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In 2007 candidate Barack Hussein Obama politicized the practices of the Bush Administration of spying on suspected terrorists by saying that his administration would never track the private lives of anyone who was not directly suspected of having committed a crime. He guaranteed he would never wiretap or track American citizens.
As we demonstrated in our article of May 16, 2012, True Champions of American Blacks, the Democratic Party has a long history of doing everything in its power to curtail the advancement of America’s minorities. This destructive assault is well documented in this video>.
What began as a decades-long violent opposition to American blacks and other ethnic and religious minorities (Germans, Italians, Catholics, Mormons, etc.) was eventually transformed into an exploitation campaign wherein blacks and other minorities were converted to a voting coalition with the sudden and wholesale “adoption” of them by the Democratic Party. Indeed, the same party that had blocked voting and civil rights acts fought for by the Republicans in Congress and the White House, now pretended to be the friends and advocates of minorities, promising them social and economic elevation and fulfillment of the American dream—in exchange for their votes and their autonomy.
As a direct result of Democratic policies, American blacks were immediately forced into lifetime welfare status and herded into ghettos called government housing. For decades our black brothers and sisters have endured an assault on their spirit that few could survive, and we have seen the results in cyclical poverty, tens of millions of abortions, the breakdown of the black American family, the wholesale dependency on drugs and alcohol, etc.
We saw a government sign the other day that explained to park visitors that by giving the bears handouts, it would make them dependent on handouts and destroy their ability to provide for themselves and to thrive. This sign was printed by the same government that has made an entire race of Americans entirely dependent on its handouts, and has re-enslaved them in the process.
“We liberals made a terrible mistake, going back 30 years ago. We made a dependent society because we thought we were doing the right thing. We had things like public housing, and we had welfare payments, and all that bred dependence.” Bob Beckel, Liberal Commentator.
So what has the Democratic Party done for American blacks and Hispanics lately?
Since Barack Hussein Obama and his Democrats entirely took over the government just 4 years ago, the average American family has lost 40% of its wealth and assets (worse for minorities), with 11 million family homes sinking into the quicksand of foreclosure during Obama’s tenure in office, and the rate climbing fast in 2012, much more of the remaining wealth will be destroyed by the time the next president takes the oath of office.
Since taking office Obama has seen the addition of over 6 million Americans to the poverty rolls, with those on food stamps doubling to 47 million, and unemployment averaging 9%–15.5% if you figure in those who have dropped off the rolls after their 99 weeks of benefits expired and they just gave up.
Which Americans are bearing the brunt of Obama’s socialist takeover? American minorities, of course.
Under Obama we are now suffering the highest, longest-running unemployment rate since the Great Depression. The average unemployment rate under George Bush was 5.2%, and candidate Obama blasted him for that number. President Obama promised Americans that if they would support his $900 billion spending stimulus package, unemployment would sink to less than 5.6%. As with every leftist promise, it was a lie.
Here are some real world numbers of the past 3.5 years that the president can’t spin:
Every week the “New Jobs” reports come out, and with fanfare the administration announces a number like 80,000, which is actually a seasonally adjusted number, not reflective of the reality of the dismal job market, and most of which are mere temp jobs, not career positions with benefits. Those numbers are quietly downgraded every week, uncovered by the mainstream media.
What’s worse, is that population growth demands 200,000 new jobs, just to keep up with the expanding workforce. Obama’s tiresome whining that it is a republican economy, not his, is belied by George Bush’s low unemployment rates, not to mention Ronald Reagan’s million job a month growth at this point in his administration, in a much smaller population and following the horrific economic crash under President Carter and his Democrats.
American Blacks and Hispanics have been led down a dangerous path by the Pied Pipers of the left. Their only hope for a brighter future is to reject the new plantation bosses of the Democratic Party and to move to traditional American values and politics, which provide personal liberty and economic freedom for all.
PUBLIUS
Dozens of Republican lawmakers have joined in accusing the Environmental Protection Agency of “apparent bias” against conservative groups following a claim that it routinely showed favoritism to liberal organizations.
The allegations were first made by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a conservative Washington, D.C., think tank. It claimed the EPA was not being fair as it weighed whether to charge fees to groups seeking information via Freedom of Information Act requests.
Its research showed liberal groups have their fees for documents waived about 90 percent of the time, while conservative groups are denied fee waivers about 90 percent of the time.
“This activity calls into question the objectivity of the FOIA employees at EPA and undermines public confidence in an agency that is charged with protecting our air and water,” a group of nearly three dozen House Republicans wrote in a letter to EPA Acting Administrator Bob Perciasepe.
Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., chairman of the Republican Study Committee, said in a separate statement that the findings are “not a coincidence” and track with the kind of targeting conducted by the IRS against conservative groups.
“Politics should not play a role in approving or denying fee waivers, and the EPA clearly crossed the line by injecting bias and favoritism into their decision making process,” he said.
In the letter, he and other lawmakers asked a string of questions on the EPA policy governing fee waivers, including who is in charge of that determination.
The letter follows efforts by the House Energy and Commerce Committee and the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee to probe the allegations.
Perciasepe told the House Energy and Commerce Committee on May 16 that “our policy is to treat everybody the same,” and the agency is considering pursuing an investigation.
In a statement to Fox News, the EPA said: “The Office of Inspector General received from the Environmental Protection Agency the official request to look into this matter just over a week ago, so the request is currently under review by the OIG at this early stage.”
Published June 08, 2013 / FoxNews.com / Fox News’ Eric Shawn contributed to this report.
Tea Party groups are barnstorming state capitals across the country to stop an Obama administration-backed initiative to impose federal math and English education standards on public schools.
Though conservatives have long argued that state and local officials can best make decisions on K-12 education, the Tea Party’s opposition to the federal program — Common Core State Standards — represents a pivot for the movement, which started in 2009 to promote lower taxes and smaller government. And they are making gains, as some states consider putting the program on hold.
“We have a renewed sense of vigor,” Lee Ann Burkholder, founder of the 9/12 Patriots in York, Pa., told FoxNews.com. “And when it comes to your kids or grandkids, people really get fired up.”
The Tea Party is already riled up following revelations that the IRS had been singling out its groups over the past few years.
On the education issue, Burkholder said her group held a meeting this spring that attracted 400 people, double the usual number. The meeting was followed by a bus trip to the state capital in which members wore matching T-shirts and pressed their case to lawmakers.
Groups have pressured state legislatures and school boards from Michigan to Georgia to drop their support or defund the bipartisan-backed program they’ve dubbed “ObamaCore,” putting heat on Republican governors in particular. It’s not so much the actual standards they object to but the fact that it’s coming from Washington as opposed to the state level, and could lead to tracking student data across the country.
Lawmakers, include several seeking reelection, have taken notice, especially after hearing about Tea Party groups vowing to back challengers to those who continue to support Common Core.
Seven state legislatures purportedly have proposed legislation to at least delay implementation. And two states with Republican governors — Indiana and Pennsylvania — have put the program on hold.
In addition, Georgia Republican Gov. Nathan Deal, up for reelection in 2014, issued an executive order last month titled Reaffirming State Sovereignty over Education that in part said: “No educational standards shall be imposed on Georgia by the federal government.”
Deal later told The Washington Post: “We didn’t see it coming with the intensity that it is, apparently all across the country.”
