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Showing posts with label U.S. Constitutution. Show all posts
Showing posts with label U.S. Constitutution. Show all posts
Saturday night, if I'm home, is one of the times during the week when I double-check on reporters, columnists and pundits that I might've missed during the week whom I often read or who are interesting enough that it's worthwhile every so often to see what they've written or Tweeted.
Usually with some ballgame on TV in the background.
And that was the case last night with Rubin, who will be a guest onABC News'"This Week" this morning, which airs at 10:30 am here in Miami
Ari Fleischer @AriFleischer,
If President O wrote the Constitution, it would begin, "We the government, in order to form a more perfect people..."
Law Shrouds Details of Congressional Trips Abroad
by Justin Elliott, ProPublica
April 11, 2012, 10:24 a.m.
When members of Congress or their staffers travel on a private group's dime, they are subject to a long list of requirements and restrictions, thanks to the Jack Abramoff scandal and that infamous picture of the grinning super-lobbyist with a congressman at a famous Scottish golf course.
Reforms in 2007 include preapproval of trips by the House or Senate ethics committee, rules barring lobbyists' involvement, limits on the length of a trip, and mandatory, prompt public disclosure of the cost, itinerary, purpose and so on.
But under a little-known exception, if a trip abroad that originates in the U.S. is paid for by a foreign government, virtually none of those restrictions and disclosure requirements applies.
Last week, we wrote about the Democratic House member from American Samoa, Eni Faleomavaega; his unusual interest in defending Bahrain during the crackdown on protests there last year; and his friend's lobbying firm that promotes the Gulf nation. Faleomavaega was in Bahrain last week, his second such trip in the last year that Bahrain paid for. On the first trip, he was accompanied by the president of the Bahrain American Council, which operates out of the lobbying firm's Washington, D.C., offices.
The South Pacific island territory that Faleomavaega represents is nearly 10,000 miles from the Persian Gulf kingdom of Bahrain, but Faleomavaega justifies his interest because Bahrain is a "key ally" to the U.S. in the Middle East.
His trips there are allowed under a half-century-old law called the Mutual Educational and Cultural Exchange Act of 1961. The post-Abramoff 2007 law that tightened congressional travel rules did not cover these MECEA trips.
The foreign emoluments clause of the U.S. Constitution bars public officials from accepting gifts from foreign governments unless explicitly authorized by Congress. The 1961 MECEA law sought to promote "cultural exchange" by allowing the secretary of state to approve programs that pay for "visits and interchanges between the United States and other countries of leaders, experts in fields of specialized knowledge or skill, and other influential or distinguished persons."
There are currently 86 approved MECEA trip programs involving more than 50 foreign governments, according to the State Department. The full list of participating governments 2014 from Canada to Yemen 2014 is here. The House and Senate ethics committees maintain a master list of approved programs, but spokespeople for the committees declined to release the list.
The State Department also declined to release it. "The details on them are proprietary for each of the foreign governments," said a State Department official who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The official said the department does not maintain a list of trips taken every year under MECEA programs because members of Congress and staffers aren't required to report them. The ethics committees also don't keep lists. So it appears that no one is tracking how much money foreign governments spend on the trips, who goes and whether the trips actually meet the goals of the program.
The recent trips to Bahrain were taken under a new memorandum of understanding between the kingdom and the State Department to allow congressional travel there. The agreement was created amid a public-relations effort to protect the country's image in the United States as Bahrain cracked down on protests.
Typically, when a member of Congress takes a trip paid by a private group, he or she must get preapproval from the ethics committee and file a detailed public disclosure form shortly after the trip. The trip must be related to the member's official duties. If the sponsor employs a lobbyist, the trip must be limited to a single night's lodging. Members of Congress can accept longer foreign travel from groups that do not employ lobbyists, but it can last no longer than seven days.
None of those conditions applies to MECEA trips. Where members go, who accompanies them, whom they meet and how much is spent 2014 all of this is unreported. The sole requirement is that members must note any MECEA trips on their annual personal financial disclosures, but the only detail disclosed is which foreign government paid for the trip.
There is also a significant delay because personal financial disclosures are not due until May of the following year. And while senior House and Senate staffers 2014 those making about $120,000 or more 2014 must file financial disclosures. Junior staffers do not, however, so they don't have to report the trips.
"Official travel and travel sponsored by foreign governments, while not as troubling as lobbyist-sponsored travel, certainly should be subject to full transparency," says Craig Holman, a government affairs lobbyist at the watchdog group Public Citizen who helped draft the 2007 law tightening privately funded travel rules.
