Mayor Bloomberg Wants to Spend $20 Billion to Protect NYC from Global Warming

/2 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Newsmax

Mayor Michael Bloomberg proposed a $20 billion plan on Tuesday to transform how New York City girds itself for storms and global warming, including removable flood walls that would be set up for much of lower Manhattan, a 15-to-20-foot levee to guard part of Staten Island, and a system of gates and levees to protect a Brooklyn creek.

Bloomberg’s proposals also include building dunes in Staten Island and the Rockaways, firming up the shoreline with bulkheads in various neighborhoods and considering building a levee and a new “Seaport City” development at the South Street Seaport that would echo nearby Battery Park City.

The mayor also is suggesting giving $1.2 billion in grants to property owners to flood-proof their buildings and $50 million to nursing homes to improve theirs; making hospitals even in rarely flooded areas to upgrade their pumps and electrical equipment; and expanding beaches and marshes.

“This plan is incredibly ambitious,” Bloomberg said in a speech at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, acknowledging that much of the work would extend beyond the end of his term this year. “This is urgent work, and it must begin now.

“Piece by piece, over many years and even decades, we can build a city that’s capable of preparing better, withstanding more and overcoming anything.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Debbie Wasserman Schultz: NSA Leaker ‘Should be Extradited, Arrested, and Prosecuted’

/4 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: AP

Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz said the National Security Agency surveillance leaker should be extradited and prosecuted, CBS Miami reported Tuesday.

According to the local news outlet, the Florida Democratic congresswoman said that while she did not vote for the programs, she believes that the leaker, Edward Snowden should be prosecuted for revealing details about the Prism surveillance program.

“He should be extradited, arrested, and prosecuted,” CBS Miami quoted Wasserman Schultz. “That’s exactly what should happen to him because he violated the law. He violated America’s trust. He jeopardized millions of Americans.”

Wasserman Schultz’ tough talk echoes other lawmakers including New York Republican Rep. Peter King and House Speaker John Boehner.

Read more from this story HERE.

Another Bombshell: Legendary Columbia Professor Never Heard of Obama

/71 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: The Blaze

My life has crossed paths with President Obama on multiple occasions. According to Obama, we were Columbia University classmates, both Pre Law and Political Science majors in the Class of ’83. I also ran against Obama in 2008 on the Libertarian Party Presidential ticket. What are the odds?

But something about “the Obama at Columbia story” has always bothered me. Earlier in the week… at The Blaze I wrote about having just returned from New York, where I attended my 30th Columbia University reunion. I celebrated with my esteemed classmates. Everyone except Barack Obama. As usual- he wasn’t there. Not a trace. Not a video greeting. Not a letter. I could not find any classmates who knew him.

I called Obama “the Ghost of Columbia University.” I pointed out (as I’ve said in the media for many years now) that Obama may have been registered at Columbia, may have graduated from Columbia, but he was rarely (if ever) seen for the two years in-between. It’s a strange, mysterious and frightening story.

Is he the real-life “Manchurian Candidate?” What explains Obama having just enough skeletal proof that he was there (one photo, one roommate, one professor, one friend)…but never seen in a class, never on anyone’s radar screen, almost invisible. A total 2-year blackout. It’s like a story straight out of a novel about the CIA or KGB. He graduated Columbia, but it’s almost as if he never went there.

To make matters more mysterious, Obama’s college records are sealed. He’s had plenty of opportunities to authorize the release, to clear the air. He has never chosen to do so. But why? What has he got to hide? Funny enough Obama has never had a problem ripping open the sealed records of his political opponents. Every step of his career Obama has beaten his opponents by having sealed documents just happen to be publicly exposed by anonymous sources. But not Obama. His records are always unavailable (and never leaked). Obama always seems to have powerful forces on his side.

Did he attend Columbia as a foreign student? That was the educated guess I made in my appearance on “Hannity” on Fox News a year ago. The only photo of Obama from his Columbia days was in his off-campus apartment with a roommate described by USA Today as a Pakistani national, pot smoker, and cocaine abuser. If you’re a foreign student, you live in housing off-campus with other foreign students.

That would also explain how he transferred to Columbia. Transferring into an Ivy League school is all but impossible. I did a little digging and found out only 3 transfer students in all of America were accepted into Columbia in the past academic year. Three students out of 315 million Americans. Yet those who knew Obama at Occidental called him a pot smoker and partier who rarely attended class. You’re telling me that a poor student, with that record, at an average college, was accepted for transfer into prestigious Columbia University? Only if he was an exotic Indonesian foreign student transferring into a college that desperately wanted to claim an ethnically and globally diverse student body.

