PK'S NOTE: Rand Paul and Trey Gowdy are my heroes.
How many records did the NSA seize from Verizon? Hundreds of millions. We are now learning about more potential mass data collections by the government from other communications and online companies. These are the "details," and few Americans consider this approach "balanced," though many rightly consider it Orwellian.
These activities violate the Fourth Amendment, which says warrants must be specific—"particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." And what is the government doing with these records? The president assures us that the government is simply monitoring the origin and length of phone calls, not eavesdropping on their contents. Is this administration seriously asking us to trust the same government that admittedly targets political dissidents through the Internal Revenue Service and journalists through the Justice Department?
No one objects to balancing security against liberty. No one objects to seeking warrants for targeted monitoring based on probable cause. We've always done this.
What is objectionable is a system in which government has unlimited and privileged access to the details of our private affairs, and citizens are simply supposed to trust that there won't be any abuse of power. This is an absurd expectation. Americans should trust the National Security Agency as much as they do the IRS and Justice Department.
Monitoring the records of as many as a billion phone calls, as some news reports have suggested, is no modest invasion of privacy. It is an extraordinary invasion of privacy. We fought a revolution over issues like generalized warrants, where soldiers would go from house to house, searching anything they liked. Our lives are now so digitized that the government going from computer to computer or phone to phone is the modern equivalent of the same type of tyranny that our Founders rebelled against.
I also believe that trolling through millions of phone records hampers the legitimate protection of our security. The government sifts through mountains of data yet still didn't notice, or did not notice enough, that one of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects was traveling to Chechnya. Perhaps instead of treating every American as a potential terror suspect the government should concentrate on more targeted analysis.
To protect against the invasion of Americans' privacy, I have introduced the Fourth Amendment Restoration Act. I introduced similar Fourth Amendment protections in December and again just last month. Both measures would have prevented the data-mining we're now seeing, but both bills were rejected by the Senate. We will see if this time my colleagues will vote to support the Constitution that they all took an oath to uphold.
I am also looking into a class-action lawsuit to overturn the decisions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that allowed for this to happen. I will take the fight all the way to the Supreme Court if necessary. My office has already heard much enthusiasm for this action.
The administration has responded to the public uproar by simply claiming that it is allowed to have unlimited access to all Americans' private information. This response is a clear indication that the president views our Constitutional "right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects" as null and void.
If this is the new normal in America, then Big Brother certainly is watching and it's not hyperbolic or extreme to say so. Nor is it unreasonable to fear which parts of the Constitution this government will next consider negotiable or negligible.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324634304578537720921466776.html?mod=rss_opinion_main
Over the past few months, Rush Limbaugh has posited what he calls the "Limbaugh Theorem." Essentially he contends that Barack Obama, as part of a calculated and permanent campaign strategy, maintains, with the help of a sycophantic media, high approval ratings despite the unpopularity of his policies. The core of this strategy is for Obama to remain above politics and not be identified with any of the policy failures or scandals surrounding his administration by blaming others for all that has gone wrong, as he is a dedicated "outsider "doing all he can to solve problems; but first he must slay those purveyors of evil rampant throughout the land: Republicans and conservatives.
The Limbaugh Theorem is spot on. However, the Obama tactics have been successful only because of the confluence of three factors that came together at a right moment in American history.
The first is the long-term and intentional dumbing down of the American people. The second, the incarnation of a celebrity culture as a byproduct of the ill-education of the citizenry as well as the concurrent decline of morality and denigration of religion. The third is this nation's unhealthy obsession with race.
The Viet Nam war protests of the 1960's unleashed far more than just a demand for an end to the war. Those that blamed America for all manner of alleged sins in the past and determined to transform the United States into a socialist/Marxist nirvana were able to step out from behind the shadows and enter the mainstream of national legitimacy. This swarm of locusts soon enveloped the higher levels of Academia spawning countless clones to further infiltrate all strata of the education establishment including primary and secondary institutions.
