COEUR D’ALENE, Idaho – Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys filed a federal lawsuit and a motion for a temporary restraining order Friday to stop officials in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, from forcing two ordained Christian ministers to perform wedding ceremonies for same-sex couples.
City officials told Donald Knapp that he and his wife Evelyn, both ordained ministers who run Hitching Post Wedding Chapel, are required to perform such ceremonies or face months in jail and/or thousands of dollars in fines. The city claims its “non-discrimination” ordinance requires the Knapps to perform same-sex wedding ceremonies now that the courts have overridden Idaho’s voter-approved constitutional amendment that affirmed marriage as the union of a man and a woman.
“The government should not force ordained ministers to act contrary to their faith under threat of jail time and criminal fines,” said ADF Senior Legal Counsel Jeremy Tedesco. “Many have denied that pastors would ever be forced to perform ceremonies that are completely at odds with their faith, but that’s what is happening here – and it’s happened this quickly. The city is on seriously flawed legal ground, and our lawsuit intends to ensure that this couple’s freedom to adhere to their own faith as pastors is protected just as the First Amendment intended.”
“The government exists to protect and respect our freedoms, not attack them,” Tedesco added. “The city cannot erase these fundamental freedoms and replace them with government coercion and intolerance.”
The Hitching Post Wedding Chapel is across the street from the Kootenai County Clerk’s office, which issues marriage licenses. The Knapps, both in their 60s and who themselves have been married for 47 years, began operating the wedding chapel in 1989 as a ministry. They perform religious wedding ceremonies, which include references to God, the invocation of God’s blessing on the union, brief remarks drawn from the Bible designed to encourage the couple and help them to have a successful marriage, and more. They also provide each couple they marry with a CD that includes two sermons about marriage, and they recommend numerous Christian books on the subject. The Knapps charge a small fee for their services.
Coeur d’Alene officials told the Knapps privately and also publicly stated that the couple would violate the city’s public accommodations statute once same-sex marriage became legal in Idaho if they declined to perform a same-sex ceremony at their chapel. On Friday, the Knapps respectfully declined such a ceremony and now face up to 180 days in jail and up to $1,000 in fines for each day they decline to perform that ceremony.
“The city somehow expects ordained pastors to flip a switch and turn off all faithfulness to their God and their vows,” explained ADF Legal Counsel Jonathan Scruggs. “The U.S. Constitution as well as federal and state law clearly stand against that. The city cannot mandate across-the-board conformity to its interpretation of a city ordinance in utter disregard for the guaranteed freedoms Americans treasure in our society.”
Virginia McNulty Robinson, one of nearly 2,500 private attorneys allied with ADF, is serving as local counsel on behalf of the Knapps in Knapp v. City of Coeur d’Alene, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Idaho.
As we have stated in the previous several posts, the government has no business regulating, or even trying to regulate political speech.
What you will read below is the beginning of several very creepy efforts to destroy freedom of political speech and conscience. Those efforts will likely manifest themselves in three ways:
I – First and most obviously, this “study” is designed to develop techniques to identify the political leanings of Twitter users. That way opinion leaders and top influencers can be singled out for IRS audits like they did to Becky Garritson; or spied upon like they did to reporters James Rosen, Sharyl Attkisson, as well as the entire Washington Bureau of the Associated Press.
This went as far as the government putting classified documents on Sharyl Attkisson’s computer in case they ever decided to charge her with possession of classified documents. Perhaps you are spreading messages someone doesn’t like or you grow to be an influencer on Twitter; so they sneak a little kiddy porn on your PC using government hacking tools and you go bye bye.
II – The study will “determine”, by the standards of “truth” as defined by the Democrats in power who paid for it, what is “true” or not. This is so obvious that it does not even need to be said, but we will say it anyway. Who lies more than government and politicians? Any attempt by them to declare something true or false will be done by pure political motivation. Even if that is not the intent of this study the results and resulting software will be used for just such a purpose, it is only a matter of time.
III – The study will determine what messages propagate through Twitter via mass fake accounts and “astroturfing” vs how messages that genuinely go viral propagate. This will be done for the purpose of perfecting methods of astroturfing to further manipulate and control the messages you see and hear on social media.
By Ajit Pai – Ajit Pai is a member of the Federal Communications Commission.
If you take to Twitter to express your views on a hot-button issue, does the government have an interest in deciding whether you are spreading “misinformation’’? If you tweet your support for a candidate in the November elections, should taxpayer money be used to monitor your speech and evaluate your “partisanship’’?
My guess is that most Americans would answer those questions with a resounding no. But the federal government seems to disagree. The National Science Foundation , a federal agency whose mission is to “promote the progress of science; to advance the national health, prosperity and welfare; and to secure the national defense,” is funding a project to collect and analyze your Twitter data.
The project is being developed by researchers at Indiana University, and its purported aim is to detect what they deem “social pollution” and to study what they call “social epidemics,” including how memes — ideas that spread throughout pop culture — propagate. What types of social pollution are they targeting? “Political smears,” so-called “astroturfing” and other forms of “misinformation.”
Named “Truthy,” after a term coined by TV host Stephen Colbert, the project claims to use a “sophisticated combination of text and data mining, social network analysis, and complex network models” to distinguish between memes that arise in an “organic manner” and those that are manipulated into being.
But there’s much more to the story. Focusing in particular on political speech, Truthy keeps track of which Twitter accounts are using hashtags such as #teaparty and #dems. It estimates users’ “partisanship.” It invites feedback on whether specific Twitter users, such as the Drudge Report, are “truthy” or “spamming.” And it evaluates whether accounts are expressing “positive” or “negative” sentiments toward other users or memes.
The Truthy team says this research could be used to “mitigate the diffusion of false and misleading ideas, detect hate speech and subversive propaganda, and assist in the preservation of open debate.”
Hmm. A government-funded initiative is going to “assist in the preservation of open debate” by monitoring social media for “subversive propaganda” and combating what it considers to be “the diffusion of false and misleading ideas”? The concept seems to have come straight out of a George Orwell novel.
The NSF has already poured nearly $1 million into Truthy. To what end? Why is the federal government spending so much money on the study of your Twitter habits?
Some possible hints as to Truthy’s real motives emerge in a 2012 paper by the project’s leaders, in which they wrote ominously of a “highly-active, densely-interconnected constituency of right-leaning users using [Twitter] to further their political views.”
Truthy reminds me of another agency-funded study, in which the Federal Communications Commission sought to insert itself into newsrooms across the country. That project purported to examine whether news outlets were meeting what researchers determined were the “critical information needs” of the American people. And it involved sending out government-funded researchers to ask editors and reporters questions about their news philosophy and editorial judgment.
Once this study was brought to the attention of the American people, howls of protest from across the political spectrum led the FCC to scrap the project — thankfully. The episode reaffirmed that the American people, not their government, determine what their critical information needs are and that the First Amendment means the government has no place in the newsroom.
That principle applies here. Truthy’s entire premise is false. In the United States, the government has no business entering the marketplace of ideas to establish an arbiter of what is false, misleading or a political smear. Nor should the government be involved in any effort to squint for and squelch what is deemed to be “subversive propaganda.” Instead, the merits of a viewpoint should be determined by the public through robust debate. I had thought we had learned these lessons long ago.
Now, I do understand the motivation behind this scheme, even though I disagree with it. To those who wish to shape the nation’s political dialogue, social media is dangerous. No longer can a cadre of elite gatekeepers pick and choose the ideas to which Americans will be exposed. But today’s democratization of political speech is a good thing. It brings into the arena countless Americans whose voices previously might have received inadequate or slanted exposure.
The federal government has no business spending your hard-earned money on a project to monitor political speech on Twitter. How should it instead have reacted when funding for Truthy was proposed? The proper response wouldn’t have required anywhere near 140 characters. It could have been, and should have been, #absolutelynot.
As is made self-evident in the trailer Steve Rogers (Captain America) is working for SHIELD with Natasha Romanoff (Black Widow). Rogers begins to question SHIELD’s motives and extra-constitutional way of business.
Rogers visits a WWII museum which features some of his exploits from the war. Rogers seems to be reflecting on who he is and what Captain America really stands for. Notice the kids idolizing him just as they did back in WWII.
Rogers, at some point in the film, decides that he has to part ways with SHIELD and they try to take him into custody. The people Rogers fights in the elevator are SHIELD agents who work for a division of SHIELD called STRIKE. They have STRIKE pins, badges and one has a a STRIKE patch on his arm. Notice that the two men in the quinjet with Rogers and Romanoff at the beginning are two of the men in the elevator.
In the screenshot below you can see both Rogers and Romanoff in civilian clothes. This seems to take place after Rogers leaves SHIELD. Does Romanoff agree with Rogers and decide to go with him or is Romanoff just playing along to keep tabs on Rogers? We will have to wait for the film to find out. Romanoff is a ruthless liar and killer, but as we saw in The Avengers she is trying to find and establish a moral compass.
