AP, NYT: Evidence lacking that Assad ordered chemical-weapons use

According to the AP and New York Times … no one really knows. The most recent AP reportsays that the US intel community says the Assad connection is no “slam dunk”:

According to the leaks that the media have amplified over the last week or so, the evidence is clear that the Syrian army used chemical weapons against rebels in a Damascus suburb, indiscriminately killing hundreds of civilians.  Barack Obama insisted yesterday in a PBS interview that only the Bashar al-Assad regime possessed the chemical weapons used in the attack, and that radio intercepts showed that Assad’s military ordered the attack.  A UN inspection team hasn’t yet finalized its report on exactly what was used, but even if the above is true — and it was always more likely that the army conducted the attack than the rebels — did the order to use the weapons come from on high, or from a rogue commander on the ground?

According to the AP and New York Times … no one really knows. The most recent AP reportsays that the US intel community says the Assad connection is no “slam dunk”:

The intelligence linking Syrian President Bashar Assad or his inner circle to an alleged chemical weapons attack that killed at least 100 people is no “slam dunk,” with questions remaining about who actually controls some of Syria’s chemical weapons stores and doubts about whether Assad himself ordered the strike, U.S. intelligence officials say. …

However, multiple U.S. officials used the phrase “not a slam dunk” to describe the intelligence picture — a reference to then-CIA Director George Tenet’s insistence in 2002 that U.S. intelligence showing Iraq had weapons of mass destruction was a “slam dunk” — intelligence that turned out to be wrong.

A report by the Office of the Director for National Intelligence outlining that evidence against Syria is thick with caveats. It builds a case that Assad’s forces are most likely responsible while outlining gaps in the U.S. intelligence picture. Relevant congressional committees were to be briefed on that evidence by teleconference call on Thursday, U.S. officials and congressional aides said.

The complicated intelligence picture raises questions about the White House’s full-steam-ahead approach to the Aug. 21 attack on a rebel-held Damascus suburb, with worries that the attack could be tied to al-Qaida-backed rebels later. Administration officials said Wednesday that neither the U.N. Security Council, which is deciding whether to weigh in, or allies’ concerns would affect their plans.

Readers had to delve rather deeply into a previous AP report to get to the story, which started at the ninth paragraph (via Twitchy):

More intelligence was being sought by U.S. officials. While a lower-level Syrian military commanders’ communications discussing a chemical attack had been intercepted, they don’t specifically link the attack to an official senior enough to tie the killings to Assad himself, according to one U.S. intelligence official and two other U.S. officials. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the intelligence publicly.

The White House ideally wants intelligence that links the attack directly to Assad or someone in his inner circle, to rule out the possibility that a rogue element of the military acting without Assad’s authorization.

That quest for added intelligence has delayed the release of the report by the Office of the Director for National Intelligence laying out evidence against Assad. The report was promised earlier this week by administration officials.

The CIA and the Pentagon have been working to gather more human intelligence tying Assad to the attack, relying on the intelligence services of Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Israel, the officials said. The administration was planning a teleconference briefing Thursday on Syria for leaders of the House and Senate and national security committees in both parties, U.S. officials and congressional aides said.

Both the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency have their own human sources — the rebel commanders and others who cross the border to brief CIA and defense intelligence officers at training camps in Jordan and Turkey. But their operation is much smaller than some of the other intelligence services, and it takes longer for their contacts to make their way overland.

Wouldn’t that be a good reason to remain patient and not conduct a rash military intervention? If we have no intel linking Assad or his senior commanders to an order using chemical weapons, why would we bomb Syrians in retaliation?  Why not demand the extradition of the commander for trial in the Hague instead?

Similarly, the New York Times waits a while to get to the point, but their lead-in focuses on the erroneous intel of the Iraq War, which then-Senator Obama used to cite during his first presidential campaign as the major failing of his predecessor:

But with the botched intelligence about Iraq still casting a long shadow over decisions about waging war in the Middle East, the White House faces an American public deeply skeptical about being drawn into the Syrian conflict and a growing chorus of lawmakers from both parties angry about the prospect of an American president once again going to war without Congressional consultation or approval.

American officials said Wednesday there was no “smoking gun” that directly links President Bashar al-Assad to the attack, and they tried to lower expectations about the public intelligence presentation. They said it will not contain specific electronic intercepts of communications between Syrian commanders or detailed reporting from spies and sources on the ground.

But even without hard evidence tying Mr. Assad to the attack, administration officials asserted, the Syrian leader bears ultimate responsibility for the actions of his troops and should be held accountable.

“The commander in chief of any military is ultimately responsible for decisions made under their leadership,” said the State Department’s deputy spokeswoman, Marie Harf — even if, she added, “He’s not the one who pushes the button or says ‘go’ on this.”

Administration officials said that communications between military commanders intercepted after Wednesday’s attack provided proof that the assault was not the result of a rogue unit acting against orders. It is unclear how much detail about these communications, if any, will be made public.

One correction to the New York Times’ argument: Obama is the only President who goes to war without Congressional approval.  Congress approved military action against Iraq in late 2002, which passed by wide bipartisan majorities.

