BWCentral

IRS to America: Your emails are ours

Bear Witness — Sat, 25 May 2013 02:24:07 +0000

Activists raise alarms over bureaucracy’s view on communication privacy

Two of the headline scandals that have hit the Barack Obama administration in recent days could be about to come together – the IRS and the invasion by government of private communications.

At least that’s the way it looks, based on a report from the activist group ACLU, where staff attorney Nathan Wessler recently wrote that the most feared federal agency believes it has the right to access private emails.

The recent scandals are creating a huge wall for the Obama administration in its efforts to move its agenda forward. In brief, Congress is investigating now why the IRS deliberately targeted conservative and tea party organizations over the last three years with what some recipients have described as harassment when they applied for a tax status.

Secondly, the Department of Justice has been gaining access to journalist’s telephone records without telling them when it suspects a leak of information to the media.

Now comes the report from Wessler, who explained that the IRS long has held the position that it can obtain and read a person’s emails – essentially without permission, without a warrant and without even notification.

The recent report from Wessler explained how the ACLU sought information about the IRS through the Freedom of Information Act.

“So does the IRS always get a warrant? Unfortunately, while the documents we have obtained do not answer this question point blank, they suggest otherwise,” Wessler wrote.

He explained the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, which was written when people likely still paid bills by mailing a check and communicated with family through letters, is “hopelessly outdated.”

“It draws a distinction between email that is stored on an email provider’s server for 180 days or less, and email that is older or has been opened,” he wrote. “The former requires a warrant; the latter does not.”

He said a court decision, from the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in United States v. Warshak, ordered that the government must obtain a probable cause warrant before compelling email providers to turn over information.

But that actually is a requirement in only the 6th Circuit, he noted.

The report said the IRS documents that were obtained show the IRS before the court opinion had a policy “to read people’s email without getting a warrant.”

In fact, the IRS believes the Fourth Amendment doesn’t really mean anything in that context, the report said.

For example, the “Search Warrant Handbook” from the lawyer of the agency’s criminal tax division, asserted “The Fourth Amendment does not protect communications held in electronic storage, such as email messages stored on a server, because Internet users do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in such communications.”

A subsequent IRS memo, the report said, explained the court ruling applies only in the 6th Circuit.

A report from the World Privacy Forum, dated only a few years ago, also warned that information “stored by a business or an individual with a third party may have fewer or weaker privacy or other protections than information in the possession of the creator of the information.”

It found that “both government agencies and private litigants may be able to obtain information from a third party more easily than from the creator of the information.”

“To the present,” wrote Wessler, “Has the IRS’ position changed this tax season? Apparently not. The current version of the Internal Revenue Manual, available on the IRS website, continues to explain that no warrant is required for emails that are stored by an ISP for more than 180 days.

“Apparently, the agency believes nothing of consequence has changed since ECPA was enacted in 1986, or the now-outdated Surveillance Handbook was published in 1994,” Wessler said.

“Let’s hope you never end up on the wrong end of an IRS criminal tax investigation. But if you do, you should be able to trust that the IRS will obey the Fourth Amendment when it seeks the contents of your private emails. Until now, that hasn’t been the case. The IRS should let the American public know whether it obtains warrants across the board when accessing people’s email. And even more important, the IRS should formally amend its policies to require its agents to obtain warrants when seeking the contents of emails, without regard to their age,” Wessler said.

The circumstances have created a market for alternatives to keeping information on email servers and other points. Companies such as CloudLocker offer products that allow consumers to store virtually unlimited data at home.

The company’s advocates explain, “Instead of keeping your files on some unknown server in who knows where, everything stays on your CloudLocker in your home or office. … You don’t send copies of your files .. the files stay on your CloudLocker and you merely send a link to the original file.”

We Once Had Presidents That Fought Communism…Now We Have One That Embraces It.

Bear Witness — Sat, 25 May 2013 02:15:32 +0000

Surprise: Obama Promotes Another Benghazi Scandal Player

Guy Benson — Sat, 25 May 2013 02:11:44 +0000

Hey, if Susan Rice qualifies for a big promotion, why not Victoria Nuland? She’s the State Department spokeswoman at the center of the firestorm over the administration’s Benghazi talking points — and if the president has his way, she’ll be movin’ on up to Assistant Secretary of State:

The State Department spokeswoman who earlier this month found herself in the middle of the controversy surrounding key revisions to the Benghazi talking points appears to be in line for a promotion. The White House announced Thursday that President Barack Obama intends to nominate Victoria Nuland as assistant secretary for European and Eurasian affairs, a position that requires Senate confirmation…Nuland, who has served as the State Department spokesperson from 2011 until earlier this spring, came under fire from Obama administration critics last week after leaked e-mails revealed she raised concerns with the CIA-prepared talking points on the deadly terror attack last September 11. Specifically, Nuland asked that references to al Qaeda and previous CIA warnings about threats posed to U.S. diplomats in Libya be scrubbed from the document that was used by U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice on news talk shows to explain the administration’s understanding of events in Libya.

Those confirmation hearings could get testy. Nuland’s contributions to the now-infamous talking points email chain provide the closest thing to smoking-gun evidence of a cover up. She demanded that (accurate) assessments of terrorist involvement be scrubbed, along with references to (accurate) intelligence warnings about the deteriorating security situation in Benghazi leading up to the attack . Here’s how ABC News described her insistence on misleading edits a few weeks ago:

In one email, previously reported by ABC News, Nuland said that including the CIA warnings “could be used by Members [of Congress] to beat the State Department for not paying attention to Agency warnings so why do we want to feed that? Concerned …” After some changes were made, Nuland was still not satisfied. “These [changes] don’t resolve all my issues or those of my building leadership,” Nuland wrote.

These two quotes alone demonstrate how Nuland was primarily concerned with denying Congress (accurate) ammunition to ask why State Department leadership had been derelict and negligent in advance of the deadly terrorist attacks. “Why do we want to feed that?” she asked, apparently unconcerned with, you know, the truth. She also specified that early rounds of alterations to the talking points were insufficiently bowdlerized, which was unacceptable to both her and her “building leadership.” To whom might she have been referring, I wonder? Now, Obama would like to elevate Nuland to be among that same building leadership. Loyal soldiers must be rewarded for protecting the castle, after all. This move extends another middle finger to House investigators and the families of the Benghazi dead. The message is clear: The president could not care less about what other people think about his administration’s actions. Indeed, it’s such a non-scandal to the White House that they’re conspicuously promoting its key players. The arrogance and “you can’t touch me” attitude speaks for itself. This administration is out of control.

Forget promotions, not a single person has been fired over the lethal Benghazi fiasco. The handful of State Department officials who’ve been “disciplined” are still drawing paychecks, including the top “scapegoat,” who was going to be reassigned to a new job as soon as the scandal “blew over.” Elsewhere on the accountability score card, at least five Benghazi attackers have been identified and located by the US government. None of them have been detained, however, because the administration is trying to build a legal case against them that could hold up in a civilian American courtroom. Madness. Meanwhile, the Congressional investigation is far from over. The American people are largely supportive of Republicans’ efforts to get to the bottom of the issue, which a majority calls “very important.” As the Washington Post puts it, based on their polling, “it’s not just Republicans up in arms about Benghazi. That’s a problem for President Obama.” I’ll leave you with this headline from BuzzFeed:

House Democrats Dismiss Existence Of Obama Scandals

Apparently some of them didn’t get the memo.

