Manning Sentencing: Judge Rejects Claim Leaks had ‘Chilling Effect’ On US Foreign Relations

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Photo Credit: APThe judge at US soldier Bradley Manning’s sentencing hearing rejected some government evidence Wednesday that the classified information he disclosed through the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks had a “chilling effect” on US foreign relations.

The judge ruled that such testimony is admissible only if the effect came directly after the information was published.

She threw out State Department undersecretary Patrick Kennedy’s testimony that leaked information published more than two years ago continues to hurt US foreign relations and policymaking.

The judge also has rejected acting assistant secretary Michael Kozak’s testimony that the leaks had made some foreign citizens, including human rights activists, less willing to speak privately with US diplomats.

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Anonymous Republican Blocks Bill Requiring Email Search Warrants

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Photo Credit: West Midlands PoliceAn anonymous Republican senator has delayed a vote on legislation that would require police to obtain a warrant before accessing emails and other online messages.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) pushed for a vote on the bill before Congress left for its August recess. He secured unanimous support from Democrats, but at least one Republican objected to the bill, according to a Democratic Senate aide.

Leahy had hoped to fast-track the bill to passage with unanimous support, but the opposition means a vote will be delayed until at least September.

A Leahy aide said the senator will continue to work with Republicans to address their concerns. The Senate could pass the legislation without unanimous support, but it would take up valuable floor time to override a filibuster.

It is unclear which Republican or Republicans objected to the bill, S. 607.

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Obama Admin. to Gut the Military Because of Sequestration

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Photo Credit: Getty Images Troop cuts and civilian layoffs are imminent unless Congress and the White House reach a deal to avert another round of automatic budget cuts this fall, according to the Pentagon’s No. 2 official.

Ashton Carter, the deputy Defense secretary, told USA TODAY on Monday that unless Congress and the White House reach a deal to avert the cuts, the Pentagon will have to make a series of tough and dangerous cuts in military and civilian personnel. The cuts, known as the sequester, call for about $500 billion in defense cuts through the end of the decade.

“We can’t rule out reductions in the civilian workforce and involuntary separations of military personnel,” Carter said. “That’s something none of us wants to do. But again if you have to have reductions this fast and this steep you have to go where it is possible to get money that fast. Those are not the most strategically and managerially sound places.”

The Pentagon recently completed a review of military-spending alternatives directed by Carter that forecast an austere future complete with troop levels not seen since 1940.

Last week, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel announced that the Strategic Choices and Management Review indicated a smaller force with modern weapons or a bigger one with older gear.

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DOJ Files Civil Suit Against Bank of America (+video)

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The U.S. government on Tuesday filed two civil lawsuits against Bank of America for what the Justice Department and securities regulators said was a fraud on investors involving $850 million of residential mortgage-backed securities.

The Justice Department and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filed the parallel suits in U.S. District Court in Charlotte, according to the court filings.

The securities date to about January 2008, the government said, putting them just at the beginning of the global financial crisis.

Bank of America responded to the lawsuits with a statement: “These were prime mortgages sold to sophisticated investors who had ample access to the underlying data, and we will demonstrate that.”

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‘Everyone Is a Pedestrian’: Gov’t Spending $2M to Increase Communities’ ‘Walkability’

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Photo Credit: NHTSAConcerned about a rise in pedestrian fatalities at a time when walking is strongly encouraged (“Let’s Move!”), the Obama administration is spending $2 million to give local communities the “resources and the tools they need” to prevent pedestrian deaths.

The effort — dubbed “Everyone Is a Pedestrian” — goes beyond public awareness campaigns that tell you to look both ways before crossing the street.

The new safety grants “will allow communities to take actions to make their city safer and better places to walk,” said David Strickland, director of the National Highway Transportation and Safety Administration (NHTSA), who spoke at a news conference on Monday.

Some of the “resources to increase walkability” mentioned at Monday’s news conference include “better infrastructure for pedestrians,” such as highway medians, pavement markings and new traffic signals.

And NHTSA’s “Everyone Is a Pedestrian” website offers a “Walkability Checklist,” which reads like a “how-to” guide for budding community activists.

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Secret Service: Contact Us to ‘Report a Tweet’

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By Susan Jones

On a day when terror threats continued to dominate the U.S. headlines, the Secret Service — a division of the Homeland Security Department since 2003 — tweeted the following message:

“Contact your nearest field office with time-sensitive or critical info or to report a tweet,” said one message.

That tweet from the Secret Service links to telephone numbers for every Secret Service office in the U.S. or its territories (there are 117 of them) and all 20 Secret Service offices overseas.

In a separate tweet on Tuesday morning, the Secret Service asked, “Have you seen any of our Most Wanted?” This tweet links to a list of suspects, most wanted for theft or fraud. None are listed as suspected terrorists.

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Photo Credit: APSecret Service Will Use ‘Social Media Monitoring’ Software for Intelligence

By Elizabeth Harrington

The Secret Service is looking to monitor social media for intelligence purposes, according to a solicitation posted by the Department of Homeland Security.

“This solicitation is primarily for social media monitoring/open source portal software licenses,” the document stated.

“The Government is seeking licenses for software solutions involving, but not limited to, real-time open source intelligence monitoring.”

Details of the solicitation have not been revealed as the full Statement of Work (SOW) is only being made available to contractors that respond to the notice.

