Posts

Feds Admit that IRS Targeted Political Candidates for Audit

/3 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Evan VucciThe Treasury Department has admitted for the first time that confidential tax records of several political candidates and campaign donors were improperly scrutinized by government officials, but the Justice Department has declined to prosecute any of the cases.

Its investigators also are probing two allegations that the Internal Revenue Service “targeted for audit candidates for public office,” the Treasury’s inspector general for tax administration, J. Russell George, has privately told Sen. Chuck Grassley.

In a written response to a request by Mr. Grassley, the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee, Mr. George said a review turned up four cases since 2006 in which unidentified government officials took part in “unauthorized access or disclosure of tax records of political donors or candidates,” including one case he described as “willful.” In four additional cases, Mr. George said, allegations of improper access of IRS records were not substantiated by the evidence.

Mr. Grassley has asked Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. to explain why the Justice Department chose not to prosecute any of the cases. The Iowa Republican told The Washington Times that the IRS “is required to act with neutrality and professionalism, not political bias.”

The investigation did not name the government officials who obtained the IRS records improperly, nor did it reveal the identities or political parties of the people whose tax records were compromised. By law, taxpayer records at the IRS are supposed to be confidential.

Read more from this story HERE.

Unbelievable: Fed’s Now Considering Prosecution of Zimmerman for Civil Rights Violations (+video)

/26 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Fox NewsBy Fox News. The Justice Department said Sunday that it will review the George Zimmerman case for possible civil rights violations, after a jury acquitted the Florida neighborhood watch volunteer in the fatal shooting of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin.

As Zimmerman’s attorney cautioned that his client’s safety is at risk, the Justice Department responded to appeals from NAACP President Benjamin Todd Jealous and several lawmakers to keep investigating the defendant.

The department may find itself in a vulnerable spot. Last week, a conservative watchdog accused an obscure agency within the DOJ of helping support the “pressure campaign” against Zimmerman in the wake of the shooting last year. Judicial Watch claimed documents and public accounts showed “extraordinary intervention” by the department in the campaign that eventually led to Zimmerman’s prosecution.

The department, however, claims that it dispatched agency representatives to reduce tensions in the community – not to take sides.

Read more from this story HERE.

______________________________________________________________________

Photo Credit: Getty ImagesThe Zimmerman Verdict

By The Wall Street Journal. An American criminal defendant is presumed to be innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, and that’s the standard to keep in mind when considering the jury’s not guilty verdict Saturday for George Zimmerman in the murder of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin.

The case has been fraught with racial politics from the start, but inside the Sanford, Florida courtroom, the jurors had to wrestle with the standard that is a hallmark of American justice. No one but Mr. Zimmerman knows what happened that early evening in 2012 when he followed Martin, an unfamiliar young, African-American male visiting the neighborhood. A scuffle ensued, Zimmerman shot Martin in what he says was self-defense, and prosecutors never produced an eyewitness or even much evidence to disprove Mr. Zimmerman.

The verdict compounds the tragedy for the Martin family, but no one can claim that their son was not represented in court. The state threw everything it had at Mr. Zimmerman. Gov. Rick Scott replaced local prosecutors with a special team from Jacksonville, the judge often ruled favorably for the prosecution, including the addition of the lesser manslaughter charge (in addition to second-degree murder) at the end of the trial…

[But] Benjamin Jealous of the NAACP is already lobbying Attorney General Eric Holder to indict Mr. Zimmerman on federal civil-rights charges. To do so and win a conviction would require proof that Mr. Zimmerman was motivated by racial animus when the record shows little more than a reference by Mr. Zimmerman to “punks” in a comment to a police dispatcher.

Millions of Americans would see such federal charges as an example of double jeopardy, and a politicized prosecution to boot. In this context, it was good to see Mr. Obama’s statement Sunday that “we are a nation of laws, and a jury has spoken.” Read more from this story HERE.

______________________________________________________________________

FBI records: agents found no evidence that Zimmerman was racist

By Frances Robles and Scott Hiaason. After interviewing nearly three dozen people in the George Zimmerman murder case, the FBI found no evidence that racial bias was a motivating factor in the shooting of Trayvon Martin, records released Thursday show.

