Top Obama appointees, including Sebelius, using secret emails

The Associated Press today, June 4, is reporting that some of President Barack Obama’s political appointees, including Health and Human Services Secretary and former Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, have been using secret government email accounts to conduct official business. It’s a system, according to the AP, that complicates agencies’ legal responsibilities to find and turn over emails under public records requests and congressional inquiries.

White House spokesman Jay Carney on Tuesday acknowledged the practice and said it made eminent sense for Cabinet secretaries and other high-profile officials to have what he called alternative email accounts that wouldn’t fill with unwanted messages. Carney said all their email accounts, public and otherwise, were subject to congressional oversight and requests by citizens under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act.

Stop the gridlock; working together will benefit the country

The long, hard-fought, ugly presidential election finally has come to an end. Barack Obama won a second term; Democrats remain in control of the Senate after even adding some seats; and the House remains firmly in the grip of Republicans.

While confetti fluttered throughout the Democratic celebration in Chicago Tuesday night, the party atmosphere should be short-lived. There should be no dancing in the streets today. The president narrowly won the popular vote, 50 to 48 percent, meaning his victory is not a mandate but rather is a result of a better campaign strategy than challenger Mitt Romney‘s in the crucial Electoral College battleground states, which Obama nearly swept.

Want real change? Then change Congress

It will be better for the country if President Obama is re-elected for a second term.

That doesn’t necessarily mean he’s the best man for the job, but historically, good pieces of legislation typically are accomplished in the second term of a two-term president that benefit the country as a whole no matter whether the president is a Republican or Democrat.

That’s because Congress and the Senate are the two chambers that wield the power and in the first term of virtually every modern presidency, partisanship gridlock prevails. The party not represented in the White House locks arms and does everything possible to block legislation to make the president look bad and be vulnerable in the next presidential election.

But in the second term, the pressure to stifle what is then a lame-duck president is not as great and that leads to better legislation, increased compromise between the parties, and beneficial action for the Middle Class so that elected officials can go back to their constituents with a list of accomplishments to justify their bid for the mid-term re-election cycle.

Obama knew but didn’t level with the American people

The White House knew, even as bullets were ringing out and ripping into walls, as fires raged from explosions, that the attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, on Sept. 11 killing U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans was a deliberate act of terrorism being carried out by a Libyan Islamic militant group.

According to an Associated Press article, emails obtained by Reuters that were sent from U.S. diplomats back to Washington, even as the attack was happening, reveal that within two hours after the deadly assault officials at the White House and State Department were told that a terrorist group called Ansar al-Sharia was claiming credit for the attack.