Feds Upset Over Release of Mexican Drug Lord who Ordered DEA Agent’s Killing (+video)

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Photo Credit: Fox NewsA Mexican court’s releasing of a drug lord who killed a Drug Enforcement Administration agent in the 1980s is sparking outrage this weekend among U.S. law enforcement officials.

Rafael Caro Quintero, who was sentenced to 40 years in prison for ordering the 1985 killing of DEA agent Enrique Camarena, was released earlier this week by a Mexican court that overturned the conviction, saying he had been improperly tried in a federal court for state crimes.

The Justice Department said it found the court’s decision “deeply troubling.”

“The Department of Justice, and especially the Drug Enforcement Administration, is extremely disappointed with this result,” the agency said in a statement.

The Justice Department also said it “has continued to make clear to Mexican authorities the continued interest of the United States in securing Caro Quintero’s extradition so that he might face justice in the United States.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Conoco-Phillips Plans New Well in Alaska National Petroleum Reserve

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(Reuters) -ConocoPhillips has applied for permits to develop a new field in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska, a vast unit of federal land that has yet to yield commercially produced oil, according to the federal agency managing the reserve.

ConocoPhillips applied to drill a production well at a site it calls GMT1, part of the Greater Mooses Tooth unit established in an area where its exploration wells struck oil, Bureau of Land Management (BLM) spokeswoman Erin Curtis said on Friday.

The company has also applied for a permit to build roads and other infrastructure needed to access the site, Curtis said.

A decision by senior corporate leaders on whether to sanction the project is expected in the second half of 2014, said Amy Burnett, a spokeswoman for ConocoPhillips in Alaska.

The Indiana-sized reserve, on the western side of the North Slope, was established in 1923 by President Warren Harding to provide fuel to the military.

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Encrypted Email Service Refuses ‘to Become Complicit in Crimes Against the American People’; Can Never Be Safe From NSA Snooping (+video)

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By Mathew J. Schwartz

Encrypted email service provider Lavabit is shutting down, but a gag order prevents the company from detailing exactly what triggered that business decision.

Ladar Levison, the owner and operator of Texas-based Lavabit, said in a statement that his hand was forced after six weeks of legal wrangling and two attempts by him to squash the gag order, both of which were rejected by a judge. As a result, he’s not at liberty to publicly reveal exactly what’s going on.

“I have been forced to make a difficult decision: to become complicit in crimes against the American people or walk away from nearly 10 years of hard work by shutting down Lavabit,” he said. “After significant soul searching, I have decided to suspend operations. I wish that I could legally share with you the events that led to my decision. I cannot.”

Lavabit had promised that it would be an “e-mail service that never sacrifices privacy for profits” and “only release private information if legally compelled by the courts in accordance with the U.S. Constitution.” The service backed up those claims by storing only encrypted versions of emails on its servers, which could only then be decrypted using a user’s passphrase, which the service didn’t store.

Lavabit’s closure led startup company Silent Circle to announce Thursday that it would shutter Silent Mail, which is its encrypted email service. “We see the writing [on] the wall, and we have decided that it is best for us to shut down Silent Mail now. We have not received subpoenas, warrants, security letters, or anything else by any government, and this is why we are acting now,” said Silent Circle CTO Jon Callas in a blog post.

Read more from this story HERE.

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By Julie Bort

Silent Circle, a company founded by Internet Hall of famer Phil Zimmermann, famous privacy expert Jon Callas, and a couple of Navy Seals, has shut down its secure email service.

They shuttered it because email can’t be secured in a way that would prevent a government agency like the NSA from snooping, the founders said.

All email messages “leak metadata” they say. That information includes data about who you are talking to and where you are. That info is visible even if the message itself is encrypted.

“E-mail as we know it today is fundamentally broken from a privacy perspective,” Callas says.

Read more from this story HERE.
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Food-Stamp Use Rises; Some 15% Get Benefits; Many Game System (+video)

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By Phil Izzo

Food-stamp use rose 2.4% in the U.S. in May from a year earlier, with more than 15% of the U.S. population receiving benefits.

One of the federal government’s biggest social welfare programs, which expanded when the economy convulsed, isn’t shrinking back alongside the recovery.

Food stamp rolls were up 0.2% from the prior month, the U.S. Department of Agriculture reported in data that aren’t adjusted for seasonal variations. Though annual growth continues, the pace has slowed since the depths of the recession.

Read more from this story HERE.

If you’re wondering why we’re not seeing food-stamp use decline with economic recovery, you’ve gotta see this Fox News Special Report:

Revolutionary Communist Party Leads ‘Abortion Rights Freedom Rides’ to 14 States

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WICHITA, KS, August 9, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Numerous mainstream and left-leaning media outlets have highlighted the “Abortion Rights Freedom Rides,” a caravan of activists now traveling to 14 states to support “Abortion on demand and without apology.” However, no media outlet has reported that the event is being conducted by the Revolutionary Communist Party USA, a cult-like Maoist sect that calls for “millions of people to rise up in mass armed revolution” against the United States “when the time is right.”

