NSA to Release Spying Statistics

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

The Obama administration plans to release statistics that could shed light on the scope of the National Security Agency’s surveillance programs.

In a blog post late Thursday, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said he would soon release data on the total number of secret court orders to communications providers and the number of people targeted in those orders.

The government plans to continue releasing the statistics in annual reports, Clapper said.

He explained that he decided to release the reports to comply with President Obama’s directive to declassify as much information as possible about the surveillance programs while protecting national security.

The data will include totals for national security letters and orders under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

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Test Reveals Facebook, Twitter and Google Snoop on Emails’: Study of Net Giants Spurs New Privacy Concerns

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Photo Credit: Reuters

Photo Credit: Reuters

Facebook, Twitter and Google have been caught snooping on messages sent across their networks, new research claims, prompting campaigners to express concerns over privacy.

The findings emerged from an experiment conducted following revelations by US security contractor Edward Snowden about government snooping on internet accounts.

Cyber-security company High-Tech Bridge set out to test the confidentiality of 50 of the biggest internet companies by using their systems to send a unique web address in private messages.

Experts at its Geneva HQ then waited to see which companies clicked on the website.

During the ten-day operation, six of the 50 companies tested were found to have opened the link.

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Obama: Sex Ed for Kindergartners ‘Is the Right Thing to Do’

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Photo Credit: CNS News

Photo Credit: CNS News

The Chicago Public Schools this year are mandating that the district’s kindergarten classes include sex education, fulfilling a proposal President Barack Obama supported in 2003 when he served in the Illinois state senate and later defended when he ran for president in the 2008 election cycle.

At a Planned Parenthood convention at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Washington, D.C., on July 17, 2007, a teenage girl who said she worked as a sex-education “peer educator” in the D.C. public schools asked then-U.S. Sen. Obama what he would do to encourage the teaching of “medically accurate, age-appropriate, and responsible sex education.”

Obama first noted that he had worked with Planned Parenthood to push a sex education bill when he served in the Illinois state legislature.

Then he said: “I remember Alan Keyes—I ran against Alan Keyes—but I remember him using this in his campaign against me, saying, ‘Barack Obama supports teaching sex education to kindergartners.

“And you know,” said Obama, “I didn’t know what to tell him. But it is the right thing to do, to provide age-appropriate sex education, science-based sex education in the schools.”

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Feds Forced Churches to Get Baptism Permits

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Photo Credit: Fox News

Photo Credit: Fox News

For as far back as anyone can remember, Missouri Baptists have gathered on river banks for Sunday afternoon baptisms.

The preacher leads the new believers into the water, draped in white robes as a choir sings, “Shall We Gather at the River.”

It’s the way it’s been done for generations – baptizing in creeks, lakes, and rivers “in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.”

But now the long-cherished tradition of “taking the plunge” has been drawn into a controversy with the federal government.

The National Park Service began enforcing a policy recently that required churches to obtain special use permits in order to baptize in public waters. As part of the same permit process, the NPS also mandated that churches give the Park Service 48 hours advance notice of pending baptisms.

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Court: White House Visitor Logs for Obama and Most of His Staff are Confidential

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

A federal appeals court ruled Friday that White House visitor logs for the president and most of his staff are not public information subject to disclosure requirements of the Freedom of Information Act.

The 3-0 decision would keep the visitor records confidential for up to 12 years after President Barack Obama leaves office.

The appeals court ruling dealt a defeat to a private group that asked the Secret Service for all White House visitor logs from Obama’s first seven months in office.

“Congress made clear that it did not want documents like the appointment calendars of the president and his close advisers to be subject to disclosure” under the Freedom of Information Act, wrote Merrick Garland, chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

Judicial Watch, a conservative-oriented watchdog group that sued in an effort to get the records, said it is considering an appeal.

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Pentagon Can’t Afford Syria Operation; Must Seek Additional Funds

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

The U.S. military, struggling after defense cuts of tens of billions of dollars, will be unable to pay for attacks on Syria from current operating funds and must seek additional money from Congress, according to congressional aides.

President Barack Obama, meanwhile, said on Friday he has not made a final decision on a military strike against Syria. He sought to play down both the scope and duration of the anticipated punitive missile and bombing campaign.

“As you’ve seen, today we’ve released our unclassified assessment detailing with high confidence that the Syrian regime carried out a chemical weapons attack that killed well over a thousand people, including hundreds of children,” Obama said.