The curriculum throughout all levels of schooling was gradually but inexorably altered to reflect the American left's mindset, not only about the nation, but also their determination to undermine basic societal moral and religious underpinning as a necessary step in assuring the populace would look to government as their savior. While the bulk of the populace slept content and mesmerized by the country's overwhelming prosperity, this process, underway for nearly two generations, has eventuated in creating a massive class of low-information voters unconcerned about the nation's future and susceptible to all manner of lies and propaganda from unscrupulous politicians such as Barack Obama, who will do or say anything to win an election.
Among the consequences of the successful undermining of societal mores and an ill-educated citizenry is the creation of a pervasive celebrity culture. As the concepts of God and individual self-determination were increasingly denigrated and cast aside, the populace began to look elsewhere for so-called role models and guidance. The obvious choice: those that entertain a vast number of people and are adept, through the vehicle of the media, at being constantly in the nation's living rooms, sports venues, movie theatres, magazines and the internet.
While it is difficult for any national politician to achieve overwhelming celebrity status, Barack Obama made that goal his primary campaign objective. Once he achieved that end, his checkered past and his record or philosophical bent became immaterial. Combining that achievement with his African descent, he has been anointed as the national celebrity-in-chief. Barack Obama is therefore above mere mortals to a majority of the gullible.
One of the aspects of American life that those of us who immigrated to the United States from other nations find confounding is the ongoing national obsession with race. Particularly as America has made enormous strides in equality since I first set foot in this country in the early 1950's. In August of 1963, as college student in Washington D.C., I was one of nearly 200,000 people at the Lincoln Memorial to hear Martin Luther King deliver his "I Have a Dream Speech." (Thereafter I became active in the civil rights movement.)
What those in the movement strived to achieve was the end of institutional racism, knowing that in time, the attitudes of the people would change. For the most part, this has been achieved within less than forty years -- a truly remarkable accomplishment in such a short period of time as compared to the history of other nations. Those of us of all races, some of whom gave their lives, were determined to rid this great country of its original sin. It was not to give others the opportunity to exploit race as a means to their devious ends, either monetary or political.
Barack Obama has both cunningly and egregiously played the so-called "race card" whenever it suits his agenda. He is reliant on so-called "white guilt" to stifle criticism or dissent, knowing that the overwhelming majority of Americans are too cowed to call him out on his actions or to be honest with pollsters or each other. Barack Obama wields no greater weapon over the people and the media than his skin color. and as such far too many are intimidated, which allows him to successfully avoid responsibility and accountability.
Thus Barack Obama reveals his abject lack of character by his dependence on manipulating an ill-educated population obsessed with celebrity, and on a society foolishly intimidated by race -- in order to foist his radical and unwanted agenda on the country by any means possible and aggregate more power to the government. He has shown himself to be the most dangerous, dishonest and narcissistic president in the history of the United States.
The scandals currently buffeting the Obama administration should not be a surprise, as Barack Obama and his minions have been emboldened to either break the law or do as they wish regardless of the Constitution or Congress. He and his cronies know full well that they will not be held to account as they go about their stealth conquest of America. There will be more revelations of wrongdoing and more scandals over the next three years, but will the bulk of the American people understand their role in empowering this President and finally hold him to account before it is too late?
Rand Paul: Big Brother Really Is Watching Us
Monitoring hundreds of millions of phone records is an extraordinary invasion of privacy.
When Americans expressed outrage last week over the seizure and surveillance of Verizon's client data by the National Security Agency, President Obama responded: "In the abstract, you can complain about Big Brother . . . but when you actually look at the details, I think we've struck the right balance."How many records did the NSA seize from Verizon? Hundreds of millions. We are now learning about more potential mass data collections by the government from other communications and online companies. These are the "details," and few Americans consider this approach "balanced," though many rightly consider it Orwellian.
These activities violate the Fourth Amendment, which says warrants must be specific—"particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." And what is the government doing with these records? The president assures us that the government is simply monitoring the origin and length of phone calls, not eavesdropping on their contents. Is this administration seriously asking us to trust the same government that admittedly targets political dissidents through the Internal Revenue Service and journalists through the Justice Department?
No one objects to balancing security against liberty. No one objects to seeking warrants for targeted monitoring based on probable cause. We've always done this.