2 FBI Agents Involved in Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s Arrest “FALL” Out of Helicopter and Die

Ralph Hornsby — Fri, 24 May 2013 02:19:00 +0000

Remember that scene in Scarface?

Two members of the FBI’s elite counterterrorism unit died Friday while practicing how to quickly drop from a helicopter to a ship using a rope, the FBI announced Monday in a statement.

The statement gave few details regarding the deaths of Special Agents Christopher Lorek and Stephen Shaw, other than to say the helicopter encountered unspecified difficulties and the agents fell a “significant distance.”

Last month, the team was involved in the arrest of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, a suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings. And in February, it rescued a 5-year-old boy held hostage for six days in an underground bunker in Alabama.

“Whenever things go really wrong, the FBI calls in the Hostage Rescue Team. It’s the government’s 911,” Coulson said.

Irvin Wells, a former FBI special agent who retired in 1990 after leading the Norfolk field office for three years, stressed that the Hostage Rescue Team is different from the FBI’s regular SWAT teams. He noted that agents assigned to a field office’s SWAT team also must perform other jobs inside the bureau, while agents assigned to the Hostage Rescue Team have no other duties.

http://hamptonroads.com/2013/05/fbi-agents-died-fall-helicop…

http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/timesdispatch/obituary.aspx…

US Suspends Constitution in Permanent World War on Terror

Eric Blair — Fri, 24 May 2013 02:03:50 +0000

Two disturbing developments have occurred in the last couple of days that have gone relatively unnoticed compared to the recent IRS, AP, and Benghazi scandals.

First, the senate is debating an expansion of the already broad powers of the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF) so the U.S. can essentially engage any area in the world in the war on terror, including America. Which brings us to the second development: the Pentagon has recently granted itself police powers on American soil.

Assistant Secretary of Defense Michael Sheehan told Congress yesterday that the AUMF authorized the US military to operate on a worldwide battlefield from Boston to Pakistan. Sheehan emphasized that the Administration is authorized to put boots on the ground wherever the enemy chooses to base themselves, essentially ignoring the declaration of war clause in the US Constitution.

Senator Angus King said this interpretation of the AUMF is a “nullity” to the Constitution because it ignores Congress’ role to declare war. King called it the “most astoundingly disturbing hearing” he’s been to in the Senate.

Even ultra-hawk John McCain agreed that the AUMF has gone way beyond its authority.

“This authority … has grown way out of proportion and is no longer applicable to the conditions that prevailed, that motivated the United States Congress to pass the authorization for the use of military force that we did in 2001,” McCain said.

Glenn Greenwald wrote an excellent piece describing how this hearing reveals the not-so-secret plan to make the war on terror a permanent fixture in Western society.

Greenwald writes:

It is hard to resist the conclusion that this war has no purpose other than its own eternal perpetuation. This war is not a means to any end but rather is the end in itself. Not only is it the end itself, but it is also its own fuel: it is precisely this endless war – justified in the name of stopping the threat of terrorism – that is the single greatest cause of that threat.

A self-perpetuating permanent war against a shadowy undefinable enemy appears to be the future of American foreign policy. How convenient for the war machine and tyrants who claim surveillance is safety.

But perhaps most disturbing of all of this is the military’s authority to police American streets as if it was in civil war. For all those still in denial that America is a militarized police state, this should be the ultimate cure to your delusion.

Jeff Morey of AlterNet writes:

By making a few subtle changes to a regulation in the U.S. Code titled “Defense Support of Civilian Law Enforcement Agencies” the military has quietly granted itself the ability to police the streets without obtaining prior local or state consent, upending a precedent that has been in place for more than two centuries.

The most objectionable aspect of the regulatory change is the inclusion of vague language that permits military intervention in the event of “civil disturbances.” According to the rule: “Federal military commanders have the authority, in extraordinary emergency circumstances where prior authorization by the President is impossible and duly constituted local authorities are unable to control the situation, to engage temporarily in activities that are necessary to quell large-scale, unexpected civil disturbances.”

A law from 1878 called the

Posse Comitatus Act

was put in place to prevent the Department of Defense from interfering with local law enforcement. But now, the DoD claims they’ve had this authority for over 100 years.

“The authorization has been around over 100 years; it’s not a new authority. It’s been there but it hasn’t been exercised. This is a carryover of domestic policy,” said an unnamed defense official who also emphasized that all soldiers take an oath to defend the Constitution against all enemies “foreign and domestic” indicating that citizens are a threat to the Constitution.

Yet, the Constitution is a document that polices the government, not the people. In other words, the only people who can be “enemies” of the Constitution are those who took an oath to defend it. Therefore, only government officials can be an enemy the Constitution.

This follows a recent West Point study that sought to define the American people as “domestic enemies” in order to justify soldiers breaking their oath to corral pesky citizens.

The West Point Terrorism Center wrote that “conspiracy theorists” who worry that local law enforcement will be steadily replaced by federally-controlled law enforcement could potentially be a domestic enemy:

Some groups are driven by a strong conviction that the American political system and its proxies were hijacked by external forces interested in promoting a “New World Order,” (NWO) in which the United States will be embedded in the UN or another version of global government. The NWO will be advanced, they believe, via steady transition of powers from local to federal law-enforcement agencies, i.e., the transformation of local police and law-enforcement agencies into a federally controlled “National Police” agency that will in turn merge with a “Multi-National Peace Keeping Force.” The latter deployment on US soil will be justified via a domestic campaign implemented by interested parties that will emphasize American society’s deficiencies and US government incompetency.

So, as the US military claims to have the authority to be a “National Police” force, researchers who claim there is an agenda to do just that are now labeled as domestic terrorists?

Does this make any sense? Will oath takers see through these ridiculous interpretations and engage the real domestic enemy to the Constitution? Or will they just follow orders when the time comes to crack down on Americans?

House Leadership Rejects Senate Immigration Bill

Mike Flynn — Fri, 24 May 2013 01:37:39 +0000

This week, the Senate Judiciary Committee completed its work on the “Gang of 8″ Amnesty Bill. The full Senate is expected to take up the legislation the first week of June, when it returns from Memorial Day recess. On Thursday, House GOP leadership made clear that the House wouldn’t consider the Senate bill should it pass, but will work on its own legislation to reform immigration.

“While we applaud the progress made by our Senate colleagues, there are numerous ways in which the House will approach the issue differently,” the statement says. “The House remains committed to fixing our broken immigration system, but we will not simply take up and accept the bill that is emerging in the Senate if it passes. Rather, through regular order, the House will work its will and produce its own legislation.”

The statement was issued jointly by Speaker Boehner and Reps. Eric Cantor, Kevin McCarthy, Cathy McMorris-Rodgers and Bob Goodlatte. VA Rep. Goodlatte chairs the House Judiciary Committee, which is planning to consider a package of bills individually to reform the nation’s immigration system.

