Have you noticed how the Democratic Party has stopped denying its socialist tendencies?

A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet

The story is told that when Ben Franklin emerged from the Constitutional Convention an anxious lady asked him what kind of government they had given us. His famous reply was: “A republic, Madam… if you can keep it.” And, for the most part, we Americans have been trying to keep it. But “change” is in the air.

Have you noticed how the Democratic Party has stopped denying its socialist tendencies?

Months ago, as I began to write about the dangers of socialism to America, (and how the Democratic Party has become a sort of Democratic-Socialist party) I was stunned when they, the democrats, did not refute it! See, I had expected democrats to deny any connection to socialism. But they didn’t. It was then that it struck me… they don’t deny it because they can’t. Apparently, they have embraced socialism.

You must forgive me if I get a bit wound-up when socialism is the topic. I have watched that “destroyer of nations” reap its harvest for many, many, decades. It is, in my opinion, the greatest threat to democracy on the planet. I see socialism as presenting an even greater threat than the Islamofacist terrorists! I will never be comfortable with a socialist government in America. We can argue “degrees” of socialism all day and it won’t matter. As the expression goes: “a little leaven leavens the whole loaf.”

I think it is pure irony that now, as a “near” socialist nation, America can celebrate an event named “Independence Day” with a straight face!

As I write, Americans are anything but independent! We are fat, and lazy, and dependent on our new “near” socialist government for far too much and if the polls can be believed nearly half of the electorate is begging the socialists in charge of the US government to take on more of our care. There is very little “independent” about Americans today. In just a few months of the Obama regime we have gone from “King of the Hill” to just another member of the “Mediocrity Mob” of nations.

I know this is difficult to swallow. You can’t know how much pain it caused me to write these words.

Look. I have stood on the ground where the Wright brothers took their first flight launching America into the space age. They had no idea that their short flight would end up taking man to the stars, but of course, it did. I have trod the ground from which our astronauts blasted off to land and walk upon the surface of the moon. I have witnessed America claw her way to the top through sheer willpower and determination to be the best. And now, as I approach the winter of my life, I am watching the decline and fall of that same America. Do you really think I don’t feel a tremendous amount of pain? I think I must now know what the ancient Romans felt as they watched the greatest civilization in history, to that day, decline, crumble, and fall in ruins around them.

“Oh,” but you say, “… Socialism is the only way to go. Everyone will be equal! No class, no class warfare…” and such.

Well, let us see if we can break it down so that even those of you in love with the “cancer of nations,” socialism, can understand it.

The story is told of an economics professor at a small college who made a statement that he had never failed a single student before but had once failed an entire class.

That class had insisted that Obama’s socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer.

The professor then said, “OK, we will have an experiment in this class on Obama’s plan.” All grades would be averaged and everyone would receive the same grade so no one would fail and no one would receive an A.

After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone got a B.

The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy.

As the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride, too, so they studied little.

The second test average was a D! No one was happy.

When the 3rd test rolled around, the average was an F.

The scores never increased as bickering, blame and name-calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else.

All failed, to their great surprise, and the professor told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great but when government takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed.

Socialism will bring the end to private enterprise. Just think: under socialism there would be no small businesses, none of those Mom and Pop stores with which we are so familiar in America. There would be no entrepreneurs. Socialism calls for the redistribution of wealth. Broken down, that simply means taking the money you earned and giving it to those you feel did not earn it. Socialism demands that all wealth in a nation, and that includes yours, will be controlled by the government. In other words, you will own nothing — not even your own money. The government owns everything and everyone is given only what it takes for that person to survive. Socialism celebrates the lack of an upper class and a lower class. Under socialism there is only one class. And in THAT class all people suffer equally.

Americans have made an awful decision. They have decided to give up. Freedom is just too hard. It requires entirely too much work and effort on the part of the individual. It is much easier to sit back, relax, and allow the government to take care of us. Look, folks, birds locked in a golden cage are just as much a prisoner as those locked in a rusty old quarter-inch mesh wire cage. A prison is a prison and man is quite capable of creating his own.

Americans remind me today of the little granddaughter of a friend. He tells me she just recently went through the stage all parents are familiar with called…”potty training.” When she finished her business she would sit patiently on the porcelain throne, and yell her head off, until someone appeared to take care of that most important chore – the hygienic cleansing of the recently employed lower sphincter. (The vernacular is much more colorful and maybe a bit more descriptive, but, at the risk of creating a pun here, I wanted to keep it clean!) The child’s actions sound so much like what Americans are doing today, sitting on the porcelain throne yelling our heads off while waiting for someone to come take care of the last, but important, chore. The government will take care of it, but there is a price to be extracted from each of us. The price is the loss of our freedom.

They say that Satan’s greatest trick is convincing mankind that he doesn’t exist. It may be HIS best trick but it doesn’t hold a candle to the trick socialism has played on America.

© J. D. Longstreet

Article submitted by:  Veronica Coffin

The post A Republic… In Danger appeared first on Tom O'Halloran.

First Lady Michelle Obama has warned that the sequester could negatively impact seniors and cut food stamps, but one thing it doesn’t seem to have affected is the White House travel budget.

By Doug Powers

Keith Koffler at White House Dossier:

First Lady Michelle Obama is staying Monday evening in the $3,300-per-night Princess Grace suite of Dublin’s Five-Star Shelbourne Hotel, according to Irish press reports, adding some credence to accusations she is in the city for a quick vacation at taxpayer expense.

Michelle jetted to Dublin Monday afternoon Irish time after a brief stop in Belfast with President Obama, who is in the city for the two-day G-8 Summit.

The White House is billing Michelle’s trip to Dublin as having diplomatic significance, but her itinerary suggests otherwise. She and her daughters will visit the Trinity College library to explore President Obama’s Irish family roots, attend a performance by the world-famous Riverdance troupe, and visit the Wicklow Mountains national forest.

Who’s booking these getaways? The IRS? This might explain why some White House staffers are rumored to have been spotted wearing “you much be Irish, cuz my hotel bill is Dublin” t-shirts.

From the Irish Independent:

No expense has been spared in catering for the comforts of Mrs Obama and her party. It is understood she will stay in the luxurious €2,500-a-night Princess Grace suite.

It is understood a total of 30 rooms in the five-star, 265-bedroom hotel, have been booked for the visit of Mrs Obama and her entourage.

Expect the White House to also claim this to be a “great bang for the buck.”

Article submitted by:  Veronica Coffin

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The time has come for men and women of integrity, with an unwavering commitment to freedom and the Constitution in their hearts, to come together once again, en masse, to show the ruling class in DC that their long train of abuses has come to an end.

Join Tea Party Patriots and many others for an Audit the IRS rally on the west lawn of the Capitol in Washington, DC on Wednesday, June 19, 2013 at high noon.

The members of the ruling class, from both parties, are outing themselves in the wake of scandal after scandal, as they seek to do damage control and circle the wagons around each other. That foul stench emanating from Washington, DC is the fear they have of losing their power. For four years, the tea party movement has been sounding the alarm that big government is out of control in every way, in every department, in every agency, in every branch of government, and in every party.

Which scandal gets under your skin the most?

Is it Fast and Furious? Is it Benghazi? What about the State Department covering up misconduct and halting investigations? The NSA spying on innocent Americans.

What about the IRS targeting, discriminating against, and oppressing the speech of conservative and tea party groups? Or perhaps the IRS illegally leaking confidential donor information of conservative groups to their political opponents? Or maybe it’s the fact that the IRS spent $50 million in two years on conferences, parties, and really awful parody videos for their employees? Could it be the IRS stealing millions of private medical records? Or was it when the federal government asked American citizens for the content of their prayers.

Is it knowing that Obamacare enforcement will be administered by same IRS that systematically oppressed Big Government’s political opponents, with the same woman in charge? Maybe it’s that Congress is trying to exempt themselves from Obamacare while forcing the American people to suffer under it, without choice and without recourse.

Are you incensed about the 1000% increase in FBI records requests under the PATRIOT Act in the last four years? What about Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius using her position of power to shake down private insurance companies to extort them into donating to a pro-Obamacare nonprofit.

Is it the hundreds of HHS employees gaining early access to a Medicare decision worth billions of dollars to private insurance companies? Or maybe it’s the Congressional insider trading and the news that Congress and President Obama quietly gutted the provisions that would make it harder for them to use their access to information to make millions in the stock market.

