Obama

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News/Politics 11-17-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. The case against executive action amnesty, from President Obama’s own mouth.

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2. And yet…..

From CNSNews  “The Obama administration announced on Friday a plan to create a new refugee/parole program for children in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras whose parents are legal residents of the United States.

“This program will allow certain parents who are lawfully present in the United States to request access to the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program for their children still in one of these three countries,” the State Department said in a news release. The department added that “[c]hildren who are found ineligible for refugee admission but still at risk of harm may be considered for parole on a case-by-case basis.”

The State Department said the new, in-country program is a “safe, legal, and orderly alternative to the dangerous journey that some children are currently undertaking to the United States.””

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3. His plans are definitely taking a toll on ICE workers.

From TheWashingtonExaminer  “Morale among officers at Immigration and Customs Enforcement, already low, has reached a new bottom as illegal immigrants expecting amnesty from President Obama taunt and ridicule the overworked officers, according to a new report.

“Yes,” said one, “working for this agency is hell right now.”

That was the latest message to immigration policy critic Jessica M. Vaughan, director of policy studies for the Center for Immigration Studies. She has charted the woes of the officers who carry out the president’s orders.

In a new paper, she wrote:

“The president’s gradual, calculated dismantling of our immigration system has caused morale to plummet in the agencies of the Department of Homeland Security. Career immigration officials have courageously objected in public, and sometimes resorted to lawsuits to draw attention to the administration’s subversion of the law. In denial about their principled objections to his scheme, now the president is hoping to stifle their voices by offering them a pay increase as part of this outrageous plan. His assumption that they are motivated by money shows just how little respect he has for the men and women who have devoted their careers to public service in immigration.”

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4. Is your state fudging the numbers?

From FoxNews  “America’s red ink runs much deeper than you think. 

Aside from the nearly $18 trillion national debt, many state governments are looking at future budgets that are trillions of dollars in the red. And they’ve hidden the numbers by dramatically under-reporting that debt, according to a new report by the think tank State Budget Solutions. 

The group looked at what are known as “unfunded liabilities” — or debt states will owe down the road. It found a number of states are fudging their numbers — big-time — using tricks like assuming their stock investments will soar. 

The book-cooking could mean bad news for public pensions and other programs that rely on these budgets. The report finds that, nationwide, states have unfunded liabilities of nearly $5 trillion, or $15,000 per American (even though the states allegedly low-ball that number at $2.7 trillion).”

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5. More overreach from more govt. agencies under Obama.

From TheNYTimes  “The federal government has significantly expanded undercover operations in recent years, with officers from at least 40 agencies posing as business people, welfare recipients, political protesters and even doctors or ministers to ferret out wrongdoing, records and interviews show.

At the Supreme Court, small teams of undercover officers dress as students at large demonstrations outside the courthouse and join the protests to look for suspicious activity, according to officials familiar with the practice.

At the Internal Revenue Service, dozens of undercover agents chase suspected tax evaders worldwide, by posing as tax preparers, accountants drug dealers or yacht buyers and more, court records show.

At the Agriculture Department, more than 100 undercover agents pose as food stamp recipients at thousands of neighborhood stores to spot suspicious vendors and fraud, officials said.

Undercover work, inherently invasive and sometimes dangerous, was once largely the domain of the F.B.I. and a few other law enforcement agencies at the federal level. But outside public view, changes in policies and tactics over the last decade have resulted in undercover teams run by agencies in virtually every corner of the federal government, according to officials, former agents and documents.”

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News/Politics 11-11-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. Great, just what we need. Now they will improve the internet like they did health insurance. I wonder if we’ll pay more too, so that others can have it for free?

From CNet  “President Obama urged the US government to adopt tighter regulations on broadband service in an effort to preserve “a free and open Internet.”

In a statement released Monday, Obama called on the Federal Communications Commission to enforce the principle of treating all Internet traffic the same way, known in shorthand as Net neutrality. That means treating broadband services like utilities, the president said, so that Internet service providers would be unable “to restrict the best access or to pick winners and losers in the online marketplace for services and ideas.”

Obama wades into a contentious debate that has raged over how to treat Internet traffic, which has only heated up as the FCC works to prepare an official guideline. Those rules were expected to be made available later this year, though reports now claim they may be delayed until early 2015. The debate has centered on whether broadband should be placed under Title II regulation under the Telecommunications Act, which already tightly controls phone services.”

And of course they plan new taxes, because that’s what Democrats do.

More here from Forbes  “American politicians of all stripes clearly see and oppose the abuses of the Internet abroad. But our government officials are not aware that the Federal Communications Commission, without statutory authority, is proposing to expand its taxation and regulation of the Internet.

The relationship between the Internet and government has become a useful barometer of personal and economic freedom. Oppressive governments use the Internet to oppress political enemies, censor ideas, and spy on citizens.  The United Nations and other international organizations see the Internet as an untapped opportunity for tax revenues and regulations to support political favorites.

Of course Congress can and does pass symbolic laws to protect the Internet, such as the recent extension of the Internet Tax Freedom Act that prohibits new state and local taxes on broadband access. Congress is eager to block state and local tax collection on the Internet on the reasonable theory that taxes will harm the Internet, one of the few engines of growth in our otherwise recession-prone economy.

