Anti-Homeless Spikes? Heartless. Cementing Over Them? Ingenious. | Common Dreams

Anti-Homeless Spikes? Heartless. Cementing Over Them? Ingenious. | Common Dreams
Published on Friday, June 27, 2014 by YES! Magazine

Anti-Homeless Spikes? Heartless. Cementing Over Them? Ingenious.
Londoners have made their feelings clear about a corporate "solution" to the problem of homelessness—and the company listened.
by Molly Rusk

(Photo by Tom Johnson / Vice News)

Early in the morning on June 12, a few members of a group known as the London Black Revolutionaries showed up in front of a Tesco shopping center on Regent Street in London and covered the store's "anti-homeless spikes" with home-made cement.
If the issue of spikes outside of Tesco hit a nerve, it could be because rates of homelessness in England have been rising.


A few days before the stunt, the spikes generated a firestorm of public criticism of the retail giant. The criticism largely took place online and centered around a series of photos of the spikes taken in October 2013 by

photojournalist Joshua Preston.

The spikes were intended to deter "antisocial behavior," Tesco told The Guardian in response to the criticism. But Londoners were having none of that.

"We want homes not spikes," Preston said in a press release from the People's Assembly Against Austerity, an organization that campaigns against austerity policies—such as cuts to pensions and public spending. "We will show Tesco that its decision to victimize the homeless is shameful."

Interest in the issue grew quickly. When Preston organized a Facebook event to protest the spikes, more than 600 people agreed to demonstrate. The event was planned to coincide with a national anti-austerity protest in London on June 21.

But the Revolutionaries got to Tesco first, and their slap-dash cement-laying did the trick: Less than 24 hours after the stunt, Tesco removed the spikes from the Regent Street store, saying "We will find a different solution."

If the issue of spikes outside of Tesco hit a nerve, it could be because rates of homelessness in England have been steadily rising. And, according to The Guardian, austerity measures are at least partly to blame:

Homelessness has increased for three consecutive years, partly because of housing shortages and cuts to benefits, with an estimated 185,000 people a year now affected in England.

The actual number of people experiencing homelessness may be significantly higher than that. Research from the charity group Crisis suggests that about 62 percent of single homeless people may not show up in official figures.

One anonymous member of the London Black Revolutionaries offered Tesco a few spike-free ways to address homelessness.

"Give money to a local shelter organization, a food kitchen, or a food bank, because that's what's going to help," he told Vice News. "It's not going to solve the problem of homelessness, but it's going to alleviate some of the pain and suffering in these people's lives."

The Revolutionaries also said they will target other businesses in London that decide to install the spikes.

Molly Rusk wrote this article for YES! Magazine, a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas with practical actions.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.



Molly Rusk is a recent graduate of the program in Creative Writing at the University of Washington and an online reporting intern at YES! Magazine

The First Iraq War Was Also Sold to the Public Based on a Pack of Lies | Common Dreams

There Has Been No Decent POTUS Since JFK And The Man In The Picture Below Was Front And Center on November 23, 1963 in Texas to help assassinate him - WAKE UP AMERICA

The First Iraq War Was Also Sold to the Public Based on a Pack of Lies | Common Dreams

Published on Friday, June 27, 2014 by Moyers & Company



The First Iraq War Was Also Sold to the Public Based on a Pack of Lies

by Joshua Holland

Then Vice President George H.W. Bush and his wife, Barbara, arrive in New Orleans for the 1988 Republican National Convention (Credit: Esther/cc/flickr)Polls suggest that Americans tend to differentiate between our “good war” in Iraq — “Operation Desert Storm,” launched by George HW Bush in 1990 — and the “mistake” his son made in 2003.



Across the ideological spectrum, there’s broad agreement that the first Gulf War was “worth fighting.” The opposite is true of the 2003 invasion, and a big reason for those divergent views was captured in a 2013 CNN poll that found that “a majority of Americans (54%) say that prior to the start of the war the administration of George W. Bush deliberately misled the U.S. public about whether Baghdad had weapons of mass destruction.”



But as the usual suspects come out of the woodwork to urge the US to once again commit troops to Iraq, it’s important to recall that the first Gulf War was sold to the public on a pack of lies that were just as egregious as those told by the second Bush administration 12 years later.



The Lie of an Expansionist Iraq



Most countries condemned Iraq’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait. But the truth — that it was the culmination of a series of tangled economic and historical conflicts between two Arab oil states — wasn’t likely to sell the US public on the idea of sending our troops halfway around the world to do something about it.



So we were given a variation of the “domino theory.” Saddam Hussein, we were told, had designs on the entire Middle East. If he wasn’t halted in Kuwait, his troops would just keep going into other countries.



As Scott Peterson reported for The Christian Science Monitor in 2002, a key part of the first Bush administration’s case “was that an Iraqi juggernaut was also threatening to roll into Saudi Arabia. Citing top-secret satellite images, Pentagon officials estimated in mid-September [of 1990] that up to 250,000 Iraqi troops and 1,500 tanks stood on the border, threatening the key US oil supplier.”



A quarter of a million troops with heavy armor amassed on the Saudi border certainly seemed like a clear sign of hostile intent. In announcing that he had deployed troops to the Gulf in August 1990, George HW Bush said, “I took this action to assist the Saudi Arabian Government in the defense of its homeland.” He asked the American people for their “support in a decision I’ve made to stand up for what’s right and condemn what’s wrong, all in the cause of peace.”



But one reporter — Jean Heller of the St. Petersburg Times — wasn’t satisfied taking the administration’s claims at face value. She obtained two commercial satellite images of the area taken at the exact same time that American intelligence supposedly had found Saddam’s huge and menacing army and found nothing there but empty desert.



She contacted the office of then-Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney “for evidence refuting theTimes photos or analysis offering to hold the story if proven wrong.” But “the official response” was: “Trust us.”



Heller later told the Monitor’s Scott Peterson that the Iraqi buildup on the border between Kuwait and Saudi Arabia “was the whole justification for Bush sending troops in there, and it just didn’t exist.”



Dead Babies, Courtesy of a New York PR Firm



Military occupations are always brutal, and Iraq’s six-month occupation of Kuwait was no exception. But because Americans didn’t have an abundance of affection for Kuwait, a case had to be built that the Iraqi army was guilty of nothing less than Nazi-level atrocities.



That’s where a hearing held by the Congressional Human Rights Caucus in October 1990 played a major role in making the case for war.



A young woman who gave only her first name, Nayira, testified that she had been a volunteer at Kuwait’s al-Adan hospital, where she had seen Iraqi troops rip scores of babies out of incubators, leaving them “to die on the cold floor.” Between tears, she described the incident as “horrifying.”



Her account was a bombshell. Portions of her testimony were aired that evening on ABC’s “Nightline” and NBC’s “Nightly News.” Seven US senators cited her testimony in speeches urging Americans to support the war, and George HW Bush repeated the story on 10 separate occasions in the weeks that followed.



In 2002, Tom Regan wrote about his own family’s response to the story for The Christian Science Monitor:





I can still recall my brother Sean’s face. It was bright red. Furious. Not one given to fits of temper, Sean was in an uproar. He was a father, and he had just heard that Iraqi soldiers had taken scores of babies out of incubators in Kuwait City and left them to die. The Iraqis had shipped the incubators back to Baghdad. A pacifist by nature, my brother was not in a peaceful mood that day. “We’ve got to go and get Saddam Hussein. Now,” he said passionately.



