Welcome to the Bush-Obama White House: They're Spying on Us
The "Bush-Obama era" will be long remembered for curbing the Constitution.
Welcome to the era of Bush-Obama, a 16-year span of U.S. history that will be remembered for an unprecedented erosion of civil liberties and a disregard for transparency. On the war against a tactic—terrorism—and its insidious fallout, the United States could have skipped the 2008 election.It made little difference.
Despite his clear and popular promises to the contrary, President Obama has not shifted the balance between security and freedom to a more natural state—one not blinded by worst fears and tarred by power grabs. If anything, things have gotten worse.
- Killing civilians and U.S. citizens via drone.
- Seizing telephone records at the Associated Press in violation of Justice Department guidelines.
- Accusing a respected Fox News reporter of engaging in a conspiracy to commit treason for doing his job.
- Detaining terrorist suspects at Guantanamo Bay, despite promises to end the ill-considered Bush policy.
And now this: The Guardian newspaper reports that the National Security Agency is collecting telephone records of tens of millions of customers of one of the nation's largest phone companies, Verizon.
If the story is accurate, the action appears to be legal. The order was signed by a judge from a secret court that oversees domestic surveillance. It may also be necessary; U.S. intelligence needs every advantage it can get over the nation's enemies.
But for several reasons the news is chilling.
- Verizon probably isn't the only company coughing up its documents. Odds are incredibly strong that the government is prying into your telephone records today.
- Issued in April, the NSA order "could represent the broadest surveillance order known to have been issued," according to The Washington Post. "It also would confirm long-standing suspicions of civil liberties advocates about the sweeping nature of U.S. surveillance through commercial carries under laws passed after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks."
- This appears to be a "rubber stamp," order, reissued every few months since 2001. As is the case with all government programs, the systematic snooping into your telephone records is unlikely to ever expire without public outcry.
- Congress is full of hypocrites. Liberals who criticized Bush are less incensed with Obama. Republicans who bowed to Bush are now blasting Obama. The next time your congressional representative criticizes Obama for curbing civil liberties, ask if he or she would vote to repeal the Patriot Act, the post-911 law that handed unfettered power to the intelligence and military bureaucracies. Most won't.
- The Bush-Obama White House hates transparency. President George W. Bush and his vice president, Dick Cheney, were justifiably criticized by Democrats (none more successfully so than Obama himself) for their penchant for secrecy. Obama promised that he would run history's most transparent administration. By almost any measure, on domestic and well as foreign policies, Obama has broken that promise.
Still, they expect and deserve an open discussion about how to fight terrorism without undermining the Constitution.
Obama started that conversation with a recent address on the drone program, media leaks and the need to move American off a constant war footing. It was a compelling and well-considered argument for the balance he is claiming to strike.
But he made the speech under pressure, and reluctantly. It only came amid new revelations about the drone program and the disclosure of newsroom spying (the Guardian may well be in Obama's sights next). Under Bush, the warrantless-wiretap program only stopped after it was publicly disclosed. In that way, the Guardian story is not a surprise, so why didn't Obama long ago acknowledge, explain, and justify such an intrusion into privacy?
Obama has promised to adjust the drone and leaks investigation policies, essentially acknowledging that his administration had gone too far in the name of security. Do you believe him?
One thing we've learned about the Bush-Obama White House is that words don't matter. Watch what they do.
http://www.nationaljournal.com/politics/welcome-to-the-bush-obama-white-house-they-re-spying-on-us-20130606
IRS employees: Washington IRS official Carter Hull oversaw targeting of conservative groups
A Washington IRS attorney named Carter Hull closely oversaw the targeting of conservative nonprofit groups and suggested questions that IRS employees could ask of conservative and Tea Party groups applying for tax-exempt nonprofit status, according to interviews that two IRS employees gave with congressional investigators.“I was essentially a front person, because I had no autonomy or no authority to act on [applications] without Carter Hull’s influence or input,” said Elizabeth Hofacre, an employee of the Cincinnati IRS office, according to a new report in the Wall Street Journal.
Hofacre’s office, which oversaw tax-exempt applications, reportedly requested help from the agency’s Exempt Organizations Technical unit in Washington, D.C. in 2010 to deal with an influx of new applications from Tea Party groups.
