ATF Seeks 'Massive' Database of Personal Info: 'Assets, Relatives, Associates and More'

/26 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Gamma-Ray Productions

A recent solicitation from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) reveals that the agency is seeking a “massive” online database capable of pulling up individuals’ personal information, connections and associates.

On March 28, ATF posted the notice on FedBizOpps.gov, entitled “Investigative System.” The solicitation was updated on April 5 with a few minor changes.

The document says that the system will be utilized by staff “to provide rapid searches on various entities for example; names, telephone numbers, utility data and reverse phone look-ups, as a means to assist with investigations, and background research on people, assets and businesses.”

The system is described as a “massive online data repository system that contains a wide variety of data sources both historically and current that can be utilized in support of investigations and backgrounds.”

The overview of the solicitation states:

Staff will utilize “a number of internal databases as well as external sources to provide timely and relevant information and intelligence products to law enforcement agencies at the federal, state and local levels.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Politically Correct AP Strikes Again!

/5 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: WND

For the second time in just days, Associated Press has redefined a word for its reporters that adopts a politically correct position, this time pleasing Muslim activists with a decision to ban the use of “Islamist” as a synonym for “fighters” and/or “militants.”

Politico’s Dylan Byers noted the change by AP was made “after much prodding from the Council on American-Islamic Relations.”

“CAIR had complained late last year that the AP’s old definition of ‘Islamist’ – ‘a supporter of government in accord with the laws of Islam [and] who views the Quran as a political model’ – had become a pejorative shorthand for extremist Muslims,” Byers wrote.

The [AP] stylebook’s entry for Islamist now reads …. ‘An advocate or supporter of a political movement that favors reordering government and society in accordance with laws prescribed by Islam. Do not use as a synonym for Islamic fighters, militants, extremists or radicals, who may or may not be Islamists.”

The move followed by just days the AP’s decision that it would redefine the American lexicon to discontinue references to “illegal immigrants.” That move widely drew guffaws, with “Tonight Show” host Jay Leno joking that it was being replaced with “undocumented Democrat.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Democrats Recruiting Trojan Horse Candidates for 2014

/2 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Win McNamee

Democratic Party officials believe that Kevin Strouse is exactly the kind of candidate who can help them retake the House next year. He’s a smart, young former Army Ranger — good qualities for any aspiring politician. But what party leaders really like is that Strouse doesn’t have particularly strong views on the country’s hottest issues.

Immigration? Tax policy? “Certainly I have a lot of research to do,” Strouse acknowledged in an interview Thursday as he announced his candidacy in a suburban Philadelphia House district.

Strouse’s candidacy reflects an emerging Democratic strategy for taking back the House from Republicans after the tea party takeover of 2010.

The best way to defeat the conservative, ideologically driven GOP, Democrats say, is to field non-ideological “problem solvers” who can profit from the fed-up-with-partisanship mood of some suburban areas. These districts will offer some of the few competitive House campaigns in the country.

“You pick your strategic high ground and force them to fight on it,” said Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.), who as chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has begun a particularly early effort at traveling the country and working the phones to lure Strouse and others like him into races.

Read more from this story HERE.

Massive Corporate Money to be Dumped in 2014 Races

/2 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: AP

Operating with few rules and limited oversight, outside groups spent a record $1 billion to influence last year’s election.

Politicians of all persuasions griped about the meddling. But few are working to change laws that ushered in an unprecedented flood of money made possible by a 2010 Supreme Court ruling that erased years of campaign finance law.

Instead, political leaders and donors from both parties are preparing for the flow of outside money to intensify. New groups have formed and others are shaping plans to come back bigger and smarter ahead of the 2014 congressional elections and the 2016 presidential race.

What laws do remain could become even looser as the Supreme Court considers another high-profile decision.

“The unregulated system that we seem to be headed in will make Watergate look like a bad soap opera,” said Robert Zimmerman, a member of the Democratic National Committee’s national finance team who helped raise as much as $500,000 for President Barack Obama’s re-election effort.

Read more from this story HERE.

Governor Jerry Brown Heads to China to Beg for California Bail-Out

/4 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Washington Times

California Gov. Jerry Brown has designs on building some of the most expensive public works projects in the nation and wants to keep the state moving forward in its slow recovery from the recession.

