FBI Files Document Communism in Valerie Jarrett’s Family.

FBI Files Document Communism in Valerie Jarrett’s Family. HT: Judicialwatch.

Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) files obtained by Judicial Watch reveal that the dad, maternal grandpa and father-in-law of President Obama’s trusted senior advisor, Valerie Jarrett, were hardcore Communists under investigation by the U.S. government.

Jarrett’s dad, pathologist and geneticist Dr. James Bowman, had extensive ties to Communist associations and individuals, his lengthy FBI file shows. In 1950 Bowman was in communication with a paid Soviet agent named Alfred Stern, who fled to Prague after getting charged with espionage. Bowman was also a member of a Communist-sympathizing group called the Association of Internes and Medical Students. After his discharge from the Army Medical Corps in 1955, Bowman moved to Iran to work, the FBI records show.

JW also obtained documents on Bowman from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) showing that the FBI was brought into investigate him for his membership in a group that “follows the communist party line.” The Jarrett family Communist ties also include a business partnership between Jarrett’s maternal grandpa, Robert Rochon Taylor, and Stern, the Soviet agent associated with her dad.

Jarrett’s father-in-law, Vernon Jarrett, was also another big-time Chicago Communist, according to separate FBI files obtained by JW as part of a probe into the Jarrett family’s Communist ties.


It’s been well documented that Valerie Jarrett, a Chicago lawyer and longtime Obama confidant, is a liberal extremist who wields tremendous power in the White House. Faithful to her roots, she still has connections to many Communist and extremist groups, including the Muslim Brotherhood. Jarrett and her family also had strong ties to Frank Marshal Davis, a big Obama mentor and Communist Party member with an extensive FBI file. Read the full story here.

Video - Obama: "Maybe it's time for mandatory voting?"

Russian Officials Order Deportation of Chief Rabbi of Omsk.

Russian Officials Order Deportation of Chief Rabbi of Omsk. (Forward).

The chief rabbi of Omsk in southern Siberia, Asher Krichevsky, was ordered deported by Russian officials, according to Russian media reports.

Krichevsky, 36, was told Tuesday that he and his family — a wife and six children — have 15 days to leave Russia.

The rabbi, who has Israeli citizenship, has worked in Russia as a Chabad emissary for 13 years.

The Federal Migration Service has accused Krichevsky of “illegal trading of alcohol,” Kommersant-Siberia reported Tuesday, but Krichevsky told the newspaper that he has not been told why he is losing his residency permit.

Local news organizations also reported that Krichevsky is under suspicion of spying for Israel, while others believe the decision is politically motivated.

Last month, Krichevsky was fined 2,000 rubles, or about $50, for selling kosher wine from the Chabad House without a liquor license, Kommersant reported.

Omsk Jewish leaders plan to appeal the deportation to Russian President Vladimir Putin, calling Krichevsky “an absolutely apolitical individual,” according to Kommersant.

The newspaper reported, however, that the rabbi may have made anti-government comments in private conversations and that the deportation may be intended to send a message to other religious leaders.

The rabbi has 10 days to appeal the decision. Hmmm.....In he 'good old days' they would send you to Siberia, now they send you to Israel?

Video - First lady Michelle Shuts Down the Press...America, 'Land of the free.....

Video - First lady Michelle Shuts Down the Press...America, 'Land of the free...... HT: Whitehouse dossier.

From the account by Vocativ:

Vocativ was on Martha’s Vineyard over the weekend to film a piece about the African-American community on the island. While we were shooting on Beach Road, one of the busiest thoroughfares on the Vineyard, the Secret Service approached and asked us to switch off our camera for 15 minutes.

A moment later, first lady Michelle Obama power walked by our crew. She was out for some exercise with a small group—and a serious security detail. It was 9:30 in the morning.

Our producer and cameraman were surrounded by Secret Service agents andvery strongly advised to stop filming. At one point, Mrs. Obama looked in their direction and said, “Don’t do that.” It’s unclear if she was telling the agents to leave us alone, or scolding us for filming on public property.Read the full story here.

This Obama 'Admin' Proposal Would Effectively Authorize Some Americans Seceding

This Obama Administration Proposal Would Effectively Authorize Some Americans Seceding. HT: Heritage.

In its latest assault on the U.S. Constitution, the Obama administration is proposing to recognize so-called “Native” Hawaiians as an Indian tribe entitled to separate and become an independent sovereign and to “reestablish” a “government-to-government relationship between the United State and the Native Hawaiian community.”

Such an unconstitutional action would amount to authorizing secession for certain residents of Hawaii.

It would also implicitly authorize government-sanctioned, discriminatory conduct against any other residents who don’t meet the explicit ancestry and blood-quantum requirements to be considered a “Native.” This would balkanize Hawaii, dividing the islands into separate racial and ethnic enclaves, and undo “the political bargain through which Hawaii secured its admission into the Union.”

>>> Legal Memorandum: The Obama Administration’s Attempt to Balkanize Hawaii

At the end of June, the Department of the Interior issued an “Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking” that set out the administration’s plan, with the opportunity for the public to file comments ending on August 19. No doubt to its chagrin, the administration encountered strong opposition at a series of hearings the Interior Department held in Hawaii in June and July, with one official from the state Office of Hawaiian Affairs being loudly booed when she declared her support for the plan.

