Who Watches the Watchers? Big Data Goes Unchecked

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

The National Security Agency might be tracking your phone calls. But private industry is prying far more deeply into your life.

Commercial data brokers know if you have diabetes. Your electric company can see what time you come home at night. And tracking companies can tell where you go on weekends by snapping photos of your car’s license plate and cataloging your movements.

Private companies already collect, mine and sell as many as 75,000 individual data points on each consumer, according to a Senate report. And they’re poised to scoop up volumes more, as technology unleashes a huge wave of connected devices — from sneaker insoles to baby onesies to cars and refrigerators — that quietly track, log and analyze our every move.

Congress and the administration have moved to rein in the National Security Agency in the year since Edward Snowden disclosed widespread government spying. But Washington has largely given private-sector data collection a free pass. The result: a widening gap in oversight as private data mining races ahead. Companies are able to scoop up ever more information — and exploit it with ever greater sophistication — yet a POLITICO review has found deep reluctance in D.C. to exercise legislative, regulatory or executive power to curb the big business of corporate cybersnooping.

The inertia — and lack of a serious legislative push — on private-sector data mining has several causes. Many Republicans are averse to any new regulation of business. Many Democrats are skittish about alienating campaign donors in Silicon Valley.

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Lamar Smith Calls ICE Release of 36,000 Criminal Immigrants A President-Sanctioned Prison Break

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

By Caroline May.

Texas Republican Rep. Lamar Smith reacted harshly to a new report detailing the crimes committed by 36,007 criminal immigrants that Immigration and Customs Enforcement released last year.

“This would be considered the worst prison break in American history, except it was sanctioned by the President and perpetrated by our own immigration officials. These criminal immigrants should have been deported to ensure that they could never commit crimes on U.S. soil. But instead, ICE officials chose not to detain them and instead released them back onto American streets,” Smith said in a statement Monday.

An internal Department of Homeland Security document obtained by the Center for Immigration Studies, a limited immigration group, and shared with Breitbart News Monday revealed that last year ICE released 36,007 criminal immigrants who had nearly 88,000 convictions.

The document further broke down the crimes and number of convictions – including 193 homicide convictions, 426 sexual assault convictions, 303 kidnapping convictions, and 1,075 aggravated assault convictions.

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criminal-illegal-aliensRelease of 36,000 criminal illegals impeachable offense?

By WND.

The reported release last year of more than 36,000 criminal illegal aliens is part of a larger annual trend of thousands of such releases since 2009, according to the authors of a book documenting the case for impeaching President Obama.

The Obama administration’s release of the criminals, in numbers larger than what is publicly known, has generating crime waves and serves as a clear and present danger to the public, argue New York Times bestselling authors Aaron Klein and Brenda J. Elliott in their book “Impeachable Offenses: The Case to Remove Barack Obama from Office.”

On Monday, a Center for Immigration Studies report found that in 2013 the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, or ICE, released violent criminals, including murderers, rapists, kidnappers and drug dealers.

The offenders were among the 36,007 criminal illegal aliens released last year who committed 87,818 crimes, including 15,635 for driving while intoxicated.

The statistics shows ICE released illegals jailed for 9,187 dangerous drug infractions, 426 sexual assault convictions, 303 kidnapping convictions, 193 homicide convictions, 1,317 domestic violence convictions and 1,075 aggravated assault convictions.

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Catholic Leaders Sound Alarm At Prayer Breakfast: ‘The Days Of Acceptable Christianity Are Over’

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Photo Credit: Wathiq Khuzaie / Getty

Photo Credit: Wathiq Khuzaie / Getty

Despite the bright, warm sunshine outside, a pessimistic fog spread over the Washington Hilton early this morning as the 10th annual National Catholic Prayer Breakfast was underway in the ballroom.

“My message for you today is a somber one,” said Professor Robert George, who lectures on civil liberties at Princeton, to a packed ballroom of Catholics that included failed Virginia gubernatorial hopeful Ken Cuccinelli. “The days of acceptable Christianity are over. The days of comfortable Catholicism are past. …It’s not easy anymore. There are costs to discipleship, heavy costs that are burdensome to bear.”

Soon enough he’d get specific. George stressed that there are “powerful forces and currents in our society that press us to be ashamed of the Gospel. For example, if you believe that marriage is the consensual union between a man and a woman, you’re portrayed as bigoted, even hateful. …If you believe these things, some forces say you are a bigot [who is] against homosexuality [and] you ought to be ashamed.”

Celebrities didn’t fare much better than gays. The Jay-Z’s and Kim Kardashians of the world may want to cover their ears for this, but the keynote speaker, His Eminence Cardinal Sean O’Malley, didn’t hold back on his feelings about celebs. “We live in a world obsessed by celebrities,” he said. “All too often celebrities replace heroines, often they live lives that are superficial and chaotic.”

On a jollier note, O’Malley came with the “warmest of greetings” from Pope Francis. He quickly followed with orders: “If he were here, I’m sure he would [encourage] you to renew the missionary style of the church.” He said Catholics must move from “a maintenance mode to a missionary one. The mission of the church is making disciples.”

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Manning Could Move To Civilian Prison For Hormone Therapy

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Photo Credit: U.S. Army handout / Reuters / Landov

Photo Credit: U.S. Army handout / Reuters / Landov

The Pentagon is working on a prison transfer for convicted WikiLeaks source Pvt. Chelsea Manning, who has requested hormone therapy. The plan would allow Manning to serve time in a civilian prison, where such therapy is available.

Manning’s first name was Bradley when the soldier made headlines for sending a trove of classified documents to the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks.

Shortly after being sentenced by a military court, Manning said she wanted to live as a woman while in prison, citing an Army psychiatrist’s earlier diagnosis of gender identity disorder.