There is a separate effort in the House to draft a single, comprehensive proposal for immigration reform. That effort is being spearheaded by 4 Democrat and 4 Republican Congressman, similar to the Senate’s “Gang” negotiators.

The House Leadership seems committed to a more deliberative, piece-meal approach to the issue.

What the Benghazi Cover-Up is Really All About

Common Constitutionalist — Fri, 24 May 2013 01:34:02 +0000

Benghazi is not a singular event. It’s not just about the death of the ambassador and three others. It’s not just about why help was not sent or even where Obama was all that time.

Although these are important, the real scandal is what was going on in Benghazi and why was ambassador Stevens there in the first place and with very little security?

I and others agree that Stevens was running guns from Libya, through Turkey and to the “Rebels” in Syria. Others and I have contended this from the beginning. To clarify, most of the “Rebels” have turned out to be Al Qaeda or affiliated terrorist groups.

I also reported early on that we “conspiracy theorists” thought that Stevens was trying to possibly retrieve some of the weapons through Benghazi and Al Qaeda or a subgroup set him up and took him out.

Now we learn from an exclusive PJ Media report by Roger Simon that some very damning evidence may be revealed soon.

Keep in mind that the following reports are not official and may not turn out to be completely accurate.

It appears as if more whistleblowers may come forward to enlighten us further regarding the real scandal — why Stevens was in Benghazi. Benghazi as you may or may not know, was not a good place to just hang around, but evidently a good place to procure weapons.

It is being said that these whistleblowers will say that Stevens was in Benghazi to buyback Stinger missiles from Al Qaeda, Stinger missiles that are capable of downing military or civilian aircraft. Not the weapons you want in the hands of terrorists.

If reports are correct, they will also claim that the gunrunning was not being done through the CIA, but Hillary Clinton’s State Department.

It will be said the CIA did not want to provide these weapons to the terrorists but apparently Hillary Clinton personally authorized it.

So if Hillary knew all about this operation, guess who else had to have known? You got it, the King himself.

The whistleblowers apparently contend that the CIA director David Petraeus’ affair was leaked to silence him.

There are also reports that Gen. Carter Ham, head of AFRICOM (U.S. Africa command) had “special ops” teams that could have been in Benghazi in very short order. The claim is that he was ordered by the White House not to send them. When he decided to disobey the order, it is reported that his second in command was ordered by the White House to threaten him with removal.

You may ask if these whistleblowers will soon come forward, why speak to PJ media ahead of any possible public testimony?

Is it possible that they fear serious retribution ahead of their testimony? Might some tragedy befall them prior to it? Could be.

Frankly, the more we learn of this thuggish administration, anything is possible.

And that brings us back to our dear president who was apparently AWOL throughout this whole ordeal.

Remember, this happened on September 11, before the presidential election. One would think it important to show a sitting president as a strong and involved Commander-in-Chief.

Yet the then Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta publicly stated that he had but one meeting with Obama and didn’t see or hear from him again. Curious? Not really.

Even if just some of these assertions are true, Obama must be seen to be as far away from this thing as possible. He could not be in the situation room. He could in no way be seen to have his fingerprints on this. He had to be insulated. But if Hillary knew, he knew.

It is my belief that these four men were sacrificed to cover-up the gunrunning and buyback operations. My guess is that there was evidence at that location that could be discovered, and when the “op” went bad, they pulled the plug and abandoned the SEALs and the ambassador.

For the good of the country, I sure hope we’re wrong.

More articles by Common Constitutionalist

Open Letter to U.S. Military: You Now Work for the North Atlantic Terrorist Organization

Timothy Pope — Thu, 23 May 2013 19:46:37 +0000

This letter is directed toward all of my military brothers who are still sleeping on the job. Time to wake up!

Do you want to know why the DoD announced this last week in a directive that they seized sovereign authority over domestic operations for civil unrest from the legislative and executive branches? And why then SECDEF Leon Panetta announced last year to Senator Sessions in congressional testimony that the DoD now gets its war-making power directly from UN/NATO authorities and NOT from the Congress?

Our country is currently in the midst of an ongoing (and escalating) power struggle over who gets to be dictator. And none of the factions serve our Constitutional Republic. They all serve foreign unelected bodies that are actively trying to usurp our republican form of government, break-up our nation and bring us into their utopic new one-world “global governance” system that they’re all now openly discussing.

You can see all the predictive programming escalating on the television and the big screen, keeping America in an ever-heightened state of fear and paranoia: Red Dawn, Homeland, Olympus Has Fallen, White House Down, G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, etc. And you can see in real time the new “domestic terror threat” being “identified” by the social engineers, turning the domestic police state control grid away from Islamic Jihad extremists, onto honorable domestic patriot groups who love their God, their freedom, liberty, religion, guns, and their Bill of Rights.

NATO, by the way, is run by the British royal family and their European central banking financiers, who run our Federal Reserve bank and the IRS. For the same reason that the FBI (domestic intelligence) is a branch of British MI5, and the CIA (foreign intelligence) is a branch of MI6. All you have to do is follow the money. It’s very easy if you know what you’re looking for. There is ALWAYS a paper trail of investments, much to the dismay of the actual perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks.

Congratulations! You are now taking your orders in a top-down command and control structure directly from foreign European collaborators. That makes you in breach of your sworn Oath by fiat.

And the terrible state of denial that this country finds itself in, that you and so many of our military men and women seem to be in, will be our downfall. The purpose of our military is to SUPPORT and DEFEND our Constitution from foreign and domestic enemies, to PROTECT our people and our Republic, not to help our enemies destroy us.

Let’s make something perfectly clear: The powers of the individual Branches of government concerning the United States Military are clearly outlined in the Constitution.

MILITARY APPROPRIATIONS:

Article I, Section 8 – The Legislative Branch – “To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years; To provide and maintain a Navy“

Article II, Section 2 – The Executive Branch – “The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States“

The separation of those powers concerning their duties and responsibilities are precise and distinct to each Branch. Article II which covers the governmental responsibilities of both Houses of Congress distinctly places the responsibility of provision for and maintenance of the military specifically in the duties of the United States House of Representatives and Senate.

Congress therefore provides funding for every aspect of military existence, from operations to equipment. The specific responsibility, “raise and support Armies,” and , “provide and maintain a Navy,” are specifically outlined in Section 8. Additionally appropriating funding for this provision is stated as not to exceed a period of, “two years,” without review by the Congress for the appropriation of funding.

The actual use of the military Constitutionally is the sole responsibility of the Executive Branch and specifically The President of The United States as Commander in Chief. Article II, Section 2 specifically states that, “The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States.” As Commander in Chief, the President is the appointed governmental head of the military and as stated in the Constitution, “he may require the Opinion,” of Department Heads in his responsibility as Commander in Chief, but he alone is the sole Constitutionally appointed officer of the government for the military and responsible for the military, “when called into the actual Service of the United States.”

