Senator Lee Says Young Americans Think They Are ‘More Likely to See Elvis Alive in This Lifetime Than Get a Dime From Social Security’

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(CNSNews.com) — While speaking about Social Security, Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) asked the audience at the Young Americans for Liberty Conference on July 31, “Most of you probably believe you are more likely to see Elvis alive in this lifetime than to get a dime from Social Security, am I right?”

Judging from the applause and cheers, it seemed that a large majority of the audience agreed with the senator. At the event, Lee was asked, “You mentioned Social Security and I would say probably most of the room on the way to the airport had to go through TSA and probably opted-out of TSA. So we were all trying to opt-out of TSA security, but what about Social Security? Would you allow our generation to opt-out of Social Security and say, ‘Look, we won’t take a dime from Social Security, we’ll take care of ourselves, let us keep our money.’ Is that a viable option, is that something that can be proposed?”

Lee responded, “Let’s talk about Social Security opt-out. The reason that that is so appealing probably to every single person in this room — and tell me if I’m right — is because most of you probably believe you are more likely to see Elvis alive in this lifetime than to get a dime from Social Security, am I right?”

After the audience applause, Lee said, “That’s about what I thought. So, the reason for that it’s not arbitrary, it’s not irrational that you feel that way. You have good reason to feel that way. You’ve seen the government set up this program, set it up in the 1930s. It was set up as an investment program, an income security program.”

“It was kind of like insurance, it was kind of like a savings plan,” said Lee. “The government told the people — even though none of us were born when this happened — the government told the people this can never be taken away. You’ll pay into it, the government will safeguard it, we’ll put it into a really safe box, and then we will give it to you when you retire.”

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FBI Informants Given Green Light to Break the Law

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Photo Credit: GOP USAThe FBI gave informants permission to break the law at least 5,658 times in one year, according to newly disclosed documents that show how often the nation’s top law enforcement agency enlists criminals to help it battle crime.

The Justice Department ordered the FBI to begin tracking crimes by its informants more than a decade ago, after the agency admitted that it had allowed Boston mobster James “Whitey” Bulger to operate a brutal crime ring in exchange for information about the Mafia. The FBI submits that tally to top Justice Department officials each year but has never before made it public.

Agents authorized 15 crimes a day on average — from drug sales to bribery and plotting robberies. FBI officials have said that permitting informants, who are often criminals, to break the law is an indispensable part of investigating criminal organizations.

“It sounds like a lot, but you have to keep it in context,” said Shawn Henry, who supervised criminal investigations for the FBI until he retired last year. “It’s not taken lightly.”

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Video: Texas Man Shoots His Abductors

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Photo Credit: SkleyAuthorities say a Houston-area man turned the tables on two bank robbery suspects who had abducted him and his wife by pulling a gun on the unsuspecting duo and shooting them both, killing one of them.

The suspects apparently knew that the woman worked at the First National Bank of Eagle Lake in Columbus, and they abducted her and her husband at gunpoint at their residence north of the city on Thursday and drove them back to the bank, Columbus County Sheriff’s Sgt. Andrew Weido told Houston television station KHOU.

The suspects forced the woman to taken an undisclosed amount of money from the bank, then forced the husband to drive them in his truck down Highway 71, Weido said. It was then that the husband grabbed a gun that was in the truck and fired at the suspects, he said.

Officers who responded to a 911 call found both suspects lying on the ground near the truck suffering from gunshot wounds.

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RNC Threatens Boycott of CNN and NBC Over Hillary Clinton Shows

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Photo Credit: Getty ImagesThe Republican National Committee has threatened a boycott of CNN and NBC in the runup to the next presidential election unless the networks cancel films they have planned on Hillary Clinton.

Reince Priebus, chair of the RNC, wrote to the heads of CNN and NBC on Monday. He warned both networks that he would seek a binding committee vote next week to “neither partner with you in 2016 primary debates nor sanction primary debates which you sponsor”, unless they cancel the Clinton shows.

Last week NBC announced plans for a four-hour mini-series on Clinton, with Diane Lane in the starring role. Two days later CNN revealed it had commissioned its films division to make a big-budget documentary on Clinton to air in 2014.

