Audrey Hudson’s husband had just left for work on August 6 when suddenly, her dog began barking. The nationally-known journalist walked over to the curtains and peeked outside to discover her Chesapeake Bay home was surrounded by law enforcement officers wearing full body armor.

The phone rang. It was her husband.

“I’m in the driveway,” he said. “The police are here. Open the door.”

And so began Hudson’s nightmare – held captive by armed agents of the U.S. Coast Guard, Maryland State Police and the Department of Homeland Security as they staged a pre-dawn raid in search of unregistered firearms and a “potato gun.”

But instead of taking the potato gun, agents seized unrelated government documents and notes from the former Washington Times journalist.

Agents took Hudson’s records during a search for guns and related items owned by her husband, a civilian Coast Guard employee. They also confiscated her legally registered firearms, according to court documents obtained by The Associated Press.

The armed agents held Hudson and her husband in the kitchen as they searched their home. At some point, one of the agents asked if she was the same person who had written a series of stories critical of the Federal Air Marshal program in the mid-2000s.

Hudson did indeed author those stories for The Washington Times.

“Those stories were embarrassing to the agency,” she told me.

It wasn’t until five weeks after the pre-dawn raid that Hudson realized agents had taken her private documents – documents that were not listed on the search warrant. At the time she was told that “miscellaneous documents” had been taken.

“I got a call from Homeland Security and they told me I could come pick up the documents,” she said. “The search warrant did not allow them to walk out with those documents. They clearly violated the search warrant.”

It appears the agents were on a fishing expedition. Hudson tells me her home is filled with boxes and boxes of files.

“But they only took five files – and all five had to do with the Federal Air Marshal stories,” she said.

The Coast Guard told The Associated Press its investigator was suspicious that the government documents in her possession were labeled “law enforcement sensitive.” However, they were returned after concluding Hudson had obtained them under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act.

But that doesn’t explain why the Coast Guard took her personal, handwritten notes. Nor does it explain why the Coast Guard accessed her personal Facebook page.

“I think they found a great way to get into my house and get a hold of my confidential notes and go through every other file in my office,” she said.

The Washington Times said Friday it is preparing legal action to fight what it called an unwarranted intrusion on the First Amendment.

“While we appreciate law enforcement’s right to investigate legitimate concerns, there is no reason for agents to use an unrelated gun case to seize the First Amendment protected materials of a reporter,” Times Editor John Solomon said.

The Coast Guard defended their actions. A spokesman said the warrant authorized police to search the family’s home for guns, ammunition, records of gun purchases, gun cleaning kits and other gun-related documents.

It should be noted that neither Hudson nor her husband have been arrested and no charges have been filed.

“We have absolutely no idea what this is all about,” Hudson told me.

I’ve got a pretty good idea. It’s about the federal government trying to intimidate an American journalist.

The Obama administration has a history of targeting journalists in their effort to root out leaks. The Associated Press noted that the raid on Hudson’s home came one month after Attorney General Eric Holder toughened the Justice Department’s rules for seizing reporters’ phone records, notes or emails using federal subpoenas or search warrants.

“This really can’t stand,” Hudson told me. “You cannot come into a journalist’s home under false pretenses with a bogus warrant and just waltz out with confidential files.”

So if you’re doing the constitutional math, I’d say the Obama administration has violated the Hudson family’s first, second and fourth amendment rights.

“Never in my wildest dreams would I have thought that state police and federal officers would come into my house at 4:30 in the morning to take my files without a federal subpoena,” she said.

It’s really not all that surprising the Obama administration would use a potato gun to trample the constitutional rights of an American citizen.

It’s a perfect tool for shredding potatoes – and the U.S. Constitution.

The Associated Press contributed to this report /By Todd Starnes / Todd’s American Dispatch / Published October 28, 2013 / FoxNews.com

The federal government’s online portal to buy health insurance suffered another glitch Sunday when the data services hub, a conduit for verifying the personal information of people applying for benefits under the law, went down in a failure that was blamed on an outside contractor.

“Today, Terremark had a network failure that is impacting a number of their clients, including healthcare.gov,” HHS spokeswoman Joanne Peters said in a statement Sunday evening. “[Health and Human Services] Secretary [Kathleen] Sebelius spoke with the CEO of Verizon this afternoon to discuss the situation and they committed to fixing the problem as soon as possible.”