Top Democrat Shows Outrage Over IRS Wasteful Spending
During a House Oversight Committee hearing Thursday on Capitol Hill, Democrat and Ranking Member Rep. Elijah Cummings, came dangerously close to sounding like a small government conservative during a rant against IRS wasteful spending. The IRS spent $50 million on conferences between 2010 and 2012 and used $50,000 in taxpayer money to produce two videos. One video shows IRS employees acting as Star Trek characters and the other shows IRS employees doing the cupid shuffle. Both videos were shown at a 2010 $4.1 million conference held in Aneheim, California.
“But guess what?” Cummings asked IRS official Faris Fink, who was responsible for spending $50,000 on parody videos for a 2010 conference. “The money that was spent on that–That’s my money! That’s the lady who got the early bus this morning. That’s her money. The one who makes $35,000, her. The gentleman up the street from my who makes 45, hauling trash. That’s their money! So, it was wasted.”In government, taxpayer money is wasted every day and yet when it gets pointed out, the argument is made that the $50,000 or $4 million is only a drop in the bucket when it comes to our fiscal problems, but that's the point. Government agencies and bureaucrats endlessly spending hard earned money and saying "it doesn't matter," should no longer be acceptable. The government is solely funded by the work of people in the private sector. The government is funded by the people who get on the early bus, the people who work extra hours, the people who create jobs at a small business and the people who have been standing up to the government and saying, "stop." As Cummings pointed out, most people don't make $50,000 per year and it is offensive that the very agency collecting the taxes of the working class are willing to frivolously spend $50,000 on a pair of embarrassing videos.
http://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2013/06/06/democrat-shows-outrage-over-irs-wasteful-spending-n1614589
Watch Eric Holder Refuse to Answer Whether Congress’ Phones Were Monitored
Attorney General Eric Holder on Thursday refused to answer whether the federal government has monitored phones belonging to members of Congress.
Holder was asked to provide assurances
that no phones inside the Capitol or belonging to lawmakers were
monitored, one day after the bombshell revelation that the government
secretly collected the phone records of millions of Verizon customers inside the U.S.
“With all due respect, senator, I don’t
think this is an appropriate setting for me to discuss that issue,”
Holder said in response to a question from Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.)
during a previously scheduled Senate hearing to discuss the Justice
Department’s budget. “I’d be more than glad to come back in an
appropriate setting to discuss the issues you have raised.”
Kirk interjected that “the correct
answer would be no, we stayed within our lane, and I assure you we did
not spy on members of Congress.”
Holder did say that members of Congress were kept fully informed about the program to collect the phone records.
“Members of Congress have been fully
briefed as these issues, these matters have been underway,” Holder said,
adding that he wasn’t comfortable saying more in an unclassified
setting.
That’s in line with comments earlier
Thursday from Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.)
and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) that they were aware of what was happening.
“This is nothing new. This has been
going on for seven years…every member of the United States Senate has
been advised of this,” Chambliss said.
Graham said Americans’ phone records were swept up only to track people “suspected to be terrorists.”
IRS Takes Vengeance on Virginia for Enforcing the Law
Virginia
Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli joked at the Virginia Republican
Convention, where he was nominated by the state GOP for governor, that
the Obama administration must not think he's a conservative: He hasn't
been audited by the IRS.
The IRS nevertheless found a way to exact vengeance on the slayer of government-lawbreaking, who has sued several federal government agencies -- and even wrote a book about why the Obama administration is America's biggest lawbreaker.
Yesterday Cuccinelli blasted the IRS for withholding payment of $125 million in money owed to Virginia. Cuccinelli won the second largest Medicaid fraud settlement is U.S. history, and the IRS has refused to cough up the money it owed to Virginia after sitting on it for eight months, where it has been earning interest for the feds, but not for Virginia.
As Cuccinelli wrote in a statement, "Can you imagine what the IRS would do if you or I turned in our tax paperwork eight-months late?"
Lawbreaking, cheating and incompetence is in the nature of government. Cuccinelli's book, The Last Line of Defense: The New Fight for American Liberty, does more than explain why he sued the Environmental Protection Agency and other federal agencies for lawbreaking, and why he was the first state AG to file suit to block ObamaCare.