What is objectionable is a system in which government has unlimited and privileged access to the details of our private affairs, and citizens are simply supposed to trust that there won't be any abuse of power. This is an absurd expectation. Americans should trust the National Security Agency as much as they do the IRS and Justice Department.
Monitoring the records of as many as a billion phone calls, as some news reports have suggested, is no modest invasion of privacy. It is an extraordinary invasion of privacy. We fought a revolution over issues like generalized warrants, where soldiers would go from house to house, searching anything they liked. Our lives are now so digitized that the government going from computer to computer or phone to phone is the modern equivalent of the same type of tyranny that our Founders rebelled against.
I also believe that trolling through millions of phone records hampers the legitimate protection of our security. The government sifts through mountains of data yet still didn't notice, or did not notice enough, that one of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects was traveling to Chechnya. Perhaps instead of treating every American as a potential terror suspect the government should concentrate on more targeted analysis.
To protect against the invasion of Americans' privacy, I have introduced the Fourth Amendment Restoration Act. I introduced similar Fourth Amendment protections in December and again just last month. Both measures would have prevented the data-mining we're now seeing, but both bills were rejected by the Senate. We will see if this time my colleagues will vote to support the Constitution that they all took an oath to uphold.
I am also looking into a class-action lawsuit to overturn the decisions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that allowed for this to happen. I will take the fight all the way to the Supreme Court if necessary. My office has already heard much enthusiasm for this action.
The administration has responded to the public uproar by simply claiming that it is allowed to have unlimited access to all Americans' private information. This response is a clear indication that the president views our Constitutional "right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects" as null and void.
If this is the new normal in America, then Big Brother certainly is watching and it's not hyperbolic or extreme to say so. Nor is it unreasonable to fear which parts of the Constitution this government will next consider negotiable or negligible.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324634304578537720921466776.html?mod=rss_opinion_main
The Obama Scandals and the Limbaugh Theorem
Virtually all the scandals erupting around the Obama regime involve the loss of individual freedom and the rapid evolution of an oppressive central government. These ongoing revelations eerily mirror the history of repressive nations such as Germany, Italy and Russia during the past century. Nonetheless, per the public opinion polls and the lack of enthusiasm by the mainstream media to cover these scandals, Barack Obama remains above the fray and is not directly linked or blamed for any of these debacles -- even something as egregious as the NSA and domestic surveillance of all Americans.Over the past few months, Rush Limbaugh has posited what he calls the "Limbaugh Theorem." Essentially he contends that Barack Obama, as part of a calculated and permanent campaign strategy, maintains, with the help of a sycophantic media, high approval ratings despite the unpopularity of his policies. The core of this strategy is for Obama to remain above politics and not be identified with any of the policy failures or scandals surrounding his administration by blaming others for all that has gone wrong, as he is a dedicated "outsider "doing all he can to solve problems; but first he must slay those purveyors of evil rampant throughout the land: Republicans and conservatives.
The Limbaugh Theorem is spot on. However, the Obama tactics have been successful only because of the confluence of three factors that came together at a right moment in American history.
The first is the long-term and intentional dumbing down of the American people. The second, the incarnation of a celebrity culture as a byproduct of the ill-education of the citizenry as well as the concurrent decline of morality and denigration of religion. The third is this nation's unhealthy obsession with race.
The Viet Nam war protests of the 1960's unleashed far more than just a demand for an end to the war. Those that blamed America for all manner of alleged sins in the past and determined to transform the United States into a socialist/Marxist nirvana were able to step out from behind the shadows and enter the mainstream of national legitimacy. This swarm of locusts soon enveloped the higher levels of Academia spawning countless clones to further infiltrate all strata of the education establishment including primary and secondary institutions.
The curriculum throughout all levels of schooling was gradually but inexorably altered to reflect the American left's mindset, not only about the nation, but also their determination to undermine basic societal moral and religious underpinning as a necessary step in assuring the populace would look to government as their savior. While the bulk of the populace slept content and mesmerized by the country's overwhelming prosperity, this process, underway for nearly two generations, has eventuated in creating a massive class of low-information voters unconcerned about the nation's future and susceptible to all manner of lies and propaganda from unscrupulous politicians such as Barack Obama, who will do or say anything to win an election.
