Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) appeared on CNN’s The Situation Room on Tuesday evening, where he was asked to respond to former Vice President Dick Cheney who told Fox News Channel’s Chris Wallace that the junior Kentucky senator was wrong when he criticized the NSA’s surveillance programs. Paul tore into the Bush administration’s role in the establishment of the post-9/11 security regime, noting that he thinks it is possible to catch terrorists using methods consistent with the Constitution.
An Administration Of Liars Or Incompetents (Perhaps Both)
June 18, 2013 by 4 Comments
It’s pretty pathetic how many in government service these days provide living proof of the validity of the Peter Principle, which asserts that “Everyone rises to the level of their incompetence.” Either that, or they’re liars.
Starting right at the top, with the President who doesn’t know about anything until he reads about it in the newspaper. He “didn’t know about” the IRS targeting of conservative groups until he learned it from press reports, even though the White House staff knew as early as 2011. The media were also his source for the questionable Associated Press phone record fiasco.
If he really doesn’t know what’s going on in his administration, which is highly unlikely since the politics have his modus operandi fingerprints all over these scandals, then he’s grossly incompetent. If he’s employing this plausible deniability tactic to maintain a distance with the abhorrent actions of his administration, then his moral authority to lead is even more dubious than previously determined.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton bloviated her incompetence in a congressional hearing room, either not knowing (or not willing to acknowledge culpability) with anything regarding the Benghazi 9/11 attack of last year. As an exclamation mark to her obtuseness, she finally lashed out, “What difference does it make?” Well, Madame Secretary, to those who want to know the truth, it makes a lot of difference when those at the highest levels of government, including you, lie to us (and four loyal Americans are dead because of it!)
Jay Carney, the White House Press Secretary, while proving adept at covering for his boss, has lost all credibility with the White House press corps by his obfuscation and mendacity when pressed on recent administration scandals. And with regard to the Benghazi incident, obviously wanting to move on with a cavalier “there’s nothing to see here” kind of attitude, he claims, “That was a long time ago.” Really! Nine months is a long time ago? So if you lied nine months ago, that’s not supposed to matter when we have four dead, including an ambassador?
And we can’t overlook the utter incompetence of the Internal Revenue Service leadership. Former IRS Commissioner Steven Miller knew for over a year that the “Advocacy Group” in Cincinnati had been targeting conservative groups, disallowing tax-exempt status. He claimed to have initiated an investigation, but knew nothing about the results of the investigation or who was running it.
Miller’s former IRS boss, Douglas Shulman, had twice testified to Congress that the conservative group targeting was not happening. And when he was finally confronted with the facts that it was indeed occurring, he claimed ignorance as his defense. And when queried by congressmen why he visited the White House 157 times, more than any cabinet member, while his predecessor had only visited once, he imperiously responded that the only visit he could recall was taking his kids to the Easter egg roll. Seriously, where do they find these guys?
Lois Lerner, the head of the IRS non-profit review division, is perhaps the only one from the administration who seems to have any semblance of integrity. At least she had the scruples to plead the 5th so as to not incriminate herself, although she likely then committed perjury before the congressional committee when she pompously declared, “I have done nothing wrong.” So much for her semblance of integrity!
Heck, IRS leadership can’t even muster the receipts for their conferences and lavish shindigs, including a $4 million “conference” in Las Vegas where they made videos of line-dancing IRS employees and featured a “Star Trek” video production that would embarrass a high school wannabe movie maker. Next time you meet with the IRS, tell them you can’t seem to locate your receipts and see how well that goes over with them!
And just this past week, FBI Director Robert Mueller proved his incompetence as he could not name the lead investigator in the IRS scandal. The investigation was purportedly ordered by his boss (the president) over a month ago; and the head of the agency knows nothing of the status of the investigation, or who’s conducting it!
The only thing anyone in this administration seems capable of accepting responsibility for, or knowing anything about, is the one program run by Washington that seems to be working and working well: the NSA data mining of American citizens. And regrettably, it took a whistle-blowing contractor to expose the extent of that “big brother” program that’s monitoring every citizen’s phone calls, emails, and digital footprint, including social media.
Either the entire administration is clueless, incompetent, and refuses to accept responsibility for anything; or they’re all liars. Either way, we clearly have an out-of-control government, too large and unwieldy to manage, and a gaggle of politicians and bureaucrats too incompetent or dishonest to run it.