Even the lead detective in the case, Sanford Det. Chris Serino, told agents that he thought Zimmerman profiled Trayvon because of his attire and the circumstances — but not his race.

Serino saw Zimmerman as “having little hero complex, but not as a racist.”

The Duval County State Attorney released another collection of evidence in the Zimmerman murder case Thursday, including reports from FBI agents who investigated whether any racial bias was involved in Trayvon’s Feb. 26 killing…

Federal agents interviewed Zimmerman’s neighbors and co-workers, but none said Zimmerman had expressed racial animus at any time prior to the Feb. 26 shooting of Martin, a black teen, in a confrontation at a Sanford housing complex. As Sanford police investigated the circumstances of Martin’s death, the FBI opened a parallel probe to determine if Martin’s civil rights had been violated. Read more from this story HERE.

______________________________________________________________________

Photo Credit: APDershowitz Calls for Federal Civil Rights Case Over “Prosecutorial Tyrant”

By David A. Patten. Famed defense lawyer and Harvard law professor Alan M. Dershowitz is calling for a federal investigation into civil rights violations stemming from the George Zimmerman case — but he says the probe should focus on prosecutorial misconduct rather than on allegations of racial profiling and bias.

Speaking Sunday in an exclusive Newsmax interview, Dershowitz said the jury’s finding that Zimmerman was not guilty of either second-degree murder or manslaughter was “the right verdict.”

He added, “There was reasonable doubt all over the place.”

Immediately after the verdict was announced, however, the NAACP and outspoken activist Al Sharpton called on the Justice Department to launch a federal civil-rights probe, charging that the case had been racially tainted.

Dershowitz is calling for a civil-rights probe as well. But he contends the person whose rights were violated was Zimmerman. Read more from this story HERE.

Journalist: US Better Not Do Anything to Snowden or Undisclosed Info Will Be Fed’s “Worst Nightmare”

/8 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: ReutersSnowden documents could be ‘worst nightmare’ for U.S. – journalist

By Reuters. Fugitive former U.S. spy contractor Edward Snowden controls dangerous information that could become the United States’ “worst nightmare” if revealed, a journalist familiar with the data said in a newspaper interview.

Glenn Greenwald, the Guardian journalist who first published the documents Snowden leaked, said in a newspaper interview published on Saturday that the U.S. government should be careful in its pursuit of the former computer analyst.

“Snowden has enough information to cause harm to the U.S. government in a single minute than any other person has ever had,” Greenwald said in an interview in Rio de Janeiro with the Argentinian daily La Nacion.

“The U.S. government should be on its knees every day begging that nothing happen to Snowden, because if something does happen to him, all the information will be revealed and it could be its worst nightmare.”

Snowden, who is sought by Washington on espionage charges after revealing details of secret surveillance programs, has been stranded at a Moscow airport since June 23 and is now seeking refuge in Russia until he can secure safe passage to Latin America, where several counties have offered him asylum. Read more from this story HERE.

___________________________________________________________________

The (spy) game’s afoot in hunt for NSA leaker Snowden

By Rowan Scarborough. One twist in the fugitive hunt for asylum-seeking Edward Snowden is that the man who has revealed the most secrets about the National Security Agency in history now is undoubtedly one of its chief targets.

A subplot in this international thriller is a cat-and-mouse game: Will the NSA penetrate his communications or will the master leaker outwit all the agency’s high-tech gadgets — since he, as well as anyone, knows how they work?

“NSA is probably doing what it does best, which is sweeping the ‘electronicshere’ for communications, voice and data, indicating his next chess move,” former CIA officer Bart Bechtel says. “They may also be looking at known and suspected collaborators.”

A second analyst, a former intelligence operative, says that the same methods Mr. Snowden, an ex-NSA contractor, disclosed in documents leaks to the press are now being turned on him. Read more from this story HERE.

___________________________________________________________________

Photo Credit: AFPMorales says US hacked Bolivian leaders’ emails

By AFP. Bolivia’s leftist president Evo Morales on Saturday accused US intelligence of hacking into the email accounts of top Bolivian officials, saying he had shut his own account down.

Latin American leaders have lashed out at Washington over recent revelations of vast surveillance programs, some of which allegedly targeted regional allies and adversaries alike.

Bolivia has joined Venezuela and Nicaragua in offering asylum to Edward Snowden, the former IT contractor for the US National Security Agency who publicized details of the programs and is now on the run from espionage charges.