Wait, is it the DOJ illegally seizing Associated Press phone records and FOX News reporter James Rosen’s phone records, email, movements, and more? Or was it when Attorney General Eric Holder possibly committed perjury in front of Congress? Maybe it was when Director of Intelligence James Clapper also possibly committed perjury in front of Congress.

Hold on, was it when you found out that the Department of Homeland Security stopped doing background checks after President Obama unconstitutionally changed our immigration laws with a simple executive order.

Perhaps it was the four ongoing scandals at the EPA–1) The EPA giving an ethics award to a fake employee that was invented so that EPA head Lisa Jackson could avoid transparency and FOIA laws? 2) The EPA making conservative groups pay FOIA fees over 90% of the time while waiving the fees for liberal groups over 90% of the time? 3) EPA employees creating swanky personal rec rooms at the office with taxpayer money and hiding them from the building cameras by stacking boxes all around the room? 4) The EPA leaking confidential and personal information about farmers and cattle facilities to environmentalist groups.

What about the nepotism at the Department of Energy.

TAKE YOUR PICK.

And those are just some of the ones we know about.

If that’s not enough to get people out of the house and into the streets, what else will it take? What other sort of abuses are you willing to take.

If you are fed up, visit www.AUDITtheIRS.org and join other freedom loving Americans, to take a stand on June 19^th for your rights and for the natural, human desire to be free.

Source: Breitbart

The post Fellow Patriots: Rally for Freedom–and Against the IRS appeared first on Tom O'Halloran.

Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi on Sunday appointed as governor of Luxor a member of the notorious terrorist organization Gamaa Islamiya which claimed responsibility for the 1997 massacre of 58 tourists and four Egyptians in Luxor.

The new governor is Adel al-Khayyat of the Building and Development party, the political wing of what was once the active terrorist group Gamaa Islamiya of which he was a founding member.

Morsi’s move was met with disbelief among some Egyptians and outright anger from the local tourism industry, already suffering from a post-“Arab Spring” decline in visitors to Egypt.

en years ago, the group renounced violence as a means to promote its Islamist aims, but a fatwa found on its website advises against building tourist accommodations. “Because tourist villages have aspects that anger Allah, including alcohol, gambling and other forbidden things, building these hotels and villages is considered aiding their owners in sin and aggression, and is not permitted,” read the fatwa, according to the New York Times. Its supporters also oppose sunbathing and women wearing shorts.

The group – which in the past received support from Al Qaeda – terrorized Egyptians and tourists during a wave of violence in the 1990s that left hundreds dead. Its spiritual leader is the “Blind Sheikh” Omar Abdel-Rahman who is currently serving a life sentence in the U.S.

The new appointment has upset those in Luxor who earn their living from tourism. According to Britain’s The Independent, hoteliers and tour operators in Luxor are protesting Morsi’s decision.

It reports that crowds protested outside the governor’s office on Monday, while tourism industry leaders planned to meet to decide how best to respond. Among the ideas being debated: picketing the governor’s office to physically stop him from entering or trying to block his arrival at Luxor airport on Tuesday.

Manager of Viking Travel Mohamed Abdel Samir said, “This decision is completely wrong.”

“This is not a suitable man for Luxor at all,” he told the paper.

Luxor is one of Egypt’s main tourist attractions, is home to well-preserved ancient temples along the Nile River and sits near the ornate royal burial sites, the Valley of the Kings and Valley of the Queens.

Walter Russell Mead of the American Interest writes, “This is a boneheaded move for a country that relies so heavily upon tourism for its economic well-being.”

Morsi appointed 17 new governors on Sunday, seven of whom are members of the Muslim Brotherhood, a move being viewed as an effort to tighten his grip on power in advance of major anti-government protests scheduled for June 30.

AFP quoted Al-Masri Al-Yom which writes that the appointments are a sign of the “continued Islamization” of state bodies, and represents a “challenge to the planned demonstration” against Morsi at the end of the month.

Source: THeBlaze

The post Obama’s man in Egypt: This Is What Democracy Looks Like: Wait Until You See Who Egyptian President Morsi Just Appointed as a Governor appeared first on Tom O'Halloran.

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Something perverse happened after the Supreme Court’s decision today invalidating citizenship-verification requirements in Arizona for registrants who use the federal voter registration form. The Left knows they lost most of the battle, but are still claiming victory. That’s what they do. Election-integrity proponents and the states are saying they lost, but don’t realize they really won.

The Left wins even when they lose, and conservatives are often bewildered and outfoxed in the election-process game.

Earlier today, I called the decision a nothingburger. After re-reading the case and reflecting a bit more, it’s clear that the decision was a disaster for the Left and their victory cackles are hollow — and they know it.

Worse, conservatives dooms-dayers who have never litigated a single National Voter Registration Act case have taken to the airwaves, describing the case as a disaster which invites illegal-alien voting.

In the last year, I’ve litigated five NVRA cases and worked on the preemption issues for years, and there is more to cheer in today’s opinion than there is to bemoan. Those complaining about the opinion don’t understand what the Left’s goal was in this case: total federal preemption. On that score, Justice Scalia foiled them; indeed, the decision today was a huge war won, even if the small Arizona battle was lost.

From my time in the Justice Department Voting Section, I can remember intimately the wars over some of the preemption issues decided today.

The Left essentially believes that anyone who fills out a federal Election Assistance Commission registration form should be allowed on the rolls, no questions asked. There were complex fights over the “citizen check-off box” issues, with the Left wanting the box rendered meaningless, and conservatives and election-integrity proponents believing a registration cannot be processed until a registrant affirms on the box that he or she is a citizen.

Before the decision today, here is what the Left wanted:

● Invalidation of Arizona’s requirement that those submitting a federal form provide proof of citizenship with their federal form. Mind you, the citizenship-proof requirement is NOT part of federal law and the Election Assistance Commission does NOT require it in the form they drafted.

● Invalidation of state citizenship-verification requirements when a state voter registration form is used (yes, such forms exist separate from the federal requirement) on the basis of federal preemption. They wanted the Arizona case to invalidate all state citizenship-verification requirements.

● Automatic registration if a registrant submits a completed federal EAC approved registration form, no questions asked.

● Federal preemption on the ability for states to have customized federal EAC-approved forms that differed from the default EAC form.

● Federal preemption over states, like Florida and Kansas, looking for independent information on citizenship to root out noncitizens from the voter rolls. Again, the Left wanted the federal EAC form to be the no-questions-asked ticket to the voter rolls.

So what is the score on these five goals after Justice Scalia’s opinion today? Election-integrity advocates are batting .800; left wing groups, .200. And the most insignificant issue of the five is the one issue the Left won. Justice Scalia foiled 4 of 5 of their goals, and the 4 biggest ones.

How does it work? The decision today uncorks state power. The Left wanted state power stripped and they lost.

First, Arizona can simply push the state forms in all state offices and online, and keep those federal forms in the back room gathering dust. When you submit a state form, you have to prove citizenship. Thanks to Justice Scalia, that option is perfectly acceptable. Loss for the Left. Victory for election integrity.

You might say, “That’s a small victory.” Nonsense. This was the whole ballgame to the groups pushing the Arizona lawsuit. They lost, period.

Next, when voters use a state, as opposed to a federal, form, they can still be required to prove citizenship. The federal form is irrelevant in that circumstance.

After the decision today, states have a green light to do double- and triple-checking even if a registrant uses the federal form. The Left wanted the submission of a federal form to mean automatic no-questions-asked registration. This is a big loss for the Left because now states can put suspect forms in limbo while they run checks against non-citizen databases and jury-response forms. Another significant victory in today’s decision. The Left wanted to strip them of that double-checking power.

The decision today is a great example of how conservatives can be distracted by squirrels running past. It is understandable and forgivable because they aren’t daily immersed in the long-term election-process agenda of the left-wing groups. Nor do they daily involve themselves with the details of election process. But having been in the “preemption wars” for nearly a decade, I can assure you this case is a big win, even if it doesn’t appear so at first glance.

Source: Rule of Law

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By Eric Lach

Last week, we learned who Edward Snowden was. This week, we live-chatted with him.

