This is serious

Two travel bloggers in the United States of America were visited by special agents of the Transportation Security Administration Tuesday night and served with subpoenas demanding to know who gave them a Christmas Day TSA memo about changes in airport security procedures.

"YOU ARE HEREBY COMMANDED BY THE ADMINISTRATOR," the subpoena begins. It demanded a response by December 31.

On December 31, the TSA backed off its deadline and gave one of the writers until January 20 to respond or challenge the subpoena in federal court.

The other writer wasn't given more time because he had already surrendered his laptop computer to the federal agents. Steve Frischling was visited at his Connecticut home for several hours on Tuesday night, and the agents returned for another visit Wednesday morning.

"Frischling said the agents threatened to interfere with his contract to write a blog for KLM Royal Dutch Airlines if he didn't cooperate and provide the name of the person who leaked the memo," the Associated Press reported.

Under that threat, Steve Frischling gave the federal agents his laptop computer.

Do you understand how serious this is?

The United States government threatened to interfere with a citizen's employment in order to intimidate him.

The subpoena served by the TSA agents was not signed by a judge. "The administrative subpoena — a demand for information issued without a judge's approval — is a civil, not a criminal document. If Elliott refuses to comply, the TSA could ask a judge to hold the writer in contempt," the AP explains.

The distinction between civil and criminal penalties may not have been made clear to Chris Elliot and Steve Frischling when federal agents knocked on the doors of their homes Tuesday night. Chris Elliot called a lawyer, and Steve Frischling was intimidated into surrendering his computer.

Under the law, ill-considered as it may be, the TSA has the authority to issue an administrative subpoena. But nowhere in the law is the TSA authorized to threaten a citizen with the loss of employment.

Which part of the Constitution does this violate most egregiously? The First Amendment right of free speech? The Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures? The Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination? The guarantee of due process of law and the equal protection of the laws? The Ninth Amendment guarantee that citizens have additional rights even if they're not specifically enumerated in the Constitution? The Tenth Amendment guarantee that the federal government has only the powers delegated to it by the Constitution, and all other powers remain with the states or the people?

Everything in the Constitution prohibits the government from using its power in this way.

In Iraq, where the government owns all the major industries and nearly everybody works for the government, this kind of intimidation is built into the daily lives of Iraqi citizens.

In the United States, it should never, ever happen.

Whoever came up with the idea of threatening Steve Frischling with the loss of his contract to write a blog for KLM Royal Dutch Airlines should resign or be fired immediately, and so should everyone who signed off on that idea, and so should the agents who delivered that threat.

All year long we've watched as the government threatened auto executives and bank executives and insurance company executives with the loss of their livelihoods if they didn't go along with the administration's directives.

Now the government is coming in the night to knock on the doors of citizens' homes and threaten them with documents that say "YOU ARE HEREBY COMMANDED."

It is worth mentioning that these writers were subjected to this treatment because they published something. Not because they are suspected of breaking any law. Not because they had information about an imminent threat to anyone's safety.

The United States is not automatically a free country because we shoot off fireworks on the Fourth of July.

We have to work at this.

Call your congressman and your senators. Tell them you want the federal government to stop governing through intimidation. Tell them you expect the federal government to protect your freedom, not to trample on it.

U.S. House of Representatives main switchboard: 202-224-3121. Click here to find contact information for your representative.

U.S. Senate main switchboard: 202-225-3121. Click here to find contact information for your senators.



Copyright 2009

.

Going down

If you were President of the United States and your poll numbers were heading toward the earth's core, how would you celebrate Christmas?

Would you dress up your beautiful family and go to church? Would you tell reporters cute stories about the kids opening their presents on Christmas morning as you and your wife looked on with pride and love? Would you go to a homeless shelter or hospital and help serve Christmas dinner?

That's not how President Obama did it.

"The president and his wife, Michelle, started their day at 6:40 a.m. by going to the gym -- a feat unimaginable to most parents of young children eager to open presents on Christmas morning," the Washington Post reported on Saturday.

