Well, now: Anita Dunn’s bully lawyer hubby takes over as White House general counsel
The thug politics power couple of Anita “A Pox on Fox” Dunn and Bob “The Silencer” Bauer isn’t going anywhere. I said it earlier this week and on Fox News early Thursday morning (vid here).
Now comes word late tonight that Bauer is indeed — as has been rumored for nearly a month via Glenn Beck and FNC (so much for not news, huh?) — taking over the White House counsel position from Greg Craig. Ed Henry at CNN reports:
In the first major shakeup among President Obama’s senior staff, CNN has learned that White House Counsel Greg Craig is being pushed out in favor of veteran Democratic lawyer Bob Bauer because of a dispute over the struggle to close the U.S. Military prison at Guantanamo.
A senior administration official and a senior Democratic source confirmed the move will be officially announced by the White House in coming days. The sources said it could be announced as early as Friday in Washington while the President will be in Japan starting a four-nation tour of Asia, which would make it likely the staff change will be overshadowed by other events.
Reached late Thursday evening by telephone for reaction, Craig told CNN, “I’m not going to comment” before hanging up.
Bauer is the husband of outgoing White House Communications Director Anita Dunn, who recently led a so-called “war” on Fox News. Dunn earlier this week announced she is leaving her White House post, a long-anticipated move that was not connected to the media battle.
Democratic officials said Craig was ousted because of frustration among senior White House aides over his handling of the plans to close the prison at Guantanamo. As the White House’s top lawyer, Craig was pivotal in advising the President it was wise to sign an executive order during his first week in office promising to shut the prison by the end of January 2010.
In a politically embarrassing move that has frustrated some of the President’s liberal supporters, White House aides have since backed off that deadline, citing complex legal issues surrounding what to do with the approximately 200 terror suspects still detained at Guantanamo. Some administration officials privately believe Craig should have better anticipated the pitfalls, though Craig supporters note he was not the only top official who supported the ironclad executive order and they believe he is being made a scapegoat.
One of the Democratic officials who spoke to CNN acknowledged Craig’s tenure had been a “little choppy” but downplayed the exit as part of the normal turnover in any administration after nearly one year in office.
I’ll remind you again of Bauer’s handiwork during the 2008 campaign:
*It was Bauer who lobbied the Justice Department unsuccessfully last fall to pursue a criminal probe of American Issues Project (AIP), an independent group that sought to run an ad spotlighting Obama’s ties to Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers.
*It was Bauer who attempted to sic the DOJ on GOP donor Harold Simmons and sought his prosecution for funding the ad.
*It was Bauer who tried to bully television stations across the country to compel them to pull the spot. All on Barack Obama’s behalf.
Bauer’s specialty is stifling dissent. He’s married to the woman Obama entrusted to lead the campaign to de-legitimize critics in the media.
Girding loins? You betcha.
***
It’s clear Obama wants an intimate ally who will put hardball politics ahead of policy and the law. The Gitmo excuse is just that — an excuse. And this from left-leaning Marc Ambinder confirms the obvious:
Sources in government say that White House Counsel Gregory Craig has decided to resign, and that the president’s personal lawyer, Robert Bauer, will take his place. A formal announcement is slated next week, though word might drop tomorrow. The official changeover won’t happen until next year.
The move has been in the works for more than a month, the decision to move on was mutual, and the announcement was delayed in order to allow a spate of negative press stories about Craig to attenuate. The news was first reported by Chuck Todd of NBC News.
He is highly regarded by his colleagues for having a top-flight legal and tactical mind. He is well-liked and friendly. And he is a veteran of the White House, having served as chief counsel to the President during impeachment. He spent decades in private practice, had five years experience as chief national security counsel to Ted Kennedy and served on Madeleine Albright’s policy planning staff at the State Department.