From a constitutional standpoint, the administration has no legal authority to implement its proposal. Only Congress, not the president, has the authority to recognize Indian tribes under Article I, Section 8. Congress has specifically refused to provide that authority. For more than a decade, former U.S. Sen. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, and Sen. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, tried unsuccessfully to convince Congress to pass the Native Hawaiian Recognition Act, which would have provided such recognition.

In fact, as recently as a year ago, the head of Indian Affairs at the Interior Department, Assistant Secretary Kevin K. Washburn, told a House subcommittee that the administration did not “have the authority to recognize Native Hawaiians.” Washburn told the subcommittee that “we would need legislation to be able to proceed down that road.” Yet, suddenly, the administration is proceeding down the very road that it admitted it lacks the authority to travel.

Hawaii’s own former attorney general, Michael Lilly, says that any effort to recognize Hawaiians as an Indian tribe is unconstitutional, because so-called Native Hawaiians don’t meet any of the political requirements necessary for such recognition. Hawaii went from being an independent kingdom to a territory to a state and four commissioners from the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights have told President Obama that neither Congress nor the president can “reconstitute a tribe or other sovereign entity that has ceased to exist as a polity in the past.” In other words, there is no Native Hawaiian government with which the administration can establish a government-to-government relationship because “it is an extinguished government, and therefore, no government at all.”

The Hawaiian state government already provides special benefits to Native Hawaiians, who are defined as “any descendant of not less than one-half part of the blood of races inhabiting the Hawaiian Islands previous to 1778.” 

As one commissioner has commented, this definition is similar to “the odious ‘one drop rule’ contained in the racial-segregation codes of the 19^th and early 20^th centuries.” The U.S. Supreme Court has called such ancestry definitions a proxy for race and held that they are discriminatory and a violation of the Fifteenth Amendment. In the past, the U.S. Justice Department has consistently taken the same position.

At worst, the Obama administration’s proposal is unconstitutional, and as a number of U.S. senators have told the administration, it is “at best offensive to the character of a country devoted to the advancement of all its citizens regardless of race.” 

The proposed rulemaking should be withdrawn and rescinded and the administration should stop engaging in unconstitutional behavior that is outside of its authority.


The post This Obama Administration Proposal Would Effectively Authorize Some Americans Seceding appeared first on Daily Signal.

“Dreamer” Convicted of Killing 2 Girls Spared Deportation Under Obama Amnesty

“Dreamer” Convicted of Killing 2 Girls Spared Deportation Under Obama Amnesty. HT: JudicialWatch.

An illegal immigrant protected by President Obama’s amnesty for “Dreamers” (brought to the United States through no fault of their own as children) will not be deported after getting convicted of felony hit-and-run for killing two little girls playing in a leaf pile.

The shocking story comes out of a small town near Portland Oregon, a city that has long offered illegal aliens sanctuary. In fact, the entire state of Oregon is a sanctuary for those in the country illegally and all law enforcement officers are banned from using any public resources to locate or capture illegal immigrants. 

This case involves a 19-year-old woman, Cinthya ­Garcia-Cisneros, living illegally in the U.S. since she was four years old. She’s the classic candidate for the president’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) directive, which grants illegal aliens who came to the U.S. as youngsters a two-year deferment from deportation.

Under DACA, implemented in 2012, Garcia-Cisneros received a work permit, driver’s license and Social Security number. Last fall she slammed a sports utility vehicle into a leaf pile, killing 6-year-old and 11-year-old stepsisters, then she fled and her boyfriend helped cover up the crime.

The horrific crash occurred in Forest Grove, which is about 25 miles west of Portland. Garcia-Cisneros got arrested the following day and her boyfriend is in jail for hindering prosecution. Earlier this year a jury found her guilty of two counts of felony hit-and-run. Even under DACA, the illegal immigrant should have been deported so she was taken to an immigration detention center in Tacoma, Washington months ago to complete removal proceedings.

Shockingly, Garcia-Cisneros was recently released from the federal facility and this week an immigration judge dismissed her deportation case.

A Portland-area radio station was the first to break the unbelievable story, but the national media subsequently showed interest because crucial portions of the case are shrouded in secrecy. The judge gave no reason for dismissing the deportation and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has declined to say why the case was dropped, according to a national newswire story that says the feds cited “privacy issues.”

As egregious as the Garcia-Cisneros case may seem, there may be many others because the Obama administration has gone out of its way to protect illegal immigrants regardless of criminal history. In fact, shortly after DACA was implemented Judicial Watch reported that federal immigration officers were actually ordered to release illegal aliens arrested for violent crimes as long as they claimed to be “Dreamers”—protected by DACA—who came to the U.S. as children.

Officials at separate front-line agencies of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)—ICE and the U.S. Border Patrol—were so infuriated that that they made the shocking directive pubic. Both are longtime federal agents and union heads who represent thousands of immigration officers around the country. They confirmed that Illegal immigrants are essentially running the show, avoiding detention by exploiting the Obama administration’s controversial DACA plan, which is expected to spare nearly 1 million young illegal immigrants (so-called “dreamers”) from deportation.

U.S. Civil Rights Commissioner Blasts Obama Amnesty Plan; Will Hurt Blacks

U.S. Civil Rights Commissioner Blasts Obama Amnesty Plan; Will Hurt Blacks. HT: JudicialWatch.

Illegal immigration has a particularly disastrous effect on the employment of black Americans and disproportionately impacts the wages and work opportunities of African-American men, according to a member of the United States Commission on Civil Rights.