In Last Line of Defense, Cuccinelli gives a tutorial about why the Constitution and its Bill of Rights were structured to best protect freedoms. As "the law that governs government," the Constitution cannot adequately protect freedom when government violates that supreme law.
As we've seen with the IRS, the EPA and other federal agencies, government ignores and thus violates the Constitution. But government lawbreaking is an even deeper problem. Government agencies violate the very laws that they are supposed to implement and enforce.
Bureaucrats are unaccountable, and mostly have no consequences for their lawbreaking. As IRS official Lois Lerner did, they violate the constitutional rights of others, then hide behind constitutional protections, such as the 5th Amendment's privilege against self incrimination, for themselves.
Ken Cuccinelli understands this as well if not better than any elected official. In an email yesterday, he wrote:
The tip of the iceberg, indeed.
The IRS nevertheless found a way to exact vengeance on the slayer of government-lawbreaking, who has sued several federal government agencies -- and even wrote a book about why the Obama administration is America's biggest lawbreaker.
Yesterday Cuccinelli blasted the IRS for withholding payment of $125 million in money owed to Virginia. Cuccinelli won the second largest Medicaid fraud settlement is U.S. history, and the IRS has refused to cough up the money it owed to Virginia after sitting on it for eight months, where it has been earning interest for the feds, but not for Virginia.
As Cuccinelli wrote in a statement, "Can you imagine what the IRS would do if you or I turned in our tax paperwork eight-months late?"
Lawbreaking, cheating and incompetence is in the nature of government. Cuccinelli's book, The Last Line of Defense: The New Fight for American Liberty, does more than explain why he sued the Environmental Protection Agency and other federal agencies for lawbreaking, and why he was the first state AG to file suit to block ObamaCare.
In Last Line of Defense, Cuccinelli gives a tutorial about why the Constitution and its Bill of Rights were structured to best protect freedoms. As "the law that governs government," the Constitution cannot adequately protect freedom when government violates that supreme law.
As we've seen with the IRS, the EPA and other federal agencies, government ignores and thus violates the Constitution. But government lawbreaking is an even deeper problem. Government agencies violate the very laws that they are supposed to implement and enforce.
Bureaucrats are unaccountable, and mostly have no consequences for their lawbreaking. As IRS official Lois Lerner did, they violate the constitutional rights of others, then hide behind constitutional protections, such as the 5th Amendment's privilege against self incrimination, for themselves.
Ken Cuccinelli understands this as well if not better than any elected official. In an email yesterday, he wrote:
"Today we're seeing what happens when liberals in Washington let government bureaucracies like the IRS run amok with no accountability, trampling the rights of taxpayers in the process. Unfortunately for all of us, my opponent, former DNC head Terry McAuliffe, has spent a lifetime getting them elected and now we are seeing the effects.
"If you believe this D.C. culture of intrusive federal overreach and trampling taxpayer rights is just happening in Virginia or to conservative organizations, you've got another thing coming. This is just the tip of the iceberg."
The tip of the iceberg, indeed.
The Left's New Scandal Strategy: Attack, Attack, Attack
The NSA revelations may reset the game, but the pattern was becoming clear: First it was "what scandals?" Next, the scandals were collapsing. Then it was "Republican overreach!" Now, with several damaging narratives still very much alive and taking a toll on public perceptions of the Obama administration, many liberals have devised a new approach to heading off the damage: Scorched-earth attacks. We saw glimmers of this at this week's House Ways and Means Committee hearing when some Democrats all but accused conservative organizations of bringing IRS abuse upon themselves by simply applying for 501(c)4 status.They did so, curiously, without making a single peep about deep-pocketed and explicitly political groups like President Obama's OFA seeking the same tax treatment. The chief offender appeared on Fox News yesterday and casually floated the possibility that Tea Party witnesses may have lied at the hearing, offering zero supporting evidence, natch.
