Sen. Rand Paul said Sunday he wants to mount a Supreme Court challenge to the federal government logging Americans’ phone calls and Internet activities.
Paul, R-Ky., a leading voice in the Libertarian movement, told “Fox News Sunday” he wants to get enough signatures to file a class-action lawsuit before the high court and will appeal to younger Americans, who appear to be advancing the cause of less government and civil liberties.
“I’m going to be asking all the Internet providers and all of the phone companies: Ask your customers to join me in a class-action lawsuit,” he said. “If we get 10 million Americans saying we don’t want our phone records looked at, then maybe someone will wake up and something will change in Washington.”
Paul, a first-term senator and potential 2016 Republican presidential candidate, said he disagrees with President Obama’s argument that the National Security Agency collecting 3 billion calls daily and other information is a modest invasion of privacy.
“That doesn’t look like a modest invasion of privacy,” he told Fox. “I have no problem if you have probable cause … but we’re talking about trolling through a billion phone records a day.”
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-06-10 02:41:162013-06-10 02:41:16Paul Wants to Lead Supreme Court Challenge to Fed’s Tracking of Americans’ Calls, Emails (+video)
By Fox News. The Obama administration has taken a first step toward opening a criminal investigation into the purported leaking of classified documents related to the federal government tracking Americans’ phone calls and emails, a source familiar with the high-level discussions told Fox News on Saturday.
The source said a “criminal report has been filed,” which begins the process.
The FBI and Justice Department would likely be involved in such a probe, which is expected to focus on British and U.S. newspapers including The Guardian. The British newspaper reported late Wednesday that the U.S. government had collected the phone records of millions of Verizon customers.
On Saturday, White House spokesman Ben Rhodes said the president is reviewing the situation to see what kind of damage might have been done.
“We’re still in early stages,” he said. However, Rhodes acknowledge the Justice Department would have to be involved and that the agency will discuss the matter with intelligence officials in the coming days.
Officials: NSA mistakenly intercepted emails, phone calls of innocent Americans
By Michael Isikoff. The National Security Agency has at times mistakenly intercepted the private email messages and phone calls of Americans who had no link to terrorism, requiring Justice Department officials to report the errors to a secret national security court and destroy the data, according to two former U.S. intelligence officials.
At least some of the phone calls and emails were pulled from among the hundreds of millions stored by telecommunications companies as part of an NSA surveillance program. James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, Thursday night publicly acknowledged what he called “a sensitive intelligence collection program” after its existence was disclosed by the Guardian newspaper.
Ret. Adm. Dennis Blair, who served as President Obama’s DNI in 2009 and 2010, told NBC News that, in one instance in 2009, analysts entered a phone number into agency computers and “put one digit wrong,” and mined a large volume of information about Americans with no connection to terror. The matter was reported to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, whose judges required that all the data be destroyed, he said.
Another former senior official, who asked not to be identified, confirmed Blair’s recollection and said the incident created serious problems for the Justice Department, which represents the NSA before the federal judges on the secret court.
The judges “were really upset about this,” said the former official. As a result, Attorney General Eric Holder pledged to the judges that the intelligence agencies would take steps to correct the problem as a condition of renewing the NSA’s surveillance program. Read more from this story HERE.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-06-08 23:35:442013-06-08 23:35:44Obama Admin. Takes First Steps to Retaliate Against Leaker of Phone Surveillance Program (+video)
Fox’s Neil Cavuto confronted Democratic strategist Julian Epstein with mounting evidence of the Obama administration’s wholesale disregard of the Fourth Amendment. He suggested that the near-daily disclosures of the White House’s surveillance of US citizens amounted to a pattern:
“You see one incident after another that comes up. It all comes back to the same basic issue: privacy invaded or potentially invaded. Institutions of all sorts doing the same thing. There is a pattern.”
Epstein insisted on playing politics with the issue, suggesting that the surveillance had no direct connections to White House: “If you want to conflate and combine the issues and make the general statements you can do that. I don’t think it’s a thoughtful way to approach it.”