Where better to go searching for the money to further those interests than the world’s second largest economy and a country that has piles of cash to invest around the globe?

The governor of the most populous U.S. state heads to China next week to begin a weeklong trade mission that he hopes will produce investments on both sides of the Pacific. Brown will lead a delegation of business leaders in search of what he calls “plenty of billions.”

“They’ve got $400 billion or $500 billion they’re going to invest abroad, so California’s got to get a piece of that,” Brown said in an interview last week ahead of his seven-day trip to China.

The governor and business leaders accompanying him are trying to rebuild the state’s official relationship with China after the state closed its two trade offices and others around the world a decade ago in a cost-cutting move. California finds itself playing catch-up to other states that have had a vigorous presence in China for years.

Read more from this story HERE.

Politico Story Falsely Portrays Democratic Front Group as Hunters Backing Gun Control

/4 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: AP

The liberal media will do anything to pressure lawmakers to support President Obama’s gun-control agenda. Politico published a story Wednesday with this headline: “Hunting Group Wants Background Checks.” The story gave the false impression that the millions of hunters in the U.S. support Mr. Obama’s push for “universal background checks.”

That is way off target. In fact, 31 well-known hunting and conservation groups sent a letter to Capitol Hill Thursday expressing opposition to intrusion by the federal government into private firearm transfers.

Politico only cites one small group in its story, Bull Moose Sportsmen, which claims 5,000 members. The story gives no context for the size of this group in relation to other hunting advocacy groups, nor its prominence in the community. The single poll cited in the Politico story is one commissioned by the group itself and claims 72 percent of hunters support “criminal background checks with some exceptions.”

None of the major hunting groups which represent the millions of law-abiding sportsmen was mentioned, nor the polling of those members.

In fact, Bull Moose Sportsmen is a fringe organization run by Democratic activists that has been rejected from membership into the major gun and hunting groups’ umbrella organization because it refuses to reveal its funding sources.

Read more from this story HERE.

Boomtown 2: Taxpayers Have Spent $15 Trillion on 'War on Poverty'

/3 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Breitbart

Since President Lyndon Baines Johnson declared “war on poverty,” U.S. taxpayers have spent $15 trillion on so-called anti-poverty programs—a figure slightly less than the national debt.

Sean Hannity, Government Accountability Institute President Peter Schweizer, and Breitbart News Executive Chairman Stephen K. Bannon explored the explosive growth of the Supplement Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) in a one-hour Fox News special tonight titled “Boomtown 2: The Business of Food Stamps.”

In 1969, just 2.8 million Americans received food stamps. Today, over 47 million Americans are on food stamps. The Fox News special explained that one contributing factor to the massive expansion of the food stamp program is the crony capitalism that has cropped up around the anti-poverty program.

Soda makers, for example, bag an estimated $4 billion a year in taxpayer money through the food stamp program. Efforts to kill the so-called “soda subsidy” have been met with fierce resistance and lobbying by the soda industry.

In Florida, State Senator Ronda Storms (R-Valrico) introduced a bill last year that would keep taxpayer-funded SNAP benefits from being spent on non-essential items like sodas, candy, chips, ice cream, and other junk foods.

Read more from this story HERE.

Gay Marriage Champion Bill O'Reilly Given $10,000 Challenge to Fairly Debate Issue

/5 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: futureatlas.com

A ministry is putting up $10,000 to challenge Fox News host Bill O’Reilly, regularly the top-rated show on cable television, for a debate over his description of Christians who follow the Bible as, well, “Bible-thumpers.”

Rev. Bill Keller, whose has created the Live Prayer presence on the web, and previously has been a guest on Fox shows such as O’Reilly, Sean Hannity and Neal Cavuto, told WND he’s putting up $10,000 and challenging O’Reilly to do the same.

Then there would be a six-minute debate over homosexual “marriage” on O’Reilly’s show – O’Reilly talking for three minutes, then Keller making the biblical argument against homosexual “marriage” for three minutes. O’Reilly’s audience would determine the winner and the sum would go to a charity of that person’s choice.

