North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un orders changes to new airport to avoid 'copying'. (AlAhram).
North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un has ordered changes to the design of Pyongyang's new international airport to reflect the country's socialist ideology after saying the layout looked like "a copy" of a foreign facility, state media reported Saturday.
Kim called a halt on work on Terminal 2 at Pyongyang International Airport after inspecting the construction site, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said.
He reproached workers for failing to carry out his earlier order in July that the project should reflect North Korea's "Juche" (self-reliance) philosophy and national identify.
North Korean architecture is characterised by its monumental but drab socialist style incorporating propaganda symbols of the communist state.
Kim said there were "deviations in the interior layout including halls for check-in and departure and service network" and other facilities were not distributed to match the space of the terminal, KCNA said.
If construction continued in that way, it may be "a copy" of the terminal of an unidentified foreign country, it quoted Kim as saying.
"When we build even a single structure, we should do in such a way as to ensure that our style, our characteristic feature and national identity are preserved.
"It is necessary to finish the construction of the terminal to be an icon of Songun (military-first) Korea, the face of the country and the gateway to Pyongyang", Kim said.
He instructed officials "to stop for the time being the finishing project of the interior now under way, examine layout designs and complete the modified ones".
Following Kim's instructions in July 2012, North Korea has been building a new airport terminal at Sunan airport as the existing terminal is too small and shabby compared with foreign ones.
The new terminal is six times larger than the old one, but it remains unclear how North Korea will be able to generate passenger numbers that would justify such expenditure.
The Stalinist state remains one of the world's least-visited countries.
Sequester THIS - "The 'President' go's Africa" -
Price tag for the trip clocks in between $60 million to $100 million.(Wapo).
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 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.
“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.
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.”
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.Hmmmm......You little people get of my lawn, so i can fly in style comes to mind.Read the full story here.
In a 2008 interview on "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno," LaBeouf (who was at the time promoting his conspiracy action film "Eagle Eye") revealed the extent to which the United States monitors Americans.
In "Eagle Eye," LaBeouf played a young man who was manipulated by an intelligence-gathering super force. According to LaBeouf, an FBI consultant on the film told the actor that one in five phone calls is "recorded and logged." "I laughed at him, and then he played back a phone conversation I had had two years prior," LaBeouf told Jay Leno. "It's extremely creepy."
So, what exactly did the authorities hear the star of "The Company You Keep" say? "It was one of those 'What are you wearing?' type of things," LaBeouf said. "Yeah, so it was mad weird."
That would likely make the person on the other end of the line China Brezner, the actress LaBeouf reportedly dated from 2004 to 2007 after meeting her on the Montreal set of "The Greatest Game Ever Played."
‘Call it Digital Blackwater’: Meet the Contractors Analyzing Your Private Data.HT: Salon.
By Tim Shorrock.
Amid the torrent of stories about the shocking new revelations about the National Security Agency, few have bothered to ask a central question. Who’s actually doing the work of analyzing all the data, metadata and personal information pouring into the agency from Verizon and nine key Internet service providers for its ever-expanding surveillance of American citizens?
Well, on Sunday we got part of the answer: Booz Allen Hamilton. In a stunning development in the NSA saga, Guardian reporter Glenn Greenwald revealed that the source for his blockbuster stories on the NSA is Edward Snowden, “a 29-year-old former technical assistant for the CIA and current employee of the defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton.” Snowden, it turns out, has been working at NSA for the last four years as a contract employee, including stints for Booz and the computer-services firm Dell.
The revelation is not that surprising. With about 70 percent of our national intelligence budgets being spent on the private sector – a discovery I made in 2007 and first reported in Salon – contractors have become essential to the spying and surveillance operations of the NSA.
From Narus, the Israeli-born Boeing subsidiary that makes NSA’s high-speed interception software, to CSC, the “systems integrator” that runs NSA’s internal IT system, defense and intelligence, contractors are making millions of dollars selling technology and services that help the world’s largest surveillance system spy on you. If the 70 percent figure is applied to the NSA’s estimated budget of $8 billion a year (the largest in the intelligence community), NSA contracting could reach as high as $6 billion every year.
But it’s probably much more than that.
“The largest concentration of cyber power on the planet is the intersection of the Baltimore Parkway and Maryland Route 32,” says Michael V. Hayden, who oversaw the privatization effort as NSA director from 1999 to 2005. He was referring not to the NSA itself but to the business park about a mile down the road from the giant black edifice that houses NSA’s headquarters in Fort Meade, Md. There, all of NSA’s major contractors, from Booz to SAIC to Northrop Grumman, carry out their surveillance and intelligence work for the agency.
