Who Is Harold Koh?
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY Posted Tuesday, March 31, 2009 4:20 PM PT
President Obama's nominee for State Department legal adviser could be a future Supreme Court pick. He believes U.S. law should be based on foreign precedent, and even Shariah law could find a home here.
... a former dean of Yale Law School ... He's an advocate of what he calls "transnational legal process" and argues that the distinction between U.S. and international law should vanish. Read more
Mr. Koh is a strong advocate of abortion.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Saturday, March 7, 2009
Divorce From Liberals
This wonderful letter, written by a brilliant American law student, was sent to me by my sister via e-mail.
DIVORCE AGREEMENT
Dear American liberals, leftists, social progressives, socialists, Marxists and Obama supporters, et al:
We have stuck together since the late 1950's, but the whole of this latest election process has made me realize that I want a divorce. I know we tolerated each other for many years for the sake of future generations, but sadly, this relationship has run its course. Our two ideological sides of America cannot and will not ever agree on what is right so let's just end it on friendly terms. We can smile and chalk it up to irreconcilable differences and go our own way.
Here is a model separation agreement: Our two groups can equitably divide up the country by landmass each taking a portion. That will be the difficult part, but I am sure our two sides can come to a friendly agreement. After that, it should be relatively easy! Our respective representatives can effortlessly divide other assets since both sides have such distinct and disparate tastes.
We don't like redistributive taxes so you can keep them. You are welcome to the liberal judges and the ACLU. Since you hate guns and war, we'll take our firearms, the cops, the NRA and the military. You can keep Oprah, Michael Moore and Rosie O'Donnell (you are, however, responsible for finding a bio-diesel vehicle big enough to move all three of them). We'll keep the capitalism, greedy corporations, pharmaceutical companies, Wal-Mart and Wall Street. You can have your beloved homeless, homeboys, hippies and illegal aliens. We'll keep the hot Alaskan hockey moms, greedy CEO's and rednecks. We'll keep the Bibles and give you NBC and Hollywood . You can make nice with Iran and Palestine and we'll retain the right to invade and hammer places that threaten us. You can have the peaceniks and war protesters.
When our allies or our way of life are under assault, we'll help provide them security. We'll keep our Judeo-Christian values. You are welcome to Islam, Scientology, Humanism and Shirley McClain. You can also have the U.N. but we will no longer be paying the bill. We'll keep the SUVs, pickup trucks and oversized luxury cars. You can take every Subaru station wagon you can find. You can give everyone healthcare if you can find any practicing doctors. We'll continue to believe healthcare is a luxury and not a right.
We'll keep The Battle Hymn of the Republic and the National Anthem. I'm sure you'll be happy to substitute Imagine, I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing, Kum Ba Ya or We Are the World. We'll practice trickle down economics and you can give trickle up poverty your best shot. Since it often so offends you, we'll keep our history, our name and our flag. In the spirit of friendly parting, I'll bet you ANWAR which one of us will need whose help in 15 years.
Sincerely,
John J. Wall
Law Student and an American
P.S. Also, please take Barbara Streisand & Jane Fonda with you.
DIVORCE AGREEMENT
Dear American liberals, leftists, social progressives, socialists, Marxists and Obama supporters, et al:
We have stuck together since the late 1950's, but the whole of this latest election process has made me realize that I want a divorce. I know we tolerated each other for many years for the sake of future generations, but sadly, this relationship has run its course. Our two ideological sides of America cannot and will not ever agree on what is right so let's just end it on friendly terms. We can smile and chalk it up to irreconcilable differences and go our own way.
Here is a model separation agreement: Our two groups can equitably divide up the country by landmass each taking a portion. That will be the difficult part, but I am sure our two sides can come to a friendly agreement. After that, it should be relatively easy! Our respective representatives can effortlessly divide other assets since both sides have such distinct and disparate tastes.