With this context, it becomes a lot easier to see why the UN inspection team, Russia, and China are objecting to the rush to retaliate, even if they can’t do a lot about it. David Cameron will go to Parliament with this data and try to convince his skeptical House of Commons that this intel provides justification for the West opening up another war in the Middle East — just two years after the disastrous NATO intervention against Moammar Qaddafi drove the Brits and all other Western nations out of Benghazi, the city NATO purported to save.  Don’t expect Cameron to have much success in convincing Parliament to take another ride on this merry-go-round, and if he fails, that’s going to make it much more difficult politically for Obama to move forward, at home and abroad, at least not without Congressional authorization.

http://hotair.com/archives/2013/08/29/ap-nyt-evidence-lacking-that-assad-ordered-chemical-weapons-use/

Anti-war movement too poor to protest Obama over Syria

If there’s one thing Americans love, it’s a good anti-war protest. With a tradition dating back to the Vietnam war, you barely have to hint at the idea that you might be considering firing a volley over somebody’s fence and you’ll have crowds of people taking to the streets singing old Beatles tunes. So now, with Barack Obama poised on the verge of launching an attack on Syria, our old friends are out there taking to the streets to give Obama an earful. Right? Right? Anyone? Beuller? How about Rick Moran?

Anti-war groups like Code Pink and Peace Action aren’t swarming the Mall in Washington to protest Barack Obama’s planned intervention in Syria because the economy is in the pits and the movement is a “shadow of its former self,” according to Medea Benjamin, founder of Code Pink.

From Buzzfeed:

“Well, the most incredibly depressing thing was that most of the groups that existed before don’t exist anymore,” said Medea Benjamin, the founder of Code Pink. “That’s the number one problem, is that the antiwar movement is a shadow of its former self under the Bush years.”

Benjamin pointed to groups like United for Peace and Justice, a Communist Party-connected group, as examples: “They’re down to a couple of volunteers,” she said.

Code Pink itself, despite being one of the most visible protest groups in the U.S. today, has felt the pinch.

“Even Code Pink, which had 300 local groups, just has a tiny portion still functioning,” Benjamin said. “So when something like this happens, we don’t have the infrastructure to rally people.”

Clearly times are hard all over and the Obama economy is even hitting the anti-war groups. It’s a tragedy I tell you, but could there be something more to this than simply a lack of cash? Rick has more:

Our pacifist friends have gotten lazy. Now that they have a liberal in the White House (who’s about to start his third war), they just can’t find the time to do the scut work necessary to drive thousands into the streets. Body counts are apparently more important to the “anti-war” crowd than the act of going to war itself, which is a curious position to hold for people who think of themselves as pacifists.

That part should be fairly obvious, and it goes without saying that there are historical examples of Republicans who seemed a bit more willing to sit on their hands regarding important issues – like spending – when a member of their own party was holding the reins. When it comes to groups like Code Pink, war is a terrible thing if there’s a Republican in the White House. (And make no mistake… war is a terrible thing.) But if it’s one of their own pulling the trigger and giving the Go Command, well… it’s kind of hot and humid out. Do you really want to go marching in this weather? And most of the Magic Markers are dried up and we’d have to go get more if we’re going to make protest signs. Maybe we should just send a nice e-mail to our Senator.

Way to stand firm on those principles, ladies.

https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?tab=Xm#inbox/140ca7f6c3444673

Obama and his team contradict past statements on war powers.

Obama weighs military action in Syria, it remains unclear whether he will first seek congressional authorization.

It is clear, however, that Obama once thought such authorization was necessary.

“The president does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation,” candidate Obama told The Boston Globe in late 2007. He added that the president can only act unilaterally in “instances of self-defense.”

“It is always preferable to have the informed consent of Congress prior to any military action,” Obama continued.

President Obama did not seek congressional approval for his military strikes against Libya in 2011. That bombing campaign led to longtime dictator Muammar Gadhafi’s ouster.

Vice President Joe Biden, who voted for the Iraq War, agreed with Obama.

“The president has no constitutional authority to take this country to war… unless we’re attacked or unless there is proof that we are about to be attacked,” Biden said in 2007.

Biden, then a Democratic senator from Delaware, suggested presidential war-making was an impeachable offense.

This was not a new position for Biden. He delivered a speech before the Senate outlining Congress’ powers to declare war back in 1998.

“Given this,” Biden said at the time, “the only logical conclusion is that the framers intended to grant to Congress the power to initiate all hostilities, even limited wars.”

Obama and Biden aren’t the only administration officials whose past comments will be parsed if strikes are ordered on Syria. Secretary of State John Kerry suggested the Syrian government would have to answer for the “moral obscenity” of chemical weapons use, while Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said troops are “ready to go” to Syria at the president’s command.

But in 2008, Kerry and Hagel, then U.S. senators, co-authored a Wall Street Journal op-ed titled “It’s Time to Talk to Syria.”

“Syria’s leaders have always made cold calculations in the name of self-preservation, and history shows that intensive diplomacy can pay off,” Kerry and Hagel wrote.

“The ultimate challenge — moving Syria away from its marriage of convenience with Iran — will certainly not happen overnight,” they continued. “But it’s telling that Iran lobbied Syria not to negotiate with Israel and that Syria decided to proceed regardless.”

The senators urged Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and President George W. Bush to emulate their fathers’ cooperation during the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

“While many doubt Syria’s intentions, we have real leverage and some inducements that have more value to Syria than cost to us,” Hagel and Kerry wrote. “There is no guarantee of an agreement, but the potential payoff is huge, and our current policy is failing.”

Kerry and Hagel both voted for the Iraq War, which they subsequently opposed.