The self-proclaimed source of recently leaked top secret National Security Agency documents answered questions for over an hour on Monday, in a forum hosted by The Guardian’s website. The question posed to Snowden, and his answers, addressed both the broader issues and questions raised by his disclosures, along with the more personal aspects of the story. Here are the highlights:

Snowden Acknowledged That Policy Limits Exist

Perhaps the most interesting answers offered by Snowden on Monday came when he addressed the line between what intelligence agencies are technically capable of versus what policy allows them to do.

The issue came up twice. The first time, Snowden was responding to a question asking him to “[d]efine in as much detail as you can what ‘direct access’ means.” (In the wake of the original stories in The Guardian and The Washington Post citing documents released by Snowden, several of the technology companies that had been identified as part of the PRISM program denied giving the government “direct access” to their servers.)

Here’s how Snowden responded:

More detail on how direct NSA’s accesses are is coming, but in general, the reality is this: if an NSA, FBI, CIA, DIA, etc analyst has access to query raw SIGINT databases, they can enter and get results for anything they want. Phone number, email, user id, cell phone handset id (IMEI), and so on – it’s all the same. The restrictions against this are policy based, not technically based, and can change at any time. Additionally, audits are cursory, incomplete, and easily fooled by fake justifications. For at least GCHQ, the number of audited queries is only 5% of those performed.

Snowden returned to the issue later in the chat. A reader asked Snowden if he stood by his claim that, as an NSA contractor, he “had the authorities to wiretap anyone, from you, or your accountant, to a federal judge, to even the President if I had a personal email.” Snowden said that he stood by the claim, then again discussed the relationship between policy protections and technical capabilities:

US Persons do enjoy limited policy protections (and again, it’s important to understand that policy protection is no protection – policy is a one-way ratchet that only loosens) and one very weak technical protection – a near-the-front-end filter at our ingestion points. The filter is constantly out of date, is set at what is euphemistically referred to as the ‘widest allowable aperture,’ and can be stripped out at any time. Even with the filter, US comms get ingested, and even more so as soon as they leave the border. Your protected communications shouldn’t stop being protected communications just because of the IP they’re tagged with.More fundamentally, the ‘US Persons’ protection in general is a distraction from the power and danger of this system. Suspicionless surveillance does not become okay simply because it’s only victimizing 95% of the world instead of 100%. Our founders did not write that ‘We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all US Persons are created equal.’

Snowden Said He Did Not Reveal Any Operations Against ‘Legitimate Military Targets’

The Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald got the the live chat going on Monday by asking Snowden why he chose to go to Hong Kong, and why he then disclosed “US hacking on their research facilities and universities?” Snowden defended his disclosures by saying that he did not reveal any operations against what he termed “legitimate military targets.”

“I pointed out where the NSA has hacked civilian infrastructure such as universities, hospitals, and private businesses because it is dangerous,” Snowden said. “These nakedly, aggressively criminal acts are wrong no matter the target. Not only that, when NSA makes a technical mistake during an exploitation operation, critical systems crash. Congress hasn’t declared war on the countries – the majority of them are our allies – but without asking for public permission, NSA is running network operations against them that affect millions of innocent people. And for what? So we can have secret access to a computer in a country we’re not even fighting? So we can potentially reveal a potential terrorist with the potential to kill fewer Americans than our own Police? No, the public needs to know the kinds of things a government does in its name, or the ‘consent of the governed’ is meaningless.

Snowden Thought Hong Kong Was A Safer Bet Than Iceland

In his coming-out interview, published last Sunday in The Guardian, Snowden said his “predisposition” was to seek asylum in a country with “shared values,” like Iceland. “They stood up for people over internet freedom,” Snowden said. Those words prompted some people to wonder why Snowden had flown to Hong Kong, as opposed to heading straight to Iceland.

On Monday, Snowden said that he thought Hong Kong had been a safer bet for him in the short-term.

“Leaving the US was an incredible risk, as NSA employees must declare their foreign travel 30 days in advance and are monitored,” Snowden wrote. “There was a distinct possibility I would be interdicted en route, so I had to travel with no advance booking to a country with the cultural and legal framework to allow me to work without being immediately detained. Hong Kong provided that. Iceland could be pushed harder, quicker, before the public could have a chance to make their feelings known, and I would not put that past the current US administration.”

Snowden Has Been Reading The News About Himself

Asked what he thought about the public debate sparked by his disclosures, Snowden revealed that he has been reading the media reports digging in to his past and his personal life.

“Initially I was very encouraged,” Snowden wrote, referring to the coverage of his disclosures. “Unfortunately, the mainstream media now seems far more interested in what I said when I was 17 or what my girlfriend looks like rather than, say, the largest program of suspicionless surveillance in human history.”

Snowden Still Suggests The Government May Have Him Killed

The second of Glenn Greenwald’s first two questions was relatively straightforward. It read as follows: “How many sets of the documents you disclosed did you make, and how many different people have them? If anything happens to you, do they still exist?”

Snowden did not answer directly. Instead, he said that the government would not be able to “cover this up,” and again raised the prospect of his being assassinated over his actions.

“All I can say right now is the US Government is not going to be able to cover this up by jailing or murdering me,” he wrote. “Truth is coming, and it cannot be stopped.”

Article submitted by:  Veronica Coffin

The post Five Revelations From The Edward Snowden Live Chat appeared first on Tom O'Halloran.

Leading Marxist Immigration Activist Admits it’s All About the Votes! 

If illegal immigrants are given voting rights, there will probably never be another Republican (or conservative president) in America again.  The Democrats and their Marxist masters in the labor unions will become America’s permanent ruling class.

By Trevor Louden

One of the US’ top “immigrant’s rights” activists, labor leader and Democratic Socialists of America Marxist, Eliseo Medina, admits that illegal immigrant amnesty has nothing to do with compassion or economics – it’s all about permanent political power for the left.

Medina sees illegal immigrant amnesty and voting rights as the beginnings of a “governing coalition for the long term.”

At the “progressive” America’s Future Now! conference in Washington, D.C. on June 2, 2009, SEIU International Executive Vice President Eliseo Medina addressed attendees on the necessity of comprehensive immigration reform.

Speaking of Latino voters, Medina said “when they voted in November, they voted overwhelmingly for progressive candidates. Barack Obama got two out of every three voters that showed up.”

So I think there’s two things that matter for the progressive community. Number one, if we are to expand this electorate to win, the progressive community needs to solidly be on the side of immigrants, that we’ll expand and solidify the progressive coalition for the future… When you are in the middle of a fight for your life you will remember who was there with you. And immigrants count on progressives to be able to do that. Number two. “We reform the immigration laws, it puts 12 million people on the path to citizenship and eventually voters”. Can you imagine if we have, even the same ratio, two out of three? If we have eight million new voters who care about …… and will be voting. We will be creating a governing coalition for the long term, not just for an election cycle…

If illegal immigrants are given voting rights, there will probably never be another Republican (or conservative president) in America again.

The Democrats and their Marxist masters in the labor unions will become America’s permanent ruling class.

Every GOP legislator needs to see this video before they cast a vote on “immigration reform.”

 

Article submitted by:  Veronica Coffin

The post Socialism Through Immigration: It’s All About VOTES! appeared first on Tom O'Halloran.

In this nation, we have been ingrained with the notion that ordinary everyday Black, White, Brown, Red, and Yellow people have genuine representative government because we have the right to vote. Yet, elected officials have repeatedly simply lied to the electorate, and once they have been voted into office, proceeded to violate the trust of those who voted for them. Unfortunately, this is not a new or even an unusual phenomenon.

Submitted by:  Veronica Coffin

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Increasingly it is becoming obvious that Big Government is too often Stupid Government. The more it does, the more it does badly. A lot of people are beginning to notice.

By Alan Caruba

Nothing enhances a president’s reputation than to be seen in the company of other world leaders and Obama will have an abundance of photo-ops as he meets in Ireland with the G8 to address the many woes of the world. Too bad they think he is a dunce.

Given the unrelenting headlines about the Obama administration, it is worth worrying that Big Government is Stupid Government. It is inherently a danger to freedom. Just ask anyone who ever lived under communism.

While there are many fine people in government, those at the top of the current roster seem to be a collection of the most incompetent, inept, naïve, ignorant, and uninformed morons to have ever gathered around that big table where the cabinet meets. If, in fact, they really do get together except for the occasional photo-op.

