U.S. Wants BofA To Pay $864M Over Bad Loans: WSJ

WASHINGTON –  The U.S. government wants Bank of America to pay a penalty of $864 million for bad mortgages made from August 2007 until April 2008 and purchased by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac , according to a [l:Wall Street Journalstory|http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304448204579187942897087218|NEW] that ran Saturday. The mortgages were part of a program called "Hustle," which aimed to quickly make loans that were then sold to government sponsored enterprises Fannie and Freddie, according to the Journal's story. The government said the sought penalty amount would cover Fannie and Freddie's gross losses from "Hustle," according to the story. "Hustle" was created by Countrywide, which Bank of America purchased in 2008.

Via Fox Business
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5 Things The Obama Administration Had No Idea The Obama Administration Was Doing

"I wouldn’t be surprised if President Obama learned Osama bin Laden had been killed when he saw himself announce it on television." -- Jon Stewart

What's the point of having a President who learns about everything his administration is doing from the newspapers, just like everyone else? When do you start to ask, "Is this guy stupid or just dishonest?" Given that Barack Obama seems to know so little about what's going on in his administration that it's starting to resemble a "Hogan's Heroes" rerun with Bo playing the role of Colonel Klink, maybe the answer is "both."

1) Obama didn't know we were spying on German Chancellor Angela Merkel for five years.

The White House cut off some monitoring programs after learning of them, including the one tracking Ms. Merkel and some other world leaders, a senior U.S. official said. Other programs have been slated for termination but haven’t been phased out completely yet, officials said.

The account suggests President Barack Obama went nearly five years without knowing his own spies were bugging the phones of world leaders. Officials said the NSA has so many eavesdropping operations under way that it wouldn’t have been practical to brief him on all of them.

2) Obama didn't know that his administration was sending guns to Mexican drug cartels via Fast and Furious.

In the March 22 interview, Obama said: “There have been problems, you know. I heard on the news about this story that fast and furious, where allegedly guns were being run into Mexico and ATF knew about it but didn't apprehend those who had sent it. Eric Holder has -- the attorney general has been very clear that he knew nothing about this. We had assigned an IG, inspector general, to investigate it.”

3) Obama didn't know the DOJ seized the AP's phone records.

(Press Secretary) Carney later added about the scandal, "We don't have any independent knowledge ... [Obama] found out about the news reports yesterday on the road."

4) Obama didn't know the IRS was targeting Tea Party groups.

During a press conference with British Prime Minister David Cameron on Monday, President Obama was asked about the IRS scandal. He responded, ”I first learned about it from the same news reports that I think most people learned about this. I think it was on Friday.”

5) Obama didn't know the Healthcare.gov website was going to fail.

In an exclusive interview with Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta asked when the President first learned about the considerable issues with the Obamacare website.

Sebelius responded that it was in "the first couple of days" after the site went live October 1.

"But not before that?" Gupta followed up.

To which Sebelius replied, "No, sir."

Via: TownHall
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Congressman wants Justice Department to investigate raid on reporter’s home

A Republican congressman is calling on the Justice Department to investigate why state and federal law enforcement raided the home of a veteran investigative reporter and confiscated a stack of her confidential files in August.

“This is unbelievable,” Republican Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert said during remarks on the floor of the House this week. “This is happening in America.”

The Daily Caller broke the news last week that the confidential files of freelance journalist Audrey Hudson, a former reporter for the Washington Times, were taken by the Department of Homeland Security during a predawn raid of her Shady Side, Md. home on Aug. 6. The raid was carried out due to an unrelated criminal case.

On Tuesday, Gohmert read excerpts from that article on the floor of the U.S. House and expressed outrage over the incident.

“I would say that if the subpoena did not allow for them to take her notes pertaining to DHS whistleblowers that provided this reporter information, it begs the question that perhaps these law enforcement officers acting under color of State law or Federal law stole these without due process,” Gohmert said.

“It bears looking into,” he added.

But the Texas Republican expressed a lack of confidence that the Justice Department would actually investigate the incident and “do justice in such an abuse of power.”

