Michael Kaery

The Iraq war was a dismal failure!!!

Posted on March 19, 2013 5:02 pm by Robert Robb

The real Iraq war lesson

Except in a few neoconservative hideouts, the Iraq war is generally regarded as a mistake.

The war has cost over $800 billion so far, with more than 4,400 U.S. soldiers killed and around 32,000 wounded. Hard to argue that the United States has acquired security gains commensurate with that sacrifice.

So, why was the Iraq war a mistake and what lessons should be learned from it? The 10th anniversary of the initial invasion has occasioned considerable discussion of those questions. But most of the discussion is wide of the most important lesson to be learned.

The Iraq war was a mistake not because the Bush administration lied about the intelligence or because the press wasn’t skeptical enough about the claims being made about Saddam Hussein and weapons of mass destruction. The Iraq war wasn’t a mistake because there was inadequate planning for postwar reconstruction or insufficient military commitment and engagement by the U.S. after Saddam fell.

Certainly, it is fair to say that every important assumption the Bush administration made about the Iraq war turned out to be inaccurate.

Saddam did not have weapons of mass destruction or an active program to produce them. The Bush administration assumed that it could just lop off the Baath leadership in Iraq and the civil government and society would continue to operate reasonably well. Instead chaos ensued and order and sound governance are still highly tenuous. Oil revenues haven’t paid for but a fraction of the cost of reconstruction, which remains patchy at best.

But here is the most important thing the Bush administration got wrong. The Bush administration claimed that, postwar, Iraq would become a shining example of democratic capitalism, serving to transform the region and be a U.S. ally helping to check the influence of Iran.

According to Transparency International, Iraq is the eighth most corrupt country in the world in which to do business. Its government remains largely paralyzed from sectarian and ethnic conflict. And it has no interest in being America’s front line against Iran. In fact, it wants friendly relations with Iran.

After Saddam’s minority Sunni dominance was wiped away, political power naturally flowed to the majority Shia. And the Shia naturally want cordial relations and an alliance with their co-religionists in Iran, given the hostile Sunni neighborhood in which they reside.

What’s important is that, while this in retrospect seems foreseeable, it was not foreseen. The Bush administration didn’t anticipate it. It wasn’t a major point made by critics of the decision to go to war.

The major lesson of the Iraq war is this: The United States cannot foresee the consequences of our actions with sufficient accuracy to be attempting to micromanage the geopolitics of the Middle East.

This is not a deficiency peculiar to the Bush administration or Republicans. President Barack Obama’s Muslim charm offensive was a dud. The Arab Spring caught his administration off guard and flat-footed.

Nor is it recent. President Clinton pushed prematurely for an Israeli-Palestinian comprehensive peace agreement and helped trigger the Second Intifada. George W. Bush told Palestinians they had to elect new leadership, so they choose Hamas.

Sometimes the time fuse on our unintended consequences is long. In 1953, the U.S. helped depose a democratically elected government in Iran and install an autocrat, the Shah, to run the country. That meant that, when the Shah was deposed in 1979, the revolution was reflexively anti-American. And now the anti-American ruling elite that took over wants a nuke.

The United States favored Saddam Hussein in his war against Iran, then went to war against him twice.

It’s often said that the United States has no option but to be deeply engaged in the region’s geopolitics. Certainly that’s where the international terrorism that threatens us emanates. But effective counterterrorism can be selective and targeted. And Middle East oil, the other rationale usually cited, is far more important to Europe than the United States, particularly if we more aggressively developed domestic sources.

The larger U.S. role in attempting to micromanage the region’s geopolitics only even arguably makes sense if we can confidently intervene in ways that are productive rather than destructive. There’s a 60-year history that says we can’t, Iraq being just the most costly example.

Iraq Attacks Across Baghdad Kill 65, Wound Hundreds

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Iraq Attacks Across Baghdad Kill 65, Wound Hundreds

By ADAM SCHRECK 03/19/13 10:02 PM ET EDT AP

BAGHDAD — Insurgents sent a bloody message on the eve of the 10th anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion, carrying out a wave of bombings across the country Tuesday that killed at least 65 people in the deadliest day in Iraq this year.

The nearly 20 attacks, most of them in and around Baghdad, demonstrated in stark terms how dangerously divided Iraq remains more than a year after American troops withdrew. More than 240 people were reported wounded.

It was Iraq's bloodiest day since Sept. 9, when an onslaught of bombings and shootings killed 92.

Violence has ebbed sharply since the peak of Sunni-Shiite fighting that pushed the country to the brink of civil war in 2006 and 2007. But insurgents are still able to stage high-profile attacks, while sectarian and ethnic rivalries continue to tear at the fabric of national unity.

The symbolism of Tuesday's attacks was strong, coming 10 years to the day, Washington time, that President George W. Bush announced the start of hostilities against Iraq. It was already early March 20, 2003, in Iraq when the airstrikes began.

The military action quickly ousted Saddam Hussein but led to years of bloodshed as Sunni and Shiite militants battled U.S. forces and each other, leaving nearly 4,500 Americans and more than 100,000 Iraqis dead.

A decade later, Iraq's long-term stability and the strength of its democracy are uncertain. While the country is freer than it was during Saddam's murderous rule, its Shiite-led government is arguably closer to Tehran than to Washington. It faces an outpouring of anger by the Sunni minority that was dominant under Saddam and at the heart of the insurgency that followed his ouster.

"Today's attacks are new proof that the politicians and security officials are a huge failure," said Hussein Abdul-Khaliq, a resident of Baghdad's Shiite slum district of Sadr City, which was hit by three explosions that killed 10 people, including three commuters on a minibus.

The apparently coordinated attacks around the country included car bombs and explosives stuck to the underside of vehicles. They targeted government security forces and mainly Shiite areas.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but Iraqi officials believe al-Qaida's Iraq arm is to blame. The terror group favors car bombs and coordinated bombings to undermine public confidence in the government. It has claimed it was behind two large-scale, well-coordinated attacks already this month, including an assault on the Justice Ministry in downtown Baghdad last week that left 30 dead.

Sabah al-Nuaman, a spokesman for Iraq's counterterrorism services, said al-Qaida is trying to exploit political instability in the country. He also linked the violence to the civil war across the border in Syria, where largely Sunni rebels – some with ties to al-Qaida – are trying to topple President Bashar Assad.

"The terrorist groups are trying to move their operations back to Iraq. They want to make Iraq part of the regional struggle," al-Nuaman said.

The violence started around 8 a.m., when a bomb exploded outside a popular restaurant in Baghdad's Mashtal neighborhood, killing four people, according to police and hospital officials. It blew out the eatery's windows and left several cars mangled in the blood-streaked street.

The deadliest attack was a 10 a.m. car bombing near the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs in Baghdad's Qahira neighborhood. Seven people were killed.

Another car bomb exploded outside a restaurant near one of the main gates to the fortified Green Zone, which houses major government offices and the U.S. and British embassies. Six people died, including two soldiers. Thick black smoke could be seen rising from the area as ambulances raced to the scene.

At one point amid the chaos, authorities shut bridges spanning the Tigris River in the capital, hoping to thwart further attacks.

Car bombings, roadside blasts, suicide attacks and other mayhem were reported in other parts of the capital as well as in Taji, Tarmiyah, Baqouba and Iskandiriya. In the northern city of Mosul, a local police commander was killed along with two bodyguards by a suicide bomber.

The U.S. and Britain, the two countries that contributed the bulk of the troops for the 2003 war effort, condemned the attacks.

"The vast majority of Iraqis want to leave behind the violence of the past to build a peaceful and prosperous country," British Foreign Secretary William Hague said in a statement.

Amid the political tensions, Iraq's Cabinet decided Tuesday to postpone next month's local elections in two provinces dominated by Sunnis.

Anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr blasted the decision and threatened to withdraw his bloc's support from the government.

"Staying in this government has become harmful and not useful at all," he said.

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Associated Press writers Sameer N. Yacoub, Qassim Abdul-Zahra and Sinan Salaheddin in Baghdad and Raphael Satter in London contributed to this report.

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Follow Adam Schreck on Twitter at http://twitter.com/adamschreck

US pays Iraq, Afghan vets $12 billion a year????

AP: Costs of US wars linger for over 100 years

AP: Costs of US wars linger for over 100 years

By By MIKE BAKER, Associated Press

OLYMPIA, Wash. (AP) — If history is any judge, the U.S. government will be paying for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars for the next century as service members and their families grapple with the sacrifices of combat.

An Associated Press analysis of federal payment records found that the government is still making monthly payments to relatives of Civil War veterans — 148 years after the conflict ended.

At the 10 year anniversary of the start of the Iraq war, more than $40 billion a year are going to compensate veterans and survivors from the Spanish-American War from 1898, World War I and II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the two Iraq campaigns and the Afghanistan conflict. And those costs are rising rapidly.

U.S. Sen. Patty Murray said such expenses should remind the nation about war's long-lasting financial toll.

"When we decide to go to war, we have to consciously be also thinking about the cost," said Murray, D-Wash., adding that her WWII-veteran father's disability benefits helped feed their family.

Alan Simpson, a former Republican senator and veteran who co-chaired President Barack Obama's deficit committee in 2010, said government leaders working to limit the national debt should make sure that survivors of veterans need the money they are receiving.

"Without question, I would affluence-test all of those people," Simpson said.

With greater numbers of troops surviving combat injuries because of improvements in battlefield medicine and technology, the costs of disability payments are set to rise much higher.

The AP identified the disability and survivor benefits during an analysis of millions of federal payment records obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.

To gauge the post-war costs of each conflict, AP looked at four compensation programs that identify recipients by war: disabled veterans; survivors of those who died on active duty or from a service-related disability; low-income wartime vets over age 65 or disabled; and low-income survivors of wartime veterans or their disabled children.

—The Iraq wars and Afghanistan

So far, the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and the first Persian Gulf conflict in the early 1990s are costing about $12 billion a year to compensate those who have left military service or family members of those who have died.

Those post-service compensation costs have totaled more than $50 billion since 2003, not including expenses of medical care and other benefits provided to veterans, and are poised to grow for many years to come.

The new veterans are filing for disabilities at historic rates, with about 45 percent of those from Iraq and Afghanistan seeking compensation for injuries. Many are seeking compensation for a variety of ailments at once.

Experts see a variety of factors driving that surge, including a bad economy that's led more jobless veterans to seek the financial benefits they've earned, troops who survive wounds of war and more awareness about head trauma and mental health.

—Vietnam War

It's been 40 years since the U.S. ended its involvement in the Vietnam War, and yet payments for the conflict are still rising.

Now above $22 billion annually, Vietnam compensation costs are roughly twice the size of the FBI's annual budget. And while many disabled Vietnam vets have been compensated for post-traumatic stress disorder, hearing loss or general wounds, other ailments are positioning the war to have large costs even after veterans die.

Based on an uncertain link to the defoliant Agent Orange that was used in Vietnam, federal officials approved diabetes a decade ago as an ailment that qualifies for cash compensation — and it is now the most compensated ailment for Vietnam vets.

The VA also recently included heart disease among the Vietnam medical issues that qualify, and the agency is seeing thousands of new claims for that issue. Simpson said he has a lot of concerns about the government agreeing to automatically compensate for those diseases.

"That has been terribly abused," Simpson said.

Since heart disease is common among older Americans and is the nation's leading cause of death, the future deaths of thousands of Vietnam veterans could be linked to their service and their benefits passed along to survivors.

A congressional analysis estimated the cost of fighting the war was $738 billion in 2011 dollars, and the post-war benefits for veterans and families have separately cost some $270 billion since 1970, according to AP calculations.

—World War I, World War II and the Korean War

World War I, which ended 94 years ago, continues to cost taxpayers about $20 million every year. World War II? $5 billion.

Compensation for WWII veterans and families didn't peak until 1991 — 46 years after the war ended — and annual costs since then have only declined by about 25 percent. Korean War costs appear to be leveling off at about $2.8 billion per year.

Of the 2,289 survivors drawing cash linked to WWI, about one-third are spouses and dozens of them are over 100 years in age.

Some of the other recipients are curious: Forty-seven of the spouses are under the age of 80, meaning they weren't born until years after the war ended. Many of those women were in their 20s and 30s when their aging spouses died in the 1960s and 1970s, and they've been drawing the monthly payments since.

—Civil War and Spanish-American War

There are 10 living recipients of benefits tied to the 1898 Spanish-American War at a total cost of about $50,000 per year. The Civil War payments are going to two children of veterans — one in North Carolina and one in Tennessee— each for $876 per year.

Surviving spouses can qualify for lifetime benefits when troops from current wars have a service-linked death. Children under the age of 18 can also qualify, and those benefits are extended for a lifetime if the person is permanently incapable of self-support due to a disability before the age of 18.

Citing privacy, officials did not disclose the names of the two children getting the Civil War benefits.

Their ages suggest the one in Tennessee was born around 1920 and the North Carolina survivor was born around 1930. A veteran who was young during the Civil War would likely have been roughly 70 or 80 years old when the two people were born.

That's not unheard of. At age 86, Juanita Tudor Lowrey is the daughter of a Civil War veteran. Her father, Hugh Tudor, fought in the Union army. After his first wife died, Tudor was 73 when he remarried her 33-year-old mother in 1920. Lowrey was born in 1926.

Lowrey, who lives in Kearney, Mo., suspects the marriage might have been one of convenience, with her father looking for a housekeeper and her mother looking for some security. He died a couple years after she was born, and Lowrey received pension benefits until she was 18.

Now, Lowrey said, she usually gets skepticism from people after she tells them she's a daughter of a Civil War veteran.

"We're few and far between," Lowrey said.

AP Writer Mike Baker can be reached on Facebook: http://on.fb.me/HiPpEV

U.S. still making payments to relatives of Civil War veterans

U.S. still making payments to relatives of Civil War veterans

By Eric Pfeiffer, Yahoo! News | The Sideshow

Juanita Tudor Lowrey received government benefits tied to her father, a Civil War veteran. (Charlie Riedel/AP)Ten years after the launch of the Iraq War, a number of critics and analysts have been pointing to war’s extravagant financial cost—to say nothing of its toll on human lives. But a surprising report shows that nearly 150 years after the Civil War's conclusion, the U.S. government is still paying relatives of veterans.

An analysis from the Associated Press found that more than $40 billion annually is being spent on veterans and survivors of wars dating from the Spanish-American War of 1898 up through the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.

There are only two recipients of Civil War benefits, both children of veterans and receiving $876 per year.

Although their names are being kept private, the AP estimates that they were both born between 1920 and 1930, meaning their parents were themselves upward of 80 when their children were born.

Juanita Tudor Lowrey, 86, received Civil War benefits tied to her late father from the age of 2 until her 18th birthday.

Military veteran and former Republican Sen. Alan Simpson said the government should consider means testing veterans as the burden on the federal debt continues to grow.

"Without question, I would affluence-test all of those people," Simpson told the AP.

Simpson co-chaired President Barack Obama’s deficit reduction committee in 2010, which offered a number of recommendations for reducing the federal budget defecit.

And while it would be natural to assume the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are the most costly, the payments to Vietnam War veterans nearly double the cost of our two current wars, $22 billion and $12 billion, respectively.

Simpson said a number of new ailments added to veterans coverage, including heart disease, has been driving up costs.

"That has been terribly abused," he said.

Meanwhile, World War II still costs the federal government about $5 billion a year. And the Korean War still costs taxpayers about $2.8 billion annually.

Amazingly, $20 million is still being paid each year to 2,289 family members of veterans from World War I, many of whom are over 100. But perhaps even stranger, 47 benefit recipients were not even born until after the war ended.

What America Learned in Iraq

Of course after 12 years of war the history books are starting to paint the truth, which is we lost both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, just like we lost the Vietnam war.

On the other hand I suspect the folks in Congress who started these wars can honestly say they were a fantastic success.

That's if you consider the wars were a government jobs program for highly paid generals who ran the wars. Both wars were also a government welfare program for the corporations in the military industrial complex that supplied the billions of dollars or perhaps trillions of dollars of military equipment needed for the war.

It was a win win situation for the crooks in Congress. They got billions of dollars in bribes, oops, I mean campaign contributions. Which in turn they stole billions or perhaps trillions from the American people and gave it to the generals and companies in the military industrial complex who gave them the bribes, or campaign contributions as they like to call them.

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What America Learned in Iraq

By JOHN A. NAGL

Published: March 19, 2013

THE costs of the second Iraq war, which began 10 years ago this week, are staggering: nearly 4,500 Americans killed and more than 30,000 wounded, many grievously; tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis wounded or killed; more than $2 trillion in direct government expenditures; and the significant weakening of the major regional counterweight to Iran and consequent strengthening of that country’s position and ambitions. Great powers rarely make national decisions that explode so quickly and completely in their face.

It may seem folly to seek a silver lining among these thunderclouds. But there are three flickers of light that offer some hope that the enormous price was not paid entirely in vain. These coins offer a meager return on our enormous investment, but not collecting them would be an insult to the memory of all that we have lost.

The first lesson is for America’s politicians, from both parties, who pushed our country into a war that we did not need to fight for dubious reasons that were eventually proved false.

Iraq was not, as we were repeatedly told, developing weapons of mass destruction; even if it had been, there was no reason deterrence, which prevented war with a nuclear-armed Soviet Union, could not have worked against a nuclear Iraq. There was no link between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, and no Qaeda presence in Iraq until the American invasion, which caused social order to collapse and provided the terrorist group with a powerful recruiting message and a dangerous new base from which to attack.

The invasion of Iraq and its bitter aftermath should remind politicians for generations of the high cost and unpredictable results for those who roll what Otto von Bismarck called “the iron dice” and should forever discredit the notion of “preventive war.” The first Iraq war, in which I led a tank platoon, was necessary; this one was not.

Reluctance to send American ground troops to intervene in Libya and Syria, while providing different levels of political and military support, gives some hope that the country will think more than twice before fighting another unnecessary war. Good intentions do not always lead to favorable outcomes.

The second lesson is for the American military, justly proud of its renaissance after the debacle of Vietnam and subsequent triumph in the cold war but grievously unprepared for the wars of this century.

The British historian Michael Howard noted that it was impossible to perfectly prepare military forces for the next war; what is important is to make sure that you have not gotten the preparations so wrong that the military cannot quickly adapt when it is next needed.

The Department of Defense failed that test. It ignored preparations for counterinsurgency operations and neglected the need for a deep understanding of languages and cultures, which played a critical role in the Sunni Awakening that eventually changed the course of the Iraq conflict.

These are old lessons — they were in fact codified in the Marine Corps Small Wars Manual of 1940 and had to be painfully relearned over the past decade. They cannot be forgotten now that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are finally drawing down. Recognizing that post-invasion stability operations, including counterinsurgency, are core military tasks for which the Pentagon must prepare is an important first step.

It would also be wise to make further investments in remotely piloted vehicles, Special Operations Forces and the capacity to train and advise foreign militaries, all of which will bear much of the burden of the most likely conflicts of this century. Of course, given the spending constraints now being imposed by Congress and the subsequent painful trade-offs those constraints bring, it remains to be seen whether these lessons have really been learned.

Finally, the experience of the Iraq war offers a breath of hope for the American people at large. In the wake of Vietnam, the United States began its grand experiment of an all-volunteer military. And it was most certainly an experiment: there was no expectation that the system would hold together in a major war, and for two generations young men have been required to register with the Selective Service in case general conflict erupted.

But there have been two such wars over the past decade, and the all-volunteer force has come through these crucibles of blood and fire with enormous distinction. [Sadly the only reason the Iraq war lasted so long was because of the all-volunteer force. Many experts think the draft, which is really a slave labor system was one of the things that caused the Vietnam war to end much earlier then it would have if the politicians had there way. Of course there was no draft in the Iraq or Afghanistan wars and thus no anti-war protests from people who would be facing the draft]

Tempered by the Great Depression, the Greatest Generation of World War II fame helped defeat fascism on two continents and save civilization. As loudly as their contributions resound in history, two-thirds of them were drafted. This new greatest generation has fought longer if not harder than its grandparents did, and all have been volunteers.

My own tank task force lost 22 fine young men during the second Iraq war, including a West Point captain and five lieutenants, and earned well over 100 Purple Hearts. The nation owes such service members a depth of gratitude it can never fully repay.

But it can begin by ensuring that we care for those who have borne the battle, and for their spouses and their orphans, to paraphrase Abraham Lincoln, America’s greatest wartime president. The traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder that are the signature wounds of these wars are invisible and hard to heal; as many as a fourth of those who fought in Iraq will suffer the ravages of these injuries for decades to come.

This is not a compelling list of gains when balanced against the unbearable losses America has endured in Iraq. But it would devalue the sacrifices of the many who have suffered if we were not to read these lessons written in blood, if our politicians did not approach future interventions with greater humility, if our military did not prepare for all possible wars rather than only the ones that it wants to fight.

We must hope that from such peril and toil this great young generation, tempered by war and hardened by what its members have seen and done, will build a better future for a wiser and chastened America.

John A. Nagl, a retired Army officer and a research professor at the United States Naval Academy, served in both Iraq wars and is the author of “Learning to Eat Soup With a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam.”

Obama’s Nixonian Precedent

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Obama’s Nixonian Precedent

By MARY L. DUDZIAK

Published: March 21, 2013 32 Comments

ON March 17, 1969, President Richard M. Nixon began a secret bombing campaign in Cambodia, sending B-52 bombers over the border from South Vietnam. This episode, largely buried in history, resurfaced recently in an unexpected place: the Obama administration’s “white paper” justifying targeted killings of Americans suspected of involvement in terrorism.

President Obama is reportedly considering moving control of the drone program from the Central Intelligence Agency to the Defense Department, as questions about the program’s legality continue to be asked. But this shift would do nothing to confer legitimacy to the drone strikes. The legitimacy problem comes from the secrecy itself — not which entity secretly does the killing. Secrecy has been used to hide presidential overreach — as the Cambodia example shows.

On Page 4 of the unclassified 16-page “white paper,” Justice Department lawyers tried to refute the argument that international law does not support extending armed conflict outside a battlefield. They cited as historical authority a speech given May 28, 1970, by John R. Stevenson, then the top lawyer for the State Department, following the United States’ invasion of Cambodia.

Since 1965, “the territory of Cambodia has been used by North Vietnam as a base of military operations,” he told the New York City Bar Association. “It long ago reached a level that would have justified us in taking appropriate measures of self-defense on the territory of Cambodia. However, except for scattered instances of returning fire across the border, we refrained until April from taking such action in Cambodia.”

In fact, Nixon had begun his secret bombing of Cambodia more than a year earlier. (It is not clear whether Mr. Stevenson knew this.) So the Obama administration’s lawyers have cited a statement that was patently false.

To be sure, the administration may have additional arguments in support of its use of drones in Yemen, Pakistan, Somalia and other countries. To secure the confirmation of John O. Brennan as the C.I.A. director, it recently showed members of the Congressional intelligence committees some of the highly classified legal memos that were the basis for the white paper. But Mr. Obama has asked us to trust him, and Cambodia offers us no reason to do so.

A more limited, secret bombing campaign in Cambodia had begun in 1965 during Lyndon B. Johnson’s administration, but Nixon escalated it to carpet-bombing. The aim was to disrupt Communist bases and supply routes. The New York Times reported on it two months after it began, but the White House denied it, and the trail went cold. When the bombing began, Nixon even kept it a secret from his secretary of state, William P. Rogers. Worried about leaks, Nixon told Henry A. Kissinger, his national security adviser: “State is to be notified only after the point of no return.”

The bombing campaign, called Operation Breakfast, was carried out through out-and-out deception. Sixty B-52 bombers were prepared for a bombing run over targets in Vietnam. After the usual pre-mission briefing, pilots and navigators of 48 planes were then pulled aside and informed that they would receive new coordinates from a radar installation in Vietnam. Their planes would be diverted to Cambodia. But the destination was kept secret even from some crew members. The historian Marilyn B. Young found an “elaborate system of double reporting,” such that “even the secret records of B-52 bombing targets were falsified so that nowhere was it recorded that the raids had ever taken place.”

So the sort of “scattered instances of returning fire across the border” cited by Mr. Stevenson were actually regular bombing runs by B-52’s. Over 14 months, nearly 4,000 flights dropped 103,921 tons of explosives, followed by more extensive bombing farther into Cambodia. Mr. Kissinger later claimed that he had been assured that there were no civilians in the area, which was not the case. Meanwhile, the North Vietnamese response was to move farther into Cambodia. The bombers followed.

Eventually, select members of Congress were notified, and an effort by Representative John Conyers Jr., a Michigan Democrat, to add the bombing to the Watergate articles of impeachment failed. Critics have argued that the ultimate result of Nixon’s strategy was to destabilize the government of Prince Norodom Sihanouk and enable the Khmer Rouge’s ascent to power in 1975, and the subsequent genocide.

The Cambodia bombing, far from providing a valuable precedent for today’s counterterrorism campaign, illustrates the trouble with secrecy: It doesn’t work. If Nixon had gone to Congress or announced the plan publicly, the historian Jeffrey P. Kimball has written, “there would have been an uproar.” But disclosure was ultimately forced upon him when he decided to send ground troops into Cambodia. A new wave of giant antiwar protests erupted, and Nixon’s ability to take further aggressive action became infeasible.

Barack Obama is, of course, no Richard Nixon — we expect better of him. And we deserve the transparency he promised us, not a new version of secret warfare.

Mary L. Dudziak, a professor of law and director of the Project on War and Security in Law, Culture and Society at Emory University, is the author of “War Time: An Idea, Its History, Its Consequences.”

Obama wants to spend $2 billion on pork to reduce oil use????

Obama wants research to wean vehicles off oil

By NEDRA PICKLER and MATTHEW DALY Associated Press Fri Mar 15, 2013 1:31 PM

LEMONT, Ill.— President Barack Obama is pushing Congress to authorize $200 million a year for research into clean energy technologies that can wean automobiles off oil.

Obama proposed the idea of an energy security trust last month in his State of the Union address, but he was putting a price tag on the idea during a trip Friday to the Argonne National Laboratory outside Chicago — $2 billion over 10 years. The White House said the research would be paid for with revenue from federal oil and gas leases on offshore drilling and would not add to the deficit.

The money would fund research on “breakthrough” technologies such as batteries for electric cars and biofuels made from switch grass or other materials. Researchers also would look to improve use of natural gas as a fuel for cars and trucks.

Obama got a firsthand look at some of the cutting-edge vehicle research in a tour of an Argonne’s lab, including a room that can go to extreme temperatures to test the impact on fuel efficiency. He talked to engineers working on electric car batteries and on an engine that runs on diesel and gasoline to reduce fuel costs.

“We want to keep on funding them,” the president said as he looked at the engine, developed with public and private funding from Chrysler. “That’s what I’m trying to tell Congress”

The proposal is modeled after a plan submitted by a group of business executives and former military leaders who are committed to reducing U.S. oil dependence. The group, called Securing America’s Future Energy or SAFE, is headed by FedEx Corp. Chairman and CEO Frederick W. Smith and retired Marine Corps Gen. P.X. Kelley. The nonpartisan group says its goal is to “break oil’s stranglehold on the transportation sector” through alternatives such as electric cars and heavy-duty trucks fueled by natural gas, but it had proposed a much larger $500 million annual investment.

Creation of the trust would require congressional approval at a time of partisan divide over energy issues. Republicans have pushed to expand oil and gas drilling on federal land and water, while Obama and many Democrats have worked to boost renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power.

Obama tried to appeal to both parties by pitching the trust plan not just as an environmental issue but as a job-creation plan that would help the United States remain a technology leader.

“If a nonpartisan coalition of CEOs and retired generals and admirals can get behind this idea, then so can we,” Obama said in his State of the Union address. “Let’s take their advice and free our families and businesses from the painful spikes in gas prices we’ve put up with for far too long.”

There were signs agreement may be possible. Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski has called it “an idea I may agree with.”

Murkowski, senior Republican on the Senate Energy Committee, did not fully endorse the plan, which is similar to one she has proposed to use revenue from drilling for oil and natural gas on public lands that previously were off-limits to energy production to pay for research on new energy technologies.

White House officials said the president’s proposal would not require expansion of drilling to federal lands or water where it is now prohibited. Instead, they are counting on increased production from existing sites, along with efficiencies from an administration plan to streamline drilling permits. The government collects more than $6 billion a year in royalties from production on federal lands and waters.

Obama’s push for the energy trust came as the Environmental Protection Agency released a new report Friday indicating that fuel economy standards rose last year by 1.4 miles per gallon — the largest annual increase since EPA started keeping track. The agency said the improvement was due to better availability of high-performing cars and more options for consumers.

The Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers suggested that rather than encouraging research on fuel-efficient cars, the government should focus on making diverse fuels more available and improving transportation infrastructure.

A spokesman for the energy security group SAFE welcomed Obama’s plan, even though it does not call for expanded drilling. A plan released by the SAFE group in December recommended using revenues from expanded offshore drilling and increased production in Alaska in areas where it is now blocked.

“At the end of the day, we still think it’s a proposal that can have bipartisan support and that can help reduce oil dependence,” SAFE spokesman Brad Goehner said Friday.

Argonne is one of the Energy Department’s largest national laboratories for scientific and engineering research, staffed by more than 1,250 scientists and engineers. White House officials said it was chosen as the site of the president’s speech because of its tradition of research into vehicle technologies.

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Follow Nedra Pickler on Twitter: https://twitter.com/nedrapickler and Matthew Daly at https://twitter.com/MatthewDalyWDC

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Daly reported from Washington.

Obama not the Devil in 'The Bible,' but silver-tongued

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Purcell: Obama not the Devil in 'The Bible,' but silver-tongued

Posted: Tuesday, March 26, 2013 10:47 am | Updated: 5:26 pm, Tue Mar 26, 2013.

Guest commentary by Tom Purcell

The devil is in the details.

Maybe I’d better explain.

As it goes, the hit History Channel show, “The Bible,” was recently called out because the actor playing the part of Satan, Moroccan-born Mohamen Mehdi Ouazanni, looks eerily similar to President Obama.

I don’t think Obama is the devil, but he surely has one characteristic that old Beelzebub is known for: a silver tongue.

See, many people think that if they met the devil in person, he’d be a foul-smelling, abrupt and frightening creature. The fact is, he’d appear to be the exact opposite.

He’d wear a Brooks Brothers suit and display a charming smile. He’d be affable and compassionate, and charm the socks off the unwitting.

He’d certainly NOT have our interest at heart — he’d only want to use us to achieve his own selfish goals — and many of us would probably never know it. Many would think he is our savior.

There’s no doubt Obama makes a lot of people feel this way — even though he has delivered the opposite of his many grandiose promises.

I vaguely recall talk of “hope and change” — how he’d magically cross the political aisle and bring the parties and the country together — yet we are more divided now than at any time in my lifetime and Obama has been the most partisan president in modern history.

Is not our division the result, in no small part, of the class warfare he waged to win a second term?

I vaguely recall him being elected in 2008 to address our financial crisis and get the economy going again. Instead, he gave us a massive new entitlement program and spent billions of borrowed stimulus dollars — yet unemployment is still high and economic growth remains incredibly stagnant.

Despite our massive debt, deficits and future entitlement obligations, our sweet talker in chief now assures the masses that America no longer has a spending problem.

He says we have already cut spending plenty; what we need to do is raise taxes to get things cooking.

Sure, he overplayed his hand on the sequestration cuts — which cut about $84 billion from our massive $4 trillion in annual spending. The gloom and doom he prophesied isn’t coming to pass, and his poll numbers have suffered some.

But the fact is, Obama has been successful, over and over, at saying one thing, doing another, and paying a very small political price for the difference.

Gosh, I feel sorry for Republicans. Sure, they have their failings — and were careless and reckless in spending the last time they controlled Congress and the presidency — but they are now on the regrettable side of calling for sensible reductions in government growth and for sensible reforms to taxes and entitlement programs.

What we need is a giant bipartisan effort to address those very things, led by our president, but Obama wants nothing to do with it.

Republicans are in the regrettable position of, say, having to tell an obese fellow he needs to lose weight or he’ll get diabetes, or hardened arteries, and may even suffer a heart attack five or six years down the line — while Obama promises the fellow a buffet dinner.

As I said, the guy is a maestro at saying one thing and doing another. Most in the media continue to NOT hold him to account for that — or for the many ways he is NOT leading us on the many problems we must address (spending, deficit, entitlements, tax reform).

Obama is not the devil, but, boy, does he have the silver tongue.

Tom Purcell is a Pittsburgh Tribune-Review humor columnist and is nationally syndicated exclusively by Cagle Cartoons Inc. Send comments to Tom at Purcell@caglecartoons.com.

Jobs Act falls short of grand promises

Source

Jobs Act falls short of grand promises

By Dina ElBoghdady, Published: March 28

When lawmakers unveiled the carefully named Jobs Act a year ago, backers expected it to get caught up in the typical grind of Capitol Hill: vigorous debate followed by a long wait for a vote that might never happen.

Instead, the legislation sailed through — perhaps too fast. Even supporters say they expected more time to work out the kinks in the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act, which aimed to help small, private firms raise money and grow so they could hire more workers.

Now, nearly a year after its enactment, major portions of the act are in limbo, and other parts have failed to measure up to the grandiose job-creation promises.

The act underscores how difficult it can be for Washington to spur job creation, even when there’s strong bipartisan consensus on a plan. President Obama hailed it in a Rose Garden ceremony as “exactly the kind of bipartisan action needed” to help the economy. Republicans claimed it as their own. The measure came together months before last year’s election, making it politically difficult to resist a proposal that promised to yield jobs.

“It was a short-lived, political fad,” said Simon Johnson, a professor of entrepreneurship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “There was this combination of wanting to look busy and wanting to create jobs, and skeptics like me never thought it would do anything good.”

The measure is a grab bag of ideas cobbled together for greater impact. It allows private firms to raise money by advertising to the general public for the first time in decades, raise up to $1 million in capital from investors via the Internet, and temporarily skirt some of the federal disclosure and accounting rules as they go public.

The legislation was built on the premise that regulation constrains the growth of small businesses and their potential for explosive job growth — an assertion that has been hotly debated by economists for decades.

But with unemployment high and an election looming, lawmakers hastily introduced the Jobs Act in December 2011, and it got a thumbs-up from the president.

The measure passed the House with an overwhelming majority three months later. Many who were tracking the bill, including its supporters, expected more scrutiny in the Senate. But it whizzed through that chamber, too, in part because Democrats who were skeptical about the measure were reluctant to break ranks with Obama.

“Once the White House endorsed the measure, it was a speeding train coming through the Senate,” said a Senate staff member who is not authorized to speak publicly on the issue and whose boss supported the Jobs Act. “It gained momentum very quickly after that even though some of us felt there was room for improvement.”

Obama signed the bill April 5, four months after its introduction — record speed by Washington standards. The result, critics say, are laws fraught with risks to investors.

A group of investor advocates, shocked by the swift action, went to Capitol Hill to follow up, said Lynn Turner, a former chief accountant at the Securities and Exchange Commission who took part in the meetings. The group asked one senior Senate staff member how lawmakers would track the number of jobs created by the measure.

“There was a moment of silence, and she said, ‘We don’t do that up here. It would take too long,’ ” Turner said. [Congress doesn't like to pass laws which have a provisions in them to document if the law was a success or a dismal failure. Members of the House and Senate don't want to have to deal with documented failures at re-election time]

A senior administration official said it is unfair to portray the legislation as a rush job. Before the Jobs Act was introduced, Congress spent months working on parts of the measure. The White House weighed in with its own framework for the legislation, including investor safeguards, said the official, who was not authorized to speak publicly on the issue. Congress opted to adopt some of the protections and ignored others.

“But all along, we continued to urge the Senate to improve on the legislation,” the official said. Obama pressed for improvements at the Rose Garden signing ceremony, when he highlighted the key role regulators would play in writing the rules needed to implement controversial parts of the measure. “That was the balance the president struck in signing the bill.”

A central feature of the Jobs Act makes it easier for private firms to go public.

That portion of the measure, which took effect immediately, grew out of a March 2011 forum at the Treasury Department. Kate Mitchell, a Democrat and a Silicon Valley venture capitalist, spearheaded a discussion about reviving the market for initial public offerings of stock, or IPOs. Eager to come up with a plan, she recruited investment bankers, entrepreneurs, lawyers, academics and other venture capitalists to form the IPO Task Force.

The task force successfully lobbied to temporarily remove certain regulatory barriers for “emerging growth companies,” defined as those with less than $1 billion in revenue.

Those companies can now give regulators less financial data before they go public and fewer details about executive compensation. They can also delay an audit of their internal controls that was mandated for all companies after the Enron accounting scandal.

The most controversial element allows investment banks that take a company public to also publish research about the company, removing a firewall put in place after the dot-com bust, when it became clear that banks were promising to hype companies’ stock through research to secure the lucrative underwriting business.

Companies can take advantage of the relaxed rules for only up to five years, which appealed to Democrats, Mitchell said. The deregulatory bent pleased Republicans.

“There was nothing radical about the relief granted,” Mitchell said. All the changes had a basis in existing practices, she said. For example, very small firms have been allowed to file scaled-back versions of financial documents for years.

Even the staunchest critics say it’s too early to tell whether these provisions are working, especially because it typically takes more than a year to prepare for an IPO. But they also say the initial signs suggest the measure has had lackluster results.

Firms can pick and choose which of the relaxed rules to embrace. Many companies are adopting some of the less controversial options and steering clear of others for fear they will be shunned by investors.

Meanwhile, the number of IPOs has not taken off, and enthusiasm for the act has waned. Only 29 percent of investment bankers say it has helped boost the number of IPOs, down from 55 percent last summer, according to a December survey by consulting firm BDO. Forty-two percent said they saw no positive effect.

Critics say the Jobs Act misdiagnosed the root causes of the IPO drought.

They say that the most promising companies have no problem raising money privately and that many of them don’t want to go public.

Besides, investor appetite isn’t there for smaller firms that do, said Jay Ritter, a finance professor at the University of Florida. Small firms with less than $50 million in annual sales have generated dismally low returns in the three years after their IPOs, he said, and that has held true for the past three decades.

Although critics continue to blast those provisions, the most controversial portions of the act are not in place yet.

Among them is one that allows fledgling firms to raise small sums from a large number of people on the Internet. Artists and charity groups have long used this “crowd-funding” method, but it has never been used to offer an ownership interest, or stake, in a company.

Investor advocates fear that crowd-funding will emerge into a platform for frauds making bogus appeals to unsophisticated investors. A group of state securities regulators said it tried to mitigate the potentially disastrous consequences by urging the White House to allow state regulators, who are closest to businesses, to oversee crowd-funding.

But the White House “wouldn’t hear of it,” said Heath Abshure, head of the North American Securities Administrators Association. “Crowd-funding was already part of the president’s platform to help small businesses by then.”

Investor advocates also lost their bid to strip a provision that allows private firms to solicit the public without regulatory oversight for the first time since the 1930s.

Hedge funds, for example, will be able to advertise via e-mail, billboards or Facebook. Before, they could only solicit sophisticated investors, who could presumably withstand potential losses. Now the firms will be left to determine whether an investor meets net-worth and income criteria.

For years, the SEC has considered allowing this type of crowd-funding and lifting the advertising ban. But it grappled with how to do it while balancing investor protections and businesses’ desire to raise money. The agency must act but is struggling with the details.

On Capitol Hill, signs of buyer’s remorse are emerging.

When the advisory board to the Democratic leadership in the Senate released a list of the jobs-boosting measures enacted by the Senate in the past five years, the Jobs Act was not among them.

Obama's DEA thugs continue their war against medical marijuana!!!!

But Obama continues to send his DEA thugs to hunt down, arrest and send to prison people involved in the medical marijuana industry.

Sadly President Obama is just a clone of tyrant and former President George W. Bush, and his war mongering rival John McCain in the 2008 election.

Source

Man secretly owned chain of pot stores

By Joe Mozingo, Los Angeles Times

March 29, 2013, 10:00 p.m.

The marijuana shops evoked health and homeopathic care, with names like Dana Point Safe Harbor Collective, Belmont Shore Natural Care, Alternative Herbal Care and Costa Mesa Patients Assn.

Nine dispensaries in all, they appeared to be run by different owners around Orange and Los Angeles counties, little different than any of the hundreds of dispensaries that have popped up in the last five years.

But they were secretly owned and operated by a 56-year-old convicted drug dealer from San Clemente, who used the stores to make millions.

Federal drug agents say John Melvin Walker, who was arrested in October, was one of the biggest players they have prosecuted in Southern California's medical marijuana trade. They could recall only one similar case, a man who used the proceeds of his seven dispensaries to buy land in Costa Rica.

On Monday, Walker is expected to appear at the U.S. Courthouse in Santa Ana to plead guilty to two felony counts: conspiracy to distribute more than 1,000 kilograms of marijuana and tax evasion. He must forfeit more than $25 million in assets, cash and business interests — including his Tuscan manor high above the Pacific in San Clemente, two homes in Long Beach and four mobile homes in Mammoth — and possibly pay $4.3 million in tax restitution.

He faces 10 years to life in prison, but prosecutors say sentencing guidelines call for 21 years to 27 years.

The Orange County Sheriff's Department started the investigation with the help of federal agents.

They took the case to the U.S. attorney because federal penalties are more severe and federal law is clear — all marijuana possession is illegal — avoiding the ambiguity of California's medical cannabis laws, which do not directly address whether commercial sales of pot are legal.

Assistant U.S. Atty. Christine Bautista said it was common for "drug-traffickers like [Walker] to hide behind the facade of medical marijuana laws and compassionate care, to make millions of dollars and conceal their identities as the true owners/operators of a string of marijuana stores."

She didn't know of any other cases involving so many stores.

"It appeared from evidence that he ran a tight ship," she said. "He instituted regular procedures at all nine shops. He regularly visited to observe. He required managers to report midday and end-of-day figures to him to show cash on hand."

At the Dana Point shop, detectives found spreadsheets showing sales over 10 months totaled $3.17 million, with $2.47 million cash on hand, according to an affidavit.

When Orange County sheriff's detectives first conducted searches of properties owned by Walker and his cohorts, they were staggered by the cash. At a Walker rental in Long Beach, they found $390,160.00 in four grocery bags in his garage, along with a shotgun, a Beretta handgun and a Chinese AK-47 with a bayonet. At a stash house in San Clemente, they found stacks of bills stuffed in furniture, in an Igloo cooler and on an ironing board, totaling about $700,000.

In February 2012, 14 people, including Walker — also known as "Pops" — were indicted on 14 counts and arrested.

The indictment alleged that Walker failed to report any income from the shops to the IRS and that he told his bookkeeper "to destroy all records pertaining to income generated at the marijuana dispensaries shortly after they were generated and not to create records that fully identified Walker's connection to the marijuana dispensaries."

According to his plea agreement, he might have to forfeit his properties, $535,291 in currency and give up any benefits he got from a $700,000 loan he made to a Charles Westlund and Silent Strippers LLC, and whatever interests he had in six businesses.

Walker's attorney, Kate T. Corrigan, said Walker is a "devoted family man, a very active parent" to young children. She declined to say how many.

"He is completely devastated that he is going to be separated from his children, and they'll be separated from him," Corrigan said. "They're going to be growing up fatherless."

joe.mozingo@latimes.com

Obama wants banks to loan money to deadbeats???

Of course that's how Democrats typically get elected, on platforms based on income redistribution where the government robs the rich and gives the loot to the poor [and wealthy special interest groups that helped them get elected]

Source

Obama administration pushes banks to make home loans to people with weaker credit

By Zachary A. Goldfarb, Published: April 2

The Obama administration is engaged in a broad push to make more home loans available to people with weaker credit, an effort that officials say will help power the economic recovery but that skeptics say could open the door to the risky lending that caused the housing crash in the first place.

President Obama’s economic advisers and outside experts say the nation’s much-celebrated housing rebound is leaving too many people behind, including young people looking to buy their first homes and individuals with credit records weakened by the recession.

In response, administration officials say they are working to get banks to lend to a wider range of borrowers by taking advantage of taxpayer-backed programs — including those offered by the Federal Housing Administration — that insure home loans against default.

Housing officials are urging the Justice Department to provide assurances to banks, which have become increasingly cautious, that they will not face legal or financial recriminations if they make loans to riskier borrowers who meet government standards but later default.

Officials are also encouraging lenders to use more subjective judgment in determining whether to offer a loan and are seeking to make it easier for people who owe more than their properties are worth to refinance at today’s low interest rates, among other steps.

Obama pledged in his State of the Union address to do more to make sure more Americans can enjoy the benefits of the housing recovery, but critics say encouraging banks to lend as broadly as the administration hopes will sow the seeds of another housing disaster and endanger taxpayer dollars.

“If that were to come to pass, that would open the floodgates to highly excessive risk and would send us right back on the same path we were just trying to recover from,” said Ed Pinto, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and former top executive at mortgage giant Fannie Mae.

Administration officials say they are looking only to allay unnecessary hesi­ta­tion among banks and encourage safe lending to borrowers who have the financial wherewithal to pay.

“There’s always a tension that you have to take seriously between providing clarity and rules of the road and not giving any opportunity to restart the kind of irresponsible lending that we saw in the mid-2000s,” said a senior administration official who was not authorized to speak on the record.

The administration’s efforts come in the midst of a housing market that has been surging for the past year but that has been delivering most of the benefits to established homeowners with high credit scores or to investors who have been behind a significant number of new purchases.

“If you were going to tell people in low-income and moderate-income communities and communities of color there was a housing recovery, they would look at you as if you had two heads,” said John Taylor, president of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, a nonprofit housing organization. “It is very difficult for people of low and moderate incomes to refinance or buy homes.”

Before the crisis, about 40 percent of home buyers were first-time purchasers. That’s down to 30 percent, according to the National Association of Realtors.

From 2007 through 2012, new-home purchases fell 30 percent for people with credit scores above 780 (out of 800), according to Federal Reserve Governor Elizabeth Duke. But they declined 90 percent for people with scores between 680 and 620 — historically a respectable range for a credit score.

“If the only people who can get a loan have near-perfect credit and are putting down 25 percent, you’re leaving out of the market an entire population of creditworthy folks, which constrains demand and slows the recovery,” said Jim Parrott, who until January was the senior adviser on housing for the White House’s National Economic Council.

One reason, according to policymakers, is that as young people move out of their parents’ homes and start their own households, they will be forced to rent rather than buy, meaning less construction and housing activity. Given housing’s role in building up a family’s wealth, that could have long-lasting consequences.

“I think the ability of newly formed households, which are more likely to have lower incomes or weaker credit scores, to access the mortgage market will make a big difference in the shape of the recovery,” Duke said last month. “Economic improvement will cause household formation to increase, but if credit is hard to get, these will be rental rather than owner-occupied households.”

Deciding which borrowers get loans might seem like something that should be left up to the private market. But since the financial crisis in 2008, the government has shaped most of the housing market, insuring between 80 percent and 90 percent of all new loans, according to the industry publication Inside Mortgage Finance. It has done so primarily through the Federal Housing Administration, which is part of the executive branch, and taxpayer-backed mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, run by an independent regulator.

The FHA historically has been dedicated to making homeownership affordable for people of moderate means. Under FHA terms, a borrower can get a home loan with a credit score as low as 500 or a down payment as small as 3.5 percent. If borrowers with FHA loans default on their payments, taxpayers are on the line — a guarantee that should provide confidence to banks to lend.

But banks are largely rejecting the lower end of the scale, and the average credit score on FHA loans has stood at about 700. After years of intensifying investigations into wrongdoing in mortgage lending, banks are concerned that they will be held responsible if borrowers cannot pay. Under some circumstances, the FHA can retract its insurance or take other legal action to penalize banks when loans default.

“The financial risk of just one mistake has just become so high that lenders are playing it very, very safe, and many qualified borrowers are paying the price,” said David Stevens, Obama’s former FHA commissioner and now the chief executive of the Mortgage Bankers Association.

The FHA, in coordination with the White House, is working to develop new policies to make clear to banks that they will not lose their guarantees or face other legal action if loans that conform to the program’s standards later default. Officials hope the FHA’s actions will then spur Fannie and Freddie to do the same.

The effort requires sign-on by the Justice Department and the inspector general of Department of Housing and Urban Development, agencies that investigate wrongdoing in mortgage lending.

“We need to align as much as possible with IG and the DOJ moving forward,” FHA Commissioner Carol Galante said. The HUD inspector general and Justice Department declined to comment.

The effort to provide more certainty to banks is just one of several policies the administration is undertaking. The FHA is also urging lenders to take what officials call “compensating factors” into account and use more subjective judgment when deciding whether to make a loan — such as looking at a borrower’s overall savings.

“My view is that there are lots of creditworthy borrowers that are below 720 or 700 — all the way down the credit-score spectrum,” Galante said. “It’s important you look at the totality of that borrower’s ability to pay.”

Is the U.S. headed for fiscal collapse?

First some numbers from the Webmaster

Second the main difference between the American economy and that of Greece and other third world countries that are routinely bankrupted by their politicians is that the American economy is huge and it will take a lot more thievery by the politicians to destroy it.

Personally I suspect that it will only be a matter of time before the thieves in the US House and US Senate increase their level of theft, or taxation as they call it before they destroy the American economy.

And the question is not "will the crooks in Congress destroy America", but "when will the crooks in Congress destroy America".

Currently the National Debt is $16.7 trillion dollars. That means each of the 314 million men, women and children who live in the USA owe about $53,000 towards their share of the National Debt.

If you consider that only ADULTS work and pay Federal income taxes, then that $53,000 increases to $106,000 for every adult in the USA.

Then if you consider that only half of the Americans that work pay Federal income taxes, that means their share of the National Debt will jump from $106,000 for each adult to $212,000 for each adult taxpayer.

And of course as Congress rolls the printing presses printing trillions of dollars of fiat money those numbers will only increase.

When I started keeping track of the amount of money each person owed toward their share of the National Debt, the debt was at about $5 trillion and about 200 million people lived in the USA, making every man, woman and child's share of the National Debt about $25,000. As I just said that number has increased to about $53,000.

Last I just gave you the rose colored version of the story.

The actual amount of money the US government has promised to pay out is actually around 4 times larger then the National Debt when you throw in other things the US Government has promised to pay for in the future for things such as Social Security or Medicare.

So that $53,000 that every man, woman and child in the USA owes toward all their US debt obligations increases to $212,000 when you use those other obligations.

The $212,000 each adult taxpayer owes toward all their US debt obligations increases to $848,000.

If you use those numbers it should be obvious that America is on the brink of being bankrupted by the crooks in the US Congress.

Last for some really good reading on the subjects of "the gold standard", "the Federal Reserve" or "the Fed", and a number of other related subject check out the book:

The Creature from Jekyll Island:
A Second Look at the Federal Reserve

G. Edward Griffin

Is the U.S. headed for fiscal collapse?

Is the U.S. headed for fiscal collapse?

By Sergio Hernandez | The Week

According to David Stockman, the U.S. economy is doomed and the government is to blame

The U.S. economy is doomed, says David Stockman in The New York Times, and the government is to blame. "We've had eight decades of increasingly frenetic fiscal and monetary policy activism intended to counter the cyclical bumps and grinds of the free market," and where has it left us? With a bogus economy propped up by massive debt and government money-printing, and headed toward another economic collapse. After the last bubble burst in 2008, the administrations of Presidents Bush and Obama, along with Congress and the Fed, have "made a series of desperate, reckless maneuvers that were not only unnecessary but ruinous." The entire economic "recovery'' has been fueled by the Fed's "radical spree of money-printing," which is "inflating yet another unsustainable bubble." As I argue in my new book, The Great Deformation, America's economic decline was sealed in 1933, when Franklin D. Roosevelt took the dollar off the gold standard and "opted for fiat money." Subsequent decades of Keynesian economics and loose monetary policy has left us $17 trillion in debt, and on a trajectory toward $30 trillion in debt within a decade. "When the latest bubble pops, there will be nothing to stop the collapse. If this sounds like advice to get out of the markets and hide out in cash, it is."

Stockman's "spittle-filled diatribe" can be reduced to one nihilistic tenet, says Neil Irwin in The Washington Post. He believes any government action leads us astray from "perfect state-of-nature capitalism." But in fact capitalism "can only exist in a framework" that is set up by government. We can disagree about "how interventionist that government or its monetary authority should be." But it's absurd to insist that "anything the state does to try to fix things is undermining some elegant capitalist order and will inevitably lead to chaos."

"It's hard to know where to begin poking holes in this," says Joe Weisenthal at Business Insider. But blaming FDR's decision to take the U.S. off the gold standard is as good a place as any. The truth is that the past 80 years "have represented a marvelous time for economic progress in America." The standard of living has vastly improved, and "the tools of modern economic management have meant that we've never had another economic crash anywhere near the level we saw during the Great Depression." The past few years alone "have been devastating" to Stockman's theory. The dollar hasn't collapsed, inflation hasn't soared, housing is recovering, and borrowing costs are not exploding. Chicken Littles like Stockman have been predicting doom for years, "and the market consistently rejects them."

Stockman's argument is nothing more than "cranky old man stuff," says Paul Krugman at The New York Times. It's the same sort of gold-bug, free-market absolutist demagoguery you get from Investor's Business Daily and Rush Limbaugh. Our $16 trillion economy can easily handle current budget deficits, which are now declining steeply. And after the 2008 recession, "running deficits was appropriate'' to stimulate economic growth. "Anyone who says differently hasn't done his homework."

State-Wrecked: The Corruption of Capitalism in America

State-Wrecked: The Corruption of Capitalism in America

By DAVID A. STOCKMAN

Published: March 30, 2013

GREENWICH, Conn.

The Dow Jones and Standard & Poor’s 500 indexes reached record highs on Thursday, having completely erased the losses since the stock market’s last peak, in 2007. But instead of cheering, we should be very afraid.

A gallery of “heroes” who championed sound money and fiscal rectitude and “villains” who led the United States down the path of insolvency.

Over the last 13 years, the stock market has twice crashed and touched off a recession: American households lost $5 trillion in the 2000 dot-com bust and more than $7 trillion in the 2007 housing crash. Sooner or later — within a few years, I predict — this latest Wall Street bubble, inflated by an egregious flood of phony money from the Federal Reserve rather than real economic gains, will explode, too.

Since the S.&P. 500 first reached its current level, in March 2000, the mad money printers at the Federal Reserve have expanded their balance sheet sixfold (to $3.2 trillion from $500 billion). Yet during that stretch, economic output has grown by an average of 1.7 percent a year (the slowest since the Civil War); real business investment has crawled forward at only 0.8 percent per year; and the payroll job count has crept up at a negligible 0.1 percent annually. Real median family income growth has dropped 8 percent, and the number of full-time middle class jobs, 6 percent. The real net worth of the “bottom” 90 percent has dropped by one-fourth. The number of food stamp and disability aid recipients has more than doubled, to 59 million, about one in five Americans.