In a letter to President Obama, the commissioner, Peter Kirsanow, blasts the administration’s plans to grant legal status and work authorization to millions of illegal immigrants.

Kirsanow is an African-American lawyer with an Ivy League degree who also sits on the National Labor Relations Board and the Center for New Black Leadership. He is a presidential appointment to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights which was established by Congress in 1957 to enhance enforcement of federal civil rights laws. The agency has eight commissioners, four appointed by the president and four by Congress. They serve six-year terms and play a vital role in advancing civil rights through objective and comprehensive investigation, research and analysis.


“Any grant of legal status will serve as a magnet to prospective illegal immigrants and further depress employment opportunities and wages for African-Americans,” Kirsanow writes to the president. “Given that the labor force participation rate is at a historic low, the unemployment rate is 6.2 percent and there has been a precipitous decline in household wealth, the timing for such a grant of legal status could not be worse.”

The veteran civil rights commissioner cites expert testimony and research conducted by his agency in the last few years to back up his words.

As an example Kirsanow tells the president about a 2008 commission briefing to address the impact of illegal immigration on the wages and employment opportunities of African-Americans. Despite ideological diversity, a number of well-regarded scholars from leading universities and independent groups acknowledged that “illegal immigration has a discernible negative effect on black employment,” Kirsanow confirms.

This is because illegal immigrants and blacks are disproportionately low skilled and often compete for the same jobs, according to one scholar cited by the commissioner. Other research has found that illegal immigrants had displaced U.S. citizens in industries that had traditionally employed large numbers of African-Americans, such as meatpacking.

“Granting legal status to millions of people who are in the United States illegally will continue to depress the wages and employment opportunities of African-American men and teenagers,” Kirsanow writes.

“It will also depress the wages and employment opportunities of African-Americans going forward. The civil rights commissioner goes on to blast the commander-in-chief for igniting the recent flood of illegal immigration by granting legal status to those living in the U.S. illegally. “When you incentivize bad behavior, you get more of it,” Kirsanow tells Obama.


The civil rights commissioner also slams the president with one of his administration’s favorite arguments on behalf of minority civil rights. It’s called disparate impact on the basis of national origin and Kirsanow asserts amnesty will constitute an unlawful discrimination because it will disproportionately benefit a particular group—Mexicans and Central Americans—and disproportionately disadvantage other ethnic groups. 

This would be considered a violation of Title VII, Kirsanow writes referring to the section of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Here’s another great point that few have bothered to bring up; an executive order granting amnesty is unfair to people who are attempting to immigrate legally, the commissioner reminds.

Obama’s Focus On Illegals Outrages Black Americans

Obama’s Focus On Illegals Outrages Black Americans.(Newsmax).

President Barack Obama’s attention to the illegal immigration crisis, which could lead him to issue executive orders early next week to delay  deportations and grant work permits to as many as 6 million migrants, has soured many of his core voters: African-Americans.

Many blacks, who twice voted for Obama in record numbers to elect him - and keep him - as the nation’s first African-American president, are angry that he has neglected the problems facing inner cities while working on the border crisis.

These big-city ills include chronic black unemployment, poor housing conditions, steep prices for food and services, low high-school graduation rates, and high crime rates.

“Black people are being played,” Herman Cain, the 2012 Republican presidential candidate, told Newsmax. “They have been taken for granted by Democrats for decades. Now they’ve reached a boiling point with this whole crisis on the border, and some of them are speaking out.”

By all accounts and as reported by Brietbart.com, the number of Border Patrol arrests of illegal immigrants since Oct. 1 stands at 174,000 and is still rising.

Cain and other African-American conservatives charge that Obama “manufactured this crisis” through a 2012 executive order that created the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

The DACA ended the threat of deportation for as many as 670,000 illegals between the ages of 15 and 31 who were brought to the U.S. before their 16th birthday. In June, the administration extended the program for two more years.

“We’ve got a real crisis in every major inner city in this country,” Cain said. “They’ve done exactly nothing to understand the problem, let alone do anything about it.”

Anita MonCrief, board member of the Black Conservatives Fund, told Newsmax that African-Americans have long been “sour on Obama.”

“This is just the first time they’ve been fed up enough to say something about it.

“People were afraid to speak out because it was unpopular to be black and not be a supporter of Obama,” MonCrief said. “The immigration crisis has brought all of this to a head to the point where people feel that they are compelled to speak out.”Read the full story here.

Video - Obama: US commits Human rights violations

"CHANGE" - 35 Percent in U.S. Facing Debt Collectors!

"CHANGE" - 35 Percent in U.S. Facing Debt Collectors! (ABC).

More than 35 percent of Americans have debts and unpaid bills that have been reported to collection agencies, according to a study released Tuesday by the Urban Institute.

The study found that 35.1 percent of people with credit records had been reported to collections for debt that averaged $5,178, based on September 2013 records. The study points to a disturbing trend: The share of Americans in collections has remained relatively constant, even as the country as a whole has whittled down the size of its credit card debt since the official end of the Great Recession in the middle of 2009.

The delinquent debt is overwhelmingly concentrated in Southern and Western states. Texas cities have a large share of their populations being reported to collection agencies: Dallas (44.3 percent); El Paso (44.4 percent), Houston (43.7 percent), McAllen (51.7 percent) and San Antonio (44.5 percent).