Do you see how far off the mark you are now to your original mandate as defined in the Constitution of the United states of America, which you swore an Oath to follow? So help you, God.

Have you even read the Constitution?!!

The coming war upon the citizens of the United States will play out like every other totalitarian socialist coup d’état in history: the civilians and military personnel will die by the millions, but mostly the children. However, it’s business as usual for the ruling class. They will dance on the graves of the “profane” and of the “useless eaters,” the “dumb animals,” the “beasts of burden” and “steaks on the table,” as they refer to us uninitiated masses, and seize the opportunity to gain even more economic control and power over people groups and resources. For the love of money is the root of ALL evil.

You all know the expression, “Follow the chaos. That’s where the opportunity is.” Rahm Emanuel made this perfectly clear when he divulged that the current administration will “never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it’s an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.”

The next big “boom town” for the people who have been using our military and other United Nations and NATO forces all over the world to attack and destabilize nations as a means of controlling their natural resources and monetary systems, is the United States. The tearing down of this country is going to mean big bucks for somebody, I assure you. Just as the tearing down of Iraq and Afghanistan has proven to be fabulously profitable for the likes of Halliburton, Dyncorp, Blackwater, Wackenhut, General Electric, the Carlyle Group, JP Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, and many other military-industrial complex bankers and defense contractors, with their control of weapons, security, narcotics-trafficking, money-laundering, and other “services” becoming increasingly lucrative.

Remember the Marine Corps coming out on Geraldo saying that they grow and protect the opium crop in Afghanistan, so that the Taliban couldn’t generate revenue from it? Then the CIA increased production ten-fold and Afghani heroine production is now at 93% of worldwide production (up from 9%) since the US “liberated” them? Also, the CIA rendition plane that crashed in the Yucatan flying into the states with 3.2 tons of cocaine aboard. And, lest we forget, that Wells Fargo and Wachovia were both caught laundering over $380 BILLION worth of drug money from Mexican cartels that was brought into the US by military and intelligence agencies. That actually made headline news, then was swept under the rug when they were fined.

You can’t guard the good by being more evil than the evil. And when you dance with the devil, he doesn’t change. You change.

Anyway, America is blessed with the richest natural resources on the planet, and all of our over 100 million pesky gun owners are the only thing standing in the way of the total takeover. That’s why, in the minds of the powers-that-be, we have to be taken out of the way of “progress.”

The elite globalist engineers, the “Insiders,” as Gary Allen called them, Eisenhower’s “Technocratic Elite” and JFK’s “Secret Society,” will never stop. Why? Because the militaries of each targeted country always fall in line and follow the illegal orders of their superiors in the name of patriotism and nationalism, no matter how evil and inhumane. This is exactly what the German soldiers did under National Socialism. As Henry Kissinger rightly foretold, “Military men are dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy.”

Are you one of them? Or, are you a thinking individual who won’t be used in someone else’s game of chess or Risk?

Well, those orders to attack and destabilize foreign nations at the behest of the war-profiteers and money-changers are about to be given against American citizens. That’s why the United States Code has been altered to make it legal. Did you not read that yet? And that’s why every imaginable executive order has already been signed to seize control of every facet of human activity (See United Nations Agenda 21 for the complete playbook).

The greatest test of our society and of our culture is coming quickly. It’s plan is out in the open for all to see. The man behind the curtain is being exposed. Just as the criminal corruption and collaborative conspiracies of the current administration to commit crimes against the state and high treason are all coming out in the open. Truth sheds light on deception. And, sadly, every sleeping American who is living sheltered in fear and so invested in saying that it isn’t happening, that none of it is real, are most assuredly going to keep denying, denying, denying… even as the country burns down around them.

Much the same that Barack “The Liar in Chief” Obama, Eric “I don’t know” Holder, Janet “I don’t understand the question” Napolitano and Hillary “What difference does it make” Clinton deny, deny, deny knowing anything at all about Fast & Furious, Extortion 17, Benghazi, the congressional spying, arresting of whistleblowers, or the IRS or AP scandals. However, all the evidence shows that these people are not ignorant like the asleep citizenry, but are of course sociopathic criminal liars and calculating tacticians, lying, lying, lying to cover up for their previous lies and deceptions. As we know, lies beget lies.

Aren’t you proud to be serving the UN and NATO through such honorable public servants?

Anyway, I want you to understand that a long-range plan is now being put into overdrive. You and I make short-term plans, but the people behind this system make 25-, 50-, and 100-year plans. Remember that the private Federal Reserve corporation was founded in 1914 after a secretive 1913 meeting of the European central banking heads in a resort on Jeckyl Island, GA. Next year will be its 100-year anniversary. Put that one in the back of your mind for later.

To shape a global society takes time. And it takes incrementalism. They know from hundreds of years of societal manipulation and observation that if they push too hard and too fast, especially on large populations, they’ll be met with massive resistance. So, they push the agenda slowly.

This is spelled-out in shocking detail in the Policy Committee of the Bilderberg Group’s top secret 1954 operations research technical manual: ‘Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars’ TM-SW7905.1, which was leaked in May of 1979. The precise agenda of social engineering and population reduction through the objectives of social control (slavery) and destruction of human life (genocide), are analyzed for implementation in that document. It forewarns its readers:

“This manual is in itself an analog declaration of intent. Such writing must be SECURED FROM PUBLIC SCRUTINY. Otherwise, it might be recognized as a TECHNICALLY FORMAL DECLARATION OF DOMESTIC WAR . . . Furthermore, whenever any person or group of persons in a position of great power, and without the full knowledge and consent of the public, uses such knowledge and methodology for economic conquest — it must be understood that A STATE OF DOMESTIC WARFARE EXISTS BETWEEN SAID PERSON OR GROUP OF PERSONS AND THE PUBLIC.”

I suggest you read it in its entirety here.

By the way, population reduction is the driving force of Eugenics, the coercive “Racial Hygiene” pseudoscience perfected by the Nazis in their search for their “Übermensch” super race, namely by Josef Mengele, the notorious ‘Angel of Death’ of Auschwitz. Most of the elite are admitted eugenicists, by their own written word.

Anyway, before this gets too long and out of hand, I familiarized myself with all of this through years of research. I actually take the time to read legislation, federal training manuals, executive orders, signing statements, white papers from DoD and DHS. I read my history, I dig deep, and I know certain key intelligence projects and operations thoroughly, like Echelon, Mockingbird, Northwoods, Cyclone, Ajax and Gladio, and how they all relate to what’s going on today.

Every wide-awake veteran I know who served with honor, who are watchmen and are desperately sounding the alarm of where our country stands on the precipice of civil war, know all of this and more to be true and imminent.

We’re not crazy. We’re not paranoid. We all have families, and would rather be focusing on them and building a future for our children. But we all know that if this isn’t turned around, if the military doesn’t wake up very soon and do what they are SUPPOSED to be doing according to the supreme law of the land, then our children have NO future.

Edmund Burke said, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” And Franklin D. Roosevelt said, “The only sure bulwark of continuing liberty is a government strong enough to protect the interests of the people, and a people strong enough and well enough informed to maintain its sovereign control over the government.”