Presiding over the largest White House counsel’s office in recent memory, he has, according to even his allies, not displayed the best of managerial skills. Even a job like the counsel becomes an inherently political position, and requires its occupant to have a broad understanding of how to engage stakeholders across the government. Mr. Craig was seen by some of his detractors as too inwardly focused…
…By his own admission, Bauer is not an expert on national security law, or on trade or tax law, or on administrative law — but he will certainly rely on able deputies. And he’ll get to choose them. Cassandra Butts, one of Craig’s chief assistants, is departing for a position at the Millennium Challenge Corporation.
Bauer is politically savvy, having worked closely with most of the leading Democrats on Capitol Hill. He is expected to bring a deft touch to the counsel’s office.
“Deft touch?”
Not exactly how I’d describe the “touch” left by brass knuckles.
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Rearranging the deck chairs…
man, i hope health care will cover their kids’ schnoz jobs because they will need them.
Still want to have to register your guns?
The government’s attempt at wresting power from the People and the States is universal. Gun registration laws aren’t meant to protect people who own guns, they are meant to warn the government as to who they need to go after first in the event that the People rise up against power grabs like this one.
If you think this man’s elevation to general counsel is about anything other than stifling free speech, you’re a fool. HR-45 is just about keeping armed Americans at bay so that the politicians can steal power in fashions such as this and that which passed the House Saturday night.
Gird your loins, indeed – and if you don’t own a gun, you had better get your hands on one (and lots of ammo) soon, or you may have no rights at all by Election Day 2012.
RWR
http://www.rightwingrocker.com
The Palace Guard just seems to get more and more incestous each day. This cannot be good for Obama.
It would be like a baseball manager getting moved up to the Majors and rather than find talent at that level, he brings his team with him assuming they can all play at that level.
No new approaches, no new ideas, no diversity of thought……. not a course of action I would recommend.
Some of the most interesting news from this administration comes on weekends. I guess they are counting on most people not following the blogosphere with its flexible hours of coverage. It is good that Obama is hiring more attack dogs. Over time, these dogs will make his admin look even more obviously thuggish.
Under Obamacare they get a 10 year wait with paper bags to wear in the interim.
One thug moves out and another thug takes his place. Obama has more reserves than Al Capone did.
Any reason why his personal lawyer would take over? Is something coming on the horizon?
…or just thug politics as usual.
Maybe they got a whiff of an impending impeachment.. Additionally, when one knows they should be in jail, & their not yet, it tends to make even a President a little paranoid..
*they’re
This administration continues to surround itself with far out of touch radicals. More nails in the coffin to this one term president, and this almost left of Castro administration.
The shakeup is just another sign that politics are more important than governing to this motley crew of hacks.
As an aside, is it just me, or do those pics of Bauer and Dunn make them look more like brother and sister than husband and wife.
The facial features are remarkably similar…
Grahamnesty censured by SC County GOP.
Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.
McCain is nicer.
Is it me or do the two of them in the pics above look insufferably elitist and arrogant??? Usually most people smile in pictures, not smirk like Dunn, or brood like Bauer. Maybe its just that I know they are smarmy liberals that makes them look like this to me, but they look about as cheerful as roadkill. Maybe I need to unplug for awhile…good grief.
With that track record, Bauer should be Free Speech Czar.
The Obama bus must have monster truck tires on it! So much for opposing voices in the “inner circle”.
I would expect the war on Fox to ratchet up a notch or two now. This Bauer thug seems to be one who incites the crowd rather than follow the law.
Is Mao Bauer’s favorite philosopher too, does he favor, say, Joseph Stalin?
Call me petty…
Call me vindictive…
But I am enjoying watching Greg Craig go under the wheels of The Bus.
Aint post-partisan politics grand?
Hey, maybe Craig wasn’t a good wartime consiglieri. Does this signal that the Obama administration is preparing to go to the mattresses?
Bauer’s specialty is stifling dissent.
Dissent, Obama’s achilles heel. Guess the Right is going to have to ratchet the dissent up a notch or two. It will be fun watching the reaction.
More from CNN:
Never clicked with senior White House aides? I wonder why.
And now I suppose Mrs. “Mao Bauer” wasn’t “behind-the-scenes” enough, considering she picked a fight with Fox. Her husband, Mr. Mao Bauer on the other hand, will probably try a more back door approach to hinder the truth being told.
