Snowden Claims He Raised Concerns about NSA Internally 10 Times Before Leaking Documents

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Photo Credit: AP / THE GUARDIANEx-NSA contractor Edward Snowden said he tried more than 10 times to go through official channels to alert someone about government spying programs, but nobody listened.

According to The Washington Post, Snowden claimed in European Parliament testimony that he reported policy or legal issues about the NSA to more than 10 officials, but as a contractor he had no legal avenue to pursue the matter.

“As an employee of a private company rather than a direct employee of the U.S. government, I was not protected by U.S. whistle-blower laws, and I would not have been protected from retaliation and legal sanction for revealing classified information about lawbreaking in accordance with the recommended process,” Snowden said in his testimony.

Snowden was at the CIA before becoming an NSA contractor. He was working for Booz Allen Hamilton at an NSA facility in Hawaii when he leaked information about the NSA spying programs to the press, The Washington Post reported.

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Huckabee: Time for Government, Not ‘People of Faith to Scale Back’

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Photo Credit: Gage SkidmoreFormer Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (R) didn’t disguise his presidential ambitions on Thursday, touting his socially conservative bona fides and blasting both President Obama and Hillary Clinton in his Conservative Political Action Conference speech.

“These are the things that I know. I know there is a God, and I know this nation would not exist had he not been the midwife of its birth. And I know that this nation exists by the providence of his hand, and if this nation forgets our God, then God will have every right to forget us,” Huckabee said. “I hope that we repent before we ever have to receive his fiery judgment.”

Huckabee is making strong signs he’ll make another run for the White House in 2016, positioning himself as a favorite of social conservatives.

The speech from the Baptist pastor was predictably heavy on social issues. Huckabee warned that “a society that sacrifices its own children is no better than the ancient Philistines,” and criticized the Obama administration for its policy requiring contraception coverage in insurance plans, warning they’re impeding on religious liberty.

“When the government begins to say ‘it’s okay if you have faith but you can only have this much of it because, when you have this much of it, it may somehow conflict with something government has passed, here’s what I know: It’s time for the government to scale back, not for people of faith to scale back. Religious liberty should be unimpeded in this nation.”

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Dr. Ben Carson: ‘We Can’t Be Free If We Are Not Brave’

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Photo Credit: APFew people have emerged on the conservative scene in recent years who have become as instantly beloved as Dr. Ben Carson, the renowned pediatric neurosurgeon and Professor Emeritus at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, who endeared himself to the Right by speaking on conservative values at the National Prayer Breakfast just inches away from captive audience member Barack Obama.

That was the case again on Saturday, when the good doctor visited the CPAC main stage to deliver his remarks.

Dr. Carson spoke about how America for him is the land of dreams, of his no-excuses mother, and of belief in God. Upon his recent retirement, the doctor imagined he would learn to play the organ and get in some golf, but, “The good Lord had a different plan.”

Since that time, Carson and his wife of 39 years, Lacena, whom he introduced at the top of his remarks, have traveled around the country, visiting states both red and blue. What he found, whatever their political persuasion, was a people that are beaten down. Dr. Carson referenced Saul Alinsky, author of Rules for Radicals, and how one of the so-called rules is to make people believe that there is only one correct way to think, and it is not their way.

Dr. Carson hates political correctness. He talked about it at that legendary prayer breakfast, and he talked about it at CPAC. What is PC today is what is espoused by left wing “ideologues,” but Dr. Carson found his own words catching on as he traversed the country, because people recognized “common sense” when they heard it. The practice of medicine, according to Carson, promotes out-of-the-box thinking as well as familiarity with controversy. It was missed by few that “common sense” falls under the out-of-the-box column and is controversial in a PC world.

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Atheists Want Iconic 17-Foot Steel Beam Cross Removed from 9/11 Museum

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Photo Credit: Jeff Kubina / flickr Atheists are trying to oust the “Miracle Cross” from the 9/11 museum arguing that its inclusion would violate the Constitution’s separation of church and state.

But Eric Baxster of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty told MyFoxNY that the cross is part of the story of 9/11 and that museums don’t censor history.

“They tell history as it happened,” Baxster said.

The 17-foot cross-shaped beam was discovered in the devastation at Ground Zero and became a symbol of comfort and hope after the horrific terrorist attack.

But American Atheists say the cross is a part of religious history and are challenging its inclusion in the new National Sept. 11 Memorial and Museum which opens in May.

