Caption The Photo: Eagles OL Evan Mathis Peeing On IRS Building Sign
” I hope Mathis doesn’t owe any Taxes, because I am sure an audit is coming his way now. He is straight on Instagram flexing, Bleacher Report captured the photo before Chip Kelly makes him take it down and drink a protein shake (no more fast food at the Eagles camp).”
” Leaving aside the seriousness of lawlessness, and the corruption of our civic culture by the professionally pious, this past week has been amusing. There was the spectacle of advocates of an ever-larger regulatory government expressing shock about such government’s large capacity for misbehavior. And, entertainingly, the answer to the question “Will Barack Obama’s scandals derail his second-term agenda?” was a question: What agenda?
The scandals are interlocking and overlapping in ways that drain his authority. Everything he advocates requires Americans to lavish on government something his administration, and big government generally, undermines — trust.
Obama’s supposed “trifecta” of scandals — Benghazi, the IRS, and the seizure of Associated Press phone records — neglects some. A fourth scandal is power being wielded by executive branch officials (at the National Labor Relations Board and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau) illegally installed in office by presidential recess appointments made when the Senate was not in recess.
A fifth might be Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius soliciting, from corporations in industries HHS regulates, funds to replace some that Congress refused to appropriate. The money is to be spent by nonprofit — which does not mean nonpolitical — entities. The funds are to educate Americans about, which might mean (consider the administration’s Benghazi and IRS behaviors) propagandize in favor of, Obamacare and to enroll people in its provisions. The experienced (former governor, former secretary of education, 10 years in the Senate) and temperate Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., compares this to the Iran-contra scandal, wherein the Reagan administration raised private funds to do what Congress had refused to do — finance the insurgency against Nicaragua’s government.
Obama’s incredibly shrinking presidency is a reminder that politics is a transactional business, trust is the currency of the transactions, and the currency has been debased. For example:”
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” Across this great land, patriotic Americans are behaving subversively.
We’re quoting from our pocket Constitutions, starting reading groups to discuss our founding documents, even gathering together to “petition the government for a redress of grievances.”
Uncle Sam is not amused.
As leaders of tea party groups have been painfully aware for years, the Internal Revenue Service has given “special” attention to conservative groups.
Heritage sounded the alarm on the Obama Administration’s hit list nearly a year ago. Idaho businessman Frank VanderSloot was singled out by the IRS and the Labor Department after making a sizable donation to Mitt Romney. Who ordered his investigation?
The goal was clearly to reduce the amount of anti-government speech by making it more difficult for these groups to achieve tax-exempt status. And it worked. Just look at these examples from four different states:
- ABC News reports that Jennifer Stefano of Pennsylvania wanted to start a tea party group, but dealing with the IRS “was frightening and that’s why I shut it down. I shut my group down.”
- The IRS ordered an Ohio group to answer 35 detailed questions, including to “provide a listing of all your past activities. Indicate the percentage of your time spent conducting the activity (total of all activities should equal 100%) and the percentage of your funds spent conducting the activity (total of all activities should equal 100%).”
- In Tennessee, Kevin Kookogey was trying to start an educational group called Linchpins of Liberty to teach the economic principles of Milton Friedman and Adam Smith. When he inquired with the IRS in 2011 about the delay in his tax-exempt status, he was told: “We have been waiting on guidance from our superiors as to your and similar organizations.” He is still waiting.
- In Virginia, it took Richmond Tea Party President Larry Nordvig two and a half years to get tax-exempt status. He tells The Washington Post the wait had “a very chilling effect” on how much money his group could raise, and thus on how much speech it could generate. “
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Published on May 15, 2013
” The I.R.S. targeting of tea party groups in the United States is par for the course. It’s not the first time the agency has been used for partisan political ends. Whether or not the targeting was undertaken as a directive from the White House, the agency’s broad latitude in determining what constitutes partisan political activity is very problematic. The solutions offered by campaign finance reformers would unfortunately only give the agency more power.
Featuring: David Keating, President of the Center for Competitive Politics / Michael W. MacLeod-Ball, Chief Legislative and Policy Counsel, ACLU / John Samples, Director of the Cato Institute’s Center for Representative Government / Gene Healy, Vice-President, Cato Institute
Related podcast/video with David Keating:http://www.cato.org/multimedia/daily-… /http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8V_9c…
Related podcast with Michael MacLeod-Ball:http://www.cato.org/multimedia/daily-…Video produced by Caleb O. Brown and Austin Bragg. Additional footage gathered by Lester Romero.”