“We must move beyond the mindset of perpetual war,” President Obama said in Berlin in June.

Military action against Syria could come as soon as Thursday, according to multiple reports.

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Tags: Barack Obama, Chuck Hagel, George W. Bush, Iran, Joe Biden, John Kerry, Syria

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2013/08/27/obama-and-his-team-contradict-past-statements-on-war-powers-syria/#ixzz2dHkcuum1

Facebook Admits to Sharing Personal Information with Government 26,000 Times in the First Six Months of 2013.

On Facebook, you can share posts and pictures with friends.
But at Facebook, they can (and do) share your posts and pictures and personal information with government agents all around the world.

Facebook released a report Tuesday detailing their level of involvement with government requests for data.  Since users willingly share so much about themselves on Facebook and other social media tools, it seems government agencies are looking to take advantage of the information – and Facebook is more than happy to comply.

As we have said many times, we believe that while governments have an important responsibility to keep people safe, it is possible to do so while also being transparent,” said Colin Stretch, an attorney for the social networking mega-site.  “Government transparency and public safety are not mutually exclusive ideals.”
Stretch assured users that Facebook scrutinizes each request and maintains a “very high legal bar” that governments must clear before users’ private information is passed along.
Even so, the numbers are startling.

In total, Facebook received more than 26,000 separate requests for information about nearly 39,000 different accounts from 72 different national governments during the first six months of 2013.
And guess which country’s government made the most requests for information from Facebook – so many, in fact, that it is more than all other requests from all other national governments in the entire world, combined.
Go ahead, guess.

It does raise some questions – like, if government surveillance is meant to stop terrorist attacks, are terrorists really posting “about to build a bomb” on their status updates?

Or, perhaps the government is collecting Facebook information for other reasons – particularly since we already know the Drug Enforcement Agency frequently gets “tips” from the National Security Agency and others (then lies about where those tips come from).

And Facebook’s willingness to share personal data with the governments of the world seems even stranger one week after Joe Sullivan, the company’s chief security officer, said “it is never acceptable to compromise the security or privacy of other people.”

Of course in that instance he was talking about one user compromising another user’s privacy.  If Facebook is going to compromise everyone’s privacy at once, that must be better – somehow.
Now we really need that “dislike” button.

http://watchdog.org/103172/dislike-facebook-admits-to-sharing-personal-information-with-governments-26000-times-in-the-first-six-months-of-2013/

Debt ceiling, government shutdown battles simmer in summer recess.

The Washington dance of flirting with fiscal catastrophe intensified this week, as the Obama administration warned House Republicans that a deal on increasing the federal debt limit may have to come sooner than expected. 

The warning came in a letter from Treasury Secretary Jack Lew to House Speaker John Boehner, who along with other members of Congress is still on summer recess and not expected to return until early September. That leaves little time to deal with two looming deadlines that have not yet been addressed. 

In order to first prevent a partial government shutdown, Congress and the Obama administration must agree on at least a temporary spending deal. 

Such a bill is typically reached without too much partisan wrangling. But this year’s effort is being complicated by Republicans saying any measure should include the steep cuts known as sequester that started this spring, and by some Democrats insisting they be removed. Plus a small-but-vocal group of Tea Party-backed Republicans is stirring the pot by trying to insist that funding for the president’s health care law, whose official signup date also is Oct. 1, be stripped from any budget bill. 

Lew, in his letter on Monday, said the debt-ceiling deadline will follow close behind. According to Lew, the Treasury Department will run out of so-called "extraordinary measures" -- tactics to avoid bumping up against the debt ceiling -- in the middle of October, risking a default unless Congress raises the cap. 

“Extending borrowing authority does not increase government spending; it simply allows the Treasury to pay for expenditures Congress has previously approved,” Lew told Boehner, R-Ohio. “Protecting the … credit of the United States is the responsibility of the Congress because only Congress can extend the nation’s borrowing authority.” 

Boehner's office fired back, with a spokesman saying the debt ceiling is a reminder that "under President Obama, Washington has failed to deal seriously with America's debt and deficit."

Boehner and Obama reached a complex deal in 2011, agreeing to roughly $900 billion in immediate spending cuts in order to increase borrowing authority by roughly the same amount. That deal laid the groundwork for the even larger cuts now known as sequester, as well as more increases in the debt ceiling.

But the high-wire act had a major economic impact -- roiling financial markets worldwide and contributing to Standard & Poor's downgrading the credit rating on U.S. bonds.

The debt ceiling right now is $16.7 trillion. Economists had for months predicted the federal government would no longer be able to pay its bills after Labor Day, but at least some thought the deadline was closer to November.

Lew told Congress that if the government cannot increase its borrowing authority, then it must use the $50 billion in cash held by the Treasury, which has no solid way of predicting when all of that money will be spent.

The White House and a group of Republican senators have worked in recent months on proposed fiscal deals to avoid last-minute negotiations, but those talks have purportedly stalled.

Though Boehner indicated last week that he wants to pass a short-term spending bill to avoid a government shutdown, he reportedly vowed Monday to put up a “whale of a fight” over the debt limit.  

"I've made it clear that we're not going to increase the debt limit without cuts and reforms that are greater than the increase in the debt limit," he said at a fundraiser for Idaho Republican Rep. Mike Simpson, according to the Idaho Statesman.

Michigan Rep. Sander Levin, the top Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee, after Lew’s letter urged the GOP to increase the debt limit.

