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Obama pick faces questions over bombers' clemencyBy PETE YOST Associated Press Writer Originally published Wednesday, January 14, 2009 at 2:05 PM WASHINGTON — New York police detective Anthony S. Senft's life changed forever when a bomb set by Puerto Rican separatists exploded, blowing him 15 feet in the air and blinding him in one eye. Now, he's angry that Eric Holder, who played a key role in awarding clemency to the bombers, is in line to be attorney general. Holder, as President Bill Clinton's deputy attorney general, worked closely with the Justice Department's pardon attorney to raise the possibility of...

The chasm between those who want President-elect Barack Obama to produce his birth certificate to verify his eligibility to hold the nation's highest office and those who simply support the Democrat is widening. "The Constitution means what we today decide it means," opined one participant on a new WND forum that offers readers an opportunity to express their opinion on the birth certificate dispute.

I spent several years of the Clinton administration writing about one scandal or controversy after another. There was, of course, the Whitewater affair and the fight over the independent counsel, Kenneth Starr. There was the Lewinsky matter. Travelgate. The bitter controversy over Elian Gonzalez. The furor over Bill Clinton's last-minute pardons. And more. It seems like so long ago. So why am I suddenly hitting the search feature on my laptop ten times a day, looking for old articles? Why am I looking for names like Eric Holder, Gregory Craig, Rahm Emanuel, and John Podesta? Because change has come to...

President-elect Barack Obama is expected to name two attorneys to his administration who helped return Elián González to Cuba, angering some Miami Republicans. Two veterans of the Elián González saga are expected to be named to top posts in Democrat Barack Obama's administration, infuriating some Cuban-American Republicans who haven't forgotten the 6-year-old boy seized in Miami and sent back to the communist regime. The Associated Press is reporting that Obama's top choice for U.S. attorney general is Eric Holder, who served as deputy attorney general during the 2000 raid in Miami. Greg Craig, who represented González's father in the custody...

Obama Appoints Castro's Lawyer as White House Counsel By Humberto Fontova Among the throng of Clinton regime retreads recruited for the Obama administration we find Gregory Craig. Craig served as Obama's advisor on Latin American during the campaign, and was appointed last week as chief White House Counsel. The MSM has mentioned Craig's role as Bill Clinton's impeachment lawyer, but mostly has omitted mention of Craig's role as chief facilitator for Fidel Castro's shanghaiing of Elian Gonzalez. Officially Craig served as attorney for Elian's father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez. This humble man worked as a hotel doorman in a nation where...

Gregory B. Craig, a well-known Washington lawyer who quarterbacked President Bill Clinton’s impeachment defense, has been chosen White House counsel by President-elect Barack Obama, according to Democratic officials. Craig is intimately familiar with the president-elect’s record because he played the role of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in debate preparations. The officials said Obama has settled on Craig but were not sure when the appointment would be announced. The choice gives the president-elect both experience and loyalty. During the primaries, Craig was an early Clinton alumni defector to Obama. Columnist Robert D. Novak reported back in the winter of 2007 that...

HAVANA (CBS4) ― Eight years after a headline making international custody fight which ended with his return to his father in Cuba, Elian Gonzalez has joined Cuba's Young Communist Union. In an article in Cuba's communist youth newspaper, Juventud Rebelde, the 14-year old Gonzalez said he would never let ex-President Fidel Castro and his brother Raul Castro down. He joined more than 18-thousand others who joined the group on Saturday. In 2000, Gonzalez' mother was killed when a boat carrying them to the U.S. capsized in the Florida Straits. Elian, who was 6 years old at the time..........."

HAVANA, Cuba (AP) -- The Cuban boy at the center of an international custody battle eight years ago has joined Cuba's Young Communist Union. Elian Gonzalez said he will never let down ex-President Fidel Castro and his brother Raul Castro, according to the Communist youth newspaper Juventud Rebelde. Raul Castro succeeded Fidel as president earlier this year. Now 14, Elian was 6 when his relatives in Miami, Florida, lost their fight to keep him in the United States and he was returned to Cuba in mid-2000 with his father. Elian had survived a boating accident off the Florida coast that...

Early Elián Gonzalez raid was planned BY WILFREDO CANCIO ISLA Before the forced removal of Elián González from his relatives' home in Little Havana eight years ago, federal agents had another plan to return the child to his father in Cuba. But an order from Washington canceled it at the last minute. According to statements by James Goldman, then head of operations for the U.S. immigration agency in Miami, federal agents had been instructed to seize Elián during a meeting in Miami Beach with his grandmothers at the home of Sister Jeanne O'Laughlin, then-president of Barry University, in January 2000....