If you were president, would you give your wife a beautiful gift that would make all the married female voters in America think you're a wonderful husband?

"The first couple did not swap presents," White House aides told the Post, "and the Obamas did not attend church services, instead spending the day at the oceanfront home they are renting in Kailua, on the island of Oahu."

Later in the day, the Obama children opened presents with their cousins, the Post reported.

President Obama is tenaciously pursuing an unpopular agenda, and he does himself no favors by missing the easy lay-ups.

A week from now, when pollsters call people at dinner time and ask if they approve or disapprove of President Obama, no one will attribute the drop in popularity to the president's decision to skip church services and family gift-giving in favor of working out and playing golf. There will be so many other things to blame by then.

But keep an eye on the answers to questions like "Does President Obama share your values?" and "Do you trust President Obama to pursue the right policies for our country?"

That's where the Ghost of Christmas Past will rattle his chains.


Copyright 2009

.

Cracking the e-books

It can take years to write a book but it takes only a week to read one, so the question a writer is asked most often is probably, "When's your next book coming out?"

Recently there has been an even more annoying question, if that's possible.

"When's your book coming out as an e-book?"

The reason that's an annoying question is that it takes longer to read this sentence than it takes to download an entire book from an overseas file-sharing site that is conveniently making e-books available at absolutely no cost whatsoever.

E-books are making suckers out of authors and publishers, who are currently on the phone screaming at each other over how to divide the royalties from e-book sales.

E-books are also making suckers out of consumers who pay hundreds of dollars for the latest e-book reading devices. Hackers cracked the proprietary code of Amazon's Kindle before the Christmas trees were even up and e-books are now available in the ubiquitous PDF format that can be read on any computer running Adobe's Acrobat Reader.

Which is a free program, by the way.

So in about twenty seconds you can find and download the brand-new book of your choice. And don't worry, there are no security cameras or mall cops to catch you.

Don't be afraid that this is too technical or difficult. Let's try it together. What should we steal? How about Sarah Palin's new book?

First, we'll go to Google and search for "Rapidshare" (that's a file-sharing site "in another land," as comedian Robert Klein used to say) and the title of Governor Palin's book, "Going Rogue."



Why, look at that, we can steal the audio book, too. Isn't that nice. So convenient.

But for now, let's just click on the second search result, fileshunt.com/rapidshare.php?file=going+rogue.



Well, that didn't take long. Here are four different links to take us to free pirated copies of Governor Palin's book. Good thing she didn't spend six years writing it or she'd really be aggravated. Let's click the "trusted download." As Senator McCain can attest, it's best to deal with someone who's been fully vetted.



This link has brought us to download-zzz.com, where we can see that the book is available in an assortment of formats. Number seven on the list is in PDF format, which any computer running Adobe Acrobat Reader can open with a single click of a mouse.

It's easy to print, too, in case you're one of those people who doesn't like to read on a screen.

Of course, then you'd have to pay for paper and toner. Unless you're at work. Hey, why not, you're done with your Internet shopping, right?

Okay, let's click on the PDF link and see what happens.



Here the web site asks us to select our country from a list. Is that because the laws in some places don't allow us to steal Governor Palin's book? Don't be silly. They just want to give us better service. "Choosing the download server closest to you will result in faster download speeds," the web site helpfully explains.

Isn't that nice? Don't you feel like an idiot for buying a Kindle?

Now let's click the download button and see if we have pulled this off successfully.



Uh-oh! We got a warning! Let's see what it says.



"In order to download this file you have to be registered and logged in. If you have NOT registered yet, click 'Register' and follow the easy steps. Creating an account is free, easy and only takes seconds."

So, have we hit the security barrier? Is this where we have to put in our real name, credit card number, verified PayPal address?

Don't be silly.