Common Core was designed by governors and state education officials with input from teachers and others, with much of its funding coming from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
So far, 45 states and the District of Columbia have adopted the standards, which are scheduled to go into effect next year.
The Tea Party effort got a boost when FreedomWorks got involved.
The well-funded national group has devoted a variety of resources to raising awareness about the issue, an effort that includes putting several information pages on its website and hosting a national teleconference Wednesday night.
“Common Core dictates what (teachers) teach, how they teach it and when they teach it,” Whitney Neal, a FreedomWorks grassroots organizer, said. “Every child is treated the same.”
However, Common Core states the program only sets standards for math and English language arts, not a national curriculum, and says teachers play a big role.
“Local teachers, principals, superintendents and others will decide how the standards are to be met,” the group says on its website. “Teachers will continue to devise lesson plans and tailor instruction to the individual needs of the students in their classrooms.”
Neal and others suggest states were pigeonholed into accepting the program so they could get much-needed Race to the Top education grants in Obama’s 2009 stimulus package. And they are concerned about the gathering of student-assessment data for comparison among students, schools, districts and states.
“It’s very creepy,” Neal said.
Potential 2016 presidential candidate and former Florida Republican Gov. Jeb Bush has landed in the middle of the controversy.
A champion of education reform, including support of home schooling and school vouchers, he has essentially asked lawmakers to resist the Tea Party pressure.
“The Common Cause State Standards are clear and straight forward,” he told business leaders last month in Michigan. “Do not pull back. Please do not pull back from high, lofty standards.”
By Joseph Weber / Published June 07, 2013 / FoxNews.com
The New York Times editorial board, which twice endorsed President Obama and has championed many planks of his agenda, on Thursday turned on the president over the government’s mass collection of phone data — saying the administration has “lost all credibility.”
The grey lady’s editorial section lately has shown frustration with the administration’s civil liberties record. It has criticized the escalation of the lethal drone program, and it lashed out after the Justice Department acknowledged seizing reporters’ phone records last month.
The report that the National Security Agency has been collecting phone records from millions of Verizon subscribers appeared to be the last straw.
An editorial published late Thursday
said the administration was using the “same platitude” it uses in every case of overreach — that “terrorists are a real menace and you should just trust us.”
The editorial continued: “Those reassurances have never been persuasive — whether on secret warrants to scoop up a news agency’s phone records or secret orders to kill an American suspected of terrorism — especially coming from a president who once promised transparency and accountability. The administration has now lost all credibility.”
The editorial board claimed Obama “is proving the truism that the executive will use any power it is given and very likely abuse it.”
The language was a far cry from the Times’ Oct. 23, 2008, endorsement of then-candidate Obama. At the time, the Times praised Obama’s “cool head and sound judgment,” and said he was “putting real flesh on his early promises of hope and change.”
Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle voiced concern on Thursday about the records collection effort. It was first reported by The Guardian newspaper, which obtained a copy of a secret court order allowing the government to collect phone call information – though not monitor the calls themselves — directly from Verizon. Civil liberties-conscious lawmakers like Sen. Mark Udall, D-Colo., and Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., cried foul, as did the American Civil Liberties Union.
Lawmakers in the loop on the program tried to assuage concerns, however. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., who lead the Senate intelligence committee, defended the program as necessary to keep the country safe.
White House Deputy Press Secretary Josh Earnest also said there is “extensive oversight” on such activity.
“The order reprinted overnight does not allow the government to listen in on anyone’s telephone calls. The information acquired does not include the content of any communications or the name of any subscriber. It relates exclusively to call details, such as a telephone number or the length of a telephone call,” he said.
The Times editorial described this explanation as “lame” — “as though there would be the slightest difficulty in matching numbers to names.”
“Essentially, the administration is saying that without any individual suspicion of wrongdoing, the government is allowed to know who Americans are calling every time they make a phone call, for how long they talk and from where,” the Times editorial board wrote.
The Times editorial board has long opposed The Patriot Act, which was the legal basis for the records collection, and reiterated that opposition in light of the latest revelations.
But the law’s author, Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., said Thursday that this application of the law was “never the intent.”
Published June 06, 2013 / FoxNews.com
The Obama administration has been collecting the phone records of millions of U.S. customers of Verizon under a top secret court order, according to a British newspaper report which raised new and troubling privacy questions.
A senior law enforcement official pushed back on the report early Thursday morning, telling Fox News that the Justice Department has not yet received a referral from the intelligence community, meaning “the process has not started yet.”
But the administration has not denied the existence of the order. While the administration defended its authority to seize phone records — and stressed that it does not monitor calls — one civil liberties group called this the “broadest surveillance order to ever have been issued.”
“It requires no level of suspicion and applies to all Verizon subscribers anywhere in the U.S.,” the Center for Constitutional Rights said in a statement.
The report in the Guardian newspaper follows revelations that the Justice Department was seizing the phone records of journalists, including at Fox News, in the course of leak probes.
The order, a copy of which apparently was obtained by The Guardian, reportedly was granted by the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court on April 25 and is good until July 19.
It requires Verizon, one of the nation’s largest telecommunications companies, on an “ongoing, daily basis” to give the NSA information on all telephone calls in its systems, both within the U.S. and between the U.S. and other countries.
The text of the order, as published by The Guardian, says that “the Custodian of Records shall produce to the National Security Agency (NSA) upon service of this Order, and continue production on an ongoing daily basis thereafter for the duration of this Order, unless otherwise ordered by the Court, an electronic copy of the” the records in question.
The newspaper claims the document shows for the first time that under the Obama administration the communication records of millions of U.S. citizens were being collected indiscriminately and in bulk, regardless of whether they were suspected of any wrongdoing.
Neither Fox News nor the Associated Press could authenticate the report as of early Thursday.
Under the terms of the order, the phone numbers of both parties on a call are handed over, as is location data, call duration, unique identifiers, and the time and duration of all calls, The Guardian said.
A senior administration official, while not confirming the report, told Fox News a FISA court order would not allow the government to listen in on anyone’s phone calls, saying that all the government would be able to collect would be metadata such as the telephone number or the length of the call.
The official also said that any court orders issued under FISA are subject to “strict controls” to ensure the rights of citizens are not violated.
“Information of the sort described in the Guardian article has been a critical tool in protecting the nation from terrorist threats to the United States, as it allows counterterrorism personnel to discover whether known or suspected terrorists have been in contact with other persons who may be engaged in terrorist activities, particularly people located inside the United States,” the official said.
But Jameel Jaffer, American Civil Liberties Union deputy legal director, called the measure “beyond Orwellian.”
“From a civil liberties perspective, the program could hardly be any more alarming. It’s a program in which some untold number of innocent people have been put under the constant surveillance of government agents,” Jaffer said in a statement.
If true, the broad, unlimited nature of the records being handed over to the NSA is unusual. FISA court orders typically direct the production of records pertaining to a specific named target suspected of being an agent of a terrorist group or foreign state, or a finite set of individually named targets. NSA warrantless wiretapping during the George W. Bush administration after the 9/11 attacks was very controversial.
The FISA court order, signed by Judge Roger Vinson, compelled Verizon to produce to the NSA electronic copies of “all call detail records or telephony [sic] metadata created by Verizon for communications between the United States and abroad” or “wholly within the United States, including local telephone calls,” The Guardian said.
