Hasan Says He Killed for the Taliban, Exposes Obama’s False Workplace Violence Claim

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The Army major on trial for murdering 13 at Ft. Hood in 2009 plans to argue that he acted in defense of the Taliban. So much for the administration calling the shootings “workplace violence.”

One of the great scandals of the Obama administration has been its shameful designation of the Nov. 5, 2009, rampage at the Army base in Killeen, Texas, by Maj. Nidal Hasan as “workplace violence.”

While Hasan continues to draw his pay, this designation has denied the dead and the survivors the benefits they would have been entitled to had the attack been properly labeled an act of terror.

One would expect that when a self-proclaimed “Soldier of Allah” shouting “Allahu Akhbar” opens fire on dozens of American citizens and soldiers, killing and maiming as many innocents as he can, it would have been called an act of terror…

The White House so far has not commented on Hasan’s stunning announcement that he will defend not only himself but also “the leadership of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, the Taliban.” In other words, he committed an act of terror on behalf of an enemy of the United States.

Read more from this story HERE.

Photo Credit: AP

House Votes to Limit Homeland Security’s Gun Ammunition Buys

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Photo Credit: M. Spencer Green

Lawmakers voted late Wednesday for limits on the amount of ammunition that can be purchased by the Department of Homeland Security.

The measure — a proposal to amend the DHS spending bill — came by way of Republican Rep. Mark Meadows and passed 234-192, The Associated Press reported. The amendment prohibits taxpayer dollars from being sent to DHS for ammunition buys unless the agency first sends a report to Congress detailing its previous like purchases.

The report must also include the agency’s past ammunition usages, AP reported.

Read more from this story HERE.

New York Times: Obama Has Lost All Credibility; Phone Surveillance Was Tipping Point for Gray Lady

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New York Times editorial board says administration has ‘lost all credibility’

By Fox News. The New York Times editorial board, which twice endorsed President Obama and has championed many planks of his agenda, on Thursday turned on the president over the government’s mass collection of phone data — saying the administration has “lost all credibility.”

The grey lady’s editorial section lately has shown frustration with the administration’s civil liberties record. It has criticized the escalation of the lethal drone program, and it lashed out after the Justice Department acknowledged seizing reporters’ phone records last month.

The report that the National Security Agency has been collecting phone records from millions of Verizon subscribers appeared to be the last straw.

An editorial published late Thursday said the administration was using the “same platitude” it uses in every case of overreach — that “terrorists are a real menace and you should just trust us.”

The editorial continued: “Those reassurances have never been persuasive — whether on secret warrants to scoop up a news agency’s phone records or secret orders to kill an American suspected of terrorism — especially coming from a president who once promised transparency and accountability. The administration has now lost all credibility.” Read more from this story HERE.

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New York Times Editorial: President Obama’s Dragnet

By The Editorial Board. Within hours of the disclosure that federal authorities routinely collect data on phone calls Americans make, regardless of whether they have any bearing on a counterterrorism investigation, the Obama administration issued the same platitude it has offered every time President Obama has been caught overreaching in the use of his powers: Terrorists are a real menace and you should just trust us to deal with them because we have internal mechanisms (that we are not going to tell you about) to make sure we do not violate your rights.

Those reassurances have never been persuasive — whether on secret warrants to scoop up a news agency’s phone records or secret orders to kill an American suspected of terrorism — especially coming from a president who once promised transparency and accountability.

The administration has now lost all credibility on this issue [Editor’s note: the New York Times altered this sentence by adding the words “on this issue” after the initial posting; see Mr. Howerton’s article below]. Mr. Obama is proving the truism that the executive branch will use any power it is given and very likely abuse it. That is one reason we have long argued that the Patriot Act, enacted in the heat of fear after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks by members of Congress who mostly had not even read it, was reckless in its assignment of unnecessary and overbroad surveillance powers.

