Battle Raging Within US Military Over Religious Rights of Soldiers

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Photo Credit: WND

Photo Credit: WND

A battle is raging in the U.S. military – over religious rights of the soldiers who defend American lives and values.

An amendment in the recently passed military budget bill actually strengthens religious freedom rights for service members, and was placed there after Barack Obama essentially ignored a similar provision last year.

“We are very concerned about his disdain not just for the members of faith in the military but the legislative branch as well,” said Brig. Gen. Doug Lee, retired, chairman of the executive committee for the Chaplain Alliance for Religious Liberty.

In last year’s National Defense Authorization Act, Kansas Congressman Tim Huelskamp successfully sponsored an amendment that was intended to protect the religious freedom rights of service members.

Huelskamp proposed the amendment following reports of service members facing retaliation for expressing their religious beliefs following Congress’ repeal of the Revolutionary War ban on homosexuals serving openly in the military.

[Click HERE for a listing of fifteen recent anti-Christian actions taken against soldiers; the listing appears at the end of the article]

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“Lerner Bill” to Fire Federal Employees Who Refuse to Testify

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Photo Credit: Vimeo

Photo Credit: Vimeo

Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) on Thursday proposed legislation that would require federal workers to be fired if they don’t answer questions from Congress.

The bill is a reaction to Lois Lerner, the IRS official who refused to answer questions about the IRS’s targeting of conservative groups during a congressional hearing last month. Lerner told the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, “I have not done anything wrong,” then invoked her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination on the advice of her lawyers…

“This is a statement which should not be made by federally appointed officials before a congressional hearing if they are faithfully carrying out the duties of their office,” Brooks told The Hill on Friday of Lerner’s decision to plead the Fifth…

Brooks’s bill says simply, “Any federal employee who refuses to answer questions in a congressional hearing after being granted immunity shall be terminated from employment.”

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Casino Crony Kickback: Reid, Heller Slip Las Vegas Tourism Handout Into Immigration Bill

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Photo Credit: Breitbart

Photo Credit: Breitbart

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and Sen. Dean Heller (R-NV) have inserted a provision that amounts to little more than a handout to Las Vegas casinos into the repackaged immigration reform bill, Breitbart News has learned. This provision, a brazen example of crony capitalism, was inserted into the immigration law enforcement section of the bill despite the fact that it has nothing whatsoever to do with “immigration” or “law enforcement.”

On page 66 of the repackaged bill, the following provision appears:

“CORPORATION FOR TRAVEL PROMOTION.—Sec- 9(d)(2)(B) of the Travel Promotion Act of 2009 (22 U.S.C. 2131(d)(2)(B)) is amended by striking ‘‘For each of fiscal years 2012 through 2015,’’ and inserting ‘‘For each fiscal year after 2012.”

The Travel Promotion Act (TPA) of 2009 allows the Secretary of the U.S. Treasury to spend up to $100 million on promoting travel to specific areas of the country. If the provision Reid and Heller inserted into the proposed immigration reform legislation becomes law, the benefits of the TPA would be extended indefinitely.

As the Heritage Foundation’s Jena McNeill wrote in June 2009, the Travel Promotion Act creates “a government-run public relations campaign funded by a tax on international visitors.” After the law was passed, the PR campaign touting Las Vegas casinos and other tourist destinations in the U.S. using that tax was rolled into a government-run corporation called “Brand USA.” In October 2012, Jim DeMint and Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) released a report that “reveals a history of waste, abuse, patronage, and lax oversight” with the Brand USA program and the Department of Commerce that oversees it.

Read more from this story HERE.

Candidate Marco Rubio in 2010: An ‘Earned Path to Citizenship is Basically Code for Amnesty’

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

When former Florida House Speaker Marco Rubio was running for the Senate in 2010–as a conservative candidate backed by the Tea Party movement–he insisted that illegal aliens inside the United States would need to go home and that giving illegal aliens “an earned path to citizenship,” such as his opponent Gov. Charlie Crist, former President George W. Bush and Sen. John McCain had advocated, was nothing more than a “code for amnesty.”