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” The Justice Department sought the authority to spy on several thousand “United States persons” in 2012, according to a letter the department recently sent to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.
“These sought information pertaining to 6,233 different United States persons,” wrote Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Peter Kadzik in the letter.
The report does not specify how many of these National Security Letter requests were granted. The requests differ from typical subpoenas, because they seek only non-content information (such as phone numbers, instead of the content of phone conversations) and do not require approval from the judicial branch. “
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” An Ohio man has slapped local government with a $3.6 million lawsuit after policemen allegedly violated his Constitutional rights. Police detained Ray Call and confiscated his weapon because he openly carried his firearm into a store.
According to reports, Call entered a store late one night with his gun openly on display. The authorities were alerted, and fairly soon two policemen arrived on the scene. The police officers held Call in the back of the police car, took his weapon, and demanded that he identify himself.
It appears that Call has a solid case. Police cannot detain citizens and demand identification with no good reason. Call was well within his rights and Ohio laws clearly backed him up. Police could not have taken action against Call unless it appeared that he was about to commit a crime, and the mere presence of a firearm does not constitute suspicion.”
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The Instructions/FAQ From NYS Troopers Web Page
” Gun owners in New York who don’t want their license information available to the public are facing a deadline to file an exemption form with local licensing authorities.
Starting Wednesday, the records of anyone who has asked to be exempt from the state Freedom of Information Law will be kept secret. But the information will be available for gun owners who haven’t acted.
The secrecy provision was included in January legislation that toughened New York gun laws to require registration of military-style weapons as well as pistols and limit the number of bullets allowed to be loaded into a clip or magazine.
* The form to request the exemption is available online and must be given to the local authority in charge of licensing. Anyone who doesn’t file by the initial deadline, including those getting new licenses, may still file in the future. Their records will be subject to FOIL requests in the meantime.”
The Form Itself Which You Can Download At The Link Below
For more information or to download a copy of the FOIL exemption form, click here.”
Note that the entire procedure is arbitrary and capricious and subject to the whim of your local licensing agent . You must list a reason why you feel that you should be granted your privacy rights . As usual the the whole business is stacked in favor of law enforcement and your application is subject to approval .
If you are not under an order of protection , sitting on a jury or a current or retired law enforcement officer you may not be able to maintain the privacy of your records . Read the app and give it a try . It will probably depend on the attitude of your local pistol licensing agent .
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3D Printing Is Way Scarier Than Plastic Guns
” Ever the publicity hound, Sen. Chuck Schumer, who obviously has no idea what additive manufacturing actually is, came out big and strong against “stomach-churning” 3D printed plastic guns last week.
This naive, sensationalist rant so misunderstands the issue, I almost don’t know where to start. He goes on to inform the public that because these guns are made of plastic, they are undetectable, so he must introduce legislation that will make it illegal to possess an undetectable or an untraceable weapon. This is like putting a “Band-Aid on a heart attack.” Sen. Schumer simply doesn’t understand what he is dealing with. In fact, most of us don’t.
Now that you know what a 3D printer is, you must also understand that 3D printers are not limited to printing in plastic. There are 3D printers that print in wood (a mixture of wood particles and binding agent that dries as wood) ceramic, carbon fiber, bronze, iron, steel, cellulose, human tissue (certain body parts for human transplant are grown using 3D printed frameworks) … there are limitations to the range of additive manufacturing materials, but the technology is evolving rapidly.
As for guns … CAD/CAM files (the computer files that 3D printers transform into physical objects one layer at a time) for the .45 caliber M1911 or the 1911A-1 single-action, semi-automatic pistol have been online for years. In fact, you can find all kinds of CAD/CAMs for all kinds of gun parts, bomb parts, bazooka parts, rocket launcher parts and other deadly weapons online. These are computer files, like songs or movies or documents or images, they cannot be protected or digitally rights managed (DRM) any better than the entertainment industry has done with its intellectual property. A file is a file is a file, if someone wants to copy it – it will be copied. You can’t tell what the file contains unless you open it and, most importantly, there is no way to ban or prohibit the transfer of files. In this case, the genie is out of the bottle, you can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube, the ship has sailed – the files are out there.