With many of these contractors now focused on cyber-security, Hayden has even coined a new term — “Digital Blackwater” – for the industry. “I use that for the concept of the private sector in cyber,” he told a recent conference in Washington, in an odd reference to the notorious mercenary army. “I saw this in government and saw it a lot over the last four years. The private sector has really moved forward in terms of providing security,” he said. Hayden himself has cashed out too: He is now a principal with the Chertoff Group, the intelligence advisory company led by Michael Chertoff, the former secretary of Homeland Security.Read the full story here.
"I'm Not A Dictator" - U.S. Air Force Prohibiting Airmen from Reading NSA Scandal Stories.HT: Caffeinatedthoughts.By Shane Vander Hart.
Over the weekend I received an email from a mother whose son is stationed with the U.S. Air Force in the Middle East. He and other Airmen received a NOTAM (Notice to Airmen) from the 624th Operations Center prohibiting them from accessing stories about the NSA surveillance activity on the Air Force’s NIPRNET (Non-Secure Internet Protocol Router Network) systems. The 624th Operations Center located at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas serves as the operational arm for the 24th Air Force’s cyberspace operations capability.
His team received an email about the NOTAM that read:
I wanted to make sure that all of you read this because just doing a simple search could jeopardize your future. In summary, anything to do with the recent news about the NSA and Verizon phone records are considered classified and searching news or records about these on our NIPRNET computers is unauthorized. Thanks!
The executive summary of the NOTAM states:
Similar to events associated with WIKILEAKS disclosures in the past 2 years, classified documents associated with a news story on NSA and wiretapping are potentially classified and readily available on the internet. Users are not to use AF NIPRNET systems to access the Verizon phone records collection and other related news stories because the action could constitute a Classified Message Incident.
They then provide more details:
Classified documents regarding Verizon phone record collection and court order have been identified as being hosted on publically accessible Internet Web Sites, most notably “The Guardian” news site. Viewing and/or downloading these documents on Air Force NIPRNET computers could constitute a Classified Message Incident. Therefore, users are not to access these file (sic) for any reason (i.e. viewing, downloading, forwarding, etc.)
So essentially our service members, at least those in the Air Force, are prohibited from searching, forwarding, reading or saving any news stories related to the NSA Scandal on NIPRNET computers. Those like this Airman currently deployed to UAE only have access to this news through Air Force computers. Members of our military are being censored from reading news about how the rights and liberty they are fighting for is being destroyed at home.
According to this Airman many of his colleagues are upset and outraged by this – understandably. They do not deserve to be treated in this manner. I wonder if other branches of our Armed Services have been given similar notices and how high up this order originated.
"The King and US" - White House postpones annual congressional picnic.(TheHill).
The White House will not hold its annual congressional picnic in June, according to sources familiar with the planning.
The annual event, traditionally held for Senate and House members and their families, might happen in September instead. The administration blamed automatic spending cuts for canceling tours of the White House, but a source close to the situation said delaying the bipartisan, bicameral picnic was “schedule-related, not sequester-related.”
It’s unclear what factors will determine whether the White House will hold the event in September. But even if the picnic happens then, fewer children will be able to attend because school will be back in session. That fact has irritated people who have attended in the past.
Over the last week, frustration on Capitol Hill mounted as to why the White House was taking so long to make the call. Sources speculated that sequestration politics was at play. As of Monday evening, the White House had not made an official announcement on the picnic.
Lawmakers however, received a notice on Monday afternoon from the White House Office of Legislative Affairs: “The White House Congressional Picnic for Members of Congress and their families will not take place in June this year. We are hopeful that we will be able to reschedule this event for September.”
When the White House canceled the public tours earlier this year, some lawmakers proposed that the administration make cuts elsewhere, such as limiting the parties thrown for Congress and members of the media.
At that time, Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) called the White House’s decision “just silly,” noting that tours of Capitol Hill would continue.
The matter came up in a rare closed-door meeting that President Obama held with members of the House GOP Conference in mid-March.
Rep. Candice Miller (R-Mich.), chairwoman of the House Administration Committee, asked why Obama ended the White House tours in light of the sequester instead of the annual Christmas Party or congressional picnic.
The president said the Secret Service didn’t want to have to furlough staff and opted instead to cut non-essential tasks.Read the full story here.
"The Department Of Just Us" - Obama’s top appointees use secret email accounts.(RT).The scale of secret email use across the government remains unknown, as most
US agencies have failed to provide lists of political appointees' email
addresses, which AP requested under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) over
three months ago.
The news agency asked for the addresses after it was
revealed last year that a former administrator of the Environmental Protection
Agency had used separate email accounts during her work, including a secret one
under the name ‘Richard Windsor.’
