FEC Democrat Pushes for Controls on Internet Political Speech

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Photo Credit: APThe FEC deadlocked in a crucial Internet campaign speech vote announced Friday, leaving online political blogging and videos free of many of the reporting requirements attached to broadcast ads — for now.

While all three GOP-backed members voted against restrictions, they were opposed by the three Democratic-backed members, including FEC Vice Chair Ann M. Ravel, who said she will lead a push next year to try to come up with new rules government political speech on the Internet.

It would mark a major reversal for the commission, which for nearly a decade has protected the ability of individuals and interest groups to take to engage in a robust political conversation on the Internet without having to worry about registering with the government or keeping and reporting records of their expenses.

Ms. Ravel said she fears that in trying to keep the Internet open for bloggers, they’ve instead created a loophole for major political players to escape some scrutiny.

“Some of my colleagues seem to believe that the same political message that would require disclosure if run on television should be categorically exempt from the same requirements when placed in the Internet alone,” said FEC Vice Chair Ann M. Ravel in a statement. “As a matter of policy, this simply does not make sense.”

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Dems on FEC move to regulate Internet campaigns, blogs, Drudge

By Paul Bedard.

In a surprise move late Friday, a key Democrat on the Federal Election Commission called for burdensome new rules on Internet-based campaigning, prompting the Republican chairman to warn that Democrats want to regulate online political sites and even news media like the Drudge Report.

Democratic FEC Vice Chair Ann M. Ravel announced plans to begin the process to win regulations on Internet-based campaigns and videos, currently free from most of the FEC’s rules. “A reexamination of the commission’s approach to the internet and other emerging technologies is long over due,” she said.

The power play followed a deadlocked 3-3 vote on whether an Ohio anti-President Obama Internet campaign featuring two videos violated FEC rules when it did not report its finances or offer a disclosure on the ads. The ads were placed for free on YouTube and were not paid advertising.

Under a 2006 FEC rule, free political videos and advocacy sites have been free of regulation in a bid to boost voter participation in politics. Only Internet videos that are placed for a fee on websites, such as the Washington Examiner, are regulated just like normal TV ads.

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Two Police Officers Killed, Two Others Hurt In California Shooting Spree

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Photo Credit: Business InsiderTwo California sheriff’s deputies were killed and two others were wounded in a shooting spree that started in a motel parking lot in Sacramento on Friday, authorities said.

The two suspects, described on Twitter by the California Highway Patrol as a man and a woman, both Hispanic and heavily armed, were taken into custody, police said.

The incident began on Friday morning in the parking lot of a Motel 6 when a deputy, later identified as Danny Oliver, 47, approached a vehicle considered to be suspicious, said Sacramento County Sheriff Lieutenant R.L. Davis.

Someone inside the car fired multiple rounds at Oliver, who was struck in the chest. On Friday afternoon, Sacramento Sheriff Scott Jones said that Oliver had died of his wounds at the University of California, Davis, Medical Center in Sacramento.

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Michelle Obama Does it Again: Confuses Democratic Senate Candidate With Republican Rival

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Photo Credit: APMichelle Obama made yet another flub on the campaign trail Thursday when she apparently confused Colorado Democratic Sen. Mark Udall with his Republican rival.

Obama spoke in Denver Thursday as part of a campaign event for Udall, who is engaged in a heated battle with his Republican opponent, Rep. Cory Gardner.

She touted Udall’s Senate record in her speech, and called him a “fifth-generation Coloradan.”

“Mark understands what makes this state special,” she said.

The only problem? Udall is not a fifth-generation Coloradan. In fact, he was born in Arizona and his father, former Rep. Mo Udall, served as a congressman from that state for decades.

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Valerie Jarrett Key Player in Fast and Furious Cover-Up After Holder Lied to Congress

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Photo Credit: Breitbart President Obama’s trusted senior advisor, Valerie Jarrett, was a key player in the effort to cover up that Attorney General Eric Holder lied to Congress about the Fast and Furious scandal, according to public records obtained by Judicial Watch.

The information is part of a Department of Justice (DOJ) “Vaughn index” detailing records about the gun-running operation known as Fast and Furious. JW had to sue the agency for the records after the Obama administration failed to provide them under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). A federal court ordered the DOJ to provide the records over the agency’s objections. Yesterday JW reported on the broad information in the records, including that Obama asserted executive privilege for Holder’s wife as part of the administration’s efforts to cover up the scandal.

Practically lost in the 1,000-plus pages of records is an index that shows Jarrett was brought in to manage the fact that Holder lied to Congress after the story about the disastrous gun-running operation broke in the media. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco Firearms and Explosives (ATF) ran the once-secret program that allowed guns from the U.S. to be smuggled into Mexico so they could eventually be traced to drug cartels. Instead, federal law enforcement officers lost track of hundreds of weapons which have been used in an unknown number of crimes, including the murder of a U.S. Border Patrol agent in Arizona.

