James Inhofe Announces Intent to Investigate NSA Violations

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

The Senate Armed Services Committee’s ranking member will launch an investigation into the Obama administration’s potentially illegal surveillance of U.S. citizens following revelations that the National Security Administration (NSA) violated legal boundaries imposed by Congress.

The Washington Post reported on Thursday that the NSA “overstepped its legal authority thousands of times each year since Congress granted the agency broad new powers in 2008.”

Many of these legal violations involved the “unauthorized” surveillance of American citizens in the United States, according to the Post’s report.

Sen. James Inhofe (R., Okla.) said on Saturday that he will now “work to investigate as to what laws were broken by the Administration,” according to a statement provided to the Free Beacon.

“The NSA violations recently reported by the Washington Post are very concerning as it appears the Obama Administration has abused the authority granted to them by Congress,” Inhofe said.

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In First Year of New Program, Deportation Is Deferred for 400,000 Young Illegal Aliens

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

About 400,000 “Dreamers” have been allowed to stay in the United States in the year since the Obama administration began accepting applications for young illegal immigrants to defer deportation proceedings and receive work permits, according to data compiled by the Brookings Institution and released on the anniversary of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

The numbers show that out of more than a half-million applicants for deferred action, more than three-quarters were accepted and just 1 percent denied. The applications were concentrated in states that already have large immigrant communities, such as California, Texas, New York, Illinois, and Florida. On the East Coast, the applications were from a more diverse set of countries while in the West, Midwest, and South the vast majority of applicants were from Mexico.

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“DACA has been an incredible success for our country,” said Congressional Hispanic Caucus Chairman Ruben Hinojosa, D-Texas. “To date we have given 400,000 young immigrants the ability to continue to contribute to this country, the only country that most of these outstanding individuals have ever known.”

The fate of these younger immigrants brought to the country illegally as children—the so-called Dreamers—is less precarious than many of the other 11 million people living in the U.S. without papers. Lawmakers have been quicker to agree that the Dreamers deserve special treatment, including an expedited path to citizenship.

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GOP Rep: Obama’s ‘Arrogant Disregard’ for ‘Voice of the People’ Has Founding Fathers ‘Turning in their Graves’

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Photo Credit: Getty Images

Photo Credit: Getty Images

A Republican Congressman from New York recently turned to Fox News to issue a scalding criticism of President Obama for taking unilateral action to extend high speed Internet to virtually every school in America.

Rep. Michael Grimm (R-N.Y.) took issue with President Obama asking the Federal Communications Commission to raise a fee that would help pay for the Internet program reportedly estimated to cost taxpayers $4 billion to $6 billion.

“It’s just a flagrant, you know, disregard not just for the current Congress,” Grimm reportedly said. “Look, it’s not about me personally. That’s not what this is about. You think about who is the Congress? It really — it is the voice of the people.”

“He [President Obama] has an agenda and he’s going to do whatever he has to do to pass that agenda, regardless of the Constitution,” he added. “I mean, I think our founding fathers are turning over in the graves right now because he’s just so blatant in his — the administrators, the people he puts in charge of these agencies are bold and brazen about saying, ‘yes, we’re going to make an end run around Congress.’”

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Idiot Big Brother

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Photo Credit: National Review

Photo Credit: National Review

On Thursday, the Washington Post’s revelation of thousands upon thousands of National Security Agency violations of both the law and supposed privacy protections included this fascinating detail:

A “large number” of Americans had their telephone calls accidentally intercepted by the NSA when a top-secret order to eavesdrop on multiple phone lines for reasons of national security confused the international code for Egypt (20) with the area code for Washington (202).

Seriously.

I enjoy as much as the next chap all those Hollywood conspiracy thrillers about the all-powerful security state — you know the kind of thing, where the guy’s on the lam and he stops at a diner at a windswept one-stoplight hick burg in the middle of nowhere and decides to take the risk of making one 15-second call from the payphone, and as he dials the last digit there’s a click in a basement in Langley, and even as he’s saying hello the black helicopters are already descending on him. It’s heartening to know that, if I ever get taken out at a payphone, it will be because some slapdash timeserving pen-pusher mistyped the code for Malaysia (60) as that of New Hampshire (603).

The Egypt/Washington industrial-scale wrong number is almost too perfectly poignant a vignette at the end of a week in which hundreds are dead on the streets of Cairo. On the global scene, America has imploded: Its leaders have no grasp of its national interests, never mind any sense of how to achieve them. The assumption that we are in the early stages of “the post-American world” is now shared by everyone from General Sisi to Vladimir Putin. General Sisi, I should add, is Egypt’s new strongman, not Putin’s characterization of Obama. Meanwhile, in contrast to its accelerating irrelevance overseas, at home Washington’s big bloated blundering bureaucratic security state expands daily. It’s easier to crack down on 47 Elm Street than Benghazi.

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Obama Blasts Government-Shutdown Threat; GOP Wants Individual-Mandate Delay

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

President Obama used his weekly radio/YouTube address to tout the pending implementation of his signature health-care law and bash the GOP for threatening a government shutdown, while Republicans used theirs to call for a delay in one of the Affordable Care Act’s controversial provisions, the so-called “individual mandate.”