Still that might explain how Obama got into Columbia. But where was he for those two years? My gut instincts say something is wrong with “the Obama at Columbia story.” Very wrong. Rancid.

But until now, I was the only one publicly voicing my suspicions. That just changed in a big way. Meet Professor Henry Graff, perhaps the most legendary and honored professor ever at Columbia University. He was THE American History and Diplomatic History professor at Columbia for 46 years. And he is more emphatic than yours truly that there are no Obama footprints at Columbia.

I was put on Professor Graff’s trail by another Columbia classmate, skeptical about Obama’s story. He told me that Professor Graff had been the speaker for the Class of ’53 last weekend at Columbia. My friend was watching Graff answer questions from the crowd when he was asked about Obama at Columbia. Graff said, “I have my doubts he ever went here.”

I did some digging and located Graff’s home phone number. I called him yesterday. Now retired, he was delighted to hear from me. He agreed to go on the record about Obama. Unlike Obama, Professor Graff clearly remembered me. He was thrilled to hear from his former student. I was in several of Graff’s classes and he remembered me like it was yesterday. He sounded great- like he hasn’t lost any of his trademark sharpness in 30 years since we last met.

I was honored to learn that this legendary historian has been following my political career for many years. But he had no such cheery things to say about the President. Graff said, “I taught at Columbia for 46 years. I taught every significant American politician that ever studied at Columbia. I know them all. I’m proud of them all. Between American History and Diplomatic History, one way or another, they all had to come through my classes. Not Obama. I never had a student with that name in any of my classes. I never met him, never saw him, never heard of him.”

Even more importantly, Professor Graff knew the other history and political science professors. “None of the other Columbia professors knew him either” said Graff.

Graff concluded our interview by saying, “I’m very upset by the whole story. I am angry when I hear Obama called ‘the first President of the United States from Columbia University.’ I don’t consider him a Columbia student. I have no idea what he did on the Columbia campus. No one knows him.”

There is something wrong with Obama’s story- I know that. Many of my classmates at last weekend’s 30th reunion knew that. Now the most beloved Professor ever at Columbia joins us in publicly questioning the story. Obama is either the ghost of Columbia, or the perfect Manchurian candidate. But something smells rotten at Columbia.

_____________________________________________________

Re-posted with permission from author Wayne Allyn Root. Wayne Root is a Capitalist Evangelist, entrepreneur, and Libertarian-conservative Republican. Wayne began his career as a sports handicapper, and has gone on to host and appear on many of the biggest television and radio news networks including: FOX News Channel, FOX Business Network, CNBC, and radio shows like Glenn Beck, Michael Savage, Jerry Doyle and Mancow Muller. He is a former Libertarian vice presidential nominee. Wayne’s latest book is out on April 15, 2013: “The Ultimate Obama Survival Guide: Secrets to Protecting Your Family, Your Finances, and Your Freedom.”

Leaker of NSA Info Disappears, Americans Flock to Legal Defense Fund

/6 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Reuters

A contractor at the National Security Agency who leaked details of top-secret U.S. surveillance programs dropped out of sight in Hong Kong on Monday ahead of a likely push by the U.S. government to have him sent back to the United States to face charges.

Edward Snowden, 29, who provided the information for published reports last week that revealed the NSA’s broad monitoring of phone call and Internet data from large companies such as Google and Facebook, checked out of his Hong Kong hotel hours after going public in a video released on Sunday by Britain’s Guardian newspaper.

The disclosures by Snowden have sent shockwaves across Washington, where several lawmakers called on Monday for the extradition and prosecution of the ex-CIA employee who was behind one of the most significant security leaks in U.S. history.

There were some signs, however, that Snowden’s stance against government surveillance and his defense of personal privacy was resonating with at least some Americans.

Supporters flocked to Snowden’s aid on the Internet – more than 25,000 people signed an online petition urging Obama to pardon Snowden even before he has been charged. A separate effort on Facebook to raise funds for Snowden’s legal defense netted nearly $8,000 in just a few hours.

Read more from this story HERE.