The last Secretary State and President-in-Waiting, Hillary Clinton, flew a million miles in the job, but no one can point to anything she actually accomplished and she, apparently, had no idea what was going on at State. The present Secretary, John Kerry, is convinced that global warming is the greatest threat to, well, everything and is still trying to get the Palestinians to agree to peace terms with Israel; something they have refused to do since it opened doors for business in 1948.

Eric Holder, the Attorney General, cannot seem to remember anything. Usually you expect a lawyer to keep a few facts in mind such as the contents of the U.S. Constitution, but Holder is an exception or, like Obama, he read it and didn’t like it.

Other than Valerie Jarrett, only the White House reporters seem to know the names of his closest advisors. Tim Carney, the spokesman for Obama, has carved out a place in history as the biggest, lying weasel to ever hold that job. Oh how I miss the beautiful and intelligent Dana Parino, Bush43’s spokesperson. Happily I get to see her on “The Five”, a Fox News daily gab fest.

After Rahm Emanuel left the job as Obama’s chief of staff to become the Mayor of Chicago, the city has turned into a killing ground the equal of downtown Baghdad.

Obama is utterly devoted to Big Government and, thanks to Obamacare, the IRS is trying to hire the equivalent of an armed forces division to administer it. The popularity of Obamacare, plus the scandals, currently is plunging to depths that even the pollsters are beginning to measure in single digits. The President’s numbers are reaching new lows as well.

A notable aspect of Big Government is the increasing size of various pieces of legislation such as the so-called immigration reform and the Common Core education bills. Beginning life as No Child Left Behind under Bush43, this latter bill is not likely to be reauthorized. Any piece of legislation that exceeds a thousand or more pages in a one-size-fits-all is doomed to failure.

At this writing, the House is getting ready to vote for a trillion-dollar food stamp and farm bill about which few Americans are even aware. It’s a huge giveaway for a nation that is essentially broke. As Congress gets close to its summer break, all manner of comparable mischief will occur. Recall that Obamacare was passed on Christmas Eve 2009!

For the same reason, the ever-expanding surveillance of everyone’s electronic communications comes with the built-in limitation that the more signals intelligence it gathers, the less likely it will produce any results, except after the next attack. The NSA employs tens of thousands of analysts to deal with all the “signent” is acquires and, other than that which focuses on places like Yemen, the rest is not likely to yield much of value.

A government big enough to access every phone call and email from 310 million Americans is also failed to take serious action when the Russians warned that two jihadists were living in Boston.

The other aspect of Big Government is the way the Obama administration has enlarged the numbers of Americans receiving food stamps, disability payments, and other “free” stuff that is not free, but dependent on those who still have a job. Social Security and Medicare are barely solvent and Medicaid is bankrupting the states that must contribute to it.

According to the American Enterprise Institute, “The number of federal employees has risen under President Obama. There were 2,790,000 federal workers in January 2009 when the president took office, and now there are 2,804,000 workers. The fact is that there is no month during President Obama’s term when the federal workforce was smaller than it was in the first month of Mr. Obama’s presidency. The president took over in January 2009. Every month after January 2009 has seen more federal workers than were employed in January 2009.

It would be wrong to suggest that federal workers are not productive, but the sheer size of this workforce suggests that Big Government takes a lot of people out of the private sector and provides them with employment that comes with a multitude of perks that adds to the federal debt for which everyone must be taxed.

“A government big enough to give you everything you want, is big enough to take away everything you have,” is attributed to Thomas Jefferson, as is “Democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.” This was true in the 1700s and is true today.

With considerable foresight, the Founders wanted a central government that was intended to remain limited in size, scope, and power. The Department of Homeland Security—the hasty reaction to 9/11—has metastasized into an Orwellian giant that should, at the earliest moment possible, be disassembled into its component parts.

The nation would no doubt benefit from putting an end to the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Education, the government mortgage companies of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and comparable entities that are mostly the result of government’s vast expansion in the latter half of the last century and this new one.

Term limits is another idea worth considering. I sometimes think that the longer a Senator or Representative stays in Congress, the more senile, incompetent, and indifferent they become to the voters.

© Alan Caruba, 2013

Article submitted by:  Veronica Coffin

The post Big Government is Stupid Government appeared first on Tom O'Halloran.

THE LIFESTYLE OF THE RICH AND FAMOUS:  The First Lady… of funny faces: Malia Obama plays up for the cameras (again) as she reduces Michelle and Sasha to fits of giggles during G8 visit to Ireland.  It’s playtime for the Obama’s while Americans continue to be jobless.

• Michelle, and two daughters, Malia, 14, and Sasha, 11 toured tourist attractions in Dublin on Monday
• First Lady in $3,300-a-night suite at lavish Shelbourne Hotel
• Michelle’s entourage takes 30 rooms at the 5-star hotel
• President Obama remains in Northern Ireland at the G8 Summit
• Two-day trip is expected to cost the U.S. taxpayer an estimated $5.2million
• Arrived amid biggest security operation ever mounted in Northern Ireland

By Louise Boyle and Jill Reilly

The Obama girls appear to have perked up on their trip to Dublin as they giggled and pulled a series of wacky faces during a performance of Riverdance.

Malia, 14, and Sasha, 11, had looked less than enthralled earlier on Monday as they toured the historic Book of Kells with their mother at Trinity College in the capital.

However the First Lady and her daughters were having a roaring good time as they sat among schoolchildren at Dublin’s Gaiety Theatre. Malia made her mother and sister laugh with one of her comic expressions, pulling crossed eyes as students surreptitiously snapped them with camera phones.

All laughs: Malia Obama makes her mother and sister laugh ahead of a special performance of Riverdance in Dublin

That’s more like it! The First Lady and her daughters grin as they take their seats to watch some traditional Irish dancing in Riverdance at the Gaiety Theatre in Dublin on Monda

Telling off? The First Lady gestures to students who attended a performance of Riverdance along with the First Lady and her daughters on Monday night in Dublin

Good to see you! Wife of the Irish Prime Minister Fionnuala Kenny hugs the First Lady. The pair have met on several occasions both in Ireland and in Washington

Candid camera: Malia Obama pulls a funny face for her sister Sasha’s camera as her parents kiss during the inauguration earlier this year

Funny girls: Malia Obama pulls some comic expressions along with sister Sasha in front of the cameras at the inaugural parade in D.C. in January

The Secret Service and the Irish gardaí kept a tight presence around the city center theater while the first family were inside.

Mrs Obama and her daughters are staying at the Shelbourne Hotel and according to theIrish Independent, her entourage has booked out 30 rooms in the five-star accommodation.

The Shelbourne Hotel is one of Dublin’s oldest and sits in the center of the city overlooking the public park St Stephen’s Green.

It is understood that Michelle will stay in the luxurious $3,300-a-night Princess Grace suite.

Thrilled, girls? First Lady Michelle Obama and her daughters, Sasha (center) and Malia (right) tour the Old Library Building at Trinity College in Dublin on Monday

Thrilled, girls? First Lady Michelle Obama and her daughters, Sasha (center) and Malia (right) tour the Old Library Building at Trinity College in Dublin on Monday

Michelle Obama and daughters visit Trinity College in Ireland

Happy holidays! Sasha and Malia Obama look a little bored as they are shown the historic books at Trinity College by Dr Patrick Prendergast

A team of staff were out cleaning the front of the building in preparation for the First family’s arrival as the usual swarm of FBI agents hovered around.

The two-day trip around the Republic is expected to cost the U.S. taxpayer more than $5.2million based on estimates after the First Couple’s 2011 one-day trip cost $2.6million.

The President, his wife and daughters touched down in Belfast amid the biggest security operation ever mounted in Northern Ireland.

Air Force One arrived at Aldergrove International Airport, 20 miles north of the city, where the President emerged from the plane with his family.

While Obama holds talks with other world leaders at the G8 summit in Northern Ireland, Michelle and their girls headed to the Republic.

On Monday evening, the First Lady made a short speech before watching a special performance of Riverdance at the Gaiety Theatre, a short distance from her city center hotel. 