Subsequent investigations by Amnesty International, a division of Human Rights Watch and independent journalists would show that the story was entirely bogus — a crucial piece of war propaganda the American media swallowed hook, line and sinker. Iraqi troops had looted Kuwaiti hospitals, but the gruesome image of babies dying on the floor was a fabrication.



In 1992, John MacArthur revealed in The New York Times that Nayirah was in fact the daughter of Saud Nasir al-Sabah, Kuwait’s ambassador to the US. Her testimony had been organized by a group called Citizens for a Free Kuwait, which was a front for the Kuwaiti government.



Tom Regan reported that Citizens for a Free Kuwait hired Hill & Knowlton, a New York-based PR firm that had previously spun for the tobacco industry and a number of governments with ugly human rights records. The company was paid “$10.7 million to devise a campaign to win American support for the war.” It was a natural fit, wrote Regan. “Craig Fuller, the firm’s president and COO, had been then-President George Bush’s chief of staff when the senior Bush had served as vice president under Ronald Reagan.”



According to Robin Andersen’s A Century of Media, a Century of War, Hill & Knowlton had spent $1 million on focus groups to determine how to get the American public behind the war, and found that focusing on “atrocities” was the most effective way to rally support for rescuing Kuwait.



Arthur Rowse reported for the Columbia Journalism Review that Hill & Knowlton sent out a video news release featuring Nayirah’s gripping testimony to 700 American television stations.



As Tom Regan noted, without the atrocities, the idea of committing American blood and treasure to save Kuwait just “wasn’t an easy sell.”





Only a few weeks before the invasion, Amnesty International accused the Kuwaiti government of jailing dozens of dissidents and torturing them without trial. In an effort to spruce up the Kuwait image, the company organized Kuwait Information Day on 20 college campuses, a national day of prayer for Kuwait, distributed thousands of “Free Kuwait” bumper stickers, and other similar traditional PR ventures. But none of it was working very well. American public support remained lukewarm the first two months.



That would change as stories about Saddam’s baby-killing troops were splashed across front pages across the country.



Saddam Was Irrational



Saddam Hussein’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait was just as illegal as the US invasion that would ultimately oust him 13 years later — it was neither an act of self-defense, nor did the UN Security Council authorize it.



But it can be argued that Iraq had significantly more justification for its attack.



Kuwait had been a close ally of Iraq, and a top financier of the Iraqi invasion of Iran in 1980, which, as The New York Times reported, occurred after “Iran’s revolutionary government tried to assassinate Iraqi officials, conducted repeated border raids and tried to topple Mr. Hussein by fomenting unrest within Iraq.”



Saddam Hussein felt that Kuwait should forgive part of his regime’s war debt because he had halted the “expansionist plans of Iranian interests” not only on behalf of his own country, but in defense of the other Gulf Arab states as well.



After an oil glut knocked out about two-thirds of the value of a barrel of crude oil between 1980 and 1986, Iraq appealed to OPEC to limit crude oil production in order to raise prices — with oil as low as $10 per barrel, the government was struggling to pay its debts. But Kuwait not only resisted those efforts — and asked OPEC to increase its quotas by 50 percent instead — for much of the 1980s it also had maintained its own production well above OPEC’s mandatory quota. According to a study by energy economist Mamdouh Salameh, “between 1985 and 1989, Iraq lost US$14 billion a year due to Kuwait’s oil price strategy,” and “Kuwait’s refusal to decrease its oil production was viewed by Iraq as an act of aggression against it.”



There were additional disputes between the two countries centering on Kuwait’s exploitation of the Rumaila oil fields, which straddled the border between the two countries. Kuwait was accused of using a technique known as “slant-drilling” to siphon off oil from the Iraqi side.



None of this justifies Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. But a longstanding and complex dispute between two undemocratic petrostates wasn’t likely to inspire Americans to accept the loss of their sons and daughters in a distant fight.



So instead, George HW Bush told the public that Iraq’s invasion was “without provocation or warning,” and that “there is no justification whatsoever for this outrageous and brutal act of aggression.” He added: “Given the Iraqi government’s history of aggression against its own citizens as well as its neighbors, to assume Iraq will not attack again would be unwise and unrealistic.”



Ultimately, these longstanding disputes between Iraq and Kuwait got considerably less attention in the American media than did tales of Kuwaiti babies being ripped out of incubators by Saddam’s stormtroopers.



Saddam Was “Unstoppable”



A crucial diplomatic error on the part of the first Bush administration left Saddam Hussein with the impression that the US government had little interest in Iraq’s conflict with Kuwait. But that didn’t fit into the narrative that the Iraqi dictator was an irrational maniac bent on regional domination. So there was a concerted effort to deny that the US government had ever had a chance to deter his aggression through diplomatic means — and even to paint those who said otherwise as conspiracy theorists.



As John Mearsheimer from the University of Chicago and Harvard’s Stephen Walt wrote in 2003, “Saddam reportedly decided on war sometime in July 1990, but before sending his army into Kuwait, he approached the United States to find out how it would react.”





In a now famous interview with the Iraqi leader, U.S. Ambassador April Glaspie told Saddam, “[W]e have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait.” The U.S. State Department had earlier told Saddam that Washington had “no special defense or security commitments to Kuwait.” The United States may not have intended to give Iraq a green light, but that is effectively what it did.



Exactly what was said during the meeting has been a source of some controversy. Accounts differ. According to a transcript released by the Iraqi government, Glaspie told Hussein, ” I admire your extraordinary efforts to rebuild your country.”





I know you need funds. We understand that and our opinion is that you should have the opportunity to rebuild your country. But we have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait.



I was in the American Embassy in Kuwait during the late 60′s. The instruction we had during this period was that we should express no opinion on this issue and that the issue is not associated with America. James Baker has directed our official spokesmen to emphasize this instruction.



Leslie Gelb of The New York Times reported that Glaspie told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the transcript was inaccurate “and insisted she had been tough.” But that account was contradicted when diplomatic cables between Baghdad and Washington were released. As Gelb described it, “The State Department instructed Ms. Glaspie to give the Iraqis a conciliatory message punctuated with a few indirect but significant warnings,” but “Ms. Glaspie apparently omitted the warnings and simply slobbered all over Saddam in their meeting on July 25, while the Iraqi dictator threatened Kuwait anew.”



There is no dispute about one crucially important point: Saddam Hussein consulted with the US before invading, and our ambassador chose not to draw a line in the sand, or even hint that the invasion might be grounds for the US to go to war.



The most generous interpretation is that each side badly misjudged the other. Hussein ordered the attack on Kuwait confident that the US would only issue verbal condemnations. As for Glaspie, she later told The New York Times, ”Obviously, I didn’t think — and nobody else did — that the Iraqis were going to take all of Kuwait.”



Fool Me Once…



The first Gulf War was sold on a mountain of war propaganda. It took a campaign worthy of George Orwell to convince Americans that our erstwhile ally Saddam Hussein — whom the US had aided in his war with Iran as late as 1988 — had become an irrational monster by 1990.