Cuba's Useful Idiot By Humberto Fontova FrontPageMagazine.com | 4/16/2008 Last month Dan Rather’s new gig as host of HDNET's “Dan Rather Reports” found him, as so often during his CBS days, “reporting” from Cuba. From Dan we heard of “dramatic changes” down there, of a “remarkable transformation.” “The door (to the U.S.) is open, “explained Dan. “The best time to talk is now.” Dan was chanting a familiar tune, one we've heard almost nonstop from the MSM's pet “Cuba Experts'” for the past 21 months. As usual when dealing with Cuban matters, a sober look behind the carefully constructed and...

Just a reminder that Elian turned eight years old today for all of those of you cared for his freedom. I want to wish him a happy birthday despite his circumstances.

MIAMI - A Cuban father allowed his young daughter to emigrate legally to the United States with her mother to find a better life. But months later, the mother has become incapable of caring for the girl and the father wants to take the child home. It would seem a simple case, especially since the mother agrees her daughter should return to Cuba. Yet on the eve of the trial, a judge has warned that it could "inflame the community," where the battle over Elian Gonzalez nearly eight years ago divided the city and became an international incident. Testimony is...

In the first public hearing on the fate of a 4-year-old girl whose father wants her to return to Cuba, a frustrated judge called for calm.The closed-door custody battle over the 4-year-old Cuban girl who ended up in foster care after her mother attempted suicide went on public display Wednesday, baring finger-pointing, raised voices and raw emotion. Crushed into a courtroom in Miami's dingy juvenile courthouse were about a dozen lawyers, four psychologists, social workers, guardians, an interpreter and a judge. They met in public after an appeals court ordered the hearings, which had been held secretly for more than...

LET'S BEGIN with the big lie—that Elian Gonzalez was separated from his father by his Cuban-American relatives living in Miami, and that father and son were reunited by Janet Reno's INS storm troopers. (What else can you call them, given their pre-dawn assault on a private home to snatch a child who was not a hostage, at gunpoint?) The entire premise of the Elian drama—that the Miami relatives have kept the boy from his father—is false. Elian was separated from his father not by Lazaro Gonzalez and company, but by Fidel Castro: the world's longest surviving and most sadistic dictator,...

"The Religious Left is far more “Left” than “religious” – they may look like a church on the outside, but on the inside, they’re a political organization advancing a leftist social agenda. And now, there’s hard evidence to back it up." NCC was a major player in the Elian Gonzalez criminal abduction, following are webpages I created throughout this illegal and disgraceful action on Easter Weekend 7 years ago...rto The Taking of Elian Elian Returns to Cuba

<p>FORMER PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON ON NOT CAPTURING BIN LADEN: 'At least I tried. That's the difference between me and some, including all the right wingers. They ridicule me for trying. They had eight months to try, they did not try. I tried. So I tried and failed'...</p>

With stories and photos of Fidel Castro's "personal health" bombarding us 24/7, I have given some second serious thought into my own involvement in the infamous Elian Gonzalez case. Once you hear the name "Elian", how can you ever forget this six year old boy and the media rampage that started in late 1999, and came full circle more than six years ago? Looking back, I have come to realize that in my advocacy to advance the concept of fathers' rights, I forgot to understand that young Elian was the wrong boy and the wrong case to champion in the...

http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=2292911 Video at link above shows a women holding up a sign protesting the police when one of the police shoots her with a rubber bullet in the back of the leg.She then turns around and gets shot in the forehead(wich can and does kill people) then the video cuts to the police gathering around after the protests and laughing about shooting her and talking about giving out trophys for it

A little Cuban boy named Elian, who in 1999 was scooped up by a federal SWAT team in Miami and shipped back to Cuba, is in the news again for the get well card he and his family sent to communist dictator Fidel Castro. The youngster addressed the 79-year-old as my "Dear Grandfather" and wished Castro a happy 80th birthday. For those not familiar with this child's story or for those who've forgotten, Elian Gonzalez was the center of one of the biggest news stories during the Clinton Administration. Not as big as Monica, but close. While escaping the communist...