We don't like redistributive taxes so you can keep them. You are welcome to the liberal judges and the ACLU. Since you hate guns and war, we'll take our firearms, the cops, the NRA and the military. You can keep Oprah, Michael Moore and Rosie O'Donnell (you are, however, responsible for finding a bio-diesel vehicle big enough to move all three of them). We'll keep the capitalism, greedy corporations, pharmaceutical companies, Wal-Mart and Wall Street. You can have your beloved homeless, homeboys, hippies and illegal aliens. We'll keep the hot Alaskan hockey moms, greedy CEO's and rednecks. We'll keep the Bibles and give you NBC and Hollywood . You can make nice with Iran and Palestine and we'll retain the right to invade and hammer places that threaten us. You can have the peaceniks and war protesters.
When our allies or our way of life are under assault, we'll help provide them security. We'll keep our Judeo-Christian values. You are welcome to Islam, Scientology, Humanism and Shirley McClain. You can also have the U.N. but we will no longer be paying the bill. We'll keep the SUVs, pickup trucks and oversized luxury cars. You can take every Subaru station wagon you can find. You can give everyone healthcare if you can find any practicing doctors. We'll continue to believe healthcare is a luxury and not a right.
We'll keep The Battle Hymn of the Republic and the National Anthem. I'm sure you'll be happy to substitute Imagine, I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing, Kum Ba Ya or We Are the World. We'll practice trickle down economics and you can give trickle up poverty your best shot. Since it often so offends you, we'll keep our history, our name and our flag. In the spirit of friendly parting, I'll bet you ANWAR which one of us will need whose help in 15 years.
Sincerely,
John J. Wall
Law Student and an American
P.S. Also, please take Barbara Streisand & Jane Fonda with you.
Thursday, March 5, 2009
Betraying Our Friends
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY - Posted Tuesday, March 03, 2009 4:20 PM PT
Appeasing Russia to "solve" Iran's nuclear ambitions is not the only disconcerting feature of President Obama's approach to the world. Vital friends and allies are getting America's cold shoulder.
What sense does it make that after Ronald Reagan wins the Cold War by refusing to abandon missile defense, the United States offers it as a bargaining chip to an increasingly menacing post-Communist Russia?
And where is the wisdom in withdrawing plans to use missile defense to protect the liberated former Eastern Bloc states against a Russian aggressor willing to wage war with the former Soviet state of Georgia and use the Ukrainian pipeline to starve Europeans of natural gas — all to prevent its former satellites from aligning with the free West? Is it any wonder that the Poles and the Czechs — who have only known freedom for a short time — now long for the days of President George W. Bush, a president willing to help them defend their liberty against aggression?
Our young, new president has reportedly written a secret letter to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev offering to give away the proposed missile shield if Moscow helps stop Iran from building long-range nuclear weapons. Barack Obama supposedly had 300 foreign policy advisers during his presidential campaign. Couldn't one of them have told him that it was Russia who provided Iran with nuclear experts, gave Iran technical information stolen from the West by Russian spies, and is building and delivering fuel for Iran's Bushehr nuclear power plant? Has it ever crossed the president's mind that letting Iran give terrorists nuclear bombs to incinerate an American or Western European city might be in Russia's long-term geopolitical interest?
Thomas C. Reed and Danny B. Stillman's newly published history of the bomb, "The Nuclear Express," calls post-cold war China — another facilitator of Iran's nuclear program — "a fearsome global competitor with interests that could be well served by the devastation of Washington or New York . . . ." The same surely applies to Vladimir Putin's Russia.
As the president mulled giving away the store to the Russians, he hosted British Prime Minister Gordon Brown at the White House Tuesday, claiming that the U.S.-U.K. "special relationship" is getting more special all the time. But the big-spending, tax-raising Brown is well to the left of his predecessor Tony Blair, and the Scot has been a dyed-in-the-wool socialist all his life, writing a 1975 "Red Paper for Scotland" demanding "a positive commitment to creating a socialist society." The president and Brown are joining forces to establish an unprecedented "global new deal" that would impose stringent new bank regulations on industrialized nations.
Meanwhile, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met Tuesday with newly elected Israeli Prime Minister-designate Benjamin Netanyahu and pushed for the establishment of a Palestinian state right at a time when Israelis — suffering continual Palestinian rocket fire — have gone to the polls to place security before the "peace process."