Twelve years later, the second invasion of Iraq was premised on Hussein’s supposed cooperation with al Qaeda, vials of anthrax, Nigerian yellowcake and claims that Iraq hadmissiles poised to strike British territory in little as 45 minutes.



Now, eleven years later, as Bill Moyers put it last week, “the very same armchair warriors in Washington who from the safety of their Beltway bunkers called for invading Baghdad, are demanding once again that America plunge into the sectarian wars of the Middle East.” It’s vital that we keep our history in Iraq in mind, and apply some healthy skepticism to the claims they offer us this time around.

© 2014 Moyers & Company







Joshua Holland is a senior digital producer for BillMoyers.com. He’s the author of The Fifteen Biggest Lies About the Economy (and Everything Else the Right Doesn’t Want You to Know about Taxes, Jobs and Corporate America) (Wiley: 2010), and host of Politics and Reality Radio. Follow him on Twitter or drop him an email at hollandj [at] moyersmedia [dot] com.

Germany Fires Verizon Over NSA Spying | Common Dreams

Germany Fires Verizon Over NSA Spying | Common Dreams

Published on Friday, June 27, 2014 by Common Dreams

Germany Fires Verizon Over NSA Spying
'The German government needs a high level of security for its essential networks'
- Sarah Lazare, staff writer

Verizon Wireless retail store in Saugus, Massachusetts (Photo: Wikimedia Creative Commons / Anthony92931)Germany announced Thursday it is canceling its contract with Verizon Communications over concerns about the role of U.S. telecom corporations in National Security Agency spying.

“The links revealed between foreign intelligence agencies and firms after the N.S.A. affair show that the German government needs a high level of security for its essential networks,” declared Germany's Interior Ministry in a statement released Thursday.

The Ministry said it is engaging in a communications overhaul to strengthen privacy protections as part of the process of severing ties with Verizon.

The announcement follows revelations, made possible by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, that Germany is a prime target of NSA spying. This includes surveillance of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s mobile phone communications, as well as a vastnetwork of centers that secretly collect information across the country.

Yet, many have accused Germany of being complicit in NSA spying, in addition to being targeted by it.

The German government has refused to grant Snowden political asylum, despite his contribution to the public record about U.S. spying on Germany.

Verizon, which has provided services to many of Germany's governmental agencies since, will be replaced by Deutsche Telekom, which was formerly run by the German state.

West Africa Ebola Epidemic "Out of Control" | Common Dreams

West Africa Ebola Epidemic "Out of Control" | Common Dreams

Published on Friday, June 27, 2014 by Common Dreams



West Africa Ebola Epidemic "Out of Control"

Deadly virus outbreak is worst on record, say health experts.

- Nadia Prupis, staff writer

(Photo: European Commission DG ECHO/Flickr/Creative Commons)Immediate action is needed to contain the deadly Ebola virus outbreak in West Africa, World Health Organization (WHO) officials warned Wednesday. At least 600 cases and 390 deaths in Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Guinea have been reported since the epidemic began in March.



"There is an urgent need to intensify response efforts," Dr. Luis Sambo, WHO regional director for Africa, said this week. WHO and Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) have sent teams of relief workers to affected countries.



But large numbers of new cases are straining emergency services on the ground.



"We have reached our limits," said Dr. Bart Janssens, MSF director of operations. "Despite the human resources equipment deployed... we are no longer able to send teams to the new outbreak sites."



This is the first time Ebola has broken out in the region. Fear and misunderstanding of the disease in local communities have contributed to the speed and scale with which it has spread, while political and religious authorities are failing to promote vital information to fight it, MSF stated. Funerals without safety measures have been a large contributing factor.



Additional support is essential to contain the outbreak, Janssens said.



"The WHO, the affected countries, and neighboring countries must deploy the resources necessary for an epidemic of this scale.... Ebola is no longer a public health issue limited to Guinea. It is affecting the whole of West Africa."



Ebola causes fever, vomiting, and diarrhea and can lead to organ failure and internal and external bleeding. It can kill up to 90 percent of those affected. While there is no cure or vaccine for the disease, it can be maintained if it is treated early.

US Still Won't Commit to Banning Landmines | Common Dreams

US Still Won't Commit to Banning Landmines | Common Dreams

Published on Friday, June 27, 2014 by Common Dreams

US Still Won't Commit to Banning Landmines
US announces steps to stop amassing stockpile of pernicious weapons, but makes no target to join global treaty
- Andrea Germanos, staff writer
A poster from a landmine museum captures the horror of landmines. (Photo: Nathan Nelson/cc/flickr)In a move met with cautious praise, the United States announced Friday that it would not produce or add to its stockpile of antipersonnel landmines (APL), and would work towards becoming party to a treaty described as "the only solution to eliminate the suffering" the weapons cause.

The U.S. "will not produce or otherwise acquire any anti-personnel landmines (APL) in the future, including to replace existing stockpiles as they expire," reads a statement from National Security Council Spokesperson Caitlin Hayden, adding that the country is "diligently pursuing solutions that would be compliant with and ultimately allow the United States to accede to the Ottawa Convention," referring to the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty.

A U.S. delegation made the announcement in Maputo, Mozambique at a conference that convenes parties to the treaty. The U.S. attended as an observer.

The U.S. thus far has failed to join 161 nations that are party to the mine ban treaty.

Though the last known use of landmines by the U.S. was in 1991 in Iraq and Kuwait, according to the Landmine Monitor Report, the U.S. still maintains the right to use self-destructing, self-deactivating antipersonnel mines anywhere. It is believed to hold 9 million self-destructing APLs in its stockpikle.

"With this announcement, the U.S. has changed its mine ban stance and has laid the foundation for accession to the treaty," said Steve Goose, International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) Head of Delegation and arms director at Human Rights Watch. "The message to the international community is clear, the Mine Ban Treaty is the only solution to eliminate the suffering caused by landmines," he said.

Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), who has pressed for years for the U.S. to ban landmines, also welcomed the announcement, calling it "incremental" but "significant."

Yet, with no target date or commitment to accede to the treaty, and potential use by the U.S. of landmines within its stockpiles, the ICBL and US Campaign to Ban Landmines stress that the announcement falls short.

"It makes no sense for the U.S. to acknowledge the weapons should be banned because of the humanitarian harm they cause while retaining the option to use them for years to come," Goose stated.

"An obvious next step is for the Pentagon to destroy its remaining stockpile of mines, which do not belong in the arsenal of civilized nations," Sen. Leahy said.

The anti-landmine coalition is calling on the U.S. to ban the use of APLs, become party to the treaty and begin to eliminate its stockpiles.

Armed US Drones Flying Over Iraq | Common Dreams

Armed US Drones Flying Over Iraq | Common Dreams

Published on Friday, June 27, 2014 by Common Dreams



Armed US Drones Flying Over Iraq

Pentagon announced Thursday drones equipped with Hellfire missiles will accompany another troop deployment

- Sarah Lazare, staff writer

Predator drone (Photo: Lt Col Leslie Pratt / Wikimedia Creative Commons)U.S. armed drones are now flying over Iraq, a Pentagon official announced Thursday,according to numerous media reports.



Equipped with Hellfire missiles, the predator drones are being deployed from a base in Kuwait to accompany unarmed surveillance flights that include drones as well as manned aircraft. The armed drones will also supplement U.S. military "advisers" on the ground, the official stated.



