Report: NSA’s Fourth Amendment Violations Have Zero Impact on Terrorism

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Photo Credit: Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call via Getty Images

Photo Credit: Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call via Getty Images

A public policy group says a review of U.S. terrorist arrests shows the government’s collection of bulk phone records does little to prevent terrorism, adding fuel to a debate over whether the spy program should be ended.

The nonprofit New America Foundation, based in Washington, analyzed cases involving 225 people recruited by al-Qaeda or other terrorist groups and charged in the U.S. since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The majority of cases started with traditional techniques, such as use of “informants, tips from local communities, and targeted intelligence operations,” according to a report today from the group, which has been critical of the NSA spy programs.

“Our investigation found that bulk collection of American phone metadata has had no discernible impact on preventing acts of terrorism and only the most marginal of impacts on preventing terrorist-related activity, such as fundraising for a terrorist group,” Peter Bergen, director of the foundation’s national security program, said in a statement.

The National Security Agency’s collection and use of bulk phone records, such as numbers dialed and call durations, is one of several surveillance programs exposed by former government contractor Edward Snowden. The disclosures have prompted calls both domestically and overseas for the U.S. to discontinue or alter the programs.

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Feds Investigate Christie’s Use of Sandy Relief Funds (+video)

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

Just days after dismissing two top advisers for their roles in the George Washington Bridge scandal, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie faced questions over the use of Superstorm Sandy relief funds.

CNN has learned that federal officials are investigating whether Christie improperly used some of that money to produce tourism ads that starred him and his family.

The news couldn’t come at a worse time for the embattled Republican, who is facing two probes in New Jersey of whether his staff orchestrated traffic gridlock near the country’s busiest bridge to punish a Democratic mayor who refused to endorse his re-election.

If the Sandy inquiry by a watchdog finds any wrongdoing, it could prove even more damaging to Christie’s national ambitions. He’s considered a possible presidential candidate in 2016.

Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: WND

Photo Credit: WND

Media slam Christie, but ignore Obama

By Bob Unruh.

Forget the fact that the Obamacare Spanish-language website apparently was written in “Spanglish,” or that the Oregon state site is, ahem, not quite operational.

And you can overlook the issue that the IRS, revealed to have been targeting conservative organizations, has proposed rules to make that the regular practice. And Fast & Furious, and Benghazi, and NSA spying, and Solyndra, and on, and on.

What appears to be important is that a Republican is involved in a scandal. No. Two scandals!

The Media Research Center reported late last week just after the news broke that aides to New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a presumptive front-runner for the 2016 GOP nomination for president, apparently were involved in a traffic scandal, there had been 17 times more coverage on that issue than in the last half year over the IRS misbehavior.

The organization reported that the story broke Wednesday and accused the governor’s aides of punishing a mayor with a huge traffic jam after he refused to endorse Christie.

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The Benghazi Transcripts: US Military Woefully Unprepared for Attack, Documents Show

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Photo Credit: Fox News

Photo Credit: Fox News

Hundreds of pages of declassified transcripts from the U.S. military’s top commanders present a picture of a woefully ill-postured military force whose assets were not in a position to quickly respond to the Benghazi terror attack — or other hot spots across Africa and the Middle East.

The 450 pages of newly declassified transcripts detail testimony from secret, closed hearings last year before Congress. They provide fresh insight into the military’s decision-making that night from the very commanders who staged the rescue efforts, including the top commander in Africa at the time Gen. Carter Ham.

Among other details, they reveal gaps in the military’s positioning of assets around the world.

For example, no attack aircraft were placed on high alert on Sept. 11, and the closest F-16 fighter planes to any of the trouble spots in North Africa were in Aviano, Italy. None were armed, and the closest air refuellers were positioned 10 hours away at a base in Great Britain.

No Defense Department AC-130 gunships were within a 10-hour flight to Libya, according to committee members who heard commanders’ testimony over the past 15 months. And the commander’s in-extremis force, which included a unit of 23 special operators who are used at the commander’s discretion, were training in Croatia that day. They did not make it to a staging base in Sigonella, Italy, for another 19 hours after the attack began, according to committee members.

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Officers Acquitted in Homeless Man’s Death

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Photo Credit: AP/BRUCE CHAMBERS

Photo Credit: AP/BRUCE CHAMBERS

Two former California police officers were acquitted Monday in the death of a homeless man after a violent struggle with officers that was captured on surveillance video.

It was a rare case in which police officers were charged with a death involving actions on duty.

Former Fullerton police officer Manuel Ramos was acquitted of second-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter. Former Cpl. Jay Cicinelli was acquitted of involuntary manslaughter and excessive use of force.

Cincinelli embraced his lawyer and put his face in his hands as the verdict concluded.