All they want is your e-mail address. They promise to protect your information ("Download-zzz.com never releases e-mail addresses to third parties for any reason whatsoever and your personal information will be securely stored in accordance with our privacy policy") but if for any reason you're worried that they can't be trusted, just go over to Yahoo or Google or AOL and sign up for a free e-mail account. Use a fake name. What, is this your first robbery? You don't know this stuff already?

You can see that you're required to check the box next to the words "I have carefully read and agree to the Terms and Conditions." Be sure to click the link and read those terms and conditions. That's where it will tell you that you may not use this file-sharing service for the purpose of stealing copyrighted material. And the next time you park your car next to a broken parking meter, be sure to put money in it anyway.



Hey, what's THIS? They want us to pay a membership fee? That is SO not going to happen. If we didn't pay the author and we didn't pay the publisher and we didn't pay for the Kindle we're certainly not going to pay YOU, pal.

These people have a lot of nerve, asking us to pay $1.95 for membership (marked down from $39.85, which apparently they had no luck collecting).

Download-zzz.com offers testimonials from satisfied customers to help convince visitors to part with two dollars for their service. Here's one:

"I have found Download ZZZ to not only be helpful in getting the freshest media content and software versions, but also reliable and fast," writes the happy customer. "In today's market, such service is a really rare example of quality. Customer support is very good as well: quick answers and quick results for me. And I got all of this at a very reasonable and fair price."

Look, it's only two dollars, and people are entitled to be paid for their work, right?

Just kidding.

You can go back to Google and search "Rapidshare" and "Going Rogue" and "FREE download," and this time don't fall for that "trusted download" scam.

This is all just another way of saying that the authors who are calling their publishers to demand a share of e-book revenue are never going to recoup the cost of the long-distance phone call. That is, if they pay for long-distance phone calls. You can call on the Internet for free, but some authors still use typewriters.

America Wants To Know started a small publishing company this year and is currently writing a series of slightly twisted detective novels which have been and continue to be one hell of a lot of work.

When's the next book coming out?

Aiming for the fall of 2010.

When's the book coming out as an e-book?

Sometime after Sarah Palin is elected president. Look for it midway through her third term.



Copyright 2009

.

Obama love child surfaces

The tabloids can stop searching for the long-rumored love child of President Barack Obama.

The Associated Press has located him. He's in the fifth grade in Selma, Indiana.

Of course, the AP didn't report that the boy is the child of the president. Everybody's off for Christmas and they won't put it together until Monday, or maybe after the first of the year.

But America Wants to Know won't make you wait. Here are the facts:

Delaware County Sheriff George Sheridan told reporters that a Selma Elementary fifth-grader was riding the bus to school on the last day before the Christmas vacation when he suddenly decided it would be a good idea to give away money. He handed out ones and fives to the other children, and his special friends got twenties.

The child gave away $300.

When the bus arrived at school, the other children went straight to the principal and the teachers and turned the kid in. They were angry that he was holding out on them.

The children complained that they only got meager little ones, fives and twenties, while the fifth-grader had ten thousand dollars in his pockets.

Of course, the money that the child was handing out belonged to somebody else.

It belonged to his grandparents.

No one is sure exactly how it could have happened, but the boy broke into his grandparents' safe and took all their cash.

Maybe Ted Sorensen wrote a speech for him.


Copyright 2009

.

Health Care Reform Dinner Theater

America Wants To Know is pleased to present a choose-your-own-ending production of "Who Killed Health Care Reform?"

Possible Ending Number One:

Senator Joe Lieberman, Independent of Connecticut, stays up late into the night on December 23rd, reading the polls by firelight. In the car on the way to the Senate the next morning, he has an epiphany and becomes a Republican. He casts the deciding vote against the health care reform bill after an impassioned speech calling for lawmakers to renounce corrupt deals and start over from scratch. He is celebrated on Fox News Channel as a maverick and his new party promises him seniority on a bunch of good committees.

