Republicans found fault with the Obama Justice Department on other issues, including its handling of a voter intimidation claim, drug enforcement issues and the status of the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Rep. John Culberson, R-Texas, said the department has not cooperated fully with the U.S. Civil Rights Commission’s investigation of alleged voter intimidation by two members of the New Black Panther Party at a Philadelphia polling place in 2008.

Culberson said the commission’s report indicates Justice Department lawyers were encouraged to be aggressive in defending blacks from voter intimidation and other forms of harassment but were discouraged from being as active fighting discrimination against whites.The congressman referenced a quote from a former Democratic activist who said the Philadelphia incident was the most serious act of voter intimidation he had witnessed in his career. 

Holder said that implication “just flies in the face of history.”

He denied the Justice Department makes decisions based on race and said he took the issue particularly personally because his sister-in-law, the late Vivian Malone Jones, helped integrate the University of Alabama. Holder said the New Black Panthers case is not a good comparison “to what happened to my people” and that it is a disservice to those who risked their lives during the civil rights battles of the ’60s.

 Excerpt from Article:

http://www.cnn.com/2011/POLITICS/03/02/house.holder/index.html?

 Face Forward Comments:

You remember the Philadelphia case, right? Several Black Panthers try to intimidate white voters with threats to harm them and their children. Why that is not looked at as voter intimidation is beyond me.

 I don’t care if the Attorney General is black, red, pink or white. All I want from him is to keep his end of the bargain which is to lead the Department of justice and help enforce the DOJ’s mission statement.

 From the DOJ’s website is there mission statement

To enforce the law and defend the interests of the United States according to the law; to ensure public safety against threats foreign and domestic; to provide federal leadership in preventing and controlling crime; to seek just punishment for those guilty of unlawful behavior; and to ensure fair and impartial administration of justice for all Americans.

 Whenever a Attorney General refers to any group of people in question of breaking the law whether they are identified by a color, a creed, a religion or any other means as “My People” the battle to remain fair and impartial is long lost. Eric Holder must go.

NEW YORK (AP) — Oil prices climbed Tuesday as Iran clamped down on anti-government protesters and unrest in the Middle East threatened to keep energy prices high for months to come.

Benchmark West Texas Intermediate for April delivery gained $2.66 to settle at $99.63 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. In London, Brent crude gained $3.62 to settle at $115.42 per barrel on the ICE Futures exchange.

The recent surge in oil has pushed up gasoline prices in the U.S. by nearly 20 cents per gallon in the past week. That’s the sharpest increase since September 2008, when Hurricane Ike shut down Gulf Coast refineries, according to the Oil Price Information Service. In 2005, Hurricane Katrina sent prices soaring about 45 cents per gallon in one week.

 Americans are now paying roughly $75.6 million more per day to fill up than a week ago.

The national average added another penny on Tuesday at $3.375 per gallon. Prices should keep rising to between $3.50 and $3.75 by spring, according to OPIS oil analyst Tom Kloza. He said future increases will be much more gradual, because gasoline markets have mostly priced in the recent rise in crude. “So we should flatten out” in coming weeks, Kloza said.

 Oil prices surged 13 percent last week, peaking above $100 per barrel, as Libyan protesters expanded their control over the country. While the Libyan uprising continued Tuesday, news agencies reported that Iranian authorities imprisoned opposition leaders in Tehran. Iranian authorities denied the reports.

 Pro-reform groups have clashed with the Iranian government. Jailing opposition leaders would be a major escalation of the country’s political crisis. Iran exports about 2.5 million barrels of oil and natural gas liquids per day, about 3 percent of global demand.

For the rest of story please go here:

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Oil-prices-climb-as-Iran-apf-1296176780.html?x=0&sec=topStories&pos=2&asset=&ccode=

 FaceForward Comments:

We need to Drill and to build Nuclear Electricity plants as quickly as possible.

At this writing, circumstances in the Middle East may change between this sentence and my last paragraph.

What began in mid-December as an uprising that sent Tunisian President Ben Ali into Saudi exile on Jan. 14 quickly inspired Cairo’s Tahrir Square rebellion. Hosni Mubarak, who ruled Egypt for 29 years, eight more than Cleopatra, hastily retired when his people hounded him from Heliopolis Palace into his vacation compound in Sharm el-Sheikh.

Just outside Mubarak’s hideaway, two Iranian war ships this week floated north through the Suez Canal. This was the Iranian Navy’s first appearance in the Arab equivalent of the Panama Canal since 1979′s revolution installed the Ayatollah Khomeini and his joyless, sexist, bloodthirsty theocracy.

