Photo Credit: APIn the wake of the tragedy in Aurora, Colorado passed some of the strictest gun control measures in the country.
But in recent months, an overwhelming 55 of the state’s 62 county sheriffs have joined a lawsuit aiming to block the measures.
“These bills do absolutely nothing to make Colorado a safer place to live, to work, to play or to raise a family,” Weld County Sheriff John Cooke explained at a recent press conference. “Instead these misguided, unconstitutional bills will have the opposite effect because they greatly restrict the right of decent, law-abiding citizens to defend themselves, their families and their homes.”
Sheriff Terry Maketa of El Paso County is one of the opposing sheriffs, and he explained on TheBlaze TV Wednesday how the public was “duped” into supporting overly vague legislation banning high-capacity magazines and requiring background checks.
Maketa says they believe the laws are unenforceable, but also violate the Second and Fourteenth Amendments.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-05-23 03:29:242016-04-11 11:20:32‘We’re Not Going to Tolerate It’: Colo. Sheriffs Unite to Block ‘Unenforceable’ Gun Control Legislation
Newly uncovered court documents reveal the Justice Department seized records of several Fox News phone lines as part of a leak investigation — even listing a number that, according to one source, matches the home phone number of a reporter’s parents.
The seizure was ordered in addition to a court-approved search warrant for Fox News correspondent James Rosen’s personal emails. In the affidavit seeking that warrant, an FBI agent called Rosen a likely criminal “co-conspirator,” citing a wartime law called the Espionage Act.
Rosen was not charged, but his movements and conversations were tracked. A source close to the leak investigation confirmed to Fox News that the government obtained phone records for several numbers that match Fox News numbers out of the Washington bureau.
Further, the source confirmed to Fox News that one number listed matched the number for Rosen’s parents in Staten Island.
Rosen’s father, attorney Myron Rosen, told FoxNews.com he found the records seizure to be “downright ludicrous.”
Photo Credit: Gage SkidmoreOn her Wednesday radio show, conservative talk show host Laura Ingraham attacked a number of Republican senators that voted to support the immigration reform bill on Tuesday, saying that she was thinking about moving to Arizona to primary Sen. Jeff Flake, who is up for re-election in 2018.
“Let me tell you — I am thinking of moving to Arizona,” Ingraham said. “You know why? I will primary challenge Sen. Jeff Flake myself, if that’s why this requires. Jeff Flake, living up to his last name, backed down from a previous promise his spokeswoman made to Breitbart. This is just like Marco [Rubio] breaking his promise, basically, that he would consider voting in favor of amendments to the Senate’s immigration bill that would close a loophole of allowing illegal immigrants access to state and local welfare. Jeff Flake voted with the liberals against the Ted Cruz amendment.”
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-05-23 03:23:072016-04-11 11:20:34Laura Ingraham: ‘I’m Thinking of Moving to Arizona’ to ‘Primary Challenge Sen. Jeff Flake Myself’
Photo Credit: APFour American citizens have been killed in counter-terrorism drone strikes since 2009, the Obama administration acknowledged for the first time Wednesday.
Attorney General Eric Holder disclosed the previously classified information in a letter to a top senator that also included the names of those killed and the revelation that only one was directly targeted in the strikes that began in 2009. He did not specifically call them drone strikes – rather, he referred to “counterterrorism operations” – but most of the individuals he mentioned are known to have died in drone strikes.
The targeted individual, Anwar al-Awlaki, was a radical Muslim cleric whom U.S. officials said was involved in planning Al Qaeda operations and terror attacks. He was killed in September 2011 in Yemen.
The acknowledgement came ahead of a major counterterrorism policy speech by President Obama scheduled for Thursday.
Holder said in the letter that the Obama administration is “aware” of three other U.S. citizens killed in such counter-terrorism operations besides al-Awlaki: Samir Khan, Jude Kennan Mohammed and Awlaki’s son Abdulrahman Anwar al-Awlaki, Holder said.
Photo Credit: WNDRep. Ted Poe, R-Texas, says he needs to know who has been ordering the Internal Revenue Service attacks on conservative organizations.
“The main point here is this: Someone is giving out marching orders for these agencies and these employees to do these things. The question is, who is giving out the marching orders?’ Poe said in an interview with WND.