So the Main Street economy is failing while Washington is piling a soaring debt burden on our descendants, unable to rein in either the warfare state or the welfare state or raise the taxes needed to pay the nation’s bills. By default, the Fed has resorted to a radical, uncharted spree of money printing. But the flood of liquidity, instead of spurring banks to lend and corporations to spend, has stayed trapped in the canyons of Wall Street, where it is inflating yet another unsustainable bubble.

When it bursts, there will be no new round of bailouts like the ones the banks got in 2008. Instead, America will descend into an era of zero-sum austerity and virulent political conflict, extinguishing even today’s feeble remnants of economic growth.

THIS dyspeptic prospect results from the fact that we are now state-wrecked. With only brief interruptions, we’ve had eight decades of increasingly frenetic fiscal and monetary policy activism intended to counter the cyclical bumps and grinds of the free market and its purported tendency to underproduce jobs and economic output. The toll has been heavy.

As the federal government and its central-bank sidekick, the Fed, have groped for one goal after another — smoothing out the business cycle, minimizing inflation and unemployment at the same time, rolling out a giant social insurance blanket, promoting homeownership, subsidizing medical care, propping up old industries (agriculture, automobiles) and fostering new ones (“clean” energy, biotechnology) and, above all, bailing out Wall Street — they have now succumbed to overload, overreach and outside capture by powerful interests. The modern Keynesian state is broke, paralyzed and mired in empty ritual incantations about stimulating “demand,” even as it fosters a mutant crony capitalism that periodically lavishes the top 1 percent with speculative windfalls.

The culprits are bipartisan, though you’d never guess that from the blather that passes for political discourse these days. The state-wreck originated in 1933, when Franklin D. Roosevelt opted for fiat money (currency not fundamentally backed by gold), economic nationalism and capitalist cartels in agriculture and industry.

Under the exigencies of World War II (which did far more to end the Depression than the New Deal did), the state got hugely bloated, but remarkably, the bloat was put into brief remission during a midcentury golden era of sound money and fiscal rectitude with Dwight D. Eisenhower in the White House and William McChesney Martin Jr. at the Fed.

Then came Lyndon B. Johnson’s “guns and butter” excesses, which were intensified over one perfidious weekend at Camp David, Md., in 1971, when Richard M. Nixon essentially defaulted on the nation’s debt obligations by finally ending the convertibility of gold to the dollar. That one act — arguably a sin graver than Watergate — meant the end of national financial discipline and the start of a four-decade spree during which we have lived high on the hog, running a cumulative $8 trillion current-account deficit. In effect, America underwent an internal leveraged buyout, raising our ratio of total debt (public and private) to economic output to about 3.6 from its historic level of about 1.6. Hence the $30 trillion in excess debt (more than half the total debt, $56 trillion) that hangs over the American economy today.

This explosion of borrowing was the stepchild of the floating-money contraption deposited in the Nixon White House by Milton Friedman, the supposed hero of free-market economics who in fact sowed the seed for a never-ending expansion of the money supply. The Fed, which celebrates its centenary this year, fueled a roaring inflation in goods and commodities during the 1970s that was brought under control only by the iron resolve of Paul A. Volcker, its chairman from 1979 to 1987.

Under his successor, the lapsed hero Alan Greenspan, the Fed dropped Friedman’s penurious rules for monetary expansion, keeping interest rates too low for too long and flooding Wall Street with freshly minted cash. What became known as the “Greenspan put” — the implicit assumption that the Fed would step in if asset prices dropped, as they did after the 1987 stock-market crash — was reinforced by the Fed’s unforgivable 1998 bailout of the hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management.

That Mr. Greenspan’s loose monetary policies didn’t set off inflation was only because domestic prices for goods and labor were crushed by the huge flow of imports from the factories of Asia. By offshoring America’s tradable-goods sector, the Fed kept the Consumer Price Index contained, but also permitted the excess liquidity to foster a roaring inflation in financial assets. Mr. Greenspan’s pandering incited the greatest equity boom in history, with the stock market rising fivefold between the 1987 crash and the 2000 dot-com bust.

Soon Americans stopped saving and consumed everything they earned and all they could borrow. The Asians, burned by their own 1997 financial crisis, were happy to oblige us. They — China and Japan above all — accumulated huge dollar reserves, transforming their central banks into a string of monetary roach motels where sovereign debt goes in but never comes out. We’ve been living on borrowed time — and spending Asians’ borrowed dimes.

This dynamic reinforced the Reaganite shibboleth that “deficits don’t matter” and the fact that nearly $5 trillion of the nation’s $12 trillion in “publicly held” debt is actually sequestered in the vaults of central banks. The destruction of fiscal rectitude under Ronald Reagan — one reason I resigned as his budget chief in 1985 — was the greatest of his many dramatic acts. It created a template for the Republicans’ utter abandonment of the balanced-budget policies of Calvin Coolidge and allowed George W. Bush to dive into the deep end, bankrupting the nation through two misbegotten and unfinanced wars, a giant expansion of Medicare and a tax-cutting spree for the wealthy that turned K Street lobbyists into the de facto office of national tax policy. In effect, the G.O.P. embraced Keynesianism — for the wealthy.

The explosion of the housing market, abetted by phony credit ratings, securitization shenanigans and willful malpractice by mortgage lenders, originators and brokers, has been well documented. Less known is the balance-sheet explosion among the top 10 Wall Street banks during the eight years ending in 2008. Though their tiny sliver of equity capital hardly grew, their dependence on unstable “hot money” soared as the regulatory harness the Glass-Steagall Act had wisely imposed during the Depression was totally dismantled.

Within weeks of the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy in September 2008, Washington, with Wall Street’s gun to its head, propped up the remnants of this financial mess in a panic-stricken melee of bailouts and money-printing that is the single most shameful chapter in American financial history.

There was never a remote threat of a Great Depression 2.0 or of a financial nuclear winter, contrary to the dire warnings of Ben S. Bernanke, the Fed chairman since 2006. The Great Fear — manifested by the stock market plunge when the House voted down the TARP bailout before caving and passing it — was purely another Wall Street concoction. Had President Bush and his Goldman Sachs adviser (a k a Treasury Secretary) Henry M. Paulson Jr. stood firm, the crisis would have burned out on its own and meted out to speculators the losses they so richly deserved. The Main Street banking system was never in serious jeopardy, ATMs were not going dark and the money market industry was not imploding.

Instead, the White House, Congress and the Fed, under Mr. Bush and then President Obama, made a series of desperate, reckless maneuvers that were not only unnecessary but ruinous. The auto bailouts, for example, simply shifted jobs around — particularly to the aging, electorally vital Rust Belt — rather than saving them. The “green energy” component of Mr. Obama’s stimulus was mainly a nearly $1 billion giveaway to crony capitalists, like the venture capitalist John Doerr and the self-proclaimed outer-space visionary Elon Musk, to make new toys for the affluent.

Less than 5 percent of the $800 billion Obama stimulus went to the truly needy for food stamps, earned-income tax credits and other forms of poverty relief. The preponderant share ended up in money dumps to state and local governments, pork-barrel infrastructure projects, business tax loopholes and indiscriminate middle-class tax cuts. The Democratic Keynesians, as intellectually bankrupt as their Republican counterparts (though less hypocritical), had no solution beyond handing out borrowed money to consumers, hoping they would buy a lawn mower, a flat-screen TV or, at least, dinner at Red Lobster.

But even Mr. Obama’s hopelessly glib policies could not match the audacity of the Fed, which dropped interest rates to zero and then digitally printed new money at the astounding rate of $600 million per hour. Fast-money speculators have been “purchasing” giant piles of Treasury debt and mortgage-backed securities, almost entirely by using short-term overnight money borrowed at essentially zero cost, thanks to the Fed. Uncle Ben has lined their pockets.

If and when the Fed — which now promises to get unemployment below 6.5 percent as long as inflation doesn’t exceed 2.5 percent — even hints at shrinking its balance sheet, it will elicit a tidal wave of sell orders, because even a modest drop in bond prices would destroy the arbitrageurs’ profits. Notwithstanding Mr. Bernanke’s assurances about eventually, gradually making a smooth exit, the Fed is domiciled in a monetary prison of its own making.

While the Fed fiddles, Congress burns. Self-titled fiscal hawks like Paul D. Ryan, the chairman of the House Budget Committee, are terrified of telling the truth: that the 10-year deficit is actually $15 trillion to $20 trillion, far larger than the Congressional Budget Office’s estimate of $7 trillion. Its latest forecast, which imagines 16.4 million new jobs in the next decade, compared with only 2.5 million in the last 10 years, is only one of the more extreme examples of Washington’s delusions.

Even a supposedly “bold” measure — linking the cost-of-living adjustment for Social Security payments to a different kind of inflation index — would save just $200 billion over a decade, amounting to hardly 1 percent of the problem. Mr. Ryan’s latest budget shamelessly gives Social Security and Medicare a 10-year pass, notwithstanding that a fair portion of their nearly $19 trillion cost over that decade would go to the affluent elderly. At the same time, his proposal for draconian 30 percent cuts over a decade on the $7 trillion safety net — Medicaid, food stamps and the earned-income tax credit — is another front in the G.O.P.’s war against the 99 percent.

Without any changes, over the next decade or so, the gross federal debt, now nearly $17 trillion, will hurtle toward $30 trillion and soar to 150 percent of gross domestic product from around 105 percent today. Since our constitutional stasis rules out any prospect of a “grand bargain,” the nation’s fiscal collapse will play out incrementally, like a Greek/Cypriot tragedy, in carefully choreographed crises over debt ceilings, continuing resolutions and temporary budgetary patches.

The future is bleak. The greatest construction boom in recorded history — China’s money dump on infrastructure over the last 15 years — is slowing. Brazil, India, Russia, Turkey, South Africa and all the other growing middle-income nations cannot make up for the shortfall in demand. The American machinery of monetary and fiscal stimulus has reached its limits. Japan is sinking into old-age bankruptcy and Europe into welfare-state senescence. The new rulers enthroned in Beijing last year know that after two decades of wild lending, speculation and building, even they will face a day of reckoning, too.

THE state-wreck ahead is a far cry from the “Great Moderation” proclaimed in 2004 by Mr. Bernanke, who predicted that prosperity would be everlasting because the Fed had tamed the business cycle and, as late as March 2007, testified that the impact of the subprime meltdown “seems likely to be contained.” Instead of moderation, what’s at hand is a Great Deformation, arising from a rogue central bank that has abetted the Wall Street casino, crucified savers on a cross of zero interest rates and fueled a global commodity bubble that erodes Main Street living standards through rising food and energy prices — a form of inflation that the Fed fecklessly disregards in calculating inflation.

These policies have brought America to an end-stage metastasis. The way out would be so radical it can’t happen. It would necessitate a sweeping divorce of the state and the market economy. It would require a renunciation of crony capitalism and its first cousin: Keynesian economics in all its forms. The state would need to get out of the business of imperial hubris, economic uplift and social insurance and shift its focus to managing and financing an effective, affordable, means-tested safety net.

All this would require drastic deflation of the realm of politics and the abolition of incumbency itself, because the machinery of the state and the machinery of re-election have become conterminous. Prying them apart would entail sweeping constitutional surgery: amendments to give the president and members of Congress a single six-year term, with no re-election; providing 100 percent public financing for candidates; strictly limiting the duration of campaigns (say, to eight weeks); and prohibiting, for life, lobbying by anyone who has been on a legislative or executive payroll. It would also require overturning Citizens United and mandating that Congress pass a balanced budget, or face an automatic sequester of spending.

It would also require purging the corrosive financialization that has turned the economy into a giant casino since the 1970s. This would mean putting the great Wall Street banks out in the cold to compete as at-risk free enterprises, without access to cheap Fed loans or deposit insurance. Banks would be able to take deposits and make commercial loans, but be banned from trading, underwriting and money management in all its forms.

It would require, finally, benching the Fed’s central planners, and restoring the central bank’s original mission: to provide liquidity in times of crisis but never to buy government debt or try to micromanage the economy. Getting the Fed out of the financial markets is the only way to put free markets and genuine wealth creation back into capitalism.

That, of course, will never happen because there are trillions of dollars of assets, from Shanghai skyscrapers to Fortune 1000 stocks to the latest housing market “recovery,” artificially propped up by the Fed’s interest-rate repression. The United States is broke — fiscally, morally, intellectually — and the Fed has incited a global currency war (Japan just signed up, the Brazilians and Chinese are angry, and the German-dominated euro zone is crumbling) that will soon overwhelm it. When the latest bubble pops, there will be nothing to stop the collapse. If this sounds like advice to get out of the markets and hide out in cash, it is.

David A. Stockman is a former Republican congressman from Michigan, President Ronald Reagan’s budget director from 1981 to 1985 and the author, most recently, of “The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in America.”

On Obamacare, Arizonans need to look behind the curtain

Patterson: On Obamacare/Medicaid, Arizonans need to look behind the curtain

Posted: Sunday, April 7, 2013 9:58 am

Guest Commentary by Tom Patterson | 0 comments

Arizona legislators are under intense pressure to pass the Obamacare Medicaid expansion. They’re getting it from all sides.

“Do the math” the governor condescendingly demands, as if it takes special genius to figure out there is short-term gain in accepting these federal funds.

“It’s your Christian duty,” helpful ministers explain, apparently forgetting that Jesus preached personal compassion for the poor, not government lobbying.

Even the business community is on their case, claiming more Medicaid business will create jobs and stimulate the economy. Of course, if government spending really created net jobs, we would be awash in jobs because we have definitely tried massive spending in recent years.

The opponents of Medicaid expansion are commonly depicted as crazed ideologues blinkered by their opposition to Obamacare. After all, the creators of Obamacare were so frantic to get the states on board with the Medicaid piece that they agreed to provide near total funding initially for this nominally state-operated program. Even by 2012, they promise to provide 90 percent of the funds. Such a deal.

But Arizonans might be wise to look behind the curtain. As time rolls on, Obamacare is already defaulting on most of its key provisions.

For example, we were told that the average family would save $2500 annually on insurance premiums. It turns out the cost of health insurance will increase from $2100-$5000 yearly when Obamacare is fully implemented.

Obama himself promised that under his plan, “if you like your doctor, nothing will change”. Yet a recent poll from the consulting firm McKinsey estimated that more than 40 million people will lose their employer-provided insurance. So much for that whopper.

The president also told us that no American families with incomes under $250,000 would see a tax hike. But there are more than 20 new taxes in Obamacare. Many of them, like the tax on medical devices, a new tax on drugs, another tax on certain high-end health plans and reduced deductibility for medical expenses all fall squarely on the middle class.

There’s much more. We were told that Obamacare would cost “only” a trillion dollars over 10 years, that the costs would be partially offset by massive reductions in Medicare spending on the elderly, and that we would achieve virtually complete universal coverage. It’s all false, false, false. With a track record like that who could believe their next promise?

Gov. Brewer’s response is to create a “circuit-breaker”, a provision that calls for Arizona to revoke the benefits expansion if the federal funding falls below 80 percent. That sounds good and she is undoubtedly sincere. But she likely won’t be the governor when that day comes and whoever is will be under intense pressure to somehow maintain the program.

That’s the way the welfare state works, the “ratchet effect”. Whatever government provides, it’s never enough and the demands for more stuff never ceases. When benefits are granted, it’s nearly impossible to retract them.

So right here, in Arizona’s intense Medicaid debate, we see how Big Government rolls over and co-opts good people. It pulls the bait-and-switch, puts them in an untenable political position and forces them to support even this unpopular program that is certain to fail.

There is a growing recognition that Obamacare is an ugly hybrid, combining the worst aspects of government medicine and highly regulated private sector medical care. It was never intended by its advocates to be a permanent solution to America’s problems with affordability and access to care. Pres. Obama and others have candidly stated the real goal is a completely government controlled medical system.

That’s why it’s critical to stop Obamacare now and replace it rather than let it fail amid calls for a government takeover. We are going to end up either with medical care dictated by federal bureaucrats or one in which the power of free markets and patient choice prevail.

Real tort reform, price transparency, ability to buy insurance across state lines and many other possible reforms are out there, but we will never get them if the Obamacare train isn’t stopped.

Obmacare must have buy-in from the states to proceed. The stakes for the Legislature are enormous.

East Valley resident Tom Patterson (pattersontomc@cox.net) is a retired physician and former state senator.

Emperor Obama is a blood thirsty murderer just like George W. Bush!!!!

Rise of the Predators

Targeted Killing Comes to Define War on Terror

By SCOTT SHANE

Published: April 7, 2013 51 Comments

WASHINGTON — When Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, a son-in-law of Osama bin Laden, was taken into American custody at an airport stopover in Jordan last month, he joined one of the most select groups of the Obama era: high-level terrorist suspects who have been located by the American counterterrorism juggernaut, and who have not been killed.

John O. Brennan, now C.I.A. director, said last year the preference was to use lethal force only when capture was not feasible.

Mr. Abu Ghaith’s case — he awaits a federal criminal trial in New York — is a rare illustration of what Obama administration officials have often said is their strong preference for capturing terrorists rather than killing them.

“I have heard it suggested that the Obama administration somehow prefers killing Al Qaeda members rather than capturing them,” said John O. Brennan, in a speech last year when he was the president’s counterterrorism adviser; he is now the C.I.A. director. “Nothing could be further from the truth.”

In fact, he said, “Our unqualified preference is to only undertake lethal force when we believe that capturing the individual is not feasible.”

Despite Mr. Brennan’s protestations, an overwhelming reliance on killing terrorism suspects, which began in the administration of George W. Bush, has defined the Obama years. Since Mr. Obama took office, the C.I.A. and military have killed about 3,000 people in counterterrorist strikes in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, mostly using drones. Only a handful have been caught and brought to this country; an unknown number have been imprisoned by other countries with intelligence and other support from the United States.

This policy on targeted killing, according to experts on counterterrorism inside and outside the government, is shaped by several factors: the availability of a weapon that does not risk American casualties; the resistance of the authorities in Pakistan and Yemen to even brief incursions by American troops; and the decreasing urgency of interrogation at a time when the terrorist threat has diminished and the United States has deep intelligence on its enemies.

Though no official will publicly acknowledge it, the bottom line is clear: killing is more convenient than capture for both the United States and the foreign countries where the strikes occur.

The drone strikes have become unpopular abroad; in a Pew Research Center poll last year, just 17 percent of Pakistanis supported them against leaders of extremist groups. And domestic critics have attacked from two different directions: Some Republicans in Congress accuse Mr. Obama of adopting a de facto kill preference because he shut down the C.I.A.’s overseas prisons and does not want to send more detainees to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Human rights advocates argue that some drone strikes have amounted to extrajudicial killings, the execution without trial of people suspected of being militants whose identities American officials often do not know and who sometimes pose little threat to the United States.

But with the American public, the strikes remain popular. Even as some senior former American security officials question whether the strikes are beginning to do more harm than good, 65 percent of Americans questioned in a Gallup poll last month approved of strikes to kill suspected foreign terrorists; only 28 percent were opposed.

Mr. Brennan’s criterion for capture — when it is “feasible” — is a very subjective judgment, said Matthew C. Waxman, a former Defense Department official who is now at Columbia Law School.

“Those simple statements about a preference to capture mask a much more complicated story,” Mr. Waxman said. “The U.S. military and intelligence community can do a great deal if they’re directed to do it. Sometimes where we say it’s infeasible, we mean it’s too risky.”

But he believes the hazards of a capture strategy are real. “I think in most cases we could not capture people without significant risk to our own forces or to diplomatic relations,” he said.

The uncertainties were evident nine months into Mr. Obama’s first term, when intelligence agencies tracked down Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, a suspect in the attacks on two American embassies in East Africa in 1998.

The original plan had been to fire long-range missiles to hit Mr. Nabhan and others as they drove in a convoy from Mogadishu, Somalia, to the seaside town of Baraawe. But that plan was scrubbed at the last minute, and instead a Navy SEALs team helicoptered from a ship and strafed Mr. Nabhan’s convoy, killing him and three others. The SEALs landed to collect DNA samples to confirm the identities of the dead.

The episode raised uncomfortable questions for some at the Pentagon. If the United States took the risk to land troops in Somalia, they wondered, why did they not capture Mr. Nabhan instead of killing him?

Or consider the case of Anwar al-Awlaki, the Yemeni-American cleric who had joined the Qaeda branch in Yemen. In September 2011, when American intelligence located him, it might conceivably have been possible to organize a capture by Yemeni or American commandos. But a drone strike was politically far less complicated for both countries, said Gregory D. Johnsen, an expert on Yemen at Princeton.

If American forces captured him, their presence on Yemeni soil might have spurred unrest, Mr. Johnsen said. If the forces of the Yemeni president at the time, Ali Abdullah Saleh, caught him, he said, “Does he turn him over to the Americans and risk a backlash? Does he hold him? It was easier for Saleh to let the Americans take a shot at Awlaki than to send his troops to catch him.”

The trade-offs have not changed under Yemen’s new president, Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi, who lauded the precision of drone strikes in a 2012 speech in Washington. Two months later, an American strike killed Adnan al-Qadhi, a well-connected Qaeda supporter, even though he was in a town near the capital, Sana, where several high-level officials live. Neighbors told reporters that he could easily have been captured.

In Pakistan, where the SEAL raid that killed Bin Laden sent Pakistani-American relations into a tailspin, drone strikes — though deeply unpopular — are tolerated by the security establishment. “There’s an intangible notion that a drone flying over is less of an intrusion than troops on the ground,” said Ashley S. Deeks, a University of Virginia law professor and a former State Department lawyer.

Then there is the question of very real danger to Americans in capturing heavily armed terrorists. The SEALs sent to Abbottabad were instructed that if Bin Laden immediately surrendered, he should be detained, according to Matt Bissonnette, a member of the SEAL team who wrote a book on the raid. But if Americans died trying to catch a midlevel militant — when drones were available but went unused — there would be a huge public outcry, most officials believe.

Only in the drone era has killing terrorism suspects become routine. In the 1980s and 1990s, counterterrorism officers captured several suspects overseas and brought them back to the United States for trial.

Brad Garrett, a former F.B.I. agent, was on the teams that caught both Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, an organizer of the first World Trade Center attack in 1993, and Mir Aimal Kansi, who shot five C.I.A. employees, two of them fatally, outside the agency’s headquarters in Virginia the same year. Teams of American and Pakistani officers caught the men by kicking down doors at their guesthouses, and “no shots were fired in either case,” he said.

As an investigator, Mr. Garrett said, “I’ve spent my life talking to live people. That’s the downside of drones. There’s no one left to talk to.” But he said that catching a solo suspect in an urban setting, while risky, was far less hazardous than confronting a gang of heavily armed men in the hostile territory of Pakistan’s or Yemen’s tribal areas. “I don’t think you can really compare them,” he said.

When Mr. Obama closed the C.I.A. prisons and banned coercive interrogations, Republicans complained that there was nowhere left to hold and question terrorists, a charge that resonated with some military and C.I.A. officers. The president countered by creating a High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group, an elite group of analysts and interrogators that officials say has been sent about two dozen times to question detainees at home and abroad. That is a tiny number compared to the frequency of drone strikes, of course, but officials say the secretive group has been successful.

An even smaller number of those questioned by the interrogation group have been brought back to the United States to face criminal charges, including Mr. Abu Ghaith, the Bin Laden son-in-law, and Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame, a Somali commander of the militant group Shabab.

By all accounts, Mr. Warsame’s handling is a powerful illustration of the value of capturing rather than killing a terrorism suspect. He first began providing information to American counterterrorism officials after being caught on a ship in April 2011. He has never stopped talking about both the Shabab and the Qaeda branch in Yemen, officials say, and he knows that his ultimate sentence will depend on his cooperation.

There are signs that the Obama administration may itself have grown wary of the convenience of targeted killing — or may be running out of high-level targets. After a sharp rise in Mr. Obama’s first two years, the total number of drone strikes is now in sharp decline.

In Pakistan, strikes peaked in 2010 at 117; the number fell to 64 in 2011, 46 in 2012, with 11 so far this year, according to The Long War Journal, which covers the covert wars. In Yemen, while strikes shot up to 42 in 2012, no strikes have been reported since a flurry of drone hits in January, according to several organizations that track strikes.

In his State of the Union address in February, Mr. Obama pledged more transparency for the drone program, and he and his aides have hinted that changes are coming. It remains unclear what the administration has in mind, but the president has spoken of the treacherous allure of the drone.

Decisions on targeted killing, he told CNN in September, are “something that you have to struggle with.”

“If you don’t, then it’s very easy to slip into a situation in which you end up bending rules thinking that the ends always justify the means,” Mr. Obama said. “That’s not who we are as a country.”

Obama unveils $3.77 trillion spending plan

But sadly this is the normal line of BS that comes from politicians who pretend to work for us. At the same time they are voting for more taxes, they are usually lying thru their teeth bragging to us how they voted to cut taxes.

I believe that the Congressional Record is excellent proof of it. In it members of Congress usually put quotes of them supporting both sides of every issue. That way a congressman when he is running for reelection can cite the record and say he supported cutting taxes, while at the same time saying he supported pork projects for special interest groups in his home state.

Source

Obama unveils $3.77 trillion spending plan

By Lori Montgomery, Updated: Wednesday, April 10, 8:40 AM

President Obama unveiled a 10-year budget blueprint Wednesday that calls for nearly $250 billion in new spending on jobs, public works and expanded pre-school education and nearly $800 billion in new taxes, including an extra 94 cents a pack on cigarettes.

But the president’s spending plan would also cut more than $1 trillion from programs across the federal government — for the first time targeting Social Security benefits — in an effort to persuade congressional Republicans to join him in finishing the job of debt reduction they started two years ago.

“Our economy is poised for progress, as long as Washington doesn’t get in the way,” Obama said in announcing his budget plan in the White House Rose Garden. He said his budget represents “a fiscally responsible blueprint for middle-class jobs and growth.”

He said his budget replaces “the foolish across-the-board spending cuts” known as the sequester that are “already hurting our economy.” The plan reduces the deficit and makes necessary investments “because we can do both,” he said. “We can grow our economy, and shrink our deficits.” He added: “The numbers work. There’s not a lot of smoke and mirrors in here.”

Obama challenged Republicans to show they are serious about deficit reduction by reforming the tax code to eliminate loopholes that benefit the wealthiest Americans and biggest corporations.

“If you’re serious about deficit reduction, then there’s no excuse to keep these loopholes open,” he said. “They don’t serve an economic purpose. They don’t grow our economy. They don’t put people back to work. All they do is to allow folks who are already well off and well connected to game the system.” He vowed that he would not “finish the job of deficit reduction on the backs of middle class families or through spending cuts alone that actually hurt our economy short term.”

Obama warned: “When it comes to deficit reduction, I’ve already met Republicans more than halfway.”

In his fifth annual budget request to Congress, Obama walks a fine line between reassuring voters anxious about the sluggish economy and facilitating compromise with a GOP that remains fixated on the dangerously high national debt.

Obama’s written message to Congress calls a growing economy the “North Star that guides our efforts.” To that end, his budget seeks $50 billion in new cash for roads and public works, $1 billion for 15 new institutes to promote innovation in manufacturing and $77 billion to make free, public pre-school available to 4-year-olds nationwide.

The cost of those initiatives would be covered through spending cuts and new revenues, including placing a $3 million cap on the value of individual retirement accounts and raising the federal cigarette tax from $1.01 to $1.95 per pack.

Meanwhile, the budget continues Obama’s outreach to Republicans by converting the private debt-reduction offer he has been making for months to GOP leaders into a formal proposal. That package proposes to replace the sequester — $1.2 trillion in deep, automatic spending cuts that took effect March 1 — with $1.8 trillion in alternative policies.

Nearly $600 billion would come from higher taxes on the wealthy, primarily through new limits on itemized deductions for families in the top tax brackets. The budget also would impose a new, minimum tax rate of 30 percent on households earning over $1 million a year, with exemptions to permit large charitable contributions.

But the rest of the package largely calls for replacing the sequester’s indiscriminate cuts to the Pentagon and other agency budgets with the sort of long-lasting entitlement reforms Republicans have long been demanding.

As he has in the past, Obama proposes to slice $400 billion from federal health programs, primarily Medicare, with the bulk of the cuts falling on drug companies and other providers. But Medicare beneficiaries would also take a hit, through higher premiums for couples making more than $170,000 a year and inducements for low-income recipients to use more generic drugs.

And for the first time, Obama formally proposes to slow the growth in Social Security benefits by applying a less-generous measure of inflation to programs throughout the federal government. The change would trim cost-of-living increases by roughly 0.3 percent a year, saving the government about $130 billion over the next decade.

White House officials said the new inflation measure — known as the chained consumer price index, or chained CPI — would not apply to programs for the poor, such as Supplemental Security Income, or SSI, and would be adjusted to reduce the impact on people 77 or older.

The deficit-reduction plan mirrors an offer Obama made in December to House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) in negotiations over the so-called fiscal cliff. At the time, Obama called for $1.2 trillion in new taxes, but the fiscal cliff deal included roughly $600 billion in new revenues over the next decade, with the bulk of the money coming from higher rates on households earning more than $450,000 a year.

Obama’s decision to include chained CPI in his budget proposal has infuriated many Democrats, and a number of liberal lawmakers protested the Social Security cuts Tuesday at the White House. Republicans, meanwhile, who have pressed the president to put the change on the table, have so far dismissed the offer as too “modest” to justify GOP support for higher taxes.

Some rank-and-file Republicans in the Senate have been more open to compromise, and Obama will dine with a dozen of them at the White House Wednesday evening. But as Washington barrels toward another potential showdown over the federal debt limit later this year, White House officials warned that the budget request represents the president’s bottom-line offer for getting federal borrowing under control.

“We don’t view this budget as a starting point in the negotiations. This is an offer where the president came more than halfway toward the Republicans,” a senior administration official told reporters Tuesday, speaking on condition of anonymity to detail the forthcoming document.

“So this is our sticking point,” the official said. “And the question is: are Republicans going to be willing to come to us to do serious things to reduce our deficits?”

While the president’s request falls far short of the austere, no-new-taxes, balanced-budget proposal adopted by House Republicans earlier this year, the White House argues that it represents serious debt reduction. Combined with budget deals enacted as part of the 2011 debt-limit fight, the fiscal cliff talks and other agreements, Obama’s new offer would reduce borrowing by a projected $4.3 trillion over the next decade — close to the sum recommended by independent budget analysts.

The budget proposes to spend $3.77 trillion in the fiscal year that starts in October, and projects a 2014 deficit of $744 billion, or 4.4 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product. The budget gap would narrow steadily over the coming decade, shrinking to $439 billion in 2023, or 1.7 percent of GDP.

The national debt, meanwhile, would continue to grow to $25 billion from today’s $16.8 trillion. But it would be slowly shrinking when measured against a growing economy, falling to 73 percent of GDP by 2023.

All told, Obama calculates that his proposals would reduce projected borrowing by about $1.4 trillion over the next decade, but that figure includes more than $500 billion in savings from ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that the administration never intended to spend.

Subtracting those savings and the president’s proposal to replace the sequester brings total new debt reduction closer to $700 billion over the next decade.

William Branigin contributed to this report.

Obama - Free cell phones for poor people???

OK, then, what part of the Constitution requires Congress to give dirt cheep cell phones for poor people????

Source

‘Obama phones’ subsidy program draws new scrutiny on the Hill

By Karen Tumulty, Published: April 9

When someone in the Washington area begins to type the president’s last name into the search box of Google’s home page, the top three terms it suggests as the most popular selections are Obama, Obamacare and . . . Obama phone.

Obama phone? A hotline, maybe, to the Oval Office?

Hardly. “Obama phone” is the widely used — and misleading — nickname of a 28-year-old federal program known as Lifeline. It provides discounts, averaging $9.25 a month, on phone service for 13.3 million low-income subscribers.

In the 31 / 2 years after false rumors started that the Obama administration was giving free cellphones to poor people — and six months after a racially charged video about it went viral — a once-obscure phone service subsidy is getting renewed scrutiny on Capitol Hill.

There are growing calls in Congress to end or drastically cut back Lifeline; later this month, the House Energy and Commerce Committee will hold a hearing that could help determine its fate.

“The program has nearly tripled in size from $800 million in 2009 to $2.2 billion per year in 2012,” the senior Republicans on the Energy and Commerce Committee wrote in a March 26 letter to the Democratic minority. “American taxpayers — and we as their elected representatives — need to know how much of this growth is because of waste, fraud and abuse.”

Lifeline was begun not by President Obama but under Ronald Reagan. It expanded to include cellphone service during the presidency of another Republican, George W. Bush.

In Obama’s first term, amid evidence of widespread fraud, the Federal Communications Commission moved to crack down on the program, saving what it predicts will be $400 million this year, on top of $214 million in 2012.

Never mind all that. “Obama phone” has stuck.

Republicans employ it as shorthand for the excesses of a welfare state. So prevalent is the catchphrase that some telecommunications companies even market the discounted service as an “Obama phone” — and often add a free phone for those who sign up.

Lifeline’s intent was inarguable enough: Phone service is “crucial to full participation in our society and economy,” the FCC noted in the order creating Lifeline on Jan. 8, 1985.

Expanding Lifeline to cellphone service reflected not only technology but also the reality of how poor people live. Last year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that slightly more than half of adults in poverty lived in households that had only wireless phone service.

But in the view of many conservatives, the “Obama phone” has become Exhibit A in the case against a liberal president who they believe is doling out goodies to make people more dependent on government. It is a version of the infamous “47 percent” argument that GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney made last year, when he claimed at a surreptiously videotaped fundraiser that nearly half the population supports Obama because it wants government handouts.

Lifeline made its way onto the radar screens of the right with an anonymous e-mail, which began circulating in 2009. It warned that free “Obama phones” were being given to welfare recipients, along with 70 minutes of service a month. “The very foundations that this country was built on are being shaken,” the e-mailer wrote.

From there, the conspiracy theories sprouted. Conservative talk radio last year was abuzz with speculation that “Obama phones” had become a means for the president’s tech-savvy reelection campaign to get poor people and minorities to vote.

Some of it was fueled by a video of an Obama supporter that went viral about six weeks before the election and has been viewed almost 8 million times.

“Everybody in Cleveland, low minority got Obama phone,” a woman yells on the video. “Keep Obama in president, you know? He gave us a phone.”

That narrative has lived on for some Obama critics as an allegory that explains the president’s worldview. “The president offers you free stuff, but his policies keep you poor,” Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said in the tea party response to Obama’s State of the Union address. “For those who are struggling, we want to you to have something infinitely more valuable than a free phone.”

And it has become woven into the current fiscal arguments. House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) tweeted on Feb. 19: “Nobody should be talking about tax hikes when govt is spending taxpayer dollars on free cell phones.”

Lifeline, however, is not funded by taxes; it subsists on fees that are tacked on to most phone bills. [i.e. TAXES on phones] That fund subsidizes a number of programs, which in addition to Lifeline include telecommunications service to rural and remote areas and to schools and libraries.

Some see a racial dimension to the opposition. “The syllogism is we all know — wink, wink — who is undeserving and who are the takers,” said David Honig, co-founder of the Minority Media and Telecom Council, which promotes access to technology for the disadvantaged. “The president looks like them, and he gives things away to them.”

The more substantive problem that has plagued Lifeline has little to do with either side’s political philosophy. When it was expanded to cover cellphone service in 2008, regulators included few safeguards against fraud.

As a result, there have been widespread reports that cellular providers, eager to collect a subsidy for each low-income subscriber, signed people up without verifying their eligibility. Some recipients also snapped up multiple phones in violation of a one-per-household rule.

Republicans are not the only ones complaining.

After Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) received a solicitation for a free phone in the mail at her home in 2011, she joined the chorus of critics. As the Senate deliberated on its budget in late March, McCaskill was the only Democrat to join Republicans in voting for a nonbinding amendment by Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) that called for ending the “mobile phone welfare program.”

The FCC implemented a set of regulations last year that required detailed audits every two years of companies that receive more than $5 million from Lifeline and imposed new requirements on subscribers to prove their eligibility and recertify it each year.

The agency has also reviewed 12.5 million subscriber records, eliminating what it says were 1.1 million duplicate subscriptions. And it is developing a national database of Lifeline subscribers to prevent fraud.

That, however, does not satisfy lawmakers such as Rep. Tim Griffin (R-Ark.), who has written a House bill to restrict the program to land lines.

Beyond the potential for waste and fraud, Griffin said, the program raises other questions.

“Should the federal government be giving people cellphones?” he said. “What about iPads? Where do we draw the line on this stuff?”

Alice R. Crites contributed to this report.

Discuss this topic and other political issues in the politics discussion forums.

Emperor Obama to cut Social Security benifits????

Of course some people raised the issue that Uncle Sam was a crook because you could put that 6.2 percent of you income Uncle Sam stole in a low interest bank saving account and get a far better return then Uncle Sam gives you.

Of course now it turns out that Uncle Sam really is a crook and President Obama has decided he doesn't want to give you back the money he stole from your paycheck under the false pretenses that he was going to let you use the money for your retirement.

I always thought Obama was kinda like a socialist Robin Hood who stole from the rich and gave to the poor. Now it seems like Obama is more like a Republican who steals from the poor and gives to the rich.

For the record I should say that at least one Supreme Court decision has said that Social Security is a TAX and that while you are required to pay the SOCIAL SECRUITY TAX. The same Supreme Court decision also said that you are not entitled to one cent in benefits for the thousands of dollars you paid in Social Security taxes. So it's not surprising that Emperor Obama is attempting to cheat the old folks out of the money they paid in Social Security taxes.

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Obama’s budget strategy: Social Security, Medicare cuts an effort to break stalemate

By Lori Montgomery Washington Post Thu Apr 11, 2013 7:52 AM

In the first budget of his second term, President Barack Obama set aside the grand ambitions that marked his early days in office and sent Congress a blueprint aimed at achieving a simple goal: ending the long partisan standoff over the national debt.

The 10-year budget request Obama unveiled Wednesday calls for nearly $300 billion in new spending on jobs and public works. That includes a landmark, $77 billion expansion of preschool education financed by smokers, who would have to pay an extra 94 cents a pack for cigarettes.

But barely five months after winning a decisive re-election victory, Obama proposed nothing on the scale of the $1.2 trillion initiative to extend health coverage to the uninsured that he pursued after taking office in 2009.

Even his hopes for a jobs package have diminished; the budget suggested that Obama would like $300 billion to pump up the sluggish economy but would settle for $50 billion to build a few new roads and bridges.

Instead, with sharp automatic spending cuts threatening to slow the economic recovery and another showdown over the federal debt limit looming, the blueprint establishes a budget deal with Republicans as Obama’s top fiscal priority. For the first time, he is formally proposing to trim scheduled Social Security benefits — a GOP demand that is anathema to many Democrats.

He is also offering to make meaningful reductions in Medicare benefits, including higher premiums for couples making more than $170,000 a year.

“With this budget, you can’t say the president isn’t leading. He’s clearly leading,” said Robert Greenstein, president of the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

“Whether one agrees or disagrees with the specific policies, he has definitely stepped up to the plate to try to break the gridlock.”

House Republicans and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., quickly dismissed the proposal, which formalizes an offer they rejected in December. McConnell called the cuts to Social Security and Medicare too “modest” to justify Obama’s bottom-line demand for nearly $700 billion in new taxes on the wealthy, primarily through new limits on itemized deductions for households in the top brackets.

“I don’t see this as fundamental entitlement reform as much as clarifying a statistic which does happen to save money,” House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., said of Obama’s offer to apply a less-generous measure of inflation — known as the chained Consumer Price Index, or chained CPI — to Social Security benefits.

Some rank-and-file Republicans in the Senate were more complimentary. Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., said Obama is “talking about Medicare reform, he’s talking about entitlement reform, and it will be interesting to see where the conversation goes.”

Isakson and other GOP senators were scheduled to join Obama for dinner at the White House on Wednesday.

With McConnell and House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, showing no interest in further talks, administration officials see Senate Republicans as their best hope for advancing a bipartisan agreement.

Obama warned during remarks in the Rose Garden on Wednesday that the budget represents his bottom-line offer. Any deal, he said, must not only replace “the foolish across-the-board spending cuts,” known as the sequester, that are “already hurting our economy” but also raise revenue from “the wealthiest individuals and biggest corporations.”

Of the entitlement cuts, Obama said, “I don’t believe that all these ideas are optimal, but I’m willing to accept them as part of a compromise.” He added, “When it comes to deficit reduction, I’ve already met Republicans more than halfway. So in the coming days and weeks, I hope that Republicans will come forward and demonstrate that they’re really as serious about the deficits and debt as they claim to be.”

Though presidents have for nearly a century launched the budget process, Obama’s request for the fiscal year that begins in October arrived on Capitol Hill 65 days late, weeks after the House and Senate had each adopted its own spending blueprint.

In the House, Ryan’s plan seeks to balance the budget over the next decade without new taxes, in part by keeping the sequester in place, repealing Obama’s health-care initiative and making unprecedented cuts to Medicaid and other programs for the poor. In the Senate, Budget Committee Chairman Patty Murray, D-Wash., won narrow approval for a competing spending plan that would replace the $1.2 trillion sequester in part with nearly $1 trillion in new taxes.

Neither proposal would trim Social Security benefits. And though Ryan proposes to replace Medicare with a cheaper system known as “premium support,” Obama’s budget offers by far the largest Medicare savings in the near term: $370 billion over the next decade vs. roughly $130 billion in the Ryan budget.

The president’s debt-reduction proposal mirrors an offer he made to Boehner in negotiations over the “fiscal cliff.” At the time, Obama called for $1.2 trillion in new taxes. He ultimately won about $600 billion, with the bulk of the money coming from higher rates on households earning more than $450,000 a year.

Now Obama is proposing to pick up where he left off, replacing the sequester with $1.8 trillion in alternative policies that were left on the table.

In addition to higher taxes on the wealthy — including a new minimum tax rate of 30 percent on households earning more than $1 million a year — the package calls for replacing the sequester’s indiscriminate cuts to the Pentagon and other agency budgets with the sort of long-lasting entitlement changes Republicans have long demanded.

That includes nearly $400 billion from federal health programs, primarily Medicare, with the bulk of the cuts falling on drug companies and other providers. But Medicare beneficiaries would also take a hit, through higher premiums and requirements to substitute more expensive brand names with generic drugs.

Obama also proposes to slow the growth of Social Security benefits through the chained Consumer Price Index, trimming cost-of-living increases by roughly 0.3 percent a year and saving the government about $130 billion over the next decade.

White House officials said the change would not affect programs for the poor, such as Supplemental Security Income, or SSI, and would be adjusted to reduce the impact on retirees 77 or older.

Still, the proposal has infuriated many Democrats, who have long demanded that Social Security be protected from any debt-reduction deal.

Combined with budget deals enacted as part of the 2011 debt-limit fight, the fiscal-cliff talks and other agreements, Obama’s new proposal would reduce borrowing by a projected $4.3 trillion over the next decade — close to the sum recommended by independent budget analysts. That includes roughly $660 billion in new savings on top of the sequester, administration officials said.

For the coming fiscal year, the blueprint proposes to spend $3.78 trillion and projects a deficit of $744 billion, or 4.4 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product. That’s down from the $973 billion deficit the White House projects for the current fiscal year and heralds an end to the era of record deficits in excess of $1 trillion that ramped up the national debt during and after the recent recession.

White House projections show the budget gap narrowing steadily over the coming decade, shrinking to $439 billion in 2023, or 1.7 percent of GDP. The national debt, meanwhile, would continue to grow to $25 trillion from today’s $16.8 trillion.

It would be slowly shrinking when measured against a growing economy but would remain at historically high levels throughout the next decade.

Obama’s budget request — the fifth of his presidency — proposes a range of other initiatives.

His written message to Congress calls a growing economy the “North Star that guides our efforts,” and his budget seeks $100 billion in new cash for roads and railways, $1 billion for 15 new institutes to promote innovation in manufacturing and $8 billion to help community colleges prepare students for existing jobs.

Obama also seeks hundreds of billions of dollars in new revenue, including a $3 million cap on the value of individual retirement accounts and an increase in the estate tax after 2018.

Administration officials emphasized that those proposals are separate from their offer for a debt-reduction compromise, which remains the top priority.

Democrat Kyrsten Sinema a big fan of corporate welfare???

Usually Democrats like Kyrsten Sinema are socialists who love to steal from the rich and give to the poor.

On the other hand Republicans usually steal from the poor and give to the rich. Like in this article where Kyrsten Sinema wants to steal billions of dollars from poor folks and give it to rich corporations.

Oddly Kyrsten Sinema seems to want to have it both ways. Like a Democrat, Kyrsten Sinema likes to steal money from the rich and give it to the poor in her socialist welfare schemes. And like a Republican, Kyrsten Sinema likes to steal money from poor folks and give it to rich corporations as in this $5 billion government welfare program for rich corporations that make solar panels.

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Rep. Sinema’s bill seeks break for green technology

By Rebekah L. Sanders The Republic | azcentral.com Wed Apr 10, 2013 5:43 PM

Solar companies that assemble panels in Arizona and other renewable-energy manufacturers based in the United States could be in line for money from the federal government if U.S. Rep. Kyrsten Sinema succeeds in pushing legislation through Congress.

Sinema, a Democrat from Phoenix, introduced Wednesday the Security in Energy and Manufacturing Act, a bill to spur domestic production of energy technology and create jobs. The legislation is part of a package of more than 40 bills that House Democrats have put forward as part of the party’s “Make It in America” initiative to re-energize the U.S. manufacturing sector.

Sinema, a closely watched freshman, could face challenges with her first bill in Congress. Similar versions introduced by House and Senate members failed in the past two sessions, and contentious budget debates in Washington have created an environment hostile to new spending.

Sinema argued there is wide support from both parties for encouraging the expansion of wind, solar and geothermal companies based in the United States.

“This bill provides an opportunity for bipartisan action to create more jobs,” she told The Arizona Republic after stumping for the bill on the House floor. “We’ve utilized this program before, and it created 180 additional manufacturing sites in 43 states. So we know it works.”

Sinema said the program gave companies leverage to secure additional private loans.

The legislation would set aside $5 billion to restart the program, known as the Advanced Energy Manufacturing Tax Credit program, or 48C. During the tax credit’s short run, from 2009 to 2010, about $3.2 billion was doled out before funding ran out.

Energy manufacturers would receive a 30 percent tax credit, or grant in lieu of the tax credit, to invest in new or bigger factories or buy additional equipment. The factories would have to be in the United States, a requirement designed to counter the rapid rise in manufacturing in places like China that boast lower costs.

Sinema said companies like Rioglass Solar Inc. in Surprise, which is expanding its factory, and Monarch Power Corp. in Scottsdale, a startup that wants to get into manufacturing, could benefit. Sinema mentioned Monarch in her speech and on Saturday will visit the company headquartered at Arizona State University’s SkySong. While campaigning last year, Sinema pledged to work on funding for renewable energy and research and development.

Monarch Chief Executive Officer Joseph Hui, an ASU engineering professor whose company is venturing into portable solar units, said the bill would be “tremendously helpful.”

Though his fledgling company has not yet sold its Lotus units, which fold up like a flower bud, Hui is betting on demand from emergency responders, outdoor vendors and electric-car owners as he looks to move into production soon.

Hui recently submitted a bid to purchase the Suntech Power Holdings Co. factory in Goodyear, which is slated to close this month. He said, if successful, he would hire back the 43 laid-off workers and aim to double the workforce by peak production. A tax credit would help him start that process, he said.

“It’s such a good opportunity,” Hui said.

You get a fair trial??? Don't make me laugh!!!

The government views you as either an enemy that belongs in prison, or a source of cash with a big wallet they want to steal. And in both cases they ain't going to let a fair trial get in their way of putting you in prison and stealing your wallet.

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Guantanamo dogged by new controversy after mishandling of e-mails

By Peter Finn, Published: April 11

The military justice system at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, which has been dogged by charges of secret monitoring of proceedings and defense communications, became embroiled in a fresh controversy Thursday when it was revealed that hundreds of thousands of defense e-mails were turned over to the prosecution.

The breach prompted Col. Karen Mayberry, the chief military defense counsel, to order all attorneys for Guantanamo detainees to stop using Defense Department computer networks to transmit privileged or confidential information until the security of such communications is assured.

Army Col. James Pohl, the chief judge at Guantanamo, also ordered a two-month delay in pre­trial proceedings in the military-commission case against Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, who is accused of organizing the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen. Defense attorneys in the trial of Khalid Sheik Mohammed , the professed mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, and four co-defendants filed an emergency motion — via a handwritten note — seeking a similar pause in proceedings.

Pretrial hearings in both cases were set to resume this month.

“Is there any security for defense attorney information?” said James Connell, attorney for Ali Abdul Aziz Ali, one of the Sept. 11 defendants. “This new disclosure is simply the latest in a series of revelations of courtroom monitoring, hidden surveillance devices and legal-bin searches.”

The inappropriate transfer of the e-mails follows other questions about government intrusion and secrecy that have undermined the legitimacy of a judicial process that has struggled to establish itself as an effective forum for the prosecution of some terrorism cases.

In February, a military lawyer acknowledged that microphones were hidden inside devices that looked like smoke detectors in rooms used for meetings between defense counsel and their clients. The military said the listening system was not used to eavesdrop on confidential meetings and had been installed before defense lawyers started to use the rooms. The government subsequently said it tore out the wiring.

That same month, Pohl learned that the soundproofed courtroom at Guantanamo was wired with a “kill switch” that allowed an unknown government entity, thought to be the CIA, to cut audio feed of the trial to the public gallery. Pohl ruled that in the future only he could turn off the audio feed to protect classified information. But defense lawyers questioned whether the audio equipment in the courtroom had been manipulated to allow the government to monitor attorney- client conversations.

In the latest controversy, the prosecution gained access to about 540,000 e-mails from defense teams. It is not clear which cases or lawyers the e-mails concerned; a Pentagon spokesman declined to comment, citing ongoing litigation.

Defense attorneys said prosecutors told them that they stopped looking at the e-mails as soon as they realized that the messages contained confidential defense information.

The mishandling of the e-mails was detected when IT specialists were conducting a search of the government’s computer system on behalf of prosecutors in a particular case. When they did so, they came across not only the e-mails they were seeking but also those between defense lawyers.

Defense attorneys said military IT personnel unsuccessfully tried to refine their search parameters two more times — and in each case discovered more confidential defense material.

In another controversy, defense counsel recently complained that huge volumes of work files were lost when the Defense Department tried to upgrade its network and mirror at Guantanamo the computer system that is available to defense lawyers handling detainee cases in the Washington area.

“Entire files, months of work was just gone,” said Navy Cmdr. Stephen C. Reyes, an attorney for Nashiri. “I have no evidence of any nefarious conduct, but it demonstrates again that we don’t have confidence that our files and communications are secure.”

Reyes noted that a prosecution file also was recently found in the defense computer system.

The latest delay in the commission hearings comes as the Obama administration faces a widening hunger strike among the detainees at Guantanamo.

Attorneys for the detainees and the military have clashed over the number of participants in the protest. The Pentagon said Thursday that 43 of the 166 detainees were on hunger strike, of whom 11 are being force-fed, while defense attorneys said the overwhelming majority of the 120 or so detainees in Camps 5 and 6 are on hunger strike.

The military has refused requests from the media, including The Washington Post, to allow reporters to observe conditions at the camps. Human Rights groups also have requested unfettered access to the camps.

A team from the International Committee of the Red Cross is visiting the camp, but the organization does not make its recommendations public.

ICRC President Peter Maurer said Thursday in an interview at The Post that the hunger strike is born of detainees’ frustration at being held indefinitely without any further review, even in cases in which they have been cleared for transfer out of Guantanamo.

U.S. tells N.Korea new missile launch would be "huge mistake"

Personally in the interest of peace I think it would be the best thing in the world if the North Koreans got a nuclear weapon that they could hit the United States with. It would prevent the American Empire from invading them like we did to Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam and numerous other Central American countries.

While the American government is run by tyrants, those tyrants are certainly smart enough not to pick on people that can defend themselves with nuclear weapons.

Yea, the North Korean government is run by a bunch of tyrants, just like Iraq and Afghanistan, but that doesn't mean the American Empire has the right to invade them.

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U.S. tells N.Korea new missile launch would be "huge mistake"

Arshad Mohammed and Jack Kim Reuters

10:11 a.m. CDT, April 12, 2013

SEOUL (Reuters) - Secretary of State John Kerry warned North Korea on Friday it would be a "huge mistake" to test launch a medium-range missile and said the United States would never accept the reclusive country as a nuclear power.

Addressing reporters after talks with South Korea's president and leaders of the 28,000-strong U.S. military contingent in the country, Kerry also said it was up to China, North Korea's sole major ally, to "put some teeth" into efforts to press Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear ambitions.

Kerry, like other U.S. officials, played down an assessment from the Pentagon's intelligence agency that the North already had a nuclear missile capacity.

The United States, he said, wanted to resume talks about North Korea's earlier pledges to halt its nuclear program.

But he also stressed that Washington would defend its allies in the region if necessary and pointedly said that Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader, "needs to understand, as I think he probably does, what the outcome of a conflict would be".

North Korea has repeatedly said it will not abandon nuclear weapons which it said on Friday were its "treasured" guarantor of security.

Kerry's visit coincided with preparations for Monday's anniversary of North Korean state founder Kim Il-Sung's birth date, a possible pretext for a show of strength, with speculation focusing on a possible new missile test launch.

Kerry, who flies to China on Saturday and to Japan on Sunday, said that if North Korea's 30-year-old leader went ahead with the launch, "he will be choosing, willfully, to ignore the entire international community".

"I would say ahead of time that it is a huge mistake for him to choose to do that because it will further isolate his country and further isolate his people, who frankly are desperate for food, not missile launches."

SHRILL RHETORIC

The North has issued weeks of shrill threats of an impending war following the imposition of U.N. sanctions in response to its third nuclear test in February. Kerry said the threats were "simply unacceptable" by any standard.

"We are all united in the fact that North Korea will not be accepted as a nuclear power," he said.

Kerry later told U.S. executives in Seoul that China, as an advocate of denuclearization, was in a position to press for a change in the North's policy.

"The reality is that if your policy is denuclearization and it is theirs as it is ours, as it is everybody's except the North at this moment ... if that's your policy, you've got to put some teeth into it," he told the gathering.

But North Korea showed little inclination for further talks.