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Silicon Valley Company Caught Paying Foreign Workers $1.21/HR After $200M Quarter

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Photo Credit: APA Silicon Valley tech company that reportedly made $200 million last quarter was importing foreign workers from India and paying them $1.21 an hour.

According to the Labor Department, “about eight employees of Fremont-based Electronics For Imaging [EFI] were flown in from India and worked 120-hour weeks to help with the installation of computers at the company’s headquarters.” NBC Bay Area noted that “the employees were paid their regular hourly wage in Indian rupees, which translated to $1.21.”

EFI claimed it “unintentionally overlooked laws that require even foreign employees to be paid based on local US standards.” The company reportedly must pay “$40,000 in back wages to the employees” and was fined $3,500.

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Doctor at New York City Hospital Tests Positive for Ebola

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Photo Credit: Joshua Bright for The New York Times.Doctor in New York City Is Sick With Ebola

By MARC SANTORA.

A doctor in New York City who recently returned from treating Ebola patients in Guinea became the first person in the city to test positive for the virus Thursday, setting off a search for anyone who might have come into contact with him.

The doctor, Craig Spencer, was rushed to Bellevue Hospital Center and placed in isolation at the same time as investigators sought to retrace every step he had taken over the past several days.

At least three people he had contact with in recent days have been placed in isolation. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which dispatched a team to New York, is conducting its own test to confirm the positive test on Thursday, which was performed by a city lab.

While officials have said they expected isolated cases of the disease to arrive in New York eventually, and had been preparing for this moment for months, the first case highlighted the challenges involved in containing the virus, especially in a crowded metropolis. Dr. Spencer, 33, had traveled on the A and L subway lines Wednesday night, visited a bowling alley in Williamsburg, and then took a taxi back to Manhattan.

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Photo Credit: Alessandro Della Valle / EPASome US hospitals weigh withholding care to Ebola patients

By Reuters.

The Ebola crisis is forcing the American healthcare system to consider the previously unthinkable: withholding some medical interventions because they are too dangerous to doctors and nurses and unlikely to help a patient.

US hospitals have over the years come under criticism for undertaking measures that prolong dying rather than improve patients’ quality of life.

But the care of the first Ebola patient diagnosed in the United States, who received dialysis and intubation and infected two nurses caring for him, is spurring hospitals and medical associations to develop the first guidelines for what can reasonably be done and what should be withheld.

Officials from at least three hospital systems interviewed by Reuters said they were considering whether to withhold individual procedures or leave it up to individual doctors to determine whether an intervention would be performed.

Ethics experts say they are also fielding more calls from doctors asking what their professional obligations are to patients if healthcare workers could be at risk.

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Experts Predict ‘Catastrophic’ Ebola Epidemic in West Africa If Aid Delayed

By HealthDay News.

A large influx of international aid is needed, and soon, if West Africa is to avoid tens of thousands of deaths from the widening Ebola crisis, a team of Yale University researchers predict.

Using a specially designed mathematical model, the researchers looked at the possible future of the outbreak in just one densely populated county of hard-hit Liberia — Montserrado County, home to the capital city of Monrovia.

The researchers said that if international aid isn’t delivered to Liberia in sufficient time and quantity, by Dec. 15 Montserrado County will have more than 170,000 cases of Ebola — 12 percent of its population — and more than 90,000 deaths.

However, if the international community ramps up efforts by Oct. 31, almost 98,000 of those cases could be avoided.

“Our predictions highlight the rapidly closing window of opportunity for controlling the outbreak and averting a catastrophic toll of new Ebola cases and deaths in the coming months,” study senior author Alison Galvani, professor of epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health, said in a university news release.

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Photo Credit: Joe Penney / ReutersEbola Reaches Mali

By CARI ROMM.

Less than a week after two west African countries successfully rid themselves of Ebola, another has announced its first case of the disease. In a television address on Thursday, Mali’s health minister, Ousmane Kone, revealed that a two-year-old girl has tested positive for the virus.

The girl was hospitalized yesterday in Kayes, a town in western Mali. A health official told Reuters that relatives brought her into the country from neighboring Guinea, where the outbreak began, after her mother died of the disease a few weeks ago.

Kone said that the girl is improving, Reuters reported, and that those who had direct contact with her are currently being monitored for signs of the disease.

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Tea Party Loses Court Battle Over Targeting to IRS

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Photo Credit: Lauren Victoria Burke, APA federal court dismissed two lawsuits against the Internal Revenue Service Thursday, ruling that the tax agency is no longer targeting conservative tax-exempt groups for greater scrutiny.

“Unless an actual, ongoing controversy exists in this case, this court is without power to decide it,” U.S. District Court Judge Reggie Walton ruled, dismissing one lawsuit brought by True the Vote, a conservative vote-monitoring organization.

True the Vote, an offshoot of the Tea Party-affiliated King Street Patriots, had its application as a social welfare group help up because the IRS suspected it was engaging in direct political election campaigning, which is forbidden under section 501(c)(4) of the tax code. IRS agents found that its web site contained “Democratic attacks and Republican/conservative response,” according to confidential IRS documents obtained by USA TODAY.