“With just nine legislative days currently scheduled in September, Republicans must return to Congress prepared to move beyond the kind of brinksmanship that undermined our economic recovery two years ago,” he said. “It is time for Republicans to do the right thing – not the far right thing.”

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/08/28/lew-warns-republicans-about-debt-ceiling-intensifying-upcoming-fiscal-deals/?cmpid=NL_morninghl#ixzz2dHepcpCt

NJ: Say, why hasn’t President Obama visited North Dakota?

Here why you think? WILLISTON, N.D.—North Dakota is at the heart of America's oil and natural gas boom, producing more than 800,000 barrels of oil a day in June, roughly 10 percent of the country'soverall daily oil production.

http://www.nationaljournal.com/insiders/energy/what-does-north-dakota-s-oil-boom-mean-for-america-20130826

Every time the White House feels like making one of their umpteenth “economic pivots,” President Obama makes it his business to campaign tour around the country and give a grandiose speech promoting his Keynesianish policies for economic growth, often in a specific location in which he can tout jobs or technical innovation as evidence of how well he understands economics and can prescribe the best solutions for the country at large. Earlier this summer, for instance, Obama stood front and center in an Amazon.com distribution plant in Tennessee, shortly after Amazon announced they were going on a major hiring kick (much to the chagrin of certain locals, I might add).

So… why hasn’t President Obama bothered to use North Dakota as a backdrop for one of his life-changing displays of elocution? North Dakota, after all, has the lowest unemployment rate in the entire country at just about three percent and is raking in the revenue — clearly they’re doing something right, yet President Obama hasn’t visited the state a single time since the 2008 campaign.

Could it be that overwhelming reason behind North Dakota’s relative success doesn’t quite jibe with President Obama’s visions for economic growth, and he’s reluctant to draw too much attention to the area? National Journal seems to have noticed:

North Dakota is like an overachieving child who attracts the attention of everyone—except Dad.

The oil boom taking over western North Dakota and transforming America’s energy landscape has prompted visits from people around the world—Germany, Turkey, Japan, Dubai, and elsewhere—to see what they can learn and how they can benefit. …

“He said he wouldn’t come in the winter,” Heitkamp told National Journal while driving outside of Dickinson, a town of about 20,000 people on the edge of the oil patch. “That’s as much of a commitment—I think it’s really important for him to take a look,” said Heitkamp, changing her thought mid-sentence.

North Dakota is at the heart of America’s oil and natural gas boom. The state, thanks to two deep underground shale-rock formations called Bakken and Three Forks, produced more than 800,000 barrels of oil a day in June, roughly 10 percent of the country’s overall daily oil production and an all-time record for the state. North Dakota has surpassed both California and Alaska to become the second-highest oil-producing state in the country, behind Texas.

While the Obama administration has no choice but to begrudgingly include the oil sector in their ostensible “all of the above” energy plan, and they’re eager to point to natural gas as a “bridge fuel” with which we can hold ourselves over until their “investments” in what they’ve decided are better forms of energy start to bear fruit, their long-term plans for the drilling permits are conspicuously underwhelming. Energy companies and lawmakers are actively asking them to change that, but the administration has no plans to budge, and meanwhile, Obama needs to keep his self-fancied environmentalist contingent appeased. Such a sticky wicket, isn’t it?

Carney: Why no, our response to Syria has nothing to do with the regime change we’ve demanded since 2011

Doesn’t this sound a little … familiar? Over two years ago, the Obama administration repeatedly insisted that its intervention in Libya to keep Moammar Qaddafi’s army from overrunning Benghazi was not about regime change, either, and insisted that Libyans had to decide their future for themselves.  The resulting NATO intervention then bombed Qaddafi’s army all the way back to Tripoli and continued the bombardment until Qaddafi’s regime collapsed — leaving a failed state in its wake, and open operation for al-Qaeda affiliated terrorist networks to operate.

But this time, it’s different:

The president is consulting with leaders of Congress and allies abroad as he weighs military options such as missile strikes against Syrian military installations.

Asked if the president is contemplating the killing of Syrian leader Bashar Assad, Mr. Carney replied, “The options that we are considering are not about regime change.”

Carney’s lips says no no no, but their official policies say yes. It took months for Barack Obama to demand regime change in Syria after the civil war started, compared to eight days for American ally Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, but demand it Obama did in October 2011. Jay Carney even delivered the message:

The White House on Friday called on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to “step down now,” warning he was taking his country down a “very dangerous path.”

In a statement, spokesman Jay Carney condemned the killing of Kurdish opposition leader Meshaal Tamo as well as the beating of a prominent Syrian activist, saying it showed “again that the Assad regime’s promises for dialogue and reform are hollow.”

“The United States strongly rejects violence directed against peaceful oppositionists wherever it occurs, and stands in solidarity with the courageous people of Syria who deserve their universal rights,” Carney said.

“Today’s attacks demonstrate the Syrian regime’s latest attempts to shut down peaceful opposition inside Syria. President Assad must step down now before taking his country further down this very dangerous path.”

So far, the White House isn’t willing to publicly proclaim a timetable for the response:

Carney says he wouldn't put a timetable on how long it will take for Pres Obama to decide on course of action against Syria.

— Mark Knoller (@markknoller) August 27, 2013

They seemed pretty anxious to leak it this morning, though, and in detail:

Missile strikes against Syria could be launched “as early as Thursday,” senior U.S. officials said Tuesday as the White House intensified its push toward an international response to the suspected use of chemical weapons.

