Snowden Downloaded NSA Secrets While Working for Dell, Sources Say

/3 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Affiliate

Photo Credit: Affiliate

Former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden began downloading documents describing the U.S. government’s electronic spying programs while he was working for Dell Inc in April 2012, almost a year earlier than previously reported, according to U.S. officials and other sources familiar with the matter.

Snowden, who was granted a year’s asylum by Russia on Aug. 1, worked for Dell from 2009 until earlier this year, assigned as a contractor to U.S. National Security Agency facilities in the United States and Japan.

Snowden downloaded information while employed by Dell about eavesdropping programs run by the NSA and Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters, and left an electronic footprint indicating when he accessed the documents, said the sources, speaking on condition of anonymity.

David Frink, a spokesman for Round Rock, Texas-based Dell, declined to comment on any aspect of Snowden’s employment with the company, saying Dell’s “customer” – presumably the NSA – had asked Dell not to talk publicly about him.

Since Snowden disclosed documents on previously secret U.S. internet and phone surveillance programs in June, his three-month tenure with U.S. contractor Booz Allen Hamilton Holding Corp starting in late March of this year has been the focus of considerable attention. His time at Dell has received little attention.

Read more from this story HERE.

Hagel Announces New Measures to Try to Stamp out Sex Assaults in the Military

/8 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Pete MarovichThe Pentagon has unveiled a range of initiatives to curb sexual assault in the ranks and tackle what military leaders have described as a “crisis” of confidence which prevents victims coming forward.

The new initiatives, to be implemented immediately, include greater protections of victims, including the expansion of an air force initiative to provide victims with a legal advocacy programme. Other changes include ensuring that pretrial investigations are conducted by judge advocate generals and improved tracking and follow-up of sexual assault cases.

In a memo to staff, Chuck Hagel, the defence secretary, described sexual assault as “a stain on the honor of our men and women who honorably serve our country, as well as a threat to the discipline and the cohesion of our force.”

He said the measures would “improve victim support, strengthen pretrial investigations, enhance oversight, and make prevention and response efforts more consistent across the military services”.

But the moves fell short of the overhaul in the system victims advocates and some lawmakers say is needed. Military critics say that to address the breakdown of trust in its handling of such cases, the responsibility for prosecuting sexual assault has to be removed from the chain of command.

Read more from this story HERE.

FreedomWorks Makes Big Anti-Obamacare Push

/0 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: John ShinkleConservatives are plotting an aggressive push during the last two weeks of August to boost the controversial effort in Congress to oppose spending bills this fall that contain funding for Obamacare.

FreedomWorks is working with local conservative activists to question senators at home-state events about their objections to a letter spearheaded by Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) vowing to vote against bills with funding for the health care law. That letter is stuck at 13 signers and FreedomWorks is keeping a running tally of senators’ support or opposition to the letter. Heritage Action for America also plans a barnstorming tour this month intended to drive more senators’ support to the letter.

“It’s sad to see once-great organizations sacrifice years of credibility on the altar of bad strategy,” said a Republican Senate aide.

Among the lawmakers being targeted by FreedomWorks are GOP Sens. Richard Burr of North Carolina, Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and John Cornyn of Texas. The activists plan to demonstrate outside the office of Burr in response to his comment that a shutdown over Obamacare funding is the “dumbest idea I’ve ever heard of” and attend a Coburn town hall in Muskogee, Okla., to ask why Coburn considers the tactic “dishonest.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Feds Ran another Massive Deficit but Obama’s Debt Clock Stays Frozen at $16.7 Trillion

/5 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: woodleywonderworks The Treasury Department’s Financial Management Service (FMS), which publishes both the federal government’s official Daily Treasury Statement and its official Monthly Treasury Statement, is reporting that in July the federal government ran a deficit of $98 billion but that the federal government’s debt remained exactly $16,699,396,000,000 for the entire month.

…The FMS said the debt stayed at exactly $16,699,396,000,000 in its Daily Treasury Statements, which are published every business day. The Daily Treasury Statements show the daily value of the federal government debt that is subject to a legal limit set by Congress.

At the static $16,699,396,000,000 level that the Treasury reported for every day of July, the debt was just $25 million below the legal limit of $16,699,421,000,000 that was set in a law passed by Congress and signed by President Barack Obama.

If Treasury’s daily statements were to declare that the government had borrowed an additional net $98 billion to cover the $98 billion deficit the Treasury declared in its monthly statement for July, the Treasury would be conceding that the government had already surpassed the legal limit on the debt–and has been violating the law by continuing to borrowing additional money.