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Judicial Watch Obtains Documents Revealing AG Holder Travel Expenses Exceeded $4 Million in Four Years

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Photo Credit: USDAgovJudicial Watch announced today that it has obtained documents from the Department of Justice (DOJ) revealing that between March 27, 2009, and August 24, 2012, Attorney General Eric Holder accrued $4,263,704.01 in total travel expenses. This included $697,525.20 in taxpayer-funded personal travel expenses. The documents were released to Judicial Watch in June in response to an August 2012 Freedom of Information Act request.

Altogether, Holder took 213 out-of-Washington trips during the 42 months for which Judicial Watch obtained records. His 31 personal trips during the time period included two trips to Martha’s Vineyard with a flight-only price tag of $95,184.50, as well as eight trips to Farmingdale, New York, at a flight cost of $118,553.71. On September 9, 2010, Holder took a one-day personal jaunt to Atlantic City that cost the taxpayers $7,408 in flight expenses alone.

Holder’s first taxpayer-funded trip noted in the documents was to an April 2009 “US/Mexico Arms Trafficking Strategy Meeting” (government cost “unavailable”) concerning gun-running between the US and Mexico, an issue in which the attorney general subsequently said he had no involvement. Among other controversial Holder travel expenditures:

In April, 2011, Holder charged taxpayers $15,452.50 for a speaking engagement at Al Sharpton’s National Action Network in New York City.

In June, 2012, Holder charged $38,108.18 in “business and personal” expenses to address LULAC, a liberal group that strongly supports amnesty for illegal aliens, in Orlando and New Orleans.

In July, 2012, Holder charged an additional $38,108.18, this time fully billed to the taxpayers, to speak before La Raza, another controversial pro-amnesty group, in Las Vegas.

Also in July, 2012, Holder flew on a Department of Defense plane, at unknown cost, to speak before the NAACP convention in Houston.

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Gohmert: Obama Administration Acting Like ‘a Bunch of Cowards’ for Closing 19 U.S. Embassies in Response to Terror Threat

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Photo Credit: Getty ImagesThe Obama administration has been accused of behaving ‘like a bunch of cowards’ after 19 embassies were closed in the wake of the al-Qaeda terror alert.

Louie Gohmert, a Republican congressman from Texas, recalled the September 11, 2012 terror attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya.

Clinton famously suggested in a Senate hearing that it was largely irrelevant whether the attack was the result of a terrorist plot or – as the administration initially claimed – an outgrowth of a spontaneous anti-U.S. protest.

‘It brings us back to the question that Hillary Clinton asked: “What difference does it make at this point?”‘ Gohmert said.

‘The difference it makes,’ he said, ‘is that if you will bother to find out exactly what went wrong, why you didn’t have security where you needed it, where you need security to shore up, what you can do to make sure that doesn’t happen again, you don’t have to close your embassies like a bunch of cowards that go running away.’

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Spitzer Rival, Former Madam, Charged with Drug Dealing

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Photo Credit: Getty ImagesFrom the no-this-race-could-not-get-weirder department: The former madam running for New York city comptroller against former call girl client Eliot Spitzer has been charged by federal authorities with selling prescription drugs.

Kristin Davis, 38, who in 2008 spent three months in jail for promoting prostitution, was arrested Monday and charged by U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara with selling hundreds of prescription painkillers and sedatives. According to the federal complaint, Davis sold drugs on four occasions since January to a drug dealer turned informant who was wearing a wire.

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Time Magazine Promotes A Childless Lifestyle As The Path To The Good Life For U.S. Couples

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Photo Credit: End of the American DreamThere is a relentless assault on the family in America today unlike anything that we have ever seen before. For decades, the entertainment industry and the mainstream media have been portraying marriage as the time “when your fun is over” and they have been encouraging young adults to put off marriage for as long as possible. So now the marriage rate in the United States is at a record low and the average age for a first marriage is at a record high. Meanwhile, the entertainment industry and the mainstream media have been heavily promoting the philosophy that having fewer children is better, and they have been teaching our young people that abortion is a really good option if an unwanted pregnancy comes along. The whole idea is that children are going to keep you from enjoying the kind of life that you really deserve to have.

This philosophy is taken even further in a new Time Magazine article. The article is entitled “The Childfree Life: When having it all means not having children“, and it openly promotes a “childless lifestyle” as the path to the good life for young U.S. couples. The following is how the article begins…

One evening when she was 14 years old, Laura Scott was washing dishes in the kitchen with her mother when she decided she didn’t want to have a child. At 26, Scott got married and waited for her mind to change. “It never happened,” she says. “And I realized I was going to be fine.” Now 50, Scott is more than fine: she’s fulfilled. And she’s not alone. The birthrate in the U.S. is the lowest in recorded American history. From 2007 to 2011, the most recent year for which there’s data, the fertility rate declined 9%. A 2010 Pew Research report showed that childlessness has risen across all racial and ethnic groups, adding up to about 1 in 5 American women who end their childbearing years maternity-free, compared with 1 in 10 in the 1970s.

The article goes on to point out that the average cost of raising a child born in 2011 to adulthood will be approximately $234,900, and it suggests that women should think long and hard before making such a commitment.

Well, what is a woman to do if she gets pregnant and she decides that raising that child will ruin her life?

According to the entertainment industry and the mainstream media, abortion is a very simple answer to that problem.

Read more from this story HERE.