Edward Snowden ‘Pictured out Shopping in Russia’

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Photo Credit: LIFE NEWSA photograph purporting to show Edward Snowden, the US intelligence leaker, out in public for the first time since being granted asylum, has been published by a Russian news website.

In the blurry image published by Life News, a casually dressed man sporting a goatee with sunglasses perched on his head is pictured pushing a supermarket trolley full of groceries across a road.

A car with partly legible Russian plates and a crossing sign identify the scene as in Russia.

“The photograph was taken in Moscow,” said Life News, which is known for its close ties to the Kremlin and security services.

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Anonymous to March on DC on Guy Fawkes Day

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Photo Credit: APDemonstrators involved with Anonymous, a loose collective of online “hacktivists,” will gather on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. on Nov. 5 to march for a vast, nearly innumerable number of causes and issues.

Flyers began appearing around downtown D.C. over the weekend advertising the “Million Mask March,” which will take place on Guy Fawkes Day.

Anonymous members, when they appear in public, are known for donning masks of Guy Fawkes, who unsuccessfully tried to blow up the England’s House of Lords on Nov. 5, 1605, and restore Catholicism to England.

The group supports leakers of government secrets, such as Julian Assange, Bradley Manning, and Edward Snowden. It was also closely allied with the now-moribund Occupy movement.

Anonymous hackers often target large governments and companies who oppose their interests with malicious cyber attacks.

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Al Sharpton, ‘PoliticsNation’ Advertisers Targeted in New Boycott

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Photo Credit: Earl Gibson III/GettyA group of conservative activists, tired of what they see as a persistent and little remarked liberal bias in the news media, are set to begin a series of boycotts aimed at advertisers who sponsor what they see as left-wing networks, outlets, and journalists.

On Sunday they announced their first target, the Rev. Al Sharpton, the civil-rights leader turned MSNBC talk-show host whose PoliticsNation has grown in influence and audience since making its debut two years ago.

“Sharpton is a racial extortionist who has instigated racial animosities, violence, and division in America for the last forty years,” write the boycott’s organizers. “In better times, Sharpton would be stigmatized and condemned for the damage he has done. But today he is a primetime host on MSNBC—the charter cable news network for NBC News, and a favored outlet for the Obama administration’s spin doctors.”

The boycott is part of Truth Revolt, a new project by the David Horowitz Freedom Center, a right-wing foundation that has focused on what it calls liberal bias in Hollywood and on college campuses. Truth Revolt, which says its purpose is to “unmask leftists in the media for who they are, destroy their credibility with the American public, and devastate their funding bases,” is led by Ben Shapiro, an editor-at-large for the conservative website Breitbart News and the author, most recently, of Bullies: How the Left’s Culture of Fear and Intimidation Silences America.

The first Sharpton sponsor the group is targeting is Ritz Crackers, owned by Chicago-based Mondelez International. Shapiro said Truth Revolt chose Mondelez because it bills itself as a “family-friendly company” and because it was one of the few advertisers to respond to the group’s inquiries about why it supports the Sharpton show.

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Rep. Al Green on Obamacare: ‘I Will Come Back in the Afterlife; I Will Haunt the Congress’ (+video)

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Photo Credit: APSpeaking at a rally to demand Congress ends the government shutdown on Friday, Rep. Al Green (D-Texas) said he is “committed to the Affordable Care Act,” and he “will come back in the afterlife” to fight for it.

In his closing remarks he said: “My followers, listen friends. I am committed to the Affordable Care Act, and I just want you to know this: if for some reason I should have an untimely demise, I want you to know that not only am I going to fight for the Affordable Care Act in this life, I will come back in the afterlife. I will haunt the Congress of the United States of America.”

Prior to the government shutdown, the House passed numerous continuing resolutions that included language to defund Obamacare or delay the individual mandate.

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Self-Described Ex-Racist Shirley Sherrod Sues Nicest Person in Los Angeles (+video)

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Photo Credit: AP/Gregory BullShirley Sherrod, the Department of Agriculture official who lost her taxpayer-funded sinecure after Andrew Breitbart posted a video of Sherrod revealing her struggle to overcome anti-white racism, has expanded her multi-year crusade against the late media entrepreneur by suing his unoffending widow, a mother of four who is loved by all who know her.

Sherrod, then-Georgia state director of rural development for the USDA, revealed in a March 2010 speech to the NAACP that she was initially unwilling to help a white farmer who sought assistance from her, but who, according to Sherrod, tried “to show me he was superior to me.” The incident she described happened in 1986 when she worked for the Federation of Southern Cooperatives/Land Assistance Fund.

After Breitbart posted a two-minute clip of Sherrod’s 43-minute stemwinder, Sherrod resigned under immense pressure from USDA and Obama administration bigwigs.

Although the Breitbart clip did indicate that Sherrod had eventually decided to place a higher value on class warfare than racial bigotry, the full import of her long speech became more clear after the full version was made public. In the full speech Sherrod, who had been made rich by a government settlement over discrimination against her collective farm, explained that she grew to realize America is divided between ”rich and poor” rather than “black and white.”

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The Cold Hard Facts of Obama’s Economy

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Photo Credit: APThere’s an old adage, “Don’t let the facts get in the way of a good story.”

That could be the battle cry within the Obama administration when it comes to Obama’s work on the economy through his five plus years as president. But a close and objective look at the facts shows that the Obama-led and Obama-owned economy tells one and only one story — FAILURE.

Let’s begin on the labor front, where the numbers are atrocious. While the monthly unemployment rate is the headline-grabbing number so many flock to, it is far from the best gauge of labor market strength.

