Obama Admin. Plan Guts Oil Shale Development, Reduces by Two-Thirds Federal Lands Previously Approved (+video)

Photo Credit: Fox News

Photo Credit: Fox News

Controversy is heating up over an administration plan to drastically reduce the amount of federal lands available for oil shale development in the American West.

The Bush administration had set aside 1.3 million acres for oil shale and tar sands development in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming. The new Bureau of Land Management plan cuts that amount by two-thirds, down to 700,000 acres, a decision that has prompted industry outrage.

“What they basically did was make it so that nobody is going to want to spend money going after oil shale on federal government lands,” said Dan Kish, Senior Vice President of Institute for Energy Research.

Read more from this story HERE.

New Evidence that Murdered Ambassador’s Benghazi Mission Involved Shipping Weapons to Syrian Rebels

Photo Credit: WND

Photo Credit: WND

A Libyan weapons dealer from a group hired to provide security to the U.S. mission in Benghazi told Reuters he has helped ship weapons from Benghazi to the rebels fighting in Syria.

The detailed account may provide more circumstantial evidence the U.S. Benghazi mission was secretly involved in procuring and shipping weapons to the Syrian opposition before the deadly attack last September that killed the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans.

According to informed Middle Eastern security officials speaking to WND on multiple occasions, the Benghazi mission was a planning headquarters for coordinating aid, including weapons distribution, to the jihadist-led rebels.

After the fall of Libyan dictator Muammar Gadhafi, the arming efforts shifted focus to aiding the insurgency targeting President Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria.

Two weeks after the Sept. 11, 2012, Benghazi attack, WND broke the story that murdered U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens himself played a central role in arming rebels and recruiting jihadists to fight Assad, according to Egyptian security officials.

Read more from this story HERE.

Fearing 2016: Slate Reporter Calls Sen. Rand Paul “White Supremacist”

Photo Credit: YouTube

Photo Credit: YouTube

In the surest sign that the liberal/progressive journalist special forces aligned to protect President Obama and the prospective candidacy of Hillary Clinton are beginning to fear the rise of Sen. Rand Paul, founding member of Journ-o-list and darling of the “Juice Box Mafia” Matt Yglesias defamed the Kentucky Republican Senator as a “white supremacist” Thursday on Twitter:

@coner64

In an exchange with the Atlantic’s Conor Friedersdorf, Yglesias went further and called Paul’s father, Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) a white supremacist as well:

2 @coner64

Read more from this story HERE.

Hastings Sent Colleagues Email About “Big Story,” “Need to Go Off the Radar” Hours Before Fatal Crash

Photo Credit: KTLA

Photo Credit: KTLA

The crash that killed journalist Michael Hastings was ruled an accident by police, but conspiracy theories continued to circulate on Friday.

Hastings, 33, was killed in a fiery solo-vehicle crash in Hancock Park early Tuesday morning.

He was best known for a 2010 Rolling Stone article that led to the resignation of Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who was the former U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan.

Staff Sgt. Joseph Biggs told KTLA that he received an email from Hastings on Monday.

Biggs had known Hastings since 2008, when the journalist was embedded in his unit in Afghanistan. Read more from this story HERE.

______________________________________________________________________

Full Text of Hastings’ Email:

From: Michael Hastings [email redacted]
Date: Mon, Jun 17, 2013 at 12:56 PM
Subject: FBI investigation re: NSA
To: [three emails redacted]

Hey [redacted], the Feds are interviewing my ‘close friends and associates.’ Perhaps if authorities arrive ‘BuzzFeed GQ’, er HQ, may be wise to immediately request legal counsel before any conversations or interviews about our news-gathering practices or related journalism issues.

Also: I’m onto a big story, and need to go off the radar for a bit.

All the best, and hope to see you all soon.

Michael

Federal Nullification Efforts Mounting in States

Photo Credit: Western Journalism

Photo Credit: Western Journalism

Imagine the scenario: A federal agent attempts to arrest someone for illegally selling a machine gun. Instead, the federal agent is arrested – charged in a state court with the crime of enforcing federal gun laws.

Farfetched? Not as much as you might think.

The scenario would become conceivable if legislation passed by Missouri’s Republican-led Legislature is signed into law by Democratic Gov. Jay Nixon.

The Missouri legislation is perhaps the most extreme example of a states’ rights movement that has been spreading across the nation. States are increasingly adopting laws that purport to nullify federal laws – setting up intentional legal conflicts, directing local police not to enforce federal laws and, in rare cases, even threatening criminal charges for federal agents who dare to do their jobs.

An Associated Press analysis found that about four-fifths of the states now have enacted local laws that directly reject or ignore federal laws on marijuana use, gun control, health insurance requirements and identification standards for driver’s licenses.

Read more from this story HERE.

IRS Sent $46 Million in Refunds to 23,994 ‘Unauthorized’ Aliens at a SINGLE Atlanta Address

Photo Credit: IRS

Photo Credit: IRS

The Internal Revenue Service sent 23,994 tax refunds worth a combined $46,378,040 to “unauthorized” alien workers who all used the same address in Atlanta, Ga., in 2011, according to the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA).

