188 Veteran Affairs Employees Were Paid to Do Union-Related Work Instead of Help Vets? Two Senators Demands Answers
Senators Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and Tom
Coburn (R-Okla.) in a letter addressed to Secretary of Veteran Affairs
Eric Shinseki claim that from January 1, 2012 through February 2013, 188
VA employees were paid full-time to do union-related work instead of
assisting the nation’s veterans.
“Recently, it has come to our attention
that a number of VA employees are paid government salaries, funded
entirely by taxpayers, to perform work totally unrelated to their formal
governmental duties,” the letter reads.
“In a practice known as ‘official time’
taxpayers pay for federal employees to perform union duties instead of
their formal jobs they were initially hired to do,” it adds. “Federal
employees not serving veterans during official time could lead to the
failure of VA’s top goals and the well-being of those who have
sacrificed in the service our nation, could be compromised. “
The Obama administration has come under
attack in recent month for the VA’s failure in addressing veterans’
disability benefits. White House Press Secretary Jay Carney promised
this week that the administration would do everything in its power to
fix the VA backlog issue by at least 2015.
The senators, citing official government documents, also took issue with the practice of putting employees on “official time.”
“During this time of sequestration and
tight budgets, it is important to know how so many employees can be
spared to serve the interest of outside groups, instead of carrying out
jobs that are essential to the health, safety and transition of our
nation’s veterans,” the letter states.
“Documents show that your department
recently employed at least 85 VA nurses, some with six-figure salaries,
who were in 100 percent official time status,” the letter continues.
“At the same time, the department is
recruiting more people to fill open nursing positions. USA Jobs
currently has openings for hundreds of nursing positions to be filled.”
The two GOP senators are clearly
unhappy with these facts. In an attempt to straighten out the issue,
Sens. Portman and Coburn sent Shinseki the following questions:
1) How many VA employees work official time 100% of the time? Please provide figures over the last ten years– as well as any comments or context you might have as to why the numbers have fluctuated. Please also include the employees’ title, salary, and duty station.
2) Please describe and provide the job descriptions of what these employees do in a given day for the VA. How do these activities relate to the mission of the VA?
3) If an employee is on official time 100% of the time, does the VA have to hire and compensate another employee to perform the duties the person would otherwise perform in their position of record? If so, how much did this cost the VA last year?
4) What is the process for putting a VA employee on official time 100% of the time? Does such an employee go through competitive hiring practices as do other federal employees?
5) How does your agency evaluate such employees for performance? Are employees who spend 100% of their time on official time eligible for pay raises? If so, please provide the amount of annual increases (including step increases, bonuses, incentive payments, awards, or other money in addition to base salary), broken down by year over the last 10 years, given to employees on official time. Please also explain the process for determining pay raises for employees on 100% official time.
6) If an employee is on 100% official time, is this employee expected to report to his or her work station on a daily basis? How many of these employees work at VA facilities and how many do not? Can employees on official time work from home? If so, please report the number of hours employees on official time worked from home or away from their primary duty station.
7) Of the employees who are on 100% official time, do any of their positions of record reflect positions the VA is currently seeking to fill, “hard to fill” positions, or positions which the VA has a critical need to fill? Could this result in any service disruptions to veterans?
8) Has the VA agreed to any current collective bargaining agreements that include language on official time? If so, what did the VA agree to? Who approved these provisions?
9) Have any members of the Board of Veterans’ Appeals been on 100% official time over the past 10 years? If so, how many?
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/06/07/188-veteran-affairs-employees-were-paid-to-do-union-related-work-instead-of-help-vets-two-senators-demands-answers/10) Have any personnel assigned to processing disability claims been on 100% official time over the past 10 years? If so, how many? How might official time affect VA’s efforts to eliminate the backlog?
Obama Has Time for Fundraising But Not D-Day Remarks
As reported earlier, President Obama and the White House failed to commemorate the 69th anniversary of D-Day yesterday.
Yesterday was the 69th anniversary of the D-Day invasion and President Obama failed to say anything about it. There is no released statement on WhiteHouse.gov and nothing on the White House or Barack Obama twitter feeds about the anniversary. President Obama did not make any public remarks about the anniversary yesterday, either.Today, President Obama will attend two Democratic fundraisers in California.
http://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2013/06/07/obama-has-time-for-fundraising-but-not-dday-remarks-n1615286
WSJ: Big Brother also collecting credit-card transactions
As if the surveillance state didn’t have enough to do, what with tracking every call in America and scanning every Internet transaction. The Wall Street Journal reported late last night that the NSA has been cataloguing credit card transactions as well, rendering utterly void any concept of transactional privacy:The National Security Agency’s monitoring of Americans includes customer records from the three major phone networks as well as emails and Web searches, and the agency also has cataloged credit-card transactions, said people familiar with the agency’s activities.
The disclosure this week of an order by a secret U.S. court for Verizon Communications Inc.’s phone records set off the latest public discussion of the program. But people familiar with the NSA’s operations said the initiative also encompasses phone-call data from AT&T Inc. and Sprint Nextel Corp., records from Internet-service providers and purchase information from credit-card providers. …
NSA also obtains access to data from Internet service providers on Internet use such as data about email or website visits, several former officials said. NSA has established similar relationships with credit-card companies, three former officials said.
It couldn’t be determined if any of the Internet or credit-card arrangements are ongoing, as are the phone company efforts, or one-shot collection efforts. The credit-card firms, phone companies and NSA declined to comment for this article.Er, let’s test the one-shot theory a bit. Let’s say that the NSA trolled millions of credit card transactions and found any kind of a useful pattern. Would they stop acquiring data under those circumstances? I highly doubt it; intelligence agencies always want more data to analyze, not less.
Here’s another question. Exactly how many terrorists use credit cards to buy the kinds of products that would create those patterns? I’m not going to posit that terrorists are geniuses by any stretch of the imagination, but it doesn’t take too much candlepower to know that credit-card transactions leave a paper trail even when the US government hasn’t acted as though George Orwell was writing a how-to manual when he published 1984 — sixty-four years ago tomorrow, in an odd coincidence.
DNI James Clapper gave a statement last night about PRISM that many interpreted as saying that the program only looked at foreign data, but Clapper’s a little Orwellian here, too:
National Intelligence Director James Clapper defended that program late Thursday saying procedures are in place that are approved by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court “to ensure that only non-U.S. persons outside the U.S. are targeted, and that minimize the acquisition, retention and dissemination of incidentally acquired information about U.S. persons.”
