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Obama’s Unconstitutional Steps Worse than Nixon’s

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Photo Credit: Tom Toles

Photo Credit: Tom Toles

President Obama’s increasingly grandiose claims for presidential power are inversely proportional to his shriveling presidency. Desperation fuels arrogance as, barely 200 days into the 1,462 days of his second term, his pantry of excuses for failure is bare, his domestic agenda is nonexistent and his foreign policy of empty rhetorical deadlines and red lines is floundering. And at last week’s news conference he offered inconvenience as a justification for illegality.

Explaining his decision to unilaterally rewrite the Affordable Care Act (ACA), he said: “I didn’t simply choose to” ignore the statutory requirement for beginning in 2014 the employer mandate to provide employees with health care. No, “this was in consultation with businesses.”

He continued: “In a normal political environment, it would have been easier for me to simply call up the speaker and say, you know what, this is a tweak that doesn’t go to the essence of the law. . . . It looks like there may be some better ways to do this, let’s make a technical change to the law. That would be the normal thing that I would prefer to do. But we’re not in a normal atmosphere around here when it comes to Obamacare. We did have the executive authority to do so, and we did so.”

Serving as props in the scripted charade of White House news conferences, journalists did not ask the pertinent question: “Where does the Constitution confer upon presidents the ‘executive authority’ to ignore the separation of powers by revising laws?” The question could have elicited an Obama rarity: brevity. Because there is no such authority.

Obama’s explanation began with an irrelevancy. He consulted with businesses before disregarding his constitutional duty to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” That duty does not lapse when a president decides Washington’s “political environment” is not “normal.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Burp: On Vineyard, Obama Lunches on Fried Shrimp, Fried Oysters, Onion Rings, French Fries

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Photo Credit: bostinno.It’s only been three days, but President Obama has quickly settled into the vacation diet on Martha’s Vineyard. But don’t tell the first lady.

During a rainy day on Tuesday, he traveled to Nancy’s in scenic Oak Bluffs for a fried lunch. According to the pool report: “POTUS’s food order at Nancy’s was fried shrimp, fried oysters, onion rings and french fries.”

Obviously not on the lunch trip was first lady Michelle Obama, the first family’s fitness buff.

Read more from this story HERE.

Union-Free America, Beware: Obama’s NLRB Is Locked, Loaded and Ready To Do Union Bosses’ Bidding

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Photo Credit: Red StateIt is now official. Barack Obama’s union-dominated National Labor Relations Board is now up to its full anti-employer potential with AFL-CIO attorney Nancy Schiffer and union lawyer Kent Hirozawa being sworn in, along with union attorney Mark Pearce resuming his role as chairman.

This is the first time the NLRB has had five sitting members since 2003, when Democrats began crippling George Bush’s NLRB in an effort to diminish its capacity on rulings.

While two Republicans, Harry I. Johnson, III and Philip A. Miscimarra were also sworn in, they are in the minority and, as a result, will only be useful for their dissent (which can sometimes be useful in federal courts).

Although Obama’s NLRB had been stymied for a period of time, thanks to the bi-partisan deal cutting by Senate Republicans, union-free employers are facing a more hostile environment not seen for the last 30 years or more.

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Video Stunner: Boy Prays to Obama

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Photo Credit: YouTubeWhile U.S. presidents may very well be the most powerful individuals on earth, the operative phrase is “on earth,” but a string of incidents has developed in which Barack is credited with much, much more.

The latest is an online video in which a young boy appears to be praying TO Obama.

Not for him. Not about him. TO him.

“Thank you for all the stuff that you helped us with. Thank you for taking the courage and all the responsibility for everything you have done for us. And God has gave you special powers and you are going to handle it just fine,” the boy prays.

“You are good, Barack Obama. You are great,” he concludes, throwing his arms in the air and screaming, “Barack Obama!”

Read more from this story HERE.

Update: Mo. State Fair Bans Rodeo Clown Who Mocked Obama

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Photo Credit: YahooThe Missouri State Fair on Monday imposed a lifetime ban on a rodeo clown whose depiction of President Barack Obama getting charged by a bull was widely criticized by Democratic and Republican officials alike.

