Showing posts with label Crime. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Crime. Show all posts

Friday, May 02, 2014

TOMMY VIETOR COMIX in "Dude, where's my van?"

Via our summer intern, @BiffSpackle and based on a true story.


Methinks Mr. Vietor will soon be back living in his van, down by the river.


JAY CARNEY: Man Without Shame

Guest post by Investor's Business Daily

Benghazi Cover-Up: The administration's tangled web of deceit now includes lying about prior lies as the White House press secretary tries to cover up its cover-up of why four Americans died in a terrorist attack.

No, that was not Winston Smith, the rewriter of history working for the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell's classic novel "1984," tap-dancing once again before a no-longer-sycophantic White House press corps. Rather, it was that master storyteller, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney.

Carney shamefully continued to insist that when then-U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice went on five Sunday talk shows days after the 2012 attack to offer an untrue story that Benghazi was the result of an inflammatory video, she was acting on the best intelligence offered by the intelligence community.

Carney said this knowing that Mike Morell, CIA deputy director two years ago, testified before Congress and said the video story did not come from CIA analysts.

As for the emails that showed the administration's motives for the story were political, to protect a president running for re-election and a secretary of state that wanted to be his successor, Carney offered his entry for 2014 Lie Of The Year: The emails obtained by the watchdog group Judicial Watch in a lawsuit specifically seeking Benghazi documents weren't really about Benghazi.

Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said in an interview on TheBlaze TV that the newly released emails bring questions about the slaughter "into the White House, and it shows that the idea that the CIA created the talking points that Susan Rice was using is a big fat lie."

In an argumentative exchange between Carney and ABC News' Jon Karl, Carney insisted that "if you look at the document in question here, it is not about Benghazi; it is about the protests around the Muslim world outside of U.S. embassies" and it was the general situation in the Middle East that Rice was being prepped for.

To his credit, Karl asked all the right questions in response to Carney's song and dance: "Why were you holding back this information? Why was this email not turned over to the Congress? Why was it not released when you released all the other emails?" and, of course, if what Carney was saying is true, why did it take a court case to get the unredacted email released?

Thursday, May 01, 2014

The Two Brothers at the Center of the Benghazi Cover-up

Guest post by Rob Bluey

The disclosure this week of a White House document on Benghazi has thrust CBS News into the spotlight for its coverage in the aftermath of the terrorist attack.

CBS News President David Rhodes is the brother of Ben Rhodes, the White House deputy national security adviser who drafted the newly released document about Benghazi just days after the Sept. 11, 2012, attack that killed four Americans. Ben Rhodes’s involvement was first revealed Tuesday when Judicial Watch obtained the document as part of a court case.

Last night, “CBS Evening News” did not cover the latest developments on the story, even though reporters peppered White House press secretary Jay Carney with questions earlier in the day.

The Washington Free Beacon reports CBS was the only evening newscast not to cover the latest details on Benghazi. The program instead covered “the weather, Oklahoma executions, and the arrest of a former Irish Republican Army operative.”

Earlier yesterday, Glenn Beck interviewed Sharyl Attkisson, a former CBS News investigative reporter, about the Benghazi disclosure and the Rhodes brothers. Attkisson revealed that she sought the same Ben Rhodes document that Judicial Watch eventually obtained. CBS News, however, would not take the matter to court.

“CBS wasn’t willing to file a [Freedom of Information Act] lawsuit when I was there to try to get some of these documents,” Attkisson said.

Toothless John Boehner and Inspector Clouseau Issa outraged over Benghazi emails: plan strongly worded memo

The Keystone GOPs -- and of course I refer to Speaker John Boehner and House Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa -- have been proven utterly incompetent and quite possibly complicit with the Obama administration's myriad scandals.

Their refusal to name a Select Investigative Committee -- for either Benghazi or the weaponization of the IRS -- is an outrage and now an embarrassment. A private organization, Judicial Watch, secured the "Smoking Gun" emails that tied the White House directly to the cover-up foisted upon the victims' families and the American public.

Boehner and Issa look like either buffoons or accomplices. Which is not to rule out the possibility that they are both.

Suitably humiliated, Boehner is squealing like a stuck pig, claiming he's outraged -- outraged, I say -- that the Obama administration lied, stonewalled and illegally withheld evidence from his toothless circle twerk.

Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) on Thursday called on Secretary of State John Kerry to testify as to why a newly revealed email prepping Susan Rice for a series of television interviews was not handed over to Congress last year... Boehner said the White House or someone in the administration must explain why the email was not included when Congress subpoenaed documents and emails last year about the deadly terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya, in 2012 that killed four Americans.

"If the White House won’t explain it, Secretary Kerry should come to the Capitol to explain why he defied an official congressional subpoena," Boehner said in a statement. "And the White House needs to understand that this investigation will not end until the entire truth is revealed and justice and accountability are served.”

Boehner said the withholding of the email constitutes the "most flagrant example yet of the administration's contempt for the American people’s right to know the truth about what happened when four Americans died in a fiery terrorist attack."

I'm surprised he didn't say, "It's a sad day" like his equally dimwitted counterpart in the Senate.

Darrell "Inspector Clouseau" (which is the nickname he prefers, I hear) Issa appears equally outraged!

[Issa] complained that the Benghazi documents recently released by the White House to Judicial Watch in response to their FOIA request, should have been turned over to Congress a year and a half ago.

...“The documents from Judicial Watch’s FOIA which was pursuant to our request more than over a year and a half ago, show a direct White House role outside of talking points prepared by the intelligence community... In pushing the false narrative that a YouTube video was responsible for the deaths of four brave Americans, it is disturbing and perhaps criminal that these documents — that documents like these — were hidden by the Obama administration from Congress and the public alike, particularly after Secretary Kerry pledged cooperation and the president himself told the American people in November of 2012 that, quote, ‘every bit of information we have on Benghazi has been provided,’” Issa said.

He noted that “the president himself said in November of 2012, that every bit of information that we have on Benghazi has been provided.”

I just emailed some of the Republican National Committee's public relations muckety-mucks, asking them what the official position is on a Select Committee on Benghazi. I fully expect an answer by 2037.

John "Amnesty" Boehner needs to go. He's not a leader; but he is a weakling, a coward, and a buffoon. And those are among his more positive traits. With all due respect.

As an aside, did you know that the last two credible challengers to John Boehner in Ohio's District 8 suddenly happened to lose their jobs?

But I'm sure that's just a coincidence.

But in case not, please support his conservative challenger, J.D. Winteregg.


Hat tip: BadBlue News.

Wednesday, April 30, 2014

Government-Media Incest Comix

Another keeper by our year-around summer intern, @BiffSpackle:


Just a reminder: you can always read the real, uncensored news at BadBlue. 24 x 7 x 365. Unfiltered by vintage media.


Obama's 3-Part Benghazi Strategy: Lie, Lie, and Lie Again

Guest post by Investor's Business Daily

Scandal: Newly obtained emails on Benghazi show then-U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice was coached by a key White House aide to lie and ignore the facts known and reported on the ground to make the administration look good.

The fish rots from the head, as the saying goes, and no further proof is needed than a Sept. 14, 2012, email from Ben Rhodes, an assistant to the president and deputy national security adviser for strategic communications, contained in more than 100 pages of documents released by Judicial Watch and obtained in a Freedom of Information Act request.

That email, with the subject line: "RE: PREP Call with Susan: Saturday at 4:00 p.m. ET," was sent to other key White House staffers such as then-Communications Director David Plouffe and Press Secretary Jay Carney the day before now-National Security Adviser Susan Rice made her whirlwind tour on five Sunday news show appearances to specifically and emphatically blame an Internet video for the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the American diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, in which U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other nationals were killed.

One of the goals listed in the emails was the need for Rice "to underscore that these protests are rooted in an Internet video, and not a broader failure or policy." She was also to "reinforce the President and Administration's strength and steadiness in dealing with difficult challenges." Her job was not to tell the truth, but to put lipstick on the Obama administration's Benghazi pig.

INTERNET SMACKDOWN O' THE DAY: Benghazi Edition

Over at The Daily Beast, investigative journalist Eli Lake has been doing yeoman's work exposing the Obama administration's scandals to otherwise clueless Newsweek readers (Lake is responsible for the Beast's inclusion on The Top 150 Conservative Websites, an admittedly controversial move on my part).

Lake's reporting on the latest Benghazi revelations is articulate, factual and damning. As any rational observer could have predicted -- and the latest emails now prove -- the White House lied to the faces of the Benghazi victims' families, lied to the American public, and lied to Congress about the nature of the attack.

