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A former adviser to President Barack Obama criticized Comcast’s acquisition of NBC Universal as evidence of consumer-hostile business practices in the communications industry, Ars Technica reports. Susan Crawford, a visiting professor at Harvard, served as Obama’s special assistant for science, technology and innovation policy. In her book “Captive Audience: The Telecom Industry and Monopoly Power in the New Gilded Age,” Crawford implicates AT&T, Verizon, Time Warner, Apple, Google and Microsoft, as well as Comcast. She states that these companies “tacitly cooperate by carving out their separate areas of expertise,” resulting in overpriced products and services for consumers. Crawford argues for...

Full Committee DATE: February 27, 2013 TIME: 10:00 AM ROOM: Hart 216 OFFICIAL HEARING NOTICE / WITNESS LIST: February 25, 2013 NOTICE OF COMMITTEE HEARING LOCATION CHANGE The hearing entitled “Hearing on the Assault Weapons Ban of 2013” scheduled before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary for Wednesday, February 27, 2013 at 10:00 a.m., in Room 226 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building will now take place in Room 216 of the Hart Senate Office Building. Senator Feinstein to preside. By order of the Chairman. Witness List Hearing before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary On “Hearing on the Assault...

The Obama administration is prodding people to become whistleblowers for ObamaCare. Of course not to blow the whistle on the government and those who created this monstrosity that no one can figure out. No, to blow the whistle on small businesses who can then be fined quickly. This way they can be run out of business even more quickly then ever. Sometimes you really can't make this crap up: The Affordable Care Act sets up a new arena of whistleblower protections for employees who complain that their company-provided health insurance doesn’t do what it’s supposed to do. On Friday, the...

President Obama announcing his run for President in 2007 in Springfield, IL: "And as people have looked away in disillusionment and frustration, we know what's filled the void. The cynics, and the lobbyists, and the special interests who've turned our government into a game only they can afford to play. They write the checks and you get stuck with the bills, they get the access while you get to write a letter, they think they own this government, but we're here today to take it back. The time for that politics is over. It's time to turn the page."

First lady Michelle Obama, surrounded by servicemen and women, made a surprise appearance at Sunday night's Oscar ceremony when she appeared via live video from Washington to present the award for Best Picture. Jack Nicholson was present on stage to hand off the award to Ben Affleck for Argo. Obama praised the nominees for the night's highest honor, saying the films nominated for the Best Picture Oscar could teach lessons that "apply to all of us no matter who we are, what we look like, where we come from and who we love." She said she was excited to pay...

"Obama's anti-gun campaign is a fraud," Stockman said. "Obama's supporters are panicking and willing to do anything to create the appearance of popular support, even if it means trying to defraud Congress," he added. "I call upon the president to denounce this phony spam campaign."Stockman said that in response to Obama's call for people to tweet their congressman in support of gun control legislation, he received just 16 tweets. But he said all of these messages were identical, and that a closer look at them revealed that only six were from real people.

Here’s the first hard evidence we’ve seen that the big meeting of the minds on guns that the media’s been touting might be overhyped. Plain and simple, says Coburn, if Democrats demand that records of private gun sales be kept, the compromise is dead. But wait. Kept by who? By the seller, or by the federal government? A Senate aide familiar with the process said Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace erred in the question he posed to Coburn. The aides said there is no discussion of allowing the federal government to keep any records of background checks or sales,...

A Web domain using the name of President Obama's grassroots lobbying group Organizing for Action now points to the National Rifle Association's web site. Derek Bovard, a computer technician in Castle Rock, Colo., registered the domain name organizingforaction.net after seeing a report about the formation of the lobbying group on Fox News last Friday. Bovard, a Republican who voted for Mitt Romney in the last election cycle, says that he bought the domain for $10 and would be willing to part with it for $10,000. He considering donating the name to the Ronald Reagan Library, but overnight decided to point...

If it mattered, the dismissive way Obama treats the media coupled with his lack of transparency would be troubling. But it doesn't matter. Even if the president was as transparent as glass, the media would still cover up anything that might politically damage him. So the fact that Obama treats the media like the lackeys they are, is actually very amusing and all kinds of satisfying. The media's been whining about "access" for 10 days now and as a result, today, Obama pretty much laughed in their collective faces with this: “What I want to do is clear out the...