“Information collected under this program is among the most important and valuable intelligence information we collect, and is used to protect our nation from a wide variety of threats,” Clapper said in a statement.Only non-US people are being targeted, but that doesn’t mean that they’re not looking at everything coming through the pipe. Clapper pledges that they’re trying to minimize the “acquisition, retention, and dissemination of incidentally acquired information about US persons” in a marvelously circular statement — how do you minimize the acquisition of “acquired information”? They’re not avoiding or preventing the acquisition of data on “US people,” just trying to minimize its use. They’re only keeping data on non-US people.
Or so they say. Trust them! And hey, eventually, you’ll learn to love Big Brother. Or else.
http://hotair.com/archives/2013/06/07/wsj-big-brother-also-collecting-credit-card-transactions/
U.S. Collects Vast Data Trove
NSA Monitoring Includes Three Major Phone Companies, as Well as Online Activity
The National Security Agency's monitoring of Americans includes customer records from the three major phone networks as well as emails and Web searches, and the agency also has cataloged credit-card transactions, said people familiar with the agency's activities.The disclosure this week of an order by a secret U.S. court for Verizon Communications Inc.'s phone records set off the latest public discussion of the program. But people familiar with the NSA's operations said the initiative also encompasses phone-call data from AT&T Inc. and Sprint Nextel Corp., records from Internet-service providers and purchase information from credit-card providers.
The agency is using its secret access to the communications of millions of Americans to target possible terrorists, said people familiar with the effort.
The NSA's efforts have become institutionalized—yet not so well known to the public—under laws passed in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Most members of Congress defended them Thursday as a way to root out terrorism, but civil-liberties groups decried the program.
"Everyone should just calm down and understand this isn't anything that is brand new,'' said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.), who added that the phone-data program has "worked to prevent'' terrorist attacks.
Senate Intelligence Chairman Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.) said the program is lawful and that it must be renewed by the secret U.S. court every three months. She said the revelation about Verizon, reported by the London-based newspaper the Guardian, seemed to coincide with its latest renewal.
Civil-liberties advocates slammed the NSA's actions. "The most recent surveillance program is breathtaking. It shows absolutely no effort to narrow or tailor the surveillance of citizens," said Jonathan Turley, a constitutional law expert at George Washington University.
Meanwhile, the Obama administration acknowledged Thursday a secret NSA program dubbed Prism, which a senior administration official said targets only foreigners and was authorized under U.S. surveillance law.
The Washington Post and the Guardian reported earlier Thursday the existence of the previously undisclosed program, which was described as providing the NSA and FBI direct access to server systems operated by tech companies that include Google Inc., Apple Inc., Facebook Inc., Yahoo Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Skype. The newspapers, citing what they said was an internal NSA document, said the agencies received the contents of emails, file transfers and live chats of the companies' customers as part of their surveillance activities of foreigners whose activity online is routed through the U.S. The companies mentioned denied knowledge or participation in the program.
The arrangement with Verizon, AT&T and Sprint, the country's three largest phone companies means, that every time the majority of Americans makes a call, NSA gets a record of the location, the number called, the time of the call and the length of the conversation, according to people familiar with the matter. The practice, which evolved out of warrantless wiretapping programs begun after 2001, is now approved by all three branches of the U.S. government.
AT&T has 107.3 million wireless customers and 31.2 million landline customers. Verizon has 98.9 million wireless customers and 22.2 million landline customers while Sprint has 55 million customers in total.
NSA also obtains access to data from Internet service providers on Internet use such as data about email or website visits, several former officials said. NSA has established similar relationships with credit-card companies, three former officials said.
It couldn't be determined if any of the Internet or credit-card arrangements are ongoing, as are the phone company efforts, or one-shot collection efforts. The credit-card firms, phone companies and NSA declined to comment for this article.
Though extensive, the data collection effort doesn't entail monitoring the content of emails or what is said in phone calls, said people familiar with the matter. Investigators gain access to so-called metadata, telling them who is communicating, through what medium, when, and where they are located.
But the disconnect between the program's supporters and detractors underscored the difficulty Congress has had navigating new technology, national security and privacy.
The Obama administration, which inherited and embraced the program from the George W. Bush administration, moved Thursday to forcefully defend it. White House spokesman Josh Earnest called it "a critical tool in protecting the nation from terror threats."
But Sen. Ron Wyden (D., Ore.), said he has warned about the breadth of the program for years, but only obliquely because of classification restrictions. "When law-abiding Americans call their friends, who they call, when they call, and where they call from is private information," he said. "Collecting this data about every single phone call that every American makes every day would be a massive invasion of Americans' privacy."
In the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, phone records were collected without a court order as a component of the Bush-era warrantless surveillance program authorized by the 2001 USA Patriot Act, which permitted the collection of business records, former officials said.
The ad hoc nature of the NSA program changed after the Bush administration came under criticism for its handling of a separate, warrantless NSA eavesdropping program.
President Bush acknowledged its existence in late 2005, calling it the Terrorist Surveillance Program, or TSP.
When Democrats retook control of Congress in 2006, promising to investigate the administration's counterterrorism policies, Bush administration officials moved to formalize court oversight of the NSA programs, according to former U.S. officials.
Congress in 2006 also made changes to the Patriot Act that made it easier for the government to collect phone-subscriber data under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
Those changes helped the NSA collection program become institutionalized, rather than one conducted only under the authority of the president, said people familiar with the program.
Along with the TSP, the NSA collection of phone company customer data was put under the jurisdiction of a secret court that oversees the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, according to officials.
David Kris, a former top national security lawyer at the Justice Department, told a congressional hearing in 2009 that the government first used the so-called business records authority in 2004.
At the time he was urging the reauthorization of the business-records provisions, known as Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which Congress later approved.
The phone records allow investigators to establish a database used to run queries when there is "reasonable, articulable suspicion" that the records are relevant and related to terrorist activity, Ms. Feinstein said Thursday.
Director of National Intelligence James Clapper also issued a defense of the phone data surveillance program, saying it is governed by a "robust legal regime." Under the court order, the data can only "be queried when there is a reasonable suspicion, based on specific facts, that the particular basis for the query is associated with a foreign terrorist organization." When the data is searched, all information acquired is "subject to strict restrictions on handling" overseen by the Justice Department and the surveillance court, and the program is reviewed roughly every 90 days, he said. Another U.S. official said less than 1% of the records are accessed.