Below we see an old SHIELD logo from the late 1940’s. Notice it has the Stars & Stripes shield in the center much like Captain America’s first shield made of iron.
Cap sheds his new SHIELD issued uniform and puts on his old 1940’s uniform. Cap is obviously making it clear that he is Captain AMERICA, he is Captain Steve Rogers U.S. Army; not Captain SHIELD and not Captain international surveillance state. All surveillance state’s become states ran by fear, just as we are seeing in our own government here in the real world. In the trailer Falcon is also seen in battle against a SHIELD quinjet.
As a matter of absolute clarity, SHIELD is an agency with much more than its fair share of liars and killers; they most certainly do violate human rights (in the Marvel Universe). As far as we know, little stands in SHIELD’s way other than people such as Agent Coulson who do have some moral compass.
In episode one of Agents of SHIELD, Agent Ward asked Coulson if he should “scratch off” – meaning murder – members of “The Rising Tide”, an idealistic hactivist group. Coulson’s reaction was one of shock…fortunately.
Those who watch Agents of SHIELD on ABC television are being lulled into a false sense of security. Agent Coulson is a good man, and I suspect that because he IS a good man they have him working assignments on The Bus to keep him, and any would be objections from him, out of the way. Coulson is a threat to SHIELD because if any one man has the influence to turn the Avengers against SHIELD it is Phil Coulson.
While SHIELD is the hero in the show, let us not forget that in several ways they are also an anti-hero (a key dynamic that makes SHIELD so interesting). Power corrupts …and not every SHIELD authority figure is Agent Coulson.
Stark, Banner, Rogers and Thor were and do remain skeptical of SHIELD. SHIELD Director Nick Fury lied to their faces about just wanting the Tesseract to be a “warm light for all mankind”. Fury was in mid-sentence lying to Rogers’ face about using the Tesseract to make weapons when Jarvis finished hacking SHIELD and Stark said, “What were you lying?”
This writer has always liked Captain America because he keeps it real, he keeps things in perspective, he does not let agendas trump principles – in short he IS good. I am impressed that Joss Wheadon is exploring how truly on the edge of dangerous SHIELD is to its own charter.
UPDATE – Just as we predicted, Democrats in the Senate are floating a bill to allow the President to raise the debt limit in direct violation of Article I of the Constitution. The Democrats have written the bill so that it would take a super majority in both chambers to block the President from giving himself an unlimited credit card.
Congress is not a rubber stamp. What President Obama and the Democrats are doing is a frontal assault on separation of powers, Congress’s power and responsibility of oversight of the Executive Branch, and the budgetary authority of Congress
The Democratic Party is pining for a powerful post-constititional Executive Branch that can illegally line item veto, pick and choose who laws will and wont apply to – Chicago style, and seize power to legislate on its own.
Legislating On His Own
Since the passage of the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, President Obama has taken it upon himself to change the law in ways he sees fit, a power that only Congress has under the Constitution. President Obama has given over 1,400 waivers to political allies be it groups or businesses which is illegal and corrupt.
The Grassley Amendment mandates that the Affordable Care Act apply to Congress just as it would to regular citizens; a law the President has waived under no constitutional authority whatsoever. He has done this in collusion with some in the congressional leadership and over the objection of some Republicans who believe doing so is unfair.
If a Republican president had behaved such a way Democrats and their friends in the praetorian media would be screaming for impeachment and enough Republicans would likely agree to get it done. Until this recent assault on the constitutional authority of Congress, Republicans have been somewhat timid in fear of being called “racist” by the praetorian media.
While Democrats would claim that Obama’s actions fall under the regulatory authority granted to the Executive Branch by Congress, regulatory authority is for the purpose of creating due process in carrying out the laws passed by Congress. It is not license to change the law or invent new laws unilaterally, nor is such authority permission to pick and choose winners and losers by deciding what parts will apply to who and who it will not. The President is seizing the power to legislate on his own and has been doing this more and more be it immigration laws, voting laws, domestic spying, and the list goes on.
UPDATE – Newt Gingrich: The President has decided that he wants to be “Legislator In Chief” – http://tiny.cc/wrtw4w
Many things are negotiable, equality under the law is not.
Assault on the Oversight and Budgetary Authority of Congress
Normally, under the regular order of appropriations and budgeting, committees in Congress will hold hearings on and then vote on how your money is spent, how much is spent, and review the stewardship of that spending after the fact with its constitutionally mandated power of oversight. This is how government is accountable to you and the representatives in Congress that you elect.
Through the committee and appropriations process the separate segmented appropriations measures are put together into a budget which sets the taxing and spending limits of various parts of the government. Next, the parts of the budget are reviewed and combined by certain standing committees in Congress such as the Budget Committee; that budget is then voted on by the entire House and Senate. Once passed the Budget is published and anyone can examine it. This is the process that Congress has generally used for the last 200 years and is why this process is called “regular order“.
Regular order makes sense. When you look at your budget at home, you look at each line item, see where your expenses are going and you make priorities to adjust your expenses so that you don’t over spend, right?
When President Obama was elected the Democrats began to refuse to even consider passing a budget, abandoning all regular order. Since the Democrats control the Senate no budgets have been passed.
The Democratic Party Majority Leader in the Senate, Harry Reid, has said again and again that the House of Representatives has no right to pick and choose what it will fund and what it will not. Then Harry Reid and the Democrats started calling Republicans in the House hostage takers, anarchists, arsonists, terrorists, and every other “ists” you can think of. At the same time the Democrats have said they want an all or nothing blank check in the form of a continuing resolution instead of a budget.
Article I Section VII – All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives
Article I Section VIII – The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States; To borrow Money on the credit of the United States;
Article I Section IX – No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law; and a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to time.
The Constitution is clear that all bills dealing with revenue must originate in the House of Representatives; which also must pay the debts, set taxes, borrow money and as Section IX makes clear that the records must all be in a budget for the people to see.
By claiming that the House of Representatives does not have the right to do exactly what the Constitution instructs in plain English, the Democrats are trying to make an unconstitutional “new normal” where there are no budgets, no oversight as we have known it for two centuries, and just write gargantuan blank checks in the form of massive continuing resolutions(CR) for President Obama to spend as he sees fit.
It is for these reasons that there is nothing clean about the Democrat’s demand for a “clean CR”.
Senator Mike Lee, who is well-known to be one of the top lawyers in the country, speaks of this:
Now Democrats are combining the two power grabs above by saying that Congress has no right to revisit Obamacare because it was passed (without a single republican vote) after Obama was elected and that only President Obama has the right and the power to (illegally) change the law on his own.
Of course the very idea Democrats and their friends in the praetorian media are pushing, that Congress can never revisit a law, is silly on its face. Social Security and Medicare are laws that have been on the books for decades and Congress has changed those programs many times.
It is the job of each new Congress to look at existing law and make changes where the people’s representatives see fit. The very notion that one Chief Justice or one President can decide Obamacare’s fate and that the Congress cannot is laughable and yet the praetorian media has been advocating this very point of view every night since the partial government shutdown.
In an effort to keep members of his own party in line President Obama has illegally changed the law by executive fiat to give Members of Congress and their staff a 72% subsidy if they buy the expensive coverage on the Obamacare Exchange, other portions of the law do not apply to Congress as well.
The Obama Administration ordered federal police to close the open air WWII Memorial and went so far as to rent “barrycades” to keep visiting WWII vets out.
Republican Members of Congress assisted the aged vets in “storming” their own memorial. Park Rangers, who are veterans themselves, refused to lay a hand on our WWII heroes:
The Obama administration ordered Park Police to close even privately funded memorials, private businesses adjacent to them, and even ordered elderly couples to be ejected from their homes which are adjacent to Lake Mead. In doing so Democrats have blamed Republicans for these outrages and for the most part the praetorian media has gone along with it. None of these parks or memorials were closed in the 17 previous government shutdowns since 1976.
The administration has threatened military priests who attempt to give Mass during the partial shutdown with arrest, and the administration has ordered that thousands of Department of Defense workers be furloughed in spite of the fact that the Defense Department has already been paid for with a separate continuing resolution. Of course President Obama has ordered the military to keep his personal retreat at Camp David open while cutting football and baseball coverage from the Armed Forces Television.
Speaker Boehner is outraged by the administration’s behavior:
President Obama has deliberately tried to spook the markets which affects the savings of millions of Americans in hopes to damage the economy even worse so that he can also blame that on Republicans.
The latest attempt to spook the markets is to threaten default on the national debt if the House of Representatives doesn’t give him all of the power that he wants. The 14th Amendment demands that the President make the scheduled payments on the debt. The Treasury takes in almost $240 billion a month which is much more than enough to pay the debt, Social Security etc. President Obama would have to willingly decide to default on the debt.