The “three days” of strikes would be limited in scope, and aimed at sending a message to Syria’s President Bashar Assad rather than degrading his military capabilities, U.S. officials told NBC News.

News on the possible timescale for military action followed another round of telephone diplomacy by President Barack Obama and his administration.

It’s good thing that “senior US officials” are willing to set the start and end dates ahead of time.  That way, Bashar al-Assad can put it on his calendar and get the e-mail reminders. I guess that’s some sort of message, but it doesn’t sound as daunting as the White House might believe, especially when partnered with double-talk about regime change.

http://hotair.com/archives/2013/08/27/carney-why-no-our-response-to-syria-has-nothing-to-do-with-the-regime-change-weve-demanded-since-2011/

Congress requests answers from DoJ on possible abuse of power allegations concerning NSA

his has been in the news recently and now it is getting some Congressional attention.  It has to do with possible illegal activities involving the NSA and DEA.  As you know, the NSA’s job is to focus outside the US, not inside, and primarily on enemies of the United States, not it’s citizens:

Eight Democratic senators and congressmen have asked Attorney General Eric Holder to answer questions about a Reuters report that the National Security Agency supplies the Drug Enforcement Administration with intelligence information used to make non-terrorism cases against American citizens.

The August report revealed that a secretive DEA unit passes the NSA information to agents in the field, including those from the Internal Revenue Service, the FBI and Homeland Security, with instructions to never disclose the original source, even in court. In most cases, the NSA tips involve drugs, money laundering and organized crime, not terrorism.

Five Democrats in the Senate and three senior Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee submitted questions to Holder about the NSA-DEA relationship, joining two prominent Republicans who have expressed concerns. The matter will be discussed during classified briefings scheduled for September, Republican and Democratic aides said.

“These allegations raise serious concerns that gaps in the policy and law are allowing overreach by the federal government’s intelligence gathering apparatus,” wrote the senators – Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, Ron Wyden of Oregon, Tom Udall of New Mexico, Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut and Sherrod Brown of Ohio.

Why, other than the fact that the NSA has no charter or permission to pass its information about American citizens on to other agencies, is this important?

The Reuters reports cited internal documents that show how DEA’s Special Operations Division funnels information from overseas NSA intercepts, domestic wiretaps, informants and a large DEA database of telephone records to authorities nationwide to help them launch criminal investigations of Americans.

The documents show that agents have been trained to conceal how such investigations truly begin – to “recreate” the investigative trail to effectively cover up the original source of the information, raising questions about whether exculpatory information might be withheld from defendants at trial.

The internal documents describe the process of recreating the evidence trail to omit any reference to the Special Operations Division as “parallel construction.” For example, agents said in interviews, they act as if a drug investigation began with a traffic stop for speeding or a broken taillight, instead of a tip passed from the NSA. An IRS document describes a similar process for tax agency investigators.

Emphasis mine. So not only is passing such information to these agencies unauthorized, the government then instructs its agents on how to lie about the source of their information (a lie of omission). And, of course, it is also legitimate to ask whether or not exculpatory evidence could also have been available but not passed to these agencies.

Is this really the type government we want?  One that spies on us, intercepts our electronic messages and phone calls and uses them secretly by passing what should be private to various other government agencies and then lies about it?  Peggy Noonan addresses those questions quite directly today:

If the citizens of the United States don’t put up a halting hand, the government can’t be expected to. It is in the nature of security professionals to always want more, and since their mission is worthy they’re less likely to have constitutional qualms, to dwell on such abstractions as abuse of the Fourth Amendment and the impact of that abuse on the First.

If you assume all the information that can and will be gleaned will be confined to NSA and national security purposes, you are not sufficiently imaginative or informed. If you believe the information will never be used wrongly or recklessly, you are touchingly innocent.

If you assume you can trust the administration on this issue you are not following the bouncing ball, from Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who told Congress under oath the NSA didn’t gather “any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans” (he later had to apologize) to President Obama, who told Jay Leno: “We don’t have a domestic program.” What we do have, the president said, is “some mechanism that can track a phone number or an email address that is connected to a terrorist attack.”

Oh, we have more than that.

Almost every politician in America lives in fear of one big thing: a terrorist attack they can later be accused of not having done everything to stop. And so they’ll do anything. They are looking to preserve their political viability and historical standing. We, as citizens, must keep other things in mind, such as the rights we are born with as Americans, one of which is privacy.

Lord Acton nailed it when he said “Power corrupts …”.  We’re currently in the midst of watching exactly that happen to an even greater degree than in the past. If you give government power, it will do everything it can to expand that power – whether legitimately or illegitimately.  It is the nature of the beast.  And we have to put up a hand to stop it.

If you’re wondering why the Tea Party is characterized in such nasty ways by the establishment of both parties, it is because it does indeed attempt to put up a hand to stop these sorts of abuses and remove power from the abusers.  They threaten the very base of power the political establishment has worked so hard to build over the years.

http://hotair.com/archives/2013/08/27/congress-request-answers-from-doj-on-possible-abuse-of-power-allegations-concerning-nsa/

George Washington and Patrick Henry Not Welcome In Today’s Military

Liberal propaganda has infected all aspects of our federal government like poison spreading through a water supply.  Everything is becoming infected with the deadly liberalism and the end result will be the death of America as we know it.