Here is an example of a travel disclosure form for a typical, privately funded trip. It details a trip to Israel in August by Rep. Paul Broun, R-Ga. The American Israel Education Fund, a charity group affiliated with the pro-Israel lobbying organization AIPAC, paid for the trip. On the form, which must be filed with the clerk of the House within 15 days of the end of the trip, Broun had to disclose that his wife also went, and had to provide the reason for the trip; the costs broken down by travel, lodging, meals and itemized other expenses; a seven-page itinerary; and a preapproval form that he had to file with the ethics committee before embarking. The preapproval form requires the member to certify that a group that employs lobbyists is not paying for the trip.
Here, in contrast, is an example of the disclosure of a MECEA trip that Rep. Health Shuler, D-N.C., took to Sri Lanka in 2009:
That trip later prompted a protest. Ethnic Tamils argued it was a propaganda trip after Shuler defended conditions in refugee camps run by Sri Lanka, the Asheville Citizen-Times reported in June 2009.
We know about Faleomavaega's trips to Bahrain only because the Humpty Dumpty Institute, a New York City group that worked with the Bahraini government to organize the travel, voluntarily posted a synopsis about last year's trip on the institute's website.
"It's a normal Bahraini MECEA trip that is intended obviously to give the Bahraini point of view," Humpty Dumpty Institute Executive Director Joseph Merante said last week. Faleomavaega attended along with Reps. Jim Himes, D-Conn.; Marcia Fudge, D-Ohio; and Dan Burton, R-Ind. Merante added that the institute seeks balance on its trips and went out of its way to add meetings with opposition groups to the itinerary.
A few other MECEA trips that have surfaced in news reports:
In March 2010, The Washington Post reported on an upcoming trip to Switzerland advertised to congressional staffers as featuring "culinary delights and Swiss hospitality" in a country that's "all about thriving cutting-edge technology in beautiful landscapes."
In October, three Republican congressmen, including two members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, toured the Alberta oil sands on a MECEA trip paid by the Canadian government. The energy committee last year was involved in pushing the proposed Keystone XL pipeline to transport tar sands oil to the U.S. The trip was first reported in the Canadian media.
Also last October, as part of a push to convince the Obama administration to sell an advanced model of the F-16 fighter jet to Taiwan, senator-turned-Taiwan-lobbyist Al D'Amato of New York wrote a letter to Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., pitching her on travel to Taiwan. "Please know that no U.S. taxpayer funds would be used to pay for your trip, as Taiwan would cover your trip via the State Department's Mutual Educational and Cultural Exchange Act," D'Amato wrote.
The Taiwan example shows how lobbyists can be involved in organizing MECEA trips 2014 participation that would not be allowed for other types of trips.
These few trips are known only because they happened to attract media attention. Because of the loophole in travel disclosure rules, it's difficult to immediately conclude much else about MECEA trips 2014 for instance, to identify trends or evaluate whether they live up to their stated purpose.
The great Roger Lohse story at Channel 10/WPLG-TV Miami on red-light cameras from two weeks ago that really got LOTS of people's full attention because it revealed that many South Florida cities were NOT contesting drivers in court who'd been issued citations, because of their fear that the law used would be ruled unconstitutional.
"Of the 199 cases he counted, there were only eight convictions. The bulk of the others -- 155 cases -- were dismissed by the cities that issued the citations."
Naturally, Hallandale Beach is one of those cities mentioned in the story. In fact, this news segment starts with Lohse standing near the city's electronic message board warning drivers about the law going into effect at west-bound Hallandale Beach Blvd. & N.W. 10th Terrace on Tuesday, which I have been mentioning here for the past several days. Red Light Tickets Not Sticking
A review of court cases shows many cases are being dismissed.
And when that something tends to re-confirm your own seasoned intuition about why the American mainstream media has lost SO much credibility, respect and just plan eyeballs/readers the past 10-15 years, it makes you wonder if in the year 2010, reasonably smart print reporters STILL don't understand that when the red light is on, the TV camera is actually ON and that you are being broadcast for everyone to see; and some people record that for posterity. Such is the case today with this curious video featuring Ezra Klein, which I first discovered on Andrew Breitbart's popular MSM-skewering journalism website, Big Journalism, http://bigjournalism.com/, itself, a spin-of of its very popular parent website, Breitnat.com, http://www.breitbart.com/
After reading the accompanying article by Larry O'Connor and re-watching the video, I'm inclined to think that it's very likely that there will be a forthcoming new feature in this space in the new year titled, "Children's letters to liberal WaPo blogger Ezra Klein."
If you believe anything over 100 years old can't be properly understood, then why do we STILL love Shakespeare?
Why do some people -thou not me!- still pay big bucks to hear classical music or opera in concert halls that they've already heard hundreds of times? Surely cable TV can do 'Better Than Ezra' as an eyewitness to history, but then that's why they're MSNBC, right?
