Obama Admin. Poised to Back FBI’s Demand For Wiretap Access to Online Communications

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Photo Credit: Christopher GregoryThe Obama administration, resolving years of internal debate, is on the verge of backing a Federal Bureau of Investigation plan for a sweeping overhaul of surveillance laws that would make it easier to wiretap people who communicate using the Internet rather than by traditional phone services, according to officials familiar with the deliberations.

The F.B.I. director, Robert S. Mueller III, has argued that the bureau’s ability to carry out court-approved eavesdropping on suspects is “going dark” as communications technology evolves, and since 2010 has pushed for a legal mandate requiring companies like Facebook and Google to build into their instant-messaging and other such systems a capacity to comply with wiretap orders. That proposal, however, bogged down amid concerns by other agencies, like the Commerce Department, about quashing Silicon Valley innovation.

While the F.B.I.’s original proposal would have required Internet communications services to each build in a wiretapping capacity, the revised one, which must now be reviewed by the White House, focuses on fining companies that do not comply with wiretap orders. The difference, officials say, means that start-ups with a small number of users would have fewer worries about wiretapping issues unless the companies became popular enough to come to the Justice Department’s attention.

Still, the plan is likely to set off a debate over the future of the Internet if the White House submits it to Congress, according to lawyers for technology companies and advocates of Internet privacy and freedom.

“I think the F.B.I.’s proposal would render Internet communications less secure and more vulnerable to hackers and identity thieves,” said Gregory T. Nojeim of the Center for Democracy and Technology. “It would also mean that innovators who want to avoid new and expensive mandates will take their innovations abroad and develop them there, where there aren’t the same mandates.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Despite Scandal, Ex-SC Gov. Sanford Back in Office

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Photo Credit: Rainier EhrhardtFour years after scandal derailed his political career, ex-Republican Gov. Mark Sanford once again holds a South Carolina political office, winning back his old congressional seat Tuesday after a race in which he battled his past and an opponent who outdid him in fundraising.

Sanford’s resurrection was completed when he defeated Democrat Elizabeth Colbert Busch, the sister of political satirist Stephen Colbert, in a district that hasn’t elected a Democratic congressman in more than three decades.

“Some guy came up to me the other day and said you look a lot like Lazarus,” Sanford told a crowd of more than 100 cheering supporters at his victory celebration, referring to the man who, according to the Bible, Christ raised from the dead.

With all precincts reporting, Sanford had about 54 percent of the vote.

“I’ve talked a lot about grace during the course of this campaign,” he said. “Until you experience human grace as a reflection of God’s grace, I don’t think you really get it. And I didn’t get it before.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Trustworthy? Fox News’ Shepard Smith Ranks Dead Last

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Photo Credit: Fox NewsAlthough he anchors the top-rated cable newscast in the nation, Shepard Smith of the Fox News Channel ranks last in a brand-new Reader’s Digest Poll listing the top 100 most trusted Americans.

“The results are revealing, hopeful, and sometimes shocking,” says the Reader’s Digest, which teamed up with the research firm Wagner Group to survey more than 1,000 Americans and discover which individuals and the ideals they represent have earned public confidence.

Smith, anchor of “The Fox Report,” was ranked at No. 100, just below New York Times columnists Maureen Dowd and Paul Krugman, who are at Nos. 98 and 99 respectively. But since no other Fox journalist even made the top 100, Smith’s ranking could be viewed as good news for him.

The magazine provides a slideshow of photos and quotes for each person in its ranking.

The quote attributed to Smith is, “I’m a journalist; I run to the fire, that’s what we do.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Obamacare Red Tape Burden Surges to 189 Million Hours a Year — and it Hasn’t Even Started

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Photo Credit: Washington Examiner The growing tower of Obamacare red tape flooding out of federal agencies will sock American businesses and families with nearly 200 million hours of paperwork compliance a year, a 50 percent jump in just the past three months as the administration pushes out more rules.

The number of compliance hours is so staggering that three House committees, in updating their Obamacare Burden Tracker, put it in perspective by claiming that the Empire State Building could be built 27 times in the 189,822,836 hours estimated so far by the Office of Management and Budget and IRS.

