Carl Levin Gets Pie in the Face From Radical Teabagger

Mob mentality

You didn't think those wild-eyed, raucous teabaggers were taking a break from their wave of violence, did you?

Oh, wait.

A Coldwater woman was arrested Monday morning in Big Rapids after she threw a pie in the face of U.S. Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich. during a question-and-answer session of the senator's visit at Pepper's Cafe and Deli in downtown Big Rapids.

Ahlam Mohsen, 23, a Michigan State University senior, was arrested by the Big Rapids Department of Public Safety after the incident. The assault came after a speech by another protester, Max Kantar, 23, of Big Rapids, who criticized Levin - chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee - for his stance on U.S. foreign policy issues, including "Israel war crimes against the Palestinian people." After Mohsen pied the long-time senator, both she and Kantar fled from Pepper's.

"Carl Levin is one of the most respected senators in Congress," Mohsen said. "People tend to blame the war on Republicans, but we wanted to target Levin today to send a message that liberals and Democrats are just as implicated in the violence as the Republicans."

I wonder what she'd have done if she didn't respect Levin.

ABC reports it was Dutch apple pie.

Mmmm. Pie.

Instapundit links. Thanks!

'Levin Sounded More Like Snooki After a Night Out Than a Senator'

You know you didn't come off well when you're being compared to this Jersey Shore imbecile. Sure, the nutroots lapped it up but it came off to me like one of the low points of this Democratic regime of error.

Embarrassed politicos and angry Wall Streeters yesterday denounced the "shi- -y" way Sen. Carl Levin and other senators treated Goldman Sachs executives testifying before Congress this week.

"He turned the Senate proceedings into an episode of 'Jersey Shore' -- a lot of yelling, expletives flying and no conclusion," a Republican aide said. "Levin sounded more like Snooki after a night out than a senator."

"It was Congress at its worst," said Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), adding that he was shocked when he first heard the curses Tuesday from Levin (D-Mich.), who spewed the word "shi- -y" 18 times during the hearing.

"I thought, 'What is he doing? Why is he doing that?' " Hatch said. "I thought Senator Levin did a yeoman job of trying to get over his point."

On Wall Street, hedge fund executive Clifford Press said he was "horrified at the spectacle."

It was appalling to see "major executives" called to Washington "to apologize and defend themselves for having made money," he said.

Finance worker Dan DeGroot said the senators didn't even seem interested in the answers from the Goldman execs.

"It was just grandstanding," he said. "The questions were shallow, not probing. And I think Goldman is being victimized."

Wall Street attorney Joe Glatstein said dragging Goldman big shots before a Senate panel looked like a "desperate attempt" by President Obama and the Democratic-controlled Congress to blame economic woes on Goldman, a financial giant facing civil charges of mortgage investment fraud.

"It's demagoguery at its worst," Glatstein said. "I think everyone came out looking poorly, especially Carl Levin, for using the S-bomb."

Hey, How About an Afghanistan Tax?

You evil "rich people" raking in an unseemly $200K a year better be ready to bend over a bit more.

Higher-income Americans should be taxed to pay for more troops sent to Afghanistan and NATO should provide half of the new soldiers, said Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

An “additional income tax to the upper brackets, folks earning more than $200,000 or $250,000” a year, could fund more troops, Levin, a Michigan Democrat, said in an interview for Bloomberg Television’s “Political Capital With Al Hunt,” airing this weekend.

White House Budget Director Peter Orszag has estimated that each additional soldier in Afghanistan could cost $1 million, for a total that could reach $40 billion if 40,000 more troops are added.

That cost, Levin said, should be paid by wealthier taxpayers. “They have done incredibly well, and I think that it’s important that we pay for it if we possibly can” instead of increasing the federal debt load, the senator said.

Levin then went out and voted to increase the federal debt load by a few trillion dollars tonight. Irony escaped the Capitol and is currently on the loose.

The supreme arrogance of these people will be their demise. How dare this career politician, who, based on his salary, is doing incredibly well but is exempt from this monstrosity he voted for tonight, tell us how well we're doing. Has he even looked around his own home state and surveyed the wreckage? Has he noticed how many people who were once doing incredibly well have fled the wasteland known as Michigan?

Ask a family of five making $200,000 a year if they're doing incredibly well. Then see how they feel about being "rich" and how much more they can afford in taxes. These are people who will not be voting for a Democrat any time soon.

Major Democrat Fundraiser Charged With Fraud

Democrats and fraud, perfect together. And in what should be considered a stunning development, the word Democrat actually appears in the Reuters headline.

The U.S. attorney in New York on Tuesday charged a New York investor and major Democratic fund-raiser with a $74 million scheme to defraud Citigroup Inc (C.N).

Hassan Nemazee, 59, was charged with one count of bank fraud, and faces up to 30 years in prison plus a fine. His lawyer Marc Mukasey, a former federal prosecutor, did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

Nemazee was a national finance chair of U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign, and a supporter of John Kerry's run for the White House in 2004.