Now top Democrats -- led by prominent veterans of Team Obama -- are aiming the big guns at House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa. David Plouffe fired a slanderous opening salvo on Twitter:
On Sunday, the flinty, self-consciously self-contained former White House senior adviser went Joe Pesci on the California Republican after Issa called Obama press secretary Jay Carney a “paid liar” on CNN over the ongoing investigation into the IRS-tea party scandal. “Strong words from Mr. Grand Theft Auto and suspected arsonist/insurance swindler …” tweeted Plouffe, alluding to decades-old allegations that Issa, the chairman of the House investigations committee, stole cars and possibly torched his own business for the insurance money.
Plouffe was regurgitating discredited allegations against Issa that weren't true in the 1970s, and remain untrue today (via CNN):
Issa once noted to a Washington Post interviewer that "For years, I used to tell everyone that I went into it because my brother was a car thief. Then they found out when I ran for office my brother did spend time in prison as a car thief, and it ruined the whole joke." In 1972, then-19-year-old Issa too was arrested under suspicion of stealing a car, but Issa claims it was a case of mistaken identity and the charges were ultimately dropped.
Some Democrats told Politico they were "privately fretting" about Plouffe's incendiary remark, even though they "loved" him for unleashing it. Assailing Issa's character and temperament is officially a codified Democrat strategy. Another technically-former Obama mouthpiece, Robert Gibbs, has joined the fray, in case there was any doubt. Gibbs called on Issa to apologize to the IRS for advancing the "unsubstantiated" suggestion that the agency's Washington leadership directed its targeting program against conservatives. Er, unsubstantiated? Oops. Finally, we have MSNBC's Martin Bashir blowing the lid off of the real reason why Republicans have been talking about "the IRS" so much lately. It's because that acronym is the new N-word. Really.
"Republicans are using [the IRS] as their latest weapon in the war against the black man...We welcome the latest phrase in the lexicon of Republican attacks on this president. 'The IRS.' Three letters that sound so innocent, but we know what you mean."
I can't even. MSNBC's president recently commented that his nominal news network isn't a great source for breaking news. (Yep, he actually said that). I suppose it is the place to turn for surreal, conspiratorial "commentary" from self-parodic buffoons. Good business model, that. By the way, the
http://townhall.com/tipsheet/guybenson/2013/06/06/the-lefts-new-scandal-strategy-attack-attack-attack-n1614020
Tips for Right-Wingers on the IRS Scandal
By Ann Coulter
Instead of showing endless loops of IRS employees wasting taxpayer
dollars line-dancing -- Breaking news: Government employees waste
millions of your dollars every single day! -- I think it would be more
useful for the public to hear a few crucial facts about the exploding
scandal at the Internal Revenue Service.
At Tuesday's congressional hearings on the IRS, witnesses provided shocking details about the agency's abuse of conservative groups.
The IRS leaked the donor list of The National Organization for Marriage to their political opponents, the pro-gay-marriage Human Rights Campaign. This is not idle speculation: The documents had an internal IRS stamp on them. The list of names was then published on a number of liberal websites and NOM's donors were harassed.
The IRS demanded that all members of the Coalition for Life of Iowa swear under penalty of perjury that they wouldn't pray, picket or protest outside of Planned Parenthood. They were also asked to provide details of their prayer meetings.
Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash. -- who was ordered by the D.C. Circuit Court to pay more than $1 million to John Boehner in 2008 for the sleazy maneuver of publishing an illegally taped private conversation -- blamed the conservative groups themselves. "Each of your groups was highly political," he lectured them, noting that they wouldn't have been asked any questions if they hadn't requested tax-exempt status.
Even a fair-minded person -- not to be confused with Jim McDermott -- might hear about the IRS' harassment of groups with "tea party," "patriot" or "liberty" in their names and think: "How do we know the IRS wasn't equally hard on left-wing groups?"
What might be more helpful than clips of IRS staff line-dancing would be for reporters, say at Fox News, to mention a few examples of the wildly partisan left-wing groups that the IRS has certified as tax-exempt.