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Top Democrat Sees Another Train Wreck Coming for Own Party

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Photo Credit: WNDA former high-ranking Clinton administration official and law partner with Hillary Clinton sees potential political disaster for Democrats in 2014 over Obama administration health-care policies.

But it’s not just Obamacare that has Webb Hubbell, former chief justice of the Arkansas Supreme Court and associate attorney general of the U.S., concerned about the political fortunes of his party. It’s what he calls “tinkering with Medicare, the tried and true social insurance program that so many older Americans rely on – which so many future older Americans will rely on, too.”

“You have to wonder why the administration would hand the Republicans such a gift,” he writes in a commentary piece in WND today.

What concerns Hubbell, who served 21 months in prison in the 1990s after pleading guilty to federal charges of overbilling clients at the Rose Law Firm where he was partnered with Hillary Clinton and Vince Foster, is a proposal from the Department of Health and Human Services to allow insurance companies to limit Medicare coverage for certain classes of drugs, including anti-rejection medications for transplant patients and medications to treat depression and schizophrenia in the elderly.

“The proposal isn’t based on a needs analysis but on an actuarial cost study that has drug companies, patient advocates and both Democrats and Republicans in Congress all up in arms,” says Hubbell. “And when Republicans and Democrats agree on anything, we all stand up and take notice.”

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NARAL President Says “Anti-Abortion Is Anti-American”

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Photo Credit: LifeNewsEverybody says something stupid and offensive at one time or another. But it takes a special kind of ideologue to turn it into a speech repeated over and over. And that ideologue is NARAL Pro-Choice America President Ilyse Hogue.

We missed it the first time she told a crowd that pro-lifers are “un-American.” That was at a Feb. 4 event in Washington, D.C. marking the pro-abortion group’s 45th anniversary (see video below). But Hogue liked it so much she said it again in San Francisco on March 4, at an event featuring Sandra Fluke, America’s most famous birth control user.

And lest anyone miss Hogue’s eloquence, NARAL tweeted it on March 6: “‘That, my friends, is not anti-abortion — what it is is anti-American.’ – @ilyseh on current anti-choice efforts in the US.#NARAL45.” Continues after video.

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Global Debt Exceeds $100 Trillion as Governments Binge

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Photo Credit: APThe amount of debt globally has soared more than 40 percent to $100 trillion since the first signs of the financial crisis as governments borrowed to pull their economies out of recession and companies took advantage of record low interest rates, according to the Bank for International Settlements.

The $30 trillion increase from $70 trillion between mid-2007 and mid-2013 compares with a $3.86 trillion decline in the value of equities to $53.8 trillion in the same period, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The jump in debt as measured by the Basel, Switzerland-based BIS in its quarterly review is almost twice the U.S.’s gross domestic product.

Borrowing has soared as central banks suppress benchmark interest rates to spur growth after the U.S. subprime mortgage market collapsed and Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.’s bankruptcy sent the world into its worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. Yields on all types of bonds, from governments to corporates and mortgages, average about 2 percent, down from more than 4.8 percent in 2007, according to the Bank of America Merrill Lynch Global Broad Market Index.

“Given the significant expansion in government spending in recent years, governments (including central, state and local governments) have been the largest debt issuers,” according to Branimir Gruic, an analyst, and Andreas Schrimpf, an economist at the BIS. The organization is owned by 60 central banks and hosts the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, a group of regulators and central bankers that sets global capital standards.

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Bill ‘Wild Bill’ Guarnere, of ‘Band of Brothers’ Fame, Dies at 90

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Photo Credit: APWilliam “Wild Bill” Guarnere, one of the World War II veterans whose exploits were dramatized in the TV miniseries “Band of Brothers,” has died. He was 90.

His son, William Guarnere Jr., confirmed Sunday that his father died at Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia. Guarnere was rushed to the hospital early Saturday and died of a ruptured aneurysm early Saturday night.

The younger Guarnere told FoxNews.com that like so many of his generation, “Wild Bill” didn’t talk about his service, even though he lost his leg in combat.

“All we knew was he lost his leg, and that was it,” William Guarnere Jr. said. “People knew more about (his service) than we did.”

The HBO miniseries, based on a book by Stephen Ambrose, followed the members of Easy Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne Division from training in Georgia in 1942 through some of the war’s fiercest European battles through the war’s end in 1945.