Yet Congress is oblivious to Federal Communications Commission efforts to undermine the spirit if not the letter of ITFA by extending substantial new federal fees on broadband access. These fees could be as harmful, if not more so, than any that state and local governments might imagine. Yet many in Congress, unaware of the fees that might be applied to the Internet, applaud the FCC.”

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2. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. Well what did you expect when Sharpton made the pick?

From ABCNews  “President Obama has said he’s “confident” that his nominee to replace outgoing Attorney General Eric Holder “will get confirmed by the Senate.”

But a look at where Loretta Lynch, the federal prosecutor out of Brooklyn, N.Y., has fallen on some of the more controversial issues dogging Holder for years suggests the confirmation process may be a bit bumpy. She and Holder seem to be eye-to-eye on many of the issues that made him such a lightning rod for Republican criticism.”

She’s obsessed with race too.

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3. Big Brother is watching…. your Tweets. And they’re using them to squash/suspend the rights of conservatives.

From TheFreeBeacon  “The House Science, Space, and Technology Committee sent a letter to the head of the National Science Foundation (NSF) on Monday, demanding answers about the origins of the nearly $1 million taxpayer-funded project to track “misinformation” on Twitter.

The Truthy project, being conducted by researchers at Indiana University, is under investigation for targeting political commentary on Twitter. The project monitors “suspicious memes,” “false and misleading ideas,” and “hate speech,” with a goal of one day being able to automatically detect false rumors on the social media platform.

The web service has been used to track tweets using hashtags such as #tcot (Top Conservatives on Twitter), and was successful in getting accounts associated with conservatives suspended, according to a 2012 book co-authored by the project’s lead researcher, Filippo Menczer, a professor of Informatics and Computer Science at Indiana University.

Menczer has also said that Truthy monitored tweets using #p2 (Progressive 2.0), but did not discuss any examples of getting liberal accounts suspended in his book.”

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4. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

Also from TheFreeBeacon  “More than 80 wounded U.S. combat veterans and their families have filed suit against several of the world’s largest banks, which they accuse of facilitating financial transfers on behalf of Iran that directly led to the killing and wounding of U.S. troops in Iraq, according to court documents obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

The suit filed early Monday accuses multiple banks of “committing acts of international terrorism” by helping Iran fund and arm Iraqi terrorists who have killed scores of U.S. troops, according to the complaint.

More than 200 plaintiffs have signed onto the suit, which targets some of the largest international banks, including: HSBC Bank USA, Barclays, London’s Standard Chartered Bank, the Royal Bank of Scotland, Credit Suisse, and London-based Bank Saderat.

The veterans argue that the banks helped Iran illegally move “billions of dollars” to terrorist entities that later targeted U.S. troops in attacks.

The suit alleges these banks are knowingly acting as key cogs in Iran’s efforts to evade U.S. sanctions and provide “material support” to Hezbollah and other terror groups, which, at Tehran’s behest, have carried out attacks against U.S. interests in Iraq.”

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News/Politics 11-10-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. I was just thinkin’ this would be the perfect guy to invite to the White House to discuss how to work with the GOP. 🙄

From Mediaite  “There’s obvious and then there’s painfully obvious. And in the case of Al Sharpton declaring that Tuesday’s resounding defeat for his party was not the fault of an unpopular president nor inept candidates, but of Hillary and Bill Clinton, it’s painfully obvious where the activist/host/liaison is getting his marching orders are coming from:

Valerie Jarrett.

As he’s enjoyed mentioning in the past, Sharpton has a direct line to the White House. He’s visited numerous times, trades daily emails with Ms. Jarrett. So when the Democrats went down in flames three days ago, guess who President Obama met with the next day? Not Mitch McConnell, not John Boehner, not DNC Chairwoman (for now) Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Instead, it’s was MSNBC’s ratings — challenged 6:00 p.m. host (along with other civil rights leaders), a White House official had confirmed. On the docket–because Sharpton is obviously an expert in all of these things — was Obamacare implementation, education and criminal justice. Speaking of criminal (in)justice, just what is Tawana Brawley up to these days?

Per the White House communication team: “The President also highlighted how we are looking forward to working with the leaders over the next two years to advance these and other crucial issues facing the country.”

It appears Sharpton must have been in the bathroom during the whole working-with-other-leaders part, as he proceeded to stage an upside down protest (seen here) of Republicans on his show yesterday.”

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2. Also over at MSNBC they have decided that the reason Democrats lost so bad is because they didn’t dumb down their message enough for you stupid voters.

From NewsBusters  “Appearing as a panelist on the November 6 Hardball, liberal talk show host Joe Madison offered his assessment for why Democrats lost the 2014 midterms: Liberals, being the intellectuals they are, talk above the heads of the average voter, rather than communicating their ideas in an accessible manner for the layman to understand. They need to “put it where the goats can get it,” as Madison’s grandfather would say.

Madison made his comments as part of a panel discussion in which Hardball host Chris Matthews lamented how Democrats, including Barack Obama, have not sold the American public on the economic rebound happening under the president’s watch.”

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3. Stop me if you’ve heard this joke before…..

From TheDailyCaller  “Bassem Masri hates the police, or “pigs” as he calls them. He supports the terrorist group Hamas and he hoped for Joan Rivers to “burn in hell” after her recent death because of the opinions she expressed about the ongoing fight between Israel and the Palestinians.

This is the man that the Department of Justice invited to a meeting to provide input on police reforms following the police shooting death of Michael Brown on Aug. 9.”