The database allows investigators to "map" individuals connected with that information, said Jeremy Bash, who until recently was chief of staff at the Pentagon and is a former chief counsel to the House Intelligence committee.
"We are trying to find a needle in a haystack, and this is the haystack," Mr. Bash said, referring to the database.
Sen. Wyden on Thursday questioned whether U.S. officials have been truthful in public descriptions of the program. In March, Mr. Wyden noted, he questioned Mr. Clapper, who said the NSA did not "wittingly" collect any type of data pertaining to millions Americans. Spokesmen for Mr. Clapper didn't respond to requests for comment.
For civil libertarians, this week's disclosure of the court authorization for part of the NSA program could offer new avenues for challenges. Federal courts largely have rebuffed efforts that target NSA surveillance programs, in part because no one could prove the information was being collected. The government, under both the Bush and Obama administrations, has successfully used its state-secrets privilege to block such lawsuits.
Jameel Jaffer, the American Civil Liberties Union's deputy legal director, said the fact the FISA court record has now become public could give phone-company customers standing to bring a lawsuit. "Now we have a set of people who can show they have been monitored," he said.
Corrections & Amplifications
The NSA monitoring program must be approved by a secret U.S. court every three months. An earlier version of this article incorrectly the approval came from Congress.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324299104578529112289298922.html
Data Collection Isn’t Data Abuse -- Yet
Notorious RINO and Blind Sheik prosecutor Andrew McCarthy posted this at NationalReview.com’s The Corner yesterday afternoon:
McCarthy had reached his conclusion before I posted mine, but I got to the same place before going on air Thursday. The PRISM story followed later in the day, but the issue is the same.
Data collection is not data abuse. A disease of government abuse and intimidation at the IRS, the DOJ, EPA and elsewhere throughout the executive branch does not mean that the national security agencies are rampaging through the records of American citizens compiling massive dockets with which to blackmail and control foes, friends and the simple bystanders.
It does mean that serious participants in the war on terror are constructing the walls of security necessary to stop jihadists before they devastate neighborhoods, cities or entire regions of the country.
Mark Steyn nailed the problem in his conversation with me yesterday:
“The administration has now lost all credibility on this issue,” the New York Times opined yesterday. “Mr. Obama is proving the truism that the executive branch will use any power it is given and very likely abuse it.”
Would that the Times had the same skepticism of the president’s assurances concerning Obamacare and the massive authorities it invested in the government, or the proclamations about the dawn of a new era of border security on the part of proponents of the Gang of 8’s bill as it presently stands.
Conservatives are very aware of what the president has done with his serial assaults on the rights of Americans, whether with his demands that religious people abandon their Free Exercise rights in the face of the HHS mandate or his abandonment of DOMA before the courts or his suspension of enforcement of the immigration laws with which he disagrees. The law-professor-turned-president has less appreciation for the rule of law than any of his predecessors.
But, but, but…the would-be killers of Americans by the tens of thousands (and more) have not abandoned their ambitions. The president can declare a unilateral cease-fire, but the Islamists have not signed on, nor will they. They will Just. Keep. Coming. This week, this month, this year and for decades to come.
That is the reality, and so is the reality of the need for massive data bases from which to follow the money and the WMD and the fanatics who will use them. They are “all in” and will stay that way, so we must be “all in” when it comes to stopping them before they strike.
The IRS scandals and the stonewalling of that investigation –and of Benghazi and the snooping of journalists—create a predicate for not believing the president and his senior officials on those controversies, but they do not by themselves call into question the need for thorough, sustained tracking of terrorists.
The opponents of the war would love nothing more than to turn the conservatives’ distrust of the president into a powerful cudgel with which to cripple the nation’s national security efforts. Conservatives have to resist that temptation while maintaining unrelenting pressure on the executive branch’s genuine assaults on free speech and association.
This is the hardest of balancing acts, the most difficult of means between extremes to find and hold on to.
It can be done, and must be done, unless another holiday from history is to be declared and another 9/11, only one far worse and far deadlier, set in motion to arrive on another peaceful morning when the country believes it is safe.
Pick a surrogate on these complicated calculations of security versus the threat of an intrusive government –someone like McCarthy—and follow what they write closely. When they sound the alarm that the president and his operatives have turned a necessary watchfulness into another abuse, then hit the panic button.
Until then, work for the success of candidates this fall and next who have deep within them an understanding of what is acceptable and what is not. This is not a one-time choice between outrage and fecklessness, but a decades-long maturity that depends, ultimately, on men and women of the highest character in the positions of greatest power.
http://townhall.com/columnists/hughhewitt/2013/06/07/data-collection-isnt-data-abuse--yet-n1615205/page/full
Fox News's Catherine Herridge broke the story this April about the construction of the NSA's huge "spy center," capable of amassing, housing, and analyzing five zettabytes of data. (For context, according to Wikipedia, as of 2009, the entire World Wide Web was estimated to contain a half of one zettabyte.)
Writing about the Verizon order at The Volokh Conspiracy, Orin Kerr noted a troubling aspect of a provision of the Patriot Act that has apparently been interpreted as allowing not just relevant individual records, but also entire databases to be collected as part of a national security investigation or threat assessment:
Also, as Kerr notes, if the NSA is "getting all of those call records, what else are they getting? If they have an order for phone calls, they could also have it for e-mails and other electronic records. This could be just one order among many."
According to Herridge, many questions about NSA's new center have gone unanswered as "classified" and "secret." She wrote:
Other related and troubling revelations over the past few months: the IRS can read your e-mails without a warrant, the DHS routinely monitors social media, and the "U.S. government and law enforcement agencies are increasingly asking Google to hand over data on its customers." New programs such as the Common Core standards and the Affordable Care Act will amass even more information.
A previous American Thinker column outlined our government's increasing appetite for data on its citizens, providing the capability for a sort of electronic omniscience that would make Big Brother envious.
If these types of data accumulation continue unchecked, having our bodies patted down in airport security lines will seem like child's play compared to having most every detail, action, and word recorded then collected in a giant warehouse, always available for examination under a government microscope.
As former NSA employee Thomas Drake told Herridge, "[t]he only way you can have perfect security is have a perfect surveillance state. That's George Orwell. That's 1984. That's what that would look like."
