” A law enforcement official has told NBC News that Attorney General Eric Holder is the one who signed the search warrant for the private emails of Fox News reporter James Rosen. The warrant was signed under the guise that Rosen might be a “possible co-conspirator” in violation of the Espionage Act.”
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DOJ Tracked Phones Of Fox News Execs, Employees At WH, Pentagon And State Dept
” The latest report from Shannon Bream details just how far the Justice Department apparently went in its tracking of Fox News. In addition to seizing phone records and emails of reporter James Rosen, the government also monitored Rosen’s parents’ home phone line in Staten Island, N.Y.
A total of 30+ phone numbers were being tracked, including some linked to Fox News executives. The probe extended to Fox News cell phones and hard lines, including those used at workspaces inside the White House, Pentagon and State Department, according to federal court filings.”
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“ Writing a column on the recent IRS abuses is a hazardous undertaking. The scandal is expanding so quickly that it’s hard to get a paragraph on paper without having to revise it with new, shocking details. As I write this, an unctuous-looking former IRS commissioner by the name of Douglas Shulman is telling the Senate Finance Committee that he knows nothing, to the consternation of Senator Max Baucus. A Democratic senator angry at a Bush-appointed bureaucrat over the targeting of Tea Party groups—strange times on Capitol Hill.
But even in post-scandal Washington, some things always stay the same. One of them is the inclination of many progressives to defend the president at all costs, no matter what the accusation. Some of these arguments—with their logical contortions and obstinate immunity to new facts—have been downright impressive. Media Matters, head to the job fair. America has a hack surplus.
Let’s take a look at six of these rationalizations that have been circulating on the left.”
These right-wingers are just upset that the IRS is doing its job.
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” Some say there are important parallels between Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party. I do not see them, only minor and inconsequential similarities highlighted much by those who have a proneness to anarchy.
Occupy attacks Free Market Capitalism, not just “corporations.” Corporations are for them the most visible sign of the evils of Market economics. Tea Party attacks cronyism, that is, corporations that align with power to get undue advantage. Big difference: one attacks corporations to dissect Capitalism and the other attacks corporations to bring about real Free Markets.
Occupy sees the solution for Corporatism in Statism. They want to give government even greater power to reign in corporations. They are blinded to the fact that the biggest corporation is Big Government, which has the power to confiscate and kill and the power to lure corporations that are willing to surrender to political pressure for advantage. In attacking unruly corporations they incentivize even more cronyism. In the end, their solution, of necessity, ends in totalitarianism. The more they attack corporations and empower government, the more Corporatism is empowered until they see no other choice than to offer all power to the State.
Tea Party sees the problem in Big Government first and in corporations in a subsidiary way. By limiting the power of government one limits the lure of power to attract corporations. If there is nothing for them in aligning with government they can only compete openly and win or fail. Or they can act illegally to get advantage but knowing that government is not there to protect them. When government is reign in to limit its purpose to protecting our liberty, government becomes a source of good and a true steward of our liberty.
As you can see, there is no comparison between Occupy and the Tea Party, no matter how many fake similarities some want to establish. “
Ismael Hernandez, Freedom & Virtue Institute,www.fvinstitute.org
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Steyn Warns Of ‘Serious Secession Movements’ If Drift Toward Socialism Not Reversed [VIDEO]
” Radio host Dennis Miller and National Review columnist Mark Steyn considered Thursday the possible outcomes if the United States continues down the path of socialism.
If socialism became the prevailing governing philosophy, Miller speculated, escaping it wouldn’t require a move to the Australian outback. Instead he suggested heading for the state of Texas, because it would be the first place to push back against it.”
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Once Government Is Ensnared In Every Aspect Of Life, A Bureaucracy Grows Increasingly Capricious.