Possible Ending Number Two:

The Senate votes 60-40 to pass the health care reform bill and it goes to conference in January, where everything in it is thrown up in the air again for lobbyists and lawmakers to bat around. The bill is written in a locked room by the glow of ten iPods running an app that imitates a lighter. The bill goes back to the House, where it passes, and to the Senate, where it fails. Everybody blames President Obama.

Possible Ending Number Three:

The Senate passes the health care reform bill on Christmas Eve and it goes to conference in January, where everything in it is thrown up in the air again for lobbyists and lawmakers to bat around, and the bill is written in a locked room, and when it comes out no one has time to read it and it's shoved through the House and Senate with not a single vote to spare. President Obama signs it in a triumphant White House ceremony and then copies are distributed so everybody can find out what they just passed. A week later, two hundred million Americans get letters from their health care providers telling them that everything is now different and some of it is more expensive. A roar goes up that can be heard on Mars. Congress scrambles to fix a hundred provisions of the new law, but too late, the voters throw out most of the Democrats and some of the Republicans and when the new Congress arrives in 2011, the first thing they do is repeal the whole mess.

Wait, wait, hold everything, America Wants To Know has just received an urgent text message from the White House ordering us to present their side of the argument.

All right.

Possible Ending Number Four:

The health care bill passes and everyone gets everything they want at everybody else's expense. When it is pointed out that nothing in the bill adds up, Congress goes into special session and repeals the laws of mathematics. South Carolina secedes from the Union and within three hours 49 states follow. President Obama announces in his State of the Union address that he plans to bring hope and change to the Washington D.C. public schools and also a couple of the subway stations.


Copyright 2009

Editor's note: You might be interested in the earlier posts, "Gazing into the future" and "Yes we can and no we won't."

Royal travels

Will everyone please stop complaining that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi travels like a queen?

Yes, it's true, she took five Air Force jets to Copenhagen because she had to be there to offer your hard-earned tax dollars to Third World socialists and tin pot dictators.

Yes, she tried to get a bigger Air Force jet to fly back and forth from Washington to California because she didn't want to be inconvenienced by refueling stops or, heaven forbid, commercial flights.

But it is simply wrong to accuse her of traveling like a queen.

This is a picture of the queen traveling to her Sandringham estate for Christmas:



Really, that's the Queen of England.




Queen Elizabeth chose to travel on an ordinary commuter passenger train, elegantly and regally making the point that she understands the economic hardship in her country and is not out-of-touch with the British public.

It's probably no accident that Her Majesty did this on the very day Prime Minister Gordon Brown and her son, the Prince of Wales, took separate jets to the U.N. Climate Conference in Copenhagen to lecture everyone else on the importance of reducing their carbon footprint.

So let's all stop insulting the queen by accusing Nancy Pelosi of acting like her.

If you are annoyed at Speaker Pelosi for her policies or her perks, here's something constructive you can do about it.

Meet John Dennis:



He's running for Congress in California's 8th Congressional district, currently represented by Rep. Nancy Pelosi.

Here's his website, http://www.johndennis2010.com.

Here's his page on the issues of "Liberty & Privacy," where he begins by quoting Patrick Henry: "The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government."

Here's the page where you can chip in five or ten dollars to his campaign: https://www.completecampaigns.com/public.asp?name=DennisJohn&page=8.

If you'd like to send Speaker Pelosi a message, you can always call her office. But if you'd like to make sure she gets the message, send five dollars to John Dennis for Congress.


Copyright 2009

Rewriting the First Amendment

Suppose you wanted to amend the Constitution to bar Congress from restricting freedom of speech in any way.

How would you word it?

You might write something like this: Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.

That certainly sounds airtight. Congress shall make "no law" abridging the freedom of speech or of the press.

"No law."

Not "no unreasonable law."

Not "no unfair law."

"No law." Congress shall make "no law" abridging (definition: depriving, cutting off) the freedom of speech or of the press.