President Obama has also said that it is unprecedented for the Congress to attach strings to a raising of the debt ceiling. In fact, Congress has done so dozens of times as that is their enumerated power under the Constitution. When Obama was a Senator he favored just such a tactic himself. The President’s lie was so over the top that McClatchy News, Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, Politico, and Fox News have all reported that the President’s claims are bunk.
The New Republic, a political magazine that favors the Democratic Party, has suggested that President Obama use the military against TEA Party activists. Other media outlets who have historically slanted reporting to favor the Democratic party have found President’ Obama’s rather obvious falsehoods a threat to their own credibility and thus are sending messages that their willingness to spin for him has limits.
NBC’s Chuck Todd grilled Jay Carney on why the White House won’t accept some of these individual continuing resolutions passed by the House to fund portions of the government that will put some people back to work:
While Obamacare may offer an expensive policy, which is implemented more like a massive tax, in exchange for “deductible not met”, “claim denied”, & “procedure not covered”; this fight is about much more than Obamacare, it is about power. A massive swing of power from the representatives of the people to the President. This is genuine third world style authoritarian power play.
One might not feel the authoritarian chill as of yet, but just wait until the next debt ceiling or government spending fight that leads to a partial shutdown and the President decides to abuse the power of Obamacare to halt payments for medical visits and prescription drugs as leverage to get his way. It is not a matter of if, it is a matter of when.
Editor’s Note: A reader sent a note asking, “What about the budgets that President Obama proposed and what about the budget that Harry Reid put up in March 2013?”
These are good questions but the answer is well known to those who have followed politics.
President Obama’s budgets got next to no support from his own caucus in the Senate as they were so outrageous that Democrats did not want to sign their name on it or be associated with it. Since the Senate Democrat Caucus would not back the House GOP budgets or the President’s budgets they died in the Senate.
After taking criticism for the abandonment of Regular Order for not passing any budgets for four years, Senate Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid put up an outrageous budget last March (2013) that was completely unserious, was opposed by four Democrat Senators, violated the Sequestor Law, and amounted to a political gag – as explained by The Hill:
The Senate-passed budget has $975 billion in new taxes, does not balance, and does not cut spending when the fact it turns off sequestration is taken into effect.
The Constitution is clear that tax bills MUST start in the House. Any tax increase that is not approved by the House first is a non-starter. Harry Reid putting up a budget that violated the Sequestor Law and imposes almost a trillion in new taxes was out of Regular Order. Of course Reid knew it, and so did those four Democrats who voted against such a stunt. Reid put up that “budget” to create the illusion of supporting Regular Order when the heat was on. This was no secret as press reports and political blogs reported as much.
UPDATE – Obama campaign manager David Plouffe accuses House Republicans of TREASON for not handing Obama a blank check CR http://tiny.cc/cs7q4w
UPDATE – Obama Administration hires private armed thugs to ring Independence Hall http://tiny.cc/9ybr4w
UPDATE – Senator Mike Lee: The best argument against Obamacare is the behavior of the Obama administration during the “shutdown”; DO WHAT I SAY OR ELSE:
UPDATE …We told ya so: Obama’s Snooping Excludes Mosques, Missed Boston Bombers – LINK
This story is not about partisanship. It is about the difference between what Palpatine called, “I will make it legal” and what is truly lawful.
For starters we need legislation making third-party records with phone companies, internet, credit card, etc private. Just because technology has out-stepped the 4th Amendment does not mean that we cannot adjust the trajectory of that Amendment to keep up with technology. The “papers and effects” of today are smart phones and computers. The Constitution doesn’t say “you have the 4th Amendment until the moment your papers are in a digital format”. Shall we poll the American people on that one?
Most Americans would be outraged if they knew that Supreme Court once ruled that you have no expectation of privacy on such personal data.
One of the reasons the Founders petitioned the Crown and then wrote the Declaration of Independence is because of unspecific “General Warrants”. The reason that the 4th Amendment was enumerated is because the British issued these general warrants which were essentially legalized ‘fishing expeditions’ into people’s lives. Eventually the Crown gave the Red Coats the ability to write their own warrants. Today we are doing the same with “national security letters“.
They have made it illegal to tell anyone you are targeted, so you can’t even go to court to fight it.
How are we to know who was hurt or whose private information was leaked, or who’s phone and email was tapped and that information was used against them secretly? Since you can’t check and see if you have been snooped upon ever, you technically have no standing in court…. how convenient. This little maneuver is how the Obama Administration has been getting such cases thrown out of court.
The entire purpose of the courts, and especially the FISA Court, is to ensure that government surveillance is not overly broad and it’s actions not heavy-handed. Yet the FISA Court somehow signed off on this unlimited illegal surveillance and the Obama Administration was able to hop from judge to judge until it found one that would sign off on tracking the life of Fox News Reporter James Rosen, his family, and the entire Washington Bureau of the Associated Press. What we are experiencing is a wholesale breakdown of both the system of checks and balances and separation of powers.
The courts have said that the government needs a warrant to put a GPS tag on someone or their car, but meta data, among other things, tracks GPS off your calls and whereabouts instantly, so each and every log entry of an American without probable cause, each case… and there are millions, is a violation of law and people’s 4th Amendment rights. Where are the prosecutions? “I was just following orders” never has flown before, and doesn’t fly now.
What I don’t like is that Edward Snowden was put in the position of having to do this. The overreaches and abuses in the NSA, IRS, EPA and other agencies should have been nipped in the bud a long time ago. The tools the NSA was given were supposed to be used on foreign targets and only those in the USA where probable cause was clear and/or a specific warrant issued.
It seems to me, who Government was targeting certainly were not two brothers in Boston calling Chechnya to speak to their jihadi mother and trainers.
In every election this president has ever been in he has utilized private and sealed records against his opponents.
I used to favor the Patriot Act, I defended it against everyone in my college class on the Patriot Act in a debate – all of them vs me, and I won those debates (according to the prof), but I always gave my support with the caveat “so far as these tools are not abused, and the men using them respect the limits of their office”. Obviously this is no longer the case. Who is it that says the government is violating the restrictions placed in the Patriot Act? None other than Representative James Sensenbrenner, the author of the Patriot Act.
Snowden is not to blame for damaging our national security.
When Carter and Clinton reigned in (some say hobbled) the CIA and our intelligence capability it impacted our ability to stop the 9/11 hijackers, it was an over reaction to the abuse of the FBI, CIA, IRS etc under LBJ and Nixon. While Carter and Clinton should have acted more wisely to be sure, it was those who abused those tools in the first place that endangered our national security by causing the backlash.
Snowden is not to blame for the same reason. Those to blame for impairing our national security in the reign in that is sure to come are those who took this too far, abused the tools of government, lied to us repeatedly, forgot the limits of their office and somehow got it in their head that we are their subjects and not the other way around.
They say “trust us” after we have seen abuse after abuse of private information stored by government. They say They say “trust us” after lying to Congress about what they were doing. They say “trust us” after telling the media that “every member of Congress knew about this when clearly this was not the case. They say “trust us” when they say that “they only collected meta-data” as if somehow that is OK, for us only to discover later that they are collecting more content than they admitted after being caught.
They say that we need to trade-off some of our liberty and privacy because security is all important, and at the same time they invite millions to cross the border illegally, and accuse those of wanting to know who are crossing our borders of being racists. The government won’t even go after jihadists who over stay their student visas. In modern times, government has demonstrated time and time again that politics always trumps security.
“A ‘find the target first, then find the crime’ political approach requires access to information of an unprecedented level. Which is exactly what is happening. When everything is a crime, government data mining matters” – Prof. William Jacobsen
President Obama:
This Administration also puts forward a false choice between the liberties we cherish and the security we demand. I will provide our intelligence and law enforcement agencies with the tools they need to track and take out the terrorists without undermining our Constitution and our freedom.
That means no more illegal wire-tapping of American citizens. No more national security letters to spy on citizens who are not suspected of a crime. No more tracking citizens who do nothing more than protest a misguided war. No more ignoring the law when it is inconvenient. That is not who we are.
What does it tell you when a 29-year-old high school drop-out has a better understanding of the 4th Amendment than the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA)?
I have been warning that academia has become so radical that it has become subversive. I am not alone in this line of thinking as Justice Scalia says that academia is largely responsible for these nonsensical, fast & loose interpretations of the Constitution.
There needs to be a massive effort to educate people on the 4th Amendment and that education needs to start with traditionalists, conservatives and republicans. Why? Because if those who claim to embrace the ideals of the nation’s founding don’t get it how can lay people be expected to?
[Editor’s Note – In this post we will be providing links to the many stories on this emerging scandal. This post will take some time to complete and will be continually updated for some time.]
In a nutshell the Obama Administration bugged an entire division at the Associated Press (AP) and many reporters at Fox News, including the parents of reporters. When asked if a national security leak could be justified into such a wide net of bugging computers, emails and phones former Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, who served four presidents, said that such an action “is inconceivable”.
