Here's the story we'll be discussing:
Whistleblowers Could be Casualties of Obama's Signing Statement
By David Nather
One of the clauses in President Obama’s first signing statement suggests he might resist lawmakers on a provision aimed at protecting whistleblowers — a suggestion that is drawing fire from a top Senate Republican and prompting a closer look by a leading whistleblower defense group.
If Obama’s statement really is an indication that the administration might not comply with the whistleblower language in the omnibus appropriations bill, it would add a new level of irony to the signing statement he issued Wednesday. Not only did Obama criticize President George W. Bush for issuing such signing statements in the first place, but watchdog groups specifically criticized Bush for allegedly trying to kill other efforts to protect federal whistleblowers from retaliation.
And here's some more
After all, Obama not only promised during the campaign to protect federal whistleblowers, he also included a directive to that effect in a memorandum to federal departments and agencies earlier this week aimed at preventing political interference in science. Obama told the departments to design procedures, “including any appropriate whistleblower protections,” to avoid the kind of interference that reportedly took place during the Bush administration.
So does Obama not really want whistleblowers to talk to Congress? Or was this just a case of the administration’s left hand not knowing what the right hand was doing? Either way, this could become a headache Obama doesn’t need right now — a high price to pay for presidential perogatives.
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Listen tonight, on the Rob Kall Bottom Up Radio Show--
9-10 PM EST WNJC 1360 in Philly and South Jersey, or listen to it streaming, live at either www.wnjc1360.com or here. and it is archived on www.whiterosesociety.org
Rob Kall is an award winning journalist, inventor, software architect,
connector and visionary. His work and his writing have been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, ABC, the HuffingtonPost, Success, Discover and other media.
Check out his platform at RobKall.com
He is the author of The Bottom-up Revolution; Mastering the Emerging World of Connectivity
He's given talks and workshops to Fortune
500 execs and national medical and psychological organizations, and pioneered
first-of-their-kind conferences in Positive Psychology, Brain Science and
Story. He hosts some of the world's smartest, most interesting and powerful
people on his Bottom Up Radio Show,
and founded and publishes one of the top Google- ranked progressive news and
opinion sites, OpEdNews.com
more detailed bio:
Rob Kall has spent his adult life as an awakener and empowerer-- first in the field of biofeedback, inventing products, developing software and a music recording label, MuPsych, within the company he founded in 1978-- Futurehealth, and founding, organizing and running 3 conferences: Winter Brain, on Neurofeedback and consciousness, Optimal Functioning and Positive Psychology (a pioneer in the field of Positive Psychology, first presenting workshops on it in 1985) and Storycon Summit Meeting on the Art Science and Application of Story-- each the first of their kind. Then, when he found the process of raising people's consciousness and empowering them to take more control of their lives one person at a time was too slow, he founded Opednews.com-- which has been the top search result on Google for the terms liberal news and progressive opinion for several years. Rob began his Bottom-up Radio show, broadcast on WNJC 1360 AM to Metro Philly, also available on iTunes, covering the transition of our culture, business and world from predominantly Top-down (hierarchical, centralized, authoritarian, patriarchal, big) to bottom-up (egalitarian, local, interdependent, grassroots, archetypal feminine and small.) Recent long-term projects include a book, Bottom-up-- The Connection Revolution, (more...)