That’s entertainment! Michelle Obama speaks ahead of a performance of Riverdance at the Gaiety Theatre, Dublin. From left are Moya Doherty, co-founder of Riverdance, Fionnuala Kenny, wife of Taoiseach Enda Kenny and Sabina Higgins, wife of the President of Ireland Michael Higgins

Under watchful eyes: The gardaí keep a heavy presence outside Dublin’s Gaiety Theatre while the First Lady and her two daughters are inside

Don’t get too excited girls! The Obama daughters study the ‘College Harp’ – Ireland’s oldest harp dating back from the 15th century and on which Ireland’s national emblem is based on

Come on, Mom! Michelle looks excited as the family delve into the Obama’s Irish heritage… unlike her daughters

Under watchful eyes: The Obama girls are followed by their heavy security details as they visit Trinity College in Dublin today

Well that’s over! Malia and Sasha Obama looked delighted to be heading back to their hotel in Dublin

Glamor: Michelle Obama and her daughters are believed to be staying in a $3,500-a-night suite at the Shelbourne Hotel in Dublin’s city center

The family is also expected to meet the staff and families of the U.S. Embassy during their Dublin visit.

While at Trinity College earlier on Monday, Mrs Obama and her daughters also pored over archives documenting the family’s Irish ancestry.  The President’s great-great-great grandfather was a shoemaker in Moneygall, Co. Offaly.

On Tuesday, Mrs Obama and her daughters will head to Glendalough in the Wicklow Mountains National Park, 20,000 hectares of upland mountain scenery.

In the evening they are scheduled to rejoin the President and fly to Berlin.

Touch down: US President Barack Obama arrived in Belfast along with his two daughters and wife Michelle who looked stylish in a Burberry coat

Holding hands: Barack Obama disembarks from Air Force One with his daughter Sasha, 11

High profile: Roads into and out of Belfast were closed to facilitate the president’s visit

A family affair: The Obama’s arrive in Northern Ireland

Greetings: The President was met by Lord Leiutenant Joan Christie, Minister of State for Northern Ireland Mike Penning, Arlene Foster MLA and Michelle O’Neill MLA

Wet welcome: Malia laughs as Sasha looks down at her feet after arriving in the drizzly weather

Long trip: Obama put his arm around daughter Malia, while First Lady Michelle Obama walked with their elder daughter Sasha

Obama was flown to Belfast City Airport by helicopter and then traveled to the Waterfront Hall conference center where he spoke to an invited audience of 2,000 mostly young people and urged political leaders to develop the peace process.

On arrival at the Waterfront, the family were greeted by Northern Ireland’s First and Deputy First Ministers Peter Robinson and Martin McGuinness.

Roads into and out of Belfast were closed to facilitate the president’s visit.

Hundreds of police 4x4s lined the streets, while the Police Service of Northern Ireland helicopter patrolled the skies over the city.

Thousands of extra police officers were deployed to the province ahead of the G8 summit.

The one day trip that the Obama’s took to Ireland in 2011 was estimated to cost the White House $2.6million.

This two-day trip is likely to cost double that amount taking into account that his daughters now need a security detail and the family have split up into two locations.

Trips on Air Force One cost the government about $180,000 per flight hour.

According to a book published last year Obama and his family cost the taxpayer $1.4billion per year.

His recent appearances in Israel cost taxpayers an estimated $10.9 million.

The last time that Obama visited Ireland in 2011, he headed to the tiny village of Moneygall, Co. Offaly.

His great-great-great grandfather on his Kansas-born mother’s side, Falmouth Kearney, lived in the town until leaving for America in 1850 at the height of the Great Famine.

Tight schedule: The family were flown to Belfast City Airport by helicopter and then travelled to the Waterfront Hall conference centre

Supportive: Obama hugs his wife before delivering a keynote address

Tests: Obama declared peace in Northern Ireland a ‘blueprint’ for those living amid conflict around the world, while acknowledging that the calm between Catholics and Protestants will face further tests

 Power dressing: Michelle wore a cream and brown outfit accessorized  with a statement necklace

Speech: Michelle Obama delivers a keynote address at Waterfront Hall in Belfast, ahead of the G8 Summit

Moving on: While Barack Obama holds talks with other world leaders at the G8 summit in Northern Ireland, Mrs Obama and their children are due to visit the Republic

Along with First Lady Michelle, the President even got to hug a distant relative, Henry Healy, a 26-year-old accountant for a plumbing firm who discovered four years ago he was one of Obama’s closest Irish relatives.

This time around, Obama has traveled to the luxury Lough Erne golf resort in Enniskillen, Co. Fermanagh, where the leaders of the world’s eight wealthiest countries will converge for the two-day G8 economic conference.

While Obama is widely admired in Ireland, he doesn’t have anything close to the fan base built by Bill Clinton, who made Northern Ireland peacemaking a top priority and visited both parts of Ireland three times from 1995 to 2000.

George Bush also visited Northern Ireland in 2008.

U.S. and Irish genealogists have detected several other distant Irish cousins of Obama living in Ireland and England, including Dick Benn and Ton Donovan, whose families live just across the border in County Tipperary and have farmed the same land for 250 years.

Slainte: President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama sip Guinness at a pub in Moneygall, Co. Offaly in 2011

Article submitted by:  Veronica Coffin

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Rotting, Decaying And Bankrupt – If You Want To See The Future Of America Just Look At Detroit (via http://JarkesyPolitical.com)

Rotting, Decaying And Bankrupt – If You Want To See The Future Of America Just Look At Detroit   Eventually the money runs out.  Much of America was shocked when the city of Detroit defaulted on a$39.7 million debt payment and announced that it was suspending payments on $2.5 billion of unsecured…

The post Rotting, Decaying And Bankrupt – If You Want To See The Future Of America Just Look At Detroit appeared first on Tom O'Halloran.

‘The truth is coming and can’t be stopped’: Snowden takes to live web chat to defend leaking NSA secrets and slams Obama on broken promises over civil liberties

• Edward Snowden answers questions from readers in live web chat
• ‘The government won’t be able to cover this up by murdering me’
• Says civil liberties have worsened under Obama despite his promises

By Alex Greig and Lydia Warren

NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden has defended his disclosure of top-secret U.S. spying programs in an online chat as he attacks President Obama over his broken promises.

As he answered readers’ questions online, Snowden lambasted U.S. officials for calling him a traitor and said the government won’t silence him by ‘jailing or murdering’ him.

‘The US Government is not going to be able to cover this up by jailing or murdering me,’ he said in the live chat, which was launched on Monday. ‘Truth is coming, and it cannot be stopped.’

The Guardian hosted the online chat with Snowden, who has been in hiding in Hong Kong since fleeing the U.S., as reporter Glenn Greenwald received and posted Snowden’s answers.

Speaking out: Edward Snowden is taking part in a live web chat, where he is defending leaking information

Among his responses, he said he waited until after the election to release the information as he had been hopeful that Obama would make good on his promises about civil liberties.

In fact, Snowden said, privacy and civil liberties have actually worsened since the re-election.

‘Shortly after assuming power, [Obama] closed the door on investigating systemic violations of law, deepened and expanded several abusive programs, and refused to spend the political capital to end the kind of human rights violations like we see in Guantanamo, where men still sit without charge,’ he said.

He said he saw no option but the flee the country as the administration would never have given him a fair trial.

‘The U.S. Government, just as they did with other whistleblowers, immediately and predictably destroyed any possibility of a fair trial at home, openly declaring me guilty of treason,’ he said. ‘That’s not justice.’

But Snowden added that he did not think it was too late – that the leaks gave the president a chance ‘for a return to sanity, constitutional policy, and the rule of law rather than men’.

Connection: Snowden is responding via Glenn Greenwald, the Guardian reporter who broke the story

He called for Obama to set up a special committee to review the surveillance programs and set up a special investigator to review presidents’ policies for wrongdoing.

He added that he did not reveal any U.S. operations against what he called legitimate military targets, but instead showed that the NSA is hacking civilian infrastructure like universities and businesses.

U.S. officials say the data-gathering programs were legal and operated under court supervision.

Snowden explained his claim that from his desk, he could ‘wiretap’ any phone call or email – a claim top intelligence officials have denied.

‘If an NSA, FBI, CIA, DIA, etc. analyst has access to query raw SIGINT (signals intelligence) databases, they can enter and get results for anything they want,’ he said. ‘Phone number, email, user id, cell phone handset id (IMEI), and so on – it’s all the same.’

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper has said that the kind of data that can be accessed and who can access it is severely limited.

His online chat comes after China denied that Snowden is working for them after former US Vice-President Dick Cheney branded the leaker a ‘traitor and possible Chinese spy’.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said at a daily briefing today, ‘This is sheer nonsense,’ when asked if Snowden worked for China.

