Is Obama’s New Ambassador a Communist “Asset” (Or Just a Racist)?

Ben Johnson, Floyd Reports

Before setting off on his sixth vacation of the year in elite Martha’s Vineyard, Barack Obama made four recess appointments. Credible sources report the FBI once listed one of them as a Communist “asset.”

Obama nominated Maria (or “Mari”) del Carmen Aponte as ambassador to El Salvador last December, but it was not her first nomination. In 1998, Bill Clinton nominated her ambassador to the Dominican Republic. When Senate Republicans began probing her ties to Cuban intelligence, she withdrew, allegedly for “personal reasons.”

Aponte lived with Roberto Tamayo, whom Clinton administration officials described as an agent of the Cuban intelligence agency Dirección General de Inteligencia (DGI). In 1993, a Cuban defector named Florentino Aspillaga said Tamayo tried to recruit Aponte on behalf of the Castro regime. Aponte acknowledges that FBI officials found “minor inconsistencies” in her story. When asked, she refused to take a polygraph test.

Sen. Jim DeMint, R-SC, flagged her nomination in March, citing “serious concerns” with her history and the fact that “we have not received all of the information we have requested.” He and other Senate Republicans asked to see her FBI file.

Instead, Obama put her in the seat in a way that bypassed the Senate’s advice and consent function. He  made use of a recess appointment, just as he did in appointing Donald Berwick, the proponent of rationed care whom Obama tapped to run Medicare and Medicaid. Then Obama made the announcement on a news dump, in hopes the story would die over the weekend.

Defenders of Aponte insist she was “cleared” by the FBI, citing an article in the Miami Herald from 1999 . However, the article does not cite the FBI; it quotes an administration official who offered no specifics. The article that Media Matters uses to vindicate Aponte concludes, “Whether or not there was ever a Cuban attempt to recruit Aponte remains unclear.”

The unclear all-clear was sounded by the Herald‘s source, Bob Nash, who went on to serve as vice chairman of ShoreBank before becoming Hillary Clinton’s deputy campaign manager in 2007. (Chicago journalist Lynn Sweet noted, “The Clintons, Nash and ShoreBank…have a long, interconnected history.” ShoreBank will soon reopen as the Urban Partnership Bank.)

The Clinton administration was not particularly conscientious about national security or its officials’ private lives. The GOP could be forgiven for wanting more confirmation than the word of a ShoreBank exec.

Whether Aponte was ever an “asset” of DGI, she does not attempt to deny her role in promoting Open Borders and amnesty.

Aponte has been on the board of directors of the National Council of La Raza and the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund (PRLDEF). The latter organization, which is now known as LatinoJustice PRLDEF, was  long headed by Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Sotomayor signed a 1981 memo – which she failed to disclose to the Senate – declaring “capital punishment is associated with evident racism in our society.’’ In the 1980s, PRLDEF issued a press release calling Puerto Rican FALN terrorists “fighters for freedom and justice, for liberation.” PRLDEF filed lawsuits forcing teachers in Ann Arbor, Michigan, to learn “Black English,” and accusing the New York Police Department of racism because too few minorities passed its promotions exam.

The National Council of La Raza (“the Race”) is infamous for its support of Open Borders, drivers licenses for illegals, in-state tuition for non-citizens, and its undying hostility to border enforcement. Obama’s Director of Intergovernmental Affairs, Cecilia Munoz, was vice president of La Raza and is the administration’s top cheerleader for amnesty — sorry, “comprehensive immigration reform.”

Aponte’s extensive funding of the Democratic Party, including the president, raises questions about whether the ambassadorship was a payback. She has donated $49,910 exclusively to Democrats, including Ted Kennedy, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Al Gore, Hilda Solis, and $2,300 to Barack Obama in 2008.

So, the question remains: Is she a Commie, a crony, or an Hispanic racist?Is the president who appointed her a radical, a rewarder, or a race-baiter?

It is despicable that Americans have to ask these questions of their president.

Castro, Obama, and the Rule of Law

By Floyd and Mary Beth Brown

This week we had the pleasure of sharing a summer barbecue with a refugee from Cuba. Our dinner conversation was starkly different than most.

This refugee came to the United States as a young boy in the early 1960s. His family was more fortunate than most as they were able to bring a suitcase and $100 when they fled Castro’s newly formed revolutionary paradise.

Our dinner consisted of all-American fare: hamburgers, potato salad, watermelon and fresh ears of sweet corn. This is a menu shared with family and friends nationwide, while celebrating the birth of our beloved America on the Fourth of July.

We began with a simple discussion about our country and the direction it has taken since Barack Obama came to power. We shared the usual complaints about the sour economy and liberal social engineering emanating from the rulers in Washington.

But then he said it. The sentence came naturally. I assume it was unplanned. But it carried the weight of a freight train.

“You know when Castro took power, none of us knew he was a Communist.”

We sat stunned. He continued, “Yes, we all thought he was a patriot, a nationalist. Before the revolution he didn’t sound like a radical.”

The comparison at this point was easy, and I interjected, “You mean just like Barack Obama?”

He responded, “Yes, just like Barack Obama.” Read more