What gaineth a president if he wins over knuckle-dragging right-wing loon commentator McCarthy but loses the New York Times? ”The administration has now lost all credibility.” Ouch!Ouch indeed, but if you really need reassurance that President Obama’s thought police are not monitoring your every move, read McCarthy’s longer essay on the NSA program here.
McCarthy had reached his conclusion before I posted mine, but I got to the same place before going on air Thursday. The PRISM story followed later in the day, but the issue is the same.
Data collection is not data abuse. A disease of government abuse and intimidation at the IRS, the DOJ, EPA and elsewhere throughout the executive branch does not mean that the national security agencies are rampaging through the records of American citizens compiling massive dockets with which to blackmail and control foes, friends and the simple bystanders.
It does mean that serious participants in the war on terror are constructing the walls of security necessary to stop jihadists before they devastate neighborhoods, cities or entire regions of the country.
Mark Steyn nailed the problem in his conversation with me yesterday:
HH: Now I am not really too upset [about the NSA story]. I used to do this for the government in ’85 and ’86 for two attorneys general. I filed the applications for warrants before the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, and the AG would review them and sign them, and you’d send them over. And I think it’s like Where’s Waldo. [The NSA is] getting the background against which they can then go look for Waldo…so I’m not particularly exercised about the NSA story. Are you, Mark Steyn?
MS: Well, I wouldn’t be were it not for the context in which it appears. I mean, I think there’s no doubt that computers and technology being the way they are, that governments can know everything about you pretty much when they want to. And I accept the point of my friend and colleague, Andy McCarthy, who points out that in fact the Supreme Court ruled in favor of this kind of meta-data surveillance in 1979, although obviously, that’s before the age of the mobile phone, where in effect, tracking what calls you’re making is also a way of tracking where you physically are at any one time. But putting all that aside, you know, in all free societies, freedom, liberty, democracy, depends on a certain circumspection of the government class toward the powers they have. If they want to, they can ride a coach and horses through the thing, and do pretty much what they want to you. And this revelation comes up in the wake of a tax collection agency that is leaking information on groups to their political opponents, in terms of the context of an Attorney General who goes on TV and denies that he lied to Congress on the grounds that in fact, he was lying to the judge. So this is when he wanted to read a journalist’s emails. So that’s the context in which this occurs, and I think in that context, it is slightly disturbing.Because trust in President Obama is eroding faster than the Cleveland Indians’ standing in the AL East, support for serious surveillance of jihadists is being undermined. How quickly is the president’s stock falling on the left?
“The administration has now lost all credibility on this issue,” the New York Times opined yesterday. “Mr. Obama is proving the truism that the executive branch will use any power it is given and very likely abuse it.”
Would that the Times had the same skepticism of the president’s assurances concerning Obamacare and the massive authorities it invested in the government, or the proclamations about the dawn of a new era of border security on the part of proponents of the Gang of 8’s bill as it presently stands.
Conservatives are very aware of what the president has done with his serial assaults on the rights of Americans, whether with his demands that religious people abandon their Free Exercise rights in the face of the HHS mandate or his abandonment of DOMA before the courts or his suspension of enforcement of the immigration laws with which he disagrees. The law-professor-turned-president has less appreciation for the rule of law than any of his predecessors.
But, but, but…the would-be killers of Americans by the tens of thousands (and more) have not abandoned their ambitions. The president can declare a unilateral cease-fire, but the Islamists have not signed on, nor will they. They will Just. Keep. Coming. This week, this month, this year and for decades to come.
That is the reality, and so is the reality of the need for massive data bases from which to follow the money and the WMD and the fanatics who will use them. They are “all in” and will stay that way, so we must be “all in” when it comes to stopping them before they strike.
The IRS scandals and the stonewalling of that investigation –and of Benghazi and the snooping of journalists—create a predicate for not believing the president and his senior officials on those controversies, but they do not by themselves call into question the need for thorough, sustained tracking of terrorists.
The opponents of the war would love nothing more than to turn the conservatives’ distrust of the president into a powerful cudgel with which to cripple the nation’s national security efforts. Conservatives have to resist that temptation while maintaining unrelenting pressure on the executive branch’s genuine assaults on free speech and association.
This is the hardest of balancing acts, the most difficult of means between extremes to find and hold on to.
It can be done, and must be done, unless another holiday from history is to be declared and another 9/11, only one far worse and far deadlier, set in motion to arrive on another peaceful morning when the country believes it is safe.
Pick a surrogate on these complicated calculations of security versus the threat of an intrusive government –someone like McCarthy—and follow what they write closely. When they sound the alarm that the president and his operatives have turned a necessary watchfulness into another abuse, then hit the panic button.
Until then, work for the success of candidates this fall and next who have deep within them an understanding of what is acceptable and what is not. This is not a one-time choice between outrage and fecklessness, but a decades-long maturity that depends, ultimately, on men and women of the highest character in the positions of greatest power.
http://townhall.com/columnists/hughhewitt/2013/06/07/data-collection-isnt-data-abuse--yet-n1615205/page/full
Big Government's Data Plan
With the shocking revelation that the NSA is collecting all Verizon phone records under a secret court order, we can now begin to understand why that same agency is in need of the massive new data center in Utah.Fox News's Catherine Herridge broke the story this April about the construction of the NSA's huge "spy center," capable of amassing, housing, and analyzing five zettabytes of data. (For context, according to Wikipedia, as of 2009, the entire World Wide Web was estimated to contain a half of one zettabyte.)
Writing about the Verizon order at The Volokh Conspiracy, Orin Kerr noted a troubling aspect of a provision of the Patriot Act that has apparently been interpreted as allowing not just relevant individual records, but also entire databases to be collected as part of a national security investigation or threat assessment:
Section 1861 says that the "things" that are collected must be relevant ...but it says nothing about the scope of the things obtained. When dealing with a physical object, we naturally treat relevance on an object-by-object basis. Sets of records are different. If Verizon has a database containing records of billions of phone calls made by millions of customers, is that database a single thing, millions of things, or billions of things?...If the entire massive database has a single record that is relevant, does that make the entire database relevant, too? The statute doesn't directly answer that, it seems to me. But certainly it's surprising -- and troubling -- if the Section 1861 relevance standard is being interpreted at the database-by-database level.
Also, as Kerr notes, if the NSA is "getting all of those call records, what else are they getting? If they have an order for phone calls, they could also have it for e-mails and other electronic records. This could be just one order among many."