Among the consequences of the successful undermining of societal mores and an ill-educated citizenry is the creation of a pervasive celebrity culture. As the concepts of God and individual self-determination were increasingly denigrated and cast aside, the populace began to look elsewhere for so-called role models and guidance. The obvious choice: those that entertain a vast number of people and are adept, through the vehicle of the media, at being constantly in the nation's living rooms, sports venues, movie theatres, magazines and the internet.
While it is difficult for any national politician to achieve overwhelming celebrity status, Barack Obama made that goal his primary campaign objective. Once he achieved that end, his checkered past and his record or philosophical bent became immaterial. Combining that achievement with his African descent, he has been anointed as the national celebrity-in-chief. Barack Obama is therefore above mere mortals to a majority of the gullible.
One of the aspects of American life that those of us who immigrated to the United States from other nations find confounding is the ongoing national obsession with race. Particularly as America has made enormous strides in equality since I first set foot in this country in the early 1950's. In August of 1963, as college student in Washington D.C., I was one of nearly 200,000 people at the Lincoln Memorial to hear Martin Luther King deliver his "I Have a Dream Speech." (Thereafter I became active in the civil rights movement.)
What those in the movement strived to achieve was the end of institutional racism, knowing that in time, the attitudes of the people would change. For the most part, this has been achieved within less than forty years -- a truly remarkable accomplishment in such a short period of time as compared to the history of other nations. Those of us of all races, some of whom gave their lives, were determined to rid this great country of its original sin. It was not to give others the opportunity to exploit race as a means to their devious ends, either monetary or political.
Barack Obama has both cunningly and egregiously played the so-called "race card" whenever it suits his agenda. He is reliant on so-called "white guilt" to stifle criticism or dissent, knowing that the overwhelming majority of Americans are too cowed to call him out on his actions or to be honest with pollsters or each other. Barack Obama wields no greater weapon over the people and the media than his skin color. and as such far too many are intimidated, which allows him to successfully avoid responsibility and accountability.
Thus Barack Obama reveals his abject lack of character by his dependence on manipulating an ill-educated population obsessed with celebrity, and on a society foolishly intimidated by race -- in order to foist his radical and unwanted agenda on the country by any means possible and aggregate more power to the government. He has shown himself to be the most dangerous, dishonest and narcissistic president in the history of the United States.
The scandals currently buffeting the Obama administration should not be a surprise, as Barack Obama and his minions have been emboldened to either break the law or do as they wish regardless of the Constitution or Congress. He and his cronies know full well that they will not be held to account as they go about their stealth conquest of America. There will be more revelations of wrongdoing and more scandals over the next three years, but will the bulk of the American people understand their role in empowering this President and finally hold him to account before it is too late?
IRS violated privacy laws, claimed privacy rights to block investigation of violation
US law requires the IRS to keep confidential the material submitted by applicants for tax-exempt status until an adjudication on the application has been finalized. What happens when they violate this law? Amazingly, as John Eastman learned when the IRS leaked the information he supplied for the National Organization for Marriage to its most vociferous opponents, the IRS claims that the privacy law forbids anyone to investigate the IRS’ violation of the very same law (via Ace, emphasis his):In March 2012, the organization, which argues the case for traditional marriage, found out its confidential tax information had been obtained by the Human Rights Campaign, one of its primary opponents in the marriage debate. The HRC put the leaked information on its website—including the names of NOM donors. The NOM not only has the legal right to keep its donors’ names private, it has to, because when contributors’ names have been revealed in the past they have been harassed, boycotted and threatened. This is a free speech right, one the Supreme Court upheld in 1958 after the state of Alabama tried to compel the NAACP to surrender its membership list.
The NOM did a computer forensic investigation and determined that its leaked IRS information had come from within the IRS itself. If it was leaked by a worker or workers within the IRS it would be a federal crime, with penalties including up to five years in prison.
In April 2012, the NOM asked the IRS for an investigation. The inspector general’s office gave them a complaint number. Soon they were in touch. Even though the leaked document bore internal IRS markings, the inspector general decided that maybe the document came from within the NOM. The NOM demonstrated that was not true.