Cavuto retorted: “Think about what I said. Julian, don’t play the politics thing. I’m telling you, drop the liberal thing and focus on the reality thing. You have one entity after another going after American people. You have one system of government, one agency, one department after another essentially doing the same thing. You can call that conflating. I am telling you there is a pattern.”
Epstein reiterated, “You can’t conflate all these issues, you have to speak about them differently. In the case of the IRS, I agree the targeting is wrong, but there was never any connection to the White House. Nobody has proven that.”
Right before cutting off his microphone, Cavuto responded, “I’m not going to get anywhere arguing this point You are saying nothing and it’s offensive. It’s annoying how obnoxious you can be on reality.”
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-06-08 23:34:402013-06-08 23:34:40Neil Cavuto Goes Off on the Surveillance State, Shuts Down Mic of Obama Defender (+video)
A North Texas high school silenced its Valedictorian’s microphone during his speech, prompting questions over his free speech rights.
Students attending the Joshua High School graduation say Remington Reimer’s microphone was cut off, right when he began to talk about the Constitution.
“He just said, he was talking about getting constitutional rights getting taken away from him,” Colin Radford, a Joshua H.S. graduate, said. “And then he said, just yesterday they threatened to turn my microphone off, and then his microphone went off.”
Reimer, who was accepted into the Naval Academy, had his speech pre-approved by the school district.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-06-08 23:33:292013-06-08 23:33:29School Cuts Off Class Valedictorian’s Mic When He Starts Talking About Constitution (+video)
Jay Leno is continuing his unrelenting, hilarious attacks on the Obama administration.
He hammers the White House for listening to phone calls, going through computer records, and basically acting like a “psycho ex-girlfriend.”
Leno rejects Obama’s statement yesterday that the feds “aren’t listening to your phone calls.”
He also suggests that Obama put his aggressive surveillance program to good use in watching the IRS.
Leno criticizes the IRS’s multi-million dollar conferences and wasteful spending on art, like paying an artist $17,000 to paint pictures of Lincoln to inspire agents. He suggests saving $16,995 by using a $5 bill.
Finally, Leon concludes his monologue suggesting one IRS party taxpayers would be happy to pay for: a “going away party.”
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-06-08 23:20:092013-06-08 23:20:09Leno: “We Wanted a President That Listens to All Americans. Now We Have One” (+video)
Dozens of Republican lawmakers have joined in accusing the Environmental Protection Agency of “apparent bias” against conservative groups following a claim that it routinely showed favoritism to liberal organizations.
The allegations were first made by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a conservative Washington, D.C., think tank. It claimed the EPA was not being fair as it weighed whether to charge fees to groups seeking information via Freedom of Information Act requests.
Its research showed liberal groups have their fees for documents waived about 90 percent of the time, while conservative groups are denied fee waivers about 90 percent of the time.
“This activity calls into question the objectivity of the FOIA employees at EPA and undermines public confidence in an agency that is charged with protecting our air and water,” a group of nearly three dozen House Republicans wrote in a letter to EPA Acting Administrator Bob Perciasepe.
Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., chairman of the Republican Study Committee, said in a separate statement that the findings are “not a coincidence” and track with the kind of targeting conducted by the IRS against conservative groups.
President Obama was left stranded without a copy of his speech Friday as he prepared to give a short presentation about the importance of Californians enrolling in his health-care program.
As Mr. Obama walked on stage at the event in San Jose, Calif., he immediately noticed that a paper copy of his speech wasn’t on the podium with the presidential seal. The president was working without a teleprompter, and he tried to stall for time until aides could rescue him.
“Good morning everybody, it is wonderful to see all of you,” Mr. Obama said to the audience. “I want to thank everybody who is here. I think there’s only one problem, and that is that my remarks are not sitting here.”
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-06-08 02:56:252013-06-08 02:56:25Obama Left Speechless Without Prepared Remarks on Health Care (+video)
President Obama on Friday for the first time publicly defended his administration’s top-secret phone and Internet surveillance programs, insisting that Americans weren’t being directly targeted and that national-security benefits were worth the “modest encroachments on privacy.”
