ACLU: ‘Never Before has the Government Argued that Newsgathering is Illegal’

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Photo Credit: APWhile Attorney General Eric Holder is taking heat for his department’s seizure of reporter records, the U.S. attorney who is personally overseeing those investigations is himself starting to face complaints that he’s gone too far in pursuing leaks.

Ronald Machen Jr., the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, was nominated by President Obama in 2009 and now runs the biggest federal prosecutor office in the country. His hundreds of attorneys handle everything from gang violence to corruption.

But in recent years, leak investigations have become a hallmark of his portfolio. And his dogged pursuit of the squeaky wheels in government has led him into the tenuous — and some say unprecedented — territory of lumping in leakers with journalists.

“What’s astonishing here is that never before has the government argued that newsgathering — in this case, asking a source to provide sensitive information — is itself illegal,” Gabe Rottman, legislative counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union, told FoxNews.com.

Machen was an early and frequent campaign donor to Obama during the 2008 election, giving close to the maximum amount allowed by law. He gave $2,300 in the general election and nearly as much during the primary.

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IRS Official Who Refused to Resign or Testify before Congress, Signed Orwellian Tea Party Letters in 2012

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Photo Credit: scott*ericThe IRS official who refused to testify this week — while claiming she had done nothing wrong — signed letters to Tea Party groups a year ago that asked them to turn over everything from printouts of their Facebook pages to the credentials of speakers who participated in their events.

A group representing more than a dozen Tea Party groups now suing the IRS released a sample of one of the letters overnight, after the official Lois Lerner was placed on administrative leave. According to one lawmaker, she was only placed on leave after she refused to resign.

Jay Sekulow, chief counsel with the American Center for Law and Justice, said the March 2012 letters show a “paper trail” that reveals her “direct involvement in sending intrusive and harassing questionnaires.”

“It appears Lerner did nothing to stop the abusive conduct. And our evidence suggests she was actively participating in the improper targeting in March 2012,” he said in a statement.

It was no secret that Lerner, as head of the exempt organizations division, was aware of the program that had developed in the Cincinnati office under her watch. A timeline provided in the inspector general’s report on the practice showed she was first briefed in June 2011.

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John McCain Tears Into Mike Lee on Senate Floor, Lee Responds (+videos)

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Photo Credit: YouTubeSen. John McCain provides yet another reason why many feel the “old bull” should be put out to pasture when he tore into fellow Republican Sen. Mike Lee on the Senate floor Thursday over Lee’s objection to negotiate the debt limit increase as part of the budget resolution.

“Perhaps the senator from Utah doesn’t know about that — the fact that even if they did raise the debt limit, it could not become law because it doesn’t go to the president of the United States,” McCain said.

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Bernanke Out by August, QE Ends, Rates Up; Prepare for Crash Now Because Easy Money Will Dry Up

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Photo Credit: Getty ImagesHis clue? Consumer sentiment: “Harris estimates that in the next five years, catch-up consumption will boost annual consumer spending growth by a half point to above 3% from about 2%.”

Reassuring? No, wishful thinking. Be very skeptical. As Robert Kuttner, author of the new “Debtors’ Prison: The Politics of Austerity Versus Prosperity” once wrote in BusinessWeek, “What do you call an economist with a prediction? Wrong.”

Harris is bucking the headwinds of history. As Jeremy Grantham, chief strategist of the $100 billion GMO money managers, recently told InvestmentNews, the newspaper of record for America’s 90,000 professional investment advisers, “3% annual GDP growth is history.”

Here’s why you better be preparing today for a crash dead ahead. As Pimco’s Bill Gross warned in his recent newsletter: “You’re going to lose money investing … because the central banks say so.” That’s right, this is a Fed-driven rally. Soon the Fed will be forced to stop printing cheap money.

Read more from this story HERE.

Pregnant Woman Dies, Gives Birth, Comes Back to Life

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Photo Credit: FoxWhen a pregnant teacher in Texas collapsed, her coworkers rushed to help. The woman technically died, gave birth and then was brought back to life.

Erica Nigrelli, an English teacher at Elkins High School in Missouri City, Texas, collapsed in a co-worker’s classroom when she was 36 weeks pregnant.

“Apparently I told her, ‘I feel very faint,’ and I put my head down and I essentially just passed out,” Erica Nigrelli said.

Erica’s husband, Nathan, is also a teacher at Elkins.

