Obama's Record Fundraising Comes Under Legal Scrutiny

President Barack Obama’s staggering second-quarter fundraising total – which some say could reach as high as $75 million – is expected to smash records and turn heads. But it also is drawing scrutiny from those who object that some of Obama’s fundraising techniques are questionable, and possibly even illegal.

CNSNews.com reported Friday that election law experts are questioning the legality of a presidential video, filmed in the White House, in which Obama dangled a raffle for a dinner with him and the vice president, in return for a campaign donation.

Title 18, subsection 607, states it is unlawful for the president “to solicit or receive a donation of money or other thing of value in connection with a federal, state, or local election, while in any room or building occupied in the discharge of official duties.”

A 1979 Justice Department ruling found that presidential fundraising in the White House is legal, but only when it occurs in the residential portion of the historic mansion.

But election-law experts told CNSNews the raffle video was taped in an area frequently used for official business.

“It’s a criminal offense,” high-powered GOP attorney Cleta Mitchell, who sits on the ABA’s election-law committee, told the website.

It appears the Obama video, which has been criticized by some observers for demeaning the presidency, was taped in the Map Room.

The Map Room is located on the ground floor of the White House. Obama has used it for media interviews and for a meeting with the Dalai Lama.

Most voters know the Map Room as the venue for the second Obama oath-of-office ceremony, which was conducted by Chief Justice John Roberts in January 2009 after the first ceremony was flubbed.

For now, though, Obama remains focused on building a massive war chest for his 2012 re-election campaign.

The president delivered a tongue-lashing to Republicans on Wednesday, lecturing them to work harder on solving the debt-ceiling crisis. The day after that controversial address, Obama jetted off to a Philadelphia fundraiser, adding to what is expected to be a record-breaking haul of campaign cash during April, May and June.

“A $75 million second quarter would be unprecedented and would suggest he is heading inexorably toward [raising] $1 billion,” Democratic pollster, author and Fox News contributor Doug Schoen tells Newsmax. “The economy may be weakening, but his finances for the campaign are only strengthening. That spells bad news for Republicans, who are having serious problems raising money.”

Larry Sabato, author and director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, tells Newsmax that Obama’s second-quarter fundraising is “obviously impressive and unprecedented, as far as I can recall.”





Although candidates aren’t required to announce their official second-quarter fundraising numbers to the Federal Election Commission until July 15, information is already leaking out regarding the results:

• NBC’s Chuck Todd has stated a good quarter for Obama would be $40 million, and a great quarter would be anything more than $80 million. By comparison, the record for the most campaign cash raised in a single quarter belongs to then-President George W. Bush, who raised $50.1 million in the second quarter of 2003.
• GOP presidential hopefuls, meanwhile, report their fundraising efforts have been slowed by the weak economy. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney is leading the GOP field with $15 million to $20 million, a figure lower than his second-quarter haul in 2007.
• Jon Huntsman, a relative newcomer to the GOP field, raised $4.1 million in the second quarter. But sources said about half of that sum came from Huntsman himself, who donated to his own campaign.
• Former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty raised $4.2 million. Finances could become an issue for him because, unlike Romney and Huntsman, Pawlenty doesn’t have deep personal finances to fall back on.
• Rep. Ron Paul continues to be a money-raising machine on the campaign trail. He collected at least $4.5 million, and a last minute push could put him over the $5 million mark for the quarter.
• Political junkies will be watching closely to see how Rep. Michele Bachmann’s fundraising efforts go. She has proven herself a prodigious fundraiser in the past, but expectations are modest because she only officially announced her candidacy on Monday. So far, no “whisper number” for her fundraising activity has been leaked.

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Obama Losing Canada's Oil to China

Saturday, 02 Jul 2011 05:04 PM

By Jim Meyers

http://www.newsmax.com/InsideCover/BarackObama-FredUpton-China-Oil/2011/07/02/id/402295?s=al&promo_code=C8BF-1

The Obama administration is foot-dragging on approving a pipeline to deliver abundant Canadian oil to the United States at the same time the Chinese are investing in a pipeline that could send that oil to China.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee last week passed a bill requiring President Barack Obama to speed up a decision on approving the pipeline. The bill was introduced by Nebraska Republican Rep. Lee Terry, who maintains that the Obama administration has been too slow in making a final decision, the Montreal Gazette reports.

The Canadian province of Alberta has the world’s third-largest oil reserves after Saudi Arabia and Venezuela, and more than Russia or Iran. Daily production from oil sands is expected to rise from 1.5 million barrels today to 3.7 million in 2025.