“He does not make clear which DOJ meeting he attended, but the timing coincides with a two-day event being held by the agency’s Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) division.

The stated goal of that meeting, which was closed to the press, is to “build trust and strengthen the relationship between law enforcement and the communities they serve is the first of several regional collaborative reform trainings on law enforcement strategies and best practices.””

Was he Sharpton approved?

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4. Not surprising.

From DefenseOne  “Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel has just a 26 percent approval rating among individuals currently serving within the national security community, according to findings from a new survey commissioned by Defense One.

The findings come as scrutiny on the Obama administration’s handling of the war in Iraq and Syria grows. At the same time, a variety of media reports hint that President Barack Obama, himself trailing in the polls after a poor showing for the Democrats in Tuesday’s election, is considering a shake-up of his national security staff. That could include Hagel.

The “Defense One National Security Survey” released Friday found few individuals inside the national security government think highly of the Obama administration’s national security strategy. The survey found that only 4 percent of respondents “strongly agree” and 16 percent “agree” that the White House has “a clear national security strategy.” Conversely, 73 percent of respondents disagreed or strongly disagreed with that statement.”

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5. They haven’t learned a thing. They continue to use the IRS and DoJ against political enemies.

From Examiner.com  “In the midst of the ongoing investigation of the alleged Internal Revenue Services (IRS) and Department of Justice (DOJ) collusion in targeting conservative and Tea Party organizations for added scrutiny when applying for tax-exempt status, a source in one of the DOJ’s law enforcement agencies claims the IRS and DOJ are both probing the finances of members of one of the nation’s wealthiest families. Their alleged crime? Financially supporting what are considered conservative causes and Republican organizations. 

To many Americans who follow the political scene in the U.S., not a day goes by without some Democrat or liberal-left pundit throwing out the name “Koch Brothers” as if it’s a proven fact that they are criminal conspirators of sorts. But according to a law enforcement source who contacted the Examiner, Democrat lawmakers – many of whom are the same Senators and House members who pushed for the IRS to target groups such as True the Vote – have secretly contacted both IRS and DOJ officials to scrutinize the philanthropic activities of the two multi-billionaires.

Thanks to soon-to-be-former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, the Democratic Party alone spent millions of dollars insinuating illegal ties between Republicans and the ultra-wealthy Charles and David Koch. The strategy of vilifying to two men is even starting to bother some Democrats especially when Sen. Reid told friendly news media outlets that even after his party’s drubbing he planned to continue his pursuit of exposing the evil Koch (pronounced coke) brothers, Charles and David.

In one of the most hypocritical moves, David Brock who runs the left-wing web site Media Matters, has openly said he was going to pursue the Koch’s spending into the 2016 election. This exercise in hypocrisy seems lost on the Democrats since Media Matters would cease to exist without the deep pockets of multi-billionaire and Republican-hater George Soros.”

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News/Politics 11-7-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. Of course they are. That’s exactly what I would expect sore losers to do. I hope Harry doesn’t get too crazy. After all, whatever he does with 51 votes, can be undone with 51 votes, thanks to his nuclear option.

From TheWashingtonPost  “Before ceding full control of Congress to the GOP in January, Senate Democrats are planning to rush a host of critical measures to President Obama’s desk, including bills to revive dozens of expired tax breaks and avoid a government shutdown for another year.

Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) is also aiming to chip away at a backlog of presidential nominations to the federal bench and the State Department over the next month, although Democratic aides say they will be unable to process all of the hundreds of pending appointments before turning the chamber over to Republicans.

Republican leaders, too, are inclined to clear the legislative decks of must-pass bills so they can start fresh in January, when they will have control of both chambers of Congress for the first time in eight years. Leaders from both parties are due at the White House for a lunch Friday to begin discussing the parameters of the possible in a new era of Republican domination.

At his first news conference since the GOP landslide at the polls this week, House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) on Thursday warned Obama to abandon his “go-it-alone” strategy of governing by executive order and to begin looking for areas of compromise with Congress.”

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2. Everything is bigger in Texas…. including Wendy Davis’ loss. 🙂

From NationalReview  “Wendy, we barely knew ye! Actually, that’s not true. We knew Wendy Davis well — too well. It is difficult to think of a more overexposed candidate in the 2014 election cycle.

We knew (from the get-go) that she was a publicity-stunt actress with show-stopping athletic shoes made famous when she spoke for eleven hours in favor of a woman’s “right” to kill her unborn child. We knew that she was the type of woman who leaves her husband and children in Texas to attend Harvard Law School, then divorces said husband the day after he pays her final law-school bill. And we found that she had — like many another brand-name politician — a politically convenient memory of myriad personal details. Of course, her memory was infallible when it came to the memoir she released less than two months before the election.

In case that was not enough, we found out, too, that she was not suited to running for homecoming queen, let alone governor of a state with an economy the size of two Switzerlands, about the functioning of which she seemed to be perilously confused. And if she was not on the campaign trail failing Civics 101, she was excelling in Advanced Mudslinging, accusing her wheelchair-bound opponent of exploiting his disability for votes, or of threatening to rescind the right to interracial marriage — despite the fact that he is married to a Hispanic woman.