IRS Buying Spying Equipment: Covert Cameras in Coffee Trays, Plants

/3 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: AP

The IRS, currently in the midst of scandals involving the targeting of conservative groups and lavish taxpayer-funded conferences, is ordering surveillance equipment that includes hidden cameras in coffee trays, plants and clock radios.

The IRS wants to secure the surveillance equipment quickly – it posted a solicitation on June 6 and is looking to close the deal by Monday, June 10. The agency already has a company lined up for the order but is not commenting on the details.

“The Internal Revenue Service intends to award a Purchase Order to an undisclosed Corporation,” reads the solicitation.

“The following descriptions are vague due to the use and nature of the items,” it says.

“If you feel that you can provide the following equipment, please respond to this email no later than 4 days after the solicitation date,” the IRS said.

Read more from this story HERE.

Support Grows for Petition to Pardon NSA Leaker Edward Snowden

/4 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: AP Photo/The Guardian

A petition for President Obama to pardon Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who admitted leaking information on classified government surveillance programs, had collected more than 18,000 signatures on the White House’s website shortly after 1 p.m. Monday.

“Edward Snowden is a national hero and should be immediately issued a full, free and absolute pardon for any crimes he has committed or may have committed related to blowing the whistle on secret NSA surveillance programs,” states the petition, which was created on Sunday.

Mr. Snowden, who is seeking asylum in Hong Kong, said he leaked the information to Britain’s Guardian newspaper because he wanted the public to know the scope of the U.S. government’s surveillance programs. In the past week, he has revealed the government’s collection of millions of citizens’ phone records and a top-secret program known as Prism that monitors data from top Internet companies.

Read more from this story HERE.

Establishment Corruption: The Nevada GOP Central Committee elected its chair to the House in 2011

/2 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Tea Party 911

Since 1789, the U.S. House of Representatives, the Peoples’ House, has been elected directly by the citizens. In Nevada, that’s no longer true. In September 2011, the party elite of the Nevada State GOP Central Committee changed We the People to We the Party, and set a dangerous precedent by appointing its own chairman to represent the 2nd Congressional District of Nevada.

Suitably, the story of how it happened begins with infidelity.

The Beginning

On May 3, 2011, U.S. Senator John Eric Ensign (R. NV.), first elected to the Senate in 2000, formally vacated his office just as the Senate Ethics Committee had begun to investigate his 2007-2008 extramarital affair with a married, female staff member.

Earlier, on April 25, 2011, Nevada Republican Governor Brian Sandoval appointed third-term U.S. Congressman Dean Heller (R. 2nd CD.) to complete Ensign’s Senate term. Sandoval set September 13, 2011 as the date for a special election to fill Heller’s now vacant House seat.

At the time, Nevada had three CDs. The map shows how the 2nd CD encompassed a majority of the land mass of Nevada, while the other two CDs covered the more densely populated urban areas.

The pending special election surfaced a generous list of candidates from both major political parties, and triggered two court battles between Nevada’s Democrat and Republican Parties.

The GOP Candidates

On Monday, May 9, 2011, Mark Amodei, Chairman of the Nevada State GOP, announced his candidacy for the 2nd CD.

For 14 years, Amodei had represented Carson City, in the Nevada Assembly (1996-1998) and in theNevada Senate (1998-2010). He’d been a Republican candidate in the 2010 U.S. Senate race, but withdrew before the GOP Primary Election Day. Sharron Angle won the GOP primary (with 40.1%) against Sue Lowden (26.1%) and Danny Tarkanian (23.3%). Angle was defeated by Sen. Harry Reid in the General election.

By the time Amodei entered the 2nd CD race, several other GOP candidates had already announced – most notably: Angle; former USS Cole Commander Kirk Lippold; and State Senator Greg Brower. All three sought support from Republican conservatives, and Tea Party organizations. Amodei did not have a reputation for being particularly conservative.

The entry of Amodei into the GOP race prompted speculation concerning back-story political motives offered by local and national media sources, including these:

Las Vegas Review-Journal, May 9, 2011: “GOP leaders who fear a victory by a Democrat or Angle — an outsider who enjoys a tea party following — have sued Secretary of State Ross Miller, a Democrat who set the free-for-all special election rules. Republicans contend that because there’s no primary, the parties’ central committees should nominate one candidate each.”