Keep an eye out for FCC dictums about the “Fairness Doctrine” and FOX News.
The majority of the time the Obama’s smirk or brood as does most of the Obaminites, leftist and such. They are a perpetually unhappy, outraged, arrogant people. Yes indeed they are insufferably elitist. When William Ayres, Obama’s New Daddy, talked of killing 25 million Americans he was not joking. Hear much of the Left ever repudiate that? They just smirked. They do believe their day has arrived-I fear they might be correct.
Bauer was counsel to Clinton during impeachment, counsel to Ted Kennedy for God knows what, and is Obama’s personal attorney. Hmmm. A rapist (alleged, but most likely true), a woman killer (by admission, he left her to drown) and a Manchurian Candidate for clients. This guys is either dirty to the core or sure knows how to pick winners.
Thanks PirateLady, for my first laugh of the day!
Bauer sounds like a modern Goebbels.
Didn’t dear Robert quote Mao:
“Mao Zedong’s time-honored maxims that “Political power must be seized by force; only war can solve the problem”, and “All political change anywhere in the world must come from the barrel of a gun”
Thats all you need to know about how another one of Dear Leaders(Mr Dithers) hacks.
“As an aside, is it just me, or do those pics of Bauer and Dunn make them look more like brother and sister than husband and wife.
The facial features are remarkably similar…”
Dimsdale! I was thinking the EXACT same thing when I saw their pictures. Or maybe Anita Dunn is actually Bob Bauer in drag…
We can add a 4th. lie to the well-known “Three most-famous lies” in history.
“I will never put my ego ahead of the American People when it comes to the welfare of the United States of America”. Signed: B. Obama.
Pffftttt, big deal! Laws are for underlings anyway. Besides, the president doesn’t qualify for being president either. Just a typical day in the neighborhood.
…apologizing for every slight, real or imagined, perpetrated by the U.S., I’m sure.
What’s not to like? Another button man for the Capo di tutti capi!
Naaa, I think he’s picking up a check.
Dunn’s hubby?
Call me a knuckle dragging chauvinist, but why isn’t she named “Anita Bauer?”
.
I can hear Obama now speaking to the Asians when on his apology tour – “Really, we’re sorry for naming it Asian Flu every year. We should have known better. It probably should have been called the Bush flu.”
Because then she’d be known as “Anita Bauer Movement”!
I learn so many new words and phrases on these responses–thanks, I think.
Jake
***
A blond wig, some good Fox TV channel makeup, and some Frisco wardrobe help for Mrs. Dunn’s husband could turn them into twins! And they probably already think and act the same.
***
Another Bill Clinton / Hillary Clinton “two for the price of one” deal. Had enough yet?
***
John Bibb
***
I don’t think that the worst repression — an intense assault on free speech and talk radio, gun control, etc., is likely to come out of thin air. This administration is waiting for their moment, and I expect that they have an idea what that moment will look like: They are waiting for some act of political violence from the right.
It is pretty inevitable that one day they will get that violent incident. And you can bet that there will not be any holding back from jumping to conclusions. It need not be anything nearly as violent as the attack at Fort Hood. But the media has the template ready-to-go: “Angry rightwinger with assault weapon driven over the edge by hate talk on the internet and and in talk radio.” And then the demand, “It is time that this country put a stop to this violence and intimidation from the right. We cannot allow the spewing of their incendiary language; we cannot allow guns in the hands of such people in a civilized country.”
I say that this is inevitable not because I think the right is quite that much on edge but because “the right” is a tent with a hundred million or so people inside. A crowd that large is like the infinite number of monkeys…eventually somebody will try everything. And, of course, the left is putting intense stress on people to hurry things along.
When this unhappy event happens, people like Bob Bauer will have their day. It will be another crisis not to be wasted. Emergency action will be required by government to stop the hate and violence. They will jump on any excuse to launch this Chavez-like action. If their moment doesn’t come soon enough, I wouldn’t be surprised if they contrived it.