Jeffrey Nelson, a spokesman for Verizon Enterprise Solutions, of which Terremark is a part, told the Associated Press: “Our engineers have been working with HHS and other technology companies to identify and address the root cause of the issue. It will be fixed as quickly as possible.”

The latest glitch came just days before Sebelius is scheduled to testify before the House Energy and Commerce Committee about the problems that have plagued the online health exchanges since they launched Oct. 1.

“The incompetence in building this website is staggering,” Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., the second-ranking Republican on the panel, told “Fox News Sunday.”

Republican lawmakers also signaled Sunday that their efforts to dismantle ObamaCare will go well beyond criticizing the problem-filled website, saying computer glitches are only the “tip of the iceberg” for the federal health care plan.

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal told “Fox News Sunday” that creating and running a website on which millions of Americans can shop for and buy an insurance policy is “the easy part.”

“The real problems will be when it’s time to schedule your grandmother’s cancer surgery,” said Jindal, chairman of the Republican Governors Association and a potential 2016 presidential candidate.

Republicans have largely opposed President Obama’s signature health care initiative long before it was signed into law in 2010 — using Americans’ concerns about the massive government undertaking to help retake the House in 2010.

More recent opposition — including the attempt to use voter dissatisfaction with ObamaCare to win the 2012 presidential election and more recently trying to “defund” ObamaCare — have failed.

However, conservatives say they fully intend to chip away at the law straight through 2016 when they’ll try again to elect a Republican president who will repeal the law.

Jindal also told Fox News the bigger issue is that problems like those related to the ObamaCare website are almost inevitable when the federal government gets too big.

“This is symptomatic of a liberal ideology that believes government should be running our health care,” he said. “We don’t need the government running health care.”

Wyoming Republican Sen. John Barrasso told ABC’s “This Week” that the website issues “are just the tip of the iceberg.”

“There are bigger problems to come,” he said.

Among the concerns of Barrasso and others are the millions of taxpayer dollars being spent on a slow, crash-prone website and Americans having to pay a tax penalty in March after trying, but failing, to sign up for insurance, while the president has exempted businesses from having to pay.

“It has Americans saying, “ ‘Why do I have to pay a penalty,’ ” Barrasso said.

Critics also argue some Americans will be forced to drop existing policies for more expensive, ObamaCare-approved ones, despite the president vowing that people could keep the insurance they liked and had.

“It’s all just not true,” Barrasso said.

Ohio Republican Gov. John Kasich told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that the problem with ObamaCare is that it doesn’t control costs.

“It drives up cost for Ohioans,” he said. “It threatens businesses to grow over 50 employees. The economy is stalled.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report /Published October 28, 2013 / FoxNews.com

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is blaming Republicans for the National Institutes of Health turning away cancer patients. But when asked why the Senate wouldn’t try to help “one child who has cancer” by approving a mini-spending bill, he shot back: “Why would we want to do that?”

The tense exchange occurred Wednesday, as Senate Democrats tried to lambaste Republicans ahead of a vote where the House ultimately approved funding the NIH and other agencies — a bid to ease the pain amid the budget stand-off.

Reid has opposed the measures, saying that if Republicans want to end the government suspension they’ll have to simply approve a “clean” budget bill — devoid of any provision that would hurt ObamaCare.

But Reid was challenged at a Democratic press conference by CNN’s Dana Bash about why the Senate wouldn’t consider the NIH bill.

“If you can help one child who has cancer, why wouldn’t you do it?” she asked.

Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., quietly asked, “Why pit one against the other?”

And Reid immediately chimed in: “Why would we want to do that? I have 1,100 people at Nellis Air Force base that are sitting home. They have a few problems of their own.”

Reid’s response was widely noticed by Republicans. “How out-of-touch and heartless can Senate Democrats be?” an email from the National Republican Senatorial Committee asked.

But Reid fired back, suggesting he’s being taken out of context.

“Republicans are in such desperate straits that they have literally resorted to accusing me of not caring about kids with cancer. Shameful,” his office tweeted.

Reid argues that the Republicans are trying to “pick and choose” what parts of government to keep open, and that they should be dropping their resistance to ObamaCare and voting to keep all of government open.