Among the many left-wing groups with tax-exempt status are:
-- ACORN (now renamed as other organizations, but all still tax-exempt), "community organizers" who engage in profanity-laced protests at private homes, dump garbage in front of public buildings and disrupt bankers' dinners in order to get more people on welfare in order to destroy the capitalist system and incite revolution;
-- Occupy Wall Street, which -- in its first month alone -- was responsible for more than a dozen sexual assaults; at least half a dozen deaths by overdose, suicide or murder; and millions of dollars in property damage;
-- Media Matters for America, a media "watchdog" group that has never noticed one iota of pro-Obama bias in the media;
-- Moveon.org, which ran ads comparing Bush to Hitler under its 501(c)(4) arm;
-- The Center for American Progress, an auxiliary of the Democratic National Committee funded by George Soros and staffed by former Clinton and Obama aides to promote the Democratic agenda;
-- The Tides Foundation, which funnels money to communist and terrorist-supporting organizations;
-- The Ford Foundation, which has never found a criminal law that isn't "racist."
These groups are regarded by the IRS as nonpartisan community groups, merely educational, while dozens of patriotic, constitutional, Christian or tea party groups are still waiting for their tax exemptions.
That's to say nothing of Planned Parenthood, PBS and innumerable other Democratic front-groups that not only have tax exemptions, but get direct funding from the government.
By contrast, the conservative groups being raked over the coals by the IRS actually were nonpartisan. The tea party forced sitting Republican senators off the ticket in Alaska and Indiana, and toppled "establishment" Republicans in Utah, Delaware, Nevada, Florida and Texas. Far from being a secretly pro-Republican group, the tea party has been a nightmare for Republicans.
Show me one instance where the Center for American Progress was more of a problem for Democrats than Republicans.
It is obviously in the interest of the left to show us liberal groups also harassed by the IRS, so it's striking that they haven't been able to produce one yet.
Instead, they hearken back to the Bush years to claim that the IRS once audited the NAACP, which is treated as ipso facto political harassment.
First of all, the NAACP doesn't exactly have a sterling record of rectitude when it comes to organization funds. In the 1990s, the NAACP used tax-exempt contributions to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars of hush money to the mistress of then-executive director Benjamin F. Chavis Jr. -- as detailed in enraged columns by Carl Rowan at the time.
Find a tea party organization that's done that, and we'll understand the IRS conducting a three-year proctology exam on the group.
Second, the Bush-era audit of the NAACP was prompted by a blindingly partisan speech given by NAACP chairman Julian Bond at an organization meeting in Philadelphia in July 2004. Bond attacked a slew of elected Republicans by name, denouncing the entire party as one whose "idea of equal rights is the American flag and Confederate swastika flying side by side."
That's what we call "black-letter law" on improper activity for a tax-exempt organization. As a 501(c)(3) group, the NAACP is prohibited from supporting or opposing any candidate for elective office.
The NAACP responded to the IRS' letter by screaming from the rooftops that it was political payback. Consequently, Bush's IRS commissioner requested that Treasury's inspector general investigate the IRS' tax-exempt unit for political bias. The IG's report found no politics in the NAACP audit and -- to the contrary -- that more "pro-Republican" groups (18) than "pro-Democratic" groups (12) had been audited.
Nonetheless, the NAACP simply refused to cooperate with the IRS. There was nothing the Bush administration could do. No Republican was going to allow the NAACP's tax-exempt status to be revoked on its watch. Two years later, the IRS simply issued a letter clearing the group.
Today, the NAACP openly engages in partisan activity, such as a current weeks-long protest of Republican legislators in North Carolina.
Finally, a tip to the Democrats trying to defend the IRS: As a devoted true-crime TV viewer, I can tell you that when you're caught red-handed, it's never a good defense to say, "Why would I be so stupid to kill my wife right after taking out a huge life insurance policy on her?"
You were that stupid and you got caught.
http://townhall.com/columnists/anncoulter/2013/06/05/tips-for-rightwingers-on-the-irs-scandal-n1614101/page/full
The Coming Obamacare Disaster
For years I have been writing about the failures of the UK's National Health Service (NHS) as a warning for what the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) will do to health care here in the U.S.London's Daily Mail has chronicled the growing problems with the NHS, which include declining quality of care and availability of services coupled with increased costs. This is what is in store for us, if Congress does not repeal Obamacare.