That was not the only Atlanta address theoretically occupied by thousands of “unauthorized” alien workers receiving millions in federal tax refunds in 2011. In fact, according to a TIGTA audit report published last year, four of the top ten addresses to which the IRS sent thousands of tax refunds to “unauthorized” aliens were in Atlanta.

The IRS sent 11,284 refunds worth a combined $2,164,976 to unauthorized alien workers at a second Atlanta address; 3,608 worth $2,691,448 to a third; and 2,386 worth $1,232,943 to a fourth.

Other locations on the IG’s Top Ten list for singular addresses that were theoretically used simultaneously by thousands of unauthorized alien workers, included an address in Oxnard, Calif, where the IRS sent 2,507 refunds worth $10,395,874; an address in Raleigh, North Carolina, where the IRS sent 2,408 refunds worth $7,284,212; an address in Phoenix, Ariz., where the IRS sent 2,047 refunds worth $5,558,608; an address in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., where the IRS sent 1,972 refunds worth $2,256,302; an address in San Jose, Calif., where the IRS sent 1,942 refunds worth $5,091,027; and an address in Arvin, Calif., where the IRS sent 1,846 refunds worth $3,298,877.

Read more from this story HERE.

U.S. Charges Snowden with Espionage

Photo Credit: The Guardian

Photo Credit: The Guardian

Federal prosecutors have filed a criminal complaint against Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who leaked a trove of documents about top-secret surveillance programs, and the United States has asked Hong Kong to detain him on a provisional arrest warrant, according to U.S. officials.

Snowden was charged with theft, “unauthorized communication of national defense information” and “willful communication of classified communications intelligence information to an unauthorized person,” according to the complaint. The last two charges were brought under the 1917 Espionage Act.

The complaint, which initially was sealed, was filed in the Eastern District of Virginia, a jurisdiction where Snowden’s former employer, Booz Allen Hamilton, is headquartered and a district with a long track record of prosecuting cases with national security implications. After The Washington Post reported the charges, senior administration officials said late Friday that the Justice Department was barraged with calls from lawmakers and reporters and decided to unseal the criminal complaint.

A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment.

Snowden flew to Hong Kong last month after leaving his job at an NSA facility in Hawaii with a collection of highly classified documents that he acquired while working at the agency as a systems analyst.

Read more from this story HERE.

Planned Parenthood to Help Administer Obamacare (+video)

Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

Planned Parenthood is diving into a new area of education, not without its own controversy: Obamacare.

The group’s more than 750 health centers across the country will be promoting the health law and helping women find out about new coverage options for themselves and their families before — and after — enrollment begins Oct. 1. They’re creating everything from refrigerator magnets to online apps that help people enroll in a health plan. Some affiliates will be applying to become official government-funded “navigators” to give people more hands-on help through the signup process.

Planned Parenthood says its health centers see nearly 3 million patients a year, many of them using the clinics as their primary point of care. More than nine out 10 are under age 40. About half are uninsured.

So the group sees itself as uniquely placed to reach those women, helping them get covered and serving as messengers to their families and communities. To that end, it’s training clinic staff, printing posters and pamphlets and incorporating information about the law into its educational programs.

Read more from this story HERE.

IRS Commissioner’s Top Aide Visited White Houses Hundreds of Times, No Explanation

Photo Credit: White House photo office/Wikipedia

Photo Credit: White House photo office/Wikipedia

While congressional lawmakers are questioning why former Internal Revenue Service Commissioner Douglas Shulman paid dozens of visits to the White House during his tenure, Shulman’s top political aide seems to have spent even more time working side-by-side with members of the Obama administration.

White House visitor logs show Shulman’s chief of staff, Jonathan M. Davis, appears to have visited the White House and adjacent Eisenhower office building as many as 310 times between the fall of 2009 and February 2013.

Davis’ background is in technology and had no expertise on tax issues , according to some IRS sources who said Davis served mostly as a political aide who served with Shulman to the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, where Shulman was vice chairman, and then followed him to the IRS.

Jason Stverak, head of the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity, said the visits raise more questions about the connection between the White House and the IRS at a time when the tax agency was targeting conservative groups. IRS officials said the targeting was initiated internally, but lawmakers have suggested that someone higher up in the administration had actually ordered the targeting.

“Why does this person have to go there 300 times when they probably don’t have the staff expertise to be discussing tax issues?” Stverak asked.

Read more from this story HERE.

FBI Under Pressure to Explain Drone Use, as Obama Names New Director

Photo Credit: Fox News

Photo Credit: Fox News

As President Obama nominates a new FBI director, the bureau is coming under rising pressure from lawmakers to explain the limits of its recently disclosed drone fleet.

Civil liberties-minded senators on both sides of the aisle have fired off sharply worded letters and statements in recent days criticizing the FBI for deploying surveillance drones without clear guidance on how to protect privacy rights.

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., was the latest to scrutinize the bureau, sending a letter on Thursday to outgoing Director Robert Mueller asking a string of questions about his agency’s drone use.

“I am disturbed by the revelation that the FBI has unilaterally decided to begin using drone surveillance technology without a governance policy, and thus without the requisite assurances that the constitutional rights of Americans are being protected,” Paul wrote.

Read more from this story HERE.