The law on which the order explicitly relies is the “business records” provision of the USA Patriot Act.
Verizon Communications Inc. listed 121 million customers in its first-quarter earnings report this April — 98.9 million wireless customers, 11.7 million residential phone lines and about 10 million commercial lines. The court order didn’t specify which type of phone customers’ records were being tracked.
Published June 06, 2013 / FoxNews.com / Fox News’ Joy Lin and Jake Gibson and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador who drew criticism for her initial account of the Benghazi terror attack, has been promoted to national security adviser, a senior White House official confirmed to Fox News.
Rice will replace Tom Donilon, who is resigning from the post. Rice, the current U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, does not need Senate confirmation for the job.
The ambassador had earlier been considered in the running for the secretary of State post, which does require confirmation, but withdrew from consideration amid the continuing fallout over her role following the Benghazi attack.
Rice went on five Sunday shows after the attack and claimed it was triggered by protests over an anti-Islam film, an explanation many lawmakers said at the time was inaccurate. The administration later acknowledged there were no protests on the ground in Benghazi, though they have not officially ruled out that protests elsewhere may have played a role.
The administration, under pressure from the media and Republicans, last month released the so-called “talking points” which showed officials drafting and re-drafting their storyline in advance of Rice’s appearance. The intelligence community did cite demonstrations — however, references to militant and Islamic extremist groups, and to prior security warnings and incidents, were ultimately stripped out after objections from various administration officials.
It’s unclear what level of involvement Rice had in this process. Officials, speaking in her defense, have said she was merely citing the assessment she was given on Sept. 16.
A senior official told Fox News that Donilon decided to leave the post after his wife took a job that involves a lot of foreign travel. He has been in the administration since the start, first as deputy national security adviser.
Fox News’ Ed Henry contributed to this report.
It’s not just the IRS.
A second federal agency is facing a probe and accusations of political bias over its alleged targeting of conservative groups.
The allegations concern the Environmental Protection Agency, which is being accused of trying to charge conservative groups fees while largely exempting liberal groups. The fees applied to Freedom of Information Act requests — allegedly, the EPA waived them for liberal groups far more often than it did for conservative ones.
The allegations are under investigation by the House Energy and Commerce Committee and the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which is also holding hearings on the Internal Revenue Service targeting of conservative groups.
“I don’t think it is fair at all. It is not fair to the American taxpayer — the American taxpayer should expect and demand that the EPA treats everyone equally in regard to these requests,” said Pennsylvania Republican Rep. Tim Murphy, a member of the Energy and Commerce Committee. “This cannot be tolerated. As we see more federal agencies with this kind of bias, it is and should be a concern for all of us.”
Research by the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), a conservative Washington, D.C., think tank, claims that the political bias is routine when it comes to deciding which groups are charged fees. Christopher Horner, senior fellow at CEI, said liberal groups have their fees for documents waived about 90 percent of the time, in contrast with conservative groups that it claims are denied fee waivers about 90 percent of the time.
“The idea is to throw hurdles in our way,” charged Horner, who says he decided to look into the fee structure after the EPA repeatedly turned down his group for waivers.
“In 20 cases of ours, since the beginning of last year, we were expressly denied, or denied by them simply refusing to respond, in 18 out of 20 cases,” said Horner, explaining that the batting percentage for fees waived in favor of liberal groups is overwhelming.
“Earth Justice was batting 17 out of 19, the Sierra Club was the worst, at 70 percent granted, 11 out of 15. You add up some other groups and we found that 75 out of 82 groups granted, because these are the groups that the EPA has decided are the favored groups.”
The EPA has denied any favoritism.
Acting EPA Administrator Bob Perciasepe told the House Energy and Commerce Committee on May 16 that “our policy is to treat everybody the same,” and the agency is considering pursuing an investigation.
In a statement to Fox News, the EPA said: “The Office of Inspector General received from the Environmental Protection Agency the official request to look into this matter just over a week ago, so the request is currently under review by the OIG at this early stage.”
But Horner, who has studied federal government agency practices as the author of “The Liberal War on Transparency: Confessions of a Freedom of Information ‘Criminal,'” says that charging fees or denying information requests is a underhanded method that government agencies use to try and stymie the free flow of information or political dissent.
“This is no different than denying a group that you don’t agree with … whether you are the IRS or the EPA, their tax-exempt status,” said Horner.
“You’re talking about essentially making or breaking them, or at a minimum, snuffing out their ability to pursue their objectives.”
Murphy said treating groups differently is simply not right.
“We are hoping that the acting administrator of the EPA can already send a message out to his people that this will not be tolerated,” Murphy said. “It is wrong. Similar with the people with the IRS who testified that, ‘well some of things may not be illegal,’ they can still be wrong. People expect their government to not be acting in these ways, but to be fair and just and truthful in these informational quests and in their investigations.”
By Eric Shawn / Published June 04, 2013 / FoxNews.com
Conservative groups who claim they were targeted by the Internal Revenue Service are getting their say on Capitol Hill as hearings on the growing agency scandals continue Tuesday.The hearing before the House Ways and Means Committee will feature leaders of groups allegedly targeted by the IRS, including several Tea Party groups and an anti-gay marriage organization that has claimed its donor details were inappropriately released.
Several of the six groups scheduled to testify say their applications for tax-exempt status were delayed while agents asked intrusive questions that the IRS has since acknowledged were inappropriate.
At a hearing Monday, the watchdog who exposed the IRS’ targeting testified nobody in the Ohio office being blamed for the scandal would tell his investigators who directed the program, as the new IRS chief vowed to “get to the bottom” of that growing question.
Nearly a month after the scandal broke, the issue of who directed agents in Cincinnati to single out Tea Party and other groups is perhaps the most glaring unanswered question. Inspector General J. Russell George, at a House appropriations subcommittee hearing, revealed Monday that his audit of the agency tried — unsuccessfully — to get to the root of the targeting.
“We did pose that question and no one would acknowledge who, if anyone, provided that direction,” he said.
Danny Werfel, testifying for the first time in his new role as acting IRS commissioner, acknowledged: “We have to get to the bottom of it.” However, he also said he has not yet asked who ordered the program.
George later testified that the scandal itself is “unprecedented.” He cited past attempts by the Nixon administration to use the IRS for inappropriate purposes, but said this program was unprecedented.
The two officials testified as Republican lawmakers voiced skepticism that the program started and ended with a few low-level staffers in Cincinnati. Fueling the skepticism, partial transcripts released over the weekend of an interview with an IRS field agent in that division showed the agent claiming Washington guided the program.
Rep. Hal Rogers, R-Ky., chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, said “we will not rest” until they find out who is responsible.
Though George has been repeatedly pressed by Democrats to say that higher-ups were not involved, he stressed Monday that the issue of political appointees’ involvement was “not the focus of our audit.” George said there’s no evidence of White House involvement, but added “I cannot say that” about the possibility of IRS appointee involvement.
The IRS is now under fire for a pair of controversies — the targeting program, but also a forthcoming inspector general report expected to show the agency spent roughly $50 million on conferences from 2010 to 2012.
Republican leaders of the appropriations subcommittee holding Monday’s hearing made clear that the two scandals will result in the agency’s budget being put under the microscope.