“That doesn’t seem to be the case,” Gohmert said.

Via: The Daily Caller

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DOJ Tries to Stop Parents from Defending Louisiana School Voucher Program

Injunction will prevent vouchers from being awarded in 

2014

The Justice Department is attempting to block parents from defending the Louisiana school voucher program in court, according to a brief filed Tuesday.

Four families filed last month to intervene in the DOJ’s lawsuit against the Louisiana Scholarship Program, which grants vouchers to students so they can flee failing schools rated C, D, or F.

The DOJ is seeking a permanent injunction against the school choice program, which would block access to vouchers beginning in 2014 unless a federal judge approves them. The lawsuit claims the vouchers are “impeding desegregation” because some recipients were in the racial minority at their failing school. Vouchers are awarded randomly by lottery.

The DOJ said in a motion filed Tuesday that parents whose kids have benefited from the program have no legal standing to become defendants in the case.

Louisiana Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal blasted the DOJ for “trying to muzzle parents.”

“The Obama administration wants to deny a voice to the very people who will be harmed by this ridiculous lawsuit,” Jindal said in a statement. “In an offensively worded motion, the U.S. Department of Justice is trying to muzzle parents who simply want to express an opinion about why their children should have the opportunity to escape failing schools.”

Among the parents petitioning to join Louisiana as defendants against the DOJ is Mitzi Dillon, who said in a statement with the Louisiana Federation for Children that her kids would be heartbroken if they had to return to their former school.

Via: WFB

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MoveOn Petition Goes Viral: ‘Arrest and Try House GOP Leadership for Sedition’

After several liberal blogs and Facebook groups picked it up, a new MoveOn.org petition picked up signatures at lightning speed, accruing thousands of signatures in a matter of hours.

“Arrest and Try House GOP Leadership for Sedition” reads the headline on the user-created petition. Seeking 15,000 signatures before “delivering” to President Obama, the petition statement demands: “[T]he Justice Department of the United States of America to arrest Republican Majority Leader Eric Cantor, Speaker of the House John Boehner and other decision-making House Republican leaders for the crime of seditious conspiracy against the United States of America.”

“The House GOP leadership’s use of the Hastert Rule and H. Res 368 to shut down the government and threaten the US economy with default is an attempt to extort the United States government into altering or abolishing the Affordable Care Act, and thus, is self-evidently a seditious conspiracy,” reads the petition’s background info. “Arrest the perpetrators in Congress immediately and bring them to justice.”

Liberal blogs picked up on the petition, its numbers skyrocketing thereafter.

Below is just a sampling of some of the signatories. One guy believes hanging is too good a punishment for the House GOP:

Another signer found use for the detention center at Gitmo:

And another seems to remember a more uhh… dystopian… version of what just happened over the last few weeks:

View the full petition here.

Via: Mediaite.com

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Fired DOJ Atty. Sues: U.S. Ignored 9/11 Fundraising Evidence

A respected veteran federal prosecutor got fired for reporting government misconduct involving a terrorism fundraising operation run by 9/11 hijacker Mohamaed Atta, according to a lawsuit filed in federal court against the Department of Justice (DOJ) and Attorney General Eric Holder.

The complaint, filed this month in United States District Court for the District of Columbia, is downright chilling. It outlines an alarming retaliation plot at the upper levels of the DOJ to oust an esteemed prosecutor who had received numerous awards for outstanding performance. Scarier even is that the feds failed to act on evidence that linked domestic fundraising to the 9/11 terrorists because it was uncovered by the Assistant U.S. Attorney under fire for exposing government wrongdoing.  

The ousted prosecutor, identified only as John Doe in the complaint, led an investigation dubbed Money Exchange that uncovered evidence that Atta was raising cash for terrorist missions in the U.S. before 2000. Rather than focus on his solid investigative work, his bosses at the DOJ retaliated against him for refusing to sign off on an illegal search and seizure in the terrorism fundraising case. His superiors, George W. Bush appointees, approved the illegal search anyways and the prosecutor blew the whistle on the wrongdoing.