Almost half of Las Vegas residents— many of whom bore the brunt of the housing bust that sparked the recession— have debt in collections. Other Southern cities have a disproportionate number of their people facing debt collectors, including Orlando and Jacksonville, Florida; Memphis, Tennessee; Columbia, South Carolina; and Jackson, Mississippi.

Video - Krauthammer: Amnesty via Executive Order 'Impeachable Offense,' But Still 'Political Suicide'

Forensic scientist: ‘Back Doors’ Running on Every iOS Device

Forensic scientist:‘Back Doors’ Running on Every iOS Device. (ZDnet).

Forensic scientist and author Jonathan Zdziarski has posted the slides (PDF) from his talk at the Hackers On Planet Earth (HOPE/X) conference in New York called Identifying Backdoors, Attack Points, and Surveillance Mechanisms in iOS Devices.
…According to one slide the iPhone is “reasonably secure” to a typical attacker and the iPhone 5 and iOS 7 are more secure from everybody except Apple and the government. 

But he notes that Apple has “worked hard to ensure that it can access data on end-user devices on behalf of law enforcement” and links to Apple’s Law Enforcement Process Guidelines, which clearly spell this out.

Zdziarski's questions for Apple include:

• Why is there a packet sniffer running on 600 million personal iOS devices instead of moved to the developer mount?
• Why are there undocumented services that bypass user backup encryption that dump mass amounts of personal data from the phone?
• Why is most of my user data still not encrypted with the PIN or passphrase, enabling the invasion of my personal privacy by YOU?
• Why is there still no mechanism to review the devices my iPhone is paired with, so I can delete ones that don’t belong? Read the full story here.

Whistleblower: The NSA lies about what it stores, stores 80% of all phone calls full audio.

Whistleblower: NSA stores 80% of all phone calls, not just metadata - full audio. (RT).

The National Security Agency lies about what it stores, said William Binney, one of the highest profile whistleblowers to ever emerge from the NSA, at a conference in London organized by the Center for Investigative Journalism on July 5. Binney left the agency shortly after the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center because he was disgusted at the organizations move towards public surveillance.

“At least 80 percent of fiber-optic cables globally go via the US,” Binney said. “This is no accident and allows the US to view all communication coming in. At least 80 percent of all audio calls, not just metadata, are recorded and stored in the US. The NSA lies about what it stores.”

Binney has no evidence to substantiate his claims as he did not take any documents with him when he left the NSA. However, he insists the organization is untruthful about its intelligence gathering practices and their ultimate aim. He says that recent Supreme Court decisions have led him to believe the NSA won’t stop until it has complete control over the population.

“The ultimate goal of the NSA is total population control,” Binney said, “but I’m a little optimistic with some recent Supreme Court decisions, such as law enforcement mostly now needing a warrant before searching a smartphone.”
During his speech at the conference, Binney praised spy-turned-whistleblower Edward Snowden for disseminating the classified documents that revealed the NSA’s global spy programs. The latest revelations showed that contrary to the NSA’s claims, the majority of information the agency gathers is from ordinary citizens with no connection to terrorism.

NSA gathered 'startlingly intimate' data on ordinary citizens, Snowden data reveals

Washington has defended its spy programs, claiming that the NSA targets individuals with connections to known terrorist groups to thwart attacks. Binney said this was a lie and the NSA had stopped “zero attacks” with its intelligence gathering programs.

One of the main factors that has allowed the NSA to increase its spy programs is the lack of oversight in the US, argues Binney. In particular, he took issue with the Foreign Surveillance Court (FISA), which oversees the issue of search warrants against people suspected of terrorism. Binney believes the court is meaningless and always sides with the US government.

“The Fisa court has only the government’s point of view,” he said. “There are no other views for the judges to consider. There have been at least 15-20 trillion constitutional violations for US domestic audiences and you can double that globally.”

Revelations about US global spy programs have sparked mass indignation, with one American judge saying the surveillance was almost Orwellian in nature. German Chancellor Angela Merkel also compared US intelligence policy to the antics of the Stasi secret police in the former East Germany.

Federal judge says NSA's phone surveillance program is likely unconstitutional

‘I,’ ‘Me,’ ‘My’—Obama Uses First Person Singular 199 Times in Speech Vowing Unilateral Action.

‘I,’ ‘Me,’ ‘My’—Obama Uses First Person Singular 199 Times in Speech Vowing Unilateral Action. (CNSNews).

Not counting instances when he quoted a letter from a citizen or cited dialogue from a movie, President Barack Obama used the first person singular--including the pronouns "I" and "me" and the adjective "my"--199 times in a speech he delivered Thursday vowing to use unilateral executive action to achieve his policy goals that Congress would not enact through the normal, constitutional legislative process.

“It is lonely, me just doing stuff,” Obama said at the speech in Austin, Texas, according to the official transcript and video posted on the White House website.

“I’m just telling the truth now,” Obama told the crowd. “I don't have to run for office again, so I can just let her rip. And I want to assure you, I’m really not that partisan of a guy.”

The White House presented Obama’s speech, which the president delivered at Austin’s Paramount Theatre, as “Remarks by the President on the Economy.” The remarks, the White House reports, ran 40 minutes, and the full transcript (including annotations for “laughter” and “applause”) is more than 5,500 words.

By contrast, President Abraham Lincoln’s Gettyburg Address was only 272 words--and did not include any form of the first person singular.