Morales said that he learned about the alleged US email snooping at the Mercosur regional summit in Montevideo earlier this week.

“Those US intelligence agents have accessed the emails of our most senior authorities in Bolivia, Morales said in a speech. Read more from this story HERE.

Report: Feds Helped Orchestrate Anti-Zimmerman Protests after Trayvon Martin Shooting

/21 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: APBy Fox News. A conservative watchdog group accused the Justice Department of helping manage the “pressure campaign” last year against George Zimmerman in the wake of the Trayvon Martin shooting, citing documents that show an obscure agency spent thousands assisting local demonstrations.

The little-known agency, the Community Relations Service, is described by the Justice Department as their “peacemaker” for community conflicts over race.

The protests last spring over Martin’s death certainly qualified as such a conflict. But while the department claims its “peacemaker” agency does not “take sides” in such disputes, Judicial Watch said the documents and public accounts show otherwise.

“These documents detail the extraordinary intervention by the Justice Department in the pressure campaign leading to the prosecution of George Zimmerman,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said.

The documents the group received — and has since published online — show the CRS agency filing a series of expenses incurred during the late March and early April demonstrations. Read more from this story HERE.

______________________________________________________________________

Federal Agency Involved in Protests is a Secretive Branch of the Justice Department

By Tom Topousis. A secretive branch of the U.S. Department of Justice was deployed to Sanford, Fla., in the aftermath of the Trayvon Martin shooting to help organize rallies, including one headlined by the Rev. Al Sharpton, calling for the arrest and prosecution of George Zimmerman.

Records obtained by the watchdog group Judicial Watch, under the Freedom of Information Act, showed that members of the Justice Department’s Community Relations Service were sent to Sanford in March and April of 2012 to help manage protests, The Daily Caller reported Wednesday.

The 347 pages of documents obtained from the federal government showed that $5,320 in expenses was claimed by the Community Relations Service for workers assigned to protests and marches in and around Sanford after Zimmerman was accused of shooting Martin. Read more from this story HERE.

Head of Fed’s CFPB Has No Idea How Many Americans the Agency Has Under Surveillance

/6 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Daily Caller A top official at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau could not tell the House Committee on Financial Services how many Americans are being monitored through the agency’s secretive data collection program Tuesday.

This response led some Republican lawmakers to question how seriously the bureau takes privacy concerns.

“It’s inconceivable to me, unless you’re the most dysfunctional agency in the entire world, that you’d come before the committee today unable to answer the very simple questions you’ve been asked,” Florida Republican Rep. Bill Posey told Steven Antonakes, the acting deputy director of the CFPB, at a contentious hearing.

…[W]hen Wisconsin Republican Rep. Sean Duffy asked Antonakes how many Americans were included in the new database, he had no answer.

“I couldn’t give you an accurate range,” Antonakes replied, prompting an incredulous response from the congressman. Previous reports have put the number of individual consumers monitored by the CFPB at least 10 million.

Read more from this story HERE.

101 Million Americans on Gov’t Food Assistance, More than Those in Private Work Force

/4 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: APThe number of Americans receiving subsidized food assistance from the federal government has risen to 101 million, representing roughly a third of the U.S. population.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that a total of 101,000,000 people currently participate in at least one of the 15 food programs offered by the agency, at a cost of $114 billion in fiscal year 2012.

That means the number of Americans receiving food assistance has surpassed the number of full-time private sector workers in the U.S.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), there were 97,180,000 full-time private sector workers in 2012.

The population of the U.S. is 316.2 million people, meaning nearly a third of Americans receive food aid from the government.

Read more from this story HERE.

Obama Gives Another Profound Speech: You’re Too ‘Cynical’ (+video)

/11 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: CorbisPresident Obama gave a speech Monday instructing Americans not to be so “cynical” about government. This is not a setup for a punch line. He then explained that the major problem with government is that it does not run as efficiently as “one of the most inclusive and most successful campaigns in American history.” His own.

It was unclear if Mr. Obama was referring to his 2008 political operation or the 2012 reprise, but in any case he said he is developing a new “management agenda” to deliver a “smarter and more accountable” government, “just like we did on that campaign.” Call us cynical, but is there an American outside of Washington nostalgic for the last election?