Eastern Libya now is controlled by regular citizens, freshly armed by soldiers who largely disobeyed orders to shoot their fellow citizens. Strongman Moammar Gadhafi ordered two fighter jets to bomb his constituents, prompting the pilots to defect to Malta.

“I have not yet ordered the use of force,” Gadhafi said Tuesday night. “When I do, everything will burn.”

Time.com reports that Gadhafi has instructed his operatives to sabotage Libya’s oil fields, supposedly to show Libyans that without Gadhafi, things could get really crazy. Libyan production already is down 25 percent, and Italy’s Eni and Spain’s Repsol have suspended operations there.

Read the rest of the Story here:

http://www.scrippsnews.com/node/59902

Face Forward Comments:The domino theory is that when one nation falls others will follow suite. We feared it in Southeast Asia and South America and while it did happen to some extent, America was not really harmed. This time it’s different for a couple of reason. First oil, second religion.

 Oil is so unbelievably interwoven into our lives. Most people only think of the cost of a gallon of gas. But when you consider that pesticides and fertilizers that provide us with cheap food prices, plastics and rubber products as well as medicines will either be gone or become hard to find, we cannot easily escape it grip on us. We get about 30% of our oil from the middle east. Without it $10 a gallon gas will be the least of your worries. Because without oil our economy will collapse.

 The reason that the wars in SE Asia and Latin America eventually ran out of steam is that they were based on an ideology (Communistic / Socialistic style of government) and they were powered by the poor underclass. Once the poor became integrated into the system and got enough food int their stomachs, the revolts largely died. Not so with what is happening in the middle east.

 The middle east is driven by a need to topple anything western in nature (think democracy and capitalism). While the media is presenting it to the world as the poor wanting to be free. However, it is actually an Islamic revolt. Don’t be fooled that the middle east will suddenly blossom and we will see the area full of little Islamic democrices just like Israel. Once the current leadership is removed, you may see elections but it will only be leaders that are approved by the Islamic Mullahs and that follow Sharia law. Once that happens Israel is doomed and the rest of the world could be pushed into WWIII.

WASHINGTON – Social Security checks would still go out. Troops would remain at their posts. Furloughed federal workers probably would get paid, though not until later. And virtually every essential government agency, like the FBI, the Border Patrol and the Coast Guard, would remain open.

That’s the little-known truth about a government shutdown. The government doesn’t shut down. And it won’t on March 5, even if the combatants on Capitol Hill can’t resolve enough differences to pass a stopgap spending bill to fund the government while they hash out legislation to cover the last seven months of the budget year.

Fewer than half of the 2.1 million federal workers subject to a shutdown would be forced off the job if the Obama administration followed the path taken by presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton. And that’s not counting 600,000 Postal Service employees or 1.6 million uniformed military personnel exempt from a shutdown.

So we’re talking fewer than one in four federal workers staying at home. Many federal workers get paid on March 4, so it would take a two-week shutdown for them to see a delay in their paychecks. The rules for who works and who doesn’t date back to the early 1980s and haven’t been significantly modified since. The Obama administration hasn’t issued new guidance.

Read the rest of the Article here:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110224/ap_on_re_us/us_what_shutdown

 Face Forward Comments:

Since the Federal Government is the largest employer in the US, even 25% of the workforce being of is a huge number. It could have a real nice impact on the debt if the furloughed workers were not paid. In fact I think it would be a good idea to have a budget crisis every month. We could then determine how much money we could put towards salaries and furlough the appropriate number of employees. 

Here are just a few “Federal Services I could live with out:

Public Radio and TV could reduce broadcast time by 25% (or just completely close the National Endowment for the arts)

Pick any two and close them FBI, CIA, Homeland Security, NSA, ATF, DEA

US Department of Education close and return control to the States

Fannie Mae, Sallie Mae, Freddie Mac and all the other lending institutions ran by the Federal Government

Farm Subsidies (do we really need to pay people to NOT farm)

 And finally to show just how totally our of control the Federal government is here is a list of organizations that are doing duplicate work to stop government waste on duplicate programs

  **  U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO)

  **  Congressional Budget Office’s

  **  Inspector General Office

  **  Government Performance and Results Act

  **  White House’s Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART) program reviews

** The Senate Governmental Affairs Committee’s

You tell me. Do you really think a day, a week, a month or even a year with out the above will impact your life in a negative manner? I didn’t think so.