According to the Daily Mail, "NHS hospitals are recruiting Spanish and Portuguese nurses in record numbers while British applicants are being refused because places on training courses have been slashed to cut costs." More than 5,000 student nurse places, it writes, "have been axed since the General Election." The reason? Foreign nurses cost less. Incredibly, they won't be checked to see if they can speak English. The potential for confusion over medication and treatment because of language differences could be significant.
Another Daily Mail story is about Stewart Fleming, a man with severe stomach pains who waited six hours in a hospital cubicle because, according to Andrew Horne, chief executive of Medway NHS Foundation Trust, "that evening was very busy; the hospital was full." The 37-year-old father of two died.
The Daily Mirror reports that at Stafford Hospital in Staffordshire, 1,200 patients died over a four-year period. No one has been held accountable, but the person in charge of the health authority for part of that time, Sir David Nicholson, was promoted and for two years headed the entire NHS at a substantially higher salary.
In a cruel irony, Donald Berwick, the former U.S. Medicare administrator, who has said, "The decision is not whether or not we will ration care -- the decision is whether we will ration with our eyes open," now heads a committee tasked with preventing the NHS from causing harm to patients. That's easy: get rid of the NHS.
A 2010 column by the Daily Telegraph's Janet Daley ran with the headline, "Copying the NHS is the last thing the U.S. should do." She called instead for a "combination of state provision and private contribution" for health care.
The NHS should have been a lesson for the United States. After promising that Obamacare would not raise insurance costs, we are now seeing the reality. Daniel P. Kessler, a Stanford University professor of law and business, recently noted in the Wall Street Journal: "Despite what you read, premiums in Oregon and California are going up, especially for the young." Other states, should they participate (and many say they won't) will inevitably have the same experience.
The Internal Revenue Service, which will enforce Obamacare's individual and employer mandates, announced in February, according to CNSNews.com, that the "cheapest health insurance plan available in 2016 for a family will cost $20,000..."
CNBC, citing a survey released by InsuranceQuotes.com, a company that allows people to compare insurance rates, recently reported that 64 percent of uninsured adults say they haven't decided if they will buy insurance by the January 1, 2014 deadline.
What happens here if people begin to experience long waits for treatment, higher costs, fewer doctors and nurses whose English is poor? Will they rebel or passively accept an unworkable system?
Two friends of mine who live in a retirement community in Washington recently told me of a change in their nursing staff. The majority are now from West Africa. This change, they say, has made many residents uncomfortable and uncertain whether the nurses are competent enough to provide the quality of care they have come to expect.
During the Depression and the rise of fascism in Europe, Sinclair Lewis wrote the novel "It Can't Happen Here." It was his warning about how fragile democracy is and how easily it can be replaced by dictatorship. Obamacare has the potential for becoming a type of dictatorship.
The negative consequences from the NHS can happen here and they are on the way, unless Republicans win enough congressional seats next year and then vote to replace Obamacare.
http://townhall.com/columnists/calthomas/2013/06/06/the-coming-obamacare-disaster-n1613798/page/full
Fort Hood shooter blasts Obama admin story
'I was defending Taliban' in attack Washington called 'workplace violence'
For years, the Obama administration has maintained that the victims of the 2009 shooting at Fort Hood, for which Islamist Maj. Hidal Hasan is charged, simply were in the crosshairs of a situation of “workplace violence.”The victims – 13 people were killed and nearly another three dozen were injured when, according to witnesses, Hasan shouted “Allahu Akbar” and started firing at people – have been denied benefits and combat honors because the government insisted there was no link to terror.
Now, however, the defendant himself is taking that off the table.
As part of his defense, he has demanded to represent himself in his still-unscheduled trial, and this week asked for a delay of several months so that he could prepare his defense which will be built on the idea he did the shootings “in defense of others.”
When asked by the judge, Col. Tara Osborn, to identify those he was “protecting,” Hasan said, “The leadership of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, the Taliban” and its leader, Mullah Omar.
Hasan, an Army psychiatrist at Fort Hood, is accused of walking into the Soldier Readiness Center on the base Nov. 5, 2009, and opening fire on his fellow soldiers.
The attack didn’t stop until Hasan himself was shot and paralyzed.
A survivor reported Hasan shouted “Allahu Akbar,” or “Allah is greatest,” a phrase commonly uttered by jihadists prior to carrying out an attack. The Fort Hood attack was the worst shooting on an American military base.