AP award winning columnist Richard Larsen is President of Larsen Financial, a brokerage and financial planning firm in Pocatello, Idaho, and is a graduate of Idaho State University with degrees in Political Science and History and former member of the Idaho State Journal Editorial Board. He can be reached at rlarsenen@cableone.net.
Whistleblower: Obama Used NSA For Politics
June 18, 2013 by 1 Comment
Who Will Lead The Next Continental Army?
June 18, 2013 by 12 Comments
As Americans’ rights are now being trampled on a daily basis by the Muslim/communist plant in the White House and those who support him, I am seeing a significant number of pro-American value groups not only forming on social media, but merging as well. Our founding documents have guaranteed We The People a right to question our government; but, as of late, our government isn’t listening.
This merging of different groups all share the same values: the Constitution, smaller government, a solid American values system, and a strong military. All of these things are being removed from us at an alarming rate. Our government is more concerned with fighting someone else’s civil war in Syria and allowing illegal immigrants into OUR country than they are about the average jobless, homeless American people who have lived here all of their lives and have contributed to the system that is being so freely offered to those who come in illegally and do not belong here.
The American people have had enough of this travesty and are willing and ready to take action against it. It is now common knowledge that our own government is arming itself against us. We are under constant watchful eyes through the NSA, and our petitioning is falling on deaf ears. We are once again being forced to stand up for the protection of our Freedom and Liberty. It is once again time to water the tree. The only difference is that this time, the enemy is within. I am certain that with God’s help, the proper people will rise up to lead the second American Revolution. Until this happens, my fellow Patriots, stay safe and always be aware of your surroundings.
Photo Credit: OZinOH (Creative Commons)
Whistleblower: IRS Possibly Employed Data To Harass Opponents
June 18, 2013 by 1 Comment
The IRS may have utilized surveillance data collected by the National Security Agency to harass political opponents of the Obama administration, including the tea party, charged NSA whistleblower William Binney in a radio interview.
After working in the intelligence community for more than 30 years, Binney retired from the NSA in 2001. He co-founded a unit on automating NSA signals intelligence and served as technical leader for NSA intelligence in 2001. Binney is credited with helping to modernize the NSA’s worldwide eavesdropping network.
Asked on Aaron Klein’s WABC radio show Sunday whether he believes data collected on millions of Americans was used by the government against political enemies, Binney replied in the affirmative.
“That’s exactly the danger about letting the government have all this kind of information about its citizens,” the ex-NSA official stated.
“For example, one of the [tea party] people testifying to Congress that was being harassed by the IRS said that the IRS, one of the questions the IRS asked them was what relationship do you have with this other person, and they gave a name. The real question that needs to be asked is how does the IRS know about that relationship?”
Islamic Mosques: Excluded From Surveillance By Feds
June 17, 2013 by 37 Comments
While Government agencies watch you – Mosques run amuck
Homeland Insecurity: The White House assures us that tracking our every phone call and keystroke is necessary to stop terrorists, and yet it won’t snoop in mosques, where the terrorists emanate from. Fact - Many of the terrorists have been radicalized in Mosques and Muslim agencies right here in America. According to the NSA the government’s sweeping surveillance of our most private communications excludes Mosques and Muslim affiliated facilities. Supposedly this is done to protect the sensibilities of innocent Muslims who worship in Mosques.
Since October 2011, mosques have been off-limits to FBI agents. Surveillance or undercover sting operations are not allowed without high-level approval from a special oversight body at the Justice Department dubbed the Sensitive Operations Review Committee (SORC). Who makes up this body, and under what methodology do they review requests - nobody knows. The names of the chairman, members and staff are kept secret. Why is it necessary to keep the names and titles of the people who decide whether or not to protect the rest of the country from radical Muslims, secret?
We do know the panel was set up under pressure from Islamist groups who complained about FBI stings at mosques. Just months before the panel’s formation, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) teamed up with the ACLU to sue the FBI for allegedly violating the civil rights of Muslims in Los Angeles by hiring an undercover agent to infiltrate and monitor mosques in America’s second largest city. Another defeat for the politically correct imbeciles in our government. Before mosques were excluded from the otherwise wide domestic spy net the administration has cast, the FBI launched dozens of successful sting operations against homegrown radicals inside mosques, and disrupted dozens of plots against innocent American citizens across the United States.
