Current Events - June 4, 2013

PK'S NOTE: This is AMAZING. But watch the whole thing.

Tea Party President at IRS Hearing Tells Govt: "You've Forgotten Your Place...They Think They Are Our Masters"

Tea Party leader Becky Gerritson during Tuesday’s House Ways and Means committee hearing on the Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of conservative groups offered a passionate and moving account of her experience with political intimidation.

“I’m not here as a serf or a vassal,” said the Wetumpka Tea Party member, at one point tearing up. “I’m not begging my lords for mercy. I’m a born-free American woman, wife, mother, and citizen. And I’m telling my government that you’ve forgotten your place.”

“It’s not your responsibility to look out for my well being and to monitor my speech. It’s not your right to assert an agenda. The post that you occupy exists to preserve American liberty. You’ve sworn to perform that duty and you have faltered.”

http://townhall.com/tipsheet/greghengler/2013/06/04/tea-party-president-at-irs-hearing-tells-govt-youve-forgotten-your-placethey-think-they-are-our-masters-n1612776

PK'S NOTE: WOW!!

Republican Congressman’s Scathing 1-Minute Obama Critique on House Floor

Speaking on the House floor Monday, Rep. Jim Bridenstine (R-Okla.) delivered a brief-yet-scathing review of President Barack Obama and his administration.

In just over a minute, Bridenstine rattled off the lengthy list of scandals and missteps that have occurred under President Obama. The GOP lawmaker said the fact that his administration is spinning out of control proves Obama is “not fit to lead” as commander in chief.

We present his remarks in full:

“The president’s Justice Department sold weapons to narco-terrorists south of our border, who killed one of our finest.

The president’s State Department lied about Benghazi with false information provided by the White House.

The president’s attorney general authorized spying on a Fox News reporter and his family for reporting on a North Korean nuclear test.

The president’s Justice Department confiscated phone records of the Associated Press because they reported on a thwarted terrorist attack.

The president’s Treasury Department uses the IRS to target political opposition.

The president’s Health and Human Services secretary pressures insurance companies she is supposed to regulate to promote ‘Obamacare,’ which is the same law she uses to force citizens to pay for abortion inducing drugs against their religious liberties.”

He then went on to say that the president’s “dishonesty, incompetence, vengefulness and lack of moral compass lead many to suggest that he is not fit to lead.”

“The only problem is that his vice president is equally unfit and even more embarrassing,” Bridenstine concluded.

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/06/03/not-fit-to-lead-gop-congressmans-scathing-1-minute-obama-critique/

 PK'S NOTE: This man is obscene.

Jim McDermott to tea-party groups: You brought this IRS scrutiny on yourselves by applying for tax exemption, you know

If you’re going to step in the ring with your government, you should expect to get punched in the face. And by “step in the ring,” I of course mean “avail yourself of the same perfectly legal tax strategies that are routinely permitted to liberal nonprofits.” I confess, while I expected some stupid and predictable Democratic scandal spin this week, I didn’t expect to watch a congressman indirectly defend government discrimination on grounds that the victims could have avoided it by simply not asserting their statutory rights in the first place. And yet here we are.

That’s not the only problem with this, per Joel Pollak:

If the IRS scandal lacked a bully figure, it has one now. McDermott repeated the same attacks on 501(c)4 organizations that other Democrats have recycled in their talking points since the scandal began. But he made the mistake of attacking the witnesses–and misrepresenting the testimony of at least one in particular. All of them, he said, were before Congress because they had been seeking tax subsidies; but as Dr. John Eastman of the National Organization for Marriage–already a tax-exempt organization–had just testified, his specific complaint was about the apparently criminal leak of their donors’ names to a liberal organization…

The basic–and deliberate–fault in McDermott’s attack is the idea that being denied tax-exempt status does not mean being denied freedom of speech and assembly. It certainly does in a context in which applications for tax-exempt status were followed by intrusive questions about speech (and prayer!), and also, in some cases, further investigation of donors and organizers by the IRS and other federal agencies, creating a chilling effect. And, of course, if the government is seen to favor some groups and not others, that effectively discourages certain kinds of speech and assembly. The issue at stake remains constitutional liberty, not tax exemption.

McDermott’s garbage can’t even be salvaged by turnng it into a feeble “hypocrisy” argument. Tea partiers support lower taxes; go figure that they’d find tax exemption attractive for their nonprofit groups. If you’re going to make a point as dumb as this one about certain groups declining to seek the 501(c)(4) status to which they’re otherwise entitled, ask progressive nonprofits who support higher federal revenue in virtually all other instances why they’re not leading by example here.

By the way, if you missed it at Politico, Issa’s investigation of the IRS is creeping higher up the ladder:

Investigators from the House Ways and Means Committee are now eyeing Joseph Grant — a top IRS official who officially retired on Monday — and his role, if any, in efforts to target conservative nonprofits. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa has claimed that the IRS agents’ actions “were directly being ordered from Washington.”

Grant could prove a key steppingstone in the GOP drive to link the IRS controversy to officials inside the Obama administration. Based in D.C., Grant was the head of the Tax Exempt and Government Entities Division until he announced his decision to leave the IRS last month…
“He is definitely someone we’ve been interested in,” a Ways and Means Committee staffer involved in the IRS probe said of Grant, speaking on condition of anonymity. “Our investigation has been looking at all of the players and Joseph Grant was in charge of the exempt organization division, above [Director of Exempt Organizations Lois] Lerner. Clearly, his knowledge or however he was involved, whether it was telling people to cut it out … that is something we’re looking at … He is definitely involved in the same way Miller and Lerner are involved, but we don’t have a good grasp on the role.”