Hasan had been on federal officials’ radar screen for at least six months prior to the shooting over postings he made on the Internet. He likened a suicide bomber who kills women and children to a soldier who throws himself on a grenade to give his life in a “noble cause.”
Intelligence officials also intercepted at least 18 emails between Hasan and the radical American-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki. Hasan told al-Awlaki in one of the emails, “I can’t wait to join you” in paradise. He also asked al-Awlaki whether it was appropriate to kill innocents in a suicide attack, when jihad was acceptable and how to transfer funds without attracting government notice.
In spite of this, Attorney General Eric Holder declined to press terrorism charges against Hasan. Instead the government has labeled the shooting as a case of “workplace violence.” During a memorial service for the victims, President Obama never once used the word terrorism.
The designation has prevented survivors and the victim’s families from receiving Purple Hearts and being able to obtain combat-related special compensation.
Staff Sgt. Shawn Manning was shot six times in the attack, yet he is denied the same benefits a soldier shot in a similar action overseas would receive.
Fellow soldiers that day “were killed and wounded by … somebody who was there that day to kill soldiers, to prevent them from deploying,” Manning said. “And if that’s not an act of war, an act of terrorism, I don’t know what is.”
Survivors and their family are forced to watch while Hasan continues to receive a paycheck and medical benefits from the military – closing in on $300,000 already.
Neal Sher and Reed Rubinstein, who are representing the Ford Hood victims and their families, said Hasan’s statements change the picture.
“Now the government’s ‘workplace violence’ lie has been fully exposed,” they told the Washington Times. “By his own admission, Hasan was a jihadist who killed innocent Americans to defend the Taliban.”
The lawyers said the Army should simply admit the Fort Hood attack was terrorism and then give the victims, the survivors and their families “all available combat-related benefits, decorations and recognition.”
Earlier, a judge who was going to require Hasan to shave – to comply with military regulations, was removed from the case and replaced with Osborn, who allowed Hasan to make his own decisions about grooming.
The dispute over the beard and other issues have caused some to say Hasan is making a mockery of the military legal system.
“If he were not a Muslim and murdered 13 people in cold blood he would long since have been tried and convicted by now,” said Robert Spencer, founder of Jihad Watch. “This ridiculous haggling over his beard is part of the general policy of the United States government not to offend Muslims and accommodate them in every way possible.”
Spencer went on to say the Army’s deference to Hasan on the beard issue is particularly appalling because it was his own piety that led him to kill his fellow soldiers.
“This accommodation is particularly unconscionable because Hassan said he has to have the beard because of his Muslim faith. But he also by his own account murdered 13 people because of his Muslim faith,” Spencer noted. “Because of this why should we be giving him any accommodation because of his faith? This would be like making sure a Nazi guard at a concentration camp in prison was later supplied with a copy of Mein Kampf along with a swastika emblem.”
Some have questioned why Hasan had no problems being clean shaven before the shooting and why it only became an issue later. Spencer explained the reason is Hasan wants to make himself a martyr in the eyes of the Muslim world.
“The martyr goes into paradise in the condition in which they die. A beard is a sign of a Muslim’s piety, and if he doesn’t have it, it is a serious mark against him,” Spencer explained. “He will consider himself to be an Islamic martyr if he is executed for his crimes or even if he dies in prison for his crimes. This is why he has attempted to plead guilty on several occasions.”
Under military law, an individual is not allowed to plead guilty in any case involving the death penalty.
WND Founder and CEO Joseph Farah, in a commentary, said, “Did you hear about Barack Obama’s Defense Department characterizing the execution-style shooting slayings of 13 and wounding of 29 at Fort Hood in 2009 by a crazed Islamist Army officer as ‘workplace violence’? … The reclassification of one of the worst terror attacks ever on domestic U.S. soil came in a strategic plan on battling ‘violent extremism in the United States’ focused on engaging local law enforcement and communities, and on countering ‘extremist propaganda.’ It pledged to put together a ‘task force of senior officials’ to work with local communities that could be targeted for recruitment and radicalization.”
But, he wrote, the report never mentions “radical Islam.”
