South Korea to Make Announcement On Air Zone; Expansion is Anticipated

/1 Comment/in , /by

Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

South Korea was scheduled to make an announcement on Sunday amid anticipation that it will expand its air defense zone south into a zone newly declared by China that has spurred regional tensions.

South Korea’s defense ministry said the announcement at 0500 GMT/Midnight ET would be about its Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ), but declined to comment on the details.

South Korea has said China’s move is unacceptable because its new zone includes the maritime rock named Ieodo which it controls, with a research station platform built atop it. China also claims the submerged rock as its own.

China’s decision on November 23 to declare an air defense zone in an area that includes islands at the center of a territorial dispute with Japan has triggered louder protests from Tokyo and Washington.

Read more from this story HERE.

1,148,000 Fewer Americans Have Jobs Today Than 7 Yrs Ago

/1 Comment/in , /by

Photo Credit: AP Photo/Charles Dharapak

Photo Credit: AP Photo/Charles Dharapak

1,148,000 fewer Americans held jobs this November than did seven years ago in November 2006, according to data released today by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Back then, according to BLS, 145,534,000 Americans held jobs. This November, according to BLS, only 144,386,000 Americans hold jobs. That is a drop of 1,148,000 in the number of Americans working.

This decline in the number of Americans who actually have jobs has come even though the size of the nation’s civilian noninstitutional population and the size of the nation’s civilian labor force have both grown significantly over the last seven years.

The civilian noninstitutional population is made up of all people 16 or older who are living in the United States and are not in the military or a prison, mental facility or nursing home. The civilian labor force consists of all people in the civilian noninstitutional population who either have a job or who actively sought a job in the past four weeks.

Read more from this story HERE.

Patriot Act Author: Obama’s Intel Czar Should Be Prosecuted

/3 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit:: Greg Nash

Photo Credit:: Greg Nash

Rep. James Sensenbrenner Jr., the original author of the Patriot Act, says Director of National Intelligence James Clapper should be prosecuted for lying to Congress.

“Lying to Congress is a federal offense, and Clapper ought to be fired and prosecuted for it,” the Wisconsin Republican said in an interview with The Hill.

He said the Justice Department should prosecute Clapper for giving false testimony during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing in March.

During that hearing, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) asked Clapper whether the National Security Agency (NSA) collects data on millions of Americans. Clapper insisted that the NSA does not — or at least does “not wittingly” — collect information on Americans in bulk.

After documents leaked by Edward Snowden revealed that the NSA collects records on virtually all U.S. phone calls, Clapper apologized for the misleading comment.

Read more from this story HERE.

IRS Using Google Maps to Spy On Taxpayers

/0 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton

Photo Credit: REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton

Agents from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) are using Google Maps as part of their tool kit to audit taxpayers and organizations, The Daily Caller has learned.

A redacted IRS letter dated Sept. 8, 2011 reveals that at least in one case the IRS’s examiners used photos of a property, obtained through Google Maps, as evidence to revoke the 501(c)(4) status of a homeowner’s association.

“The road consists of a two-mile loop around the inside of the property. It goes not have any sidewalks or bicycle lanes. The examining agent printed and copied a map from Google Maps (www.google.com) into this report,” states the letter.

501(c)4 is a tax-exempt status that includes certain “social welfare organizations,” “local associations of employees,” “homeowners associations,” “volunteer fire companies,” and certain lobbying organizations.

The IRS became mired in scandal in May 2013 after a report by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration found that IRS staffers had singled out tea party groups seeking 501(c)(4) tax-exempt status for extra scrutiny.

Read more from this story HERE.

Report: 2 Men with HIV thought To Be Cured See Reappearance of Virus

/4 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: NIAID

Photo Credit: NIAID

Researchers are saying a pair of HIV-positive men from Boston, thought to have been cured of the disease after undergoing bone marrow transplants, has since seen the reappearance of the virus that causes AIDS in their bloodstream.

The Boston Globe reports a team led by Dr. Timothy Henrich, an infectious disease specialist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, revealed the disappointing findings on Friday at a Florida conference on HIV.

“This suggests that we need to look deeper, or we need to be looking in other tissues . . . the liver, gut, and brain,” Henrich told The Globe. “These are all potential sources, but it’s very difficult to obtain tissue from these places so we don’t do that routinely.”

Both patients reportedly had undergone bone marrow transplants to combat lymphoma – and had since then stopped taking the costly cocktail of medicines that keeps HIV from reproducing in the body. HIV is a virus that attacks – and destroys – the body’s immune system. An HIV-positive patient is said to have AIDS once their immune system has deteriorated beyond a certain, clinically measured point.

In one of the Boston patients’ cases, the virus reportedly reappeared after 12 weeks of not having taken medication. In the other, it returned after 32.