The rodeo clown won’t be allowed to participate or perform at the fair again. Fair officials say they’re also reviewing whether to take any action against the Missouri Rodeo Cowboy Association, the contractor responsible for Saturday’s event.

The entertainment during the bull riding contest featured a clown wearing a mask of Obama with an upside down broomstick attached to his backside. Spectators were asked if they wanted to see “Obama run down by a bull.” Many in the audience responded enthusiastically.

Numerous Missouri officials denounced the act after video and photos were posted online. Some Democratic Missouri lawmakers suggested Monday that there should be financial consequences for the fair.

The fair said in a written statement announcing the clown’s ban that he had engaged in an “unconscionable stunt” that was “inappropriate and not in keeping with the Fair’s standards.” The fair’s press release did not identify the clown.

Read more from this story HERE.

The NSA is Turning the Internet into a Total Surveillance System

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Photo Credit: Roger ToothBy Alexander Abdo and Patrick Toomey

Another burst of sunlight permeated the National Security Agency’s black box of domestic surveillance last week.

According to the New York Times, the NSA is searching the content of virtually every email that comes into or goes out of the United States without a warrant. To accomplish this astonishing invasion of Americans’ privacy, the NSA reportedly is making a copy of nearly every international email. It then searches that cloned data, keeping all of the emails containing certain keywords and deleting the rest – all in a matter of seconds.

If you emailed a friend, family member or colleague overseas today (or if, from abroad, you emailed someone in the US), chances are that the NSA made a copy of that email and searched it for suspicious information.

The NSA appears to believe this general monitoring of our electronic communications is justified because the entire process takes, in one official’s words, “a small number of seconds”. Translation: the NSA thinks it can intercept and then read Americans’ emails so long as the intrusion is swift, efficient and silent.

That is not how the fourth amendment works.

Read more from this story HERE.

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N.S.A. Said to Search Content of Messages to and From U.S.

By Charlie Savage

The National Security Agency is searching the contents of vast amounts of Americans’ e-mail and text communications into and out of the country, hunting for people who mention information about foreigners under surveillance, according to intelligence officials.

The N.S.A. is not just intercepting the communications of Americans who are in direct contact with foreigners targeted overseas, a practice that government officials have openly acknowledged. It is also casting a far wider net for people who cite information linked to those foreigners, like a little used e-mail address, according to a senior intelligence official.

While it has long been known that the agency conducts extensive computer searches of data it vacuums up overseas, that it is systematically searching — without warrants — through the contents of Americans’ communications that cross the border reveals more about the scale of its secret operations.

It also adds another element to the unfolding debate, provoked by the disclosures of Edward J. Snowden, the former N.S.A. contractor, about whether the agency has infringed on Americans’ privacy as it scoops up e-mails and phone data in its quest to ferret out foreign intelligence.

Government officials say the cross-border surveillance was authorized by a 2008 law, the FISA Amendments Act, in which Congress approved eavesdropping on domestic soil without warrants as long as the “target” was a noncitizen abroad. Voice communications are not included in that surveillance, the senior official said.

Read more from this story HERE.

Head of National Black Chamber of Commerce on Obama’s priorities: ‘This is not America’

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Photo Credit: Daily CallerCommitted to successful black entrepreneurship, Harry C. Alford, Jr. has been president of the National Black Chamber of Commerce since 1993.

During that time, he has spoken out with increasing boldness against the liberal orthodoxy hurting the black community. In 2009, he took on Democratic California Sen. Barbara Boxer at a cap-and-trade hearing, and that video went viral. In this interview with Alford, he continues to boldly confront the politics of government dependency, which he believes stand opposed to the founding principles of capitalism, private property and opportunity.

Alford claims President Barack Obama is hurting black entrepreneurship everyday with entitlements and dependency.

“He’s just after votes,” Alford said of Obama. “And people who don’t know, ‘He gives me a free cell phone, I increase my food stamps.’ That’s not America. That’s not why we fought the British.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Edward Snowden A Patriot?

