Top Democratic Senator Calls for Scrapping Key Snooping Patriot Act Section

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Photo Credit: Susan Walsh

Photo Credit: Susan Walsh

The Senate’s senior lawmaker said Tuesday that its time to end the Patriot Act power that the intelligence community has relied on to collect all Americans’ phone records, saying it isn’t making the country safer.

“In my view, and I’ve discussed this with the White House, the Section 215 collection of Americans’ phone records must end,” said Sen. Patrick J. Leahy, Vermont Democrat and chairman of the SenateJudiciary Committee. “It is not making America safer and the government has not made its case this is an effective counterterrorism tool.”

Speaking at Georgetown Law Center, Mr. Leahy said he would hold a classified briefing this week and call an open hearing next week to try to look at the issues at stake.

The intelligence snooping has come under scrutiny since leaks earlier this year exposed that the U.S. government was collecting the time and phone numbers of calls made in the U.S., as well as combing through other electronic communications.

Since then, the intelligence community has admitted it has repeatedly broken its own rules — though officials say they have caught themselves and have generally not found any intentional efforts to abuse the programs.

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Conservative Group: Mitch McConnell, John Cornyn ‘Turncoats’

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

A conservative political action committee on Tuesday slammed two of the Senate’s top Republicans as “turncoats” who have “surrendered” on the health care fight.

“Mitch McConnell and John Cornyn have surrendered to Barack Obama, Harry Reid, and the Democrats,” charged an email blast from the Senate Conservatives Fund. “More importantly, they have surrendered to Obamacare — the biggest job killer in America.”

The email took McConnell (R-Ky.) and Cornyn (R-Texas) to task over their declining to block a House-passed spending measure that would defund Obamacare. Some conservatives, like Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), are opposed to moving that bill forward, arguing that the process for doing so would allow Senate Democrats to remove defunding language from the bill. But McConnell’s and Cornyn’s offices have signaled that they won’t join attempts to thwart the bill.

“Sen. McConnell supports the House Republicans’ bill and will not vote to block it, since it defunds Obamacare and funds the government without increasing spending by a penny,” a spokesman for McConnell said in a statement on Monday . “He will also vote against any amendment that attempts to add Obamacare funding back into the House Republicans’ bill.”

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Time for a Million Muslim March on Washington to Protest the Violence

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Photo Credit: Irish Central

Photo Credit: Irish Central

In the wake of the horrific Muslim terror attack in Kenya, the “religion of peace” is starting to get a black eye.

I was speaking to a friend the other day, who was once married to a Muslim and has close ties to the worldwide Muslim community. We both agree that the Muslims we personally know are kind decent people and not at all associated with the daily jihad violence seen around the world. They abhor the crazies amongst them.

The worlds 1.2 billion Catholics have one spokesman who can support or condemn policy and speak out for them. They have a pope and his message is mostly of kindness and compassion for each other.

But Muslims have no main leader to speak for them and as a result, the ones among them who preach a brand of hatred and violence seem to grab the attention of the media.

In the latest round of senseless violence:

The storming of a “western” shopping center in Nairobi Kenya by Muslim extremists resulted in the slaughter of every non Muslim they could put their gun sights on….72 dead so far. Alarmingly, it seems that among the Muslim terrorists who attacked the mall, were American Muslims recruited from Minnesota and Maine. Minnesota is known to have a large Muslim Somali community, and they are reportedly recruited to take part in terrorist activity.

While the Kenya attack was occurring, in another part of the world a pair of suicide bombers blew themselves up outside a 130-year-old Anglican church in Pakistan. The bombings were timed for Sunday Mass, killing at least 78 people in the deadliest attack on Christians in the predominantly Muslim country.

Ongoing attacks on Christians by Muslim Brotherhood adherents have resulted in churches getting torched and countless Christians murdered in Egypt. See: There Is a Bulls eye on the Back of Every Christian Living in Egypt.

In the Syrian civil war, Muslim “rebels” have systematically targeted Christian towns, destroying them and killing the inhabitants.

Violent oppression of Christians has become the norm in Muslim-majority nations, especially in Africa and the Middle East. In some countries it is government sanctioned violence that burns down churches and imprison parishioners.

In others countries, groups and vigilantes take matters into their hands by murdering Christians and driving them out of regions they have called home for centuries. Read more: Heads roll as the religion of “turn the other cheek,” meets the religion of “peace”

According to the latest State Department report on worldwide terrorism, there were 6,771 terrorist attacks in 2012, fueled by an upsurge in state sponsored terrorism by Iran. See: What 2012 Terrorism Statistics Reveal.

America is still jittery after getting another wake up call when Boston was bombed by Jihadists during the historic Boston Marathon.