” Speaking at Ohio State University earlier this month, Barack Obama urged students to pay no attention to those paranoid types who “incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity.” Oddly enough, in recent days the most compelling testimony for this view of government has come from the president himself, who insists with a straight face that he had no idea that the Internal Revenue Service had spent two years targeting his political enemies until he “learned about it from the same news reports that I think most people learned about this.” Like you, all he knows is what he reads in the papers. Which is odd, because his Justice Department is bugging those same papers, so you’d think he’d at least get a bit of a heads-up.”
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” MARK LEVIN: “Yes, we’re going to cover the ins and outs of this — we’re going to come into the weeds, but folks, it’s time to kill the IRS. That’s the bottom line. This agency has been corrupt since its founding. And the bigger the government gets, the more corrupt it gets, the more ubiquitous it gets. And I don’t just mean political partisanship and cronyism, I mean its abuses. We must fight the expansion of the IRS under Obamacare. We must fight to kill the IRS or critically wound it — politically — with either a flat tax or a fair tax. Now is the time to advance a liberty agenda. Now is the time to advance a Constitutional agenda.” (Mark Levin Show, May 15, 2013)”
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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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” America endured eight years of war and 25,000 casualties rather than submit God-given, Natural Rights to government control. Yet in the 150 years since the civil war, we have seen the United States Federal Government expand its scope of power and authority and our freedoms eroded almost exponentially with each change of the executive.
Today the US has the largest, most powerful government in the history of humankind – a government far more controlling, taxing, and demanding than our founding generation abolished.
How did this happen? And what, if anything, can you do about it?”
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Gun Homicide Rate Down 49% Since 1993 Peak; Public Unaware
” National rates of gun homicide and other violent gun crimes are strikingly lower now than during their peak in the mid-1990s, paralleling a general decline in violent crime, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of government data. Beneath the long-term trend, though, are big differences by decade: Violence plunged through the 1990s, but has declined less dramatically since 2000.
Compared with 1993, the peak of U.S. gun homicides, the firearm homicide rate was 49% lower in 2010, and there were fewer deaths, even though the nation’s population grew. The victimization rate for other violent crimes with a firearm—assaults, robberies and sex crimes—was 75% lower in 2011 than in 1993. Violent non-fatal crime victimization overall (with or without a firearm) also is down markedly (72%) over two decades.”
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” Public policies often have unintended consequences that outweigh their benefits. One consequence of high state cigarette tax rates has been increased smuggling, as criminals procure discounted packs from low-tax states to sell in high-tax states. Growing cigarette tax differentials have made cigarette bootlegging both a national problem and a lucrative criminal enterprise.
Every two years, scholars at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a Michigan think tank, use a statistical analysis of available data to estimate smuggling rates for each state.[1] Their most recent report uses 2011 data and finds that smuggling rates generally rise in states after they adopt large cigarette tax increases. Smuggling rates have dropped in some states, however, often where neighboring states have higher cigarette tax rates. Table 1 shows the data for each state, comparing 2011 and 2006 smuggling rates and tax changes.
New York is the highest net importer of smuggled cigarettes, totaling 60.9 percent of the total cigarette market in the state. New York also has the highest state cigarette tax ($4.35 per pack), not counting the local New York City cigarette tax (an additional $1.50 per pack). Smuggling in New York has risen sharply since 2006 (+70 percent), as has the tax rate (+190 percent).”
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” Gun buyers have long demonstrated a tendency to stock up on weapons and ammunition ahead of possible changes to gun laws, and a so-called “Obama surge” in gun sales kicked off in the lead-up to Barack Obama’s first election victory in 2008.
There was a similar pick up in 2012 as a second Obama victory looked likely, and another rush on stores when it became clear the Obama administration would push for tighter gun control laws in the wake of the Sandy Hook school shooting last December.
In fact, the rush beginning in December has been high even by historic standards: the FBI conducted just under 2.8 million background checks on prospective gun buyers in December 2012, the highest number in any single month since records begin in November 1998. That’s more than triple the number it was running in in December 2002.
