News Stuff, Plus a Dog

As corrupt as the night is dark.

Alejandro Mayorkas, the former director of U.S. Customs and Immigration Services, favored projects championed by Nevada U.S. Sen. Harry Reid, Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, and Hillary Clinton’s brother Tony Rodham, according to an explosive new report from the Department of Homeland Security inspector’s general (IG).

The IG concluded its investigation into whether Mayorkas, now the deputy secretary at DHS, "exerted improper influence" in the adjudication of the Employee-Based Fifth Preference (EB-5), which allows aliens to invest $500,000 in U.S. companies in order to gain residency for themselves and their families.

And indeed, the IG determined that Mayorkas did improperly exert his influence, and on behalf of companies with ties to Reid, McAuliffe, and Rodham.

"Mayorkas communicated with stakeholders on substantive issues, outside of the normal adjudicatory process, and intervened with the career USCIS staff in ways that benefited the stakeholders," the report reads, noting that in each of those cases the outcome would have been different if not for Mayorkas' intervention.

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The IG, which began its investigations in Sept. 2012, also found that the number and variety of witnesses was “highly unusual” and characterized Mayorkas' level of intervention as "unprecedented."

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In an unrelated case, Rodham’s position with Gulf Coast earned him a spot on the board of a gold mining company with interests in Haiti. Rodham met the owner of that company, VCS Mining, at an event for the Clinton Global Initiative, his sister's "charity."

I put the quotes around "charity" myself there at the end.

Nobel Peace Prize winner Obama slowing the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan.

A lot of soldiers are going to be left in an indefensibly weak position, just so Obama can say he's not blowing Afghanistan in exactly the same way he blew Iraq.

resident Barack Obama on Tuesday reversed plans to withdraw about 5,000 US troops from Afghanistan this year, an overture to the country's new reform-minded leader.

Hosting Ashraf Ghani at the White House for a first presidential head-to-head, Obama agreed to keep the current level of 9,800 US troops in the war-torn country until the end of 2015.

"President Ghani had requested some flexibility on our drawdown timelines," Obama said at a joint news conference, adding a decision to meet that request "reflects our reinvigorated partnership with Afghanistan."

By the way, he called Ghani "Karzai" during the event, because he's a just-barely-average-IQ idiot who's also lazy.

This AP reporter, Mike Lee, has some questions for the State Department's resident Dummy Jen Psaki.

Obama, who hates Israel and is also kind of anti-semitic, may push to recognize Palestine as a sovereign state, because of Butthurt.

The WSJ says of Obama's Mean Girlish temper tantrums: Americans and the world is left to wonder just whose side Mr. Obama is on.

And, as promised, Fritz the Golden Retriever, a dog who catches food in his mouth the way Barack Obama governs.

And here now some Classic Rock.

posted by Ace at 07:50 PM

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