Meanwhile, the United States has opened a "joint operations center" in Baghdad, boosting the total number of U.S. service members to 500, Pentagon officials revealed in a statementreleased Thursday.



And according to a New York Times article published Wednesday, two Iraqi advisers to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said that the U.S. is planning to send more than 1,000 U.S. private security guards to Iraq to protect U.S. troops. This amounts to "far more Americans than previously acknowledged," the Times notes.



The Pentagon's announcement of drone flights come amid reports that Iran is also sending surveillance drones to Iraq.



Middle East scholar Juan Cole warned earlier this month that the Obama administration's deployment of special forces military "advisers" to Iraq for intelligence-gathering and other purposes suggest that "Obama is likely paving the way to US drone strikes on ISIS in Iraq."

Obama Requests Nearly $60 Billion to Continue Endless War | Common Dreams

Obama Requests Nearly $60 Billion to Continue Endless War | Common Dreams
Published on Friday, June 27, 2014 by Common Dreams

Obama Requests Nearly $60 Billion to Continue Endless War
Fund request also marks escalation in aid to "vetted" Syrian opposition forces
- Andrea Germanos, staff writer

An anti-war protest in 2010. (Photo: Fibonacci Blue/cc/flickr)President Obama on Thursday announced he would ask Congress for $58.6 billion in war funding for the 2015 fiscal year.

A White House statement outlining the request for what is formally called the Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) notes that it is $20.9 billion less than what had been figured in an earlier budget.

The OCO—re-branded from the Global War on Terror—fund is in addition to the nearly $500 billion base FY2015 budget for the Defense Department.

The OCO fund request amount on its own represents 1.55 percent of the the total budget, but is part of the overall military spending that accounts for over 16 percent of the budget.

The OCO budget "isn’t subject to caps or cuts or any restrictions at all," as Mattea Kramer of the National Priorities Projected has noted, and, as Defense News reported earlier this month, "The administration has never announced a final year for OCO funding."

"While it is good to see the Overseas Contingency Operations account finally begin to come down, the Pentagon's request continues to use OCO as a massive slush fund to avoid fiscal discipline," Stephen Miles, coalition coordinator for Win Without War, stated to Common Dreams. "At nearly $60 billion, the request is $40 billion over what the Administration itself has pegged as the costs of our mission in Afghanistan," he added.

Included within the nearly $60 billion request is "$500 million for a proposed authority to train and equip vetted elements of the Syrian armed opposition to help defend the Syrian people, stabilize areas under opposition control, facilitate the provision of essential services, counter terrorist threats, and promote conditions for a negotiated settlement."

As Democracy Now! reported Friday, "If approved, it would mark the most direct U.S. military role in the [Syrian] conflict to date, following more covert forms of support for the rebels."

In contrast to calls by war hawks for continued military intervention, Miles added that the American public doesn't want continued war funding.

"Americans want our tax dollars to be coming home with our troops," he stated.

_________________________________
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IRS Official Whose Emails Were "Lost" Visited White House More Than 30 Times - Katie Pavlich

IRS Official Whose Emails Were "Lost" Visited White House More Than 30 Times



Katie Pavlich | Jun 20, 2014







Last night on The Kelly File Chief Counsel at the American Center for Law and Justice Jay Sekulo revealed that the former chief of staff to former IRS Commissioner Steven Miller, Nikole Flax, visited the White House 35 times after talking with former head of tax exempt groups Lois Lerner about working to criminally prosecute conservative tea party groups for "lying" about political activity. At the White House, Flax met with a top Obama aid during some of those visits. This entire exchange is worth your time.



[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHyWUvjf23I&w=560&h=315]



The email discussed in the segment above is detailed in this previously reported story, along with Lerner's contact with Democrat Elijah Cummings and suggestions from former FEC Attorney Larry Noble and Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse that conservative groups should be targeted for criminal prosecution in order to "make an impact and they [conservative groups] wouldn't feel so comfortable doing the stuff."



"I got a call today from Richard Pilger Director Elections Crimes Branch at DOJ ... He wanted to know who at IRS the DOJ folk s [sic] could talk to about Sen. Whitehouse idea at the hearing that DOJ could piece together false statement cases about applicants who "lied" on their 1024s --saying they weren't planning on doing political activity, and then turning around and making large visible political expenditures. DOJ is feeling like it needs to respond, but want to talk to the right folks at IRS to see whether there are impediments from our side and what, if any damage this might do to IRS programs. I told him that sounded like we might need several folks from IRS," Lerner wrote in a May 8, 2013 email to former Nikole C. Flax, who was former-Acting IRS Commissioner Steven T. Miller's chief of staff.



"I think we should do it – also need to include CI [Criminal Investigation Division], which we can help coordinate. Also, we need to reach out to FEC. Does it make sense to consider including them in this or keep it separate?" Flax responded on May 9, 2013.



"As I mentioned yesterday -- there are several groups of folks from the FEC world that are pushing tax fraud prosecution for c4s who report they are not conducting political activity when they are (or these folks think they are). One is my ex-boss Larry Noble (former General Counsel at the FEC), who is now president of Americans for Campaign Reform. This is their latest push to shut these down. One IRS prosecution would make an impact and they wouldn't feel so comfortable doing the stuff," she wrote. "So, don't be fooled about how this is being articulated – it is ALL about 501(c)(4) orgs and political activity."



The White House denied any involvement in the IRS targeting scandal and responded to revelations of "lost" emails as a normal computer crash.



IRS Commissioner John Koskinen will testify today in front of the House Ways and Means Committee about the "lost" emails.



via IRS Official Whose Emails Were "Lost" Visited White House More Than 30 Times - Katie Pavlich.

SWAT Teams Claim 'Corporate' Exemption From Public Scrutiny | Common Dreams

Published on Friday, June 27, 2014 by Common Dreams

SWAT Teams Claim 'Corporate' Exemption From Public Scrutiny
ACLU hits brick wall after issuing public records requests for information about deadly force, incident reports, and more.
- Sarah Lazare, staff writer


SWAT Team (Photo: Oregon Department of Transportation / Flickr Creative Commons)Operators of Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) teams comprised of tax payer-funded police and sheriffs in Massachusetts claim they are immune to public records requests about deadly force, incident reports, and more because they are private "corporations."

In addition to SWAT teams run by individual towns, many of these military-style domestic policing units in Massachusetts are operated by regional "law enforcement councils," which are bankrolled by tax-payer money and comprised of publicly-funded police and sheriffs. According to the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, approximately 240 of the 351 police departments in Massachusetts belong to these LECs.

Some of these LECs have become incorporated with 501(c)(3) status—a classification they say makes them exempt from public records requests.

Jessie Rossman, staff attorney for the ACLU of Massachusetts, told Common Dreams that her organization issued records requests to "a couple of LECs" to obtain information about their policies for a recent report on the militarization of local police. "We got responses from individuals claiming to speak on behalf of the LECs saying they would not be responding because they do not believe they are subject to public records law," she explained.

This is despite the SWAT teams' possession of automatic weapons and combat gear, as well as their military-style "counter-insurgency" tactics, which, according to the ACLU of Massachusetts report, turn communities into "war zones."