Do you even believe this philosophy?

Throughout history, you want to know who the tyrants eliminated first after seizing power? It was those people who helped their rise to power. Why? Because those are the people they fear the most, because they are not to be trusted. It’s always the special forces military and police units like the SS brown shirts, the Stasi, the intellectuals, the progressives and the corrupted politicians. But only after they eradicate the chosen ethnic race or religious group with the help of their enforcers who are next on the hit list. That’s how it works, you see? The self-appointed elect at the top don’t trust ANYBODY, as they themselves of course cannot be trusted.

Back to the original intent of this letter, the military now says that presidential authorization is no longer required to quell civil disturbances, and has effectively granted itself police powers on American soil. That is the equivalent of a nuclear bomb going off in Washington D.C., especially since the passing of the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which limited the powers of the federal government in using federal military personnel domestically for the enforcement of the laws of the land within CONUS.

Not only that, the senate is debating an expansion of the already broad powers of the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF) so the U.S. can essentially engage any area in the world in the war on terror, including America. See more on that here.

It’s bad enough to say that NATO’s in charge of our military. Now, the military top brass is in charge, themselves? And they admittedly follow orders from NATO, which is a Bilderberg/Nazi-founded, narcotics-trafficking, child-trafficking, sex-trafficking organization of global terrorism. Look it up.

I just typed in “nato terrorism” into Google and got 18,100,000 results. The term “nato drug trafficking” lands 1,070,000 results, “nato child trafficking” lands 506,000 results, “nato sex trafficking” lands 1,010,000 results, and the search term “nato killers” lands 2,140,000 results.

Time to wake up, brothers! We have been hijacked by a criminal regime that is beholden to foreign corporate interests, which has been visibly corrupt since the Kennedy assassination, and we’re being overrun by increment.

But, America is distracted by one war after another; by one foreign entanglement and domestic crisis after another. Did you notice how one second, Kim Jong Un was saber-rattling and threatening the United States over and over… and the next second, he is nowhere to be found? That’s because China pulled the chain on his money supply. After all, North Korea is merely a proxy of the Chinese government, and Jong Un was merely playing his role in the never-ending campaign of fear, but got a little carried away.

The priest class don’t like when their puppets go rogue and divert from the script. They have to be punished from time to time, be made an example of and/or put back in line. Example: Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi. They both attempted to establish their own national banks and non-interest bearing gold-backed currencies, defying the dictates of the Rothschild banking oligarchy. Obviously, you don’t do that. With that said, both Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy also attempted to go against the European bankers and establish non-interest bearing treasury notes, “Greenbacks”, which did not accrue interest and therefore did not create indebtedness to the bankers. We know what fate befell them as a result of their defiance.

That’s what this is all about: MONEY.

And these people are going to squeeze the citizens of this nation and of the world for every dime we have (top-down, bottom-up, until the middle class is wiped out). That is the stated goal of the Council on Foreign Relations. They will pit the social and religious groups against each other like always (namely the Muslims vs. Christians and Jews; and the Socialists vs. Nationalists). And when the engineered chaos gets bad enough, the engineers will then come in and pose as the saviors, offering their exoteric solution, which on the surface appears to benefit the people, but esoterically always only benefits themselves, and effectively plunges the people into desperation.

It’s called the Hegelian Dialectic, and it has been used for over 6,000 years.

As one of the founders of our Federal Reserve, Paul Warburg said, “We will have a world government whether you like it or not. The only question is whether that government will be achieved by conquest or by consent.”

That’s what the military is gearing up for: domestic uprising so bad as a result of economic and political tyranny (the love of money being the root of all evil — the control of money being the control of all evil), that for the first time in history, the president supposedly may not be capable of responding to it?

“If the United States is hit with a weapon of mass destruction, the Constitution will likely be discarded in favor of a military form of government.” — General Tommy Franks

Billionaire investor Warren Buffett referred to our corrupt Federal Reserve system and their use of derivatives (fraudulent fractional reserve banking) and other economic weapons as “financial weapons of mass destruction.”

Have you noticed the prosperity leaving our country; the corporations fleeing; the disparity between the rich and poor ever widening? The Congress has already spent all federal pension funds. That’s right, the money to pay you your earned (paid-into) retirement is not there. Nor is the money to pay the Social Security that hundreds of millions of Americans have paid into. Our country’s national debt is at $17 trillion, a greater sum than our entire Gross Domestic Product, and we’ve been signed onto over $2 QUADRILLION worth of fraudulent international derivatives, which is somewhere roughly 30 times all the wealth in the entire world.

Similarly, the unconstitutional ObamaCare monstrosity was written by foreign insurance companies in order to double the insurance rates and rape the people of their prosperity, and there are currently 37 bills on the House floor to repeal it at the state level (See the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution) because so many elected representatives who still have a soul are waking up to the tyrannical provisions embedded within the bill.

It is an engineered implosion.

And finally, when the remaining savings and pension funds of our citizenry are stolen by the foreign central bankers, the orchestrators of our Federal Reserve, just like the Cypriot government did to its citizens by authority of the EU in the Great Train Robbery of Cyprus, all hell will break loose and the American people will rise up in the worst nationwide insurrection this planet has ever seen.

And oh, how the blood will flow!

THE MONEY IS THE TRIGGER FOR EVERYTHING. Do you get that?

That’s when the military will go to war with the American people, to “quell civil uprising.” I remember training for that in Operation Urban Warrior back in 1998-1999. That’s when the Army’s Civil Disturbance Operations (US Army Field Manual FM 3-19.15) will go active. That’s when the illegal orders will be given to seize all legally-owned weapons, establish a martial law scenario and fire upon men, women and children who resist. That’s when the Civilian Inmate Labor Program (Army Regulation 210-35) will give the authority to inter the survivors in detention installations for “re-education”.

You do remember the infamous 29 Palms Survey given by Lieutenant Commander Ernest Guy Cunningham on May 10, 1994, at 29 Palms Naval Base in California, don’t you? Question #45 reads:

Just so you know who the real enemy is when the shit hits the fan and people start to die enmasse. Government is and always was the #1 suspect. It’s called “Democide,” death by government. Democide is defined specifically as, “the murder of any person or people by a government, including genocide, politicide and mass murder.” 262 million people (non-enemy combatant civilians) were murdered by their own governments in the 20th century alone.

Speaking of Democide, Barack Obama has appointed 7 czars who have all quoted Mao Tse Tung, the greatest mass murderer in recorded history. They’re not liberals. They’re authoritarians POSING as liberals.

Are you beginning to understand? Or, are you going to go on believing the bullshit lies you’re being fed? Where is your line in the sand drawn? Mine has been crossed already. Is there no amount of on-it’s-face tyranny you won’t blindly follow so as not to rock the boat and lose your cushy pay? Well, the Titanic is sinking and the rats are abandoning ship.

As I always say, get on the right side of history, my brothers.