ELIAN Gonzalez, the Cuban boy who became the celebrated object of a 2000 US-Cuba tug-of-war wished Cuban leader Fidel Castro a speedy recovery from surgery. "We send you this letter so that you know that we are concerned about your health," Elian Gonzalez, now 13, said in a letter also signed by five other children in his family and published today in the official newspaper, Juventud Rebelde. A week ago, Mr Castro, 79, handed power "temporarily" to his younger brother, Defence Minister Raul Castro, while undergoing surgery for intestinal bleeding. In November 1999, Elian, who was six at the time,...

Sunday, July 2, 2006 ELIAN – Elian Gonzalez has never spoken before about the battle between the U.S. and Cuba that he was in the middle of five years ago when he was just 6. He does now in an interview with Bob Simon. Draggan Mihailovich is the producer. AL QAEDA’S TOWN – When terrorist insurgents led by Al Qaeda took over the Iraqi town of Tal Afar, the U.S. military had to devise a way of retaking it. Their methods have become a blueprint for the war on terror. Lara Logan reports. Josh Yager is the producer. FIRST...

I have a few thoughts for you in response to some letters of late. The voices now crying for the impeachment of Bush were silent during Waco, Elian Gonzales and the first World Trade Center attack, Ruby Ridge and the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole. Their favorite president presided over the the largest bubble burst in U.S. economic history (DOT.COM). China, India and Pakistan get nukes. The U.S. bombed Yugoslavia for weeks; hit the Chinese embassy and killed thousands of untold civilians. The U.S. did a lot of bombing from 30,000 feet because Clinton was afraid to lose one soldier....

Just wondering, besides going around FISA during the investigation of Aldrich Ames, did the Clinton Administration go around FISA during the investigation and deportation of Elian Gonzales?

THOSE EVIL AMERICAN TROOPS FRIGHTENING THOSE POOR IRAQIS Yesterday we noted that John Kerry was resorting to his old ways; bashing our men and women in uniform. On last Sunday's Face the Nation Kerry had this to say about the actions of American troops in Iraq: " ..... there is no reason, Bob, that young American soldiers need to be going into the homes of Iraqis in the dead of night, terrorizing kids and children, you know, women ...." Well, there you go. Now we have the Democratic Presidential candidate, The Poodle, applying the "T" word to our own troops...

LIKE WINSTON SMITH, Elian Gonzalez has learned to love Big Brother. CBS News loves him, too. Elian's excuse is that he is 11 years old and has been brainwashed by a totalitarian police state. What excuse is there for CBS? Last week, ''60 Minutes" aired an interview with Elian, the Cuban boat child who survived a desperate escape from Fidel Castro's island dictatorship in November 1999 only to be forcibly turned over to the Cubans by the Clinton administration the following April. The story was a shameless piece of agitprop. From correspondent Bob Simon's opening description of the Elian affair...

(CBS) In the annals of conflict between Cubans and Americans, there was the Bay of Pigs, there was the Cuban Missile Crisis and, in 1999, there was Elian Gonzalez. The last time we saw Elian, he was a 6-year-old in the eye of a storm in Miami, and possibly the youngest person ever to become the focus of an international crisis. Now, five years after he returned to Cuba with his father, you will hear Elian’s story from his point of view. 60 Minutes correspondent Bob Simon reports. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- At the age of 5, he survived an incredible sea journey...

Elian interview sparks Miami row Relatives in Florida of the shipwrecked Cuban boy Elian Gonzalez have criticised an interview with him to be shown on US television on Sunday. Cubans celebrated when Elian was returned to his father In excerpts from the CBS network's 60 Minutes show Elian, now 11, calls Cuban leader Fidel Castro his friend. He also accuses his family in Miami of trying to turn him against his father during a custody battle in 2000 which culminated in his return to Cuba. A spokesman for the Florida relatives said Elian had been brainwashed. Elian turned six soon...

Elian Gonzalez, 11, calls Castro 'friend,' 'father' MIAMI, Florida (AP) -- Elian Gonzalez, the Cuban boy at the center of an international custody battle five years ago, calls Cuban President Fidel Castro his friend and says he hopes someday to see his Miami family again. "Despite everything they did, it was wrong, they are (still) my family ... my uncles," the boy said in an interview with CBS's "60 Minutes." Excerpts were released Thursday for the program that airs Sunday night. Elian, now 11, set off a seven-month custody battle after he was rescued off the Florida coast in 1999...

Former U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno wowed the crowd at the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association's conference in Montreal on Sept. 24 with an impassioned speech on universal healthcare, wrapping up the GLMA's annual conference with an inspired bang. Reno stressed the importance of gay healthcare professionals to come out and work as a community as the best means of standing up to an increasingly conservative, homophobic culture and government. “By utilizing the professional bonds and friendships built up through your work, I believe you can build a system of healthcare delivery that will make us all proud,” said Reno....