Snowden himself added in the web chat: ‘Ask yourself: if I were a Chinese spy, why wouldn’t I have flown directly into Beijing? I could be living in a palace petting a phoenix by now.’

Several nations, including U.S. allies, have reacted angrily to revelations by the ex-CIA employee that U.S. authorities had tapped the servers of internet companies for personal data.

National defense: Former Vice President Dick Cheney spoke on Fox News Sunday in Washington about the need for surveillance

‘We believe the United States should pay attention to the international community’s concerns and demands and give the international community the necessary explanation,’ Hua said.

The Chinese government has previously not commented directly on the case, simply repeating the government’s standard line that China is one of the world’s biggest victims of hacking attacks.

A senior source with ties to the Communist Party leadership said Beijing was reluctant to jeopardise recently improved ties with Washington.

Cheney said how the controversial surveillance methods used by the NSA could have prevented the September 11 attacks and said the revelations have done ‘enormous damage’ to America’s security.

Speaking on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace, Cheney took credit for crafting the program of data collection, saying that he ‘worked with [former Director of National Intelligence] Mike Hayden when we set this program up.’

‘Traitor’: According to Cheney, Snowden could be leaking U.S. security secrets to China. Supporters in Hong Kong have come out strongly in defense of the former CIA employee, as pictured

‘As everybody who’s been associated with the program’s said, if we had had this before 9/11, when there were two terrorists in San Diego – two hijackers – had been able to use that program, that capability, against that target, we might well have been able to prevent 9/11,’ Cheney told Wallace.

In the webchat, Snowden added: ‘Journalists should ask: since these programs began operation shortly after September 11th, how many terrorist attacks were prevented SOLELY by information derived from this suspicion-less surveillance that could not be gained via any other source?

‘Then ask how many individual communications were ingested to acheive that, and ask yourself if it was worth it.’

Cheney ridiculed the notion that the NSA was listening in to personal calls of ordinary Americans.

‘The allegation is not that we get all this personal information on Aunt Fanny or Chris Wallace, that’s not the way it works,’ he said.

Anger: Snowden said civil liberties had worsened ever since President Obama was re-elected last year

‘What information [was collected]?’ he said. ‘And the answer is phone numbers and who contacted who. But we don’t have any names associated with it. It’s just a big bag of numbers that’s been collected.’

Of Snowden, Cheney said the breach of security was one of the worst in history.

‘I think he’s a traitor. I think it’s one of the worst occasions, in my memory, of somebody with access to classified information doing enormous damage to the national security interests of the United States,’ he said.

He suggested that Snowden, who is thought to have fled to Hong Kong, could be working with the Chinese government.

‘I am very, very worried that he still has additional information that he hasn’t released yet, that the Chinese would welcome the opportunity and are probably willing to offer immunity – or sanctuary, if you will – in exchange for what he presumably knows or doesn’t know,’ said Cheney.

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immigration

“‘No decisions are being made without talking to us about it,’ the official said of the Gang of Eight negotiations … ‘This does not fly if we’re not O.K. with it,’” a senior Obama official told author Ryan Lizza for the pending article.

White House officials also believe the emerging bill will be a huge success for President Barack Obama.

“If a Gang of Eight-style bill is signed into law by the President, it will probably be one of the top five legislative accomplishments in the last twenty years,” the official said. “It’s a huge piece of business.”

The report points out other evidence of close White House involvement.

For example, Obama met with four top Democrats pushing the bill on Thursday, and a White House spokesman said earlier that White House lawyers are participating in the drafting of the bill.

But Obama and White House officials have kept a low profile to avoid deterring GOP cooperation.

However, they expect to seize the credit from Latinos once a bill is signed, the New Yorker article said. “We’re not worried about short-term political credit. We’ll get plenty of it if it gets signed,” the official told The New Yorker.

The Senate continues debate on the bill this week.

The New Yorker article also highlights unflattering statements and infighting among the GOP side of the Gang of Eight Senators, including Sen. John McCain, Sen. Lindsey Graham,  Sen. Marco Rubio and Florida’s former Republican governor, Jeb Bush.

During a debate over guest-worker rules, “Rubio sided with the Chamber against the construction workers,” according to the article.

“There are American workers who, for lack of a better term, can’t cut it,” a Rubio aide told Lizza. ‘“There shouldn’t be a presumption that every American worker is a star performer. There are people who just can’t get it, can’t do it, don’t want to do it. And so you can’t obviously discuss that publicly,” said the aide.

McCain also complained to Sen. Chuck Schumer, the leading Democrat in the gang, about Rubio’s tactics to win support from other GOP.

“Schumer often found himself mediating disputes between Rubio and McCain, who felt that Rubio’s public statements sometimes positioned him positively with [GOP] conservatives at the expense of the Gang,” said the article. “McCain would call Schumer and fume, ‘Look what Rubio’s doing!’”

An aide to Rubio dismised the New Yorker article, but did not deny the quotes.

“Sen. Rubio declined to participate in the piece, and our office strongly objected to the magazine using the background quotes like they did because they misrepresented the Senator’s position,” the aide told Politico.

The 1,077-page bill is expected to provide amnesty to at least 11 million illegal immigrants, bring in another 20 million people over the next decade, accelerate the future inflow of immigrants’ relatives, increase the supply of agricultural laborers and boost the annual inflow of blue-collar and professional guest-workers above 1 million.

Since July 2008, the number of Americans with jobs has dropped by 3 million to 144 million, while the working-age population has climbed 9 million to 245 million, including roughly 4 million working-age immigrants. Roughly 20 million Americans lack full-time jobs.

The total cost to taxpayers is unclear. The amnesty of roughly 11 million low-skill workers is expected to spur benefit spending by $9.3 trillion over 50 years, but advocates say the bill’s various costs will be offset by economic gains.

Source: Daily Caller

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The facial databases have grown rapidly in recent years and generally operate with few legal safeguards beyond the requirement that searches are conducted for “law enforcement purposes.” Amid rising concern about the National Security Agency’s high-tech surveillance aimed at foreigners, it is these state-level facial-recognition programs that more typically involve American citizens.

The most widely used systems were honed on the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq as soldiers sought to identify insurgents. The increasingly widespread deployment of the technology in the United States has helped police find murderers, bank robbers and drug dealers, many of whom leave behind images on surveillance videos or social-media sites that can be compared against official photo databases.

But law enforcement use of such facial searches is blurring the traditional boundaries between criminal and non-criminal databases, putting images of people never arrested in what amount to perpetual digital lineups. The most advanced systems allow police to run searches from laptop computers in their patrol cars and offer access to the FBI and other federal authorities.

Such open access has caused a backlash in some of the few states where there has been a public debate. As the databases grow larger and increasingly connected across jurisdictional boundaries, critics warn that authorities are developing what amounts to a national identification system — based on the distinct geography of each human face.

“Where is government going to go with that years from now?” said Louisiana state Rep. Brett Geymann, a conservative Republican who has fought the creation of such systems there. “Here your driver’s license essentially becomes a national ID card.”

Facial-recognition technology is part of a new generation of biometric tools that once were the stuff of science fiction but are increasingly used by authorities around the nation and the world. Though not yet as reliable as fingerprints, these technologies can help determine identity through individual variations in irises, skin textures, vein patterns, palm prints and a person’s gait while walking.

The Supreme Court’s approval this month of DNA collection during arrests coincides with rising use of that technology as well, with suspects in some cases submitting to tests that put their genetic details in official data­bases, even if they are never convicted of a crime.

Facial-recognition systems are more pervasive and can be deployed remotely, without subjects knowing that their faces have been captured. Today’s driver’s-
license databases, which also include millions of images of people who get non-driver ID cards to open bank accounts or board airplanes, typically were made available for police searches with little public notice.

Thirty-seven states now use ­facial-recognition technology in their driver’s-license registries, a Washington Post review found. At least 26 of those allow state, local or federal law enforcement agencies to search — or request searches — of photo databases in an attempt to learn the identities of people considered relevant to investigations.

“This is a tool to benefit law enforcement, not to violate your privacy rights,” said Scott McCallum, head of the facial-recognition unit in Pinellas County, Fla., which has built one of the nation’s most advanced systems.