Oh, and as an added bonus, President Obama and Hillary Clinton tossed an innocent filmmaker in the clink to reinforce their cover story.

No matter. The point of this particular post -- I'm rambling, I know -- is the commentary following Lake's revelations. An ever-dwindling number of Obama defenders, drones, sycophants, and other miscreants are still attempting to defend the indefensible.

Like this schmuck, who goes by the handle "Leftcoastnative" (a liberal in California? Who knew?):

Here's what republicans would have said if the Benghazi attack had happened on a republican president's watch, and if the Secretary of State's name hadn't been "Clinton."

(crickets.........crickets..........crickets........ crickets.........)

Somewhere deep in the recesses of congressional republicans' digital trash cans, are the deleted e-mails that said: "Whatever you do, don't mention the fact that we cut the State Department's security budget by half a billion dollars in the two yeas before Benghazi, and be sure we keep calling it a consulate even though we all know it was a CIA station."

"And just for the heck of it, let's not mention that Stevens was our point man with the Libyan rebels before he was Ambassador. It might muddy the water. Oh.....if someone asks what the heck the ambassador was doing at a lightly defended CIA station in Benghazi on the anniversary of 9/11 instead of tucked away safe and sound at the embassy in Tripoli, just pivot to the IRS or Fast and Furious."

Regarding the State Department's security budget, that tired canard -- first marketed by the dumbest Vice President in American history -- was long ago refuted by the State Department itself:

In testimony Wednesday before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Charlene Lamb, a deputy assistant secretary of state for diplomatic security, was asked, “Was there any budget consideration and lack of budget which led you not to increase the number of people in the security force there?”

Lamb responded, “No, sir.”

Recall that Lamb is the person who denied requests from the top diplomatic security officer in Libya to retain a 16-man team of military personnel who had been protecting diplomats.

But the funniest smackdown of Leftcoastnative's central contention was proferred by "F_this_State":

@Leftcoastnative: I think it's amazing that so many liberals know what would happen in this imaginary alternate universe where a republican got elected instead of obama. You should all really go find a scientist, tell them you can see into alternate realities, and then prove that you can. You'd win a nobel prize for sure, and advance humanity into a new golden age.

It's just amazing that so many people have access to all the multiple universes and never told anyone. The physics community is going to be ecstatic.

And as it pertains to Benghazi, my primary question remains unanswered.

The same Leftist twits who reveled in George W. Bush reading My Pet Goat for seven minutes during the 9/11 attacks (as it turns out, at Secret Service request to prepare for a safe evacuation route to Air Force One) haven't once asked what Barack Obama did for 12 hours after being notified his Ambassador was about to be kidnapped or murdered.


Hat tip: BadBlue News.

Tuesday, April 29, 2014

Krauthammer on the sad, amoral, and pathetic excuse for a human being known as Hillary Clinton

Dr. Krauthammer about sums it up.

I find the most scandalous element of this from purely just a human point of view, is the fact that the Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, with the bodies of the dead lying in front of her and with the families there, brought up the video and said a video with which we had nothing to do, and then according to one of the family members, when she went over to console that family member, she said ‘We’re going to get the guy who did the video.’


Now, that to me, if she knew that this was a phony story and I’m not sure I can understand how it would be otherwise, is a form of deception that I think is truly scandalous.

The back-story, for those who may have missed it, is here.


HIGH CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS: Administration's Benghazi Lies Were an "Effort to Protect, Re-Elect Obama"

The cover-up is confirmed.

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that on April 18, 2014, it obtained 41 new Benghazi-related State Department documents. They include a newly declassified email showing then-White House Deputy Strategic Communications Adviser Ben Rhodes and other Obama administration public relations officials attempting to orchestrate a campaign to “reinforce” President Obama and to portray the Benghazi consulate terrorist attack as being “rooted in an Internet video, and not a failure of policy.”  Other documents show that State Department officials initially described the incident as an “attack” and a possible kidnap attempt.

Cold-blooded lies invented to hide the fact that American heroes fought and died while awaiting a rescue that would never come.

Previously unreleased internal Obama administration emails show that a coordinated effort was made in the days following the Benghazi terror attacks to portray the incident as “rooted in [an] Internet video, and not [in] a broader failure or policy.”