Rodong Sinmun, the mouthpiece of the ruling Workers' Party, said Pyongyang would never abandon its nuclear program.

"The DPRK will hold tighter the treasured sword, nuclear weapons," it said, referring to the country by its official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

BIRTHDAY CELEBRATIONS

North Korean state television showed footage of newscasts from other countries depicting the trajectory a North Korean missile launch might take.

It also showed preparations for the Kim Il-Sung birthday festivities, including floral tributes, and a stadium of thousands of school children of the Korean Children's Union, each wearing a red scarf and saluting and marching in unison.

Speculation has mounted of an impending medium-range missile test launch in the North after reports in South Korea and the United States that as many as five medium-range missiles have been moved into position on the country's east coast.

Officials in both countries believe the North is preparing to test-launch a Musudan missile, whose range of 3,500 km (2,100 miles) or more would put Japan within striking distance and may threaten the island of Guam, which houses U.S. military bases.

The North has been angry about annual military drills between U.S. and South Korean forces, describing them as a "hostile" act. The United States dispatched B52 and B2 stealth bombers from their bases to take part.

Hours before Kerry's arrival, a U.S. lawmaker quoted a report by the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, one of the 17 bodies that make up the U.S. intelligence community, as saying it had "moderate confidence" that North Korea had developed a nuclear bomb that could be fitted on a ballistic missile.

But Kerry poured cold water on the report said it was "inaccurate to suggest that the DPRK has fully tested, developed capabilities" as set down in the document.

South Korea's Defence Ministry said it did not believe North Korea could mount a nuclear warhead on a missile.

A U.S. official had earlier suggested that Washington's greatest concern was the possibility of unexpected developments linked to Kim Jong-un's "youth and inexperience". Asked if war seemed imminent, he replied: "Not at all."

South Korean President Park Geun-hye, meeting officials from her ruling Saenuri Party before her talks with Kerry, struck a conciliatory note by suggesting Seoul should at least listen to what North Korea had to say.

"We have a lot of issues, including the Kaesong industrial zone," local media quoted her as saying. So should we not meet with them and ask: "Just what are you trying to do?'"

The president was referring to North Korea's closure this week of the jointly run Kaesong industrial park, with the loss of 53,000 jobs.

Kerry said the United States would not object to the South talking to the North. He also did not rule out the possibility of U.S. aid some day flowing to the North, but suggested this could only happen if Pyongyang undertook real denuclearization.

Kerry sounded upbeat about resolving a dispute between the United States and South Korea over a civil nuclear cooperation agreement that expires next year, saying he thought a compromise could be found by Park's visit to Washington next month.

South Korea is believed to want the right to reprocess its spent nuclear fuel, which would allow it to deal with a mounting stockpile of nuclear waste.

However, this could also allow it to produce bomb-grade fissile material, a step Washington is loathe to see it take in part because of its nuclear standoffs with Iran and North Korea.

"We are ... very concerned at this time about not having any ingredients that could alter our approach ... to either of those," he said. But Kerry added that he was "confident that one option or another will be able to come to fruition (with South Korea) by the time that President Park comes to Washington."

(Additional reporting by Ju-min Park in SEOUL, Sui-Lee Wee in BEIJING, John Ruwitch in SHANGHAI, and Patricia Zengerle, Mark Hosenball and Jeff Mason in WASHINGTON; Writing by Ronald Popeski and Arshad Mohammed; Editing by Nick Macfie and Jon Hemming)

U.S. uses the Bible as “an excuse for invading other countries.”

While I think it is wrong to murder innocent people like the people that planted the bombs in the Boston Marathon, I think that Tamerlan Tsarnaev quote is correct.

If the American government would stop terrorizing people in other countries these terrorist acts would stop overnight.

Also from this quote it sounds like the American police force have a double standard of justice. They seem to think it's OK to flush our Constitutional rights down the toilet to help them catch alleged criminals.

U.S. officials said a special interrogation team for high-value suspects would question him without reading him his Miranda rights

Source

Final shootout, then Boston bombing suspect caught

Associated Press Sat Apr 20, 2013 7:26 AM

WATERTOWN, Mass. — For just a few minutes, it seemed as if the dragnet that had shut down a metropolitan area of millions while legions of police went house to house looking for the suspected Boston Marathon bomber had failed.

Weary officials lifted a daylong order that had kept residents in their homes, saying it was fruitless to keep an entire city locked down. Then one man emerged from his home and noticed blood on the pleasure boat parked in his backyard. He lifted the tarp and found the wounded 19-year-old college student known the world over as Suspect No. 2.

Soon after that, the 24-hour drama that paralyzed a city and transfixed a nation was over.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s capture touched off raucous celebrations in and around Boston, with chants of “USA, USA” as residents flooded the streets in relief and jubilation after four tense days since twin explosions ripped through the marathon’s crowd at the finish line, killing three people and wounding more than 180.

Will cops torture Boston Marathon bombing suspect to get answers???

President Barack Obama said there are many unanswered questions about the Boston bombings, including whether the two men had help from others. He urged people not to rush judgment about their motivations.

Dzhokhar and his brother, 26-year-old Tamerlan Tsarnaev, were identified by authorities and relatives as ethnic Chechens from southern Russia who had been in the U.S. for about a decade and were believed to be living in Cambridge, just outside Boston. Tamerlan Tsarnaev died early in the day of gunshot wounds and a possible blast injury. He was run over by his younger brother in a car as he lay wounded, according to investigators.

During a long night of violence Thursday and into Friday, the brothers killed an MIT police officer, severely wounded another lawman during a gun battle and hurled explosives at police in a desperate getaway attempt, authorities said.

Late Friday, less than an hour after authorities lifted the lockdown, they tracked down the younger man holed up in the boat, weakened by a gunshot wound after fleeing on foot from the overnight shootout with police that left 200 spent rounds behind.

The resident who spotted Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in his boat in his Watertown yard called police, who tried to persuade the suspect to get out of the boat, said Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis.

“He was not communicative,” Davis said.

Instead, he said, there was an exchange of gunfire — the final volley of one of the biggest manhunts in American history.

The violent endgame unfolded just a day after the FBI released surveillance-camera images of two young men suspected of planting the pressure-cooker explosives at the marathon’s finish line, an attack that put the nation on edge for the week.

Watertown residents who had been told Friday morning to stay inside behind locked doors poured out of their homes and lined the streets to cheer police vehicles as they rolled away from the scene.

Celebratory bells rang from a church tower. Teenagers waved American flags. Drivers honked. Every time an emergency vehicle went by, people cheered loudly.

“They finally caught the jerk,” said nurse Cindy Boyle. “It was scary. It was tense.”

Police said three other people were taken into custody for questioning at an off-campus housing complex at the University of the Massachusetts at Dartmouth where the younger man may have lived.

“Tonight, our family applauds the entire law enforcement community for a job well done, and trust that our justice system will now do its job,” said the family of 8-year-old Martin Richard, who died in the bombing.

Queries cascaded in after authorities released the surveillance-camera photos — the FBI website was overwhelmed with 300,000 hits per minute — but what role those played in the overnight clash was unclear. State police spokesman Dave Procopio said police realized they were dealing with the bombing suspects based on what the two men told a carjacking victim during their night of crime.

The search by thousands of law enforcement officers all but shut down the Boston area for much of the day. Officials halted all mass transit, including Amtrak trains to New York, advised businesses not to open and warned close to 1 million people in the city and some of its suburbs to unlock their doors only for uniformed police.

Around midday, the suspects’ uncle, Ruslan Tsarni of Montgomery Village, Md., pleaded on television: “Dzhokhar, if you are alive, turn yourself in and ask for forgiveness.”

Until the younger man’s capture, it was looking like a grim day for police. As night fell, they announced that they were scaling back the hunt and lifting the stay-indoors order across the region because they had come up empty-handed.

But then the break came and within a couple of hours, the search was over. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was captured about a mile from the site of the shootout that killed his brother.

A neighbor described how heavily armed police stormed by her window not long after the lockdown was lifted — the rapid gunfire left her huddled on the bathroom floor on top of her young son.

“I was just waiting for bullets to just start flying everywhere,” Deanna Finn said.

When at last the gunfire died away and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was taken from the neighborhood in an ambulance, an officer gave Finn a cheery thumbs-up.

“To see the look on his face, he was very, very happy, so that made me very, very happy,” she said.

Authorities said the man dubbed Suspect No. 1 — the one in sunglasses and a dark baseball cap in the surveillance-camera pictures — was Tamerlan Tsarnaev, while Suspect No. 2, the one in a white baseball cap worn backward, was his younger brother.

Chechnya, where the brothers grew up, has been the scene of two wars between Russian forces and separatists since 1994, in which tens of thousands were killed in heavy Russian bombing. That spawned an Islamic insurgency that has carried out deadly bombings in Russia and the region, although not in the West.

U.S. uses the Bible as “an excuse for invading other countries.”

Also, the FBI interviewed the older brother at the request of a foreign government in 2011, and nothing derogatory was found, according to a federal law enforcement official who was not authorized to discuss the case publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

The official did not identify the foreign country or say why it made the request.

Exactly how the long night of crime began was unclear. But police said the brothers carjacked a man in a Mercedes-Benz in Cambridge, just across the Charles River from Boston, then released him unharmed at a gas station.

They also shot to death a Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer, 26-year-old Sean Collier, while he was responding to a report of a disturbance, investigators said.

The search for the Mercedes led to a chase that ended in Watertown, where authorities said the suspects threw explosive devices from the car and exchanged gunfire with police. A transit police officer, 33-year-old Richard Donohue, was shot and critically wounded, authorities said.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev ran over his already wounded brother as he fled, according to two law enforcement officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the investigation. At some point, he abandoned his car and ran away on foot.

The brothers had built an arsenal of pipe bombs, grenades and improvised explosive devices and used some of the weapons in trying to make their getaway, said Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger, D-Md., a member of the House Intelligence Committee.

Watertown resident Kayla Dipaolo said she was woken up overnight by gunfire and a large explosion that sounded “like it was right next to my head … and shook the whole house.”

“It was very scary,” she said. “There are two bullet holes in the side of my house, and by the front door there is another.”

Tamerlan Tsarnaev had studied accounting as a part-time student at Bunker Hill Community College in Boston for three semesters from 2006 to 2008, the school said. He was married with a young daughter.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was registered as a student at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. Students said he was on campus this week after the Boston Marathon bombing. The campus closed down Friday along with colleges around the Boston area.

The men’s father, Anzor Tsarnaev, said in a telephone interview with the AP from the Russian city of Makhachkala that his younger son, Dzhokhar, is “a true angel.” He said his son was studying medicine.

“He is such an intelligent boy,” the father said. “We expected him to come on holidays here.”

A man who said he knew Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Krystle Campbell, the 29-year-old restaurant manager killed in Monday’s bombing, said he was glad Dzhokhar had survived.

“I didn’t want to lose more than one friend,” Marvin Salazar said.

“Why Jahar?” he asked, using Tsarnaev’s nickname. “I want to know answers. That’s the most important thing. And I think I speak for almost all America. Why the Boston Marathon? Why this year? Why Jahar?”

Two years ago, the city of Cambridge awarded Dzhokhar Tsarnaev a $2,500 scholarship. At the time, he was a senior at Cambridge Rindge & Latin School, a highly regarded public school whose alumni include Matt Damon, Ben Affleck and NBA Hall of Famer Patrick Ewing.

Tsarni, the men’s uncle, said the brothers traveled here together from Russia. He called his nephews “losers” and said they had struggled to settle in the U.S. and ended up “thereby just hating everyone.”

———

Sullivan and Associated Press writers Stephen Braun, Jack Gillum and Pete Yost reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Mike Hill, Katie Zezima, Pat Eaton-Robb and Steve LeBlanc in Boston, Rodrique Ngowi in Watertown, Mass. and Jeff Donn in Cambridge, Mass., contributed to this report.

Sens. Graham, McCain say Tsarnaev should be sent to Guantanamo

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."

H. L. Mencken

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Sens. Graham, McCain say Tsarnaev should be sent to Guantanamo

By Richard A. Serrano

April 20, 2013, 10:33 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.), said Saturday in a joint statement that alleged Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev should be denied a defense attorney and declared an “enemy combatant.”

They added in a statement on Graham's Facebook page, "It is clear the events we have seen over the past few days in Boston were an attempt to kill American citizens and terrorize a major American city.”

The two Republican conservatives have demanded that terror suspects not be Mirandized or tried in federal courts and instead be shipped to the detainee prison on Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

But the Supreme Court has never said that a U.S. citizen captured on U.S. soil, like Tsarnaev, could be treated as an enemy combatant.

“The accused perpetrators of these acts were not common criminals attempting to profit from a criminal enterprise, but terrorists trying to injure, maim, and kill innocent Americans,” the senators said. “We need to know about any possible future attacks which could take additional American lives. The least of our worries is a criminal trial which will likely be held years from now.

"Under the Law of War we can hold this suspect as a potential enemy combatant not entitled to Miranda warnings or the appointment of counsel. Our goal at this critical juncture should be to gather intelligence and protect our nation from further attacks."

In a separate tweet, Graham added, “The last thing we may want to do is read Boston suspect Miranda Rights telling him to 'remain silent.'"

Tsarnaev was arrested Friday night in Watertown, Mass. He was being held at a local hospital, and a Justice Department official said he likely would be charged later Saturday. Carmen Ortiz, the U.S. Attorney in Boston, invoked a “public safety exemption in cases of national security and potential charges involving acts of terrorism” as a reason not to immediately read him his Miranda rights against self-incrimination.

In 2011, a Justice Department memo expanded the use of the public safety exception in domestic terrorism cases, so that it can be invoked in exceptional circumstances even when there is not an imminent safety threat. The changes were made after a controversy over the handling of the suspect in the Christmas Day 2009 airline bomb attempt, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who was questioned by FBI agents for less than an hour before being read his rights.

The American Civil Liberties Union, meanwhile, said in a statement that “every criminal defendant” is entitled to Miranda rights, noting that Tsarnaev became a naturalized American citizen.

“The public safety exception should be read narrowly. It applies only when there is a continued threat to public safety and is not an open-ended exception to the Miranda rule,” the ACLU said. “Every criminal defendant has a right to be brought before a judge and to have access to counsel. We must not waver from our tried and true justice system, even in the most difficult of times. Denial of rights is un-American and will only make it harder to obtain fair convictions."

F*ck his Constitutional rights, he is a criminal!!!

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Debate Over Delaying of Miranda Warning

By CHARLIE SAVAGE

Published: April 20, 2013

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration’s announcement that it planned to question the Boston Marathon bombing suspect for a period without first reading him the Miranda warning of his right to remain silent and have a lawyer present has revived a constitutionally charged debate over the handling of terrorism cases in the criminal justice system.

The suspect, Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev, 19, a naturalized American citizen, remained hospitalized on Saturday for treatment of injuries sustained when he was captured by the police on Friday night, and it was not clear whether he had been questioned yet. But the administration’s effort to stretch a gap in the Miranda rule for questioning about immediate threats to public safety in this and other terrorism cases has alarmed advocates of individual rights.

Anthony D. Romero, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, said it would be acceptable for the Federal Bureau of Investigation to ask Mr. Tsarnaev about “imminent” threats, like whether other bombs are hidden around Boston. But he said that once the F.B.I. gets into broader questioning, it must not “cut corners.”

“The public safety exception to Miranda should be a narrow and limited one, and it would be wholly inappropriate and unconstitutional to use it to create the case against the suspect,” Mr. Romero said. “The public safety exception would be meaningless if interrogations are given an open-ended time horizon.”

At the other end of the spectrum, some conservatives have called for treating terrorism-related cases — even those arising on American soil or involving citizens — as a military matter, holding a suspect indefinitely as an “enemy combatant” without a criminal defendants’ rights. Two Republican senators, John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, called for holding Mr. Tsarnaev under the laws of war, interrogating him without any Miranda warning or defense lawyer.

“Our goal at this critical juncture should be to gather intelligence and protect our nation from further attacks,” they said. “We remain under threat from radical Islam and we hope the Obama administration will seriously consider the enemy combatant option.”

The Miranda warning comes from a 1966 case in which the Supreme Court held that, to protect against involuntary self-incrimination, if prosecutors want to use statements at a trial that a defendant made in custody, the police must first have advised him of his rights. The court later created an exception, allowing prosecutors to use statements made before any warning in response to questions about immediate threats to public safety, like where a gun is hidden.

The question applying those rules in terrorism cases arose after a Nigerian named Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab tried to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner on Dec. 25, 2009. After landing in Michigan, he was given painkillers for burns and confessed to a nurse. He also spoke freely to F.B.I. agents for 50 minutes before going into surgery.

After he awoke, the F.B.I. read Mr. Abdulmutallab the Miranda warning, and he stopped cooperating for several weeks.

Republicans portrayed the Obama administration’s handling of the case in the criminal justice system as endangering national security, setting the template for a recurring debate.

In late January 2010, Mr. Abdulmutallab’s family and lawyer persuaded him to start talking again, and he provided a wealth of further information about Al Qaeda’s branch in Yemen. Later, during pretrial hearings, his lawyers asked a federal judge, Nancy G. Edmunds, to suppress the early statements.

But Judge Edmunds ruled that the statement to the nurse had been voluntary and lucid despite the painkillers, and that the 50-minute questioning was a “fully justified” use of the public safety exception. She declined to suppress the statements, and Mr. Abdulmutallab pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life in prison.

By then, the Justice Department had sent the F.B.I. a policy memo urging agents, when questioning “operational terrorists,” to use a broad interpretation of the public safety exception. The memo asserted that giving the “magnitude and complexity” of terrorism cases, a lengthier delay is permissible, unlike ordinary criminal cases.

“Depending on the facts, such interrogation might include, for example, questions about possible impending or coordinated terrorist attacks; the location, nature and threat posed by weapons that might post an imminent danger to the public; and the identities, locations and activities or intentions of accomplices who may be plotting additional imminent attacks,” it said.

Judge Edmunds’s ruling was seen by the administration as confirmation that its new policy was constitutional — and that it was neither necessary nor appropriate to put domestic cases in military hands.

Stephen Vladeck, an American University law professor, said the middle ground sought by the administration has put both the civil libertarian and national security conservative factions in a bind.

“This is the paradox of progressive national security law, which is how do you at once advocate for the ability of the civilian courts without accepting that some of that includes compromises that are problematic from a civil liberties perspective?” he said. “The paradox is just as true for the right, because they are ardent supporters of things like the public-safety exception, but its existence actually undermines the case for military commissions.”

With Police in Schools, More Children in Court

Let's face it, it's not about the kids. It's about high paying, cushy jobs for cops.

Well at least that is probably how the cops and police unions feel about it.

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With Police in Schools, More Children in Court

By ERIK ECKHOLM

Published: April 12, 2013 175 Comments

HOUSTON — As school districts across the country consider placing more police officers in schools, youth advocates and judges are raising alarm about what they have seen in the schools where officers are already stationed: a surge in criminal charges against children for misbehavior that many believe is better handled in the principal’s office.

Since the early 1990s, thousands of districts, often with federal subsidies, have paid local police agencies to provide armed “school resource officers” for high schools, middle schools and sometimes even elementary schools. Hundreds of additional districts, including those in Houston, Los Angeles and Philadelphia, have created police forces of their own, employing thousands of sworn officers.

Last week, in the wake of the Newtown, Conn., shootings, a task force of the National Rifle Association recommended placing police officers or other armed guards in every school. The White House has proposed an increase in police officers based in schools.

The effectiveness of using police officers in schools to deter crime or the remote threat of armed intruders is unclear. The new N.R.A. report cites the example of a Mississippi assistant principal who in 1997 got a gun from his truck and disarmed a student who had killed two classmates, and another in California in which a school resource officer in 2001 wounded and arrested a student who had opened fire with a shotgun.

Yet the most striking impact of school police officers so far, critics say, has been a surge in arrests or misdemeanor charges for essentially nonviolent behavior — including scuffles, truancy and cursing at teachers — that sends children into the criminal courts.

“There is no evidence that placing officers in the schools improves safety,” said Denise C. Gottfredson, a criminologist at the University of Maryland who is an expert in school violence. “And it increases the number of minor behavior problems that are referred to the police, pushing kids into the criminal system.” Nationwide, hundreds of thousands of students are arrested or given criminal citations at schools each year. A large share are sent to court for relatively minor offenses, with black and Hispanic students and those with disabilities disproportionately affected, according to recent reports from civil rights groups, including the Advancement Project, in Washington, and the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, in New York.

Such criminal charges may be most prevalent in Texas, where police officers based in schools write more than 100,000 misdemeanor tickets each year, said Deborah Fowler, the deputy director of Texas Appleseed, a legal advocacy center in Austin. The students seldom get legal aid, she noted, and they may face hundreds of dollars in fines, community service and, in some cases, a lasting record that could affect applications for jobs or the military.

In February, Texas Appleseed and the Brazos County chapter of the N.A.A.C.P. filed a complaint with the federal Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights. Black students in the school district in Bryan, they noted, receive criminal misdemeanor citations at four times the rate of white students.

Featured in the complaint is De’Angelo Rollins, who was 12 and had just started at a Bryan middle school in 2010 when he and another boy scuffled and were given citations. After repeated court appearances, De’Angelo pleaded no contest, paid a fine of $69 and was sentenced to 20 hours of community service and four months’ probation.

“They said this will stay on his record unless we go back when he is 17 and get it expunged,” said his mother, Marjorie Holmon.

Federal officials have not yet acted, but the district says it is revising guidelines for citations. “Allegations of inequitable treatment of students is something the district takes very seriously,” said Sandra Farris, a spokeswoman for the Bryan schools.

While schools may bring in police officers to provide security, the officers often end up handling discipline and handing out charges of disorderly conduct or assault, said Michael Nash, the presiding judge of juvenile court in Los Angeles and the president of the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges.

“You have to differentiate the security issue and the discipline issue,” he said. “Once the kids get involved in the court system, it’s a slippery slope downhill.”

Mo Canady, the executive director of the National Association of School Resource Officers, defended placing police officers in schools, provided that they are properly trained. He said that the negative impacts had been exaggerated, and that when the right people were selected and schooled in adolescent psychology and mediation, both schools and communities benefited.

“The good officers recognize the difference between a scuffle and a true assault,” Mr. Canady said.

But the line is not always clear. In New York, a lawsuit against the Police Department’s School Safety Division describes several instances in which officers handcuffed and arrested children for noncriminal behavior.

Many districts are clamoring for police officers. “There’s definitely a massive trend toward increasing school resource officers, so much so that departments are having trouble buying guns and supplies,” said Michael Dorn, director of Safe Havens International, in Macon, Ga., a safety consultant to schools.

One district in Florida, Mr. Dorn said, is looking to add 130 officers, mainly to patrol its grade schools. McKinney, Tex., north of Dallas, recently placed officers in its five middle schools.

Many judges say school police officers are too quick to make arrests or write tickets.

“We are criminalizing our children for nonviolent offenses,” Wallace B. Jefferson, the chief justice of the Supreme Court of Texas, said in a speech to the Legislature in March.

School officers in Texas are authorized to issue Class C misdemeanor citations, which require students to appear before a justice of the peace or in municipal court, with public records.

The process can leave a bitter taste. Joshua, a ninth grader who lives south of Houston, got into a brief fight on a school bus in November after another boy, a security video showed, hit him first. The principal called in the school’s resident sheriff, who wrote them both up for disorderly conduct.

“I thought it was stupid,” Joshua said of the ticket and his need to miss school for two court appearances. His guardian found a free lawyer from the Earl Carl Institute, a legal aid group at Texas Southern University, and the case was eventually dismissed.

Sarah R. Guidry, the executive director of the institute, said that when students appeared in court with a lawyer, charges for minor offenses were often dismissed. But she said the courts tended to be “plea mills,” with students pleading guilty in the hope that, once they paid a fine and spent hours cleaning parks, the charges would be expunged. If students fail to show up and cases are unresolved, they may be named in arrest warrants when they turn 17.

In parts of Texas, the outcry from legal advocates is starting to make a difference. Jimmy L. Dotson, the chief of Houston’s 186-member school district force, is one of several police leaders working to redefine the role of campus officers.

Perhaps the sharpest change has come to E. L. Furr High School, which serves mainly low-income Hispanic children on the city’s east side. Bertie Simmons, 79, came out of retirement 11 years ago to try to turn around a school so blighted by gang violence that it dared not hold assemblies.

“The kids hated the school police,” said Ms. Simmons, the principal. They arrested two or three students a day and issued tickets to many more.

Ms. Simmons searched for officers who would work with the students and build trust. She found them in Danny Avalos and Craig Davis, former municipal police officers who grew up in rough neighborhoods, and after years of effort, the campus is peaceful and arrests and tickets are rare. Discipline is usually enforced by a principal’s court with student juries, not summonses to the criminal courts.

“Writing tickets is easy,” Officer Avalos said. “We do it the hard way, talking with the kids and coaching them.”

With new guidelines and training, ticketing within the Houston schools was reduced by 60 percent in one year. Citations for “disruption of classes,” for example, fell to 124 between September and February, from 927 in the same period last year.

“Our role is not to be disciplinarians,” Chief Dotson said in an interview. “Our purpose is to push these kids into college, not into the criminal justice system.”

Bush’s legacy keeps getting worse

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Bush’s legacy keeps getting worse

By Eugene Robinson, Published: April 25

In retrospect, George W. Bush’s legacy doesn’t look as bad as it did when he left office. It looks worse.

I join the nation in congratulating Bush on the opening of his presidential library in Dallas. Like many people, I find it much easier to honor, respect and even like the man — now that he’s no longer in the White House.

But anyone tempted to get sentimental should remember the actual record of the man who called himself The Decider. [Reminds me of David Dorn. David Dorn is the guy who is accusing me of being a government snitch for the last 12 years.] Begin with the indelible stain that one of his worst decisions left on our country’s honor: torture.

Hiding behind the euphemism “enhanced interrogation techniques,” Bush made torture official U.S. policy. Just about every objective observer has agreed with this stark conclusion. The most recent assessment came this month in a 576-page report from a task force of the bipartisan Constitution Project, which stated that “it is indisputable that the United States engaged in the practice of torture.”

We knew about the torture before Bush left office — at least, we knew about the waterboarding of three “high-value” detainees involved in planning the 9/11 attacks. But the Constitution Project task force — which included such figures as Asa Hutchinson, who served in high-ranking posts in the Bush administration, and William Sessions, who was FBI director under three presidents — concluded that other forms of torture were used “in many instances” in a manner that was “directly counter to values of the Constitution and our nation.”

Bush administration apologists argue that even waterboarding does not necessarily constitute torture and that other coercive — and excruciatingly painful — interrogation methods, such as putting subjects in “stress positions” or exposing them to extreme temperatures, certainly do not. The task force strongly disagreed, citing U.S. laws and court rulings, international treaties and common decency.

The Senate intelligence committee has produced, but refuses to make public, a 6,000-page report on the CIA’s use of torture and the network of clandestine “black site” prisons the agency established under Bush. One of President Obama’s worst decisions upon taking office in 2009, in my view, was to decline to convene some kind of blue-ribbon “truth commission” to bring all the abuses to light.

It may be years before all the facts are known. But the decision to commit torture looks ever more shameful with the passage of time.

Bush’s decision to invade and conquer Iraq also looks, in hindsight, like an even bigger strategic error. Saddam Hussein’s purported weapons of mass destruction still have yet to be found; nearly 5,000 Americans and untold Iraqis sacrificed their lives to eliminate a threat that did not exist.

We knew this, of course, when Obama became president. It’s one of the main reasons he was elected. We knew, too, that Bush’s decision to turn to Iraq diverted focus and resources from Afghanistan. But I don’t think anyone fully grasped that giving the Taliban a long, healing respite would eventually make Afghanistan this country’s longest or second-longest war, depending on what date you choose as the beginning of hostilities in Vietnam.

And it’s clear that the Bush administration did not foresee how the Iraq experience would constrain future presidents in their use of military force. Syria is a good example. Like Saddam, Bashar al-Assad is a ruthless dictator who does not hesitate to massacre his own people. But unlike Saddam, Assad does have weapons of mass destruction. And unlike Saddam, Assad has alliances with the terrorist group Hezbollah and the nuclear-mad mullahs in Iran.

I do not advocate U.S. intervention in Syria, because I fear we might make things worse rather than better. But I wonder how I might feel — and what options Obama might have — if we had not squandered so much blood and treasure in Iraq.

Bush didn’t pay for his wars. The bills he racked up for military adventures, prescription-drug benefits, the bank bailout and other impulse purchases helped create the fiscal and financial crises he bequeathed to Obama. His profligacy also robbed the Republican Party establishment of small-government credibility, thus helping give birth to the tea party movement. Thanks a lot for that.

As I’ve written before, Bush did an enormous amount of good by making it possible for AIDS sufferers in Africa to receive antiretroviral drug therapy. This literally saved millions of lives and should weigh heavily on one side of the scale when we assess The Decider’s presidency. But the pile on the other side just keeps getting bigger.

New film looks at ‘War on Whistleblowers’

Sadly Emperor Obama is just a Democratic version of George W. Bush!!!

By Joe Davidson, Published: April 23

The Obama administration’s approach to federal whistleblowers has been likened to “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.”

On the good doctor’s side, President Obama has important accomplishments in protecting the rights of whistleblowers. Yet whistleblower advocates are fuming at the administration’s actions against federal employees whom it considers to be leakers of national security information.

“There’s a schizophrenia within the administration,” said Tom Devine, legal director of the nonprofit Government Accountability Project. “It’s been Obama versus Obama on whistleblower policy. Until recently, there was a virtual free-speech advocacy for whistleblower job rights that’s unprecedented, more than any other president in history.

“At the same time,” Devine added, “he has willingly allowed the Justice Department to prosecute whistleblowers on tenuous grounds.”

That last point — the Mr. Hyde side — is the focus of the new film “War on Whistleblowers: Free Press and the National Security State.” (Disclosure: The documentary features comments by Dana Priest, a Washington Post colleague.) It is a project of the Brave New Foundation, a social justice advocacy organization. The film is being shown in theaters in New York City and Los Angeles, but the main distribution channels will be iTunes, Netflix, Hulu, Amazon and cable systems.

The Justice Department rejects the notion that it is overzealous in its prosecution of those the government calls national security leakers.

“Unauthorized disclosures of classified information cause damage to our national security and we take the investigation and prosecution of such matters very seriously,” Dean Boyd, a Justice Department spokesman, said via e-mail. “In these and all other cases, Justice Department investigators and prosecutors follow the facts and the law to determine whether charges are appropriate.”

The Justice Department does not target whistleblowers, he added: “However, we cannot condone the knowing and willful disclosure of classified information to the media or others not entitled to such information. An individual in authorized possession of classified information has no authority or right to unilaterally determine that it should be made public or otherwise disclose it.”

The film recognizes the president’s good side, with a quick nod by Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project on Government Oversight. The “good news,” she said, is passage of the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act, which Obama supported, and his directive providing protection for national security whistleblowers. That mention, however, is not until 59 minutes into the 66-minute film.

Balanced? No. But the stories about the government’s aggressive moves against federal employees who worked to uphold the finest traditions of public service are chilling and deserve the notice and outrage the film hopes to generate.

Franz Gayl’s is the first case presented. The Defense Department civilian employee was punished for his efforts to save the lives of U.S. troops at war.

“Hundreds of Marines were tragically lost and probably thousands maimed unnecessarily, so I said, let’s replace the Humvees with what are called MRAPs, Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles,” he says in the film.

After taking his concerns to Pentagon officials with no luck, he went to the news media. Then the blowback hit. He was stripped of his security clearance, the lifeline for national security workers, and suspended.

“They were using all these personnel actions against me,” he said. “I’m the substandard employee, bottom 3 percent, unreliable, untrustworthy, et cetera, et cetera. After investigations and after all these personnel actions and reprisals, I was placed on administrative leave.

“I was fearful. If I have to leave the government now and I don’t have security clearances, we’re gonna have to move away. I can’t get a job around here. You can’t do anything without a security clearance around [the] D.C. area. I knew that life was gonna go ‘foof,’ fall off a cliff.”

Gayl was fortunate to have whistleblower advocates who cushioned his fall. And in November 2011, after intervention by an Office of Special Counsel that was re-energized by Obama, the military’s threat to suspend Gayl indefinitely was lifted and his security clearance was reinstated.

There’s a lot left out of his story in this space, and similar stories of other whistleblowers can’t be mentioned at all. Gayl’s is a distressing tale of Uncle Sam playing the bully, making life hell for a federal employee who fought to better protect American troops.

“I’m now working back at the Pentagon in the office from which I was removed,” Gayl says at the end of the film. “I feel very lucky, because I received a lot of support from a lot of outsiders that I don’t think every person in my situation gets.”

The film makes you wonder how many more trampled, and largely unknown, federal whistleblowers like Gayl are out there.

Twitter: @JoeDavidsonWP

Previous columns by Joe Davidson are available at wapo.st/JoeDavidson.

Air Force Two grounded in Flagstaff

Biden back in D.C., but plane remains stuck in Flagstaff

The Republic | azcentral.com Mon Apr 29, 2013 8:32 PM

Vice President Joe Biden is back in Washington after spending the weekend in Arizona. But Air Force Two is still sitting on the tarmac at Flagstaff Pulliam Airport, where it has been grounded since landing Friday.

And it could be there for several days. Biden’s office said the plane’s engines “ingested some debris” after landing. The damage was found in a post-flight inspection.

Biden was in Arizona with his two sons and son-in-law. He was the opening speaker at the McCain Institute’s annual Sedona Forum.

“As far as I know, he was not stranded,” said Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. “If that happened, I did not hear that. But I would be very pleased if he did: They spent a lot of money, so it would be good for the Arizona economy.”

Biden returned to Washington on Sunday on an alternate U.S. Air Force aircraft.

No First Amendment rights when it comes to taxes????

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Muzzling free speech about taxes

By George F. Will, Published: April 23

“The legislative department is everywhere extending the sphere of its activity, and drawing all power into its impetuous vortex.”

— James Madison, Federalist 48

The government has done this, and the court has declined to do its duty to enforce constitutional limits. Herewith an illustration of why conservatives must abandon their imprecise opposition to “judicial activism” and advocate for more vigorous judicial engagement in protecting liberty from the vortex of the regulatory state.

Spirit, Allegiant and Southwest are low-cost carriers that have thrived since the deregulation of the airline industry, which began in 1978. The government retains a narrow authority to prevent deceptive advertising practices. But as the airlines argued in petitioning the Supreme Court to hear their case, the government is micromanaging their speech merely to prevent the public from understanding the government’s tax burdens.

The government’s total price rule forbids the airlines from calling attention to the tax component of the price of a ticket by listing the price the airline charges and then the tax component with equal prominence. The rule mandates that any listing of the tax portion of a ticket’s price “not be displayed prominently and be presented in significantly smaller type than the listing of the total price.” The government is trying to prevent people from clearly seeing the burdens of government.

These three low-cost carriers compete for the most price-conscious travelers, and they want to tell those travelers which portion of a ticket’s cost the airlines control. The government, far from regulating to prevent customer confusion, is trying to prevent customers from understanding the taxes and fees that comprise approximately 20 percent of the average airline ticket.

Timothy Sandefur, of the public-interest, limited-government Pacific Legal Foundation, notes that decades ago the Supreme Court, without justification in the Constitution’s text, structure or history, created a binary First Amendment. So today the amendment gives different degrees of protection to two kinds of speech — strong protection to political speech, minimal protection to commercial speech.

The court has never clearly defined the latter but has suggested that commercial speech proposes a commercial transaction between the speaker and the audience. And the court has held that freedom of commercial speech cannot be abridged if the speech is neither false nor deceptive and if it is not related to an illegal activity.

Note two things. The airlines’ speech the government is regulating with the total price rule would be protected even if it were just commercial speech. And it actually is political speech: It calls its audience’s attention to, and invites disapproval of, government policy.

In permitting the government’s regulation of this speech, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit held, 2 to 1, that the total price rule “does not prohibit airlines from saying anything; it just requires them to disclose the total, final price and to make it the most prominent figure in their advertisements.” But this ignores the government’s obvious purpose of preventing the airlines from drawing attention to the government’s exactions.

In their brief asking the Supreme Court to reverse the D.C. Circuit’s decision, the airlines noted that the government is forbidding them to do what virtually every American industry does — advertise the pre-tax price of their products. Shirts and shoes and salamis are sold with the pre-tax sum on the price tag.

D.C. Circuit Judge A. Raymond Randolph, dissenting from the court’s permission of this unauthorized and indefensible regulation, asked: How can the government’s supposed interest in consumers having “accurate” information be served by requiring “significantly smaller” typefaces for taxes and fees that make up a larger share of the prices of the low-cost airlines than of the older airlines? Randolph said the government’s purpose is “to control and to muffle speakers who are critical of the government.”

Government is violating one of the natural rights that the Founders said government is “instituted” (the Declaration’s word) to protect. This episode confirms conservatism’s premise that today’s government is guilty of shabby behavior until proven innocent. And conservatives enable such behavior when their unreflective denunciations of judicial “activism” encourage excessive judicial deference toward the modern executive’s impetuous vortex.

Emperor Obama is a liar and hypocrite???

Whistle-blowers: Rescue requests denied in Libya attack

Source

Whistle-blowers: Rescue requests denied in Libya attack

By Oren Dorell USA Today Tue May 7, 2013 11:49 AM

Revelations from State Department "whistle-blowers" on the Benghazi terror attack that left the U.S. ambassador of Libya dead will show that requests for military rescue were turned down and that the White House was immediately aware that the CIA concluded the attackers were linked to al-Qaeda.

Documents released by various Congressional committees and excerpts of interviews provided by the House oversight committee appear to contradict the description of events as provided by the Pentagon, the White House and then-secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. Among them:

• The U.S. military refused to send jets over a raging battlefield in Benghazi in an attempt to scatter the attackers.

• The Pentagon's Africa command refused to let a Special Forces team in Tripoli fly the short distance to Benghazi in an attempt to rescue U.S. personnel.

• The CIA told the White House the attack was a coordinated assault by al-Qaeda-linked terrorists. But the White House and State Department publicly blamed the attack on a spontaneous mob angered over an anti-Islam video, and claimed the reports of terrorists was not learned until later.

• The State Department never activated a foreign emergency response team, which assists diplomats under attack. A State official will testify this was done to avoid the appearance that a terrorist attack had happened.

The revelations come from witnesses who will appear in public Wednesday before the House oversight committee. Scheduled to speak are Mark Thompson, acting Deputy Assistant Secretary for Counterterrorism; Gregory Hicks, former deputy chief of mission and chargé d'affairs in Libya, and Eric Nordstrom, the former regional security officer in Libya. All are current State Department employees.

The information they have already provided committee staffers, together with published reports from other committees, paint a picture of a White House and State Department that tried to prevent information about a terrorist attack from being exposed just weeks before President Obama faced re-election, according Frederick Hill, spokesman for the oversight committee.

"These witnesses have information that has not previously come forward because the administration has tried to suppress it," Hill said. "The testimony of the former deputy chief of mission directly contradicts statements made by high-ranking officials."

U.S. Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens was killed in the attack along with State Department employee Sean Smith and former Navy SEALs Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods. The State Department's Accountability Review Board, appointed by Clinton, later issued a report saying the military assets in the region could not have saved the Americans.

While it was clear from the start that terrorists were involved, that information was scrubbed from talking points memos distributed by the White House, according to the witnesses and investigations conducted by various Republican-led committees in the House of Representatives.

Hicks, who became the top U.S. official in Libya after Stevens' death, told committee staffers he pushed for a stronger military response to an attack he knew from the start was launched by Islamist terrorists, but was rebuffed by Washington, according to excerpts of interview transcripts provided by the House oversight committee.

Hicks said he asked twice whether an F-16 or some other "fast-mover" aircraft could fly over the battlefield with hopes it would scatter the attackers.

"I talked with the Defense Attache, Lt. Col. Keith Phillips, and I asked him, 'Is there anything coming?' "

According to Hicks' account, Phillips said the nearest fighter planes were in Aviano, Italy, and it would take two to three hours to get them airborne, and there were no tanker assets close enough to support them.

Hicks says when he asked again, before the 5:15 a.m. mortar attack that killed Doherty and Woods, "the answer, again, was the same as before."

Hicks says he believes the Libyan government would have approved the flyover and that it would have been effective because the militias "were under no illusions that American and NATO air power won that war for them," he said.

"If we had been able to scramble a fighter or aircraft or two over Benghazi as quickly as possible after the attack commenced, I believe there would not have been a mortar attack on the annex in the morning because I believe the Libyans would have split," according to Hicks' excerpts.

"The Libyans would have split. They would have been scared to death that we would have gotten a laser on them and killed them."

A four-man team of military special operations forces was told not to board a Libyan military flight from Tripoli to Benghazi to reinforce troops sent to defend U.S. diplomatic personnel, Hicks said.

A previous team had already arrived at Benghazi at 1:15 a.m., Hicks said. Less than two hours later, Hicks received a phone call from then-prime minister of Libya, Mohammed Magarief, reporting that Stevens had died. His death meant Hicks was then in charge of the U.S. mission in Libya.

A second special forces team was organized, geared up and about to drive to a C-130 aircraft, when its commander, Lt. Col. Gibson, was ordered to stop by his superiors, Hicks said.

"He got a phone call from SOCAFRICA (Special Operations Command Africa) which said, you can't go now, you don't have authority to go now," Hicks said. "They were told not to board the flight, so they missed it."

Hicks said Gibson told him: "I have never been so embarrassed in my life that a State Department officer has bigger balls than somebody in the military."

Hicks said he believed the military stopped the trip because "they just didn't have the right authority from the right level."

Maj. Robert Firman, a Pentagon spokesman, said Monday: "There was never any kind of stand-down order to anybody."

State Department and White House officials scrubbed any mention of terrorism from Benghazi talking points given to Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, before she went on Sunday talk shows five days after the attack, according to a report by five House committees that investigated how that happened.

The CIA on Sept. 14 circulated a memo that said it had issued numerous warnings about al-Qaeda-linked extremists in Benghazi and throughout Libya. According to the Weekly Standard, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland objected that the CIA report gave the appearance that State did not heed agency warnings. By the time work on the memo was complete the next day, the Standard reported, mention of al-Qaeda and Islamic extremists was gone.

Emperor Obama is a liar and hypocrite???

Whistle-blowers: Rescue requests denied in Libya attack

Source

Whistle-blowers: Rescue requests denied in Libya attack

By Oren Dorell USA Today Tue May 7, 2013 11:49 AM

Revelations from State Department "whistle-blowers" on the Benghazi terror attack that left the U.S. ambassador of Libya dead will show that requests for military rescue were turned down and that the White House was immediately aware that the CIA concluded the attackers were linked to al-Qaeda.

Documents released by various Congressional committees and excerpts of interviews provided by the House oversight committee appear to contradict the description of events as provided by the Pentagon, the White House and then-secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. Among them:

• The U.S. military refused to send jets over a raging battlefield in Benghazi in an attempt to scatter the attackers.

• The Pentagon's Africa command refused to let a Special Forces team in Tripoli fly the short distance to Benghazi in an attempt to rescue U.S. personnel.

• The CIA told the White House the attack was a coordinated assault by al-Qaeda-linked terrorists. But the White House and State Department publicly blamed the attack on a spontaneous mob angered over an anti-Islam video, and claimed the reports of terrorists was not learned until later.

• The State Department never activated a foreign emergency response team, which assists diplomats under attack. A State official will testify this was done to avoid the appearance that a terrorist attack had happened.

The revelations come from witnesses who will appear in public Wednesday before the House oversight committee. Scheduled to speak are Mark Thompson, acting Deputy Assistant Secretary for Counterterrorism; Gregory Hicks, former deputy chief of mission and chargé d'affairs in Libya, and Eric Nordstrom, the former regional security officer in Libya. All are current State Department employees.

The information they have already provided committee staffers, together with published reports from other committees, paint a picture of a White House and State Department that tried to prevent information about a terrorist attack from being exposed just weeks before President Obama faced re-election, according Frederick Hill, spokesman for the oversight committee.

"These witnesses have information that has not previously come forward because the administration has tried to suppress it," Hill said. "The testimony of the former deputy chief of mission directly contradicts statements made by high-ranking officials."

U.S. Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens was killed in the attack along with State Department employee Sean Smith and former Navy SEALs Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods. The State Department's Accountability Review Board, appointed by Clinton, later issued a report saying the military assets in the region could not have saved the Americans.

While it was clear from the start that terrorists were involved, that information was scrubbed from talking points memos distributed by the White House, according to the witnesses and investigations conducted by various Republican-led committees in the House of Representatives.

Hicks, who became the top U.S. official in Libya after Stevens' death, told committee staffers he pushed for a stronger military response to an attack he knew from the start was launched by Islamist terrorists, but was rebuffed by Washington, according to excerpts of interview transcripts provided by the House oversight committee.

Hicks said he asked twice whether an F-16 or some other "fast-mover" aircraft could fly over the battlefield with hopes it would scatter the attackers.

"I talked with the Defense Attache, Lt. Col. Keith Phillips, and I asked him, 'Is there anything coming?' "

According to Hicks' account, Phillips said the nearest fighter planes were in Aviano, Italy, and it would take two to three hours to get them airborne, and there were no tanker assets close enough to support them.

Hicks says when he asked again, before the 5:15 a.m. mortar attack that killed Doherty and Woods, "the answer, again, was the same as before."

Hicks says he believes the Libyan government would have approved the flyover and that it would have been effective because the militias "were under no illusions that American and NATO air power won that war for them," he said.

"If we had been able to scramble a fighter or aircraft or two over Benghazi as quickly as possible after the attack commenced, I believe there would not have been a mortar attack on the annex in the morning because I believe the Libyans would have split," according to Hicks' excerpts.

"The Libyans would have split. They would have been scared to death that we would have gotten a laser on them and killed them."

A four-man team of military special operations forces was told not to board a Libyan military flight from Tripoli to Benghazi to reinforce troops sent to defend U.S. diplomatic personnel, Hicks said.

A previous team had already arrived at Benghazi at 1:15 a.m., Hicks said. Less than two hours later, Hicks received a phone call from then-prime minister of Libya, Mohammed Magarief, reporting that Stevens had died. His death meant Hicks was then in charge of the U.S. mission in Libya.

A second special forces team was organized, geared up and about to drive to a C-130 aircraft, when its commander, Lt. Col. Gibson, was ordered to stop by his superiors, Hicks said.

"He got a phone call from SOCAFRICA (Special Operations Command Africa) which said, you can't go now, you don't have authority to go now," Hicks said. "They were told not to board the flight, so they missed it."

Hicks said Gibson told him: "I have never been so embarrassed in my life that a State Department officer has bigger balls than somebody in the military."

Hicks said he believed the military stopped the trip because "they just didn't have the right authority from the right level."

Maj. Robert Firman, a Pentagon spokesman, said Monday: "There was never any kind of stand-down order to anybody."

State Department and White House officials scrubbed any mention of terrorism from Benghazi talking points given to Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, before she went on Sunday talk shows five days after the attack, according to a report by five House committees that investigated how that happened.

The CIA on Sept. 14 circulated a memo that said it had issued numerous warnings about al-Qaeda-linked extremists in Benghazi and throughout Libya. According to the Weekly Standard, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland objected that the CIA report gave the appearance that State did not heed agency warnings. By the time work on the memo was complete the next day, the Standard reported, mention of al-Qaeda and Islamic extremists was gone.

Feds sue landlord of longtime Berkeley pot dispensary

President Obama has lied a number of times and said he wasn't going to have his DEA thugs shake down legal medical marijuana dispensaries.

Now Obama's jackbooted DEA thugs are trying to seize the property leased to one of California's oldest medical marijuana.

Source

Feds sue landlord of longtime Berkeley pot dispensary

By Kate Mather

May 8, 2013, 1:17 p.m.

Federal prosecutors have filed a lawsuit attempting to seize property leased to one of California's oldest medical marijuana dispensaries, a rare step in the ongoing battle over who has authority over such facilities.

The forfeiture complaint filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in San Francisco alleges that Berkeley Patients Group violated federal law by operating a marijuana dispensary, making the property owner subject to seizure of the space.

The suit also says the dispensary is located within 1,000 feet of two preschools.

The 14-year-old facility's website bills it as "one of California's largest and most respected medical cannabis collectives" that has "provided safe access and fair prices to thousands of Northern California patients."

Berkeley Patients Group changed locations last year after its old landlord received a letter threatening seizure for the same reasons, the Oakland Tribune reported. The facility closed its doors in May and moved down the street, where it reopened at its current spot in December.

Berkeley City Council members Darryl Moore and Laurie Capitelli have recommended a resolution opposing the federal government's forfeiture action.

"The U.S. Attorney is ignoring the will of the people and continues to attack licensed dispensaries operating in compliance with all state and local laws," the proposal states. "The U.S. Attorney's current forfeiture action against BPG victimizes its patients, many of them Berkeley residents, who rely on it to provide the medication that they most desperately need."

The suit is similar to one filed last year against Harborside Health Center, the nation's largest pot dispensary, located in Oakland. That case has yet to be resolved.

Supporters of the Berkeley Patients Group planned a news conference Wednesday in Berkeley. The facility's chief operations officer, Sean Luse, said in a statement that "Berkeley Patients Group intends to vigorously defend the rights of its patients to be able to obtain medical cannabis from a responsible, city-licensed dispensary."

News of the lawsuit came days after the California Supreme Court gave local governments authority to zone medical marijuana dispensaries out of existence, in effect upholding bans in about 200 cities.

U.S. wants to keep 9 bases in Afghanistan after 2014

Source

Karzai: U.S. wants to keep 9 bases in Afghanistan after 2014

KABUL, Afghanistan Afghan President Hamid Karzai said Thursday he was ready to let the U.S. have nine bases in the country after the 2014 combat troop pullout, but wants Washington's "security and economic guarantees" first.

Speaking at a ceremony on Thursday at Kabul University, Karzai said Afghanistan is ready to sign a partnership agreement to that effect.

The remarks were the first time the Afghan leader had offered any insight into ongoing talks over a deal that would outline American presence in Afghanistan after 2014.

CBS News Kabul bureau chief Mukhtar Ahmad reports that, according to Karzai, the U.S. wants to maintain bases in Kabul, Herat, Helmand, Shindand, Gardez, Mazar, Jalalabad, Kandahar and Bagram.

Karzai said Afghanistan wants a U.S. commitment to quickly bring security to the country, strengthen its security forces and the promise of prolonged economic development.

U.S. officials were not immediately available for comment.

IRS officials in Washington were involved in targeting of conservative groups

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IRS officials in Washington were involved in targeting of conservative groups

By Juliet Eilperin and Zachary A. Goldfarb, Published: May 13 E-mail the writers

Internal Revenue Service officials in Washington and at least two other offices were involved with investigating conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status, making clear that the effort reached well beyond the branch in Cincinnati that was initially blamed, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post.

IRS officials at the agency’s Washington headquarters sent queries to conservative groups asking about their donors and other aspects of their operations, while officials in the El Monte and Laguna Niguel offices in California sent similar questionnaires to tea-party-affiliated groups, the documents show.

IRS employees in Cincinnati told conservatives seeking the status of “social welfare” groups that a task force in Washington was overseeing their applications, according to interviews with the activists.

Lois G. Lerner, who oversees tax-exempt groups for the IRS, told reporters Friday that the “absolutely inappropriate” actions were undertaken by “front-line people” working in Cincinnati to target groups with “tea party,” “patriot” or “9/12” in their names.

In one instance, however, Ron Bell, an IRS employee, informed a lawyer representing a conservative group focused on voter fraud that the application was under review in Washington. On several other occasions, IRS officials in Washington and California sent conservative groups detailed questionnaires about their voter outreach and other activities, according to the documents.

“For the IRS to say it was some low-level group in Cincinnati is simply false,” said Cleta Mitchell, a partner in the law firm Foley & Lardner who sought to communicate with IRS headquarters about the delay in granting tax-exempt status to True the Vote.

Moreover, details of the IRS’s efforts to target conservative groups reached the highest levels of the agency in May 2012, far earlier than has been disclosed, according to Republican congressional aides briefed by the IRS and the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration ­(TIGTA) on the details of their reviews.

Then-Commissioner Douglas Shulman, a George W. Bush appointee who stepped down in November, received a briefing from the TIGTA about what was happening in the Cincinnati office in May 2012, the aides said. His deputy and the agency’s current acting commissioner, Steven T. Miller, also learned about the matter that month, the aides said.

The officials did not share details with Republican lawmakers who had been demanding to know whether the IRS was targeting conservative groups, Republicans said.

“I wrote to the IRS three times last year after hearing concerns that conservative groups were being targeted,” Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (Utah), the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, said in a statement Monday. “In response to the first letter I sent with some of my colleagues, Steven Miller, the current Acting IRS Commissioner, responded that these groups weren’t being targeted.”

“Knowing what we know now,” he added, “the IRS was at best being far from forth coming, or at worst, being deliberately dishonest with Congress.”

As new details emerged Monday, Democrats and Republicans alike decried the agency’s actions as an unacceptable abuse of power.

In a news conference Monday, President Obama said he learned of the investigating in media reports on Friday and has “no patience with it.”

“If in fact IRS personnel engaged in the kind of practices that have been reported on, and were intentionally targeting conservative groups, then that’s outrageous,” Obama said. “And there’s no place for it. And they have to be held fully accountable.”

White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters Monday that the White House counsel’s office learned of an upcoming IRS inspector general’s report on April 22 as part of a routine notification but had not received access to the report.

On Capitol Hill, two Senate panels — the Finance Committee and the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations — announced Monday that they will investigate. The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and the Ways and Means Committee have been looking into reports of IRS attempts to single out organizations on the right for heightened scrutiny. Ways and Means has called IRS officials to testify Friday.

“These actions by the IRS are an outrageous abuse of power and a breach of the public’s trust,” said Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.). “The IRS will now be the ones put under additional scrutiny.”

Separately, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio) introduced companion bills Monday that would require the IRS to fire any employee found “willfully” violating “the constitutional rights of a taxpayer,” according to statements by both lawmakers. The bills also would make them criminally liable for their actions.

Even as Obama vowed that his administration “will make sure that we find out exactly what happened on this,” however, the IRS offered no new information on how it selected which groups to single out for scrutiny.

The White House is legally barred from contacting the IRS about a tax matter, under a prohibition adopted after the Watergate scandal. And although it can contact the Treasury Department about tax issues, neither Treasury nor the IRS can disclose specific taxpayer information. The IRS can release information about a petition for tax- exempt status only after it has been approved.