The technology produces investigative leads, not definitive identifications. But research efforts are focused on pushing the software to the point where it can reliably produce the names of people in the time it takes them to walk by a video camera. This already works in controlled, well-lit settings when the database of potential matches is relatively small. Most experts expect those limitations to be surmounted over the next few years.

That prospect has sparked fears that the databases authorities are building could someday be used for monitoring political rallies, sporting events or even busy downtown areas. Whatever the security benefits — especially at a time when terrorism remains a serious threat — the mass accumulation of location data on individuals could chill free speech or the right to assemble, civil libertarians say.

“As a society, do we want to have total surveillance? Do we want to give the government the ability to identify individuals wherever they are . . . without any immediate probable cause?” asked Laura Donohue, a Georgetown University law professor who has studied government facial databases. “A police state is exactly what this turns into if everybody who drives has to lodge their information with the police.”

A facial ‘template’

Facial-recognition systems analyze a person’s features — such as the shape of eyes, the curl of earlobes, the width of noses — to produce a digital “template” that can be quickly compared with other faces in a database.

The images must be reasonably clear, though newer software allows technicians to sharpen blurry images, bolster faint lighting or make a three-dimensional model of a face that can be rotated to ease comparisons against pictures taken from odd angles.

For the state officials issuing driver’s licenses, the technology has been effective at detecting fraud. As millions of images are compared, the software typically reveals the identities of hundreds or thousands of people who may have more than one driver’s license.

When searches are made for criminal investigations, typically a photo called a “probe” is compared against existing images in a database. The analytical software returns a selection of potential matches, though their accuracy can vary dramatically. A probe image of a middle-aged white man, for example, could produce a possible match with a 20-something African American woman with similarly shaped eyes and lips. Many systems include filters that allow searchers to specify race, sex and a range of possible ages for a suspect.

“It’s a fine line where you need to protect the rights of the citizens, but you also are protecting the right of citizens when you ferret out crime,” said Anthony J. Silva, administrator of Rhode Island’s Division of Motor Vehicles and a former town police chief.

Establishing identity, Silva said, is essential to effective police work: “I can’t tell you how many times I was handed fraudulent documents. And when you are on the street at 3 a.m., who do you call?”

Pennsylvania’s Justice Network, which has allowed police anywhere in the state to compare a facial image with mug-shot databases, has become a key in­vestigative tool, officials said, and last month it added access to 34 million driver’s-license photos. (Some residents have several images, taken over years.)

A detective in Carlisle, Pa., attempting to learn the real name of a suspect known on the street as “Buddha the Shoota” compared a Facebook page picturing the man with the mug-shot database and got a promising lead.

“Facebook is a great source for us,” said Detective Daniel Freedman, who can do facial searches from his department-issued smartphone. “He was surprised when we walked in and said, ‘How you doin’, Buddha?’  ”

He said the suspect responded, “How you know that?” — to which Freedman replied simply, “We’re the police.”

Safeguards and trends

There typically is little concern when facial-recognition systems relying on criminal databases help identify suspects in narrowly targeted investigations. But searches against images of citizens from driver’s licenses or passports, as opposed to mug shots of prisoners, raise more complex legal questions.

Police typically need only to assert a law enforcement purpose for facial searches, whether they be of suspects or potential witnesses to crimes. Civil libertarians worry that this can lead to broadly defined identity sweeps. Already many common but technically illegal activities — blocking a sidewalk, cycling at night without a light or walking a dog without a leash — can trigger police stops and requests for identification, they say.

“The potential for abuse of this technology is such that we have to make sure we put in place the right safeguards to prevent misuse,” Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) said in a statement. “We also need to make sure the government is as transparent as possible in order to give the American people confidence it’s using this technology appropriately.”

A few states, including Washington, Oregon and Minnesota, have legal barriers to police accessing facial-recognition technology in driver’s-license registries. New Hampshire’s legislature passed a law prohibiting ­motor vehicle officials from collecting any biometric data.

But the broader trend is toward more sophisticated databases with more expansive access. The current version of the Senate’s immigration bill would dramatically expand an electronic photo-verification system, probably relying on access to driver’s-license registries.

Montana has a facial-recognition system to help prevent fraud in its driver’s-license registry, but officials are still debating whether to allow police any kind of access.

“I can see it’s an amazingly powerful tool. It has a lot of possibilities,” said Brenda Nordlund, the administrator of the Motor Vehicle Division there. “I don’t know if that’s what citizens expect when they come in and get their driver’s-license pictures taken.”

There are substantial variations in how states allow police searches of their driver’s-license databases. Some allow only licensing-agency officials to conduct the actual searches. Others let police do searches themselves, but only from a headquarters office. And still others have made the technology available to almost any officer willing to get trained.

The District of Columbia has facial-recognition technology for its driver’s-license registry but does not permit law enforcement searches, spokeswoman Vanessa Newton said. Virginia motor vehicle officials have run a pilot program experimenting with facial-recognition technology but have not made a decision on whether police will have access to such a system if it is eventually installed, spokeswoman Sunni Brown said. Maryland does not use such technology in its driver’s-license registry.

Police long have had access to some driver’s-license information — including photographs — when they are investigating criminal suspects whose names they know. But facial-recognition technology has allowed police working from a photo of an unknown person to search for a name.

Las Vegas police, for example, called on authorities two states away in Nebraska for help solving a homicide. Based on a tip, investigators had a page from a social-media site featuring the image of an unknown suspect; the tipster said the woman in the photo had lived in Nebraska. The facial-recognition software produced a hit on a driver’s license there, cracking open the case.

“That picture hung on our wall for a long time,” said Betty Johnson, vehicle services administrator in Nebraska. “We are pretty darn proud of that one.”

Who has the databases?

A single private contractor, MorphoTrust USA, which is based in a suburban Boston office park but is owned by French industrial conglomerate Safran, dominates the field of government facial-
recognition technology systems. Its software operates in systems for the State Department, the FBI and the Defense Department. Most facial-recognition systems installed in driver’s-license registries use the company’s technology, it says.

The largest facial database belongs to the State Department and includes about 230 million searchable images, split almost equally between foreigners who apply for visas and U.S. citizens who hold passports. Access for police investigations, though, is more limited than with state driver’s-license databases.

The FBI’s own facial-recognition database has about 15 million criminal mug shots. Bureau officials are pushing to expand that by tens of millions more by encouraging states to upload their criminal justice photos into the national system. The FBI does not collect driver’s-license images, but the bureau has developed access to state systems that do.

That effort began with“Project Facemask,” which compared images of federal suspects and fugitives against photos in North Carolina’s driver’s-license registry, helping identify a double-homicide suspect who had changed his name and moved to that state from California. The FBI now has agreements giving access to driver’s-license databases in 10 states for investigative purposes. Many motor vehicle officials say they also run searches for federal agents who request them, typically through “fusion centers” that ease the sharing of information among state, local and federal authorities.

Depending on the importance of the case, federal agents can potentially tap facial databases held by driver’s-license registries, state criminal justice systems, the FBI, the State Department and the Defense Department, which has several million searchable faces, mostly Afghans and Iraqi men. Together these amount to an estimated 400 million facial images in government hands, though the rules on access to each database vary. (Often an individual is pictured in more than one database, or even more than once in a single one.)

Federal investigators searched several facial databases in the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombing in April, officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation. But the images were not clear enough to produce hits, even though both of the alleged bombers had driver’s licenses in Massachusetts, a state that uses facial-recognition technology.

Yet as facial databases grow and video cameras become more prevalent and powerful, such searches will become more effective, experts say.

“More and more, what you’re going to see is criminals and other people whose images were taken over the years are digitized, [and] put into these databases, and incidents like Boston will be easier to solve,” said James Albers, senior vice president for government operations for MorphoTrust USA.

Jake Ruberto, left, and and Scott McCallum, co-administrators of the facial-recognition program run by the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office in Florida.
(Edward Linsmier/For The Washington Post)

Pinellas County Sheriff’s Deputy Jeremy Dressback has been using facial-recognition software for more than six years.
(Edward Linsmier/For The Washington Post)

Pinellas County

The Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office says its facial-recognition unit conducts 5,000 searches a month and has assisted in nearly 1,000 arrests since 2004. A bulletin board in the office is lined with success stories: A teenage boy who was sending lewd messages to young girls through multiple Facebook accounts was identified, as was a suicide victim and an alleged bank robber — whose scowling image was captured by the branch’s surveillance camera.