“You talk about reckless and irresponsible. Wow. What this is all about is ObamaCare. They are obsessed. I don’t know what other word I can use,” Reid said.

Republicans say it’s Democrats’ refusal to negotiate the health law that has landed the country in this position.

“The entire government is shut down right now because Washington Democrats refuse to even talk about fairness for all Americans under ObamaCare,” Mike Steel, spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner, said in a statement. “Today, the House will continue to pass bills that reflect the American people’s priorities.”

The Obama Administration is doing its best to portray the “shutdown” of the federal government as a catastrophe, caused solely by the heartless, mean spirited, cheapskate curmudgeons in the Republican Party.  In his speech the president opened by mentioning the GOPs guilt in shutting down the federal government several times in the first minute, going as far as zeroing in on the Tea Party faction of the party.

The dirty little secret of the federal government is that most of it is bloat and fat, and provides no visible benefit to the American taxpayers.  In a “shutdown” like the one the country is experiencing, ‘non-essential’ personnel are furloughed, but essential workers are kept on the job.  The first question that arises from this policy is “Why are we even employing non-essential people in the federal government?”  The answer: the more non-productive people that are on the government dole, including its non-essential employee workforce, the more people that vote Democrat–to keep the money coming.  It’s truly that simple.

When the government goes unfunded in a shutdown, as it has 17 times since the 1970s, it continues to operate and provide essential services, including sending out checks to social security recipients, the disabled, veterans, etc.

All of this adds up to the reality that a government shutdown could go on for months–many months–and it would be hard to notice it.  This is a truth that the left seeks to hide at all costs.  If Americans get wind of this fact, the next thing they’ll want to do is keep their money and spend it on things they feel are important–and that would undo 100 years of leftist encroachments on American pocketbooks and liberties.

In fact, the president and his administration are pulling out all the stops to convince Americans that they are being hurt by the current shutdown.  They have gone to enormous expense to place barriers at national parks and monuments, to keep Americans away from their properties.  They are doing everything they can to make Americans feel as much pain as possible due to the shutdown.  Statesmen and public servants would do the opposite, of course, but these are not statesmen–they are power mongers, who harness political power by stealing the money and liberty of average citizens.  They care nothing about the general welfare, but only buying political loyalty through redistribution and welfare checks.

In several articles in the past year the Federalist Press has outlined the real power of constitutionalists in congress, which is provided to them by the Constitution itself.  It is the power of the purse.  Not one red penny gets spent in this country that is not authorized by the House of Representatives.  This is part of the power of Checks and Balances.  Let the President bring his brand of socialism to the country, and let a leftist court step aside and clear the skids for him.  No matter what mischief such despots attempt, unless the House of Representatives funds it, it won’t be implemented.

The House has not gone far enough.  As we have recommended several times, the Constitution demands that the House send a balanced budget (which contains only constitutionally mandated spending) to the Senate.  That’s it.  The House can go home after that.  The House need not negotiate with a leftist Senate, or a Socialist White House.

Will the president call it extremism?  Will he call it blackmail?  Yes–and who cares?  The American people hate ObamaCare, and this entire fight is about implementing a juggernaut bureaucracy that will doom the country to socialism for decades or centuries to come.  This is the real fight–for the soul of America–and Americans are behind the congress in this fight.

In reality, the Senate and President will be forced to sign whatever spending bill the House of Representatives sends them, because shut down of the entire government is the only option they have if they don’t go along.

With all of that power, one wonders why the House of Representatives has failed so miserably to reign in a burgeoning, activist federal government run amok.  Finally, the GOP has followed the Constitution.  American citizens stand behind you–so don’t let us down and cave in to the pressures brought by America’s domestic enemies.

PUBLIUS

It is a sign of the twisted times that we have the misfortune of living in. It is a symptom of the advanced state of moral and social decay that in America today that celebrities are afforded the reverent status that they are. Take for instance our clowns, specifically the liberal clowns.  Silly comedians the likes of Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert and Bill Maher provide a mixture of jokes, shtick, political mockery and real news mixed with interviews and enjoy an astounding degree of popularity. That these court jesters are taken with any degree of seriousness is a clear example of not only how poorly that the mainstream media has served its purpose but also of the depravity of the American soul during this ongoing downtrend. Now there is El Presidente Barack H. Obama showing up on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno this week. So much for the dignity of the office.

