Sen. Charles Schumer’s brother-in-law was quietly nominated this month to a federal judgeship in New Jersey — a move that has some in the Garden State crying political foul, The Post has learned.

Kevin McNulty, who is married to Schumer’s sister, Fran, was named to the US District Court by the White House late on Friday, Dec. 16. According to a boilerplate quote, President Obama believes McNulty is a “distinguished individual” who “will serve the American people with integrity and a steadfast commitment to justice.”

New Jersey’s two US senators, Frank Lautenberg and Robert Menendez, followed that up with their own news release heaping praise on the nominee.

What no one mentioned is that McNulty, 57, was the last-minute choice of Lautenberg, who had been leaning toward other candidates until surprisingly submitting McNulty’s name to the White House.

Lautenberg and his aides have given no public explanation for the decision to go with McNulty even though the latter had never been publicly touted as a contender for the job, which carries life tenure and a $174,000-a-year salary.

“No one knows why he did it,” said one person involved in the nomination process. “Everyone thinks it’s all about 2014 and Frank making sure he has Chuck in his corner.”

The White House declined to comment, as did McNulty.

Lautenberg’s reps denied any political motives and stressed that McNulty, who lives in upscale Short Hills, won the nod on the merits. He is a senior partner at Gibbons PC in Newark.

Aides also insisted that Lautenberg was clueless about McNulty’s relationship to Schumer when he first looked at him in 2009.
“It is complete fiction to suggest that there was any deal or that Kevin McNulty was brought into the process at the last minute,” said Lautenberg spokesman Caley Gray.

People involved in the judicial-nomination process in New Jersey told The Post they believe the surprise nomination was a naked political maneuver by the 87-year-old Lautenberg to stay in Schumer’s good graces. Lautenberg is worried that party elders will try to push him out of his beloved Senate seat because of his advanced age — something that Schumer, one of the party’s top opinion makers and fund-raisers, would be able to stop.

“McNulty came out of left field,” said another source involved in the Jersey judicial politics. “McNulty’s not a dumb guy, but people were just, like, ‘How’d that happen?’ ”

Schumer spokesman Mike Morey said Schumer played no part in his brother-in-law’s nod. He insisted Lautenberg could never lose Schumer’s backing.

Right.

While robocalls aren’t illegal, using state funded emergency systems are. Missuse of a 911 system, which elevator phones are hooked to is a crime.

“So in return for continuing the fiscally irresponsible and economically unsuccessful Bush tax policy, Democrats receive a desperately necessary extension of jobless benefits of the sort that used to be completely uncontroversial until this Congress came to town, as well as some helpful tax breaks for the working class that Republicans likely would have supported under any circumstance.”

Read through to the links in the comments. They’re coming apart in Progressive Land.

Over at National Review:

“President Obama has now moved into the second phase of capitulation. He has agreed to delay any tax increases, on anyone, for at least two years. The top marginal income-tax rate will stay at 35 percent; the dividend and capital-gains tax rates will stay at 15 percent. Over the next two years, the estate tax will be lower than it has been for almost any part of the last decade. The president has also agreed to an additional reduction in tax rates: Payroll taxes will also be temporarily reduced. And his own administration’s best policy proposal, allowing businesses to deduct the full cost of all investment expenses over the next two years, is also included in the deal.

What liberals got out of the deal was the extension of some of their favorite tax credits and, above all, a 13-month extension of federal subsidies for unemployment benefits — with no compensatory spending cuts. This stretches subsidies for the jobless out to three years. It’s far from our ideal policy, but the deal is still worth taking: If it won’t do much good for the economy, it will avert a serious blow to it.

It is possible that Republicans could have gotten an even better deal next year, since their numbers in Congress will increase in January. But that would have left them having to cut taxes retroactively and left households paying first higher and then lower taxes. Acting now reduces both uncertainty and volatility. Republicans can now spend the next two years advancing spending cuts and long-term tax reform.”

When the GOP takes control of congress in January the cutting of the budget will begin. A huge win.