For the next 14 months they heard nothing about an investigation. By August 2012, the NOM was filing Freedom of Information Act requests trying to find out if there was one. The IRS stonewalled. Their “latest nonresponse response,” said Mr. Eastman, claimed that the law prohibiting the disclosure of confidential tax returns also prevents disclosure of information about who disclosed them. Mr. Eastman called this “Orwellian.” He said that what the NOM experienced “suggests that problems at the IRS are potentially far more serious” than the targeting of conservative organizations for scrutiny.Ace has a hilarious and on-point criticism, casting this interaction in the form of a joke:
NOM: I want to know who broke the law protecting confidentiality of taxpayer information.This claim could never have survived in court, but that’s not the point. FOIA requests aren’t answered by someone in a call center; they go to the legal department in an agency with more lawyers than there are players in the NFL at any one time. This is the official face of the IRS, where laws intended to protect citizens from abuse by the agency get perverted into shields against accountability, while higher-ups exploit their power to intimidate political opponents.
IRS: We can’t tell you that.
NOM: Why not?
IRS: The law protecting the confidentiality of taxpayer information protects the confidentiality of those who break the law of protecting the confidentiality of taxpayer information.
That’s the joke version. It also happens to be the actual account of the IRS’ position.
This goes beyond a few “low-level employees.” This speaks to the culture within the IRS, and it’s a culture that is commonly seen when extraordinary power meets a vacuum of accountability. That’s something all Americans should fear — and work to either change or eliminate.
http://hotair.com/archives/2013/06/11/irs-violated-privacy-laws-claimed-privacy-rights-to-block-investigation-of-violation/
5 Reasons the Rubio/McCain Amnesty Bill Is The Next Obamacare
"The 'Gang of Eight' bill is not immigration reform. It is big government dysfunction. It is an immigration Obamacare. All advocates of true immigration reform — on the left and the right — should oppose it." -- Mike Lee
”On every major front, this legislation fails to deliver on its core promises. It delivers only for the special-interest groups who helped write it. Should it pass, it would represent the ultimate triumph of the Washington elite over the everyday citizen to whom Congress properly owes its loyalty.” -- Jeff SessionsAt a time when the Obama Administration is imploding under the weight of its own scandals and the GOP's odds of taking back the Senate in 2014 are rising almost by the day, it's incredibly ironic that the Republican Party is working with the Democrats on an amnesty bill that will depress the conservative base in 2014, permanently cement in a Democrat majority in America and give Barack Obama almost everything he wants in return for absolutely nothing of consequence.
It's at moments like these when you realize that Republicans really richly deserve to be called "the stupid party."
1) The bill legalizes illegal aliens before security measures are put in place: The entire history of immigration reform in this country over the last thirty years has consisted of the government promising to improve security and then not living up to those promises. Reagan signed on to a "one time" amnesty in return for security measures that were never put in place. Under Clinton, programs like Operation Vanguard were stopped BECAUSE THEY WERE EFFECTIVE at driving illegals out of the meat packing industry. Under George W. Bush, the fence the law says we shall build on the southern border was never completed. Under Barack Obama, an illegal DREAM ACT that never passed Congress was put in place, his administration essentially stopped deporting illegals without felonies on their records and thousands of already detained illegal immigrants were released. Claiming that we'll give legal status to the illegals that are already here and then put security measures in place later isn't even a good faith argument; it's an attempt to deceive the American people by sleazy politicians whose only concern is amnesty for illegals at any cost.
2) Most of the key security measures in the bill are left up to the discretion of the Obama Administration: After the Obama Administration has shown little appetite for enforcing immigration law and the IRS has politically targeted conservative groups on Obama's watch, it's almost unimaginable that there would be Republicans who are essentially willing to say, "We'll just take Obama's word for it on security." Yet, that's exactly what this bill does time after time, in clause after clause. If the Obama Administration says we've met a security standard, then we've met it. Here's what Mark Krikorian from National Review and the Center for Immigration Studies has to say about that.