Rogers said the committee might even consider placing “conditions” on the agency’s budget allowing Congress to monitor its spending. He said he’s “absolutely appalled” by the conference spending.
Rep. Ander Crenshaw, R-Fla., head of the subcommittee hosting the hearing, said Congress will “have to think very carefully about the amount of money that we provide to the IRS.”
He noted that the agency has requested $12.9 billion for 2014 — or $1 billion more than it got for 2013.
“We cannot in good conscience continue to provide hard-earned taxpayers’ dollars and have them use those funds to abuse the rights of American citizens,” he said.
Werfel acknowledged that the public trust “has been violated,” and said he is committed to restoring it.
Democratic Rep. Jose Serrano, though, cautioned against cutting funding to the IRS. The New York lawmaker said doing so is “asking for more trouble,” though he blasted the IRS program as inappropriate.
Meanwhile, the White House on Monday stood by claims that administration officials were not involved in the IRS’ targeting of Tea Party groups.
White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said Monday the administration is “concerned” about both the conference spending and the targeting program. But he defended the administration following claims by an unnamed IRS employee that the targeting program was directed by Washington.
The inspector general, Carney said, “both in testimony and in his report, found no evidence that outsiders — those outside the IRS — influenced the behavior that took place there.”
He said: “That is the conclusion of the independent inspector general. And we certainly have seen no other evidence to contradict that.”
Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., on Sunday called Carney a “paid liar” as he discussed the IRS situation. Carney, though, said Monday he’s “not going to get into a back-and-forth with” Issa.
Published June 04, 2013 / FoxNews.com / The Associated Press contributed to this report
Some of President Obama’s political appointees, including the Cabinet secretary for the Health and Human Services Department, are using secret government email accounts they say are necessary to prevent their inboxes from being overwhelmed with unwanted messages, according to a review by The Associated Press.
The scope of using the secret accounts across government remains a mystery: Most U.S. agencies have failed to turn over lists of political appointees’ email addresses, which the AP sought under the Freedom of Information Act more than three months ago. The Labor Department initially asked the AP to pay more than $1 million for its email addresses.
The AP asked for the addresses following last year’s disclosures that the former administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency had used separate email accounts at work. The practice is separate from officials who use personal, non-government email accounts for work, which generally is discouraged — but often happens anyway — due to laws requiring that most federal records be preserved.
The secret email accounts complicate an agency’s legal responsibilities to find and turn over emails in response to congressional or internal investigations, civil lawsuits or public records requests because employees assigned to compile such responses would necessarily need to know about the accounts to search them. Secret accounts also drive perceptions that government officials are trying to hide actions or decisions.
“What happens when that person doesn’t work there anymore? He leaves and someone makes a request (to review emails) in two years,” said Kel McClanahan, executive director of National Security Counselors, an open government group. “Who’s going to know to search the other accounts? You would hope that agencies doing this would keep a list of aliases in a desk drawer, but you know that isn’t happening.”
Agencies where the AP so far has identified secret addresses, including the Labor Department and HHS, said maintaining non-public email accounts allows senior officials to keep separate their internal messages with agency employees from emails they exchange with the public. They also said public and non-public accounts are always searched in response to official requests and the records are provided as necessary.
The AP couldn’t independently verify the practice. It searched hundreds of pages of government emails previously released under the open records law and found only one instance of a published email with a secret address: an email from Labor Department spokesman Carl Fillichio to 34 coworkers in 2010 was turned over to an advocacy group, Americans for Limited Government. It included as one recipient the non-public address for Seth D. Harris, currently the acting labor secretary, who maintains at least three separate email accounts.
Google can’t find any reference on the Internet to the secret address for HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. Congressional oversight committees told the AP they were unfamiliar with the non-public government addresses identified so far by the AP.
Ten agencies have not yet turned over lists of email addresses, including the Environmental Protection Agency; the Pentagon; and the departments of Veterans Affairs, Transportation, Treasury, Justice, Housing and Urban Development, Homeland Security, Commerce and Agriculture. All have said they are working on a response to the AP.
White House spokesman Eric Schultz declined to comment.
A Treasury Department spokeswoman, Marissa Hopkins Secreto, referred inquiries to the agency’s FOIA office, which said its technology department was still searching for the email addresses. Other departments, including Homeland Security, did not respond to questions from the AP about the delays of nearly three months. The Pentagon said it may have an answer by later this summer.
The Health and Human Services Department initially turned over to the AP the email addresses for roughly 240 appointees — except none of the email accounts for Sebelius, even one for her already published on its website. After the AP objected, it turned over three of Sebelius’ email addresses, including a secret one. It asked the AP not to publish the address, which it said she used to conduct day-to-day business at the department. Most of the 240 political appointees at HHS appeared to be using only public government accounts.
The AP decided to publish the secret address for Sebelius — KGS2@hhs.gov — over the government’s objections because the secretary is a high-ranking civil servant who oversees not only major agencies like the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services but also the implementation of Obama’s signature health care law. Her public email address is Kathleen.Sebelius@hhs.gov.
At least two other senior HHS officials — including Donald Berwick, former head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and Gary Cohen, a deputy administrator in charge of implementing health insurance reform — also have secret government email addresses, according to the records obtained by the AP.
The Interior Department gave the AP a list of about 100 government email addresses for political appointees who work there but none for the interior secretary at the time, Ken Salazar, who has since resigned. Spokeswoman Jessica Kershaw said Salazar maintained only one email address while serving as secretary but she would not disclose it. She said the AP should ask for it under the Freedom of Information Act, which would take months longer.
The Labor Department initially asked the AP to pay just over $1.03 million when the AP asked for email addresses of political appointees there. It said it needed pull 2,236 computer backup tapes from its archives and pay 50 people to pore over old records. Those costs included three weeks to identify tapes and ship them to a vendor, and pay each person $2,500 for nearly a month’s work. But under the department’s own FOIA rules — which it cited in its letter to the AP — it is prohibited from charging news organizations any costs except for photocopies after the first 100 pages. The department said it would take 14 weeks to find the emails if the AP had paid the money.
Fillichio later acknowledged that the $1.03 million bill was a mistake and provided the AP with email addresses for the agency’s Senate-confirmed appointees, including three addresses for Harris, the acting secretary. His secret address was harris.sd@dol.gov. His other accounts were one for use with labor employees and the public, and another to send mass emails to the entire Labor Department, outside groups and the public. The Labor Department said it did not object to the AP publishing any of Harris’ email addresses.
In addition to the email addresses, the AP also sought records government-wide about decisions to create separate email accounts. But the FOIA director at HHS, Robert Eckert, said the agency couldn’t provide such emails without undergoing “an extensive and elongated department-wide search.” He also said there were “no mechanisms in place to determine if such requests for the creation of secondary email accounts were submitted by the approximately 242 political appointees within HHS.”
Late last year, the EPA’s critics — including Republicans in Congress — accused former EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson of using an email account under the name “Richard Windsor” to sidestep disclosure rules. The EPA said emails Jackson sent using her Windsor alias were turned over under open records requests. The agency’s inspector general is investigating the use of such accounts, after being asked to do so by Congress.
An EPA spokeswoman described Jackson’s alternate email address as “an everyday, working email account of the administrator to communicate with staff and other government officials.” It was later determined that Jackson also used the email address to correspond sometimes with environmentalists outside government and at least in some cases did not correct a misperception among outsiders they were corresponding with a government employee named Richard Windsor.