Rubio, who won that 2010 election, is now the leading Republican in the U.S. Congress pushing for illegal aliens to be given the earned path to citizenship that he himself insisted was “code for amnesty” only three years ago.

Rubio’s declaration that to allow illegal aliens to stay in the United States and get on a pathway to citizenship was in fact amnesty came in an Oct. 24, 2010 debate hosted by CNN’s Candy Crowley and Adam Smith of the St. Petersburg Times.

“So, your plan is that you’re going to close the borders, get the electronic system, fix the legal system, and then do what?” Crowley asked Rubio in that debate.

“And then you’ll have a legal immigration system that works,” said Rubio. “And you’ll have people in this country that are without documents that will be able to return to the, will be able to leave this country, return to their homeland, and try to re-enter through our system that now functions, a system that makes sense.”

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Fearing 2016: Slate Reporter Calls Sen. Rand Paul “White Supremacist”

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Photo Credit: YouTube

Photo Credit: YouTube

In the surest sign that the liberal/progressive journalist special forces aligned to protect President Obama and the prospective candidacy of Hillary Clinton are beginning to fear the rise of Sen. Rand Paul, founding member of Journ-o-list and darling of the “Juice Box Mafia” Matt Yglesias defamed the Kentucky Republican Senator as a “white supremacist” Thursday on Twitter:

@coner64

In an exchange with the Atlantic’s Conor Friedersdorf, Yglesias went further and called Paul’s father, Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) a white supremacist as well:

2 @coner64

Read more from this story HERE.

Hastings Sent Colleagues Email About “Big Story,” “Need to Go Off the Radar” Hours Before Fatal Crash

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Photo Credit: KTLA

Photo Credit: KTLA

The crash that killed journalist Michael Hastings was ruled an accident by police, but conspiracy theories continued to circulate on Friday.

Hastings, 33, was killed in a fiery solo-vehicle crash in Hancock Park early Tuesday morning.

He was best known for a 2010 Rolling Stone article that led to the resignation of Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who was the former U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan.

Staff Sgt. Joseph Biggs told KTLA that he received an email from Hastings on Monday.

Biggs had known Hastings since 2008, when the journalist was embedded in his unit in Afghanistan. Read more from this story HERE.

______________________________________________________________________

Full Text of Hastings’ Email:

From: Michael Hastings [email redacted]
Date: Mon, Jun 17, 2013 at 12:56 PM
Subject: FBI investigation re: NSA
To: [three emails redacted]

Hey [redacted], the Feds are interviewing my ‘close friends and associates.’ Perhaps if authorities arrive ‘BuzzFeed GQ’, er HQ, may be wise to immediately request legal counsel before any conversations or interviews about our news-gathering practices or related journalism issues.

Also: I’m onto a big story, and need to go off the radar for a bit.

All the best, and hope to see you all soon.

Michael

Federal Nullification Efforts Mounting in States

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Photo Credit: Western Journalism

Photo Credit: Western Journalism

Imagine the scenario: A federal agent attempts to arrest someone for illegally selling a machine gun. Instead, the federal agent is arrested – charged in a state court with the crime of enforcing federal gun laws.

Farfetched? Not as much as you might think.

The scenario would become conceivable if legislation passed by Missouri’s Republican-led Legislature is signed into law by Democratic Gov. Jay Nixon.

The Missouri legislation is perhaps the most extreme example of a states’ rights movement that has been spreading across the nation. States are increasingly adopting laws that purport to nullify federal laws – setting up intentional legal conflicts, directing local police not to enforce federal laws and, in rare cases, even threatening criminal charges for federal agents who dare to do their jobs.

An Associated Press analysis found that about four-fifths of the states now have enacted local laws that directly reject or ignore federal laws on marijuana use, gun control, health insurance requirements and identification standards for driver’s licenses.