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WATCH: Bill Clinton Defends Hillary on Benghazi

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Photo Credit: NBC

Photo Credit: NBC

Former President Bill Clinton defended Hillary Clinton’s actions as Secretary of State following the 2012 attack that killed four Americans in Benghazi, saying his wife “did what she should have done.”

“In my opinion, Hillary did what she should have done. She impaneled a very high level review committee,” Clinton said Wednesday at the Peter G. Peterson Foundation 2014 Fiscal Summit.

“They looked into what was wrong, they gave 29 recommendations,” he added. “She took them and started implementing them and they established the fact that, whether it was right or wrong in the past, secretaries of states never were involved directly in theses security decisions.”

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Republican Senators Demand Failed Obamacare Exchanges Pay Back Federal Government

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Photo Credit: REUTERS / Mike Segar

Photo Credit: REUTERS / Mike Segar

Several Republican senators introduced a bill Wednesday requiring states that failed to produce viable Obamacare exchanges to reimburse federal taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars.

Utah Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch, ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, and Wyoming Republican Sen. John Barrrasso introduced the legislation Wednesday.

“Hard-working American taxpayers should not be forced to foot the bill for what has already turned into an almost $500 million boondoggle,” Sen. Hatch said in a statement.

The bill would only apply to states who give up entirely on their exchanges and belatedly choose to have the federal government take over and operate their Obamacare marketplace. It would require states to repay ten percent of their federal grant funding each year over a ten year period.

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Judge Rules Idaho Must Recognize Same-Sex Marriage

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

A judge ruled that Idaho must recognize same-sex marriage.

According to a news release issued Tuesday, Chief U.S. Magistrate Judge for the District of Idaho Candy W. Dale ruled in favor of four same-sex couples who were challenging Idaho’s marriage laws.

Dale ruled the laws in question violated the rights of gays and lesbians under the 14th Amendment.

“If every individual enjoys a constitutional right to marry, what is the substance of that right for gay or lesbian individuals who cannot marry their partners of choice?” Dale asked in the memorandum decision and order. “Traditional man-woman marriage is no answer, as this would suggest that gays and lesbians can switch off their sexual orientation and choose to be content with the universe of opposite-sex partners approved by the state.”

Unless an appeal is filed in a higher court and that court issues a stay, Idaho must recognize the marriages starting Friday at 9 a.m.

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2 Boys Injured After ‘Bounce House’ Flies 20 Feet into Air

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

Two boys, ages 5 and 6, in upstate New York were seriously injured Monday after an inflatable bounce house went airborne, according to police.

The house reached heights of between 15 and 20 feet, the South Glens Falls Police Department said in a statement.

Police said the two boys were still in the hospital Wednesday and are in stable condition, according to the Associated Press. One boy, who suffered a head injury, is in a medically induced coma, AP reports.

We’ve received more pictures of the #bouncehouse accident https://t.co/EBQ9jtl7K3pic.twitter.com/AI5LHgdtOS

— The Post-Star (@poststar) May 13, 2014

One boy was dropped onto a parked car and the other landed in the street. A 10-year-old girl was also tossed from the bounce house and suffered minor injuries, reports WNYT-TV in Albany.

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Christian Pregnant Mother in Sudan Sentenced to Death, 100 Lashes on Mother’s Day

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

A Christian mother living in Sudan, pregnant with her second child, was sentenced to 100 lashes and death on Mother’s Day for adultery and apostasy, a persecution watchdog group revealed.

“We grieve today at the sentencing to death of a mother, pregnant with her second child, for the expression of her faith and legal marriage to a practicing Christian,” said International Christian Concern Regional Manager William Stark.

“The handing down of such an extreme punishment under a law inspired by the al-Turabi radicalism of the early al-Bashir regime brings into question the direction Sudan intends to head following South Sudanese succession. Having embraced policies of Islamization and Arabization in the past, ICC fears Meriam could be the first of many more Christians to suffer under an increasingly radicalized Sudanese government intent on enforcing Shari’ah (Islamic) law throughout the land.”

The woman, 27-year old Meriam Yahia Ibrahim, received the sentencing on Sunday, when the U.S. celebrated Mother’s Day. She appeared before El Haj Yousif Public Order Court in Khartoum, Sudan.

ICC reported that Ibrahim was raised as an Orthodox Christian, is a graduate of Khartoum University and was a practicing MD. She married a South Sudanese Christian, Daniel Wani, but since she was born in Sudan, a heavily Islamic country, she is officially considered a Muslim, which makes her marriage to a non-Muslim illegal in Sudan’s court system.

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CAIR: Remove ‘Islamist Extremism,’ ‘Jihadism’ From 9/11 Museum Video

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Photo Credit: National September 11 Memorial Museum

Photo Credit: National September 11 Memorial Museum

Days before the National September 11 Memorial Museum opens in New York, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) is stepping up its campaign to urge organizers to edit a video presentation on al-Qaeda, to remove terms such as “Islamist extremism” and “jihadism.”

An earlier CAIR initiative – a letter last month co-signed by several other Muslim and Arab-American organizations, complaining to museum directors about what they called “academically controversial terminology” – met with no success.

On Monday CAIR’s New York chapter began asking “all Americans” to lobby national and New York leaders on the issue.

A “click and send” letter made available by the chapter calls for the short video entitled “The Rise of Al-Qaeda” to be edited to remove “anti-Islamic terminology,” before the museum opens to the public next Wednesday.

The appeal is addressed to President Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, New York Senators Kirsten Gillibrand and Charles Schumer, Mayor Bill de Blasio, and City Councilwoman Margaret Chin, who represents lower Manhattan.

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