Based on an article in The Guardian published Wednesday night, we now know that the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National Security Agency used the Patriot Act to obtain a secret warrant to compel Verizon’s business services division to turn over data on every single call that went through its system. We know that this particular order was a routine extension of surveillance that has been going on for years, and it seems very likely that it extends beyond Verizon’s business division. Read more from this story HERE.

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Hannity Slams the New York Times for quietly altering it’s scathing Obama editorial

By Jason Howerton. The New York Times created a stir on Thursday when it published a scathing editorial, slamming the Obama administration for its drastic domestic surveillance efforts. The “administration has lost all credibility,” it read.

But it was only a few hours before the Times quietly altered that harsh statement, adding the words “on this issue.” Though a small change, it completely changes the meaning of the sentence…

Fox News host Sean Hannity caught the sneaky edit and slammed the publication for once again caving to protect President Obama. Read more from this story HERE.

The Face of Obamacare Failure: John Edwards Will Resume Suing Medical Providers

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Photo Credit: Irish Central

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, famously said on the eve of the vote for Obamacare: “To find out what’s in the bill, we’ll have to pass the bill”

Well Ms Pelosi, we know what is not in the bill: Any real attempt to get the legal industry’s snouts out of the country’s multi hundred billion dollar medical care system. Because of this and other failures to reform skyrocketing costs of healthcare, Americans are starting to reject Obamacare. See story

The trial lawyer lobby, which is a stalwart supporter and funder of the Democrat party, made sure no real tort reform would be contained in Obamacare. The Heritage Foundation wrote a revealing article on this unnecessary burden by tort lawyers…and the fear of tort lawyers who increase the cost of healthcare by at least 200 billion per year See article

One of the highest profile lawyers who has preyed on the healthcare industry in the past, is Democrat Senator and presidential contender John Edwards. Yesterday Edwards announced he is opening up his law practice to resume his lucrative career of suing healthcare, after taking a hiatus for his political ambitions. See USA Today

After suffering national scandal for an affair and an out of wedlock child while his wife was suffering from cancer, Edwards evidently missed the percs the income from his malpractice lawsuits brought him in the past…Such as a 30,000 square foot mansion and all of the attendant wealth that lifestyle brings.

At the core of John Edwards extravagant wealth and lifestyle, has been his ability to successfully convince gullible juries that a medical misstep, an honest mistake, or really nothing at all, by a doctor or hospital, is enough to reward his plaintiffs tens of millions of dollars.

Edwards’s courtroom antics went as far as to dramatize the events at birth by speaking to jurors as if he were the unborn baby, begging for help, begging to be let out of the womb. One of those cases saw him hit the jackpot for 23 million See Washington Times story

But the dirty little secret behind Edwards and others like him, is that all Americans subsidize their wealth.

Of course tort lawyers like John Edwards can claim they do a lot of good by weeding out incompetence and dangerous medical practices. But many in the healthcare industry dispute that and claim they do great harm to healthcare.

In reality, if the designers of Obamacare were serious about checking runaway healthcare costs, their main target would have been the revamp of the medical malpractice tort system at all levels.

Easy to understand changes could have been incorporated into Obamacare to stop the abuse of the system; such as creating medical/legal boards with the ability to suspend healthcare providers personally found to be incompetent or dangerous. These same boards could be responsible for awarding damages to victims of medical malpractice, without going through lawsuits and the resultant out of proportion judgments.

Make it easier to fine/imprison CEO’s and directors of pharmaceutical, medical device companies who market products that harm the public, or do not do the job they promise. Make responsibility and punishment personal, instead of impersonal.

With a few changes and safeguards in place, malpractice suits could easily be capped by what regional medical/legal boards decide to be the real costs of damages.

But none of these reforms are in Obamacare and lawyers like John Edwards will take advantage of that fact, as we are all forced to pay the exorbitant costs of medical care that are baked into the Obamacare cake.

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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.