Obama is not in a position to remove Lerner, a career official who can be terminated for cause only under normal civil service proceedings. The IRS has two political appointees: the commissioner, who serves a five-year term, and the chief counsel.

As the IRS came under broader political attack Monday, more details surfaced on how the exempt-organizations division struggled to determine which nonprofits should receive “social welfare” status after the 2010 Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission ruling. That decision, which allowed corporations and unions to raise and spend un­limited amounts of money on elections, opened the door for groups to accept undisclosed contributions as long as their “primary purpose” was not politics.

In a Jan. 9, 2012, letter to the Richmond Tea Party, IRS specialist Stephen Seok asked questions including “the names of the donors, contributors and grantors,” as well as the size of the contributions and grants, and when they were given.

Richmond Tea Party President Larry Nordvig, whose group applied for tax-exempt status in December 2009 and received it in July 2012, said the extended inquiry had “a very chilling effect” on how much money the group could raise because its donors preferred anonymity.

The Wetumpka Tea Party of Alabama experienced a two-year delay after submitting its initial application.

Becky Gerritson, a 44-year-old stay-at-home mother and the group’s president, said the IRS sent a questionnaire asking for the names of all volunteers, donor identification and contribution amounts, the names of any legislators its members had communicated with directly or indirectly, and the contents of all speeches its members had made, among a long list of other details.

“I was outraged,” Gerritson said. “Being an election year, I felt like it was intimidation.”

The group did not provide the information. Approval came only after the group sought help from the American Center for Law and Justice, which threatened a lawsuit against the IRS, Gerritson said.

Although some of the groups were explicitly labeled “tea party” or “patriot,” others that came under intense scrutiny were focused on challenging the Affordable Care Act — known by many as Obamacare — or the integrity of federal elections.

In a June 3, 2011, letter to the IRS, Mitchell questioned the agency’s motivations for delaying recognition of one of her clients who had filed nearly two years earlier, writing, “Is the [group’s] opposition to Obamacare and the takeover of America’s healthcare system by the government the reason that this application has been held up and not approved?”

Catherine Engelbrecht, president of the Houston-based True the Vote, first filed for tax-exempt status in July 2010. At one point, Engelbrecht — who is still awaiting a determination from the IRS regarding her voting rights organization and a separate tea party group, King Street Patriots — said an IRS employee informed her: “I’m just doing what Washington is telling me to do. I’m just asking what they want me to ask.”

The IRS did not respond to requests for comment Monday.

Josh Hicks and Julie Tate contributed to this report.

Discuss this topic and other political issues in the politics discussion forums.

Obama, the uninterested president

Obama, the uninterested president

By Dana Milbank, Published: May 14

President Passerby needs urgently to become a participant in his presidency.

Late Monday came the breathtaking news of a full-frontal assault on the First Amendment by his administration: word that the Justice Department had gone on a fishing expedition through months of phone records of Associated Press reporters.

And yet President Obama reacted much as he did to the equally astonishing revelation on Friday that the IRS had targeted conservative groups based on their ideology: He responded as though he were just some bloke on a bar stool, getting his information from the evening news.

In the phone-snooping case, Obama didn’t even stir from his stool. Instead, he had his press secretary, former Time magazine journalist Jay Carney, go before an incensed press corps Tuesday afternoon and explain why the president will not be involving himself in his Justice Department’s trampling of press freedoms.

“Other than press reports, we have no knowledge of any attempt by the Justice Department to seek phone records of the Associated Press,” Carney announced.

The president “found out about the news reports yesterday on the road,” he added.

And now that Obama has learned about this extraordinary abuse of power, he’s not doing a thing about it. “We are not involved at the White House in any decisions made in connection with ongoing criminal investigations,” Carney argued.

Reuters correspondent Jeff Mason asked how Obama felt about “being compared to President Nixon on this.”

The press secretary laughed. “People who make those kinds of comparisons need to check their history,” he said.

Carney had a point there. Nixon was a control freak. Obama seems to be the opposite: He wants no control over the actions of his administration. As the president distances himself from the actions of “independent” figures within his administration, he’s creating a power vacuum in which lower officials behave as though anything goes. Certainly, a president can’t know what everybody in his administration is up to — but he can take responsibility, he can fire people and he can call a stop to foolish actions such as wholesale snooping into reporters’ phone calls.

At the start of Tuesday’s briefing, the AP’s Jim Kuhnhenn pointed out that in all the controversies of the moment — the Benghazi “talking points,” the IRS targeting and the journalists’ phone records — “you have placed the burden of responsibility someplace else. . . . But it is the president’s administration.”

President Passerby, however, was not joining the fray. Carney repeated Obama’s assertion that the IRS’s actions would be outrageous only “if” they are true. Never mind that the IRS has already admitted the violations and apologized.

The press secretary said repeatedly that “we have to wait” for a formal report by the agency’s inspector general before the most powerful man in the world could take action. By contrast, Carney didn’t think it necessary to wait to assert that nobody in the White House knew about the IRS activities until “a few weeks ago.” (They apparently didn’t tell the boss about the matter until Friday.) Tuesday night, Obama issued a statement saying he had seen the I.G. report and directed Treasury Secretary Jack Lew “to hold those responsible for these failures accountable.”

The response to the deep-dive into AP phone records — more than 20 work, home and mobile phone lines in three cities over two months — also got the President Passerby response: “He cannot comment specifically on an ongoing criminal investigation or actions that investigators at the Department of Justice may or may not have taken.”

It didn’t matter to Carney that the Justice Department had already admitted the actions in a letter to the AP. “But we know it happened, just as the IRS admitted what it had done,” Fox News’s Wendell Goler protested.

“Again, it would be inappropriate to comment,” said Carney, one of the 42 times he used the words “appropriate” or “inappropriate” in his hour-long briefing. One of the few things Carney thought it appropriate to say was that Obama thinks the press should be “unfettered.”

NPR’s Ari Shapiro asked Carney to square Obama’s belief in an unfettered press with the fact that he has prosecuted twice as many leakers as all previous administrations combined.

Carney said Obama’s love of press freedom “is backed up by his support for a media shield law.” This would be the shield law that died in Congress in 2010 because of Obama’s objections.

Alexis Simendinger, from RealClearPolitics, challenged Carney to harmonize his refusal to meddle in an “ongoing investigation” with Obama’s comments on the Trayvon Martin case last year, when a Justice Department investigation was ongoing.

“Come on,” Carney replied with scorn, repeating the excuse that “we have no knowledge” of the phone snooping “beyond the press reports that we’ve read.”

And that’s just the problem.

Twitter: @Milbank

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Obama’s second term clouded by controversies

Obama’s second term clouded by controversies

By Dan Balz, Published: May 14

After answering questions Monday morning about two of the controversies that have undermined his administration, President Obama flew off to New York to raise money for the Democratic Party. There, before partisan donors, he reflected on his second term and said he will continue to reach out to Republicans. “I sure want to do some governing,” he explained.

Obama’s words suggest that he believes there is a way to compartmentalize the business of his second term: legislative and other business here, scandals over there. But things are too messy for that right now. A politician who has counted good luck as part of his skill set will need all the breaks he can muster to pull off that bit of political jujitsu.

Even in the best of times, Obama’s outreach to Republicans produced little in return — and these are no longer close to the best of times. The question is whether the barely civil relationship between the White House and the opposition party has been irreparably damaged. A related question is how much the controversies will weaken Obama’s standing with the public. Together, the answers will decide how effectively he can govern.

It is too early to draw any broad conclusions about the long-term damage to Obama’s presidency from the news that the Internal Revenue Service targeted conservative groups and that the Justice Department collected two months of phone records from Associated Press reporters and editors. But in the moment, these controversies — along with the ongoing congressional investigation of the attacks in Benghazi, Libya — have created major challenges for the administration.

The president and his advisers have tried to insulate the White House from the actions of the IRS and the Justice Department, claiming ignorance. The IRS, officials argued Friday, is quasi-independent. It took the president three days to express his outrage at the agency’s actions. As for the Justice Department’s leak investigation, White House officials said Monday night that it was a department decision that was not forwarded to the president.

Those are temporary responses that probably will not be sufficient over time. The White House may have known nothing about either, but both are now the president’s problem. And both reflect questions about the administration that predate the revelations of the past few days.

The tea party movement has been a political nemesis for Obama since the first year of his presidency. The movement helped turn the battle over health care into one of the most divisive fights of his presidency. The political potency of the grass-roots activists who rallied behind tea party banners helped deliver the worst midterm-election defeat to a party holding the White House in 70 years.

The president and his advisers may not have known anything about IRS targeting of tea party groups for greater scrutiny, but the abuse of power confirmed complaints by conservatives and GOP lawmakers that the practice was taking place and impressions among conservatives that the administration is truly hostile to the tea party movement. Holding those responsible accountable will be only part of Obama’s challenge in responding.

Less is known about the Justice Department’s leak investigation. It was carried out by an administration that came into office talking about the importance of civil liberties, but whose record has been a disappointment to civil libertarians. No one can recall anything as far-reaching as what the Justice Department apparently did in secretly gathering information about the work of AP journalists.

Obama showed his greatest passion Monday when he denounced the GOP-led inquiry of the killing of four Americans in a terrorist attack in Benghazi on Sept. 11, 2012. That partisan politics are involved in the congressional investigation is certainly the case. In addition to whatever enmity is felt toward the Obama administration over its handling of the aftermath, GOP leaders see former secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton for what she is, which is a potentially formidable presidential candidate in 2016.

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney says the president had "no knowledge" of a Department of Justice probe into AP phone records, but says Obama also believes "classified information needs to remain classified."

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney says the president had "no knowledge" of a Department of Justice probe into AP phone records, but says Obama also believes "classified information needs to remain classified."

Obama argued that the current focus on administration talking points is a political sideshow. As others, including The Post’s Glenn Kessler, have noted, the multiple alterations in those talking points appeared to reflect an internal turf war between the State Department and the CIA. Obama argued that it was hardly a coverup.

Given the timing of the attack in Benghazi, which occurred in the heat of a presidential race, White House officials worked to keep the issue from becoming part of the campaign debate — and GOP nominee Mitt Romney’s maladroit handling of it at the start provided convenient cover for the White House. Obama’s campaign put Romney on the defensive, rather than the opposite, although the deaths of the four Americans — and the subsequent security lapses that were enumerated — were a major stain on the administration.

As questions were raised, White House officials avoided drawing conclusions about the origins of the attacks. Even as the head of the National Counterterrorism Center testified that what happened at the U.S. diplomatic post in Benghazi was a terrorist attack, the president continued to resist labeling it as such. For whatever reason, the administration’s semantic gamesmanship contributed to what the president now dismisses as a sideshow.

Obama is early into his second term, but it has not gone as planned. His gun-control initiative was blocked. Prospects for a grand bargain on the budget are problematic. Immigration reform is moving forward slowly in the Senate and faces uncertainty in the House, although administration officials remain optimistic that Congress eventually will approve a bill.

On Monday night in New York, the president said, “I’m going to do everything I can over the next 31 / 2 years to continue to reach out to my Republican friends on the other side of the aisle. . . . I want to get some stuff done. I don’t have a lot of time.”

He will have to spend some of that precious time trying to clean up unexpected messes that have landed on his desk. How seriously off track his administration is will depend in large part on how skillfully Obama handles what is before him.

balzd@washpost.com

IRS, AP scandals bring tea partyers, ‘lamestream media’ together

IRS, AP scandals bring tea partyers, ‘lamestream media’ together

By Kathleen Parker, Published: May 14 E-mail the writer

Breaking news: Conservative organizations suddenly have found common cause with one of their favorite objects of contempt — the benighted Mainstream Media.

Or as the tea party queen and former Alaska governor likes to put it, the “lamestream media.”

In a twist of irony, the two groups have coalesced around a common enemy: the U.S. government.

Revelations the past few days that the Internal Revenue Service has been giving special attention to conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status have converged with the news that the Justice Department has been seizing phone recordsfrom the Associated Press. Reaction from both camps has been outrage seasoned with constitutional fervor.

Not to overstate it, but nothing less than free speech is at stake, about which no one should be confused.

Briefly, the IRS singled out specific groups with words such as “tea party,” “patriot” or “9/12” in their names for special scrutiny, including asking for donor lists. Needless to say, this could have a chilling effect on donors who prefer anonymity, but it also smacks of intimidation. The implication: Criticize the government and you will pay. Literally. The targeting, moreover, was not a rogue operation by some random field agents in Cincinnati, as originally claimed, but, according to The Post, involved IRS officials in Washington.

“Outrageous” was the term President Obama used Monday during a joint news conference with British Prime Minister David Cameron. Obama promised to get to the bottom of it even though, as president, he can’t directly contact the IRS about a tax matter. This is owing to the legacy of Watergate, when then-President Richard Nixon used the IRS to intimidate his perceived enemies. The unavoidable comparison is, well, unavoidable.

Obama can rattle some cages, though, and given his administration’s almost daily scandal production, he’s going to be a busy zookeeper for the foreseeable future. No sooner had the Benghazi, Libya, hearing concluded than the IRS story broke, followed by reports of the Justice Department probe. The latter’s investigation pertained to reporters’ phone records over a two-month period affecting four bureaus, including the AP’s congressional office, and more than 20 lines potentially used by hundreds of reporters and, significantly, their sources.

Americans accustomed to hating the media — a popular pastime of self-proclaimed “new media,” often meaning someone with an iPhone and a laptop — should stop hitting “snooze” on their wake-up call right about now. When the choice is between distrusting reporters and distrusting the government, there’s no contest, especially when the aggrieved are groups of people (tea partyers and self-proclaimed patriots) whose chief organizing principle is distrust of government.

Reporters, though they are merely human with all the attendant imperfections, are fundamentally on the patriot team. They’re sort of like cops: You hate them when their blue lights appear in the rear view, but you love them when something goes bump in the night.

Though some journalists and even some institutions can be politically biased, a news organization exists for the purpose of reporting on organized power, especially the government. If tea party people worry that government is bearing down on them through its confiscatory powers via the IRS, then they have double reason for concern when the media are threatened.

Who in the White House or Congress will be willing to speak off the record if they fear being exposed to or by the Justice Department? This isn’t only outrageous; it is dangerous.

The government can legitimately investigate journalists in the interest of national security, as has been claimed here. Officials say that an AP story last May about a failed al-Qaeda plot raised flags about potentially dangerous leaks. But there is a serious question whether the AP situation warranted such a massive and covert search.

Out of fairness (or fear of punitive repercussions?), early reaction to these revelations has focused on the incompetence of the Obama administration rather than any sinister intent. Similarly, the administration’s incorrect reporting of events in Benghazi are claimed to have been the product of miscommunication and inter-agency turf squabbles rather than a deliberate attempt to mislead the public heading into the presidential election.

Whatever.

Pending a verdict from investigators investigating investigators, it is abundantly clear that something is awry at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., not least of which is an apparent failure to understand the basic principles of American governance. Incompetence may be an explanation, but it is hardly reassuring.

Richard Milhous Obama????

Obama and overreach

May 15, 2013

•Multiple White House claims about Washington's handling of the murderous raid in Benghazi stand exposed as false.

•Internal Revenue Service officials admit a worse-by-the-day scandal that appalls fair-minded Americans.

•The U.S. Department of Justice scrambles to explain its clandestine collection of records on work and personal telephone lines that The Associated Press says are used by more than 100 of its journalists.

In reaction, the White House blames political opponents, disavows ownership or pleads ignorance.

Hard as it may be, then, set aside your own politics and ask yourself which of these Monday statements rings truer:

"The whole issue of talking points, frankly, throughout this process has been a sideshow. ... And suddenly, three days ago, this gets spun up as if there's something new to the story. There's no 'there' there."

— President Barack Obama, dismissing congressional scrutiny of his and his subordinates' statements about Benghazi as a "political circus"

"Americans should take notice that top Obama administration officials increasingly see themselves as above the law and emboldened by the belief that they don't have to answer to anyone."

— House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa

For now, many among us would take Option 2. With each of these troubling disclosures, the Obama administration finds itself reacting to appearances of overreach, of arrogance, of determination to dodge its embarrassments rather than to take ownership of them.

We don't expect unanimity of agreement on this. On each of these controversies, though, even some of the president's most loyal supporters — from Capitol Hill to the liberal commentariat to Main Streets across the land — are questioning the government's conduct on his watch. That turnabout either angers or amuses opponents inclined to ask the supporters, "Where have you been?"

At each of these turns, the Obama administration has looked manipulative, defensive and peevish. In one sense those aren't startling reactions; they're vulnerabilities for any White House that, like this one, wants an image of moral righteousness, honesty and transparency.

Taken together, though, these controversies project a less flattering image of truth-shading, hubris and intrusion. In the week of humiliating disclosures that started with last Wednesday's congressional hearing on Benghazi, Americans haven't seen the administration exhibit ... one shred of humility:

•The White House and State Department have taken vague responsibility for Benghazi mistakes, but neither has produced answers to the most crucial questions, starting with:

Who, exactly, had rejected repeated requests for security upgrades from U.S. officials in Libya? Who, exactly, decided not to attempt a military rescue, an F-16 flyover, a NATO or other allied reaction, something, during the eight-hour assault? Who, exactly, let the task of informing the American people deteriorate into an orgy of tail-covering and lies? And why, exactly, does the president's spokesman still mislead Americans by suggesting that the Central Intelligence Agency, rather than the State Department or White House, drove that process — essentially blaming CIA staffers who did the typing rather than blaming administration officials who told them what to type?

•The IRS' disclosure that it had inordinately targeted conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status was astonishing. No more astonishing, though, than Tuesday's news that the IRS allegedly gave nonpublic information about nine of those groups to ProPublica, an investigative journalism organization.

Obama called the early disclosures outrageous and vowed to learn "exactly what happened on this." The president would have better served himself and his administration, though, by acknowledging the shriekingly obvious: If IRS officials were trying to hinder conservative groups that opposed Obama, that means high-level federal officials were trying to steer the Nov. 6 election to the president. There was no such candor from the president or, Tuesday, from his spokesman.

•Americans thus far know less about the Justice Department's grab of AP staffers' phone records. But here, too, many of those Americans can't help but ask if all the president's men and women stay up late, trying to look intrusive.

By the AP's account, Justice subjected the organization to an unprecedented invasion of its news-gathering operations. The evident goal: to identify the government source(s) of a May 2012 AP story about a CIA operation in Yemen that had stopped an al-Qaida plot to bomb a U.S.-bound airplane.

Once again, a question raised by the Benghazi debacle resonates loudly: As the 2012 presidential election approached, were some federal officials overstepping bounds to shore up the president's campaign claim that, as he said at the Democratic National Convention, "al-Qaida is on the path to defeat"?

The easiest way for the president and his White House to further that rising suspicion — we emphasize that it's thus far unproven — is to demonstrate three things to his newly energized foes and to his friends who didn't expect this sort of conduct: that his subordinates will end their egregious stonewalling on Benghazi, will pursue the IRS scandal as high as it goes and will demand full disclosure of whether his Justice Department scrupulously followed the law in its pursuit of journalists' phone records.

Until the president makes and keeps those three assurances, he'll continue to make Issa's accusation ring true: This administration looks guilty of overreach — of believing it is above the law.

Obama used IRS to terrorize conservative groups???

Source

Groups that sought tax-exempt status say IRS dealings were a nightmare

By Josh Hicks and Kimberly Kindy, Published: May 15 E-mail the writers

The Common Sense Campaign, a self-described constitutionalist group based in Montgomery, Ala., aspired to be a smaller version of the National Rifle Association — powerful and influential, without having to pay federal income taxes.

“We wanted to have a voice too,” said the group’s chairman, Pete Riehm. “The biggest difference between us and them is money.”

But Common Sense never reached the nonprofit stage. The organization gave up seeking tax-exempt status after two years of Internal Revenue Service demands for everything from the group’s blog posts to the names of “anyone who gave you so much as a dollar,” according to its officials.

“We were spending thousands of dollars between the filing fees and attorney fees,” Riehm said. “We realized that just paying the taxes would cost a whole lot less.”

Common Sense was one of scores of groups that faced months and even years of delays in seeking tax exemptions after the IRS started targeting groups with names containing “tea party,” “patriot” and other terms associated with conservatives. The practice, which appears to have lasted for about 18 months until early 2012, has set off a political firestorm in Washington and a criminal investigation by the FBI and the Justice Department.

Not only did IRS employees improperly target groups based on politics, but they also improperly demanded a host of details about the groups’ activities, according to a report on the abuses by a Treasury Department inspector general.

Some groups, including several interviewed by The Washington Post, were asked to provide names of donors or membership lists, which experts say the IRS cannot legally do. The agency also demanded names of board members, copies of meeting minutes and résumés, details of community organizing efforts and numerous other details, according to questionnaires obtained by The Post.

“It was pretty much a proctology exam through your earlobe,” said Karen L. Kenney, the coordinator for the San Fernando Valley Patriots, a tea party group in Southern California that was sent an IRS questionnaire with more than 100 questions on it.

The San Fernando group first submitted its application for nonprofit status in the fall of 2010, which was after the IRS’s Cincinnati-based “determination unit” had implemented its politically charged screening criteria. The group wrote the agency a $400 check to fast-track the process, but 19 months went by before the group heard anything, Kenney said.

That’s when the long list of questions arrived. Kenney said the group sent back a four-inch, seven-pound stack of documents before deciding that enough was enough. The group decided the questions were far too intrusive and could result in individual supporters being targeted.

“We couldn’t sic the IRS on our members,” Kenney said.

The delays were rampant. The inspector general found that “no work was completed on the majority of these applications for 13 months” while the “inappropriate criteria” were in place.

By 2011, after the criteria were put into effect, nonprofit approvals stopped entirely for groups whose names included “tea party” or “9/12,” a movement associated with conservative commentator Glenn Beck, according to a Post analysis of IRS data. After the criteria were revised in 2012, the backlog was broken and 27 groups with those names were approved, mostly in the second half of the year.

Groups with the word “progressive” in their names suffered no similar slowdown. The number of approvals for those groups increased each year, from 17 in 2009 to 30 in 2012, the data show.

Lois G. Lerner, who heads the IRS’s tax-exemption division, described the targeting campaign as a misguided attempt to deal with a wave of applications after the 2010 Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which allowed corporations and labor unions to spend unlimited sums on politics. That decision and others led to a frenzy of spending by independent groups, surpassing $1 billion in 2012.

IRS standards are vague regarding how much political activity is allowed for nonprofit groups. They are generally not allowed to endorse candidates or directly participate in political campaigns, although they may influence elections through limited issue advertising and other efforts.

The case of Alabama’s Common Sense Campaign illustrates the challenges. Riehm, the group’s chairman, acknowledged that his organization has had favorite candidates, but it has not endorsed anyone directly.

The group felt strongly, for example, about Constitution Party candidate Bill Atkinson, who was defeated in a 2011 special election for a seat in the Alabama House of Representatives. Some of the group’s members worked on Atkinson’s campaign, Riehm said.

“He was very conservative, and the right kind of guy we wanted,” Riehm said.

Riehm said the group’s interaction with the IRS was filled with difficulties. Group officials said they first got the runaround and then were told that their file had been misplaced.

“The lady I spoke with was very rude and said they would get in touch when they’re ready,” said Callie Goodrum, an administrator for the group. “Two or three months later I called again, and she said our file had been totally lost and we would have to refile.”

Another IRS representative contacted Common Sense Campaign officials, telling them they would have to provide more information about the group’s activities: any candidate endorsements or comparisons, details of mobilization efforts, how much time was devoted to such activities and who would benefit from them.

The case handler also asked about the group’s political affiliations, Goodrum said. “He asked point-blank if we were a tea party group,” she said. “He said he saw on our Web site that we teach about the Constitution, and that’s when he asked.”

Many conservative groups say they refrained from applying for tax-exempt status because they had heard similar accounts from like-minded organizations.

“It was just horror story after horror story,” said Jeff Reuer, former chairman of South Carolina’s Goose Creek 9-12 Project. “People told us, if we weren’t on the IRS’s radar, we should hold off applying.”

The South Carolina group has yet to decide whether it will apply for tax-exempt status, Reuer said. He said the group focuses on voter registration efforts and state and local issues and does not support or endorse candidates.

Not all the groups caught up in the targeting campaign were clearly conservative. Several journalism-related groups, including one based in San Francisco and another that produced stories for the New York Times, said they experienced delays and scrutiny from 2010 to 2012.

James O’Shea, the former editor of the Los Angeles Times, applied in 2010 for nonprofit status for the Chicago News Cooperative. He said he waited about a year before the agency sent a series of questionnaires asking the group to document its activities. He sent stacks of documents to the IRS and waited again.

After a long delay, O’Shea said, he received a series of questionnaires asking the group to document and describe all of its activities.

But then the donations began to dry up. “Donors want you to get your nonprofit status at some point,” he said. “We never got approval because we got caught up in that same kind of scrutiny. It didn’t really have much to do with liberal or conservative, it seems.”

The cooperative shut down in 2012.

Juliet Eilperin and Dan Keating contributed to this report.

Obama administration sounds like Sgt Schultz - "We know nothing"

Eric Holder’s abdication

By Dana Milbank, Published: May 15

As the nation’s top law enforcement official, Eric Holder is privy to all kinds of sensitive information. But he seems to be proud of how little he knows.

Why didn’t his Justice Department inform the Associated Press, as the law requires, before pawing through reporters’ phone records?

“I do not know,” the attorney general told the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday afternoon, “why that was or was not done. I simply don’t have a factual basis to answer that question.”

Why didn’t the DOJ seek the AP’s cooperation, as the law also requires, before issuing subpoenas?

“I don’t know what happened there,” Holder replied. “I was recused from the case.”

Why, asked the committee’s chairman, Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), was the whole matter handled in a manner that appears “contrary to the law and standard procedure”?

“I don’t have a factual basis to answer the questions that you have asked, because I was recused,” the attorney general said.

On and on Holder went: “I don’t know. I don’t know. . . . I would not want to reveal what I know. . . . I don’t know why that didn’t happen. . . . I know nothing, so I’m not in a position really to answer.”

Holder seemed to regard this ignorance as a shield protecting him and the Justice Department from all criticism of the Obama administration’s assault on press freedoms. But his claim that his “recusal” from the case exempted him from all discussion of the matter didn’t fly with Republicans or Democrats on the committee, who justifiably saw his recusal as more of an abdication.

“There doesn’t seem to be any acceptance of responsibility in the Justice Department for things that have gone wrong,” said Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), after Holder placed the AP matter in the lap of his deputy. “We don’t know where the buck stops.”

The best Holder could do was offer an “after-action analysis” of the matter and pledge the administration’s renewed support for a media shield law (the same proposed law the Obama administration undermined three years ago). But that does nothing to reverse the damage the administration has already done with its wholesale snooping into reporters’ phone records and its unprecedented number of leak prosecutions.

“I realize there are exceptions and that you have recused yourself, but it seems to me clear that the actions of the department have, in fact, impaired the First Amendment,” Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) told Holder. “Reporters who might have previously believed that a confidential source would speak to them would no longer have that level of confidence, because those confidential sources are now going to be chilled in their relationship with the press.”

In a sense, the two topics that dogged Holder most on Wednesday — the AP phone records and the IRS’s targeting of conservative groups — were one and the same. In both cases, Americans are being punished and intimidated for exercising their right of free expression — by the taxing authorities, in the conservatives’ case, and by federal prosecutors, in the reporters’ case.

But Holder cared so little about those two issues that he said not a peep about either the IRS or the AP in his opening statement. When he was questioned about the AP case, his first response was to suggest the criticism of him was political. “I mean, there’s been a lot of criticism,” Holder said. “In fact, the head of the RNC called for my resignation, in spite of the fact that I was not the person involved in that decision.”

Republicans on the House committee had voted previously to hold Holder in contempt of Congress, and Holder made clear the feeling was mutual; he informed Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) that his line of questioning was “too consistent with the way in which you conduct yourself as a member of Congress. It’s unacceptable, and it’s shameful.” Some of the Republicans provided Holder justification for his disdain. Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Tex.), defying the chairman’s gavel, shouted a stream of exotic accusations at Holder, closing with the complaint that Holder was casting “aspersions on my asparagus.”

But there would be more sympathy, and support, for Holder if he took seriously the lawmakers’ legitimate questions about his department’s abuse of power in the AP case. He may have recused himself from the leak probe that led to the searches of reporters’ phone records (a decision he took so lightly that he didn’t put it in writing), but he isn’t recused from defending the First Amendment.

Didn’t the deputy attorney general who approved the subpoenas have the same potential conflict of interest that Holder claimed?

“I don’t know.”

When did Holder recuse himself?

“I’m not sure.”

How much time was spent exploring alternatives to the subpoenas?

“I don’t know, because, as I said, I recused myself.”

But when the Justice Department undermines the Constitution, recusal is no excuse.

Past presidents have sent IRS after critics

Source

Past presidents have sent IRS after critics

By Tom Raum Associated Press Fri May 17, 2013 12:22 AM

WASHINGTON The Internal Revenue Service controversy dogging President Barack Obama is hardly the first time a White House and the tax agency have been accused of political meddling and bias.

Over the past week, Republicans have been trying to link Obama to what the IRS has acknowledged was improper extra scrutiny of conservative political groups seeking tax-exempt status. That’s despite the fact that little — if anything — has surfaced to suggest White House officials had advance knowledge of the IRS actions.

The line between IRS misconduct and the Oval Office appears less fuzzy in IRS political incidents in previous administrations.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s frequent use of the IRS as a weapon of political retribution is well-documented. He reportedly had the IRS scrutinize tax returns of his harshest critics, including Sen. Huey Long of Louisiana and Hoover Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon.

And President Richard Nixon famously subjected those on his “enemies list” to tax audits and was even caught on Watergate tapes boasting of it to aides in the Oval Office.

President Dwight Eisenhower used federal tax collectors to go after members of the Communist Party. President John F. Kennedy set up an IRS program to “explore the political activities” of conservative nonprofits. President Jimmy Carter’s IRS director, Jerome Kurtz, ended the tax-exempt status of private Christian schools out of compliance with federal anti-discrimination policies.

Recent administrations

During Bill Clinton’s presidency, the IRS audited the conservative Heritage Foundation and the National Rifle Association.

And during President George W. Bush’s tenure, the agency audited the NAACP for remarks its leaders made during the 2004 election urging Bush’s defeat. The IRS alleged it amounted to improper political activity. The civil-rights organization argued it was the victim of political bias. The case dragged on for two years.

“It is true that, in the past, presidents going back as far as at least Franklin Roosevelt used — or attempted to use — the IRS to intimidate or go after their political opponents. So it’s a bipartisan thing,” said economist Bruce Bartlett, a tax-policy official in the administrations of Republican Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.

“But this one seems to have been driven more from the bottom up rather than the top down, promoted by lower-level IRS officials,” Bartlett said.

Tea party focus now

In the latest flare-up over political interference with the tax system, the IRS acknowledged that organizations applying for tax-exempt status during the 2012 election season were singled out for extra scrutiny if they had “tea party” or “patriot” in their titles. In some cases, groups were asked for names of donors. The agency apologized and insisted the practice was not politically motivated.

But it touched off anger on Capitol Hill, coming at the same time as controversies over the Justice Department’s seizure of phone records of The Associated Press and lingering questions over the administration’s handling of September’s deadly terrorist attack on a U.S. diplomatic outpost in Benghazi, Libya.

“They finally messed with an agency everybody fully understands,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., among Republicans complaining the loudest about the IRS transgressions and seeking to tie them to the president.

Several days after IRS acknowledged its improper actions, Attorney General Eric Holder announced that his agency would investigate whether laws were broken as a Justice Department inspector general’s report blamed “ineffective management” at the IRS.

Investigation, resignation

Trying to control the fallout, Obama forced the resignation of Acting IRS Commissioner Steven Miller. “Americans are right to be angry about it, and I’m angry about it,” the president said of the IRS targeting. “The IRS has to operate with absolute integrity.”

The IRS is charged with weeding out the social-welfare and educational organizations that qualify as fully tax exempt — designated in the federal tax code as 501(c)(4) groups — from ones that are primarily political and generally not tax-exempt. The difference is that the tax-exempt groups cannot advocate on behalf of individual candidates or parties, even though many groups come close to crossing the line.

The workload became even more intensive for the IRS as the number of groups registering for tax-exempt status roughly doubled in the aftermath of a series of campaign finance rulings ahead of the 2012 elections.

The Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision in particular helped move the debate over distinguishing between political and social welfare groups “into the realm of regulation and bureaucrats protecting themselves and tax lawyers paid to find loopholes,” said presidential historian Stephen Hess.

IRS-style abuses endemic to Obama’s view of government

Source

IRS-style abuses endemic to Obama’s view of government

In response to the IRS targeting tea party organizations for special scrutiny, President Barack Obama said: “The good news is it’s fixable.”

Actually, in the context of Obama’s view of government, it isn’t fixable. Such abuses are endemic.

Obama believes in the good will of a government managed by liberals. He believes in entrusting such a government with enormous and wide-reaching discretionary authority.

In Obama’s view of government, it decides which businesses get subsidies, tax preferences and loan guarantees, and which do not. Which banks are deemed systemic risks and subject to different regulatory treatment than other banks, and even to each other. Which local government projects get federal assistance, and which do not.

And which organizations get tax-exempt status, and which do not.

Governments, however, are not staffed by angels. They are staffed by human beings. And if human beings are given vast discretionary powers, they will be routinely abused.

Some will abuse them for personal gain or to reward friends. Some will abuse them simply because they enjoy the exercise of authority over others. And some will abuse them to favor political allies and punish political opponents.

To the extent governmental power is abused for political reasons, conservatives will most often be on the receiving end. Liberals believe government is a force for good so are attracted to work within it. Conservatives fear the destructive power of government and tend to shy away from working for it. So, regardless of who is in charge at the top, the people who do the work in government will list to the liberal side.

The bias can be instinctive and not conscious. The IRS decided that conservative organizations were to be automatically flagged for extra scrutiny when filing for tax-exempt status. Yet, in its response to a damning inspector general report, the agency claims that “the front line career employees that made the decisions acted out of a desire for efficiency and not out of any political or partisan viewpoint.”

That claim can only be made by people who believe that it is self-evident that conservatives are significantly more likely to cheat on such applications and are unaware of their bias.

The IRS has no objective criteria to determine which applicants get greater scrutiny. For social welfare organizations, some campaign involvement is permitted but it cannot be the “primary activity.” The IRS has no objective criteria to determine what the “primary activity” is. The IRS has no objective criteria regarding what constitutes campaign activities as opposed to issue advocacy or public education.

In other words, those who work for the IRS can just make it up as they go along.

The left is being hypocritical in this scandal. The left was howling for the IRS to put the screws to conservative tax-exempt organizations engaging in political activity. The IRS response clearly indicates that the heightened scrutiny was in part a reaction to such howls. And when it turns out that the IRS was indeed putting the screws to conservative applicants, the left has turned against it.

In the Road to Serfdom, F.A. Hayek illuminated a different view of good government, one bound by what Hayek called the rule of law. According to Hayek, the essence of the rule of law is that “government in all its actions is bound by rules fixed and announced beforehand.” He quoted favorably A.V. Dicey that the rule of law “excludes the existence of arbitrariness, of prerogative, or even of wide discretionary authority on the part of government.”

A government of arbitrary powers distorts and diminishes productive enterprise. The people who live under such a government are less free.

Earlier in the month, Obama delivered one of his periodic odes to government in a commencement address to Ohio State University. Shortly after saying he wasn’t going to get partisan, Obama told the graduates to ignore those who “warn that tyranny is always lurking just around the corner.”

Well, tyranny may not be lurking just around the corner. But with a government of enormous and wide-reaching discretionary authority, you don’t have to turn the corner to run into arbitrary, abusive and prejudicial exercises of that power.

Emperor Obama knew the IRS was harassing his enemies????

Probe of IRS began last year

By Stephen Ohlemacher Associated Press Sat May 18, 2013 12:15 AM

WASHINGTON -- Senior Treasury officials were made aware in June 2012 that investigators were looking into complaints from “tea party” groups that they were being harassed by the Internal Revenue Service, a Treasury inspector general said Friday, disclosing that Obama administration officials knew there was a probe during the heat of the presidential campaign.

J. Russell George, Treasury inspector general for tax administration, testified alongside ousted IRS head Steven Miller, who did little to subdue Republican outrage during hours of intense congressional questioning.

Both defiant and apologetic, Miller acknowledged agency mistakes in targeting tea-party groups for special scrutiny when they applied for tax-exempt status, but he insisted that agents broke no laws and that there was no effort to cover up their actions.

Miller only stoked the criticism of many Republicans, who are assailing the administration on a sudden spate of other controversies, even as some Democrats are trying to contain the political damage.

“I don’t know that I got any answers from you today,” Rep. Mike Kelly, R-Pa., told Miller. “I am more concerned today than I was before.”

At one point in the day’s hearing, George said he had told the department’s general counsel about his investigation on June 4, 2012, and Deputy Treasury Secretary Neal Wolin “shortly thereafter.” But, George cautioned, those discussions were “not to inform them of the results of the audit, it was to inform them of the fact that we were conducting the audit.”

After the hearing, inspector-general spokeswoman Karen Kraushaar said George “informed Department of Treasury officials that we were looking into the IRS’ handling of applications for tax-exempt status, partly due to allegations raised by conservative organizations.”

Kraushaar said the disclosure was part of a routine briefing about the office’s activities.

The Treasury Department issued a statement on Friday saying officials first became aware of the actual results of the investigation in March, when they were provided a draft of George’s report, a standard practice.

George’s disclosure came before the House Ways and Means Committee in the first of several congressional hearings on the matter. He was joined by Miller, who spoke publicly about the controversy for the first time.

Miller was contrite as he apologized for the actions of agents who singled out conservative political groups for additional, often burdensome scrutiny.

“First and foremost, as acting commissioner, I want to apologize on behalf of the Internal Revenue Service for the mistakes that we made and the poor service we provided,” he told the committee. “The affected organizations and the American public deserve better.”

But the hearing turned prickly when Miller insisted he did not deceive Congress, though he repeatedly failed to reveal the controversy last year when he was asked about it by lawmakers — even after he had been briefed.

“I did not mislead Congress or the American people,” Miller said.

The administration is on the defensive for a trio of issues that are threatening to derail the president’s second-term agenda. In addition to the IRS case, President Barack Obama and other officials are being pressed about last September’s terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya, that killed the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans, and the government’s seizure of Associated Press telephone records as part of a leak investigation.

“Listening to the nightly news, this appears to be just the latest example of a culture of cover-ups and political intimidation in this administration,” said Rep. Dave Camp, R-Mich., chairman of the Ways and Means Committee.

Committee Democrats were also critical of the IRS, but several took offense at Camp’s assertion that this matter is part of a wider problem within the administration. They noted that there has been no evidence so far that anyone outside the IRS was involved in targeting conservative groups.

“If this hearing becomes essentially a bootstrap to continue the campaign of 2012 and to prepare for 2014, we will be making a very, very serious mistake,” said Rep. Sander Levin of Michigan, the top Democrat on the panel.

Levin said Lois Lerner, who heads the IRS division that makes decisions about tax-exempt groups, “should be relieved of her duties.” Lerner is the IRS official who made the scandal public on May 10 in what Miller said was a planned event at a legal conference.

Obama forced Miller to resign this week, though Miller will remain on the job for a few days until the new acting director takes over. Obama has named Daniel Werfel, a top White House budget officer, to replace him.

Miller is a 25-year IRS employee who was a deputy commissioner when the tea-party groups were being targeted. In that job, Miller was over the division that dealt with tax-exempt organizations.

He became acting head of the agency in November, when IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman’s five-year term expired. Shulman had been appointed by President George W. Bush, a fact highlighted by several Democrats at Friday’s hearing.

Camp said Miller’s departure wouldn’t be enough.

Two other committees have hearings scheduled for next week, and the Justice Department has launched its own criminal investigation. Miller is also scheduled to testify on Tuesday before the Senate Finance Committee. He will be joined by Shulman and George.

Underscoring the seriousness of his testimony on Friday, Miller was sworn in as a witness, an unusual step for the Ways and Means panel.

He told committee members that before the episode became public, he had no contact with the Treasury Department, the White House or Obama’s re-election campaign about targeting conservative groups.

“Absolutely not,” Miller said.

He surprised committee members when he said “it is absolutely not illegal” for IRS agents to single out conservative groups for additional scrutiny.

“Please don’t get me wrong,” he added. “It should not happen.”

George, the inspector general, backed up Miller’s assertion when he said the yearlong investigation did not uncover illegal activity.

George’s report concluded that an IRS office in Cincinnati, which screened applications for the tax exemptions, improperly singled out tea-party and other conservative groups for tougher treatment. The report says the practice began in March 2010 and lasted in various forms until May 2012.

Agents did not flag similar progressive or liberal labels, though some liberal groups did receive additional scrutiny because their applications were singled out for other reasons, the report said.

The inspector general’s report blamed ineffective management in Washington, D.C., for letting the inappropriate singling out occur for so long.

Miller said he was notified that conservative groups had been singled out for additional scrutiny on May 3, 2012.

But Miller was not forthcoming back then about groups being targeted in at least two letters to members of Congress and in testimony before a Ways and Means subcommittee.

Obama uses smoke and mirrors to balance the budget.

Source

Obama’s budget is another instance of lost credibility

By Jennifer Rubin, Published: May 19, 2013 at 1:00 pmE-mail the writer 173

It turns out that President Obama’s Office of Management and Budget is no more trustworthy than the rest of his administration. His budget, unsurprisingly to conservatives, is not “balanced” and does not deliver on its promise to cut $1.8 trillion in spending over a decade.

The Post reports:

President Obama’s most recent budget request would reduce borrowing by $1.1 trillion over the next decade compared with current law — almost entirely through higher taxes on the rich, large estates and smokers, congressional budget analysts said Friday.

In addition to raising nearly $1 trillion in new taxes, the president’s blueprint would also cut spending modestly, according to the analysis by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

The same accounting gimmicks remain (“those savings include money the government never intended to spend anyway, such as a contingency fund for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and nearly $300 billion in unneeded disaster relief”). In fact, without these tricks, “Obama’s budget blueprint would actually increase spending over the next decade by roughly $700 billion, according to CBO figures.” Oh, and his budget never balances. Once again, what he told us is very different from reality.

The difficulty the president now faces is not merely the multiple scandals and the perception that his administration has crossed the line from partisanship to illegality, but the growing recognition that almost nothing he says can be taken at face value. The presumption of integrity and assumption of good faith has vanished in a cloud of unkept promises, wrongdoing and ineptitude.

When he says “red line” he doesn’t mean it. When he says he wants a “balanced” approach, he doesn’t translate that into action. When he says Obamacare is on track, it’s a joke. When he says he says he’s decimated al-Qaeda, he’s exaggerating. When he says a video spurred the attack on Libya, he’s flat out wrong. When he says he respects the First Amendment, he’s fooling no one.

No wonder our international foes don’t believe him; many Americans don’t either. Whether he is misleading, mistaken or miscast as president hardly matters any more. What is critical is that he’s no longer believed.

Once a president loses credibility and his words can no longer be accepted at face value, it doesn’t matter what domestic or foreign policy he is pursuing, he’s done as a leader. [Well it isn't only President Obama that routinely lies to us, all the crooks in Congress do.]

How close to that point is the president? Some may think he’s passed it. With a fleet of yes men and women as advisers, he’s particularly handicapped in figuring out how to restore his stature. [I wouldn't call them "yes men" when they are partners in the crime] Maybe a clean sweep of his advisers and cabinet would help. But, since Jay Carney tells us there are no scandals, that isn’t likely to happen soon.

Obama aides knew of IRS audit; Obama not told

Obama spokesman Jay Carney defended keeping the president out of the loop on the Internal Revenue Service audit, saying Obama was comfortable with the fact that "some matters are not appropriate to convey to him, and this is one of them."

But I suspect Obama is a liar and knew.

Obama has routinely lied to us before. Obama has said a number of times he was going to stop sending his DEA thugs after medical marijuana patients. He hasn't. Obama has promised to support gay marriage. He hasn't. Obama has promised to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. While on paper he has pretended to end the wars we still have thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of American military contractors in both countries.

Source

More Obama aides knew of IRS audit; Obama not told

Associated Press

White House chief of staff Denis McDonough and other senior advisers knew in late April that an impending report was likely to say the IRS had inappropriately targeted conservative groups, President Barack Obama's spokesman disclosed Monday, expanding the circle of top officials who knew of the audit beyond those named earlier.

But McDonough and the other advisers did not tell Obama, leaving him to learn about the politically perilous results of the internal investigation from news reports more than two weeks later, officials said.

The apparent decision to keep the president in the dark underscores the White House's cautious legal approach to controversies and reflects a desire by top advisers to distance Obama from troubles threatening his administration.

Obama spokesman Jay Carney defended keeping the president out of the loop on the Internal Revenue Service audit, saying Obama was comfortable with the fact that "some matters are not appropriate to convey to him, and this is one of them."

"It is absolutely a cardinal rule as we see it that we do not intervene in ongoing investigations," Carney said.

Republicans, however, are accusing the president of being unaware of important happenings in the government he oversees.

"It seems to be the answer of the administration whenever they're caught doing something they shouldn't be doing is, `I didn't know about it'," Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, told CBS News. "And it causes me to wonder whether they believe willful ignorance is a defense when it's your job to know."

Obama advisers argue that the outcry from Republicans would be far worse had McDonough or White House Counsel Kathryn Ruemmler told the president about the IRS audit before it became public, thereby raising questions about White House interference.

Still, the White House's own shifting information about who knew what and when is keeping the focus of the IRS controversy on the West Wing.

When Carney first addressed the matter last week, he said only that Ruemmler had been told around April 22 that an inspector general audit was being concluded at a Cincinnati IRS office that screens applications for organizations' tax-exempt status. He said the audit was described to the counsel's office "very broadly."

But on Monday, Carney said lower-ranking staffers in the White House counsel's office first learned of the report one week earlier, on April 16. When Ruemmler was later alerted, she was told specifically that the audit was likely to conclude that IRS employees improperly scrutinized organizations by looking for words like "tea party" and "patriot." Ruemmler then told McDonough, deputy chief of staff Mark Childress, and other senior advisers, but not Obama.

A new Pew Research Center poll shows 42 percent of Americans think the Obama administration was "involved" in the IRS targeting of conservative groups, while 31 percent say it was a decision made solely by employees at the IRS.

The IRS matter is one of three controversies that have consumed the White House over the past week. In each instance, officials have tried to put distance between the president and questionable actions by people within his administration.

As with the IRS investigation, the White House says Obama learned only from news reporters that the Justice Department had subpoenaed phone records from journalists at The Associated Press as part of a leaks investigation. And faced with new questions about the deadly attacks in Benghazi, Libya, Obama's advisers have pinned responsibility on the CIA for crafting talking points that downplayed the potential of terrorism, despite the fact that the White House was a part of the process.

Former White House officials say a president has little choice but to distance himself from investigations and then endure accusations of being out of touch, or worse.

"It's a tough balance," said Sara Taylor Fagen, who was White House political director for President George W. Bush from 2005 to 2007.

"With a scandal, there's no way to win," said Fagen, whom the Senate Judiciary Committee subpoenaed and sharply questioned in a probe of dismissed U.S. attorneys. "There may never have been any wrongdoing by anyone in the White House, on any of these issues," she said, "but once the allegations are made, you can't win."

A White House peeking into an ongoing investigations can trigger a political uproar. A well-known case involved President Richard Nixon trying to hinder the FBI's probe of the Watergate break-in.

In a less far-reaching case in 2004, the Bush White House acknowledged that its counsel's office learned of a Justice Department investigation into whether Sandy Berger _ the national security adviser under President Bill Clinton _ had removed classified documents from the National Archives. Democrats said the White House hoped to use the information to help Bush's re-election campaign.

In the current IRS matter, two congressional committees are stepping up their investigations this week with hearings during which IRS and Treasury officials will be questioned closely about what they knew and when.

Former IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman heads to Capitol Hill on Tuesday, giving lawmakers their first opportunity to question the man who ran the agency when agents were improperly targeting tea party groups. The Senate Finance Committee wants to know why Shulman didn't tell Congress _ even after he was briefed in 2012 _ that agents had been singling out conservative political groups for additional scrutiny when they applied for tax-exempt status.

Also testifying will be Steven Miller, who took over as acting commissioner in November, when Shulman's five-year term expired. Last week, Obama forced Miller to resign.

On Wednesday, Deputy Treasury Secretary Neal Wolin will testify before the House oversight committee.

Treasury inspector general J. Russell George says he told Wolin about the subject of the IRS inquiry last summer.

In a related matter, the IRS acknowledged Monday that an official testified to Congress about tax-exempt matters long after her duties supposedly had shifted to the rollout of Obama's health care law.

Republicans point to Sarah Hall Ingram's history at IRS as they question the agency's ability to properly oversee aspects of Obama's health care overhaul. The IRS will play a major role in determining benefits and penalties under the new law.

The IRS had said last week that Ingram shifted to overseeing the health care law rollout in December 2010, well before alarm bells went off at headquarters that a unit of the tax exempt division was targeting tea party groups for extra scrutiny.

But records show she testified to Congress in her capacity as head of the tax-exempt office as recently as last year.

Monday the IRS said in a statement that Ingram "was in a unique position to testify" about tax-exempt policies in May 2012. It said Ingram "still formally held" the title of IRS commissioner of tax exempt and government entities, even though "she was assigned full-time to (health care law) activities since December 2010."

Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, says Congress needs to find out what Ingram and other officials knew, and when they knew it.

___

Associated Press writers Stephen Ohlemacher, Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar and Jim Kuhnhenn and researcher Monika Mathur contributed to this report.

___

Follow Julie Pace at http://twitter.com/jpaceDC and Charles Babington at http://twitter.com/cbabington

Obama administration mistakes journalism for espionage

Obama administration mistakes journalism for espionage

By Eugene Robinson, Monday, May 20, 4:48 PM

The Obama administration has no business rummaging through journalists’ phone records, perusing their e-mails and tracking their movements in an attempt to keep them from gathering news. This heavy-handed business isn’t chilling, it’s just plain cold.

It also may well be unconstitutional. In my reading, the First Amendment prohibition against “abridging the freedom . . . of the press” should rule out secretly obtaining two months’ worth of the personal and professional phone records of Associated Press reporters and editors, including calls to and from the main AP phone number at the House press gallery in the Capitol. Yet this is what the Justice Department did.

The unwarranted snooping, which was revealed last week, would be troubling enough if it were an isolated incident. But it is part of a pattern that threatens to redefine investigative reporting as criminal behavior.

The Post reported Monday that the Justice Department secretly obtained phone and e-mail records for Fox News reporter James Rosen, and that the FBI even tracked his movements in and out of the main State Department building. Rosen’s only apparent transgression? Doing what reporters are supposed to do, which is to dig out the news.

In both instances, prosecutors were trying to build criminal cases under the 1917 Espionage Act against federal employees suspected of leaking classified information. Before President Obama took office, the Espionage Act had been used to prosecute leakers a grand total of three times, including the 1971 case of Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers. Obama’s Justice Department has used the act six times. And counting.

Obviously, the government has a duty to protect genuine secrets. But the problem is that every administration, without exception, tends to misuse the “top secret” stamp — sometimes from an overabundance of caution, sometimes to keep inconvenient or embarrassing information from coming to light.

That’s where journalists come in. Our job, simply, is to find out what the government doesn’t want you to know.

Sometimes reporters come across information whose disclosure would genuinely put national security at risk. When officials appeal to news organizations on such grounds, editors listen.

The case involving the Associated Press is a good example. The story at issue, published last May, involved details of a CIA operation in Yemen that foiled a terrorist plot to bomb an airliner. AP chief executive Gary Pruitt said on “Face the Nation” that the news service agreed to hold the story after administration officials warned publication would threaten security. The AP published only after officials from two government entities said the threat no longer existed, according to Pruitt.

Ironically, this was a story of success in the fight against terrorism. I have to wonder whether the administration’s real aim is to find out who leaked this bit of good news — or to discourage potential leaks of not-so-rosy news in the future.

The Fox News case is even worse. At issue is a 2009 story about how North Korea was expected to react to a U.N. Security Council resolution criticizing the rogue nation’s nuclear tests. The Justice Department is prosecuting Stephen Jin-Woo Kim, then an analyst working for the State Department, for allegedly leaking to Fox News reporter Rosen a report about what North Korea was thought likely to do.

Prosecutors examined Rosen’s phone records, read his e-mails and, using the electronic record left by his security badge, even tracked when he entered and left the State Department building. How did officials justify such snooping? By asserting in an FBI affidavit, according to The Post, that Rosen broke the law “at the very least, either as an aider, abettor and/or co-conspirator.”

In other words, since there is no law that makes publishing this classified information illegal, the Justice Department claims that obtaining the information was a violation of the Espionage Act.

Rosen has not been charged. Every investigative reporter, however, has been put on notice.

If this had been the view of prior administrations, surely Bob Woodward would be a lifer in some federal prison. The cell next door might be occupied by my Post colleague Dana Priest, who disclosed the CIA’s network of secret prisons. Or by the New York Times’ James Risen and Eric Lichtblau, who revealed the National Security Agency’s eavesdropping program.

A federal “shield” law protecting reporters from having to divulge their sources means nothing if it includes an exception for cases involving national security, as Obama favors. The president needs to understand that behavior commonly known as “whistleblowing” and “journalism” must not be construed as espionage.

Read more from Eugene Robinson’s archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook. You can also join him Tuesdays at 1 p.m. for a live Q&A.

Top IRS official will invoke Fifth Amendment

Government bureaucrats do it all the time and so should you.

The real problem is when you are detained by the police the questions are frequently rigged or asked in a manor that any answer you give will be an admission of guilt, and that answer will be used against you in court.

Susan Sanchez, is a public defender for the Maricopa County Attorneys office who used to give "Know Your Rights" talks for Phoenix Copwatch. She tells us that when you pulled over and asked by the cop

"How intoxicated are you on a scale of 1 to 10"

Most people who have had only one beer don't realize that if they say they are only intoxicated at a level of 1 on a scale of 1 to 10 are admitting that they are legally drunk.

That is because under Arizona law even if you are slightly intoxicated, you are still guilty of DUI. And saying you are only intoxicated at a level of 1 on a scale of 1 to 10 is admitting you are drunk.

The only correct answer to that question is zero, but the cop didn't tell you that you could use zero as an answer. The cop told you to give an answer of 1 to 10, and any of those answers is an admission of guilt - even if you don't know it.

