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.

FBI Under Pressure to Explain Drone Use, as Obama Names New Director

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Photo Credit: Fox News

Photo Credit: Fox News

As President Obama nominates a new FBI director, the bureau is coming under rising pressure from lawmakers to explain the limits of its recently disclosed drone fleet.

Civil liberties-minded senators on both sides of the aisle have fired off sharply worded letters and statements in recent days criticizing the FBI for deploying surveillance drones without clear guidance on how to protect privacy rights.

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., was the latest to scrutinize the bureau, sending a letter on Thursday to outgoing Director Robert Mueller asking a string of questions about his agency’s drone use.

“I am disturbed by the revelation that the FBI has unilaterally decided to begin using drone surveillance technology without a governance policy, and thus without the requisite assurances that the constitutional rights of Americans are being protected,” Paul wrote.

Read more from this story HERE.

Lawyers Eye NSA Data as Treasure Trove for Evidence in Murder, Divorce Cases

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NSAThe National Security Agency has spent years demanding that companies turn over their data. Now, the spy agency finds the shoe is on the other foot. A defendant in a Florida murder trial says telephone records collected by the NSA as part of its surveillance programs hold evidence that would help prove his innocence, and his lawyer has demanded that prosecutors produce those records. On Wednesday, the federal government filed a motion saying it would refuse, citing national security. But experts say the novel legal argument could encourage other lawyers to fight for access to the newly disclosed NSA surveillance database.

“What’s good for the goose is good for the gander, I guess,” said George Washington University privacy law expert Dan Solove. “In a way, it’s kind of ironic.”

Defendant Terrance Brown is accused of participating in the 2010 murder of a Brinks security truck driver. Brown maintains his innocence, and claims cellphone location records would show he wasn’t at the scene of the crime. Brown’s cellphone provider — MetroPCS — couldn’t produce those records during discovery because it had deleted the data already.

On seeing the story in the Guardian indicating that Verizon had been ordered to turn over millions of calling records to the NSA last month, Brown’s lawyer had a novel idea: Make the NSA produce the records…

“Relying on a June 5, 2013, Guardian newspaper article … Defendant Brown now suggests that the Government likely actually does possess the metadata relating to telephone calls made in July 2010 from the two numbers attributed to Defendant Brown,” wrote U.S. District Judge Robin Rosenbaum in an order demanding that the federal government respond to the request on June 10.

Read more from this story HERE.

Government Could Use Metadata to Map Your Every Move

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Photo Credit: Alex Garcia

Photo Credit: Alex Garcia

If you tweet a picture from your living room using your smartphone, you’re sharing far more than your new hairdo or the color of the wallpaper. You’re potentially revealing the exact coordinates of your house to anyone on the Internet.

The GPS location information embedded in a digital photo is an example of so-called metadata, a once-obscure technical term that’s become one of Washington’s hottest new buzzwords.

The word first sprang from the lips of pundits and politicians earlier this month, after reports disclosed that the government has been secretly accessing the telephone metadata of Verizon customers, as well as online videos, emails, photos and other data collected by nine Internet companies. President Barack Obama hastened to reassure Americans that “nobody is listening to your phone calls,” while other government officials likened the collection of metadata to reading information on the outside of an envelope, which doesn’t require a warrant.

But privacy experts warn that to those who know how to mine it, metadata discloses much more about us and our daily lives than the content of our communications.

Read more from this story HERE.

Liberals Can’t Stand Him, Either

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Photo Credit: Townhall

Photo Credit: Townhall

President Obama has gotten his fair share of verbal abuse from conservatives since his re-election. But now, even his own party is turning on him. On Thursday night, at the annual progressive conference Netroots Nation, leftists from across the country expressed their frustration with Obama and his slow progress in office.

Welcome to the U.S. legal system.

Some were disappointed that they hadn’t seen changes or consequences in the banking sector after the housing crisis. Some were upset that he’s failed to create a single job out of the one million he promised by the end of his second term. Some even voiced their distress over the NSA surveillance scandal and the government’s collection of private data.

In fact, CNN reported that it was difficult to find anyone who believed that the president has done enough to live up to the Democratic Party’s expectations for his presidency. CNN reporters found many of their questions about the president were met with shrugs and occasional eye rolls.

Read more from this story HERE.

Farm Bill Comes to Stunning Defeat in House

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Photo Credit: Breitbart

Photo Credit: Breitbart

While Americans have been understandably focused on important issues such as the Immigration Bill and the Obama administration scandals, on Thursday, by a vote of 195-234, the House defeated the nearly $1 trillion farm subsidy and food stamp bill–known collectively as “The Farm Bill,” in a searing rebuke to House leadership.

The Wall Street Journal refers to the shocking defeat of the farm legislation as a “revolt,” and describes how the House’s more conservative members who believed the bill spends too much money, including Paul Ryan and Jeb Hensarling, joined with Democrats who said the bill did not offer enough in entitlements to bring the legislation to its knees.

The WSJ states that the reason for the surprising defeat of the House farm bill was its “mind-boggling price tag–$740 billion for food stamps and $200 billion for farm payments” and other freebies. The taxpayer-funded farm payment subsidies have been shown to find their way into the pockets of wealthy farm owners, agribusiness lobbyists, and even members of Congress who vote on the bill.

While conservatives note that food stamps have grown to an $80 billion per year program, up by about 70% in less than five years, Democrats called the $2 billion in cuts and the addition of a work requirement in the legislation too severe.

Read more from this story HERE.