To our south, the Obama administration is jeopardizing our relationship with Colombia over misguided Carteresque human rights quibbles after America has helped that nation make strides in its war against drug cartels — and at a time when the Pentagon reports that Mexico may suffer a "rapid and sudden collapse." A recent Joint Forces Command analysis warns: "(Mexican) politicians, police and judicial infrastructure are all under sustained assault and pressure by criminal gangs and drug cartels. How that internal conflict turns out over the next several years will have a major impact on the stability of the Mexican state." In spite of that dire prospect just across our border, the administration and Congress are foot-dragging on ratification of the Colombian trade pact and funds to continue opposing the drug traffickers and Colombia's leftist insurgency. With Venezuela's Hugo Chavez aligned with Iran and the Castro regime still in business in Cuba, what friend will we have in Latin America if we shun President Alvaro Uribe's government in Colombia?
Barack Obama promised in his campaign to change the world. He never mentioned he would do it by acting against our best allies and partners around the globe — friends we need, and who need us, to stay free and secure.
Appeasing Russia to "solve" Iran's nuclear ambitions is not the only disconcerting feature of President Obama's approach to the world. Vital friends and allies are getting America's cold shoulder.
What sense does it make that after Ronald Reagan wins the Cold War by refusing to abandon missile defense, the United States offers it as a bargaining chip to an increasingly menacing post-Communist Russia?
And where is the wisdom in withdrawing plans to use missile defense to protect the liberated former Eastern Bloc states against a Russian aggressor willing to wage war with the former Soviet state of Georgia and use the Ukrainian pipeline to starve Europeans of natural gas — all to prevent its former satellites from aligning with the free West? Is it any wonder that the Poles and the Czechs — who have only known freedom for a short time — now long for the days of President George W. Bush, a president willing to help them defend their liberty against aggression?
Our young, new president has reportedly written a secret letter to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev offering to give away the proposed missile shield if Moscow helps stop Iran from building long-range nuclear weapons. Barack Obama supposedly had 300 foreign policy advisers during his presidential campaign. Couldn't one of them have told him that it was Russia who provided Iran with nuclear experts, gave Iran technical information stolen from the West by Russian spies, and is building and delivering fuel for Iran's Bushehr nuclear power plant? Has it ever crossed the president's mind that letting Iran give terrorists nuclear bombs to incinerate an American or Western European city might be in Russia's long-term geopolitical interest?
Thomas C. Reed and Danny B. Stillman's newly published history of the bomb, "The Nuclear Express," calls post-cold war China — another facilitator of Iran's nuclear program — "a fearsome global competitor with interests that could be well served by the devastation of Washington or New York . . . ." The same surely applies to Vladimir Putin's Russia.
As the president mulled giving away the store to the Russians, he hosted British Prime Minister Gordon Brown at the White House Tuesday, claiming that the U.S.-U.K. "special relationship" is getting more special all the time. But the big-spending, tax-raising Brown is well to the left of his predecessor Tony Blair, and the Scot has been a dyed-in-the-wool socialist all his life, writing a 1975 "Red Paper for Scotland" demanding "a positive commitment to creating a socialist society." The president and Brown are joining forces to establish an unprecedented "global new deal" that would impose stringent new bank regulations on industrialized nations.
Meanwhile, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met Tuesday with newly elected Israeli Prime Minister-designate Benjamin Netanyahu and pushed for the establishment of a Palestinian state right at a time when Israelis — suffering continual Palestinian rocket fire — have gone to the polls to place security before the "peace process."
To our south, the Obama administration is jeopardizing our relationship with Colombia over misguided Carteresque human rights quibbles after America has helped that nation make strides in its war against drug cartels — and at a time when the Pentagon reports that Mexico may suffer a "rapid and sudden collapse." A recent Joint Forces Command analysis warns: "(Mexican) politicians, police and judicial infrastructure are all under sustained assault and pressure by criminal gangs and drug cartels. How that internal conflict turns out over the next several years will have a major impact on the stability of the Mexican state." In spite of that dire prospect just across our border, the administration and Congress are foot-dragging on ratification of the Colombian trade pact and funds to continue opposing the drug traffickers and Colombia's leftist insurgency. With Venezuela's Hugo Chavez aligned with Iran and the Castro regime still in business in Cuba, what friend will we have in Latin America if we shun President Alvaro Uribe's government in Colombia?
Barack Obama promised in his campaign to change the world. He never mentioned he would do it by acting against our best allies and partners around the globe — friends we need, and who need us, to stay free and secure.