Grant, you may recall, announced he was “retiring” a few weeks ago. Supposedly he learned about the targeting of conservative groups last April and, like everyone else involved in this fiasco, forgot to mention it publicly until last month. Two clips for you here, one of McDermott and the other via the Washington Free Beacon of Paul Ryan laying into him for his nonsense.

http://hotair.com/archives/2013/06/04/jim-mcdermott-to-tea-party-groups-you-brought-this-irs-scrutiny-on-yourselves-by-applying-for-tax-exemption-you-know/ 

Washington Times Writer: IRS Scandal ‘About to Explode’

Washington Times columnist and Drudge Report editor Joseph Curl on Monday, citing “top Hill sources,” reported that the IRS political targeting scandal is set to “explode”

“Hearing from some top Hill sources that IRS scandal about to explode. Low-level agency workers miffed at being blamed. About to return fire,” Curl tweeted via his official Twitter account.

He followed up with an additional post:

“One source says there’s a paper trail to DC, and some who were worried from the get-go kept a paper trail. Wouldn’t say WH, but said ‘high.’”

This serious news tip had not been corroborated as of Monday night, but TheBlaze will continue monitoring the developments in the IRS scandal.

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/06/03/washington-times-writer-irs-scandal-about-to-explode/

Some Are "More Equal" Than Others?!

Today, as victims of the IRS' targeting of conservatives testify on Capitol Hill, contrast them with these groups that have enjoyed tax-exempt status without any IRS hassling.  As J. Christian Adams points out, it seems that affiliation with George Soros is a common theme -- as is, shall we say, a certain "harmony" with the policies of the Obama administration.

Even a cursory read gives the lie to any IRS claims that their concern was exploitation of the tax-exempt form, rather than animus toward conservative ideas.

http://townhall.com/tipsheet/carolplattliebau/2013/06/04/some-are-more-equal-than-others-n1612503 

Video: Tea Party activist describes IRS intimidation tactics

Meet Karen Kenney, the first in what will undoubtedly be a parade of victims of the intimidation tactics of the IRS aimed at conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.  Twitchy captures Kenney’s statement and the immediate Twitter reaction to it.  With President Obama attempting to pre-empt the hearing with an odd live statement on judicial nominations — usually a matter left to press releases — coverage of the hearing has been spotty, but this needs to be seen and read in full:
Just how intimidating was this effort? Sixteen months after applying, SFVP finally heard from the IRS on its application, with a deadline cast in ominous tones:

In October 2010, the San Fernando Valley Patriots, a not-for-profit corporation in California, applied with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) for 501(c) 4 status as a tax-exemptsocial welfare organization. We were then and remain a “tea party” group affiliated with the national Tea Party Patriots.

We heard nothing until February 2012 when I received a packet from the IRS Exempt Organizations Office in Cincinnati, OH, which included a questionnaire with 35 items divided into 80 subpoints of inquiry.

A cover letter indicated we had 20 days to comply without penalty including “penalties of perjury” for failure to answer all questions with facts that are “true, correct, and complete.”
Generally, the questions were a demand that read like the chilling words from the 1950s: “Are you now or have you ever been…”

Kenney says her personal favorite among the raft of questions was #33, which demanded that the applicants incriminate themselves:

My personal favorite was question No. 33, which in relation to protests asked for a listing of our “committed violations of local ordinances, breaches of public order or arrests” then requesteddetails on how we “conduct or promote” illegal activities.

I think the IRS needs to fix its labeling machine: We’re the San Fernando Valley Patriots, not Occupy Oakland.

We’re going to be hearing from plenty of victims, and Obama can’t call a press conference every day to suck away the coverage.

http://hotair.com/archives/2013/06/04/video-tea-party-activist-describes-irs-intimidation-tactics/

Obama administration may have a fourth big scandal

The Associated Press has uncovered what may become a vast new scandal for the Obama administration: the possibly widespread use of covert email accounts by political appointees, enabling evasion of sunshine laws designed to protect the public. Jack Gillium of AP reports:

Some of President Barack Obama's political appointees, including the Cabinet secretary for the Health and Human Services Department, are using secret government email accounts they say are necessary to prevent their inboxes from being overwhelmed with unwanted messages, according to a review by The Associated Press.

The scope of using the secret accounts across government remains a mystery: Most U.S. agencies have failed to turn over lists of political appointees' email addresses, which the AP sought under the Freedom of Information Act more than three months ago. The Labor Department initially asked the AP to pay more than $1 million for its email addresses.

This looks very bad indeed. Former EPA administrator Lisa Jackson has already lost her hob owing to her use of the pseudonym "Richard Windsor" in correspondence with both agency officials and outsiders, including environmental activists. These communications ought to be available through Freedom of Information Act requests, but the use of a covert email account circumvents FOIA search requests.

The secret email accounts complicate an agency's legal responsibilities to find and turn over emails in response to congressional or internal investigations, civil lawsuits or public records requests because employees assigned to compile such responses would necessarily need to know about the accounts to search them. Secret accounts also drive perceptions that government officials are trying to hide actions or decisions.

"What happens when that person doesn't work there anymore? He leaves and someone makes a request (to review emails) in two years," said Kel McClanahan, executive director of National Security Counselors, an open government group. "Who's going to know to search the other accounts? You would hope that agencies doing this would keep a list of aliases in a desk drawer, but you know that isn't happening."

The officials using covert email accounts include some charged with the implementation of Obamacare, such as HHS secretary Kathleen Sebelius and other senior poltiical appointees:

At least two other senior HHS officials - including Donald Berwick, former head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and Gary Cohen, a deputy administrator in charge of implementing health insurance reform - also have secret government email addresses, according to the records obtained by the AP.

This scandal could be really big.Judging by the efforts to evade transparency, there probably is something to hide.

