Americans deserve to know and Judicial Watch has launched an investigation into the ordeal which, ironically, was exposed by a national newswire service well known for its pro-Obama reporting. Here is the story that’s earned worldwide attention because of the shameful allegations of a major government cover-up for political purposes.  

It involves New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez, a Cuban-American who advocates aggressively on behalf of illegal immigrants. A former congressman, Menendez has voted against hiring new border agents, security fences along the Mexican border and enhancing sentences for illegal aliens convicted of violent crimes. A few months ago a conservative website published a piece in which two prostitutes offered alarming details about Menendez paying them for sex in the Dominican Republic, which he visits frequently.

On the heels of that disgraceful revelation comes the story, this time in the famously liberal and Obama-loving mainstream media, of how the White House apparently protected Menendez from yet another public relations crisis. How? By delaying the removal of an illegal immigrant from Peru with an expired visa (like the 9/11 hijackers) and a criminal record for sexual assault.

The 18-year-old illegal alien, Luis Abrahan Sanchez Zavaleta, worked in the senator’s office even though he had an expired visa and a rap sheet for sexually assaulting an 8-year-old boy repeatedly, according to the news report that exposed the story. Sanchez Zavaleta had the audacity to apply for President Obama’s special childhood amnesty, but he got busted for failing to disclose his criminal record and not updating his sex offender registration.

According to government documents obtained by the news agency, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials in Newark had arranged to arrest Sanchez Zavaleta on October 24, less than two weeks before the November election. Menendez faced an unexpected challenge from his opponent, state Senator Joe Kyrillos, and the administration didn’t want to risk losing the seat to Republicans. Menendez ended up winning reelection on November 6 with 58% of the vote.

Here is what happened after the feds earmarked the Menendez staffer, according to the news report: “Noting that Sanchez was a volunteer in Menendez’s Senate office, ICE officials in New Jersey advised that the arrest “had the possibility of garnering significant congressional and media interest” and were “advised to postpone the arrest” until officials in Washington gave approval. The documents describe a conference call between officials Washington and New Jersey to “determine a way forward, given the potential sensitivities surrounding the case.”

Homeland Security documents cited in the news report show that the illegal immigrant’s arrest “was delayed by six weeks.” Not surprisingly, everyone involved denies any wrongdoing and through his staff Senator Menendez claims he only heard about the case in the media. Judicial Watch plans to get to the bottom of this matter by seeking all records under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and taking legal action if necessary to obtain them.

In the last few years various government-sanctioned assessments have exposed the ills of global warming, but this is the grand poobah of federal reports. It’s published every four years by a group of scientists from a federal advisory panel (National Climate Assessment and Development Advisory Committee) that operates under the president’s National Science and Technology Council.

So it hardly comes as a surprise that its latest National Climate Assessment is essentially one big argument for the president’s various green initiatives, including the aggressive regulation of carbon dioxide and other gases that global warming alarmists say are ruining mother earth. The report, made public in the last few days, is so long it includes a warning that it’s a “very large file.” To avoid technical issues, different chapters as well as the introduction and executive summary can be viewed separately.

An address to the American people warns that climate change, once considered an issue for a distant future, has moved into the present. Things have worsened, with evidence of a changing climate “strengthened considerably” since that last National Climate Assessment report in 2009. Many more impacts of human-caused climate change have now been observed, the intro says, further warning that “climate change presents a major challenge for society.”

This includes the increasing threat to infrastructure, water supplies, crops and shorelines. In fact, environmental changes—mostly caused by humans—are causing drastic conditions such as disastrous flooding and dangerous rises in sea levels in some parts and ravaging droughts in others. This is having a huge impact on Americans’ health and livelihoods, especially in communities that already face economic challenges, the report says.

In the last few years a variety of government-funded studies have warned that global warming will make food and water dangerous, cause mental illness, cancer and threaten national security. In fact, under the Obama Administration, a consortium of scientists from several government agencies—including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the State Department and National Institute of Environmental Health Science—have confirmed that global warming is one of the “most visible environmental concerns of the 21st century.”

The $500 million initiative to racially diversify medical research was launched last year after a government-sanctioned study uncovered a “disturbing and disheartening” lack of racial diversity in the field.  Especially troubling are Uncle Sam’s discriminatory funding practices when it comes to distributing federal research grants, the study found.