“What matters in the end is completion. Performance. Results. Not just making promises, but making good on promises,” Mr. Obama continued. Sorry, that was George W. Bush in 2001 debuting what he also called a new “management agenda.” Perhaps Mr. Obama’s version is an homage, though he didn’t acknowledge the debt, nor did he mention Al Gore’s “reinventing government” program of the 1990s.

President Obama’s management agenda is also indebted to President Obama’s 2011 call for a scrubdown of the regulatory state for duplicative rules, as well as President Obama’s 2012 proposal to consolidate and reorganize the executive branch. The authorities have since issued Amber Alerts for both projects.

Read more from this story HERE.

Edward Snowden’s Nightmare Comes True

/7 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: APBy Philip Ewing. Edward Snowden’s nightmare may be coming true.

Not exile; not the danger of imprisonment or prosecution; and not his newfound association with dictators, lawyers and impresarios.

Snowden’s worst fear, by his own account, was that “nothing will change.”

“People will see in the media all these disclosures, they’ll know the lengths the government is going to grant themselves powers, unilaterally, to create greater control over American society and global society,” he told The Guardian last month after he’d asked it to identify him as its source. “But they won’t be willing to take the risks necessary to stand up and fight to change things, to force their representatives to actually take a stand in their interests.”

One month after The Guardian’s first story, which revealed an order from the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court authorizing the National Security Agency to collect the phone records of every Verizon customer, there has been no public movement in Washington to stop the court from issuing another such order. Congress has no intelligence reform bill that would rein in the phone tracking, or Internet monitoring, or cyberattack planning, or any of the other secret government workings that Snowden’s disclosures have revealed. Read more from this story HERE.

_____________________________________________________________________

Last chance for Edward Snowden?

By Associated Press. An influential Russian parliament member who often speaks for the Kremlin encouraged NSA leaker Edward Snowden on Sunday to accept Venezuela’s offer of asylum.

Alexei Pushkov, who heads the international affairs committee in Russia’s parliament, posted a message on Twitter saying: “Venezuela is waiting for an answer from Snowden. This, perhaps, is his last chance to receive political asylum.”

Russian officials say Snowden has been stuck in the transit area of Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport since arriving on a flight from Hong Kong two weeks ago, unable to travel further because the United States annulled his passport.

Pushkov’s comments appear to indicate that the Kremlin is now anxious to be rid of the former National Security Agency systems analyst, who the U.S. wants returned to face espionage charges.

The asylum offer from Venezuela came in the early hours of Saturday, Moscow time, and there has been no response from the Kremlin or Russian Foreign Ministry. As Pushkov’s tweet indicated, Snowden also is not known to have responded to Venezuela’s offer. Read more from this story HERE.

_____________________________________________________________________

Photo Credit: DPASnowden Claims German Intelligence “in Bed” With the NSA

By Spiegel. For weeks now, officials at intelligence services around the world have been in suspense as one leak after another from whistleblower Edward Snowden has been published. Be it America’s National Security Agency, Britain’s GCHQ or systems like Prism or Tempora, he has been leaking scandalous information about international spying agencies. In an interview published by SPIEGEL in its latest issue, Snowden provides additional details, describing the closeness between the US and German intelligence services as well as Britain’s acquisitiveness when it comes to collecting data.

In Germany, reports of the United States’ vast espionage activities have surprised and upset many, including politicians. But Snowden isn’t buying the innocence of leading German politicians and government figures, who say that they were entirely unaware of the spying programs. On the contrary, the NSA people are “in bed together with the Germans,” the whistleblower told American cryptography expert Jacob Appelbaum and documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras in an interview conducted with the help of encrypted emails shortly before Snowden became a globally recognized name.
Snowden describes the intelligence services partnerships in detail. The NSA even has a special department for such cooperation, the Foreign Affairs Directorate, he says. He also exposes a noteworthy detail about how government decision-makers are protected by these programs. The partnerships are organized in a way so that authorities in other countries can “insulate their political leaders from the backlash” in the event it becomes public “how grievously they’re violating global privacy,” the former NSA employee says.