In addition to the email addresses, the AP also sought records government-wide about decisions to create separate email accounts. But the FOIA director at HHS, Robert Eckert, said the agency couldn't provide such emails without undergoing "an extensive and elongated department-wide search." He also said there were "no mechanisms in place to determine if such requests for the creation of secondary email accounts were submitted by the approximately 242 political appointees within HHS."

When caught evading the requirements of sunshine laws, federal agencies are now pleading that it would be too much trouble to reveal what has been kept illegally secret. This practically screams for a Congressional investigation, armed with subpoena powers.

President Obama promised the most transparent administration in history. He should be held to that promise. In fact, the entire contents of all covert email accounts of officials should be published on the internet to enable crowd sourcing of analysis. As AP notes:

Obama pledged during his first week in office to make government more transparent and open. The nation's signature open-records law, he said in a memo to his Cabinet, would be "administered with a clear presumption: In the face of doubt, openness prevails."

Lucianne Goldberg correctly observes that "The Associated Press plays turn-about on Obama biggies." Turning against its media allies may turn out to have been the biggest PR blunder in its history. We don't even know the magnitude of the scandal yet, but having made his promise, it is entirely fair to hold President Obama to his commitment.

 http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2013/06/obama_administration_may_have_a_fourth_big_scandal.html#ixzz2VGAD43R4

Alexander: Use of Private Emails By Public Officials is ‘Against the Law’

Senator LaMar Alexander (R., Tenn.) appeared on “Fox and Friends” Tuesday morning to discuss the Associated Press‘ report that top administration officials are using secret email addresses, whose contents are unknown.

One of the officials using a secret email account is Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. The existence of her secret email address was unknown until the new report.

As Senator Lamar explained, the use of a private email address to conduct public business is illegal.

DOOCY: Also, breaking news this morning, according to the Associated Press, apparently the Obama administration has been using secret government e-mail accounts for a variety of reasons. But apparently Secretary Sebelius is one of the people who has been using a secret e-mail account. So apparently it’s going to be hard for investigators to subpoena that, Senator, because they don’t even know it existed until this morning.

ALEXANDER: Well, that’s a problem because there is something called the Public Records Act. So if you’re in the government and in the Executive Branch, what you’re supposed to do is use the government e-mail for official business, and you use your private e-mail for your private business. If you mix the two up, that’s against the law and that frustrates the ability of the public to find out what you’re doing.

 http://freebeacon.com/lamar-use-of-private-emails-by-public-officials-is-against-the-law/

Inspector General Looking Into IRS Bonuses

Acting IRS Commissioner: President May Have Approved Certain Bonuses

On Monday, Rep. Harold Rogers (R., Ky.) of the House Appropriations Subcommittee asked acting IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel about bonuses within the IRS, some of which had to be approved by the president. Werfel explained the president’s role in distributing these bonuses, stating, “There’s a small sub-class of bonuses called presidential rank awards that are approved by the president, but they are relatively small in number, maybe a couple hundred throughout the entire government. The larger amounts of bonuses in terms of quantity are typically approved by the agency head.”

REP. HAROLD ROGERS: Mr. Werfel, I’m beginning to like you when you say you don’t want more money. That’s music to my ears and I’m sure the chairman feels the same. Now, in addition to the $50 million for conferences over the last three years, the press is reporting that the IRS paid out more than $92 million in bonuses during that three-year period. And within that sum, key figures in the current scandal got bonuses. Sarah Hall Ingram, the former Commissioner of the Tax Exempt and Government Entities Division which was responsible for overseeing the 501 c4 applications, received a bonus, bonuses of $103,000 plus which increased during the period of the increased scrutiny of these conservative groups and in addition to that she was promoted, now to head up the IRS involvement with Obamacare. Joseph Grant, former Deputy Commissioner of Tax Exempt, three bonuses, almost $84,000. Same period of time. Lois learner, Director of the Exempt Organizations Division, given $42,000 in bonuses during that period. And all of these had to be approved by the president, isn’t that right? 

DANIEL WERFEL: My understanding is there’s a small sub-class of bonuses called Presidential Rank Awards that are approved by the president but they are relatively small in number, maybe a couple hundred throughout the entire government. The larger amounts of bonuses in terms of quantity are typically approved by the agency head. 

ROGERS: OPM’s guidelines say that bonuses over $25,000 have to be approved by the president. So did the president approve these bonuses of these very critical people in this scandal that we’re investigating? 

WERFEL: I’m not sure of the answer to that question. I’m also not sure the way you phrased the question if the bonus totals you articulated were individual bonuses that added up to those numbers or if there was an individual bonus that exceeded 25,000 but that’s something we can certainly look into and get back to you. 

ROGERS: Would you let me know? 

WERFEL: Yes.

http://freebeacon.com/inspector-general-looking-into-irs-bonuses/

If you've 'done nothing wrong,' you still need to worry

Constitutional expert warns of Supreme Court assault on privacy

If you’ve done nothing wrong, police and other law enforcement don’t worry you, right?

They should, according to an analysis today of a U.S. Supreme Court decision that said police can take a DNA sample after an arrest to see if it matches any samples from unresolved crimes in a database.

The concern is that if taking DNA samples from those who are not convicted is justified, it also would be permitted to take DNA samples from anyone who flies on an airplane, applies for a driver’s license or attends a public school, according to John Whitehead, a constitutional expert with the Rutherford Institute.

The opinion for the five-justice majority, written by Anthony Kennedy, said taking and analyzing a cheek swab of the arrestee DNA is “like fingerprinting and photographing, a legitimate police booking procedure that is reasonable under the Fourth Amendment.”

The four judges who disagreed warned of the consequences.

“Make no mistake about it: because of today’s decision, your DNA can be taken and entered into a national database if you are ever arrested, rightly or wrongly, and for whatever reason,” Justice Antonin Scalia said in a dissent.