As I wrote in my pre-mortem postmortem of the Wendy Davis campaign two weeks ago, Davis’s candidacy will never rise to the levels of infamy achieved by Todd Akin and Christine O’Donnell, because she had the benefit of a “D” next to her name. But Davis was a worse candidate than either, victimized not by a single foolish comment, but by managing to step on more rakes than Sideshow Bob. Adding to that was her determination to double down on those mistakes, so that she often looked not just bumbling, but mean.”

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3. They never learn. 

From AOL.com  “One of the longest-held prisoners at the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay was sent home to Kuwait on Wednesday, the first release based on the determination of a review panel that has been re-evaluating some men previously classified as too dangerous to release.

Fawzi al-Odah had been told his release was imminent but didn’t know the date until shortly before he boarded the flight back to his country from the base in southeast Cuba, his lawyer, Eric Lewis, said.

The 37-year-old al-Odah had been the focus of an arduous battle to secure his release that had the support of his government. Lewis, who spoke to him about a week before the departure, said the prisoner just wanted to get on with life.”

“The release of al-Odah was criticized by U.S. Sen. Kelly Ayotte, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee and a chief proponent of keeping the prison open. The New Hampshire Republican called it “yet another dangerous example of the Obama administration’s misguided motivation to empty and then close Guantanamo rather than protect the national security interests of the United States.””

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4. Huh. The mainstream press appears to have missed this story. I wonder why….? 🙄

Are they afraid to arrest her because they fear more riots? They’re gonna happen either way.

From TheDailyMail  “Michael Brown’s mother has been named as one of the ‘attackers’ who assaulted and robbed vendors selling t-shirts commemorating the youngster’s death.

A report from Ferguson police identified Lesley McSpadden, 34, as one of a group of up to 30 people that ran into the tent and ransacked the stall in the Missouri city on Saturday October 18. 

Pearlie Gordon, 54, Brown’s mother-in-law, and two men were selling ‘Justice for Mike Brown’ merchandise when the subjects ‘jumped out of vehicles and rushed them’ during what police are classifying as an armed robbery.”

“More than $1500 in merchandise and $400 in cash ‘was stolen by unknown subjects’ who managed to escape before police arrived.”

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More here, from TheSmokingGun  “A police report detailing a fight last month between members of Michael Brown’s family over the sale of commemorative t-shirts identifies the late teenager’s mother as one of the “attackers” who beat and robbed vendors selling the merchandise from a tent in a Ferguson, Missouri parking lot.

A copy of the Ferguson Police Department report was provided yesterday by city attorney Stephanie Karr. When TSG requested the document two weeks ago, Karr noted that Brown’s mother, Lesley McSpadden, was “described in the report” and had “specifically requested that the report be withheld from the media.”

“McSpadden’s mother, Desureia Harris, began to rip down t-shirts hanging on a line, Gordon told officers. Then, she added, other members of the group began “tearing her booth apart.” Gordon (seen at left) said that during the melee she was repeatedly struck in the head and knocked to the ground.

At one point, Gordon recalled, she heard McSpadden “yell to an unknown subject, ‘That’s Calvina’s mom, get her @#%.” [Calvina is the first name of Michael Brown Sr.’s wife.] “McSpadden then ran up and punched Gordon,” according to the report.

Gordon’s male associates were also beaten–reportedly with a pipe–during the confrontation, and one of the men was transported by EMS workers to a local hospital for treatment of “injuries sustained during the assault.”

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News/Politics 11-6-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. The voters have spoken and he doesn’t like what they said.

From TheAP  “For anyone expecting postelection contrition at the White House or vows to change course after a disastrous election for Democrats, President Barack Obama had one message Wednesday: Think again.

A day after Democrats lost control of the Senate and suffered big losses in House and governors’ races across the country, Obama struck a defiant tone. He defended his policies, stood by his staff and showed few signs of changing an approach to dealing with congressional Republicans that has generated little more than gridlock in recent years.

Rather than accept the election results as a repudiation of his own administration, the president said voters were disenchanted with Washington as a whole. And rather than offering dour assessments of his party’s electoral thrashing, as he did after the 2010 midterms, the president insisted repeatedly that he was optimistic about the country’s future.”

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2. And speaking of defiant….

From TheCharlotteObserver  “Two weeks after he lost his right to vote, former Charlotte mayor and convicted felon Patrick Cannon apparently cast a ballot.

That vote, which was officially challenged Tuesday night, would violate Cannon’s bond and could put him back before a judge, said Greg Forrest, chief of the U.S. Probation Office in Charlotte.

It may even mean the 47-year-old Democrat goes to prison sooner.

“Let’s cut to the chase: He shouldn’t have done that, and we’re going to talk to him tomorrow (Wednesday),” Forrest told the Observer.”

Lock him up and add a new charge.

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3. 5 Democrat myths have been exposed as false.

From TheWashingtonExaminer  “As Democratic losses mounted in Senate races across the country on election night, some liberal commentators clung to the idea that dissatisfied voters were sending a generally anti-incumbent message, and not specifically repudiating Democratic officeholders. But the facts of the election just don’t support that story.

Voters replaced Democratic senators with Republicans in Arkansas, Colorado, Iowa, North Carolina, Montana, South Dakota, West Virginia and likely in Alaska, and appear on track to do so in a runoff next month in Louisiana. At the same time, voters kept Republicans in GOP seats in heavily contested races in Georgia, Kansas and Kentucky. That is at least 10, and as many as a dozen, tough races, without a single Republican seat changing hands. Tuesday’s voting was a wave alright — a very anti-Democratic wave.