"Obama's anti-gun campaign is a fraud," Stockman said. "Obama's supporters are panicking and willing to do anything to create the appearance of popular support, even if it means trying to defraud Congress," he added. "I call upon the president to denounce this phony spam campaign."

In addition to Michelle Obama’s surprise appearance at the Oscars ceremony last night, DreamWorks CEO and Obama mega-donor Jeffrey Katzenberg was recognized for his philanthropic and humanitarian achievements.Katzenberg received the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award (an “honorary Oscar”) in September 2012, and was honored again on Sunday during the live festivities.The ultra-wealthy Hollywood tycoon and long-time liberal benefactor was one of the most prolific donors during the 2012 election cycle, giving more than $3.2 million to Democratic candidates, committees, and super PACs. Most of that money ($3 million) went to Priorities USA Action, the pro-Obama super PAC that the president had...

President Obama, in his State of the Union address this month, proposed raising the minimum wage to $9.00 an hour. As recently as 2006 that rate was $5.15, and has been at its current level of $7.25 only since July 2009. The next day, as if not to be outdone, two Minnesota state legislators proposed raising Minnesota’s minimum wage to $9.50 per hour from $6.15 presently. (Minnesota businesses currently follow the federal minimum.) After years of consensus among economists on the effects of the minimum wage, the last twenty years has seen renewed debate over whether minimum wage laws reduce...

If you want a thorough agency-by-agency rundown of the budget cuts sequestration would deliver, the Office of Management and Budget has you covered. In compliance with The Sequestration Transparency Act of 2012, the OMB sent a detailed report to Congress in September 2012. But there's a small problem with the report: One of the cuts it warns against would affect an agency that no longer exists--and didn't exist when the OMB sent its report to congress. The first line item on page 121 of the OMB's September 2012 report says that under sequestration the National Drug Intelligence Center would lose...

US President Barack Obama warned warring politicians Monday it was time to start governing as Washington headed into another manufactured crisis threatening the fragile economy. Obama told an annual meeting of state governors at the White House that huge budget cuts due to hit on March 1 would "slow our economy, eliminate good jobs" and leave Americans with "thinly stretched" budgets wondering what to do, AFP reported. The president is demanding that congressional Republicans stave off a set of arbitrary, automatic spending cuts known as the sequester by closing tax loopholes that benefit the rich and corporations. "We can't just...

<p>Bloomberg/Businessweek has an interesting article on the upcoming “bipartisan” panel entitled “Limited Mortgage Finance Role for U.S. Government Gains Support”.</p>

A Texas Republican on Monday said President Obama's gun control campaign is a fraud based on fake messages over Twitter.

Last week President Obama held a photo op an important news conference in which he warned Americans of the dire, disastrous consequences if the Eeevil Republicans have their way and the dreaded, draconian SEQUESTER goes into effect!! Jobs will be lost! Vital services will be lost!! LIVES will be lost!!! Planes will fall out of the sky! First responders won't be there to respond! Teachers will be out of a job! Roads and bridges! Crumbling infrastructure! SCHOOLS! Children's SCHOOLS, Mandrake! The Children--think of The Children!!!! "My fellow Americans, just look at these carefully selected stage props these brave first...

(CNSNews.com) – President Barack Obama called Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at about 10 p.m. on the night of the terrorist attacks on the U.S. facilities in Benghazi, Libya, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney told CNSNews.com. That was more than six hours after the attacks started, more than an hour before Tryone Woods and Glen Doherty were killed–and about the time that Clinton first released a statement linking the attacks to “inflammatory material posted on the Internet,” a reference to an anti-Muslim video on YouTube. “Like every president before him, he has a national security adviser and deputy national...

President Obama urged compromise Monday as he pushed congressional Republicans to reach an agreement to avoid big spending cuts due to take effect at the end of the week. "There are always going to be some areas where we have genuine disagreement ... but there are more areas where we can do a lot more cooperating than we have seen in the past couple years," Obama told a meeting of the National Governors Association at the White House. "At some point, we've got to do some governing. And, certainly, we can't keep careening from manufactured crisis to manufactured crisis." ....

George Washington, a man much loved, was the father of our country. Frederick Nietzsche, a man much loathed, was a 19th century German philosopher who brazenly declared that "God is Dead." While these two men could not have been more different, their descriptions of government were oddly similar. Washington compared government to fire; "Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force. Like fire it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master." (It cannot be proven conclusively that Washington himself originated this quote. However, it has been attributed to him for over a century and is in...