The head of the Internal Revenue Service’s tax-exempt organizations office, Lois Lerner, appeared before a U.S. House committee Wednesday but refused to answer questions, invoking her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.
Poe is particularly concerned about IRS targeting of the King Street Patriots, a tea party group founded in Houston by Catherine Engelbrecht.
The congressman compared the IRS scandal to the Fast and Furious gun-tracing scandal: “Who is the person who decided to smuggle guns to Mexico? We still don’t know.”
Photo Credit: APBy Kate Grise. Tea party members gathered outside the Internal Revenue Service in Washington, D.C. Tuesday to protest the targeting of conservative groups that had identified themselves as “tea party” or “patriots” on applications for tax-exempt status.
Led in a chant by a man dressed as George Washington, about 75 protesters expressed their discontent with the Internal Revenue Service and the current administration with shouts of “Audit the IRS” and “Indict Obama”…
The flash rally was a part of a larger group of more than 100 nationwide protests organized by Tea Party Patriots. Read more from this story HERE.
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Top IRS official to invoke 5th Amendment, decline to testify at House hearing
By Barnini Chakraborty. Lois Lerner, the director of the IRS division that singled out conservative groups, is expected to invoke the Fifth Amendment Wednesday when she appears before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Fox News has learned.
That means Lerner, head of the exempt organizations division, probably won’t answer any questions on what she knew about IRS agents going after Tea Party-related groups. That also means she probably won’t say why she sat on the information for so long before it became public.
Lerner’s attorney William Taylor III asked committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., in a letter if she could skip Wednesday’s hearing since she would be pleading the Fifth. Read more from this story HERE.
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Video: Former IRS Chief Refuses to Apologize
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“The IRS Thing, It’s Not America, We’re Sick of It”
By Dionne Searcey. About 300 people gathered Tuesday for a short, angry rally outside the federal building here that houses the unit of the IRS embroiled in a scandal over workers improperly scrutinizing the charity applications of politically conservative groups.
Holding signs that said “Internal Rigging Service” and “Tyranny” and shouting chants of “You work for us!” and “IRS! KGB!” the group included many members of the local Tea Party organization who demanded punishment for those who were involved.
“Heads have to roll here,” said one protester, Kevin Tinsley, who works in advertising sales and said everyone from President Barack Obama down to the lowest level workers in the IRS determinations unit must be held accountable for the targeting of tea party groups.
“The IRS thing, it’s not America, and we’re sick of it,” Mr. Tinsley said before letting loose with a string of swear words. Read more from this story HERE.
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Why Were DHS Agents Seemingly Monitoring Multiple Tea Party IRS Protests Across the Country on Tuesday?
By Jason Howerton. There were multiple reported sightings of agents with the Department of Homeland Security at several Tea Party-led IRS protests in states like Missouri, Florida, Illinois and Indiana. The rallies that occurred across the country on Tuesday were sparked by the IRS’ unfair targeting of conservative groups — one of the several scandals the Obama administration is dealing with.
What is unclear though is why federal officials felt the Tea Party presence required more than the attention of local law enforcement.
These photos, one showing “armed” DHS guards, were reportedly taken at the St. Louis IRS protest:
Read more from this story HERE.
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For Tea Party Groups, Shades of 2010
By Trip Gabriel. They are getting the band back together.
In the well-burnished legend of its founding, the Tea Party movement sprang to life at grass-roots rallies, a spontaneous protest against government overreaching that grew and grew until it stunned Democrats and many moderate Republicans in the 2010 midterm elections.
On Tuesday, rallies across the country to protest the Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of Tea Party groups seeking tax-exempt status recalled those glory days, drawing colorful crowds in three-cornered hats, with members singing patriotic songs and waving provocative signs like “Fire the Liars” and “I.R.S.S.” — the last two letters drawn like the lightning bolts of the Nazi SS.
Leaders of the Tea Party movement hope outrage over the I.R.S. inquiry will rekindle grass-roots activism that in many places went dormant after big Republican electoral defeats of November 2012. They aim to link the current scandal to other government programs they consider overweening — principally the rollout of the health care overhaul law — and generate a Republican wave in the 2014 midterm elections reminiscent of 2010’s. Read more from this story HERE.