That should do it. We would just need to get it approved by two-thirds of the House and two-thirds of the Senate, and then by three-quarters of the fifty state legislatures, and it would be the law of the land.

Of course, we can save ourselves a lot of trouble by reading the Constitution we already have, because that's what it says now.

The U.S. Supreme Court is currently puzzling over the case of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which stems from a documentary motion picture critical of Hillary Rodham Clinton. At issue is whether the movie is some kind of an illegal campaign advertisement under the campaign finance laws passed by Congress.

It's possible that the justices will throw out the 2002 McCain-Feingold Act and any number of other restrictions on who can say what when about incumbents and their challengers.

It's also possible that the justices won't throw out these laws and instead will continue to decide on a case-by-case basis which restrictions on campaign donations and ads are reasonable, and which ones aren't.

And this brings us to the strange case of Congressman Alan Grayson, Democrat of Florida.

Rep. Grayson wrote a letter to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder on December 15 asking him to investigate and prosecute Angie G. Langley for putting up a website that is critical of him and seeking to raise money to defeat him next November.

The website is called MyCongressmanIsNuts.com. "Utterly tasteless and juvenile," Rep. Grayson complained in his letter.

The congressman wants Ms. Langley fined and imprisoned for five years for violating 18 U.S.C. 1001.

Maybe Angie G. Langley has violated 18 U.S.C. 1001 and maybe she has not, but either way a citizen of the United States has a perfect right to ask:

"What the hell kind of an unconstitutional law prohibits a citizen from criticizing a congressman and trying to raise money to defeat him in the next election?"

And while we're thinking about it, "What the hell kind of an unconstitutional law makes a congressman believe he can threaten a citizen with arrest for ridiculing him?"

It's easy to say Congressman Alan Grayson is a whack job and no one in the Justice Department will take his request seriously. But it's no small thing to be threatened with arrest by the United States government. It's expensive to defend yourself against federal charges, and just the reported possibility of charges can be enough to destroy a career and throw a life into financial chaos.

Do we want to live in the kind of country where citizens are afraid to criticize elected officials and terrified to raise money to defeat them?

Let's hope the U.S. Supreme Court throws out the entire body of federal campaign finance law. Justices and lawmakers take an oath to uphold the Constitution. Perhaps we should make them take an oath to read it, too.


Copyright 2009

Predicting slavery

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid took to the Senate floor today and said Republicans who oppose the health care reform bill are just like the 19th century politicians who supported slavery.

"If you think you've heard these same excuses before, you're right," Reid said. "When this country belatedly recognized the wrongs of slavery, there were those who dug in their heels and said 'slow down, it's too early, things aren't bad enough.'"

He also compared health care reform opponents to people who opposed the civil rights movement.

"When this body was on the verge of guaranteeing equal civil rights to everyone regardless of the color of their skin, some senators resorted to the same filibuster threats that we hear today," the Senate Majority Leader said.

America Wants To Know predicted these comments in a September 4, 2009, post titled "Why we're fighting." Here it is:

Why we're fighting

Believe it or not, the battle over health care reform has its roots in the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, the Supreme Court ruling that banned racial segregation in schools.

The Brown ruling was a landmark decision because it reversed the precedents which stretched all the way back to the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment. The framers of the Fourteenth Amendment were very careful to leave racial segregation untouched. Twice they specifically refused to adopt language that banned discrimination on the basis of race, citing their fear that the courts might use that language to strike down racial segregation, a result, they said, that was "not intended."

When the 20th century Supreme Court struck down racial segregation, the justices were asserting the power of the federal courts to set aside both precedents and statutes in order to achieve justice, a result that they believed could not be achieved by strictly following the Constitution.

Racial segregation, like slavery before it, was protected by the Constitution's division of power between the states and the federal government. It takes the approval of three-quarters of the states to amend the Constitution, and that's a very steep hill to climb. Who knows how many generations of African-Americans might have been forced by law to live as second-class citizens if the Supreme Court and the federal government had not stretched their powers in order to force the states to ban racial discrimination.