The ‘Strange’ IRS Audit of a Romney Fundraiser and Her Extended Family

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Photo Credit: Daily Caller

The Internal Revenue Service’s political targeting might not have been limited to a few “rogue Cincinnati agents” or even organizations seeking nonprofit status. A major Mitt Romney fundraiser and campaign official — along with her husband and three other family members — all a visit from the taxman in 2012.

In an interview with The Daily Caller, Kit Moncrief, a big-money fundraiser and state chair in Texas for Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign, recounted an unusual telephone call she received from an IRS agent on her personal cell phone in the spring of last year.

“The first place [the agent] called me was on my cell phone,” Moncrief said, explaining that she believed the only place the agent could have accessed the number was from a Romney list. “The number is listed under my husband’s name. She wouldn’t have been able to be able to have my cell phone number because on the IRS form it shows the office number.

“She would have had to have gotten it from the Romney list. That’s the only way I can figure out how she got the number,” Moncrief said.

Read more from this story HERE.

Cruz Announces Early Opposition to Obama’s Blame-America-First UN Nominee; McCain Announces Support for Obama Pick

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President Obama’s nominee to replace Susan Rice as the next U.N. ambassador is running into early opposition from conservative Jewish groups and at least one Republican senator, as she prepares for what could be a tough confirmation.

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, shortly after Obama nominated Samantha Power, called the selection “deeply troubling.”

Never shy about his views, Cruz bluntly questioned a series of statements Power has made, including a 2003 essay in which she called for the U.S. to institute a “doctrine of the mea culpa” to enhance credibility.

“No nation has spilled more blood or sacrificed more for the freedom of others than ours, and yet Ms. Power has publicly embraces the need for America to continue apologizing to the world for perceived transgressions, going so far as to explicitly urge ‘instituting a doctrine of the mea culpa’,” Cruz said in a written statement.

It’s unclear whether other conservatives will join Cruz or mount a sizeable opposition. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., already has said he would support Power, while other influential lawmakers have not yet offered an opinion on her credentials.

Read more from this story HERE.

Massachusetts Governor Got Drunk, Left Bar Without Paying Tab After Boston Bombing

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Photo Credit: Jared Wickerham

It was a very drunk governor Deval Patrick who sat in a restaurant in the Berkshires for some alone time in the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombings and ended up drinking heavily, the Boston Herald reported on June 6 after the governor gave a candid talk to employees and revealed that he had become drunk.

At the time, the drunk governor didn’t even have the money to pay for his food or drinks at the West Stockbridge bistro called Rouge. Still drunk, Gov. Patrick left Rouge without paying his bill that night, but he did return at some point later and pay up, said Rouge co-owner Maggie Merelle, who served him.

Merelle, in fact, said that the drunk governor was so well-behaved that she didn’t even realize that he’d had a few too many. The drunk governor wasn’t even tipsy, she said.

But Gov. Patrick has owned up to his heavy drinking that night. “By the end of the meal, I was actually quite drunk, by myself,” he conceded to his employees.

Read more from this story HERE.

IRS Official Who Played ‘Spock’ in Video Apologizes Under Issa Grilling

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The Internal Revenue Service executive who portrayed Spock in the agency’s “Star Trek” video parody apologized to lawmakers for inappropriate spending on a $4.1 million conference from 2010.

The videos, “at the time they were made, were an attempt in a well-intentioned way to use humor,” said Faris Fink, moments after the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee showed excerpts from the video. “It’s embarrassing and I apologize.”

Fink is commissioner of the agency’s small business and self-employed division, which has 24,000 employees across the country and organized the conference.

The IRS spending on conferences was “at best, maliciously self-indulgent,” said Rep. Darrell Issa, the committee chairman.

Issa, a California Republican, said he was less concerned about the total IRS spending on conferences — $49 million from 2010 to 2012 — than about perks such as discounted presidential suites and hotel rooms for local employees at the expense of other employees who could have gotten better training.

