Fitzgerald tried to get Obama, came up with “Zilch,” says former Chicago Tribune editor
U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald interrogated convicted political fundraiser Tony Rezko and others intensively about then-senator and presidential candidate Barack Obama, a former managing editor of the Chicago Tribune said on television last week.
Jim Warren, now a political commentator for MSNBC, told Hardball host Chris Matthews that Fitzgerald questioned Rezko “very aggressively” about possible involvement of Obama in alleged political scandals in Chicago, and came away “with nothing.”
Warren said, “They have come away with zilch.”
This item, lost amid furor over newly released Justice Department torture memos last week, came out April 14. Warren was at the Tribune from 1984 until August 2008, according to the newspaper, going to the Tribune from the rival Chicago Sun-Times where he began in 1977. Warren was Washington Bureau Chief for the Tribune for eight years beginning in 1993.
Warren emphasized that his own viewpoint on whether Fitzgerald’s investigations included Obama has changed.
-snip
So, my notion that they took a passive attack toward Obama for a variety of reasons, I now have to admit, according to my sources, is simply wrong.
May 16, 2009 • 2:51 am Comments Off
False!—U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald let Obama slide on Chicago scandals
May 15, 2009 • 11:37 pm Comments Off
False!—Obama Promised To Reject Military Commissions System
Obama promised to reject the Bush 2006 Military Commissions Act, in particular its underlying legal structure. He did not promise to reject military commissions.
President Barack Obama didn’t reverse himself on military commissions.
He was clear before the campaign that he’d favor them under different rules. On Jan. 22, a senior administration official briefed reporters that keeping the military panels alive with new rules was a real possibility. Obama’s campaign trail rhetoric was a bit murky, probably deliberately so, but if reporters didn’t nail him down is that Obama’s fault? Did anyone ask him if he was ruling out commissions?
The president’s statement included a justification for the use of a revamped military commissions system. “In 2006, I voted in favor of the use of military commissions,” it read. “But I objected strongly to the Military Commissions Act that was drafted by the Bush administration and passed by Congress, because it failed to establish a legitimate legal framework and undermined our capability to ensure swift and certain justice against those detainees that we were holding at the time.”
The Supreme Court struck down part of the Military Commissions Act in June, ruling that foreign detainees at Guantanamo Bay had the right to challenge their detention in federal courts.
The changes announced today include a ban on using statements obtained from detainees through “cruel, inhuman and degrading interrogation methods”; limitations on the use of hearsay; greater latitude for the accused in choosing their lawyer; and basic protections for people who refuse to testify. Under the new rules, military commission judges would be able to establish the jurisdiction of their own courts.
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Filed under: False!, Justice, Military, National Security
January 22, 2009 • 3:10 am Comments Off
True!—By Executive Order on 1/22/09 President Obama Ordered Lawful Interrogations, An End To Torture
THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
For Immediate Release January 22, 2009
EXECUTIVE ORDER
ENSURING LAWFUL INTERROGATIONS
By the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, in order to improve the effectiveness of human intelligence gathering, to promote the safe, lawful, and humane treatment of individuals in United States custody and of United States personnel who are detained in armed conflicts, to ensure compliance with the treaty obligations of the United States, including the Geneva Conventions, and to take care that the laws of the United States are faithfully executed, I hereby order as follows:
Section 1. Revocation. Executive Order 13440 of July 20, 2007, is revoked. All executive directives, orders, and regulations inconsistent with this order, including but not limited to those issued to or by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) from September 11, 2001, to January 20, 2009, concerning detention or the interrogation of detained individuals, are revoked to the extent of their inconsistency with this order. Heads of departments and agencies shall take all necessary steps to ensure that all directives, orders, and regulations of their respective departments or agencies are consistent with this order. Upon request, the Attorney General shall provide guidance about which directives, orders, and regulations are inconsistent with this order.
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Filed under: Executive Order, Intelligence, Justice, Military, National Security, True!
December 24, 2008 • 9:43 pm Comments Off
True! Barack Obama attended Sunday School as a boy in Hawaii
Obama Attends Service for Grandmother
Wednesday, December 24, 2008; Page A03
HONOLULU, Dec. 23 — President-elect Barack Obama and his family joined close friends Tuesday to pay tribute to the woman he called his “rock,” his maternal grandmother, who provided stability in his young life and made possible his rise to the nation’s presidency.
The Obamas attended a private memorial service for Madelyn Dunham, who lived in a modest apartment here and died of cancer at age 86 two days before the presidential election.
The service was held at the First Unitarian Church of Honolulu, a two-story house converted into a place of worship. The service was closed to the media.
The First Unitarian Church of Honolulu is where the funeral for President Obama’s grandparents and mother were held. It was here he attended Sunday School as a boy.
When Obama was in elementary school in Honolulu, Young recounted in a telephone phone interview, either his grandmother or grandfather (there’s confusion over which one) brought him to Sunday school there for several years.
The Dunhams had attended a Unitarian church in the Seattle area when Obama’s mother was a teenager. Although there’s no record of their attendance at the Honolulu church, Obama writes about it in his memoir “Dreams From My Father,” and one family who still attends the church remembers him.
When Young reminded Obama at the memorial service, “his eyes lit up, and he turned to Michelle and said, ‘Hey, that’s right. This is where I went to Sunday school.’”
Obama spent some time on the second floor, where Sunday school is held, but didn’t recognize anything. That’s not surprising, Young said, because the church has been renovated over the years.
The 100-year-old building had been an estate of the Cooks, a well-known family in Hawaii.
August 23, 2008 • 3:08 pm Comments Off
True! World Net Daily Found Obama’s Birth Certificate “Authentic”
However, FactChecker.org says it obtained Obama’s actual birth certificate and that the document was indeed real. The site discredited some of the claims of Internet bloggers, such as that the certificate as viewed in a scanned copy released by Obama’s campaign lacked a raised seal. FactChecker.org also established that many of the alleged flaws in the document noted by bloggers were caused by the scanning of the document.
A separate WND investigation into Obama’s birth certificate utilizing forgery experts also found the document to be authentic.
Here is a cached copy, just in case.
Here is the FactCheck referred to in the WND article above.
Filed under: Birth Certificate, Internet News, True!