In President Obama’s speech, he used a first person singular, on average, every 12 seconds. At that rate, had Obama spoken for just 15 more minutes, he would have used the first person singular more than 272 times in one speech—exceeding all the words in the Gettysburg Address.

In one 68-word passage--in which he vowed to act unilaterally if Congress did not enact legislation he liked--Obama used the first person singular five times more than Lincoln used it in his 272 words at Gettysburg.

“I can't stand by with partisan gridlock that's the result of cynical political games that threaten the hard work of millions of Americans,” said Obama. “I’m not just going to stand by and say, okay, that's--I guess that's the way it is. Whenever and wherever I have the power, the legal authority to help families like yours, even if Congress is not doing anything, I will take that opportunity.”

'Invisible' - Encrypted instant messaging project seeks to obscure metadata.

'Invisible' - Encrypted instant messaging project seeks to obscure metadata.(TechWorld). By JeremyKirk.

Cyber “security researchers are have a working prototype of an instant messaging application that aims to thoroughly obscure and scrub evidence that two parties have been chatting.”

“The Invisible.im Project,” notes Mr. Kirk, “is looking for developers, and aims to solve a difficult security problem of online messaging services: metadata, or information about other data that can give law enforcement and governments, leads on people they’re investigating.”

“Even if an IM conversation between two people is encrypted,” adds Mr. Kirk, “a determination that two people merely communicated, can be enough for authorities to ask a court for warrants for other information — that could eventually compromise their [previous] conversations. That information could come from buddy lists; or, instant messaging servers that broker conversations and log information.”

“Invisible.im makes it possible for any member of the public to communicate with a journalist (or, indeed anyone) without leaving a retrospectively recoverable forensic trail behind on third-party servers,” according to the project’s website. Mr. Kirk notes that “Invisible.im was launched by [cyber] security IT analyst Patrick Gray; and HD Moore, Chief Research Officer at the security company Rapid7; the vulnerability researcher known as “The Grugg,” and another researcher, Ducktor Richo.”

Mr. Kirk adds that “the foundation of Invisible.im is built around XMPP, the widely used chat protocol. But, rather than using servers across the Internet to broker the transfer of messages, Invisible.im sets up a local XMPP server on a user’s computer. That local XMPP server then connects to the TOR hidden service.

TOR is short for The Onion Router, an [Internet] anonymity network that encrypts Internet traffic in order to give greater privacy to a Web browser. TOR can also be used to set up a “hidden” website; or, one hosted on the network whose true IP address is masked.”

“Chats are encrypted,” he notes, “using OTR, Off-The-Record, an encryption plugin. Invisible.im will use “ephemeral” encryption keys for those OTR sessions, which are scrubbed when the chat session ends. Chats will also have another layer of encryption by virtue of using TOR.”

“An “anonymous” mode of Invisible.im will allow a person to contact another person, for example, by downloading Invisible.im ; and, then entering the hidden service address of the person,” notes Mr. Kirk.

“The project is considering creating an address book so people can find the verifiable addresses of others they wish to contact. A more secure mode will allow two people who have been cryptographically verified, to chat. In that mode,” he notes, “no one can tell they are on each other’s ‘buddy lists’ or, that they have ever had a conversation, let alone when,” according to the project’s website.”

“It means authorities will not be able to infer relationships between users of the program — by passively observing internet traffic,” it said.

There Is No Such Thing As ‘NSA Proof’

While Invisible.im is clearly a move towards greater Internet privacy, I know of no ‘cyber maginot line;’ or, firewall that is absolutely, 100 percent foolproof. Brendan Sasso writing in the June 17, 2014 DefenseOne.com, contends that “while thousands, perhaps millions to billions of us as well as private-sector companies, nation-states, others, etc. — are taking measures such as adopting end-to-end encryption, there is nothing ‘NSA-Proof’ out there.”

“If they want it [NSA], they can get it,” is the bottom line to his article. And, that is almost certainly the truth. Joseph Lorenzo Hall, the Chief Technologist for The Center for Democracy and Technology, said “the idea of becoming ‘NSA-Proof, is “just silly.” “If they want it, they can get it,” he added. “The agency [NSA] can hack or, bypass many security measures — if it is determined enough,” Hall said.

"CHANGE" - 36% of the nation’s young adults ages 18 to 31 living with their parents.

"CHANGE" - 36% of the nation’s young adults ages 18 to 31 living with their parents. HT: InfidelBloggers. By Epaminondas.

But wait IT gets better.......

A Rising Share of Young Adults Live in Their Parents’ Home 36% of the nation’s young adults ages 18 to 31—the so-called Millennial generation—were living in their parents’ home, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data. This is the highest share in at least four decades and represents a slow but steady increase over the 32% of their same-aged counterparts who were living at home prior to the Great Recession in 2007 and the 34% doing so when it officially ended in 2009.

but, but but… NRO

Study: All Employment Growth Since 2000 Went to Immigrants According to a major new report from the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), net employment growth in the United States since 2000 has gone entirely to immigrants, legal and illegal. 

Using data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, CIS scholars Steven A. Camarota and Karen Zeigler found that there were 127,000 fewer working-age natives holding a job in the first quarter of 2014 than in 2000, while the number of immigrants with a job was 5.7 million above the 2000 level.

The rapidity with which immigrants recovered from the Great Recession, as well as the fact that they held a disproportionate share of jobs relative to their share of population growth before the recession, help to explain their findings, the authors report. In addition, native-born Americans and immigrants were affected differently by the recession.