“I’m writing to express my deep disappointment in your company’s decision to air a miniseries promoting former Secretary Hillary Clinton ahead of her likely candidacy for the Democratic nomination for president in 2016,” Priebus wrote to NBC Entertainment chairman Robert Greenblatt. The opening of his letter to CNN president Jeff Zucker substituted “miniseries” for “film” but was otherwise identical.

Priebus accused both networks of a “thinly-veiled attempt at putting a thumb on the scales of the 2016 presidential election”. The programming would be unfair to others who might compete for the Democratic nomination, he said, “and to the Republican nominee, should Clinton compete in the general election”.

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Florida Police: Maintenance Man Uses Dying Man’s ATM Card before Calling 911

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Photo Credit:GainesvilleThe maintenance man at a Gainesville apartment complex has been arrested after police allege he found a tenant either dead or dying and, before calling 911, used the man’s ATM card to withdraw more than $600.

Police did not learn of the theft until three weeks after the man’s death on July 1, when the tenant’s brother called to say that on the day of his brother’s death, ATM charges were posted against his Bank of America account minutes before paramedics arrived.

Clarence Davis, 52, of 106 NE Rally Ave. in Micanopy, called authorities on July 1 to report a death at the University Commons apartment complex on Southwest Archer Road, the Gainesville Police Department reported. Shortly after police arrived, emergency medical personnel pronounced J.W. White dead of an undisclosed medical condition, police said.

On July 22, White’s brother contacted police to report the ATM transactions, which took place across the street from White’s apartment at 8:19 a.m. and 8:20 a.m., eight minutes before White was found dead.

Video footage from the ATM showed Davis conducting a balance inquiry and making two withdrawals from the victim’s account for a total of $611.90 including transaction fees, police reported.

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Terror Threat Intelligence Not New (+video)

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Photo Credit: APBy Bill Gertz

Intelligence regarding al Qaeda plans to attack U.S. embassies, officials, and interests last Sunday was known for months by U.S. intelligence agencies but was used only recently to trigger the closure of embassies and issuance of public warnings of impending attacks.

Al Qaeda “chatter” about coming terrorist operations, mainly against 22 U.S. embassies and consulates, and threats to attack or bomb officials in the Middle East and elsewhere was widely reported in classified intelligence reports over several months. The report said an attack was planned for Sunday, although no attack was carried out.

The intelligence was based on electronic surveillance of al Qaeda communications indicating some type of spectacular bombing or other attacks was being planned and would in fact be carried out very soon.

The timing of the administration’s announced closure of numerous U.S. embassies in the Middle East has raised concerns among some U.S. officials that the Obama administration is politicizing intelligence to distract attention from the Benghazi and other scandals.

“Why is this coming out now?” asked one official with access to terrorist threat data. “Is the administration trying to suck up news coverage with the embassy threats to distract attention from what the CIA was doing in Benghazi?”

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Intercepted communication between Al Qaeda leaders prompted terror warning, source says

By Fox News

The terror threat that led to the closure of nearly two-dozen U.S. embassies and consulates resulted from intercepted communications between the head of Al Qaeda and the leader of its Arabian Peninsula affiliate, a U.S. intelligence source tells Fox News.

The confirmation shows just how high the alleged threat goes in the terror network and is the most specific detail to emerge over the nature and origin of the threat. The source said the communications were intercepted between Ayman al-Zawahiri — who is Usama bin Laden’s successor — and Nasir al-Wuhayshi, head of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

Asked about the claim, officials with the CIA and Office of the Director of National Intelligence would not confirm the details of any such intercepted communications.

Earlier in the day, officials with the White House and State Department declined to provide further specifics about the nature of the threat. White House Press Secretary Jay Carney would say only that the threat potentially goes “beyond” the Arabian Peninsula.

Carney reiterated that officials view the threat, which also prompted a worldwide travel alert last week, as “significant.”

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U.S. Directs Agents to Cover Up Program Used to Investigate Americans

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Photo Credit: ReutersA secretive U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration unit is funneling information from intelligence intercepts, wiretaps, informants and a massive database of telephone records to authorities across the nation to help them launch criminal investigations of Americans.