Almost every requirement in this bill can be waived by Janet Napolitano: for instance, the time limits on when people can be legalized, the requirements on criminal activity or even the enforcement triggers. Those basically don’t mean anything if any of them is held up in court, still. …The litigation over the 1986 bill didn’t end until just a few years ago. The ACLU has been quite clear that it intends to sue to stop mandatory e-verify and probably sue to stop a bunch of other things. If, for instance, mandatory use of electronic verification is still in the courts 10 years after the bill passes, it’s entirely possible the Secretary of Homeland Security can just give everybody Green Cards on her own — and there are hundreds of other examples of that kind of discretion.
It’s not too much of an exaggeration to say that this 1,000 page bill after all of the amendments could be boiled down to, “We trust you, Obama; just do the right thing.”3) This bill allows illegal immigrants to have American citizenship: Simply put, nobody who is in this country illegally should be given the privilege of applying for American citizenship. Truthfully, illegal immigrants don't deserve to even be allowed to be part of a guest worker program, but let's say theoretically as a huge compromise, the bill had gone that way.
That would have taken worries about massive chain migration off the table, it would alleviate concerns that the Democrats would be adding huge numbers of new voters, it would mean the retirement of poor, manual laborers would be an issue for their home country, not us and it would "get them out of the shadows."
It's better for America in almost every single way except one: It wouldn't add millions of new voters for the Democrat Party. It might not be admirable that the Democrats would hold out for a provision that's horrible for the country, but good for the Democrat Party, but it's at least understandable. Why any Republican would try to demographically flood conservatism out of existence, put Americans out of jobs and hurt the country to get amnesty at any cost is a question voters should ask them the next time they're up for reelection.
4) Illegal immigrants won't be forced to pay back taxes: Illegals are able to "do jobs Americans just won't do" because they are allowed to "do things Americans just can't do." You could work for a lot less per hour yourself if you didn't have car insurance or health insurance and could cheat on your taxes with impunity. Illegals broke the law to be here and they committed document fraud to work and both of those should be disqualifiers are far as American citizenship goes, but even if you ignore that, they should at least have to pay their taxes just like Americans do. Isn't that the least we could ask? Not according to Marco Rubio, John McCain, Kelly Ayotte and the other Republicans who support this bill.
Under the proposal as offered, immigrants would not have to prove a tax history. There would be no obligation to show evidence of prior filings or payments. It’s basically a simplified version of tax amnesty: there is no responsibility for settling up back taxes. The only exception to the rule involves a situation in which the Internal Revenue Service already has a taxpayer in their crosshairs; if you have an outstanding liability in your name, you’ll be obligated to pay up. Interestingly, this is a change from the current rules for applying for residency or citizenship status which makes tax compliance a criteria for legal entry.
On its face, the rule makes sense. It would be a near impossibility to require previously undocumented persons to show that they had filed and paid taxes. There are simply no records: we call them undocumented workers for a reason.In a world where Tea Party groups are being politically targeted by the IRS and you have to pay your taxes or go to jail, the people who support this bill believe that illegal aliens shouldn't have to pay the taxes they already owe. That's not just wrong; it's an offensive double standard.
5) Provisions in the bill could add as many as 30 million new immigrants: When massive numbers of Americans can't find a job, how much sense does it make to import 30 million new workers?
The sponsors promised that the bill would not significantly increase legal immigration. However, it will grant legal status to at least 30 million immigrants over the next 10 years if you add up the proposed surge in legal arrivals, approval of 4.5 million previous green card applicants, plus work authorization and legal residency for an estimated 11 million here unlawfully today. The number grows higher if you take into account the removal of annual caps on migration for immediate family members.Keep in mind that the vast majority of these people won't be highly educated, won't be highly paid and will cost more in government services than they pay out over the course of their lifetimes. A Heritage Foundation study put the cost to taxpayers at 6.3 trillion dollars over time.
Of course, advocates of amnesty hotly dispute Heritage's claim and say that making illegal aliens citizens would be a huge financial boon to the country. Maybe if this were 100 years ago before America became a welfare state that was heavily reliant on highly skilled labor, that might even be true. But today, as Mark Krikorian has noted, the idea that making illegal aliens into citizens could benefit the nation economically is ridiculous.