Although the EPA’s inspector general is investigating the agency’s use of secret email accounts, it is not reviewing whether emails from Jackson’s secret account were released as required under the Freedom of Information Act.
The EPA’s secret email accounts were revealed last fall by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a conservative Washington think tank that was tipped off about Jackson’s alias by an insider and later noticed it in documents it obtained the FOIA. The EPA said its policy was to disclose in such documents that “Richard Windsor” was actually the EPA administrator.
Courts have consistently set a high bar for the government to withhold public officials’ records under the federal privacy rules. A federal judge, Marilyn Hall Patel of California, said in August 2010 that “persons who have placed themselves in the public light” — such as through politics or voluntarily participation in the public arena — have a “significantly diminished privacy interest than others.” Her ruling was part of a case in which a journalist sought FBI records, but was denied.
“We’re talking about an email address, and an email address given to an individual by the government to conduct official business is not private,” said Aaron Mackey, a FOIA attorney with the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. He said that’s different than, for example, confidential information, such as a Social Security number.
Under the law, citizens and foreigners may use the FOIA to compel the government to turn over copies of federal records for zero or little cost. Anyone who seeks information through the law is generally supposed to get it unless disclosure would hurt national security, violate personal privacy or expose business secrets or confidential decision-making in certain areas.
Obama pledged during his first week in office to make government more transparent and open. The nation’s signature open-records law, he said in a memo to his Cabinet, would be “administered with a clear presumption: In the face of doubt, openness prevails.”
Published June 04, 2013 / Associated Press
There is a growing divide in the United States, as there is throughout the world, regarding the role of governments in economies.
Following the phenomenal success of “The American Experiment” of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, the world saw the rise of socialism in the early part of the Twentieth Century, when the economies of China and Russia were usurped by the mass murder of many millions of their citizens who owned or produced more than the bare minimum.
This “redistribution” of wealth was sold to the common people as “fairness,” and the Red Army was simultaneously forgiven its atrocities as the blood of millions stained the Eastern Hemisphere.
After World War II, less militaristic forms of socialism spread to the west, first in Europe, then to Banana Republics where dictators quickly rose to power on the backs of local revolutionaries they slew once “independence” was gained.
To understand Socialism, we should contrast it with its opposing economic system—Capitalism. Capitalism is a system where individuality reigns supreme, and independent persons utilize whatever resources they can develop, individually or in a voluntary aggregate, to generate the production of goods and services, which are sold to others who need them as an unhampered market requires. This is the system that catapulted America to world leadership in mere decades.
Socialism, on the other hand, is a system where government officials dictate every aspect of economic production and distribution. Government bureaucrats ascertain and determine what products will be produced, which services will be required, and which people will provide them. Socialism decries individualism, citing the accumulation of economic and social power into the hands of a few as a natural result of unbridled performance.
Socialism was proved a flawed system when those nations who had adopted it collapsed under their own weight, or as in the case of China, moved toward capitalism to save their faltering economies. The social impact on the citizens of those countries was much worse than the economic difficulties created by centralized control, however. The concentration of wealth and power under capitalism was eclipsed under socialism, where a mere handful dictated terms of life to the masses and lived like potentates compared with the working class.
Leftists in the U.S. have long eyed the wealth produced by America’s economic engine and have waged a hundred year war to siphon its prosperity off to socialistic programs. Indeed, power has shifted from the individual American to state and federal bureaucracies as individual liberties have been subordinated to government institutions through burdensome taxation and regulation. This loss of individual liberties has been accomplished in the name of “fairness” by the same methods employed in China and the U.S.S.R., only on a slower course.
President Barack Hussein Obama outlines in his own autobiographies his affinity with socialism, and his disdain for what he terms colonialists (essentially, America’s founders). He has surrounded himself with socialists and communists his entire life, including during his presidency. His open agenda has been to subordinate and nationalize large portions of the American economy, and his insatiable appetite for spending the money of his fellow Americans, present and future, knows no practical bounds.
Obama, and all of those on the left who fantasize about a socialistic utopia covering our once-great land, should take some lessons in reality from history—recent at that. Lacking the wisdom to do that, they should reconsider the sage words of U.K.’s former Prime Minister:
“The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.” ― Margaret Thatcher
PUBLIUS
Secretary of State John Kerry said Monday that the Obama administration would sign a controversial U.N. treaty on arms regulation, despite bipartisan resistance in Congress from members concerned it could lead to new gun control measures in the U.S.
Kerry, releasing a written statement as the U.N. treaty opened for signature Monday, said the U.S. “welcomes” the next phase for the treaty, which the U.N. General Assembly approved on April 2.
“We look forward to signing it as soon as the process of conforming the official translations is completed satisfactorily,” he said. Kerry called the treaty “an important contribution to efforts to stem the illicit trade in conventional weapons, which fuels conflict, empowers violent extremists, and contributes to violations of human rights.”
The treaty would require countries that ratify it to establish national regulations to control the transfer of conventional arms and components and to regulate arms brokers, but it will not explicitly control the domestic use of weapons in any country.
Still, gun-rights supporters on Capitol Hill warn the treaty could be used as the basis for additional gun regulations inside the U.S. and have threatened not to ratify.
Last week, 130 members of Congress signed a letter to Obama and Kerry urging them to reject the measure for this and other reasons.
“As your review of the treaty continues, we strongly encourage your administration to recognize its textual, inherent and procedural flaws, to uphold our country’s constitutional protections of civilian firearms ownership, and to defend the sovereignty of the United States, and thus to decide not to sign this treaty,” the lawmakers wrote.
The chance of adoption by the U.S. is slim, even if Obama goes ahead and signs it — as early as Monday, or possibly months down the road. A majority of Senate members have come out against the treaty. A two-thirds majority would be needed in the Senate to ratify.
What impact the treaty will have in curbing the estimated $60 billion global arms trade remains to be seen. The U.N. treaty will take effect after 50 countries ratify it, and a lot will depend on which ones ratify and which ones don’t, and how stringently it is implemented.
The United Nations has organized a high-level signing ceremony at U.N. headquarters on Monday — a sign of the treaty’s global importance — and several dozen countries are expected to sign, the first step to ratification.
The Control Arms Coalition, which includes hundreds of non-governmental organizations in more than 100 countries that promoted an Arms Trade Treaty, said it expects many of the world’s top arms exporters — including Britain, Germany and France — to sign alongside emerging exporters such as Brazil and Mexico. It said the United States is expected to sign later this year.
The coalition noted that more than 500,000 people are killed by armed violence every year and predicted that “history will be made” when many U.N. members sign the treaty, which it says is designed “to protect millions living in daily fear of armed violence and at risk of rape, assault, displacement and death.”
Many violence-wracked countries, including Congo and South Sudan, are also expected to sign. The coalition said their signature — and ratification — will make it more difficult for illicit arms to cross borders.
The treaty covers battle tanks, armored combat vehicles, large-caliber artillery systems, combat aircraft, attack helicopters, warships, missiles and missile launchers, and small arms and light weapons.
It prohibits states that ratify it from transferring conventional weapons if they violate arms embargoes or if they promote acts of genocide, crimes against humanity or war crimes. The treaty also prohibits the export of conventional arms if they could be used in attacks on civilians or civilian buildings such as schools and hospitals.