He typically donates more than $100,000 annually to Democratic political candidates, including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Senator Charles Schumer, and sits on the board of the Iranian American Political Action Committee .

Bill Clinton, when he was president, nominated Nemazee to be U.S. ambassador to Argentina.

Prosecutors said Nemazee, the chairman and chief executive of Nemazee Capital Corp, sought to induce Citigroup's banking unit to lend up to $74 million based on fraudulent and forged documents suggesting that he had hundreds of millions of dollars of accounts available as collateral.

They said Nemazee also provided Citigroup with fake references so that when the bank would try to confirm details about his accounts, it would actually be contacting him. The scheme lasted from December 2006 to this month, the prosecutors said.

Prosecutors said federal agents stopped him on Sunday at Newark Liberty International Airport as he prepared to board a flight to Rome, and that he repaid a more than $74 million loan to Citigroup the following day.

Sounds like he was going to abscond like another Clinton pal, Marc Rich.

Chuckie Schumer ought to be pleased to find out another of his major fundraisers now faces prison, just like his pal Bernie Madoff.

In addition to Nemazee and the now-imprisoned Norman Hsu, I wonder how many other criminal fundraisers were helping Hillary Clinton?

Here's a rundown of Democrats Nemazee contributed to: Also included are Democrat Senators Barbara Boxer, Joe Biden, Kirsten Gillibrand, Frank Lautenberg, Dick Durbin, Carl Levin, and Jay Rockefeller.

I'll wait with breathless anticipation for all of them to comment and offer to return his dirty money.

Michelle Malkin already has material for a new chapter of her best-selling book.

When Losers Keep Losing

The Democrats continue to open the door into their own faces.

Here's a tip, guys. It's time to MoveOn.

US Senate Democrats lose on Iraq pullout plan

Frustrated U.S. Senate Democrats failed on Friday to force a troop pullout from Iraq, losing ground from an earlier vote and capping a series of defeats that reinforced the chamber's divide over the war.

The proposal's sponsors said they would spend the weekend crafting a compromise to try to attract more support, and denied they were wasting the Senate's time.

"We're not going to be discouraged," Michigan Democratic Sen. Carl Levin said. "There's no better use of the Senate's time than to try to change the direction in Iraq."

The Senate voted 47 to 47 on a plan by Levin and Rhode Island Democrat Jack Reed to require most U.S. troops to leave Iraq within nine months of the bill's enactment. That was far short of the 60-vote threshold needed to clear a Senate procedural hurdle and bring the bill to a final vote.

The loss was one of a string of Democratic defeats on the war this week. A Democratic proposal for a war funding cutoff was rejected on Thursday, and a plan to give U.S. troops more leave between deployments also failed amid criticism it would limit the military's ability to maintain force levels.

War opponents in the Senate have endured similar setbacks all year, but had hoped more Republicans would break with President George W. Bush this fall and embrace timelines for bringing U.S. troops home, or at least back other plans that challenged strategy in the unpopular war.

But the Republican minority in the closely divided Senate felt bolstered by a recent report from Gen. David Petraeus, the U.S. commander in Iraq, who said some progress was being made.

They'll never get it.

More comment at Memeorandum.

Resounding Defeat for Iraq Cut Off Bill

Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama suffered a humiliating defeat today as the Iraq funding cut off bill went down to defeat by a margin of 67-29.

The Washington Post account, however, buries those two way at the bottom of the second page, preferring to note it's a loss for Russ Feingold instead.

Feingold's measure, co-sponsored by Reid and Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., proved divisive for Democrats. On the final vote, 19 Democrats joined 47 Republicans and Connecticut Independent Joseph Lieberman in opposing the measure. Of the 29 supporting were 28 Democrats and Vermont Independent Bernard Sanders.

Sen. Carl Levin, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said he opposes any measure that cuts off money for the war.

"We don't want to send the message to the troops" that Congress does not support them, said Levin, D-Mich. "We're going to support those troops."

Harry Reid's Bloody Hands

Harry Reid seems quite determined to drive over the cliff and take his party with him. While I'm all for the Democrats self-destructing, by denying the troops the necessary funds for the war, he's endangering both their lives and ours. If the Democrats are so naive to think our enemies will just lay down their arms if we bug out of Iraq, they're even more dangerous that I ever imagined.

To be sure, Reid won't risk calling for an immediate pullout. He cautioned his party's bug-out-now wing to be patient, despite "the restlessness" of those who "voted for change in November [and] anticipated dramatic and immediate results in January."

The problem, said Reid, is that "George W. Bush is still the commander-in-chief - and this is his war."

And there's the real problem: From the start, Reid and the Democrats have seen the war in Iraq as a partisan opportunity.

They refuse to present a unified front to the rest of the world - especially to America's enemies - because, in their pinched view, to do so would be to weaken their own prospects for retaking the White House in 2008.