Just three months ago, the House Ways and Means, Education and the Workforce, and Energy and Commerce committees first estimated the paperwork burden at 127 million hours per year. Since then, the administration has scrambled to issue more regulations in time for the Jan. 1 kickoff of the Obamacare program.

The biggest addition is a new rule that will add 46 million hours of paperwork to the makers of drugs, medical devices and medical supplies, according to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. They will be required to report payments to doctors and teaching hospitals and reveal investments doctors have in their companies.

Read more from this story HERE.

Senators Block Gosnell Resolution

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Photo Credit: Daily Caller A Senate resolution aimed at investigating and correcting the policies which led to the illegal abortion practices of Philadelphia abortionist Kermit Gosnell was blocked Monday evening.

Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee attempted to hotline the resolution to express “the sense of the Senate that Congress and the States should investigate and correct abusive, unsanitary, and illegal abortion practices” Monday evening, but an unknown senator objected to its unanimous passage, according to Lee’s office.

“It is difficult to imagine why anyone would object to a non-binding resolution calling on Congress to investigate these alleged disturbing, horrific, and illegal abortion practices committed by Kermit Gosnell and others,” Lee said in a statement.

“With numerous reports of similar instances surfacing around the country, the need for greater regulatory oversight of these so-called clinics is so plainly obvious it strains the limits of disbelief to think all members of the Senate would not agree,” he added. “The resolution is simply an affirmation that we as a country — a moral and compassionate society — have an interest in acting to save the lives of innocent women and children, and to prevent these kinds of heinous acts from happening to anyone again.”

Lee’s resolution, which has 11 co-sponsors, highlighted the crimes alleged against Gosnell, who faces more than 250 criminal charges, including first-degree murder charges for the deaths of four babies born alive in attempted abortions and a third-degree murder charge for a woman who died in 2009 during an abortion from a drug overdose.

Read more from this story HERE.

Multinational Corporation Eli Lilly Lobbied For Obamacare, Now Against It

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Photo Credit: Charles DharapakEli Lilly CEO John Lechleiter, who previously lobbied on behalf of Obamacare, said that one of President Obama’s costly new health-care reforms would have “catastrophic” consequences for innovation and that he plans to fight against it.

Lechleiter condemned Obama’s “dual eligibles” rebate plan at the annual Eli Lilly shareholder meeting Monday in Indianapolis.

“He said it would have fairly catastrophic consequences to the industry,” Eli Lilly spokesman Greg Kueterman told The Daily Caller.

Eli Lilly is a major drug maker and the world’s largest manufacturer of psychiatric medications.

Read more from this story HERE.

Hospital Prices No Longer Secret As New Data Reveals Bewildering System, Staggering Cost Differences

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Photo Credit: Getty Images When a patient arrives at Bayonne Hospital Center in New Jersey requiring treatment for the respiratory ailment known as COPD, or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, she faces an official price tag of $99,690.

Less than 30 miles away in the Bronx, N.Y., the Lincoln Medical and Mental Health Center charges only $7,044 for the same treatment, according to a massive federal database of national health care costs made public on Wednesday.

Americans have long become accustomed to bewilderment and anxiety when confronting health care bills. The new database underscores why, revealing the perplexing assortment of prices for medical care, with the details of bills seemingly untethered to any graspable principle.

Even within the same metropolitan area, hospitals charge prices that differ by staggering degrees for the same procedures. People without health insurance pay vastly higher costs for care when less expensive options are often available nearby. Virtually everyone who seeks health care winds up paying inflated prices in one form or another as these stark disparities in price sow inefficiencies throughout the market.

While this basic picture has emerged as the consensus reality among health care experts, their evidence has been primarily anecdotal. Hospitals have protected their price lists — documents known as charge masters — as closely guarded secrets.

Read more from this story HERE.

Huckabee, Bolton: Obama Will Be Ousted Over Benghazi

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photo credit: gage skidmoreBy Jonathan Easley. Former Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee said on his radio show Monday that President Obama “will not fill out his full term” because he was complicit in a “cover-up” surrounding the attack that killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans in Libya.

“I believe that before it’s all over, this president will not fill out his full term,” Huckabee said. “I know that puts me on a limb, but this is not minor.”