Nobody would be saying, “Let’s close some high schools because we want to have more people with only a sixth grade education. That really benefits America.” It’s a joke. The very fact that they can say this with a straight face without being laughed off the stage is more a testament to the media’s gullibility than anything else. I mean, you expect politicians to engage in brazen lying, but the problem is too many people swallow this stuff and believe it.What it all comes down to is that if you want amnesty at any price, this is the bill for you. However, this bill won't secure the border, get an E-Verify system in place, stop future illegal immigration, fix our broken immigration system, build a fence or do anything but set us up for the next "one time amnesty" ten or twenty years down the road. Passing this bill will practically guarantee that we won't take any serious measures to secure the border for the foreseeable future. In fact, just enforcing the laws we have on the books would do considerably more to secure the border and stop illegal immigration than this bill ever could. This bill would be a disaster for the country, a nightmare for conservatism and the end of any hope of getting border security in the next decade. There is nothing you can do to help your country right now that's more important than speaking out against this bill, calling your senator and doing whatever it takes to stop this amnesty from becoming law.
Senate passes trillion dollar farm bill
The Senate passed a massive farm bill that will cost nearly a trillion dollars over the next 10 years, with a token $24 billion "cut" from President Obama's request.New York Times:
"The Senate today voted to support 16 million American jobs, to save taxpayers billions and to implement the most significant reforms to agriculture programs in decades," said Senator Debbie Stabenow, Democrat of Michigan and chairwoman of the Senate Agriculture Committee. She was a co-author of the bill with Senator Thad Cochran of Mississippi, the ranking Republican on the committee.
The Senate bill would cut $24 billion from current spending levels, including about $4.1 billion from food stamps over the next 10 years. Groups fighting hunger said the cuts in food stamps would put millions of poor families at risk. A House version of the bill would provide for food stamp cuts of $20 billion, just one major example of how far apart the two houses are in adjusting spending.
In the House, the farm bill faces a much tougher road. Last year, conservative lawmakers helped kill the bill because of their desire for deeper cuts in the food stamp program, which serves about 45 million Americans.
Hoping to satisfy conservatives, the House Agriculture Committee recently increased the amount of cuts to the program to the $20 billion mark over the next 10 years, up from $16 billion in last year's bill. In a statement before the Senate vote, Speaker John A. Boehner, Republican of Ohio, said the House would begin work on its version of the farm bill this month.
Conservation programs that help protect farmland and waters would be cut by about $3.5 billion in the Senate bill, with additional reductions coming from the automatic spending cuts known as the sequester.Left in place, a $1.6 billion foreign food aid program and subsidies for rice and peanut growers. The foreign food aid program is a massive waste of taxpayer money. We buy food in the US and ship it thousands of miles instead of buying food locally (where it is much cheaper) and shipping it a few miles to those who need it. And while subsidies for some crops have been dropped, southern Republicans maintained payments to rice and peanut farmers.
As far as SNAP, or the food stamp program, the Senate will never go for $20 billion in cuts and the House probably won't go for much less. SNAP cuts will probably be a deal killer and the 2008 Farm Bill will expire on September 30, leaving a lot of agriculture workers and farmers in limbo.
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2013/06/senate_passes_trillion_dollar_farm_bill.html#ixzz2VvIAoXYF
Obama Admin Considering Resettling Syrian Refugees in U.S. and These Are the States Where They May Go
The Obama administration is considering
resettling some refugees who have escaped war-torn Syria in the United
States, a development first reported by the Los Angeles Times on Sunday and later confirmed by the State Department.
According to the Times, the
resettlement of the refugees would be “part of an international effort
that could bring thousands of Syrians to American cities and towns.”
The Times reports [emphasis added]:
A resettlement plan under discussion in Washington and other capitals is aimed at relieving pressure on Middle Eastern countries straining to support 1.6 million refugees, as well as assisting hard-hit Syrian families.
The State Department is “ready to consider the idea,” an official from the department said, if the administration receives a formal request from the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees, which is the usual procedure.
The United States usually accepts about half the refugees that the U.N. agency proposes for resettlement. California has historically taken the largest share, but Illinois, Florida, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia are also popular destinations.