Get out while you still can and fight with us, or you will be destroyed by this criminal authoritarian regime you are helping along to fruition. The technocratic elite who are hellbent on radically transforming humanity into a system that they control to reduce the majority of the world’s population, “Maintaining humanity under 500 million in perpetual balance with nature,” in their own words. And, statistically, you and the rest of the willing collaborators will be the first ones on the chopping block. Traitors can’t be trusted, even among their own.

Study the Night of the Long Knives, otherwise known as Operation Hummingbird, and you’ll know what I mean.

They aren’t breaking eggs in order to create a great utopian omelet. It always only creates a nightmare scenario, because that’s what genocidal madmen want to create. Just like Jeffrey Dahmer created his own little heaven. It’s a nightmare for you and me, but heaven for him.

The reality of what is transpiring is hardcore, but you first have to acknowledge it, then accept it, then try to do something to alter or abolish it. That’s what our Declaration of Independence says must be done:

That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government . . . when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

That’s also what our Constitution and Articles of Confederation and the Federalist Papers demand of the People. And their collective call-to-action has NO EXPIRATION DATE. Nor does your Oath. It’s a general declaration against universal despotism, which we are now fully entering. If you take away the rights of one individual, you take away the rights of all. You take away your own rights, your creator-endowed rights which all these documents recognize and which are antecedent to all earthly governments.

Thomas Jefferson told us that, “Single acts of tyranny may be ascribed to the accidental opinion of a day; but a series of oppressions, begun at a distinguished period and pursued unalterably through every change of ministers, too plainly prove a deliberate, systematic plan of reducing us to slavery.”

Why can you not see that? And why can you not see that you are being used as a tool to bring about that slavery? God help you if you don’t make it right and distance yourself from the enforcement system of slavery that employs you. If you don’t, then you really are merely a dumb, stupid animal to be used as a pawn in foreign policy.

Read ‘War Is A Racket‘ by Major General Smedley D. Butler. It’s a synopsis of how the criminal foreign central banking heads attempted to use him to lead a fascist military “black op” coup d’état in 1934 to unseat and takeover our elected government. But they didn’t expect him to be an honorable man and blow the whistle on them. The book also describes how he spent his career as a military officer hustling for private corporate interests.

Adolf Hitler’s rise to power was funded and orchestrated by the same “Merchants of Death,” high-profile American monopoly men, the war profiteers who were implicated in the Trading With the Enemy Act. Samuel P. Bush (George W. Bush’s great-grandfather), Averell Harriman, and Fritz Thyssen, among others. They reaped enormous profits at the cost of tens of thousands of American battle deaths, hundreds of thousands of foreign enemy and non-enemy combatant deaths, and millions of deaths resulting from the U.S. nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

“I spent thirty-three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country’s most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.” — Maj. Gen. Smedley D. Butler

Are you falling in the same trap? God, I hope not. That only leads to one place…

“My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge, because thou hast rejected knowledge.” (Hosea 4:6)

In conclusion, I write all of this because I care about all of you. I care about my God, my country, and about my family. I write these thoughts because I see our people losing their humanity, and our military and police becoming a private mercenary force of henchmen who have forgotten their original directive, who now work for some very bad foreign organizations at the top of the pyramid who are trying to destroy this nation, and bring us into their “Novus Ordo Seclorum” by way of our monetary system. See the reverse of the Great Seal of the United States on the back of your $1 bill. It is a very old plan.

And then, when the dark masters (whose fruits are endless rivers of blood and failure) have used you and pinned your medals upon your chest, patted you on the back, told you “good job sonny boy,” and put you out to pasture when your usefulness is spent; then you’ll be either thrown under the bus like the 900,000 suffering veterans who are still awaiting medical benefits, or you’ll be bumped-off.

Oh, you didn’t know that was happening? Look up the virus plaques that were embedded in your cells when you were injected with the experimental vaccines. They are engineered to trigger cancer when hormone levels decrease in the human body. I was injected with the same time-delayed soft kill bio weapons you were. It’s all on record, if you care to dig for the evidence of the crimes. Remember the experiment on the Tuskegee Airmen? That’s where a certain race-specific bio weapon was developed. And “Agent Orange” was not designed to be a defoliant. It kills people, not plants, as we are now seeing.

If they treat you and your fellow enforcers of tyranny like dumb animals, how well do you think they’ll treat you when you’re out? Ask any veteran and they’ll tell you. I talk to them all the time. They’ve been hung out to dry and are now facing yet a new unfortunate enemy, the VA.

The one thing that enrages me more than anything is watching innocent people, especially children, get hurt. My heart cries out for the casualties of these never-ending wars, for the innocent people defending their ancient homeland from enemy invasion, for the children caught in the cross-hairs of Obama’s indiscriminate drone strikes, for the holocaust that is being prepared for the American people. Or, have you not seen the mass casualty preparations being made, and the funding for hundreds of millions of body bags and multi-functional cremation containers for cadavers being federally funded and stockpiled by the millions, the activation of internment camps, not to mention the now 2.2 BILLION rounds of multiple caliber ammunition purchased by DHS (an agency that only operates domestically NOT abroad), enough ammo to engage the American people in a 30-year Iraq war; enough ammo to shoot every single American man, woman and child ten times each?

In comparison, during the height of active battle operations in Iraq, US soldiers used 5.5 million rounds of ammunition a month.
So much ammunition has been purchased by domestic government agencies, that Major General Jerry Curry, USA (Ret.) asked the question “Who Does The Government Intend To Shoot?” in his August 17, 2012 op-ed piece for The Daily Caller. Maj. Gen. Curry concludes his article with:

“This is a deadly serious business. I hope I’m wrong, but something smells rotten. And If the Congress isn’t going to do its duty and investigate this matter fully, the military will have to protect the Constitution, the nation, and our citizens.”

And let us not forget Law Enforcement Targets, Inc., the designer and full service provider of training targets for the DHS, the Justice Department and thousands of law enforcement agencies throughout the country. The company offered their line of “No More Hesitation” targets, “designed to give officers the experience of dealing with deadly force shooting scenarios with subjects that are not the norm during training.” The targets are, “meant to help the transition for officers who are faced with these highly unusual targets for the first time.”

The targets include “pregnant woman threat,” “older man with shotgun,” “older man in home with shotgun,” “older woman with gun,” “young school aged girl,” “young mother on playground,” and “little boy with real gun.”

Why are top training target suppliers for the government supplying the likes of the DHS with “non-traditional threat” targets of children, pregnant women, mothers in playgrounds, and elderly American gun owners, unless there is a demand for them and they intend to be used?

The Department of Homeland Security also purchased no less than 7,000 fully automatic assault rifles last September, labeling them “Personal Defense Weapons.”

The DHS also put out an urgent solicitation in July of last year for hundreds of items of “riot gear,” in preparation for expected civil unrest.

Not to mention their purchase of nearly 3,000 heavily armored Mine Resistant Armor Protected (MRAP) vehicles for use on the streets of the United States. MRAP vehicles are primarily used by the U.S. military and are designed to protect troops from ambushes, land mines and improvised explosive devices (IED).

Iraq, Afghanistan, Fallujah, and the rest of the Middle East conflicts were a training laboratory for domestic operations. A retired military commander who has a conscience exposed that three years ago. The door-to-door gun confiscations, the arrests, detainment, and suppression of resisters… it’s all going to be used here at home.