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Photo Credit: APBy Trevor Timm

Does President Barack Obama think we’re stupid?

That’s the only conclusion possible after watching Friday’s bravura performance in which the president announced a set of proposals meant to bring more transparency to the National Security Agency — and claimed he would have done it anyway, even if Edward Snowden had never decided to leak thousands of highly sensitive documents to The Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald.

But even as he grudgingly admitted that the timing, at least, of his suggestions was a consequence of Snowden’s actions, the president declared, “I don’t think Mr. Snowden was a patriot.” When you look at what has changed over the past two months, though, it’s hard not to wonder, “What could be more patriotic than what Snowden did?”

First, the results: More than a dozen bills have already been introduced to put a stop to the NSA’s mass phone record collection program and to overhaul the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which has reinterpreted the Fourth Amendment in secret, creating a body of privacy law that the public has never read. A half-dozen new privacy lawsuits have been filed against the NSA. The Pentagon is undergoing an unprecedented secrecy audit. U.S. officials have been caught deceiving or lying to Congress. The list goes on.

These actions have been accompanied by a sea change in public opinion about surveillance. Poll after poll has shown that for the first time ever, Americans think the government has gone too far in violating their privacy, with vast majorities believing the NSA scooping up a record of every phone call made in the United States invades citizens’ privacy.

Read more from this story HERE.

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McCain: Young Americans admire Snowden, see him as ‘some kind of Jason Bourne’

By Ben Wolfgang.

A deep distrust of government has led young Americans to hold up NSA leaker Edward Snowden as a hero, Sen. John McCain said Sunday.

“There’s a young generation who believes he’s some kind of Jason Bourne,” the Arizona Republican said during on “Fox News Sunday,” referring to the lead character in the Bourne movie trilogy who battled his own government, particularly the CIA.

Mr. Snowden’s revelations — including details of the National Security Agency’s data-collection efforts — have led to a debate on the national security vs. privacy question, and how to balance the two.

President Obama last week laid out a series of proposed reforms to government spying programs in an effort to reassure Americans that their Fourth Amendment rights aren’t being trampled. His proposals include having a privacy advocate argue against the federal government in court, more restrictions on the mass collection of phone records and other steps.

Read more from this story HERE.

Gohmert: President Lied About GOP on Obamacare

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Photo Credit: Gage SkidmoreRep. Louie Gohmert charged on Sunday that President Barack Obama lied when he said during his White House press conference Friday that Republicans want to stop Americans from getting health care.

“That’s a false narrative. He said that we’re trying to keep people from getting health care. That’s just not true. That is an absolute, blatant lie,” the Texas Republican said. “We’re not trying to keep anybody from getting health care. And whether or not they have insurance under an exchange or not does not prevent people from getting health care.”

Gohmert was appearing on a political roundtable panel on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday with a fellow Texas congressman, Democrat Joaquín Castro, who defended Obama’s remarks and criticized Republicans for “extreme ideology.”

“The fact is you have millions and millions of Americans that can’t afford health insurance. Obamacare is helping people get health insurance. Republicans have offered no other solutions or plans,” Castro said, adding over Gohmert’s objection: “At this point, Louie, it’s just, you know, ideology. It’s just extreme ideology.”

Read more from this story HERE.

‘Obama Run Down by a Bull’

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Photo Credit: APA clown wearing a President Barack Obama mask appeared at a Missouri State Fair rodeo this weekend and the announcer asked the enthusiastic spectators if they wanted to see “Obama run down by a bull.”

The antics led the state’s second highest-ranking official, Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder, to denounce the performance in a tweet Sunday. He said it was “disrespectful” to the president.

“We are better than this,” the Republican tweeted.

State Fair officials said the show was “inappropriate” and “does not reflect the opinions or standards” of the fair. “We strive to be a family friendly event and regret that Saturday’s rodeo badly missed that mark,” they said in a statement Sunday.

It wasn’t clear if any action will be taken against the performers.

Read more from this story HERE.