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Obama keeps his campaign mega-donors close — in White House jobs. By Kase WickmanWednesday, June 15, 2011 10:04 EDT Despite running his presidential campaign on banning former lobbyists — and their special interests influence — from the marble halls of his administration, President Barack Obama has hired about 80 percent of his mega-donors (those who bundled $500,000 or more for him during the campaign) to “key administration posts.” The Center for Public Integrity’s iWatch News combed through campaign finance records and pulled several other surprising statistics about just who is landing in the White House.

For example, Donald Gips, a telecom executive who bundled more than $500,000 for the future president, was put in charge of hiring at the White House, and then made ambassador to South Africa in mid-2009. Meanwhile, the telecom company Gips left but still held stock in received millions of dollars in stimulus-funded government contracts for broadband projects in six states. The White House agreed. Copyright 2011 The Raw Story Kase Wickman. U.S. lawmakers file suit against Obama over Libya war. By Agence France-PresseWednesday, June 15, 2011 13:40 EDT WASHINGTON — A bipartisan group of US lawmakers filed suit against President Barack Obama on Wednesday, saying US military operations in Libya are “illegal” because they do not have congressional approval. Democrat Dennis Kucinich of Ohio and nine other members of the House of Representatives signed the lawsuit challenging what they described as Obama’s circumvention of Congress in authorizing the use of military force in a protracted effort to oust longtime Libyan ruler Moamer Kadhafi.

“With regard to the war in Libya, we believe that the law was violated. We have asked the courts to move to protect the American people from the results of these illegal policies,” Kucinich said in a statement as the lawmakers filed their suit in a federal court in Washington. The US Constitution stipulates that only Congress has the right to declare war. Agence France-Presse. From Bush to Obama, the snooping goes on | Dan Kennedy. Remember section 215? It was a notorious provision of the USA Patriot Act, renewed on Thursday, that allowed the government to snoop on what library books you'd borrowed, what videos you'd rented, your medical records – anything, really, if investigators thought it might have something to do with terrorism, no matter how tangential.

I wrote about it for the Boston Phoenix in 2003, as an example of the then budding excesses of the Bush-Cheney years. Well, section 215 is back – not that it ever went away. Charlie Savage reports in Friday's New York Times that two Democratic senators, Ron Wyden of Oregon and Mark Udall of Colorado, have accused the Obama administration of using Section 215 for purposes not intended by Congress.

Russ Feingold, then a Democratic senator for Wisconsin, raised similar alarms in 2009. The senators know what the White House is up to because they were privy to secret testimony. But under Senate rules, they can't reveal what they learned. Rigged USA Elections Exposed‬‏ America Land of The Weak and Home of the Cowards Police State‬‏ Modern America too close to 1933 Germany?‬‏