If only they were allowed to continue, perhaps the many innocent victims of the Boston Marathon bombings would not have lost their lives and limbs. The FBI never canvassed Boston mosques until four days after the April 15 attacks, and it did not check out the radical Boston mosque where the Muslim bombers worshiped even though they were supposedly on the government’s watch list. The bureau didn’t even contact mosque leaders for help in identifying their images after those images were captured on closed-circuit TV cameras and cellphones.
As I have repeatedly pointed out, the Politically Correct attitude of the Obama administration is dangerous to the well being of the average hard working American citizen. There are many religious communities in the United States. How can the government attack one of the oldest and most established religions in the United States and choose to defend the actions of another belief system that espouses violence and murder of Westerners who they classify as infidels. Even though the FBI was tipped by Russia more than a year before about the leanings of the two Boston bombers, they apparently chose to ignore it. Now after the fact we learn that one of the Muslim bombers made extremist outbursts during worship, yet because the mosque wasn’t monitored, red flags didn’t go off inside the FBI about his increasing radicalization before the attacks.
Why didn’t the Imam contact the FBI? Why don’t these people of peace speak up when they hear people in their congregation espousing hate of the country they have adopted. Maybe it’s because they see us as an opportunity to expand their Caliphate and don’t really care what happens to the infidels in their way who don’t deserve to live. This is particularly disturbing in light of recent independent surveys of American mosques, which reveal some 80% of them preach violent jihad and distribute violent literature to worshipers. Even though Islam is not a religion in the strict sense (it is more of a socio-economic way of life), if Church doors are open to anyone or anything then Mosques should be too. If Muslims have nothing to hide then they should not object to being treated the same or equal to other religious organizations.
If our Federal agencies are going to protect us from attack, they have to adopt strong measures to root out these radicals and a plan to counter those who would commit atrocities against citizens of the the United States.
Photo Credit: Site.gov/SC
NSA: Reality In The Digital Age
June 17, 2013 by 2 Comments
How much of our modern life is digitally constructed? How much of our day-to-day research is done online? Much of our record-keeping, financial transactions, commerce, communications and of course, social media rely on access to the digital realm where they reside. Our entertainment and news are utterly dependent on the uncorrupted digital transfer of information.
If the NSA leaker Edward Snowden is telling the truth, then our government has the ability to see all of those things and more, at the root level. According to Snowden, our government has total access, in real time, across all platforms.
I hear much lamentation over the loss of privacy, and the counter-argument swiftly given is that only those with something to hide need worry. What is getting lost here is the unfortunate reality that we likely have less to fear from what information may be taken out of the digital stream and misused, than what information might be placed into the stream imperceptibly, across all platforms, in real-time.
Realities could be constructed. Media news cycles could be managed by leaving trails that create desired narratives. Research might be misdirected toward dead-ends or desired results. Reputations could be enhanced or diminished, created or destroyed, with no one the wiser. The political power created by such a tool would be unequalled in human history.
Our government has long operated similar surveillance programs. The NSA operation is not a shiny new thing, it is merely a very powerful thing grown to unthinkable proportions. Before 9/11 these functions were spread out across a number of agencies.
While it might have been possible to misdirect the resources of a portion of government against a political enemy, it was quite difficult to do so without leaving a trail, even with the turf battles and refusals to share information between agencies that were a hallmark of our intelligence community. These circumstances comprised the “wall” former Clinton administration official Jamie Gorelick spoke of (and in fact created) and it needed to be breached for efficiency’s sake.
But where we only needed a door – albeit one with a sturdy lock – we destroyed the entire wall. Now, the monumental power that comes with having root access to the very backbone of the global internet, is directed by a monolithic security apparatus operating behind an impenetrable veil of secrecy with little meaningful oversight and no real checks on abuse.
What is the likelihood that the most opaque administration in our lifetime (gasp!) might be unable to resist the temptation to fiddle with our realities? This being the same bunch that peddled automatic weapons to drug cartels, targeted conservatives with the power of the IRS, and to this day, stonewalls investigators looking into Benghazi.
This is too much power for any government to have without extraordinary safeguards. The capability described in Snowden’s leak is a genie that will not be put back into the bottle. Its utility is too great and its power too vast. It is the “One Ring,” from the Tolkien tale, and it must meet the same fate.