Read more from this story HERE.

Outrage Over NSA’s Theft of Millions of Verizon Customers’ Records; but What About the Agency’s Recording of All Cell Calls?

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Photo Credit: Matt Rourke/AP

As Restoring Liberty reported last month, a retired FBI counter-terrorism agent let it slip during a CNN interview regarding the Boston Marathon Bombing that the U.S. government is recording all cell phone conversations.

Previously, NSA whistle-blower William Binney, a 32-year veteran of the agency, claimed in an interview with the New York Times that the federal government was engaged in near-universal surveillance of digital communications, not just in the United States but internationally. He claims that he helped develop the technology to accomplish this.

With that as the backdrop, it was disclosed yesterday that the NSA secured an Order from a top secret U.S. Foreign Intelligence Court out of Washington, D.C. to gather up the records – on an ongoing, daily basis – of all telephone calls such as the length of the call, phone numbers, time of the call, and geographic location of the call.

Why would the Feds need this when they’re already recording all cell communications? Mr. Binney would have to answer that question but perhaps the government is only able to intercept the data packets for voice communications and is unable to match those to specific phone numbers without the additional information supplied by the carriers.

In any event, this outrageous Fourth Amendment violation is yet another reason that many are suggesting the country has entered into an era of “soft tyranny.”

Here’s more on the NSA’s Verizon snooping from the British outlet that first broke the story:

The National Security Agency is currently collecting the telephone records of millions of US customers of Verizon, one of America’s largest telecoms providers, under a top secret court order issued in April.

The order, a copy of which has been obtained by the Guardian, requires Verizon on an “ongoing, daily basis” to give the NSA information on all telephone calls in its systems, both within the US and between the US and other countries.

The document shows for the first time that under the Obama administration the communication records of millions of US citizens are being collected indiscriminately and in bulk – regardless of whether they are suspected of any wrongdoing.

The secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (Fisa) granted the order to the FBI on April 25, giving the government unlimited authority to obtain the data for a specified three-month period ending on July 19.

Under the terms of the blanket order, the numbers of both parties on a call are handed over, as is location data, call duration, unique identifiers, and the time and duration of all calls. The contents of the conversation itself are not covered

Army Punishes Soldier Who Served Chick-fil-A

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Photo Credit: Generic Brand Productions

An Army master sergeant was punished after he hosted a promotion party and served Chick-fil-A sandwiches in honor of the Defense of Marriage Act.

The unidentified soldier was investigated, reprimanded, threatened with judicial action and given a bad efficiency report, according to the Chaplain Alliance for Religious Liberty.

“They say he is no longer a team player and was not performing up to standards,” Chaplain Alliance Executive Director Ron Crews told Fox News. “This is just one little example of a case of a soldier just wanting to express his views and now he’s been jumped on by the military.”

The soldier’s story was included in a letter to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights documenting concerns about attacks on religious liberty within the Armed Services.

The Pentagon did not return calls seeking comment. Read more from this story HERE.

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Congressman: Troops Being Punished For Expressing Religious Faith

The House Armed Services Committee is considering a religious liberty amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act Wednesday over fears the military is punishing soldiers for expressing their religious faith.

“The men and women who put their lives on the line to defend our freedoms should not have their own religious freedom jeopardized during their military service,” said Rep. John Fleming (R-LA), who authored the amendment.

Fleming said steps taken in last year’s NDAA only focused on protecting beliefs of service members – and not the exercise or expression of those beliefs.

“My amendment is necessary to ensure that men and women of faith will not be discriminated against in the Armed Forces, and will be free to exercise their religious beliefs,” he said. “Military service members, particularly chaplains, feel like their ability to execute their duties are being greatly limited by some of the policies and actions in the Pentagon.”

The Pentagon did not immediately respond to questions about the congressman’s amendment. Read more from this story HERE.