According to Herridge, many questions about NSA's new center have gone unanswered as "classified" and "secret." She wrote:
Fellow NSA whistleblower Bill Binney, who worked at the NSA for nearly four decades, says it's about the possibility that the government's stunning new capacity to collect, store and analyze data could be abused. "It's really a -- turnkey situation, where it could be turned quickly and become a totalitarian state pretty quickly," he said. "The capacities to do that is being set up. Now it's a question of if we get the wrong person in office, or if certain people set up their network internally in government, they could make that happen quickly."
Other related and troubling revelations over the past few months: the IRS can read your e-mails without a warrant, the DHS routinely monitors social media, and the "U.S. government and law enforcement agencies are increasingly asking Google to hand over data on its customers." New programs such as the Common Core standards and the Affordable Care Act will amass even more information.
A previous American Thinker column outlined our government's increasing appetite for data on its citizens, providing the capability for a sort of electronic omniscience that would make Big Brother envious.
If these types of data accumulation continue unchecked, having our bodies patted down in airport security lines will seem like child's play compared to having most every detail, action, and word recorded then collected in a giant warehouse, always available for examination under a government microscope.
As former NSA employee Thomas Drake told Herridge, "[t]he only way you can have perfect security is have a perfect surveillance state. That's George Orwell. That's 1984. That's what that would look like."
Kerry Quietly Skirts Law Put in Place by Congress, Sends Muslim Brotherhood-Controlled Egypt $1.3 Billion Gift
Secretary of State John Kerry last
month secretly sent $1.3 billion in U.S. military aid to Muslim
Brotherhood-controlled Egypt, waiving the restrictions put in place by
Congress to withhold such aid unless the country could meet certain
democracy standards.
“Under
U.S. law, for the $1.3 billion to flow the secretary of state must
certify that the Egyptian government ‘is supporting the transition to
civilian government, including holding free and fair elections,
implementing policies to protect freedom of expression, association and
religion, and due process of law’,” Reuters reports.
Kerry’s quiet decision came before an
Egyptian court this week sentenced 43 democracy workers, including 16
Americans, to up to five years in jail for working in NGOs not
registered with the government. Critics of the restrictive government
see the action as a crackdown on pro-democracy, non-governmental
organizations.
In a May 9 memo, Kerry said that “we
are not satisfied with the extent of Egypt’s progress and are pressing
for a more inclusive democratic process and strengthening of key
democratic institutions.” Yet the new secretary of state still decided
to push the aid through.
Reuters was able to obtain a copy of the State Department’s notification of Kerry’s sneaky move, which was never released to the public. “A strong U.S. security partnership
with Egypt, underpinned by FMF (Foreign Military Financing), maintains a
channel to Egyptian military leadership, who are key opinion makers in
the country,” Kerry wrote in the memo.
“A decision to waive restrictions on
FMF to Egypt is necessary to uphold these interests as we encourage
Egypt to continue its transition to democracy,” he continued.
The unpopular memo was reportedly sent
to congressional appropriations committees while some aides didn’t even
know about its existence.
Under Hillary Clinton, the State
Department last year also waived the restriction, however, it announced
the decision and publicly defended its position to the media.
The Daily Beast’s Josh Rogin has more details:
The law that allows the State Department to give Egypt $1.3 billion each year in Foreign Military Financing (FMF) specifies that to get the money, the secretary of State must certify that Egypt is honoring its peace treaty with Israel as well as “supporting the transition to civilian government including holding free and fair elections; implementing policies to protect freedom of expression, association, and religion, and due process of law.”
Several members of Congress said this week that Egypt’s sentencing of American NGO workers, who were there to help Egypt build up its civil society and to promote democracy, flew in the face of that very law, meaning that Egypt should not get the money.
Stephen McInerney, executive director
of the Project on Middle East Democracy, told The Daily Beast that it
was “very alarming that no public statement was made by the secretary or
the Department of State more broadly in conjunction with the waiving of
these conditions.”
Do you think the U.S. should be providing more than $1 billion in aid to Muslim Brotherhood-controlled Egypt?
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/06/07/john-kerry-quietly-waives-law-put-in-place-by-congress-sends-muslim-brotherhood-controlled-egypt-1-3-billion-gift/
Albanian Socialist arranged $10,000 payment for Obama photo
An Albanian politician under investigation for corruption arranged a $10,000 contribution to President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign in order to set up a photo opportunity between Obama and the leader of the Socialist Party of Albania.Edi Rama, the Socialist party candidate for prime minister in Albanian elections later this month, was photographed with the president at an October 2012 fundraiser. Rama has been heavily promoting this appearance with the U.S. leader in the apparent hope that it will help the Socialists gain power in the election.
What Rama doesn’t mention is that the photo was arranged with the help of a $10,000 Obama campaign contribution made by an Albanian resident of New Jersey.
Rama’s Socialist Party is attempting to unseat Democratic Party prime minister Sali Berisha in the June 23 Albanian parliamentary elections and elect Rama as prime minister.
Albanian politician Dritan Prifti, who was then a member of the Socialist Party, arranged for Rama to attend a $40,000-a-head San Francisco fundraiser with Obama on the night of October 8, 2012, an Albanian National who has close relations with the Socialist Party and who has worked in the Albanian government told The Daily Caller.
The source, who insisted on anonymity, told TheDC that Prifti compelled an Albanian resident of New Jersey and his wife to donate $70,000 to the Obama Victory Fund 2012 just days before the fundraiser and to bring Rama as his personal guest
Part of this contribution was intended as a $10,000 payment to the Obama campaign for the photograph. Foreign nationals like Prifti and Rama are legally prohibited from directly donating to U.S. political campaigns.
Prifti, who has since split with Rama and the Socialists due to a political feud and is now running for Parliament as an independent, claimed in a video released in Albania late last month that he arranged Rama’s photograph with Obama, which Rama is now showing off in his home country to help him in the elections.
On October 9, 2012, Rama tweeted in Albanian, “Ne fund nje takim i paharrueshem me Presidentin Obama! Fat dhe nder per shqiptaret ky mik i madh ne Shtepine e Bardhe.” Rama’s tweet, translated to English, means, “At the end, an unforgettable meeting with President Obama! Fate and honor that Albanians have such a great friend in the White House.”
“Yesterday Edi Rama showed the media the picture that he took with Barack Obama. I want to remind Edi Rama that I organized this meeting with Obama. I was the person who personally undertook the organizing of this meeting and I realized this meeting for Edi Rama,” Prifti said in Albanian, according to a translation of the video.