No, Reid didn't repeat his declaration of defeat during yesterday's speech from the Senate floor.

It probably has dawned on him just how big a political blunder he committed - witness Sen. Chuck Schumer's gentle contradiction of the majority leader over the weekend, insisting that "the war is not lost."

Meanwhile, Michael Barone examines the quandary the Democrats find themselves in, having to deal with the lunatics like CodePink while trying to straddle the fine line of public opinion: pandering to those who want out while not wanting to be blamed for cutting off funding. Good luck with that.

We witness here a division in the Democratic Party -- its politicians and its voters -- we have seen ever since military action started to be considered in 2002. Then, most House Democrats voted against the Iraq war resolution, most Senate Democrats for it. The lineup today is not necessarily the same: Mr. Levin, who voted against the war resolution, insists the troops must be funded; Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who voted for the war resolution and said last November that of course the troops will be funded, now says he's for Sen. Russ Feingold's March 2008 deadline.

What's curious is that congressional Democrats don't seem much interested in what is actually happening in Iraq. The commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, returns to Washington this week, but last week Mrs. Pelosi's office said "scheduling conflicts" prevented him from briefing House members. Two days later, the members-only meeting was scheduled, but that brings to mind the fact Mrs. Pelosi and other top House Democrats skipped a March 8 Pentagon videoconference with Gen. Petraeus.

How long this fight will go on is unclear. Some Democrats predict it will continue for months. But their dilemma remains the same. They want to be seen as acting to end the war. But they dare not be seen as not funding the troops.

Check out AJ Strata for more.

UPDATE: Hard to fathom, but Reid is getting dumber by the day. Check out the latest at Hot Air. More also at Michelle Malkin, Riehl World View, Protein Wisdom, Jules Crittenden.

Senators Want Probe of Mohammed's Alleged Abuse

It really doesn't get any sillier than this.

Two senators who observed last week's closed military proceedings against al-Qaeda leader Khalid Sheik Mohammed called for an investigation into allegations that the accused planner of the Sept. 11 attacks was physically abused while in CIA custody.

Mohammed told the tribunal last Saturday that he had been mistreated during three years in CIA custody before his transfer to Guantanamo Bay, and he submitted a written description of the alleged abuse. The military panel immediately classified the submission and redacted from transcripts details of Mohammed's treatment in the CIA's secret prison program.

According to one portion of the transcript made public earlier this week, however, Mohammed told the panel of three unnamed military officers that his children had been held for four months and abused during his incarceration.

"Allegations of prisoner mistreatment must be taken seriously and properly investigated. To do otherwise would reflect poorly on our nation," Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), a committee member, said in a statement issued yesterday.

This monster is fortunate to still be breathing, and now we have two United States senators, men who were likely targets of United Flight 93, who are fretting over his alleged abuse.

Disgusting.

Massive WaPo Blunder

We're so used to the relentless media bias that we've come to expect it on a daily basis. Considering the amount of times they screw up, the mainstream press unwittingly has become a boon for bloggers over the past several years. Today we have a whopper from the Washington Post and a lengthy "correction" that soon followed.

Of course, they were spoonfed the misinformation by none other than the unctuous Carl Levin.

A Feb. 9 front-page article about the Pentagon inspector general’s report regarding the office of former undersecretary of defense Douglas J. Feith incorrectly attributed quotations to that report. References to Feith’s office producing “reporting of dubious quality or reliability” and that the office “was predisposed to finding a significant relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda” were from a report issued by Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) in Oct. 2004. Similarly, the quotes stating that Feith’s office drew on “both reliable and unreliable reporting” to produce a link between al-Qaeda and Iraq “that was much stronger than that assessed by the IC [Intelligence Community] and more in accord with the policy views of senior officials in the Administration” were also from Levin’s report. The article also stated that the intelligence provided by Feith’s office supported the political views of senior administration officials, a conclusion that the inspector general’s report did not draw.The two reports employ similar language to characterize the activities of Feith’s office: Levin’s report refers to an “alternative intelligence assessment process” developed in that office, while the inspector general’s report states that the office “developed, produced, and then disseminated alternative intelligence assessments on the Iraq and al Qaida relationship, which included some conclusions that were inconsistent with the consensus of the Intelligence Community, to senior decision-makers.” The inspector general’s report further states that Feith’s briefing to the White House in 2002 “undercuts the Intelligence Community” and “did draw conclusions that were not fully supported by the available intelligence.”

All the gory details are laid out in painstaking detail at Captain's Quarters, Hot Air, NRO's Media Blog, Michelle Malkin, Forward Movement, Sister Toldjah, Ace of Spades, 7.62mm Justice, Right Voices, and the Political Pit Bull.

The AP screwed this up as well, as noted by Power Line.

Reuters is still spinning as best they can.

Let's see how quickly the tinfoil hat crowd translates "inappropriate" into "illegal".

Let's see how quickly the talking heads retract their commentary on this. I won't hold my breath.