And the rush has continued through 2013 so far. Here’s the number of monthly background checks in the first three months of each year since 1998. This year looks set to be the busiest ever.”
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The Obama Mafia Gets The Private Sector To Do Its Anti-Gun Dirty Work
” The world’s largest industrial company, General Electric, received a very-generous deal in 2009 when the company received $139 billion in taxpayer money under provisions created to keep banks afloat. Though GE Capital is not classified as a bank, the company was able to secure the money because it owned two small Utah banking institutions.
In short, thanks to the loophole, GE was able to secure $139 billion while not, technically, being a bank. Further, GE was able to avoid the restrictions and stipulations given to banks.
Now, with money in hand, GE Capital is cutting off funding to gun shops as the Obama Administration continues its dying efforts to curtail Second Amendment protections.
Daniel Greenfield of Frontpagemag.com accurately summarized the danger of this unholy alliance:
“What we are seeing is the political consolidation of big business into an arm of government with misappropriated taxpayer money being used to pick winners and losers in the marketplace, with the ‘winners’ then doing the dirty work of the government and acting as its regulatory arm, destroying entire areas of business that the government has yet to be able to destroy on its own.” “
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“ Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was charged Monday with conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction.
A federal court spokesman said Tsarnaev, 19, made his first court appearance on the charges stemming from last week’s finish line bombing from his hospital bed at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.
“Approximately 30 seconds before the first explosion, he lifts his phone to his ear as if he is speaking on his cell phone, and keeps it there for approximately 18 seconds. A few seconds after he finishes the call, the large crowd of people around him can be seen reacting to the first explosion,” the document said.
“Virtually every head turns to the east [towards the finish line] and stares in that direction in apparent bewilderment and alarm. Bomber Two, virtually alone among the individuals in front of the restaurant, appears calm. He glances to the east and then calmly but rapidly begins moving west, away from the direction of the finish line.”
DISENCHANTED AMERICANS START LIFE OVER IN TROPICAL BELIZE
” “Not everyone believes this country is moving in the right direction. Staring down a future of increased tax burdens and shifting cultural values, you can keep chasing the old dream, or you can literally live on a beachfront property in a tropical setting with your own staff for $2,000 a month.” That’s the offer of Orange County Real Estate Company, BuyBelize.com, according to President, Bill Bannon.
“We’re seeing increased demand for our premium properties in Belize. When people come out and see first hand that they can afford a lifestyle they never thought possible in the U.S., the word starts to spread.”
Perhaps the strongest motivator for the new stream of Belizean converts is the favorable tax climate. BuyBelize.com reports, “A key consideration for a direct investment or development opportunity in Belize is the country’s tax climate. Belize has long been regarded as one of the T-7 Tax Havens and it is for this very reason that it is such an attractive option for investors. With the US in economic downturn many investors are looking to internationalize their finances and their portfolios for both tax and asset protection reasons. Belize offers a legitimate path to investors seeking to cover both of these bases.” “
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“It’s a terrible situation in Boston. And, unfortunately, … one gets the sense that this is more reflective of the ‘new normal,’ if you will,” he explained. “So much of society is changing so rapidly. We talk about a ‘new normal’ when it comes t0 climate change and adjusting to a change in the weather patterns. ‘New normal’ when it comes to public security in a post-9/11 world. Where these random acts of violence, which at one time were implausible, now seem all-too-frequent.”
Correct us if we are wrong but might this “New Normal” be a byproduct of an over-weaning , ineffective and corrupt government that takes more and more from society and contributes less and less to it’s actual well-being ?
It strikes us that this contrived idea of a “new normal” is a statist tool to justify ever-increasing government intrusion into the daily lives of Americans all in the name of “public safety ” .
In that regard it would appear that the statists among us have a very handy ally in the Jihadist movement and it comes as no surprise to find that the authorities will bend over backwards to dhimmie themselves on the altar of political correctness as the threat of terrorism is the perfect ” bogeyman” to use for the erosion of our liberties .
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