We’ve all heard how more and more textbooks being used in public schools are teaching our children that the Boston Tea Party was a terrorist act and that America is the enemy of the world.  Kids are being taught globalism and a one-world economy and government.

Now, the Defense Department has come out with its own liberal version of history and guidelines for military personnel, a document titled ‘AFSS 0910 Equal Opportunity and Treatment Incidents (EOTI).’  Contained in the document are lessons which are teaching the military that people like George Washington and Patrick Henry who fought for America’s freedom were extremists and those types of people are not wanted in today’s military.

On page 35, the document provides the following definitions:

“Extremism – A term used to describe the actions or ideologies of individuals or groups who take a political idea to its limits, regardless of unfortunate repercussions, and show intolerance toward all views other than their own.”

“Extremist – A person who advocates the use of force or violence; advocates supremacist causes based on race, ethnicity, religion, gender, or national origin; or otherwise engages to illegally deprive individuals or groups of their civil rights.”

On page 36, the document states:

“Individuals who hold extremist views are in conflict with the standards expected of all military members, and participation in extremism is inconsistent with the duties of military service.”

On page 38, the document equates hate groups with extremists:

“While many extremist groups advocate violence, some extremists avoid violence at all costs. So, one cannot say that the terms extremist and hate is synonymous. However, while not all extremist groups are hate groups, all hate groups are extremist groups.”

“According to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), there were 932 hate groups active in the United States in 2009. Many of these groups follow the same ideologies, but do not necessarily work together or cooperate with each other. Extremists tend to be confrontational, so fights within a group are not uncommon. After an argument, dissidents may form another competing group or organization, or join a different one.”

Now you need to realize that the Southern Poverty Law Center defines any conservative group as being a hate group.  Among their list of hate groups is, Family Research Council, American Family Association, Concerned Women for America and Coral Ridge Ministries.  There are indications that the shooting earlier this year at the Family Research Council was prompted by the organization being labeled as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Judicial Watch pointed out:

“In April 2013, following a terrorist shooting at the Family Research Council (FRC) headquarters that occurred in August 2012, Judicial Watch filed multiple FOIA requests to determine what, if any, influence SPLC’s branding of hate groups had on government agencies. On its website, the SPLC has depicted FRC as a ‘hate group,’ along with other such mainstream conservative organizations as the American Family Association, Concerned Women for America, and Coral Ridge Ministries. At the time of the shooting, FRC president Tony Perkins accused the SPLC of sparking the shooting, saying the shooter ‘was given a license to shoot … by organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center.’”

On page 39, the DOD document places the hate groups listed by the Southern Poverty Law Center in with the Neo-Confederate, Black Separatist, Ku Klux Klan, Neo-Nazi, Racist Skinheads and the White Nationalists.  That’s right; the Department of Defense considers conservative groups like Coral Ridge Ministries and the American Family Association to be in the same category of hate groups as the KKK and Skinheads.

On page 40 it states:

“Extremists often attack the character of an opponent rather than deal with the facts or issues raised. They will question motives, qualifications, past associations, alleged values, personality, looks, and mental health as a diversion from the issues under consideration.”

This actually describes most liberal Democrats, especially during the last election where they spent more time attacking their Republican opponents’ character than discussing the issues.

On page 45 the document describes recruiting methods of hate groups and extremists:

“The standard hate message has not changed, but it has been packaged differently. Modern extremist groups run the gamut from the politically astute and subtle to the openly violent.”

“Nowadays, instead of dressing in sheets or publicly espousing hate messages, many extremists will talk of individual liberties, states’ rights, and how to make the world a better place.”

Let me get this straight.  If you talk to people about states’ rights (Tenth Amendment) or individual liberties (US Constitution and the Bill of Rights), then you are a recruiting extremist and a member of a hate group.  That means that any conservative Republican or Christian is an extremist and not fit to serve in the US military.  Men like George Washington, Patrick Henry, Gen. Dwight David Eisenhower and most of the heroes that built and protected America for over 200 years are extremist hate mongers and no longer welcome to serve in our military and protect what little freedoms we have left.

The Department of Defense is saying that they only want men and women who are not patriotic, hate the American way of life and are as liberal as Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama.  God help us!

http://godfatherpolitics.com/12288/george-washington-patrick-henry-welcome-todays-military/

MLK III Displays Racist Views At 50th Anniversary Commemoration

This past weekend, you couldn’t turn on any news program without hearing about the 50th anniversary commemoration of the March on Washington.  Fifty years ago, Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his now famous ‘I have a dream’ speech.

At this weekend’s celebration, a number of speakers took to the podium.  Among them was Martin Luther King III, the son of the famous civil rights leader.  When he addressed the crowd, he revealed his racist attitudes which are the very problems that his father fought so hard to prevent.  During his address, he said:

"However, sadly, the tears of Trayvon Martin's mother and father remind us that, far too frequently, the color of one's skin remains a license to profile, to arrest and to even murder with no regard for the content of one's character."

Excuse me?

If you want to regard one’s character, Trayvon Martin was a pot smoking, trouble making thug.  Trayvon’s own social media sites and some of the honest people that knew him revealed he was looking for a fight and that he was an angry kid looking for trouble.  He posted photos of himself with both middle fingers flipping everyone off.  He was found to own a set of burglary tools.