Of course you and I know the question is a bunch of BS, but sadly the prosecutor will take the answer you gave to this BS question and ask the jury to convict you with it.

So it's best to refuse to answer any and all police questions, just like this high level bureaucrat at the IRS is doing.

Source

Top IRS official will invoke Fifth Amendment

By Richard Simon and Joseph Tanfani

May 21, 2013, 12:15 p.m.

WASHINGTON – A top IRS official in the division that reviews nonprofit groups will invoke the Fifth Amendment and refuse to answer questions before a House committee investigating the agency’s improper screening of conservative nonprofit groups.

Lois Lerner, the head of the exempt organizations division of the IRS, won’t answer questions about what she knew about the improper screening – or why she didn’t reveal it to Congress, according to a letter from her defense lawyer, William W. Taylor 3rd.

Lerner was scheduled to appear before the House Oversight committee Wednesday.

“She has not committed any crime or made any misrepresentation but under the circumstances she has no choice but to take this course,” said a letter by Taylor to committee Chairman Darrell E. Issa, R-Calif. The letter, sent Monday, was obtained Tuesday by the Los Angeles Times.

Taylor, a criminal defense attorney from the Washington firm of Zuckerman Spaeder, said that the Department of Justice has launched a criminal investigation, and that the House committee has asked Lerner to explain why she provided “false or misleading information” to the committee four times last year.

Since Lerner won’t answer questions, Taylor asked that she be excused from appearing, saying that would “have no purpose other than to embarrass or burden her.” There was no immediate word whether the committee will grant her request.

According to an inspector general’s report, Lerner found out in June 2011 that some staff in the nonprofits division in Cincinnati had used terms like “Tea Party” and “Patriots” to select some applications for additional screening of their political activities. She ordered changes.

But neither Lerner nor anyone else at the IRS told Congress, even after repeated queries from several committees, including House Oversight, about whether some groups had been singled out unfairly.

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joseph.tanfani@latimes.com

Twitter: @JTanfani

richard.simon@latimes.com

Twitter: @richardsimon11

AG: 4 Americans killed since 2009 in drone strikes

OK, I suspect that Emperor Obama will disagree with that and claim he is protecting America from terrorists when he plays judge, jury and executioner when he murders people with drones.

Source

AG: 4 Americans killed since 2009 in drone strikes

Associated Press Wed May 22, 2013 2:26 PM

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration acknowledged for the first time Wednesday that four American citizens have been killed in drone strikes since 2009 in Pakistan and Yemen. The disclosure to Congress comes on the eve of a major national security speech by President Barack Obama.

In conducting U.S. counterterrorism operations against al-Qaida and its associated forces, the government has targeted and killed one American citizen, Anwar al-Awlaki, and is aware of the killing by U.S. drones of three others, Attorney General Eric Holder said in a letter to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy.

Al-Awlaki, a radical Muslim cleric, was killed in a drone strike in September 2011 in Yemen. Holder said three other Americans were killed by drones in counterterrorism operations since 2009 but were not targeted. The three are Samir Khan, who was killed in the same drone strike as al-Awlaki; al-Awlaki’s 16-year-old son, Abdulrahman, who also was killed in Yemen two weeks later; and Jude Kenan Mohammed, who was killed in a drone strike in Pakistan.

“Since entering office, the president has made clear his commitment to providing Congress and the American people with as much information as possible about our sensitive counterterrorism operations,” Holder told Leahy, a Democrat.. “To this end, the president has directed me to disclose certain information that until now has been properly classified.”

“The administration is determined to continue these extensive outreach efforts to communicate with the American people,” Holder wrote.

The rise of the fourth branch of government

And at the same time these members of Congress who are doling out pork and cash can deny giving special treatment to the people who gave them campaign contributions by saying "I didn't write those laws. Those laws were created by some unnamed federal bureaucrat in some unnamed federal agency. I am shocked at how those unnamed, unaccountable bureaucrats are wasting out tax dollars [but of course they never will pass any laws to stop it, because they agree with those unnamed, unaccountable bureaucrats who are helping them rob us taxpayers blind]"

Government also frequently works like this at the state, county and city levels too. When elected officials can blame unelected bureaucrats for their decisions it makes it a lot easier for them to rob us blind and get reelected at the same time.

Source

The rise of the fourth branch of government

By Jonathan Turley, Published: May 24 E-mail the writer

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University.

There were times this past week when it seemed like the 19th-century Know-Nothing Party had returned to Washington. President Obama insisted he knew nothing about major decisions in the State Department, or the Justice Department, or the Internal Revenue Service. The heads of those agencies, in turn, insisted they knew nothing about major decisions by their subordinates. It was as if the government functioned by some hidden hand.

Clearly, there was a degree of willful blindness in these claims. However, the suggestion that someone, even the president, is in control of today’s government may be an illusion.

The growing dominance of the federal government over the states has obscured more fundamental changes within the federal government itself: It is not just bigger, it is dangerously off kilter. Our carefully constructed system of checks and balances is being negated by the rise of a fourth branch, an administrative state of sprawling departments and agencies that govern with increasing autonomy and decreasing transparency.

For much of our nation’s history, the federal government was quite small. In 1790, it had just 1,000 nonmilitary workers. In 1962, there were 2,515,000 federal employees. Today, we have 2,840,000 federal workers in 15 departments, 69 agencies and 383 nonmilitary sub-agencies.

This exponential growth has led to increasing power and independence for agencies. The shift of authority has been staggering. The fourth branch now has a larger practical impact on the lives of citizens than all the other branches combined.

The rise of the fourth branch has been at the expense of Congress’s lawmaking authority. In fact, the vast majority of “laws” governing the United States are not passed by Congress but are issued as regulations, crafted largely by thousands of unnamed, unreachable bureaucrats. One study found that in 2007, Congress enacted 138 public laws, while federal agencies finalized 2,926 rules, including 61 major regulations.

This rulemaking comes with little accountability. It’s often impossible to know, absent a major scandal, whom to blame for rules that are abusive or nonsensical. Of course, agencies owe their creation and underlying legal authority to Congress, and Congress holds the purse strings. But Capitol Hill’s relatively small staff is incapable of exerting oversight on more than a small percentage of agency actions. And the threat of cutting funds is a blunt instrument to control a massive administrative state — like running a locomotive with an on/off switch.

The autonomy was magnified when the Supreme Court ruled in 1984 that agencies are entitled to heavy deference in their interpretations of laws. The court went even further this past week, ruling that agencies should get the same heavy deference in determining their own jurisdictions — a power that was previously believed to rest with Congress. In his dissent in Arlington v. FCC, Chief Justice John Roberts warned: “It would be a bit much to describe the result as ‘the very definition of tyranny,’ but the danger posed by the growing power of the administrative state cannot be dismissed.”

The judiciary, too, has seen its authority diminished by the rise of the fourth branch. Under Article III of the Constitution, citizens facing charges and fines are entitled to due process in our court system. As the number of federal regulations increased, however, Congress decided to relieve the judiciary of most regulatory cases and create administrative courts tied to individual agencies. The result is that a citizen is 10 times more likely to be tried by an agency than by an actual court. In a given year, federal judges conduct roughly 95,000 adjudicatory proceedings, including trials, while federal agencies complete more than 939,000.

These agency proceedings are often mockeries of due process, with one-sided presumptions and procedural rules favoring the agency. And agencies increasingly seem to chafe at being denied their judicial authority. Just ask John E. Brennan. Brennan, a 50-year-old technology consultant, was charged with disorderly conduct and indecent exposure when he stripped at Portland International Airport last year in protest of invasive security measures by the Transportation Security Administration. He was cleared by a federal judge, who ruled that his stripping was a form of free speech. The TSA was undeterred. After the ruling, it pulled Brennan into its own agency courts under administrative charges.

The rise of the fourth branch has occurred alongside an unprecedented increase in presidential powers — from the power to determine when to go to war to the power to decide when it’s reasonable to vaporize a U.S. citizen in a drone strike. In this new order, information is jealously guarded and transparency has declined sharply. That trend, in turn, has given the fourth branch even greater insularity and independence. When Congress tries to respond to cases of agency abuse, it often finds officials walled off by claims of expanding executive privilege.

Of course, federal agencies officially report to the White House under the umbrella of the executive branch. But in practice, the agencies have evolved into largely independent entities over which the president has very limited control. Only 1 percent of federal positions are filled by political appointees, as opposed to career officials, and on average appointees serve only two years. At an individual level, career officials are insulated from political pressure by civil service rules. There are also entire agencies — including the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Trade Commission and the Federal Communications Commission — that are protected from White House interference.

Some agencies have gone so far as to refuse to comply with presidential orders. For example, in 1992 President George H.W. Bush ordered the U.S. Postal Service to withdraw a lawsuit against the Postal Rate Commission, and he threatened to sack members of the Postal Service’s Board of Governors who denied him. The courts ruled in favor of the independence of the agency.

It’s a small percentage of agency matters that rise to the level of presidential notice. The rest remain the sole concern of agency discretion.

As the power of the fourth branch has grown, conflicts between the other branches have become more acute. There is no better example than the fights over presidential appointments.

Wielding its power to confirm, block or deny nominees is one of the few remaining ways Congress can influence agency policy and get a window into agency activity. Nominations now commonly trigger congressional demands for explanations of agencies’ decisions and disclosures of their documents. And that commonly leads to standoffs with the White House.

Take the fight over Richard Cordray, nominated to serve as the first director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Cordray is highly qualified, but Republican senators oppose the independence of the new bureau and have questions about its jurisdiction and funding. After those senators repeatedly blocked the nomination, Obama used a congressional break in January to make a recess appointment. Since then, two federal appeals courts have ruled that Obama’s recess appointments violated the Constitution and usurped congressional authority. While the fight continues in the Senate, the Obama administration has appealed to the Supreme Court.

It would be a mistake to dismiss such conflicts as products of our dysfunctional, partisan times. Today’s political divisions are mild compared with those in the early republic, as when President Thomas Jefferson described his predecessor’s tenure as “the reign of the witches.” Rather, today’s confrontations reflect the serious imbalance in the system.

The marginalization Congress feels is magnified for citizens, who are routinely pulled into the vortex of an administrative state that allows little challenge or appeal. The IRS scandal is the rare case in which internal agency priorities are forced into the public eye. Most of the time, such internal policies are hidden from public view and congressional oversight. While public participation in the promulgation of new regulations is allowed, and often required, the process is generally perfunctory and dismissive.

In the new regulatory age, presidents and Congress can still change the government’s priorities, but the agencies effectively run the show based on their interpretations and discretion. The rise of this fourth branch represents perhaps the single greatest change in our system of government since the founding.

We cannot long protect liberty if our leaders continue to act like mere bystanders to the work of government.

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Obama, No more drone murders!!! Honest!!! Trust me!!!

Source

Obama's drone rules leave unanswered questions

By JULIE PACE, AP White House Correspondent

Updated 1:37 am, Saturday, May 25, 2013

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama left plenty of ambiguity in new policy guidelines that he says will restrict how and when the U.S. can launch targeted drone strikes, leaving himself significant power over how and when the weapons can be deployed.

National security experts say it's imperative to leave some room in the guidelines, given the evolving fight against terrorism. But civil rights advocates argue too little has been revealed about the program to ensure its legality, even as the president takes steps to remove some of the secrecy.

"Obama said that there would be more limits on targeted killings, a step in the right direction," said Kenneth Roth, executive director at Human Rights Watch. "But a mere promise that the US will work within established guidelines that remain secret provides little confidence that the US is complying with international law."

An unclassified version of the newly established drone guidelines was made public Thursday in conjunction with Obama's wide-ranging address on U.S. counterterrorism policies. Congress' Intelligence committees and the Capitol Hill leadership have been briefed on the more detailed, classified policies, but because those documents are secret, there's no way of knowing how much more clarity they provide.

The president has already been using some of the guidelines to determine when to launch drone strikes, administration officials said. Codifying the strictest standards, they argue, will ultimately reduce the number of approved attacks.

Among the newly public rules is a preference for capturing suspects instead of killing them, which gives the U.S. an opportunity to gather intelligence and disrupt terrorist plots. The guidelines also state that a target must pose a continuing and imminent threat to the U.S.

However, the public guidelines don't spell out how the U.S. determines whether capture is feasible, nor does it define what constitutes an imminent threat.

Former State Department official James Andrew Lewis said Obama must retain some flexibility, given the fluid threats facing the U.S.

"The use of force and engagement of force always require a degree of discretion," said Lewis, now a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "We don't want to change that."

The guidelines also mandate that the U.S. have "near certainty" that no civilians will be killed in a strike. Civilian deaths, particularly in Pakistan, have angered local populations and contributed to a rise in anti-American sentiments in the volatile region.

Shahzad Akbar, a Pakistani lawyer who has filed many court cases on behalf of drone victims' families, said that while he appreciated Obama's concern about civilian casualties, he wasn't confident the new guidelines would change U.S. actions.

"The problem remains the same because there is no transparency and accountability for the CIA because it will remain inside the system and not be visible to outsiders," he said.

Obama, in his most expansive discussion of the drone program, said in his speech Thursday to the National Defense University that he is haunted by the unintentional deaths. But he argued that targeted strikes result in fewer civilian deaths than indiscriminate bombing campaigns.

"By narrowly targeting our action against those who want to kill us, and not the people they hide among, we are choosing the course of action least likely to result in the loss of innocent life," Obama said.

Administration officials said the new guidelines are applicable regardless of whether the target is a foreigner or U.S. citizen.

Polling suggests the American people broadly support the use of drones to target suspected terrorists in foreign countries, though support drops somewhat if the suspect is a U.S. citizen. A Gallup poll in March found 65 percent of Americans favor using drone strikes in other countries against suspected terrorists, while only 41 percent favored the use of drone strikes overseas against U.S. citizens who are suspected terrorists.

Despite the public support, Obama has come under increased pressure from an unusual coalition of members of Congress of both parties who have pressed for greater transparency and oversight of the drone program.

Sen. Mark Udall, D-Colo., who serves on the Senate Armed Services and Intelligence committees, said he would review the guidelines to ensure they keep "with our values as a nation," but indicated lawmakers may ask for additional overtures.

"I commend the president for his effort to define the boundaries of U.S. counterterrorism operations and for stating a commitment to increased accountability," Udall said. "While this is helpful and important, more needs to be done."

Relevant congressional committees are already notified when drone strikes occur. But it's unclear how the administration, under Obama's new transparency pledge, will handle public notifications, particularly when Americans are killed.

The public only knew about the deaths of three Americans by drone strikes through media reports and the fourth when Attorney General Eric Holder disclosed it in a letter to Congress on the eve of the speech.

Under current policy, the official U.S. figures of number of strikes and estimated deaths remain classified.

According to the New America Foundation which maintains a database of the strikes, the CIA and the military have carried out an estimated 416 drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen, resulting in 3,364 estimated deaths, including militants and civilians. The Associated Press also has reported a drone strike in Somalia in 2012 that killed one.

The think tank compiles its numbers by combining reports in major news media that rely on local officials and eyewitness accounts.

Strikes in Pakistan spiked in 2010 under Obama to 122, but the number has dropped to 12 so far this year. Strikes were originally carried out with permission of the Pakistani government of Pervez Musharraf, though subsequent Pakistani governments have demanded strikes cease.

The CIA and the military have carried out some 69 strikes in Yemen, with the Yemeni government's permission.

___

Associated Press writer Sebastian Abbot in Islamabad contributed to this report.

___

Follow Julie Pace at http://twitter.com/jpaceDC

Transparency isn't coming easily to Obama White House

Sadly it doesn't seem like their is more then a dimes difference between Barack Hussein Obama and George W. Bush.

Sadly with the recent IRS scandal Barack Hussein Obama is now even looking a lot like Richard M. Nixon.

Oh well, at least the American government has the best tyrants and crooks in government that money can buy.

Source

Transparency isn't coming easily to Obama White House

By Christi Parsons and Kathleen Hennessey, Washington Bureau

May 25, 2013, 6:09 p.m.

WASHINGTON — The White House decided to release internal emails about the deadly attack on the diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya — but only after summaries of the exchanges had leaked.

The president's spokesman disclosed details of closed-door discussions about a report that found the IRS targeted conservative groups — but did so in a drip-drip-drip fashion that only raised more questions.

And in a speech meant to expose the top-secret drone program to public examination, President Obama shrouded key details, such as whether the CIA would still use drones.

Caught up in a public relations crisis, White House officials have drawn open a few curtains, revealing once-secret documents and answering queries that they would ordinarily have dismissed with an eye roll.

But the sharing has been selective and done under duress. It has come in fits and starts to an administration that promised to be the most open in American history.

Many allies of the president think that with this burst of sunshine he has arrested the run of bad news and taken charge of the "narrative." Even in some Obama-friendly quarters, though, the sharing is seen as too little and too late, and all the more disappointing for the high hopes Obama had set for transparency at the outset of his presidency.

Civil liberties advocates are disappointed that Obama's drone speech glossed over some of the more difficult legal and moral aspects of targeted killings. The chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, a Democrat, questioned the candor of former officials at the Internal Revenue Service.

Lanny Davis, who handled scandals for the Clinton White House, has been critical of the Obama administration.

"The nontransparency instinct of the Obama White House is more about not understanding effective, proactive crisis management," said Davis, who remains an Obama supporter. "The idea is to inoculate by being transparent."

President Clinton survived scandals with the help of advisors known for strategically leaking information that was damaging. One tactic was a document "dump" delivered Friday evening in the hope the story would be old news by Monday.

"You help write bad stories," Davis said. "That's counterintuitive. But you know this stuff is coming out, so it's to your advantage to get it all out quickly, all completely, and make sure it's over and done."

Obama set out to do more than just play defense against scandal. Right after taking office, he sent a memo to federal agencies and promised an "unprecedented level of openness in government." His was the first modern administration to release White House visitor logs.

Before long, though, advocates for open government began to complain that the administration was resisting public records requests and going after whistle-blowers and leakers with vigor.

Then news broke that the Department of Justice had subpoenaed phone records of the Associated Press and emails of a Fox News journalist in pursuit of government leakers. The media peppered the White House with questions about its commitment to the 1st Amendment.

Obama aides went to work to allay concerns. They called in veterans of past administrations and campaigns to ask for advice. Democratic strategists say they talked about candor.

Tad Devine, senior advisor to former Democratic presidential nominees Al Gore and John F. Kerry, thinks the Obama team is embracing the idea. "They understand that by putting out a lot of information they reduce the risk that the Republicans can convince people and the press that they are hiding something," Devine said. "They also understand that time is their enemy in dealing with issues of this nature."

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney has recently entertained a much wider variety of questions, disclosing names of senior staffers involved in internal meetings and even talking about a conversation he had with Obama about media freedoms. He usually declines to "read out" such events.

Still, administration officials let their account of the IRS troubles evolve — particularly regarding the question of when the White House learned the agency was inappropriately targeting groups that sought tax-exempt status by singling out those with the words "tea party" or "patriots" in their applications.

The White House has struggled to "give accurate information on a timely basis," said Martha Joynt Kumar, a political science professor at Towson University who studies the White House and its relationship with media.

"In this case, you can see they've been slow to gather the facts, and it has damaged them," Kumar said. "It has kept the story rolling and makes it appears as though they're not on top of it."

With his administration's transparency under fire, Obama departed from his focus on drones in his speech last week to address it. He said he was troubled that leak investigations could chill the investigative journalism that holds government accountable.

But he also argued that openness isn't always the most important value — that sometimes the nation's security is at stake. The challenge, he said, is in "striking the right balance."

christi.parsons@latimes.com

kathleen.hennessey@latimes.com

Elected officials delegate their authority to unelected, unnamed government bureaucrats???

I suspect the reason our elected official delegate their powers to unnamed, unelected bureaucrats in obscure government agencies is because it makes them easier to steal our money and give it to the special interest groups that helped get them elected.

If Congressman Harry Mitchell passes a law that gives millions of dollars of government welfare to the special interest groups that helped him get into power his actions are usually a matter of public record and the media will cover the story and sometimes it will tick off the voters enough that the boot him out of office.

On the other hand if Congressman Harry Mitchell delegates the authority to some unnamed team of bureaucrats in some obscure government agency, it's usually pretty easy for Congressman Harry Mitchell to go to those unnamed government bureaucrats and get them to shove the pork to the special interest groups that helped him get elected. And of course that makes it much more difficult for the media to document the connection between Congressman Harry Mitchell giving millions of dollars of pork to the special interest groups that helped him get elected.

Sure to the general public those people who doled out the pork are unknown bureaucrats in an obscure government agency and the public is clueless to who they are.

But Congressman Harry Mitchell knows those unknown bureaucrats in an obscure government agency very well and probably had a hand in giving them their job. And of course with that in mind it is probably pretty easy for Congressman Harry Mitchell to get them to shovel the pork to his special interest groups.

Source

Fifteen Bureaucrats Are Better Than One

Posted on May 30, 2013 | Author: Christina Sandefur

Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) have announced that they will not recommend candidates to serve on the Independent Payment Advisory Board, the federal health care law’s panel of 15 bureaucrats tasked with reducing Medicare costs. In a letter to the president explaining their decision, Boehner and McConnell said they “believe Congress should repeal IPAB” and “hope establishing this board never becomes a reality.”

The Board has vast power over the entire health care market to set price controls, levy taxes, and even ration care. In fact, it can propose anything its members determine is “related to the Medicare program.” IPAB’s proposals automatically become law unless Congress and the president quickly enact a substitute plan with an equal reduction in spending, and the Board’s decisions aren’t subject to review by administrative judges or courts. To add insult to injury, the Board is virtually unrepealable.

The Goldwater Institute is suing over the constitutionality of the Board, arguing that it is a violation of the Constitution’s separation of powers doctrine. Lawmakers are right to call for its demise. But will refusing to recommend board members do the job?

No. While the president must seek recommendations from Congress, the ultimate decision of whom to appoint to the Board is his. And there’s no requirement that IPAB be bipartisan. So refusing to participate in the appointment process just gives President Obama more say in the Board’s makeup.

Worse yet, stalling member appointments and confirmations may mean no one gets chosen for IPAB. To opponents of the Board, that may sound desirable. But as the Congressional Research Service recently confirmed, if no one is selected to fill the board member slots, the Secretary of Health and Human Services will wield IPAB’s powers unilaterally.

While lawmakers should work to repeal IPAB, washing their hands of the appointment process is a step in the wrong direction. When it comes to making health care decisions, the only thing worse than 15 unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats is one unelected, unaccountable bureaucrat.

After vowing transparency, US silent on drone killing

After vowing transparency, US silent on drone killing

WASHINGTON: A week after President Barack Obama cracked the lid of secrecy on his drone war, the United States refused Wednesday to confirm it had killed a top Pakistani Taliban leader in an airborne attack.

Pakistani security and intelligence sources said that Waliur Rehman, deputy leader of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) had perished in an American drone strike, along with at least five other people, in North Waziristan.

But senior officials in Washington stuck to their normal practice of declining to provide details of US operations, and only hinted that Rehman, wanted for attacks on Americans and Pakistanis, had been killed.

The attack appeared to be the first known US drone strike since Obama's speech last week laying out new criteria for the covert use of unmanned aerial vehicles in strikes against terror suspects and militants.

“We are not in a position to confirm the reports of Waliur Rehman's death,” White House spokesman Jay Carney said.

“If those reports were true, or prove to be true, it's worth noting that his demise would deprive the TTP of its second-in-command and chief military strategist,” Carney said.

Rehman is also wanted in connection with attacks on US and Nato personnel across the Afghan border and for involvement in the attack on American citizens in Khost, Afghanistan on December 30, 2009.

That strike, though Carney did not describe it in detail, was a dark day in CIA history, when seven counter-terrorism agents and security contractors were killed in a suicide bombing inside a US base.

Carney would not confirm whether the attack on Rehman satisfied the new criteria for drone strikes established by Obama last week during a speech that aimed to recast the country's decade-long battle against terrorism.

In the speech, Obama said lethal force would only be used to “prevent or stop attacks against US persons,” when capture is not feasible and if a target poses a “continuing, imminent threat” to Americans.

Carney pointed to a clause in Obama's remarks in which he said that in the “Afghan war theater” Washington must support its troops until the Nato withdrawal is complete in 2014.

He appeared to be making a case that Rehman's killing may have satisfied the new guidelines because he may have posed a direct and imminent threat to US troops across the border in Afghanistan.

The president said in his speech that strikes would continue against “high value Al-Qaeda targets, but also against forces that are massing to support attacks on coalition forces.”A CIA spokesman also declined to confirm Rehman's death.

Carney dismissed the idea that keeping reporters in the dark about the reported attack conflicted with Obama's pledge for more transparency over the drone war. He said the speech at the National Defense University last week contained an “extraordinary amount of information.” “It does not mean that we are going to discuss specific counter-terror operations,” Carney said.

Security, tribal and intelligence officials told AFP in Pakistan that Rehman, who had a $5 million US government bounty on his head, was the target of the strike and was killed.

Pakistani security officials said the others killed in the attack were TTP cadres, including two local-level commanders. There were no initial reports of civilian casualties.

According to Britain's Bureau of Investigative Journalism, CIA drone attacks targeting suspected Al-Qaeda and Taliban militants in Pakistan have killed up to 3,587 people since 2004, including as many as 884 civilians.

The frequency of drone strikes in Pakistan has tailed off in recent months, with the previous one coming on April 17.

Source

After vowing transparency, US mum on drone killing

By AFP / Web Desk

Published: May 29, 2013

WASHINGTON: The United States on Wednesday refused to confirm that it killed the number two in the Pakistani Taliban, despite President Barack Obama’s promise of more transparency on the drone war.

The killing of Waliur Rehman, deputy leader of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) was the first known US drone strike since Obama’s speech last week laying out new criteria for the covert use of unmanned aerial vehicles.

His death was the first test of whether US authorities would provide more transparency on drone operations by the CIA or the military after Obama’s pledge of greater accountability over the use of such attacks.

“We are not in a position to confirm the reports of Waliur Rehman’s death,” White House spokesperson Jay Carney said, following an attack in which the TTP number two and at least five others were killed.

“If those reports were true, or prove to be true, it’s worth noting that his demise would deprive the TTP of its second-in-command and chief military strategist.” Carney said.

Carney said Rehman was also wanted in connection with attacks on US and Nato personnel in Afghanistan and for involvement in the attack on American citizens in Khost, Afghanistan on December 30, 2009.

That strike, though Carney did not describe it in detail, was a dark day in CIA history, when seven counter-terrorism agents and security contractors were killed in a suicide bombing in a remote outpost.

Carney would not confirm whether the attack on Rehman satisfied the new criteria for drone strikes established by Obama last week during a speech that aimed to recast the country’s decade-long battle against terrorism.

In the speech, Obama said that lethal force would only be used to “prevent or stop attacks against US persons,” when capture is not feasible and if a target poses a “continuing, imminent threat” to Americans.

But Carney pointed out a clause in Obama’s speech in which he said that in the “Afghan war theater” Washington must support its troops until the Nato withdrawal is complete in 2014.

The president said that strikes would continue against “high value al Qaeda targets, but also against forces that are massing to support attacks on coalition forces.”

A CIA spokesperson also declined to confirm Rehman’s death.

Security, tribal and intelligence officials told AFP in Pakistan that Rehman, who had a $5 million US government bounty on his head, was the target of the strike in North Waziristan and was killed.

Pakistani government condemns drone strike

The Pakistani government “expressed serious concerns” over the US drone strike that killed Waliur Rehman on Wednesday, according to a press release from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Pakistan has maintained its stance that US drone strikes are counter-productive, result in the loss of innocent lives and violate Pakistani sovereignty.

$32,400 that's chump change that Obama won't even touch.

Source

DNC nixes salesman's plan to pay $32K to lobby Obama

USA Today Mon Jun 3, 2013 9:04 PM

LOS ANGELES -- The Democratic National Committee is rejecting the contribution of a California car salesman and electric car advocate who was forking over $32,400 out of his retirement savings to attend a private fundraiser Friday on the promise that he would get at least two minutes to lobby President Obama.

In rejecting his bid to attend the luncheon, the DNC expressed reservations about the media attention that has gone to Paul Scott, a self-described $50,000-a-year Nissan car salesman in Los Angeles, and the notion of paying for access. Scott's intentions were reported last Friday night by USA TODAY. Scott said he wanted to give the president some advice about better ways to advance the electric-car movement. Scott, 60, says he felt so strongly about the issue that he was going to dip into his savings so he could make the pitch face-to-face.

In a letter dated Saturday, DNC National Finance Director Jordan Kaplan says Obama shares a devotion to clean energy and promotion of electric cars, but that the committee had concerns. Contributors, says the letter obtained by USA TODAY, are supporting the president and Democratic candidates, not using off-the-record events "as a way to gain access." The letter noted "the media attention your contribution has garnered."

Scott says he received word of his rejection Monday and "my heart sank." He says he had heard over the weekend that he might be viewed by the DNC "as a liability" and that he should hang low and forego further media interviews. "I hoped I didn't blow it," he says. "I really wanted to meet the president."

Scott, a co-founder of the advocacy group Plug In America, says he is not rich like many of top-tier donors. He said he responded specifically to a DNC email that promised that a select group of 25 who paid the highest of three levels -- $10,000, $16,200 and $32,400 -- would be able to meet Obama at the Santa Monica, Calif., luncheon, have their photo snapped with the president about be able to engage in a private discussion. He says a DNC official assured him he would get to speak to Obama for at least two minutes, probably no more than four, in connection with the session.

"I really wanted to do this thing," says Scott. "It was going to be so exciting, totally worth the money, and more importantly, I was going to get my message out there." Now, he says, the kerfuffle over the contribution can allow him to get out word via media interviews. "Irregardless" of meeting Obama, "I get the message out."

Obama signs bill on lying about military medals

Obama lied to us several times when he said he wouldn't send his DEA thugs to arrest medical marijuana users in California.

Obama also lied about supporting gay marriage.

And of course Obama has told us a whole slew of lies about ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Yea, I know, the American Empire won both wars but if that is true why do we have tens of thousands of military troops in both countries. OK, most of them are not American military troops, but they are mercenaries hired by the American government to replace the military troops.

Source

Obama signs bill on lying about military medals

3:21 p.m. EDT June 3, 2013

WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House says President Obama has signed a bill making it a crime to lie about receiving a military medal.

The Stolen Valor Act cleared both chambers of Congress last month. The White House said Obama signed it Monday.

The measure revives a law struck down by the Supreme Court in 2006. The court said it may be disreputable to lie about receiving a medal, but it's protected under the First Amendment.

The new law is narrower, making it a crime to lie about being decorated with the intent to profit personally or financially. That could include those who claim medals in order to receive veterans benefits, land a government contract or get a job reserved for veterans.

Violators could face up to a year in prison.

Obama officials defend collecting phone records

Source

Obama officials defend collecting phone records

Associated Press Thu Jun 6, 2013 7:17 AM

WASHINGTON — A British newspaper reported that the United States has been collecting the telephone records of millions of Americans under a top secret court order. The Obama administration on Thursday defended the government’s need to collect telephone records of American citizens, calling such information “a critical tool in protecting the nation from terrorist threats.”

While defending the practice, a senior Obama administration official did not confirm the report Wednesday in Britain’s Guardian newspaper.

The disclosure was likely to bring questions from both Republicans and Democrats of how far the Obama administration’s surveillance policies go, following the government’s tracking of Associated Press journalists’ phone records in a leak investigation.

The White House has been on the defensive against Republicans who claim the administration is too intrusive in Americans’ lives, citing the federal tax agency’s targeting of conservative groups for extra scrutiny as proof.

Republicans also claim Obama aides manipulated the government’s response to last year’s deadly attack on a U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, to remove any links to terrorism in the heat of a presidential election, which the White House denies.

The controversies collectively could erode the American people’s trust in Obama and derail his second term agenda.

The court order to collect phone records was granted by the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court on April 25 and is good until July 19, the newspaper reported. The order requires Verizon, one of America’s largest telecommunications companies, on an “ongoing, daily basis” to give the National Security Agency information on all telephone calls in its systems, both within the U.S. and between the U.S. and other countries.

The newspaper said the document, a copy of which it had obtained, shows for the first time that under the Obama administration the communication records of millions of U.S. citizens were being collected indiscriminately and in bulk, regardless of whether they were suspected of any wrongdoing.

The Associated Press could not authenticate the order because documents from the court are classified.

The administration official spoke on condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to publicly discuss classified matters.

Verizon spokesman Ed McFadden said Wednesday the company had no comment. The NSA had no immediate comment.

Verizon Communications Inc. listed 121 million customers in its first-quarter earnings report this April — 98.9 million wireless customers, 11.7 million residential phone lines and about 10 million commercial lines. The court order didn’t specify which type of phone customers’ records were being tracked.

Under the terms of the order, the phone numbers of both parties on a call are handed over, as are location data, call duration, unique identifiers, and the time and duration of all calls. The contents of the conversation itself are not covered, The Guardian said.

The administration official said, “On its face, the order reprinted in the article does not allow the government to listen in on anyone’s telephone calls.”

The broad, unlimited nature of the records being handed over to the NSA is unusual. FISA court orders typically direct the production of records pertaining to a specific named target suspected of being an agent of a terrorist group or foreign state, or a finite set of individually named targets. NSA warrantless wiretapping during the George W. Bush administration after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks was very controversial.

The secret court order, signed by Judge Roger Vinson, compelled Verizon to provide the NSA with electronic copies of “all call detail records or telephony metadata created by Verizon for communications between the United States and abroad” or “wholly within the United States, including local telephone calls,” The Guardian said.

The law on which the order explicitly relies is the “business records” provision of the USA Patriot Act, which passed after Sept. 11, 2001.

Top political appointees use secret email accounts

Just like the lie that he wouldn't send his DEA thugs after medical marijuana businesses in California.

Source

Top political appointees use secret email accounts

Associated Press Tue Jun 4, 2013 11:10 AM

WASHINGTON — Some of President Barack Obama’s political appointees, including the Health and Human Services secretary, are using secret government email accounts they say are necessary to prevent their inboxes from being overwhelmed with unwanted messages, according to a review by the Associated Press.

The scope of using the secret accounts across government remains a mystery: Most U.S. agencies have failed to turn over lists of political appointees’ email addresses, which the AP sought under the Freedom of Information Act more than three months ago. The Labor Department initially asked the AP to pay more than $1 million for its email addresses.

The AP asked for the addresses following last year’s disclosures that the former administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency had used separate email accounts at work. The practice is separate from officials who use personal, non-government email accounts for work, which generally is discouraged — but often happens anyway — due to laws requiring that most federal records be preserved.

The secret email accounts complicate an agency’s legal responsibilities to find and turn over emails in response to congressional or internal investigations, civil lawsuits or public records requests because employees assigned to compile such responses would necessarily need to know about the accounts to search them. Secret accounts also drive perceptions that government officials are trying to hide actions or decisions.

White House spokesman Jay Carney on Tuesday defended use of the email accounts by senior U.S. officials as a traditional practice across government and by previous administrations. [Previous government crooks did it, so that makes it OK for us to do it???] Carney said the email accounts aren’t secret, even though they aren’t disclosed to the public, [then if they are not secret, what are they???] because their contents fall under congressional oversight and the Freedom of Information Act.

Carney said that having alternative emails makes “eminent sense” and compared senior government officials to news columnists at major publications who provide email addresses for their readers but have alternate email addresses so they are not inundated with unwanted messages. [So they are SECRET email accounts???]

Carney wouldn’t say whether White House officials also use secret accounts, noting that the president’s staff, like Congress, is exempt from turning over materials under the open records law. But Carney said that early in his tenure at press secretary, after his email address had been announced publicly, Carney changed his address to avoid being inundated by emails and spam. [F*ck the public records law, we had to do it to prevent spam!!!]

“That’s a very reasonable thing to do,” Carney said. [Yea, everything the President orders is a very reasonable thing to do!!!!]

Agencies where the AP so far has identified secret addresses, including the Labor Department and HHS, also said maintaining non-public email accounts allows senior officials to keep separate their internal messages with agency employees from emails they exchange with the public. They also said public and non-public accounts are always searched in response to official requests and the records are provided as necessary.

The AP couldn’t independently verify the practice. It searched hundreds of pages of government emails previously released under the open records law and found only one instance of a published email with a secret address: an email from Labor Department spokesman Carl Fillichio to 34 coworkers in 2010 was turned over to an advocacy group, Americans for Limited Government. It included as one recipient the non-public address for Seth D. Harris, currently the acting labor secretary, who maintains at least three separate email accounts.

Google can’t find any reference on the Internet to the secret address for HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. Congressional oversight committees told the AP they were unfamiliar with the non-public government addresses identified so far by the AP.

Ten agencies have not yet turned over lists of email addresses, including the Environmental Protection Agency; the Pentagon; and the departments of Veterans Affairs, Transportation, Treasury, Justice, Housing and Urban Development, Homeland Security, Commerce and Agriculture. All have said they are working on a response to the AP.

White House spokesman Eric Schultz declined to comment. [We refuse to comment on if we obey the public records laws!!! Is that an oxymoron or what???]

A Treasury Department spokeswoman, Marissa Hopkins Secreto, referred inquiries to the agency’s FOIA office, which said its technology department was still searching for the email addresses. Other departments, including Homeland Security, did not respond to questions from the AP about the delays of nearly three months. The Pentagon said it may have an answer by later this summer. [We refuse to comment on if we obey the public records laws!!! And we also promptly respond to all requests for public records as required by the law. Again iss that an oxymoron or what???]

The Health and Human Services Department initially turned over to the AP the email addresses for roughly 240 appointees — except none of the email accounts for Sebelius, even one for her already published on its website. After the AP objected, it turned over three of Sebelius’ email addresses, including a secret one. It asked the AP not to publish the address, which it said she used to conduct day-to-day business at the department. Most of the 240 political appointees at HHS appeared to be using only public government accounts.

The AP decided to publish the secret address for Sebelius — KGS2(at)hhs.gov [KGS2@hhs.gov] — over the government’s objections because the secretary is a high-ranking civil servant who oversees not only major agencies like the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services but also the implementation of Obama’s signature health care law. Her public email address is Kathleen.Sebelius(at)hhs.gov. [Kathleen.Sebelius@hhs.gov]

At least two other senior HHS officials — including Donald Berwick, former head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and Gary Cohen, a deputy administrator in charge of implementing health insurance reform — also had secret government email addresses, according to the records obtained by the AP. A spokesman for Cohen, Brian Cook, said the non-public address that HHS listed in its records — Gary.Cohen1(at)cms.hhs.gov [Gary.Cohen1@cms.hhs.gov] — was created after Cohen rejoined the department in August 2012 after a brief absence and all emails now are directed to his public government email account. Cook called the suggestion that Cohen ever had a secret account “news to everyone, including Gary.”

The Interior Department gave the AP a list of about 100 government email addresses for political appointees who work there but none for the interior secretary at the time, Ken Salazar, who has since resigned. Spokeswoman Jessica Kershaw said Salazar maintained only one email address while serving as secretary but she would not disclose it. She said the AP should ask for it under the Freedom of Information Act, which would take months longer.

The Labor Department initially asked the AP to pay just over $1.03 million when the AP asked for email addresses of political appointees there. It said it needed pull 2,236 computer backup tapes from its archives and pay 50 people to pore over old records. Those costs included three weeks to identify tapes and ship them to a vendor, and pay each person $2,500 for nearly a month’s work. But under the department’s own FOIA rules — which it cited in its letter to the AP — it is prohibited from charging news organizations any costs except for photocopies after the first 100 pages. The department said it would take 14 weeks to find the emails if the AP had paid the money.

Fillichio later acknowledged that the $1.03 million bill was a mistake and provided the AP with email addresses for the agency’s Senate-confirmed appointees, including three addresses for Harris, the acting secretary. His secret address was harris.sd(at)dol.gov. [harris.sd@dol.gov] His other accounts were one for use with labor employees and the public, and another to send mass emails to the entire Labor Department, outside groups and the public. The Labor Department said it did not object to the AP publishing any of Harris’ email addresses.

In addition to the email addresses, the AP also sought records government-wide about decisions to create separate email accounts. But the FOIA director at HHS, Robert Eckert, said the agency couldn’t provide such emails without undergoing “an extensive and elongated department-wide search.” He also said there were “no mechanisms in place to determine if such requests for the creation of secondary email accounts were submitted by the approximately 242 political appointees within HHS.”

Late last year, the EPA’s critics — including Republicans in Congress — accused former EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson of using an email account under the name “Richard Windsor” to sidestep disclosure rules. The EPA said emails Jackson sent using her Windsor alias were turned over under open records requests. The agency’s inspector general is investigating the use of such accounts, after being asked to do so by Congress.

An EPA spokeswoman described Jackson’s alternate email address as “an everyday, working email account of the administrator to communicate with staff and other government officials.” It was later determined that Jackson also used the email address to correspond sometimes with environmentalists outside government and at least in some cases did not correct a misperception among outsiders they were corresponding with a government employee named Richard Windsor.

Although the EPA’s inspector general is investigating the agency’s use of secret email accounts, it is not reviewing whether emails from Jackson’s secret account were released as required under the Freedom of Information Act.

The EPA’s secret email accounts were revealed last fall by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a conservative Washington think tank that was tipped off about Jackson’s alias by an insider and later noticed it in documents it obtained the FOIA. The EPA said its policy was to disclose in such documents that “Richard Windsor” was actually the EPA administrator.

Courts have consistently set a high bar for the government to withhold public officials’ records under the federal privacy rules. A federal judge, Marilyn Hall Patel of California, said in August 2010 that “persons who have placed themselves in the public light” — such as through politics or voluntarily participation in the public arena — have a “significantly diminished privacy interest than others.” Her ruling was part of a case in which a journalist sought FBI records, but was denied.

“We’re talking about an email address, and an email address given to an individual by the government to conduct official business is not private,” said Aaron Mackey, a FOIA attorney with the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. He said that’s different than, for example, confidential information, such as a Social Security number.

Under the law, citizens and foreigners may use the FOIA to compel the government to turn over copies of federal records for zero or little cost. Anyone who seeks information through the law is generally supposed to get it unless disclosure would hurt national security, violate personal privacy or expose business secrets or confidential decision-making in certain areas.

Obama pledged during his first week in office to make government more transparent and open. The nation’s signature open-records law, he said in a memo to his Cabinet, would be “administered with a clear presumption: In the face of doubt, openness prevails.”

The NSA tracking phone calls of millions of Verizon customers???

Not just Verizon? Secret NSA effort to gather phone data is years old

By Richard A. Serrano and Kathleen Hennessey

June 6, 2013, 8:54 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- The massive National Security Agency collection of telephone records disclosed Wednesday was part of a continuing program that has been in effect nonstop since 2006, according to the two top leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

“As far as I know, this is the exact three-month renewal of what has been in place for the past seven years," Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) told reporters Thursday. The surveillance “is lawful” and Congress has been fully briefed on the practice, she added.

Her Republican counterpart, Saxby Chambliss, concurred: "This is nothing new. This has been going on for seven years,” he said. “Every member of the United States Senate has been advised of this. [Which means every member of the Senate approved of it???] To my knowledge there has not been any citizen who has registered a complaint. It has proved meritorious because we have collected significant information on bad guys, but only on bad guys, over the years."

The statements by the two senators, whose committee positions give them wide access to classified data, appeared to rule out the possibility that the court order directing Verizon to turn over telephone records was related to the Boston Marathon bombings. The order was effective as of April 19, shortly after the bombings, which had sparked speculation about a link.

Instead, the surveillance, which was revealed Wednesday by Britain’s Guardian newspaper, appears to have been of far longer duration. Although the senators did not specify the scope of the surveillance, the fact that it has been in place since 2006 also suggests that it is not limited to any one phone carrier.

The Obama administration defended the program Thursday, saying the data collection “has been a critical tool in protecting the nation from terrorist threats to the United States.” [So every one of these millions of Americans the NSA spied on is a terrorist according to Obama???]

A senior administration official released a statement which did not confirm the existence of the court order authorizing the surveillance, which, according to the copy released by the Guardian, is marked "Top Secret." It was issued in late April by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, a secret court that meets in Washington, and allowed the government to collect the bulk data until July 19.

"The information acquired does not include the content of any communications or the name of any subscriber," the official said. "It relates exclusively to metadata, such as a telephone number or the length of a call.

The court order was authorized under a provision of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that allows the government to collect business records in bulk if its requests are approved by the court. [I think that is a big word for the police state Patriot Act]

The official said telephone data allow "counterterrorism personnel to discover whether known or suspected terrorists have been in contact with other persons who may be engaged in terrorist activities, particularly people located inside the United States.”

The official requested anonymity to discuss the counterterrorism program.

In defending the data collection program, the administration official sought to spread responsibility, noting that “all three branches” of government were tasked with review and oversight of surveillance. [So all three branches of government are spying on us???]

"There is a robust legal regime in place governing all activities conducted pursuant to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act," the official said. He said that involves oversight by the Department of Justice, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the FISA court.

Separately, the Justice Department released a letter defending the administration’s handling of the FISA law that they had sent in 2011 to two senators who had objected to it.

“We do not believe the Executive Branch is operating pursuant to ‘secret law’ or ‘secret opinions of the Department of Justice,’ “ said the letter, signed by Assistant Atty. Gen. Ronald Weich. The “Intelligence Community is conducting court-authorized intelligence activities pursuant to a public statute, with the knowledge and oversight of Congress and the Intelligence Communities of both Houses.”

“Many other collection activities are classified,” Weich added, saying that “this is necessary because public disclosure of the activities they discuss would harm national security and impede the effectiveness of the intelligence tools that Congress has approved.”

Weich further defended the program by saying intelligence officials have “determined that public disclosure of the classified use” of the law “would expose sensitive sources and methods to our adversaries and therefore harm national security.”

He said collection of records, as now underway with Verizon phone logs, was different than material obtained through grand jury subpoenas. Grand jury subpoenas, he said, can be obtained by prosecutors without court approval. In contrast, he said, the intelligence collections can be done only with approval from a federal judge sitting on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

Most importantly, he noted that FISA courts require a showing by officials that the records sought “are relevant to an authorized national security investigation.”

The Weich letter was sent to Sen. Ron Wyden (D-0re.).

Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. is testifying Thursday morning before the Senate Appropriations Committee, and is expected to address the matter further.

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kathleen.hennessey@latimes.com

Rick.Serrano@latimes.com

Twitter: @khennessey

President Obama’s Dragnet

Source

President Obama’s Dragnet

By THE EDITORIAL BOARD

Published: June 6, 2013

Within hours of the disclosure that the federal authorities routinely collect data on phone calls Americans make, regardless of whether they have any bearing on a counterterrorism investigation, the Obama administration issued the same platitude it has offered every time President Obama has been caught overreaching in the use of his powers: Terrorists are a real menace and you should just trust us to deal with them because we have internal mechanisms (that we are not going to tell you about) to make sure we do not violate your rights.

Those reassurances have never been persuasive — whether on secret warrants to scoop up a news agency’s phone records or secret orders to kill an American suspected of terrorism — especially coming from a president who once promised transparency and accountability. The administration has now lost all credibility. Mr. Obama is proving the truism that the executive will use any power it is given and very likely abuse it. That is one reason we have long argued that the Patriot Act, enacted in the heat of fear after the 9/11 attacks by members of Congress who mostly had not even read it, was reckless in its assignment of unnecessary and overbroad surveillance powers.

Based on an article in The Guardian published Wednesday night, we now know the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National Security Agency used the Patriot Act to obtain a secret warrant to compel Verizon’s business services division to turn over data on every single call that went through its system. We know that this particular order was a routine extension of surveillance that has been going on for years, and it seems very likely that it extends beyond Verizon’s business division. There is every reason to believe the federal government has been collecting every bit of information about every American’s phone calls except the words actually exchanged in those calls.

A senior administration official quoted in The Times offered the lame observation that the information does not include the name of any caller, as though there would be the slightest difficulty in matching numbers to names. He said the information “has been a critical tool in protecting the nation from terrorist threats,” because it allows the government “to discover whether known or suspected terrorists have been in contact with other persons who may be engaged in terrorist activities, particularly people located inside the United States.”

That is a vital goal, but how is it served by collecting everyone’s call data? The government can easily collect phone records (including the actual content of those calls) on “known or suspected terrorists” without logging every call made. In fact, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was expanded in 2008 for that very purpose. Essentially, the administration is saying that without any individual suspicion of wrongdoing, the government is allowed to know who Americans are calling every time they make a phone call, for how long they talk and from where.

This sort of tracking can reveal a lot of personal and intimate information about an individual. To casually permit this surveillance — with the American public having no idea that the executive branch is now exercising this power — fundamentally shifts power between the individual and the state, and repudiates constitutional principles governing search, seizure and privacy.

The defense of this practice offered by Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, who as chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee is supposed to be preventing this sort of overreaching, was absurd. She said today that the authorities need this information in case someone might become a terrorist in the future. Senator Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, the vice chairman of the committee, said the surveillance has “proved meritorious, because we have gathered significant information on bad guys and only on bad guys over the years.”

But what assurance do we have of that, especially since Ms. Feinstein went on to say that she actually did not know how the data being collected was used?

The senior administration official quoted in The Times said the executive branch internally reviews surveillance programs to ensure that they “comply with the Constitution and laws of the United States and appropriately protect privacy and civil liberties.”

That’s no longer good enough. Mr. Obama clearly had no intention of revealing this eavesdropping, just as he would not have acknowledged the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen, had it not been reported in the press. Even then, it took him more than a year and a half to acknowledge the killing, and he is still keeping secret the protocol by which he makes such decisions.

We are not questioning the legality under the Patriot Act of the court order disclosed by The Guardian. But we strongly object to using that power in this manner. It is the very sort of thing against which Mr. Obama once railed, when he said in 2007 that the Bush administration’s surveillance policy “puts forward a false choice between the liberties we cherish and the security we provide.”

Two Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon and Senator Mark Udall of Colorado, have raised warnings about the government’s overbroad interpretation of its surveillance powers. “We believe most Americans would be stunned to learn the details of how these secret court opinions have interpreted Section 215 of the Patriot Act,” they wrote last year in a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. “As we see it, there is now a significant gap between what most Americans think the law allows and what the government secretly claims the law allows. This is a problem, because it is impossible to have an informed public debate about what the law should say when the public doesn’t know what its government thinks the law says.”

On Thursday, Representative Jim Sensenbrenner, Republican of Wisconsin, who introduced the Patriot Act in 2001, said that the National Security Agency overstepped its bounds by issuing a secret order to collect phone log records from millions of Americans. “As the author of the Patriot Act, I am extremely troubled by the F.B.I.’s interpretation of this legislation,” he said in a statement. “While I believe the Patriot Act appropriately balanced national security concerns and civil rights, I have always worried about potential abuses.” He added: “Seizing phone records of millions of innocent people is excessive and un-American.”

This stunning use of the act shows, once again, why it needs to be sharply curtailed if not repealed.

What You Should Know About NSA Phone Data Program

What You Should Know About NSA Phone Data Program

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: June 6, 2013 at 4:04 PM ET

WASHINGTON — The government knows who you're calling.

Every day. Every call.

Here's what you need to know about the secret program and how it works:

___

Q: What happened and why is it a big deal?

A: The Guardian newspaper published a highly classified April U.S. court order that allows the government access to all of Verizon's phone records on a daily basis, for both domestic and international calls. That doesn't mean the government is listening in, and the National Security Agency did not receive the names and addresses of customers. But it did receive all phone numbers with outgoing or incoming calls, as well as the unique electronic numbers that identify cellphones. That means the government knows which phones are being used, even if customers change their numbers.

This is the first tangible evidence of the scope of a domestic surveillance program that has existed for years but has been discussed only in generalities. It proves that, in the name of national security, the government sweeps up the call records of Americans who have no known ties to terrorists or criminals.

Q: How is this different from the NSA wiretapping that was going on under President George W. Bush?

A: In 2005, The New York Times revealed that Bush had signed a secret order allowing the NSA to eavesdrop on Americans without court approval, a seismic shift in policy for an agency that had previously been prohibited from spying domestically. The exact scope of that program has never been known, but it allowed the NSA to monitor phone calls and emails. After it became public, the Bush administration dubbed it the "Terrorist Surveillance Program" and said it was a critical tool in protecting the United States from attack.

"The NSA program is narrowly focused, aimed only at international calls and targeted at al-Qaida and related groups," the Justice Department said at the time.

But while wiretapping got all the attention, the government was also collecting call logs from American phone companies as part of that program, a U.S. official said Thursday. After the wiretapping controversy, the surveillance continued, albeit with court approval. That's what we're seeing in the newly released court document: a judge's authorization for something that began years ago with no court oversight.

Q: Why does the government even want my phone records?

A: They're not interested in your records, in all likelihood, but your calls make up the background noise of the global phone system.

Look at your monthly phone bill, and you'll see patterns: calls home as you leave work, food delivery orders on Friday nights, that once-a-week call to mom and dad.

It's like that, except on a monumentally bigger scale. Armed with the nation's phone records, the NSA's computers can identify what normal call behavior looks like. Abnormal call behavior begins to stand out.

When the computers spot something out of the ordinary, the government can identify what are known in intelligence circles as "communities of interest" — the networks of people who are in contact with targets or suspicious phone numbers.

Over time, the records also become a valuable archive. When officials discover a new phone number linked to a suspected terrorist, they can consult the records to see who called that number in the preceding months or years.

Once the government has narrowed its focus on phone numbers it believes are tied to terrorism or foreign governments, it can go back to the court with a wiretap request. That allows the government to monitor the calls in real time, record them and store them indefinitely.

___

Q: So a judge approved this. Does that mean someone had to show probable cause that a crime was being committed?

A: No. The seizure was authorized by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which operates under very different rules from a typical court. Probable cause is not required.

The court was created by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 and is known in intelligence circles as the FISA court. Judges appointed by the president hear secret evidence and authorize wiretapping, search warrants and other clandestine efforts to monitor suspected or known spies and terrorists.

For decades, the court was located in a secure area at Justice Department headquarters. While prosecutors in criminal cases must come to court seeking subpoenas, the FISA judges came to the Justice Department. That changed in 2008 with the construction of a new FISA court inside the U.S. District Court in Washington. The courtroom is essentially a vault, designed to prevent anyone from eavesdropping on what goes on inside.

In this instance, Judge Roger Vinson authorized the NSA to seize the phone records under a provision in the USA Patriot Act, which passed shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and vastly expanded the government's ability to collect information on Americans.

___

Q: If not probable cause, what standard did the government use in this case?