As Washington Post writer Radley Balko points out, Massachusetts SWAT teams have an ugly history of brutality and excessive force, including a litany of deaths in botched drug raids. In their report, the ACLU of Massachusetts notes that "unjustifiable force and SWAT raids against people in their homes most often target people of color and the poor."

In response, the ACLU of Massachusetts announced this week it is suing the North Eastern Massachusetts Law Enforcement Council for information about its SWAT teams, after NEMLEC refused a public records request. NEMLEC possesses a combat-level vehicle and weapons for "military style operations," according to a statement about the lawsuit.

"NEMLEC can't have it both ways," said Rossman. "The same authority that allows them to participate in high risk warrant service, forced entry, and arrests of individuals also means they must be subject to public records law."

_____________________
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Celebrate Independence Day By Opposing Government Tyranny

Celebrate Independence Day By Opposing Government Tyranny

written by ron paul
sunday june 29, 2014


This week Americans will enjoy Independence Day with family cookouts and fireworks. Flags will be displayed in abundance. Sadly, however, what should be a celebration of the courage of those who risked so much to oppose tyranny will instead be turned into a celebration of government, not liberty. The mainstream media and opportunistic politicians have turned Independence Day into the opposite of what was intended.

The idea of opposing — by force if necessary — a tyrannical government has been turned into a celebration of tyrannical government itself!

The evidence is all around us.

How would the signers of the Declaration of Independence have viewed, for example, the Obama Administration’s “drone memo,” finally released last week, which claims to justify the president’s killing American citizens without charge, judge, jury, or oversight? Is this not a tyranny similar to that which our Founders opposed? And was such power concentrated in one branch of government not what inspired the rebellion against the English king in the first place?

The “drone memo,” released after an ACLU freedom of information request, purports to establish the president alone as the arbiter of who is or is not a terrorist subject to execution by the US government. There is no due process involved, just the determination of the president. Thus far the only American citizens killed by the president are Anwar al-Awlaki and his teenaged son, but the precedent has been established, according to the memo, that the president has the authority to kill Americans he believes are terrorists.

Even the New York Times, which generally backs whatever US administration is in power, is troubled by the White House’s legal justification to claim the authority to kill Americans. A Times editorial last week concluded that:
...the memo turns out to be a slapdash pastiche of legal theories — some based on obscure interpretations of British and Israeli law — that was clearly tailored to the desired result.I agree with the New York Times’ conclusion that, “[t]his memo should never have taken so long to be released, and more documents must be made public. The public is still in the dark on too many vital questions.”

Coincidentally, in addition to the “drone memo” released last week, a broader study of the US use of drones was also released by the Stimson Center. The study, co-chaired by Gen. John Abizaid, former U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) commander, concluded that contrary to claims that drones help prevent wider conflicts by targeting specific individuals, the use of drones “may create a slippery slope leading to continual or wider wars.”

In fact, the study concluded, the use of drones overseas is likely counterproductive. “Civilian casualties, even if relatively few, can anger whole communities, increase anti-US sentiment and become a potent recruiting tool for terrorist organizations,” the study found.

Seven years ago I wrote in an Independence Day column:
Only the safe-guards and limitations that are enshrined in a constitutionally-limited republic can prohibit a nation from lurching toward empire...I hope every person who reads or hears this will take the time to go back and read the Declaration of Independence. Only by recapturing the spirit of independence can we ensure our government never resembles the one from which the American States declared their separation.On Independence Day we should remember the spirit of rebellion against tyranny that inspired our Founding Fathers to set out our experiment in liberty. We should ourselves celebrate and continue that struggle if we are to keep our republic.

Tags - liberty

Related

A Tipping Point For Liberty Against Leviathan - 14 January 2014
US Military Training Overseas: Vast and Under-Reported - 16 April 2013
The Coming Non-Intervention Revolution - 16 April 2013
The Interventionist Failures and How To Fix Them - 17 April 2013
Scenes From the Ron Paul Institute Press Conference - 22 April 2013

March Against Corruption Nov. 1 - 8, 2014 Everywhere

GMO Insulin Causes Type 1 Diabetes in Type 2 Diabetics, Study Finds

GMO Insulin Causes Type 1 Diabetes in Type 2 Diabetics, Study Finds Posted on: Saturday, June 28th 2014 at 7:00 am Written By: Sayer Ji, Founder

A groundbreaking new study finds synthetic (GMO) insulin is capable of rapidly producing type 1 diabetes in type 2 diabetics.

Last year, we reported on the dangers of insulin therapy for type 2 diabetics, following the publication of a study comprised of almost 85,000 type 2 diabetic patients that found insulin monotherapy doubled their risk of all-cause mortality, in addition to significantly increasing their risk for diabetes-related complications and cancer. Insulin monotherapy resulted in:
2.0 times more myocardial infarctions.
1.7 time more major adverse cardiac events
1.4 time more strokes
3.5 times more renal complications
2.1 time more neuropathy
1.2 times more eye complications
1.4 times more cancer
2.2 times more deaths

Now, a new study published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism titled, "Insulin administration may trigger type 1 diabetes in Japanese type 2 diabetes patients with type 1 diabetes high-risk HLA class II and the insulin gene VNTR genotype," is shedding light on a possible explanation for why insulin treatment may accelerate morbidity and mortality in type 2 diabetics. The study revealed that giving genetically susceptible type 2 diabetes patients recombinant insulin can trigger their bodies to target their own insulin producing cells for autoimmune destruction, effectively producing 'double diabetes': type 1 and type 2, as a result.

The Japanese study took 6 patients (4 men and 2 women) with type 2 diabetes, none of whom had previously received insulin therapy nor had markers for autoantibodies to their own insulin (e.g. GAD65). All patients were found to have the type 1 diabetes susceptibility gene known as type 1 diabetes high risk HLA class II (IDDM1), which is considered to play a role in up to 50% of type 1 diabetes cases, and the insulin gene VNTR genotype (IDDM2), believed to play a key role in susceptibility to type 2 diabetes.

After recombinant insulin administration their blood glucose control deteriorated, and their own insulin producing beta cells – as measured by declining C-peptide levels (a marker for the production of natural insulin) – decreased insulin production to a deficiency levels commonly found in type 1 diabetes patients. The average time it took for the patients to develop full blown type 1 diabetes was 7.7 months, with one patient developing the condition within 1.1 months.

Further tests revealed that the patients had antibodies against their own pancreatic islet cells (the cells responsible for producing insulin), insulin allergy or increased levels of insulin antibody. Additionally, 2 of 4 cases were found to have GAD-reactive and insulin peptide reactive Th1 cells, typical markers of autoimmunity induced type 1 diabetes.

The researchers concluded from their findings:

"The findings suggest that insulin administration may have triggered TIDM in patients with T2DM. IDDM1 and IDDM 2 as well as autoreactive T cells may contribute to the development of T1DM. Developing insulin-triggered T1DM if a patient's blood glucose control acutely deteriorates after insulin administration should be carefully considered."