“This is akin to reclassifying the 9/11 attacks as ‘pilot error,’” wrote Farah.
Also commenting recently was William Murray, author of “My Life Without God.”
“President Barack Hussein Obama refuses to designate Hasan’s assault on Fort Hood as terrorism even though Hasan referred to himself as a ‘soldier of Islam.’ As a result of Obama’s refusal, the families of the dead and the injured have been refused combat compensation.
“President Obama will not even issue Purple Hearts to the victims – not to the families of the dead, and not to those who were wounded,” he wrote. “Barack Obama and his Department of Defense insist Hasan’s attack was mere ‘workplace violence’ and was ‘isolated’ and therefore not terrorism or combat.”
But, Murray pointed out, “Obama ordered the assassination of Hasan’s jihadist partner and instructor in the attack, American-born al-Qaida collaborator Anwar al-Awlaki. A CIA drone killed al-Awlaki and several others in Yemen in September 2011. It was the first execution ever of a U.S. citizen without trial by our government.
“If Maj. Nidal Hasan acted alone and the jihad attack at Fort Hood was mere ‘workplace violence,’ why was retribution required on al-Awlaki? Because the killing wasn’t retribution at all; it was because Obama needed to shut al-Awlaki up and stop his bragging about the attack on Fort Hood. With al-Awlaki taking credit for the shooting, Obama could not classify it as ‘workplace violence.’ All those involved other than Hasan had to be eliminated,” he said.
In an exclusive interview with WND’s Greg Corombos, former U.S. Attorney Andrew C. McCarthy, who led the successful prosecution against the 1993 World Trade Center bombers, said the military judge had no choice but to allow Hasan to represent himself at trial and probably couldn’t stop Hasan from turning the courtroom into a platform for his radical Islamic views.
“I don’t see how the judge could avoid it. As the Supreme Court has held, if you make a knowing and intelligent decision before the trial starts that you want to represent yourself, you have an absolute constitutional right to do that,” McCarthy said. ”I think that the objections that people have or the fears they have that by representing himself he’s going to turn the proceedings into a circus are a little bit overblown. Let’s face it, even if he weren’t representing himself he could try to turn the case into a circus if that’s what he was determined to do.
“Whether he’ll be able to do that or not is really going to be a function of how strong the judge presiding over the trial is, not whether (Hasan’s) just a defendant at the table or the defendant who represents himself.”
McCarthy said Hasan’s strategy is most likely to lay the grounds for an appeal of a likely death sentence.
“What a defendant is always trying to do is sow error into the record because that’s the best chance you have of getting the outcome reversed on appeal. I think what he’s really trying to accomplish here is get the death penalty off the table one way or the other. This is a way that makes the trial a little bit more chaotic,” said McCarthy, who argued that if Hasan is convicted and sentenced to death he has a good chance of finding a sympathetic appellate court that could save his life.
Another issue in the case is what discovery evidence Hasan will have access to as he prepares his defense. McCarthy said the government’s cautious charges in this case should limit the amount of sensitive information provided to Hasan.
“It would concern me more if he were being accused as an al-Qaida operative because then there would be an argument that he should be given the discovery about the overall al-Qaida conspiracy,” McCarthy said. “The way the prosecution has a way of regulating how much or how little a defendant is entitled to in terms of discovery is how you plead the case.
“In this case, the prosecution has plead the case narrowly. They’ve gone out of their way not to accuse him of terrorism, which I think is a mistake, but I think they have made it a simple, straightforward homicide case. Therefore, I would say that he should not be entitled to any discovery about our enemies,” said McCarthy, who noted the only al-Qaida-related content the prosecution will likely mention is Hasan’s relationship with radical cleric Anwar Al-Awlaki.
Hasan is also asking for a delay in the start of the trial because of his intent to pursue a new, “defense of others” strategy. When asked by Judge Osborn who he was defending, Hasan mentioned the leadership of the Islamic emirate of Afghanistan, the Taliban and Taliban leader Mullah Omar. McCarthy said he would not delay the trial any further and hopes the judge will rule that way.
http://www.wnd.com/2013/06/fort-hood-shooter-blasts-obama-admin-story/
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