A: The judge relied on one of the most controversial aspects of the Patriot Act: Section 215, which became known colloquially as the "library records provision" because it allowed the government to seize a wide range of documents, including library records. Under that provision, the government must show that there are "reasonable grounds to believe" that the records are relevant to an investigation intended to "protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities."

Exactly what "relevant" meant has been unclear. With the release of the classified court order, the public can see for the first time that everyone's phone records are relevant.

The Justice Department has staunchly defended Section 215, saying it was narrowly written and has safeguarded liberties.

Some in Congress, however, have been sounding alarms about it for years. Though they are prohibited from revealing what they know about the surveillance programs, Democratic Sens. Ron Wyden of Oregon and Mark Udall or Colorado have said the government's interpretation of the law has gone far beyond what the public believes.

"We believe most Americans would be stunned to learn the details of how these secret court opinions have interpreted section 215 of the Patriot Act," the senators wrote in a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder last year.

___

Q: Why don't others in Congress seem that upset about all this?

A: Many members of Congress have known this was going on for years. While Americans might be surprised to see, in writing, an authorization to sweep up their phone records, that's old news to many in Congress.

"Everyone should just calm down and understand that this isn't anything that's brand new," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said Thursday. "It's been going on for some seven years."

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Vice Chairman Saxby Chambliss issued a similar statement:

"The executive branch's use of this authority has been briefed extensively to the Senate and House Intelligence and Judiciary Committees, and detailed information has been made available to all members of Congress."

___

Q: What does the Obama administration have to say about this?

A: So far, very little. Despite campaigning against Bush's counterterrorism efforts, President Barack Obama has continued many of the most controversial ones including, it is now clear, widespread monitoring of American phone records.

The NSA is particularly reluctant to discuss its programs. Even as it has secretly collected millions of phone records, it has tried to cultivate an image that it was not in the domestic surveillance business.

In March, for instance, NSA spokeswoman Vanee Vines, emailed an Associated Press reporter about a story that described the NSA as a monitor of worldwide internet data and phone calls.

"NSA collects, monitors, and analyzes a variety of (asterisk)(asterisk)(asterisk)FOREIGN(asterisk)(asterisk)(asterisk) signals and communications for indications of threats to the United States and for information of value to the U.S. government," she wrote. " (asterisk)(asterisk)(asterisk)FOREIGN(asterisk)(asterisk)(asterisk) is the operative word. NSA is not an indiscriminate vacuum, collecting anything and everything."

___

Q: Why hasn't anyone sued over this? Can I?

A: People have sued. But challenging the legality of secret wiretaps is difficult because, in order to sue, you have to know you've been wiretapped. In 2006, for instance, a federal judge in Detroit declared the NSA warrantless wiretapping program unconstitutional. But the ruling was overturned when an appeals court that said the plaintiffs — civil rights groups, lawyers and scholars — didn't have the authority to sue because they couldn't prove they were wiretapped.

Court challenges have also run up against the government's ability to torpedo lawsuits that could jeopardize state secrets.

The recent release of the classified court document is sure to trigger a new lawsuit in the name of Verizon customers whose records were seized. But now that the surveillance program is under the supervision of the FISA court and a warrant was issued, a court challenge is more difficult.

Suing Verizon would also be difficult. A lawsuit against AT&T failed because Congress granted telecommunications companies retroactive immunity for cooperating with warrantless surveillance. In this instance, Verizon was under a court order to provide the records to the government, making a lawsuit against the company challenging.

Uncle Sam reads your email and listens to your phone calls

Monumental phone, Internet monitoring laid bare in reports

Sure the jackbooted thugs in the FBI, Homeland Security, DEA, BATF, and ICE who created this program are the problem, but the real problem is the members of the US Congress and US Senate who passed the unconstitutional laws such as the Patriot Act and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act which allow the police thugs in those government agencies to do this.

The article didn't mention this but in addition to monitoring our phone conversations and reading our emails the government at both the Federal, state, county and city levels routinely monitor our websites, chat rooms, Facebook, Tweeter and other internet activities.

Every day some of my web pages get a visit from an IP address in Shady Grove, Maryland, which I suspect is the home of some Federal police agency. On a map Shady Grove, Maryland looks like a suburb in the Washington, D.C. metro area and I suspect it is the home of one branch or another of the US Department of Homeland Security.

I have read a number of articles in the Arizona Republic about people who have been arrested by police from the cities of Tempe, Phoenix and the Arizona Department of Public Safety who troll the internet pretending to be horny underage girls who want to have sex with older men.

Source

Monumental phone, Internet monitoring laid bare in reports

Associated Press Fri Jun 7, 2013 7:42 AM

A leaked document has laid bare the monumental scope of the government's surveillance of Americans' phone records — hundreds of millions of calls — in the first hard evidence of a massive data collection program aimed at combating terrorism under powers granted by Congress after the 9/11 attacks.

At issue is a court order, first disclosed Wednesday by The Guardian newspaper in Britain, that requires the communications company Verizon to turn over on an "ongoing, daily basis" the records of all landline and mobile telephone calls of its customers, both within the U.S. and between the U.S. and other countries. Intelligence experts said the government, though not listening in on calls, would be looking for patterns that could lead to terrorists — and that there was every reason to believe similar orders were in place for other phone companies.

Some critics in Congress, as well as civil liberties advocates, declared that the sweeping nature of the National Security Agency program represented an unwarranted intrusion into Americans' private lives. But a number of lawmakers, including some Republicans who normally jump at the chance to criticize the Obama administration, lauded the program's effectiveness. Leaders of the House Intelligence Committee said the program had helped thwart at least one attempted terrorist attack in the United States, "possibly saving American lives."

Separately, The Washington Post and The Guardian reported Thursday the existence of another program used by the NSA and FBI that scours the nation's main Internet companies, extracting audio, video, photographs, emails, documents and connection logs to help analysts track a person's movements and contacts. It was not clear whether the program, called PRISM, targets known suspects or broadly collects data from other Americans.

The companies include Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube and Apple. The Post said PalTalk has had numerous posts about the Arab Spring and the Syrian civil war. It also said Dropbox would soon be included.

Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Microsoft and Apple said in statements that they do not provide the government with direct access to their records.

"When Facebook is asked for data or information about specific individuals, we carefully scrutinize any such request for compliance with all applicable laws, and provide information only to the extent required by law," the company said.

The leaks about the programs brought a sharp response from James Clapper, the director of national intelligence. In an unusual statement late Thursday, Clapper called disclosure of the Internet surveillance program "reprehensible" and said the leak about the phone record collecting could cause long-lasting and irreversible harm to the nation's ability to respond to threats.

Clapper said news reports about the programs contained inaccuracies and omitted key information. He declassified some details about the authority used in the phone records program because he said Americans must know the program's limits. Those details included that a special national security court reviews the program every 90 days and that the court prohibits the government from indiscriminately sifting through phone data. Queries are only allowed when facts support reasonable suspicion, Clapper said.

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said of the phone-records collecting: "When law-abiding Americans make phone calls, who they call, when they call and where they call is private information. As a result of the discussion that came to light today, now we're going to have a real debate."

But Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said Americans have no cause for concern. "If you're not getting a call from a terrorist organization, you've got nothing to worry about," he said. [Yea, and if this were Nazi Germany, I am sure Sen. Lindsey Graham would have said the Jews shouldn't be alarmed at some of the things Hitler was doing, after all they were aimed at Jews, but rather at helping the Nazis catch bad criminals.]

A senior administration official pointed out that the collection of communication cited in the Washington Post and Guardian articles involves "extensive procedures, specifically approved by the court [FISA courts, secret courts created by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which are normally not open to the public, and which don't keep records of their decisions that are open to the public, and which meet in location which the public is not allowed], to ensure that only non-U.S. persons outside the U.S. are targeted, and that minimize the acquisition, retention and dissemination of incidentally acquired information about U.S. persons." The official, who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and requested anonymity, added that Congress had recently reauthorized the program.

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said the order was a three-month renewal of an ongoing practice that is supervised by federal judges who balance efforts to protect the country from terror attacks against the need to safeguard Americans' privacy. The surveillance powers are granted under the post-9/11 Patriot Act, which was renewed in 2006 and again in 2011.

While the scale of the program might not have been news to some congressional leaders, the disclosure offered a public glimpse into a program whose breadth is not widely understood. Sen. Mark Udall, a Colorado Democrat who serves on the Intelligence Committee, said it was the type of surveillance that "I have long said would shock the public if they knew about it."

The government has hardly been forthcoming.

Wyden released a video of himself pressing Director of National Intelligence James Clapper on the matter during a Senate hearing in March.

"Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?" Wyden asked.

"No, sir," Clapper answered.

"It does not?" Wyden pressed.

Clapper quickly softened his answer. "Not wittingly," he said. "There are cases where they could, inadvertently perhaps, collect — but not wittingly."

There was no immediate comment from Clapper's office Thursday on his testimony in March.

The public is now on notice that the government has been collecting data — even if not listening to the conversations — on every phone call every American makes, a program that has operated in the shadows for years, under President George W. Bush, and continued by President Barack Obama.

"It is very likely that business records orders like this exist for every major American telecommunication company, meaning that if you make calls in the United States the NSA has those records," wrote Cindy Cohn, general counsel of the nonprofit digital rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation, and staff attorney Mark Rumold, in a blog post.

Without confirming the authenticity of the court order, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said such surveillance powers are "a critical tool in protecting the nation from terror threats," by helping officials determine if people in the U.S. who may have been engaged in terrorist activities have been in touch with other known or suspected terrorists.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Mich., stressed that phone records are collected under court orders that are approved by the Senate and House Intelligence committees and regularly reviewed.

And Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada played down the significance of the revelation.

"Everyone should just calm down and understand that this isn't anything that's brand new," he said. "This is a program that's been in effect for seven years, as I recall. It's a program that has worked to prevent not all terrorism but certainly the vast, vast majority. Now is the program perfect? Of course not." [Yea, and Harry Reid probably would have said the same things to the Jews in Nazi Germany. Trust your government, these laws are not aimed at murdering Jews, but at catching criminals. Trust the government, we are here to help you, not harm you!!!]

But privacy advocates said the scope of the program was indefensible.

"This confirms our worst fears," said Alexander Abdo, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union's National Security Project. "If the government can track who we call," he said, "the right to privacy has not just been compromised — it has been defeated."

Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., who sponsored the USA Patriot Act that governs the collection, said he was "extremely troubled by the FBI's interpretation of this legislation." [Another government liar who will say anything to get elected??? If this tyrant is so concerned about the Patriot Act he created why doesn't he pass a law to repeal it??? Probably because he is getting money from the special interest groups in the FBI and other Homeland Security agencies]

Attorney General Eric Holder sidestepped questions about the issue during an appearance before a Senate subcommittee, offering instead to discuss it at a classified session that several senators said they would arrange.

House Speaker John Boehner called on Obama to explain why the program is necessary.

It would "be helpful if they'd come forward with the details here," he said.

The disclosure comes at a particularly inopportune time for the Obama administration. The president already faces questions over the Internal Revenue Service's improper targeting of conservative groups, the seizure of journalists' phone records in an investigation into who leaked information to the media, and the administration's handling of the terrorist attack in Libya that left four Americans dead. [I have always said Obama is a carbon copy clone of George W. Bush, now it seems like Obama is also a clone of Richard M. Nixon!!!]

At a minimum, it's all a distraction as the president tries to tackle big issues like immigration reform and taxes. And it could serve to erode trust in Obama as he tries to advance his second-term agenda and cement his presidential legacy.

The Verizon order, granted by the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court on April 25 and good until July 19, requires information on the phone numbers of both parties on a call, as well as call time and duration, and unique identifiers, according to The Guardian.

It does not authorize snooping into the content of phone calls. But with millions of phone records in hand, the NSA's computers can analyze them for patterns, spot unusual behavior and identify "communities of interest" — networks of people in contact with targets or suspicious phone numbers overseas.

Once the government has zeroed in on numbers that it believes are tied to terrorism or foreign governments, it can go back to the court with a wiretap request. That allows the government to monitor the calls in real time, record them and store them indefinitely.

Rogers said once the data has been collected, officials still must follow "a court-approved method and a series of checks and balances to even make the query on a particular number." [From what I have read these FISA courts are secret courts created by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which are normally not open to the public, and which don't keep public records of their decisions. So that really isn't a system of checks and balances to prevent government abuses, in fact it's an invitation to government abuses]

But Jim Harper, a communications and privacy expert at the libertarian-leaning Cato Institute, questioned the effectiveness of pattern analyses to intercept terrorism. He said that kind of analysis would produce many false positives and give the government access to intricate data about people's calling habits.

Verizon Executive Vice President and General Counsel Randy Milch, in a blog post, said the company isn't allowed to comment on any such court order.

"Verizon continually takes steps to safeguard its customers' privacy," he wrote. "Nevertheless, the law authorizes the federal courts to order a company to provide information in certain circumstances, and if Verizon were to receive such an order, we would be required to comply."

The company listed 121 million customers in its first-quarter earnings report this April — 98.9 million wireless customers, 11.7 million residential phone lines and about 10 million commercial lines. [That is about one third of American's population of 310 million people]

The NSA had no immediate comment. The agency is sensitive to perceptions that it might be spying on Americans. It distributes a brochure that pledges the agency "is unwavering in its respect for U.S. laws and Americans' civil liberties — and its commitment to accountability."

Under Bush, the NSA built a highly classified wiretapping program to monitor emails and phone calls worldwide. The full details of that program remain unknown, but one aspect was to monitor massive numbers of incoming and outgoing U.S. calls to look for suspicious patterns, said an official familiar with the program. That official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss it publicly.

After The New York Times revealed the existence of that wiretapping program, the data collection continued under the Patriot Act, the official said. The official did not know if the program was continuous or whether it stopped and restarted at times.

The FISA court order, signed by Judge Roger Vinson, compelled Verizon to provide the NSA with electronic copies of "all call detail records or telephony metadata created by Verizon for communications between the United States and abroad" or "wholly within the United States, including local telephone calls," The Guardian said.

The law on which the order explicitly relies is the "business records" provision of the Patriot Act.

PGP - Pretty Good Privacy - Use it to encrypt your data

Personally I suspect that if you can encrypt it the government can decrypt it. The only question is how long will it take for the government to decrypt it and how much will it cost the government to decrypt it.

When Phil Zimmermann first invented PGP the US government threatened to put him in jail if he gave people outside of the USA copies of the software. The government says PGP is a munition and therefor subject to the governments control.

Phil Zimmermann got around that problem and put the source code on the internet and the cat has been out of the bag since then. The government didn't carry out it's threat to put him in jail.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pretty_Good_Privacy

Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) is a data encryption and decryption computer program that provides cryptographic privacy and authentication for data communication. PGP is often used for signing, encrypting and decrypting texts, e-mails, files, directories and whole disk partitions to increase the security of e-mail communications. It was created by Phil Zimmermann in 1991.

http://www.gnupg.org/

The free version of PGP

http://www.pgpi.org/

More free PGP software

http://www.symantec.com/encryption

The commercial version of PGP

http://cryptography.org/getpgp.htm

Where to get PGP

http://www.openpgp.org/

http://philzimmermann.com/EN/findpgp/

Obama Africa trip to cost $60 to $100 million

Source

Source: President Obama Africa trip could cost $60 million

By Carol D. Leonnig and David Nakamura The Washington Post Fri Jun 14, 2013 10:22 AM

When President Obama makes his first extended trip to sub-Saharan Africa this month, the federal agencies charged with keeping him safe won’t be taking any chances.

Hundreds of U.S. Secret Service agents will be dispatched to secure facilities in Senegal, South Africa and Tanzania. A Navy aircraft carrier or amphibious ship, with a fully staffed medical trauma center, will be stationed offshore in case of an emergency.

Military cargo planes will airlift in 56 support vehicles, including 14 limousines and three trucks loaded with sheets of bullet­proof glass to cover the windows of the hotels where the first family will stay. Fighter jets will fly in shifts, giving 24-hour coverage over the president’s airspace, so they can intervene quickly if an errant plane gets too close.

The elaborate security provisions — which will cost the government tens of millions of dollars — are outlined in a confidential internal planning document obtained by The Washington Post. While the preparations appear to be in line with similar travels in the past, the document offers an unusual glimpse into the colossal efforts to protect the U.S. commander in chief on trips abroad.

Any journey by the president, such as one scheduled next week for Northern Ireland and Germany, is an immense and costly logistical challenge. But the trip to Africa is complicated by a confluence of factors that could make it one of the most expensive of Obama’s tenure, according to people familiar with the planning.

The first family is making back-to-back stops from June 26 to July 3 in three countries where U.S. officials are providing nearly all the resources, rather than depending heavily on local police forces, military authorities or hospitals for assistance.

The president and first lady had also planned to take a Tanzanian safari as part of the trip, which would have required the president’s special counterassault team to carry sniper rifles with high-caliber rounds that could neutralize cheetahs, lions or other animals if they became a threat, according to the planning document.

But officials said Thursday that the safari had been canceled in favor of a trip to Robben Island off the coast of Cape Town, South Africa, where Nelson Mandela was held as a political prisoner.

When The Post first asked White House officials about the safari last week, they said no final decision had been made. A White House official said Thursday that the cancellation was not related to The Post’s inquiries.

“We do not have a limitless supply of assets to support presidential missions, and we prioritized a visit to Robben Island over a two-hour safari in Tanzania,” said spokesman Josh Earnest. “Unfortunately, we couldn’t do both.” [Well $60 to $100 million for a stinking trip to Africa is close to a limitless supply of assets]

Internal administration documents circulated in April show that the Obama family was scheduled to go to both Robben Island and the safari park, according to a person familiar with the plans.

Former presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush also made trips to multiple African nations involving similarly laborious preparations. Bush went in 2003 and 2008, bringing his wife on both occasions. Bush’s two daughters went along on the first trip, which included a safari at a game preserve on the Botswana-South Africa border.

“Even in the most developed places of Western Europe, the level of support you need for mass movements by the president is really extraordinary,” said Steve Atkiss, who coordinated travel as special assistant for operations to Bush. “As you go farther afield, to less-developed places, certainly it’s more of a logistical challenge.”

White House and Secret Service officials declined to discuss the details of the security operations, and administration aides cautioned that the president’s itinerary is not finalized.

Obama’s overseas travels come as government agencies, including the Secret Service, are wrestling with mandatory, across-the-board spending cuts. The service has had to slice $84 million from its budget this year, and this spring the agency canceled public White House tours to save $74,000 a week in overtime costs.

Many details about foreign presidential trips are classified for national security reasons, and there is little public information about overall costs. A report from the Government Accountability Office found that Clinton’s 1998 trip to six African nations cost the U.S. government at least $42.7 million. Most of that was incurred by the military, which made 98 airlift missions to transport personnel and vehicles, and set up temporary medical evacuation units in five countries.

That figure did not include costs borne by the Secret Service, which were considered classified.

Obama’s trip could cost the federal government $60 million to $100 million based on the costs of similar African trips in recent years, according to one person familiar with the journey, who was not authorized to speak for attribution. The Secret Service planning document, which was provided to The Post by a person who is concerned about the amount of resources necessary for the trip, does not specify costs.

“The infrastructure that accompanies the president’s travels is beyond our control,” said Ben Rhodes, Obama’s deputy national security adviser for strategic communications. “The security requirements are not White House-driven, they are Secret Service-driven.”

Current and former government security officials involved in presidential trips said White House staff also help determine what’s required, because they plan the visits and parameters. The Secret Service and military respond to that itinerary by providing what their agencies consider the required security.

White House officials said the trip was long overdue, marking Obama’s first visit as president to sub-Saharan Africa aside from a 22-hour stopover in Ghana in 2009. The emerging democracies on the itinerary are crucial partners in regional security conflicts, Rhodes said.

Obama will hold bilateral meetings with each country’s leader and seek to forge stronger economic ties at a time when China is investing heavily in Africa. He also will highlight global health programs, including HIV/AIDS prevention.

The first lady, who toured South Africa and Botswana without the president in 2011, will headline some events on her own during the week. The stops will add to the logistical challenges, because she will require her own security detail and vehicles, the planning document shows.

Secret Service spokesman Ed Donovan declined to discuss details of the journey. “We always provide the appropriate level of protection to create a secure environment,” he said.

According to the Secret Service document, Obama will spend a night in Dakar, Senegal, two nights in Johannesburg, a night in Cape Town and one night in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

Among the 56 vehicles for the trip are parade limousines for the president and first lady, a specialized communications vehicle for secure telephone and video connections, a truck that jams radio frequencies around the presidential motorcade, a fully loaded ambulance that can handle biological or chemical contaminants and a truck for X-ray equipment.

The Secret Service transports such vehicles, along with bulletproof glass, on most trips, including those inside the United States, White House officials said. But with quick stops in three countries, the agency will need three sets of each, because there is not enough time to transfer the equipment, according to the planning document.

One hundred agents are needed as “post-standers” — to man security checkpoints and borders around the president — in each of the first three cities he visits. Sixty-five are needed to meet up with Obama in Dar es Salaam. Before the safari in Mikumi National Park was canceled this week, an additional 35 post-standers had been slated to protect the Obamas and their two daughters there, according to the document.

In addition, 80 to 100 additional agents will be flown in to work rotating shifts, with round-the-clock coverage, for Obama’s and his family’s security details, counterassault teams and logistics coordinators.

The planning document does not provide a total number of how many individual agents will be involved in the trip; some will work in more than one location.

Officials said the Secret Service does not want the president traveling anywhere without a top-rated trauma center nearby. The White House medical unit makes decisions about which foreign hospitals meet its standards when it makes advance visits to the locations for planned trips, officials said.

In much of the developing world, the U.S. Navy provides a “floating hospital” on an aircraft carrier or amphibious ship nearby, officials said.

“This is what you need to support the American presidency,” Atkiss said of the requirements, “regardless of who the president is.”

Alice Crites contributed to this report.

Pushing the envelope, NSA-style

Pushing the envelope, NSA-style

By Charles Krauthammer, Published: June 13 E-mail the writer

Thirty-five years ago in United States v. Choate, the courts ruled that the Postal Service may record “mail cover,” i.e., what’s written on the outside of an envelope — the addresses of sender and receiver. [I have to disagree with that decision. If I pay a private company to provide me with mail service I think it would be wrong for them to tell everybody on the plant who I was sending and receiving letters to and from. And I would switch companies if I found out they were blabbing that information all over the planet]

The National Security Agency’s recording of U.S. phone data does basically that with the telephone. It records who is calling whom — the outside of the envelope, as it were. The content of the conversation, however, is like the letter inside the envelope. It may not be opened without a court order. [Again I disagree with that logic. My phone company should not be telling everybody on the planet who I make calls to and who I receive calls from. And I would switch companies if I found out they were giving out this information]

The constitutional basis for this is simple: The Fourth Amendment protects against “unreasonable searches and seizures,” and there is no reasonable expectation of privacy for what’s written on an envelope. It’s dropped in a public mailbox, read by workers at the collection center and read once again by the letter carrier. It’s already openly been shared, much as your phone records are shared with, recorded by, and (e-)mailed back to you by a third party, namely the phone company. [Again I disagree with the Supreme Courts definition of a "reasonable expectation of privacy"]

Indeed, in 1979 the Supreme Court (Smith v. Maryland) made the point directly regarding the telephone: The expectation of privacy applies to the content of a call, not its record. There is therefore nothing constitutionally offensive about the newly revealed NSA data-mining program that seeks to identify terrorist networks through telephone-log pattern recognition.

But doesn’t the other NSA program — the spooky-sounding James Bond-evoking PRISM — give you the willies? Well, what we know thus far is that PRISM is designed to read the e-mails of non-U.S. citizens outside the United States. If an al-Qaeda operative in Yemen is e-mailing a potential recruit, it would be folly not to intercept it.

As former attorney general Michael Mukasey explained, the Constitution is not a treaty with the rest of the world; it’s an instrument for the protection of the American citizenry. And reading other people’s mail is something countries do to protect themselves. It’s called spying. [Again I have to disagree with that. The American government should not be SPYING on ANYONE, including foreign countries. If we declare war on a county I see no problems with spying on them as part of the war effort, but spying on a country we are not at war with is wrong]

Is that really shocking?

The problem here is not constitutionality. It’s practicality. Legally this is fairly straightforward. But between intent and execution lies a shadow — the human factor, the possibility of abuse. And because of the scope and power of the NSA, any abuse would have major consequences for civil liberties.

The real issue is safeguards. [The Constitution and the Bill of Rights are the safeguards here, and they both have been flushed down the toilet by Congress and the President!!!] We could start by asking how an Edward Snowden — undereducated, newly employed, rootless and grandiose — could have been given such access and power. We need a toughening of both congressional oversight and judicial review, perhaps even some independent outside scrutiny. Plus periodic legislative revision — say, reauthorization every couple of years — in light of the efficacy of the safeguards and the nature of the external threat.

The object is not to abolish these vital programs. [Again I disagree, these programs should be ABOLISHED] It’s to fix them. Not exactly easy to do amid the current state of national agitation — provoked largely because such intrusive programs require a measure of trust in government, and this administration has forfeited that trust amid an unfolding series of scandals and a basic problem with truth-telling.

There are nonetheless two other reasons these revelations have sparked such anxiety. Every spying program is a compromise between liberty and security. Yet here is a president who campaigned on the proposition that he would transcend such pedestrian considerations. “We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals,” he declared in his first inaugural address, no less.

When caught with his hand on your phone data, however, President Obama offered this defense: “You can’t have 100 percent security and also then have 100 percent privacy. . . . We’re going to have to make some choices as a society.”

So it wasn’t such a false choice after all, was it, Mr. President? [OK, now it looks like we can agree on something??? Emperor Obama is a tyrant and hypocrite!!!]

Nor does it help that just three weeks ago the president issued a major foreign-policy manifesto whose essential theme was that the war on terror is drawing to a close and its very legal underpinning, the September 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force, should be not just reformed but repealed to prevent “keeping America on a perpetual wartime footing.”

Now it turns out that Obama’s government was simultaneously running a massive, secret anti-terror intelligence operation. But if the tide of war is receding, why this vast, ever-expanding NSA dragnet whose only justification is an outside threat — that you assure us is receding?

Which is it, Mr. President? Tell it straight. We are a nation of grown-ups. We can make choices. Even one it took you four years to admit is not “false.”

Read more from Charles Krauthammer’s archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook.

Five myths about privacy

Five myths about privacy

By Daniel J. Solove, Published: June 13

Daniel J. Solove is a law professor at George Washington University, the founder of the privacy and data-security training company TeachPrivacy and the author of “Nothing to Hide.”

The disclosure of two secret government surveillance programs — one involving phone records and the other personal data from Internet companies — has sparked debate about privacy and national security. Has the government gone too far? Or not far enough? How much privacy should we sacrifice for security? To discuss these issues productively, some myths must be dispelled.

1. The collection of phone numbers and other “metadata” isn’t much of a threat to privacy.

Don’t worry, argue defenders of these surveillance programs: The government is gathering innocuous data, not intimate secrets. “Nobody is listening to your telephone calls,” President Obama declared. Intelligence agencies are “looking at phone numbers and durations of calls; they are not looking at people’s names, and they’re not looking at content.”

But “metadata” about phone calls can be quite revealing. Whom someone is talking to may be just as sensitive as what’s being said. Calls to doctors or health-care providers can suggest certain medical conditions. Calls to businesses say something about a person’s interests and lifestyle. Calls to friends reveal associations, potentially pointing to someone’s political, religious or philosophical beliefs.

Even when individual calls are innocuous, a detailed phone record can present a telling portrait of the person associated with a telephone number. Collect millions of those records, and there’s the potential to trace the entire country’s social and professional connections.

2. Surveillance must be secret to protect us.

The administration and intelligence agencies have been quick to defend the classified status of the phone and Internet surveillance programs. “Disclosing information about the specific methods the government uses to collect communications can obviously give our enemies a ‘playbook’ of how to avoid detection,” said Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. National Security Agency Director Keith Alexander went further: “Grave harm has already been done by opening this up.” Presidents Obama and George W. Bush have both perpetuated this myth.

Of course, if the government is trying to gather data about a particular suspect, keeping the specifics of surveillance efforts secret will decrease the likelihood of that suspect altering his or her behavior.

But secrecy at the level of an individual suspect is different from keeping the very existence of massive surveillance programs secret. The public must know about the general outlines of surveillance activities in order to evaluate whether the government is achieving the appropriate balance between privacy and security. What kind of information is gathered? How is it used? How securely is it kept? What kind of oversight is there? Are these activities even legal? These questions can’t be answered, and the government can’t be held accountable, if surveillance programs are completely classified.

With the phone and Internet programs, it isn’t clear that sufficient protective measures are in place. The president and security officials assure us there are, but without transparency, we can’t really know.

3. Only people with something to hide should be concerned about their privacy.

In the wake of the leaks about government surveillance, writer and privacy supporter Daniel Sieradski started a Twitter account with the handle @_nothingtohide and has been retweeting variations on this myth. A typical tweet: “I don’t care if the government knows everything I do. I am fully confident that I will not be arrested.”

When privacy is compromised, though, the problems can go far beyond the exposure of illegal activity or embarrassing information. It can provide the government with a tremendous amount of power over its people. It can undermine trust and chill free speech and association. It can make people vulnerable to abuse of their information and further intrusions into their lives.

Even if a person is doing nothing wrong, in a free society, that person shouldn’t have to justify every action that government officials might view as suspicious. A key component of freedom is not having to worry about how to explain oneself all the time.

4. National security requires major sacrifices in privacy.

Obama invoked this myth this month when he said, “You can’t have 100 percent security and also then have 100 percent privacy and zero inconvenience.” The implication is that those upset about surveillance fail to recognize that we must trade some privacy for security.

But usually it’s not either-or. As Obama himself said in his 2009 inaugural address: “As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals.”

Protecting privacy doesn’t need to mean scuttling a security measure. Most people concerned about the privacy implications of government surveillance aren’t arguing for no surveillance and absolute privacy. They’d be fine giving up some privacy as long as appropriate controls, limitations, oversight and accountability mechanisms were in place.

This sentiment was evident in the public outcry over the Transportation Security Administration’s use of full-body X-ray scanners that displayed what looked like nude images of airline passengers. No one wanted to end airport security checks. They wanted checks that were less intrusive. Congress required the TSA to use less-revealing software, and the agency ended up switching to different machines.

5. Americans aren’t especially bothered by government intrusions into their privacy.

“The public is just fine with government snooping in the name of counterterrorism,” read one Washington Post headline this past week. Indeed, a Post and Pew Research Center poll found that a majority of Americans prioritized the investigation of possible terrorist threats over the protection of personal privacy and considered it “acceptable” for the NSA to use secret court orders to access phone records to investigate terrorism.

Yet the same poll showed that the public was more closely divided on whether “the U.S. government should be able to monitor everyone’s e-mail and other online activities if officials say this might prevent future terrorist attacks.” And a Gallup poll found that only 37 percent of Americans approved of the NSA obtaining phone records and Internet communications as part of efforts to investigate terrorism, while 53 percent disapproved.

I would expect polls to show even more support for privacy if it weren’t falsely pitted — in public debates and in poll questions themselves — against stopping terrorist attacks. We don’t have to choose between preserving privacy and preventing terrorism. We do have to decide how much oversight and accountability there should be when the government conducts surveillance of its citizens.

Read more from Outlook, friend us on Facebook, and follow us on Twitter.

Emperor Obama is a hypocrite???

Source

Travels of the President Under a Microscope in an Era of Belt Tightening

By MICHAEL D. SHEAR and PETER BAKER

Published: May 29, 2013

CHICAGO — Perhaps it is nothing more than an accident of timing that as federal workers brace for a summer filled with unpaid furlough days, their leaders are traveling the nation and globe on trips that exude luxury.

On Wednesday, President Obama left the White House for two Chicago fund-raisers in the hope of helping Democrats retake the House in next year’s elections. The cost of flying aboard Air Force One to his hometown: $180,000 per hour.

The same day, Michelle Obama traveled to Massachusetts to lunch with rich donors who had paid up to $37,600 per ticket at the Taj Boston Hotel. The meal included roasted Chilean sea bass with a fricassee of asparagus. Meanwhile, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and his wife, Jill, were in Rio de Janeiro, part of a six-day swing through Latin America to discuss trade and investment, including a stop in Trinidad and Tobago.

“We’ve got kind of an Obama cabal in this room,” the president joked Wednesday night during a $32,400-per-couple fund-raiser with about 70 of his friends at the home of Bettylu and Paul Saltzman, longtime supporters. He said returning to Chicago for the day was like “Old Home Week.”

For a leader presiding over automatic budget cuts and a slow-moving economic recovery, there are growing political costs to presidential travel. Every move a president makes costs money, and in an era when money is in short supply, that means heightened scrutiny. Vacations are especially touchy.

“The president is asking the people to sacrifice but never himself,” Representative Chris Stewart, Republican of Utah, said when he introduced a resolution this year asking Mr. Obama to forgo vacations to pay for resuming White House tours cut because of the automatic budget cuts, known as the sequester. “We don’t have a problem with him taking vacations, but it seems petty to close the White House to tours when forgoing one or two out-of-town vacations would easily pay for the cost of keeping it open.”

Bob Dole, the former Republican senator from Kansas, was more blunt when asked generally about Mr. Obama’s travels in a rare interview on “Fox News Sunday” this week. “He’s on the road too much,” Mr. Dole said.

Almost by definition, Mr. Obama lives a life foreign to most Americans, with the big white house and the ushers and chefs and the airplane fueled and ready to go. When he wants a weekend away, he can fly to Florida to golf with Tiger Woods. When his daughters take spring break, they head to Aspen to ski. He winters in Hawaii and summers on Martha’s Vineyard.

But this summer’s trips come as federal employees are tightening their belts. Last Friday, four federal agencies closed down — the Environmental Protection Agency, the Internal Revenue Service, the Department of Housing and Urban Development and even the Office of Management and Budget — as employees were ordered to take the first of several unpaid days off.

Many workers are canceling summer vacations of their own. Across the government, cutbacks are everywhere. The Blue Angels did not fly at the Naval Academy commencement, Head Start programs are turning away children, and there are no summer jobs for college students to cut the grass at Antietam.

In a nod to the pain that federal employees are feeling, Mr. Obama announced in April that he would cut his salary by $20,000.

Despite that gesture of solidarity, the president’s official and political trips still generate second-guessing. This summer he plans a diplomatic foray to Africa that will cost millions of dollars and involve hundreds of security, communications, military and technical personnel, just as it did when George W. Bush and Bill Clinton went. White House officials said they were not deterred by fear of criticism, although some said the president would probably avoid safari time.

Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, a group that opposes tax increases, said Mr. Obama brought such criticism on himself.

“The cost of every vacation and ‘work trip’ is now compared to things he cancels ‘due to sequester,’ ” he said. “And he cannot complain as he started this ‘blame-the-sequester, there-is-nothing-to-cut’ narrative.”

White House officials react to such criticism with weariness. Mr. Obama arrived in office during the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression and has been criticized for taxpayer expenses almost from the start. Aides said the public understands that being president costs money and that Mr. Obama has official obligations and deserves time off. They dismiss complaints as predictable carping from a party whose leaders enjoy perks of their own, including Congressional trips overseas. Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio spends time playing golf and traveling the fund-raising circuit.

“Many Republicans in Washington criticize the president because the sun comes up in the morning,” said Dan Pfeiffer, a senior adviser to Mr. Obama. “So if that was our litmus test, we couldn’t get out of bed in the morning.”

Officials said the White House had pared back because of the sequester. Staff travel, equipment purchases and hiring have been curtailed. Among those furloughed was the assistant White House chef. And in general, some political and personal expenses are reimbursed to the government according to formulas.

But officials said the vast bulk of Mr. Obama’s expenses, including the $179,750-per-hour cost of Air Force One, are simply the price of the presidency and the communications and security required for a 24-hour-a-day commander in chief.

Other presidents have come under fire for vacation habits. Ronald Reagan retreated to his ranch at Santa Barbara, Calif., and Mr. Bush to his outside Crawford, Tex. Mr. Clinton had no home and, like Mr. Obama, favored rental estates on Martha’s Vineyard.

“It’s just a routine part of the Washington gotcha game,” said Joe Hagin, who spent 14 years in the White House working for three Republican presidents, most recently as Mr. Bush’s deputy chief of staff. “Democrats played it against President Bush, and Republicans are returning the favor. It’s been going on for a long time.”

John McCain is against the "military police state"???

Kyrsten Sinema votes to support the military police state???

That's probably as accurate as Hitler saying he loves Jews.

And allegedly anti-war, anti-police state Kyrsten Sinema seems to have turned into a supporter of the military industrial complex and the police state.

Kyrsten Sinema voted against the bill which would have curbed the NSA surveillance operations.

Kyrsten Sinema when she was an Arizona elected official tried to flush Arizona's medical marijuana program (Prop 203) down the toilet introducing a bill that would have slapped a 300 percent tax on medical marijuana.

Source

McCain: More transparency on NSA

By Dan Nowicki The Republic | azcentral.com Sat Jul 27, 2013 7:51 PM

U.S. Sen. John McCain says last week’s narrow U.S. House vote on the National Security Agency’s phone-record collecting demonstrates the need for President Barack Obama’s administration to better explain the controversial anti-terror program to an anxious public.

The Republican-controlled House voted 217-205 Wednesday to defeat an amendment that would have drastically curtailed the NSA’s snooping practice, which has rattled privacy advocates and civil libertarians across the political spectrum since it was disclosed in early June.

“I think it’s a combination of right and left, but I think it’s a little more than that. And that is, there’s suspicion out there,” McCain, R-Ariz., told The Arizona Republic. “Because I don’t think there has been enough communication with the American people as to exactly what they’re doing and what they’re not doing. In other words, it concerns all of us that the government might be invading our privacy. So there’s going to have to be legislation that calls for greater transparency and sharing of methodology without compromising our ability to defend this country.”

The split in Arizona’s House delegation illustrates how the NSA issue has blurred traditional partisan and ideological lines. Republican U.S. Reps. Paul Gosar, Matt Salmon and David Schweikert joined Democratic U.S. Reps. Raúl Grijalva and Ed Pastor in voting to curb the NSA surveillance operation. Democratic U.S. Reps. Ron Barber, Ann Kirkpatrick and Kyrsten Sinema [looks like the allegedly anti-war peacenik Kyrsten Sinema now supports the police state and military industrial complex] and Republican U.S. Rep. Trent Franks opposed the amendment to essentially kill the program, which was developed as part of the war against terrorism that followed the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

“I doubt if there would have been that vote on Sept. 12, 2001,” McCain said.

In other developments:

McCain is continuing to push bipartisan legislation that over four years would phase out the $1 bill and replace it with a $1 coin. He argues the transition would modernize U.S. currency while saving taxpayers billions of dollars and reducing the deficit.

But a gossip columnist for the Hill, a Washington, D.C., newspaper, last week asked him about one constituency that has been cool to the coin idea: strippers and exotic dancers who collect dollar bills as tips during their stage performances.

“Then I hope that they could obtain larger denominations,” McCain told The Hill, eventually adding, “Fives, tens, one hundreds!”

On Friday, McCain clarified to The Republic that he weighed in only when “pressed about the predicament” by the media.

“I was asked about it. ... I don’t frequent those establishments,” McCain said. “I don’t presume to know what’s best. I think I’m an expert on a lot of national-security issues, but that’s one that I’m not really well-versed in.”

McCain’s “a la carte” cable television bill got a boost last week when U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut announced that he would sign on as its lead Democratic co-sponsor.

McCain this year revived legislation that would encourage cable and satellite TV providers to offer customers the ability to purchase only the channels they want to watch instead of having to buy an expensive bundle. The bill, which faces stiff resistance from the influential telecommunications industry, remains a longshot to become law, but Blumenthal’s participation could help its chances in the Democrat-controlled Senate.

“We’re having a lot of fun with it,” McCain said. “We’re making those lobbyists earn their salaries.”

Nowicki is The Republic’s national political reporter.

John McCain and Barack Obama working together???

Or you could think of it like the Crips and the Bloods working together corner the heroin market in South Central Los Angeles. [Not that I have anything against heroin, I think it should be legalized]

Sadly ever since Barack Obama got elected he pretty much has been a clone of both George W. Bush and John McCain.

Source

Barack Obama and John McCain: Washington's newest odd couple

Posted: Sunday, July 28, 2013 1:14 pm

Associated Press

There was no conciliatory phone call, no heart-to-heart talk to soothe the tensions. No one knows exactly when President Barack Obama and Republican Sen. John McCain went from bitter rivals in the 2008 presidential campaign and foes over health care and national security to bipartisan partners.

Yet in recent months, an alignment on high-profile domestic issues — not to mention an eye on their respective legacies — has transformed Obama and McCain into Washington's most unexpected odd couple. The Arizona senator is a regular visitor to the West Wing and in near-daily contact with senior White House officials.

McCain, in an Associated Press interview, said that he and Obama "trust each other." White House chief of staff Denis McDonough, among the Obama advisers who speak regularly with McCain, praised the lawmaker as a "refreshing" partner who "welcomes a debate and welcomes action."

Like any good business arrangement in the nation's capital, the secret to the new Obama-McCain alliance ultimately comes down to this: Both sides believe that working together is mutually beneficial and carries little political risk.

For Obama, the senator has become a rare Republican backer of important elements on the president's second term agenda, including immigration overhaul, stricter background checks for gun buyers, and perhaps a fall budget deal.

In return, McCain has secured increased access to the White House and an opportunity to redeem his reputation as a Capitol Hill "maverick." That image was tainted when McCain tacked to the right during his failed 2008 presidential run against Obama.

"I've told the people of Arizona, I will work with any president if there are ways I can better serve Arizona and the country," McCain said. "That seems to be an old-fashioned notion but it's the case."

Indeed, the level of attention lavished on a functional working relationship between the Democratic president and the Republican senator underscores how rare such partnerships have been during Obama's tenure.

Lawmakers, including some Democrats, long have chafed at Obama's distant dealings with Capitol Hill and his supposed lack of understanding about how Congress operates.

It's unlikely that Obama and McCain's partnership will lead to a larger detente between the White House and congressional Republicans. While McCain may have sway over some like-minded members of the Senate Republican caucus, he has considerably less influence with his party's more conservative wing, particularly in the GOP-controlled House.

Still, the White House is hopeful that forging policy breakthroughs with McCain and other Senate Republicans will isolate the House GOP and perhaps persuade them to act.

The first test of that strategy probably will be the White House-backed immigration overhaul. McCain helped write and shepherd the bill through the Senate last month. Its future in the House is deeply uncertain.

The administration also will try to work with McCain ahead of impending budget battles, McDonough said, given that the senator and the White House agree there is a negative impact from across-the-board federal budget cuts, particularly on the military and defense industry.

McDonough said it's not just a shared view on policy that has made McCain an attractive partner to Obama on these and other issues. It's their mutual disdain for Washington meetings that never move beyond the standard talking points.

"Part of what's great to work with him is his impatience with that," McDonough said. "You can kind of get into the meat of the matter very quickly"

Obama and McCain were never close during the president's brief tenure in the Senate. While McCain is a creature of Capitol Hill, Obama largely saw Congress as a stepping stone to bigger things. The relationship deteriorated during frequent clashes in the 2008 presidential campaign, and it often appeared during Obama's first term like it would never recover.

In 2010, the two sparred during a televised negotiating session on health care. McCain chastised Obama for brokering deals behind closed doors, to which the president snapped, "We're not campaigning anymore. The election is over."

McCain replied: "I'm reminded of that every day."

White House advisers still bristle over McCain's accusations that the administration covered up details of last year's deadly attacks on Americans in Benghazi, Libya, as well as his relentless criticism of former U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice's role in that alleged effort.

McCain's criticism contributed to Rice's decision to withdraw from consideration as Obama's secretary of state. She now serves as White House national security adviser, a post that does not require Senate confirmation.

McDonough acknowledged that McCain's role in keeping the Benghazi controversy alive has been a source of frustration. But he credited the senator with largely shelving his criticism of Rice once she joined the White House staff.

"The way he's worked with her since she became national security adviser speaks to his interest in making sure that even where we disagree, we're finding a way to work together when we can," McDonough said. "I know the president has appreciated that."

McCain said his stronger ties with the president on domestic issues won't keep him from challenging the president on national security issues, including Syria, where McCain backs a more aggressive U.S. response than does the administration. But he said there's a way to strike an appropriate balance.

"He is the president of the United States," McCain said. "You can strongly disagree and still be respectful."

Emperor Obama in Phoenix next Tuesday????

Presidential Visit Obama to stop in Valley next week to discuss home ownership

Posted: Wednesday, July 31, 2013 11:46 am

Associated Press

President Barack Obama has chosen Arizona for the next stop on his middle-class speech tour.

The White House says Obama will visit Phoenix next Tuesday, Aug. 6, to lay out ideas for helping homeowners and others who want to own a home. Obama last week began a series of speeches outlining his ideas for how to help grow the middle class and boost the economy.

Next Tuesday afternoon, the president will head to Burbank, Calif., to spread his economic message during an appearance on "The Tonight Show" with Jay Leno. White House spokesman Jay Carney says the next day, on Wednesday, Obama has scheduled a visit with troops and their families at Camp Pendleton.

Obama to visit Phoenix next week for housing speech

Obama to visit Phoenix next week for housing speech

By Rebekah L. Sanders The Republic | azcentral.com Wed Jul 31, 2013 10:28 AM

President Barack Obama will visit Arizona next week as he tours the country speaking about his plans for the nation’s economic recovery.

The president is scheduled to give a speech in the Phoenix area Tuesday highlighting housing and the middle class, said White House spokesman Keith Maley. He’s revisiting the topic of his first presidential visit to Arizona in February 2009.

Obama has delivered campaign-style speeches in the past two weeks on investing in infrastructure, lowering the cost of college loans and overhauling the tax code in Galesburg, Ill., Warrensburg, Mo., Jacksonville, Fla., and Chattanooga, Tenn. He has criticized Republicans for not doing enough to help struggling families.

The president will travel to Phoenix “to continue talking with Americans about his better bargain for the middle class,” Maley told The Arizona Republic.

“In Tennessee, the President laid out one cornerstone of that vision: a plan to create good jobs that pay decent wages by investing in manufacturing and infrastructure,” Maley said. “Next week in Arizona, the President will lay out his plan to continue to help responsible homeowners and those Americans who seek to own their own homes as another cornerstone of how we strengthen the middle class in America.”

The White House so far has not given details on the location and time of the speech.

It will be Obama's sixth official visit to the state.

Details of Emperor Obama's Aug 6, 2013 visit

Obama flushes Constitution and Bill of Rights???

Sorry Mr. President, there already is an "outside task force" to balance civil liberties and security issues.

It's called the Constitution and Bill of Rights.

Of course you probably flushed it down the toilet after you used the Bill of Rights to wipe your *ss!!!

Source

Obama unveils efforts to increase transparency on surveillance

By Holly Bailey, Yahoo! News | Yahoo! News

President Barack Obama unveiled new efforts to increase transparency and “build greater confidence” about the government’s controversial surveillance efforts, acknowledging that the public’s trust has been shaken after former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden leaked operational details about the programs.

“It’s not enough for me as president to have confidence in these programs,” Obama declared at a White House news conference. “The American people have to have confidence as well.”

Among other things, Obama called for the creation of an outside task force to advise his administration on how to balance civil liberties and security issues. He also said he had directed the intelligence community to make as much information about the spying programs as possible and directed the NSA to create a website that would be a “hub” for that information.

“These steps are designed to make sure the American people can trust that our interests are aligned with our values,” Obama said.

Asked about his decision to cancel a September summit with Russian President Vladmir Putin, Obama admitted Moscow’s decision to grant Snowden asylum played a role in that decision, but insisted it wasn’t the only factor. He pointed to differences on Syria and human rights and said he believed it was more helpful to “take a pause, reassess where Russia’s going” and “calibrate the relationship” before meeting with the Russian leader.

“The latest episode is just one more in a number of emerging differences that we’ve seen over the last several months,” Obama said.

Obama announces NSA reforms

Obama announces NSA reforms, takes questions at news conference

By Steven R. Hurst Associated Press Fri Aug 9, 2013 1:09 PM

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama announced a series of steps Friday meant to ease fears about the scope of secret domestic and foreign surveillance activities, saying he is confident the programs are “not being abused” but that they must be more transparent.

He gave no indication he was ready to end the massive collection of information about Americans’ telephone calls and email. [This is typical of our lying double talking politicians. They have one press conference to say they are FOR something and then another press conference to say they are AGAINST the same thing. I suspect it works and people believe the version that they wish was true. As opposed to hearing both conflicting stories and realizing that one way or another the politicians are lying to us.]

In his first press conference since April, Obama also explained his decision to cancel a summit meeting next month with Russian leader Vladimir Putin and said he had only “mixed” success in moving forward in resetting the relationship between the two countries.

Russia’s recent decision to grant asylum to National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden was not the only reason for calling off the Putin meeting, Obama said.

He encouraged Putin to “think forward instead of backwards” on a long list of issues that will define currently strained relations in the future.

In wide-ranging comments lasting nearly an hour, Obama also said it would not be appropriate to boycott the upcoming Winter Olympics in Sochi, despite Russian laws that discriminate against gays and lesbians.

The president also said he did not consider Snowden, who is charged in federal court with violations of the Espionage Act, as a whistleblower or “patriot.” He invited Snowden, if he feels what he did was legal and right, to return to the United States to defend his actions. [Yea, Obama will let Snowden defend his actions - from a prison cell to a kangaroo court]

Addressing the issues raised by Snowden’s leaks of secret government surveillance programs, Obama said the world needs to be convinced that U.S. espionage does not step on their rights. [In that case stop the spying and pardon Snowden and Manning]

One goal of Obama’s news conference was to try to calm anger over a spying program that has been kept secret for years and that the administration falsely denied ever existed. [Trust us, we haven't flushed the Bill of Rights down the toilet, and even if we did it's for your own benefit! Honest!!!]

The administration was releasing more information Friday about how it gathers intelligence at home and abroad, plus the legal rationale for the bulk collection of phone records without individual warrants. That program was authorized under the USA Patriot Act, which Congress hurriedly passed after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks against the U.S. [And many legal scholars will tell you the Patriot Act is blatantly unconstitutional!!!!]

The National Security Agency says phone records are the only things it collects in bulk under that law. [Trust us, we aren't keeping track of anything else you do. Honest! Swear to God!!! And no we didn't video tape the sex you had with that women who is your mistress] But officials have left open the possibility that it could create similar databases of people’s credit card transactions, hotel records and Internet searches. [Again trust the NSA. Don't think of them violation your Constitutional rights, they are protecting you from those terrorists that hide under your bed and only come out at night!!! Honest!!!]

The changes Obama endorsed Friday include the formation of an outside advisory panel to review U.S. surveillance powers, assigning a privacy officer at the National Security Agency, and the creation of an independent attorney to argue against the government before the nation’s surveillance court. [Yea, an independent attorney that reports to Obama and the NSA!!!]

All those new positions would carry out most of their duties in secret. [And unless another guy like Snowden comes along and exposes us, we will pretend we are no longer keeping a dossier on you.]

The debate over national security and privacy began with the leaks by Snowden, a former government contract systems analyst, who revealed classified documents exposing NSA programs that store years of phone records on every American.

That revelation prompted the most significant reconsideration yet of the vast surveillance powers Congress granted the president after the 2001 attacks.

Obama has found Congress surprisingly hostile to those powers since they were made public, especially from an unusual coalition of libertarian-leaning conservatives and liberal Democrats. [Rubbish!!! Congress is only hostile to those powers in the media because they want to get re-elected. Congress has done NOTHING to repeal the Patriot Act.]

The administration says it only looks at the phone records when investigating suspected terrorists. But testimony before Congress revealed how easy it is for Americans with no connection to terrorism to unwittingly have their calling patterns analyzed by the government.

When the NSA identifies a suspect, analysts can look not just at the suspect’s phone records but also the records of everyone he calls, everyone who calls those people and everyone who calls those people.

If the average person called 40 unique people, for example, analysis would allow the government to mine the records of 2.5 million Americans when investigating one suspected terrorist.

Yemen official: U.S. drones kill 12 in 3 airstrikes

Obama is a serial killer whose weapon of choice is drones???

Source

Yemen official: U.S. drones kill 12 in 3 airstrikes

Associated Press Thu Aug 8, 2013 8:36 PM

SANAA, Yemen — The U.S. has sharply escalated its drone war in Yemen, with military officials in the Arab country reporting 34 suspected al-Qaida militants killed in less than two weeks, including three strikes on Thursday alone in which a dozen died.

The action against al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, as the Yemen branch is known, comes amid a global terror alert issued by Washington. One Mideast official says the uptick is due to its leaders leaving themselves more vulnerable by moving from their normal hideouts toward areas where they could carry out attacks.

The U.S. and Britain evacuated diplomatic staff from the capital of Sanaa this week after learning of a threatened attack that prompted Washington to close temporarily 19 diplomatic posts in the Middle East and Africa.

Thursday’s first reported drone attack hit a car carrying suspected militants in the district of Wadi Ubaidah, about 175 kilometers (109 miles) east of Sanaa, and killed six, a security official said.

Badly burned bodies lay beside their vehicle, according to the official. Five of the dead were Yemenis, while the sixth was believed to be of another Arab nationality, he said.

The second drone attack killed three alleged militants in the al-Ayoon area of Hadramawt province in the south, the official said. The third, also in Hadramawt province, killed three more suspected militants in the al-Qutn area, he added.

All the airstrikes targeted cars, added the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media.

The drone strikes have become a near-daily routine since they began July 27. So far, they have been concentrated in remote, mountainous areas where al-Qaida’s top five leaders are believed to have taken refuge.

But drones also have been seen and heard buzzing for hours over Sanaa, worrying residents who fear getting caught in the crossfire.

While the United States acknowledges its drone program in Yemen, it does not talk about individual strikes or release information on how many are carried out. The program is run by the Pentagon’s Joint Special Operations Command and the CIA, with the military flying its drones out of Djibouti, and the CIA out of a base in Saudi Arabia.

Pentagon spokesman Army Lt. Col. Todd Breasseale declined to comment Thursday and would not confirm the existence of a military drone program in Yemen. The CIA also declined to comment.

Since July 27, drone attacks have killed 34 suspected militants, according to an Associated Press count based on information provided by Yemeni security officials.

The terror network’s Yemeni offshoot bolstered its operations in Yemen more than a decade after key Saudi operatives fled here following a major crackdown in their homeland. The drone strikes and a U.S.-backed offensive that began in June 2012 have driven militants from towns and large swaths of land they had seized a year earlier, during Yemen’s political turmoil amid the Arab Spring.