The researchers also pointed out that there are a number trials underway to produce vaccines containing insulin intended to induce a 'tolerogenic immune response' and therefore ameliorate autoimmune type 1 diabetes.[1] Clearly, however, their findings run contrary to this expectation, revealing that it is possible that introducing exogenous forms of insulin may stimulate the opposite reaction and induced autoimmunity against the hormone, or the cells in the pancreas responsible for producing it.
Discussion: GMO Insulin Not the Same As Animal Derived Insulin

A possible explanation for these results lies in the difference between today's synthetic insulin and insulin purified from animals such as pigs (porcine insulin), which is no longer available in countries like the U.S.

Insulin was actually the first protein to be synthesized with recombinant DNA (GMO) technology in the late 1970s,[2] and today, products like Lantus (insulin glargine [rDNA origin] injection) dominate the market. According to Sanofi, Lantus' manufacturer their form is produced "by recombinant DNA technology utilizing a non-pathogenic laboratory strain of Escherichia coli (K12) as the production organism." Synthetic insulin is classified as an insulin analog that differs significantly from human insulin in its primary amino acid structure: "Insulin glargine differs from human insulin in that the amino acid asparagine at position A21 is replaced by glycine and two arginines are added to the C-terminus of the B-chain." Lantus' formulation also contains various 'inactive ingredients,' such as:
hydrochloric acid
sodium hydroxide (lye)
zinc
m-cresol (a coal tar derivative)
glycerol
polysorbate 20

The simultaneous injection of these antigenic ingredients along with synthetic insulin could be responsible for hypersensitizing the immune system against insulin in the same way that inactive and adjuvant ingredients in vaccines induce exaggerated immune reactions against the 'active' vaccine antigen (e.g. the viral or bacterial antigen) which sometimes results in the immune system attacking self-structures (autoimmunity).

[The structure of insulin. The left side is a space-filling model of the insulin monomer. On the right side is a ribbon diagram of the insulin hexamer (6 insulin molecules conjoined), believed to be the stored form. Source: Wikipedia]

According to a 1993 paper on recombinant human insulin, "Bacterially expressed proteins normally lack any secondary structure or post-translational modifications" – a highly significant fact, considering that complex proteins such as hormones actually have four levels of folding complexity: primary, secondary, tertiary and quaternary, all of which together determine the protein's natural structure and therefore its function.  In fact, this complexity is so immense that Levinthal's paradox states a fully folded protein (i.e., one that has attained its native conformation) must pass through such a large number of degrees of freedom to reach its native state that there is not enough time in the universe for it to move through all possible configurations to the one it was designed by nature to assume. Obviously, if synthetic insulin is not capable of obtaining the same 3-dimensional structure as natural insulin, nor is modified post-translationally through epigenetic regulatory processes, it cannot behave in the same way as natural insulin in the body, and would likely be identified as 'other' by the immune system, if not also cellular insulin receptors.

Research dating back to the early 1980s compared synthetic E. Coli derived insulin with porcine (pig) derived insulin in diabetic children and found that porcine insulin was more effective at lowering HbA1 values (a marker of damage associated with elevated blood sugar), superior at reducing fasting glucose concentrations, and less antibody reactive to insulin than synthetic insulin. [3]  While pig derived insulin has its limitations, especially considering there are limits to how much can be produced, clearly it is more appropriate than synthetic versions if it is true that the latter is incapable of reproducing the same therapeutic outcome for diabetics.

Natural Approaches To Diabetes Prevention and Treatment are the Future

In a previous article on natural interventions for type 1 diabetes, 10 Natural Substances That Could Help Cure Type 1 Diabetes, we focused on the biomedical literature supporting the role of beta cell (insulin producing cell) regenerating foods and natural substances in addressing one of the root causes of type 1 diabetes.

The future of medicine will look to identifying and removing the causes of conditions like diabetes, instead of employing patented synthetic drugs and synthetic replacement therapies (which feed the deficiency), palliatively -- especially considering the new research indicating they actually make the patient far worse. Also, diet is the #1 factor in the pathogenesis of most chronic conditions that afflict the modern world; more specifically, the consumption of foods or food-like products that deviate from our ancestral diets generate the physiological conditions that produce disease in the first place. Addressing the dietary causes and incompatibilities and many 'diseases' decelerate and may even regress.

For additional research on the topic of regenerative medicine and diabetes you can consult the articles 6 Bodily Tissues that Can Be Regenerated Through Nutrition and Diabetes: An Entirely Preventable and Reversible Disease. Or, visit our Health Guide on Blood Sugar Disorders.

Also, if you missed the author's presentation on "What Medical Science Says About Reversing Diabetes" for the Reversing Diabetes World Summit, the all access digital package is still available here.

REFERENCES

---

[1] Harrison LC, et al Antigen-based vaccination and prevention of type 1 diabetes. Curr Diab Rep . 2013;13:616–623.

[2] Beta Cell Biology Consortium, The Structure of Insulin

[3] N P Mann, et al  Human insulin and porcine insulin in the treatment of diabetic children: comparison of metabolic control and insulin antibody production. Br Med J (Clin Res Ed). Nov 26, 1983; 287(6405): 1580–1582.

via GMO Insulin Causes Type 1 Diabetes in Type 2 Diabetics, Study Finds.

I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream for GMO Labeling Laws!

Spread the word

I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream for GMO Labeling Laws!

Dear Organic Consumer,

Last week, the International Dairy Foods Association (IDFA), who along with Monsanto and the Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA) is suing the state of Vermont to overturn its GMO labeling law, served up ice cream and root beer floats to members of Congress.

It was all part of the IDFA’s 32nd annual Capitol Hill Ice Cream Party, carried out with help from IDFA and GMA members like Dean Foods, Nestle USA, Unilever, J.M. Smucker Co. and more.

But what it was really about, of course, was sweetening the backroom deals the Gene Giants, Big Food and Big Dairy are plotting with politicians. So they can overturn Vermont’s law and pass a sweeping federal law to preempt state GMO labeling laws.

We aren’t going to stoop to setting up an ice cream stand on Capitol Hill. But we do need your help to raise enough money to defend Vermont and pass a strong GMO labeling initiative in Oregon.

We’re still about $11,000 short of our summer fundraising goal. Can you help us reach the finish line by midnight June 30? Click here for details on how to donate online, by mail or by phone.

The IDFA’s Ice Cream Propaganda Party represents everything that’s wrong with politics today.

But the GMO labeling movement has come too far to let a little Rocky Road or Chunky Monkey stop us.

With your help, we’re going to do everything in our power to defend Vermont’s law, pass an equally strong labeling law in Oregon in November, and raise holy hell if Congress even thinks about passing the DARK (Deny Americans the Right to Know) ACT.

Please help us fight back. Against the GMA, the IDFA and Big Food. Click here for details on how to donate online, by mail or by phone.

Thank you!

Ronnie Cummins

National Director, Organic Consumers Association and Organic Consumers Fund

P.S. Funds donated directly to campaigns must be raised through the Organic Consumers Fund, our allied 501(c)4 lobbying arm. If you need to make a tax-deductible donation, please donate to our 501(c)3 nonprofit. Your donation will indirectly support our GMO bans and labeling law campaigns by funding our ongoing education and media work.

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California Border Patrol Seizes Nearly $1M Drugs in 2 Hours

California Border Patrol Seizes Nearly $1M Drugs in 2 Hours


CALIFORNIA BORDER PATROL SEIZES NEARLY $1M DRUGS IN 2 HOURS



by DANIEL NUSSBAUM 27 Jun 2014, 8:38 AM PDT 0POST A COMMENT

In three separate incidents on Wednesday, Border Patrol agents in Murrieta and Indio, California seized $964,530 worth of drugs, including cocaine, methamphetamine, and heroin. All three seizures occurred in under two hours.