Instead, even as the Treasury was running up the $98-billion deficit it reported in the July Monthly Treasury Statement, every one of the 22 Daily Treasury Statements published for July said the Treasury had closed out the previous business day with exactly $16,699,396,000,000 in debt.

Read more from this story HERE.

NY Times Takes Down the Bill Clinton Foundation, Devastates Hillary’s Chances at POTUS

/5 Comments/in , /by

Is the New York Times being guest edited by Rush Limbaugh? Today it runs with a fascinating takedown of the Clinton Foundation – that vast vanity project that conservatives are wary of criticising for being seen to attack a body that tries to do good. But the liberal NYT has no such scruples. The killer quote is this:

For all of its successes, the Clinton Foundation had become a sprawling concern, supervised by a rotating board of old Clinton hands, vulnerable to distraction and threatened by conflicts of interest. It ran multimillion-dollar deficits for several years, despite vast amounts of money flowing in.

Over a year ago Bill Clinton met with some aides and lawyers to review the Foundation’s progress and concluded that it was a mess. Well, many political start-ups can be, especially when their sole selling point is the big name of their founder (the queues are short at the Dan Quayle Vice Presidential Learning Center). But what complicated this review – what made its findings more politically devastating – is that the Clinton Foundation has become about more than just Bill. Now both daughter Chelsea and wife, and likely presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton have taken on major roles and, in the words of the NYT “efforts to insulate the foundation from potential conflicts have highlighted just how difficult it can be to disentangle the Clintons’ charity work from Mr Clinton’s moneymaking ventures and Mrs Clinton’s political future.” Oh, they’re entangled alright.

The NYT runs the scoop in its usual balanced, inoffensive way – but the problem jumps right off the page. The Clintons have never been able to separate the impulses to help others and to help themselves, turning noble philanthropic ventures into glitzy, costly promos for some future campaign (can you remember a time in human history when a Clinton wasn’t running for office?). And their “Ain’t I Great?!” ethos attracts the rich and powerful with such naked abandon that it ends up compromising whatever moral crusade they happen to have endorsed that month. That the Clinton Global Initiative is alleged to have bought Natalie Portman a first-class ticket for her and her dog to attend an event in 2009 is the tip of the iceberg. More troubling is that businessmen have been able to expand the profile of their companies by working generously alongside the Clinton Foundation.

Read more from this story HERE.

Fast and Furious Toll Grows as More ATF Guns Found in Mexican Crime Scenes

/7 Comments/in , /by

Three more weapons from Fast and Furious have turned up at crime scenes in Mexico, CBS News has learned, as the toll from the controversial federal operation grows.

According to Justice Department tracing documents obtained by CBS News, all three guns are WASR-10 762-caliber Romanian rifles. Two were purchased by Fast and Furious suspect Uriel Patino in May and July of 2010. Sean Steward, who was convicted on gun charges in July 2012, purchased a third. The rifles were traced yesterday to the Lone Wolf gun shop in Glendale, Ariz.

During Fast and Furious and similar operations, federal agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) encouraged the Lone Wolf and other gun stores to sell massive amounts of weapons to questionable purchasers who allegedly trafficked them Mexican drug cartels.

Patino is said to have purchased 700 guns while under ATF’s watch. Ever since, a steady stream of the guns have been recovered at crime scenes in Mexico and the U.S. But the Justice Department has refused repeated requests from Congress and CBS News to provide a full accounting. An estimated 1,400 guns are still on the street or unaccounted for.

Read more from this story HERE.

The Leftward Lurch of Fox News Revealed in the Promotion of Pro-Gay Kelly, Dismissal of Hannity

/44 Comments/in , /by

The truth about Sean Hannity’s loss of his nightly slot on Fox News has finally come out. From the press release:

As part of a national journalism conference on Tuesday, August 20, America’s Survival, Inc. (ASI), a public policy organization, is officially releasing a new report on radical changes at Fox News that should cause great concern to pro-family conservatives.

“Pushing Sean Hannity out of the 9:00 p.m. slot, to make way for pro-homosexual advocate Megyn Kelly, is another sign of the channel’s left-ward drift and decline,” said ASI President Cliff Kincaid, a veteran journalist and media critic.

We would have hit the delete button, but the release carried the name of Atlanta’s Phil Kent, who confirmed that the group is indeed real – and that he’ll be handling press when the study is released at a National Press Club affair in Washington.