The sudden drone barrage could further upset a population already angered by bombings that have killed civilians, said Gregory Johnsen, the author of “The Last Refuge: Yemen, al-Qaida and America’s War in Arabia.”

“It’s a really rapid increase when there was a long time where there were no drone strikes for weeks,” Johnsen said in an interview with the AP. “This has a lot of people in Yemen on edge.”

A U.S. intelligence official and a Mideast diplomat have told the AP that the embassy closures were triggered by the interception of a secret message between al-Qaida chief Ayman al-Zawahri and Nasser al-Wahishi, the leader of the Yemen-based offshoot, about plans for a major attack.

Authorities in Yemen said they had discovered al-Qaida plot to target foreign embassies in Sanaa and international shipping in the Red Sea.

Yemeni authorities said this week that a group of al-Qaida militants have entered Sanaa and other cities to carry attacks. It issued list of 25 al-Qaida wanted militants. The Yemeni statement said security forces will pay $23,000 to anyone who comes forward with information that leads to the arrests of any of the wanted men.

The discovery of the al-Qaida plot prompted the Defense Ministry to step up security around the strategic Bab el-Mandeb waterway, which connects the Red Sea with the Gulf of Aden. Officials banning speedboats or fishing vessels from the area.

Details of the plot were reminiscent of the suicide attack on the USS Cole in 2000 in Aden harbor that killed 17 American sailors.

One local political analyst suggests the latest plots were floated by the group to show it is still a formidable force.

“Al-Qaida has suffered losses and it is trying to make an impression,” said analyst Ali al-Sarari, who is close to the Yemeni government. “The mere talk about an upcoming attack gives the group a chance to restore its shattered image … as a group capable of exporting terrorism.”

A senior security official told AP that the al-Qaida leaders never meet together out of fear of a drone attack killing all of them at once. These include al-Wahishi, a onetime aide to Osama bin Laden; Qassem al-Raimi, believed to be the military commander; and Ibrahim al-Asiri.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to brief the media, said al-Wahishi is believed to be trying to recruit informants in the mountainous areas of Marib in central Yemen, especially in the Wadi Ubaidah valley, where tribal allies of ousted President Ali Abdullah Saleh are concentrated.

Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi became president in 2012 after a year of mass protests demanding Saleh’s ouster. Since then, Hadi has accused Saleh’s men, who are still in key positions in security agencies and municipalities, of trying to hinder his reforms.

Marib is one of the few places known to be al-Qaida strongholds, and the Yemeni military has not tried to carry out a large offensive there because of the strong presence of anti-government tribes.

The official said al-Raimi is believed to be moving in southern Yemen, while al-Asiri is believed to be in the north, close to the border with Saudi Arabia, his home.

Johnsen said the U.S. faces a major problem in Yemen when it comes to intelligence gathered on the ground. By relying solely on cellphone calls and other intercepts, chances are increased that a drone strike could merely target a tribesmen who once called an al-Qaida figure, rather than a militant, he said.

“The U.S. is firing missiles into a country, if not blindly, maybe just one-eyed.” he added.

Yemeni troops have stepped up security across Sanaa, with multiple checkpoints set up and tanks and other military vehicles guarding vital institutions. The army has surrounded foreign installations, government offices and the airport with tanks and troops.

In Sanaa’s cafes and on its public transportation, the drones were a popular topic of conversation, prompting fear and even some dark humor.

“These aircraft are really scaring people here,” said Mohammed al-Mohandis, a teacher, who added that he and his friends heard the drone while chewing leaves of qat, the mild stimulant plant that is addictively used in Yemen.

Al-Mohandis even joked with his buddies that someone could have planted an electronic chip on them. “Watch out, or you are finished!” he said, drawing laughter.

Another Sanaa resident, Ahmed Said, suggested the Americans should target those who cause power outages in the city, instead of al-Qaida.

Speaking to AP over the phone, Said shouted at a man crossing the street slowly: “Hurry up, the drone will hit you!”

———

Michael reported from Cairo. Associated Press Intelligence Writer Kimberly Dozier in Washington and Jon Gambrell in Cairo contributed to this report.

Can Obama write his own laws?

Source

Can Obama write his own laws?

By Charles Krauthammer, Published: August 15

As a reaction to the crack epidemic of the 1980s, many federal drug laws carry strict mandatory sentences. This has stirred unease in Congress and sparked a bipartisan effort to revise and relax some of the more draconian laws.

Traditionally — meaning before Barack Obama — that’s how laws were changed: We have a problem, we hold hearings, we find some new arrangement ratified by Congress and signed by the president.

That was then. On Monday, Attorney General Eric Holder, a liberal in a hurry, ordered all U.S. attorneys to simply stop charging nonviolent, non-gang-related drug defendants with crimes that, while fitting the offense, carry mandatory sentences. Find some lesser, non-triggering charge. How might you do that? Withhold evidence — for example, the amount of dope involved.

In other words, evade the law, by deceiving the court if necessary. “If the companies that I represent in federal criminal cases” did that, said former deputy attorney general George Terwilliger, “they could be charged with a felony.”

But such niceties must not stand in the way of an administration’s agenda. Indeed, the very next day, it was revealed that the administration had unilaterally waived Obamacare’s cap on a patient’s annual out-of-pocket expenses — a one-year exemption for selected health insurers that is nowhere permitted in the law. It was simply decreed by an obscure Labor Department regulation.

Which followed a presidentially directed 70-plus percent subsidy for the insurance premiums paid by congressmen and their personal staffs — under a law that denies subsidies for anyone that well-off.

Which came just a month after the administration’s equally lawless suspension of one of the cornerstones of Obamacare: the employer mandate.

Which followed hundreds of Obama­care waivers granted by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to selected businesses, unions and other well-lobbied, very special interests.

Nor is this kind of rule-by-decree restricted to health care. In 2012, the immigration service was ordered to cease proceedings against young illegal immigrants brought here as children. Congress had refused to pass such a law (the DREAM Act) just 18 months earlier. Obama himself had repeatedly said that the Constitution forbade him from enacting it without Congress. But with the fast approach of an election that could hinge on the Hispanic vote, Obama did exactly that. Unilaterally.

The point is not what you think about the merits of the DREAM Act. Or of mandatory drug sentences. Or of subsidizing health care premiums for $175,000-a-year members of Congress. Or even whether you think governors should be allowed to weaken the work requirements for welfare recipients — an authority the administration granted last year in clear violation of section 407 of the landmark Clinton-Gingrich welfare reform of 1996.

The point is whether a president, charged with faithfully executing the laws that Congress enacts, may create, ignore, suspend and/or amend the law at will. Presidents are arguably permitted to refuse to enforce laws they consider unconstitutional (the basis for so many of George W. Bush’s so-called signing statements). But presidents are forbidden from doing so for reasons of mere policy — the reason for every Obama violation listed above.

Such gross executive usurpation disdains the Constitution. It mocks the separation of powers. And most consequentially, it introduces a fatal instability into law itself. If the law is not what is plainly written, but is whatever the president and his agents decide, what’s left of the law?

The problem is not just uncertain enforcement but the undermining of the very creation of new law. What’s the point of the whole legislative process — of crafting various provisions through give-and-take negotiation — if you cannot rely on the fixity of the final product, on the assurance that the provisions bargained for by both sides will be carried out?

Consider immigration reform, now in gestation. The essence of any deal would be legalization in return for strict border enforcement. If some such legislative compromise is struck, what confidence can anyone have in it — if the president can unilaterally alter whatever (enforcement) provisions he never liked in the first place?

Yet this president is not only untroubled by what he’s doing, but open and rather proud. As he tells cheering crowds on his never-ending campaign-style tours: I am going to do X — and I’m not going to wait for Congress.

That’s caudillo talk. That’s banana republic stuff. In this country, the president is required to win the consent of Congress first.

At stake is not some constitutional curlicue. At stake is whether the laws are the law. And whether presidents get to write their own.

Read more from Charles Krauthammer’s archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook.

Obama doesn’t favor medical marijuana ‘at this point’

Currently over 51 percent of the people in Federal prisons are there for victimless drug war crimes. 80 percent of those people in Federal prisons are not there for SALES of drugs, but for simple possession of drugs. So Obama is a liar when his White House spokesman said the following statement:

“The priority in terms of the dedication of law enforcement resources should be targeted toward our drug kingpins, drug traffickers and others who perpetrate violence in the conduct of the drug trade”

Source

White House: Obama doesn’t favor medical marijuana ‘at this point’

By Aaron Blake, Published: August 21 at 5:22 pm

White House deputy press secretary Josh Earnest said Wednesday that President Obama doesn’t favor changing medical marijuana laws “at this point.”

Several states have moved toward legalizing marijuana — mostly medical but also recreational — and Dr. Sanjay Gupta recently came out in favor of medical marijuana after initially opposing it.

Marijuana remains illegal under federal law, creating a conflict in states that have moved to legalize it. Earnest said the Obama administration is not targeting individual users in those states.

“The priority in terms of the dedication of law enforcement resources should be targeted toward our drug kingpins, drug traffickers and others who perpetrate violence in the conduct of the drug trade,” Earnest said. “But at the same time, the president does not, you know, at this point advocate a change in the law.”

States that have legalized marijuana say they believe the administration has given them tacit approval to more forward, even as it remains illegal according to federal law.

Local governments cutting hours over Obamacare costs

Source

Local governments cutting hours over Obamacare costs

By Reid Wilson, Published: August 22 at 10:00 am

Many cash-strapped cities and counties facing the prospect of shelling out hundreds of thousands of dollars in new health-care costs under the Affordable Care Act are opting instead to reduce the number of hours their part-time employees work.

The decisions to cut employee hours come 16 months before employers — including state and local governments — will be required to offer health-care coverage to employees who work at least 30 hours a week. Some local officials said the cuts are happening now either because of labor contracts that must be negotiated in advance, or because the local governments worry that employees who work at least 30 hours in the months leading up to the January 2015 implementation date would need to be included in their health-care plans.

On Tuesday, Middletown Township, N.J. said it would reduce the hours of 25 part-time workers to avoid up to $775,000 in increased annual health-care costs. Earlier this month, Bee County, Tex., said it would limit its part-time workers to 24 hours per week when the new fiscal year starts Oct. 1.

Last month, department heads in Brevard County, Fla., were told to plan similar cuts in advance of the 2015 deadline. Brevard County Insurance Director Jerry Visco estimated the new mandate would cost the county $10,000 per part-time employee — or $1.38 million a year if all 138 part-time employees who work more than 30 hours a week are covered, he told Florida Today. The Brevard County libraries have already cut hours for 37 employees.

“It’s not something we prefer to do, but the cost of health insurance is significant and would really impact municipal budgets,” said Anthony Mercantante, Middletown’s township administrator. “It’s not something we can take on, particularly when we don’t know some of the other ramifications of the Affordable Care Act. There are far more questions than answers right now.”

Middletown spends about $9 million a year, out of its $65 million budget, on employee health policies, Mercantante said.

Elsewhere, Lynchburg, Va., administrators have cut hours for 35 to 40 part-time employees. Chesterfield County, just south of Richmond, is likely to cut the hours of “several hundred” employees, the county director of human resources told the Richmond Times-Dispatch earlier this year. Chippewa County, Wisc., will drop 15 part-time positions to avoid up to $163,000 in annual health care costs, the county administrator told Wisconsin Public Radio in April.

In a statement provided to GovBeat, White House Council of Economic Advisers chairman Jason Furman said there is no evidence that the Affordable Care Act is prompting employers to add part-time rather than full-time positions.

“Since the ACA became law, nearly 90% of the gain in employment has been in full-time positions. Furthermore, the law is helping make health insurance coverage more affordable which supports job growth,” Furman said. “Just yesterday, we learned that the growth in employers’ health care premiums has slowed significantly recently, to less than a third of the growth rate in the late ’90s and early 2000s.”

Other supporters of the law suggested the cuts could actually cost counties and cities more money than if they simply paid for part-time workers’ health-care costs.

“There are some costs of doing business where it really does cost you more money to have multiple people on the job,” said Gary Burtless, a senior fellow of economic studies at the Brookings Institution. “Why would you create more jobs than you need to at 20 hours a week, when if you’re really responding to the Affordable Care Act you would assign people to work 29 hours a week?”

“I don’t think this is going to be a big direct-cost burden for counties and municipalities,” Burtless added.

Mercantante, the Middletown administrator, says it’s the uncertainty that’s driving his town’s actions. “Towns are going to have to start looking at different types of health-care packages to offer to people given the new mandates, but I can’t tell you what those are going to be or how much they’re going to cost us,” he said.

Obama is a liar - Unions are the problem!!!

Obama is a liar who will say anything to get elected

Unions are the problem, not the solution to the problem

1) Obama, like most politicians, is a liar who will say anything to get elected

Obama claimed Detroit as evidence of his successful policies: “We refused to let Detroit go bankrupt. We bet on American workers and American ingenuity and, three years later, that is paying off in a big way.”

Patterson points out that the main cause of Detroit's bankruptcy was the elected officials sleeping with the government employee unions. He points out that government employee unions may also bankrupt Chicago and Los Angeles.

It doesn't mention it, but the police and firemen unions in Phoenix and many other Arizona cities are causing those governments the same financial problems that Detroit, Los Angeles and Chicago have.

Patterson: Other cities may follow Detroit's lead but government would be scary

Posted: Monday, August 26, 2013 6:42 am

Guest commentary by Tom Patterson

In the 2012 presidential campaign, President Obama claimed Detroit as evidence of his successful policies: “We refused to let Detroit go bankrupt. We bet on American workers and American ingenuity and, three years later, that is paying off in a big way.”

Yet last month, Americans were shocked when Detroit — long a symbol of our economic might and cultural vibrancy — filed for Chapter 9 bankruptcy. The collapse has already sent tremors through the municipal bond markets and threatened the economic security of defined benefit pensioners everywhere.

But Detroit isn’t a one-off, exceptional tragedy that we can afford to pity but otherwise ignore. It is on the same trend line as scores of other American cities and even our national government.

In the first half of the 20th century, Detroit’s auto industry produced 200,000 manufacturing jobs. These weren’t government programs or the result of government subsidies nor the product of government “investment” in training programs. If anything, they were the result of government staying out of the way and allowing visionary industrialists working in a decidedly capitalistic system to produce wealth for all. Detroit had a prosperous middle class as well as great buildings, civic spaces and art institutions.

In 1941, the auto companies first began collective bargaining with the United Auto Workers. By the 1950s, Detroit’s eminence in automobile manufacturing begin to fade, as foreign competition emerged and companies were forced into wage hikes, work rules and pension commitments they couldn’t afford.

As jobs and population declined, the city of Detroit made its fatal mistake. Instead of responding to the decline in tax revenues with belt-tightening, a succession of corrupt, incompetent Detroit mayors and City Councils continued to spend recklessly and to negotiate lavish pension funds with a new but immensely powerful political support: public employee unions.

As crime rates soared and schools deteriorated, taxpayers fled Detroit, yet the alliance between unions and the politicians they supported continued to flourish.

The consequences of spending money you don’t have are eventually predictable. Detroit’s debt load today is $18 billion, a sum it can’t pay partly because 38 cents of every new tax dollar goes to retirement benefits, a figure expected to grow soon to 65 cents. Detroit mismanaged itself into a hole it couldn’t get out of. The only question now is whether bondholders or pensioners should take the major hit. Once proud Detroit is a pitiful basket case.

Chicago appears headed on the same course. It’s population has declined over 1 million since 1950. It’s predicted budget shortfall is 1 billion by 2015 while its pension funds are 32 billion underfunded.

Los Angeles hasn’t experienced a population decline but also runs an annual budget deficit and has an unfunded pension liability of 27 billion. Philadelphia’s pension plans are only 50 percent funded even though the city pays 28 percent of its total budget for pension and health benefits.

But the federal government may be in the most trouble of all. For decades now the feds have been operating public retirement and health care programs without evidencing the slightest intent to fund the promises they are making. Instead of saving contributions in the “trust” to fund future benefits for the people making the payments, they spend the money is if there is no tomorrow and no need to save or to reduce debt.

Social Security has unfunded liabilities – not liabilities, unfunded liabilities – of 9.6 trillion over the next 75 years. If you include Medicare and federal employees pension benefits, that number is an unthinkable 86.8 trillion.

It’s bizarre to see our leaders, slack-jawed and vacant-eyed, ignoring all the obvious signs of danger. Even though a modest, expected increase in interest rates on our national debt will precipitate a profound crisis, we still employee recruiters to coerce the dubious into programs like food stamps and SSDI. Even though Americans are aging and every year there are fewer workers to support each retiree, we can’t muster the courage to do something as logical and painless as gradually raising the retirement age to 67.

The lesson of Detroit is clear. Foolish fiscal policies eventually result in less freedom, less opportunity and a declining standard of living for all. Is anybody listening?

• East Valley resident Tom Patterson is a retired physician and former state senator. He can be reached at pattersontomc@cox.net.

Will Emperor Obama invade Syria???

As Randolph Bourne said

"War is the health of the state".

Of course the rest of us will be taxed to pay for war profits which are giving all the folks in the military industrial complex smiles on their faces.

Well at least in America we won't have to worry about burying the dead people murdered by the American Empire. While us Americans pay the price of our masters wars thru our wallets, in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan they pay the price of our masters wars with dead bodies.

Source

Hagel: U.S. military stands ready to strike Syria

Associated Press Tue Aug 27, 2013 7:03 AM

WASHINGTON — The U.S. military stands ready to strike Syria at once if President Barack Obama gives the order, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said Tuesday as the United States prepared to formally declare that chemical weapons had been used in Syria’s civil war.

U.S. officials said the growing intelligence pointed strongly toward Bashar Assad’s government as the culprit in the chemical attack in the Damascus suburbs last week that activists say killed hundreds of people — a claim Assad called “preposterous.”

The U.S., along with allies in Europe, appeared to be laying the groundwork for the most aggressive response since the civil war began more than two years ago.

Two administration officials said the U.S. was expected to make public a more formal determination of chemical weapons use on Tuesday, with an announcement of Obama’s response likely to follow quickly. The officials insisted on anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the internal deliberations.

Secretary of State John Kerry has called the evidence of a large-scale chemical weapons attack “undeniable.” He said international standards against chemical weapons “cannot be violated without consequences.”

Any U.S. military action in Syria most likely would involve sea-launched cruise missile attacks on military targets. Officials said it was likely the targets would be tied to the regime’s ability to launch chemical weapons attacks. Possible targets would include weapons arsenals, command and control centers, radar and communications facilities and other military headquarters.

Less likely was a strike on a chemical weapons site because of the risk of releasing toxic gases.

Hagel told BBC television Tuesday that the Defense Department has “moved assets in place to be able to fulfill and comply with whatever option the president wishes to take.” The Navy has four destroyers in the eastern Mediterranean Sea within range of targets inside Syria. The U.S. also has warplanes in the region.

“We are ready to go,” said Hagel, speaking during a visit to the Southeast Asian nation of Brunei.

Hagel said “to me it’s clearer and clearer” that the Syrian government was responsible, but that the Obama administration was waiting for intelligence agencies to make the determination.

In London, Prime Minister David Cameron recalled Parliament for an urgent discussion Thursday on a possible military response. The British government said its military was drawing up contingency plans for a possible military attack. Italy, meanwhile, insisted that any strike must be authorized by the U.N. Security Council.

Assad has denied launching a chemical attack. In an interview published Tuesday on the website of the state-run Syrian Arab News Agency, Assad warned that if the U.S. attacks Syria, it will face “what it has been confronted with in every war since Vietnam: failure.”

Syrian activists say the Aug. 21 chemical attack killed hundreds. The group Doctors Without Borders put the death toll at 355 people.

The international community appeared to be considering action that would punish Assad for deploying deadly gases, not sweeping measures aimed at ousting the Syrian leader or strengthening rebel forces.

“This is about the violation of an international norm against the use of chemical weapons and how we should respond to that,” State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said.

A United Nations team already on the ground in Syria has collected evidence from last week’s attack. The team came under sniper fire Monday as it traveled to the site of the Aug. 21 attack and on Tuesday delayed a second inspection.

The U.S. said Syria’s delay in giving the inspectors access rendered their investigation meaningless, and officials said the administration had its own intelligence confirming chemical weapons use and planned to make it public in the coming days.

It’s unlikely that the U.S. would launch a strike against Syria while the United Nations team is still in the country. A U.N. spokeswoman said the inspection team might need longer than the planned 14 days to complete its work.

Officials said there was “very little doubt” that the chemical attack originated with the Assad regime, noting that Syria’s rebel forces do not appear to have access to the country’s chemical weapons stockpile.

It’s unclear whether Obama would seek authority from the U.N. or Congress before using force. It is likely Russia and China would block U.S. efforts to authorize action through the U.N. Security Council.

More than 100,000 people have died in clashes between forces loyal to Assad and rebels trying to oust him from power. While Obama has repeatedly called for Assad to leave power, he has resisted calls for a robust U.S. intervention and has largely limited American assistance to humanitarian aid.

Obama has ruled out putting U.S. troops on the ground in Syria, and officials say they are not considering setting up a unilateral no-fly zone.

Obama considering limited military strike on Syria

After Syria chemical allegations, Obama considering limited military strike

By Karen DeYoung and Anne Gearan, Published: August 26

President Obama is weighing a military strike against Syria that would be of limited scope and duration, designed to serve as punishment for Syria’s use of chemical weapons and as a deterrent, while keeping the United States out of deeper involvement in that country’s civil war, according to senior administration officials.

The timing of such an attack, which would probably last no more than two days and involve sea-launched cruise missiles — or, possibly, long-range bombers — striking military targets not directly related to Syria’s chemical weapons arsenal, would be dependent on three factors: completion of an intelligence report assessing Syrian government culpability in last week’s alleged chemical attack; ongoing consultation with allies and Congress; and determination of a justification under international law.

The Obama administration toughened its criticism of Syria's alleged chemical weapons use, with Secretary of State John Kerry cutting his vacation short to address the crisis as the U.S. considers possible military actions.

The Obama administration toughened its criticism of Syria's alleged chemical weapons use, with Secretary of State John Kerry cutting his vacation short to address the crisis as the U.S. considers possible military actions.

“We’re actively looking at the various legal angles that would inform a decision,” [legal angles??? As one bank robber to the other said, let's rob this bank because they don't have any armed guards like the other bank. Emperor Obama doesn't mind invading a small country like Syria that can't defend themselves, but he certainly won't bomb a country with nuclear weapons that can defend it's self like North Korea.] said an official who spoke about the presidential deliberations on the condition of anonymity. Missile-armed U.S. warships are already positioned in the Mediterranean.

As the administration moved rapidly toward a decision, Secretary of State John F. Kerry said the use of chemical weapons in an attack Wednesday against opposition strongholds on the outskirts of Damascus is now “undeniable.”

Evidence being gathered by United Nations experts in Syria was important, Kerry said, but not necessary to prove what is already “grounded in facts, informed by conscience and guided by common sense.”

The team of U.N. weapons investigators on Monday visited one of three rebel-held suburbs where the alleged attack took place, after first being forced to withdraw when their vehicles came under sniper fire. The Syrian government, which along with Russia has suggested that the rebels were responsible for the chemical attack, agreed to the U.N. inspection over the weekend.

Videos and statements by witnesses and relief organizations such as Doctors Without Borders have proved that an attack occurred, Kerry said. The U.S. intelligence report is to be released this week.

Among the factors, officials said, are that only the government is known to possess chemical weapons and the rockets to deliver them, and its continuing control of chemical stocks has been closely monitored by U.S. intelligence.

Kerry said Syrian forces had engaged in a “cynical attempt to cover up” their actions, not only by delaying the arrival of the U.N. team but by shelling the affected area continually. Any U.S. strike would probably await the departure of the U.N. inspectors from Syria.

Kerry’s statement, which he read to reporters in the State Department briefing room without taking questions, was part of an escalating administration drumbeat, which is likely to include a public statement by Obama in coming days. Officials said the public warnings are designed partly to wring any possible cooperation out of Russia — or an unlikely admission from the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad — before Obama makes his decision.

The administration decided to postpone a meeting with the Russians this week in The Hague to discuss a negotiated solution to the Syrian war, “given our ongoing consultations about the appropriate response to the chemical weapons attack in Syria on August 21,” a State Department official said.

At the State Department, Kerry said, “Make no mistake: President Obama believes there must be accountability for those who would use the world’s most heinous weapons against the world’s most vulnerable people. Nothing today is more serious, and nothing is receiving more serious scrutiny.”

He and other officials drew a sharp distinction between U.S. action related to a violation of international law by what they called Assad’s “massive” use of chemical weapons and any direct military involvement in the Syrian conflict, which is in its third year. [Of course lets forget about America's invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan which both were almost certainly violations of international law.]

“What we are talking about here is a potential response . . . to this specific violation of international norms,” White House press secretary Jay Carney said. “While it is part of this ongoing Syrian conflict in which we have an interest and in which we have a clearly stated position, it is distinct in that regard.”

Obama and other officials have said repeatedly that no U.S. troops would be sent to Syria. But despite Obama’s year-old threat of an unspecified U.S. response if Assad crossed a “red line” by using chemical weapons, even a limited military engagement seemed unlikely before Wednesday’s attack near Damascus.

“This international norm cannot be violated without consequences,” Kerry said. [Well, expect by the American government which invaded both Iraq and Afghanistan]

The options under consideration are neither new nor open-ended, officials said. The use of “limited stand-off strikes” has long been among the options the Pentagon has provided Obama. “Potential targets include high-value regime air defense, air, ground, missile, and naval forces as well as the supporting military facilities and command nodes,” Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in a June letter to Congress. “Stand-off air and missile systems could be used to strike hundreds of targets at a tempo of our choosing.”

Although Dempsey, who has questioned the wisdom of direct military involvement in Syria, said that such an operation would require “hundreds” of ships and aircraft and potentially cost “in the billions,” the action that is being contemplated would be far smaller and designed more to send a message than to cripple Assad’s military and change the balance of forces on the ground. Syrian chemical weapons storage areas, which are numerous and widely dispersed, are seen as unlikely targets.

The language of international criminality has clearly resonated among U.S. allies and lawmakers.

“We will have to act,” said Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.), a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence who has long opposed any U.S. intervention, including the administration’s decision this summer to send light arms to Syrian opposition forces. “I don’t think we can allow repeated use of chemical weapons now, an escalated use of chemical weapons, to stand.” [Translation - with the wars winding down in Iraq and Afghanistan the American corporations in the military industrial complex need a new source of revenue and a war in Syria would be great!!!]

Sen. Bob Corker (Tenn.), the senior Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, emphasized that a U.S. strike should not be directed at altering the dynamic of Syria’s larger civil war. [Then why on earth are we going to bomb them??? Probably so we can look like tough guys!!!!]

“I think it should be surgical. It should be proportional. It should be in response to what’s happened with the chemicals,” Corker said in an NBC interview. “But the fact is, I don’t want us to get involved in such a way that we change that dynamic on the ground.” The senator said he thought the administration’s response to the attack was “imminent.”

House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) said he had been in touch with the White House. In a statement, Boehner echoed concerns expressed by lawmakers from both parties that the administration further consult Congress before taking action.

The administration has said that it will follow international law in shaping its response. [Hey, I would be happy if you just followed the Constitution and got Congress to declare war on Syria before bombing them. But hey, when your are the American Emperor who needs to consult Congress] Authorization for the use of force against another nation normally comes only from the U.N. Security Council — where Russia and China have vetoed previous resolutions against Assad — or in a NATO operation similar to the one launched in the former Yugoslavia in 1999, without a U.N. mandate.

But much of international law is untested, [translation - we will use any lame excuse to bomb Syria] and administration lawyers are also examining possible legal justifications based on a violation of international prohibitions on chemical weapons use, or on an appeal for assistance from a neighboring nation such as Turkey.

Britain, France and Turkey have said that they would support action if the use of chemical weapons was confirmed, but a clear-cut case is also likely to make approval easier for allies such as Germany, which disagreed with NATO’s 2011 operation in Libya despite the existence of a U.N. resolution.

“The use of chemical weapons would be a crime against civilization,” German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said Monday. “The international community must act should the use of such weapons be confirmed.”

Consultations on Syria have been ongoing at the ambassadorial level at NATO headquarters in Brussels, where a meeting is scheduled for Wednesday. The Arab League, which approved the Libya operation, is also due to meet this week to discuss Syria.

Ed O’Keefe contributed to this report.

U.N. warns U.S. against illegal spying on diplomats

According to the US Constitution any treaties the America government enters into must be obeyed before the normal laws passed by Congress and must be obeyed.

Of course the US government doesn't seem to be willing to obey laws that it has agreed to obey when it signed onto treaties any more then it is willing to obey the requirements of the Bill of Rights, such as the 4th Amendment which says it won't spy on us without a search warrant, issued by a court based on probable cause!!!

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U.N. warns U.S. against illegal spying on diplomats

By Carol J. Williams

August 26, 2013, 2:15 p.m.

United Nations officials on Monday reacted to the latest leaks about U.S. National Security Agency spying with a reminder to the Obama administration of its legal obligation to respect the “inviolability” of diplomatic missions on U.S. soil.

The German news magazine Der Spiegel reported over the weekend that the NSA, already under fire for reported intelligence gathering on private phone calls and emails around the world, had also infiltrated the U.N. video-conferencing network to eavesdrop on diplomatic missions in New York.

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and other officials are “aware of the reports and intend to be in touch with the relevant authorities,” spokesman Farhan Haq told reporters at the daily news briefing at U.N. headquarters.

The United States, as host country for the United Nations and its member delegations, is obliged by “well-established international law” to respect the privacy and sovereignty of national and multinational missions, Haq said.

“Member states are expected to act accordingly to protect the inviolability of diplomatic missions,” Haq said.

Der Spiegel reported in its latest issue that its reporters had analyzed secret NSA documents leaked by fugitive intelligence contractor Edward Snowden that disclosed how the U.S. agency gained access to the U.N. communications systems. The respected German magazine also reported that the NSA, in its clandestine surveillance, had discovered similar spying activity conducted by China that U.S. analysts were able to comb for important intelligence insights.

The magazine laid out in detail how the NSA acquired floor plans and diagrams of the European Union's new diplomatic mission at the United Nations in September 2012 in an operation code-named Apalachee.

Under the 1961 Vienna Convention and other international accords, Haq said, the United States is prohibited from conducting covert operations at the United Nations and its associated foreign missions.

The NSA used traditional wiretapping devices to intercept U.N. communications, Der Spiegel said. It also reported that the agency infiltrated the computer networks of foreign diplomatic missions in Washington, including the EU delegation headquarters, and copied computer hard drives.

The magazine referred to an "internal presentation" summing up an NSA objective to acquire "information superiority," not just in its counter-terrorism intelligence gathering, but also with programs aimed at drug trafficking, organized crime and "traditional espionage targeting foreign governments."

Feds Won't Sue to Stop Marijuana Use in 2 States

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Feds Won't Sue to Stop Marijuana Use in 2 States

WASHINGTON August 29, 2013 (AP)

By PETE YOST and GENE JOHNSON Associated Press Associated Press

Despite 75 years of federal marijuana prohibition, the Justice Department said Thursday that states can let people use the drug, license people to grow it and even allow adults to stroll into stores and buy it — as long as the weed is kept away from kids, the black market and federal property.

In a sweeping new policy statement prompted by pot legalization votes in Washington and Colorado last fall, the department gave the green light to states to adopt tight regulatory schemes to oversee the medical and recreational marijuana industries burgeoning across the country.

The action, welcomed by supporters of legalization, could set the stage for more states to legalize marijuana. Alaska is scheduled to vote on the question next year, and a few other states plan similar votes in 2016.

The policy change embraces what Justice Department officials called a "trust but verify" approach between the federal government and states that enact recreational drug use.

In a memo to all 94 U.S. attorneys' offices around the country, Deputy Attorney General James Cole said the federal government expects that states and local governments authorizing "marijuana-related conduct" will implement strong and effective regulatory and enforcement systems that address the threat those state laws could pose to public health and safety.

"If state enforcement efforts are not sufficiently robust ... the federal government may seek to challenge the regulatory structure itself," the memo stated. States must ensure "that they do not undermine federal enforcement priorities," it added.

The U.S. attorney in Colorado, John Walsh, said he will continue to focus on whether Colorado's system has the resources and tools necessary to protect key federal public safety interests.

Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper said the state is working to improve education and prevention efforts directed at young people and on enforcement tools to prevent access to marijuana by those under age 21. Colorado also is determined to keep marijuana businesses from being fronts for criminal enterprises or other illegal activity, he said, and the state is committed to preventing the export of marijuana while also enhancing efforts to keep state roads safe from impaired drivers.

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee also laid out guidelines for marijuana entrepreneurs.

"If you don't sell this product to children, if you keep violent crime away from your business, if you pay your taxes and you don't use this as a front for illicit activity, we're going to be able to move forward," Inslee said.

Under the new federal policy, the government's top investigative priorities range from preventing the distribution of marijuana to minors to preventing sales revenue from going to criminal enterprises, gangs and cartels and preventing the diversion of marijuana outside of states where it is legal.

Other top-priority enforcement areas include stopping state-authorized marijuana activity from being used as a cover for trafficking other illegal drugs and preventing violence and the use of firearms in the cultivation and distribution of marijuana. The top areas also include preventing drugged driving, preventing marijuana cultivation and possession on federal property.

The Justice Department memo says it will take a broad view of the federal priorities. For example, in preventing the distribution of marijuana to minors, enforcement could take place when marijuana trafficking takes place near an area associated with minors, or when marijuana is marketed in an appealing manner to minors or diverted to minors.

Following the votes in Colorado and Washington last year, Attorney General Eric Holder launched a review of marijuana enforcement policy that included an examination of the two states. The issue was whether they should be blocked from operating marijuana markets on the grounds that actively regulating an illegal substance conflicts with federal drug law that bans it.

Peter Bensinger, a former head of the Drug Enforcement Administration, said the conflict between federal and state law is clear and can't be reconciled. Federal law is paramount, and Holder is "not only abandoning the law, he's breaking the law. He's not only shirking his duty, he's not living up to his oath of office," Bensinger said.

Last December, President Barack Obama said it doesn't make sense for the federal government to go after recreational drug users in a state that has legalized marijuana. Last week, the White House said that prosecution of drug traffickers remains an important priority.

A Pew Research Center poll in March found that 60 percent of Americans think the federal government shouldn't enforce federal anti-marijuana laws in states where its use has been approved. Younger people, who tend to vote more Democratic, are especially prone to that view. But opponents are worried these moves will lead to more use by young people. Colorado and Washington were states that helped re-elect Obama.

Advocates of medical marijuana were cautious about the new policy. Twenty states and the District of Columbia have enacted laws that effectively allow patients to access and use medical marijuana. Threats of criminal prosecution and asset forfeiture by U.S. attorneys have closed more than 600 dispensaries in California, Colorado and Washington over the past two years, said Americans for Safe Access, which advocates for safe and legal access to therapeutic cannabis.

Dan Riffle of the Marijuana Policy Project, the nation's largest marijuana policy organization, called the policy change "a major and historic step toward ending marijuana prohibition" and "a clear signal that states are free to determine their own policies."

Kevin Sabet, the director of Project Smart Approaches to Marijuana, an anti-legalization group, predicted the new Justice Department policy will accelerate a national discussion about legalization because people will see its harms — including more drugged driving and higher high school dropout rates.

Kristi Kelly, a co-founder of three medical marijuana shops near Denver, said the Justice Department's action is a step in the right direction.

"We've been operating in a gray area for a long time. We're looking for some sort of concrete assurances that this industry is viable," she said.

A national trade group, the National Cannabis Industry Association, said it hopes steps will be taken to allow marijuana establishments access to banking services. Federally insured banks are barred from taking money from marijuana businesses because the drug is still banned by the federal government.

———

Johnson reported from Seattle. Associated Press writers Alicia Caldwell in Washington and Kristen Wyatt in Denver contributed to this report.

Obama to allow recreational marijuana

Obama said he wouldn't use his jackbooted DEA thugs to shake down medical marijuana clinics - but he did any how.

I guess only time will tell on this. But Obama has lied before and can't be trusted.

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Obama administration to allow recreational marijuana laws to stand

By David G. Savage

August 29, 2013, 10:32 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration announced Thursday a limited pullback on federal enforcement of marijuana, saying it will not interfere with new state laws that permit recreational use of marijuana.

The Justice Department said it will not seek to veto new state laws in Colorado and Washington that legalize the recreational use of marijuana, and it will not bring federal prosecutions against dispensaries or businesses that sell small amounts of marijuana to adults.

A department official stressed, however, that marijuana remains illegal under federal law, and that U.S. prosecutors will continue to aggressively enforce the law against those who sell marijuana to minors and to criminal gangs that are involved in drug trafficking.

Atty. Gen. Eric Holder described the Obama administration’s middle-ground approach to marijuana enforcement in a call to the governors of two states.

Holder also sent new guidance to U.S. attorneys telling them to focus their prosecutions on certain federal priorities. They include preventing drug sales to minors and stopping traffickers from moving marijuana across state lines.

Under the new guidance, a marijuana dispensary will not be targeted by federal prosecutors solely because of its size or its volume, an official said.

This change could have an immediate impact in California and the other states where medical marijuana is legal under state law.

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david.savage@latimes.com

Obama is talking America into a war

Emperor Obama is as bad as Emperor Bush???

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Obama is talking America into a war

By George F. Will, Published: August 28 E-mail the writer

Barack Obama’s foreign policy dream — cordial relations with a Middle East tranquilized by “smart diplomacy” — is in a death grapple with reality. His rhetorical writhings illustrate the perils of loquacity. He has a glutton’s, rather than a gourmet’s, appetite for his own rhetorical cuisine, and he has talked America to the precipice of a fourth military intervention in the crescent that extends from Libya to Afghanistan.

Characterizing the 2011 Libyan project with weirdly passive syntax (“It is our military that is being volunteered by others to carry out missions”), he explained his sashay into Libya’s civil war as preemptive: “I refused to wait for the images of slaughter and mass graves before taking action.”

With characteristic self-satisfaction, Obama embraced the doctrine “R2P” — responsibility to protect civilians — and Libya looked like an opportunity for an inexpensive morality gesture using high explosives.

Last August, R2P reappeared when he startled his staff by offhandedly saying of Syria’s poison gas: “A red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized.” The interesting metric “whole bunch” made his principle mostly a loophole and advertised his reluctance to intervene, a reluctance more sensible than his words last week: Syria’s recidivism regarding gas is “going to require America’s attention and hopefully the entire international community’s attention.” Regarding that entirety: If “community” connotes substantial shared values and objectives, what community would encompass Denmark, Congo, Canada, North Korea, Portugal, Cuba, Norway, Iran, Britain, Saudi Arabia, Poland and Yemen?

Words, however, are so marvelously malleable in the Obama administration that the Oxford English Dictionary’s definition of “coup” (“a change in the government carried out violently or illegally”) somehow does not denote what happened in Egypt. Last week, an Obama spokesman said: “We have made the determination that making a decision about whether or not a coup occurred is not in the best interests of the United States.” So convinced is this White House of its own majesty and of the consequent magic of its words, it considers this a clever way of saying the law is a nuisance.

Section 508 of the Foreign Assistance Act forbids aid to “any country whose duly elected head of government is deposed by military coup” until the president determines that “a democratically elected government” has been restored. Secretary of State John Kerry was perhaps preparing to ignore this when he said something Egypt’s generals have not had the effrontery to claim — that the coup amounted to “restoring democracy.”

Perhaps Section 508 unwisely abridges presidential discretion in foreign policy, where presidents arguably deserve the almost unfettered discretion they, with increasing aggressiveness, assert everywhere. And perhaps if Obama were not compiling such a remarkable record of indifference to law, it would be sensible to ignore his ignoring of this one.

But remember Libya. Since the War Powers Resolution was passed over Richard Nixon’s veto in 1973, presidents have at least taken care to act “consistent with” its limits on unilateral presidential war-making. Regarding Libya, however, Obama was unprecedentedly cavalier, even though he had ample time to act consistent with the Constitution by involving a supportive Congress. As Yale Law School’s Bruce Ackerman then argued:

“Obama has overstepped even the dubious precedent set when President Bill Clinton bombed Kosovo in 1999. Then, the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel asserted that Congress had given its consent by appropriating funds for the Kosovo campaign. It was a big stretch, given the actual facts — but Obama can’t even take advantage of this same desperate expedient, since Congress has appropriated no funds for the Libyan war. The president is simply using money appropriated to the Pentagon for general purposes to conduct the current air campaign.”

Obama is as dismissive of “red lines” he draws as he is of laws others enact. Last week, a State Department spokeswoman said his red line regarding chemical weapons was first crossed “a couple of months ago” and “the president took action” — presumably, announcing (non-lethal) aid to Syrian rebels — although “we’re not going to outline the inventory of what we did.”

The administration now would do well to do something that the head of it has an irresistible urge not to do: Stop talking.

If a fourth military intervention is coming, it will not be to decisively alter events, which we cannot do, in a nation vital to U.S. interests, which Syria is not. Rather, its purpose will be to rescue Obama from his words.

Read more from George F. Will’s archive or follow him on Facebook.

Why Syria's chemical weapons stockpile is safe from airstrikes

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Why Syria's chemical weapons stockpile is safe from airstrikes

By Carol J. Williams

August 29, 2013, 5:00 a.m.

Syrian President Bashar Assad wields command over the world's biggest stockpile of chemical weapons, international security experts say, and he is expected to emerge from any punitive Western airstrikes with his arsenal intact.

With an estimated 50 storage sites, many situated in or near urban centers, any attempt to destroy or degrade the Assad government's supply of poison gases and nerve agents would require a massive invasion of ground forces that no nation considered part of the emerging "coalition of the willing" would be likely to support.

Even if U.S. and allied intelligence have precisely located some of the stores of sarin, mustard or VX gas, analysts say, the likelihood of a successful airstrike is slim because of Assad's powerful air defenses and the risk of bombed chemical stores unleashing their deadly gases.

As the United States and other nations weigh the appropriate response to Assad's suspected use of chemical weapons in an attack last week that killed hundreds of Syrian civilians, Western military strategists have reportedly concluded there is no way to target the weapons of mass destruction with airstrikes. With no appetite in the United States or Europe for the scale of mission necessary to locate, capture and neutralize the Damascus government's chemical weapons, the punitive strikes are expected to be more symbolic than effective in preventing future use of WMD.

"If we were to go after the storage sites, our intel on this stuff, if our track record is any judge, is not perfect, to say the least," said Steven Bucci, a former Army Green Beret officer and senior Pentagon official now directing foreign policy studies at the Heritage Foundation. He alluded to the faulty reconnaissance on Saddam Hussein's purported caches of weapons of mass destruction that prompted the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

A more logical target for airstrikes would be chemical agent production facilities, where bombs or missiles would have a better chance of destroying the substances before they are weaponized, Bucci said.

"That said, what the heck does that do for you, considering that they have a bazillion tons of this stuff already?" he said, branding Syria "the superpower of chemical weapons."

Steven Weber, a UC Berkeley political science professor with expertise in international security and defense issues, describes the objective of taking out Syria's WMD as too daunting and dangerous.

"There is always a risk of unintended dispersal of chemical agents in a missile strike. To do that reasonably safely, you would have to know exactly what is stored at the site, where the people are in the area, what the winds are like. Otherwise you run the risk of creating toxic plumes that would kill people," Weber said. "And you probably can't get to all of them, so it may not make sense to bother taking out only some of them unless you can ensure that any collateral damage is really low."

With so many variables and unknowns, the odds of eliminating Assad's chemical weapons capability are minimal, says Raymond Zilinskas, director of chemical and biological weapons programs at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey.

Factoring the probability of detecting real weapons sites from decoys, acquiring the correct target, successfully launching the munitions and destroying the right contents probably drops the chances for a mission accomplished below 10%, the biotechnology expert estimates.

Charles P. Blair of the Federation of American Scientists this week posted to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists a multimedia report on Syria's chemical weapons, their origins and incidents of suspected use. The Johns Hopkins University and George Mason University biodefense scholar also pointed out that Syria is one of only seven countries that hasn't signed the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention that outlaws production, possession and use of the weapons.

Making a preemptive strike on Assad's chemical arsenal, which Damascus has built up over 40 years, probably would backfire strategically "in this kind of highly propagandized, politicized war," warned Thomas H. Henriksen, a senior fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution who studies insurgencies, rogue states and defense affairs. Any civilians killed by the inadvertent release of poison gas from the bombings would be displayed by the Syrian government as evidence of the perfidy of the United States and its allies, he said.

And striking aggressively to eliminate weapons to prevent their future use is a gamble that won't pay off if civilian casualties are inflicted, said Henriksen, a veteran author on U.S. foreign policy who also teaches at the U.S. Joint Special Operations University.

"Even if you think in the long term that it is a good thing to eliminate these weapons, if it blows up and lots of innocent people are killed, no one is going to think about what might have happened later," he said. "All anyone will care about is what has happened in the current time."

North Korea's Kim Jong Un executes ex-girlfriend???

Maybe Kim Jong Un is a mass murderer, but he is a rank amateur compared to American Emperors Bush and Obama who have murdered thousands and possibly millions in Iraq and Afghanistan.

When it comes to murders that target specific individuals Kim Jong Un is a again a rank amateur compared the hundreds of people Obama has murdered with drones.

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North Korea's Kim reportedly has ex-girlfriend, 11 others executed

By Carol J. Williams

August 29, 2013, 3:09 p.m.

A North Korean firing squad last week executed a former girlfriend of leader Kim Jong Un and 11 other entertainers for allegedly violating laws banning pornography, a South Korean newspaper reported Thursday.

The report by Chosun Ilbo, an English-language newspaper of a Seoul media conglomerate, deemed the reported Aug. 20 executions a death blow to expectations that Kim would oversee a transition of his isolated and tyrannized people into a more open era.

Among the dozen performers shot to death while their families and former band members were forced to watch was Hyon Song Wol, a singer Kim reportedly courted a decade ago but was forced to abandon by his dictatorial father, Kim Jong Il.

Hyon was pictured by North Korean state television performing at a concert Aug. 8 in Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, less than two weeks before her execution, Chosun Ilbo reported, posting a picture of the singer juxtaposed against one of Kim applauding at the concert.

The 12 members of the Unhasu Orchestra and the Wangjaesan Light Music Band were accused of violating anti-pornography laws by videotaping themselves having sex and selling copies of the tape to North Korean fans and in China.

The South Korean newspaper, which attributed reports of the executions to sources in China, said one also claimed that some of those arrested in the Aug. 17 crackdown were found to have Bibles in their possession. Like most communist countries, North Korea denounces religion as an undesirable foreign influence.

Hyon married a North Korean military officer after Kim's father forced their breakup, but reportedly continued to see the Pyongyang heir apparent even after her marriage, Chosun Ilbo said.

Kim, 30, is believed to have married Hyon's fellow band member, Ri Sol Ju, in the last year or so. Ri began showing up with Kim at cultural events in the capital a little more than a year ago, including at a female band concert in July 2012 that featured Western music, mini-skirted violinists and a parade of knock-off Disney characters. The gala raised speculation that Kim would relax longstanding constraints on artistic expression and social behavior imposed by his father and grandfather since North Korea's emergence as a separate state after World War II.

The performance that dispensed with the usual dour dress and state-mandated repertoire gave rise to "hopes that the young leader is more open to ideas from overseas, but that was apparently misreading," Chosun Ilbo concluded.

"Kim Jong Un has been viciously eliminating anyone who he deems a challenge to his authority," the newspaper said, quoting an unnamed source. The executions "show that he is fixated on consolidating his leadership."

Kim and his military and political hierarchies provoked new strain in relations with South Korea and the West this year by conducting a prohibited nuclear bomb test and proclaiming as invalid the 1953 armistice that halted fighting in the Korean War. The two sides never signed a peace treaty to formally end the conflict.

Is Obama lying about his "new" marijuana position???

Obama lied before when he said he wouldn't shake down people for medical marijuana, but he continue to send his DEA thugs to shake down medical marijuana users in California.

Source

Marijuana advocates cheer Obama administration stand

By Ari Bloomekatz

August 29, 2013, 1:30 p.m.

Marijuana advocates in California and elsewhere cheered the Obama administration's announcement Thursday that it would not interfere with new laws in Colorado and Washington state permitting recreational use of cannabis.

But the advocates cautioned there is still a ways to go before legalization.

Dale Gieringer, a leading marijuana advocate in California, said he is encouraged by the new U.S. Justice Department memo, but he notes he has been encouraged by past memos only to see federal enforcement increase. [Obama lied before about not shaking down medical marijuana users and sellers]

“There are some weasel words in this,” he said. "They’re not going to make a priority to do something, but that doesn’t mean they won’t do it.” [Obama has given us the same lie before about medical marijuana]

The memo written by Deputy Atty. Gen. James M. Cole is a sharp turn from the last memo he wrote in 2011, in which he emphasized that commercial marijuana operations were not protected by their states’ laws.

The document released Thursday said prosecutors “should not consider the size or commercial nature of a marijuana operation alone” as a factor for enforcement. [translation - we won't shake down recreational users of marijuana - but we might if we feel like it]

“I hope the attorney general follows through with the spirit of their memo, but we’ll have to see,” Gieringer said.

But at least in writing, the Justice Department has now decided against seeking to block new state laws in Colorado and Washington that legalize the recreational use of marijuana.

They also said they will not bring federal prosecutions against dispensaries or businesses that sell small amounts of marijuana to adults. [Yea, we have heard that before - In Orange County, California they are trying to use RICA laws to seize an office building because one office was rented to a medical marijuana business]

A department official stressed, however, that marijuana remains illegal under federal law, and that U.S. prosecutors will continue to aggressively enforce the law against those who sell marijuana to minors or to criminal gangs that are involved in drug trafficking. [It's all how you define criminal gangs and drug trafficking - remember when Clinton said a BJ wasn't really sex - Emperor Obama will set the definition of criminal gangs and drug trafficking, and he could set it to include medical marijuana users or sellers]

Atty. Gen. Eric Holder described the Obama administration’s middle-ground approach to marijuana enforcement in a call to the governors of the two states.

Under the new guidance, a marijuana dispensary will not be targeted by federal prosecutors based on its size or its volume alone, an official said. [but it may be targeted for other reasons ]

This change could have an immediate effect in states where medical marijuana is legal under state law.

Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, said Thursday's announcement will reverberate not only in Washington and Colorado, but also in California and New York, and in other countries as well.

In a phone interview from Jamaica, Nadelmann said that country is moving to legalize marijuana and that some officials had been expecting opposition from the U.S. But Nadelmann said he told them there was now a lot less to fear.

"With today's announcement, it reinforces what I was saying in a huge way," Nadelmann said. "I was expecting a yellow light, but this light looks a lot more greenish than I had expected."

"The White House is essentially saying proceed with caution," he said. [proceed with caution because Obama may change his mind, if he hasn't lied about his current position]

Nadelmann said the announcement is "significant for the growing number of the other states where the majority of the electorate favor legalizing marijuana and it has international implications" for countries like Jamaica and Uruguay.

As for California, Nadelmann said "there's more or less a consensus among key allies to try and put this on the ballot in 2016."

Missouri poised to enact measure nullifying federal gun laws

Gun Bill in Missouri Would Test Limits in Nullifying U.S. Law

By JOHN SCHWARTZ

Published: August 28, 2013 738 Comments

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — Unless a handful of wavering Democrats change their minds, the Republican-controlled Missouri legislature is expected to enact a statute next month nullifying all federal gun laws in the state and making it a crime for federal agents to enforce them here. A Missourian arrested under federal firearm statutes would even be able to sue the arresting officer.

Lawmakers are considering whether to override a veto of a gun bill by Gov. Jay Nixon of Missouri, who considered the bill unconstitutional.

The law amounts to the most far-reaching states’ rights endeavor in the country, the far edge of a growing movement known as “nullification” in which a state defies federal power.

The Missouri Republican Party thinks linking guns to nullification works well, said Matt Wills, the party’s director of communications, thanks in part to the push by President Obama for tougher gun laws. “It’s probably one of the best states’ rights issues that the country’s got going right now,” he said.

The measure was vetoed last month by Gov. Jay Nixon, a Democrat, as unconstitutional. But when the legislature gathers again on Sept. 11, it will seek to override his veto, even though most experts say the courts will strike down the measure. Nearly every Republican and a dozen Democrats appear likely to vote for the override.

Richard G. Callahan, the United States attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri, is concerned. He cited a recent joint operation of federal, state and local law enforcement officials that led to 159 arrests and the seizing of 267 weapons, and noted that the measure “would have outlawed such operations, and would have made criminals out of the law enforcement officers.”

In a letter explaining his veto, Mr. Nixon said the federal government’s supremacy over the states’ “is as logically sound as it is legally well established.” He said that another provision of the measure, which makes it a crime to publish the name of any gun owner, violates the First Amendment and could make a crime out of local newspapers’ traditional publication of “photos of proud young Missourians who harvest their first turkey or deer.”

But the votes for the measure were overwhelming. In the House, all but one of the 109 Republicans voted for the bill, joined by 11 Democrats. In the Senate, all 24 Republicans supported it, along with 2 Democrats. Overriding the governor’s veto would require 23 votes in the Senate and 109 in the House, where at least one Democrat would have to come on board.

The National Rifle Association, which has praised Mr. Nixon in the past for signing pro-gun legislation, has been silent about the new bill. Repeated calls to the organization were not returned.

Historically used by civil rights opponents, nullification has bloomed in recent years around a host of other issues, broadly including medical marijuana by liberals and the new health care law by conservatives.

State Representative T. J. McKenna, a Democrat from Festus, voted for the bill despite saying it was unconstitutional and raised a firestorm of protest against himself. “If you just Google my name, it’s all over the place about what a big coward I am,” he said with consternation, and “how big of a ‘craven’ I was. I had to look that up.”

The voters in his largely rural district have voiced overwhelming support for the bill, he said. “I can’t be Mr. Liberal, St. Louis wannabe,” he said. “What am I supposed to do? Just go against all my constituents?”

As for the veto override vote, he said, “I don’t know how I’m going to vote yet.”

State Representative Doug Funderburk, a Republican from St. Peters and the author of the bill, said he expected to have more than enough votes when the veto override came up for consideration.