Camarota and Zeigler report three conclusions:

First, the long-term decline in the employment for natives across age and education levels is a clear in­dication that there is no general labor shortage, which is a primary justification for the large increases in immigration (skilled and unskilled) in the Schumer-Rubio bill and similar House proposals.

Second, the decline in work among the native-born over the last 14 years of high immigration is consis­tent with research showing that immigration reduces employment for natives.

Third, the trends since 2000 challenge the argument that immigration on balance increases job oppor­tunities for natives. Over 17 million immigrants arrived in the country in the last 14 years, yet native employment has deteriorated significantly.

The Center for Immigration Studies is a non-profit research institute. Founded in 1985, the organization is regularly consulted by policymakers, the academic community, and the media on matters of immigration policy.

Now I am not saying stop immigration (LEGAL), I am saying there is something FUNDAMENTALLY WRONG both with the economy and with the way we measure the economy.

Video - Friendship among the horror: Female prisoners of the Russian Gulags.

Video - Friendship among the horror: Female prisoners of the Russian Gulags.HT: RBTH.

GULAG was originally an acronym meaning Main Camp Administration, but it has come to signify the whole system of imprisonment and forced labor that Stalin expanded in 1929 and which grew until his death in 1953. 

Anne Applebaum, in her comprehensive book “GULAG: A History”, estimates that between these dates “some 18 million people passed through this massive system,” with millions more compelled to migrate. 

Conditions were terrible; the death rate was high. But “in the end,” writes Applebaum, “statistics can never fully describe what happened.” 

We can only begin to comprehend the suffering behind the numbers by reading the eyewitness accounts of survivors. 

Russian woman Tamara Petkevich spent seven years in labor camps. In her autobiographical “Memoir of a Gulag Actress” she mentions a former NKVD (security services) official who ended up in prison. 

“The bloodiest page of our history had firmly projected itself onto the aggravated consciousness of this functionary,” writes Petkevich. He wanders about muttering deranged decrees for shootings, exile or the arrest of “all the women of Moscow” and finally runs amok with an ax, hacking off limbs as “streams of blood gushed everywhere.” 

A female doctor eventually stops him by asking in a commanding voice: “Where’s the verdict? When did the court confer?” This crazy episode functions as a microcosmic metaphor for a senseless era. 

 Eugenia Ginzburg, a professor in Kazan, was to spend 18 years in the Soviet prison camp system. Her memoir, “Into the Whirlwind,” describes the mundane details that underline the horror, like washing her bra over the slop bucket, or darning it with fishbone needles “extracted from the evening stew.” 

In parentheses, as though it were nothing remarkable, she writes about the moment when a peaceful, easy­going woman called Nadya collapses on the frozen ground, one “purple evening in Kolyma” in arctic Siberia. The guard prods her body with his rifle and shouts at her to get up until one of the other prisoners points out that she is dead. 

Crushed by the dreary life in labor camps, some women found ways to exchange sexual favors with the camp officials for better food and living conditions. 

Not everyone, though, succumbed to this temptation, which led to disdain and hostility from fellow prisoners.  

“His blue, frost­bitten hands with their crooked fingers stretched out towards me,” writes Ginzburg. When she is offered money for sex, she comments wryly that she has previously encountered the question of prostitution only as a social problem or a theatrical device.

The memoirists have mostly been arrested for political reasons under the infamous Article 58 of the penal code. Labeled as a “daughter of an enemy of the people,” Petkevich was arrested in her early 20s in 1943. A beautiful young woman, she was the target of frequent sexual assaults. When she fights off the head of the cultural­educational department, he growls: “You’ll rot. You’ll be groveling at my feet for help.” 

Petkevich later describes how mothers were separated from their children and recalls one prisoner stripping herself naked and “cursing and swearing that she was pregnant again and that they had to let her stay.” The guards take her to the punishment block, “from where her screams reached us for a long time afterward.”
Read the full story here.

The European Union prepares the ‘solidarity clause’ framework for military use against citizens.

The European Union prepares the ‘solidarity clause’ framework for military use against citizens. HT: Stratrisk.

See also: EU prepares the ground for military use against the citizens

The EU creates a legal framework for Europe-wide deployment of police and military units . At the same time, the EU Commission is working intensively on the creation of a single EU police unit as well as an EU public prosecutor (more here ).

The use of the “European Gendarmerie Force” (EUROGENDFOR) is made ​​possible by the “solidarity clause” as Heise reported. At the unit, headquartered in Vicenza, Italy, all EU Member States are involved, the Gendarmerien, so police forces with military status are used.

One of the founding countries of the EUROGENDFOR include Portugal, Spain, Italy, France and the Netherlands. We provide our services to the police unit of the EU, NATO or the UN.

“The ‘solidarity clause’ is redundant, since the EU already has mechanisms for mutual assistance in case of disasters. Secondly, the clause amplifies the course to a militarization of domestic politics, since upon request military can be used in another Member State.

“On Tuesday, the representatives of the EU Member States in the Council adopted a decision on the so-called ‘solidarity clause’. Were a disaster or a loosely defined crisis to occur, the organs of the European Union would be obliged to assist using all the instruments at their disposal. This includes military resources”, warned Member of the Bundestag Andrej Hunko.

The proposal on ‘arrangements for the implementation by the Union of the Solidarity Clause’ was jointly presented by the Commission and the EU High Representative in 2012. A country can invoke the “solidarity clause” if a crisis “overwhelms its response capacities”. Mention is made of operational, policy and financial instruments and structures.

