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Fishnet Friday

GAO Puts a Hitch in Obama's "git along" Over Legality of Bowe Bergdahl Prisoner Swap

by Robert Janicki
I can imagine Obama fuming over this latest rebuff to his "I have a pen and phone" style of administrative tyranny.  What I'm not certain of is whether it will have practical application that will result in anything more than a footnote in the history of the most corrupt administration in American history.  In all likelihood the GAO may not have any responsibility other than the reporting of the illegality of the action by Obama and his henchmen  In the end it may be all about politics and a lot less about the law.

from NRO

"President Obama violated a “clear and unambiguous” law when he released five Guantanamo Bay detainees in exchange for Army Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl, the Government Accountability Office reported Thursday.

[The Department of Defense] violated section 8111 because it did not notify the relevant congressional committees at least 30 days in advance of the transfer,” the GAO report said. “In addition, because DOD used appropriated funds to carry out the transfer when no money was available for that purpose, DOD violated the Antideficiency Act. The Antideficiency Act prohibits federal agencies from incurring obligations exceeding an amount available in an appropriation.”

Our marvelously inept and incompetent Secretary of Defense was complicit in this illegal act, but then again why would anyone expect Chuck Hagel to step up and object to Obama's plan.  I'd really be surprised if Hagel can walk and chew gun at the same time.  Hagel was the shame of Nebraska as one of its Senators for two terms with an absolutely meaningless and unproductive career as a Senator.  He had very little in the way of authoring any legislation, let alone anything of consequence.

It's obvious from the following that the Obama administration was leaning on the GAO to acknowledge that the ruling law in question was to be viewed as unconstitutional so as to provide cover for Obama.  However, that would have been a bridge too far to cross for the GAO, since they are not a court, but rather an administrative oversight agency with questionable powers to enforce any of their findings of wrong doing.

"The GAO rejected the idea that the action was legal and sidestepped the Obama team’s suggestion that the law is unconstitutional.

“It is not our role or our practice to determine the constitutionality of duly enacted statutes,” the report says. “In our view, where legislation has been passed by Congress and signed by the President, thereby satisfying the bicameralism and presentment requirements in the Constitution, that legislation is entitled to a heavy presumption in favor of constitutionality.”  

Tingles Matthews Has Rare Moment of Lucidity

ISIS: "If They Want to Die, Help Them Out"

Blood on Obama's Golf Club

Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer (Ret.), a CIA-trained former senior intelligence officer today appeared on WMAL radio in Washington, D.C., to discuss the ISIS execution of American journalist James Foley earlier this week.

WFB

"He told me and co-host Brian Wilson that the recently revealed rescue attempt led by Special Forces earlier this summer failed because President Obama was slow to give the go-ahead:

"I’m hearing from my friends in the Pentagon, they are giving him every single option way ahead of time. And let me give you a little secret here: The reason that raid into Syria failed to get Foley and those guys was because the president drug his feet. He waited too long, the intel got stale, and by the time we actually gave the “go” word it failed because we just didn’t react quick enough."

(Video Here) 

This president not only has no balls (safely locked away in Valerie Jarrett's purse), he has no guts either.

More Proof We're Being Governed By Idiots

State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf told reporters with a straight face at a news briefing about the savage beheading of American photojournalist James Foley by savages calling themselves the Islamic State, that not only was the crime not directed against the United States, it wasn’t done in the name of religion either.

Israeli Delivers Major Blow to Hamas

Goes for the Head of the Snake 

(AP)- An Israeli airstrike in Gaza killed three senior leaders of the Hamas military wing on Thursday, the militant group said, in what is likely to be a major blow to the organization's morale and a significant scoop for Israeli intelligence. Israel says the airstrikes are in response to a resumption of Hamas rocket fire that on Tuesday scuttled a six-day cease-fire. The strike near Rafah, a town in the southern part of the coastal territory, was one of 20 the Israeli military said it carried out after midnight.

In a text message sent to media, Hamas said three of its senior military leaders — Mohammed Abu Shamaleh, Mohammed Barhoum and Raed al-Attar — were killed, along with three other people. The three Hamas leaders are considered to be at the senior levels of its military leadership and were involved in a number of high profile attacks on Israeli targets.