In addition to demolishing the claim of bipartisan anti-incumbent sentiment, voters also exposed as myths five other ideas dear to the hearts of Democrats in the last few months:

1) The election wouldn’t be a referendum on President Obama.”

“4) Women would save Democrats.”

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4. How do you know they’re missing if you never looked for them?

From JudicialWatch  “Judicial Watch announced today that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) admitted to the court that it failed to search any of the IRS standard computer systems for the “missing” emails of Lois Lerner and other IRS officials. The admission appears in an IRS legal brief opposing the Judicial Watch request that a federal court judge allow discovery into how “lost and/or destroyed” IRS records relating to the targeting of conservative groups may be retrieved. The IRS is fighting Judicial Watch’s efforts to force testimony and document production about the IRS’ loss of records in Judicial Watch’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) litigation about the IRS targeting of Tea Party and other opponents of President Obama(Judicial Watch v. IRS (No. 1:13-cv-1559)).  The lawsuit is before U.S. District Court Judge Emmett G. Sullivan.

In its September 17 Motion for Limited Discovery, Judicial Watch argues that, despite two orders, the IRS had consistently failed to provide information detailing how “the missing emails could be retrieved from other sources and produced to Judicial Watch.” On October 17, IRS attorneys asked the court to deny the Judicial Watch request, even while admitting that additional Congressional requests “could result in additional documents being located ….”

In its October 27 Reply in Support of Motion for Limited Discovery, Judicial Watch argued that declarations submitted by the IRS in response to the Judge Sullivan’s orders “fail to answer important questions about the missing emails:”

[I]t has become apparent that the IRS did not undertake any significant efforts to obtain the emails from alternative sources following the discovery that the emails were missing. The emails are potentially responsive to Plaintiff’s FOIA requests, and the IRS’s failure to search for them in other recordkeeping systems raises material questions of fact about whether the agency has conducted a reasonable search.

Judicial Watch lawyers reviewed the IRS court filings and concluded that the agency “did not undertake any significant efforts to obtain the emails.””

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5. As Democrats now call for bi-partisanship (which they never get around to when they run things), here’s something for the Republicans to keep on mind.

From WeaselZippers  “Last night, the talking points were already under way from Democrats on how now we must all work together, the time for partisanship is past.

No no, my dear Democrats. Given this election is a very specific and direct rejection of the policies that you and President Obama have espoused(in his own words), now is the time to work nonstop and eliminate those same policies in accordance with the will of the people.

Republicans, Conservatives. Please do remember as you are urged to act in a ‘bipartisan way’, what you have been called.”

“Enemy, paranoid, greedy, Bible-thumping, gun-toting, fear-mongering, racist, sexist, bigot, birther, redneck, homophobic, xenophobic, global-warming denialists, anti-science, Neanderthal, barbarian, terrorist, hobbits, member of the Flat Earth Society, Nazi, bully, Yosemite Sam hillbilly, beer-toting, pot belly, church going, small-minded, whack-job, Evangelical, gun nuts, wing nut, knuckle-dragger, clueless, Teabaggers, narrow-minded, evil, redneck freaks, judgmental, backwards, sick, anti-intellectualist, slut-shaming, slimebuckets, forced-birther, neocons, Zionist, neo-Confederate, wild nasty hard-right fringe, extremist, sewer rats, wacko birds, bitter clingers, misogynist, you suck, Obamaphobic, chirper, white nativist, crazies,”

And that’s not even a third of the list.

Don’t fall for it. Don’t let Lucy do it to you again Charlie Brown.

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News/Politics 11-3-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. Let’s hope they’re accurate.

From FoxNews  “Republican Senate candidates are pulling away in the final days of key races, according to polls released this weekend.

Republicans are either leading in Georgia, Kentucky and Louisiana or will likely win runoff elections, according to a NBC/Marist poll released Sunday.

In addition, the Republican nominee in Iowa, Joni Ernst, now has a 7-point lead over Democratic challenger Rep. Bruce Braley, according to a Des Moines Register poll released Saturday.

Most polls have shown until now that the four races have essentially been deadlocked in the closing weeks.”

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2. The govt. made 20 billion in purchases this year that it’s allowed to keep secret from taxpayers.

From NBC/Washington  “The federal government has spent at least $20 billion in taxpayer money this year on items and services that it is permitted to keep secret from the public, according to an investigation by the News4 I-Team.

The purchases, known among federal employees as “micropurchases,” are made by some of the thousands of agency employees who are issued taxpayer-funded purchase cards. The purchases, in most cases, remain confidential and are not publicly disclosed by the agencies. A sampling of those purchases, obtained by the I-Team via the Freedom of Information Act, reveals at least one agency used those cards to buy $30,000 in Starbucks Coffee drinks and products in one year without having to disclose or detail the purchases to the public.

A series of other recent purchases, reviewed by internal government auditors, include wasteful and inappropriate purchases by government employees — including a gym membership and JC Penney clothing — that were not detected or stopped until after the purchase was completed.

The I-Team’s findings have been the subject of a Congressional hearing and created scrutiny from taxpayer watchdogs for the Department of Homeland Security, which made the Starbucks purchases and declines to publicly detail them.”

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3. Here’s more waste, fraud, and abuse of taxpayer money.

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4. Not shocking to anyone who’s been connecting the dots.