Touted as one of the few government probes to focus solely on the racial and ethnic composition of federal research funding applicants, the study determined that blacks who apply for grants are less likely than whites and Hispanics to receive the awards. Of additional concern is the low number of “non-white applicants” who apply for the public grants in the first place, the study found.

Through the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the nation’s medical research agency, the government doles out north of $31 billion annually to hundreds of thousands of researchers at thousands of universities and institutions around the globe. During a six-year period analyzed in the study, black researchers who applied for NIH grants were 10% less likely than whites to get the awards.

Researchers from the government-funded team of esteemed academics that conducted the minority probe think this is why; “the quality of educational and mentoring experiences may differ for applicants who self-identify as black or African-American.” In short, the NIH has admitted that it is guilty of not equally benefitting “all racial and ethnic groups.”

To right the wrong the NIH created a $500 million plan to support minority students with scholarships, research experiences and even graduate loan repayment. The agency is also creating a new committee that makes “diversity a core consideration of NIH governance” and ensures fairness in the peer review system that erases “unconscious bias related to disparities in research awards.” The plan also implements “implicit bias and diversity awareness training.”

This week the NIH announced that to lead the costly diversification effort it’s created a “new senior scientific position” of Chief Officer for Scientific Workforce Diversity. The agency plans to recruit a nationally-renowned scientist who will promote inclusiveness and equity throughout the biomedical research community, according to NIH Director Francis Collins. “Workforce diversity and inclusion is vital to the success of NIH to achieve scientific outcomes that advance the nation’s health,” Collins said.

In the last few weeks of 2012, the Obama Department of Labor (DOL) generously dedicated nearly $40 million to global initiatives unlikely to help workers in this country. The money will go to efforts that strengthen unions and help combat child labor in African, central and South American countries. This includes $10 million to combat the prevalence of child labor in agriculture and domestic service in Tanzania and $5 million to battle it in Burkina Faso’s cotton production and gold mining industries.

The South American allotment—$5.35 million—will support the socialist government of Brazil in its effort to crackdown on forced child labor, which is “abhorrent” and “cannot be tolerated,” according to Obama Labor Secretary Hilda Solis. Victims and their households will be linked to social and livelihood programs, as per a DOL announcement. A portion of the cash will also go to Peru, where evidently child labor is also a problem

Additionally, the DOL gave an international labor organization a separate $10 million grant to help combat the labor abuse of “vulnerable groups” in Ecuador and Panama. This will target Afro-descendant, indigenous and migrant populations. The same international labor organization also got an extra $5 million from Uncle Sam to reduce child domestic work in four provinces of Indonesia. This will be accomplished by building the capacity of domestic worker organizations and promoting decent work for domestic workers.

A few days later the DOL gave a leftist labor group, the American Center for International Labor Solidarity, $2.2 million to strengthen “worker organizations” (can you say unions?) in Haiti and Peru. Solis says it will help vulnerable Haitians and Peruvians “engage in productive, effective negotiations with government and employers.” The agency capped the year by giving a Colombian union $1.5 million to strengthen labor rights in that South American country. All the cash was doled out in the last few days of 2012! In mid-October the DOL dedicated $1.5 million to promote collective bargaining and improve labor relations in Vietnam.  

However, like a good politician, the former vice president conveniently invoked executive privilege to protect his office from troublesome public-records requests and congressional scrutiny. For instance, he hid behind it to avoid releasing information involving a task force that met in secrecy to develop the nation’s energy policy. This violated federal open meetings law and Judicial Watch sued for information on the task force’s inner workings, which were supposed to be open for public scrutiny. Thanks to JW, nearly 40,000 pages of documents have been released into the public domain.

When Cheney shunned an order (signed by President George Bush, no less) requiring all executive branch offices to comply with regular reviews of their procedures for classifying and declassifying documents, he asserted that he was not part of the executive office. His reasoning, in this case, was that the vice president serves constitutionally as the presiding officer of the United States Senate, with a tie-breaking vote, and therefore has legislative power as well.

Incredibly, this crazy logic has been adopted by President Obama even though the White House web site lists the vice president under the executive branch. The vice president is elected along with the president by the Electoral College, the official site explains, and the vice president has an office in the West Wing of the White House as well as in the nearby Eisenhower Executive Office Building.