“Rama was supposed to travel to this dinner along with Prifti and one other Socialist parliament member , but Prifti was denied the visa to travel with Rama because he was under investigation for corruption in Albania,” according to the Albanian source.
“The reason that Rama did not publish this picture immediately was that he felt journalists would find out that he had paid money for the picture,” according to the source, who claimed that the photograph cost
$10,000.Rama posted the photograph on his Facebook page May 24, and the photo has been published extensively in the Albanian press. Julianna Smoot, deputy manager for Obama’s 2012 campaign, appears in the background of the photograph.
Prifti and Rama arranged the meeting by persuading Bilal Shehu, an Albanian resident of New Jersey who had never before donated to a political campaign, to contribute $70,000 to the Obama Victory Fund 2012 on September 28, 2012, according to the source. This source did not say how the two convinced Shehu to make the donation.
To Swab or Not to Swab
In a "sharply divided," interesting mixture, the Supreme Court justices ruled on Monday, June 3, 2013, that DNA samples can be obtained by law enforcement officials when a person is arrested. Although the Supreme Court justices have spoken and this ruling is now the "law of the land," many are weighing in with their opinions on this issue.Those in support of allowing police officers to obtain a DNA sample without a warrant equate it to fingerprinting and photo-taking (mug shots) already used by law enforcement as a routine part of a detainee's booking procedure when arrested. Justice Anthony Kennedy, who voted in favor of the ruling, wrote: "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." Conservative Justice Anton Scalia, however, in voting against the ruling, said: "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" (Court: Police can take DNA from arrestees).
Fingerprinting technology as a means of identification and for connecting criminals to crime scenes has been employed by law enforcement agencies for decades -- so much so that no one questions the legality or the "constitutionality" of the procedure. Perhaps the reason very few hesitate giving their fingerprints is because the only information gleaned from a fingerprint is the identity of the person to whom the fingerprint belongs. Of course, if that person has committed a crime in his/her past, that may also be revealed when the fingerprints are processed. Indeed, people are so comfortable with fingerprinting that millions of people willingly submit to the procedure in their line of employment, this author included.
Now enter DNA (Deoxyribonucleic acid) profiling.
In a nutshell,
"Although 99.9% of human DNA sequences are the same in every person,
enough of the DNA is different to distinguish one individual from
another, unless they are monozygotic twins.[2] DNA profiling uses repetitive ("repeat") sequences that are highly variable,[2] called variable number tandem repeats (VNTRs), particularly short tandem repeats (STRs). VNTR loci
are very similar between closely related humans, but so variable that
unrelated individuals are extremely unlikely to have the same VNTRs."DNA profiles are stored in a CODIS (Combined DNA Index System) database, authorized by Congress in 1994 and launched in 1998. CODIS is a three-tiered database system consisting of the NDIS (National DNA Index System), maintained by the FBI; SDIS (State DNA Index System), maintained by each state; and LDIS (Local DNA Index System), maintained by local law enforcement. Federal, state, and local member labs can access NDIS. The FBI ensures confidentiality of the stored DNA information in that no names are used to identify any DNA profile in the database. Each profile, however, is assigned a number -- which, of course, can be traced back to the submitting agency, whereupon the name of the DNA donor can be obtained. Confidential?
DNA profiling reveals much more than a simple fingerprint. In addition to confirming a person's gender, DNA reveals a person's hair and eye color and can be used to determine a person's ethnic descent. In addition, certain DNA "markers" can determine a person's propensity for obesity, longevity, and some diseases, such as breast cancer, heart disease, Huntington's disease, and cystic fibrosis, for example.
Proponents of mandatory swabbing for DNA claim that DNA profiling is much more precise than a mere fingerprint in the ability to connect a criminal to a crime. Indeed, with the use of DNA profiling, many "cold cases" that might have remained unsolved forever have now been closed. In addition, DNA profiling has also been beneficial in proving the innocence of a wrongly accused person(s). The Innocence Project states that "there have been 307 post-conviction exonerations in the United States -- 18 of which served time on death row."
Opponents of mandatory DNA swabbing cite the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which states, in part: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures...shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause[.]" Just as fingerprints are unique to each individual, so is DNA. However, fingerprints are "readily available," so to speak. A person leaves a fingerprint on anything he/she touches, wherever he/she goes. Unless one wears gloves, it is impossible not to leave a fingerprint. An untainted DNA sample, though, can come only from swabbing a person's cheek or drawing a blood sample -- which opponents claim is a violation of one's person. Constitutionally, then, a warrant, showing probable cause, must be acquired before a DNA sample is obtained.
Another concern, and with good reason, is the fact that the federal government would have access to any person's DNA profile -- and given what these profiles reveal about a person, the government could use the information against an individual or a group of people that, perhaps, it feels poses a threat. Given the ongoing debacle of the IRS scandal, in which Tea Party and conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status were targeted, resulting in their applications being delayed, to say that the government could use DNA information against a person is not a beyond imagination.
Along that same line, with the ability to determine if a person has a propensity toward a debilitating or life-threatening disease, would the government use the DNA-provided information to eliminate certain people using the excuse that to care for people with these types of affliction would be a financial drain on the health care system? Given the reports we've heard of "death panels" hidden in the pages of ObamaCare, and citing the testimony of those who have been denied care or certain procedures due to age or health status already, this doesn't appear to be a far stretch.
The case against mandatory DNA swabbing appears much stronger than the case presented by proponents. Of course, there will be some who say that the reasons given against mandatory DNA swabbing amount to nothing more than conjecture or the work of conspiracy theorists. But considering what is going on within our government, the above fears are entirely feasible.
All of this notwithstanding, though, when considering the spirit and intent of the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution, mandatory DNA profiling is clearly unconstitutional.
Obama's 'Saving Even One Child' Policy Falls Short
Something happened between the time the president talked about Christina Taylor Green, the 9-year-old girl shot dead in the Tucson Gabrielle Giffords shooting, jumping through rain puddles in heaven, and the country finding out that Sara Murnaghan, a 10-year-old Pennsylvania child with cystic fibrosis, is being denied a life-saving lung because of government regulations dictating age restrictions on organ transplants.Sara Murnaghan does qualify for pediatric lungs. However, there are currently none available. Without transplanting adult lungs into Murnaghan's body, the little girl has about five weeks to live and will qualify for a transplant one year and eleven months too late.