In addition, the treaty requires countries to take measures to prevent the diversion of conventional weapons to the illicit market. This is among the provisions that gun-rights supporters in Congress are concerned about.
Published June 03, 2013 / FoxNews.com / The Associated Press contributed to this report.
A staggering 100,000 Christians are killed annually because of their faith, according to the Vatican — and several human rights groups claim such anti-Christian violence is on the rise in countries like Pakistan, Nigeria and Egypt.
“Credible research has reached the shocking conclusion that an estimate of more than 100,000 Christians are violently killed because of some relation to their faith every year,” Vatican spokesman Monsieur Silvano Maria Tomassi said Tuesday in a radio address to the United Nations Human Rights Council.
“Other Christians and other believers are subjected to forced displacement, to the destruction of their places of worship, to rape and to the abduction of their leaders, as it recently happened in the case of Bishops Yohanna Ibrahim and Boulos Yaziji, in Aleppo [Syria],” Tomassi said.
While several human rights groups could not comment specifically on the Vatican’s number, organizations, like Persecution.Org, said the persecutions of Christians have been on the rise in places like Africa and the Middle East over the last decade.
“Two-hundred million Christians currently live under persecution. It’s absolutely on the rise,” Jeff King, the group’s president, told FoxNews.com.
“It’s easing in the old Communist world and it’s rising in the Islamic world,” King said, noting in particular countries like Egypt, Pakistan and Nigeria. King said that the first major killing spree in recent years happened between 1998 and 2003, when he claims 10,000 Christians were murdered in Indonesia alone during those years.
Last March, a Nigerian Christian leader was killed when suspected Muslim militants burst into his home and shot him. Two members of Islamic militant group Boko Haram shot Faye Pama Mysa, a Pentecostal pastor and secretary of the Christian Association of Nigeria, in his home Wednesday, according to multiple reports. The killing happened just after President Goodluck Jonathan declared a state of emergency because of ongoing attacks in Africa’s most populous nation.
King spoke of another example in which young Christian girls were forced into sex slavery in Bangladesh. More than 140 children were rescued from Islamic training centers over the last year — with the majority of girls being targeted because of their religion, according to King.
“Two-hundred million Christians currently live under persecution. It’s absolutely on the rise.” – Jeff King, president of Persecution.Org
John Eibner, CEO of Christian Solidarity International, has raised grave concerns over what he calls “religious cleansing” in Syria.
“Religious minorities are under constant threat in Syria,” Eibner told FoxNews.com. “If things continue as they have been for the past two years in Syria, with an increase in religious cleansing, it’s reasonable to think that there will be no more Christian communities or other religious minorities in the near future.”
“Anti-Christian violence is on the increase throughout the world, especially throughout North Africa and the Middle East,” he added. “It’s hard for me to say with precision what the numbers are, but without doubt anti-Christian violence is on the increase.”
Dinah Pokempner, general counsel for Human Rights Watch, was not able to independently verify the Vatican’s figure, but said, “I think there’s little doubt that every week, every day, someone in the world is being persecuted – even to the point of losing their life – based on their religion.”
“Persecution is a daily event on the basis of religion,” Pokempner said. “This persecution affects Christians just as it does Muslims, Jews, Bahá’ís and people of other faiths.”
A spokesman with the Vatican could not be immediately reached for comment.
Jane Zimmerman, the U.S. State Department’s Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, said in a statement that: “While I’m unfamiliar with the methodology that was used to reach that number, we have certainly followed numerous cases in recent years in which Christians and others of many faiths have been attacked or killed on account of their religious beliefs.”
“Whatever the numbers, no one should die for professing or practicing their faith, whatever that faith is,” Zimmerman told FoxNews.com. “The United States firmly supports the freedom to profess and practice one’s faith, to believe or not to believe, and to change one’s beliefs. As Secretary Kerry said on May 20, religious freedom ‘is a birthright of every human being.'”
By Cristina Corbin / Published June 02, 2013 / FoxNews.com
A government watchdog has found that the Internal Revenue Service spent about $50 million to hold at least 220 conferences for employees between 2010 and 2012, a House committee said Sunday.
The excerpts provided no direct evidence that Washington had ordered that screening. The top Democrat on that panel, Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, contested that, saying none of the employees interviewed have so far identified any IRS officials in Washington as ordering that targeting.
The conference spending included $4 million for an August 2010 gathering in Anaheim, Calif., for which the agency did not negotiate lower room rates, even though that is standard government practice, according to a statement by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
Instead, some of the 2,600 attendees received benefits, including baseball tickets and stays in presidential suites that normally cost $1,500 to $3,500 per night. In addition, 15 outside speakers were paid a total of $135,000 in fees, with one paid $17,000 to talk about “leadership through art,” the House committee said.
The report by the Treasury Department’s inspector general, set to be released Tuesday, comes as the IRS already is facing bipartisan criticism after agency officials disclosed they had targeted tea party and other conservative groups.
Agency officials and the Obama administration have said that treatment was inappropriate, but the political tempest is showing no signs of ebbing and has put the White House on the defensive.
Three congressional committees are investigating, a Justice Department criminal investigation is under way, President Barack Obama has replaced the IRS’ acting commissioner and two other top officials have stepped aside.
The Treasury Department released a statement Sunday saying the administration “has already taken aggressive and dramatic action to reduce conference spending.”
IRS spokeswoman Michelle Eldridge said Sunday that spending on large agency conferences with 50 or more participants fell from $37.6 million in the 2010 budget year to $4.9 million in 2012. The government’s fiscal year begins Oct. 1 the previous calendar year.
On Friday, the new acting commissioner, Danny Werfel, released a statement on the forthcoming report criticizing the Anaheim meeting.
“This conference is an unfortunate vestige from a prior era,” Werfel said. “While there were legitimate reasons for holding the meeting, many of the expenses associated with it were inappropriate and should not have occurred.”
Issa’s committee also released excerpts from interviews congressional investigators conducted last week with two IRS employees from the agency’s Cincinnati office. The excerpts omitted the names of those interviewed and provided no specifics about individuals in Washington who may have been involved.
One of the IRS employees said in an excerpt that they were told by a supervisor that the need to collect the reports came from Washington, and said that in early 2010 the Cincinnati office had sent copies of seven of the cases to Washington.
The other said “all my direction” came from an official the transcript said was in Washington.
One of the workers also expressed skepticism that the Cincinnati office originated the screening without direction from Washington, according to the excerpts.
Appearing Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Issa said this conflicted with White House comments that have referred to misconduct by IRS workers in Cincinnati. Without naming White House spokesman Jay Carney, Issa said the administration’s “paid liar, their spokesperson” is “still making up things about what happens in calling this local rogue.”
He added, “This is a problem that was coordinated in all likelihood right out of Washington headquarters and we’re getting to proving it.”
In briefings with reporters, Carney has not referred to the Cincinnati IRS office as “rogue.”
“He’s good at throwing out outlandish charges but it’s unclear what he’s saying he lied about,” White House spokesman Eric Schultz said of Issa’s remark.
Cummings said Issa’s comments conflicted with a Treasury inspector general’s report that provided no evidence that the Cincinnati office received orders on targeting from anyone else.