But Kevin spews into another lefty defense of why the Bush tax cuts are hurting the economy. They’re not. Out of control government spending is. But the pint he misses, like a lot of lefties. It’s our money. We would like to keep as much as possible of it. Thank you.

It’s a lesson that will lead to our victory in November when the majority of Americans will let lefties know just how much they believe in what I say.

Democrats
Congress
Taxes

“WASHINGTON — As if voters don’t have enough to be angry about this election year, the government is expected to announce this week that more than 58 million Social Security recipients will go through another year without an increase in their monthly benefits.

It would mark only the second year without an increase since automatic adjustments for inflation were adopted in 1975. The first year was this year.
“If you’re the ruling party, this is not the sort of thing you want to have happening two weeks before an election,” said Andrew Biggs, a former deputy commissioner at the Social Security Administration and now a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

“It’s not the congressional Democrats’ fault, but that’s the way politics works,” Biggs said. “A lot of people will feel hostile about it.”

But it is the congressional democrats fault. Completely mismanaging the economy, bailing out banks and throwing billions down the toilet, there is simply no excuse to short change seniors and veterans.

See you gone in November. Change is coming.

Democrats
Congress

Read more.

By the way, this was in any case an unmitigated disaster for Democrats. Colbert didn’t do anything wrong, he was asked to appear in character. However at a time when the country needs their politicians to be serious and doing their jobs apparently democrats like Lofgren would rather put on a show. If the GOP were smart they’d play this to the hilt.

Steven Colbert
Comedy Central
Zoe Lofgren

“Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW, today filed a pair of complaints concerning Delaware Republican Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell’s use of more than $20,000 in campaign funds for personal expenses.
“Christine O’Donnell is clearly a criminal, and like any crook she should be prosecuted,” CREW Executive Director Melanie Sloan said in a release. “Ms. O’Donnell has spent years embezzling money from her campaign to cover her personal expenses. Republicans and Democrats don’t agree on much these days, but both sides should agree on one point: thieves belong in jail not the United States Senate.”

CREW is requesting that the U.S. Attorney’s office in Delaware open a criminal investigation and asking the Federal Election Commission to audit O’Donnell’s campaign expenses.

The group said its allegations are tied to former O’Donnell aide David Keegan’s affidavit stating O’Donnell, who has run for Senate three times, paid her rent for two months out of campaign funds in 2009 and also used campaign funds for meals and gas. In addition to misappropriation of campaign funds, CREW argues that O’Donnell is guilty of lying about the expenditures and committed tax evasion by not reporting the money as income.

Representatives for O’Donnell, whose financial disclosure form said her earned income between March 2009 and June 2010 was just $5,800, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.”

Sloan is a DNC activist running a a George Soro’s funded shadow group “CREW”, which notably files complaints on republicans only occasionally throwing one out on Democrats to appear “honest”. Here’s the background on CREW.

“CREW was founded by Democrat activists Norm Eisen (an attorney) and Louis Mayberg (a prominent Democrat donor, and co-founder of the Maryland-based mutual fund management firm ProFund Advisors LLC). CREW’s “Form 990″ IRS filing for 2001 lists Mayberg as one of its three Founding Directors; the other two are Daniel Berger (a high-profile Democrat donor who in 2004 made a $100,000 contribution to America Coming Together) and Mark Penn (a fellow at the New Politics Institute, and a top Democrat strategist and pollster who not only played a key role in Bill Clinton’s 1996 presidential campaign, but also served as head of “message and strategy” for Hillary Clinton’s 2000 Senate campaign).

CREW has received financial backing from George Soros’s Open Society Institute, Democracy Alliance, the Tides Foundation, the Streisand Foundation, the Arca Foundation, the David Geffen Foundation, the Wallace Global Fund, the Mayberg Family Charitable Foundation, the Woodbury Fund, and the Sheller Family Foundation — all institutions distinguished by their support for far-left causes.