The president said the use of the deadly weapons had violated international “norms” and that action was needed to prevent the further use of the arms.

A future military operation would not involve troops on the ground as part of a long-term campaign, Obama said. “But we are looking at the possibility of a limited, narrow act that would help make sure that not only Syria but others around the world understands that the international community cares about maintaining this chemical weapons ban and norm,” he said.

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Justice Ginsburg to Officiate at Same-Sex Wedding

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg will officiate at a same-sex wedding this weekend in what is believed to be a first for a member of the nation’s highest court.

Ginsburg will officiate Saturday at the marriage of Kennedy Center President Michael Kaiser and John Roberts, a government economist.

“Michael Kaiser is a friend and someone I much admire,” Ginsburg said in a written statement Friday. “That is why I am officiating at his wedding.”

The private ceremony will take place at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, a national memorial to President John F. Kennedy. The 80-year-old Ginsburg, an opera lover, is a frequent guest at the center.

Same-sex marriage is legal in the District of Columbia and 13 states.

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Ocean Plume from Japan Nuke Disaster Will Reach U.S. by 2014

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nuclear attackWithin three years of the Fukushima nuclear plant meltdown that was triggered by a tsunami in Japan in March 2011, the radioactive ocean plume resulting from the disaster will reach the shores of the United States, researchers say.

However, according to the Australian Research Council’s Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science, by the time the plume hits the west coast of the United States it is expected to be harmless.

“Observers on the west coast of the United States will be able to see a measurable increase in radioactive material three years after the event,” Erik van Sebille, one of the paper’s authors, said in a news release from the research council.

“However,” he added, “people on those coastlines should not be concerned, as the concentration of radioactive material quickly drops below World Health Organization safety levels as soon as it leaves Japanese waters.”

Within four months of the incident, two currents off the coast of Japan, known as the Kuroshio Current and the Kurushio Extension, diluted the radioactive material to levels considered safe by the WHO, the authors of the report said.

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Al Gore’s Global Warming Desperation

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Photo Credit: FrontPageMag

Photo Credit: FrontPageMag

Those who are wondering why Al Gore chose to publicly resurface in a Washington Post interview last Thursday with that paper’s ever-pliable Journalist founder Ezra Klein only need to look in three places.

First, there’s the recently revealed empirical evidence that the “global warming” movement’s claim that climate change is causing increased extreme weather events isn’t true. Second, there’s a new summary of historical research which blows up the movement’s infamous core “hockey stick” chart forecasting unprecedented, accelerating warming. Finally, there’s a new report due to arrive in a month from an increasingly desperate United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

In late September, the IPCC, laughably described by the wire service AFP as “an expert body set up in 1988 to provide neutral advice on global warming and its impacts,” will release its next set of “scientific data” to advocate for a worldwide carbon-tax regime. Gore’s mission is clearly to start greasing the skids for the IPCC’s next round of hysteria.

Gore told WaPo’s Klein that the earth is already suffering the negative consequences of failing to act against “global warming.” He claims that “every extreme weather event now has a component of global warming in it,” and that “the appearance of more extreme and more frequent weather events has had a very profound impact on public opinion in countries throughout the world.”

There’s no doubt that the worldwide press’s emphasis on “extreme weather events” has been greater. Virtually every such occurrence will cause one or more journalists, politicians or both to claim it as definitive or presumptive “proof” of the existence of “global warming” and the urgent need to combat it.

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Turning the Tables? Group Challenges Domestic Surveillance by Tracking Obama

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Photo Credit: Tumblr

Photo Credit: Tumblr

In response to what some consider over-reaching surveillance programs conducted by U.S. intelligence agencies, which have been shown to collect thousands of communications with no terror connection, a group decrying the privacy implications of these programs is turning the tables on the president.

According to the Creator’s Project, “Where is Obama” pinpoints the location of President Barack Obama using what the group calls the ”Crowd-Sourced Positioning System, or CSPS.”

“The position of the president is a state secret. The White House website shows only Barack Obama’s schedule from the current day, but never dates beyond. The accuracy of this information is controversial. Obama, on the other hand, knows your entire calendar,” the creators Kim Asendorf, Ole Fach, Kyle McDonald and Jonas Lund said of the project. “Every person in the world can now participate in the supervision of the President.”

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