“When a president lies to the American people and is part of a cover-up, he cannot continue to govern,” he added. “And as the facts come out, I think we’re going to see something startling. And before it’s over, I don’t think this president will finish his term unless somehow they can delay it in Congress past the next three and a half years.”

Some Republicans have maintained that the administration has not been forthcoming in the circumstances surrounding the attack, pointing to U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice, who went on Sunday news shows and argued the attacks were a spontaneous reaction to an offensive video. The administration later admitted Rice’s claim was made with insufficient intelligence, and labeled the event an act of terror.

On Monday, House Republicans released portions of an interview with State Department whistle-blower Gregory Hicks, who took over as the top U.S. diplomat in Libya after Stevens was killed.Read more from this story HERE.

John Bolton: Benghazi Could Topple Administration

By Bill Hoffmann. The mushrooming Benghazi scandal could potentially lead to the unraveling of the administration of President Barack Obama, says John Bolton, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

“This could be a hinge point for the Obama administration. It’s that serious for them,” Bolton told “The Steve Malzberg Show” on Newsmax TV.

Bolton made his remarks as Congress prepares on Wednesday to interview at least three witnesses about the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. Embassy in Benghazi, Libya.

One witness, Greg Hicks — the embassy’s No. 2 official — has said everybody knew the bloodbath, which ended in the deaths of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans, was a terrorist attack.

This despite the White House initially claiming it was an impromptu protest against a blasphemous YouTube video. Read more from this story HERE.

Mark Levin: Feds Not Focused on Criminals, They’re Focused on “We the People”

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Photo Credit: Daily Caller At the National Rifle Association Convention in Houston on Friday, conservative talker Mark Levin told attendees that the Bill or Rights were “under attack” from progressives in Washington, D.C.

“The forces that are gathering now in Washington and in the states to destroy our Second Amendment right are ominous,” Levin the author of “Ameritopia: The Unmaking of America,” said. “They’re not focused on criminals. They’re not focused on mass murderers. They’re focused on ‘we the people.’ The fact of the matter is these are very, very perilous times. The federal government is becoming increasingly powerful. The Bill of Rights are under attack — unless you’re a mass murder or a terrorist, in which place they kick in and are strongly defended. What I’m talking about are law-biding citizens.”

“That’s who I care about, citizens who work hard, pay their taxes and want to defend their families and want to go hunting and want to have target practice. Or they have guns that sit in their closet for 30 years, and they never touch,” he said. “What do I care what they do with their weapons as long as they’re law-biding? And this is the point.”

“I hear it often said, ‘You don’t need this type of firearm,’ ‘You don’t need this amount of ammunition,’” he said. “Well, wait a minute — who gets to decide that? We get to decide that. It’s not a bill of needs — it’s a bill of rights. The Second Amendment is included. As a matter of fact, there would be no Constitution but for the Bill of Rights.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Benghazi Witnesses: Obama Admin. Let Americans Die for Politics

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Photo Credit: AFP/Getty ImagesBy Oren Dorell. Testimony from three State Department “whistleblowers” scheduled to appear at a hearing on Capitol Hill on Wednesday will show that politics played a role from the start in the government’s handling of the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya, a Republican lawmaker says.

The hearing will explore why the State Department never activated its Foreign Emergency Support Team, a unit made up of security and intelligence professionals who specialize in responding to crises, said Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah.

Chaffetz believes the reason is that activating the team, whose members have connections to the CIA and the military, would have labeled the attack “a terrorist activity,” which then-secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s State Department did not want to do.

“They didn’t want the political label of a terrorist attack,” said Chaffetz, who heads the national security subcommittee of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which is holding Wednesday’s hearing.

“Early on in this fight these people made a critical bad decision in that they did not activate these people simply because they were afraid it would be labeled as terrorism. It was pure politics.” Read more from this story HERE.

Benghazi Whistle-Blower Witnesses are “Terrified” of State Department

By Cheryl K. Chumley. Rep. Jason Chaffetz said the witnesses who are due to testify on Benghazi, Libya, on Wednesday have been intimidated by the Obama administration to such degree that they’re terrified.

“There are people who want to testify that have been suppressed,” he said, during a Fox News appearance on Sunday. “They’re scared to death of what the State Department is doing with them.” Read more from this story HERE.