U.S. Gives Big, Secret Push to Internet Surveillance

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Photo Credit: Getty Images Senior Obama administration officials have secretly authorized the interception of communications carried on portions of networks operated by AT&T and other Internet service providers, a practice that might otherwise be illegal under federal wiretapping laws.

The secret legal authorization from the Justice Department originally applied to a cybersecurity pilot project in which the military monitored defense contractors’ Internet links. Since then, however, the program has been expanded by President Obama to cover all critical infrastructure sectors including energy, healthcare, and finance starting June 12.

“The Justice Department is helping private companies evade federal wiretap laws,” said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, which obtained over 1,000 pages of internal government documents and provided them to CNET this week. “Alarm bells should be going off.”

Those documents show the National Security Agency and the Defense Department were deeply involved in pressing for the secret legal authorization, with NSA director Keith Alexander participating in some of the discussions personally. Despite initial reservations, including from industry participants, Justice Department attorneys eventually signed off on the project.

The Justice Department agreed to grant legal immunity to the participating network providers in the form of what participants in the confidential discussions refer to as “2511 letters,” a reference to the Wiretap Act codified at 18 USC 2511 in the federal statute books.

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Calif. Bill Would Let Non-Citizens Serve on Juries

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Photo Credit: zzpzaThe California Assembly passed a bill on Thursday that would make the state the first in the nation to allow non-citizens who are in the country legally to serve on jury duty.

Assemblyman Bob Wieckowski, D-Fremont, said his bill, AB1401, would help California widen the pool of prospective jurors and help integrate immigrants into the community.

It does not change other criteria for being eligible to serve on a jury, such as being at least 18, living in the county that is making the summons, and being proficient in English.

The bill passed 45-25 largely on a party-line vote in the Democratic-controlled Assembly and will move on to the Senate. One Democrat – Assemblyman Adam Gray, of Merced – voted no, while some other Democrats did not vote.

Democratic lawmakers who voted for the bill said there is no correlation between being a citizen and a juror, and they noted that there is no citizenship requirement to be an attorney or a judge. Republican lawmakers who opposed Wieckowski’s bill called it misguided and premature.

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Rep. Louie Gohmert: A 'Conservative Firebrand'

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Photo Credit: Getty Images Below is the transcript of an interview conducted with Louie Gohmert as he walked back to his office after a Fox Business Network television appearance on Capitol Hill. In the interview, Gohmert discusses the state of the GOP, President Barack Obama’s foreign policy, and whether he has considered running for Senate…

What do you think the 2012 election said about the GOP? A lot of commentators say it showed that the GOP has to change on immigration or become supportive of gay marriage to remain competitive. How do you see it?

I think if we had done the things we promised that we wouldn’t be told that now we have to pander. You know, Scott Walker showed if you make promises and you do what you promise, you don’t have to pander. And, you know, Chris Christie has done somewhat the same thing. You make promises when you’re running, and keep your promises. And even when people disagree with you or don’t like you, they will look upon you as being a person of honor and they’ll respect you and you will be elected again. It’s just that people are so hungry for elected officials that will do what they say and say what they’ll do and keep those promises.

So you don’t accept the argument that the country is changing and the Republican Party has to change with it?

The country is always changing and we do need to change, and by changing we change the way we message, but there are some things — like honest, integrity — those kind of values that never go out of vogue. And I think people are hungry for honesty and integrity and I think that’s where we need to be — not pandering. And I also think if we start making the kind of changes that you’ve talked about policy-wise, even though they’re diametrically opposed to what we’ve said when we’ve been elected, I don’ think we’ll come back. People would rather have somebody of honor and integrity. I mean look at [George] Washington. People disagreed with him. He didn’t have 100 percent agreement on a whole lot of things, but he was a man of integrity and kept his word and that’s why we still celebrate him today, in addition to being very brave.

