vet for garden-variety donations,” said Kenneth Gross, an election and campaign law specialist who represents corporations and candidates. But, he added, “for the candidates who are bundling hundreds of thousands of dollars, they should go through a reasonable level of due diligence beyond a Google search.” . . .

More than 1.3 million Americans have donated to Obama's campaign? Yeah, right. Of course, since Obama likes calling himself a citizen of the world, I suppose anyone who contributes to his re-election campaign regardless of where they're from is considered an American. As it did in 2008, the Omedia will allow the impostor to continue doing what he does best--defrauding the American public.

CNN Managing Editor Defends Crowley In E-Mail

TMZ has obtained an e-mail CNN Managing Editor Mark Whitaker sent to the cable news agency's staff trying to blunt criticism about Candy Crowley's role as a substitute teleprompter to aid President Obama's performance in Tuesday night's debate with Mitt Romney. Whitaker accused the Romney camp of engaging in pre-debate attempt to intimidate her, defended her misleading fact-checking intervention to rescue Obama on the Benghazi terrorist attack question, and attributed the need to allow Obama much more speaking time because "he speaks more slowly."

"Let's start with a big round of applause for Candy Crowley for a superb job under the most difficult circumstances imaginable. She and her team had to select and sequence questions in a matter of hours, and then she had to deal with the tricky format, the nervous questioners, the aggressive debaters, all while shutting out the pre-debate attempts to spin and intimidate her. She pulled it off masterfully.

The reviews on Candy's performance have been overwhelmingly positive but Romney supporters are going after her on two points, no doubt because their man did not have as good a night as he had in Denver. On the legitimacy of Candy fact-checking Romney on Obama's Rose Garden statement, it should be stressed that she was just stating a point of fact: Obama did talk about an act (or acts) of terror, no matter what you think he meant by that at the time. On why Obama got more time to speak, it should be noted that Candy and her commission producers tried to keep it even but that Obama went on longer largely because he speaks more slowly. We're going to do a word count to see whether, as in Denver, Romney actually got more words in even if he talked for a shorter period of time."

It's no wonder Romney's camp would have been doing pre-debate spin about the potential for Crowley's bias to appear during Tuesday night's debate. After all, she described the Ryan-Romney ticket a couple of months ago as the "ticket death wish." The notion that CNN would go as far as to conduct a word count to prove that Obama said no more than Romney in the additional time Crowley allotted to him to speak is laughable.

Scalia Died While Attending Gathering Of Elite Secret Society

Cibolo Creek Ranch owner John Poindexter, front and center at the Order's 2013 Investiture in Madrid

The conspiracies swirling the death of Justice Antonin Scalia are now going to go nuclear with a bombshell revelation by the Washington Post that the late justice was attending a gathering of a very elite secret society at the Cibolo Creek Ranch in Presidio County, Texas when he supposedly died in his sleep. It's called the International Order of St. Hubertus, an order of elite hunters originally founded in 1695 by Count Franz Anton von Sporck in the former Kingdom of Bohemia, which was then part of the Habsburg Empire and current day Czech Republic.

John Poindexter, the Texas billionaire who owns the 30,000-acre Cibolo Creek Ranch holds one of the highest ranks in this international secretive hunting society of the rich and powerful and was hosting a select group of its members at his ranch when Justice Scalia was allegedly found dead in the presidential suite where he was staying during the weekend hunting trip. The Post also reveals that the previously-undisclosed friend who accompanied Scalia to the ranch was a prominent Washington lawyer, C. Allen Foster, who is also a high-ranking member of St. Hubertus. Foster, a Republican, has argued voting rights cases before the Supreme Court. It is unclear whether Scalia held membership in the highly-secretive order, although Poindexter denied any knowledge of Scalia belonging to the order.

After Scalia’s death Feb. 13, the names of the 35 other guests at the remote resort, along with details about Scalia’s connection to the hunters, have remained largely unknown. A review of public records shows that some of the men who were with Scalia at the ranch are connected through the International Order of St. Hubertus, whose members gathered at least once before at the same ranch for a celebratory weekend.

Members of the worldwide, male-only society wear dark-green robes emblazoned with a large cross and the motto “Deum Diligite Animalia Diligentes,” which means “Honoring God by honoring His creatures,” according to the group’s website. Some hold titles, such as Grand Master, Prior and Knight Grand Officer. The Order’s name is in honor of Hubert, the patron saint of hunters and fishermen.

Cibolo Creek Ranch owner John Poindexter and C. Allen Foster, a prominent Washington lawyer who traveled to the ranch with Scalia by private plane, hold leadership positions within the Order. It is unclear what, if any, official association Scalia had with the group.

“There is nothing I can add to your observation that among my many guests at Cibolo Creek Ranch over the years some members of the International Order of St. Hubertus have been numbered,” Poindexter said in an email. “I am aware of no connection between that organization and Justice Scalia.”

An attorney for the Scalia family did not respond to requests for comment for this article. 

The story couldn't get any creepier. St. Hubertus' American chapter was launched at the infamous Bohemian Club in 1966. The Bohemian Club is an elite all-male club of the nation's most powerful in government and business that meets at Bohemian Grove, a remote wooded area outside of San Francisco, where members frolic in the nude, network and worship a large, carved wooden owl, which former President Richard Nixon railed against on one of his Oval Office recordings as being "the most faggy Goddamn thing you could ever imagine." Many of our recent presidents have attended the club's secret, closed-door summer conclaves.