Although these cases rarely involve national security issues, documents reviewed by Reuters show that law enforcement agents have been directed to conceal how such investigations truly begin – not only from defense lawyers but also sometimes from prosecutors and judges.

The undated documents show that federal agents are trained to “recreate” the investigative trail to effectively cover up where the information originated, a practice that some experts say violates a defendant’s Constitutional right to a fair trial. If defendants don’t know how an investigation began, they cannot know to ask to review potential sources of exculpatory evidence – information that could reveal entrapment, mistakes or biased witnesses.

“I have never heard of anything like this at all,” said Nancy Gertner, a Harvard Law School professor who served as a federal judge from 1994 to 2011. Gertner and other legal experts said the program sounds more troubling than recent disclosures that the National Security Agency has been collecting domestic phone records. The NSA effort is geared toward stopping terrorists; the DEA program targets common criminals, primarily drug dealers.

“It is one thing to create special rules for national security,” Gertner said. “Ordinary crime is entirely different. It sounds like they are phonying up investigations.”

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Circuit Court: ‘Unsettled’ if 2nd Amendment Applies Outside of Home

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Photo Credit: APIn a case over New Jersey’s requirement that a citizen demonstrate “justifiable need” for a carrying a firearm before receiving a concealed carry license, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit ruled that such a requirement “does not burden conduct within the scope of the Second Amendment’s guarantee.” The court also said “it remains unsettled” whether the Second Amendment is even applicable outside one’s home.

Filed on July 31, 2013, the ruling in Drake v. Filko upheld New Jersey’s practice of placing the burden of proof upon the citizen. In other words, the citizen who wants to carry a gun for self-defense must demonstrate why doing so is necessary for him or her. In simple terms, the citizen must justify being free.

That runs contrary to previous rulings in other circuits, such as on March 6, 2012 when U.S. District Judge Benson Everett Legg ruled against Maryland’s requirement that citizens who wanted a concealed carry permit had to demonstrate a “good and substantial reason” for getting one. Overturning this New Jersey-like requirement, Legg ruled: “A citizen may not be required to offer a ‘good and substantial reason’ why he should be permitted to exercise his rights. The right’s existence is all the reason he needs.”

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Snake Escaped from Pet Shop ‘Strangles’ Two Young Boys to Death in Canada

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Photo Credit: ALAMYThe two young boys, aged five and seven, were sleeping at a friend’s apartment late on Sunday in the small town of Campbellton when they were surprised by the snake.

It had escaped from a pet store that specialised in exotic animals located on the floor below the apartment.

“The preliminary investigation has led police to believe that a large exotic snake had escaped its enclosure at the store sometime overnight, and got into the ventilation system, then into the upstairs apartment,” police said in a statement.

“It’s believed the two boys were strangled by the snake.”

A New Brunswick police spokesman declined to give further details on the size of the snake or whether signs of strangulation were apparent on the boys.

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FBI Can Hack Your Android to Remotely Activate Cell Phone Microphones

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Photo Credit: Getty ImagesLaw-enforcement officials in the U.S. are expanding the use of tools routinely used by computer hackers to gather information on suspects, bringing the criminal wiretap into the cyber age.

Federal agencies have largely kept quiet about these capabilities, but court documents and interviews with people involved in the programs provide new details about the hacking tools, including spyware delivered to computers and phones through email or Web links—techniques more commonly associated with attacks by criminals.

People familiar with the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s programs say that the use of hacking tools under court orders has grown as agents seek to keep up with suspects who use new communications technology, including some types of online chat and encryption tools. The use of such communications, which can’t be wiretapped like a phone, is called “going dark” among law enforcement.

A spokeswoman for the FBI declined to comment.

The FBI develops some hacking tools internally and purchases others from the private sector. With such technology, the bureau can remotely activate the microphones in phones running Google Inc.’s GOOG -0.17% Android software to record conversations, one former U.S. official said. It can do the same to microphones in laptops without the user knowing, the person said. Google declined to comment.

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