Read more from this story HERE.

Calif. Health Exchange Shares Consumers’ Data Without Permission

/1 Comment/in , /by

Photo Credit: REUTERS

Photo Credit: REUTERS

The California health exchange has admitted it has been divulging contact information for tens of thousands of consumers to insurance agents without their permission or knowledge in an effort to hit deadlines for coverage.

Covered California said it was handing out consumer information as part of a pilot program to help people enroll ahead of a Dec. 23 deadline to have health insurance in place by the new year, according to the Los Angeles Times. The consumers in question had gone online to research insurance options, but didn’t ask to be contacted.

Social Security numbers, income and other information were not provided to the agents, but names, addresses, phone numbers and email addresses were made available, exchange officials said.

The names provided by Covered California include people who started an insurance application on the website but didn’t complete the process.

State officials say they do not know exactly how many people are affected by the information sharing.

Read more from this story HERE.

What Obama Got Right and What He Got Wrong on Economic Mobility

/1 Comment/in , /by

Photo Credit: Reuters

Photo Credit: Reuters

When it comes to economic mobility, the President often starts out by making some statements that Republicans and Democrats have always agreed on, such as:

While we don’t promise equal outcomes, we have strived to deliver equal opportunity—the idea that success doesn’t depend on being born into wealth or privilege, it depends on effort and merit.

The idea that a child may never be able to escape that poverty because she lacks a decent education or health care, or a community that views her future as their own, that should offend all of us and it should compel us to action.

But then he spoils it. The President’s speech at the Center for American Progress on Wednesday linked policy prescriptions for increasing economic mobility to reducing income differences in America—as though the opportunity problems facing inner-city kids are somehow because Warren Buffett has a lot of money. But not only do the facts show no link between income inequality and a lack of mobility; focusing on inequality actually distracts from the true causes of low economic mobility.

The President identified several social factors that are essential to upward mobility. “Disparities in education, mental health, obesity, absent fathers, isolation from church, isolation from community groups—these gaps are now as much about growing up rich or poor as they are about anything else.” He’s right about these things. But income redistribution will not fix these.

Read more from this story HERE.

Ex-Official Claims FBI Can Secretly Activate Webcams Without the Indicator Light Turning On

/3 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Shutterstock

Photo Credit: Shutterstock

The FBI can secretly activate a computer’s webcam to spy on an individual without turning on the indicator light, a former official revealed to the Washington Post in an article published Friday.

According to the Washington Post’s account of what Marcus Thomas — former assistant director of the FBI’s Operational Technology Division in Quantico — said, “The FBI has been able to covertly activate a computer’s camera — without triggering the light that lets users know it is recording — for several years, and has used that technique mainly in terrorism cases or the most serious criminal investigations.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Houston Mayor Accused of Instituting ‘Mob Rule’

/0 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: WND

Photo Credit: WND

Houston Mayor Annise Parker is being accused of instituting “mob rule” after imposing a policy that will pay benefits to same-sex couples who have been legally married.

Jared Woodfill, chairman of the local Harris County Republican Party, has signed on to a lawsuit in response, charging the mayor “unilaterally disposed of the Houston City Charter and the Texas Constitution without anything even resembling democratic process.”

Parker announced Nov. 20 that the new policy will offer health and life insurance benefits to all spouses of legally married employees, including same-sex couples.

A voter-approved charter amendment in 2001, however, banned benefits to same-sex couples.

Parker has lived in a lesbian relationship with Kathy Hubbard for 24 years but will remain ineligible for benefits because she is not legally married, the Houston Chronicle reported.

Read more from this story HERE.

Ex-Obama Guard Talks ‘Out of Control’ Government

/1 Comment/in , /by

Photo Credit: WND

Photo Credit: WND

He swore to take a bullet for the president and then left it all behind to take a bullet for the American people.

Hear Secret Service Agent Dan Bongino tell his story at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C, on Dec. 9 at noon.

WND-TV will live-stream his presentation on why he resigned from his six-figure Secret Service job to embark on a campaign to warn the American people of the dangers of an out-of-control, unaccountable government…

Bongino, who during his 12-year tenure in the Secret Service guarded Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, resigned in 2010. He walked away in favor of sounding a clarion call to the American people in defense of sane government and the U.S. Constitution.

The author of the explosive New York Times bestseller “Life Inside the Bubble: Why a Top-Ranked Secret Service Agent Walked Away From It All” will present to the audience at the Heritage Foundation an intimate look at life inside the presidential “bubble,” which he describes as a haze of staffers, consultants, cronies, acolytes, bureaucrats and lobbyists that creates an “alternate reality” in which monumental policy decisions are made.

Read more from this story HERE.