Abolish the Department of Homeland Security, break up much of the NSA infrastructure and devolve those functions back to the multiple agencies from whence they came. At least then, when someone seeks to turn this power against a foe, real or imagined, there will be numerous checks to prevent unconstitutional behavior due to the sheer number of agencies and people involved.
Clearly this will not prevent all abuses, but dividing power such as this, is our only means of controlling it. Is Snowden a hero? I wouldn’t go that far yet, but I would certainly describe him as the right guy in the right place, at the right time in our Republic’s history, however short that history may yet turn out to be.
While the founders couldn’t have predicted a capability such as that leaked by Snowden, they did imagine and account for the mentality and motives of people who would seek to misuse it. While the tools may have improved, the workmen are just as fallible as ever, which is why we must follow Jefferson’s advice and “bind down [their] hands with the chains of the Constitution.”
www.readmorejoe.com
“Washington Establishment Rats” Seek To Cover Up NSA Scandal
June 17, 2013 by 4 Comments
Larry Klayman, a former Justice Department prosecutor and founder of Judicial Watch and Freedom Watch, today issued the following statement in the wake of having filed last week two class action lawsuits seeking redress for the widespread violation of constitutional rights to privacy, freedom of association, to be secure from unreasonable searches and seizures and due process in the newest Obama scandal known as “NSA-gate.”
“Now that the proverbial ‘cat is fully out of the bag’ concerning the NSA’s and its enablers’ massive violation of the constitutional rights of American citizens, the ‘establishment rats’ in Washington, D.C., predictably were sent scurrying to try to cover up their ‘NSA rat hole,’ by vilifying and then calling for the criminal prosecution of whistleblower Edward Snowden. Many of these rabid rats are of Democrat and Republican persuasions; they are the government officials, congressmen and senators who all collaborated to put the NSA’s illegal ‘Big Brother’ data mining of cell and internet providers communications networks secretly into effect. They also consist of the pro-Obama prime time talk show hosts of MSNBC, and Jeffrey Toobin, the legal analyst who also ran interference for the criminally minded Clintons during the late 1990s. These media apologists have miraculously developed a new found concern for national security – having conveniently ‘overlooked’ President Obama and Vice President Biden’s wholesale and highly damaging leaks of classified national security information to boost their 2012 election prospects.
Now claiming that this massive violation of privacy and other constitutional rights is justified to combat terrorism, these Washington establishment rats are in full spin mode. On many of the Sunday talk shows, they were present in full force, trying to divert attention away from NSA-gate, lest it implicate them in the patently illegal criminal conduct.
But the American people are not fooled, no more than our Founding Fathers Benjamin Franklin, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were fooled by King George III’s wholesale violation of basic human rights in the years leading up to the Declaration of Independence and the start of the revolutionary war, when the British busted into our homes, stole our worldly possessions, taxed us into submission, perverted our legal system and, when we complained, seized and destroyed our weapons of self defense.
The potential number of class action plaintiffs in the two cases which I filed over NSA-gate potentially number over 300 million persons. The masses thus have the legal means to rise up and and hold the Washington establishment rats, which include but are not limited to defendants President Obama, Attorney General Holder, the Justice Department, the heads of the NSA and the cell and internet providers, the agencies and companies themselves, and federal judge Roger Vinson, responsible for their outrageous criminal acts. These cases can be the catalyst which sparks the new American revolution, peacefully and in the courts.
But if the federal judiciary does not hear the legitimate grievances of the American people and take corrective action, and instead seek to protect the Washington establishment rats who put them in power, then it could be 1776 all over again, as the people have been violated and raped, and they demand redress! Coupled with all of the other outrageous abuses of the government and its enablers, which have in the last decades been piling up, and gotten much worse during the Obama administration, the citizenry is more than angry; and it has had it! In the footsteps of our Founding Fathers, the American citizenry want a return to a free country and is prepared to take all just and appropriate measures to restore the nation to its foundational roots before it is destroyed by these arrogant, power hungry and lawless tyrants,” pleaded Klayman.
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Liberals And Conservatives, Unite!
More often than not, when someone says, “I hate to say I told you so,” they love to say they told you so. Prepare to have a bucket of gloat dumped on your head.
Still, there are those rare occasions when people both say it and mean it. A few possible examples come to mind: Aboard the Titanic. At the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Standing before the pearly gates (after your stupid bomb squad partner goes ahead and cuts the blue wire). And right now.