Los Angeles Times, April 29, 2011: “Sharron Angle, a former Reno assemblywoman and ‘tea party’ favorite, carried the [2nd] district in her losing 2010 campaign against Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, and figures in much of the intrigue surrounding the special election…Angle has never gotten on well with establishment Republicans, and many were infuriated by her bumbling campaign against Reid. They hope that Miller will allow party leaders to pick their nominee, which would almost certainly mean that Angle would be passed over, perhaps in favor of Lt. Gov. Brian Krolicki, State Sen. Greg Brower of Reno, or Mark Amodei, the state GOP chairman. On the Democratic side, party leaders are hoping to coalesce behind a single candidate, with State Treasurer Kate Marshall an early favorite.”

The Court Battles

At the outset, it was unclear as to how Nevada would conduct its first ever special election. Two courts, first the Carson City District Court and then the Supreme Court of Nevada (SCONv), were called on by the Democrat and Republican Parties to interpret the application of, primarily, two Nevada election statutes.

The key issue, in the minds of the party officials on both sides, was whether or not both parties would run a single candidate or multiple candidates in the special election. The Democrats wanted multiple candidates for each party. The Republicans wanted one.

On May, 2, 2011, Nevada Democrat Secretary of State Ross Miller interpreted the NRS (Nevada Revised Statues) to indicate that the special election would be an open contest wherein multiple names would appear on each major party’s list of candidates on the Election Day ballot.

The Nevada Republican Party, chaired by Amodei, sued Nevada Secretary of State Miller claiming that a nominating process that resulted in just one candidate per party, exercised through the central committee of each party, was the proper interpretation of Nevada’s election statutes.

In the midst of the debate that followed, the more fundamental issue of whether or not the Nevada election statues cited were being properly used went unaddressed by both parties in the law suit, as the court’s attention focused on NRS 304.240 and 293.165.

NRS 304.240: “Procedure for filling vacancy in major or minor political party nomination or nonpartisan nomination. 1. If the Governor issues an election proclamation calling for a special election pursuant to NRS 304.230, no primary election may be held.”

This law, bypassing the primary process, was passed in response to the 9/11 attack and was intended to define the process to fill a vacancy caused by a “catastrophic” cause resulting in the vacancy of at least one-fourth of the U.S. House of Representatives. District Judge James Todd Russell ignored the legislative intent by, first, not ruling that the Governor couldn’t make such a proclamation because there was no catastrophe, and, second, by disallowing a primary. The only time the primary process is to be removed is when a catastrophe has caused the vacancy of at least a quarter of the U.S. House of Representatives.

To be specific: In the NRS, “catastrophe” is defined as “a natural or man-made event that causes, by death or disappearance, a vacancy in at least one-fourth of the total number of offices in the United States House of Representatives, including any number of offices representing the State of Nevada, or at least one-half of the total number of offices representing the State of Nevada.” Obviously, no catastrophe was involved in this case.

That begs the question: Why did Governor Sandoval call for a special election in the absence of a “catastrophe”? (Might the intent have been to assure that the candidate most favorable to the Nevada GOP was selected?) In 2004, upon the recommendation of Senator Harry Reid (D. NV.), Sandoval was nominated by President George W. Bush to the bench of the United States District Court for the District of Nevada. The Governor surely would have been aware of the intent of the NRS 304.230.

NRS 293.165: “Procedure for filling vacancy in major or minor political party nomination or nonpartisan nomination. 1. Except as otherwise provided in NRS 293.166, a vacancy occurring in a major or minor political party nomination for a partisan office may be filled by a candidate designated by the party central committee of the county or State, as the case may be, of the major political party or by the executive committee of the minor political party subject to the provisions of subsections 4 and 5.” (Subsections 4 and 5 refer to calendar matters.)

This statute pertains to a vacancy in the nomination that occurs after a primary-elected party nominee drops out, or dies. In those cases, so that the party is not bereft of a candidate on Election Day, the party central committee may select a new nominee to run in the general election. In the 2nd CD case there was no need to fill the office before the 2012 election when a primary would have routinely occurred before the general election.

Continued in Part 2: The Nevada GOP Central Committee elected its chair to the House in 2011 (Part 2)

_______________________________________________________________

Since 2007, Lee Cary has written hundreds of articles and blogs for several conservative websites, including the American Thinker and Breitbart’s Big Journalism & Big Government (as Archy Cary), been quoted on national television (Sean Hannity) and on nationally syndicated radio (Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin). His articles are cited in Jerome Corsi’s The Obama Nation and in Levin’s Liberty and Tyranny. Cary now writes for the Texas-based site teaparty911.com.