“Nobody is listening to your telephone calls,” Obama said, acknowledging that his National Security Agency was collecting massive amounts of data on Americans. But he insisted that the data included only telephone numbers and durations of conversations — and that there was no monitoring of actual calls. To listen in on conversations, Obama said it would require court approval.
As for the revelation that the NSA and FBI are also accessing the Internet servers of major U.S. providers, Obama said, “This does not apply to U.S. citizens, and this does not apply to people living in the United States.”
Obama was forced to address the simmering controversies at an event in San Jose, Calif., meant to trumpet his healthcare overhaul. Allies and political foes alike have battered the administration with charges of government overreach as details continue to emerge about its surveillance programs.
Obama offered no apologies, at one point brushing off the controversies as “hype.” He said the secret programs, originated in President George W. Bush’s administration, were subject to Congressional oversight.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-06-08 02:55:392013-06-08 02:55:39What a Relief: Our Trustworthy President Assures Us that the Feds aren’t Listening to Your Phone Calls (+video)
President Obama this afternoon addressed recent reports of the National Security Agency secretly obtaining phone records and private data for surveillance.
During his speech he indicated that Americans needed to trust the system of government set up to thwart abuse.
“If people can’t trust not only the executive branch but also don’t trust Congress, and don’t trust federal judges, to make sure that we’re abiding by the Constitution with due process and rule of law, then we’re going to have some problems here.”
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-06-08 02:44:082013-06-08 02:44:08Obama: If You Can’t Trust Government, We’re Going to Have Some Problems (+video)
The Pentagon directed an Air Force Base to remove a video tribute to First Sergeants because it mentioned the word ‘God’ and might be offensive to atheists or Muslims, Fox News has learned.
The tribute was created by a chaplain at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst. The chaplain wrote a poem titled, “God Created A First Sergeant.” It was later adapted into a video with a narration. First Sergeants are senior non-commissioned officers who look after enlisted members.
The video was modeled after the Dodge Ram Super Bowl commercial titled, “God Created A Farmer.”
“On the eighth day, God looked down on His creation and said, ‘I need someone who will take care of the Airmen,’” the tribute read. “So God created a First Sergeant.”
Chaplain leadership at the base signed off on the project as well as other base officials and earlier this week the video was posted on YouTube. But it was soon taken down after other officers objected. Read more from this story HERE.
The Fox and Friends clip about the Air Force video starts a few seconds after the Jay Leno intro:
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Soldier Told Not to Read Levin, Limbaugh or Hannity in Uniform
A veteran member of the U.S. Army Band said he is facing retribution and punishment from the military for having anti-Obama bumper stickers on his car, reading books written by conservative authors like Mark Levin and David Limbaugh, and serving Chick-fil-A sandwiches at his promotion party.
Master Sgt. Nathan Sommers, a 25-year Army veteran and conservative Christian based at Fort Myer in Washington, believes his outspoken opposition to gay marriage prompted higher-ups to take a closer look at his beliefs. The recipient of an Army Commendation Medal and a soloist at the funeral of former First Lady Betty Ford, Sommers said his core beliefs are enough to mark a soldier for persecution in today’s military.
“It seems like with the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell – that the Christians have been the ones who’ve had to go underground and in the closet – for fear of retaliation and reprisals,” Sommers told Fox News. “Christians feel like they can’t be forthright with their faith. They have to hide.”
Ret. Navy Commander John Bennett Wells is representing the master sergeant. He said there is no doubt in his mind that the U.S. military is discriminating against Christians – and specifically his client.
“There’s no question about it,“ Wells told Fox News. “Because he is religious, because he feels that homosexual conduct is wrong for religious reasons, he is basically being persecuted.” Read more from this story HERE.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-06-08 02:41:372013-06-08 02:41:37Assault Against Christians, Conservatives in Military Continues: Video Mentioning God Banned, Hannity, Levin and Limbaugh Censored (+video)