“O’Reilly says that those who support God’s plan for marriage lose the argument because all they can do is ‘thump the Bible.’ Let him put his money where his mouth is. We will each put up $10,000 to the charity of our choice, he can make his case for gay marriage, and I will ONLY use the Bible to make the case for traditional marriage,” Keller said.

O’Reilly had originally said on his own program,””The compelling argument is on the side of homosexuals. That’s where the compelling argument is. ‘We’re Americans. We just want to be treated like everybody else.’ That is a compelling argument, and to deny that, you gotta have a very strong argument on the other side. And the other side hasn’t been able to do anything but thump the Bible.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Colorado Undersheriff Claims DHS, State Police are Targeting Christians

/60 Comments/in , /by

In the following letter posted at Restatements and republished by a number of news outlets throughout the country, an undersheriff in Colorado warns that he attended a law enforcement seminar where an officer funded by the Department of Homeland Security warned the group of Colorado law enforcers to be on the lookout for Christians, especially those who take the Bible literally. Here’s the letter:

From: rtrowbridge@[redacted]
To: forknown@[redacted]
Subject: CSP Training
Date: Fri, 5 Apr 2013 10:30:22 -0600

On April 1, 2013 I attended training in La Junta, Colorado hosted by the Colorado State Patrol (CSP). The training was from 12:00 pm to 4:00 pm and covered two topics, Sovereign Citizens, and Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs. I was pretty familiar with motorcycle gangs but since we often deal with the so-called sovereign citizen groups I was interested to see what they had to say. The group consisted of police officers, deputies, and CSP troopers. There were about 20 people in attendance.

Trooper Joe Kluczynski taught a 2-hour section on sovereign citizens. Kluczynski spent most of his two hours focusing on how, in his view and apparently the view of Homeland Security, people turn to the sovereign citizen movement. Kluczynski started off by saying there are probably some sovereign citizens in this room and gave a generalized list of those groups that have sovereign citizen views. Among those groups, Kluczynski had listed, were those who believe America was founded on godly principles, Christians who take the Bible literally, and “fundamentalists”. Kluczynski did not explain what he meant by “fundamentalists” but from the context it was clear he was referring again to those who took the Bible literally or “too seriously.”

While Kluczynski emphasized that sovereign citizens have a right to their beliefs, he was clearly teaching that the groups he had listed should be watched by law enforcement and should be treated with caution because of their potential to assault law enforcement. Kluczynski explained why he believed these groups were dangerous saying they were angry over the election of a black president.
When someone in the group suggested the failing economy was probably much more to blame, Kluczynski intimated that those who are not going along with the changes in America will need to be controlled by law enforcement. Kluczynski even later questioned some of the troopers present if they were willing and prepared to confiscate “illegal” weapons if ordered to.

Kluczynski’s assignment with the CSP was an Analyst for the Colorado Information Analysis Center, (CIAC). CIAC is funded by Homeland Security funds and run by the CSP. Kluczynski said he gets his information from the Department of Homeland Security. Kluczynski said he was leaving the CSP at the end of that week (March 29, 2013) to begin his new career with Homeland Security. I thought he was perfect for the job.

Ron Trowbridge
Undersheriff
Prowers County Sheriff’s Office

Read more from this story HERE.

US Military: 'Catholics, Evangelical Christians' are Extremists

/13 Comments/in , /by

The Defense Department came under fire Thursday for a U.S. Army Reserve presentation that classified Catholics and Evangelical Protestants as “extremist” religious groups alongside al Qaeda and the Ku Klux Klan.

The presentation detailed a number of extremist threats within the U.S. military, including white supremacist groups, street gangs, and religious sects.

The presentation identified seventeen religious organizations in a slide titled “religious extremism.” They include al Qaeda, Hamas, the Filipino separatist group Abu Sayyaf, and the Ku Klux Klan, which the slide identifies as a Christian organization.

“Religious extremism is not limited to any single religion, ethnic group, or region of the world,” the slide explains, in language that closely resembles the text of a Wikipedia page on “extremism.”

While outfits such as al Qaeda and the KKK are explicitly violent, the presentation also lists Catholicism and evangelical Protestantism as extremist groups.

Read more from this story HERE.