Catholic Archbishop: Wake Up! Religious Liberty Under Attack in USA

/3 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: AP Photo/Matt Rourke

Roman Catholic Archbishop Charles J. Chaput is calling on Americans to wake up and recognize that the Founding Fathers’ vision of religious freedom is now threatened by the federal government.

“The day when Americans could take the Founders’ understanding of religious freedom as a given is over,” said the archbishop. “We need to wake up.”

Chaput, who leads the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia, pointed to Obamacare’s sterilization-contraception-abortifacient regulation as one example. The regulation, issued by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, requires almost all health-care plans in the United States to provide coverage for sterilizations, artificial contraceptives and abortion-inducing drugs to all women of reproductive age–even if the person or employer providing the insurance coverage and even if the female beneficiaries themselves do not want the coverage and believe it is morally wrong and violates their religious beliefs.

“[T]he HHS mandate can only be understood as a form of coercion,” the archbishop wrote in a recent column posted on the website of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. The column is entitled, “Religious Freedom and the Need to Wake Up.”

Last year, the Catholic bishops of the United States unanimously approved a statement describing the HHS regulation as an “unjust and illegal mandate.” The unanimous bishops said the regulation not only violated the religious freedom of religious institutions but also the “personal civil rights” of individual Americans who will be forced to comply with it either as employers or employees.

Read more from this story HERE.

Are Federal Employees Now Involved in a Massive Insider Trading Scandal?

/1 Comment/in , /by

Photo Credit: Joshua Roberts/Bloomberg

Federal employees were given advance notice of an April 1 Medicare decision worth billions of dollars to private insurers. And in the weeks before the decision was officially announced, shares in those firms spiked, the Washington Post reports.

Naturally, the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission suspect Wall Street investors and fed workers engaged in insider trading.

The April 1 decision was about increasing funding to Medicare Advantage by $8 billion

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said last week that his office “reviewed the e-mail records of employees at the Department of Health and Human Services and found that 436 of them had early access to the Medicare decision as much as two weeks before it was made public,” the report notes.

“The number of federal employees with advance knowledge is surely higher; the figures Grassley’s staff compiled did not include people at the White House’s Office of Management and Budget who also saw the information,” the report adds.

Read more from this story HERE.

Bill O’Reilly’s ‘Killing Kennedy’ Selects Its’ Lee Harvey Oswald and Will Begin Filming

/0 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Irish Central

In a press release this afternoon, National Geographic announced, the final major actor has been signed to round out the cast of Killing Kennedy. Actor Will Rothhaar will play the volatile former Marine and assassin Lee Harvey Oswald.

Rothhaar is the final of the four major players in the film to be announced. He joins Rob Lowe (John F. Kennedy), Ginnifer Goodwin (Jacqueline Kennedy) and Michelle Trachtenberg (Marina Oswald).

The upcoming two-hour original factual drama, Killing Kennedy by Scott Free Productions, will premiere on the National Geographic Channel later this year. It is timed to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy; it will air in the United States and globally in 171 countries and 38 languages.

According to National Geographic:

“Based on the best-selling book by Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard, Killing Kennedy begins in 1959, at major turning points for both the future president and his assassin. John F. Kennedy is in Washington, D.C., announcing his presidential candidacy, while Lee Harvey Oswald finds himself in the U.S. embassy in Moscow, renouncing his U.S. citizenship. These two events start both men — one a member of one of the United States’ most wealthy and powerful families, the other a disillusioned former Marine and Marxist — on a cataclysmic track that would alter the course of history. Throughout we see their highs and lows, culminating in not one but two shocking deaths that stunned the nation.”

Bill O’Reilly’s mastery of storytelling artfully woven into his fact based books, is proving to be a goldmine for the Fox News Anchor. His last book, Killing Lincoln, was a blockbuster best seller and made into a movie as well.

O’Reilly has already announced he is working on a third “killing book,” this one titled “Killing Jesus.” National Geographic Channel has already confirmed it is set to adapt this third partnering with the author and Ridley Scott’s, Scott Free Productions on its network.

Production on Killing Kennedy begins this week in Richmond, Va.

_____________________________________

Ed Farnan is the conservative columnist at IrishCentral, where he has been writing on the need for energy independence, strong self defense, secure borders, 2nd amendment, smaller government and many other issues. His articles appear in many publications throughout the USA and world. He has been a guest on Fox News and a regular guest on radio stations in the US and Europe.