Monthly Notes

Briefly Noted: October 2014


The Benghazi Accountability Coalition is pressing Congress for answers about the Obama administration’s bungling in the deadly debacle in Benghazi, Libya, on Sept. 11, 2012. Charles Woods, father of Navy SEAL Tyrone Woods, who died trying to fend off the Islamist attack, said he can’t understand why the Obama administration won’t answer even the most basic questions about what happened. “When a mission is compromised, the warriors, they know they will be extracted,” said Woods, who was also a Navy SEAL himself. “During all of the hours that this attack happened, there was no attempt made to rescue.” The administration’s refusal to launch such a rescue mission stands in stark contrast to its willingness to swap Bowe Bergdahl, a U.S. soldier who apparently defected to the Taliban in Afghanistan, for five members of the Islamic terrorist high command.

Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton says internal State Department documents have surfaced that show that three months before the Benghazi attack, security guards were fleeing their posts “out of fear of their safety.” Those documents consisted of emails obtained by Judicial Watch under the Freedom of Information Act, which is “the best way to get information out of this administration—an administration that is committed to secrecy and stonewalling on something that would have taken down previous administrations,” Fitton said. “Which is the lying by a president and his officials, to protect his re-election, about a terrorist attack that killed four Americans.”

The Center for Constitutional Rights, a militant left-wing public interest law firm, is suing the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), including U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), to compel the government to honor Freedom Of Information Act requests regarding home raids conducted as part of immigration enforcement. CCR filed suit on behalf of the Immigrant Defense Project, claiming the raids are racist. “These raids implicate individual liberties, privacy concerns, and policy discussions, yet there is virtually no publicly available information about them,” said CCR Senior Staff Attorney Ghita Schwarz. “We need records and documents about policies and decision-making to understand the impact of home raids on communities and the extent to which constitutional violations occur and are reported or investigated. For there to be any hope for accountability, there must be transparency.”

Supposed champion of the proletariat, former ACORN lawyer Arthur Z. Schwartz, has sold a lower Manhattan townhouse he bought for $499,990 in 2003 for a staggering $20.9 million, according to news reports. The nearly 27-foot-wide, 1836 Greek Revival home features a 1,200 square-foot garden, high ceilings, moldings, and plenty of natural light. Schwartz was a Barack Obama delegate to the 2008 Democratic National Convention and has been general counsel to the Transportation Workers Union of Greater New York. Now he joins the dreaded 1 Percent.

After video surfaced of now-suspended Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice beating his future wife into unconsciousness, the National Football League, a 501(c)(6) nonprofit corporation that has long been a bastion of political correctness, is appointing Anna Isaacson as its “vice president for social responsibility.” It is a new position. Isaacson is already the NFL’s vice president of community affairs and philanthropy.

Matthew Vadum

The author of Subversion Inc.: How Obama’s ACORN Red Shirts are Still Terrorizing and Ripping Off American Taxpayers (WND Books, 2011), Vadum, former senior vice president at CRC, writes and speaks widely…
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