Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) released a report documenting attempted abuses of federal power by the Obama administration on Tuesday, saying the administration “knows virtually no bounds.”
Cruz points to Obama’s own Supreme Court appointees, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor, to make his case:
“When President Obama’s own Supreme Court nominees join their colleagues in unanimously rejecting the Administration’s call for broader federal power six times in just over one year, the inescapable conclusion is that the Obama Administration’s view of federal power knows virtually no bounds,” the senator’s report said.
The Obama administration’s over-reaching includes attempts to electronically track Americans without cause and deny churches the right to choose their own ministers…
In one case, Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church & School v. EEOC, the Justice Department argued it “had the right to oversee a church’s choosing of ministers,” which even Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan called “amazing.”
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00kathleenhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngkathleen2013-04-13 03:08:412013-04-13 03:08:41Sen. Cruz: Obama Wants Power to Choose Ministers at Churches
Talk-show host Rush Limbaugh declared, “The nuclear family has always been under attack by communists, by leftists. The nuclear family – just like religion – must be destroyed, and in its place, ‘the community,’ the collective.
“So, while this is outrageous in its self-contained form, it isn’t anything new. I guess one of the things that is the most frustrating to me is that liberalism and socialism and Marxism and this kind of stuff have been out there on display for people to see and recognize and accept as true for decades.”
Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin tweeted: “‘Apparently MSNBC doesn’t think your children belong to you. Unflippingbelievable.”
Meanwhile, Glenn Beck pointed out that the MSNBC network promo is not just some gaffe by a host or panelist.
“This is something that people thought about,” he said. “This is something that everybody worked on. This is something that everybody got together and filmed.”
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-04-09 03:03:212013-04-09 03:03:21Limbaugh, Palin and Beck All Outraged Over MSNBC Ad Promoting Government Ownership of Children
These are trying times. Never in the history of this country have we been so weakened and polarized by what many view as deliberate government policy. Now anti-gunners in the U.S. Congress, the Obama administration, and legislatures across the country are seeking to exploit the Newtown tragedy to promote their “gun control” agenda that envisions federal, universal background checks on gun purchases, and that could lead to gun registration and confiscation.
At the same time, the increasing militarization of law enforcement, most visibly demonstrated by the growing use of massive, SWAT-type raids on businesses and individuals, sometimes with federal involvement or authorization, is heightening concerns that this country is moving toward a police state.
Mountain Pure SWAT Raid: The Movie
Mountain Pure Water, LLC is headquartered on Interstate 30 just outside the town of Little Rock, Arkansas. The company manufactures and distributes beverage containers, spring water, fruit drinks, and teas. In January 2012, about 50 federal agents, led by Small Business Administration (SBA) Office of Inspector General (OIG) Special Agent Cynthia Roberts and IRS Special Agent Bobbi Spradlin, swooped in, guns drawn. Without explanation they shut down plant operations, herded employees into the cafeteria, and confined them to the room for hours. They could not so much as use the bathroom without police escort. Cell phones were confiscated and all Internet and company phones were disabled.
Plant Manager Court Stacks was at his desk when police burst through his office door, guns drawn and pointed at him—a thoroughly unprofessional violation of basic firearms discipline in this circumstance, and the cause of numerous accidental SWAT killings.
According to Mountain Pure CEO John Stacks, the search warrant was related to questions about an SBA loan he secured through the Federal Emergency Management Agency to recover tornado losses to his home, warehouse, and associated equipment. Mr. Stacks says the SBA apparently doesn’t believe that assets listed as damaged in the storm were actually damaged.
The search warrant was extremely vague and some agents’ actions may have been illegal, according to company attorney, Timothy Dudley. Comptroller Jerry Miller was taken to a private room and interrogated for over three hours by SBA Special Agent Cynthia Roberts, the raid leader. He requested an attorney and was told “That ain’t gonna happen.” According to Miller, the SBA unilaterally changed the terms of Stacks’ loan. He says he asked Roberts what gave the SBA authority to do that, and she responded, “We’re the federal government, we can do what we want, when we want, and there is nothing you can do about it.” Miller said during the raid Roberts “strutted around the place like she was Napoleon.”
Stacks said the company has had three IRS audits in the past three years, including one following the raid, with no problems. The SBA has still not filed any charges, continues to stonewall about the raid’s purpose, and refuses to release most of the property seized during the raid.
Quality Assurance Director Katy Depriest, who doubles as the company crisis manager, described agents’ “Gestapo tactics.” She added that they confiscated CDs of college course work and educational materials for a class she had been taking that resulted in her flunking the course. Those materials have not yet been returned.
Attempts were made to contact Ms. Roberts for this article, but she is no longer employed by the SBA. Questions were directed to the Little Rock, Arkansas U.S. Attorney’s office. The USA’s public affairs officer had no comment; however they have convened a grand jury to evaluate the case.