UN, government and non-governmental
representatives are meeting this week in Geneva to discuss the
resettlement options, according to the Times.
State Department Spokeswoman Jen Psaki was asked for details about the resettlement plan at the department’s Monday briefing.
“Well, let me first say the preferred
solution for the vast majority of refugees is to return home once it is
safe. We are in close contact with the UN on the need for resettlement
of refugees from countries of first asylum throughout the world,” Psaki
said.
“The United States accepts more
UN-referred refugees than all other countries combined, and we are
aware, and we would – and the UN is aware that the U.S. would consider
any individuals referred to us to have been determined to be in need of
resettlement. So we are prepared to respond if asked, and will encourage
other resettlement countries to do the same,” she added.
While she wouldn’t specify the number
of Syrian refugees the U.S. would be willing to resettle, she explained
that Congress caps the number of refugees at 70,000 in total.
“So the way it would work would be if a
specific country is added to the list of refugees where we would accept
their refugees, which the U.S. is certainly open to – but let me just
reiterate that the preferred solution for the vast majority is to return
to their country once it’s safe,” Psaki said.
The UN’s refugee agency UNHCR on Tuesday said it was talking to Germany about resettling up to 10,000 Syrian refugees.
Though the refugee problem is a
serious humanitarian issue – with most having fled to neighboring
Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey – moving some of them to the U.S. would
create challenges. First, how to vet applicants from a country where so
many jihadi and al Qaeda activists are present. Secondly, would the lure
of possible entry to the U.S. encourage other Syrians to leave their
country, further straining their neighbors’ generosity and resources?
As the L.A. Times reports, “Two
resettled Iraqis were convicted of trying to send arms to Al Qaeda from
their home in Bowling Green, Ky.”
The paper describes political challenges as well:
Congress strongly resisted accepting Iraqi refugees, including interpreters who had worked with U.S. forces, after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion. Most lawmakers share White House caution about getting more engaged in Syria and may have little appetite for a major influx.But Susan Rice, President Obama’s new national security advisor, and Samantha Power, Obama’s nominee for U.S. ambassador to the U.N., both have been strong advocates for refugees. They may make the White House more receptive to at least a partial opening.
The L.A. Times points out that the
Department of Homeland Security requires “careful vetting of refugees,
with multiple interviews and background checks before they are allowed
to enter the country.” That process, “under normal circumstances,” can
take a year or more.
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/06/11/obama-admin-considering-resettling-syrian-refugees-in-u-s-and-these-are-the-states-where-they-may-go/
Whistleblower: Hillary's Chief of Staff Quashed State Dept. Scandal Investigation
A former senior investigator with the State Department's criminal investigative unit has turned whistleblower and alleged to both the media and Congress that senior staff within State Department covered up investigations into appalling behavior committed by members of Hillary Clinton's security staff and our ambassador to Belgium. One of those alleged to have interfered was Cheryl Mills, Hillary's chief of staff.
The case in which Clinton enforcer Mills
allegedly intervened centered upon Brett McGurk, Obama’s nominee to be
US ambassador to Iraq.
McGurk’s expected nomination fell apart
after a computer hack exposed his racy e-mails and an extramarital
affair with Wall Street Journal reporter Gina Chon.
According to the memo, the SID “never
interviewed McGurk, allegedly because Cheryl Mills from the Secretary’s
office interceded.”
“Without that interview, SID has been unable to close the case,” the memo concludes.
Mills isn't the only high-ranking official being named. Patrick Kennedy, the Undersecretary of State for Management, is directly accused of killing an investigation into and our Ambassador to Belgium, Howard Gutman, who is accused of slipping away from his security detail to solicit sex from minor children.
Gutman was a big Democratic donor before
taking the post, having raised $500,000 for President Obama’s 2008
campaign and helping finance his inaugural.
* At least seven agents in Clinton’s
security detail hired prostitutes while traveling with her in various
countries, including Russia and Colombia.
Investigators called the use of prostitutes by Clinton’s security agents “endemic.”
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/06/11/Whistleblower-Hillarys-chief-of-staff-quashed-state-department-scandal-investigation
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