Oddly enough, the U.S. Constitution proscribes the oath of office that the newly-elected President of the United States must utter under oath, and yet the person we were told two years ago was a brilliant constitutional law expert, Barack Obama, had no problem whatsoever understanding what those words meant -and neither did anyone else. http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/constitution.html http://www.usconstitution.net/const.html
Klein seems to have no problem understanding the original part of our Constitution we call the Bill of Rights, and in particular, the First Amendment guaranteeing "freedom of speech" But then that's part of the current MSM's problem isn't it? Its very disconnectedness with the majority of the American electorate makes it a poor source to judge anything of note, and when something happens they don't expect, esp. with blue-collar or Southern appeal, they always cast it in negative and even sinister tones, out of habit.
It makes you wonder what would this crop of overly self-impressed reporters and columnists have made of John Jay, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams? And God forbid if Jefferson had been from Georgia, forget about it! So many current print and TV reporters are forever opining the merits of compromise for others in their columns, blogs and public/TV appearances -that's when you give in and let them have their way, in case you forgot- or trying to make heroes of pols who are unprincipled go-along types.
But when push comes to shove, reality has shown us that despite their talk, they aren't really the compromising type themselves. Reality has shown us that what they like to do is pick-and-choose from American history and its institutions, as if it were a Chinese takeout menu, and while they are very protective of their own rights. yours?Well, YOURS are up for debate.
This continually shows itself thru their very opinionated screeds and squeamishness about the parts that they personally disagree with, like American's right under the Bill of Rights to bear arms, for example, which they want to do away with. But you couldn't have one right without the other.
So much of today's MSM don't understand this fact -or want to understand- which is one of the reasons why so many Americans are genuinely repelled by certain of them when they appear on TV chat shows, because while the citizens know their history and what real compromises were made in order for the Constitution to be passed in Philadelphia 234 years ago, many young-ish reporters are clueless, and many of the worst offenders are currently toiling in South Florida.
Ernie Pyle is dead and he isn't coming back. http://journalism.indiana.edu/resources/erniepyle/ ------ Update of January 2, 2011 at 2:09 p.m.On The Drudge Report this afternoon, http://www.drudgereport.com/
Matt has this Klein story featured with the headline Ernie Pyle is dead and he isn't coming back.
Update of January 2, 2011 at 2:09 p.m. On The Drudge Report this afternoon, http://www.drudgereport.com/Matt has this Klein story featured with the headline: WASH POST STAFFER: Constitution Impossible to Understand Because It's Over 100 Years Old... ----- Pulitzer Prize winner David McCullough on History http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-A4Kti0iw3M
What's the reason there's no WMATA pedestrian tunnel connecting the north and south-bound Farragut North train station and the east-west-bound Farragut West Metro train station in Washington, D.C. when they are less than a city block apart, and would obviously make everyone's life easier?
Why are all the press hangouts near the Washington Post on 15th so very, very lame, unlike the way press bars always appear in films, hence one of the reasons so much of DC's media drinks and eats between K Street and DuPont Circle. Those cool images oif what life could be like are precisely why so many college students put up with crap while working for the student college newspaper, because they can picture that idealized life and can imagine making it a reality?
How will it all end for Daniel Snyder and the Washington Redskins, with his wife inheriting the team and running it after he sticks his foot in his mouth one time too many and suffocates, or with him selling the team to be rid of the headache and universal criticism of him and his grating personality, and the new team owner raising the Vince Lombardi Trophy within three years?
The extra-hard sports imponderable: The sports teams I root for most fervently have had the following people associated with them over the past few years since I returned to South Florida from the Washington, D.C. area: Dave Wannstedt (Dolphins football coach), Mike Davis (IU basketball coach), Randy Shannon (University of Miami Hurricanes), Tony Sparano (Dolphins football coach), Peter Angelos (Orioles owner), Stephen Ross (Dolphins owner). Hoosier head basketball Tom Crean seems to have gone a long way in solving IU's personnel problem, but the pious Dolphins and Hurricanes seem almost oblivious to the longstanding problems that have bedeviled them for years, despite the self-evident nature of those problems. Why?
Timeout during 2007 IU Basketball game against Kentucky at Assebly Hall, Bloomington, (IN), featuring the "William Tell Overture" and "Indiana Our Indiana" - the Indiana University Pep Band and IU Cheerleaders
Surely it must be more than the exposed cleavage everywhere, right? So why is Uncle Ezra so confused? Delicious!!! Can you name the 7 'extra' U.S. states that Obama refers to when he says that there are 57 states?(Is one of them the State of South Florida?) What's the point of two Carolinas and two Dakotas? Will the curse on the Baltimore Orioles only end upon the death of Peter Angelos, or will it have staying power like the curse of the billy goat on the Chicago Cubs?