For a taste of what it will look like, recall the soft martial law roll-out upon hundreds of innocent civilians of Watertown, Maryland after the Boston bombing, all because of one single 19-year-old, suspected of terrorism. I wrote about it and posted the photos and video here.

One last thing. From my studies, there are ten classic steps dictators (or would-be dictators) always take when they wish to close down an open society. Here they are:

1. Invoke an external and internal threat
2. Establish secret prisons
3. Develop a paramilitary force
4. Surveil ordinary citizens
5. Infiltrate citizens’ groups
6. Arbitrarily detain and release citizens
7. Target key individuals
8. Restrict the press
9. Cast criticism as “espionage” and dissent as “treason”
10. Subvert the rule of law

The same steps are being played out in America. We are under assault. It’s so obvious, it’s painful. Also, read the Communist Manifesto and tell me if you don’t think they have all but accomplished it here at home? There is also the 45 declared goals of communism to be implemented in the United States. They were read into the congressional record in 1963. Communist Goals (1963) Congressional Record—Appendix, pp. A34-A35 January 10, 1963. Current Communist Goals EXTENSION OF REMARKS OF HON. A. S. HERLONG, JR. OF FLORIDA IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES Thursday, January 10, 1963.

America needs you to see this. We need for your fellow Marines, Soldiers, Airmen, Sailors and Cost Guardsmen to see it, so that you can honor your sworn Oaths, say NO and constitutionally (legally) defy those illegal orders when the time comes that they are given. And it will come soon…

When you judge a tree by the fruit it bears, what do you see? What fruit does the DoD, the foreign and domestic policies of your Commander in Chief and his foreign commanders bring forth?

Before you go parroting that I’m a “crazy lone-nut conspiracy theorist,” the tired, worn-out and misused talking point repeated by the controlled mainstream media mouthpieces, there are scores of retired military personnel corroborating everything that I’m saying to you.

There is Army Lt. Gen. Jerry Boykin, former Delta Force commander and the most highly decorated American soldier in the United States. There’s Navy Admiral James Lyons, former Commander of U.S. Pacific Fleet. Air Force Lt. Gen. Tom McInerney, Army Maj. Gen. Paul Vallely, Army Maj. Gen. Jerry Curry, Army Lt. Col. Roy Potter, Army Lt. Colonel and U.S. Congressman Allen West, Army Maj. Stefan Cook, Army Captain Terry M. Hestilow, and Marine Corps Iraq veteran Cpl. Adam Kokesh, to name a few.

Ezekiel 33 says that, “if the watchman see the sword come, and blow not the trumpet, and the people be not warned; if the sword come, and take any person from among them, he is taken away in his iniquity; but his blood will I require…”

The watchmen are sounding the alarm.

Don’t be used.
Don’t let the edicts of lesser men dictate your perception.
Don’t let them steal your humanity.

The United States of America is a captured operation, and we have little time to lose if our children are to live in real freedom.

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way- in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.” — Charles Dickens, ‘Tale of Two Cities’

In which one are you?

Are you a merchant of death, or are you a defender of liberty?

As for me and my house, give me Liberty, or give me death!

May God bless each and every one of you, for I do not envy the challenge before you, nor the decision you are about to be faced with.

Respectfully,
Timothy Pope
Former Sergeant of Marines

Democrats turn on IRS: ‘There will be hell to pay’

Garth Kant — Thu, 23 May 2013 04:28:15 +0000

Vow to appoint special prosecutor if agency keeps stonewalling

WASHINGTON — The threat was addressed to all the witnesses, but it was obvious the congressman had just one in mind, the woman at the center of the IRS scandal, Lois Lerner.

Rep. Stephen Lynch, D-Mass., loudly threatened in his opening statement that if witnesses refused to testify, it would leave Congress no option but to appoint a special prosecutor to look into abuse by the IRS.

“There will be hell to pay if that’s the route we choose to go down,” he warned.

But that’s just what Lerner did, refusing to testify before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform by invoking her constitutional right against self-incrimination.

Lerner said she would not answer questions because the Justice Department has launched a criminal investigation into the IRS scandal.

Lerner has blamed abusive IRS practices on low-level employees in the Cincinnati office. But IRS sources told National Review, “From the outset, Internal Revenue Service lawyers based in Washington, D.C., provided important guidance on the handling of tea-party groups’ applications for tax-exempt status.”

Lerner heads the IRS unit that oversees applications for groups seeking tax-exempt status. She triggered an uproar nearly two weeks ago when she announced the IRS began targeting conservative groups for extra scrutiny in 2010.

Committee chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., subpoenaed Lerner to testify Wednesday. He has accused her of lying to Congress four times last year when lawmakers began looking into complaints of IRS agents asking intrusive questions of tea party groups seeking tax-exempt status.

Lerner presented her side of the argument in an opening statement. She claimed she is innocent of wrongdoing and said that because members had accused her of lying to the committee, she was taking the advice of her attorney to not answer questions.

“I have not done anything wrong. I have not broken any laws or provided false information to this or any other congressional committee,” she said.

Lerner also claimed she had not violated any IRS rules or regulations.

By refusing to testify, Lerner said, “People may assume I have done something wrong.”

“I have not,” she insisted.

Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., then contended she had waived her Fifth Amendment right by telling her side of the story during an opening statement that Issa said made “assertions.”

“That’s not the way it works,” Gowdy said, prompting applause in the hearing room.

Issa then tried to ask Lerner two questions but she refused to answer both times.

Issa then excused Lerner and her counsel.

Lerner has admitted the IRS harassed hundreds of conservatives over the last two years but there is also evidence she harassed a religious group during her tenure as head of the Enforcement Office at the Federal Election Commission (FEC.)

The Weekly Standard reported the FEC investigated the Christian Coalition in the late 1990′s for allegedly coordinating issue advocacy expenditures with a number of candidates for office.

The FEC deposed 48 people, forced the Christian Coalition to produce tens of thousands of documents and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars investigating but never found any evidence supporting the accusation.

It was reported last week that IRS agents under Lerner quizzed tea party groups about such information as the content of their prayers. The attorney for the Christian Coalition says the FEC asked equally intrusive questions to his client.

In fact, James Bopp Jr.,testified before the congressional Committee on House Administration in 2003 that FEC attorneys had asked, “[W]hat occurs at Coalition staff prayer meetings” and what churches specific people belonged to. Additionally, pastors were asked about their federal, state and local political activities.

After the Christian Coalition was cleared of any wrongdoing Lerner was promoted to acting General Counsel at the FEC before going to the IRS.

Lerner’s dismissal at Wednesday’s hearing left former IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman, Treasury Department Inspector General J. Russell George and Deputy Treasury Secretary Neal Wolin to testify.

Issa would soon become furious over a major development revealed at Wednesday’s hearing that opens new questions about whether the IRS harassment was politically motivated.

He said the committee was just informed the IRS had completed its own investigation confirming abuse of conservative groups six months before the 2012 election but kept the results hidden.