Obama took to the air to schmooze with Leno and to dispense his political lies and disinformation on a number of topics. One of course being of Russia’s refusal to turn over NSA contractor Booz Allen leaker Edward Snowden for torture and a show trial. Obama and dirty Eric Holder, still pissy over Friday’s embarrassing smackdown by the bear accused Russia of having a “Cold War mentality” for not immediately rolling over and conceding to his majesty’s requests. In the new American century it is intolerable for any country to not acquiesce to the wishes of the U.S. empire, for the smaller ones there are threats of withholding of economic support, non- inclusion in global trade agreements, support of that regime’s political opponents and when all else fails, send in the drones. With Russia, still an extremely powerful nation with a military and nukes of it’s own it is a special type of retaliation that is merited. The U.S. President debases the office he holds, shows up on a celebrity clown show, mocks Putin and the next day in a proclamation that is promulgated by state media Obama throws a tantrum and cancels his September Summit with the Russian leader. Now there’s some stellar leadership, the type that is befitting of a kindergarten sandbox.

Someone get that man a pacifier.

Obama’s snit over Russia only further cements the image of the U.S. of A as the global spoiled brat that it has become after years of abysmal leadership. The pope of hope can stamp his feet all that he wants and here in Der Homeland it will be eaten up by most lemmings as well as his legions of adoring, low-information zombies but once again the country is exposed on the world stage as exactly what it has become which is a petulant, immature, self-absorbed, hypocritical bully led by a pathological narcissist. We are no longer held in high esteem by those outside of our borders where the electronic narcosis of television used to keep the population distracted, placid and stupid. There was a time when our democratic form of government, civilized and moral society and advanced sciences were the envy of the world but that era recedes into the past quicker than revisionist history is able to keep its image alive through lies, trickery and propaganda. Thanks to a succession of amoral cheats and cheap hustlers, of which Obama is only the latest we have become the new evil empire and continue to expand our global footprint of degeneracy and blight.

While on Leno, in addition to talking about his “bromance” with John McCain (retch) Obama also used the opportunity to blatantly lie about his NSA surveillance machine.

“We don’t have a domestic spying program…What we do have are some mechanisms where we can track a phone number or an email address that we know is connected to some sort of terrorist threat.”

While I seriously doubt that the man has more than an inkling of the true nature of this growing menace that will soon consume all privacy except as Orwell put it his prophetic 1984 “Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimetres inside your skull” he is a useful idiot. Most of it is above Obama’s paygrade, he will be gone long before the final phase of the eradication of the Constitution will occur. He is a malleable fool, a dunce and an amiable, smiling front man for the empire. He serves his purpose for the time and by showing up on Leno’s show he is selling the sizzle while obscuring that the steak is made of horsemeat.

As for the terrifying Al Qaeda, risen like a phoenix from the ashes to which Obama himself not so long ago relegated it the propaganda just gets more ridiculous by the day. I heard some yutz on the Chris Matthews show the other night (it may have been Washington adjunct Richard Engle spreading the absurd tale that devious Al-Qaeda was planning to attack targets by carrying surgically implanted bombs that are able to evade detection. Hey, I saw the Dark Knight too where the Joker was able to sucessfully pull this off and blow up the Gotham City Police Department but come on now, when does this stuff just become so over the top that it is rejected outright as the horseshit that it is?  Now with the wonderful idea that this is actually a threat it will allow an already run amok TSA to unleash the government goon squad on those who appear to have medical issues, humiliating them in public and seizing them for strip searches. A massive big government agency already comprised of thugs, miscreants, wanna-be-cops, perverts and control freaks is about to get even more aggressive. Nice country isn’t it.

And all of this recent hullabaloo is because one man was able to break free from the systems of control and reveal top secret rogue government information about widespread unconstitutional spying. The subsequent self- immolation of the Obama administration’s competence and the tearing down of their star spangled facade of lies that covered their tyranny was just too much to take.

So the vainglorious ass that is the sitting U.S. Emperor is now taking his case directly to the sheeple, first there was Leno, what’s next Obama? Jersey Shore? A sit down with Honey Boo Boo? There is no level to which he won’t descend when it comes to selling out his country for chump change.

By Donn Marten