Liberals, we conservatives hate to say we told you so.
But we told you so.
In the wake of CIA whistleblower Edward Snowden’s earthshaking revelation that the Obama NSA has been spying on tens of millions of Americans – conservatives, liberals, and moderates alike – by illegally searching and seizing telephone calls and other private data, I tweeted the following: “So can liberals and conservatives all come together now and agree that Obama is a Marxist tyrant?”
Ian Murphy, a liberal freelance writer with Salon.com, AlterNet.org, and similar such “progressive” publications, tweeted back: “He’s not a Marxist.”
“We’ll split the difference,” I replied.
The implication behind Murphy’s brief comment is both clear and profound. While he, a proud leftist, inexplicably remains in denial of Obama’s patently evident Neo-Marxist socio-political worldview, he has, nonetheless – and along with a fast-growing number of his “progressive” counterparts – finally come to acknowledge that Barack Hussein Obama, 44th president of these Divided States of America, is, indeed a grade-A tyrant.
In recent months, as this administration has been rocked by self-inflicted scandal after self-inflicted scandal, a vibrant, three-dimensional picture of Mr. Obama has begun to emerge. So obvious and outrageous are his abuses of power that many of his sycophantic holdouts are finally taking a second, less-jaundiced look at their Dear Leader.
For example, after it was learned that the Obama IRS was intentionally targeting conservative, Christian, and Jewish organizations and individuals for harassment and political intimidation, Jon Stewart, liberal comedian and host of “The Daily Show,” did a scathing spot in which he told the president, “You’ve vindicated conspiracy theorists.”
More recently, in response to the IRS and NSA scandals, “Tonight Show” host Jay Leno joked of “Snoop Obama”: “We wanted a president that listens to all Americans,” he said. “Now we have one.”
Both the liberal New York Times and hard-left filmmaker Michael Moore have similarly opined that the Obama administration has “lost all credibility,” while left-leaning Politico observed that “Nothing brings the left and the right together quite like government snooping.”
This is the tip of the iceberg. Liberals are running from Obama like Occupy Wall Streeters from Irish Spring. Each of these scandals (Fast and Furious, Benghazi, IRS-gate, spying on the media, NSA spying on the American people, et al.) are ostensibly, grievous enough when taken alone, to rise to the level of “high crimes and misdemeanors.”
When taken together, however, they are manifestly impeachable.
Unfortunately, I doubt Congress has the courage to do it. It would take a bipartisan, consensus effort. We’re still not there yet. Even so, we’ve come a long way. No reasonable person, liberal or conservative, can in good faith still deny that Barack Obama is the most lawless president in American history.
Oh, what a difference a couple centuries make. While Benjamin Franklin famously warned that “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety,” President Obama – with his hand caught in your information cookie jar – now assures us that Franklin had it all wrong: “[O]ne of the things that we’re going to have to discuss and debate is how are we striking this balance between the need to keep the American people safe and our concerns about privacy,” he said, “because there are some tradeoffs involved.”
Yikes.
“The president is conducting an all-out assault on the constitutionally protected rights of American citizens,” responded Mat Staver, founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel, one of the fastest-growing civil rights legal organizations in America.
“Electronic data collection on this massive scale clearly violates the Fourth Amendment. It is tantamount to having a government official sneak into your home or business and copy all of your papers, records and personal effects. The fact the government may not immediately use copied material except when it needs it is irrelevant. The Fourth Amendment does not prohibit searches and seizures without probable cause only if the government uses the information,” he said.
“We cannot justify such massive collection of American citizens’ data by any government agency under the guise of preventing crime or even terrorism. This government overreach is an indictment on both political parties, as both have been involved in authorizing these unconstitutional acts. Our government leaders and bureaucrats have forgotten the price of liberty and are too willing to give up liberty for a little security,” concluded Staver.
This isn’t a left or right issue. This is about freedom. This is about the rule of law. Barack Obama has exposed himself as an enemy of the Constitution, an enemy of the American people – all of the American people – whether liberal or conservative, Democrat, or Republican.
Liberals, let’s agree to disagree where we disagree. Likewise, let’s agree to agree where we agree.
Let’s come together and do something about America’s Barack Obama problem.
Matt Barber (@jmattbarber on Twitter) is an attorney concentrating in constitutional law. He serves as Vice President of Liberty Counsel Action.