“Rather than lobbing unsubstantiated conclusions on national television for political reasons, we need to work in a bipartisan way to follow the facts where they lead,” Cummings said.
The interviews with IRS employees were conducted by Republican and Democratic aides on Issa’s committee and also involved aides from both parties from the House Ways and Means Committee.
One of the employees was a lower-level worker while the other was higher-ranked, said one congressional aide, but the committee did not release their names or titles.
The IRS Cincinnati office handles applications from around the country for tax-exempt status. A Treasury inspector general’s report in May said employees there began searching for applications from tea party and conservative groups in their hunt for organizations that primarily do work related to election campaigns.
That May report blamed “ineffective management” for letting that screening occur for more than 18 months between 2010 and 2012. But that report — and three hearings by congressional committees — have produced no specific evidence that the Cincinnati workers were ordered by anyone in Washington to target conservatives.
The latest report on IRS conferences will be the subject of a hearing Thursday by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
Karen Kraushaar, spokeswoman for the inspector general’s office, said public discussion of a report before it is released “serves no purpose and should generally be avoided.”
Werfel is scheduled to make his first congressional appearance as acting commissioner Monday when he appears before a subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee.
According to congressional aides briefed by the inspector general’s office, the IRS did not formally seek competitive bids for the city where the agency’s 2010 conference was held, for the event planner who assisted the agency, or for the speakers.
The aides, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe a confidential congressional briefing, said other benefits given to some attendees at the Anaheim IRS conference included vouchers for free drinks and some tickets to attend Angels baseball games.
Two videos produced by the IRS were shown at the Anaheim conference. In one, agency employees did a parody of “Star Trek” while dressed like the TV show’s characters; the second shows more than a dozen IRS workers dancing on a stage. The two videos cost the agency more than $50,000 to make, aides said.
The lecturer who spoke about leadership through art produced six paintings of subjects that included Abraham Lincoln, Michael Jordan, the rock singer Bono and the Statue of Liberty, the aides said.
Published June 02, 2013 / Associated Press
Interviews with a regional IRS agent involved in the agency targeting Tea Party groups for additional vetting appear to contradict the White House assertion that rogue agents, not the administration, were behind the effort, according to partial transcripts released Sunday by the House Oversight and Government Affairs Committee.
The agent in the Cincinnati office, where the targeting took place, told congressional investigators that he or she was told in March 2010 by a supervisor to search for Tea Party groups applying for tax-exempt status and that “Washington, D.C., wanted some cases.”
The agent said that by April the office had held up roughly 40 cases and at least seven were sent to Washington. In addition, the agent said, a second IRS employee asked for information on two other specific applicants in which Washington was interested.
When asked by congressional investigators about allegations and press reports about two agents in Cincinnati essentially being responsible for the targeting, the agent responded: “It’s impossible. As an agent we are controlled by many, many people. We have to submit many, many reports. So the chance of two agents being rogue and doing things like that could never happen. … They were basically throwing us underneath the bus.”
The administration has denied involvement in the scandal, repeatedly saying it was limited to only the two Cincinnati agents.
White House Press Secretary Jay Carney has appeared to give conflicting statements on the scandal, including whether top White House officials knew only of the inspector general’s probe into the targeting of politically conservative groups or if they were told about the bombshell findings when briefed in late April.
Carney also said the top officials decided not to tell President Obama to avoid any possibility of the White House interfering in the investigation.
On Sunday, California Republican Rep. Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Affair Committee, accused Carney of being untruthful about the scandal.
“Their paid liar, their spokesperson … he’s still making up things about what happened and calling this a local rogue,” Issa said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
The congressman also provided the network with a copy of the transcript in which the agent said he or she followed directions from Washington. However, when asked if the Tea Party scrutiny came directly from Washington, the agency said “I believe so.”
Officials have also said the targeting was not politically motivated, though it appeared to last until nearly the end of the 2012 election cycle and did not appear to target liberal-leaning political groups.
At least three congressional committees are already investigating the scandal, which widened last week to include revelations about the agency spending roughly $60,000 on team-building videos that spoofed the TV shows “Star Trek” and “Gilligan’s Island.” New IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel has vowed to conduct a full investigation.
In addition, the Treasury Department’s inspector general released a preliminary report this weekend that shows the IRS spent about $50 million to hold at least 220 conferences for employees from 2010 to 2012, according to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, with the full report to be released later this week.
Steve Miller, the acting IRS director when the scandal broke, resigned May 15 after Obama and Treasury Secretary Jack Lew asked for his resignation.
The chairman of the House Judiciary Committee said Sunday his panel is investigating remarks Attorney General Eric Holder made under oath regarding the Justice Department accessing a Fox News reporter’s phone logs and emails.
“It’s fair to say we’re investigating the conflict in his remarks, those remarks were made under oath,” Chairman Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., told “Fox News Sunday.”
However, he did not say the committee is investigating Holder for perjury.
Goodlatte said the committee has sent Holder a letter asking him to explain why his remarks before Congress in May seem to conflict with the language of an affidavit he signed in 2010 asking a judge to give investigators access to Fox reporter James Rosen’s communications and movement within State Department headquarters.
“We also think it’s very important that the attorney general be afforded the opportunity to respond, so we will wait to pass judgment on that until we receive his response,” the congressman said.
At issue is Holder signing the 2010 affidavit that refers to Rosen as a “potential criminal liability” for seeking classified information from a State Department contract employee and states investigators had probable cause to believe Rosen committed a crime by conspiring with the employee or by aiding and abetting the purported leak.
Holder then told Congress on May 15 that prosecuting the press was “not something I’ve ever been involved in, heard of, or would think would be wise policy.”
On Sunday, Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., told Fox that Holder’s testimony and his actions in 2010 are consistent because the government had probable cause to believe Rosen violated the Espionage Act of 1917.
“But that doesn’t mean the Justice Department ever intended to prosecute Rosen,” said Van Hollen, an attorney. “There are no false allegations in this affidavit that I know of.”
The House committee sent the letter to Holder on May 29 and gave him until Wednesday to respond.
Published June 02, 2013 / FoxNews.com
The top staffer for Florida Democratic Rep. Joe Garcia resigned this weekend after being implicated in a voting-fraud scheme.
Chief of Staff Jeffrey Garcia resigned Friday after taking responsibility for the plot and being asked by the congressman for his resignation.
A “well-intentioned attempt to maximize voter turnout” – Rep. Joe Garcia, D-Fla.
The congressman said Saturday he thinks the plot was a “well-intentioned attempt to maximize voter turnout” and that the system is “prone to fraud.”
Several hours before the resignation, law-enforcement investigators raided the homes of Giancarlo Sopo, the congressman’s communications director, and John Estes, his 2012 campaign manager.
Authorities are investigating a sophisticated scheme to manipulate last year’s primary elections by submitting hundreds of fraudulent absentee-ballot requests.
Garcia won the primary and later defeated incumbent Republican David Rivera in the general election.
That primary resulted in a separate, federal corruption investigation into whether Rivera had ties to the illegally funded primary campaign of one of Garcia’s opponents. Rivera has denied any wrongdoing.
Published June 02, 2013 / FoxNews.com / The Associated Press contributed to this report.
An Arizona mother imprisoned in Mexico on a drug-smuggling charge was released from prison late Thursday, a family spokesman tells Fox News.