Cuba's longtime communist leader said he was proud to be the friend of Elian Gonzalez, now 11, who graduated this week from Grade 6. "I have the privilege to be his friend," Castro said in speech that was published in Cuban media Friday, a day after the leader attended Elian's graduation ceremony.

Cuban President Fidel Castro said in a speech published Friday that he's honored to be a friend of Elian Gonzalez, the boy at the center of an international custody dispute five years ago. "I have the privilege to be his friend," Castro said Thursday night during Elian's sixth-grade graduation in the coastal city of Cardenas, east of Havana. The speech was broadcast on state television and published Friday in the Communist Party daily Granma. Elian, now 11, was the subject of a high-profile legal and ideological battle between his father in Cuba and family members in South Florida, both who...

Thirteen people who were tear-gassed during the raid to seize Elian Gonzalez five years ago lost a lawsuit Friday in which they had sought $3.25 million in damages from the government. U.S. District Judge K. Michael Moore issued a 19-page decision saying that the demonstrators and bystanders failed to show enough credible evidence that federal agents' use of force during the raid was "unreasonable under the circumstances." The 13 people claimed they had been sprayed at close range while on their own property or behind barricades. Three neighbors testified that an agent gassed them without warning from 2 to 4...

MIAMI - The Little Havana home that sheltered Elian Gonzalez during his five months in Miami is still scarred from the swift raid in which armed federal agents stormed the house to reunite the boy with his father. Elian's Miami relatives didn't repair the holes created when, five years ago last Friday, authorities kicked in the bedroom door. It is a reminder to visitors that a Border Patrol officer confronted family friend Donato Dalrymple, as he tried to hide in a closet with the boy — an image captured in a Pulitzer Prize-winning Associated Press photograph. An enlarged version of...

<p>Elian Gonzalez, the young Cuban castaway whose international custody battle ended in his dramatic seizure from a Miami home five years ago, addressed a crowd of thousands Friday, thanking Cubans and Americans alike for fighting for his return to the island.</p>

MIAMI · The Little Havana home that sheltered Elián González during his five months in Miami is still scarred from the swift raid in which armed federal agents stormed the house to reunite the boy with his father. Elián's Miami relatives didn't repair the holes created five years ago today when authorities kicked in the bedroom door. It is a reminder to visitors that a Border Patrol officer confronted family friend Donato Dalrymple as he tried to hide in a closet with the boy, an image captured in a Pulitzer Prize-winning Associated Press photograph.

In his new book "Fidel: Hollywood's Favorite Tyrant," Fontova describes what he calls a staged interview Dan Rather held with Juan Miguel, father of Elian Gonzalez, the youthful lone survivor of a capsized Cuban boat which sank on its way to the U.S. The custody battle culminated in a dramatic, pre-dawn raid by machine-gun-toting federal agents to snatch the 6-year-old from his Miami relatives during Easter weekend and send him back to Castro's tyranny. Fontova also tells a heart-wrenching story of Cuba's execution of American businessman Howard Anderson. Anderson owned a chain of service stations and a Jeep dealership and...

CáRDENAS, Cuba · Elián González says he wants to be a gymnast when he grows up. But his grandfather, Juan González Sr., knows Elián's future career choices are as variable as any normal preteen's and could change next month. "I want him to be a good man, to do good deeds, not do anything he will regret. Everything else is all right," he said, sitting in his home in the coastal town of Cárdenas under a large photograph of a very young Elián. At age 11, the boy whose bitter custody battle stands as a symbol of the Cold War...

Hi, explain this to me. How was Janet Reno able to defy the 11th circuit court, but Jeb Bush wasn't. In 2000, the 11th circuit court ruled the U.S couldn't send Elian Gonzales to Cuba. He had to be in the U.S. What happened to Bill and Janet? NOTHING. They stated that the 11th Circuit had no jurisdiction and that the Florida Court had no jurisdiction. So why didn't Jeb do the same thing and send state troopers to get Terri into a hospital. Read this from April 2000. You'll see the 11th circuit court ruled Janet Reno couldn't send...

Liberals say state courts have the right to decide whether brain-damaged Florida woman Terri Schiavo lives or dies, but they held a different position in the case of Cuban refugee Elian Gonzalez in 1999. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, John Fund compared the two cases and found that liberals backed federal intervention in 5-year-old Elian's case. He said they supported the Clinton administration's decision to send heavily armed Immigration and Naturalization Service agents in an early morning raid to remove Elian from the care of family members in Miami. But, Fund notes, many of the same liberals don't believe...