Former AP Washington Chief Fournier: DOJ’s phone record seizure of reporters is “Unprecedented, chilling and plain stupid”
CBS Reporter Sharyl Attkisson (who exposed the “Fast n’ Furious” scandal) : My computer has been compromised – LINK – LINK.
US Attorney in Justice Department who targeted Fox News reporters a large Obama campaign donor – LINK.
Obama Administration targeted other Fox News employees – LINK. Tracking at least one’s every movement. Administration claimed that Fox broke the law by merely asking questions about the scandal. The Obama Administration used the Patriot Act “administrative subpoena” to carry out this abuse. Megyn Kelly comments on this nonsense:
Joseph Curl: CIA source says Fox News scandal the “4th Shoe”; says it goes much deeper; says White House also sitting on “something” that has top aides terrified – LINK.
Attorney General Eric Holder personally signed off on bugging Fox News and labeling Fox reporter James Rosen a “co-conspiritor” – LINK.
Karl Rove: This is how Eric Holder lied to Congress
James Rosen Comments
Ann Coulter goes through the history of “national security” when it comes to reporters under the Bush Administration vs the Obama Administration:
NBC’s Lisa Myers explains how the Obama Administration history of intimidating reporters and sources:
Obama Administration seized records of Fox News reporters parents
Attorney General Eric Holder’s “I don’t know syndrome” under oath:
MORE – IRS Chief Steven Miller: “I Can’t Remember” Who Is Responsible for Targeting Conservatives
Associated Press: Obama Administration has intimidated people from talking to us – LINK.
CNN outlines the timeline of how the Obama Administration accused Fox News reporter Jim Rosen of being a criminal to get his personal information and then lied about it:
Brit Hume: ‘Chilling’ Search of Fox Reporter Shows DOJ Treats ‘Ordinary News Gathering As Crime’
Megyn Kelly – Eric Holder misled Congress:
Kirsten Powers and Denis Prager on Obama’s war in critics:
More prominent liberals call for Attorney General Eric Holder’s resignation – LINK.
BUSTED – If At First You Don’t Succeed? Report: Holder Went Judge-Shopping for James Rosen Subpoena – LINK.
Senator Ted Cruz: Obama Administration does not respect the Bill of Rights. Eric Holder should resign. Obama should tell the truth. They are telling flat-out falsehoods:
Bob Woodward: I would not dismiss Benghazi as merely politics; compares it to Watergate:
IJR: You’re Right, Obama is No Nixon: Tricky Dick was an Amateur – LINK.
Senator Ted Cruz: Obama Administration does not respect the Bill of Rights. Eric Holder should resign. Obama should tell the truth. They are telling flat-out falsehoods:
Dr. Walter Williams: Why Americans deserve the IRS – LINK.
[Editor’s Note – It is rare that we copy an entire article from another web site and present it in total. Usually we print a key excerpt of the most important points and have a link to the rest, which is considered “best internet manners”. However, in some rare cases, when the piece is so important, the information so crucial, that presenting the entire piece becomes warranted.
This piece from Michelle Malkin shows that some of the same people who were caught abusing the IRS under Bill Clinton, were re-appointed by Obama and are some of the guilty parties today. This indicates clear premeditation from the White House. What other reason would a President re-appoint a man with a criminal history like IRS Department Head Steven Miller?]
UPDATE – IRS boss of Tea Party probes targeted anti-Clinton group in 1990s – LINK.
UPDATE – IRS Official Admits Clinton Enemies Were Audited – LINK.
It’s always the “low-level” peon’s fault, isn’t it? When Democrats get caught red-handed abusing government powers and bullying their political enemies small and large, nobody at the top knows nuttin’. The buck stops … in the janitors closet or something.
Here’s what I know: While they pretend to champion privacy rights, top left-wing operatives have routinely ransacked and plundered through the private documents and personal records of conservative groups, business owners and public figures. Through it all, those on the right standing against government tyranny have refused to stand down.
During the Clinton years, senior IRS official Paul Breslan revealed that the administration’s auditors specifically targeted conservative critics. On the hit list: Judicial Watch, Paula Jones and Gennifer Flowers, the National Rifle Association, The National Review, The American Spectator, Freedom Alliance, National Center for Public Policy Research, Citizens Against Government Waste, Concerned Women for America, and the San Diego Chapter of Christian Coalition.
Steven Miller, one of the Clinton IRS agents who helped conduct those witch hunts in the 1990s, is currently the head of the Obama IRS department that has now admitted it discriminated against tea party groups. Jackboot history repeats itself.
In 1997, far-left Congressman Jim McDermott obtained and leaked an illegally taped phone call involving House GOP leaders to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and The New York Times. Far from a low-level underling, McDermott was the top Democrat on the House Ethics Committee at the time. Ohio GOP Rep. John Boehner won a $1 million civil lawsuit against McDermott. McDermott’s leak was condemned by U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Hogan as “willful and knowing misconduct (that) rises to the level of malice in this case.”
In 2005, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee — headed by New York Sen. Charles Schumer — targeted then Maryland GOP Lt. Gov. Michael Steele as he considered a U.S. Senate bid. Two of Schumer’s staffers illegally obtained Steele’s credit report by using his Social Security number, which they got from public documents. They set up a fake email account and then impersonated Steele on a website to filch his financial information.
Democrats framed the sleazy move as the work of junior staffers. But the supervising operative involved, Katie Barge, was senior research director of the DSCC, a former researcher at the George Soros-funded attack group Media Matters for America and a researcher for presidential candidate Sen. John Edwards.
Schumer’s other document plumber, Lauren Weiner, was a DSCC researcher who had worked for Dick Gephardt and the Democratic National Committee. She pleaded guilty to fraudulently obtaining a credit report and escaped jail time. After she was fired, she earned a journalism degree at the Columbia University School of Journalism.
In 2006, longtime Democratic operative Bob Fertik called on his minions to attempt to obtain the private phone records of prominent conservatives through shady online information brokers. “If money is scarce,” Fertik vowed, “Democrats.com will reimburse you if you buy the records for an important phone number and discover gold when you get the records.”
In October 2008, top Ohio Democrats targeted real plumber Joe Wurzelbacher after he challenged then presidential candidate Barack Obama’s “spread the wealth” radicalism. Helen Jones-Kelley, then director of the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services, ordered underlings to scour government databases for dirt. In addition to pawing through his child-support papers, her agency also checked Wurzelbacher in its computer systems to determine whether he was receiving welfare assistance or owed unemployment compensation taxes.
Jones-Kelley was not just a high-level state official. She was also an Obama campaign donor who volunteered to arrange an event for Michelle Obama and provided the campaign with nearly 20 names of potential donors ahead of a Dayton campaign stop. Three years after resigning, she found herself back on the taxpayer dole with another government job. Corruptocrats protect their own.
Also in 2008, Obama’s allies at a Soros-tied outfit named Accountable America sent out “warning” letters to 10,000 top GOP givers “hoping to create a chilling effect that will dry up contributions.” Witch hunt leader Tom Matzzie, formerly of Soros-funded MoveOn.org, promised “legal trouble, public exposure and watchdog groups digging through their lives.” Matzzie also advertised a $100,000 bounty for dirt on conservative political groups “to create a sense of scandal around the groups” and to dissuade donors from giving money.
The effort was supported by Judd Legum, founder of Think Progress, which is run by former Clinton scandal manager turned Obama confidante John Podesta’s Center for American Progress.
During the 2010 midterms, the Obama bully brigade waged a similar campaign against the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and its donors as payback for the organization’s ads opposing the federal health care takeover. During the 2012 election season, Obama campaign manager Jim Messina declared war on free-market philanthropists Charles and David Koch and private donors to their nonprofit activist group Americans for Prosperity.
As I warned in my column in March 2012, it seemed “no small coincidence” at the time that Team Obama was threatening conservative activists publicly “just as numerous tea party organizations (were) reporting that the Internal Revenue Service (had) targeted them for audits. According to Colleen Owens of the Richmond (Va.) Tea Party, several fiscally conservative activist groups in Virginia, Hawaii, Ohio and Texas (had) received a spate of IRS letters. The missives demand(ed) extensive requests to identity volunteers, board members and … donors.”
The latest confession by Obama IRS officials that they targeted tea party, pro-Constitution and pro-Israel groups isn’t a sign of “rogue” behavior. It’s tyrannical Democratic business as usual.
After recent revelations, perhaps it is time to just change the name of the IRS to the KGB or the STASI. The motto of the STASI was “the sword and shield of the party”.
The new form will require disclosure of a taxpayer’s personal identifying health information in order to determine compliance with the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate.
As confirmed by IRS testimony to the tax-writing House Committee on Ways and Means, “taxpayers will file their tax returns reporting their health insurance coverage, and/or making a payment”.
So why will the Obama IRS require your personal identifying health information?