“John Doe made additional disclosures regarding his supervisors’ misconduct from 2005 through 2008 which are protected under the Whistleblower Protection Act,” the complaint says. “These additional protected disclosures included reports of misconduct by his superiors in disciplinary proceedings, in political hirings, and in mishandling of a terrorist investigation.”

Besides forcing the whistleblower out, the DOJ hierarchy continued punishing him by snubbing his topnotch investigative work on the terrorism financing case, which spanned several years. In fact, he came under fire for distributing a memo on the Money Exchange investigation to the DOJ counterterrorism division as part of an agency directive to promptly make disclosures of national security information to all law enforcement components.

Incredibly, authorities never followed through with the valuable evidence that the former federal prosecutor and his team provided, according to the lawsuit. “On May 23, 2008, John Doe urged the Acting United States Attorney to act upon the Money Exchange Memorandum because bank records underlying the terrorist funding would be destroyed after 7 years,” the complaint says.

“On May 27, 2008, the United State Attorney ordered John Doe to retrieve the May 5 Money Exchange Memorandum from all recipients. The Acting United States Attorney then criticized John Doe for “going outside the chain of command.” The Acting United States Attorney ordered John Doe to turn over the Money Exchange case materials to another AUSA. That AUSA never followed up on the Money Exchange Memorandum.”

If the allegations in the complaint are true, heads should roll at the DOJ for allowing a personal vendetta to interfere with a terrorism investigation. While the complaint doesn’t mention names, you can deduct that the Assistant U.S. Attorney suing the DOJ was pretty high up at the agency and probably has a boatload of evidence that authorities prefer to keep from going public.

Via: Judicial Watch

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Former U.S. Attorney Joe DiGenova: SCOTUS Aware DOJ Advising Universities To Disregard Their Ruling On Race Based Admissions, Preparing To “Slap Them Down”

Relevant portion starts at 3:15.

Update to this story.

Joe DiGenova is a Former U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia. He spoke on WMAL this morning, noting that the DOJ actually advised universities in writing to ignore the SCOTUS ruling on race based admissions. The ruling determined that you could not use race as the primary factor in determining admission. Yet, the DOJ letter advises the universities that they could carry on as they had been doing.

DiGenova said the SCOTUS was prepared to smack down the DOJ in “a big way”, that they were aware of the DOJ letter sent out to disregard their ruling and might even cite to it in their decision in an upcoming Michigan case.

Via: Weasel Zippers

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DOJ sends letter to Universities telling them to ignore SCOTUS ruling on using race in admissions…

I was listening to Attorney Joe DiGenova this morning on WMAL and he pointed out how the DOJ had recently sent a letter to universities telling them they could ignore the June ruling by the Supreme Court on using race in admissions. The Supreme Court, in a nearly unanimous ruling, said that universities could use race in admissions but not as a dominant factor. But in this letter the DOJ is instructing universities to continue with the same racial preferences that the Supreme Court had just barred them from using:

WSJ – Obama Administration regulators have made a specialty of ignoring Congressional intent, and even black-letter law. Now they’re showing the same disdain for the Supreme Court with advice to universities about interpreting racial preferences in the wake of June’s Fisher v. University of Texas ruling.

In a September 27 letter to university presidents, civil rights officials from the Departments of Justice and Education wrote that the Court’s decision in Fisher means that universities can continue with their same racial-preference policies. According to the Administration’s version of events, the ruling was merely a tweak on 2003′s Grutter v. Bollinger decision that racial preferences could be used to achieve “diversity” on campus.

…

That must be news to the Supreme Court, which in an 8-1 opinion by Justice Anthony Kennedy rebuked Texas precisely because it had failed to heed Grutter. That decision said schools could use race in admissions but not as a dominant factor. In practice, however, the University of Texas like most other schools implemented a race-dependent admissions program and figured no one would notice. In Fisher, Justice Kennedy called that unacceptable and ordered courts to give universities “no deference” in subjecting racial preference policies to “strict scrutiny,” or the highest level of judicial review.

Via: The Right Scoop

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