CREW’s Executive Director is Melanie Sloan, a longtime Democrat operative who previously served as Nominations Counsel for Joe Biden’s Senate Judiciary Committee (1993); Counsel for the Crime Subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee for Charles Schumer (1994); Minority Counsel for the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee under John Conyers (1995-1998); and Assistant U.S. District Attorney for the District of Columbia (1998-2003).

Other CREW officials have similarly deep ties to the political Left. For example, Deputy Director and Communications Director Naomi Seligman Steiner was formerly the Communications Director of Media Matters for America. CREW Special Projects Associate Lida Masoudpour was once a staffer at Media Matters and served as an intern in the office of Senator Hillary Clinton. CREW Senior Counsel Tim Mooney previously served as Senior Counsel at Alliance for Justice (AFJ). CREW Counsel Dan Roth was formerly the Dorot Judicial Selection Fellow at AFJ. CREW Research Associate Robin Powers is a former Program Associate of AFJ who interned with Vital Voices Global Partnership and the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois. CREW Counsel Kimberly Perkins once worked as the Assistant General Counsel for the National Office of the NAACP, where she led the “Voting Rights & Redistricting Project” and “Election Protection” efforts. CREW Executive Assistant Melissa Cuerdon, who previously worked in the pharmaceutical industry, served internships at the Sierra Club and the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN).

On August 15, 2006, CREW took on the legal case of Valerie Plame Wilson and her husband, former U.S. ambassador Joseph Wilson, who jointly filed a federal civil lawsuit against U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney, his former Chief of Staff I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, top Presidential advisor Karl Rove, and other then-current and former administration officials.”

Sloan is also actively supporting O’Donnell’s democrat challenger Coons.

“WASHINGTON — House Democrats were preparing late last year for the first floor vote on the financial regulatory overhaul when Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio and other Republican leaders summoned more than 100 industry lobbyists and conservative political activists to Capitol Hill for a private strategy session.

The bill’s passage in the House already seemed inevitable. But Mr. Boehner and his deputies told the Wall Street lobbyists and trade association leaders that by teaming up, they could still perhaps block its final passage or at least water it down.

“We need you to get out there and speak up against this,” Mr. Boehner said that December afternoon, according to three people familiar with his remarks, while also warning against cutting side deals with Democrats.

That sort of alliance — they won a few skirmishes, though they lost the war on the regulatory bill — is business as usual for Mr. Boehner, the House minority leader and would-be speaker if Republicans win the House in November. He maintains especially tight ties with a circle of lobbyists and former aides representing some of the nation’s biggest businesses, including Goldman Sachs, Google, Citigroup, R. J. Reynolds, MillerCoors and UPS.

They have contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to his campaigns, provided him with rides on their corporate jets, socialized with him at luxury golf resorts and waterfront bashes and are now leading fund-raising efforts for his Boehner for Speaker campaign, which is soliciting checks of up to $37,800 each, the maximum allowed.

Some of the lobbyists readily acknowledge routinely seeking his office’s help — calling the congressman and his aides as often as several times a week — to advance their agenda in Washington. And in many cases, Mr. Boehner has helped them out.

As Democrats increasingly try to cast the Ohio congressman as the face of the Republican Party — President Obama mentioned his name eight times in a speech last week — and as Mr. Boehner becomes more visible, his ties to lobbyists, cultivated since he arrived here in 1991, are coming under attack.

The woman he hopes to replace, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, derided him on Friday as having met “countless times with special-interest lobbyists in an effort to stop tough legislation” that would regulate corporations and protect consumers. And the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, through a spokeswoman, charged that he “epitomizes the smoked-filled, backroom, special-interest deal making that turns off voters about Washington.”

Mr. Boehner, who declined to be interviewed for this article, and his lobbyist allies ridicule such criticism as politically motivated by desperate Democrats. His actions, they say, simply reflect the pro-business, antiregulatory philosophy that he has espoused for more than three decades, dating back to when Mr. Boehner, the son of a tavern owner, ran a small plastics company in Ohio. And fielding requests from lobbyists is nothing unusual, he says.