But here's the problem.

Not everything is slavery.

In fact, nothing else is slavery. No other injustice compares to turning people into property, so that the Constitution's vitally important protection of property rights would perversely hold people in bondage in the name of liberty.

Even though women, and immigrants, and gays, and Jews, and Catholics have experienced discrimination in the United States, nothing compares to slavery.

Nothing.

However, to many people who came of age in the post-Brown era, any attempt to prevent the federal government from enforcing fairness of any kind, on any issue, is equivalent to opposing court-ordered desegregation.

That's why so many people are accusing health care reform opponents of racism, as House Ways and Means Chairman Charles Rangel did on Thursday.

Is it racist to want to hold the federal government to the constitutional limits of its power?

In the case of school segregation, it was.

But is private health insurance like segregation? Is market pricing for pharmaceuticals like segregation? Is state-by-state regulation of insurance companies like segregation?

Are locally-controlled school curricula like segregation? Are lower federal taxes like segregation? Is a balanced budget like segregation?

You would think so, to listen to some politicians. Yesterday Vice President Joe Biden called the $787 billion stimulus bill "morally right."

Reasonable people can disagree over whether it is "morally right" to borrow money for federal spending and then send the bill to everybody's grandchildren, but right now we're all too angry at each other to be reasonable.

The health care reform bill is a dead body, and the politicians pretending to revive it are just maneuvering to get somebody else's fingerprints on the knife. But this is an argument we're going to keep having until we face the fact that Brown v. Board of Education was necessarily unconstitutional, and not a model for the expanded use of federal government power to solve every problem.


Copyright 2009

Editor's note: For more information and complete source notes on the history of the Fourteenth Amendment and the desegregation cases, please see the appendix to The 37th Amendment at www.ExtremeInk.com/appendix.htm.

.

Argus on Tiger

Comedian Argus Hamilton has decided to honor the world's number-one golfer with a Special Collection of Tiger Woods jokes on his web site. Tiger joins the exclusive company of previous honorees Eliot Spitzer, Mel Gibson, Larry Craig, Paris Hilton, Sarah Palin and the California recall election.

You can find the jokes at http://www.ArgusHamilton.com/tiger.htm.

Read Argus five days a week (Tuesday through Friday and Sunday) at www.ArgusHamilton.com/argus.htm.


.

The case for adultery

Notice anything about these pictures?




The first one is Michaele Salahi meeting the president at a White House state dinner last week. The second one is Monica Lewinsky meeting the president at a White House Christmas party in 1996.

All politicians have a gift for charming people, so maybe that's the reason the facial expressions of the women are so similar.

They both look really... what's the word... comfortable.

They look delighted and effusive and in love.

Just a coincidence, surely.

Or is it?

This week the Obama administration announced that White House social secretary Desiree Rogers would not cooperate with a congressional investigation into the breach of security that allowed Michaele Salahi and her husband into the White House.

"Based on the separation of powers, staff here don't go to testify in front of Congress," press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters on Wednesday.

Seriously?

"It doesn't even pass the laugh test, to be quite blunt about it," said George Mason University public policy professor Mark Rozell, the author of a new book on executive privilege.

But House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson decided not to fight the White House. He refused to authorize a subpoena for Desiree Rogers' testimony as requested by Rep. Peter King, the ranking Republican on the committee.

Three uniformed Secret Service agents were put on paid administrative leave this week although everyone continues to praise their outstanding work, and no one from the social office is in trouble although everyone acknowledges that procedures could have been better.

Earlier this year, President Obama had to do major damage control after he casually sided with a black Harvard professor against a white police officer, so the president might incur the seething wrath of law enforcement officers across the country if he permits three Secret Service agents to be saddled with blame for someone else's incompetence.

And he did campaign on greater transparency, specifically criticizing the Bush administration's unwillingness to let presidential aides testify before Congress.