The secret accounts raise
suspicions that government officials are trying to hide their actions or
decisions from the general public, AP wrote in its report. They also complicate
an agency's legal responsibilities to find and turn over emails in response to
relevant requests – an employees assigned to fulfill such requests may not know
of a secret account’s existence.
“What happens when that person
doesn't work there anymore? He leaves and someone makes a request [to review
emails] in two years,” Kel McClanahan, executive director of government
transparency watchdog National Security Counselors told AP. “Who's going to
know to search the other accounts? You would hope that agencies doing this would
keep a list of aliases in a desk drawer, but you know that isn't happening.”
The agencies revealed to have used secret addresses, including the Labor
Department and Health and Human Services, explained that maintaining non-public
email accounts allows senior officials to separate their internal messages with
agency employees from emails they exchange with the public. They also assured
that, as with public emails, non-public accounts are always searched in response
to official requests, and records are provided as necessary.
According to AP, at least three senior officials at Health and Human
Services have secret accounts, including Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.
Despite objections from the government, AP revealed Sebelius’ non-public
address – KGS2(at)hhs.gov – due to the secretary being a high-ranking civil
servant who oversees the implementation of Obama's signature healthcare law.
The Labor Department initially asked AP to pay over $1 million to cover
the costs of recovering the requested data, contradicting the agency’s own rules
that prohibit it from charging news organizations.
Labor Department
spokesperson Carl Fillichio later apologized and provided journalists with email
addresses for the agency's Senate-confirmed appointees, including the secret
addresses for Acting Secretary Seth D. Harris – harris.sd(at)dol.gov.
Ten US government agencies have not yet turned over lists of their email
addresses to AP, saying they are still working on a response. These include the
Environmental Protection Agency, the Pentagon and the departments of Veterans
Affairs, Transportation, Treasury, Justice, Housing and Urban Development,
Homeland Security, Commerce and Agriculture.
Aaron Mackey, an FOIA
attorney with the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, stated that
“an email address given to an individual by the government to conduct
official business is not private,” and cannot be labeled confidential
information.
The Freedom of Information Act allows both US citizens
and foreigners to compel the government to turn over copies of federal records
for free, as long as the disclosure does not threaten national security, violate
personal privacy or expose business secrets.
In his first week in
office, President Obama pledged to make the US government more open and
transparent, saying in a memo to his Cabinet that the nation's signature
open-records law would be "administered with a clear presumption: In the face
of doubt, openness prevails."Hmmmm......The most transparent Tsaristic Goverment Evah.Read the full story here.
I believe that the Obama administration is conducting psychological warfare on conservative Americans. HT: FoxNews.Not only that but it is also waging this war on all Americans who previously viewed themselves, their country, their Constitution and their overwhelming belief in God as a force for good in the world.
The psychological warfare began with an apology tour in which President Obama publicly “confessed,” presuming to speak for all of us, for the shortcomings of America and our supposed contributions to tyranny and all manner of evils around the world.
This confession planted in the American mind the notion that our values and beliefs might not be in line with freedom and truth.
It was reinforced by the first lady stating during the 2008 presidential campaign that she had never felt pride in our country.
These statements were seemingly shrugged off by Americans who, collectively, seemed to be telling themselves that they were hearing discontent channeled from disenfranchised groups in our nation who, nonetheless, loved the country—and all of us, too.
But, deep inside the American psyche, something more malignant could have been planted—the seeds of self-hatred and self-doubt. And I no longer believe that those seeds were planted unintentionally by people as smart and capable as the president and first lady.
Psychological warfare has been described as a set of techniques aimed at influencing a target audience’s value systems or beliefs and inducing confessions of wrongdoing or attitudes favorable to the group proffering the techniques.
The techniques are often combined with black ops strategy, in which covert initiatives seek to dispirit, disempower and confuse adversaries.
The psychological warfare has continued, I believe, with other opportunities the president has had to make American’s question their individual freedoms and autonomy.
This has included misrepresenting horrific crimes, such as the one which unfolded in Newtown, Connecticut, as evidence of the need for gun control measures, when they clearly evidenced a need for revamping our mental health care system.
Gun rights are inextricably entwined in the American psyche with freedom to defend oneself. Attacking gun rights, I believe, is an element of the psychological warfare on the American belief that force is justifiable when confronting evil.
My belief that psychological warfare is being deployed on Americans by this American president and his administration has been solidified as news has come out of the targeting of conservative groups by the IRS.
This black ops targeting doesn’t just have the effect of slowing the financial momentum of these groups. It has the goal of dispiriting them and making them feel helpless to achieve their goals.