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Palin Fires a Shot Over the GOP Establishment’s Bow at CPAC and Throws in Some Dr. Seuss Just for Fun

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CPAC 2014Once again former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin wowed the crowd at CPAC and, in the process, put the establishment on notice if they do not stand for conservative principles, they will lose her support and that of many other Americans too.

In the closing address at the nation’s largest conservative conference, Palin sounded a similar theme to several of the firebrands–including Ted Cruz, Mike Lee and Rand Paul–who addressed the DC gathering of thousands from around the country. The spirit of their remarks can be summarized using the old Tom Petty lyrics, “I won’t back down, you can stand me up at the gates of hell, but I won’t back down.”

To the Republican Party leadership, Palin let them know that it’s time to have a “come to Jesus moment. America is counting on the GOP to get it right.” Why should any Republican get elected or re-elected who is for higher taxes, more government and more regulations? Why should they be rewarded with your vote, Palin queried. Borrowing a turn of phrase from Barack Obama, she reminded the GOP, “You know that 2010 election victory that swept you into power, you didn’t build that, the tea party did.”

Palin pointed to the examples of Senator Ted Cruz and House members like Louie Gomert and Trey Gowdy as the type of leadership that the times require. She fully supported Cruz’s ObamaCare filibuster believing it a great service to the country, and also approved of his reading of Dr. Seuss’ “Green Eggs and Ham” while he held the Senate floor last fall.

Sarah Palin debuted her own version of the classic tale for today’s CPAC audience: “I do not like this Uncle Sam. I do not like his health care scam. I do not like these dirty crooks, or how they lie and cook the books. I do not like when Congress steals, I do not like their crony deals. I do not like this spying, man, I do not like, ‘Oh, Yes we can,'” which drew laughter and cheers from the CPAC crowd.

She continued, “I do not like this spending spree, we’re smart, we know there’s nothing free. I do not like reporters’ smug replies when I complain about their lies. I do not like this kind of hope, and we won’t take it, nope, nope, nope.”

The former Alaska Governor went on to bring up the crisis in the Ukraine and wondered why in the world the United States was reducing its conventional forces to pre-World War II levels and drastically cutting its nuclear arsenal in light of it. Palin advised, “Mr. President the only thing that stops a bad guy with a nuke is a good guy with a nuke,” prompting the crowd to rise to its feet with approval. She then added with a slight smirk, “I’m probably being too hard on the President, afterall who could have seen this coming.” Catching the reference, the crowd rose back to its feet cheering.

Palin ended on an upbeat note saying there is a “great awakening” happening in America.”The Age of Obama is almost over, marking the end of an error.” The message of liberty has resonated “since a band a brothers dumped tea in the Boston Harbor,” she exhorted. Because of that, she has hope. “The best is yet to come.”

Cruz and Lee at Top of Palin’s List if She Doesn’t Run in 2016

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Former Alaska Gov. and Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin closed out CPAC on Saturday and blasted the Republican establishment for marginalizing conservatives and the Tea Party after the historic 2010 elections in which the Tea Party gave House Republicans back their majority.

Palin, whose endorsement carries the most weight in GOP primaries, had a simple message for the “Beltway Boys”: “You didn’t build that. The Tea Party did.”

Palin closed out CPAC as the conference’s featured speaker for the second time in the last three years. Last year, Sen. Ted Cruz, who said he would not be in the U.S. Senate were it not for Palin, closed out the conference. Palin, whose endorsement is the most influential in Republican primaries, said that if she does not run for president in 2016, Cruz and Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) are at the top of her list. And she had plenty of praise for Cruz on Saturday, thanking Texas for helping put Congress on “Cruz control.”

She said reinforcements have to be sent to Washington to fight for American workers who “are caught between the crony capitalism that benefits the politically collected and the income redistribution that benefits the politically favored.”

Palin also spoke about how conservatives are now pushing back in winning in the culture wars, as was evidenced by A&E’s reinstatement of Duck Dynasty patriarch Phil Robertson, and took on the Democrats’ phony “war on women” rhetoric by saying Democrats think women are cheap, and that all they need are cheap lines about birth control to get their votes. Palin asking the women in the audience to not be cheap political accessories and said one will not hear Democrats scream, “I am women, hear me roar,” because while donkeys bray, “only Mama Grizzlies can say, ‘Hear Me Roar!'”

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