In October, regional exchanges will begin offering private insurance plans for people who are not covered through their employers, and as the Affordable Care Act’s rollout continues, it’s being contested by Republicans who want to push the law back or halt it entirely, after the Obama administration delayed by one year the requirement that larger businesses supply health insurance to employees.

Obama listed the law’s more popular elements, like free mammograms, the requirement that insurers sell coverage despite “preexisting conditions,” and the requirement that insurers let young adults stay on their parents’ coverage plans until the age of 26.

“It’s OK if you’re not a fan of the Affordable Care Act,” Obama said. “You can take advantage of these things anyway.”

The president blasted Republicans who have effectively threatened a government shutdown if “Obamacare” continues as planned. Conservative lawmakers have pledged to oppose renewed government funding, when the tab comes due to Congress this fall in the form of an expired funding measure, if the next funding bill includes money for the Affordable Care Act.

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Cairo at War – Under Siege Inside the Al-Fath Mosque

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Photo Credit: Reuters

Photo Credit: Reuters

Yasmine Ahmed’s two brothers had been trapped in the siege for over 12 hours. Packed into a sweltering back room barricaded with chairs and wooden tables, they had been cooped up alongside hundreds of panicking Islamists and the decomposing corpses from another weekend of violence.

In the main prayer hall of the Al-Fath mosque, its grubby carpet littered with discarded shreds of cotton wool and surgical pads, an army commander huddled in a circle with his troops who, it was claimed, had only entered the building to clear it of supporters of toppled President, Mohamed Morsi as well as to protect innocent worshippers from angry mobs gathering outside.

Hundreds of locals were crammed against the pointed steel gates of the mosque courtyard. Many were in no mood to forgive those trapped inside; in the minds of some Egyptians, the Morsi supporters have become little more than “terrorist” outlaws.

“Their fate is not in my hands now,” said Yasmine, 20, a college student. “The army and the police think the people trapped inside are terrorists. But they are not. What we have now is chaos. There is chaos between all the Egyptian people.”

The fear and anxiety were palpable. Weeping relatives tramped around the prayer hall, while jumpy police officers toted their Kalashnikovs in one hand, wide-eyed and frantically chewing gum.

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Many 2016 Republican Hopefuls Agree: Defund ObamaCare

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Paul-Cruz-LeeMany Republicans who are eyeing a run for president in 2016 are backing an all-or-nothing plan to defund ObamaCare.

More than half a dozen possible GOP White House candidates support that strategy while a handful are calling for a more nuanced approach to defunding or repealing the healthcare law. Another five are dodging questions and a couple others are not signaling one way or another.

In short, some are willing to go to the brink and beyond of a government shutdown to defund ObamaCare. But it’s far from unanimous.

Still, the results of The Hill’s survey favors the shutdown-showdown strategy hatched by Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), thanks to outspoken endorsements from GOP frontrunners, such as Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.).

The Florida Republican and three other colleagues also entertaining presidential runs — Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and John Thune (R-S.D.) — have backed Lee’s effort by refusing to support government funding bills that include money for ObamaCare.

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School Children to be Fed ‘Gay-Promoting’ Lessons

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Photo Credit: WND

Photo Credit: WND

An organization that promotes homosexuality is distributing DVDs to each primary school in Scotland to teach “alternative families” to young children.

The project is paid for by funds from a national lottery, which boasts of spending millions of dollars to give people a better chance in life, make communities safe, create more sustainable services and make people healthier.

A report from the Christian Institute said Stonewall Scotland, a pro-homosexual organization, has been given almost $20,000 from the Awards for All scheme run by the lottery.

The funding will be used to pay for DVDs that celebrate same-sex duos, and they will be delivered to primary schools across the nation.

“There is a key difference between acknowledging the existence of different family types on the one hand and positively promoting them in the classroom on the other,” said Norman Wells of the Family Education Trust.

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ICE Agents Raid Arizona Car Wash Chain

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Photo Credit: bark

Photo Credit: bark

A chain of Phoenix-area car washes that’s raised thousands for local charities, including numerous law enforcement agencies, found itself the target of a sweeping raid Saturday by law officers.

Special agents from Immigration and Custom Enforcement’s homeland security investigations unit conducted raids at 13 Danny’s Family Car Wash locations in central Arizona, plus three locations tied to its outsourced staffing service provider, HR Betty, said ICE spokesman Andrew Munoz.

“We are … going after businesses that are a magnet for unauthorized workers,” Munoz said.

The action came as part of a criminal investigation into alleged criminal fraud, identity theft and financial violations, according to the agency. Few details were immediately available, though more would come out if an indictment in the case is unsealed.

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Google Outage Reportedly Caused Big Drop in Global Traffic

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Photo Credit: CNET

Photo Credit: CNET

For a very brief few minutes on Friday you may have noticed some Google services, most notably search, appeared to be down. If not, maybe you noticed the ensuing freak-out across Twitter and the rest of the Internet.

At first glance the flash outage was little more than an opportunity for a few good one-liners and a chance to actually stand up from the keyboard and walk around for a few minutes. If we had connected nanobots floating around in our bloodstreams, certainly they would have registered a worldwide uptick in caffeine intake during those few moments.

As it turns out though, Google’s downtime did appear to have global, measurable repercussions, according to analytics firm GoSquared, which estimates that it caused a 40 percent drop in global traffic during a five-minute window.

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