With that kind of resume, he would be rather handy to have on the payroll if Obama plans on any internal battles, say, against Hillary.
…and speaking of media templates about “violence on the Right”
Does anybody remember the media frenzy a few years ago about the burning of black churches? You’d have thought that KKK battalions were nightly riding through the countryside attempting an ethnic cleansing of rural Mississippi and Alabama, Georgia, the Carolinas, etc.
The story eventually faded because there was absolutely no there there. Old, ramshackle country buildings burn sometimes. There was no KKK, no real statistical evidence of anything at all. But the media is ready, and propaganda outfits like the Southern Poverty Law Center will supply the academic-sounding “reports.” Just as the media is ready to deny Jihadist violence, it is ready at the least excuse to declare a wave of right-wing terrorism.
Have you ever accidentally stepped in dog poop, then trying to clean it off realized you stepped in another one?
Were Anita & hubby the models for the “American Gothic”?
She is scary….now, her hubby is scary. She quotes Mao…hubby does, too. She says she controlled every minute detail of what the Press got during Obeyme’s campaign….these are scary people. God help us.
Bauer’s job has been to stamp out lawsuits over Obama’s ineligibility to be POTUS. The lawsuit recently dismissed by Judge Carter in California included a 30 page writeup which acually provided information which could increase the chances of future lawsuits bing successful. The key is that the lawsuits must be filed in a Wasington DC federal court.
Leo Donofrio, a lawyer active in bringing an earlier lawsuit against Obama discusses in layman’s terms what needs to be done in future lawsuits….it’s quite interesting:
http://naturalborncitizen.wordpress.com/2009/10/29/judge-carter-the-writ-of-quo-warranto-must-be-brought-within-the-district-of-columbia-because-president-obama-holds-office-within-that-district/
The Bob who puts in his 2 cents worth on Leo’s blog is me.
The following article puts the eligbility slant on Bauer’s job bringing him back to DC where he can best fight the new lawsuits. In spite of a media blackout on discussing Obama’s past in general, and his eligibility in particular, the issue is, thankfully, not going away.
Robert Bauer to become White House chief-counsel
November 13, 2009 by John Charlton
APPOINTMENT CONFIRMED, ACCORDING TO AP: OFFICIAL ANNOUCEMENT TO FOLLOW
by John Charlton
(Nov. 13, 2009) — Robert Bauer, who represented Barack Hussein Obama in eligibility lawsuits, which challenged his legitimate holding of the Presidency, will be appointed to replace the White House’s chief legal counsel, Greg Craig, according to an AP report written by Jennifer Loven, and published just 15 minutes ago. She writes,
Bob Bauer, who was general counsel on Obama’s presidential campaign and a longtime adviser to Obama, has agreed to take Craig’s place, the officials said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because the announcement, first reported by The Washington Post, has not yet been made.
Robert Bauer garnered national infamy earlier this year when he personally threatened a U.S. Citizen, Mr. Hollister, for brining a legal challenge against Obama in the D.C. courts; affirming that he would seek sanctions and his fees from Hollister if he appealed his case.
It is widely speculated that Obama has promoted Bauer because of his effectiveness in thwarting court challenges to the former’s usurpation of the U.S. Presidency. It is also believed that Bauer, through Siddhart Velamoor, may have exercised direct influence and control of Judge David. O Carter, in his decision dismissing the Plaintiffs’ complaint in Barnett vs. Obama. That case, according to Mr. Charles Lincoln III, Attorney Gary Kreep, and seemingly the Indiana State Court of Appeals — which failed to cite it in a list of eligibility suits whose rulings were precedential — is still active. Dr. Orly Taitz, esq., recently filed a Motion for Reconsideration, which was commented on by The Post & Email on Nov. 9th.
A collection of Socialist Punks and Thugs seem to characterize the Obama Regime. Pseudo Intellectuals and opportunists are the folks that Obama surrounds himself with. Not for any talents other than driving an Agenda that America does not need or want.
Transparent as hell.
Hey Anita, where do you get your hair done? Hedgeclippers R Us?