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
How "This Mess" (Obama's words) Started -- In Case You Didn't Know
This article, sent to me by a friend via e-mail, hits the nail right on the head.
Fannie Mae Eases Credit To Aid Mortgage Lending By Steven A. Holmes - (Published: New York Times, Thursday, September 30, 1999)
Fannie Mae Eases Credit To Aid Mortgage Lending By Steven A. Holmes - (Published: New York Times, Thursday, September 30, 1999)
In a move that could help increase home ownership rates among minorities and low-income consumers, the Fannie Mae Corporation is easing the credit requirements on loans that it will purchase from banks and other lenders. The action, which will begin as a pilot program involving 24 banks in 15 markets -- including the New York metropolitan region -- will encourage those banks to extend home mortgages to individuals whose credit is generally not good enough to qualify for conventional loans. Fannie Mae officials say they hope to make it a nationwide program by next spring.
Fannie Mae, the nation's biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate income people and felt pressure from stock holders to maintain its phenomenal growth in profits. In addition, banks, thrift institutions and mortgage companies have been pressing Fannie Mae to help them make more loans to so-called subprime borrowers. These borrowers whose incomes, credit ratings and savings are not good enough to qualify for conventional loans, can only get loans from finance companies that charge much higher interest rates -- anywhere from three to four percentage points higher than conventional loans.
''Fannie Mae has expanded home ownership for millions of families in the 1990's by reducing down payment requirements,'' said Franklin D. Raines, Fannie Mae's chairman and chief executive officer. ''Yet there remain too many borrowers whose credit is just a notch below what our underwriting has required who have been relegated to paying significantly higher mortgage rates in the so-called subprime market.'' Demographic information on these borrowers is sketchy. But at least one study indicates that 18 percent of the loans in the subprime market went to black borrowers, compared to 5 per cent of loans in the conventional loan market.
In moving, even tentatively, into this new area of lending, Fannie Mae is taking on significantly more risk, which may not pose any difficulties during flush economic times. But the government-subsidized corporation may run into trouble in an economic downturn, prompting a government rescue similar to that of the savings and loan industry in the 1980's. ''From the perspective of many people, including me, this is another thrift industry growing up around us,'' said Peter Wallison a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. ''If they fail, the government will have to step up and bail them out the way it stepped up and bailed out the thrift industry.''
Under Fannie Mae's pilot program, consumers who qualify can secure a mortgage with an interest rate one percentage point above that of a conventional, 30-year fixed rate mortgage of less than $240,000 -- a rate that currently averages about 7.76 per cent. If the borrower makes his or her monthly payments on time for two years, the one percentage point premium is dropped.
Fannie Mae, the nation's biggest underwriter of home mortgages, does not lend money directly to consumers. Instead, it purchases loans that banks make on what is called the secondary market. By expanding the type of loans that it will buy, Fannie Mae is hoping to spur banks to make more loans to people with less-than-stellar credit ratings. Fannie Mae officials stress that the new mortgages will be extended to all potential borrowers who can qualify for a mortgage. But they add that the move is intended in part to increase the number of minority and low income home owners who tend to have worse credit ratings than non-Hispanic whites.
Home ownership has, in fact, exploded among minorities during the economic boom of the 1990's. The number of mortgages extended to Hispanic applicants jumped by 87.2 per cent from 1993 to 1998, according to Harvard University's Joint Center for Housing Studies. During that same period the number of African Americans who got mortgages to buy a home increased by 71.9 per cent and the number of Asian Americans by 46.3 per cent. In contrast, the number of non-Hispanic whites who received loans for homes increased by 31.2 per cent. Despite these gains, home ownership rates for minorities continue to lag behind non-Hispanic whites, in part because blacks and Hispanics in particular tend to have on average worse credit ratings.
In July, the Department of Housing and Urban Development proposed that by the year 2001, 50 percent of Fannie Mae's and Freddie Mac's portfolio be made up of loans to low and moderate-income borrowers. Last year, 44 percent of the loans Fannie Mae purchased were from these groups.
The change in policy also comes at the same time that HUD is investigating allegations of racial discrimination in the automated underwriting systems used by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to determine the credit-worthiness of credit applicants.
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