White House Insists James Clapper Will Not Lead NSA Surveillance Review

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Photo Credit: EPABy Ewen MacAskill

The White House has moved to dampen controversy over the role of the director of national intelligence James Clapper in a panel reviewing NSA surveillance, insisting that he would neither lead it nor choose the members.

Statements by Barack Obama and Clapper on Monday night were widely interpreted as the director of national intelligence being placed in charge of the inquiry, which the president had announced on Friday would be “independent”.

The apparent involvement of Clapper, who has admitted lying to Congress over NSA surveillance of US citizens, provoked a backlash, with critics accusing the president of putting a fox in charge of the hen house.

But the White House national security council insisted on Tuesday that Clapper’s role would be more limited.

“The panel members are being selected by the White House, in consultation with the intelligence community,” national security council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said.

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Photo Credit: APIntelligence committee withheld key file before critical NSA vote, Amash claims

By Spencer Ackerman

A leader of the US congressional insurrection against the National Security Agency’s bulk surveillance programs has accused his colleagues of withholding a key document from the House of Representatives before a critical surveillance vote.

Justin Amash, the Michigan Republican whose effort to defund the NSA’s mass phone-records collection exposed deep congressional discomfort with domestic spying, said the House intelligence committee never allowed legislators outside the panel to see a 2011 document that described the surveillance in vague terms.

The document, a classified summary of the bulk phone records collection effort justified under Section 215 of the Patriot Act, was declassified by the Obama administration in late July.

The Justice Department and intelligence agencies prepared it for Congress before a 2011 vote to reauthorize the Patriot Act, and left it for the intelligence committees in Congress to make the document available to their colleagues.

“It is not acceptable for the intelligence committee, or any other committee, to withhold critically important information pertaining to a program prior to the vote,” Amash told the Guardian.

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Dzhokhar Tsarnaev Friends Plead Not Guilty to Obstruction of Justice

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Photo Credit: APTwo college friends of the surviving Boston Marathon bombing suspect pleaded not guilty Tuesday to allegations they conspired to obstruct justice by agreeing to destroy and conceal some of their friend’s belongings as he evaded authorities.

Dias Kadyrbayev and Azamat Tazhayakov, both nationals of Kazakhstan who shared an apartment in New Bedford, Massachusetts, became friends with bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev when they all started school at University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth in 2011.

Tsarnaev is accused of setting off two bombs near the race’s finish line that killed three and wounded hundreds on 15 April. He has pleaded not guilty. Authorities say he was working with his older brother, who died during the manhunt for the suspects days later.

On April 18, Tsarnaev’s friends took his laptop from his dorm room, along with a backpack that had fireworks with explosive powder and a jar of petroleum jelly, federal authorities alleged in an indictment last week.

They say Kadyrbayev had gotten a text from Tsarnaev suggesting that he could go to his dorm room and “take what’s there.” The indictment also alleged that Kadyrbayev later put the backpack with the fireworks and jelly in a trash bin outside the New Bedford apartment after Tazhayakov agreed.

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Union-Free America, Beware: Obama’s NLRB Is Locked, Loaded and Ready To Do Union Bosses’ Bidding

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Photo Credit: Red StateIt is now official. Barack Obama’s union-dominated National Labor Relations Board is now up to its full anti-employer potential with AFL-CIO attorney Nancy Schiffer and union lawyer Kent Hirozawa being sworn in, along with union attorney Mark Pearce resuming his role as chairman.

This is the first time the NLRB has had five sitting members since 2003, when Democrats began crippling George Bush’s NLRB in an effort to diminish its capacity on rulings.

While two Republicans, Harry I. Johnson, III and Philip A. Miscimarra were also sworn in, they are in the minority and, as a result, will only be useful for their dissent (which can sometimes be useful in federal courts).

Although Obama’s NLRB had been stymied for a period of time, thanks to the bi-partisan deal cutting by Senate Republicans, union-free employers are facing a more hostile environment not seen for the last 30 years or more.

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Whistleblowers’ Attorney: 400 Surface-to-Air Missiles Stolen from Benghazi Now ‘in the Hands of Some Very Ugly People’ (+video)

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A former U.S. attorney representing Benghazi whistleblowers is claiming that 400 surface-to-air missiles were “stolen” and “taken from Libya” and are now “in the hands of some very ugly people.” He also said the Obama administration is “deeply concerned” that the weapons may be used to shoot down airliners.