Andrej Hunko continued:

“The adoption at the General Affairs Council took place in secret: the point was not mentioned on the agenda of  the meeting. The press was not informed. Yet this is one of the most controversial clauses contained in the EU treaties. 

That is precisely the reason why agreement on the details of the solidarity clause was postponed to a later point at the time of the signature of the Lisbon Treaty.

The ‘solidarity clause’ boosts the role of the two intelligence-service-style EU situation centres. But it also creates the legal framework for deployment of the special police units of the ‘ATLAS network’ being developed by the Commission.

From Germany, the GSG 9 is involved; last year this Federal Police Special Forces unit was able to head a large-scale ATLAS exercise encompassing several countries for the first time.

The ‘solidarity clause’ is superfluous, since the EU already has mechanisms for mutual assistance in disaster situations. At the same time, however, the clause strengthens the course towards militarisation of home-affairs policy, since military personnel can be sent to another Member State on request.

I am concerned that this is about the home-affairs version of the Article 5 clause on mutual defense: it would apply in situations which ‘may have an adverse impact on people, the environment or property’.

Even politically motivated blockades in the areas of energy and transport and general strikes are covered.

The text explicitly refers to crises which originate outside the territory of the Member States. The Left Party parliamentary group rejects this blurring of the lines between internal and external security.

Instead of militarisation of home-affairs policy through the deployment of military forces inside other Member States, we need reinforcement of the civilian mechanisms of solidarity within the EU.”

Press release of 24 June 2014 by the General Affairs Council:  

http://www.consilium.europa.eu/uedocs/cms_data/docs/pressdata/EN/genaff/143353.pdf

EPA agency tells Congress: File not found.

EPA agency tells Congress: File not found. TheHill.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the IRS share a problem: officials say they cannot provide the emails a congressional committee has requested because an employee’s hard drive crashed.

EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy confirmed to the House Oversight Committee Wednesday that her staff is unable to provide lawmakers all of the documents they have requested on the proposed Pebble Mine in Alaska, because of a 2010 computer crash.

“We’re having trouble getting the data off of it and we’re trying other sources to actually supplement that,” McCarthy said. “We’re challenged in figuring out where those small failures might have occurred and what caused them occur, but we’ve produced a lot of information.”

The revelation came less than two weeks after IRS officials told Congress that Lois Lerner, the official at the center of the controversy over the targeting of conservative tax-exempt groups, also suffered from a hard drive crash that makes it difficult to comply with records requests.Read the full story here.

Speaker Boehner Planning House Lawsuit Against Obama Executive Actions.

Speaker Boehner Planning House Lawsuit Against Obama Executive Actions. HT: InfidelBloggers.
Roll Call:

Speaker John A. Boehner, R-Ohio, told Republicans Tuesday he could have an announcement within days on whether the House will file a lawsuit against President Barack Obama, challenging the executive actions that have become the keystone of the administration.

The lawsuit could set up a significant test of constitutional checks and balances, with the legislative branch suing the executive branch for ignoring its mandates, and the judiciary branch deciding the outcome.
Boehner told the House Republican Conference during a closed-door meeting Tuesday morning that he has been consulting with legal scholars and plans to unveil his next steps this week or next, according to sources in the room.

Boehner spokesman Michael Steel said further action is necessary because the Senate has not taken up bills passed by the House targeting executive actions. The House has passed a bill expediting court consideration of House resolutions starting lawsuits targeting executive overreach and another mandating that the attorney general notify Congress when the administration decides to take executive action outside of what has been authorized by Congress.

“The president has a clear record of ignoring the American people’s elected representatives and exceeding his constitutional authority, which has dangerous implications for both our system of government and our economy,” Steel said. “The House has passed legislation to address this, but it has gone nowhere in the Democratic-controlled Senate, so we are examining other options.”

It remains unclear which executive action or actions the House would challenge, but Obama has given Congress ample targets. In the last several years, he has issued executive actions halting deportations of hundreds of thousands of immigrants who came to the country as children, extending the family and medical leave benefits to gay couples and raising the minimum wage for federal contractors. He has also worked around legislative deadlines for enacting provisions of the Affordable Care Act and issued other executive actions relating to the environment and the gender and race pay gap.

Obama has said he takes executive action because of a divided Congress’ inability to pass laws targeting important issues of the day. Congressional Republicans contend such actions are unconstitutional and thwart Congress’ power.

But individual members of Congress do not have standing to sue because they are not legally recognized as injured parties. Congress as an institution, on the other hand, may sue on the grounds that there has been institutional injury done because their legislative powers have been nullified.

One path Boehner could take would be to convene the Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group, a panel of leaders created in 1993 that votes on whether or not to sue on behalf of the House. The group consists of the speaker, the majority leader, the majority whip, the minority leader and the minority whip, and it would act on a majority vote.

Boehner last convened the group when the Obama administration dropped its defense of the Defense of Marriage Act in 2011. The House has since dropped its challenge of the law. At the time, however, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California objected to the challenge holding that it was an unwarranted way to spend taxpayer money. Her spokesman, Drew Hammill, said she will likely object similarly if Boehner moves forward with a lawsuit against the president.

“While the urgent needs of the American people are ignored by House Republicans, it is reprehensible that Speaker Boehner plans another doomed, legal boondoggle after he spent $2.3 million in taxpayer dollars unsuccessfully defending discrimination in federal courts,” Hammill said.