Simply put, there is no way for the IRS to enforce Obamacare’s individual mandate without such an invasive reporting scheme. Every January, health insurance companies across America will send out tax documents to each insured individual. This tax document—a copy of which will be furnished to the IRS—must contain sufficient information for taxpayers to prove that they purchased qualifying health insurance under Obamacare.
This new tax information document must, at a minimum, contain: the name and health insurance identification number of the taxpayer; the name and tax identification number of the health insurance company; the number of months the taxpayer was covered by this insurance plan; and whether or not the plan was purchased in one of Obamacare’s “exchanges.”
This will involve millions of new tax documents landing in mailboxes across America every January, along with the usual raft of W-2s, 1099s, and 1098s. At tax time, the 140 million families who file a tax return will have to get acquainted with a brand new tax filing form. Six million of these families will end up paying Obamacare’s individual mandate non-compliance tax penalty.
As a service to the public, Americans for Tax Reform has released a projected version of this tax form to help families and tax specialists prepare for this additional filing requirement. Taxpayers may view the projected IRS form at www.ObamacareTaxForm.com. On the form, lines 3-4 show where taxpayers will disclose their personal health ID information.
Editor’s Note – The fact that the IRS scandal is portrayed as being centered in Cincinnati, Ohio sets up a false narrative; as if “oh it didn’t happen in DC so perhaps it wasn’t as political as some feared”. That is the misnomer of misnomers. The political fact is this: he who wins Ohio wins the presidency. The importance of of Ohio in electoral politics cannot be overstated. UPDATE – IRS officials in DC and California involved in targeting conservative groups – LINK.
Editor’s Note II – The same IRS department head, Steven Miller, who politicized the IRS under Clinton at center of current scandal – LINK. Why reappoint a man with his history? This indicates premeditation on the part of the administration.
UPDATE – IRS boss of Tea Party probes targeted anti-Clinton group in 1990s – LINK.
UPDATE – IRS Official Admits Clinton Enemies Were Audited – LINK.
This post is being constantly updated so please check back from time to time.
UPDATE – IRS chiefs knew about politically motivated audits in 2011 – LINK.
UPDATE – The crazy things the IRS asked TEA Party groups during the illegal inquiries – LINK. No one can say this was not politically motivated after reading this.
UPDATE – ABC News’ George Will “How stupid do they (IRS and Obama Admin) think we are?”
“He has through his subordinates and agents endeavored to cause in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens, income tax audits or other income tax investigations to be initiated or conducted in a discriminatory manner.” Section 1, Article 2, the Impeachment Articles of Richard Nixon.
UPDATE – Dennis Kucinich Slams IRS’ Political Targeting:
UPDATE – ABC News: IRS IG Report shows that IRS started targeting conservative groups in 2010 (video). Groups targeted included those who watch government spending, educating on the Bill of Rights, those who focus on tax policy and Jewish groups.
UPDATE – IRS Leaking private information for political reasons – LINK.
UPDATE – Koch Industries Lawyer to White House: How Did You Get Our Tax Information? – LINK.
UPDATE – Coulter: Obama’s signature campaign move was opening sealed records – LINK.
UPDATE – Jon Stewart Skewers Obama over scandals – LINK.
UPDATE – IRS intimidation used to shut down TEA Party groups – LINK.
UPDATE – IRS Execs knew political targeting was happening and lied to Congress about it:
Representative Dave Camp, chairman of the powerful Ways and Means Committee, charged top IRS officials, including former commissioner Doug Shulman, of lying to Congress over the targeting of tea-party groups.
“They knew this was going on and responded in writing to the committee that it was not,” said Camp in an interview at the Capitol. He also said “yes” when I asked him whether he felt that Shulman and others had lied.
UPDATE – An IRS Exec at center of the illegal political targeting was promoted and given $42,531 in bonuses:
Lois Lerner, the senior executive in charge of the IRS tax exemption department and the federal employee at the center of the exploding scandal over the IRS targeting of conservative, evangelical and pro-Israel non-profits, was given $42,531 in bonuses between 2009 and 2011.That figure was included in data provided by the IRS in response to a Freedom of Information Act request by The Washington Examiner. Lerner is director of the IRS exempt organizations division, which processes and approves or denies applications from groups seeking tax-exempt status.
UPDATE – Over $100 million in IRS bonuses since 2009 – LINK.
UPDATE – IRS Gave liberal groups a pass, put conservatives on hold for 27 months – LINK.
UPDATE – IRS targeted over 500 conservative organizations, religious organizations, educational organizations that teach American civic history, Jewish and other pro-Israeli organizations – LINK.
UPDATE – Franklin Graham also targeted by IRS – LINK.
UPDATE – Fox News host Eric Bolling was targeted by the IRS – LINK.
UPDATE – Another IRS Official at the center of the illegal targeting promoted, now in charge of IRS Obamacare office – LINK.
Sarah Hall Ingram
UPDATE – Sarah Hall Ingram, the IRS executive in charge of the tax exempt division in 2010 when it began targeting conservative Tea Party, evangelical and pro-Israel groups for harassment, got more than $100,000 in bonuses between 2009 and 2012.
More recently, Ingram was promoted to serve as director of the tax agency’s Obamacare program office, a position that put her in charge of the vast expansion of the IRS’ regulatory power and staffing in connection with federal health care, ABC reported earlier today.
UPDATE – IRS illegally gave records on conservatives to a leftist George Soros sponsored group. Soros is the number one contributor to various Democrat Party organizations – LINK.
UPDATE – Soros gave $6.1 million to groups that pressured the IRS to target conservatives – LINK.
UPDATE – Romney donor Frank Vandersloot smeared by Obama campaign audited twice:
UPDATE – WOW! IRS Asked Tea Party Leader for Back-Door Password to Group’s Website:
UPDATE – Report: IRS Deliberately Chose Not to Fess Up to Scandal Before Election. IRS Commissioner knew this was going on for over a year – lied to Congress – LINK:
UPDATE – IRS Denied tax exempt status to pro-life groups on behalf of Planed Parenthood – LINK – LINK.
UPDATE – Conservative Hispanic Groups Targeted In IRS Scandal – LINK.
UPDATE – Mark Levin – It’s Time to Kill the IRS:
UPDATE – CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: The testimony from [Steven] Miller comes under the category of ‘how stupid do you think we are?’ Here’s a guy who said that the IRS openly discriminated against groups on the basis of their politics, but the action was not a political action. It was instead an attempt at efficiency. You’ve got to be a knave or a fool to say that and you have to be an idiot to believe it. It’s simply a contradiction in terms. – LINK.
UPDATE – Texas TEA Party leader was subject to IRS, FBI, ATF and OSHA audits after applying to IRS for tax exempt status. Texas Congressman Kevin Brady asks, “Is this America anymore?”:
UPDATE – Five IRS employees to testify next week to answer for wrongdoing – LINK.
UPDATE – IRS: ‘Please Detail the Content of Your Members’ Prayers.’ – LINK:
UPDATE – Chris Matthews: Miller was full of it and there was clearly targeting going on – LINK.
UPDATE – Piers Morgan: I guess government can become tyrannical after all:
UPDATE – Paul Ryan grills IRS Commissioner. Can there be any doubt that Commissioner Miller mislead Congress in his previous July 2012 testimony?
UPDATE – IRS Chief Steven Miller: “I Can’t Remember” Who Is Responsible for Targeting Conservatives:
UPDATE – Mika Brzezinski, Joe Scarborough & Lisa Myers: IRS is lying, lied to Congress. Timeline:
UPDATE – IRS lied in FOIA requests to conceal documents – LINK.
UPDATE – IRS agents classified applications from conservatives and churches as “obnoxious” – LINK.
UPDATE – Rep. Mike Kelly receives standing ovation after epic grilling of IRS Commissioner:
BUSTED – Top Obama Administration officials were briefed on IRS political targeting in June of 2012 – NY Times – AP – WSJ – Breitbart:
The inspector general gave Republicans some fodder Friday when he divulged that he informed the Treasury’s general counsel he was auditing the I.R.S.’s screening of politically active groups seeking tax exemptions on June 4, 2012. He told Deputy Treasury Secretary Neal Wolin “shortly after,” he said. That meant Obama administration officials were aware of the matter during the presidential campaign year.
OUTRAGE – Suit Alleges IRS Improperly Seized 60 Million Personal Medical Records – LINK.
UPDATE – IRS asked churches for membership lists:
ILLEGAL – IRS ignored Congressional demand for documents relating to the illegal targeting of citizens – LINK.
UPDATE – Trey Goudy questions former IRS Commissioner Schulman. “Can’t remember”. Schulman admits that he did nothing to stop the illegal practices at the IRS [Note – Some are saying that Schulman was a Bush appointee. Schulman gave $250.00 a month to the Democratic National Committee]:
UPDATE – IRS official Lois Lerner pleads the Fifth Amendment after waiving that right by her opening statement. You do not get to tell your side of the story and refuse cross examination by pleading the Fifth. Pleading the Fifth means that you are not testifying in fear that doing so will reveal criminal activity that can be used against you:
SHOCK – IRS official Lois Lerner asked targets of investigations about their prayers when she was at the Federal Election Commission (FEC); sued Christian Coalition in a politically motivated lawsuit and lost:
UPDATE – Ranking Democrat at the Government Oversight Committee blasts IRS:
UPDATE – Senior White House staff, including Obama’s lawyer, White House Council Kathy Ruemmler, knew about illegal IRS targeting and claim they didn’t tell Obama – LINK:
Does anyone believe this story?
UPDATE – Krauthammer: Obama still dodging questions and lying about IRS
Washington Post (2)- Key Obama Administration claims about IRS scandal untrue:
1 – Illegal targeting happened months before the Citizens United court ruling.
2 – Claims about “inadvertent targeting” due to “massive increase of 501c4 applications” also untrue, as there was no appreciable increase in the first year of the illegal targeting.
3 – IRS Council Lois Lerner’s claim that she found out about the illegal targeting in the press also false as the IG report shows that she knew about it at least as far back as June 2011.
4 – Lerner misled Congress.
UPDATE – How did a White House economics advisory Austin Goolsbee get private tax information on Obama Administration political enemies – LINK.
UPDATE – Senator Mitch McConnell: Obama Administration used IRS as “Speech Police”:
UPDATE – More “I don’t know – I don’t recall” video from Obama Administration officials:
UPDATE – NBC News: Senior Washington IRS officials requested information of conservative groups:
Cleta Mitchell, another attorney representing conservative groups that allege they were targeted, said an IRS agent in Cincinnati told her a “task force” IRS office in Washington, D.C., was making the decisions about the processing of applications, and that she subsequently dealt with IRS representatives there.
“(The IRS agent in Cincinnati) told me that in fact the case would be transferred to a special task force out of Washington, and that he was told – he was the originally assigned agent – that he wasn’t allowed to make decisions, the decisions were all going to be made in Washington,” Mitchell said. “I know that this process was going on in Washington because I’ve dealt with those people.”
UPDATE – Anonymous Cincinnati IRS official says ‘Everything comes from the top.’ – LINK:
Everything comes from the top. We don’t have any authority to make those decisions without someone signing off on them. There has to be a directive.
UPDATE – Fox 19 Ben Swann: Individual IRS Agents/Supervisors named and they all are supervised by Agent Supervisor Cindy Thomas. Thomas visited with IRS Chief Council Lois Lerner regularly:
UPDATE – The Blaze/NBC News: IRS Chief Council Lois Lerner personally signed at least some illegal questionnaires to targeted groups – LINK.
UPDATE – Pro-Israel organizations audited by IRS say government targeting coordinated – LINK.
UPDATE – Illegal IRS targeting started the day after President Obama met with the Treasury Department/IRS employees union chief – LINK.
WOW – Lois Lerner to Republican Senate Candidate “promise me you will never run for office again and this investigation will go away”. How Lois Lerner tried to strong-arm Dick Durbin’s opponent out of 1996 Illinois Senate race – LINK – LINK.
Orwellian – Obama Administration sends armed DHS Agents to peaceful protests against IRS – LINK.
BUSTED – IRS’s Doug Shulman had more public White House visits (157) than any Cabinet member. Bush met with his IRS chief once – LINK: UPDATE – Bill O’Reilly not happy that former IRS chief visited the White House 157 times, could be a smoking gun:
Conservative radio talker Mark Levin appears to have touched off the investigation into Internal Revenue Service targeting of conservative political groups back in March 2012.
In a letter last year on behalf of the Landmark Legal Foundation, an organization he heads, Levin requested an investigation into what he called “misconduct.”
On Friday, the Internal Revenue Service revealed that it had improperly targeted conservative groups for audits during the 2012 election. During a conference call, Lois Lerner, the IRS’s director of exempt organizations, explained that IRS staffers selected groups that included the words “tea party” or “patriot” in their applications for tax exempt status.
Levin told The Daily Caller Friday afternoon his organization had litigated similar complaints of political audits during the Clinton administration and specifically referenced the Heritage Foundation as one of the tax collector’s targets at the time.
More recently, Levin said, conservative and Tea Party groups approached him complaining of harassment by the IRS, which prompted his organization to petition Treasury Department Inspector General for Tax Administration J. Russell George.
The House oversight committee will look into the IRS’s admission Friday that it targeted conservative groups for special scrutiny during last year’s elections — a move that committee Chairmen Darrell E. Issa and Jim Jordan said smacks of “political retaliation.”
The two lawmakers said they will hold those IRS officials who were involved “responsible … for this political retaliation.”
The IRS admitted that it unfairly sent conservative and tea party groups questionnaires last year asking them to justify their tax-exempt status. Republicans at the time accused the agency of trying to intimidate conservatives into silence ahead of the elections.
Friday’s admission appears designed to deflate an upcoming audit by the IRS’s inspector general looking into the matter.
“The fact that Americans were targeted by the IRS because of their political beliefs is unconscionable,” Mr. Issa and Mr. Jordan said in a statement. “The committee will aggressively follow up on the IG report and hold responsible officials accountable for this political retaliation.”
This post is being continually updated! Please scroll down for the latest updates!!
There will also be whistle-blowers from the CIA, but they are being threatened and forced to undergo constant polygraph tests while the Obama Administration tried to keep this a secret (according to WABC’s John Bachelor. UPDATE – House Intelligence Committee Chair says that there are more whistle-blowers to come).
UPDATE – Sen. Coburn: ‘Glaring omission’ in Benghazi information from State Department to the Intelligence Committee – LINK.
UPDATE – Rand Paul: Hillary should never hold public office again – LINK.
UPDATE – CNN has had enough, blasts Obama Administration lies on Benghazi:
UPDATE – BBC News Editor – Benghazi is very serious, heads will roll – LINK.
UPDATE – Geraldo Rivera: My sources tell me that Benghazi was about running missiles to Syria – LINK.
UPDATE – Democrats still in denial..the dead are no big deal… – LINK – LINK.
UPDATE – Must see: Sharyl Attkisson interview on the Benghazi attack and coverup – LINK.
UPDATE – CBS News President David Rhodes and ABC News President Ben Sherwood, both of them have siblings that not only work at the White House, that not only work for President Obama, but they work at the NSC on foreign policy issues directly related to Benghazi. – LINK.
UPDATE – IBD: Benghazi Talking Points: A Lie Hillary Agreed Upon – LINK.
UPDATE – Kirsten Powers: There is something just fundamentally really, really wrong with our media…
UPDATE – Senator Rand Paul on the latest revelations:
UPDATE – Fox News gloats – We Got Benghazi right all along:
UPDATE – Kirsten Powers – Obama inserts himself in the center of these scandals because he constantly lies about them:
UPDATE – Krauthammer: Biggest scandal of all is what the President was doing for eight hours?
UPDATE – Kirsten Powers: Obama lying about Benghazi and his word games are getting old.
UPDATE – KT McFarland: Internal State Department investigation was a subterfuge. Why? Ambassador Pickering and Admiral Mullins were given such a narrow portion of the Benghazi scandal to investigate, only investigated if there was inadequate security at our diplomatic mission in Benghazi (Duh! Four people are dead, of course it was inadequate):
UPDATE – Benghazi Scandal Investigation Widening – Lawmakers Seek Interviews Of 13 Top Officials:
UPDATE – State Department: We May Not Comply With Congress’ Benghazi Subpoena – LINK.
UPDATE – Bob Woodward: I would not dismiss Benghazi as merely politics; compares it to Watergate:
UPDATE – Truth or scapegoat? State Department tells CBS News that stand down order to FEST response team was incompetence by Patrick Kennedy, one of Hillary Clinton’s Deputies – LINK.
UNSPEAKABLE – The only action President Obama took while our people were under attack in Benghazi was to Hillary Clinton to discuss the cover story:
One other whistle-blower is still being silenced by the Obama Administration – LINK – LINK.
Editors Note – Please see our previous Benghazi coverage HERE. Also, be sure to see our two comprehensive analysis pieces from October and November:
Democrats in the House and on MSNBC and in the Administration are calling these men liars:
Greg Hicks is a long time State Department career officer. He is not a political appointee. Hicks is the Chief of Mission which put number two in Libya until Ambassador Stephens was killed.
Gregory Hicks’ 30 Minute Recount of Benghazi Attack
Gregory Hicks (Whistleblower) Embarrassed By Blame Placed On YouTube Video:
Rep Chaffetz Questions Greg Hicks: There Was Never An Intention To Rescue US. Personnel In Benghazi:
Gregory Hicks (Whistleblower) Stand Down Order Came From AFRICOM or SOCAFRICA [Only the Secretary of Defense or Obama could have sent such a stand down order and prevent help from coming]:
UPDATE – Megyn Kelly analyzes the testimony about the stand down orders and Democrats’ efforts to paint the whistle-blowers as liars:
Whistle-blower Greg Hicks tells committee State Dept told me not to speak to Congressman Chaffetz:
Harry Reid not only violated Senate rules in his tirade. What Harry Reid tried to do that generated the floor objection of Ted Cruz is also very worthy of noting. What Reid tried to do was have the right to add language in the bill that was not voted on in the Senate in secret.
That is correct, the Senate leadership since 2006 has been legislating behind closed doors in secret during the conference process. The House under Nancy Pelosi was doing that until the Republicans took back the House. Please see our editor’s note below.
When called out by Senator Cruz on trying to use such a dirty trick against the American people, Harry Reid went on a name calling tirade.
Senator Ted Cruz:
Senator Mike Lee:
Editor’s Note: The videos below are from 2009. The Democrats inserted language in a bill (during conference in secret) to make it legal to give bonuses to the AIG execs who we were bailing out. Those execs were big donors to Democrat Senator Chris Dodd. After lying about it, Dodd and the Democrats finally confessed at what they had done:
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Thursday at a National Day of Prayer event on Capitol Hill, Rear Admiral William Lee spoke out against the growing religious hostility in the military. As first reported by World Magazine, the Admiral recounted a story of his decision to violate military rules preventing him from giving a Bible to a soldier who had attempted suicide.
The Admiral said, “The lawyers tell me that if I do that, I’m crossing the line,” Lee said. “I’m so glad I’ve crossed that line so many times.” Lee pledged not to back down from “my right under the Constitution to tell a young man that there is hope.” According to World Magazine, he asked those gathered to pray for military service members as they “weather the storm that I am almost certain will come.”
There may be a seemingly good reason to give the government more power and intrusion in our lives, but in case after case we find the tools given with those powers to be irresistible for those so entrusted to abuse.
The Founders were wise to chain the government as best they could, but even they well understood that eventually it would unravel if the people were not vigilant.
This is how far the Obama Administration will go to keep the truth from coming out.
UPDATE I – Attorney for a whistle-blower speaks out:
UPDATE II – As we told Political Arena readers previously, there were indeed forces in range of the Benghazi attack. Some forces that were not even the closest are speaking out:
In high security cases the government must clear the lawyers who can pass a background check so they may speak with their clients legally. The Obama administration in refusing to grant the clearance is preventing the whistle-blowers from having legal representation, which of course is illegal. This will go to court and the Obama Administration will lose as legally the Administration does not have a legal leg to stand on.
According to former US Attorney Joe DiGenova, the State Department is standing in the way of lawyers trying to represent whistleblowers in the ongoing investigation into the events at the US Consolate in Benghazi on September 11, 2012.
DiGenova appeared with me and co-host Brian Wilson this morning on “Mornings on the Mall” on WMAL-FM in Washington DC.
“The Department of State is refusing to grant clearances to Victoria (Toensing) and other people who want to represent the whistleblowers in an attempt to prevent the testimony,” DiGenova said, referring to the upcoming hearing before Rep. Darrel Issa’s House Oversight Committee.
DiGenova called the stand-off a “constitutional showdown” and added, “Congress is going to win. The administration’s effort to cover up what happened in Benghazi is going to fail.”
Listen to the entire interview below. The part about the Benghazi whistle-blowers begins at 3:09:
In this video ICE union Chief Chris Cane dresses down the US Senate Judiciary Committee. This is simply a must see. Stand With Arizona:
Last week, ICE union chief Chris Crane won a stunning initial court victory in his lawsuit against the Obama Administration. As we reported, Federal Judge Federal Judge Reed O’Connor told the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that they hadno power to refuse to deport illegal aliens, and that he was likely to strike down Obama’s virtual “DACA” amnesty for millions of illegal aliens. The ruling stunned Washington, and Crane’s lawsuit could derail Obama’sfour-year effort to undermine immigration enforcement nationwide.
In Senate testimony (video below), President of the National Immigration and Customs Enforcement Council Crane slammed the Obama administration and the Senate’s Gang of Eight for including advocates for illegal aliens, but excluding law enforcement from providing input on the new ‘immigration reform’ legislation.
Crane testified before the Senate expressing his disgust that law enforcement was shut out of the negotiations on immigration reform. Crane was sitting right next to National Council of La Raza (“The Race”) president Janet Murguia when he made his comments. La Raza – a racist intimidation group originally funded by the Mexican Government – was outrageously welcomed to help write the immigration bill, while law enforcement agents were shunned.
Crane recounted to the Judiciary Committee how he was physically escorted out of a Gang of Eight press conference last week and “spoken to with anger and disrespect.”
“Never before have I seen such contempt for law enforcement officers as what I’ve seen from the Gang of Eight,” he said.
Crane told the Judiciary Committee:
Lawmaking in our nation has indeed taken a strange twist. Senators invite illegal aliens to testify before Congress…but American citizens working as law enforcement officers within our nation’s broken immigration system are purposely excluded from the process and prohibited from providing input.
Suffice it to say, following the Boston terrorist attack, I was appalled to hear the Gang of Eight telling America that its legislation was what American law enforcement needs.
In this case, Hillary Clinton said that she never saw the Libyan Ambassadors security requests and that she never saw the memo’s stripping our facilities of their security. Unfortunately for Hillary documents show the signature of Hillary Clinton acknowledging said requests and memos.
Democrats are crying “its all politics” but the documents speak for themselves, as does the stonewalling of any transparency. We know that forces in the area were told to stand down, we know that the administration lied about the nature (blame the video) of the attacks from day one, we know Defense Secretary Leon Panetta lied when he said that we had no assets that could have responded within the six hour long attack, we know that Obama lied to NBC’s Brian Williams when he said he ordered that all resources be sent to aid our people under attack as no record exists of any such orders. In fact, Leon Panetta said that Obama went to bed after he heard of the attack. Obama skipped his morning intelligence briefing and went to a campaign fund raiser.
From FBI interrogation footage. Confessed terrorist Floyd Lee Corkins II, who attacked Family Research Council on August 15, 2012, shooting and injuring Leo Johnson (before Johnson subdued him and took his weapon) explains to FBI interrogators that he used the Southern Poverty Law Center’s list to find his target.
With so many of these green energy boondoggles it looks like this – Obama hands over tax-dollars to a fund raiser who is an owner in a junk “green energy company”. Said owners pay themselves in a big way, give big money to Democrats and go out of business.
As of last November (2012) there were 50 such companies. Obama Administration emails released show how green energy money was steered to Obama cronies with sham, junk bond companies.
A jaw-dropping revelation came to light in December 2011 by the Trib Total Media, yet it was ignored by the media and even missed by those of us watching the solar world unfold.
China’s major solar panel companies — whose low-cost products led some American factories to close, helped create the Solyndra controversy and spawned talk of a trade war — were bankrolled in the United States by the world’s largest investment banks.
Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, USB Investment Bank and others raised $6.5 billion for seven young Chinese solar panel makers in the mid-2000s by underwriting their securities on the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq, a Tribune-Review investigation has found.
The Trib goes on, “It’s not clear how the idea of using offshore tax havens to get listed on U.S. exchanges developed. But the Trib learned through SEC reports how Chinese solar companies grabbed onto the idea.” The first was Suntech Power Holdings Co. Ltd., now the world’s largest solar company. It began operating as a Chinese company in May 2002, and by 2004 reported sales of $85.3 million…”
However, Bloomberg News reported last week, “Suntech Power Holdings Co. (STP) [was] forced to put its Chinese solar unit into bankruptcy last month, “becoming the latest casualty of a painful slump in the global solar industry,” wrote Townhall.com. But Bloomberg noted that Suntech “began that slide into insolvency in 2009 when customers linked to the founder couldn’t pay their bills and the company booked the sales as revenue anyway, regulatory filings show.”
What most don’t know is that Suntech is a tiny fraction of “Obamanomics Outsourced,” whereas his administration is responsible for steering billions in stimulus funds (and other “green” money) to foreign companies and shipping green jobs overseas. This is clearly a broken 2008 energy campaign promise, but worse, a violation on how the 2009 trillion-dollar stimulus package was sold –– to create jobs and grow the economy here in America.
This demonstration shows how limiting magazine sizes helps criminals and those intent on mass slaughter while endangering those who would use a firearm for self-defense.
1 – There are billions of high-capacity magazines already in circulation and the ability to manufacture them at home has become easy. Does anyone believe that a criminal is going to limit his magazine size to 7 or 10 rounds?
2 – Even if a person bent on mass slaughter did only use ten round magazines, he will just carry more magazines when he goes to the crime scene, but the person defending might carry only 1 extra magazine for convenience.
3 – But the most important point is that modern guns are designed to be reloaded almost instantly with moderate practice. Practice that criminals will now take the time to do because of all of the media hype on this issue.