Intensive Cooperation with Germany

SPIEGEL reporting also indicates that cooperation between the NSA and Germany’s foreign intelligence service, the BND, is more intensive than previously known. The NSA, for example, provides “analysis tools” for the BND to monitor signals from foreign data streams that travel through Germany. Among the BND’s focuses are the Middle East route through which data packets from crisis regions travel. Read more from this story HERE.

_____________________________________________________________________

Photo Credit: APCuba’s Raul Castro backs asylum offers for Edward Snowden

By Fox News. Cuba’s Raul Castro stood Sunday with Latin American countries that have expressed a willingness to grant asylum NSA leaker Edward Snowden.

Venezuela and Bolivia both made asylum offers to Snowden over the weekend, and Nicaragua has said it is also considering his request.

Snowden has until Monday to respond to Venezuela’s offer.

“We support the sovereign right of …. Venezuela and all states in the region to grant asylum to those persecuted for their ideals or their struggles for democratic rights,” Castro said in a speech to Cuba’s national assembly, according to state-run newspaper Juventud Rebelde.

The foreign media was not given access to the session, but the speech was expected to be broadcast in its entirety later Sunday. Read more from this story HERE.

_____________________________________________________________________

Photo Credit: APBrazil Top Target of NSA Eavesdropping, Second Only to the US

By Reuters. The U.S. National Security Agency monitored the telephone and email activity of Brazilian companies and individuals in the past decade as part of U.S. espionage activities, the Globo newspaper reported on Sunday, citing documents provided by fugitive Edward Snowden, a former NSA intelligence contractor.

The newspaper did not say how much traffic was monitored by NSA computers and intelligence officials. But the Globo article pointed out that in the Americas, Brazil was second only to the United States in the number of transmissions intercepted.

Brazil was a priority nation for the NSA communications surveillance alongside China, Russia, Iran and Pakistan, Globo said.

In the 10-year period, the NSA captured 2.3 billion phone calls and messages in the United States and then used computers to analyze them for signs of suspicious activity, the paper said. In the United States, the NSA used legal but secret warrants to compel communications companies to turn over information about calls and emails for analysis.

Some access to Brazilian communications was obtained through American companies that were partners with Brazilian telecommunications companies, the paper reported, without naming the companies. Read more from this story HERE.

Surveillance State on Steroids: Fed’s Tracking All Postal Mail, Too (+video)

/6 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: NY Times Leslie James Pickering noticed something odd in his mail last September: a handwritten card, apparently delivered by mistake, with instructions for postal workers to pay special attention to the letters and packages sent to his home.

“Show all mail to supv” — supervisor — “for copying prior to going out on the street,” read the card. It included Mr. Pickering’s name, address and the type of mail that needed to be monitored. The word “confidential” was highlighted in green.

“It was a bit of a shock to see it,” said Mr. Pickering, who with his wife owns a small bookstore in Buffalo. More than a decade ago, he was a spokesman for the Earth Liberation Front, a radical environmental group labeled eco-terrorists by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Postal officials subsequently confirmed they were indeed tracking Mr. Pickering’s mail but told him nothing else.

As the world focuses on the high-tech spying of the National Security Agency, the misplaced card offers a rare glimpse inside the seemingly low-tech but prevalent snooping of the United States Postal Service.

Mr. Pickering was targeted by a longtime surveillance system called mail covers, a forerunner of a vastly more expansive effort, the Mail Isolation Control and Tracking program, in which Postal Service computers photograph the exterior of every piece of paper mail that is processed in the United States — about 160 billion pieces last year. It is not known how long the government saves the images.

Read more from this story HERE.

82% of Americans Agree Founding Fathers Would be Unhappy With Feds

/3 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: cliff1066™

Photo Credit: cliff1066™

As Independence Day approaches, most Americans think the Founding Fathers would have had a sad celebration this year.

A Fox News poll asks voters what the Founding Fathers would think of Washington these days: Fully 82 percent think they would be unhappy with how things are going there.

That includes 96 percent of those who identify with the Tea Party movement, 95 percent of Republicans, 88 percent of independents and 68 percent of Democrats.

Democrats (23 percent) are about six times as likely as Republicans (4 percent) to think the Founding Fathers would be pleased.

Meanwhile, more than three-quarters of voters (77 percent) believe the United States would be a better country if we followed the ideas of the Founding Fathers and the Constitution more closely.

Read more from this story HERE.