Many people are starting to question why peaceful Muslims tolerate this violence being waged on Muslim and non Muslim in the name of their religion. There is no other religion in the world that is surrounded by such violence under its banner.

America is the most religiously tolerant country in the world and accepts all sorts of different beliefs…..As long as they are not violent towards us. We know that all Muslims are not terrorists, but it seems that most of today’s terrorists are Muslim.

America and the worlds tolerance is being stretched thin by one atrocity after another being waged under the banner of a religion. Even though the percentage of the extremists among Muslims is small, it is painting the whole religion with a violent paintbrush.

It is time for leaders among the Muslim faithful to step forward and condemn the violence. It would be totally appropriate and appreciated by the world to see a massive show of condemnation of this violence. A symbolic way to show it would be a million Muslim march on Washington DC… Americans of every stripe would gladly join in a show of solidarity.

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Ed Farnan is the conservative columnist at IrishCentral, where he has been writing on the need for energy independence, strong self defense, secure borders, 2nd amendment, smaller government and many other issues. His articles appear in many publications throughout the USA and world. He has been a guest on Fox News and a regular guest on radio stations in the US and Europe.

Americans Paid All-Time Highs In State and Local Taxes in 2nd Quarter

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

Revenues from state and local individual income taxes, general sales and gross receipt taxes, motor fuel taxes, motor vehicle taxes and taxes on alcoholic beverages each hit all-time highs in the second quarter of this year, according to data released today by the Census Bureau.

That means that in no quarter of any year since the Census Bureau first started tracking state and local tax revenues in 1962 have Americans paid more in each of these categories of state and local taxes then they did in the quarter that ran from April through June of 2013.

Americans paid a record of $114.032 billion in state and local individual income taxes in the second quarter of this year, according to the Census Bureau. That was up $7.787 billion—or 7.3 percent—from the previous all-time record of $106.245 billion in state and local individual income taxes that Americans paid in the second quarter of 2008.

Americans also paid a record of $82.212 billion in state and local general sales and gross receipts taxes in the second quarter of this year. That was up $1.85 billion—or 2.3 percent—from the previous record of $80.362 billion in general sales and gross receipts taxes American paid in the second quarter of 2008.

Americans paid a record of $11.254 billion in state and local motor fuels taxes in the second quarter of 2013. That was up $135 million—or 1.2 percent—from the previous record of $11.119 billion paid in the second quarter of 2012.

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U.S. Military’s Battlefield Network Vulnerable to Hackers

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Photo Credit: Musadeq Sadeq

Photo Credit: Musadeq Sadeq

The Pentagon’s main battlefield intelligence network in Afghanistan is vulnerable to hackers — both the enemy or a leaker — and the U.S. command in Kabul will cut off from the military’s classified data files unless the Army fixes the defects in 60 days, according to an official memo obtained by The Washington Times.

The memo says the Army’s Distributed Common Ground System (DCGS) flunked a readiness test and does not confirm the source of outside Internet addresses entering the classified database.

The Sept. 5 warning notice from the U.S. command in Kabul is another blow to the intelligence network, commonly called “D-Sigs.” It already had suffered a wave of bad news, such as soldiers panning its performance as unreliable and the Pentagon’s top tester judging it as not operationally effective.

The warning comes as the U.S. military is on heightened alert against unlawful entry into classified computer networks, not only by the enemy but also by “friendlies” such as Army Pvt. Bradley Manning and former National Security Agency contractor Edward J. Snowden. Both illegally downloaded reams of classified data that got widespread dissemination in the news media and, officials say, greatly damaged America’s security.

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EPA Seeks Definition of ‘Bodies of Water’ for Clean Water Act

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Photo Credit: Getty Images

Photo Credit: Getty Images

The EPA took a giant step toward finally defining which bodies of water are subject to regulation under the Clean Water Act last week, when it filed a draft rule with the White House regulatory czar designed to settle the confusion created in recent years by a series of court decisions.

The legal battles have centered on the definition and scope of a seemingly innocuous phrase — what exactly are “waters of the United States”?

Judges and regulators have wrestled over how to interpret the term in the absence of legislative action to clarify it. Now, the EPA is not only proposing a regulatory solution — which is not yet publicly available — but is also conducting a scientific review to accumulate evidence to back up the penultimate rule.

That approach to implementing the Clean Water Act (PL 95-217) is the latest example of the Obama administration’s philosophy on environmental policymaking: Act when Congress doesn’t and take steps to shore up the approach against future legal challenges.

“We’re not likely to get that clarity from Congress anytime soon,” said Bruce Myers Jr. of the Environmental Law Institute. “Further clarity from the agencies is beneficial.”