Rush: The 11th Circuit Court had said "No" to Johnny Reno, but she went ahead and took custody of Elian anyway...........................

The sad case of Terri Schiavo has raised passions not seen since five years ago. Then another bitterly divided family argued in Florida courts over someone who couldn't speak on his own behalf: Elian Gonzalez. In both cases, those who were unhappy with the courts' decisions strained to assert the federal government's power to produce a different outcome. The difference is that in Mrs. Schiavo's case, Congress backed off after passing a bill that merely asked a federal court to hear the case from scratch, something that U.S. District Judge James Whittemore declined to do. By contrast, those who wanted...

For the second time in five years, government entities in this country are with brute force victimizing an innocent person during Holy Week, the week of Christ's Passion. The last time it was the Clinton administration's seizure of Elian Gonzales, of which I wrote at NewsMax: This country, which makes such a show of supporting the oppressed against the oppressors, treats [Elian's] Miami relatives in their modest bungalow home--these people who have nothing to stand on but their humanity and their sense of what is right--with contempt. This country, which gobbles up one Hollywood thriller after another in which people...

Could Dan Rather be in trouble again? A new book on Castro tells of a staged Dan Rather interview that was master-minded by a Clinton lawyer. In Fidel: Hollywood's Favorite Tyrant, author Humberto Fontova reveals for the first time how Dan Rather's "60 Minutes" interview with Juan Miguel (Elian Gonzalez's father) was stage-managed by former Clinton lawyer and friend, Gregory Craig. According to a Cuban-American translator from the U.S. Treasury Department: "The questions for Juan Miguel were actually fed to Dan Rather by Gregory Craig. After a taping session, Craig would call Dan over, give him some more instructions and...

http://www.therealcuba.com/index.htm

The kids wanted to watch a movie the other night; after much haggling we all settled on "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang". Now while watching it, something strange happened. Now, I'm a big movie buff. Much like Lieutenant Kinderman in "The Exorcist" I like to talk film, discuss it; but I'm really stumped on something. That hardly ever happens, film wise, so I hope I can call on all of your collective knowledge to help me through this. My problem is this: I think I've seen a whole third of the movie somewhere else, and I can't remember where. Was it...

Babalu blog's Val Prieto, who was profiled recently on the front page of the Miami Herald as a brilliant new voice of the often-dismissed Cuban-American community, has a striking update about the Elian Gonzalez case. Back in 2000, the rescue of the 6-year-old Cuban refugee by fishermen off the coast of Florida triggered a three-way tug-of-war between Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, the cowardly Clinton Administration, and the Cuban-American community over custody of the child. The Clinton administration resolved the question with a savage pre-dawn raid, grabbing the terrified child at gunpoint from his Miami relatives and delivering him straight to...

Captive of Castro By Sherrie Gossett | February 18, 2005 "The Cuban government installed what somebody described as a speaker phone" in the father's home in Cuba so that Cuban government agents could coach him on what to say. Elian Gonzalez's name is back in the news since a new trial related to the custody drama got underway in Miami the last week of January. He was the Cuban boy who came to America when his mother died to give him freedom.

Janet Reno came to Colorado Sate University tonight on her public speaking tour. FReepers and members of the Tyranny Response Team were there to remind the attending public of her legacy.........

This article mentions Agustin Blazquez's short "Dan Rather, '60 Minutes' an Inside View" that will be released this coming Spring as part of the Special Edition DVD of Blazquez's new documentary "The Rats Below." A retired Architect of the U.S. Treasury Department in Washington, DC, Pedro Porro, A.I.A. reveals what he found to be a serious manipulation of a segment of "60 Minutes" he participated in order to influence the conclusions of the audience. This interview with Mr. Porro was taped on May 18, 2003 - before the recent scandal on CBS about the "60 Minutes" Dan Rather segment criticizing...

Trial Opens Over Raid on Elian Gonzalez Mon Jan 24, 2:28 PM ET MIAMI - A trial opened Monday in a $3 million-plus lawsuit by 13 people who say they were injured or traumatized when federal agents seized a screaming Elian Gonzalez from his Miami relatives' home.   The opening witness was neighbor Maria Riera, who testified that she clutched her chest and thought she was dying when an agent doused her with tear gas during the April 22, 2000, raid to reunite the 6-year-old boy with his father in Cuba. The 13 neighbors and protesters are seeking up to...