Emails sent by senior White House adviser Ben Rhodes to other top administration officials reveal an effort to insulate President Barack Obama from the attacks that killed four Americans.

Rhodes sent this email to top White House officials such as David Plouffe and Jay Carney just a day before National Security Adviser Susan Rice made her infamous Sunday news show appearances to discuss the attack.

The “goal,” according to these emails, was “to underscore that these protests are rooted in an Internet video, and not a broader failure or policy.”

Bryan Preston well summarizes the implications for the Beltway Elite.

The “goal,” therefore, was to lie convincingly enough to get the president re-elected. It takes a special coldness to tell that lie with the bodies of the dead in coffins behind you. Hillary Clinton managed that without a trace of a conscience to slow her down...

...It’s well to remember at this point who Ben Rhodes is. According to the White House, he is assistant to the president and deputy national security adviser for strategic communications and speechwriting. That sounds nice, but he has no career in the military or intelligence. Rhodes is a career partisan Democrat and Obama loyalist who was put on the National Security Council because he is a loyalist to the man. Not the nation. Or the facts on the ground in Libya or anywhere else. Rhodes’ loyalty belongs to Barack Obama.

He needs to be compelled to testify under oath about all this.

The latest revelation is, in Roger L. Simon's opinion, the lynchpin for an impeachment trial.

The levels of criminality involved in this are mind-boggling. Everyone from Ben Rhodes to Hillary Clinton to Jay Carney to Susan Rice to Mike Morell to Barack Obama and on and on must explain themselves minute-by-minute. American “liberals” and their media consorts should search their souls. People died here...

...Anyone who now considers Benghazi a “fake scandal” is a either a complete liar or a moron. This new release of emails thanks to Judicial Watch is literally a call to arms. We will now see if there is even a figment of honesty in our mainstream media and if our elected representatives are to be trusted in any way.

It is our duty as citizens to put as pressure on those representatives as possible to carry through this investigation to its natural conclusion — impeachment.

In light of this discovery, will the Speaker of the House, John Boehner, finally name a Select Committee on Benghazi?

Will Darrell "Inspector Clouseau" Issa explain why a watchdog group like Judicial Watch -- and not his unfocused and possibly incompetent Oversight Committee -- is doing all of the heavy lifting in this investigation?

Will the media finally admit that they are co-conspirators in the cover-up?

As Preston concludes:

It was not about a movie. The terrorists who attacked the embassy in Cairo wanted to force the U.S. to release the blind sheikh who masterminded the 1993 World Trade Center attack. What did the terrorists who attacked Benghazi shortly thereafter want? Why did they attack that facility, and did they know that the U.S. ambassador was there? Where was Barack Obama while Ben Rhodes was directing a cover-up? Why was the military not allowed to respond?

I have my theories.


Hat tip: BadBlue News

Sunday, April 27, 2014

ATTENTION VOTER ID OPPONENTS: 44,000 Additional Bogus Voters Discovered in Virginia

Guest post by Kenric Ward

RICHMOND, Va. – A crosscheck of voter rolls in Virginia and Maryland turned up 44,000 people registered in both states, a vote-integrity group reported Wednesday.

And that’s just the beginning.

“The Virginia Voters Alliance is investigating how to identify voters who are registered and vote in Virginia but live in the states that surround us,” Alliance President Reagan George told the State Board of Elections.

George acknowledged that the number of voters who actually cast multiple ballots is relatively small. In the case of Maryland and Virginia, he revealed that 164 people voted in both states during the 2012 election.

But George said his group will expand their search for duplicate voters in the District of Columbia, Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, North Carolina, Tennessee, West Virginia and Georgia.

“We are also determining the best way to identify non-citizens who have registered to vote and may have voted in past elections,” George said.

Saturday, April 26, 2014

CBO Purposely Understating Next Decade's Social Security Deficits by... One Trillion Dollars

Financial blogger Bruce Krasting has discovered a teensy, weensy accounting discrepancy between the Congressional Budget Office and the Social Security Administration. It only amounts to a hidden trillion dollar deficit... over the next 10 years.

As Krasting asks, "What's a trillion among friends?"

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) came out with its latest baseline estimates for Social Security (SS) this week... As an ex Wall Streeter I always go to the ‘Cash Flow’ numbers first, as cash flow is what drives most companies to success or ruin. The same rules apply for SS. I was surprised at the results presented by the CBO...