At 10:30 a.m., Murrieta sector Border Patrol agents stopped a 41-year-old U.S. woman in a Ford Expedition on I-10. After drug-sniffing dogs gave a "positive alert" to the agents, they searched her car and found 51.36 pounds of cocaine, according to a U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) press release. Authorities estimated the street value of the cocaine at $667,680.

Just 15 minutes later, at 10:45 a.m., the same agents stopped another Ford Expedition, driven by a 59-year-old U.S. woman. The agents got permission from the woman to search her car, where they found four packages of drugs hidden in an ice chest; 1.10 pounds of methamphetamine, 5.09 pounds of cocaine, and just under a pound of heroin. The combined estimated street value of all three drugs in that seizure is $87,650.

Both women were arrested and face drug smuggling charges. The cars were seized by Border Patrol.

A third incident occurred at 12:15 p.m., just an hour and a half later, according to a separate CBP press release. Border Patrol agents at the Indio Station in El Centro Sector stopped a 21-year-old man and 48-year-old woman, both Mexican nationals, when drug-sniffing dogs alerted agents to narcotics in their car. During the agents' search, they found a hidden compartment built into the frame of the car; inside were 18 packages of cocaine, weighing a combined 20.96 pounds. The estimated street value of the cocaine is $209,600.

The two suspects, the drugs, and the car were all turned over to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) for further investigation.

DAVE DEFEATED: Cameron Proves British EU Influence Is Worthless as Juncker Gets the Nod

DAVE DEFEATED: Cameron Proves British EU Influence Is Worthless as Juncker Gets the Nod



DAVE DEFEATED: CAMERON PROVES BRITISH EU INFLUENCE IS WORTHLESS AS JUNCKER GETS THE NOD

European Union leaders gathered in Brussels have nominated Jean-Claude Juncker to be the next president of the European Commission, dismissing Prime Minister David Cameron’s warnings that putting the euro-zealot Juncker in the top job in Brussels would push Britain further towards an exit from the EU.

Cameron said Juncker is “a face from the 80s” and is not the man to lead the reform Britain says the EU needs. The prime minister is reported to have warned German Chancellor Angela Merkel that if Juncker were to become the president of the commission, which is the EU’s executive branch, he may be forced to bring forward the referendum on EU membership he has promised the British.

Cameron admitted before the meeting of the European Council, made up of the heads of government of member states, that “the odds are stacked against me” but he would continue to fight Juncker’s nomination.

In fact, Cameron’s style of personal attack on Juncker may have swayed some former allies to back Juncker.

One argument by the prime minister, that the European Parliament has seized control of the selection by insisting their candidate Juncker be chosen, could have swayed support among some reform-minded prime ministers who are uneasy about a “coup” by forces at the parliament.

However, Cameron’s insistence that Juncker was too much of a “federalist” for the job and a “has been” sounded like a personal attack, when the other prime ministers knew that any other candidate for the job at the commission would be bound to be as much a euro-enthusiast as Juncker, if perhaps rather more diplomatic in style.

Also, Continental politicians are likely to have found the British newspaper accounts on Juncker’s alleged heavy drinking, though not officially connected with Number 10 or any British diplomats, to have been intrusive and extreme, and may well have reacted against a debate that degenerated into a British personal smear campaign.

So now what the appointment of Juncker may be, besides a humiliation for Cameron and a display of British diplomatic impotence in the EU institutions, is a subtle victory for Merkel.

The nomination of Juncker to the top post at the commission, delivered by Merkel despite widespread doubts about his abilities, ensures that the Chancellor now has a half-lamed president who can be pushed into following the Berlin line.

What has often been overlook in Britain is that in the years following the banking crash and the euro crisis, the European Commission under Barroso has become less of an independent executive arm of the EU and more the servant of the European Council. Merkel has shown herself to be the strongest force on the council, leaving Germany’s former equal partner France long behind, doing intergovernmental deals when it suited her to control events without the agreement or cooperation of the elite eurocrats at the commission.

Now the (perhaps) wine-sodden and bruised (but triumphant) Juncker knows to whom he owes his new €321,000 (£257,000) a year job, his private plane, his 24-hour personal television camera crew, his entertainment allowance, his fabulous pension, his staff of flunkies, his thousands of euros in allowances. He owes it all to Merkel.

And he owes Cameron less than zilch.

BREAKING: SUPREME COURT UNANIMOUSLY RULES OBAMA RECESS APPOINTMENTS ARE UNCONSTITUTIONAL POWER GRAB - 12160

BREAKING: SUPREME COURT UNANIMOUSLY RULES OBAMA RECESS APPOINTMENTS ARE UNCONSTITUTIONAL POWER GRAB - 12160


Posted by H●ȴȴɣwͼͽd on June 26, 2014 at 12:16pm in Current News/Events

BREAKING: SUPREME COURT UNANIMOUSLY RULES OBAMA RECESS APPOINTMENTS ARE UNCONSTITUTIONAL POWER GRAB



by KEN KLUKOWSKI 26 Jun 2014, 7:48 AM PDT

Today the Supreme Court unanimously held that President Barack Obama violated the Constitution when he made several appointments to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and other agencies without Senate approval.

The Appointments Clause of the Constitution requires that all high-level executive branch positions (called "principal officers") and all federal judges be nominated by the president, then must be confirmed by the Senate. The Recess Appointments Clause provides that if the Senate is in recess, the president can make appointments that can continue up to two years.

Not able to get several controversial nominees confirmed, Obama waited until the Senate adjourned for several days, then declared the Senate to be in recess, and unilaterally filled all those positions.

Obama made the shocking claim that he can declare the Senate in recess anytime there are not enough senators present on the Senate floor to do business. Under that theory, almost any night after dinner the president would be able to appoint Cabinet secretaries and even Supreme Court justices for up to two years without a Senate vote.

The majority opinion in NLRB v. Noel Canning was written by Justice Stephen Breyer, a liberal appointed by Bill Clinton, writing for five justices. Justice Antonin Scalia wrote a separate opinion for the four conservative justices that took a very different view of the Recess Appointments Clause that would restrict presidential power more significantly, but agreeing Obama's actions were unconstitutional.

Ken Klukowski is senior legal analyst for Breitbart News and a fellow with the American Civil Rights Union. Follow him on Twitter @kenklukowski.

Obama Launched Border Crisis to Destroy America

Watch Trey Gowdy Shred the IRS Chief on National TV [VIDEO]

 

Watch Trey Gowdy Shred the IRS Chief on National TV [VIDEO]

There was a contentious hearing Monday night in the House Government Reform Committee, as new IRS Commissioner John Koskinen was called to testify about Lois Lerner’s “lost” emails.

This hearing was just days after Koskinen was reamed by Rep. Paul Ryan, who told him “nobody believes you” in a House Ways and Means Committee hearing.

Trey Gowdy was in top form Monday night, giving Koskinen a lesson in the law, and no doubt added a few more lines to his growing list of already impressive quotes.