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10 Commandments Monument Toppled, Reagan Statue Torched

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Photo Credit: Breitbart

Photo Credit: Breitbart

10 Commandments monument toppled in Washington

By Jessica Gresko.

A stone monument of the Ten Commandments that sits on a street behind the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington and was the subject of controversy in the past has been toppled by vandals.

The 3-foot-by-3-foot granite monument weighs 850 pounds and sits out front of the headquarters of Faith and Action, a Christian outreach ministry. The group installed the tablets in a garden outside its offices in 2006, and the group’s president said the tablets were angled so that justices arriving at the high court would see them.

The Rev. Robert Schenck, who heads the organization, said the damage to the monument happened sometime between Friday night and Saturday night. A minister who works in the area alerted the group to the damage around 9 p.m. Saturday.

The monument had been pushed over so that the words of the Ten Commandments are now face down. Vandals bent a steel rod that secures the monument to a thick concrete base to an almost 90 degree angle. The monument itself is not damaged, Schenck said.

“Whoever did this was determined to get it done because it’s not something you could easily do,” Schenck said, adding that the vandals also installed a “For Rent” yard sign by the monument and that the vandalism was reported to police.

Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: Ronald Reagan Library

Photo Credit: Ronald Reagan Library

Vandals torch Ronald Reagan statue at California park

By Cheryl K. Chumley.

Vandals set fire to a life-size statue of Ronald Reagan at a Southern California sports park that bears the name of the 40th president, authorities reported Monday.

The bronze statue stands at the Ronald Reagan Sports Park in Temecula, Calif., the very same site praised by Reagan in the 1980s as a solid example of what volunteerism and fundraising can accomplish — rather than government regulation and taxpayer dollars.

Read more from this story HERE.

Reid on Defunding Obamacare: “We’re Not Going to Bow to Tea Party Anarchists who Deny that Obamacare is the Law”

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Photo Credit: Getty Images

Photo Credit: Getty Images

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid declared the House version of the bill that funds the government and defunds Obamacare “dead on arrival” in the Senate, accusing Republicans of trying to hold the country “ransom.”

On Friday, the House passed a bill that funds the government through December 15, while defunding Obamacare. Reid moved to begin consideration of the bill when the Senate returned to session Monday afternoon, but made clear that it would be sent back to the House without that provision…

“We’re not going to bow to tea party anarchists who deny that Obamacare is the law,” Reid said.

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Source: McConnell, Cornyn Whipping Votes Against Ted Cruz

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picture - mcconnell-cornynA source in Congress tells Breitbart News that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Senate Minority Whip John Cornyn are using their leadership positions to pressure other Republicans to oppose Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) in his campaign to defund Obamacare.

“Right now in the Senate, Mitch McConnell and John Cornyn are actively whipping Senators to shut down debate on the House continuing resolution so that Harry Reid can gut it with just 51 votes,” a senior congressional staffer with intimate knowledge of the situation said in an email to Breitbart News. “Unbelievably, they actually are leading the fight to fully fund Obamacare.”

McConnell and Cornyn stated earlier Monday that they oppose a possible filibuster from Cruz to keep Reid from adding language funding the Affordable Care Act to the continuing resolution passed by the House of Representatives.

As Breitbart News reported on Saturday, McConnell and Cornyn could help Cruz win:

First, when Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid brings the House continuing resolution (CR) to the floor next week, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell needs to deliver 41 Republican votes to filibuster it until Senator Reid agrees not to try and restore funding for Obamacare. McConnell has the power to ensure that Reid cannot get an amendment onto the bill that strips the Obamacare defunding language with a simple majority vote.

Read more from this story HERE.

Facing Threats of Termination, Official at Heart Of IRS Scandal “Retiring”

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Photo Credit: Getty/AFP

Photo Credit: Getty/AFP

Facing a possible firing, the Internal Revenue Service official at the center of the agency’s tea party scandal retired Monday, ending one chapter in a ruckus that has engulfed the tax-collection agency since spring.

Lois Lerner headed the IRS division that handles applications for tax-exempt status when she was placed on paid leave in May. While she was in charge, the agency acknowledged that agents improperly targeted tea party groups for extra scrutiny when they applied for tax-exempt status during the 2010 and 2012 elections.

Lerner first disclosed the targeting at a law conference in May, when she was asked a planted question about IRS treatment of political groups. Less than two weeks later, she refused to answer questions at a congressional hearing, citing her constitutional right not to incriminate herself.

A day after the hearing she was placed on paid leave at the age of 62.

Lerner’s retirement came as a review board was set to propose that she be fired, said a statement by Rep. Sander Levin of Michigan, the top Democrat on the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee.

Read more from this story HERE.