Lately, America has been subjected to radically pro-choice Barack attempting to advance an anti-gun agenda by pretending to care about saving the lives of children he'd have otherwise been fine with aborting had they still been in utero.
Undermining Second-Amendment rights is why the president shows up at memorials, fake-cries on camera, hugs grieving parents, signs legislation surrounded by high-fiving youngsters, and repeatedly vows that saving the life of one child is worth the effort.
Piling it on, Michelle Obama even flew to Chicago to attend the funeral of 15-year-old gun violence victim Hadiya Pendleton and then invited the dead girl's parents, Cleo and Nathaniel, to grace the State of the Union skybox, just to add a good dose of parental bereavement to the anti-gun atmosphere.
Now, after hearing Kathleen Sebelius make the cold comment that "someone lives and someone dies" in response to questions about why she refuses to intervene in the Sara Murnaghan emergency lung transplant case, it's clear that anti-gun political pragmatism is at the root of concern over the saving of some lives and not others.
It's clear that in the Obama administration, if gun violence kills a child, it matters. However, if cystic fibrosis is the killer, oh well -- as Kathleen Sebelius says, "someone lives and someone dies."
In response to the Sandy Hook shooting where 20 children and six adults lost their lives in Newtown, Connecticut, the president stressed that "if there is a step we can take that will save even one child from what happened in Newtown, we should take that step."
Yet, during a recent House hearing, when Lou Barletta (R-Pa) implored HHS Secretary Sebelius to "take that step" so that a little girl can have a shot at life, and to "please, suspend the [lung transplant] rules until we look at this policy," Sebelius, who does have the authority to waive the rule on Sara's behalf, refused.
At the Tucson Memorial, Scripture-quoting Barack Obama said, "If this tragedy prompts reflection and debate, as it should, let's make sure it's worthy of those we have lost. Let's make sure it's not on the usual plane of politics and point scoring and pettiness that drifts away with the next news cycle."
At the Newtown Vigil, Obama reaffirmed those sentiments when he said that "[t]his job of keeping our children safe...is something we can only do together ... we bear a responsibility for every child because we're counting on everybody else to help look after ours; that we're all parents; that they're all our children."
Then, while signing executive orders aimed at curbing gun violence, flanked by four anti-gun youngsters, Obama said, "This is our first task as a society. Keeping our children safe. This is how we will be judged. And their voices should compel us to change."
So if saving children's lives are "not on the usual plane of politics" when an opportunity to fulfill "our first task -- caring for our children," arises for one little girl, why does Kathleen Sebelius respond by coldly reminding Congressman Barletta that although it's an "incredibly agonizing situation where someone lives and someone dies ... 40 [other] people in Pennsylvania are on the 'highest acuity list' for lung transplants"?
And while caution is in order because the government changing the rules for the benefit of the one sets a dangerous precedent -- in the future, the government could be inclined to change the rules to detriment of the many -- there is a huge amount of liberal hypocrisy afoot here.
Why? Because in the end, little Sara Murnaghan will likely die, and not as the result of a gunshot wound, so Barack Obama won't care. Moreover, Michelle Obama will not attend Sara's funeral, and neither will Sara's mom and dad, Janet and Fran, be sitting beside the first lady next year in the State of the Union skybox as representatives of the need to change organ transplant laws.
Rest assured, in the short time that Sara has left, Barack Obama will not be reminding America that "we bear a responsibility" for Sara. Nor will he sign a middle-of-the-night executive order overriding Kathleen Sebelius's stubborn refusal to waive the adult lung transplant rule in time to save the child's life.
It's also unlikely that health care reformer Barack "Doesn't Care" Obama will be on hand to shed one fake tear or quote a single out-of-context Scripture passage at Sara's funeral.
Instead, as a result of refusing to "take that step ... [to] save even one child," Barack Obama and his self-serving administration have exposed the true nature of an agenda that has nothing to do with shielding the lives of helpless children from harm and everything to do with advancing a progressive anti-gun agenda.
$431,363 Stimulus Project Concludes 'Gay Fathers' Have Less Time for Sex
President Barack Obama's 2009 economic stimulus law financed a $431,363 grant in Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco-based congressional district to study the “psychological distress” of homosexual fathers. The study took three years to publish its results and created no jobs.The study concluded that homosexual men likely reduce their chances of contracting HIV after becoming fathers because they have less time for sex.
The grant--entitled “Health and HIV Among Gay Fathers"--was awarded to San Francisco State University. At the time, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, who represented the area, was speaker of the House.
The $431,363 was to be used to “to identify psychological and behavioral factors that help prevent gay fathers from HIV risk, substance abuse, and psychological distress as they navigate the myriad life-changing situations faced as parents.”
The study was led by Colleen Hoff, professor of sexuality studies at San Francisco State University, who, along with a team of researchers, interviewed 48 male couples who are raising children together.
The results were published in the journal Couple and Family Psychology on June 25, 2012.
The study found that homosexual men are likely to reduce their chances of contracting HIV after becoming fathers, because there is less time for sex.
"When gay couples become parents, they become very focused on the kids, they are tired, there is less time for communication and less desire for sex," said Hoff. "They go through a lot of the same changes as heterosexual couples who have kids."
"We found that gay fathers have less time for sex and less emphasis on sexuality, which could mean they are at less risk for HIV," she said. "Many fathers said they feel a sense of responsibility toward their children which motivates them to avoid risky sexual behavior."
The study also found that many gay couples “increased their commitment to each other and “deepened their relationship” after adopting children.
The researchers said they were surprised to find that becoming parents did not affect gay couples’ “sexual agreements,” or the contracts “many gay male couples make about whether sex with outside partners is allowed.”
"There wasn't the shift that we thought we might find," Hoff said. "For the most part, those who were monogamous before becoming parents said they stayed with that arrangement. Those who had open relationships before having children reported that they kept to that agreement,” she said.
The study also warned doctors to not assume that because a gay man is a father he is not sexually promiscuous.
"Some men felt that there is this assumption that if you are a gay parent you are monogamous," Hoff said. "This kind of stigma around gay parents' sexuality could be a concern if gay fathers are reluctant to talk to their physician about their sexual agreement and get tested for HIV.”
The study warns physicians and counselors against making assumptions about gay fathers and stresses the importance of offering them opportunities to discuss their sexual agreements and access to testing services, San Francisco State University said.