Because law enforcement refused repeated requests to respond for this article, we have only Mountain Pure’s side of the story, but they make a compelling case:
•Many company employees were willing to discuss this raid on the record.
•Mountain Pure and several employees have sued Special Agents Roberts and Spradlin.
•Mr. Stacks commissioned a video about the raid, reproduced here.
The video includes testimony from Henry Juszkiewicz, CEO of famed Gibson Guitar Corp., which suffered two such raids, and another raid target, Duncan Outdoors Inc. The video does not attempt to establish anyone’s guilt or innocence, but rather highlights law enforcement’s heavy-handed tactics in executing SWAT-style search warrants against legitimate businesses. Gibson has settled with the Justice Department in a case fraught with legal ambiguities, while Duncan has been indicted for violations of currency transaction reporting requirements.
Mr. Stacks claims he has gotten calls from many companies that have suffered similar raids, but they are afraid to speak out. Here are a few examples that have made national news:
•FDA officials, U.S. Marshals, and the Pennsylvania State Police raided an Amish farm in 2011 for selling raw milk.
•A Department of Education SWAT team raided a man’s home, “dragged him out in his boxer shorts, threw him to the ground and handcuffed him” in front of his three young children. They were looking for evidence of his estranged wife’s financial aid fraud.
•66 year-old George Norris spent two years in jail following a USFWS raid that nailed him for filing incorrect forms on imported orchids.
•A Fairfax, Virginia optometrist being served a warrant for illegal gambling was killed by a SWAT team member whose firearm accidentally discharged. He answered the door in his bathrobe, unarmed and unaware that he was even under investigation.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-04-06 03:14:382013-04-06 03:14:38Police Militarization, Abuses of Power, and the Road to Impeachment
NASA’s James Hansen, director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies and a controversial and highly vocal voice of alarm about the planet’s changing climate, will retire as the director of the space institute, NASA announced Tuesday — and plans to immediately sue his former employer.
Hansen will step down from his $180,000 a year position to join a number of lawsuits challenging the federal and state governments for their failure to police industry over man’s effect on the climate, the New York Times reported.
Hansen was clearly aware of the irony.
“As a government employee, you can’t testify against the government,” he told the Times. Hansen is a central figure in the battle against climate change; on Feb. 13, he was arrested alongside of actress Daryl Hannah, activist Bill McKibben and a small group of activists protesting the planned Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada to the U.S. Gulf of Mexico.
That was at least the fourth arrest for the climate scientist — and his high profile was raising eyebrows at NASA headquarters.
“It was becoming clear that there were people in NASA who would be much happier if the ‘sideshow’ would exit,” Hansen told the Times.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-04-02 22:07:112013-04-02 22:07:11Activist Head of US Goddard Space Institute Quits So He Can Sue Government Over Global Warming
The National Shooting Sports Foundation today strongly objected to the last-minute reversal of the U.S. government position regarding the United Nations Arms Trade Treaty. In the closing hours of negotiations on Thursday, March 28, the government abandoned its previous insistence that the treaty be approved only through achieving “consensus” of all the member states. Requiring consensus had been the United States position going back to earlier administrations.
At the end of the session, a U.S. government spokesperson told reporters “It’s important to the United States and the defense of our interests to insist on consensus. But every state in this process has always been conscious of the fact that if consensus is not reached in this process, that there are other ways to adopt this treaty, including via a vote of the General Assembly.” The spokesperson went on to say that the United States would vote “yes” on the treaty in the General Assembly, regardless of the positions of other member states. By abandoning the requirement for consensus the United States is assuring passage of the treaty by the United Nations.
“This abrupt about-face on the long-standing United States requirement for ‘consensus’ illustrates that the Obama Administration wants a sweeping U.N. arms control treaty,” said Lawrence Keane, NSSF senior vice president and general counsel. “We are troubled by the timing of the Obama Administration’s decision to abandon consensus on the eve of the Senate debate on pending gun control measures. The United Nations treaty would have a broad impact on the U.S. firearms industry and its base of consumers in the U.S.”
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-04-01 23:59:052013-04-01 23:59:05Last Minute Reversal: U.S. will "Vote Yes" on UN Arms Treaty
After remaining mum on the subject when asked about it last week, Sen. Mark Begich’s office issued a statement Monday night from the senator supporting marriage equality.
“I believe that same sex couples should be able to marry and should have the same rights, privileges and responsibilities as any other married couple,” the Alaskan senator said in what appears to be his first direct statement on the subject.
“Government should keep out of individuals’ personal lives — if someone wants to marry someone they love, they should be able to. Alaskans are fed up with government intrusion into our private lives, our daily business, and in the way we manage our resources and economy,” he continued.