...CBO’s cash flow number for 2013 is a surplus of $38 [billion]... The difference between CBO and SS on the critical cash flow numbers is $106B in just fiscal 2013. The reason for this big discrepancy is the accounting treatment for interest. CBO includes interest income as a cash item, SS does not...

...Should interest be included in the calculation of cash flow for SS? CBO says “yes”, I would agree with SS, and say “no”. Interest is paid in scrip [IOUs] – not cash... CBO and SS disagree on the most basic definition of financial health – Net Cash Flow. CBO has projections going out to 2024. This is CBO’s forecast of Net Cash Flow as compared to the accounting treatment for interest at SS:


The cummulative difference between CBO and SSA is $1.2 Trillion over the the next decade! ... Why does CBO have such a dramatically different assessment of Net Cash Flow for SS? I can’t answer that. I did contact CBO for an explanation, I never heard from them.

And you never will, Bruce. You never will.


Hat tip: BadBlue Money News.

Wednesday, April 23, 2014

AMORAL DECEPTION: The Democrats' "Voting Rights" Fraud

By Hans von Spakovsky and Peter McGinley

Last Friday, in a speech at Al Sharpton’s National Action Network conference, President Obama proudly announced that the Justice Department had taken on more than 100 voting rights cases since 2009. The problem with that claim is that, since 2009, the Justice Department has taken on only 39 voting rights cases—and as former Voting Section lawyer Christian Adams points out, only 13 were related to protecting minority voting rights. And, with respect to some of the cases in which the department has been involved, it lost spectacularly—such as its false claim that South Carolina’s voter ID law was discriminatory.

Perhaps President Obama misspoke when he overstated the number of voting rights cases by more than 60—or perhaps he was misinformed by his Attorney General, Eric Holder. In fact, the ever-criticized Bush administration had a much better enforcement record with much higher case numbers than the Obama administration, as was outlined in a report released by the Justice Department’s Inspector General in March 2013. President Obama also made no mention of his administration’s unjustified dismissal of the voter intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party—that would, after all, not fit the narrative he is trying to propagate. Regardless, President Obama’s exaggerated claims come as no surprise, especially given the setting of this particular speech.

Al Sharpton’s National Action Network conference in New York City, where Bertha Lewis, the former CEO of ACORN, an organization convicted of numerous voter registration frauds, participated in a panel discussion earlier in the week, was the perfect arena for the President’s inaccurate claims. In her remarks, Lewis declared that there is a “great fear” of what she called the “darker…new majority” that she says wields power in America. She went on to say that supporters of voter ID laws are attempting to implement a “South African apartheid-type thing where the masters of the universe still rule.” She is apparently unaware that Nelson Mandela, South Africa’s former president, supported voter ID laws or that South Africa today has much stricter ID requirements than any state in America.

CLOWARD-PIVEN: 18 Stats That Prove That Government Dependence Has Reached Epidemic Levels

Guest post by Michael Snyder

Did you know that the number of Americans getting benefits from the federal government each month exceeds the number of full-time workers in the private sector by more than 60 million? In other words, the number of people that are taking money out of the system is far greater than the number of people that are putting money into the system. And did you know that nearly 70 percent of all of the money that the federal government spends goes toward entitlement and welfare programs? When it comes to the transfer of wealth, nobody does it on a grander scale than the U.S. government. Most of what the government does involves taking money from some people and giving it to other people. In fact, at this point that is the primary function of the federal government.

Just check out the chart below. It comes from the Heritage Foundation, and it shows that 69 percent of all federal money is spent either on entitlements or on welfare programs…

So when people tell you that the main reason why we are being taxed into oblivion is so that we can “build roads” and provide “public services”, they are lying to you. The main reason why the government taxes you so much is so that they can take your money and give it to someone else.

We have become a nation that is completely and totally addicted to government money. The following are 18 stats that prove that government dependence has reached epidemic levels…

#1 According to an analysis of U.S. government numbers conducted by Terrence P. Jeffrey, there are 86 million full-time private sector workers in the United States paying taxes to support the government, and nearly 148 million Americans that are receiving benefits from the government each month. How long can such a lopsided system possibly continue?

#2 Ten years ago, the number of women in the U.S. that had jobs outnumbered the number of women in the U.S. on food stamps by more than a 2 to 1 margin. But now the number of women in the U.S. on food stamps actually exceeds the number of women that have jobs.