If liberal Americans stand by and do not seek swift and severe justice for those who perpetrated these acts, then they will have tacitly been victimized, too. Because they will have tacitly agreed that it is acceptable for their government to target certain political movements for persecution—and that will have fundamentally changed the psyche of America.
Seen through the lens of psychological warfare, the failure to defend our embassy in Benghazi need not be understood simply as a screw-up. It could reflect an actual strategy on the part of the administration to reinforce the notion that homicidal violence born of hatred toward America is understandable—even condonable—because we have generated it ourselves and are reaping the harvest of ill will we have sown. In other words, we should take our punishment.
The president said as much when he blamed the murder of our Ambassador to Libya on a film that criticized Islam.
This misstatement may disclose not just incompetence and may not just be evidence of a cover-up, but may be evidence of exactly what I am theorizing here: that the president, with the help of his administration, is attempting to conduct psychological warfare on Americans who value autonomy and free will and free markets and small government, by convincing them that they are wrong-minded, prejudiced and pathological and should deeply question their beliefs—including some ensconced in the Constitution.
The wiretapping of journalists would be, then, just another black ops technique in an ongoing war against our freedoms.
There will be those that say that many American leaders have sought to target groups hostile to their views. Some will point to President Nixon or Senator McCarthy or J. Edgar Hoover. And that debate can be had.
But I assert that this administration is engaged in a coordinated attempt to dispirit, disarm and disenfranchise large portions of the American population and to weaken our founding principles through what is best understood as psychological warfare.
And with that statement in the public domain, let us, at least, be aware and notice how many events unfold in-keeping with it, over the next months and years.
The enemy of psychological warfare is the knowledge of what is really happening to us and remembering who we really are.
Dr. Keith Ablow is a psychiatrist and member of the Fox News Medical A-Team. Dr. Ablow can be reached at info@keithablow.com.
Mark Levin: This isn’t about Lois Lerner or the IRS. This is about TYRANNY!HT: TheRightScoop.
Mark Levin started his show tonight putting everything into the proper perspective, saying that all that’s going on is a product of a central government run amuck. He says we are living in a soft tyranny and we must reestablish our republic. http://videos.videopress.com/xQQHw7y6/levin_notaboutlerner_abouttyranny_std.mp4
Video - Darrell Issa to haul Lerner back before Comittee.HT: InfidelBloggers.
"Mr. Issa, Mr. Cummings said we should run this like a courtroom and I agree with him. She just testified. She just waved her Fifth Amendment rights.You don’t get to tell your side of the story and then not be subjected to cross examination. That’s not the way it works. She waved her right to Fifth Amendment privilege by issuing an opening statement. She ought to stand here and answer our questions. (Applause)”
The common thread in the Obama adminstration scandals.HT: PowerlineBlog.
John Yoo identifies the common thread in the major Obama administration scandals:
Add up all the recent scandals and the message is clear: the Obama administration is showing that it cannot be trusted with the basic functions of government: law enforcement (surveillance of reporters), taxation (IRS scandals), and national security (Benghazi).
How, then, can we trust the administration when it comes to immigration — an area in which it already has refused to enforce portions of the law that it doesn’t like?
Washington Hits the $16.7 Trillion Debt Ceiling with $300 Billion in New Debt in less than FOUR months!HT: Heritage.
On May 19, the United States hit its debt ceiling after adding $300 billion
in more debt since lawmakers suspended the ceiling in February.
But the cash won’t run dry until at least Labor Day, according to Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, whose department can employ a
variety of cash management tools to continue spending beyond the official debt
deadline.
Congress last hit the debt ceiling in January. The President and Congress
then decided to “suspend” the debt limit through May 18. This is the first time
that lawmakers adopted a debt ceiling date instead of a dollar amount. The
Congressional Budget Office explains:
On May 19, the debt limit will be raised to its previous value—$16.394
trillion—plus the amount of borrowing that occurred while the limit was
suspended (that is, from early February to May 18).
In other words, the President and Congress decided in February that they
would continue borrowing through May 18, with the new debt limit becoming the
then-current limit of $16.394 trillion plus whatever was added on since then.
Washington racked up $300 billion in more debt in less than four months, making
the current limit $16.7 trillion.
This is the pattern of recurrent budget negotiation crises:
Spend;
Spend some more;
Run up against the debt ceiling;
Resort to “extraordinary measures” to ward off a possible default for a
while; and finally,
Settle for inadequate measures that fail to curb soaring debt in the
future.
"Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose" - Same woman in charge of Political Persecution of Conservatives Now Running ObamaCare Office.HT: Breitbart.