Although Begich’s office did not respond to an earlier request for comment about his views on marriage equality, the Human Rights Campaign informed BuzzFeed Monday afternoon that Begich’s office had told the LGBT rights organization that Begich supported [it].
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-03-26 23:41:582013-03-26 23:41:58After Repeatedly Refusing to Answer, Alaska’s Sen. Begich Now Embraces Homosexual Marriage
If history is any judge, the U.S. government will be paying for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars for the next century as service members and their families grapple with the sacrifices of combat.
An Associated Press analysis of federal payment records found that the government is still making monthly payments to relatives of Civil War veterans — 148 years after the conflict ended.
At the 10 year anniversary of the start of the Iraq war, more than $40 billion a year are going to compensate veterans and survivors from the Spanish-American War from 1898, World War I and II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the two Iraq campaigns and the Afghanistan conflict. And those costs are rising rapidly.
U.S. Sen. Patty Murray said such expenses should remind the nation about war’s long-lasting financial toll. “When we decide to go to war, we have to consciously be also thinking about the cost,” said Murray, D-Wash., adding that her WWII-veteran father’s disability benefits helped feed their family.
Alan Simpson, a former Republican senator and veteran who co-chaired President Barack Obama’s deficit committee in 2010, said government leaders working to limit the national debt should make sure that survivors of veterans need the money they are receiving.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-03-21 01:27:502013-03-21 01:27:50US Still Making Payments To Relatives Of Civil War Veterans, Analysis Finds
Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) said Democrats set up the Affordable Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare, to “fail” in order to establish a single-payer health care system, “where the government controls everybody’s lives.”
“Let’s just be honest about it, the bill hasn’t triggered yet fully,” Hatch said of Obamacare, during a press conference on Capitol Hill on Wednesday. “And it doesn’t until the 1st of next year.”
“When the young people in this country find out that they are going to be the generation of debtors and there’s no way they’re ever going to get out from underneath this kind of stuff—I’ve got to tell you, people don’t even realize how crushing it’s going to be after the 1st of this next year,” he said.
“And I’ll predict that within that year—now I may be wrong on this—but within the immediate future the Democrats are going to throw their hands in the air and say, ‘It’s not working. It’s unaffordable. And we have to go to a single-payer system,’” Hatch said, adding, “where the government controls everybody’s lives.”
“That’s what’s behind all of this. And they know it’s going to fail,” he said. “It’s already failing, and it hasn’t even triggered yet, the big expenses.”
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https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-03-21 00:32:472013-03-21 00:32:47Sen. Hatch: Left Conspired to Ensure Obamacare Fails So That Government Takes Over All of Healthcare (+video)
Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas President Richard Fisher said the government should break up the biggest U.S. banks rather than allow them to hold a “too-big- to-fail” advantage over smaller firms.
The 12 largest financial institutions hold almost 70 percent of the assets in the nation’s banking system and profit from an unfair implicit guarantee that the government would bail them out, Fisher said today in a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference in National Harbor, Maryland. The biggest banks enjoy a “significant” subsidy, enabling them “to grow larger and riskier,” he said.
“These institutions operate under a privileged status,” Fisher said. “They represent not only a threat to financial stability, but to fair and open competition.”
The biggest banks came under scrutiny yesterday at a Senate hearing on JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM), which hid trading losses, according to a report by the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. The New York-based firm under Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon lost more than $6.2 billion last year in a credit derivatives bet by Bruno Iksil, known as the London Whale.
Fisher said in a phone interview with Bloomberg News that his proposal “will not lead to the denial of credit for U.S. corporations.” The cost from big banks “far exceeds the benefits,” and the U.S. doesn’t need “to have the largest banks in the world to compete,” Fisher said after his speech.
Wayne LaPierre, the CEO of the National Rifle Association, let loose against the media and government who have recently characterized the gun lobbyist’s talking points as “crazy.”
“Let them be damned!” roared LaPierre.
In a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference, LaPierre accused gun-control advocates of offering “illogical” solutions to the problems of gun violence.
“They denigrate, and they call us ‘crazy’ for holding fast to [our opposition to gun control]. In their distorted view of the world, they’re smarter than we are; they’re special; they’re more worthy than we are; they know better than we do,” he said. “The liberal media can keep hating on me, but I’m still standing.”
LaPierre dismissed the Obama administration’s efforts to curb gun violence as ineffective and an infringement on Second Amendment rights. He described Democrats’ calls for expanding background checks as a “placebo” to which criminals won’t submit. “There are only two reasons for government to create that federal registry of gun owners, to tax them or to take them,” LaPierre said.
LaPierre reserved his harshest criticism for Janet Napolitano’s Department of Homeland Security, which suggested in a recent Web video that citizens use objects like scissors when faced by an active shooter.