Plastic guns? Seriously. How about guns printed in steel, guns printed in carbon fiber, guns printed in, you name it – there’s a 3D printer that can print in the medium. In a world of 3D printers, there is no such thing as gun control – people who are so inclined will print all the guns and ammo they need – untraceable, no serial numbers, no markings about point of origin, no trade marks, nothing! “
HT/Instapundit
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Government Obtains Wide Set Of Associated Press Phone records In Investigation, Using Subpoena
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” The Justice Department secretly obtained two months of telephone records of reporters and editors for The Associated Press in what the news cooperative’s top executive called a “massive and unprecedented intrusion” into how news organizations gather the news.
In all, the government seized the records for more than 20 separate telephone lines assigned to AP and its journalists in April and May of 2012. The exact number of journalists who used the phone lines during that period is unknown, but more than 100 journalists work in the offices where phone records were targeted, on a wide array of stories about government and other matters.
In a letter of protest sent to Attorney General Eric Holder on Monday, AP President and Chief Executive Officer Gary Pruitt said the government sought and obtained information far beyond anything that could be justified by any specific investigation. He demanded the return of the phone records and destruction of all copies.
The government would not say why it sought the records. Officials have previously said in public testimony that the U.S. attorney in Washington is conducting a criminal investigation into who may have provided information contained in a May 7, 2012, AP story about a foiled terror plot. The story disclosed details of a CIA operation in Yemen that stopped an al-Qaida plot in the spring of 2012 to detonate a bomb on an airplane bound for the United States.”
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Obamacare: Taxpayers Must Report Personal Health ID Info To IRS
” So why will the Obama IRS require your personal identifying health information?
Simply put, there is no way for the IRS to enforce Obamacare’s individual mandate without such an invasive reporting scheme. Every January, health insurance companies across America will send out tax documents to each insured individual. This tax document—a copy of which will be furnished to the IRS—must contain sufficient information for taxpayers to prove that they purchased qualifying health insurance under Obamacare.
This new tax information document must, at a minimum, contain: the name and health insurance identification number of the taxpayer; the name and tax identification number of the health insurance company; the number of months the taxpayer was covered by this insurance plan; and whether or not the plan was purchased in one of Obamacare’s “exchanges.” “
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Biometric Database Of All Adult Americans Hidden In Immigration Reform
” The immigration reform measure the Senate began debating yesterday would create a national biometric database of virtually every adult in the U.S., in what privacy groups fear could be the first step to a ubiquitous national identification system.
Buried in the more than 800 pages of the bipartisan legislation (.pdf) is language mandating the creation of the innocuously-named “photo tool,” a massive federal database administered by the Department of Homeland Security and containing names, ages, Social Security numbers and photographs of everyone in the country with a driver’s license or other state-issued photo ID.
Employers would be obliged to look up every new hire in the database to verify that they match their photo.”
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” Senior Internal Revenue Service officials knew agents were targeting tea party groups as early as 2011, according to a draft of an inspector general’s report obtained by The Associated Press that seemingly contradicts public statements by the IRS commissioner.
But on June 29, 2011, Lois G. Lerner, who heads the IRS division that oversees tax-exempt organizations, learned at a meeting that groups were being targeted, according to the watchdog’s report. At the meeting, she was told that groups with “Tea Party,” ”Patriot” or “9/12 Project” in their names were being flagged for additional and often burdensome scrutiny, the report says.
Among the other revelations, on Aug. 4, 2011, staffers in the IRS’ Rulings and Agreements office “held a meeting with chief counsel so that everyone would have the latest information on the issue.”
On Jan, 25, 2012, the criteria for flagging suspect groups was changed to, “political action type organizations involved in limiting/expanding Government, educating on the Constitution and Bill of Rights, social economic reform/movement,” the report says.”
Changing the criteria from “tea party” and “patriot” to “limiting government” and “educating on the Constitution/Bill of Rights” is an improvement ?
We are in the hands of a amateurish tyrant and the Chicago way has now become the Washington way .
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Blueprints For 3D-Plastic Gun Downloaded 100,000 Times In 2 Days Before The State Department Orders The Site To Take Down The Weapon Designs
” Blueprints for the first-ever plastic gun produced on a 3-D printer, that can pass through metal detectors, have been downloaded over 100,000 times since it was posted to the web on Monday.