”The Democrat Party represents the federal
government, and the federal government expands the power of the Democrat Party.
They’re appendages of each other. ”
Sarah Hall Ingram served as commissioner of the
office responsible for tax-exempt organizations between 2009 and 2012. But
Ingram has since left that part of the IRS and is now the director of the IRS’
Affordable Care Act office, the IRS confirmed to ABC News
today.
Her successor, Joseph Grant, is taking the fall for misdeeds at the
scandal-plagued unit between 2010 and 2012. During at least part of that time,
Grant served as deputy commissioner of the tax-exempt unit.
Grant announced today that he would retire June
3, despite being appointed as commissioner of the tax-exempt office May 8, a
week ago.
Ace sums up: "So this guy, who may have been promoted to the position just to be fired from it, takes the fall, while the woman actually responsible for the regime is now enforcing ObamaCare."Hmmmm........Interior Repression Storm Troopers.Read the full story here.
Never Mind the IRS, You'd Better Be Nice to "Totalitarian Rule" Kathleen Sebelius.(Cato).By Michael F. Cannon.
ObamaCare’s Independent
Payment Advisory Board is everything its critics say and worse. It is a
democracy-skirting, Congress-blocking, powers-unseparating, law-entrenching,
tax-hiking, fund-appropriating, price-controlling, health-care-rationing, death-paneling,
technocrat-thrilling,
authoritarian, anti-constitutional super-legislature. Its very existence is
testament to government incompetence. It stands as a milestone on the road to
serfdom.
The Congressional
Research Service has now confirmed
what HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius pretendsnot to know but what Diane Cohen and I
explained here:
[I]f President Obama fails to appoint any IPAB members, all these powers fall
to Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius.
That’s an awful lot of power to give any one person, particularly someone who
has shown
as much willingness to abuse her power as Sebelius has.
I would also like the Congressional Research Service to address a feature of
IPAB that Cohen and I first exposed. According to the statute, we write:
Congress may only stop IPAB from issuing self-executing legislative proposals
if three-fifths of all sworn members of Congress pass a joint resolution
to dissolve IPAB during a short window in 2017. Even then, IPAB’s enabling
statute dictates the terms of its own repeal, and it continues to grant IPAB the
power to legislate for six months after Congress repeals it. If Congress
fails to repeal IPAB through this process, then Congress can never again
alter or reject IPAB’s proposals.
You read that right. For more, read our
paper, especially Box 3 on page 9.
CRS, I’m interested to know what you think. Take a close look at the law and
get back to me.Hmmmm...........Guide for Dictatorship 101.Read the full story here.
Members of the House of Representatives are scheduled to vote Thursday to
repeal all of Obamacare. Given that the House voted to repeal the law last year,
some commentators and observers have questioned the need for another repeal
vote. However, the scandals coming to light over the last week perfectly make the
case for why Congress must eradicate the law from the statute books.
On Friday, the Internal Revenue Service finally disclosed that it had spent
years targeting tea party and other conservative groups, delaying their
applications for non-profit status and giving those applications additional
scrutiny — solely because of those groups’ political beliefs.
Also on Friday, The Washington Post revealed that Health and Human
Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius personally asked health industry groups to
contribute to Enroll America, a pro-Obamacare front group working to “educate”
the public about the law’s supposed benefits. While we don’t yet know all the details about these scandals, we do know that
the IRS grossly abused its power at a time when Obamacare grants it massive new
authority. The Treasury Department’s Inspector General has said Obamacare
represents “the largest set of tax law changes in 20 years,” with at least 42
provisions adding to or amending the tax code.
Obamacare taxes most people with health insurance, and most people without
health insurance. Likewise, the law taxes many employers who provide health
insurance, and most employers who don’t provide health insurance.
Obamacare’s heavy reliance on the IRS seems somehow fitting, as the entire
law relies on a scheme of government controls and regulations to work its will
on the health care system. The law imposes price controls on insurance companies
and extends a system of price controls for pharmaceutical companies. Obamacare
also places a board of unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats at the center of its
plans to control health care costs. A 2010 Congressional Research Service report found that the number of new
bureaucracies “that will ultimately be created” by Obamacare “is currently
unknowable.” Little wonder that Vice President Biden boasted shortly before the
law was passed, “We’re going to control the insurance companies.” That’s what Obamacare is about. It’s not about health care. It’s about
government control and power. And the record of this Administration shows its
willingness to use this power in arbitrary and harmful ways.