The abortion freedom rides are being led by Stop Patriarchy, a front group for the Revolutionary Communist Party USA (RCP). SP’s original “Call to Action” gives the RCP’s web address as its own and prominently quotes RCP founder and chairman Bob Avakian.

The new “freedom rides,” modeled after the civil rights campaign to register black voters in the segregated South, provide special support to states that have only one abortion facility.

Their banners proclaim, “Abortion Providers are Heroes.” Another said, “A Woman is Not the Life Support System for Her Uterus.”

This weekend, they are protesting in Wichita, Kansas, to back efforts to open a new abortion facility once owned by Dr. George Tiller, whom they call a “heroic abortion provider.”

Read more from this story HERE.

NSA Scandal Sparks Hacker Rebellion

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Many of the computer hackers the federal government has relied upon for national cyber-security are now turning away, irate over revelations the National Security Agency has been actively spying on Americans.

“The NSA and other intelligence agencies had made major inroads in recent years, in hiring some of the best and brightest,” reported Reuters’ Joseph Menn from a pair of hacker conventions held in Las Vegas last week. “Much of that goodwill has been erased after the NSA’s classified programs to monitor phone records and Internet activity were exposed by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.”

Glyn Moody of the technology news website Techdirt further noted tensions over what he called “the increasing demonization of hackers (not to be confused with crackers that break into systems for criminal purposes), for example by trying to add an extra layer of punishment on other crimes if they were done ‘on a computer.’”

The result, Menn notes, is that U.S. efforts to recruit hackers may have taken a substantial blow, and Moody suggests it may now be much harder to “keep up the pace of technological development within the spying program.”

“We’ve gone backwards about 10 years in the relations between the good guys and the U.S. government,” said Alex Stamos, a veteran security researcher who was speaking at one of the Vegas conventions.

Read more from this story HERE.

DOJ Memo Asserts that All US Phone Calls Are ‘Relevant’ to Terrorism

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Photo Credit: USDAgovThe Justice Department on Friday released its legal rationale for why all U.S. phone calls are “relevant” to terrorism investigations.

The administration released the memo as part of President Obama’s push to enhance public confidence in the National Security Agency’s controversial surveillance programs.

Section 215 of the Patriot Act allows the government to collect business records if they are “relevant” to a terrorism investigation. The NSA has acknowledged that it has been using the provision to force phone companies to turn over records on all U.S. phone calls.

The records include phone numbers, call times and call durations, but not the contents of the conversations.

Numerous lawmakers, including Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), the author of the Patriot Act, have accused the NSA of abusing its power under Section 215.

Read more from this story HERE.

Reid on Immigration Reform: ‘If We Go to Conference, We Will Win’

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Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said on Friday that if House Republicans end up sending their collection of immigration bills to a conference with the Senate, Democrats and illegal immigration advocates would win.

“If we go to conference, we would win,” Reid told a Nevada radio station.

Reid’s comments are the latest in a long line of Senate Democrats and House Republicans openly stating that the plan for amnesty for all of America’s illegal aliens rests in the House passing a group of immigration bills, then going to a conference with the Senate “Gang of Eight” bill.

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), a member of the Gang of Eight, said on Wednesday that the House GOP piecemeal strategy is “OK by us” because the Senate would combine all the bills in a conference.

Read more from this story HERE.

‘Mother F***er Racist Sons of B**ches From Hell’: Wedding Venue Gets Threats, Fears Shut Down After Refusing Gay Couple’s Nuptials

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Another business is facing retribution for declining service to a same-sex couple. Betty and Dick Odgaard, owners of Görtz Haus Gallery in Grimes, Iowa, are catching the ire of gay rights advocates after they declined offering their venue to Lee Stafford and his fiance Jared.

Now the owners, who are Christians, are receiving vicious and threatening emails and phone calls — and they fear that their business could shut down because of the fierce reaction.

It was less than one week ago that the Lee and Jared entered Görtz Haus looking for additional information about holding their wedding there. After Dick realized that it would be a gay ceremony, he told the couple that they would not be able to hold their nuptials at the establishment — and that’s when the controversy erupted.

“It started with emails and we noticed the emails were from a person with a name that looked like a man’s name. We’re a little suspicious about it and … two fellows walked in and that’s where it all began,” Dick told TheBlaze on Friday. “It was obvious what the situation was. I had to confirm it. I asked if this was a gay marriage celebration and I said we can’t take your money for this.”

From there, news spread that the Odgaards turned the couple away. Before long, phone calls and emails came streaming in. Betty said that some people have promised that the furor won’t stop until the business, which is a bistro, flower shop and a wedding destination, shuts down. Detractors have called Betty and Dick “haters.”

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Darrell Issa Subpoenas Treasury Department Over Auto Bailout Documents

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Claiming that it has turned over “only a fraction” of the requested documents, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., sent a subpoena today to Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew regarding the 2009 taxpayer-funded $50 billion bailout of General Motors.

“Taxpayers deserve the full truth about how decisions were made to use their money in an Administration effort that resulted in protecting generous pensions for unionized Delphi employees while greatly diminishing benefits for non-unionized employees,” Issa said in the letter. The chairman has been investigating the matter since 2010.

For over a year, Treasury has slow-walked his document requests, he claimed.

Read more from this story HERE.