Designs for the ‘Liberator’ pistol were posted online by Defense Distributed but on Thursday the U.S. State Department ordered the website to take down the blueprints, on the basis that the plans could violate export regulations. “
” The blueprints, that could be produced on 3-D printers costing as little as $1,000, were seen as a breakthrough because no one has previously designed such a weapon that could withstand the pressure of firing modern ammunition.
Surprisingly, most downloads of the plans did not come from inside the U.S. but from Spain.
The U.S. is second, ahead of Brazil, Germany, and the U.K., according to Haroon Khalid, a developer working with Defense Distributed, who reported the statistics to Forbes.”
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” The sophistication of a global network of thieves who drained cash machines around the globe of an astonishing $45 million in mere hours sent ripples through the security world, not merely for the size of the operation and ease with which it was carried out, but also for the threat that more such thefts may be in store.
Seven people were arrested in the U.S., accused of operating the New York cell of what prosecutors said was a network that carried out thefts at ATMs in 27 countries from Canada to Russia. Law enforcement agencies from more than a dozen nations were involved in the investigation, U.S. prosecutors in New York said Thursday.
It appears no individuals lost money. The thieves plundered funds held by the banks that back up prepaid credit cards, not individual or business accounts, Lynch said.
There were two separate attacks in this case, one in December that reaped $5 million worldwide and one in February that snared about $40 million in 10 hours with about 36,000 transactions. The scheme involved attacks on two banks, Rakbank in the United Arab Emirates and the Bank of Muscat in Oman, prosecutors said.”
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” The body of Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev has been buried in an undisclosed location outside the city of Worcester, where it had been held for a week at a funeral home, police said Thursday.
“As a result of our public appeal for help, a courageous and compassionate individual came forward to provide the assistance needed to properly bury the deceased,” Worcester police said in a statement.
Sgt. Kerry Hazelhurst said the body was no longer in Worcester and is now entombed. Police did not disclose where the body was taken.
Tsarnaev’s body had been at the Graham Putnam & Mahoney Funeral Parlors for a week. Director Peter Stefan says he could not find a community willing to take the body, including Cambridge, where the family had lived for a decade. Tsarnaev’s uncle, Ruslan Tsarni, had custody of the body.”
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” It’s an oppressive spring afternoon in Austin, Texas. Low clouds threaten to unleash a gullywasher. After a couple of emails and phone calls I’m at an apartment complex off to the west of the University of Texas campus. A pair of young men pull up and pop the lid on the trunk of their car. One pulls a flat metal case from the trunk and I jokingly ask, “Is that a gun or a guitar?”
The lead man could blend in with the musicians and hipsters all over Austin who recently dominated the city during SXSW, but he isn’t one and what he has in the case is an instrument, but it’s not musical.
The man with the strange rifle is Cody Wilson, 25, the co-director of Defense Distributed. That’s the group that in the past year has gone from not even existing to being on the verge of changing everything.
Or nothing. The fact is, neither Wilson nor anyone else knows what effect realizing his idea will have. But we’re very close to finding out.
Defense Distributed is about to create the world’s first fully functional, fully printed gun. The wikiweapon will be real.
We go into his apartment and he shows me around. It’s a typical male college student’s place — he’s a law student at UT — a bit messy and unkempt. Up in his bedroom he has a huge American flag on one wall and the famous “Come and Take It” flag opposite. It’s a replica of the flag that flew at Gonzales, Texas, on October 2, 1835 when Texians dared the Mexican army to retrieve a cannon.”
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” A new virus has been cataloged, and it appears to be planting and distributing child pornography files. Hackers? No. The government is planting child porn on your computer, or so an alert published today indicates.
Before It’s News has interviewed a person, who spoke on condition of anonymity, that has been a victim of the virus implantation. The person was engaged in journalistic exposure of political corruption, and suddenly police appeared on his doorstep with a search warrant specifying a search for evidence of possessing and distributing child pornography. The story is a bit convoluted here, but basically the gentleman did a little more investigation and found rogue .exe files on his computer that appeared as normal emule sharing directories but contained “hundreds to thousands” of child pornography files. The potential whistleblower claims the virus was deliberately planted on his computer in order to stop his activity.
The article surmises the Internet Crimes Against Children task force may be behind the virus planting, though why is unclear.