But check out the latest edition of the United States Government Policy and Supporting Positions (Plum Book), published every four years after the presidential election to identify presidentially appointed positions within the federal government. It’s alternately published by the Senate and the House. The newly released 2012 edition says that “the Vice Presidency is a unique office that is neither a part of the executive branch nor a part of the legislative branch, but is attached by the Constitution to the latter.”

It’s unlikely this will receive any mainstream media attention. The discovery was made by a group of scientists that specializes in reporting developments in government secrecy. In a piece titled “Cheneyism Preserved But Attenuated in New Plum Book” the group writes; “somewhat unexpectedly, this conception of a Vice Presidency that transcends the three branches of government reappears in the 2012 edition of the Plum Book….”

It gets better; the new manual, which is around 75 pages, suggests that Western ignorance of Afghan culture— not Taliban infiltration—is responsible for the increase in deadly attacks by Afghan soldiers against the coalition forces.

The soon-to-be-released Army handbook is still being drafted, but a mainstream newspaper got a sneak preview and published an article that should infuriate the American taxpayers funding the never-ending war on terror. The manual is being created because someone with authority bought the theory that cultural insensitivity is driving insider attacks on U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

More than three dozen insider attacks have killed 63 members of the U.S.-led coalition this year, according to the article, and some blame “American cultural ignorance.” The bottom line is that troops may experience social-cultural shock and/or discomfort when interacting with Afghan security forces, the new military handbook says. “Better situational awareness/understanding of Afghan culture will help better prepare [troops] to more effectively partner and to avoid cultural conflict that can lead toward green-on-blue violence.”

The draft leaked to the newspaper offers a list of “taboo conversation topics” that soldiers should avoid, including “making derogatory comments about the Taliban,” “advocating women’s rights,” “any criticism of pedophilia,” “directing any criticism towards Afghans,” “mentioning homosexuality and homosexual conduct” or “anything related to Islam.”

At least one high-ranking military official had the backbone to publicly criticize the new manual, albeit through a spokesperson. U.S. Marine General John Allen, the top commander in Afghanistan, doesn’t endorse it and rejected a proposed forward drafted by Army officials in his name. “He does not approve of its contents,” according to a military spokesman quoted in the story.

Earlier this year the Obama Administration changed the way federal agents are trained to combat terrorism and violent extremism by eliminating all materials that shed a negative light on Muslims. Under White House orders, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) destroyed instructional material that characterizes Muslims as prone to violence or terrorism in a government-wide call to end Islamophobia.

Under Obama practically every major federal agency has been ordered to participate in Muslim outreach initiatives, including the Justice Department with a special program to protect Islamic civil rights, Homeland Security meetings with extremist Muslim organizations and the nation’s space agency (NASA) with an unprecedented mission to focus on Muslim diplomacy.

Additionally, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton signed a special order to allow the reentry of two radical Islamic academics whose terrorist ties long banned them from the U.S. and the administration sent an America-bashing mosque leader (Feisal Abdul Rauf) who blames U.S. foreign policy for the 9/11 attacks on a Middle Eastern outreach mission. The Obama Administration even ordered a government-funded meal program for home-bound seniors to offer halal cuisine prepared according to Islamic law.

It’s a tough pill to swallow as the homeland suffers through a growing financial crisis and a mind-boggling $16 trillion deficit, not to mention record unemployment. The Obama Administration always seems to find plenty of cash to support its favorite leftwing causes, both in the U.S. and abroad.

In this case American taxpayers will dole out $4.5 million to support research that will ultimately improve the common bean, a main staple produced throughout the world’s food insecure areas, including East and South Africa. The goal is to solve critical production and disease constraints in a crop that is the primary staple for more than 200 million Africans, according to an announcement issued this week by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Of particular interest to USDA officials is that beans are “cultivated mostly by women.”

The bean study is part of President Obama’s global hunger and food security initiative (Feed the Future) which essentially finances costly projects that supposedly address the root cause of hunger and poverty as well as long term solutions to “food insecurity.” This is done by linking U.S. research and scientific innovations to effective adaptations in the fields across developing countries, in this case Africa.

“Over the next 50 years, we will need to produce roughly as much food for the world’s population as has been produced in the entire history of mankind,” said Catherine Woteki, USDA’s Chief Scientist and Under Secretary for Research, Education and Economics. “A challenge this serious and urgent requires the best and brightest ideas in food and agricultural science.” Not surprisingly, this doesn’t come cheap.