In another case, a man reported a stolen computer but then noticed that an online photo album he long had maintained was automatically uploading new snapshots of a couple he did not recognize. When the sheriff’s office ran a search, the pictures matched faces in both the mug-shot and driver’s-license data­bases. The couple soon fingered an acquaintance who was arrested for stealing the computer and then selling it to them.

The sheriff’s office, whose jurisdiction includes St. Petersburg and its suburbs, built its facial-recognition system over more than a decade, relying for most of that time on mug shots collected at prisons and police booking centers across the state.

The system now has partnerships with the sheriff’s offices in more than half of Florida’s counties and many other government agencies. This year the unit added the ability to search more than 20 million driver’s-license records, bringing the number of facial images in the database to 30 million, officials say.

The Pinellas County system also has access to 250,000 mug shots — though not driver’s-license images — from the Northern Virginia Regional Identification System, a joint project of Washington area jurisdictions, including some Maryland counties.

Pinellas Deputy Jeremy Dressback, a community policing officer, uses access from the laptop in his patrol car to keep track of the people he encounters on a dingy country stretch notorious for prostitution, drugs and seedy motels.

On a recent patrol, when a scruffy-looking man he did not recognize walked up to one of the motels, Dressback stopped him on suspicion of trespassing and asked for identification. The man did not have a driver’s license but gave his name — James A. Shepherd, age 33, from Kentucky — and said he was staying at the motel with his girlfriend.

Dressback pulled out a digital camera, asked permission to take a picture and then snapped a shot. When the image did not match anyone in the facial-recognition system, Dressback downloaded the picture to his laptop computer and attached it to a field report on Shepherd as a “suspicious person.”

Shepherd, who said he was a roofer returning from work, grumbled at the intrusion, even though he had agreed to have his picture taken. “I’m not a criminal, so there’s really no reason for me to be in a criminal database,” Shepherd said before adding, “But I have been arrested quite a few times.”

When his girlfriend walked by moments later — they were indeed staying at the motel — Shepherd directed her toward their room.

“Get out of here,” he said. “You’ll be in his database in 10 seconds.”

Brook Silva-Braga contributed to this report.

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Source: Washington POST

The post State photo-ID databases become troves for police appeared first on Tom O'Halloran.

Syria is not America’s war. It is the Muslim Brotherhood’s war. Instead of nation-building at home, Obama is caliphate-building abroad.

By Daniel Greenfield

Around this time two years ago, Barack Obama delivered a prime time speech in which he told viewers waiting for him to shut up and make way for American Idol, “We have spent a trillion dollars on war, at a time of rising debt and hard economic times… America, it is time to focus on nation-building here at home.”

Even while he was delivering a speech promising to begin nation-building at home, the warplanes he had dispatched to Libya were bombing government targets in support of the Islamist uprising.

A month earlier, Obama had told Americans that he had a duty to protect “Benghazi, a city nearly the size of Charlotte”. Given a choice between nation-building in Charlotte and Benghazi; Obama chose Benghazi.

In September 2012, Obama gave yet another speech calling for a withdrawal from Afghanistan and nation-building at home. Ten days later, the diplomatic mission in Benghazi came under attack by militias and terrorists who had been allowed to take over the city by Obama’s  Libyan intervention.

At the presidential debate, despite the broken promises on Libya, Obama once again brought out his “nation-building at home” card.

In response to a question about the challenges of the Middle East and the terrorist attack in Benghazi, Obama speechified, “The other thing that we have to do is recognize that we can’t continue to do nation building in these regions. Part of American leadership is making sure that we’re doing nation building here at home.”

The response should have come with a laugh track. Eight months later, the Nobel Peace Prize winner is preparing to lead America into his second Arab Spring war.

The script has already been written and it’s the same script that saw airtime in Libya. Claim an imminent threat to civilians that is actually a threat to the terrorists. Carve out a No Fly Zone. Arm the terrorists. And then sit back and wait for the next Benghazi.

To invade Libya, Obama lied and told the American people that the residents of Benghazi were about to suffer a massacre that would stain “the conscience of the world.” No such massacre had taken place or was ever going to take place. The only innocent people who wound up massacred in Benghazi were the Americans sent there by Hillary Clinton.

This time, swap out Aleppo or Homs for Benghazi as the cities badly in need of American protection. Never mind that the Christians of Aleppo and Homs, the only innocent parties in a religious war between a Shiite government and Sunni terrorist groups, are in far more danger from the Islamist Sunni terrorists that Obama is proposing to arm.

The Free Syrian Army’s Farouq Brigades went door to door expelling Christians in Homs. Of the 160,000 Christians in the city, there are now barely a 1,000. Christians in Aleppo have faced kidnappings and car bombings. Some have chosen to arm themselves against the rebels.

“We see on TV armed young men with beards shouting, ‘Allah is great!’ and calling for jihad. We have the right to defend ourselves,” one Christian in Aleppo said. But Obama won’t be supplying the Christians with any weapons. Those are reserved for the bearded young Allah-shouters.

In Qseir, the city recently recaptured by the Syrian Army from the Sunni militias, whose loss partly triggered the rush to war by the Western allies of the Muslim Brotherhood, most of the Christians had fled a place where they were once 10 percent of the population following Sunni Muslim persecution.

The 10,000 Christians of Qseir were ordered to leave the city by loudspeakers on mosques. If Obama’s intervention helps the Islamist militias retake Qseir; there will soon be no Christians left in the city at all. And the same goes for Homs and Aleppo.

Intervention in support of the Islamist militias in Syria is nothing more than a Christian ethnic cleansing project. And those supporting it should be treated like any other advocates of ethnic cleansing.

Obama’s intervention in Libya turned Benghazi over to Islamist militias who have persecuted Christians. His intervention in Syria will ethnically cleanse Christians while rewarding the Muslim Brotherhood with another building block for their caliphate plans.

The Syrian War, like the Libyan War, is built on a pyramid of lies. There are no good options in Syria and nothing we do will help anyone there.

Despite the belated declaration that the Syrian government had breached a Red Line by using chemical weapons, the evidence points to chemical weapons use by both sides.

Obama is choosing to hold only one side accountable for actions that both sides have taken. While the Sunni rebels who used chemical weapons will be armed and aided, the Shiite government which used chemical weapons will get bombed. That’s not human rights; it’s cynical hypocrisy.

The vaunted “Red Line” was and is irrelevant. The White House delayed taking a position when the evidence of a breach first came in and dispatched its media allies to make excuses for not taking an immediate stand because the line was never the issue. The determining factor was whether the Sunni rebels could win on their own or not.

The Libyan intervention had nothing to do with protecting the people of Benghazi and everything to do with protecting the Islamist militias in Benghazi which were in danger of losing the city. The Syrian intervention has nothing to do with whether Assad used chemical weapons, but the worry that the Sunni militias will lose Aleppo and Homs the way that they appear to have lost Qseir.

It was only when it became clear that the Sunni rebels were being rolled back by government forces, that the Red Line began flashing in the White House.  And if there is any doubt of that, Politico quoted an administration official as saying, “The decision was ultimately driven by the discovery Assad used [chemical weapons], but there were a number of other factors in place that were also important… “Would we have made [the determination Assad had breached the red line] even if we didn’t have the evidence? Probably.”

Had an official of the previous administration made such a statement around the Iraq War, there would have been talk of impeachment, but the media has long since gotten used to swallowing the bizarre lies put out by an administration that ended the Iraq War twice and kept insisting that Al Qaeda was on the run even as it was expanding across North Africa.

Obama lied the country into war in Libya. Now no one even blinks as an official admits that he was prepared to lie the country into war in Syria.

Before the campaign, Obama yammered about nation-building at home. Libya isn’t home. Neither is Syria.

While Obama botched Afghanistan, he has insisted on committing the United States to intervening in every nation-building war that the Arab Spring can throw up. Despite slashing the military to the bone, he hasn’t slaked his appetite for new wars. Even though he has dismantled the ability of the FBI to track Islamic terrorists at home, he has busily devoted government resources to helping them win abroad.

Syria is not America’s war. It is the Muslim Brotherhood’s war. Instead of nation-building at home, Obama is caliphate-building abroad.

Article submitted by:  Veronica Coffin

The post Obama Lies America Into Another War appeared first on Tom O'Halloran.