Adam Winkler, a professor of law at the University of California, Los Angeles, who follows nullification efforts nationally, said that nearly two dozen states had passed medical marijuana laws in defiance of federal restrictions. Richard Cauchi, who tracks such health legislation for the National Conference of State Legislatures, said: “Since January 2011, at least 23 states have considered bills seeking to nullify the health care law; as of mid-2013 only one state, North Dakota, had a signed law. Its language states, however, that the nullification provisions ‘likely are not authorized by the United States Constitution.’ ”

What distinguishes the Missouri gun measure from the marijuana initiatives is its attempt to actually block federal enforcement by setting criminal penalties for federal agents, and prohibiting state officials from cooperating with federal efforts. That crosses the constitutional line, said Robert A. Levy, chairman of the libertarian Cato Institute’s board of directors — a state cannot frustrate the federal government’s attempts to enforce its laws.

Mr. Levy, whose organization has taken a leading role in fighting for gun rights, said, “With the exception of a few really radical self-proclaimed constitutional authorities, state nullification of federal law is not on the radar scope.”

Still, other states have passed gun laws that challenge federal power; a recent wave began with a Firearms Freedom Act in Montana that exempts from federal regulations guns manufactured there that have not left the state.

Gary Marbut, a gun rights advocate in Montana who wrote the Firearms Freedom Act, said that such laws were “a vehicle to challenge commerce clause power,” the constitutional provision that has historically granted broad authority to Washington to regulate activities that have an impact on interstate commerce. His measure has served as a model that is spreading to other states. Recently, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit struck down Montana’s law, calling it “pre-empted and invalid.”

A law passed this year in Kansas has also been compared to the Missouri law. But Kris W. Kobach, the Kansas secretary of state, disagreed, saying it had been drafted “very carefully to ensure that there would be no situation where a state official would be trying to arrest a federal official.”

In Missouri, State Representative Jacob Hummel, a St. Louis Democrat and the minority floor leader, said that he was working to get Democrats who voted for the bill to vote against overriding the veto. “I think some cooler heads will prevail in the end,” he said, “but we will see.”

Taking up legislative time to vote for unconstitutional bills that are destined to end up failing in the courts is “a waste of taxpayers’ money,” Mr. Hummel said, adding that more and more, the legislature passes largely symbolic resolutions directed at Congress.

“We’re elected to serve the citizens of the state of Missouri, at the state level,” he said. “We were not elected to tell the federal government what to do — that’s why we have Congressional elections.”

The lone Republican opponent of the bill in the House, State Representative Jay Barnes, said, “Our Constitution is not some cheap Chinese buffet where we get to pick the parts we like and ignore the rest.” He added, “Two centuries of constitutional jurisprudence shows that this bill is plainly unconstitutional, and I’m not going to violate my oath of office.”

Mr. Funderburk, the bill’s author, clearly disagrees. And, he said, Missouri is only the beginning. “I’ve got five different states that want a copy” of the bill, he said.

Source

Missouri poised to enact measure nullifying federal gun laws

Published August 29, 2013

FoxNews.com

The Republican-led Missouri Legislature is expected to override Gov. Jay Nixon’s veto of a bill that would expand gun rights and make federal gun regulations unenforceable -- even as similar laws adopted in other states to buck federal gun rules face legal challenges.

Several of Nixon’s fellow Democrats told The Associated Press that they would vote to override his veto when lawmakers convene in September, even while agreeing with the governor that the bill couldn’t survive a court challenge. Many of them noted that in some parts of Missouri, a “no” vote on gun legislation could be career ending.

The legislation would make it a misdemeanor for federal agents to attempt to enforce any federal gun regulations that “infringe on the people’s right to keep and bear arms.” The same criminal charges would apply to journalists who publish any identifying information about gun owners. The charge would be punishable by up to a year in jail and a $1,000 fine.

Nixon said the bill infringes on the U.S. Constitution by giving precedence to state law over federal laws and by limiting the First Amendment rights of media.

The legislation is one of the boldest measures yet in a recent national trend in which states are attempting to nullify federal laws. A recent Associated Press analysis found that about four-fifths of the states have enacted local laws that directly reject or ignore federal laws on gun control, marijuana use, health insurance requirements and identification standards for driver’s licenses. Relatively few of those go so far as to threaten criminal charges against federal authorities.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last week ruled against a series of laws enacted in Montana that attempt to declare that federal firearms regulations don't apply to guns made and kept in that state. Similar laws have been adopted in other states.

In the Montana case, the Justice Department successfully argued that the courts have already decided Congress can use its power to regulate interstate commerce to set standards on such items as guns.

The ruling has the potential to affect similar laws in several other states and leaves open the possibility of an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The state of Montana has intervened in support of its law. The case also attracted the support of Utah, Alaska, Idaho, Michigan, Nebraska, South Carolina, South Dakota, West Virginia, and Wyoming.

In Missouri, gun rights legislation typically has received bipartisan support. In 2003, the Republican-led Legislature overrode Democratic Gov. Bob Holden’s veto of legislation legalizing concealed guns with the help of more than two dozen Democrats. That same year, Democrats helped Republicans to override another Holden veto of a bill limiting lawsuits against gun manufacturers.

“We love our guns and we love hunting. It’s not worth the fight for me to vote against it,” said Rep. T.J. McKenna, D-Festus. But, he added, “the bill is completely unconstitutional, so the courts are going to have to throw it out.”

McKenna was among 11 House Democrats who joined Republicans to pass the Missouri gun legislation in May, by a 116-38 vote. The bill cleared the Senate 26-6, with two Democrats supporting it. A veto override needs a two-thirds majority in both chambers, or 109 votes in the House and 23 in the Senate.

Republicans hold 24 Senate seats. Although Republicans currently hold 109 House seats, they’re down at least one of their own. Rep. Jay Barnes was the only Republican to vote against the original bill and said he opposes a veto override.

“Our Constitution is not a Chinese buffet, which we like and do not like,” the Jefferson City attorney told the AP. “The First Amendment is part of the Constitution that we must uphold. … (And) the supremacy clause means that states cannot criminalize the activities of agents of the federal government.”

If the rest of the Republicans stick together, and none are absent, that means they will need at least one Democratic vote to override the veto.

But so far, at least three House Democrats McKenna, Keith English of Florissant and Ben Harris of Hillsboro said they would support a veto override, and Democratic Rep. Jeff Roorda of Barnhart said he was leaning toward it.

“Being a rural-area Democrat, if you don’t vote for any gun bill, it will kill you,” Harris said. “That’s what the Republicans want you to do is vote against it, because if you vote against it, they’ll send one mailer every week just blasting you about guns, and you’ll lose” re-election.

Four other Democrats who voted for the bill told the AP they were now undecided. At least one of the original Democratic “yes” votes Rep. Steve Hodges, of East Prairie said he would switch to a “no.”

This year’s vetoed gun bill is entitled the “Second Amendment Preservation Act” a label that some Democrats said makes it politically risky to oppose.

Democratic Rep. Ed Schieffer, who proclaims himself “100 percent pro-gun,” said he voted for the bill in May with an eye toward a potential 2014 state Senate campaign against Republican Rep. Jeanie Riddle, of Mokane, who also supported the bill. Schieffer, of Troy, said he is undecided whether to support a veto override.

“I personally believe that any higher court will probably rule this particular gun law unconstitutional on that, I probably agree that the governor’s right,” Schieffer said. “But I may end up still voting for the gun bill, because I don’t want to be on record for not supporting guns.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Source

Missouri to nullify federal firearm laws while Obama offers new gun control measures

Published time: August 29, 2013 21:49

As the White House rolls out new plans meant to curb violent gun crime in America, residents in the state of Missouri may soon be able to bypass federal firearm laws.

United States Vice President Joe Biden announced additional steps on Thursday that the Obama administration will move forward with as part of a gun-control initiative ramped-up following last year’s mass shooting at a Newtown, Connecticut elementary school. At the same time, however, the Republican-controlled state legislature in Missouri is on the verge of defying both the governor and the US Constitution by pushing forward a bill that will prohibit local authorities from enacting federal gun laws.

Gov. Jay Nixon, a Democrat, vetoed Republican-authored legislation last month that would make it a misdemeanor for the feds to attempt to enforce any federal gun regulations that “infringe on the people’s right to keep and bear arms.” Despite shutting down the bill, however, lawmakers are expected to override his veto in the coming days and let the measure go on the books.

If passed, the law will also force journalists who publish identifying information about gun owners to pay a $1,000 fine and spend a year in jail. Gov. Nixon said it could start a precedent that would erode some First Amendment rights for the media if his veto is rejected.

In a letter to the New York Times, Nixon said the bill would make it a crime for a local newspaper to publish “photos of proud young Missourians who harvest their first turkey or deer.” According to some estimates, however, local lawmakers will likely make it impossible for the law to be vetoed anytime soon.

When the bill was originally passed in the State House, 108 of the 109 Republicans voted in favor of it, as did 11 Democrats. In the Senate, the Times reported, two-dozen Republicans and 2 Democrats signed on in support. In order for the veto to be rejected, the legislature will need 109 votes from the House and 23 from the Senate.

State Representative T. J. McKenna (D-Festus) told the Times he voted for the bill even though he doesn’t favor it because the repercussions could have been dastardly.

“If you just Google my name, it’s all over the place about what a big coward I am,” he told the paper. “I can’t be Mr. Liberal, St. Louis wannabe,” he said. “What am I supposed to do? Just go against all my constituents?”

Speaking to Fox News, McKenna added that the bill would violate constitutional law and will likely be thrown out, even if the veto override receives enough votes.

Meanwhile, President Barack Obama is hoping he can advance reformed gun rules on a federal level that, if the Missouri legislature has its way, will be null and void in The Show-Me State—until, of course, a court intervenes and opines otherwise.

Months after the White House announced plans to reform laws in the wake of the Newtown shooting, Biden on Thursday said the administration is looking to tackle firearm crime by launching two new front lines in their war against guns. The vice president proposed a White House plan to stop letting military weapons be re-sold to people in the US or allied countries, as well as another that would close down a loophole that currently lets Americans who are ineligible to own a firearm bypass restrictions by registering weapons in the name of a corporation or trust.

"It's simple, it's straightforward, it's common sense," Biden said.

Obama unveils modest new restrictions on some guns

Source

Obama unveils modest new restrictions on some guns

By Josh Lederman Associated Press Thu Aug 29, 2013 10:41 PM

WASHINGTON — Months after gun control efforts crumbled in Congress, Vice President Joe Biden stood shoulder-to-shoulder Thursday with the attorney general and the top U.S. firearms official and declared the Obama administration would take two new steps to curb American gun violence.

But the narrow, modest scope of those steps served as pointed reminders that without congressional backing, President Barack Obama’s capacity to make a difference is severely inhibited.

Still, Biden renewed a pledge from him and the president to seek legislative fixes to keep guns from those who shouldn’t have them — a pledge with grim prospects for fulfillment amid the current climate on Capitol Hill.

“If Congress won’t act, we’ll fight for a new Congress,” Biden said in the Roosevelt Room of the White House. “It’s that simple. But we’re going to get this done.”

One new policy will bar military-grade weapons that the U.S. sells or donates to allies from being imported back into the U.S. by private entities. In the last eight years, the U.S. has approved 250,000 of those guns to come back to the U.S., the White House said, arguing that some end up on the streets. From now on, only museums and a few other entities like the government will be eligible to reimport military-grade firearms.

The ban will largely affect antiquated, World War II-era weapons that, while still deadly, rarely turn up at crime scenes, leaving some to question whether the new policy is much ado about nothing.

“Banning these rifles because of their use in quote-unquote crimes is like banning Model Ts because so many of them are being used as getaway cars in bank robberies,” said Ed Woods, a 47-year-old from the Chico area of Northern California.

Woods said he collects such guns because of their unique place in American history. He now wonders whether he’ll be prohibited from purchasing the type of M1 Garand rifle his father used during World War II. The U.S. later sold thousands of the vintage rifles to South Korea.

“Someday my kids will have something that possibly their grandfather, who they never had a chance to meet, is connected to,” Woods said in an interview.

Charles Heller, who lobbies for gun rights in Arizona on behalf of the Arizona Citizens Defense League, called the new regulation “another tempest in a teapot.”

“These (guns) are relics,” Heller said. “They are used in service-rifle competitions and kept in collections. They are bought by the exact people who aren’t going to do something wrong.”

The Obama administration is also proposing to close a loophole that it says allows felons and other ineligible gun purchasers to skirt the law by registering certain guns to a corporation or trust. The new rule would require people associated with those entities, like beneficiaries and trustees, to undergo the same type of fingerprint-based background checks before the corporation can register those guns.

Using the rule-making powers at his disposal, Obama can place that restriction only on guns regulated under the National Firearm Act, a 1934 law that only deals with the deadliest weapons, like machine guns and short-barreled shotguns. For the majority of weapons, there is no federal gun registration.

“It’s simple, it’s straightforward, it’s common sense,” Biden said of the measures he unveiled Thursday as he swore in Obama’s new director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, Todd Jones.

But Heller said gun buyers typically don’t set up trusts or corporations to avoid background checks. He said they are established to allow multiple people, often family members, to use or inherit a weapon legally.

ATF already conducts thorough checks on anyone purchasing that class of weapon, he said.

“This means absolutely nothing,” he said. “It’s a red herring meant to make people think they are doing something.”

The quick reproach from gun-control opponents, however, underscored that the same forces that thwarted gun control efforts in Congress have far from mellowed on the notion of stricter gun laws in the future.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., accused the president of governing only by executive action while failing to sufficiently enforce gun laws already on the books. And the National Rifle Association called on Obama to stop focusing his efforts on inhibiting the rights of law-abiding gun owners.

“The Obama administration has once again completely missed the mark when it comes to stopping violent crime,” said NRA spokesman Andrew Arulanandam.

But proponents of gun control called them important steps to keep military-grade weapons out of American communities and plug a deadly hole in the background check system.

“It’s time for Congress to stop dragging its feet and pass common-sense reforms that keep criminals and the dangerously mentally ill from illegally buying guns,” said New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Boston Mayor Thomas Menino in a joint statement.

There are few signs the calculus in Congress has changed dramatically since April, when a package of measures including expanded background checks and an assault weapons ban flopped in the Senate despite intense advocacy by families of the 20 children and six adults gunned down in December in Newtown, Conn.

Republic reporter Alia Beard Rau contributed to this article.

Military has deep doubts about wisdom of striking Syria

U.S. military officers have deep doubts about impact, wisdom of a U.S. strike on Syria

Hey it's not about protecting American from bad guys, it's about Emperor Obama proving he is a real Emperor. Just like Emperor Bush!!!!

Remember wanna be Emperor John McCain singing "Bomb, bomb Iran" to the tune of the Beach Boy's song "Barbara Ann". In addition to being a clone of Emperor Bush, President Obama is also a clone of John McCain

Source

U.S. military officers have deep doubts about impact, wisdom of a U.S. strike on Syria

By Ernesto Londoño, Published: August 29

The Obama administration’s plan to launch a military strike against Syria is being received with serious reservations by many in the U.S. military, which is coping with the scars of two lengthy wars and a rapidly contracting budget, according to current and former officers.

Having assumed for months that the United States was unlikely to intervene militarily in Syria, the Defense Department has been thrust onto a war footing that has made many in the armed services uneasy, according to interviews with more than a dozen military officers ranging from captains to a four-star general.

Former and current officers, many with the painful lessons of Iraq and Afghanistan on their minds, said the main reservations concern the potential unintended consequences of launching cruise missiles against Syria.

Some questioned the use of military force as a punitive measure and suggested that the White House lacks a coherent strategy. If the administration is ambivalent about the wisdom of defeating or crippling the Syrian leader, possibly setting the stage for Damascus to fall to fundamentalist rebels, they said, the military objective of strikes on Assad’s military targets is at best ambiguous.

“There’s a broad naivete in the political class about America’s obligations in foreign policy issues, and scary simplicity about the effects that employing American military power can achieve,” said retired Lt. Gen. Gregory S. Newbold, who served as director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the run-up to the Iraq war, noting that many of his contemporaries are alarmed by the plan.

New cycle of attacks?

Marine Lt. Col. Gordon Miller, a fellow at the Center for a New American Security, warned this week of “potentially devastating consequences, including a fresh round of chemical weapons attacks and a military response by Israel.”

“If President [Bashar al-Assad] were to absorb the strikes and use chemical weapons again, this would be a significant blow to the United States’ credibility and it would be compelled to escalate the assault on Syria to achieve the original objectives,” Miller wrote in a commentary for the think tank.

A National Security Council spokeswoman said Thursday she would not discuss “internal deliberations.” White House officials reiterated Thursday that the administration is not contemplating a protracted military engagement.

Still, many in the military are skeptical. Getting drawn into the Syrian war, they fear, could distract the Pentagon in the midst of a vexing mission: its exit from Afghanistan, where U.S. troops are still being killed regularly. A young Army officer who is wrapping up a year-long tour there said soldiers were surprised to learn about the looming strike, calling the prospect “very dangerous.”

“I can’t believe the president is even considering it,” said the officer, who like most officers interviewed for this story agreed to speak only on the condition of anonymity because military personnel are reluctant to criticize policymakers while military campaigns are being planned. “We have been fighting the last 10 years a counterinsurgency war. Syria has modern weaponry. We would have to retrain for a conventional war.”

Dempsey’s warning

Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has warned in great detail about the risks and pitfalls of U.S. military intervention in Syria.

“As we weigh our options, we should be able to conclude with some confidence that use of force will move us toward the intended outcome,” Dempsey wrote last month in a letter to the Senate Armed Services Committee. “Once we take action, we should be prepared for what comes next. Deeper involvement is hard to avoid.”

Dempsey has not spoken publicly about the administration’s planned strike on Syria, and it is unclear to what extent his position shifted after last week’s alleged chemical weapons attack. Dempsey said this month in an interview with ABC News that the lessons of Iraq weigh heavily on his calculations regarding Syria.

“It has branded in me the idea that the use of military power must be part of an overall strategic solution that includes international partners and a whole of government,” he said in the Aug. 4 interview. “The application of force rarely produces and, in fact, maybe never produces the outcome we seek.”

The recently retired head of the U.S. Central Command, Gen. James Mattis, said last month at a security conference that the United States has “no moral obligation to do the impossible” in Syria. “If Americans take ownership of this, this is going to be a full-throated, very, very serious war,” said Mattis, who as Centcom chief oversaw planning for a range of U.S. military responses in Syria.

The potential consequences of a U.S. strike include a retaliatory attack by the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah — which supports Assad — on Israel, as well as cyberattacks on U.S. targets and infrastructure, U.S. military officials said.

“What is the political end state we’re trying to achieve?” said a retired senior officer involved in Middle East operational planning who said his concerns are widely shared by active-duty military leaders. “I don’t know what it is. We say it’s not regime change. If it’s punishment, there are other ways to punish.” The former senior officer said that those who are expressing alarm at the risks inherent in the plan “are not being heard other than in a pro-forma manner.”

President Obama said in a PBS interview on Wednesday that he is not contemplating a lengthy engagement, but instead “limited, tailored approaches.”

A retired Central Command officer said the administration’s plan would “gravely disappoint our allies and accomplish little other than to be seen as doing something.”

“It will be seen as a half measure by our allies in the Middle East,” the officer said. “Iran and Syria will portray it as proof that the U.S. is unwilling to defend its interests in the region.”

Still, some within the military, while apprehensive, support striking Syria. W. Andrew Terrill, a Middle East expert at the U.S. Army War College, said the limited history of the use of chemical weapons in the region suggests that a muted response from the West can be dangerous.

“There is a feeling as you look back that if you don’t stand up to chemical weapons, they’re going to take it as a green light and use them on a recurring basis,” he said.

An Army lieutenant colonel said the White House has only bad options but should resist the urge to abort the plan now.

“When a president draws a red line, for better or worse, it’s policy,” he said, referring to Obama’s declaration last year about Syria’s potential use of chemical weapons. “It cannot appear to be scared or tepid. Remember, with respect to policy choices concerning Syria, we are discussing degrees of bad and worse.”

NSA paying U.S. companies for access to communications networks

NSA didn't hack into your personal ATT phone account, ATT voluntarily gave NSA all the data they have on you!!! Well after NSA gave them some cold hard cash!!!

Source

NSA paying U.S. companies for access to communications networks

By Craig Timberg and Barton Gellman, Published: August 29

The National Security Agency is paying hundreds of millions of dollars a year to U.S. companies for clandestine access to their communications networks, filtering vast traffic flows for foreign targets in a process that also sweeps in large volumes of American telephone calls, e-mails and instant messages.

The bulk of the spending, detailed in a multi-volume intelligence budget obtained by The Washington Post, goes to participants in a Corporate Partner Access Project for major U.S. telecommunications providers. The documents open an important window into surveillance operations on U.S. territory that have been the subject of debate since they were revealed by The Post and Britain’s Guardian newspaper in June.

New details of the corporate-partner project, which falls under the NSA’s Special Source Operations, confirm that the agency taps into “high volume circuit and packet-switched networks,” according to the spending blueprint for fiscal 2013. The program was expected to cost $278 million in the current fiscal year, down nearly one-third from its peak of $394 million in 2011.

Voluntary cooperation from the “backbone” providers of global communications dates to the 1970s under the cover name BLARNEY, according to documents provided by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. These relationships long predate the PRISM program disclosed in June, under which American technology companies hand over customer data after receiving orders from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

In briefing slides, the NSA described BLARNEY and three other corporate projects — OAKSTAR, FAIRVIEW and STORMBREW — under the heading of “passive” or “upstream” collection. They capture data as they move across fiber-optic cables and the gateways that direct global communications traffic.

The documents offer a rare view of a secret surveillance economy in which government officials set financial terms for programs capable of peering into the lives of almost anyone who uses a phone, computer or other device connected to the Internet.

Although the companies are required to comply with lawful surveillance orders, privacy advocates say the multimillion-dollar payments could create a profit motive to offer more than the required assistance.

“It turns surveillance into a revenue stream, and that’s not the way it’s supposed to work,” said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a Washington-based research and advocacy group. “The fact that the government is paying money to telephone companies to turn over information that they are compelled to turn over is very troubling.”

Verizon, AT&T and other major telecommunications companies declined to comment for this article, although several industry officials noted that government surveillance laws explicitly call for companies to receive reasonable reimbursement for their costs.

Previous news reports have made clear that companies frequently seek such payments, but never before has their overall scale been disclosed.

The budget documents do not list individual companies, although they do break down spending among several NSA programs, listed by their code names.

There is no record in the documents obtained by The Post of money set aside to pay technology companies that provide information to the NSA’s PRISM program. That program is the source of 91 percent of the 250 million Internet communications collected through Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act, which authorizes PRISM and the upstream programs, according to an 2011 opinion and order by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

Several of the companies that provide information to PRISM, including Apple, Facebook and Google, say they take no payments from the government when they comply with national security requests. Others say they do take payments in some circumstances. The Guardian reported last week that the NSA had covered “millions of dollars” in costs that some technology companies incurred to comply with government demands for information.

Telecommunications companies generally do charge to comply with surveillance requests, which come from state, local and federal law enforcement officials as well as intelligence agencies.

Former telecommunications executive Paul Kouroupas, a security officer who worked at Global Crossing for 12 years, said that some companies welcome the revenue and enter into contracts in which the government makes higher payments than otherwise available to firms receiving re­imbursement for complying with surveillance orders.

These contractual payments, he said, could cover the cost of buying and installing new equipment, along with a reasonable profit. These voluntary agreements simplify the government’s access to surveillance, he said.

“It certainly lubricates the [surveillance] infrastructure,” Kouroupas said. He declined to say whether Global Crossing, which operated a fiber-optic network spanning several continents and was bought by Level 3 Communications in 2011, had such a contract. A spokesman for Level 3 Communications declined to comment.

In response to questions in 2012 from then-Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), who was elected to the Senate in June, several telecommunications companies detailed their prices for surveillance services to law enforcement agencies under individual warrants and subpoenas. AT&T, for example, reported that it charges $325 to activate surveillance of an account and also a daily rate of $5 or $10, depending on the information gathered. For providing the numbers that have accessed cell towers, meanwhile, AT&T charged $75 per tower, the company said in a letter.

No payments have been previously disclosed for mass surveillance access to traffic flowing across a company’s infrastructure.

Lawyer Albert Gidari Jr., a partner at Perkins Coie who represents technology and telecommunications companies, said that surveillance efforts are expensive, requiring teams of attorneys to sift through requests and execute the ones deemed reasonable. Government agencies, meanwhile, sometimes balk at paying the full costs incurred by companies

“They lose a ton of money,” Gidari said. “And yet the government is still unsatisfied with it.”

The budget documents obtained by The Post list $65.96 million for BLARNEY, $94.74 million for FAIRVIEW, $46.04 million for STORMBREW and $9.41 million for OAKSTAR. It is unclear why the total of these four programs amounts to less than the overall budget of $278 million.

Among the possible costs covered by these amounts are “network and circuit leases, equipment hardware and software maintenance, secure network connectivity, and covert site leases,” the documents say. They also list in a separate line item $56.6 million in payments for “Foreign Partner Access,” although it is not clear whether these are for foreign companies, foreign governments or other foreign entities.

Some privacy advocates favor payments to companies when they comply with surveillance efforts because the costs can be a brake on overly broad requests by government officials. Invoices also can provide a paper trail to help expose the extent of spying.

But if the payments are too high, they may persuade companies to go beyond legal requirements in providing information, said Chris Soghoian, a technology expert with the American Civil Liberties Union who has studied government payments related to surveillance requests.

“I’m worried that the checks might grease the wheels a little bit,” he said.

Shamed into war?

Shamed into war?

By Charles Krauthammer, Published: August 29

Having leaked to the world, and thus to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, a detailed briefing of the coming U.S. air attack on Syria — (1) the source (offshore warships and perhaps a bomber or two), (2) the weapon (cruise missiles), (3) the duration (two or three days), (4) the purpose (punishment, not “regime change”) — perhaps we should be publishing the exact time the bombs will fall, lest we disrupt dinner in Damascus.

So much for the element of surprise. Into his third year of dithering, two years after declaring Assad had to go, one year after drawing — then erasing — his own red line on chemical weapons, Barack Obama has been stirred to action.

Or more accurately, shamed into action. Which is the worst possible reason. A president doesn’t commit soldiers to a war for which he has zero enthusiasm. Nor does one go to war for demonstration purposes.

Want to send a message? Call Western Union. A Tomahawk missile is for killing. A serious instrument of war demands a serious purpose.

The purpose can be either punitive or strategic: either a spasm of conscience that will inflame our opponents yet leave not a trace, or a considered application of abundant American power to alter the strategic equation that is now heavily favoring our worst enemies in the heart of the Middle East.

There are risks to any attack. Blowback terror from Syria and its terrorist allies. Threatened retaliation by Iran or Hezbollah on Israel — that could lead to a guns-of-August regional conflagration. Moreover, a mere punitive pinprick after which Assad emerges from the smoke intact and emboldened would demonstrate nothing but U.S. weakness and ineffectiveness.

In 1998, after al-Qaeda blew up two U.S. embassies in Africa, Bill Clinton lobbed a few cruise missiles into empty tents in Afghanistan. That showed ’em.

It did. It showed terminal unseriousness. Al-Qaeda got the message. Two years later, the USS Cole. A year after that, 9/11.

Yet even Clinton gathered the wherewithal to launch a sustained air campaign against Serbia. That wasn’t a mere message. That was a military strategy designed to stop the Serbs from ravaging Kosovo. It succeeded.

If Obama is planning a message-sending three-day attack, preceded by leaks telling the Syrians to move their important military assets to safety, better that he do nothing. Why run the considerable risk if nothing important is changed?

The only defensible action would be an attack with a strategic purpose, a sustained campaign aimed at changing the balance of forces by removing the Syrian regime’s decisive military advantage — air power.

Of Assad’s 20 air bases, notes retired Gen. Jack Keane, six are primary. Attack them: the runways, the fighters, the helicopters, the fuel depots, the nearby command structures. Render them inoperable.

We don’t need to take down Syria’s air defense system, as we did in Libya. To disable air power, we can use standoff systems — cruise missiles fired from ships offshore and from aircraft loaded with long-range, smart munitions that need not overfly Syrian territory.

Depriving Assad of his total control of the air and making resupply from Iran and Russia far more difficult would alter the course of the war. That is a serious purpose.

Would the American people support it? They are justifiably war-weary and want no part of this conflict. And why should they? In three years, Obama has done nothing to prepare the country for such a serious engagement. Not one speech. No explanation of what’s at stake.

On the contrary. Last year Obama told us repeatedly that the tide of war is receding. This year, he grandly declared that the entire war on terror “must end.” If he wants Tomahawks to fly, he’d better have a good reason, tell it to the American people and get the support of their representatives in Congress, the way George W. Bush did for both the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.

It’s rather shameful that while the British prime minister recalled Parliament to debate possible airstrikes — late Thursday, Parliament actually voted down British participation — Obama has made not a gesture in that direction.

If you are going to do this, Mr. President, do it constitutionally. And seriously. This is not about you and your conscience. It’s about applying American power to do precisely what you now deny this is about — helping Assad go, as you told the world he must.

Otherwise, just send Assad a text message. You might incur a roaming charge, but it’s still cheaper than a three-day, highly telegraphed, perfectly useless demonstration strike.

Obama should get Congress’ OK

Obama should get Congress’ OK

The Republic | azcentral.com Thu Aug 29, 2013 7:56 PM

Even before the start of his second term, President Barack Obama made clear that he and Congress essentially had parted ways.

On virtually every significant domestic policy, be it health care, environmental enforcement, energy or social welfare, Obama is pursuing initiatives through the bureaucracy he controls rather than the balky, uncooperative legislative branch he does not.

An attack on Syria is not a matter of domestic policy.

And, like it or not, Obama owes it to the American people to make his case publicly before Congress as to why this nation’s best interests lie in going to war with Bashar Assad’s Syrian regime, however limited and temporary that war may be.

Consulting with Congress and securing a vote of affirmation from lawmakers may not be an experience at the top of Obama’s to-do list.

But George H.W. Bush likely did not relish the experience in 1991 prior to gaining congressional approval of the invasion of Kuwait.

And, likewise, George W. Bush in 2003 prior to his invasion of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Obama can and should do as much.

Yes, history is full of examples of presidents acting unilaterally as commander in chief. But in virtually all latter-day cases — including President Bill Clinton’s bombing campaign to save Muslim refugees from ethnic cleansing in Kosovo — the chief executives made their choices based on an urgent need to act and with a reasonable expectation that the action could achieve its intended goal.

Obama needs to explain to Congress — and, in the process, the country — why committing U.S. troops and materiel to the Syrian civil war is in the nation’s best interest.

The administration’s rough outline of engagement — cruise missiles delivered over two or three days — does not inspire much confidence that the mission is intended to achieve anything other than fulfilling Obama’s Dec. 2, 2012, declaration that if Assad began exterminating his people with chemical weapons, “there will be consequences, and you will be held accountable.”

Even that declaration is rife with ambiguity. Also last year, Obama said Assad chemically mass-murdering his own people “would change my calculus.” He did not say to what.

The president needs to explain why a 2-year-old butchery that has claimed perhaps 100,000 Syrian lives now is different because the butcher is wielding a more menacing cleaver.

Further, he needs to explain what difference launching those cruise missiles will make, both in terms of American interests and Syrian lives.

Obama is frustrated with a Congress that he sees as paralyzed with partisan intransigence. In many respects, that frustration is understandable. Regarding the approaching Syrian conflict, much less so.

On Wednesday, 116 House members, including 18 Democrats, signed a letter “strongly” urging the president “to consult and receive authorization from Congress before ordering the use of U.S. military force in Syria.”

Obama, of all people, should not need to be reminded of the folly of ignoring contrarian voices before marching off headlong into foreign conflicts.

White House releases report on Syria chemical attack

I believe that attack was on the Branch Davidians who lived in the Mount Carmel Center which was burnt to the ground by the FBI and BATF attack in attempt to arrest their leader David Koresh on some trivial weapons charges.

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White House releases report on Syria chemical attack

By Aamer Madhani USA Today Fri Aug 30, 2013 11:49 AM

WASHINGTON--Secretary of State John Kerry said Friday that the U.S. has evidence the Syrian government used chemical weapons against its own people, as the White House released a four-page report summarizing their case against the Bashar Assad regime.

Kerry said the administration is releasing an intelligence report today laying out their evidence. Proving this allegation is considered a threshold that the U.S. would use to justify a potential military strike on that country.

"I'm not asking you to take my word for it," Kerry said. "Read for yourselves the verdict reached by our intelligence community" that the government of Syria was responsible for the attack.

The intelligence community believes with "high confidence" that Assad government used chemical weapons in Damascus suburbs based on human sources as well as intercepts of conversations by senior Syrian officials, according to the report and Kerry.

With the release of the unclassified intelligence report and a telephone briefing for lawmakers on Thursday evening, the White House looked to bolster the case for taking action against Assad even as objections to a military strike continue to mount in the U.S. and with the nation's closest ally, Britain, to taking military action.

Obama was also given a bolt of international backing on Friday, when President François Hollande of France on Friday announced his support for international military action against the Syrian government.

On Thursday, the British parliament voted to reject taking military action in Syria, even the government published an intelligence document that detailed how it concluded the Syrian government was responsible for the chemical attacks on the outskirts of Damascus last week.

Obama still has not on announced whether he will take action for the Aug. 21 attack, which the U.S. government says killed 1,429, including more than 400 children.

"The primary question is no longer what do we know," Kerry said. "It is what are we in the world going to do about it?"

A war with Syria to save face

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A war with Syria to save face

Apparently the United States is going to go to war, at least sort of, with Syria.

That’s not because Syria has attacked the United States, because it hasn’t.

It’s not because the United States believes that it has strategic interests at stake in Syria’s civil war that warrant military intervention. If that were the case, we would have already taken action.

And it’s not really out of humanitarian concern with what’s going on in Syria’s civil war, although that will be the rhetorical cloak with which we don our military action. If we were truly acting out of humanitarian concern, we would have intervened tens of thousands of civilian deaths ago.

Instead, we are going to war with Syria because the President of the United States said that the use of chemical weapons was a “red line” that would change his “calculus” regarding involvement and Syrian strongman Bashar Assad has apparently made such egregious use of them that it can no longer be ignored.

In other words, we are going to war with Syria to save face.

Supposedly, the United States now has to take action because if we don’t, our subsequent threats won’t be taken seriously by other powers.

It’s already too late for that. The reluctance of the Obama administration to take action even after the president’s red line was crossed is transparent and obvious to all. Unless the military action is large enough to result in Assad’s ouster, which doesn’t appear to be in the offing, the rest of the world will continue to significantly discount the Obama administration’s bluster.

The Middle East is on fire. The Syrian civil war is lapping over into Lebanon and Jordan. Egypt is wretched politically and economically.

The places where the United States has previously intervened militarily are hardly oases of stability. Afghanistan appears likely to revert to rule by local warlords. Renewed sectarian violence is breaking out in Iraq. Libya is a place where a U.S. ambassador was killed by jihadists and has become an arms depot for jihadists throughout the region.

The argument is made that the Arab Spring went bad and the Middle East is on fire because the Obama administration retreated from involvement in the multitude of conflicts going on there. Think through the implications of that claim.

According to this line of thinking, the United States should have sufficient troops stationed in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya to ensure relative peace and security in each country.

We should have picked which Syrian rebels to back and given them the firepower to knock off Assad. Although whether we should have supported the factions backed by Saudi Arabia or those supported by Turkey and Qatar, which are different, isn’t clear.

And the United States should have somehow bullied the Muslim Brotherhood to govern more inclusively in Egypt or the military not to engage in a coup.

A more grounded understanding of U.S. interests in the Middle East begins with accepting that we have no true allies in the region except for Israel.

Is the House of Saud our ally? Saudi Arabia promotes a radical strand of Islam, Wahhabism, throughout the world. Wahhabism often spawns jihadist movements. Jihadi terrorism gets important financial support from Saudi sources.

Saudi Arabia is one of the most despotic regimes in the world, including religious intolerance and persecution. The principal difference between the House of Saud and the Muslim Brotherhood isn’t really religious and certainty isn’t relative commitment to democratic capitalism. It’s that the Brotherhood doesn’t believe in hereditary monarchies. And that’s a fight the United States should get in the middle of?

We have no true allies. There is not even a semi-clear path to peace and stability in the region. And even if there were, there’s not much the United States could do to steer regional powers toward it.

It’s hard to see how a war to save face is a meaningful step in any right direction.

Deferring Syria decision to Congress pure political masterstroke for the president

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Patterson: Deferring Syria decision to Congress pure political masterstroke for the president

Posted: Saturday, September 7, 2013 6:47 am

Commentary by Tom Patterson

President Obama’s decision to defer to Congress the decision about whether to slap around Syria was a pure political masterstroke.

It wasn’t his first choice. He’s ignored Congress and the Constitution many times before, so it was no surprise when he signaled his intention to make the decision himself whether or not to attack Syria as punishment for using chemical weapons.

But sometime after the specific plans had been made and while he was still dithering, it apparently dawned on him that he had painted himself into a corner. By exhibiting chronic weakness and failing to think ahead, he had created a lose-lose situation. Any decision he made now would have substantial negative consequences and be subject to withering criticism. Here was the opportunity for bipartisan sharing!

Think about this. Mankind has been thinking and writing about military strategy for some time now. I’m pretty sure no expert on the subject has ever advocated supplying your enemy with detailed descriptions of your plan of attack before you proceed. Yet our deep-thinker-in-chief has publicly disclosed the weapons of choice, the launching sources, the duration and the limited scope of the proposed assault. No spy could have hurt us worse.

How did we get here? It started with electing a president who assured us that some of the most murderous religious fanatics on the planet were really nice guys who would succumb to his charm offensive, like we had. The Russians, Iranians, North Koreans and other inhabitants of the real world soon picked up on the fact that the President who couldn’t stop apologizing for his own country was soft and naive.

“Leading from behind” turned out to be a euphemism for indecision and weakness. When he declared a year ago that Syria would be crossing a “red line” if they deployed chemical weapons, they weren’t impressed. They went ahead.

So now, we’re in a position where, to preserve our honor, or Barack Obama’s honor or something, we’re contemplating attacking Syria because they used the wrong techniques to kill citizens. Our options are all bad.

We could follow the original Obama plan and carry out a limited attack, not a real attack, just enough to say we had done something. But the unintended consequences might be more than we bargained for.

Assad

It would bolster anti-American sentiment and would strengthen Syrian dictator Assad’s standing in the region. It very likely would set off a regional war with Israel taking the punishment. It wouldn’t even teach Syria “the lesson” about red lines nor likely deter others.

Another option, endorsed by John McCain among others, would be full military engagement with the goal of deposing the Assad regime. But even those pushing this path don’t seem sure what the endgame might be.

What could it possibly be? Al-Qaeda affiliated groups are already licking their chops, poised to take over if Assad goes down. Are we hoping to replicate our great outcomes in Afghanistan and Iraq? Do we want a regime change as beneficial as Egypt’s?

Unless somebody comes up with a different plan, there’s no reason to believe we wouldn’t be spending yet more blood and treasure to in a futile attempt to establish a “stabilizing presence” in the region.

The third option is to do nothing. Yes, it would send a message (again) that U.S. leadership is unserious and vacillating to our other enemies. Yes, it would be a personal embarrassment to Obama, although he has set up Congress to take the fall if that is what they decide.

Yet in the end, doing nothing may be the least bad option. It’s not isolationism to decline a war with no real mission, no plan and no national security interests at stake. We may even be worse off if the rebels did prevail.

The take-home message to Americans is that, while on an emotional high, we elected a president who openly doubted whether American values were worth defending and who has never developed to this day a coherent foreign policy to protect our interests. This is what we got.

It’s a potentially dangerous world out there.

Next time we need to choose more thoughtfully.

East Valley resident Tom Patterson is a retired physician and former state senator. He can be reached at pattersontomc@cox.net.

Has Kyrsten Sinema sold out to the military industrial complex????

While Kyrsten Sinema always has been a gun grabbing, tax and spend socialist she used to be on our side and against war.

I suspect Kyrsten Sinema has sold her soul to the military industrial complex and will vote to allow Emperor Obama to bomb Syria.

And for those of you who don't remember Kyrsten Sinema when she was a member of the Arizona Legislator tried to kill Arizona's medical marijuana law by passing a 300 percent tax on medical marijuana.

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Rep. Kyrsten Sinema, District 9: Undecided

In a statement last week, Sinema said, “I’m deeply troubled by reports concerning the Assad regime’s use of chemical weapons against the Syrian people. ... I intend to evaluate whether any proposed action will protect and advance American goals and interests once I have been briefed by national-security officials.” To contact Sinema, call her Washington, D.C., office at 202-225-9888 or her district office in Phoenix at 602-956-2285.

Sen. John McCain, a Republican, voted in support of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s resolution authorizing the use of military force in Syria after it was amended to emphasize priority of changing the momentum in the Syrian civil war.

“That strategy must degrade the military capabilities of the Assad regime while upgrading the military capabilities of moderate Syrian opposition forces,” McCain said in a written statement. “These amendments would put the Congress on the record that this is the policy of the United States, as President Obama has assured me it is.”

To contact McCain, call his Washington, D.C., office at 202-224-2235.

Sen. Jeff Flake, a Republican, voted in support of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s resolution authorizing the use of military force in Syria.

"As commander in chief, President Obama already has the authority to conduct a limited strike such as the one he has asked Congress to authorize. This president's reasons for coming to Congress in this instance were political, not constitutional,” Flake said. "I believe in a strong commander in chief who takes actions as warranted and stands by them, which is why I voted in favor of the resolution in committee. After reviewing both the classified and unclassified evidence, I am convinced that the Syrian regime did launch a chemical-weapons attack, and it is in our national interest that it faces the consequences."

To contact Flake, call his Washington, D.C., office at 202-224-4521.

Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick, a Democrat, is undecided on U.S. military action in Syria.

"I'm very disturbed by the reports coming out of Syria about chemical weapons being used to kill civilians," she said. "But being on the Veterans Affairs Committee, I have seen what war has done to our soldiers coming out of Iraq and Afghanistan. Military action does not come without consequences."

To contact Kirkpatrick, call her Washington, D.C., office at 202-225-3361 or her district offices in Flagstaff and Casa Grande at 928-213-9977 and 520-316-0839.

Rep. Ron Barber, a Democrat, is undecided. Spokesman Mark Kimble said Barber will decide after Congress reconvenes next week, and there is debate on the House floor.

To contact Barber, call his Washington, D.C., office at 202-225-2542 or his district offices in Tucson and Sierra Vista at 520-881-3588 and 520-459-3115.

Rep. Raul Grijalva, a Democrat, is against U.S. military action in Syria. Grijalva wrote in a recent opinion piece that he believes diplomatic solutions should be pursued first.

To contact Grijalva, call his Washington, D.C., office at 202-225-2435 or his district offices in Avondale and Somerton and Tucson at 623-536-3388 and 928-343-7933 and 520-622-6788.

Rep. Paul Gosar, a Republican, is leaning against U.S. military action in Syria. "Unless something really changes my direction and information, I'm a no. Getting involved in a sectarian war is a lose-lose situation."

To contact Gosar, call his Washington, D.C., office at 202-225-2315 or his district offices in Prescott and San Tan Valley at 928-445-1683 and 480-882-2697.

Rep. Matt Salmon, a Republican, is against U.S. military action in Syria. "I know what my vote is going to be - and it's no. They haven't made a compelling case at all why this is in our national interest."

To contact Salmon, call his Washington, D.C., office at 202-225-2635 or his district offices in Gilbert at 480-699-8239.

Rep. David Schweikert, a Republican, leans toward no. His spokeswoman Rachel Semmel said Schweikert "isn't convinced there is a US interest yet. If we become engaged with little direction from the President, what is our exit strategy?"

To contact Schweikert, call his Washington, D.C., office at 202-225-2190 or his district office in Scottsdale at 480-946-2411.

Rep. Ed Pastor, a Democrat, is undecided. "I've received some calls and briefings but I haven't made up my mind yet. ... We're working on a decision and we'll have it by next week."

To contact Pastor, call his Washington, D.C., office at 202-225-4065 or his district office in Phoenix at 602-256-0551.

Rep. Trent Franks, a Republican, did not return calls seeking comment. To contact Franks, call his Washington, D.C., office at 202-225-4576 or his district office in Glendale at 623-776-7911.

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Poll: Congress opposing Syria strike

By Susan Page and John Kelly USA Today Mon Sep 9, 2013 7:29 AM

WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama faces a daunting and uphill battle to win congressional authorization for a military strike on Syria, a USA Today Network survey of senators and representatives has found.

The comprehensive poll of Congress says that only a small fraction of the 533 lawmakers — 22 senators and 22 House members — are willing to say they will support the use of force in response to the reported use of chemical weapons by the Syrian regime. Far more overall — 19 senators and 130 House members — say they will oppose a resolution that would authorize military strikes. Two seats in the 435-member House are vacant.

The largest group of lawmakers remains undecided, including a majority of the Senate and the House. That could create an opportunity for the president to persuade them in a string of six interviews with TV network anchors today and a televised address to the nation Tuesday. The Senate could vote as early as Wednesday.

“We cannot turn a blind eye to images like the ones we’ve seen out of Syria,” Obama said in his weekly radio address Saturday. “Failing to respond to this outrageous attack would increase the risk that chemical weapons could be used again; that they would fall into the hands of terrorists who might use them against us; and it would send a horrible signal to other nations that there would be no consequences for their use of these weapons. All of which would pose a serious threat to our national security.”

Congress isn’t convinced. In the survey:

Democrats haven’t fallen in line behind the president, at least not yet. Congressional Democrats are as likely to oppose the measure as support it, although most say they are undecided. At the moment, 28 Democrats support action; 28 oppose it.

Republicans who have made a decision overwhelmingly oppose Obama, by nearly 8-1. Sixteen Republicans support action; 121 oppose it.

In a majority of states, not a single member of Congress has gone on record endorsing the president’s request for authorization of a military strike. That includes a dozen states that Obama carried in both the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections: Colorado, Connecticut, Hawaii, Iowa, Massachusetts, Maine, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington and Wisconsin.

“I think it’s an uphill slog from here,” Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and one of the handful of Republicans who support the president, said on CBS’ “Face the Nation” Sunday.

He said the White House has “done an awful job” in explaining the reason for a strike and added, “It’s a confusing mess.”

On “Fox News Sunday,” Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., said he was horrified by images of the alleged chemical-weapons attack in Syria but warned that the strikes could destabilize the country or even increase the odds that opposition forces obtain chemical weapons.

“I don’t think we’re going to do anything to (Syrian President Bashar) Assad,” he said.

Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., said he has heard overwhelming opposition from his constituents. “And keep in mind, my district voted 77 percent for the president,” he said on CBS. “I think the president has work to do, but I think he can possibly get the votes. But he’s got to come before the Congress and the nation.”

On this issue, Obama hasn’t been able to count on the classic partisan divide that has defined the capital’s politics through his tenure. Some liberal Democrats have aligned with Republican libertarians to oppose a military strike. Some GOP hawks who typically oppose him (including Arizona Sen. John McCain, whom Obama beat in the race for the White House in 2008) argue for action.

Even African-Americans in Congress, who have been among Obama’s most reliable supporters on other issues, are resistant. Of 42 Black lawmakers, two are committed to voting “yes.”

A separate Washington Post count of congressional support Sunday reported different specific numbers but also found a tough road ahead for the president. In the Senate, the Post found 25 in favor, 17 opposed, 10 leaning no and 50 undecided; in the House, 25 in favor, 111 against, 116 leaning no and 181 undecided.

In the USA Today Network survey, journalists from USA Today and nearly 40 other Gannett-owned newspapers and television stations across the country reported on the views expressed by every senator and all but four members of the House, who couldn’t be reached.

Obama Tests Limits of Power in Syrian Conflict

The proposed strike is unlike anything that has come before — an attack inside the territory of a sovereign country, without its consent, without a self-defense rationale and without the authorization of the United Nations Security Council or even the participation of a multilateral treaty alliance like NATO, and for the purpose of punishing an alleged war crime that has already occurred rather than preventing an imminent disaster.

Obama Tests Limits of Power in Syrian Conflict

By CHARLIE SAVAGE

Published: September 8, 2013 254 Comments

WASHINGTON — In asking Congress to authorize an attack on Syria over claims it used chemical weapons, President Obama has chosen to involve lawmakers in deciding whether to undertake a military intervention that in some respects resembles the limited types that many presidents — Ronald Reagan in Grenada, Bill Clinton in Kosovo and even Mr. Obama in Libya — have launched on their own.

President Obama’s strategy ensures that no matter what happens, the crisis is likely to create an important precedent.

On another level, the proposed strike is unlike anything that has come before — an attack inside the territory of a sovereign country, without its consent, without a self-defense rationale and without the authorization of the United Nations Security Council or even the participation of a multilateral treaty alliance like NATO, and for the purpose of punishing an alleged war crime that has already occurred rather than preventing an imminent disaster.

The contrasting moves, ceding more of a political role to Congress domestically while expanding national war powers on the international stage, underscore the complexity of Mr. Obama’s approach to the Syrian crisis. His administration pressed its case on Sunday, saying it had won Saudi backing for a strike, even as the Syrian president warned he would retaliate.

Mr. Obama’s strategy ensures that no matter what happens, the crisis is likely to create an important precedent in the often murky legal question of when presidents or nations may lawfully use military force.

Kathryn Ruemmler, the White House counsel, said the president believed a strike would be lawful, both in international law and domestic law, even if neither the Security Council nor Congress approved it. But the novel circumstances, she said, led Mr. Obama to seek Congressional concurrence to bolster its legitimacy.

The move is right, said Walter Dellinger, who led the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel in the Clinton administration, because the proposed attack is not “covered by any of the previous precedents for the unilateral use of executive power.”

“That doesn’t mean it couldn’t become another precedent,” Mr. Dellinger added. “But when the president is going beyond where any previous president has gone, it seems appropriate to determine whether Congress concurs.”

Disputes about whether and when a president or nation may launch an act of war can be hazy because courts generally do not issue definitive answers about such matters. Instead presidents, and countries, create precedents that over time can become generally accepted as a gloss on what written domestic laws and international treaties permit. Against that backdrop, many legal scholars say Mr. Obama is proposing to violate international law. But others contend that the question is ambiguous, and some suggest that the United States could establish a precedent creating new international law if it strikes.

The United States has used its armed forces abroad dozens of times without Security Council approval, but typically has invoked self-defense; when Mr. Reagan invaded Grenada in 1983, for example, he cited a need to protect Americans on the island along with the request of neighboring countries. The most notable precedent for the Syria crisis was Mr. Clinton’s 1999 bombing of Kosovo, but that was undertaken as part of NATO and in response to a time-urgent problem: stopping a massacre of civilians.

By contrast, the United States would carry out strikes on Syria largely alone, and to punish an offense that has already occurred. That crime, moreover, is defined by two treaties banning chemical weapons, only one of which Syria signed, that contain no enforcement provisions. Such a strike has never happened before.

Attempts to deal with the novelty of the crisis in international law have become entangled in the separate domestic law question of whether the president could order strikes on Syria without Congressional permission.

Seeking the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, Mr. Obama embraced a limited view of a president’s power to initiate war without Congress, telling The Boston Globe that “the president does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.”

But by the 2011 conflict in Libya he abandoned his campaign view of presidential war powers as too limited. While the NATO intervention was authorized for international law purposes by the Security Council, in domestic law Congress did not authorize Mr. Obama to participate. But Mr. Obama’s Office of Legal Counsel argued that it was lawful for him to unilaterally order American forces to bomb Libya because of national interests in preserving regional stability and in supporting the “credibility and effectiveness” of the Security Council.

In recent weeks, administration lawyers decided that it was within Mr. Obama’s constitutional authority to carry out a strike on Syria as well, even without permission from Congress or the Security Council, because of the “important national interests” of limiting regional instability and of enforcing the norm against using chemical weapons, Ms. Ruemmler said.

But even if he could act alone, that left the question of whether he should. The lack of a historical analogue and traditional factors that have justified such operations, she said, contributed to his decision to go to Congress.

“The president believed that it was important to enhance the legitimacy of any action that would be taken by the executive,” Ms. Ruemmler said, “to seek Congressional approval of that action and have it be seen, again as a matter of legitimacy both domestically and internationally, that there was a unified American response to the horrendous violation of the international norm against chemical weapons use.”

At a news conference last week, Mr. Obama argued that the United States should “get out of the habit” of having the president “stretch the boundaries of his authority as far as he can” while lawmakers “snipe” from the sidelines. But he also explained his decision in terms of very special circumstances: humanitarian interventions where there is no immediate pressure to act and the United Nations is blocked.

Jack Goldsmith, a head of the Office of Legal Counsel in the Bush administration, said the limited criteria cited by Mr. Obama mean his move might not apply to more traditional future interventions. The more important precedent, he said, may concern international law and what he portrayed as Mr. Obama’s dismissive attitude toward whether or not having permission from the Security Council should stop humanitarian interventions.

Mr. Obama has in recent days repeatedly portrayed the Security Council system as incapable of performing its function of “enforcing international norms and international law,” and as so paralyzed by the veto power wielded by Russia that it is instead acting as a “barrier” to that goal.

Mr. Goldsmith said that in the Kosovo campaign, the Clinton administration shied away from arguing that it was consistent with international law to carry out a military attack not authorized by the Security Council purely for humanitarian reasons. Its fear was that such a doctrine could be misused by other nations, loosening constraints on war.

In his 2009 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, Mr. Obama said all nations “must adhere to standards that govern the use of force.” But he also argued that humanitarian grounds justified military force and cited “the Balkans,” leaving ambiguous whether he meant Bosnia, which had some Security Council approval; Kosovo, which did not; or both.

Ms. Ruemmler said that while an attack on Syria “may not fit under a traditionally recognized legal basis under international law,” the administration believed that given the novel factors and circumstances, such an action would nevertheless be “justified and legitimate under international law” and so not prohibited.

Still, she acknowledged that it was “more controversial for the president to act alone in these circumstances” than for him to do so with Congressional backing.

Steven G. Bradbury, a head of the Office of Legal Counsel in the Bush administration, said it would be “politically difficult” to order strikes if Congress refused to approve them. But he predicted future presidents would not feel legally constrained to echo Mr. Obama’s request. “Every overseas situation, every set of exigent circumstances, is a little different, so I don’t really buy that it’s going to tie future presidents’ hands very much,” he said.

But Harold H. Bruff, a University of Colorado law professor who is one of the authors of a casebook on the separation of powers, argued that the episode would have enduring political ramifications. “I’m sure that Obama or some later president will argue later that they can still choose whether or not to go to Congress,” he said. “But it does raise the political cost of a future president not going to Congress because the precedent will be cited against him or her.”