#3 The U.S. government has spent an astounding 3.7 trillion dollars on welfare programs over the past five years.

Sunday, April 20, 2014

GUN CONTROL STILL WORKING OUT SWIMMINGLY IN CHICAGO: 9 Dead, 26 Others Wounded Over Easter Weekend

What was the old saw about guns and outlaws? It would appear that the corrupt, dimwitted Democrats running Chicago never heard it and can't learn it.

At least nine people have been killed and 26 others wounded in shootings across Chicago since Friday... Of the 35 people shot, 10 of them were shot on Easter Sunday.

The weekend's latest shooting took place around 1 p.m. Sunday in the 2800 block of South Sawyer Avenue, killed two people.

A 33-year-old man was fatally shot in the head and a 19-year-old man was shot in the chest.

The 19-year-old man was taken in critical condition to an area hospital, but police said he later died of his injuries... Police said the two were traveling in a vehicle when an orange hummer [sic] drove alongside and fired shots.

...Just after 5 a.m. Sunday two people were found shot to death in a Garfield Ridge home, police said.

The two were found unresponsive just after 5 a.m. Sunday inside a home in the the 5300 block of South Austin Avenue, said Chicago Police News Affairs Officer Jose Estrada.

I wonder how many of the 9 dead will be recategorized as "noncriminal death investigations" as part of Rahm Emanual and Gerry McCarthy's ongoing scam?


RAHM EMANUEL AT IT AGAIN: Chicago's crime rate reportedly doctored to hide Democrat policy failures

Fascinating investigative report in Chicago Magazine describes the malevolent behavior of the Emanuel administration and the corrupt Democrat leadership in Cook County. Those declining crime rates in Chicagoland?

Chicago conducted a 12-month examination of the Chicago Police Department’s crime statistics going back several years, poring through public and internal police records and interviewing crime victims, criminologists, and police sources of various ranks. We identified 10 people, including Groves, who were beaten, burned, suffocated, or shot to death in 2013 and whose cases were reclassified as death investigations, downgraded to more minor crimes, or even closed as noncriminal incidents—all for illogical or, at best, unclear reasons.

This troubling practice goes far beyond murders, documents and interviews reveal. Chicago found dozens of other crimes, including serious felonies such as robberies, burglaries, and assaults, that were misclassified, downgraded to wrist-slap offenses, or made to vanish altogether.

To be clear, this skulduggery can not be laid on the feet of rank-and-file police force. It is a policy that can only come from the top.

Saturday, April 19, 2014

FOURTH BRANCH OF GOVERNMENT: Federal Bureaucracy Says Attorney-Client Privilege is Dead

Guest post by Simon Black

In the Land of the Free, people grow up hearing a lot of things about their freedom.

You're told that you live in the freest country on the planet. You're told that other nations 'hate you' for your freedom.

And you're told that you have the most open and fair justice system in the world.

This justice system is supposedly founded on bedrock principles-- things like a defendant being presumed innocent until proven guilty. The right to due process and an impartial hearing. The right to counsel and attorney-client privilege.

Yet each of these core pillars has been systematically dismantled over the years:

1. So that it can operate with impunity outside of the law, the federal government has set up its own secret FISA courts to rubber stamp NSA surveillance.

According to data obtained by the Electronic Privacy Information Center, of the nearly 34,000 surveillance requests made to FISA courts in the last 35-years, only ELEVEN have been rejected.

Unsurprising given that FISA courts only hear the case from the government's perspective. It is literally a one-sided argument in FISA courts. Hardly an impartial hearing, no?

All Enemies, Foreign and Domestic

Another @BiffSpackle instant classic.


Related: March 2009: Obama's "Civilian National Security Force" resurfaces.

Thursday, April 17, 2014

"CIVILIAN NATIONAL SECURITY FORCE": Obama's Goals Become Clear with his Militarized Government

Guest post by Investor's Business Daily

Federal Fire Power: Instead of putting a lien on the property of Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, the Bureau of Land Management surrounded his ranch with 200 armed agents. It's not the only agency with a private army.

Back in 2008, candidate Barack Obama slipped a little-noticed line in a speech, proposing a national police force reporting straight to him.

"We cannot continue to rely only on our military," he said. "We've got to have a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded."