Walton said the IRS has assured the public that they’re no longer screening applications for tax exemptions based on its political leanings, a practice that led to the dismissal of several top IRS officials when it was disclosed by Treasury inspectors last year.

“Thus, the allegedly unconstitutional governmental conduct, which had delayed the processing of the plaintiffs’ tax-exempt applications and spawned this litigation, is no longer impacting the plaintiffs,” Walton said in a second opinion dismissing a lawsuit brought by Linchpins of Liberty and 40 other groups in 22 states.

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Obama Asks Judge To Hide Emails To Attorney General Holder’s Wife

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By NEIL MUNRO.

President Barack Obama is asking a judge to keep secret the contents of emails apparently sent between Attorney General Eric Holder and his wife.

The request is part of Obama’s three-year stonewall against Judicial Watch’s inquiry into the Operation Fast and Furious scandal, during which the Department of Justice watched while military-style weapons were bought in the United States and smuggled to Mexican drug gangs. The scandal went public once one of Obama’s employees — a U.S. border guard — was killed by a criminal using one of the smuggled guns.

Late Oct. 22, moments before a judicial deadline, the White House sent the judge a 1,307-page list of 15,662 Fast and Furious documents that it wants to keep hidden from Judicial Watch and the public.

The list includes almost 20 emails between Attorney General Eric Holder and his wife, Sharon Malone.

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Obama Asserts Fast and Furious Executive Privilege Claim for Holder’s Wife

Judicial Watch announced today that it received from the Obama Department of Justice (DOJ) a “Vaughn index” detailing records about the Operation Fast and Furious scandal. The index was forced out of the Obama administration thanks to JW’s June 2012 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request and subsequent September 2012 FOIA lawsuit (Judicial Watch v. Department of Justice (No. 1:12-cv-01510)). A federal court had ordered the production over the objections of the Obama Justice Department.

The document details the Attorney General Holder’s personal involvement in managing the Justice Department’s strategy on media and Congressional investigations into the Fast and Furious scandal. Notably, the document discloses that emails between Attorney General Holder and his wife Sharon Malone – as well as his mother – are being withheld under an extraordinary claim of executive privilege as well as a dubious claim of deliberative process privilege under the Freedom of Information Act. The “First Lady of the Justice Department” is a physician and not a government employee.

This is the first time that the Obama administration has provided a detailed listing of all records being withheld from Congress and the American people about the deadly Fast and Furious gun running scandal. The 1307-page “draft” Vaughn index was emailed to Judicial Watch at 8:34 p.m. last night, a few hours before a federal court-ordered deadline. In its cover letter, the Department of Justice asserts that all of the responsive records described in the index are “subject to the assertion of executive privilege.”

The Vaughn index explains 15,662 documents. Typically, a Vaughn index must: (1) identify each record withheld; (2) state the statutory exemption claimed; and (3) explain how disclosure would damage the interests protected by the claimed exemption. The Vaughn index arguably fails to provide all of this required information but does provide plenty of interesting information for a public kept in the dark for years about the Fast and Furious scandal.

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Gun-Toting Grandpa Defends Wife, Granddaughter From Rapists In NC Home Invasion

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Photo Credit: Daily CallerA North Carolina man exchanged fire with three home invaders after they tried to rob his house and rape his granddaughter, reports the Fayetteville Observer.

At his Lumberton home on Monday, Kenneth Byrd, 67, was approached by an individual claiming to have car problems. When Byrd invited the man into his home, he was rushed by two additional assailants wearing black clothes and ski masks.

The home invaders — all three brandishing handguns — corralled Byrd, his wife Judy and their 19-year-old granddaughter and demanded money and other valuables from the family safe.

Byrd initially complied with their demands, but when the men began to beat Judy and attempted to rape his granddaughter, he grabbed a hidden firearm and let loose a flurry of shots at the assailants.

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Top Iranian Adviser: Obama is 'Weakest of US Presidents'

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Photo Credit: APPresident Barack Obama is “the weakest of U.S. presidents” and his time in the White House has been “humiliating,” a top Iranian official said in an interview with the country’s Fars News Agency, according to a translation provided to The Free Beacon.

“Obama is the weakest of U.S. presidents, he had humiliating defeats in the region,” said Ali Younesi, senior adviser to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, in comments coming as the United States is trying to persuade his country to join the international coalition fighting against the Islamic State.

His words could also be a sign that the Rouhani regime does not intend to concede to the United States’ demands concerning Iran’s nuclear program.

U.S. Under-Secretary of State Wendy Sherman told Reuters Thursday that Iran will be considered responsible if a deal to curb the nuclear program is not reached in exchange for relief from extensive sanctions placed on the country.

The United States, along with Britain, China, France, Germany, and Russia have set a deadline of Nov. 24 for reaching a deal on the sanctions, and Sherman said Iran’s best hope is to reach an agreement.

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