More than two dozen states and the federal government now take DNA swabs after arrests. But a Maryland court said it was illegal for officials to take Alonzo King’s DNA without a warrant from a judge.

That state court said King had a “reasonable expectation of privacy against warrantless, suspicionless searches.”

He had been linked to a decades-old criminal case through the DNA swab.

The Supreme Court now has reversed that.

Kennedy was joined in the majority by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Stephen Breyer. Scalia was joined in dissent by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.

The controversy was over whether police could take the samples before a conviction or without a judge’s warrant.

Whitehead called the decision a “devastating ruling.”

“Any American who thinks they’re safe from the threat of DNA sampling, blood draws, and roadside strip and/or rectal or vaginal searches simply because they’ve ‘done nothing wrong,’ needs to wake up to the new reality in which we’re now living,” he wrote.

“As the Supreme Court’s ruling in Maryland v. King shows, the mindset of those in the highest seats of power – serving on the courts, in the White House, in Congress – is a utilitarian one that has little regard for the Constitution, let alone the Fourth Amendment. Like Justice Scalia, all I can hope is that ‘today’s incursion upon the Fourth Amendment’ will someday be repudiated,” Whitehead said.

“As I document in my new book, ‘A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State,’ our freedoms – especially the Fourth Amendment – are being choked out by a prevailing view among government bureaucrats that they have the right to search, seize, strip, scan, spy on, probe, pat down, taser, and arrest any individual at any time and for the slightest provocation,” Whitehead wrote.

“Now, thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court’s devastating decision in Maryland v. King – in which a divided Court determined that a person arrested for a crime who is supposed to be presumed innocent until proven guilty must submit to forcible extraction of their DNA – you can add invasive DNA sampling to the list of abuses being ‘legally’ meted out on the long-suffering American populace.”

He said the court once again sided “with the guardians of the police state over the defenders of individual liberty.”

Whitehead said the only “glimmer of reason” in the case was from Scalia, “who wasted no time dispatching the court’s dubious claim that DNA is necessary for suspect identification. Scalia was joined in his biting dissent by the three female justices on the Court (Ginsburg, Sotomayor, and Kagan).”

“As the minority opinion pointed out, Maryland actually took a full three months to test King’s DNA before handing the DNA over to the FBI to be matched against a database of unsolved crimes (that is, crimes in which the suspect has not been identified). Clearly, the state’s intention was not to identify King, but to potentially implicate him in a crime other than the one for which he was accused.”

He continued: “As disheartening as this ruling is, it is simply one more volley in a long line of attacks on our right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures by government agents. In the past few years, the Supreme Court has determined that freedom from unreasonable government intrusion, a core component of the United States Constitution, is of little importance in an age of surveillance and security at any cost.”
Other precedents Whitehead cited:

• “It’s OK for police officers to use excessive force as long as they don’t know that the Constitution prohibits them from doing so.”
• “In an effort to make life easier for overworked jail officials, they can strip search anyone brought in, under any pretext.”
• “Police officers can break into homes, without a warrant, even if it’s the wrong home as long as they think they have a reason to do so.”
• “The sensibility of police dogs trumps the Constitution. In Florida v. Harris a unanimous Court declared roadside stops to be Constitution-free zones where police may search our vehicles based upon a hunch and the presence of a frisky canine.”

“This is what one would call a slow death by a thousand cuts, only it’s the Fourth Amendment being inexorably bled to death. This latest wound proves that there really is nothing standing between the American people and the police state which has slowly grown up around our society,” Whitehead wrote.

WND recently reported that the federal government also is trying to convince consumers to trust government agents with DNA.

WND reported when the U.S. government released a report called “Privacy and Progress in Whole Genome Sequencing” by the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues.

Its goal was to “find the most feasible ways of reconciling the enormous medical potential of whole genome sequencing with the pressing privacy and data access issues raised by the rapid emergence of low-cost whole genome sequencing.”

The chairman, Amy Gutmann, said without the cooperation of millions of Americans the research will falter and possibly fail.

“The life-saving potential of genome sequencing depends on gathering genetic information from many thousands (perhaps millions) of individuals, most of whom will not directly benefit from the research,” she said.

“Those who are willing to share some of the most intimate information about themselves for the sake of medical progress should be assured appropriate confidentiality, for example, about any discovered genetic variations that link to increased likelihood of certain diseases, such as Alzheimer’s, diabetes, heart disease and schizophrenia.”

She warned that without assurances in place, “individuals are less likely to voluntarily supply the data that have the potential to benefit us all with life-saving treatments for genetic diseases.”

The commission’s report found that current procedures vary. Some states have reliable methods to protect privacy, but others have holes in their systems.

“In many states someone could legally pick up a discarded coffee cup and send a saliva sample to a commercial sequencing entity in an attempt to discover an individual’s predisposition to neurodegenerative disease. The information might then be misused, for example, by a contentious spouse as evidence of unfitness to parent in a custody case. Or, the information might be publicized by a malicious stranger or acquaintance without the individual’s knowledge or consent in a social networking space, which could adversely affect that individual’s chance of finding a spouse, achieving standing in a community, or pursuing a desired career path,” the report said.

The fact that cooperation will be needed from many is not the issue.

“Realizing the promise of whole genome sequencing requires widespread public participation and individual willingness to share genomic data and relevant medical information,” said commission vice chair James W. Wagner. “In other words, scientists and clinicians must have access to data from large numbers of people who are willing to share their private information.

“This, in turn,” he said, “requires public trust that any whole genome sequence data shared by individuals with clinicians and researchers will be adequately protected.”

WND also previously reported on disputes over DNA data, including a case in Minnesota in which the state was warehousing the DNA of all newborns.

Ultimately, the state Supreme Court gave privacy advocates a huge victory over their state government, deciding state law does not allow Minnesota’s health agencies to take, keep and use the blood spots without restriction that include DNA data for each child .