In an interview with WMAL radio, Joe DiGenova explained that the stolen missiles also represent one of the reasons the U.S. State Department shut down 19 embassies across the Middle East last week.

He said the development has the Obama administration “deeply concerned” and on alert.

Even more potentially shocking, DiGenova claimed the missiles are now in the hands of Al Qaeda operatives, according to his sources. His sources include “former intelligence officials who stay in constant contact with people in the Special Ops and intelligence community.”

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DOE Defends $100M Grant to Green Company that Now May File Bankruptcy

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The Energy Department is defending its decision to award nearly $100 million to a major green energy company that has been investigated by two federal agencies and says it may be forced to declare bankruptcy.

ECOtality announced the company’s potential bankruptcy in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) last week. It also revealed that it is under investigation by the Labor Department. The company was previously subject to an SEC investigation into alleged insider trading.

DOE spokesman Bill Gibbons defended the agency’s decision to award ECOtality $99.8 million to build electric-vehicle charging stations around the country.

“The Energy Department’s grant to ECOtality was used for the installation and data collection of charging stations in cities across America where sales of plug-in electric cars are on the rise,” Gibbons said in an email.

“Meant to establish the seeds of infrastructure needed to support a growing market for advanced vehicles, the company installed more than 12,500 charging stations in 18 U.S. cities — or approximately 97 percent of their goal,” he noted.

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Health Group’s ObamaCare Enrollment Drive Targets States with GOP Governors

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A leading campaign to promote ObamaCare enrollment is targeting 10 states, mostly with Republican governors hostile to the law.

The window to begin enrolling in the law’s new coverage options opens in just 50 days. Enroll America, a prominent nonprofit with close ties to the White House, said it’s focusing on 10 states as it ramps up a massive education campaign that will ultimately cost tens of millions of dollars.

Enroll America President Anne Filipic emphasized that the group’s mission is not to promote ObamaCare politically but to provide nuts-and-bolts information about how the law works and to encourage people to sign up for new coverage options.

“This is not a conversation about politics,” Filipic said. “This is a conversation about what does this mean to you, to your family, to your pocketbook. And there’s such power in that.”

Of the 10 states Enroll America is targeting — Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Texas — nine have Republican governors.

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Gold Surge Bodes Ill for Economy

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The recent increase in gold prices suggest investors are increasingly worried the Federal Reserve may soon back off its current policy of quantitative easing in which it has bought billions of dollars of U.S. treasury debt and mortgage backed securities over the past few years.

In an article published Monday, Tyler Durden of ZeroHedge.com noted investors last week covered an enormous number of options contracts going short on gold futures prices, 23,518 futures contracts in total, suggesting a short-squeeze on gold is starting to solidify.

Short positions on gold futures contracts involve bets an investor makes that the price of gold will drop in the future. If the price of gold does not drop as anticipated, the investor owning a short contract must take a loss by purchasing gold at current prices to close out the contract on the expiration date.

When gold prices increase, investors owning gold futures short contracts risk losing money on the bad bet that the price of gold would have declined between the date the contract was purchased and the expiration date of the contract.

Durden noted the covering of gold shorts occurred last week at the fastest pace seen in the past 13 years.

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Breitbart News Interview: Mark Levin and The Liberty Amendments

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Photo Credit: CNS NewsBreitbart News: With The Liberty Amendments, you’re attempting to launch a movement to amend the Constitution. Do you expect to be successful, and how long would it take?

Levin: What I hope to do, at least in some small way, is begin a discussion among those of us who believe the Republic is unraveling, and find a way to re-establish the Constitution and reclaim our heritage. When you look at the massive debt and reckless monetary policies of the federal government; the ability of five Supreme Court justices to pervert the Constitution and impose via fiat their personal policy preferences on the whole of society without any recourse; Congress’s legislating, through massive bills, outside its enumerated powers and its delegation of unchecked power to a massive and growing bureaucracy, which legislates thousands of times each year by regulatory fiat; and the increasing authoritarianism of presidents who issue executive orders to create their own law and also blatantly rewrite statutes by interpretation and execution (or not) based on whether they agree with them or not; I think this and much more evinces the growing and steady decline of constitutional republicanism.

