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Rahm Emanuel may be leaving the White House, but that doesn’t mean he’s going to be back in his house. Chicago Sun-Times columnist and talking in the third person enthusiast Michael Sneed is reporting that the tenant Emanuel leased his Chicago home to has no intention of moving out now that the Chief of Staff is returning from Washington. We can only imagine the barrage of four letter words this development has incurred. From the Chicago Sun-Times: “The upshot: Sneed has learned the tenant, Robert ‘Rob’ P. Halpin, 59, who holds the lease with his wife, Lori, until June 2011,...

Democrats in Congress are holding White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel accountable for his part in the collapse of healthcare reform. The emerging consensus among critics in both chambers is that Emanuel’s lack of Senate experience slowed President Barack Obama’s top domestic priority. The share of the blame comes as cracks are beginning to show in Emanuel’s once-impregnable political armor. Last week he had to apologize after a report surfaced that he called liberal groups “retarded” in a private meeting. While Emanuel has quelled that controversy by meeting with advocates for people with disabilities, on Capitol Hill he’s under...

The White House escalated its offensive against Fox News on Sunday by urging other news organizations to stop "following Fox" and instead join the administration's attempt to marginalize the channel. White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel told CNN that President Obama does not want "the CNNs and the others in the world [to] basically be led in following Fox." Obama senior adviser David Axelrod went further by calling on media outlets to join the administration in declaring that Fox is "not a news organization." "Other news organizations like yours ought not to treat them that way," Axelrod counseled ABC's...

Every 10 years, the federal government undertakes a constitutionally mandated count of the American population to determine the apportionment of elected representatives among the 50 states, and, given the political stakes, it has always been a lodestone for controversy. In recent decades, the blasts and the blows have been mostly about the counting - or undercounting, as the case may be - of minorities. The squalls this year are blowing in from three different directions, and two of them are based on constitutional complaints. First fury up, a charge that President Barack Obama has made a power grab by transferring...

Main Points made by Rahm Emanuel in his book which Obama is now trying to push into policy. Makes you wonder who is running the show. 1. Page 160 New Domestic Defense Division Rahm: “It should include top security talent from the CIA, the FBI, and the ranks of state and local law enforcement. Obama: Obama’s new task force: The Team would be drawn from those with relevant experience probably from agencies such as the FBI, CIA, and the Pentagon…” http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124787391051060705.html 2. Page 58 Citizen service: Rahm: “Every citizen needs to understand and accept the essence of the American bargain:...

Leave it to Democratic Party operatives to describe citizen protesters as acting like “organized mobs.” Such an unimaginative contradiction in terms surely indicates a new level of desperation in the liberal camp. Then again, the same smirking liberal pointmen introduced the phrase “tea-bagging” to a general population heretofore blessedly ignorant of that particular sexual fetish. (Shamefully, even Senate Majority Whip Richard Durbin has used the expression in public. It’s another indication of the degree to which civil discourse has degenerated — no small thanks to Durbin’s own comparison of U.S. soldiers to “Nazis” on the Senate floor. But back to...

On July 22, 2009, President Obama held one of the most boring news conferences in the history of televised presidential events. For nearly 50 minutes, he blathered on about private and public health care plans, red pills and blue pills, costs and benefits. In the last five minutes of the conference, he made his controversial comments about Henry Louis Gates and the Cambridge, Mass., police department -- but by that time, everyone watching was either drifting into sleep or totally comatose. So why did ABC, NBC, and CBS broadcast this atrocious, narcolepsy-inducing ode to arrogance in the midst of prime...

The House investigative committee’s top-ranking Republican wants White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel to answer for allegations that he used “Chicago-style scare tactics” to intimidate lawmakers who say the economic stimulus has failed. In a letter sent to Emanuel on Tuesday, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee ranking member Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) demanded to know how involved the chief of staff was in an effort to “threaten” Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer after Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) said the president’s Recovery Act was a failure. According to reports, Emanuel directed four Cabinet secretaries to send what Issa characterized as “threatening...

Following reports that White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel has been orchestrating an effort to intimidate members of Congress and Governors who raise legitimate concerns regarding the effectiveness of the stimulus, House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Ranking Member Darrell Issa (R-CA) sent a letter to Emanuel saying “While this type of scare tactic may work In Chicago, it will not work to intimidate me or other Members of the United States Congress.” “I and others have dared to bring these facts to the attention of President Obama, the Congress and the American people,” Issa wrote. “You’ve unfortunately...

WASHINGTON. D.C. – Following reports that White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel has been orchestrating an effort to intimidate members of Congress and Governors who raise legitimate concerns regarding the effectiveness of the stimulus, House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Ranking Member Darrell Issa (R-CA) sent a letter to Emanuel saying “While this type of scare tactic may work In Chicago, it will not work to intimidate me or other Members of the United States Congress.” “I and others have dared to bring these facts to the attention of President Obama, the Congress and the American people,” Issa...

In the days before President Obama's last news conference, as the networks weighed whether to give up a chunk of their precious prime time, Rahm Emanuel went straight to the top. Rather than calling ABC, the White House chief of staff phoned Bob Iger, chief executive of parent company Disney. Instead of contacting NBC, Emanuel went to Jeffrey Immelt, the chief executive of General Electric. He also spoke with Les Moonves, the chief executive of CBS Corp., the company spun off from Viacom. Whether this amounted to undue pressure or plain old Chicago arm-twisting, Emanuel got results: the fourth hour...

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will bypass the committee working on the chamber's health-care reform bill and put the legislation to a full floor vote by next week, Rep. Tom Price said Friday. "My sense as of last night is her plan is now to bring the bill to the floor," said Mr. Price, a Georgia Republican and orthopedic doctor. He spoke on The Washington Times "America's Morning News" radio show. "We've witnessed some remarkable conversations and discussions between the speaker and others that leads me to believe she's going to pull a power play." Mrs. Pelosi, California Democrat, participated in...

Here is video today of GOP House Minority Leader John Boehner from the House Floor where he said bluntly that the Obama Administration has not "rescued the economy." Boehner was reacting to what he said were comments by Obama Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel who reportedly said "We have rescued the economy." Boehner pointed out that the 9.5% unemployment does not bear that out, nor the millions of jobs that stand to be lost if President Obama's "Cap and Trade" legislation were to become law. . . . (Watch Video)

At the same time President Obama is asking members of Congress to take one of the most politically difficult votes of their careers, he is also pressing lawmakers to give up one of their most valued perks of office: boosting Medicare payments to benefit hometown providers. Behind the scenes, Obama is pushing for a mechanism that would take Medicare payment authority out of the hands of politicians and invest it in a separate entity, possibly under the executive branch. "Structures that fundamentally alter the long-term costs are a must for real health-care reform," said White House Chief of Staff Rahm...

On the defensive over the economy and health care, the White House is shooting back with a double-barreled message for its critics and skeptics. To Republicans who say the stimulus isn’t working: Back off. To moderate Democrats wary of health care reform: We’re watching you. Earlier this week, the administration launched a coordinated effort to jam Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl, an Arizona Republican who’s argued that the government should “cancel the rest of the stimulus spending.” No fewer than four Cabinet secretaries wrote to Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer — also a Republican — to ask her if she agreed...