Outside court, Kelly Thomas’s parents condemned the verdict.

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Famous Name Leads Boy Scouts in ‘Gay’ Change

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Photo Credit: WND

Photo Credit: WND

The man who led the U.S. Defense Department through its transition to allowing openly acknowledged homosexuals to serve in the military is set to take over the Boy Scouts of America as the iconic youth organization undergoes a similar historic change.

Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who made news last week with the release of a memoir in which he harshly criticizes President Obama’s leadership, was chosen last October to begin a two-year term as BSA president in May 2014.

The Boy Scouts of America began allowing openly “gay” scouts for the first time Jan. 1 after a controversial vote last May by its National Council.

Gates, as defense secretary, backed Obama’s withdrawal of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy. Congress repealed the ban in 2010, and it was lifted in 2011.

Gates earned the BSA’s highest honor, Eagle Scout, as a teen.

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Police Interview Shown in Case of Slain DC Writer

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supreme-court-building-washington-d-c-dcscJurors in the trial of a German man charged with killing his 91-year-old wife were shown bloody crime scene photographs Monday and a portion of an interview with homicide detectives in which he referred to the couple’s relationship as a “marriage of convenience.”

Albrecht Muth, 49, also describes in matter-of-fact fashion how he found the lifeless body of his wife, Viola Drath, in a bathroom of their home but decided that it would be futile to even try to resuscitate her.

“The obvious was obvious,” Muth can be heard telling the pair of detectives.

Muth is charged with first-degree murder in the August 2011 beating and strangulation death of Drath, a German journalist and socialite. He faces life in prison if convicted.

The interview, recorded in a cramped police interrogation room in the days between the discovery of Drath’s body and her husband’s arrest, gave jurors their closest look yet at the defendant: Muth has been absent from the trial, participating passively through videoconference, after doctors said his self-imposed starvation made him too weak to appear in court. He has been fasting off-and-on for what he says are religious reasons.

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MSNBC: Joe Miller is Retiring? Not So Fast. . .

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If you were watching MSNBC Live this morning, you might be wondering why former and current Alaska Republican senatorial candidate Joe Miller is retiring in the middle of his campaign. It’s an unorthodox political strategy for someone who is not currently embroiled in scandal, and who stands a reasonable chance of walking away with the nomination for a second time.

Joe Miller MSNBC

It appears that reports of his political death have been exaggerated. And so has his conversion to the Democratic Party, his relocation to California, and his service to the United States Congress since the early 1970s.

Someone at MSNBC confused candidate Joe Miller with George Miller, 21-term Democratic congressman from California who came out with a statement today declaring his upcoming retirement.

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Taxpayers Paid Nearly $175M for Penis Pumps Between 2006 and 2011

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Photo Credit: Andromedical Indonesia Flickr

Photo Credit: Andromedical Indonesia Flickr

Taxpayers paid nearly $175 million for vacuum erection systems (VES), commonly known as “penis pumps,” from 2006 to 2011, according to an inspector general report released on Monday.

The federal government paid more than double the retail price for VES, the Department of Health and Human Services IG found. Medicare prices for the systems, the report said, “remain grossly excessive compared with the amounts that non-Medicare payers pay.”

Medicare paid 473,620 VES claims during calendar years 2006 through 2011, according to the IG report.

Health care policy experts said the revelations in the IG report are a troubling indication of what they describe as wasteful spending in federal health programs.

“The fact that taxpayers have spent more than a quarter of a billion dollars over the past decade on penis pumps via Medicare is obscene and insulting – even more so when you consider that this is an arena of Medicare expenditures rife with fraud and where the government doesn’t even bother to assess medical necessity,” said Ben Domenech, a senior fellow at the Heartland Institute.

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Watch Out Tea Party! Obama Weaponizing the IRS (+video)

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Photo Credit: WND

Photo Credit: WND

“Non-profit groups must prepare to fight back [against] the IRS on yet a second front,” warns Cleta Mitchell, a partner in the Washington-based law firm Foley & Lardner LLP, well-known for providing expert legal advise to conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status.

In discussions throughout the Capitol, Mitchell has expressed her concern new rules proposed by the IRS demonstrate once again the Obama administration is determined to keep tea-party groups from having the type of impact on the mid-term elections this November that they had in 2010, when Republicans grabbed majority control of the House of Representatives.

“This is a real assault on the First Amendment rights of American citizens, and we need to do everything we can to stop the IRS from implementing these new rules,” Mitchell says.

Mitchell has produced in a YouTube video a briefing in which she explains the goal of the IRS is to limit the free speech of conservative groups:

She is urging conservatives groups and individuals to file comments with the IRS right away, arguing it is “impractical, burdensome and unacceptable for the IRS to interject itself into the workings of every citizens group in the country.”

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