Mr. King III, what about the character of the hundreds of while people that have been savagely attacked by blacks for no other reason than they are white?  What about all the beatings and killings of white people by angry blacks who declared they were doing this in the name of Trayvon Martin?

Mr. King III, please tell me why most of the time a white person attacks or kills a black person it’s labeled as a racial hate crime, but when hundreds of blacks have attacked dozens of whites, even beating them to death, it’s rarely ever labeled as a racial hate crime?

Is racism something that only a white person can be guilty of?  Why can’t a black person be a racist?  I’ve never seen any legal definition of racism restricting it only to white people.  Why is it a black public figure can say all kinds of racially hateful statements and nothing is done to them, but let a white public figure say just one little thing and they lose their jobs and are labeled racist for the rest of their lives?

Yes, there are many white people that are racist, but some of the most racist people I have seen and heard of are black, including Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson Sr.  King III’s statement is an example of black racism towards others and I believe that his father would have been embarrassed and ashamed by his statement at the anniversary commemoration.  It’s people like him, Sharpton and Jackson Sr. that keep racism alive and well in America.

http://godfatherpolitics.com/12290/mlk-iii-displays-racist-views-50th-anniversary-commemoration/

The March on Washington, 50 Years Later: How the American Left Remembers It

ifty years ago this week, the historic March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom took place. The highlight was Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech, now justly celebrated as one of the most famous orations in American history, standing alongside that of Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.

I, along with many other Americans, have my own memories of that day. I had recently left Madison, Wisconsin, to come back to New York City with my first wife and our infant daughter, where I looked for an apartment and began the long process of writing my doctoral dissertation and finding a job. I had been involved in the civil rights movement in 1959-60 at the University of Iowa, where I got my M.A. in history. I organized the picketing of Woolworth’s department store in solidarity with the Greensboro, North Carolina, sit-in, at which brave black students demanded to be served lunch at the segregated chain’s lunch counter. While at Iowa, my wife and I went to hear King speak at a local black church, and hence I already knew what a powerful speaker he was.

On the day of the march, I boarded an old hard-back yellow school bus at 5:00 a.m. for the long trip to the nation’s capital. The bus was chartered by people working out of Bayard Rustin’s New York office, and was officially part of a delegation of what became Students for a Democratic Society, but at the time was the Student League for Industrial Democracy, a group affiliated with the Socialist Party led by Norman Thomas. Rustin and A. Phillip Randolph were both members.

I remember one highlight. The then-segregated Maryland rest stops were open to all marchers, black and white. I recall groups of volunteers handing out free sandwiches and drinks to all marchers. Standing next to me, a black kid who was perhaps 10 or 11 laughed and said loudly: “The white power structure certainly has things well organized for our benefit today.” The march itself proved to be glorious — all ages, white and black, demanding that the American promise of equality before the law for all be realized and that the scourge of racism and segregation be ended throughout the nation as a whole.

The promise and hopes of that day would soon be shattered by the Birmingham, Alabama church bombing which killed young children at Sunday school, and by the other obstructionist attempts of Southern racists to stifle the forces demanding change and equality. The march took place as the nation recalled the recent assassination of Medgar Evers and the murder of Emmett Till in 1955.

It would be a long and noble struggle, and fifty years later, anyone with a shred of honesty knows how different the America of that day was from the one we now live in.

I have little to add to the wonderful column appearing in these pages by Rick Moran, who rightfully notes how Martin Luther King, Jr. would be stunned by the speeches at last week’s first commemoration march, where the huckster Rev. Al Sharpton was a keynote featured speaker, and where the calls of “Justice for Trayvon” and claims that the vote was being taken away from African-Americans resounded. It was apparent that in the eyes of many who spoke, we were still living in the America of the early 1960s.
The remembrances of the original 1963 March on Washington has led to scores of articles about what Martin Luther King, Jr. would say today, what he would demand if he was still alive and speaking at this week’s commemorative event. It is an exercise in which it seems every liberal and leftist is participating, with the expected results.

In most regards, what they think are the important issues are what they think King would be saying. The exercise amounts to  a litany of today’s left-wing agenda.

Writing in The Nation, Gary Younge does not disappoint in giving us the perspective of unadulterated leftism. For him, King’s historic speech was a “searing indictment of American racism that still exists.” (My emphasis.) As Younge sees it, Martin Luther King Jr. was a radical of the far Left, who only with the passage of time “went from ignominy to icon.”

Evidently Mr. Younge is too young to recall — or perhaps because he grew up in Britain, does not know — that the radicals in SNCC often referred to him behind his back as “Uncle Martin Tom” and “Martin Luther Coon.” And that self-proclaimed black revolutionaries like Malcolm X condemned King regularly as an appeaser of white power for advocating non-violence and Gandhi-style resistance.

The march itself, Malcolm X proclaimed, was “The Farce on Washington.”
Now it certainly is true that King was of the social-democratic tradition, as was the march’s chief captain and organizer, Bayard Rustin. Rustin, however, was as anti-Communist as one could be, and hence, urged King not to later waste the potential of his moral leadership of the movement by joining the anti Vietnam-war movement.

Rustin, who was a dedicated pacifist, would later sign an open letter informing Americans why he would not take part in any anti-war rallies in which speakers advocated victory for the Viet Cong or flew the National Liberation Front flags alongside that of the United States.

King gained stature and recognition for his leadership of the civil rights movement. But it is time to acknowledge that he was not correct in all the stands he took. Praising his leadership and moral power does not mean that we have to take the position that everything he believed was correct.

