NSA Having Flashbacks to Watergate Era (+video)

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NSABy Ken Dilanian

The National Security Agency is facing its worst crisis since the domestic spying scandals four decades ago led to the first formal oversight and overhaul of U.S. intelligence operations.

Thanks to former NSA systems analyst Edward Snowden’s flood of leaks to the media, and the Obama administration’s uneven response to them, morale at the spy agency responsible for intercepting communications of terrorists and foreign adversaries has plummeted, former officials say. Even sympathetic lawmakers are calling for new curbs on the NSA’s powers.

“This is a secret intelligence agency that’s now in the news every day,” said Michael Hayden, who headed the NSA from 1999 to 2005 and later led the CIA. “Each day, the workforce wakes up and reads the daily indictment.”

President Barack Obama acknowledged Friday that many Americans have lost trust in the nation’s largest intelligence agency. “There’s no doubt that, for all the work that’s been done to protect the American people’s privacy, the capabilities of the NSA are scary to people,” he said in a CNN interview.

He added, “Between all the safeguards and checks that we put in place within the executive branch, and the federal court oversight that takes place on the program, and congressional oversight, people are still concerned as to whether their emails are being read or their phone calls are being listened to.”

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Corker: Congress Doesn’t Know Extent of NSA Surveillance

By Washington Free Beacon Staff

Sen. Bob Corker (R., Tenn.) told Fox News Sunday even he was not sure to what extent the National Security Agency kept tabs on Americans, adding he wanted the NSA to brief Congress “from top to bottom” to explain the programs in place and help ensure appropriate oversight.

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Pat Buchanan: ‘Whites Are the Only Group That You Can Discriminate Against Legally in America Now’ (+video)

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Photo Credit: Noel Sheppard

Photo Credit: Noel Sheppard

Syndicated columnist Pat Buchanan made a statement Friday guaranteed to make liberal media members’ heads spin.

During a discussion about Affirmative Action on PBS’s McLaughlin Group, Buchanan said, “Whites are the only group that you can discriminate against legally in America now” (video follows with transcript and commentary):

…MICHELLE BERNARD: Here’s a question I have. One of the things I always say because I think you can measure diversity in a lot of ways, but I think there’s an argument to be said that the greatest Affirmative Action program that there is in the country is being born white. There is a natural assumption when you are applying to institutions of higher education that you are excellent or you are more superb than others.

BUCHANAN: With due respect, whites are the only group that you can discriminate against legally in America now.

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Gov. Mike Pence Delivers Weekly GOP Address: How Obamacare Hurts Jobs (+video)

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Photo Credit: YouTube

Photo Credit: YouTube

GOP: In the Weekly Republican Address, Gov. Mike Pence of Indiana discusses how Obamacare is “costing jobs, discouraging investment, and making the future bleak for too many families” nationwide. Unlike the Washington-knows-best mandates in Obamacare, Gov. Pence explains how his state has “lowered costs and improved outcomes” by “letting freedom and personal responsibility work together” through “a nationally–recognized program called the Healthy Indiana Plan.”

GOV. MIKE PENCE:

“Hello, I’m Indiana Governor Mike Pence.
“These are difficult days for too many Americans. Our economy isn’t growing as fast as we would like, and businesses aren’t creating as many jobs as we need. In states like Indiana, we’re working every day to give people more freedom to grow their businesses, but the over-regulation, higher taxes and new mandates coming from Washington, D.C. are stifling our economy and hurting efforts being made in states across the country.

“Everywhere I go in Indiana, I meet business owners and workers who are in survival mode. They’re trying to figure out how to survive the new normal of more regulations, higher taxes and the impending costs and mandates of the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.

“As implementation of this law gets closer, we are learning more about the burdens it will place on hardworking Americans. In Indiana, the Affordable Care Act will raise the average cost of health insurance in the individual market by an unaffordable 72 percent…

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Martin Luther King’s Son: Trayvon Murdered Because He was Black (+video)

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Photo Credit: breitbart

Photo Credit: breitbart

On Saturday, Martin Luther King III, son of the civil rights icon, used a rally that honored the 50th anniversary of the Reverend Doctor’s “I Have a Dream” to politicize and inject race into the tragic death of Trayvon Martin, asserting he was killed because of the color of his skin.

“Sadly, the tears of Trayvon Martin’s mother and father remind us that far too frequently the color of one’s skin remains a license to profile, arrest, and to even murder with no regard to the content of one’s character,” Martin Luther King III declared. “Regressive ‘stand your ground’ laws must be repealed.”

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Fort Hood Shooter Convicted on all Counts (+video)

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Photo Credit: Fox News

Photo Credit: Fox News

Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan was found guilty on all 13 counts of premeditated murder and 32 counts of attempted premeditated murder Friday, making him eligible for the death penalty.

The sentencing phase of his trial was set to begin Monday.

A military jury deliberated for roughly one day before announcing the verdict.

Hasan sat emotionless, stroking his beard when the judge announced a verdict had been reached. He stood and looked at the juror panel president when the verdict was read, then turned and looked back down.

A few family members of the victims cried and hugged each other at the announcement, but there were no courtroom outbursts.

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Greg Gutfeld Slams Media: ‘A Dead Australian is Just the Price you Pay to be Politically Correct’ (+video)

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Photo Credit: Daily Caller

Photo Credit: Daily Caller

On Thursday’s “The Five,” co-host Greg Gutfeld gave a scathing critique of the media for the absence of coverage of last week’s shooting of Australian baseball player Christopher Lane, allegedly killed by three Oklahoma teens who told police they were “bored.”