Read more from this story HERE.

IRS Sent $46 Million in Refunds to 23,994 ‘Unauthorized’ Aliens at a SINGLE Atlanta Address

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Photo Credit: IRS

Photo Credit: IRS

The Internal Revenue Service sent 23,994 tax refunds worth a combined $46,378,040 to “unauthorized” alien workers who all used the same address in Atlanta, Ga., in 2011, according to the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA).

That was not the only Atlanta address theoretically occupied by thousands of “unauthorized” alien workers receiving millions in federal tax refunds in 2011. In fact, according to a TIGTA audit report published last year, four of the top ten addresses to which the IRS sent thousands of tax refunds to “unauthorized” aliens were in Atlanta.

The IRS sent 11,284 refunds worth a combined $2,164,976 to unauthorized alien workers at a second Atlanta address; 3,608 worth $2,691,448 to a third; and 2,386 worth $1,232,943 to a fourth.

Other locations on the IG’s Top Ten list for singular addresses that were theoretically used simultaneously by thousands of unauthorized alien workers, included an address in Oxnard, Calif, where the IRS sent 2,507 refunds worth $10,395,874; an address in Raleigh, North Carolina, where the IRS sent 2,408 refunds worth $7,284,212; an address in Phoenix, Ariz., where the IRS sent 2,047 refunds worth $5,558,608; an address in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., where the IRS sent 1,972 refunds worth $2,256,302; an address in San Jose, Calif., where the IRS sent 1,942 refunds worth $5,091,027; and an address in Arvin, Calif., where the IRS sent 1,846 refunds worth $3,298,877.

Read more from this story HERE.

U.S. Charges Snowden with Espionage

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Photo Credit: The Guardian

Photo Credit: The Guardian

Federal prosecutors have filed a criminal complaint against Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who leaked a trove of documents about top-secret surveillance programs, and the United States has asked Hong Kong to detain him on a provisional arrest warrant, according to U.S. officials.

Snowden was charged with theft, “unauthorized communication of national defense information” and “willful communication of classified communications intelligence information to an unauthorized person,” according to the complaint. The last two charges were brought under the 1917 Espionage Act.

The complaint, which initially was sealed, was filed in the Eastern District of Virginia, a jurisdiction where Snowden’s former employer, Booz Allen Hamilton, is headquartered and a district with a long track record of prosecuting cases with national security implications. After The Washington Post reported the charges, senior administration officials said late Friday that the Justice Department was barraged with calls from lawmakers and reporters and decided to unseal the criminal complaint.

A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment.

Snowden flew to Hong Kong last month after leaving his job at an NSA facility in Hawaii with a collection of highly classified documents that he acquired while working at the agency as a systems analyst.

Read more from this story HERE.

IRS Commissioner’s Top Aide Visited White Houses Hundreds of Times, No Explanation

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Photo Credit: White House photo office/Wikipedia

Photo Credit: White House photo office/Wikipedia

While congressional lawmakers are questioning why former Internal Revenue Service Commissioner Douglas Shulman paid dozens of visits to the White House during his tenure, Shulman’s top political aide seems to have spent even more time working side-by-side with members of the Obama administration.

White House visitor logs show Shulman’s chief of staff, Jonathan M. Davis, appears to have visited the White House and adjacent Eisenhower office building as many as 310 times between the fall of 2009 and February 2013.

Davis’ background is in technology and had no expertise on tax issues , according to some IRS sources who said Davis served mostly as a political aide who served with Shulman to the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, where Shulman was vice chairman, and then followed him to the IRS.

Jason Stverak, head of the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity, said the visits raise more questions about the connection between the White House and the IRS at a time when the tax agency was targeting conservative groups. IRS officials said the targeting was initiated internally, but lawmakers have suggested that someone higher up in the administration had actually ordered the targeting.

“Why does this person have to go there 300 times when they probably don’t have the staff expertise to be discussing tax issues?” Stverak asked.

Read more from this story HERE.