My family arrived in this country fleeing Cuban Communism. The government forced, literally, my maternal grandparents out of their house with regulatory terror. They affixed a seal on the door of their home because they refused to pay a revolutionary tax. That piece of paper hangs in my law office today, right near my desk, [...]
A former Democratic Congressman from Ohio, Rep. Jim Traficant, served seven years in a federal prison for abusing the privileges of his office. He was accused of taking bribes, as well as having Congressional staffers do odd jobs for him in his Washington, DC home.
Before meeting his political demise, however, he was one of [...]
During an interview on CNN’s Directo USA yesterday we talked about the leak of National Security Agency (NSA) documents of what seems to be various U.S. surveillance programs. Before the taping, the other guest, Mr. Roberto Izurieta from the GW University Graduate School of Political Management, and I were discussing [...]
We may have the makings of yet another political maelstrom, but this one could impact outside the beltway. Unlike the early reports about Verizon phone records, there now appears to be a lot more activity than meta-data collection by the intelligence community.
Let’s face it, the nation was due sooner or [...]
This week’s Odds and Ends have a Spanish theme to it. Primarily because of the three news items that caught my attention in the last couple of weeks.
The first item happened last night. I was visiting my mom when I saw a commercial on Univision. For those [...]
“But I doubt that the proud men who wrote the charter of our liberties would have been so eager to open their mouths for royal inspection,” Justice Scalia, dissenting in Maryland v. King (2013) … this has nothing to do with data mining by the government, but it should have been the lead news story [...]
It has been a while since we had an interesting and politically-charged Senate Foreign Relations Committee (SFRC) confirmation hearings. That could change soon. President Obama has nominated liberal hawks to fill his national security roster. While the Senate cannot really do much about the National Security Advisor, the UN Ambassador is a different story.
With [...]
Over on Facebook this morning a post by Ruben Navarrette touch a nerve. A raw one. It has to do with our society’s obsession with label, the ethnic kind. My response generated more responses than usual, most private. Here is what I said:
The sooner we stop labeling people [...]
The Obama Administration has tackled reform of our national export control system with much gusto. Our trade security system includes a series of laws and regulations that, among other things, controls what sensitive technology and services can be sold or shared with foreigners. Also included under this system are economic sanctions, customs rules, and others. [...]
What has happened to our GOP? I do not recognize it anymore. It has gone green, as in the party of the Green Eyeshade Politico.
This week the College Republican National Committee (CRNC) will release yet another 2012 election post-mortem. It contains the usual parade of horribles and pabulum-laden advice on messaging for “tomorrow’s GOP”. POLITICO is [...]
The Chinese government wants a lot more pork, the edible kind, and they came to the Commonwealth of Virginia to purchase the world’s leading producer of pork products. A deal was inked this week valued at a little over $7,000,000,000 for Virginia’s Smithfield Foods from Smithfield, Virginia. The buyer is Shuanghui International Holdings Limited.
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The Miami Herald reports today that a Miami couple that took more than forty flights to Cuba or Mexico since 2007 has been arrested by federal authorities in a $15 Medicare fraud case. What do Cuba junkets have to do with Medicare fraud? In this case, maybe nothing; however, federal authorities should [...]