Click here to get more details on Fox News’ surrender to the dark side.

Read more from this story HERE.

Google Says Users of Gmail Should Expect that Others Will Have Access to Their Email

/3 Comments/in , /by

If you happen to send an email to one of the 400 million people who use Google’s Gmail service, you shouldn’t have any expectation of privacy, according to a court briefing obtained by the Consumer Watchdog website.

In a motion filed last month by Google to have a class action complaint dismissed, Google’s lawyers reference a 1979 ruling, holding that people who turn over information to third parties shouldn’t expect that information to remain private.

From the filing (emphasis added):

Just as a sender of a letter to a business colleague cannot be surprised that the recipient’s assistant opens the letter, people who use web-based email today cannot be surprised if their communications are processed by the recipient’s ECS provider in the course of delivery. Indeed, “a person has no legitimate expectation of privacy in information he voluntarily turns over to third parties.” Smith v. Maryland, 442 U.S. 735, 743-44 (1979). In particular, the Court noted that persons communicating through a service provided by an intermediary (in the Smith case, a telephone call routed through a telephone company) must necessarily expect that the communication will be subject to the intermediary’s systems. For example, the Court explained that in using the telephone, a person “voluntarily convey[s] numerical information to the telephone company and ‘expose[s]’ that information to its equipment in the ordinary course of business.” Id. at 744 (emphasis added).

…“Google has finally admitted they don’t respect privacy,” said John M. Simpson, Consumer Watchdog’s Privacy Project director, in a news release. “People should take them at their word; if you care about your email correspondents’ privacy don’t use Gmail.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Poll: Less than 3 Percent of Federal Workers Want to Join Obamacare

/6 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Daily CallerBy Patrick Howley

Less than 3 percent of U.S. federal workers want to give up their current health plans and join Obamacare, according to a new poll.

92.3 percent of federal workers think that they should continue with their current health insurance program, the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP), while just 2.8 percent think they should be required to join Obamacare exchanges and 4.9 percent are not sure, according to an August survey conducted by FedSmith.com, a website for federal employees.

“There is apparently little debate among the federal workforce. Federal employees do not want to be part of the new system… Employees who are already retired have a much stronger negative reaction to being moved to a new system,” FedSmith.com noted.

Though congressmen and congressional staffers have to enroll in Obamacare exchanges, most federal employees insured under FEHBP will not be forced to switch to Obamacare exchanges when the law is fully implemented in 2014. But a recent proposed bill by Michigan Republican Rep. Dave Camp to force federal workers out of FEHBP and into Obamacare generated a lot of concern among federal workers.

Read more from this story HERE.

_______________________________________________________________________________

ObamaCare cap on out-of-pocket costs delayed, Sen. Paul calls move ‘illegal’

By Fox News

A report that another provision of ObamaCare — one that would cap out-of-pocket health care costs — was being delayed brought a defiant challenge Tuesday from a top Senate Republican, accusing the president of “illegal and unconstitutional” acts in changing laws without congressional approval.

“The president doesn’t get to write legislation, and it’s illegal and unconstitutional for him to try and change legislation by himself,” Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., told Fox News.

The New York Times first reported on Tuesday that the administration is giving some insurers and employers a one-year grace period to adhere to the limit, which otherwise would have capped individual costs at $6,350 a year. The full requirement will go into effect in 2015, rather than 2014. The change means some employers — namely, those with more than one benefit provider — could use plans with higher limits or no limit at all on out-of-pocket costs during that period.

The grace period apparently was granted earlier this year, though was buried in reams of regulatory material and was not publicly reported until now. Department of Labor guidelines published in February had addressed the delay.

The confirmation comes weeks after the administration announced it was delaying a key insurance mandate — the requirement on mid-sized and large businesses to provide coverage to full-time workers. The mandate, and the cap on costs, were both delayed for one year, in a move officials claimed was meant to give businesses more time to prepare.

Read more from this story HERE.

Ground Swell: OFA Gets Zero Attendance for Climate Change Rally

/6 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: APNot a single person showed up at the Georgetown waterfront Tuesday for a climate change agenda event put on by Organizing for Action, the shadowy nonprofit advocacy group born out of President Obama’s 2012 campaign, the NRCC wrote in its blog.

The event page for the “Climate Change Day of Action Rally” disappeared after rainy weather appeared to drive away whatever people planned to attend. The embarrassing showing follows the news that only one volunteer stayed for an OFA Obamacare event in Centreville, Va., last week to work the phones.

Read more from this story HERE.