From TheDailyCaller  “The deadly EV-D68 enterovirus epidemic, which struck thousands of kids this fall, was likely propelled through America by President Barack Obama’s decision to allow tens of thousands of Central Americans across the Texas border, according to a growing body of genetic and statistical evidence.

The evidence includes admissions from top health officials that the epidemic included multiple strains of the virus, and that it appeared simultaneously in multiple independent locations.

The question can be settled if federal researchers study the genetic fingerprint of the EV-D68 viruses that first hit kids in Colorado, Missouri and Illinois to see if they are close relatives to the EV-D68 viruses found in Central America.”

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5. This is how not to do it. Let people with no military experience micromanage military decisions.

From TheDailyBeast  “Top military leaders in the Pentagon and in the field are growing increasingly frustrated by the tight constraints the White House has placed on the plans to fight ISIS and train a new Syrian rebel army.

As the American-led battle against ISIS stretches into its fourth month, the generals and Pentagon officials leading the air campaign and preparing to train Syrian rebels are working under strict White House orders to keep the war contained within policy limits. The National Security Council has given precise instructions on which rebels can be engaged, who can be trained, and what exactly those fighters will do when they return to Syria. Most of the rebels to be trained by the U.S. will never be sent to fight against ISIS.

Making matters worse, military officers and civilian Pentagon leaders tell The Daily Beast, is the ISIS war’s decision-making process, run by National Security Adviser Susan Rice. It’s been manic and obsessed with the tiniest of details. Officials talk of sudden and frequent meetings of the National Security Council and the so-called Principals Committee of top defense, intelligence, and foreign policy officials (an NSC and three PCs in one week this month); a barrage of questions from the NSC to the agencies that create mountains of paperwork for overworked staffers; and NSC insistence on deciding minor issues even at the operational level.

“We are getting a lot of micromanagement from the White House. Basic decisions that should take hours are taking days sometimes,” one senior defense official told The Daily Beast.”

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News/Politics 10-20-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. So they’re paying for insurance that’s pretty much useless barring a major illness. What a rip off.

From TheNYTimes  “About 7.3 million Americans are enrolled in private coverage through the Affordable Care Act marketplaces, and more than 80 percent qualified for federal subsidies to help with the cost of their monthly premiums. But many are still on the hook for deductibles that can top $5,000 for individuals and $10,000 for families — the trade-off, insurers say, for keeping premiums for the marketplace plans relatively low. The result is that some people — no firm data exists on how many — say they hesitate to use their new insurance because of the high out-of-pocket costs.

Insurers must cover certain preventive services, like immunizations, cholesterol checks and screening for breast and colon cancer, at no cost to the consumer if the provider is in their network. But for other services and items, like prescription drugs, marketplace customers often have to meet their deductible before insurance starts to help.

While high-deductible plans cover most of the costs of severe illnesses and lengthy hospital stays, protecting against catastrophic debt, those plans may compel people to forgo routine care that could prevent bigger, longer-term health issues, according to experts and research.

“They will cause some people to not get care they should get,” Katherine Hempstead, who directs research on health insurance coverage at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, said of high-deductible marketplace plans. “Unfortunately, the people who are attracted to the lower premiums tend to be the ones who are going to have the most trouble coming up with all the cost-sharing if in fact they want to use their health insurance.””

And the prices are going up, but you can’t find out how much until after the elections.

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2. Meet Hillary’s Benghazi “fixer.” Same as it ever was huh?

From TheDailySignal  “To Sonya Gilliam, a recent account of improper sorting of Benghazi-related documents  at the State Department brought back vivid memories of her own encounters with high-level government officials who withheld, deleted or destroyed public records.

And one name stood out for its familiarity: Cheryl Mills.

A former deputy assistant secretary of state had told The Daily Signal that Mills was present during an after-hours document operation in a basement room of the State Department in October 2012. Mills was chief of staff to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.”

The purpose of the session, former State Department official Raymond Maxwell said, was to “separate” documents damaging to Clinton before records were turned over to an independent review board probing the Sept. 11, 2012 terrorist attacks on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya.”

“My stomach dropped,” Gilliam says about hearing the allegation last month that Mills was involved in Benghazi document sorting: I said to myself, oh my gosh, here we are, 14 or 15 years later, [and] Cheryl Mills is still in charge of document ‘production’—I’ll use that term loosely.”

Sandy Berger would be so proud.

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3. Chairperson fight!

DWS whistles past the graveyard like nobody’s business.

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4. Peyton is The TD Man.

From MSN  “Peyton Manning’s receivers played keep-away with his milestone memento and the NFL’s new leader in career touchdown passes toyed with the San Francisco 49ers in the Denver Broncos’ 42-17 victory Sunday night.

Manning went into the showdown two TDs shy of Brett Favre’s record of 508, and threw four touchdown passes to reach 510.

“It’s special because of the way our team played,” said Manning, who surpassed Favre’s mark with an 8-yard strike to Demaryius Thomas late in the second quarter.”

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by

News/Politics 10-17-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. More US victims from F and F. What else are they hiding?

From JudicialWatch  ” Judicial Watch today announced that, based on information uncovered through a Judicial Watch public records lawsuit against the City of Phoenix, the U.S. Congress has confirmed that an AK 47 rifle used in a July 29, 2013, gang-style assault on an apartment building that left two people wounded was part of the Obama Department of Justice (DOJ) Operation Fast and Furious gunrunning program.