Delivering the oil will mean building two pipelines, one south to the refineries on the Texas Gulf Coast and the other west toward the Pacific, where it can be exported to China.

If the United States doesn’t approve its pipeline promptly due to environmental concerns, “Canada might increasingly look to China, thinking America doesn’t want a big stake in what environmentalists call ‘dirty oil,’ which they say increases greenhouse gas emissions,” according to a report from The Associated Press.

Sinopec, a Chinese-controlled company, has invested $5.5 billion in the planned pipeline to the Pacific coast.

Sinopec has also paid $4.6 billion for a stake in Syncrude, Canada’s largest oil-sands project, and PetroChina, Asia’s largest oil and gas company, bought a $1.7 billion stake in Athabasca Oil Sands Corp.

According to Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach, American government officials have expressed concerns about the Pacific pipeline delivering oil to China that might have otherwise gone to the United States.

Rep. Fred Upton, a Michigan Republican who is chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, told Newsmax in an interview last week that the pipeline project could create 100,000 jobs and said: “Why is it that we’re not working with Canada, which will be producing more than 3 or 4 million barrels a day from oil sand, and we’ve stalled on the application to build a pipeline?

“If we continue to say we may not be interested, Canada is going to turn around and build that pipeline not to the United States but instead to Vancouver, and they’re going to be selling it off to China.”

Environmentalist groups have urged Obama to reject the pipeline project. They assert that extracting oil from oil sands requires huge amounts of energy and water, increases emissions and threatens rivers and forests.

But Michael A. Levi, senior fellow for energy and the environment at the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations, maintains that environmentalists are exaggerating the dangers of oil sand extraction.

“A lot of people have been convinced that this is the cutting edge of the climate change fight,” he said. “In the end this is the equivalent to half a percent of U.S. Emissions.”

And a report commissioned by the Obama administration suggests that the pipeline to Texas, along with a reduction in overall U.S. oil demand, “could essentially eliminate Middle East crude imports long term.”

The State Department, which must approve the pipeline, has promised a decision by the end of the year, although Republicans wants it sooner.

And Upton told Newsmax that the bill his committee passed last week “is expected on the House floor as early as next month.”

David Goldwyn, a former State Department energy official who left this year to work as a consultant, said he believes the pipeline will ultimately be approved, according to the AP.

“I think it would be a huge waste of a great opportunity to provide supply security,” he said. “We don’t often get the choice of where we can get our oil from. In this case we get to choose Canada. That’s an opportunity we shouldn’t miss.”

And Russell Girling, CEO of TransCanada, the company that would build the pipeline, says opponents of the project are in fact set on targeting Canadian oil sands.

“The real issue here is those opposed to the Canadian oil sands believe that by delaying or denying this permit somehow they will slow down the development of Canadian oil sands,” he told the Business News Network.

“That’s an unrealistic expectation — the Canadian oil sands will get developed, irrespective of this pipeline.”

Read more on Newsmax.com: Obama Losing Canada's Oil to China
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Government Obama Executive Orders Impose New Gun Rules

A few days ago, the Blaze reported on the low-key plans of the Obama administration to increase the penalties for certain gun law violations, and add steps to the background checks for legal gun ownership.

Today the administration’s plans are beginning to come into effect. Through an Executive Order, the Obama administration is implementing new restrictions on the sale of certain weapons in border states, and increasing the penalties for violating certain firearms laws.

Fox News is reporting on the purpose of the gun control executive orders:

“In an effort to stem the illicit flow of weapons into Mexico, the Justice Department announced Monday that all gun shops in four Southwest border states will be required to alert the federal government to frequent buyers of high-powered rifles.

Under the new policy, federal firearms licensees in Texas, California, Arizona and New Mexico must report purchases of two or more of some types of rifles by the same person in a five-day span. The requirement applies to purchases of semi-automatic rifles that have detachable magazines and a caliber of greater than .22.

ATF estimates it will generate 18,000 reports a year. ATF will retain the information and if no investigative leads have been realized after two years, it will be purged.”

The Daily Beast seems to have the inside track on more Executive Orders, however, claiming recent conversations with administration officials. TDB says the upcoming Executive Orders will have more impact than what Fox outlines above, including:

“A national electronic system designed to make background checks for handgun buyers simpler and faster, leaving an electronic paper trail. [And] Tougher sentencing guidelines for straw buyers that Holder’s department pushed through procedural hoops at the U.S. Sentencing Commission earlier this year.”

The question remains- if these Executive Orders are ‘common sense’ measures as the administration claims, why not let Congress enact them as laws? And if they are minor tweaks to existing law as others claim, are they necessary at all?