The $4.5 million for this particular project will be divided by five research institutions, most of which are already publicly funded. Michigan State University will get the biggest chunk, $1.9 million, to develop common bean germplasm with resistance to major soil pathogens in East Africa. The University of Nebraska will get over $1.3 million to reduce fungal problems in common bean breeds in Eastern and Southern Africa and Iowa State University $250,000 to study the reproducible transformation system for the common bean. Cornell University, the only private recipient, is getting $1 million to study beans in Western Kenya.

Indeed this is a noble cause, but it’s highly likely that there are plenty of domestic programs deserving of these funds. To tackle food insecurity in the U.S. the Obama Administration is doling out record numbers of food stamps and offering states cash rewards to sign up the most recipients. As a result a record 48 million people receive food stamps in the U.S., according to the latest government figures.

Known as the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP), it’s a joint venture between the State Department and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), the Homeland Security agency that oversees the nation’s lawful immigration. The two agencies are responsible for deciding which refugees are granted USRAP resettlement consideration. USCIS is hands on and conducts individual, in-person interviews with applicants to determine if they meet the refugee criteria.

Most of the refugee referrals are made by the notoriously corrupt United Nations, which has published an extensive handbook on the subject. In a nutshell here is the criteria; a refugee must have a well-founded fear of persecution based on at least one of the following—religion, political opinion, race or nationality. This means there is a continued need for protection and candidates should be granted permanent residence status with access to rights similar to those enjoyed by nationals, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) guide.

In fiscal year 2011 Uncle Sam generously offered 56,424 persecuted foreigners refuge and in fiscal year 2012 the number increased to 58,236, according Barbara Strack, the Refugee Affairs Division Chief at USCIS. This week Strack testified at a congressional hearing, “Terrorist Exploitation of Refugee Programs,” that addressed the serious security vulnerabilities in her division. She told the House Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) “has been working closely with interagency partners to improve, refine, and streamline the security vetting regime for refugee applicants and for other immigration categories.”

Last May two Iraqi nationals who were given refugee status under USRAP were arrested and federally indicted for plotting to send weapons and money to al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) as well as conspiracy to kill U.S. national abroad. The men, Waad Ramadan Alwan and Mohanad Shareef Hammadi, lived in Kentucky and have pleaded guilty to the charges, which are outlined in this FBI document. They are scheduled to be sentenced early next year.

At this week’s hearing, the congressman who chairs the counterterrorism and intelligence committee revealed that the Kentucky case is not a fluke and that the “threat posed by refugees with ties to al Qaeda is much broader than was previously believed.” He reiterated the testimony of FBI Director Robert Mueller before a House Intelligence Committee last year, in which the FBI chief admitted ongoing concerns about individuals who may have been resettled here in the United States that have some association with al Qaeda in Iraq.

USRAP, which has helped relocate millions of refugees over the decades, has come under fire in recent years because it’s gotten too big and security measures are lax. A report released last year by a nonprofit that researches immigration matters says this is because the U.S. has lost control of the program, instead surrendering to U.N. policies to determine who’s admitted and because meaningful background checks are difficult to obtain for refugees admitted from countries without reliable government records.

As a result the program is a bloated disaster, admitting nearly three times the number of refugees as the rest of the developed world combined, the probe found. Additionally, the investigation found that “common criminals, war criminals, international fugitives, and terrorists have all used the USRAP and its related asylum provisions for entry into the United States.” Here is another interesting tidbit: “Bribery of U.N. officials is commonly reported among those attempting to secure refugee admission to the United States.”

This clearly defeats the intended goal of saving mother earth from the evils of man-made pollutants that are contributing to the global warming crisis. The story involves California’s massive transformation in the way electricity is produced and distributed. By 2020 the Golden State plans to be a green zone with a clean-energy economy that drastically slashes greenhouse gas emissions to reduce the impact of climate change.

This is supposed to happen via a “renewable portfolio standard,” which will require utility companies to get a third of their electricity from renewable sources like solar and wind. But this overhaul comes with a hefty price—to the environment and the wallet—and a lengthy report released this week by a nonpartisan state oversight agency seems to indicate that perhaps it’s just a pipe dream.