The funding for the study was broken up into two grants: $220,776 issued in August 2009 and $210,587 issued in 2010, both distributed through the National Institute of Mental Health.
According to Recovery.gov, there were “No jobs created or retained” from the study.
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/431363-stimulus-project-concludes-gay-fathers-have-less-time-sex
$149,992 for Grant to Study Fighting Freshman Fat
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has awarded a grant of $149,992 to study the on-campus food choices of college students.The grant was awarded to Fairleigh Dickinson University in New Jersey for the “Prevention of Late Adolescent Obesity in the College Environment: an Optimal Default Paradigm.” The project started at the beginning of this year and is running through the end of 2014.
A focus of the study is the weight gain of college freshman. According to the USDA non-technical summary of the grant, “The first year of college is a time of transition when adolescents are first learning to manage their own energy intake and expenditure without parental supervision. Many students obtain their meals on campus and are confronted with a wide array of food choices without any limitation on options or portion sizes.”
Project Director Dr. Katharine Loeb of Fairleigh Dickinson University’s Psychology department tells CNSNews.com, “First year students are at a potentially vulnerable juncture.”
“So what were hoping, especially for first year students, but certainly there’s benefit for all four years of college, is that college dining environments could make it easier to choose healthier foods by making those foods the default and by making it at least a bit inconvenient to access the alternative,” she said.
The project requires designing a menu of healthy meals, not so-healthy meals and a free array of both food choices. One condition of the experiment will have the menu featuring the healthy meal options in large print at the top, followed by the less-healthy options in smaller print and requiring a 15-minute wait to be served.
The second condition has the less healthy options at the top in large print, with the healthy meals listed below in smaller print requiring a 15-minute wait.
The third condition for study will offer both options, “both healthy and unhealthy items will be displayed simultaneously, with no wait for any item,” the USDA grant summary says.
“Specifically, results of these experiments will inform policies regarding default selection procedures in college and university dining programs.”
Loeb says, “The beauty of optimal default is
that it does not fundamentally restrict free choice, it just positions
the choices to increase the likelihood that the better option will be
chosen. ‘Better’ is defined as what is in the individuals or public’s
interest.”
“We’re hypothesizing that by positioning choices
more optimally, that it will be easier for students to stay with
healthier choices that have better nutritional value, which would
ideally prevent weight gain and obesity along with facilitating other
health benefits,” Loeb said.
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/149992-grant-study-fighting-freshman-fat
Feds Will Pay $40,267 for Unwanted Tortoise Drop-Off
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) is planning to spend
$40,267 in taxpayer funds to provide the public with a centralized drop
off location for pet tortoises and tortoises found in developed or
urban areas and provide for their temporary care.
“After 20 years or more of this, we find every year there’s hundreds of unwanted pet tortoises and folks looking for an opportunity to do something with them – give them away, get rid of them – and so The Animal Foundation has agreed to receive them and then try to adopt them back out again,” Cook said.
The grant recipient – The Animal Foundation (TAF) in Las Vegas – “will accept pet tortoises and tortoises found in developed or urban areas from the public at the Lied Animal Shelter, and will provide for their temporary care until they are picked up by FWS, or designated representatives.”
“When tortoises were listed [as endangered] in 1989, people were keeping them as pets,” Cook said. “They were grandfathered in, and then these were all theoretically descendents of those captive tortoises, although we realize that there are still probably some people who aren’t aware that they’re protected and they might find a tortoise in the wild and keep it, but that’s illegal to do so.”
Once dropped off, the tortoises will be assessed by veterinary staff to determine if it is suitable for adoption.
“These unwanted pet tortoises can’t be released back to the wild, because of issues with diseases and things like that, that they might spread through the wild population,” FWS spokesperson Jeannie Stafford told CNSNews.com.
Respiratory tract diseases are common in tortoises, “in captive populations in particular, and they can transmit that to wild tortoises and harm wild tortoise populations,” Cook said.
Respiratory tract diseases are “generally untreatable,” and tortoises are euthanized, he said.
“Theoretically, it may be treatable, but the difficulty and time and expense would be insurmountable,” Cook added. “Sometimes we’ll watch tortoises for a period of time if their clinical signs are minimal, and they can return to health, but it’s not black or white.”
In the past tortoises were coming in at a rate of over 1,000 pet tortoises a year into a facility managed by the Bureau of Land Management, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the San Diego Zoo.
The grant recipient will also “notify the designated representatives” who eventually adopt a tortoise “of any tortoises that are known to have been brought from out of state,” the grant announcement said.
“The recipient will develop a tortoise adoption program consistent with State and Federal regulations, and authorizations aimed at increasing positive adoption outcomes,” the announcement added.
The grant was posted on April 13, 2013. The closing date for applications was May 3, 2013.
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/feds-will-pay-40267-unwanted-tortoise-drop
President Photoshop?
Two puzzling photos that do not bear close scrutiny were published in 2010 on the mybarackobama.com campaign website, adding further mystery to the man who left surprisingly few documented footprints in the sands of time as he came to adulthood.Recently, the website Give Us Liberty referenced a photo from the official Obama campaign website. It is of Mr. Obama as a youth with his mother, sister, and grandfather. In the photo, his mother's fist protrudes from under his arm, and the color of the fist exactly matches that of the young Mr. Obama's arm.
Give Us Liberty also discovered another photo at the same Obama site of Mr. Obama sitting between his grandparents, and, in the photo, the hand of Mr. Obama's grandfather mysteriously appears to float over Mr. Obama's shoulder.
Big Fur Hat at iOwnTheWorld did some interesting things with that last photo, and Richard Terrell of Aftermath "de-photoshopped" the floating hand picture with similar results.
BFH
and
Richard Terrell
Both BFH and Give Us Liberty offer speculative comments for readers.
Notwithstanding the content and implications of those comments, it is an incontrovertible fact that the photos appear on an official Obama website.
There are 3 obvious questions about the photos:
1. How did they come to appear as they do?
2. How did they come to appear at the site?
3. Why did they came to appear as they do.
And more puzzling still is how the site's creator failed to notice these anomalies in the photos, if, in fact, the creator did fail to notice them.
Like matryoshka dolls, each of these puzzles has more puzzles nested within.
Technically proficient readers may wish to examine carefully and quickly those photos, for they may soon be unavailable for inspection.
No comments:
Post a Comment