Secretary Sebelius’s recently disclosed fundraising campaign tried to make an
end-run around Congress, forcing private companies to give money for a
pro-Obamacare marketing campaign that Congress itself has refused to fund. It isn’t the first time the secretary has skirted the law, either. HHS’s
infamous waivers, the majority of which went to individuals in union health
plans, weren’t mentioned in Obamacare. And in recent weeks, Democrats who
support the law have criticized the secretary for taking funds from other
programs to fund Obamacare implementation.
Just like the IRS, HHS has also targeted the First Amendment rights of
private organizations. In 2009, the department applied an infamous “gag order”
on Medicare Advantage plans, ordering them not to communicate with seniors about
how Obamacare’s cuts to Medicare Advantage would affect their coverage. If past experience is any guide, IRS and HHS could use their newfound
Obamacare powers to target their political opponents. Will individuals who
choose not to buy insurance under Obamacare’s mandate find themselves subjected
to government audits?
Will corporations who choose not to “donate” to Sebelius’s fundraising
campaign find themselves targeted by Obamacare regulators — or even the IRS
itself? Given the events of the past week, few can answer these questions with
an unequivocal “no.” There’s one easy way to stop the rot, and that’s to repeal Obamacare once and
for all. At a time when this week’s revelations show how the government has
abused its existing powers, it’s exactly the wrong time to give the government
yet more authority. Congress should instead focus on repealing Obamacare and
restoring freedom. This piece originally appeared in The Washington Examiner.
IRS Faces Lawsuit After Stealing 60 Million Medical Records.HT: GatewayPundit.
The IRS is facing a lawsuit after stealing 60 million medical records from 10 million patients. Healthcare IT News reported:
The Internal Revenue Service is now facing a class action lawsuit over allegations that it improperly accessed and stole the health records of some 10 million Americans, including medical records of all California state judges.
According to a report by Courthousenews.com, an unnamed HIPAA-covered entity in California is suing the IRS, alleging that some 60 million medical records from 10 million patients were stolen by 15 IRS agents.
The personal health information seized on March 11, 2011, included psychological counseling, gynecological counseling, sexual/drug treatment and other medical treatment data.
“This is an action involving the corruption and abuse of power by several Internal Revenue Service agents,” the complaint reads. “No search warrant authorized the seizure of these records; no subpoena authorized the seizure of these records; none of the 10,000,000 Americans were under any kind of known criminal or civil investigation and their medical records had no relevance whatsoever to the IRS search. IT personnel at the scene, a HIPPA facility warning on the building and the IT portion of the searched premises, and the company executives each warned the IRS agents of these privileged records,” it continued.
According to the case, the IRS agents had a search warrant for financial data pertaining to a former employee of the John Doe company, however, “it did not authorize any seizure of any healthcare or medical record of any persons, least of all third parties completely unrelated to the matter,” the complaint read.
The lawsuit is seeking punitive damages for constitutional violations, as well as $25,000 “per violation per individual” in compensatory damages. Those damages could start at a minimum total of $250 billion.Read the full story here.
Top Constitutional Experts: Obama Is Worse than Nixon.HT: Washington'sblog.
In the wake of the twin scandals of the IRS targeting conservative groups and the Department of Justice spying on AP reporters, the comparisons between Obama and Nixon are everywhere.
But what do experts say?
Former New York Times general counsel James Goodale – who represented the paper during its Pentagon Papers fight with the Nixon administration – said in an interview yesterday that Obama is worse than Nixon when it comes to press freedoms. And see this.
Former constitutional lawyer Glenn Greenwald noted last year:
We supposedly learned important lessons from the abuses of power of the Nixon administration, and then of the Bush administration: namely, that we don’t trust government officials to exercise power in the dark, with no judicial oversight, with no obligation to prove their accusations. Yet now we hear exactly this same mentality issuing from Obama, his officials and defenders to justify a far more extreme power than either Nixon or Bush dreamed of asserting: he’s only killing The Bad Citizens, so there’s no reason to object!
The painful fact is that Barack Obama is the president that Nixon always wanted to be. Four decades ago, Nixon was halted in his determined effort to create an “imperial presidency” with unilateral powers and privileges. In 2013, Obama wields those very same powers openly and without serious opposition. The success of Obama in acquiring the long-denied powers of Nixon is one of his most remarkable, if ignoble, accomplishments. Consider a few examples:
Warrantless surveillance
Nixon’s use of warrantless surveillance led to the creation of a special court called theForeign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA). But the reform turned out to be more form than substance. The secret court turned “probable cause” into a meaningless standard, virtually guaranteeing any surveillance the government wanted. After hundreds of thousands of applications over decades, only a couple have ever been denied.
Last month, the Supreme Court crushed any remaining illusions regarding FISA when itsided with the Obama administration in ruling that potential targets of such spying had to have proof they were spied upon before filing lawsuits, even if the government has declared such evidence to be secret. That’s only the latest among dozens of lawsuits the administration has blocked while surveillance expands exponentially.