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Boston Marathon Bombers' Next Target was Times Square, says Bloomberg

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Photo Credit: snorpeyThe Boston Marathon bombing suspects had Times Square in their sights before law enforcement authorities put an end to their bloody terror spree, according New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

“New York was next on their list of targets,” Bloomberg said of brothers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. Bloomberg said he received confirmation of the chilling second phase of their plot from the FBI. “The fact is, New York City remains a prime target for those who hate America and want to kill Americans.”

Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said the brothers, Muslims from Dagestan, a breakaway republic in Russia, hatched their plot to attack Times Square while driving the streets of Cambridge last Thursday in a Mercedes SUV they had carjacked from a man who later escaped. Kelly called the New York plot “spontaneous,” and said they had six bombs with them in the car, some of which they hurled at police cars hours later when they were being pursued in a chase that culminated in Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s death.

One of the bombs the brothers had in the stolen car was a pressure cooker bomb, identical to one used in the marathon attack, and packed with gunpowder and shrapnel, Kelly said. Both Kelly and Bloomberg noted surveillance cameras, a contentious subject in New York, played a key role in solving the bombing in Boston, Bloomberg’s hometown. Still, the mayor said there was no way of knowing if the brothers could have pulled off a second attack in America’s largest city.

“We don’t know if we would have been able to stop the terrorists had they arrived here from Boston,” Bloomberg said. He said he did not know of a specific target within Times Square.

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Federal Judge in Oregon Rules Limiting Inmates' Mail to Postcards Unconstitutional

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Photo Credit: Tim Pearce, Los GatosA federal judge in Oregon has determined limiting inmates’ mail to only postcards is unconstitutional, throwing into question the legality of a practice used for years in jails across the country.

For two years, the Columbia County Jail north of Portland restricted inmates’ personal mail to the sending and receiving of postcards until U.S. District Court Judge Michael Simon issued an injunction that stopped the practice in May 2012.

In a ruling made public Thursday, Simon said the practice by the St. Helens jail is unconstitutional because it violates the First Amendment rights of inmates, the people who write to them, and the plaintiff, a monthly national law journal published by the Vermont-based Human Rights Defense Center.

It’s the first legal precedent opponents can use in their opposition to a policy that stretches from Florida to the Arizona desert, where Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio is credited with first implementing it in 2007.

The primary reasons cited for the postcard-only mail policy are that it prevents contraband from entering the jail and it saves time for increasingly cash-strapped sheriff’s offices.

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Sen. Mitch McConnell's and RNC Chair Reince Priebus' Staff Attend Congressional Tea Party Caucus Meeting

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Photo Credit: APThe Tea Party Caucus is back in action with a new strategy and a growing membership.

Roughly 20 House Republicans attended a closed-door meeting Thursday evening in the Rayburn House Office Building, along with staffers from nearly 40 congressional offices, including those of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and fellow Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul.

It comes as conservatives continue to flex their muscle, making life difficult for GOP leaders in the House on issues like Obamacare, and as the debate on immigration legislation heats up.

Conservative mainstays such as Reps. Paul Broun (R-Ga.), Louie Gohmert (R-Texas), Tom Price (R-Ga.), Trent Franks (R-Ariz.) and Steve King (R-Iowa) were among those at the meeting. A source said the entire GOP House delegation from South Carolina was there as well.

Mike Shields, chief of staff to Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus, spoke at the meeting – an indication that the GOP establishment is making an effort to work with the tea party lawmakers.

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Outrage: Congressional Leaders Engaged in Secret Discussions to Exempt Them, Aides, from Obamacare

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Congressional leaders in both parties are engaged in high-level, confidential talks about exempting lawmakers and Capitol Hill aides from the insurance exchanges they are mandated to join as part of President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul, sources in both parties said.

The talks — which involve Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), the Obama administration and other top lawmakers — are extraordinarily sensitive, with both sides acutely aware of the potential for political fallout from giving carve-outs from the hugely controversial law to 535 lawmakers and thousands of their aides. Discussions have stretched out for months, sources said.