The unemployment rate currently stands at 7.3%. Obama backers will point to the fact… again let’s look at the facts, and rightfully say that the unemployment rate has steadily fallen from its peak of 10% in October 2009 and has remained below 8% since August 2012. These are indeed facts, but they mask the underlying and quite troubling data.

Understand that the unemployment rate is a rather simplistic calculation. The numerator is composed of the number of people unemployed and who have looked for work in the past four weeks. That number is then divided by the total number of individuals in the labor force.

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Eric Holder’s 2014 Racial Politics

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Photo Credit: Getty ImagesFor Eric Holder, American racial history is frozen in the 1960s. The Supreme Court ruled in June that a section of the 1965 Voting Rights Act is no longer justified due to racial progress, but the U.S. Attorney General has launched a campaign to undo the decision state-by-state. His latest target is North Carolina, which he seems to think is run from the grave by the early version of George Wallace.

The real current Governor, Republican Pat McCrory, signed a law in August that requires voters to present government-issued photo ID at the polling station, including a state driver’s license or military ID. Voters who show up without one can still cast a provisional ballot pending their return with a photo ID. The law also shortens early voting to 10 days from 17 and ends a program that preregistered high school students before they were eligible to vote.

According to Mr. Holder, this amounts to a shocking return to the Jim Crow era. He describes these modest measures to secure the integrity of the ballot as “aggressive steps to curtail the voting rights of African Americans.” And he is suing the state to bring it back under the federal supervision of the Voting Rights Act for all of its future voting-law changes.

The Supreme Court held in June that such federal “preclearance” under Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act had outlived its usefulness in states where black and white voter registration and participation rates are roughly equal. That should have been good news, but now Mr. Holder wants to haul North Carolina and Texas back into long-term federal supervision through a back door.

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Issa: ‘There’s a Reason to Fear’ Obama Agencies (+videos)

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Photo Credit: APRepublican California Rep. Darrell Issa, the GOP’s top government watchdog, warns that we have entered a time to “love my country, fear my government.”

“Right now, there’s a reason to fear the IRS and other agencies, including the EPA, who are loaded with people who feel empowered to bend the rules against those they disagree with,” the California Republican explained.

Issa has been investigating the Internal Revenue Service since Lois Lerner’s May 2013 admission that the agency treated conservative groups differently, and his Sept. 17 committee report details the committee’s progress and findings to date.


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ATF Tries to Block Whistleblowing Agent’s ‘Fast and Furious’ Book

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Photo Credit: APThe Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is blocking the main whistleblower in the Fast and Furious case from publishing a book for pay, claiming his retelling of the Mexico “gun-walking” scandal will hurt morale inside the embattled law enforcement agency, according to documents obtained by The Washington Times.

ATF’s dispute with Special Agent John Dodson is setting up a First Amendment showdown that is poised to bring together liberal groups like the American Civil Liberties Union and conservatives in Congress who have championed Mr. Dodson’s protection as a whistleblower.

The ACLU is slated to become involved in the case Monday, informing ATF it is representing Mr. Dodson and filing a formal protest to the decision to reject his request to publish the already written book, sources told The Times, speaking only on the condition of anonymity.

The battle also could have repercussions on Capitol Hill, where the two lead investigators who helped uncover the Fast and Furious scandal, Sen. Chuck Grassley, Iowa Republican, and House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell E. Issa, Calif. Republican, had written a foreword to the book, the sources said.

ATF officials declined Sunday night to discuss Mr. Dodson’s specific matter, citing personnel privacy. But the officials said it was possible for an agent to be rejected for publishing a book for pay but get permission to publish it for free. No manuscript for any Fast and Furious book has received approval for unpaid publication, however, the officials said.

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Video: Fox News’ Chris Wallace Rips into Treasury Secretary Jack Lew: ‘Your History is Wrong,’ Obama’s Refusal to Negotiate is ‘Unprecedented’

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Photo Credit: YouTube ScreenshotBy Oliver Darcy.

Fox News’ Chris Wallace grilled Treasury Secretary Jack Lew on Sunday, repeatedly asking him questions regarding the president’s refusal to negotiate with Republicans in Congress over the budget.

“I know the direction is bad,” Lew said about what would happen if the U.S. government defaulted on its debt. “There is a range of how bad. It is irresponsible and it is reckless to take that chance.”

“Despite these stakes, the president is refusing to negotiate,” Wallace countered, noting presidents have negotiated with Congress in the past over a variety of topics. “What’s unprecedented is not Congress tying strings; what’s unprecedented is a president refusing to negotiate.”

“Frankly, I think your history is wrong,” Lew said.

“With all due respect, your history is wrong,” Wallace responded. “This has happened over and over again, and presidents have negotiated.”

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Treasury Secretary Lew: Congress ‘Reckless’ if Debt Ceiling Not Raised

By Greg Richter.

Saying that the U.S. government is “just too important to the world,” Treasury Secretary Jack Lew urged Congress to raise the country’s debt ceiling by an Oct. 17 deadline because he has “run out of tricks” to keep it operating past that date.

Lew said it will be “dangerous” and “reckless” for Congress to pass an October deadline without raising the government’s borrowing limit.

Appearing on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday, Lew said he has been using “extraordinary measures” to make room to borrow money since the United States hit its debt ceiling in May.

“I have no more,” Lew said he wrote in a letter to Congress last week. The government has $30 billion of cash on hand, but on any given day it can have a $50 billion-$60 billion positive or negative cash flow.

“It won’t last very long,” he said of the reserves.

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