The Post was able to confirm by showing a copy of a photo of C. Allen Foster to Presidio County Sheriff Danny Dominguez that he was the friend of Scalia who had accompanied him to Cibolo Creek Ranch. Foster flew with Scalia and U.S. Marshals, who provide security to Supreme Court justices, to Houston, where the two boarded a private jet without the U.S. marshals that flew them to a private airport owned by Poindexter. Foster, incidentally, is a former spokesman for the elite big game hunting club, Safari Club International, which includes among its members former President George H.W. Bush, former Vice President Dan Quayle and the late Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf. Evansville businessman Steven Chancellor, a close friend of the Bush family who does contract work for the CIA, is also a member of the elite big game hunting group.

According to The Post, private jets owned by Wallace "Happy" Rogers III and A.J. Lewis III, flew from San Antonio and arrived at the Cibolo Creek Ranch just after noon on February 12 and departed the ranch on February 14 just 30 minutes apart. Rogers owns the Buckhorn Saloon and Museum in San Antonio according to The Post. Lewis owns a restaurant supply company based in San Antonio. Both men are contributors to Republican candidates, unlike Poindexter, who is a major giver to Democratic candidates. Rogers and Lewis have also both held leadership positions in the Texas chapter of St. Hubertus.

Controversy arose shortly after news of Scalia's death became public when it was learned that his body lay in his bed many hours before officials in Presidio County responded to the death scene. Two justices of the peace, whose job it is to conduct death investigations, both turned down requests to go to the ranch, although neither was informed the deceased was Justice Scalia. A county judge and former justice of the peace, Cinderela Guevara, was then contacted, who declared Justice Scalia had died of natural causes over the telephone without visiting the death scene after talking to U.S. marshals and Sheriff Dominguez. No autopsy was performed on Justice Scalia's body, a decision defended by Judge Guevara based on the Scalia family's wishes. Scalia's doctor later released a statement indicating he suffered from heart disease and diabetes, among other health issues, which were attributed to the 79-year old's death.

Cibolo Creek Ranch owner John Poindexter (Matthew Busch/Getty Images)

The wooden owl worshiped by Bohemian Grove members

President Obama awarding Poindexter a special citation for service in Vietnam in Rose Garden ceremony

The speech President John F. Kennedy delivered to newspaper editors railing against the conspiracy of secret societies, which some believe led to his eventual assassination by rogue elements that secretly-control our U.S. government.

And these types of stories in the tabloids come as no surprise.

And then there was that time a few years ago when "Family Guy" predicted Scalia's death in a hunting accident.

Explains the occult art crap I saw at Cibolo Creek Ranch
THIS was outside my room there@DRUDGE_REPORT pic.twitter.com/YKkVWxBmNZ

— David Knight (@libertytarian) February 25, 2016

Hamilton Expected To Be Nominated To 7th Circuit Court of Appeals

Indiana's Judge David Hamilton of the federal district court for the Southern District of Indiana is expected to be President Barack Obama's first nominee to a vacant position on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals according to the NY Times' Neil Lewis. Hamilton will also be Obama's first choice for any court of appeals opening. Lewis writes:

Judge Hamilton, who is said by lawyers to represent some of his state’s traditionally moderate strain, served as counsel to Senator Evan Bayh when Mr. Bayh was the state’s governor; he is also a nephew of former Representative Lee H. Hamilton of Indiana.

A senior administration official said Judge Hamilton would have the support of both Mr. Bayh, a Democrat, and the state’s other senator, Richard G. Lugar, a Republican. He will be nominated for a seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, based in Chicago.

The administration official said part of the reason for making the Hamilton nomination the administration’s first public entry into the often contentious field of judicial selection was to serve “as a kind of signal” about the kind of nominees Mr. Obama will select. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because the nomination had not been officially made . . .

Judge Hamilton was named to the bench by President Bill Clinton in 1994. As a trial judge largely bound to the rulings of higher courts, he has had few opportunities to demonstrate any ideological leanings.

He did receive attention for two rulings striking down actions of conservatives in the Indiana legislature. In 2005, he made news by ruling that the legislature was prohibited from beginning its sessions with overtly Christian prayers.

The decision drew widespread criticism in the legislature and across the state. On appeal, a panel of the Seventh Circuit dismissed the ruling, saying the people in whose name the American Civil Liberties Union had brought the suit lacked standing because they had not been harmed by the prayers. In 2008, Judge Hamilton struck down as unconstitutional an amendment to the state law requiring convicted sex offenders to provide the authorities with personal information, including any e-mail addresses or user names. The amendment would also have required the offenders to agree to allow their home computers to be searched at any time and to pay for a program to allow monitoring of their Internet use.

The judge said the amendment cut into the heart of a person’s right to privacy in his home. “The ability of the individual to retreat into his home and therefore to be free from unreasonable intrusion by the government stands at the very core” of constitutional protections against unreasonable searches, he said.

Judge Hamilton graduated from Yale Law School before serving as a law clerk to Judge Richard D. Cudahy of the Seventh Circuit, who is generally viewed as a liberal jurist.

By naming judges one at a time, Mr. Obama is taking a markedly different approach from former President George W. Bush, who held a ceremony on May 9, 2001, in the Rose Garden to present his first 11 choices for appeals court seats. The ceremony provided a political air to the nominations, most of which went to prominent conservatives.

A big hat tip to the Indiana Law Blog.

Obama Forces Marine To Break Military Rule By Holding Umbrella For Him

Marine Corps regulations forbid Marines from holding umbrellas while in uniform, even if ordered to do so by the President. Nonetheless, the Commander in Chief ordered Marines to hold umbrellas for him and Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogen during a press conference held in the Rose Garden yesterday. You can tell by the photo how light the rain was by the appearance of the reporters at the press conference, who don't look particularly wet sitting in the rain.