Boehner’s legal theory is based on work by Washington, D.C., attorney David Rivkin of Baker Hostetler LLP and Elizabeth Price Foley, a professor of law at Florida International University College of Law.

Rivkin said in an interview that in addition to proving institutional injury, the House would have to prove that as an institution, it has authorized the lawsuit. A vote by the Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group would do so.
The suit would also have to prove that no other private plaintiff has standing to challenge the particular suspension of executive action and that there are no other opportunities for meaningful political remedies by Congress, for instance by repeal of the underlying law.

“Professor Foley and I feel that if those four conditions are met, the lawsuit would have an excellent chance to succeed. This is particularly the case because President Obama’s numerous suspensions of the law are inflicting damage on the horizontal separations of powers and undermine individual liberty,” Rivkin said.
Rivkin and Foley have argued in op-eds that most of Obama’s executive orders have been benevolent — that is, they have exempted classes of citizens from the law, for instance through deferred action for childhood arrivals. Therefore, no individual has standing to sue because the actions have helped people. Congress as an institution, however, can sue because the actions flout the laws they have passed.
They have argued that short of impeachment, there is no other check to the president’s issuance of executive actions.

Related ! What Congress can do about Obama’s rewriting of laws.
New York Post: By George F. Will

What philosopher Harvey Mansfield calls “taming the prince” — making executive power compatible with democracy’s abhorrence of arbitrary power — has been a perennial problem of modern politics.
It is now more urgent in America than at any time since the Founders, having rebelled against George III’s unfettered exercise of “royal prerogative,” stipulated that presidents “shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed.”
Serious as are the policy disagreements roiling Washington, none is as important as the structural distortion threatening constitutional equilibrium. Institutional derangement driven by unchecked presidential aggrandizement did not begin with Barack Obama, but his offenses against the separation of powers have been egregious in quantity, and qualitatively different.
Regarding immigration, health care, welfare, education, drug policy and more, Obama has suspended, waived and rewritten laws, including the Affordable Care Act.
That law required the employer mandate to begin this year. But Obama wrote a new law, giving to certain-sized companies a delay until 2016, and stipulating that other employers must certify they will not drop employees to avoid the mandate. Doing so would trigger criminal perjury charges; so, he created a new crime, that of adopting a business practice he opposes.
Presidents must exercise some discretion in interpreting laws, must have some latitude in allocating finite resources to the enforcement of laws and must have some freedom to act in the absence of law.
Obama, however, has perpetrated more than 40 suspensions of laws. Were presidents the sole judges of the limits of their latitude, they would effectively have plenary power to vitiate the separation of powers, the Founders’ bulwark against despotism.
Congress cannot reverse egregious executive aggressions such as Obama’s without robust judicial assistance. It is, however, difficult to satisfy the criteria that the Constitution and case law require for Congress to establish “standing” to seek judicial redress for executive usurpations injurious to the legislative institution.
Courts, understandably fearful of being inundated by lawsuits from small factions of disgruntled legislators, have been wary of granting legislative standing. However, David Rivkin, a Washington lawyer, and Elizabeth Price Foley of Florida International University have studied the case law and believe standing can be obtained conditional on four things:
That a majority of one congressional chamber explicitly authorize a lawsuit. That the lawsuit concern the president’s “benevolent” suspension of an unambiguous provision of law that, by pleasing a private faction, precludes the appearance of a private plaintiff. That Congress cannot administer political self-help by remedying the presidential action by simply repealing the law. And that the injury amounts to nullification of Congress’ power.
Hence the significance of a House lawsuit, advocated by Rivkin and Foley, that would unify fractious Republicans while dramatizing Obama’s lawlessness. The House would bring a civil suit seeking a judicial declaration that Obama has violated the separation of powers by effectively nullifying a specific provision of a law, thereby diminishing Congress’ power. Authorization of this lawsuit by the House would give Congress “standing” to sue.
Congress’ authorization, which would affirm an institutional injury rather than some legislators’ personal grievances, satisfies the first criterion. Obama’s actions have fulfilled the rest by nullifying laws and thereby rendering the Constitution’s enumeration of Congress’ power meaningless.
The House has passed Rep. Trey Gowdy’s (R-SC) bill that would guarantee expedited consideration by federal courts of House resolutions initiating lawsuits to enforce presidents to “faithfully execute” laws. But as a bill, it is impotent unless and until Republicans control the Senate and a Republican holds the president’s signing pen.
Some say the judicial branch should not intervene because if Americans are so supine that they tolerate representatives who tolerate such executive excesses, they deserve to forfeit constitutional government.
This abstract doctrine may appeal to moralists lacking responsibilities. For the judiciary, it would be dereliction of the duty to protect the government’s constitutional structure. It would be perverse for courts to adhere to a doctrine of congressional standing so strict that it precludes judicial defense of the separation of powers.
Advocates of extreme judicial quietism to punish the supine people leave the people’s representatives no recourse short of the extreme and disproportionate “self help” of impeachment.
Surely courts should not encourage this. The cumbersome and divisive blunderbuss process of impeachment should be a rare recourse. Furthermore, it would punish a president for anti-constitutional behavior, but would not correct the injury done to the rule of law.
Surely the Republican House majority would authorize a lawsuit. And doing so would establish Speaker John Boehner as the legislature’s vindicator.

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Boehner must have been listening: