"... explicit and even harsh penalties for violations."

Peggy Noonan has a column in today’s Wall Street Journal that makes the point that domestic spying will eventually, if it has not already, lead to a paranoid nation where no one trusts anyone.

 

Noonan:

If—what Snowden says is substantially true, the surveillance state will in time encourage an air of subtle oppression, and encourage too a sense of paranoia that may in time—not next week, but in time, as the years unfold—loosen and disrupt the ties the people of America feel to our country. "They spy on you here and will abuse the information they get from spying on you here. I don't like 'here.'"

Following the IRS and NSA revelations, the Internet is filled with references to the Stasi, the notorious East German police that monitored the people in that wretched country.

If we are going to stop government agents from the IRS, the FBI, the EPA or any of the other government alphabet agencies from crossing the line from servant to master, we must find the will to make sure that those who transgress are dealt with harshly. Harsh as in jail time; not simply fired, allowed to resign or put on paid leave like Lois Lerner.

When we commit a crime, lie to government agents or fall afoul of the myriad laws that have been passed we find ourselves in the coils of the judicial system. Government employees appear to have no fear of this, hence Ms. Lerner’s obvious contempt for the members of congress that tried to ask her some questions. It is past time to bring back the concept that they work for us, not the other way around. It is past time to rein in the Ruling Class. The only way that is done is for punishment to be severe and public.

Rand Paul's Message To Evangelicals: "There is a war on Christianity"

I'm starting to warm to Rand Paul more and more.

Senator Rand Paul, who is seriously considering running for President of the United States, told a conservative Christian audience today that, "There is a war on Christianity" being waged by "liberal elites' and "worldwide as well.

Part of his speech (read the whole thing).

There is a war on Christianity, not just from liberal elites here at home, but worldwide.

And your government, or more correctly, you, the taxpayer, are funding it.

You are being taxed to send money to countries that are not only intolerant of Christians but openly hostile. Christians are imprisoned and threatened with death for their beliefs.

In Pakistan, Asia Bibi, a Christian, sits on death row. Her crime, according to her, is that she dared to drink from a glass that belonged to a Muslim co-worker.

According to her co-workers, she insulted the Prophet. In our country, we refer to such quibbling as gossip. In Pakistan, if you are a Christian, it can land you on death row.

Recently, in Pakistan, a 12-year-old with Downs syndrome was imprisoned and charged with a death penalty crime for burning the Koran.

After weeks she was released after a local Imam was accused of actually sprinkling pages from an Arabic book into a fire near the little girl.

Criticize Obama and Josh Marshall calls you are racist, even if you are the Washington Post

Wapo has story on the immense costs of taking black presidents on trips to Africa

A foreign war is always a good way for diverting attention from domestic problems.

 

Is Scandalpalooza getting a little too much for Barack Obama? Running around the country raising money and playing small-ball not changing the focus enough?  Obama has decided to use the ace-in-the-hole that he’s been holding back for just the right time.  The tried and true play of the ruler in trouble:  when things in the capital get too hot, get the involved in another foreign war. His spy agency has suddenly told him, at just this very minute, that Bashar al-Assad, the dictator of Syria has used chemical weapons. Or perhaps he found out about it by reading about it in the newspapers.  So to war we will go, and antediluvian dinosaurs like McCain will be egging him on.

It is not possible to be too cynical about this regime.   And it's not possible to exaggerate the stupidity of Republicans.

If Sarah Palin Had Become President

Remember the 2008 election? Democrats in and out of the media told us that McCain was old and it was possible that he could die in office, leaving Sarah Palin as president. The horror!
 

Well imagine that McCain had not self-destructed, become president and died, leaving Palin as president.

Beginning on day one: 

• Palin would not have dismissed the Black Panther intimidation lawsuit that the government had already won.
• Palin would not have seized two auto companies and give them to her cronies in and out of the UAW.
• Palin and her supporters would not be claiming that her opponents were racists for disagreeing with her policies.
• Palin would not have tried to block Boeing from building a factory in South Carolina as a gift to her union buddies in Washington state.
• Palin would not have toured the world apologizing for America.
• Palin's Homeland Security Department would not have classified patriots as security threats.
• Palin would have expanded oil and gas exploration on federal lands instead of reducing it, make the US even less dependent on foreign oil.
• Palin would not have allowed the Pigford suit to be settled that gives billions of dollars to “farmers” that never farmed.
• Palin would not have shipped thousands of guns to Mexican drug cartels so that they could be found next to the bodies of murdered Mexicans and American agents.
• Palin would not have encouraged the IRS to harass Tea Party groups.
• Palin would not have encouraged the IRS to illegally reveal the names of contributors to conservative groups to Liberal organizations so that contributors could be harassed.
• Palin’s IRS would not ask groups seeking 501(c)4 status about their prayer life.
• Palin would not have passed a national health care bill that is a 2000 page “train wreck” and that threatens to destroy America’s health care system.
• Palin would have focused on reducing unemployment as it skyrocketed instead of wasting a trillion dollars on green boondoggles..
• Palin would have known that in today’s regulatory state there is not such thing as a “shovel ready jobs” program.
• Palin would not have spent a trillion dollars to prop up state and local government employees when private sector employees were losing millions of jobs.
• Palin would not have handed out “Palin phones” to welfare recipients.
• Palin would not have attacked Libya, without congressional approval, turning it into a rogue state.
• Palin would not have allowed her ambassador to Libya to be slaughtered, along with three US service members, and told would-be rescuers to stand down.
• Palin would not have blamed a demonstration that did not occur caused by a video that no one saw for the attack by terrorist in Benghazi.
• Palin’s UN ambassador would not have gone on national TV to lie about the terrorist attacks in Benghazi because she would not have broken Libya in the first place.
• Palin would not have been stupid enough - or naive enough - to support the Islamist take-over of the Egyptian government.
• Palin would have given encouragement to demonstrators in Iran when they went to the streets to protest a fraudulent election.
• Palin would not be giving the Islamist regime in Egypt billions of dollars to keep it in power.
• Palin would not have told Putin to wait till after she was re-elected because then she would have more flexibility.
• Palin’s appointed officials would not be lying to congress and the American people when they are not invoking the Fifth Amendment against incrimination.
• Palin would not be sending Secret Service agent to her critics' homes demanding to do a search, go through his medical records, his computer, his cell phone and pretty much anything else, and then threaten to come back and confiscate his guns if he "stepped over the line."
• Finally, Palin would have taken responsibility for the things that happened while she was President instead of telling us that she only read about it in this morning’s newspaper.

St. Louis police commander survives ambush on special patrol

When the bad guys begin setting up ambushes for police officers, what makes St. Louis different from any city in the Middle East?  I think we have more than the usual criminal problem.  Crooks should be afraid of the police rather than the other way around.  This is not a crime problem, it's a culture problem.  Think "war zone."

Spiess, 52, was alone, in uniform, driving an unmarked Chevrolet Impala about 9:22 p.m. when he spotted a suspicious-looking black Pontiac Bonneville with temporary license tags on Evans Avenue, heading west near Vandeventer Avenue.

He said he made a U-turn to follow, and the Pontiac’s driver would not stop for his lights and siren. The circumstances did not qualify under rules limiting pursuits, so he gave up at Evans and Sarah Street.

As Spiess continued along Evans, a man jogged slowly toward him and stopped between parked cars about 12 feet away.

“He looks me dead in the eye, lifts his pistol and starts shooting at me,” Spiess said Wednesday. “The first round sounded like a shotgun went off in my car. Then I heard a high-pitched whine go through the (open) driver’s side window and out the passenger window.

“He looked at me square in the face, I’m in an Impala, wearing a police shirt, and he was looking me right in the eye. He knew who he was shooting at. He absolutely knew I was a policeman.”

Spiess said that as he sped off, he watched in the mirror as the gunman stepped to the middle of the street and continued firing.

Note that in the entire article the race of the individuals is not named.  In the MSM that's a dead give-away.

ANN COULTER: IF THE GOP IS THIS STUPID, IT DESERVES TO DIE

On amnesty for illegal immigrants.

Democrats terrify Hispanics into thinking they'll be lynched if they vote for Republicans, and then turn around and taunt Republicans for not winning a majority of the Hispanic vote.

This line of attack has real resonance with our stupidest Republicans. (Proposed Republican primary targets: Sens. Kelly Ayotte, Jeff Flake, Lindsey Graham and Marco Rubio.) Which explains why Republicans are devoting all their energy to slightly increasing their share of the Hispanic vote while alienating everyone else in America.

It must be fun for liberals to manipulate Republicans into focusing on hopeless causes. Why don't Democrats waste their time trying to win the votes of gun owners?

As journalist Steve Sailer recently pointed out, the Hispanic vote terrifying Republicans isn't that big. It actually declined in 2012. The Census Bureau finally released the real voter turnout numbers from the last election, and the Hispanic vote came in at only 8.4 percent of the electorate -- not the 10 percent claimed by the pro-amnesty crowd.

The sleeping giant of the last election wasn't Hispanics; it was elderly black women, terrified of media claims that Republicans were trying to suppress the black vote and determined to keep the first African-American president in the White House.

READ THE WHOLE THING.

I often refer to John McCain “the old guy who ran with Sarah Palin” for good reason, he’s past his sell-by date. Honor McCain for his courage as a POW, put up a statue to his somewhere, but get him out of the political spotlight and into a retirement home because when he talks (and the media loves to get him talking) he makes my hair hurt.

He says that Republicans should support amnesty even if it doesn’t get the GOP one more vote because it gets them in the game and allows them to compete for the Hispanic vote. For one counterpoint read Ann Coulter. For another, let’s review the Republican experience with the Black vote. More Republicans voted for the Civil Rights bill than did Democrats. Yet every time this fact is raised nobody cares. Black voters are an electoral monolith, a reliable Democrat vote. Even when Republicans run a Black candidate against a white Democrat, the white Democrat gets the majority of the Black vote.

Facts don’t matter nearly as much as demagoguery. Democrats accuse the Republicans of wanting to put black people in chains, re-introduce slavery and kill their first-born and have more credibility with Black voters than some poor white schlub running on the Republican ticket proclaiming he’s for Civil Rights for all and voted for Civil Rights all his life. The answer from Black voters is to pull the lever next to the “D” on Election Day.

There is an answer to this issue, but it’s not the McCain answer. Please, Arizona voters, send McCain off to “spend more time with his family.”

Dorothy Rabinowitz goes off the rails.

Dorothy Rabinowitz on A Song of Victims

For the school of believers certain that an all-powerful American government regularly plots to invade their lives and subvert their freedom, these are heady days—or so they seemed. News of data mining looked to be irresistible proof of that faith—their darkest vision of an America at the mercy of a government secretly gathering all sorts of personal information and subverting the Constitution. And there was Edward Snowden, the latest addition to the pantheon of anti-government leakers, releasing a tonnage of classified data about the NSA surveillance programs.

.

For this he was, not unexpectedly, acclaimed as a hero both in the precincts of the Progressive Left and its anti-terror war warriors, and some quarters of the Libertarian Right—two groups, it has long been obvious, with much in common.

Trouble is, this latest face of self-sacrifice for a higher cause (Snowden has let it be known he considers his life as a free man pretty much over now) hasn't been greeted with anything remotely like admiration among Americans, other than sympathizers in the aforementioned groups. From all indications, he's an object of general contempt well deserving of prosecution—another in the line of socially deranged seekers who found the self-definition they long for in their obsessed vision of their government as the central source of evil in the world. It didn't help that Mr. Snowden's explanation for what he did came brimming odiously with virtue—he had, he said, decided to leak material because he thought Americans should be informed so that they could debate the questions he raised.

I’m sorry Dorothy Rabinowitz wrote this because it damages her valuable reputation. She uses the straw men that Obama regularly creates, creating a “school of believers” who believe that the American government “plots to invade their lives and subvert their freedom,” that view “…their government as the central source of evil in the world.” She may be spending too much time with the Progressives who told us that the Bush-Cheney cabal was doing exactly that. She may agree with Barack Obama that the constitution is fatally flawed because the Bill of Rights tells the government what it can’t do rather than telling the government what it must do .

 

Meanwhile in the rest of the country, we’re being hit with stories about the IRS targeting Tea Party and patriot groups for “special treatment.” For “accidentally” sending out lists of contributors to conservative and pro-family groups to Leftist organizations so that their contributors can be harassed. At the EPA, we have its head using a fake e-mail account and her underlings making conservatives pay a fortune for FOIAs to be granted while waiving fees for liberal groups. We have seen the government and the press (but I repeat myself) blame Benghazi on a demonstration that did not occur in reaction to a video that no one ever saw. We’re now treated to the interesting statistic that the lawyers in government supported Obama over Romney overwhelmingly, from 68% at the Department of Defense to 100% at the Department of Education. The Ruling Class is telling us to trust the government while the Country Class believes that they may not be paranoid enough.

 

But back to Dorothy, whose work I have previously admired. She indulges in ad hominem attacks on the leaker who may or may not be an honorable man, but whose revelations should be the cause of a national debate on just how much information we want the government to have on us. There is the little matter of the Fourth Amendment which states: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

 

We should have a sober discussion about whether creating a data base of all my phone calls and my internet comments violate this protection of my “person, houses, papers and effects.” And to dismiss this concern as foolish is beneath her. To suggest, as Dorothy does, that spying on Americans is the way to keep us from dying at the hands of terrorists is also beneath her.

The Real Threat to British Elites

Via Taki's Magazine

Recent incidents of Muslims behaving badly—such as the butchering of British soldier Lee Rigby by two Islamic-convert African immigrants, the riots in Stockholm, and the never-ending revelations about numerous Pakistani pimps “grooming” very young white English girls for being gang-banged by their relatives—has European elites terrified…of European commoners.

Please share this article by using the link below. When you cut and paste an article, Taki's Magazine misses out on traffic, and our writers don't get paid for their work. Email editors@takimag.com to buy additional rights.

Interesting article about Muslim male-chauvinist men in England grooming very young girls into having sex and then gang-banging them.

What makes the European eleites nervous?  Not the gang-rape of low class girls (after all, their children are protected).  It’s European men—with their talent for self-organization—who frighten Europe’s ruling class.

FOUR, Count Them, Four Separate EPA Scandals

1) The EPA gave an ethics award to fake employee, “Richard Windsor,” who was already just an unethically created e-mail alias for the agency’s former head, Lisa P. Jackson.

2) The EPA makes conservatives pay a fortune for FOIAs to be granted while waiving fees for liberal groups.

3) EPA contractors are basically Gym, Tan, Laundrying in new, swanky rec rooms thanks to your tax money.

4) The EPA leaked confidential information on farmers and cattle facilities to environmental groups. No bigs.

We can trust our phone and Internet records to this government.  Suuure we can.

EPA 'Mistakenly' Gives Names of Farmers to Radical Groups

According to the report, the information on livestock and produce farmers was sought through a Freedom of Information Act request by the groups Earth Justice, the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Pew Charitable Trust. They were given information on roughly 80,000 farmers and ranchers, though the EPA later said it made a mistake by releasing the information.

So the EPA sent them the names, addresses, phone numbers and other private personal information so that they could be harassed more effectively.

‘Pro-Gun’ Ricin mailer turns out to be Hollywood anti-gunner

Shocker! 

The letters came in the mail, and they bore a chilling message:

You will have to kill me and my family before you get my guns. Anyone wants to come to my house will get shot in the face. The right to bear arms is my constitutional right and I will excersice [sic] that right til the day I die. whats in the letter is nothing compared to what ive got planned for you.

The first one was addressed to Michael Bloomberg, the most visible face of the anti-gun movement, but it was intercepted at a postal facility that screens mail for New York celebrities. (No one will ever poison one of them, just an expendable postal worker, the new Ruling Class equivalent of Cleopatra’s food taster). Within a few days an identical letter with an identical date and postmark came to Mark Glaze, the guy who does the day-to-day gruntwork of trying to disarm America for his boss, Michael Bloomberg, at his lobbying firm The Raben Group, 1640 Rhode Island Avenue NW, Washington DC. Glaze was not covered by postal special treatment at the time, but the envelope was opened, as all mail to Washington lobbyists is, by an expendable intern.

Those few individuals who seriously study criminal communications, like these letters, can often utter an opinion with some degree of confidence about whether the letter is written by an actual idiot, or by an intelligent and educated person impersonating an idiot. These letters do show deliberate misspellings and usage “errors” of the type used in such an impersonation.

A third letter with slightly variant text, and with a curious absence of spaces after most periods, but with the same Louisiana postmark was sent to the President. It read (bold text is added variation from the Bloomberg/Glaze letters, strikethrough is material deleted that was in those letters):

You will have to kill me and my family before you get my guns.Anyone wants to come to my house will get shot in the face.I served in the united states army and because your muslim ass will probly never be able to retire.I will have to work until my last breath.I deserve better and so do my wife and kiddos.I will take care of this myself and make sure you wont be runnin this country in the ground any further.The right to bear arms is my constitutional right and I will excersice [sic] that right til the day I die. What’s in the letter is nothing compared to what ive got plannedin store for you mr president.

All three letters tested positive for ricin, using a somewhat insensitive field test. No one was exposed to lethal levels of the toxin (lethal levels being extremely small), fortunately. But the publicity over the letters wasn’t what the putative sender might have expected. Glaze, Bloomberg, and Obama, and their partisans and the media (but we repeat ourselves!) received the news with something approximating delight. The letters were proof that gun owners were murderous, insurrectionist sickos, fully deserving the IRS audits and whatever other miseries federal authorities could bring down on them. Editorials and “news analyses” (i.e., the New York Times equivalent of the front-page editorial formerly favored by Pravda pre-1992) piled imprecations on the presumed facilitator and enabler of this act of terrorism: the NRA, naturally.

Meanwhile, the actual investigation took another turn.

Postal inspectors have access to some of the coolest new tools in the Patriot Act toolbox. Every piece of mail is imaged, databased, and stored forever (just like the source, destination, duration, and location of every phone call, apparently). The Bloomberg and Obama letters were quickly tracked through a Shreveport postal center, back to a bunch of mail that came in through New Boston and Texarkana, Texas.

She was sure she could outwit the FBI.

At this time, a providential break in the case occurred: a New Boston woman named Shannon Richardson walked in to the FBI in Shreveport, LA, and fingered her husband, Nathaniel, as the mailer. Nathaniel was dangerous. He had lots of guns. He didn’t like the President. He was a combat wounded veteran, and he was employed in the defense industrial base (these are all things the FBI has been directed to consider warning signs). The FBI swarmed him at work.

To their shock and surprise, Nathaniel Richardson was cooperative. He said his marriage was on the rocks, and said anything Shannon told them was probably bullshit. Apparently one of the many stressors in their failed marriage was their disparate attitude towards guns. He consented to a search of his vehicle.

The search found a dozen castor beans in the trunk of his silver Maxima. Castor beans are the essential source of ricin. Still, they didn’t take him into custody. They did tell him not to leave town.

Meanwhile, other agents conducted a limited consent search of the Richardson home, finding and taking with Shannon’s consent numerous electronic gadgets that let them establish that Nathaniel’s computer had indeed been used to order castor beans and items for preparing ricin (lye and syringes). Shannon’s cell phone, which she also permitted them to examine, had nothing suspicious on it.

At this point, the FBI had a pretty good suspicion that the ricin letters originated at the Richardson home, but they had no real proof either spouse was guilty — each fingered the other, and the physical and computer forensics didn’t close the suspicion gap on either one.

This was the pinnacle of Shannon’s acting career. She wasn’t acting.

They chose to reinterview Shannon, and they fluttered her. The polygraph examiner indicated that she was deceptive when denying knowledge of the castor beans or ricin. At this point she changed her story. Now she said she had known that Nathaniel sent the letters, so, wanting him to be apprehended, she took steps to make sure he was caught by spreading some of his castor beans around. (“Modified limited hangout” perhaps?)

Both Richardsons consented to a thorough search of their home, and this time the FBI hit pay dirt: while on their first visit, they’d taken only electronics, this time they found castor beans, syringes with suspicious fluid, and various samples that tested positive for ricin. (Interestingly, the documents released so far do not indicate that the agents found or seized firearms).

Meanwhile, the forensic examination of the Richardsons’ computers bore further fruit. Three files were generated on Shannon’s computer, but printed on Nathaniel’s. They were:

•obama.docx — three mailing labels: to Bloomberg, Obama and Glaze.

•Muslimbastard.docx — the letter to President Obama, quoted above.

•guns.docx — various other quasi-literate letters that served to incriminate Nathaniel.

The printing, the mailing, the ordering of the castor beans and the data searches were all timestamped in the systems of the computers. At each of these times, Nathaniel had the perfect alibi: he was clocked in at work at Red River Army Depot, where his co-workers confirmed that he had been there, and where he had no computer access whatsoever.

SCAR. Check. Swimsuit. Check. Bat Guano Crazy Chick. Double check!

Shannon Richardson, meanwhile, had emerged as an interesting character. She was pregnant with a child, presumably sired by Nathaniel, but had five other children and several other failed marriages behind her. She was an aging actress (she uses the name Shannon Guess for film work; IMDB says she’s 35 but she looks older) who has struggled to find work in the youth-obsessed industry. Her best-known recent turn was as a zombie in a TV show, not exactly a thespian career milestone. And — oh yeah. She was a bitter opponent of gun rights.

It was time for the FBI to talk to Shannon Richardson again, and on D-Day, June 6th, they interviewed her on neutral ground, in a Mt Pleasant, Texas, hotel. Shown some of the evidence, she made a further confession, if still only a partial one: yes, she’d received the ricin ingredients, yes, she’d printed the mailing labels, and yes, she’d mailed the letters.

And, oh yeah, she had known the letters had ricin in them.

But it was all Nathaniel’s fault! He’d forced her, you see. That was her third, and latest story, and it incriminated her even as she insisted she was an innocent victim all along.

That was enough for the FBI. The next morning, June 7th, SA James Spiropoulos was in front of US Magistrate Judge Caroline Craven, with an affidavit setting out most of the above, and asking for an arrest warrant. Judge Craven signed. The only charge in the arrest affidavit was 18 USC 876(c), a general prohibition on sending threats of kidnapping or injury through the mails. Expect further charges.

Frankly, we could have told the Richardsons long ago that they were not a match: Nathaniel is a MacBook Pro user, and Shannon is PC. Not that she’ll be online for a while.

Meanwhile, when you don’t see retractions or apologies from Bloomberg, Glaze, Obama and about two hundred editorial pages, don’t be shocked. Indeed, expect the media to keep referring to this crime as one committed by pro-gunners, and inspired by the NRA.

And remember that Bloomberg, Glaze, Obama and the media were all excited about the prospect of prison for a man who now appears to be innocent.

Hero or Anti-Hero

Central Standard Times also wonders about the NSA leaker.

The man who exposed the National Security Agency’s top-secret surveillance programs has mysteriously disappeared from the Hong Kong hotel room where he had recently taken refuge, and a massive world-wide manhunt is now underway. We’re not talking about the American law enforcement officials who hope to arrest him on various espionage charges, although they’re probably on the job as well, but rather about the army of Hollywood agents eager to secure the rights to his story.

The saga of Edward Snowden would make for an interesting movie, and we’d happily pay the price of admission if only for the suspense of finding out if he is portrayed as a hero or a villain.

Hollywood could have a problem with him because, after all, he leaked The Lightworker's secrets.

Marco Rubio: In immigration reform, legalization comes first

In a Spanish-language interview Sunday with the network Univision, Sen. Marco Rubio, the leading Republican on the Gang of Eight comprehensive immigration reform group, made his strongest statement yet that legalization of the nation’s estimated 11 million illegal immigrants must happen before any new border security or internal enforcement measures are in place, and will in no way be conditional on any security requirements.

“Let’s be clear,” Rubio said. “Nobody is talking about preventing the legalization. The legalization is going to happen. That means the following will happen: First comes the legalization. Then come the measures to secure the border. And then comes the process of permanent residence.”

It's good to know where he stands. He doesn't have to lie any more.  Good thing the House will kill this bill.

Democrats love surveillance, as long as it's Obama, not Bush...

Spying is OK as long as your guy is doing the spying.

Politicians Not Worthy of Trust

All ruling classes always maintain that what they are doing is for the common good.  They lie.  I recently posted a series of posts here, here and here to illustrate how rapidly our assumptions about the benevolence of government have crumbled. 

It really does matter who is in charge of the awesome power the government has, and the Obama administration has demonstrated what happens when bad people rule.  Washington has not just become the capital of Hunger Games, but the seat of corruption so vast that people are finally beginning to rebel.

Glenn Reynolds was one of the first to sound the alarm.  Obama's power grab

The NSA spying scandal goes deep, and the Obama administration's only upside is that the furor over its poking into Americans' private business on a wholesale basis will distract people from the furor over the use of the IRS and other federal agencies to target political enemies -- and even donors to Republican causes -- and the furor over the Benghazi screwup and subsequent lies (scapegoated filmmaker Nakoula is still in jail), the furor over the "Fast And Furious" gunrunning scandal that left literally scores of Mexicans dead, the scandal over the DOJ's poking into phone records of journalists (and their parents), HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius' shakedown of companies she regulates for "donations" to pay for ObamaCare implementation that Congress has refused to fund, the Pigford scandal where the Treasury Department's "Judgment Fund" appears to have been raided for political purposes -- well, it's getting to where you need a scorecard to keep up.

But, in fact, there's a common theme in all of these scandals: Abuse of power. And, what's more, that abuse-of-power theme is what makes the NSA snooping story bigger than it otherwise would be. It all comes down to trust.

The justification for giving the government a lot of snooping power hangs on two key arguments: That snooping will make us safer and that the snooping power won't be abused.

It didn't stop the Boston bombings, Major Nassan or Benghazi, although all of these event were preceded by the use of electronic communication.

Most Americans generally think that politicians are untrustworthy. So why trust them with so much power? The evidence to date strongly suggests that they aren't worthy of it.

I agree.

The Ruling Class vs. the Country Class

The gap between the rulers and the ruled widens precipitously.

As far as the American people are concerned, this domestic spying is a big deal. Yet revealingly, to the political class--that is, our leaders in Washington DC--it’s not such a big deal. And there we see the central cleft in our politics today: the widening gap between the government and the governed.

According to pollster Scott Rasmussen, the American people oppose the US government’s secret collection of phone records by a whopping 59:26 margin.

Listening to Special Report tonight was eye-opening. All three commentators expressed support for the NSA spying program. They defended it because we are supposed to believe that if it’s approved and rendered kosher by government officials, members of congress and judges, the American people should just accept that what the government is doing is fine. I’m frankly shocked by how out of touch these people are. Is there some kind of invisible shield around Washington DC and New York that keeps them from seeing that the “country class” no longer believes the soothing reassurance of government officials … including judges?   If the scandals of the last few weeks mean anything, it's that reassurance from people in government no longer has credibility.  I voted for Reagan, Bush, Palin (and the old guy she ran with) and Romney but right now I find the rush to defend the NSA by the ruling class of both parties frankly scary.  And demeaning.  The officials are telling us they have everything under control; "top men" are working on it.  Do the people who make these comments even realize they are using the punch line from an Indiana Jones movie?

“I work for you”.

The accumulation of just too many lies.

The government’s ultimate defense is to say “I work for you”. But that only works when people believe it. Unfortunately too many now believe the country works for Obama....
Snowden said what many were already prepared to believe — even Obama’s liberal supporters — that the administration is a lying, corrupt, power-mad collection of unscrupulous men. Like a jilted woman, people didn’t believe Snowden because they knew him; they believed in Snowden because they knew Obama. The sense of betrayal may have even been more acute on the Left. In Snowden’s words: “I believed in Obama’s promises”. And how many of those said to themselves, ‘so did I and chose poorly.’

Your IRS at work

“Keep Your Faith to Yourself”

Brainwashing the troops

The new, politically correct, military.

From Just One Minute:

Programming our troops overseas get as their choices when they listen to AM Radio broadcasts overseas:

AFN Powernet Schedule:

Here for instance is Tuesday thru Friday:

(Tuesday thru Friday)

0000 NPR Market Place

0030 NPR All Things Considered

0400 ESPN Game Night (Monday)

0400 ESPN Sports Center Tonight (Tuesday – Friday)

0600 AFN Morning NewsWatch

0900 NPR From the Top (Monday)

0900 NPR Talk of the Nation (Tuesday-Friday)

1000 NPR On the Media (Monday)

1000 NPR Fresh Air (Tuesday-Friday)

1000 AFN OpenLine (as scheduled covering NPR)

1100 NPR All Things Considered

1300 ESPN Mike & Mike in the Morning

1600 AFN Afternoon NewsWatch

1800 AP News

1802 AFN NewsWatch Update

1805 Yahoo Sports

1806 Rush Limbaugh (Conservative)

1900 AP News (2 Minutes)

1902 AFN NewsWatch Update

1905 Yahoo Sports

1906 Doug Stephan (Call-in interviews – Variety)

2000 Jim Rome (Sports Talk}

2100 AP News (2 Minutes)

2102 AFN NewsWatch Update

2105 Yahoo Sports

2106 Ed Schulz (Liberal)

2200 NPR All Things Considered