“I get lobbied every day by somebody,” he said last month after a speech in Cleveland. “It could be by my wife. It could be the bellman. It goes on all day, every day, every place.”

And it’s all perfectly ethical and legal. There is nothing in the story that pertains to anything wrong, and yet Lipton gives it his best shot using the often tried and true “It’s the accusation of the appearance of evil that counts”.

Yet if this is the best he can do for his bosses to help them reverse fortunes in November, they’re screwed. If Lipton, who get’s front row seating to a lot of Democratic fundraising and other events, would disclosed his close involvement in the party happening, perhaps he would have more moral ground to stand on.

Unfortunately he doesn’t. Oh, and don’t worry, he’s not the only one who doesn’t disclose his involvement.

But that will come in another post. But I would love to see Pelosi go further attacking Boehner. In fact I would love to see any Democrat take this further. No party has more connections with special interests and lobbyist than the Demcorats. In fact during that vote on healthcare, the Democrats also had hundreds of special interest groups, specifically leftwing groups with big donation pockets lobbying Pelosi and Reid to get Obamacare passed.

In fact as The Examiner found, Obama’s promise to declare war on Lobbyist was just a bunch of talk – like a lot of what Obama says.

“in the previous 12 months, the Obama administration had hired at least 45 former lobbyists to policymaking jobs, including five Cabinet slots. A former lobbyist for the Swiss Bankers Association is the general counsel at the IRS, and a former Goldman lobbyist is chief of staff at the Treasury Department. Monsanto’s former chief lobbyist is the FDA’s deputy commissioner for foods. When Obama got rid of his ethics czar this summer, he transferred White House transparency duties to former lobbyist Bob Bauer.

This doesn’t count the “nonlobbyist lobbyists” like Liz Fowler, who was vice president of public policy at WellPoint, the nation’s largest insurer, but never registered as a lobbyist. After Obamacare passed, she joined the Department of Health and Human Services.

Google’s former vice president for government affairs, Andrew McLaughlin, is now the White House’s deputy chief technology officer. McLaughlin, using a personal e-mail account, cooperated with active Google lobbyists on “net neutrality” — a pro-regulation position favored by both Google and the president — in violation of White House policy. The White House “reprimanded” McLaughlin for that, but it excused his regular e-mail exchange with another Google lobbyist, Vint Cerf, because Cerf (who calls himself an “evangelist” of policy, and is not registered as a lobbyist) sits on a federal advisory board.

These nonlobbyist lobbyists — McLaughlin, Cerf, Fowler and Obama confidant Tom Daschle, for instance — have proliferated under Obama.

Boehner fires back through Byron York and shows that Lipton wasn’t interested in getting to the truth, only to get his screed to press.

John Boehner
Eric Lipton
New York Times

“A senior aide for Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) was arrested Tuesday for attempting to bring marijuana into the Hart Senate Office Building, according to U.S. Capitol Police reports.

Marcus Stanley, who served as a senior economic adviser and at one time worked on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee — chaired by Boxer — was stopped by a police officer Tuesday morning when he allegedly tried to “remove and conceal” a leafy green substance from his pocket during a security screening at the Constitution Avenue door of the Hart building around noon, according to a Capitol Police report.

Police confiscated the substance, which later tested positive for marijuana, and Stanley quickly resigned.

“Marcus Stanley is no longer with this office,” Boxer spokesman Zachary Coile told POLITICO. “He submitted his resignation, and Sen. Boxer accepted it because his actions yesterday were wrong and unacceptable.”

Stanley has worked on Capitol Hill since 2007, according to financial disclosure records from Legistorm, and draws a six-figure salary. He has also worked for the Joint Economic Committee.

Marijuana possession has been an ongoing issue on the Capitol grounds, especially since the Capitol Visitor Center opened with additional screening facilities. In the past year and a half, more than a dozen people have been stopped for bringing marijuana into the Capitol complex, along with other drugs, including at least one instance involving cocaine, according to police records.”

Explains a lot it does.