An October 16 letter sent from Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) and Rep. Darryl Issa (R-CA) to Deputy Attorney General James Cole discloses that “we have learned of another crime gun connected to Fast and Furious.  The [Justice] Department did not provide any notice to the Congress or the public about this gun.”  Grassley (Ranking Member on the Senate Judiciary Committee) and Issa (Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee) detail:

Based on the serial number [1977DX1654] from the police report obtained by Judicial Watch and documents obtained during our Fast and Furious investigation, we can confirm that the assault rifle recovered in the vehicle on July 30, 2013, was purchased by Sean Christopher Stewart. Stewart pled guilty to firearms trafficking charges resulting from his involvement with Operation Fast and Furious … Stewart purchased this particular firearm on December 8, 2009, one of 40 that he purchased that day while under ATF surveillance” (emphasis in original document).

The Phoenix Police reports, which the letter from Congress references, were obtained by Judicial Watch thanks to a lawsuit filed against the City of Phoenix, AZ, seeking the Police Department’s records about the gang assault (Judicial Watch v. City of Phoenix (No. CV2014- 012018)). The lawsuit was filed on October 2 after the City of Phoenix ignored an August 5, 2014, Arizona Public Records Law request for information about the crime and the guns.  Judicial Watch believed the reports detailed that a weapon or weapons used in the assault are connected to the federal government’s Fast and Furious gunrunning operation.  Today’s letter from Grassley and Issa is official confirmation of Judicial Watch’s understanding from other sources.”

“According to the Phoenix Police Department report, ATF traced the firearm on July 31, 2013, the day after Phoenix police officers recovered it. Yet, over a full year has passed, and the Department has failed to notify the Committees … This lack of transparency about the consequences of Fast and Furious undermines public confidence in law enforcement and gives the impression that the Department is seeking to suppress information and limit its exposure to public scrutiny.”

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2. Catch and release.

From Breitbart  “Deportations from the interior of the United States declined 34 percent this year from last, according to a new report from the Center for Immigration Studies, derived largely from an internal Department of Homeland Security document. 

The CIS report released Wednesday and authored by the group’s director of policy studies, Jessica Vaughan, details the decline in immigration enforcement and reveals that there remain nearly 167,000 convicted criminal immigrants with final orders of removal still in the United States and “currently at large.”

“Prosecutorial discretion as practiced by the Obama administration has transformed immigration enforcement into a massive catch-and-release program that makes a joke of the law, fails to deter illegal settlement, and allows even illegal aliens who commit crimes to remain here,” Vaughan said Wednesday.

“These policies inflict real harm on Americans and legal immigrants,” she continued, “in the form of lost jobs, depressed wages, additional social services, and even lost lives. In addition, with the rise of ISIS and other terrorist groups around the world, our lax policies represent an unnecessary national security risk.”

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3. The CDC director says a travel ban would hurt African economies. Yet that’s exactly what many African nations are doing.

From TheAP  “Health officials battling the Ebola outbreak that has killed more than 4,500 people in West Africa have managed to limit its spread on the continent to five countries – and two of them appear to have snuffed out the disease.

The developments constitute a modest success in an otherwise bleak situation.

Officials credit tighter border controls, good patient-tracking and other medical practices, and just plain luck with keeping Ebola confined mostly to Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea since the outbreak was first identified nearly seven months ago.

Senegal did so well in finding and isolating a man with Ebola who had slipped across the border from Guinea in August that the World Health Organization on Friday will declare the end of the disease in Senegal if no new cases surface.”

Sealing the borders won’t happen under Obama, and if it does, it won’t be done until it’s too late.

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4. The Centers for Anything But Disease Control.

From TheNYPost  “At $7 billion, the Centers for Disease Control 2014 budget is nearly 200 percent bigger now than it was in 2000. Those evil, stingy Republicans actually approved CDC funding increases in January larger than what President Obama requested.

What are we getting for this ever-increasing amount of money? Answer: A power-hungry busybody brigade of politicized blame-mongers.

Money, money, it’s always the money. Yet, while Ebola and enterovirus D68 wreak havoc on our health system, the CDC has been busying itself with an ever-widening array of non-disease-control campaigns, like these recent crusades:

Mandatory motorcycle-helmet laws

Video games and TV violence

“Social norming” in the schools”

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5. Neo-Victorianism on Campus.

From TheWeeklyStandard  “Sexual liberation is having a nervous breakdown on college campuses. Conservatives should be cheering on its collapse; instead they sometimes sound as if they want to administer the victim smelling salts. 

It is impossible to overstate the growing weirdness of the college sex scene. Campus feminists are reimporting selective portions of a traditional sexual code that they have long scorned, in the name of ending what they preposterously call an epidemic of campus rape. They are once again making males the guardians of female safety and are portraying females as fainting, helpless victims of the untrammeled male libido. They are demanding that college administrators write highly technical rules for sex and aggressively enforce them, 50 years after the proponents of sexual liberation insisted that college adults stop policing student sexual behavior. While the campus feminists are not yet calling for an assistant dean to be present at their drunken couplings, they have created the next best thing: the opportunity to replay every grope and caress before a tribunal of voyeuristic administrators.