What is the big secret that's worth all this political risk?

Is it presidential adultery?

After the party-crashing incident, press secretary Robert Gibbs went on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" show and was asked if the president was angry.

"I think it is safe to say he was angry, Michelle was angry," Gibbs said.

Did you catch that? The anger of the president is presumed. The anger of the first lady was witnessed.

A few months ago, the Obamas gave an interview to the New York Times Magazine about how the presidency has affected their marriage. Mrs. Obama hinted that things weren't perfect. "The bumps happen to everybody," she said.

Washington correspondent Jodi Kantor wrote:

"Clearly, the Obamas prefer to think of themselves as largely unaltered. 'The strengths and challenges of our marriage don't change because we move to a different address,' the first lady said, the president studying the carpet as she answered."

Maybe we should have been a little more suspicious when the president put up such a fight to keep his BlackBerry.

Here's a little more evidence that there might be more to the Obama-Michaele handshake than meets the eye.

Michaele's husband Tareq corresponded by e-mail with Pentagon official Michele Jones in the weeks before the state dinner. In one e-mail he wrote that he knew "for a fact" that six people who had been invited, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid among them, would not be attending:



The only administration official who has publicly acknowledged contact with the Salahis is Michele Jones, and Tareq Salahi was giving her this information, not hearing it from her.

Who told him? Were the Salahis in touch with someone in the social office? Why would someone in the social office share details of the RSVPs for an upcoming state dinner with people who weren't even invited to it?

Maybe there's a seedier explanation.

This is an excerpt from the Starr Report:

Ms. Lewinsky testified that she and the President had a sexual encounter during this visit. (176) They kissed, and the President touched Ms. Lewinsky's bare breasts with his hands and mouth. (177) At some point, Ms. Currie approached the door leading to the hallway, which was ajar, and said that the President had a telephone call. (178) Ms. Lewinsky recalled that the caller was a Member of Congress with a nickname. (179) While the President was on the telephone, according to Ms. Lewinsky, "he unzipped his pants and exposed himself," and she performed oral sex. (180)

The numbers in parentheses are footnotes, where Independent Counsel Ken Starr scrupulously documented the source for every unbelievable but corroborated detail. You can read it here.

Did Michaele Salahi hear the RSVP information in the same way Monica Lewinsky overheard telephone conversations with Members of Congress?

If Michaele Salahi has a personal relationship with the president, the Secret Service agents on duty might have recognized her and believed that she was expected inside the White House for the state dinner, and you can bet they'd know better than to call the social office staffers who work for the first lady.

In fact, the Secret Service acknowledges that the agents did not call the social office staff. No explanation for this departure from the agency's protocols has been given.

Not publicly, anyway.

Is it impossible that Michaele Salahi is having an affair with President Obama?

Would anyone who was having an affair with the president post photos of her White House visit on a Facebook page? Wouldn't that be rather indiscreet?

"Between 1995 and 1998, Ms. Lewinsky confided in 11 people about her relationship with the President," the Starr report says.

This is a photo of then-Senator Obama with Michaele Salahi, her husband, and celebrity guests at a polo event in 2005:



At the time that photo was taken, Senator Obama was living in Washington D.C. while his wife Michelle lived in Chicago with the kids.

A few days after the Salahis crashed the state dinner, the Obamas attended the Oregon State-George Washington University basketball game. Here's a picture of the president and the first lady in their courtside seats:



That's Mrs. Obama's mother sitting between them in the well-known Chelsea Clinton position.

Yes, it's just speculation.

It's hard to believe the president is cheating on his wife right under her nose inside the White House.

It's much easier to believe that three highly trained Secret Service agents decided for no reason to allow two uninvited and unscreened party crashers into the White House state dinner for the prime minister of India.

Right.


Copyright 2009

Editor's note: You might be interested the the earlier posts, "Bombshell" and "Mr. Rumsfeld's mythical privilege."

.