The state had argued that officials were entitled to the information and could use it for outside studies as they chose.

The case had been brought by nine families with 25 children. The Citizen’s Council for Health Freedom, which monitored the case’s progress since it was launched, had expressed concern about the possible eugenics influences that could result from inappropriate use of DNA data.

President Twila Brase said at the time, “When our organization discovered the state health department’s baby DNA warehouse in 2003 and the use of newborn DNA for genetic research without parent consent, we determined to do all that we could to stop this practice. No state law expressly permits these activities.”

She said, “We are pleased that these nine families were willing to sue the state of Minnesota. Their action and this decision now secures the genetic privacy rights and informed written consent rights of all Minnesota parents and newborn citizens.”

The ItsMyDNA.org website posts information for citizens, especially parents of newborns, to show what their own state does regarding the acquisition, maintenance and use of babies’ DNA.

She said there are 18 states that keep such information from 10 years to indefinitely.

“We know at the federal level, researchers want the states to become the steward of these blood spots,” she warned. “We’re saying that this DNA is the property of the children and the state doesn’t have a right to claim ownership.”

She continued, “We are not government subjects of research by virtue of being born, and our DNA is not government property.”

In a previous report, Brase warned that the accumulation of DNA data on entire generations of the population could result in unwelcome actions.

“Suppose … expanded screening of an infant reveals not a fatal and incurable disease but instead a host of genetic variants, each of which merely confers elevated risk for some condition or other,” her report said. “Who is to say at what point an uncovered defect becomes serious enough to warrant preventing the birth of other children who might carry it? At what point have we crossed the line from legitimate family planning to capricious and morally dubious eugenics?”

WND reported Brase’s report said the concept of “identifying” those who would be “unsuitable” for reproduction is enough reason for parents to be alarmed.

Her report said most parents “have no idea that government is doing the testing or retaining the data and DNA.”

“It is not hard to imagine the day when any discovered but nonsymptomatic condition could become a ‘pre-existing condition’ for which private insurers would not pay. The eugenic implications are obvious. Thus, the growing collection of genetic test results and newborn DNA could easily enable a eugenics agenda on the part of government agencies and private industry,” the report said.

WND also reported the state of Texas forwarded the DNA from hundreds of newborn babies to a military database without parental permission or knowledge.

The Texas Tribune, an online publication founded by a former editor of the Texas Monthly and a longtime owner of the Texas Weekly, had published a story about the Department of State Health Services in Texas giving some 800 DNA samples to the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology’s DNA Identification Laboratory.

The actions were uncovered as part of the publication’s review of nine years’ worth of emails over the collection of babies’ DNA, which recently was targeted by a lawsuit.

WND reported late last year that the dispute was settled out of court, providing a victory for genetic privacy.
According to the Tribune report, Texas officials routinely collected blood spots to screen for health issues. Then around 2002, officials started storing the blood spots on cards at Texas A&M University.

But officials never obtained parental permission and found themselves targeted by a lawsuit over their actions.

The Tribune reported that in addition to storing the blood spots, the state gave 800 samples – from which it removed identifying labels such as names and dates – to the military operation.

Brase said at the time there remain concerns, “This is the government. This is what people forget. This is the government planning to create a DNA warehouse of citizens.”

http://www.wnd.com/2013/06/if-youve-done-nothing-wrong-you-still-need-to-worry/

Fascism In America

When fascism comes to America, what will it look (and feel) like? 

Very much like what we have now, because a version of fascism is already here. 

I am not the first to worry about the prospect of fascism in America. In 1935, for example, Sinclair Lewis published It Can't Happen Here, which is a fictional account of a fascist take-over of the country. In 2008, Joe Conason published It Can Happen Here. The book's subtitle, Authoritarian Peril in the Age of Bush, tells all we need to know. 

Others have also breached the topic, but these works suffice. Lewis' and Conason's tomes ought to caution against too readily concluding that fascism could happen here. Nevertheless, there are grounds for concern.

Fascism is associated with Hitler's brutal dictatorship in Germany between 1933 and 1945, or Mussolini's milder version in Italy between 1922 and 1943, Franco's in Spain between 1936 and 1975, or a host of lesser-known personalities in various countries at different times. 

Fascism is a totalitarian political system, in which an all-powerful central government directs a nation's economy. Virtually no aspect of society is independent of the state, which is a one-party regime, dominated by an omniscient leader. Although heavily influenced by populistic themes, fascist ideology is at once anti-democratic and collectivist.

At first blush, the American variety of fascism is different. For one thing, the traditional institutions associated with government in the United States are still in place. Sadly, however, the primary principles of American governance -- especially limited government, federalism, individual liberty, personal responsibility, and so on -- have been severely compromised. 

I am reminded of The Roman Revolution, published in 1939 by the late Ronald Syme. The book covered Roman history from Julius Caesar's assassination in 44 B.C.E. till Augustus' death in 14 C.E. Its main thesis is that the Roman Republic's institutions and processes, which had worked during most of the republican era, had become inadequate for the needs of empire. Without drastically changing the Republic's major institutions, Augustus "revolutionized" the key features of Roman government consistent with his monarchial rule. He did so in ways that went largely unnoticed during his lifetime.

The Roman Revolution was inspired by fascism's emergence in Italy and Germany, which is why it has much to teach Americans today. 

Ours has become a system of virtually limitless central governmental power. Whatever one thinks of the IRS and Justice Department scandals -- targeting conservatives and evangelical Christian and orthodox Jewish organizations, spying on AP reporters, and labeling a Fox News journalist a potential felon -- their common theme is that the federal government can do anything it wishes.