The ultimate result of the feminists’ crusade may be the same as if they were explicitly calling for a return to sexual modesty: a sharp decrease in casual, drunken sex. There is no downside to this development. “

Or if you prefer an alternate title, The Vindication of Christian Sexual Ethics.

From NationalReview  “It won’t work. Sure, there will be a chill that settles across some campuses (depending on enforcement), and there will be cases where the burden-shifting “works” (at least in the way that feminists want it to work) by ruining a man’s life in highly ambiguous circumstances. But the end result won’t be a net increase in healthy relationships but instead an increase in fear, confusion, and recriminations as neo-Victorianism butts up against the crazed ”sex week” culture that still infects campuses from the top to the bottom of the academic food chain. It’s decadence versus contractual morality that utterly defies human nature, and neither model is viable.

This is exactly the time when Christians should step forward with a different ideal, the holistic, healthy, and proven model of sobriety always, chastity before marriage, and fidelity afterwards — all because marriage is sacred, our bodies are a temple to God, and we love our spouses more than we love our own lives. 

Yet, sadly, many Christians have treated Christian sexual morality as something to be embarrassed about — to be shoved at the end of the conversation or minimized by reference to “other” good works. As if the formation of lifelong, loving relationships is somehow secondary to good deeds in soup kitchens or medical mission trips.”

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by

News/Politics 10-16-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. facepalm-double

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2. And if that video didn’t bring their incompetent response to all this into focus, this should.

From CNSNews  “Dr. Tom Frieden, director of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said during a telephone press briefing Wednesday that you cannot get Ebola by sitting next to someone on a bus, but that infected or exposed persons should not ride public transportation because they could transmit the disease to someone else.”

“Frieden’s statement came in response to CNSNews.com’s question regarding a video message from President Barack Obama last week addressing Ebola-stricken countries in West Africa, in which the president told residents they “cannot get [Ebola] through casual contact like sitting next to someone on a bus.””

“My first question is, did the CDC vet this video message before it was released and posted on U.S. embassy websites, and is it true that a person runs absolutely no risk of contracting Ebola on public transportation, such as a bus?”

“Yes, CDC vetted the message, and, yes, we believe it’s accurate,” Frieden responded. “I think there are two different parts of that equation,” he continued. “The first is, if you’re a member of the traveling public and are healthy, should you be worried that you might have gotten it by sitting next to someone? And the answer is no.”

“Second, if you are sick and you may have Ebola, should you get on a bus? And the answer to that is also no. You might become ill, you might have a problem that exposes someone around you,” he said.”

Take a moment to absorb the stupidity of these statements……

How is it that you can’t catch it on a bus, but you can infect others on the bus if you have it. What?

And these are the experts handling this? We are so …….

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3. More bad news.

From TheJournalOfEmergencyMedicalServices  ” International aid organization Doctors Without Borders said that 16 of its staff members have been infected with Ebola and nine of them have died.

 Speaking at a press conference in Johannesburg Tuesday, the head of Doctors Without Borders in South Africa Sharon Ekambaram said medical workers have received inadequate assistance from the international community.

“Where is WHO Africa? Where is the African Union?” said Ekambaram who worked in Sierra Leone from August to September. “We’ve all heard their promises in the media but have seen very little on the ground.””

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4. Nope. No WMD’s here.

From TheNYTimes  “In all, American troops secretly reported finding roughly 5,000 chemical warheads, shells or aviation bombs, according to interviews with dozens of participants, Iraqi and American officials, and heavily redacted intelligence documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.”

“The New York Times found 17 American service members and seven Iraqi police officers who were exposed to nerve or mustard agents after 2003. American officials said that the actual tally of exposed troops was slightly higher, but that the government’s official count was classified.

The secrecy fit a pattern. Since the outset of the war, the scale of the United States’ encounters with chemical weapons in Iraq was neither publicly shared nor widely circulated within the military. These encounters carry worrisome implications now that the Islamic State, a Qaeda splinter group, controls much of the territory where the weapons were found.

The American government withheld word about its discoveries even from troops it sent into harm’s way and from military doctors. The government’s secrecy, victims and participants said, prevented troops in some of the war’s most dangerous jobs from receiving proper medical care and official recognition of their wounds.”

“Jarrod L. Taylor, a former Army sergeant on hand for the destruction of mustard shells that burned two soldiers in his infantry company, joked of “wounds that never happened” from “that stuff that didn’t exist.” The public, he said, was misled for a decade. “I love it when I hear, ‘Oh there weren’t any chemical weapons in Iraq,’ ” he said. “There were plenty.””

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5. Harvard educated lawyers are speaking out about the school’s new sexual misconduct policies.

From TheBostonGlobe  “Twenty-eight current and retired Harvard Law School professors are asking the university to abandon its new sexual misconduct policy and craft different guidelines for investigating allegations, asserting that the new rules violate the due process rights of the accused.

“This is an issue of political correctness run amok,” said Alan M. Dershowitz, an emeritus Harvard Law professor who was among the faculty members signing an article, sent to the Globe’s Opinion page, that is critical of the new procedures.”

“In a statement Tuesday night, Harvard said the new policy was enacted after a two-year review of its practices and its guidelines “create an expert, neutral, fair, and objective mechanism for investigating sexual misconduct cases involving students.”

The misconduct policy, which Harvard announced in July and which took effect this fall, includes a provision to adopt a “preponderance of evidence” standard when determining whether sexual assault or harassment occurred.”

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