Gutfeld, author of “The Joy of Hate: How to Triumph over Whiners in the Age of Phony Outrage,” said that absence was a product of the tragedy not fitting a particular media narrative.

“So by now you have heard of the murder of this young man from Australia, Christopher Lane,” Gutfeld said. “The media has a motive: boredom. Yeah, when you’re bored, you kill people. But by blaming boredom, you can ignore recent tweets by one suspect who boasted hating white people. The suspected shooter reveled in gang signs and gang colors and bragged about knocking out five white people since the Zimmerman verdict.”

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Senator: Obama ‘Perilously Close’ to Impeachment (+video)

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coburn1-compressedThe momentum to remove the president is growing rapidly, as almost every day another lawmaker raises the possibility of impeaching President Obama.

Now, it’s Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla, who said Wednesday the president is getting “perilously close” to qualifying for impeachment.

Speaking at the Muskogee Civic Center in Oklahoma, the senator said, “What you have to do is you have to establish the criteria that would qualify for proceedings against the president, and that’s called impeachment.”

“That’s not something you take lightly, and you have to use a historical precedent of what that means. I think there’s some intended violation of the law in this administration, but I also think there’s a ton of incompetence, of people who are making decisions.”

A constituent then responded, “Even if there is incompetence, the IRS forces me to abide by the law.”

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Obama: Feds Will Define What a Good College Is, Punish and Reward Accordingly (+video)

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

Speaking at the University of Buffalo, President Barack Obama today unveiled an ambitious new plan for the federal government to create a national rating system that will define what a good college is and financially reward or punish colleges depending on how they rank in the government’s system.

He said he intends to have the rating system in placed by the fall of 2015 and intends to work with Congress to enact legislation linking federal aid to colleges to the rating system.

As outlined by Obama, this rating system would look at essentially materialistic and financial characteristics of a college as opposed to intellectual and moral ones.

For example, as the president described it, the rating system will not measure how many of a school’s graduates go on to become exemplary and virtuous in the conduct of their personal and public lives, but it will measure things such as “how many students graduate on time,” “how well do those graduates do in the work force,” whether the college is “helping students from all kinds of backgrounds succeed,” and “how successful colleges are at enrolling and graduating students who are on Pell Grants.”

Federal Pell Grants are gifts of cash–not loans–that the federal government gives to some students, but not others. They are not based on academic merit but on whether a student’s income and his or her parents’ income is low enough to qualify the family as what the Department of Education calls “low-income.”

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Authorities: Iowa Couple Shot, Killed Escaped Inmate (+video)

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iowaLaw enforcement authorities said Tuesday that an Iowa couple shot and killed an escaped inmate after being held in their home for four hours.

Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation Special Agent Mitch Mortvedt said Rodney Long forced his way into the couple’s home at 2609 Highland Avenue about 10:15 p.m. and held them for the next four hours.

Jerome and Carolyn Mauderly said Long was armed with a semi automatic handgun. He had also taken their phones.

Jerome, 71, and Carolyn, 66, decided to defend themselves, Mortvedt said. Jerome shot Long with his shotgun. They were not seriously hurt in the incident.

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NSA Collected Non-Terrorism-Related Emails (+video)

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

By Reid J. Epstein.

The National Security Agency began improperly collecting Americans’ electronic communications that had no connection to terrorism in 2008, but the government didn’t learn of the problem until 2011, senior administration officials said Wednesday.

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper will release three documents that reveal the extent of the error, posting them on a new tumblr page.

The NSA revealed the improper collection of emails to the FISA court in 2011, which demanded a halt to the practice. The officials said the problem was technological and not malicious.

Congress, the administration officials said, knew when it authorized the surveillance programs in 2008 that some Americans would inadvertently have their communications intercepted.

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Photo Credit: WND

Photo Credit: WND

NSA ‘Goes After Man who Mocked Agency’

By Joe Kovacs.

The National Security Agency, the secretive federal department under fire for spying on U.S. citizens, is now accused of crushing the free-speech rights of a businessman clowning around about the NSA.

LibertyManiacs.com, a company that markets “freedom products for liberty lovers,” says the NSA is using a claim of copyright infringement to stop it from selling T-shirts and other products making fun of the Big Brother agency.

“Two months ago the NSA’s lawyers came after our parodies of the rogue agency and forced our host to take them down,” the company said Friday on its Facebook page.

At issue is use of the NSA logo, which was partially altered by LibertyManiacs owner Dan McCall. He kept the name of the agency and most of the artwork intact, but changed the bottom portion from “United States of America” to the laugh-inspiring “Peeping while you’re sleeping.”

Underneath the doctored logo is the phrase “The NSA, the only part of government that actually listens.”

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NSA collected thousands of emails from Americans, rebuked by court

By Fox News.

The National Security Agency was rebuked by a secret court in 2011 for collecting thousands of emails and other online details from Americans with no ties to terrorism, according to court opinions which were declassified for the first time on Wednesday.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence took the unusual step of declassifying more than 100 pages of documents, amid the escalating public debate about government surveillance programs. The release comes several days after a report showed that the NSA had violated privacy rules and overstepped its authority thousands of times.

Some of those incidents were minor, but the documents released Wednesday detail major compliance problems.

In 2011, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court was notified of a problem involving “upstream collection,” which is the collection of Internet traffic outside of the service providers. The NSA was collecting bundled email communications under a provision which focuses on foreign Internet traffic. The NSA, though, was not effectively segregating all the traffic from Americans.

The court rebuked the NSA for the violation.

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