And I’ve concluded that Washington is incapable of reforming itself, which should seem fairly obvious. After all, it has designed the federal Leviathan, which is getting bigger and more aggressive. And I was thinking: What has this federal government become? It is not a constitutional, federal, or representative republic, as our Framers understood those institutions. I believe the federal government is increasingly operating outside the Constitution and that we are in a post-constitutional period. This is how justices, presidents, and members of Congress are able to concoct and then impose such monstrous laws as Obamacare and Dodd-Frank, among thousands of other laws and rules every year, on an unwitting population.

This book is written for those of us who fear what is happening to our nation–the increasing authoritarianism and abuse of the individual–and refuse to accept these events either by pretending they are not serious or as the inevitable decline of a great republic. This has been building for decades, since at least the advent of the Progressive era, and, in my view, requires a resolute, decades’-long effort to reverse course. So, the question arises, what do we do? For those of us who care, my book explores some of the possibilities. And they are provided in the Constitution itself.

The Framers knew better than others what it was like to confront actual tyranny. So why wouldn’t we look to these greatest men for answers? So, that’s what I did. If you look at Article V of the Constitution, it includes, among other things, two processes for amending the Constitution. The first process has resulted in twenty-seven amendments: two-thirds of both Houses of Congress propose an amendment, and three-fourths of the states are required to ratify it. In the second process, which is every bit as legitimate, two-thirds of the states decide to convene a meeting for the purpose of proposing amendments, which are then sent to the states for three-fourths ratification. It is a process that essentially bypasses Congress. Let me be as clear as I can: this second amendment process provides for a convention of the states to propose amendments, which in turn must be ratified by three-fourths of the states; it does not provide for a Constitutional Convention. Furthermore, because three-fourths of the states must ratify proposed amendments, there would be no “runaway convention” overturning the entire Constitution, as some might fear monger. I fully expect the most vociferous critics of this constitutional process to be among those who support or have contributed to all manner of constitutional evasions and distortions in favor of the increasing centralization and concentration of power, which is precisely what the Constitution was established to prevent.

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North Carolina Governor Signs Extensive Voter ID Law

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North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory (R) on Monday signed into law one of the nation’s most wide-ranging Voter ID laws.

The move is likely to touch off a major court battle over voting rights, and the Justice Department is weighing a challenge to the new law, which is the first to pass since the U.S. Supreme Court struck down part of the Voting Rights Act.

The measure requires voters to present government-issued photo identification at the polls and shortens the early voting period from 17 to 10 days. It will also end pre-registration for 16- and 17-year-old voters who will be 18 on Election Day and eliminates same-day voter registration.

Democrats and minority groups have been fighting against the changes, arguing that they represent an effort to suppress the minority vote and the youth vote, along with reducing Democrats’ advantage in early voting. They point out that there is little documented evidence of voter fraud.

Republicans say that the efforts are necessary to combat such fraud and that shortening the window for early voting will save the state money. They also note that, while the North Carolina law makes many changes to how the state conducts its elections, most of its major proposals — specifically, Voter ID and ending same-day registration — bring it in line with many other states. More than three-fifths of states currently have some kind of Voter ID law, and even more have no same-day registration. Not all states allow in-person early voting.

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Proposed New Federal Rule Could Put ‘Big Brother’ in Your Driver’s Seat

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A proposed federal rule that would require black boxes or event data recorders (EDRs) in every U.S. automobile may mean “Big Brother” could be in your passenger seat for every drive.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration rule requires all light passenger vehicles be equipped with an EDR by Sep.1, 2014. Ninety-six percent of new cars already have them – measuring such inputs as speed, lateral acceleration, pedal effort, seat belt use, wheel spin, steering wheel turn and direction.

Black box data retrieved from U.S. car accidents in a single day would provide more information than a year’s worth of crash testing, says Tom Kowalick, who heads the design team that is standardizing the devices for automakers worldwide.

But he also said he fears that for all their potential good, the EDRs present a massive privacy dilemma, and an opportunity for fraudsters.

“They can take that odometer and roll that odometer back to zero,” he said. “They can change the Vehicle Identification Number (VIN), which is in the computer. And once they do that, then it’s okay for them to very simply steal the motor vehicle and move it away.”

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