Think back to Barack Obama's comment that the main problem with the Constitution is that it is a charter of "negative liberties," because it primarily specifies what government cannot do to people. The Obamians want a charter of "positive liberties"; they want an organic law asserting what government can do to -- oops, sorry -- for people.

Harvard University law professor Cass Sunstein -- a czar in the first Obama Administration -- is the co-author with Richard Thaler of Nudge (2009), a book which argues that government should "gently" push people to do what they ought to have the sense to realize they should do. 

Thaler and Sunstein's thesis is an exemplar of the "progressive" theory of government, which was a precursor to fascism, as Jonah Goldberg noted in Liberal Fascism (2008). Progressivism is belief in big government. It has two principles: (1) government regulation of the economy and society; and (2) redistribution of private property in the name of social justice.

Progressivism is a harbinger of fascist collectivism. Omnipotent central government, economic regulation -- sometimes known as "crony capitalism" -- redistribution of wealth; all these are consistent with fascism. (Many conflate progressivism with socialism, but the same features apply to fascism.)

How can a variety of democratic theory like progressivism can be a harbinger of fascism, which is obviously totalitarian? The distinction between progressives' notion of democracy and totalitarianism blurs.

No discussion of fascism would be complete without considering ordinary citizens' role. One of the most disturbing books to come out of World War II is They Thought They Were Free (1955), by Milton Mayer, who traveled to Germany in 1952 and interviewed ten ordinary Nazis who lived in west-central Germany. All were anti-Semitic. Two were Alte Kämpfer -- "old fighters" -- who had become Nazis before the Reichstag elections of 1930; the rest joined the party later, typically for opportunistic reasons.

Mayer's "friends" mentioned that the Nazi transmogrification of Germany occurred in a series of small steps, none of which was so wrenching as to produce massive resistance. Had the Nazis moved too swiftly, and made major transformations of Germany, some people -- perhaps enough to make a difference -- might have changed history. (One can't help thinking about Pastor Niemöller's account of how he remained passive during early Nazi outrages, only to discover that, when they came for him, it was too late.)

One is also struck by Mayer's "friends" lack of curiosity about what was going on beyond their narrow sphere of interest. (For a sense of what this mind-set must have been like, get the movie, Judgment at Nuremberg, set in Germany in 1948, and watch the scene where "Chief Judge Dan Haywood" -- Spencer Tracy -- meets "Mr. and Mrs. Halbestadt" -- Ben Wright and Virginia Christine -- a German couple who have been assigned to be his butler and house keeper. The "Halbestadts" beautifully exhibit this mind-set.) 

Even though neither uses the term "fascism" -- two slender books present evidence buttressing the assertion that a version of fascism has come to America.

The first is Angelo Codevilla's The Ruling Class (2010), which argues that a relatively small proportion of the populace -- "the ruling class" -- governs the rest of the population, a.k.a. "the country class." The ruling class is America's elite, and their desires dictate what government does.

The second is Nicholas Eberstadt's A Nation of Takers (2012), which claims that a large proportion of the population -- sometimes approaching half -- receives some kind of government benefit. Instead of sturdy self-reliance, we confront the spectacle of a sizable slice of the public "gaming the system" to "qualify" for government benefits for which they might not be entitled.

How do these books buttress the argument that fascism already exists in America? The Ruling Class illustrates how the country is already governed by a tiny slice of the populace, ruling in their own interests. A Nation of Takers shows that, because they are already so dependent on government, millions of ordinary people lack the resources and the inclination to oppose government diktats.

Can anything be done to at least ameliorate fascism's impact? Yes, but, as the barkeep in Irma la Douce, was wont to say, "that's another story." 

http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/06/fascism_in_america.html#ixzz2VGCP9Mr0

The Obama crime family

Exclusive: Wayne Allyn Root says BHO's team makes mafia look positively civilized


The mafia has nothing on Obama.

Have you seen the headlines? Obama’s IRS is ruthless. They want to know what you say in your Facebook posts, what you are thinking, what you are reading – they even want to know the content of your prayers. Amazing – even the mafia doesn’t ask these kind of personal questions.

Obama’s IRS goes after tea partiers, conservatives and groups that believe in the U.S. Constitution. Even the mafia has more respect for the Constitution than Obama’s government gang.

Obama’s IRS goes after Christian charities, Catholic professors and pro-life groups. They went after Billy Graham? Even the mafia has more respect for the church than the Obama Crime Family.

In one case the IRS offered to “end the pain” if the pro-life group agreed to stop picketing Planned Parenthood clinics. This is a level of extortion even the mafia would be impressed with.

Obama’s IRS released sensitive and confidential tax records of conservative groups to their opposition. They even appear to have released Mitt Romney’s confidential tax records to the Obama campaign. Even the mafia respects a man’s tax returns.

Obama’s IRS also targeted pro-Israel Jewish groups. Are you kidding? Even the greatest gangsters of all-time – Meyer Lansky and Bugsy Siegal – were always friends of Israel.

Then there’s the way the Obama Crime Family treats the taxpayers. Don Obama and his crew are very much like the mafia – except meaner. You see the mafia almost never goes after “civilians.” They only intimidate, extort and kill other mobsters or “associates” active in the criminal world. If only Obama were that discriminating!

The Obama Crime Family goes after every taxpayer in America. Obama desperately needs your money, and he’ll stop at nothing to confiscate it. Whether it’s raising income taxes, payroll taxes, Obamacare taxes, online sales taxes, taking away exemptions and deductions, he’ll find a new and creative way to extort your money.

As a bonus, since well-off taxpayers write most of the checks for Republican candidates and conservative causes, Don Obama is slowly bankrupting his political opposition. Even the Gambinos never figured out how to use the law to bankrupt the other mafia families.

And then there’s the theft on a massive scale that would make the mafia blush. My new national best-selling book, “The Ultimate Obama Survival Guide,” paints a full detailed picture of this slow-motion tragedy. Let me share a few highlights of Don Obama’s larceny in action.