Yanira Maldonado walked out of the jail late Thursday night, after court officials reviewed security footage that showed her and her husband boarding a bus in Mexico with only blankets, bottles of water and her purse in hand.
Maldonado hugged her husband Gary and was greeted by well-wishers after she left the lockup and officials closed the jail doors behind her.
She spoke briefly, thanking U.S. state department officials, her husband, her lawyers and prison workers who made her stay comfortable.
“Many thanks to everyone, especially my God who let me go free, my family, my children, who with their help, I was able to survive this test,” she said.
The family’s lawyer in Nogales, Jose Francisco Benitez Paz, said a judge determined Thursday that she was no longer a suspect and all allegations against her were dropped. The couple planned to immediately return to Arizona, he said.
“She lived through a nightmare,” he said after her release.
Maldonado’s release came hours after court officials reviewed security footage that showed the couple boarding a commercial bus traveling from Mexico to Phoenix with only blankets, bottles of water and her purse in hand.
U.S. politicians portrayed her as a victim of a corrupt judicial system and demanded her release.
The judge had until late Friday to decide whether to free her or send her to another prison in Mexico while state officials continued to build their case. Prosecutors could appeal the ruling.
Maldonado was arrested by the Mexican military last week after they found nearly 12 pounds (5.4 kilograms) of pot under her seat during a security checkpoint.
Benitez noted that it was a fairly sophisticated smuggling effort that included packets of drugs attached to the seat bottoms with metal hooks — a task that would have been impossible for a passenger. He said witness testimony and the surveillance video showed Yanira Maldonado was innocent.
“There is justice in this country,” he said.
Gary Maldonado said he was originally arrested after the pot was found under his wife’s bus seat, but after Yanira Maldonado begged the soldiers to allow her to come along to serve as a translator, the military officials decided to release him and arrest her instead. He said authorities originally demanded $5,000 for his wife’s release, but the bribe fell through.
“Here, we are guilty until you are proven innocent,” he said after the court hearing.
The Maldonados were traveling home to the Phoenix suburb of Goodyear after attending her aunt’s funeral in the city of Los Mochis when they were arrested.
The bus passed through at least two checkpoints on the way to the border without incident. In the town of Querobabi in the border state of Sonora, all the passengers were ordered off the bus and a soldier searched the interior as they waited. The soldier exited and told his superiors that packets of drugs had been found under seat 39, Yanira Maldonado’s, and another seat, number 42. Her husband was in seat 40.
Gary Maldonado said a man sitting behind them on the bus fled during the inspection. He said the man might have been the true owner of the drugs.
About 40 people were on the bus before the inspection, but Gary Maldonado said he was the only passenger who appeared American.
Mexican officials provided local media with photos that they said were of the packages Maldonado is accused of smuggling. Each was about 5 inches high and 20 inches wide, roughly the width of a bus seat. The marijuana was packed into plastic bags and wrapped in tan packing tape.
The couple had previously traveled on commercial buses through Mexico because they felt it was safer than driving a personal vehicle.
Yanira Maldonado is a naturalized U.S. citizen who was born in Mexico, her family said. The couple celebrated their first wedding anniversary while she was jailed.
Drug traffickers have increasingly been using passenger buses to move U.S.-bound drugs through Mexico. Federal agents and soldiers have set up checkpoints along Mexico’s main highways and have routinely seized cocaine, marijuana, heroin and more from buses.
Mexico’s justice system is carried out largely in secret, with proceedings done almost entirely in writing.
Four years ago, Mexico decriminalized the possession of small amounts of marijuana, cocaine and heroin, but it still has stiff penalties for drug trafficking.
Mexican law doesn’t specify a minimum or maximum sentence in drug crimes and leaves it up to the judge to decide how long the sentence should be, said Jose Luis Manjarrez, a spokesman for federal prosecutors in Mexico.
On Wednesday, an army lieutenant, a private and another sergeant were supposed to appear in court but they did not show up. The army did not explain why, the couple’s lawyer said.
A search of court records in Arizona didn’t turn up any drug-related charges against Yanira or Gary Maldonado.
The Maldonados said they will likely avoid future trips to Mexico.
“Maybe in time,” she said.
Published May 31, 2013 / FoxNews.com / The Associated Press contributed to this report.
The former head of the IRS visited the White House more times than any Cabinet member, according to an analysis by The Daily Caller, raising questions about the nature of those visits — particularly around the time the agency was targeting conservative groups.
The Caller analysis of White House visitor logs showed former IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman visited the White House at least 157 times under the Obama administration.
Even Attorney General Eric Holder, one of Obama’s closest allies, visited only 62 times according to the records.
The records may not reflect every single visit, as some officials do not have to sign in every time they come to the White House.
But they could lend weight to concerns voiced by lawmakers at a hearing last week about the frequency of Shulman’s White House contact. During the time period when the IRS was singling out Tea Party and other groups for extra vetting — as they applied for tax-exempt status — Shulman visited the White House 118 times.
Asked to explain the visits, Shulman gave lawmakers a list of possible reasons.
“The Easter Egg roll with my kids … questions about the administratibility of tax policy … our budget, us helping the Department of Education streamline application processes for financial aid,” he said.
According to the Caller analysis, no other top official logged more than 100 visits.
The official with the next-highest number of visits — close to 90 — was Rebecca Blank, former deputy secretary and now acting secretary of the Commerce Department. Next in line was Thomas Perez, a top Justice Department official who has since been nominated to lead the Labor Department.
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner each logged fewer than 50 visits.
Former IRS officials have testified that the scrutiny of conservative groups, while inappropriate, was not politically motivated.
Published May 30, 2013 / FoxNews.com
In the eight months since Human Events and The Columbus Dispatch reported that several counties in the major Swing State have voter rolls that boast literally 110 percent voter registration, the Obama-Holder Justice Department has yet to investigate the widespread voter fraud that is occurring in particularly Left-leaning districts.
Human Events reported:
“In two counties, the number of registered voters actually exceeds the voting age population: Northwestern Ohio’s Wood County shows 109 registered voters for every 100 eligible, while in Lawrence County along the Ohio River it’s a mere 104 registered per 100 eligible.”
Human Events also said that, an additional “31 more counties report over 90 percent voter registration, which is a good 20 percent higher than the national average.”
Furthermore, the Ohio Secretary of State, Jon Husted, said that he sent Attorney General Holder a letter in February of 2012, which warned him that “Common sense says that the odds of voter fraud increase the longer these ineligible voters are allowed to populate our rolls… I simply cannot accept that.”
Holder, nor anyone under his command, got back to the Secretary of State before the state turned Obama-Blue in November of 2012. The Justice Department still has yet to respond.
Meanwhile, voter fraud continues to be a major issue in Ohio and around the country as a whole.
Human Events said that nationally, “The Pew Center for the States estimates about 24 million ineligible voter registrations, including more than 1.8 million dead people listed as voters; about 2.75 million with voter registrations in more than one state; and about 12 million voter records with incorrect addresses.”
While these numbers are staggering, what is even more shocking is that despite the Justice Department being made aware of these facts, Eric Holder still opposes a national requirement for voters to show ID in order to cast their ballot.
People have to present ID to cash a check, buy a beer, test drive a car, and sign their children out when they get picked up for day care.
Why does Eric Holder think casting a ballot to elect local, state, and national leaders is so much less significant?
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