Unilateral military action
Nixon’s impeachment included the charge that he evaded Congress’ sole authority to declare war by invading Cambodia. In the Libyan “mission,” Obama announced that only he had the inherent authority to decide what is a “war” and that so long as he called it something different, no congressional approval or even consultation was necessary. He proceeded to bomb a nation’s capital, destroy military units and spend more than a billion dollars in support of one side in a civil war.
Kill lists
Nixon ordered a burglary to find evidence to use against Daniel Ellsberg, who gave the famed Pentagon Papers to the press, and later tried to imprison him. Ellsberg was later told of a secret plot by the White House “plumbers” to “incapacitate” him in a physical attack. It was a shocking revelation. That’s nothing compared with Obama’s assertion of the right to kill any U.S. citizen without a charge, let alone conviction, based on his sole authority. A recently leaked memo argues that the president has a right to kill a citizen even when he lacks “clear evidence (of) a specific attack” being planned.
Attacking whistle-blowers
Nixon was known for his attacks on whistle-blowers. He used the Espionage Act of 1917to bring a rare criminal case against Ellsberg. Nixon was vilified for the abuse of the law. Obama has brought twice as many such prosecutions as all prior presidents combined [and see this]. While refusing to prosecute anyone for actual torture, the Obama administration has prosecuted former CIA employee John Kiriakou for disclosing the torture program.
Other Nixonesque areas include Obama’s overuse of classification laws and withholding material from Congress. There are even missing tapes. In the torture scandal, CIA officials admitted to destroying tapes that they feared could be used against them in criminal cases. Of course, Nixon had missing tapes, but Rose Mary Woods claimed to have erased them by mistake, as opposed to current officials who openly admit to intentional destruction.
Obama has not only openly asserted powers that were the grounds for Nixon’s impeachment, but he has made many love him for it. More than any figure in history, Obama has been a disaster for the U.S. civil liberties movement. By coming out of the Democratic Party and assuming an iconic position, Obama has ripped the movement in half. Many Democrats and progressive activists find themselves unable to oppose Obama for the authoritarian powers he has assumed.
It is not simply a case of personality trumping principle; it is a cult of personality.
Long after Watergate, not only has the presidency changed. We have changed. We have become accustomed to elements of a security state such as massive surveillance and executive authority without judicial oversight. We have finally answered a question left by Benjamin Franklin in 1787, when a Mrs. Powel confronted him after the Constitutional Convention and asked, “Well, Doctor, what have we got — a republic or a monarchy?” His chilling response: “A republic, if you can keep it.”
We appear to have grown weary of the republic and traded it for promises of security from a shining political personality. Somewhere, Nixon must be wondering how it could have been this easy.
Nixon’s “Enemies List” is famous, and the former head of the National Security Agency’s global digital data gathering program says that Obama also has an enemies list … which has been used to take down a wide variety of people, including the head of the CIA. The Washington Post’s Ed Rogers notes:
Obama doesn’t need a traditional Nixonian enemies list. In the digital age, with the Obama machine’s much-celebrated technological capabilities, the president can sort his enemies by keywords.
You’ve heard about the AP spying scandal, and the head of the Department of Justice implies that the government has spied on many other reporters.
Reporters who criticize those in power are being smeared by the government and targeted for arrest(and see this). Indeed, the Obama administration is treating real reporters as potential terrorists.
After Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Chris Hedges, journalist Naomi Wolf, Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg and others sued the government to enjoin the NDAA’s allowance of the indefinite detention of Americans – the judge asked the government attorneys 5 times whether journalists like Hedges could be indefinitely detained simply for interviewing and then writing about bad guys. The government refusedto promise that journalists like Hedges won’t be thrown in a dungeon for the rest of their lives without any right to talk to a judge.
Wikileaks’ head Julian Assange could face the death penalty for his heinous crime of leaking whistleblower information which make those in power uncomfortable … i.e. being a reporter. Daniel Ellsberg notes that Obama’s claimed power to indefinitely detain people without charges or access to a lawyer or the courts is a power that even King George didn’t claim. Former judge and adjunct professor of constitutional law Andrew Napolitano points out that Obama’s claim that he can indefinitely detain prisoners even after they are acquitted of their crimes is a power that even Hitler and Stalin didn’t claim.
Indeed, Obama has turned America into the most spied upon nation in world history, and has rolled back liberties to the time of the enactment of the Magna Carta in 1215.
Former US Attorney General Michael Mukasey was on America's Newsroom this morning. The former AG slammed the Obama administration for using the arms of government for political purposes.