As our military is slowly decimated by his policies and budget cuts — and with federal agencies armed to the teeth — we may be seeing what he had in mind at the ranch of a 67-year-old Nevadan.

Agents of a federal agency that many Americans were surprised to see so heavily armed even herded American citizens into "First Amendment zones," another surprise to those who thought the Constitution made the entire U.S. such a zone.

"The government's option," said Fox News contributor and former Judge Andrew Napolitano, "is to take the amount of money (Bundy) owes them and docket it — that is, file the lien on his property. The federal government could have done that.

"Instead, they wanted this show of force. They swooped in . . . with assault rifles aimed and ready and stole this guy's property, they stole his cattle. They didn't have the right to do that. That's theft, and they should have been arrested by state officials."

The Environmental Protection Agency also has a private army. In late August 2013, armed EPA agents joined agents of the Alaska Environmental Crimes Task Force and swarmed gold mines near Chicken in the Last Frontier State.

HILARIOUS: IRS Hack Lois Lerner Plays the Victim Card

Guest post by Logan Albright

The saga of Lois Lerner, the IRS official who oversaw the unjust persecution of conservative and tea party organizations during the 2012 election, continues to be one of the most interesting and infuriating cases of political corruption in recent memory. After twice invoking the Fifth Amendment to avoid testifying on what she knew and when she knew it, Ms. Lerner now faces the prospect of jail time, having been officially held in contempt of Congress and recommended for criminal prosecution by the Department of Justice.

Yet one of the most astonishing features of this whole circus has been Lerner’s alleged rationale for refusing to cooperate the investigation and help right the wrongs of her agency. Presented with an opportunity to display honesty and humility in order to root out political corruption, Lerner instead took refuge in cowardice.

Lerner’s attorney claimed that she feared that giving an open testimony before the congressional committee would place her life in danger. “Ms. Lerner has been the subject of numerous threats on her life and safety, and on the life and safety of her family. I left with the staff recent evidence of those threats,” he wrote in a letter to Darrell Issa, the committee chairman.

It is a bit rich for someone who participated in the wholesale abuse of government power to oppress ordinary citizens to now paint herself as a victim. This is a typical, and wholly predictable, tactic of the left. Whenever they are caught doing something unseemly, it is never their fault. Progressives are incapable of seeing themselves as anything other than victims, and their opponents as anything other than oppressors. Any other perspective would shatter their self-image as noble underdogs, fighting the evil and greedy capitalists for the common good.

THE REAL REASON FOR THE BUNDY RANCH TAKEOVER ATTEMPT: Solyndra on a Massive Scale

Guest post by James Simpson

Speaking to a local TV news program Monday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada declared: “This isn’t over.” And he is certainly correct. The showdown between BLM and Cliven Bundy – the last rancher in Clark County, Nev. – was but the latest battle in a long-running conflict.

Supposedly at issue was the desert tortoise, a reptile on the endangered species list that purportedly could not coexist on the land with Bundy’s cattle. But why, many asked, would the turtle suddenly be threatened by animals it had cohabited with for the 100-plus years the Bundy ranch has been in operation?

A BLM document unearthed last week discusses mitigation strategies for the Dry Lake Solar Energy Zone, just southwest of the Bundy ranch. The “mitigation strategy” proposed to use the grazing lands near the Bundy ranch as a kind of sanctuary for the desert tortoise, because the entire region is slated for a large number of solar, wind and geothermal energy generation facilities.

The solar projects will obliterate most of the turtle’s natural habitat.

Bloggers quickly made a connection between the effort to remove Bundy’s cattle and a solar energy project in Southern Nevada financed by the communist Chinese energy firm ENN. It was to be the largest solar farm in the U.S.

Reid had lobbied heavily for the company’s business, even traveling to China. Reid’s son, Rory Reid, formerly a Clark County commissioner, became a lobbyist for ENN, and the Senate majority leader’s former senior adviser, Neil Kornze, now leads the BLM.

But the solar energy complex financed by the communist Chinese was not at the heart of the Bundy Ranch fiasco after all. The project died last year.

However, the BLM’s library of renewable energy projects revealed it was only one of more than 50 solar, wind and geothermal projects planned for Nevada, California, Arizona and other Western states. Reid was focused on at least one, and maybe more, of the projects, much closer to the Bundy ranch.