On Wednesday, in the most spectacular Israeli strike since the cease-fire was breached, Hamas' shadowy military chief, Mohammed Deifm, was the object of an apparent assassination attempt that killed his wife and infant son. Hamas officials announced that Deif was not in the targeted home at the time and was still alive.

The Media and Ferguson, Missouri

"The most poisonous '-ism' now infecting Ferguson, Missouri, is not virulent racism. It's viral narcissism.

Over the past two weeks, the impoverished St. Louis County suburb has become a magnet for self-absorbed publicity seekers of all colors and agendas.  Perhaps the most repulsive species on display in Ferguson is the Journalisto Vanitatis. This breed of egotistical East-Coast reporters can be easily identified by its ever-present appendages: a smartphone and smart glasses. ...  

From the L.A. riots to Hurricane Katrina to Ferguson, an eternal truth endures: Tragedy is the mother of poisonous pretension"- Michelle Malkin  

Maybe Eric Holder Should Clean Up His Own Yard

Race-based hate crimes spike in D.C

"D.C. police say that of the 18 race-based hate crimes in 2013, the majority of victims were white and the majority of suspects black. The number of incidents was up from the 13 race-based bias crimes reported in 2012."

In 2009 Eric Holder went on record and testified before a Senate judiciary Committee to explain new Hate Crime legislation was written to protect those that have historically been oppressed and targeted because of skin color or religious affiliation, giving African Americans and Jews as examples. When asked some simple question pertaining to how the laws would be enforced Mr. Holder stumbled over himself a bit as he struggled to justify his reasoning. 

This we call a post-racial America, where your skin color determines if you hate or not.  

The Killing of Cops and Other Footnotes in History

Now that it has been reported that Ferguson Police officer Darren Wilson suffered a serious injury during his confrontation with Michael Brown, and breaking news that his companion Dorian Johnson recanted his media statement, along with the revelations of numerous eyewitness seem to confirm the police account of events are making more and more observers draw an increasingly likely conclusion:

On that fateful Saturday, August 9, Officer Wilson was trying to avoid becoming what cops too often do. A statistic.

“On average, one law enforcement officer is killed in the line of duty somewhere in the United States every 58 hours,” writes the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund. Yet they don’t receive ultimate attention. That’s reserved for the likes of Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, and Mumia Abu-Jamal — the last of whom murdered a Philadelphia police officer named Daniel Faulkner in 1981.

The reality is that if Brown had killed Officer Wilson 10 days ago, it just would have been a footnote in the news. No high profile racial bias investigation by the DOJ. No intervention by the Attorney General.

Columnist and former Dade County Sheriff s Office police captain Frank Marshall cites three recent deaths:

• July 13th. Detective Melvin Santiago, 23, Jersey City P.D., New Jersey. Ambushed when responding to a robbery call. Killed because he was a cop. Suspect is a black male who was killed on the scene. The suspect’s wife said that more cops should have been killed.

• July 6th. Officer Jeffery Westerfield, 47, Gary Police Department, Indiana. Responded to a domestic disturbance call. He was ambushed, shot in his patrol car as he arrived. Killed on his 47th birthday, he leaves behind four daughters. Another loyal, American officer… killed for being a cop. Suspect was a black male.

• July 5th. Officer Perry Renn, 51, Indianapolis P.D., Indiana. Answered a call about shots being fired in the area. Shot as he arrived. Officer Renn was also an U.S. Army veteran. Killed because he was a cop. Suspect was a black male.

Marshall also adds further perspective:

“At least 120 to 180 officers a year are killed in the line of duty. In 2014, the death toll is on track toward 130 dead officers. Half of those have been killed by gunfire. Most of those are killed because they were a cop. Why don’t we label that bigotry? Hate crime?”

Statistically, 94 percent of all black homicide victims are killed by other blacks, and black Americans are more likely to shoot whites than whites are to shoot blacks. This makes white-on-black homicide a man-bites-dog story relatively speaking, yet that isn’t why the media afford such cases disproportionate coverage. Rather, we’re supposed to believe they are cases of dog bites man — and that the media is the dog catcher.