Obama White House claims no knowledge of AP investigation.(RT).Just hours after the AP reported on Monday that the Justice Department secretly
obtained two months of telephone records of reporters and editors employed by
the news agency, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said, “Other than
press reports, we have no knowledge of any attempt by the Justice Department to
seek phone records of the AP.”
"We are not involved in decisions made in connection with criminal
investigations, as those matters are handled independently by the Justice
Department,” said Carney. “Any questions about an ongoing criminal
investigation should be directed to the Department of Justice.”
But by the time the White House responded to the news on Monday, the AP had
already authored a letter to Eric Holder, the US attorney general appointed by
Pres. Obama and ergo the top official within the Department of Justice.
According to the AP’s initial report on the investigation, AP President and
Chief Executive Officer Gary Pruitt wrote Holder to condemn the probe as a
"massive and unprecedented intrusion" into how news organizations
operate.
"There can be no possible justification for such an overbroad collection
of the telephone communications of The Associated Press and its reporters,”
Pruitt wrote.
The Justice Department has yet to weigh in on the scandal and will likely
defer questions for the time being since official policy prohibits the agency
from formally discussing criminal investigations that are ongoing. Members of
Congress, on the other hand, can’t say they’ve remained silent. Within hours of
the AP story going live, lawmakers from both sides of the aisle were up in arms
over the news.
Even if the administration attests that the White House and Justice
Department weren’t in cahoots, politicians that are peeved by the matter are
making it known that the Obama administration isn’t off the hook.Regardless of
whether the probe were approved by Attorney General Holder — or, for that
matter, if it was even necessary — many are saying the blame ultimately falls on
the president, who campaigned on a promise of transparency yet oversees an
administration that investigates journalists.
Senator Rand Paul (R-Kentucky), a staunch constitutionalist, told Fox News on
Monday, “This sounds like a president somewhat drunk on power, not cautious
about how he uses power.”
Obama, Paul told Fox host Sean Hannity, is “using the power of his
government to investigate his enemies, he’s tapping the phones of the press, and
it turns out last year he signed legislation that allows him to detain an
American without a trial and send them to Guantanamo Bay.”
The Obama administration’s attorneys have fought relentlessly to keep the
NDAA on the books, even filing appeals to petition a federal judge after Section
1021 was deemed unconstitutional. Now with the AP’s latest revelation, though,
members of the same Congress that approved of that bill only a year-and-a-half
ago are attacking the White House.
“This is obviously disturbing,” House Oversight and Government Reform
Chairman Darrell Issa (R-California) told reporters. “Coming within a week of
revelations that the White House lied to the American people about the Benghazi
attacks and the IRS targeted conservative Americans for their political beliefs,
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.”
In a tweet, Issa added that he found the revelation
“disturbing.”
Whether it is secretly targeting patriotic Americans participating in the
electoral progress or reporters exercising their First Amendment rights, these
new revelations suggest a pattern of intimidation by the Obama
Administration,” weighed in Douglas Heye, a spokesman for House Majority
Leader Eric Cantor (R-Virginia).
Michael Steel, a representative for House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio),
said, “The First Amendment is first for a reason. If the Obama Administration
is going after reporters’ phone records, they better have a damned good
explanation.”
Even members of Obama’s own Democratic Party were disturbed by the AP’s
report.
“The burden is always on the government when they go after private
information – especially information regarding the press or its confidential
sources,” Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) told
reporters. “I want to know more about this case, but on the face of it, I am
concerned that the government may not have met that burden. I am very troubled
by these allegations and want to hear the government’s explanation.”
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut) told the AP the Justice Department
"must be forthcoming with the facts as soon as possible."
Holder’s office has not said why the investigation was ordered, but the AP
suggested it’s likely in regards to a May 2012 exclusive the agency published in
which a covert CIA operation was exposed. Earlier this year, CIA Director John
Brennan told Congress that the FBI asked him if he was the source for the AP
article. Brennan denied the allegation and said the release of information
pertaining to a terror plot was an "unauthorized and dangerous disclosure of
classified information."
The AP wrote Monday that the letter notifying the agency of the investigation
arrived last Friday, and acknowledged that subpoenas were used to obtain phone
records from reporters and editors.
Matthew Miller, a former top spokesman for Holder, defended the department’s
actions to reporters for the Huffington Post.
"This is how leaks get investigated," Miller said. "Leaking
classified information is a crime, and there are usually only two parties who
know who committed the crime, the leaker and the reporter. Getting access to
phone records allows investigators to see who the possible source might have
been and confront them with evidence of a crime."Read the full story here.