Don Obama targets, hunts, demonizes, intimidates and punishes his best customers (business owners and high-income taxpayers). Even the mafia treats their best customers with respect.

But taxation is only the tip of the iceberg for the Obama Crime Family. They can rob widows and orphans blind without ever touching their bank accounts. The Obama Crime Family’s weapon of choice is the Federal Reserve. If Don Obama can’t get his hands on your money, he merely orders the Fed to print trillions in new dollars. That makes your life savings worthless. It threatens your retirement. It even threatens the financial future of your children and grandchildren (because all that debt needs to be repaid).

When it comes to jobs, Obama is the most prolific killer EVER. There are now 90 million able-bodied, working-age Americans no longer working. That’s almost one third of the country’s population. The workforce participation rate is the lowest since 1979. For men it’s the lowest since 1948. Don Obama has killed so many jobs, he should be on top of the FBI’s “Most Wanted List.”

Don Obama also kills spirit. He overwhelms business owners with so many taxes and regulations, they live in despair and depression. Obama is a ruthless enforcer – he created 6,118 new government regulations in just the first 90 days of 2013. He is snuffing out the economy like a mafia paid hit man.

 It makes you wonder who is paying Obama to cause this kind of damage.

The mafia makes much of their money from the sale of drugs. But Don Obama’s drug of choice is entitlements. He has addicted the whole country to “Obama money.” It’s just not worth it to work anymore. This Obama is very good – even the mafia could never destroy the moral fabric of the whole country.

Then there’s the intimidation against “ratings agencies.” Standard & Poor’s and then Egan-Jones downgraded the debt of America under Obama – for the first time in history. So guess what happened next? They were both indicted by the federal government.

Were these indictments a coincidence? No more than if a business owner stopped paying kickbacks to the mafia and suddenly winds up firebombed. These were messages.

Then there’s Obamacare. The IRS predicts the typical family will soon pay $20,000 per year for health care. Since no one in this Obamageddon economy has $20,000 to spare, Obama will turn us all into wards of the state, dependent on government to pay for our health care. Even the mafia was never this ruthless.

But Don Obama saves his real mafia tactics for the energy industry. He despises oil, coal, nuclear and fracking. A true Marxist, Obama wants energy bills to go through the roof so that we all need government handouts to survive. So he uses every trick in his book to destroy the energy producers – from EPA regulations to executive orders.

Heck, Don Obama is so ruthless, he even bugs his friends in the media. He looks at the emails of the moms and dads of the media. He names journalists as “conspirators” for just doing their jobs.

With the Obama Crime Family breathing down our necks, it’s lucky the honest citizens have the Second Amendment to protect us. Oh, right. Obama wants to disarm us. Even the mafia can’t use the power of government to disarm its victims. Brilliant. This Obama Crime Family is in a league of their own.
My apologies for insulting the Gambinos by comparison.

http://www.wnd.com/2013/06/the-obama-crime-family/

Obama birth-certificate doubts head to Capitol

Audible gasps, shock, outrage and support for a congressional investigation were the responses by law-enforcement officers, elected officials and attorneys to a presentation by Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s Cold Case Posse of evidence that Barack Obama’s birth certificate is fraudulent.

Arpaio’s lead investigator, Mike Zullo, made a public presentation Saturday at the annual convention of the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association in St. Charles, Mo., then held a closed-door session for police officers, elected officials and others.

“Sheriff Arpaio wants this in Congress. That’s where we intend to take it,” Zullo said in an interview with Carl Gallups of PPSimmons Radio.

Zullo said he was amazed by the number of law-enforcement personnel and others at the conference who were not aware of the evidence that Obama’s birth documentation is fake.

He told Gallups the overwhelming response was “absolute shock,” noting “audible gasps” could often be heard during his presentation.

Zullo said one official came up to him afterwards and said: “I have been purposely ignoring this matter – until now. I will ignore it no longer.”

Several constitutional officers, public officials, attorneys, elected officials and others are now pledging full and personal support for moving the issue to a congressional investigation, Zullo said.

He said the virtual media blackout had kept many of the officials in in attendance uninformed and they are now outraged that they have seen the evidence that they should have seen from the beginning.”

Zullo said the media is being “side-stepped.”

“We are making inroads and contacts that we have never made before,” he said. “This conference is really going to pay off in moving things forward. Very important people are now beginning to see the amassed criminal evidence of perhaps the biggest fraud in American history. They are moved – they are shocked – and they are ready for action. Plans of action are now being laid at this very conference. This meeting could prove to be monumental.”

Obama’s birth certificate became an issue before the 2008 campaign — raised first by Hillary Clinton’s campaign — because of allegations he might not qualify for the presidency as a “natural born citizen.”

Though the Constitution provides no definition, many scholars believe the drafters of the Constitution understood it to mean someone who was born of citizen parents. Obama’s father never was a U.S. citizen, and some critics suspect Obama was not born in the U.S.

Arpaio launched his Cold Case Posse investigation after Maricopa County constituents expressed concern about placing an ineligible candidate on the 2012 presidential ballot.

Zullo recently met with members of Congress concerning the evidence his team has gathered.

After examining the evidence, he said, “They’re looking … and saying, ‘My God, a fifth-grader can see through this.’”

Evidence from Arpaio’s investigation was entered in a legal case pending before the Alabama Supreme Court. It was brought by attorney Larry Klayman on behalf of 2012 Constitution Party presidential nominee Virgil Goode and Alabama Republican Party leader Hugh McInnish, who are seeking to force Alabama Secretary of State Beth Chapman to verify that all candidates on the state’s 2012 ballot were eligible to serve.