ESET Virus Radar has recognized the virus, and calls it Win32/MoliVampire. The short description indicates, “Win32/MoliVampire.A is a trojan which tries to download other malware from the Internet. Win32/MoliVampire.A may be spread via peer-to-peer networks.”
The trojan contains an URL address. It tries to download a file from the address. Files are copied into a shared folder of various instant messengers and P2P applications, according to the description.”
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Palm Beach County Sheriff Gets $1 Million For Violence Prevention Unit Amid Questions About Civil Liberties, Care For Mentally Ill
” Florida House and Senate budget leaders have awarded Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw $1 million for a new violence prevention unit aimed at preventing tragedies like those in Newtown, Conn., and Aurora, Colo., from occurring on his turf.
Bradshaw plans to use the extra $1 million to launch “prevention intervention” units featuring specially trained deputies, mental health professionals and caseworkers. The teams will respond to citizen phone calls to a 24-hour hotline with a knock on the door and a referral to services, if needed.
The goal will be avoiding crime — and making sure law enforcement knows about potential powder kegs before tragedies occur, Bradshaw said. But the earmark, which is a one-time-only funding provision, provoked a debate Monday among mental health advocates and providers about the balance between civil liberties, privacy and protecting the public.
Bradshaw said his proposal is a first-of-its-kind in the nation, and he hopes it will become a model for the rest of the state like his gang prevention and pill-mill units.
“Every single incident, whether it’s Newtown, that movie theater, or the guy who spouts off at work and then goes home and kills his wife and two kids — in every single case, there were people who said they knew ahead of time that there was a problem,” Bradshaw said. “If the neighbor of the mom in Newtown had called somebody, this might have saved 25 kids’ lives.”
“We want people to call us if the guy down the street says he hates the government, hates the mayor and he’s gonna shoot him,” Bradshaw said. “What does it hurt to have somebody knock on a door and ask, ‘Hey, is everything OK?’ ”
He said he met with Bradshaw about the program and “got assurances from the sheriff that this is going to be done in a way that respects people’s autonomy and privacy, and that he makes sure to protect against people making false claims.”
Bradshaw acknowledged the risk that anyone in a messy divorce or in a dispute with a neighbor could abuse the hotline. But, he said, he’s confident that his trained professionals will know how to sort out fact from fiction.”
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” Worried about drones spying on you? Soon, a device might be able to send you text and email alerts that let you know when a drone is nearby.
[ALSO: Domestic Drone Arrest Database Being Built by Defense Lawyers Group]
A Washington, D.C.-based engineer is working on the “Drone Shield,” a small, Wi-Fi-connected device that uses a microphone to detect a drone’s “acoustic signatures” (sound frequency and spectrum) when it’s within range.
The company’s founder, John Franklin, who has been working in aerospace engineering for seven years, says he hopes to start selling the device sometime this year. He is using the Kickstarter-like IndieGoGo to finance the project.
The device will cost $69 and will be about the size of a USB thumb drive. It will use Raspberry Pi – a tiny, $25 computer – and commercially available microphones to detect drones. He says he imagines that people will attach the Drone Shield to their fences or roofs to protect their home from surveillance.”
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Which Companies Help Protect Your Data From The Government (An Important Infographic)
” The folks at the Electronic Frontier Foundation do such good work. Everyone who cares about freedom in the online world should send them a check (or some bitcoin.)”
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Docs Show Janet Napolitano Thanked Missouri Governor For Breaking State Law
” Missouri Governor Jay Nixon repeatedly denied knowing anything about Missouri illegally sharing its citizens private CCW information with the federal government, even after his own head of Missouri Highway Patrol contradicted him in a public hearing. Now we’ve learned that Nixon not only knew about the violation of Missouri law, but he was thanked in a letter by Janet Napolitano:
DHS- Letter to Nixon- REAL ID Compliance — ongoing MO CCW Scandal
Missouri law — signed into effect by Gov. Nixon himself — prohibits full compliance with the Real ID Act. This includes sharing Missouri’s conceal carry list, which officials under Nixon did, with his full knowledge, according to this letter.
Missouri’s governor lied to his constituency when he said that no documents were being shared — Nixon even claimed that the lawsuit was dismissed, which it was not:
“First of all, the Department of Revenue has been very clear,” Nixon said. “There are no documents being sent to some federal government magic database somewhere to do something.” “
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