Sign up for our weekly newsletter right now:

Gowdy began his five minutes of questioning with an explanation of what “spoliation of evidence” means, and how in a courtroom a jury can infer wrongdoing on the part of a defendant if they “spoliate” or destroy/lose/hide evidence.  The IRS “losing” two years worth of Lois Lerner’s emails leads the American people to infer that such evidence may have hurt the IRS’s claim that no wrongdoing occurred.

Gowdy then asked Koskinen how he was so sure there was no criminal wrongdoing in the IRS, when he wasn’t familiar with the relevant criminal statutes. (H/T The Blaze)

“Spoliation of evidence is when a party fails to preserve evidence, there’s a negative inference that the jury can draw from their failure to preservethe evidence.  If you destroy documents, the jury can infer that those documents wouldn’t have been good for you.”

“If a taxpayer is being sued by the IRS, administratively, civilly, or prosecuted criminally, and they fail to keep documents, the jury can draw a negative inference from the fact that they failed to keep receipts, or emails, or documents.  So if it’s true and applies to a taxpayer, it oughtto apply to the IRS as well, agreed?”, said Gowdy.

“Is this a trial, is this a jury, is that what this is?” Koskinen asked.

“I said administrative, civil, or criminal, if you want to go down that road I’m happy to go down it with you Commissioner.”

“You have already said multiple times today that there was no evidence that you found of any criminal wrongdoing,” Gowdy said. “I want you to tell me what criminal statutes you’ve evaluated.”

“I have not looked at any,” Koskinen replied.

“Well then how can you possibly tell our fellow citizens that there’s not criminal wrongdoing if you don’t even know what statutes to look at?” Gowdy shot back.

Koskinen repeated again that he had seen no evidence of wrongdoing, but was cut off by Gowdy.

“How would you know what elements of the crime existed?” Gowdy asked. “You don’t even know what statutes are in play.  I’m gonna ask you again, what statutes have you evaluated?”

Koskinen said he can rely on common sense, but was again cut off by an incredulous Gowdy.

“Common sense? Instead of the criminal code, you want to rely on common sense?” Gowdy said as Koskinen shook his head at the table.

“You can shake your head all you want to, Commissioner. You have said today that there is no evidence of criminal wrongdoing, and I’m asking you what criminal statutes you have reviewed to reach that conclusion.”

“I have reviewed no criminal statutes”, said Koskinen.

“Alright, so you don’t have any idea whether there was any criminal conduct or not because you don’t know the elements of the offense.”

“What did she (Lois Lerner) mean when she said we needed a project, but we need to be careful that it doesn’t appear to be per se political?  You don’t think that is a potential violation of 1842?  Because you haven’t looked at 1842, you don’t have any idea Commissioner.  You don’t have any idea whether there is any criminal wrongdoing or not.”

Koskinen then tried to spin it back to there being no evidence of involvement by the White House, calling it a conspiracy theory and made up by Republicans.

“No sir, you are wrong about that. You are repeating a talking point from my colleagues on the other side that we’re obsessed with the White House.”

“It was Jay Carney that perpetuated the myth that it was two rogue agents in Ohio, it wasn’t any of us. Was that accurate?” Gowdy asked.

“Not that I know of,” Koskinen replied.

“So that was inaccurate and that came from the White House. Who said there’s not a smidgen of corruption?”

“My understanding is that was the president,” the commissioner answered.

“So that’s Jay Carney and the president both inserting themselves into the IRS scandal,” Gowdy said. “And you want to blame us for bringing the White house into it?”

“I haven’t blamed you at all,” Koskinen said.

“You just did, commissioner. You just did.”

Trey Gowdy nailed Koskinen, and it is a shame that he only had five minutes.  Gowdy used his prosecutorial skills and knowledge of the law to prove that the IRS chief has absolutely no idea if anything criminal occurred or not.

There is little doubt that wrongdoing took place, and the convenience of the timeline on which everything occurred only raises more suspicions.

It is high time for a special prosecutor to conduct an investigation.  The Justice Department investigation is a sham, and the IRS seems content to wait for another ineffective Inspector General investigation to take place before making any changes or drawing any conclusions.

Hopefully, people will eventually be held accountable.  Perhaps that will occur under the next administration.  Maybe Trey Gowdy should be nominated as Attorney General under the next Republican administration, then turned loose to fully investigate and prosecute each and every criminal crony in the Obama administration.

Related posts:

1. VIDEO: Trey Gowdy Explains Why Lois Lerner Should Be Arrested
2. WATCH: Congressman Obliterates IRS Chief, “Nobody Believes You”
3. Trey Gowdy: Charge Lois Lerner “Contempt of Congress”

Watch Trey Gowdy Shred the IRS Chief on National TV [VIDEO]
Ben Marquis
Tue, 24 Jun 2014 17:48:25 GMT

Trey Gowdy OWNS Irs Commissioner John Koskinen. Trey Gowdy vs Irs Commis...

When is a spending increase a spending cut?

 

In the bizzaro world of Congress of course…

Two weeks ago Congress considered the Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act (T-HUD) Act.   The bill appropriated $52 billion in discretionary spending, an increase of $1.2 billion above what was appropriated last year.

However, the Appropriations Committee claims they actually reduced spending because part of the increase was intended to offset decreasing Federal Housing Administration receipts (which are usually used as an offset against spending). Got that? I guess it never occurred to the appropriators that one way to respond to reduced revenues is to actually cut spending.

In other budgetary news, last week the House considered the Department of Defense Appropriations Bill. The bill spends $490.9 billion on “defenses”–a $4.1 billion increase above last year’s levels. However, this is not enough of an increase for our “fiscally conservative” Congress as the bill also included $79.4 in “Overseas Contingency Operations” (OCO) funding. Campaign for Liberty is working with a coalition to end OCO funding and continues to work to end all budget gimmicks and reduce spending as part of our push for Real Cuts, Right Now.

The post When is a spending increase a spending cut? appeared first on Campaign for Liberty.

When is a spending increase a spending cut?
Norm Singleton
Mon, 23 Jun 2014 20:01:09 GMT

GOP leadership’s hysterical attacks on Massie Amendment

 

Not only did every member of the GOP leadership vote against the Massie amendment to the Defense Appropriations bill forbidding warrantless wiretapping of American citizens, they also distorted the amendment in their official summary and vote recommendation:

Massie Amdt- “Prohibits funds from being used to fully exploit lawfully collected foreign intelligence information collected under Sec. 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.”

The Massie Amendment actually forbid the collection of information on American citizens in violation of the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution. While it does end the practice of using a US citizen’s contacts with a foreign target as a justification for warrantless surveillance of that citizen, it does nothing to stop the lawful collection of information on foreigners suspected of plotting terrorists’ acts against the US.

The GOP leadership’s summary may be the only piece of information many members and staffers will see on an amendment before voting on it. So the fact that the Massie Amendment received a majority of Republicans votes despite the GOP leadership’s distortions makes this victory even more significant. Even Congress now no longer falls for the hysterical argument that we must trade liberty for phantom promises of security.

The post GOP leadership’s hysterical attacks on Massie Amendment appeared first on Campaign for Liberty.

GOP leadership’s hysterical attacks on Massie Amendment
Norm Singleton
Tue, 24 Jun 2014 16:53:11 GMT