The case, dismissed at a lower level, is now before the Alabama Supreme Court, where strict constitutionalist Roy Moore was elected chief justice in November. The case becomes all the more intriguing because Moore is on record previously questioning Obama’s constitutional eligibility to serve as president.

The affidavit in the Alabama case, written by Zullo,says his team “concluded that there was probable cause that forgery and fraud had been committed in respect of two documents: 1) the long-form or original birth certificate computer image presented by Mr. Obama, which contained multiple errors and anomalies, many of them serious and: 2) the selective-service document for Mr. Obama, which contained a two-digit year-stamp.”

“This was contrary to specifications issued by federal regulations to the effect that the year of issue should be expressed as four digits on the stamp, and also contrary to any other selective-service registration document that we had been able to examine,” Zullo wrote.

The evidence, he said, should be put before Congress.

Zullo said Arpaio “continues to recommend that the Congress of the United States open an immediate investigation, including the appointment of a select committee, as regards to the authenticity of Mr. Obama’s documentation, whether any crimes have been committed, and to determine Mr. Obama’s eligibility for the office of president of the United States.”

The Obama administration has dismissed questions about Obama’s eligibility with mockery and ridicule.

In a brief asking that the Alabama case be dismissed, Democrats quoted late-night comedian Jimmy Kimmel.

The party insisted: “In order for one to accept the claim that President Obama’s birth certificate is a forgery [and that he is ineligible], one has to buy into a conspiracy theory so vast and byzantine that it sincerely taxes the imagination of reasonable minds.”

The brief scoffs at “birthers” as a “tiny cabal of zealots” and quotes Kimmel saying: “These people could have personally witnessed Obama being born out of an apple pie, in the middle of a Kansas wheat field, while Toby Keith sang the National Anthem – and they’d still think he was a Kenyan Muslim.”

But Arpaio is one of few law enforcement authorities to look into the issue, and although his work largely has been under the radar in recent months, it is continuing, Zullo’s affidavit confirmed.

In a 2010 interview with WND, Moore said he’d seen no convincing evidence that Obama is a “natural born citizen” – as the U.S. Constitution requires of presidents – and a lot of evidence that suggests he is not.
“This is the strangest thing indeed,” he said. “The president has never produced [evidence] in the face of substantial evidence he was not born in our country. People are accepting it blindly based on their feelings, not on the law.”

More recently, when a majority of the state’s high court denied a 2012 petition filed by McInnish seeking to require an original copy of Obama’s birth certificate before the sitting president would be allowed on the state’s ballot, Justice Tom Parker filed a special, unpublished concurrence in the case arguing that McInnish’s charges of “forgery” were legitimate cause for concern.

Parker wrote: “Mclnnish has attached certain documentation to his mandamus petition, which, if presented to the appropriate forum as part of a proper evidentiary presentation, would raise serious questions about the authenticity of both the ‘short form’ and the ‘long form’ birth certificates of President Barack Hussein Obama that have been made public.”

In his concurrence, Parker described McInnish’s petition: “McInnish seeks from this court a writ of mandamus, directly ordering Beth Chapman, as secretary of state for the State of Alabama, ‘to demand that [President Barack Hussein] Obama cause a certified copy of his bona-fide birth certificate be delivered to her direct from the government official who is in charge of the record in which it is stored, and to make the receipt of such a prerequisite to his name being placed on the Alabama ballot for the … November 6, 2012, general election.’”

Parker, who also wrote a concurrence in another case arguing Roe v. Wade should be overturned, agreed that Arpaio’s findings were legitimate cause to question Obama’s presented documents but nonetheless joined his fellow justices in denying McInnish’s petition.

“The Alabama Constitution implies that this court is without jurisdiction over McInnish’s original petition,” Parker explains. “The office of the secretary of state of Alabama is not a ‘court of inferior jurisdiction’ that this court may control through the issuance of a writ in response to a petition.”

Now, however, the case is coming from a lower court, suggesting the Supreme Court may have some opportunity for action.

Zullo testifies that the White House computer image file of Obama’s birth certificate contained anomalies that were unexplainable unless the document had been fabricated piecemeal by human intervention, rather than being copied from a genuine paper document.

“As of the date of this report, this investigation remains open and ongoing and additional forensic evidence continues to be uncovered, further validating the original investigational findings.”

His testimony continued, “Mr. Obama has in fact not offered any verifiable authoritative document of any legal significance or possessing any evidentiary value as to the origins of his purported birth narrative or location of the birth event.

“One of our most serious concerns is that the White House document appears to have been fabricated piecemeal on a computer, constructed by drawing together digitized data from several unknown sources,” Zullo wrote.

Zullo also noted that the governor of Hawaii was unable to produce an original birth document for Obama, and it should have been easy to find.

He said raising further questions is the fact Obama has refused to release: Original, long-form 1961 Hawaiian birth certificate, marriage license between Obama’s father (Barack Sr.) and mother (Stanley Ann Dunham), name change (Barry Sotero to Barack Hussein Obama), Obama’s adoption records, records of Obama’s and his mother’s repatriation as U.S. citizens on return from return from Indonesia, Obama’s baptism records, Noelani Elementary School (Hawaii), Punahou School financial aid or school records, Occidental College financial aid records, Harvard Law School records, Columbia senior thesis, Columbia College records, Obama’s record with Illinois State Bar Association, Obama’s files from career as an Illinois State senator, Obama’s law client list, Obama’s medical records and Obama’s passport records.

In action related to the same case, Klayman asked the court to strike the brief from the Alabama Democratic Party. He called in “frivolous and arrogant” and said “in addition to mocking in disrespectful fashion the seriousness of this case and the integrity of our judicial system, [Democrats] seek to improperly present new evidence not on the record for appeal.”

http://www.wnd.com/2013/06/obama-birth-certificate-doubts-head-to-capitol/