In the demonstration below, the firearm used a 1911 Colt .45, a design that is 102 years old. The shooter demonstrates how fast and easy it is to change magazines. For the purposes of this demonstration each magazine is loaded with two with two rounds.
NOTE: Modern firearms are designed to be reloaded even faster than what is done with the 102 year old design shown below:
Most charities help the wounded, the ill and/or the poor. Obama constantly claims that Republicans want to balance the budget on the backs of the poor and the old, but Obamacare and his budget do exactly that. Democrats often blame Republicans for exactly what it is they are doing. Obamacare’s transfer of $714 Billion from Medicare to pay for Obamacare bureaucrats has caused premiums for the elderly to rise.
President Obama’s long-awaited budget proposal, to be released today, does not come right out and say that it intends to reduce contributions to charity—but that is almost certainly what would happen were it to become law. Here’s why. The White House has effectively doubled down on a tax change it has been pushing for four years that would limit the value of the charitable tax deduction. The Administration has, since 2009, pushed unsuccessfully to allow only 28 cents on a dollar donated to charity to be deducted—even though the top tax rate for the wealthy donors who make most use of the deduction has been 35 percent. In the budget released today, the President again proposes to cap the charitable deduction at 28 percent—despite the fact that the top rate on the highest earners has increased to 39.6 percent. Think of it this way: the White House proposal would raise the cost of giving to charity from 60 cents per dollar to 72 cents per dollar. That’s a 20 percent increase in what can be called the “charity tax.”
When one taxes something more, of course, one gets less of it—and it’s likely that the current $168 billion in itemized charitable giving would decline. Indeed, Indiana University’s Center for Philanthropy has previously estimated that capping the charitable tax deduction’s value at 28 percent—even when the top income tax rate was 35 percent—would lower giving by 1.3 percent, or some $2.18 billion in 2010. The new proposal would likely take an even bigger bite from giving. The Chronicle of Philanthropy reports that the reduction in giving could be as high as $9 billion a year.
Of course “cuts” doesn’t tell the whole story. That money, $714 billion, was not returned to the taxpayer, nor was that money used to pay the debt, nor was it returned to those who have paid into medicare for decades. Instead, that money was robbed from those who paid medicare premiums. The Democratic Party leadership along with President Obama used that money to pay Obamacare bureaucrats and write the reams of regulations associated with it.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Retired as a city worker, Sheila Pugach lives in a modest home on a quiet street in Albuquerque, N.M., and drives an 18-year-old Subaru.
Pugach doesn’t see herself as upper-income by any stretch, but President Barack Obama’s budget would raise her Medicare premiums and those of other comfortably retired seniors, adding to a surcharge that already costs some 2 million beneficiaries hundreds of dollars a year each.
More importantly, due to the creeping effects of inflation, 20 million Medicare beneficiaries would end up paying higher “income related” premiums for their outpatient and prescription coverage over time.
Administration officials say Obama’s proposal will help improve the financial stability of Medicare by reducing taxpayer subsidies for retirees who can afford to pay a bigger share of costs. Congressional Republicans agree with the president on this one, making it highly likely the idea will become law if there’s a budget deal this year.
But the way Pugach sees it, she’s being penalized for prudence, dinged for saving diligently.
It was the government, she says, that pushed her into a higher income bracket where she’d have to pay additional Medicare premiums.
IRS rules require people age 70-and-a-half and older to make regular minimum withdrawals from tax-deferred retirement nest eggs like 401(k)s. That was enough to nudge her over Medicare’s line.
“We were good soldiers when we were young,” said Pugach, who worked as a computer systems analyst. “I was afraid of not having money for retirement and I put in as much as I could. The consequence is now I have to pay about $500 a year more in Medicare premiums.”
We have seen this kind of propaganda before HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE and HEREsince Obama took office. The Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security are issuing reports and training materials equating Christians and political enemies of the far left with the most radical and dangerous hate groups. There is only one purpose for this kind of dehumanization, it hopes to desensitize the military and police to a point where they will fire on fellow Americans and ignore human rights.
So much for the First Amendment. This is what we call criminalizing political differences.
A combat battalion commander assigned to the 101st Air Borne Division (Air Assault) at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, sent an email out to several dozen subordinate officers and senior noncommissioned officers describing conservatives as members of hate groups.
Using the subject line of ‘Domestic Hate Groups,’ LTC Jack Rich warned his subordinate leaders that they include:
• members of the Christian right (like Focus on the Family’s former leader, James Dobson)
• anti-gay groups (those who oppose the “so-called homosexual agenda”)
• members of Patriot organizations (those “opposed to the ‘New World Order’”; those who believe that the “‘New World Order’ is imposing a global plan, called Agenda 21, to take away citizens’ property rights”; those who “believe that being well armed is a must”; those who fear “impending gun control or weapons confiscations, either by the government or international agencies”)
• anti-Muslim groups (those who “broadly defame Islam”; those who believe the “inherent danger to America posed by its Muslim-American community”, that Muslims are a “fifth column intent on undermining and eventually replacing American democracy and Western civilization with Islamic despotism”; those who “allege that Muslims are trying to subvert the rule of law by imposing on Americans their own Islamic legal system, Shariah law”)
• anti-illegal alien groups
Commissar Rich identifies the Family Research Council, American Family Association, United States Justice Foundation, Atlas Shrugs, Sharia Awareness Network, Bare Naked Islam, and many other organizations as hate groups.
This is not unusual for the left. As has been demonstrated again and again, such laws are not designed to stop crime, they are designed to put gun owners in jail, who are most likely the political enemies of Democrats. yes their intentions are that bad.
S. 374 just passed the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday on a vote of 10-8. S. 374 bears the Orwellian title “Protecting Responsible Gun Sellers Act of 2013.” With all of the talk about “Universal Background Checks,” it is time to see what Congress has in mind for you. In short, the bill is designed to land you in federal prison.
The act bans the transfer of a firearm without running a criminal background check on a transferee through the federal NICS system. This is the same system that is used for retail purchases of firearms now, whether at a gun store or a gun show. The bill would apply the check to transfers that are currently private and expand the definition of “transfer” beyond any reasonable conception of the term. The definition of a “transfer” in the bill is very broad, and it includes loaning a firearm. There are some exceptions, but the exceptions are very narrowly drawn.
Under S. 374 as it passed the Judiciary Committee, all transfers would first require a transfer to a federally licensed firearms dealer, who would then transfer the firearm to the recipient, after running a check through NICS.
Exceptions would include gifts to a spouse, sibling, parent-child, or grandparent grandchild.
Transfers within the home, say to a live in girlfriend, would be legal, but only if the firearm does not leave the home (or “curtilage”) and the transfer lasts less than 7 days. A temporary transfer at a shooting range would also be legal, but only if the firearm does not leave the shooting range. A loan for hunting would also be legal. Other loans would result in imprisonment for a year unless the NICS check is performed.
The term “transfer” specifically includes the term “loan,” so loaning a firearm other than in the situations outlined above would be a crime.
What about the following situations:
You leave on a trip for 10 days, with the firearm at home in possession of a room mate, fiancee, or lover.
You have a few acres here in Georgia. You step away from the “curtilage” of your home and permit a friend or relative to use your firearm to shoot targets or pests on your own property.
Both situations would land you in prison under S. 374.
It gets worse. What is a shooting range? Under the bill, it is only a shooting range if it is owned or occupied by a “duly incorporated organization organized for conservation purposes or to foster proficiency in firearms.”
Is the shooting range owned by a natural person? Prison.
Is the shooting range owned by a corporation dedicated to turning a profit, rather than conservation or fostering the aims in the bill? Prison.
What about loaning a firearm for shooting at a Georgia DNR range? Prison.
While there is an exception for shooting competitions organized by the Georgia DNR, there is no exception for loaning a firearm just for recreational target shooting practice.
There is much more to the bill. For instance, it does away with the Georgia Weapons Carry License as an exception to the NICS check. It permits Eric Holder to set the cost of the transfer fee when you loan your weapon. It mandates reporting the theft or loss of a firearm within 24 hours, the failure of which will put you in prison, and this part of the bill is a felony punishable by 5 years imprisonment.
The bill claims Congressional power to make these laws under the Constitution’s Commerce Clause.
We are NOT fans of Alex Jones here, but when he gets it spot on with the evidence he deserves the same credit as anyone else. Examine the evidence:
“If you are not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.” – Malcolm X
“The government exists to protect and respect our freedoms, not attack them,” Tedesco added. “The city cannot erase these fundamental freedoms and replace them with government coercion and intolerance.”
Coeur d’Alene officials told the Knapps privately and also publicly stated that the couple would violate the city’s public accommodations statute once same-sex marriage became legal in Idaho if they declined to perform a same-sex ceremony at their chapel. On Friday, the Knapps respectfully declined such a ceremony and now face up to 180 days in jail and up to $1,000 in fines for each day they decline to perform that ceremony.
Political Arena 