King did say in 1967 at a Riverside Church meeting that the United States is “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.” He was wrong, and it was, in my eyes, unfortunate that at that moment he drifted into support of the far Left’s agenda regarding Vietnam. Like so many others who opposed the Vietnam War and hoped for a North Vietnamese victory, King too was swept up by the growing opposition. He squandered his stature by joining with radicals whose agenda was not ending the war through a negotiated settlement, but favoring a victory for the Vietnamese Communists.

To left-wing radicals like Younge, King’s speech was not simply one calling for an end to legal segregation, but one in which he sought programs based on governmental help to bring material prosperity to poor black Americans.

Younge does not mention, however, that the program of the march for government intervention was worked on by Rustin and Randolph, and was based on the belief that the United States could afford both guns and butter, and that calling for programs like a domestic Marshall Plan to end the ghettos did not mean joining the Left’s call for less defense spending.

Of course, to Younge, racism is not an “aberration of the past,” as proved when the Supreme Court “gutted the Voting Rights Act this past spring.”

Younge’s views were bested however, by our capital’s leading voice, the Washington Post. In Sunday’s “Outlook” section, the main part of the front page and one other full page were given over to an article by Peter Dreier, whom readers of my PJM column might recall I was engaged in a debate with a few years ago. Dreier, the E.P. Clapp distinguished professor of politics at Occidental College (where our president was a student), asks the question “Where would [King] lead us today?” He writes:

Today, at age 84, King would no doubt still be on the front lines, lending his voice and his energy to major battles for justice.

Since King is no longer with us, the truth is that we have no idea how and in what manner King may have evolved.
Might he have joined Bill Cosby in criticizing so much of black “culture” that is harmful and eulogizes thuggish behavior and glamorizes murder? Might he have worked to emphasize the building blocks necessary to rebuild the black family at a time when so many African-American youngsters are raised in single-family households by their mothers? Any of these and many other choices are possible when speculating about what Martin Luther King, Jr. may have advocated in the present day.

Nevertheless, Professor Dreier is certain that King would favor the banning of guns, or, as Dreier writes, “would probably push for tougher limits on gun ownership.”

Note that word “probably.” Might not he have gone another route, and decided that with growing gang violence in black neighborhoods, perhaps owning a gun of one’s own might work to prevent violence being unleashed on those trying to raise their children in a stable atmosphere? That perhaps greater legal gun ownership would cause gang members to think twice before engaging in neighborhood shooting sprees? Perhaps, after reading Robert F. Williams’ Negroes with Guns, he might have concluded that just as some blacks in the South protected themselves against the Klan by having an armed home, the same protection might work in the present against the threat of bodily harm by gang members.

Dreier is also certain that King would support abortion, or as he calls it, “women’s reproductive freedom.” Noting that King received the Margaret Sanger award from Planned Parenthood in 1966, he cited King’s words:

There is a striking kinship between our movement and Margaret Sanger’s early efforts.

Perhaps after doing some more reading, King would have quickly disavowed those words, realizing that Sanger believed in eugenics and, as Jonah Goldberg has written, “was a thoroughgoing racist.”
As Sanger wrote, she desired:

More children from the fit, less from the unfit — that is the chief issue of birth control.

One of her closest friends was white supremacist Lothrop Stoddard, who favored limiting the food supply for the inferior colored races “so we can compel an inferior race to remain in its native habitat.” Sanger asked Stoddard to join the board of directors of the American Birth Control League.

Later, Sanger created “The Negro Project,” which, as Goldberg points out, was meant to “help pare down the supposedly surplus black population.” Sanger actually wrote:

We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population.

Her project report stated:

The mass of significant Negroes still breed carelessly and disastrously, with the result that the increase among Negroes … is [in] that portion of the population least intelligent and fit.

Of course, being a leftist, Dreier automatically favors cutting the defense budget, since he obviously believes America has no external threats and does not need any defense at all. Even for someone like him, however, it is an insult to King’s memory to write that he “would probably be working with unions, religious organizations and activist groups such as Code Pink to cut the defense budget.” To anyone who thinks the antics of Code Pink, led by the extremist radical leftist Medea Benjamin, have anything in common with what King believed is delusional.

Dreier is also sure that King would be supportive of the campaign for a higher minimum wage, the anti-Walmart movement, boycotting the Gap, etc. One could just as well argue that King might have taken the time to read serious black authors like Thomas Sowell and Shelby Steele, and even consult with Dr. Ben Carson, and have ended up reevaluating some of his early left-leaning ideas and concepts. King, after all, was not averse to challenging his conceptions, and he might have concluded that the much-heralded Great Society programs he once favored had failed, and that new approaches had to be taken to deal with the question of poverty and the road to restoring equality of opportunity.

Professor Dreier concludes that the best way to honor King’s memory “is to continue his struggle for social justice.” That term, which should be quickly retired, is the Left’s euphemism for adhering to bankrupt liberal/left bromides that have failed to solve the very problems its adherents believe they are addressing.
Let us honor Dr. King’s heroic fight against racism in our past, and honor his desire to right the wrongs that still exist by coming up with our own programs and ideas based on conservative principles. The surest way to guarantee further defeat is to pursue the goals enunciated by Peter Dreier.

http://pjmedia.com/ronradosh/2013/08/26/the-march-on-washington-50-years-later-how-the-american-left-remembers-it/?singlepage=true