A source close to the talks says: “Everyone has to hold hands on this and jump, or nothing is going to get done.”

Yet if Capitol Hill leaders move forward with the plan, they risk being dubbed hypocrites by their political rivals and the American public. By removing themselves from a key Obamacare component, lawmakers and aides would be held to a different standard than the people who put them in office.

Democrats, in particular, would take a public hammering as the traditional boosters of Obamacare. Republicans would undoubtedly attempt to shred them over any attempt to escape coverage by it, unless Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) give Democrats cover by backing it.

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Military Blocks Access to Southern Baptist Website

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Photo Credit: Wesley FryerThe U.S. Military has blocked access to the Southern Baptist Convention’s website on an unknown number of military bases because it contains “hostile content” — just weeks after an Army briefing labeled Evangelical Christians and Roman Catholics as examples of religious extremism, Fox News has learned.

The Southern Baptist Convention is the nation’s largest Protestant denomination known for its support of the pro-life movement and its strong belief in traditional marriage.

Southern Baptist chaplains reported that SBC.net had been blocked at military installations around the nation. The censorship was made public after an Army officer tried to log onto the denomination’s website and instead — received a warning message.

“The site you have requested has been blocked by Team CONUS (C-TNOSC/RCERT-CONUS) due to hostile content,” the message read.

Team CONUS protects the computer network of the Dept. of Defense. The SBC’s website was not blocked at the Pentagon. Read more from this story HERE.

UPDATE:

Pentagon Blocks, Says it Will Free Access to Southern Baptist Website

The Pentagon blocked access to the Southern Baptist Convention’s website recently because it contained “hostile content” that was later determined to be malware, a military spokesman said Thursday.

“We determined that our web filters recently detected malware at the SBC website, which resulted in the block for some service members,” Lt. Col. Damien Pickart said in a prepared statement. “The department has verified that the Southern Baptist Convention website no longer contains malware that may pose a threat to our networks and will be unblocked today.”

Pickart denied the block had anything to do with the religious content of the nation’s largest Protestant denomination.“The Department of Defense strongly supports the religious rights of service members, to include their ability to access religious websites like that of the SBC,” he said.

Hundreds of Southern Baptist military personnel and chaplains across the nation reported earlier this week they could no longer access the SBC.net website on base computers. Instead, they received a message saying the website had been blocked due to “hostile content.”

At the same time, soldiers reported they could access websites of other religious faiths and organizations. Read more from this story HERE.

Harry Reid: Tea Party Like Anarchists, Gov't 'Inherently Good'

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Photo Credit: APSenate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) believes the Tea Party is ideologically similar to anarchists and that government is “inherently good.”

Speaking on the Senate floor on Tuesday, Reid said he was frustrated that, “We have a situation where this country has been driven by the Tea Party for the last number of years.” He then insinuated Tea Partiers were like anarchists.

“When I was in school, I studied government and I learned about the anarchists. Now, they were different than the Tea Party because they were violent,” Reid said. “But they were anarchists because they did not believe in government in any level and they acknowledged it.”

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Cantor Withdraws Obamacare Bill that Drew the Ire of Conservatives

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Photo Credit: John Shinkle House Republican leadership abruptly pulled a health care bill from the floor after concerns from conservatives that it extended President Barack Obama’s health care law.

The legislation, which was championed by Majority Leader Eric Cantor, had opposition from all corners of the conservative universe.

It’s a blow to the Virginia Republican, who touted the “Helping Sick Americans Now Act” and visited the Republican Study Committee meeting Wednesday to try to move votes.

The legislation attempts to transfer money from what Republicans call a “slush fund” — it’s actually a preventative disease account — to create high-risk pools for sick Americans. The Obama administration said Tuesday the president would likely veto the bill.

“We had good conversations with our members and made a lot of solid progress,” said Erica Elliott, a spokesman for Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.). “There’s still work to do and with members leaving town for the Bush Library dedication in Texas, we’ll continue the conversations after the district work period.”

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