California is trying to implement too many renewable energy policy initiatives at the same time without a full accounting of the consequences, according to the audit. This includes a groundbreaking cap-and-trade program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, support for rapid expansion of rooftop solar systems and promotion of large, utility-scale solar thermal power plants in the desert.

“The state has not produced a comprehensive assessment of the total cost of implementing this group of policies, inhibiting consumers and businesses in their ability to plan for this new future,” the report says. “This sets the stage for a potential ratepayer revolt that could dampen support for environmental stewardship policies.”

In a statement announcing the report, the chairman of the state watchdog that conducted the probe, warned: “Without more careful calibration of these policies, Californians may wind up paying more than necessary for electricity and the state may unnecessarily degrade pristine habitat in its rush to implement its renewable energy goals.”

On a wider scale, this delivers a substantial blow to the Obama Administration’s green energy crusade, which has already cost American taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars for failed experiments. Remember the Solyndra boondoggle? The fly by night solar panel firm got $535 million from the government to promote green energy but instead folded, laying off more than 1,000 workers and stiffing U.S. taxpayers. President Obama had touted Solyndra as a prominent example of clean energy, saying during a visit to its northern California headquarters that “companies like Solyndra are leading the way toward a brighter and more prosperous future.”

The administration has also poured tens of millions of dollars into other ill-fated renewable energy projects that continue receiving big chunks of cash from the government. Last fall an investigative news report revealed that many of the nation’s so-called “green energy plants” actually infest the air with a “toxic brew of pollutants” while the administration promotes them as environmentally friendly generators of electricity and showers them with hundreds of millions of dollars.

Additionally, the administration has funded programs like a $30 million initiative to train the next generation of energy efficiency experts at dozens of universities around the country and $5 million to join an Arab-based organization dedicated to promoting renewable energy worldwide. The U.S. already gives similar international “renewable energy” initiatives, operated by the famously corrupt United Nations, billions of dollars.

Uncle Sam even doled out $9.9 million for the “green makeover” of a public housing facility in Washington State. President Obama justifies the expenditures by claiming that the green initiatives, not only help the environment, they create jobs. However, a scathing congressional report  has revealed that the failed projects have instead eliminated jobs and the process of distributing funds is rife with undue political influence.

It’s one of those sad stories seen only in America. It involves the radical Islamic Army psychiatrist (Nidal Malik Hasan), who had his medical education and training paid for by Uncle Sam. In 2009, Hasan went on a murderous shooting rampage at the Texas Army base as he chanted “Allahu Akbar!” (God is great in Arabic). Besides murdering 13 colleagues he wounded dozens of others.

Hasan has documented ties to a radical mosque leader (Anwar al Awlaki) who promotes jihad against the U.S., attempted to contact al Qaeda associates prior to the attack and defended Islamic suicide bombers in comments he posted on the internet. Before the shocking rampage, there were repeated signals that Hasan was a potential danger, yet authorities did nothing to stop him, perhaps to avoid Muslim profiling.  

In fact, the Obama Administrations long insisted it was simply workplace violence unrelated to any sort of terrorist act so as not to offend Islam. Days after the shooting at the nation’s largest military base, the administration’s biggest concern was preventing a wave of anti-Muslim sentiment in the United States. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano went on a public campaign to assure that America knew the shooter “was an individual who does not represent the Muslim faith” and guaranteed that a civil rights and civil liberties directorate in her department aimed to “prevent everybody being painted with a broad brush.”

PC wagon aside, the United States Army has a longtime ban on facial hair and Hasan has grown a beard during his time in custody because his Muslim faith requires it. (Of interesting note is that he disregarded this Muslim requirement while he served in the Army). In mid-October the military judge presiding over the case, Colonel Gregory Gross, ruled that Hasan must appear clean shaven in court as per Army rules or be forcibly shaven. An Army appeals court upheld the decision, ruling that Colonel Gross properly found that the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act doesn’t give Hasan the right to have a beard while in uniform at trail.  

Incredibly, the nation’s highest military appellate court didn’t like this and evidently interpreted it as a bias on the part of the judge. So this week it removed Colonel Gross from presiding over the trail, because it found that his treatment of Hasan showed the “appearance of bias.” In its decision, which was not posted on the Ft. Hood website, the court said that because of a variety of factors, a reasonable person “would harbor doubts about the military judge’s impartiality.”