Dick Retta stands outside a Planned Parenthood clinic in downtown Washington three days a week, trying to persuade pregnant women not to get abortions. The 80-year-old grandfather has been coming to the clinic for eight years and said he’s personally persuaded over 400 women to leave this clinic and others.

Retta says his approach is friendly, gentle and loving. Government lawyers portray him differently, calling him “among the most vocal and aggressive anti-abortion protestors” outside the clinic.

In court documents, they say he routinely follows patients entering the building and yells at them as the clinic door closes. Last year he physically blocked a woman from entering the clinic, shouting at her not to kill her baby, they say.

As a result they sued Retta over last year’s incident, using a 1994 law that makes it a crime to intimidate or interfere with someone obtaining reproductive health services. He is one of a handful of people nationwide charged every year under the law. Lawyers for the government and Retta have a meeting before a judge Thursday to see if they can come to an agreement in the case, but it’s unclear how likely that is.

“They’d like to get rid of me,” said Retta, who acknowledges he’s persistent and assertive with his message but denies ever blocking access to the clinic.

Read More at OfficialWire By Jessica Gresko

Photo Credit: WeNews Creative Commons

Not long before Dick Armey – a conservative Republican constitutionalist – retired as House majority leader, he gave a speech expressing his worry about the government’s increasing blanket surveillance over We the People. He practically begged President George W. Bush to “use these tools we have given you to make us safe in such a manner that’ll preserve our freedom” (my book, “The War on the Bill of Rights and the Gathering Resistance,” Seven Stories Press, 2003).

Bush’s response, alas, was to listen more and more to Vice President Dick Cheney.

And now for the first time in American history, according to the Government Accountability Project’s Jesselyn Radack, Attorney General Eric Holder has officially and publicly declared “new guidelines that permit the federal counterterrorism investigators to collect, search and store data about Americans who are not suspected of terrorism, or anything …

“According to the Justice Department, law enforcement and other national security agencies can copy entire databases and sift through the data for suspicious patterns to stop potential terrorist threats” (“Govt. Keeping Data on Americans With No Connection to Terrorism,” whistleblower.org, March 23).

Where in the Constitution do “suspicious patterns” – otherwise undefined and outside the jurisdiction of our courts – allow the government to put large and growing numbers of us into databases for future tracking?

Read More at WND.

Felony charges related to election fraud have touched the 2008 race for the highest office in the land.

Prosecutors in South Bend, Ind., filed charges Monday against four St. Joseph County Democratic officials and deputies as part of a multiple-felony case involving the alleged forging of Democratic presidential primary petitions in the 2008 election, which put then-candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton on the Indiana ballot.

The officials are accused of taking part in a scheme to fake signatures and names on the primary petitions needed to run for president. Court papers say the plan was hatched by local Democratic Party officials inside the local party headquarters.

Among those charged is the former long-time chairman of the St. Joseph County Democratic Party, Butch Morgan, who allegedly ordered the forgeries. He was forced to resign when the allegations were first made public last October, even though his lawyer, Shaw Friedman, told Fox News at the time that Morgan did not do anything wrong.

The St. Joseph County Board of Voter Registration’s Democratic board member, Pam Brunette, Board of Voter Registration worker Beverly Shelton and Democratic volunteer and former board worker Dustin Blythe also face charges.

Read More at Fox News. By Eric Shawn.

Photo Credit: Donkey Hotey (Creative Commons)

With all the lawn signs and ads on the airwaves, it’s obvious an election is taking place in Wisconsin — just not for the Republican presidential candidates.

While the presidential primary being held Tuesday is a comparatively low-key affair, the raucous campaign to recall Republican Gov. Scott Walker is dominating the state’s political landscape.

More than a year after the unions took to the streets and the halls of the capital city of Madison in protest of Walker’s budget reforms, the push to recall the governor and other Republican officials is reaching a decision point. The lawn signs in the state are more likely to say “Recall Walker” or “Support Walker,” than anything about the GOP presidential candidates, as the governor prepares to stand for election in June.

“The presidential race essentially didn’t come to Wisconsin ’till seven days ago,” said Brian Schimming, vice chair of the Republican Party of Wisconsin.

The recall fever has made it difficult for the presidential candidates to make inroads with voters. By the time the ads for Mitt Romney or Rick Santorum hit the airwaves, viewers had seen their share of pro- or anti-Walker spots.

Read More at Fox News. By Mike Tobin.