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Christians Claim IRS Harassment in Election
By Jerome R. Corsi. During the 2012 election year, the Internal Revenue Service delayed the application of a conservative Christian group in Ohio that was seeking 501(c)3 tax-exempt status to register Christians to vote and to oppose the ACLU in court in First Amendment cases.
“We have suspicion that the IRS delayed our application for nearly 13 months due to the selective targeting of Ohio conservative groups that Congress is now investigating in both the House and Senate,” stated Chris Long, president of the Ohio Christian Alliance, told WND.
Long said his group’s original application made it clear that the new organization would go into Christian congregations with a non-partisan effort to register voters in the battleground state of Ohio during the 2012 presidential election.
“The IRS knew we would be registering conservative church-goers and weighing in on the 2012 presidential election,” he said.
Long pointed out that the non-partisan Ohio Christian Alliance Educational Fund, operating as a 501(c)3 organization, would have registered both Democrats and Republicans. Read more from this story HERE.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-05-22 02:48:172016-04-11 11:20:35IRS Protests, IRS Refuses to Apologize, IRS Official Claims the 5th, and Other Developments (+video)
Photo Credit: eResumes4VipsThe Senate Judiciary Committee’s passage of a sweeping immigration bill was expected. But the explosion of chants of “Yes we can! Yes we can!” and “Leahy! Leahy!” came as a surprise.
The “Gang of Eight” bill passed by a wide 13-5 margin early Tuesday evening. Amid the cheering, Democratic committee chairman Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont could be seen motioning spectators to come up and participate in the celebration.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-05-22 02:44:322016-04-11 11:20:36‘Yes We Can’ Chant Breaks Out as Senate Panel Passes Immigration Bill
Photo Credit: Reuters Federal agents and the state fire marshal have effectively barred a federal safety panel from the site of a Texas fertilizer plant blast that killed 15 people and injured about 200 others, hampering its investigation, the panel’s chairman said.
In a May 17 letter to Sen. Barbara Boxer, U.S. Chemical Safety Board Chairman Rafael Moure-Eraso asked the California Democrat to help the board obtain evidence under control of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives that he contends is essential to the board’s investigation, the Waco Tribune-Herald and Austin American-Statesman reported.
“To date, the CSB has experienced significant obstacles that potentially compromise and delay our ability to complete the `comprehensive investigation’ that you have rightly demanded, and that we would very much like to produce,” he wrote to Boxer. The chairwoman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works has said she planned to hold hearings into the April 17 West Fertilizer explosion.
Photo Credit: WNDCBS News reporter Sharyl Attkisson has been a thorn in the Obama administration’s side for some time now.
The Emmy-award winning journalist has refused to let the president’s scandals be swept under the rug, interviewing “Fast & Furious” whistleblowers and chasing down Benghazi leads long after even her own network didn’t want to hear it anymore.
Now she says, however, her personal and work computers have been compromised, an intrusion that may be linked back to the White House.
“I can confirm that an intrusion of my computers has been under some investigation on my end for some months, but I’m not prepared to make an allegation against a specific entity today, as I’ve been patient and methodical about this matter,” Attkisson told Politico. “I need to check with my attorney and CBS to get their recommendations on info we make public.”
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-05-22 02:36:372016-04-11 11:20:37CBS Star Reporter: Feds Hacked My Computers, Too
Photo Credit: WNDThe State Department has been leaking to reporters false information to discredit Benghazi whistleblower Gregory Hicks, charged his legal counsel, Victoria Toensing, in an interview with WND.
Hicks, who testified May 8 before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, is the former State Department deputy chief of mission who was in Libya at the time of the Benghazi attack.
Toensing told WND the State Department has been telling reporters that U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens could not reach Hicks by telephone on the night he was killed in the terrorist attack, Sept. 11, 2012, because Hicks was relaxing, watching television, and did not have his telephone with him.
“This is a total fabrication,” Toensing charged. “Telephone reception in Libya is notoriously unreliable. Sometimes you just don’t get your calls. And besides, the record will show Hicks reached Stevens by telephone within five or 10 minutes at the most after Stevens first telephoned him.”
Toensing said several reporters, whom she declined to identify, have called her to ask if the story about Hicks being AWOL at the time of the Benghazi attack was true.