“I opened the door and walked in and Erica was laying on the floor,” he said.

Read more from this story HERE.

Michelle Obama Wants Textbooks to Swap Cupcakes for Apples in Math Problems

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Photo Credit: APFirst Lady Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move!” initiative is praising textbook publishers for “swapping out cupcakes for apples in math problems,” in a campaign to incorporate health information into the learning resources for kids.

“Today at the White House, we celebrated a group of educational publishers on their development of voluntary guidance to incorporate health information into textbooks and other learning materials,” Let’s Move! said in a blog post entitled, “Cookies 2 Carrots,” on Wednesday.

“Publishers are making simple changes, like swapping out cupcakes for apples in math problems,” the anti-obesity initiative noted. “They are also finding ways to include physical activity in lesson plans – discussing the history of little league baseball and using sports in word problems.”

Let’s Move! – a government initiative started by Mrs. Obama – aims to curb the obesity rate among children in the U.S. Mrs. Obama has recently expanded her campaign to museums and zoos asking them to change their menus, and also wants to “impact the nature of food in grocery stores.”

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Obama Breaks with Tradition, Fails to Return Marine’s Salute (+video)

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Photo Credit: GOP The Daily DosePresident Obama, commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces, broke with the tradition of returning the salute of the U.S. Marine outside Marine One Friday morning.

Perhaps Obama suddenly realized, or perhaps someone onboard the helicopter said something to him, because Obama promptly walked back down the steps to go shake hands with the Marine.

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Obama Meets In Oval Office With Illegal Aliens

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Photo Credit: Official White House Photo/Pete SouzaPresident Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden met in the Oval Office on Tuesday with three people who are in the country in violation of U.S. immigration laws but who have received “deferred action” allowing them to stay in the country under the terms of a “memorandum” issued unilaterally last year by Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.

While conceding that she had no legal authority to change the “immigration status” of illegal aliens or provide them with a “pathway to citizenship,” Napolitano instructed the top officials at Customs and Border Protection, Citizenship and Immigration Services, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement to use what she called “prosecutorial discretion” in not enforcing the immigration laws against certain classes of immigration lawbreakers.

These included illegal aliens who arrived in the United States before their sixteenth birthday, had graduated from high school or served in the military, had not been convicted of “significant” or “multiple” misdemeanors, and had not yet turned thirty.

Before Napolitano issued this unilateral order allowing the illegal aliens to remain in the country in violation of the law, President Obama’s allies in Congress had failed to secure passage of the Dream Act, which would have allowed such persons to became legal residents in the United States.

In all, Obama and Biden met on Tuesday with eight people who are advocating immigration reform, according to White House readout of the meeting. The White House readout listed three of those as having received “deferred action.” Most others were legally in the United States with relatives who were illegal aliens.

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Comedian Calls Out Muhammad for Pedophilia, Gets Hammered With Death Threats (+video)

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Photo Credit: YouTubeComedian Steven Crowder’s recent “Jesus vs. Muhammad” video – just posted this week – has gone viral, generating almost 250,000 views.

Why? Its content is a bit edgy, calling out Muhammad for pedophilia and the Koran for its incitement of violence.

As one might expect, that has generated significant backlash. Crowder is reporting from his Twitter account that he has received many death threats, profanity-laced insults, and other not-so-nice reactions from Muhammad defenders on social media.

Here’s the video that’s created all the fuss:

His Days are Numbered: Holder Personally OK’d Search Warrant for Fox News Reporter’s Private Emails

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Photo Credit: Chip SomodevillaAttorney General Eric Holder signed off on a controversial search warrant that identified Fox News reporter James Rosen as a “possible co-conspirator” in violations of the Espionage Act and authorized seizure of his private emails, a law enforcement official told NBC News on Thursday.

The disclosure of the attorney general’s role came as President Barack Obama, in a major speech on his counterterrorism policy, said Holder had agreed to review Justice Department guidelines governing investigations that involve journalists.

“I am troubled by the possibility that leak investigations may chill the investigative journalism that holds government accountable,” Obama said. “Journalists should not be at legal risk for doing their jobs.”

Rosen, who has not been charged in the case, was nonetheless the target of a search warrant that enabled Justice Department investigators to secretly seize his private emails after an FBI agent said he had “asked, solicited and encouraged … (a source) to disclose sensitive United States internal documents and intelligence information.”

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