Issa accused the IRS of intentionally misleading Congress by failing to alert lawmakers about the abuse a year ago.

“Just yesterday the committee interviewed Holly Paz, the director of exempt organizations, rulings and agreements, division of the IRS,” Issa said.

“While a tremendous amount of attention is centered about the Inspector General’s report, or investigation, the committee has learned from Ms. Paz that she in fact participated in an IRS internal investigation that concluded in May of 2012 – May 3 of 2012 – and found essentially the same thing that Mr. George found more than a year later.”

“Think about it,” Issa continued, “For more than a year, the IRS knew that it had inappropriately targeted groups of Americans based on their political beliefs, and without mentioning it, and in fact without honestly answering questions that were the result of this internal investigation.”

Everyone who knew about the extra scrutiny “could have and should been a whistle-blower,” Issa said.

He also accused the Obama administration of placing a “higher priority on deniability than addressing blatant wrongdoing.”

Issa also told George, who’s IRS audit was not completed until a week ago, that he had a legal obligation to inform Congress of his findings as he was completing his audit.

Both Democrat and Republican lawmakers were frustrated with Shulman during Wednesday’s hearing, saying either that he should have known of the targeting of conservatives earlier than he did or he was not being truthful about when he learned about it.

Lawmakers suggested Shulman would have easily known about the problem if he had just asked his staff.

“You made not one inquiry before testifying before Congress about what the truth of that is,” said Rep. Rob Woodall, R-Ga.

“I’m not saying you were lying; I’m saying you were derelict in inquiring about what the truth was,” he added.

Democrat Lynch essentially did accuse Shulman of lying.

“You misled Congress. Make no question about it,” Lynch told Shulman.

Lynch told Shulman he “did nothing” and “abdicated” his responsibility by not reporting concerns of abuse when he first learned in the spring of 2012 that IRS agents were targeting conservatives.

Shulman tried to explain it was his understanding conservative groups were not the only ones getting such invasive scrutiny.

Lynch appeared frustrated with the answer.

In another development Wednesday, the IRS failed to comply with a Senate request for crucial evidence.

The House Ways and Means Committee demanded records of IRS communications with the White House and Treasury Deprtment that could reveal what the Obama administration knew about the targeting of conservatives and when it knew it.

The IRS missed the May 21 deadline to respond to a letter in which top committee members asked, “Did the IRS at any time notify the White House of the targeting of conservative or any other groups?”

The White House said Monday that Chief of Staff Denis McDonough and other senior officials learned last month about the Treasury Department inspector general’s inquiry into IRS abuse. The White House said the officials did not inform President Obama about the review because it was not complete and he did not learn of the abuse until news reports May 10.

It’s unlikely anyone at the IRS will lose their job over the scandal.

“Why weren’t more people fired?” Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., demanded at Tuesday’s hearing.

Politco discovered it’s not so easy.

Most employees involved in the targeting of conservatives are covered by protections for federal workers that include a long series of steps including two rounds before boards of appeal that would take more than a year.

No one yet has apparently been formally reprimanded, no less fired.

Latest developments in IRS scandal:

A group of leading conservatives today released a letter to the House and Senate Republican leadership, and their Republican Conferences, demanding legislation be passed to compensate those groups and individuals who were targeted for political discrimination by the Obama administration’s IRS.
An investigation by Cincinnati Fox 19 reporter Ben Swann reveals how claims of “rogue” low-level IRS employees in Cincinnati targeting conservative groups are “falling apart.”
Bonnie Esrig, former IRS Cincinnati manager, rejects the idea low-level employees were responsible for targeting conservative and tea-party groups. Esrig tells NBC News that even if an employee went “rogue,” management is required to supervise and sign off on everything they do.

Former Clinton White House counsel Lanny Davis said the growing IRS scandal has robbed Democrats of the so-called “trust edge” they held over Republicans and is now jeopardizing hopes that Hillary Clinton will replace President Obama in 2016, the Washington Examiner reports.

The IRS controversy is just one of a list of scandals plaguing the Obama White House. Others include the still-unanswered questions about the Benghazi terror attack that killed four Americans and the the Department of Justice’s secret seizure of the telephone records of reporters covering Washington.

THE WAR ON OUR VETERANS

Michael Connelly — Thu, 23 May 2013 02:56:40 +0000

With Memorial Day approaching Americans should be preparing to honor our veterans and military heroes currently fighting for us as well as remembering those we have lost. This honor should be especially due from our own government that has sent these brave men and women off to war. Unfortunately, the opposite is true. It is clear that the Federal government has declared war on our veterans and is intent on denying them the very Constitutional rights they fought to protect.

First there is the ever widening scandal involving the systematic denial of veterans Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms and their rights to due process under the provisions of the Fifth Amendment. This is being orchestrated by the VA which sends out letters to veterans telling them that because of physical or mental disabilities the VA is going to declare them incompetent to handle their own financial affairs and appoint a fiduciary to represent them.

Then in the same letter the veterans are told that “A determination of incompetency will prohibit you from purchasing, possessing, receiving, or transporting a firearm or ammunition. If you knowingly violate any of these prohibitions, you may be fined, imprisoned, or both pursuant to the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, Pub.L.No. 103-159, as implemented at 18, United States Code 924(a)(2).”

An estimated 150,000 veterans are now on the NICS background check list and cannot legally purchase firearms. I believe that the vast majority of them do not belong on the list and many of the veterans don’t know why they are there or even that they have been placed on the list. The only legitimate reasons for veterans to lose Second Amendment Rights is if they have been convicted of a felony, are known drug addicts, or been found to be mentally ill to a point where they are a danger to themselves or others.

The veterans that are being represented by the United States Justice Foundation (USJF) are reporting to us that they are being declared incompetent for having minor depression, PTSD, or simply because they let their spouses pay the family bills. Some veterans are reporting that if they try to fight the VA determination of incompetence the VA either threatens to withhold their payments or actually has done so. This is extortion since many veterans rely on their VA payments to feed themselves and their families.

The VA has refused to respond to several requests made under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) for information about the criteria being used to declare veterans incompetent and deny them their Second Amendment rights. The USJF has filed a suit to force the VA to turn over this information and will soon be filing a class action suit on behalf of veterans to stop the whole process.

This suit is the last chance these veterans may have since the bill introduced by Senator Richard Burr (R.NC) to protect the gun rights of veterans was recently defeated by the Democrats in the Senate.

There are at least three other attacks taking place on our veterans. The first has been the subject of a series of reports by the Fox News and ABC affiliates in Dallas, Texas which last fall reported that veterans going to the VA hospital were either having to wait for months to get treatment for serious illnesses or in some cases being denied effective treatment entirely. Two veterans were found to have committed suicide, one on the hospital grounds, because they were not being properly treated for their severe problems.

The second problem for our wounded warriors has been exposed in a series of reports by the Colorado Springs Gazette. According to the paper an extraordinary number of veterans who have received traumatic wounds, been treated and latter returned to their units, have ultimately received less than honorable discharges from the military for alleged misconduct. Once that happens, the soldiers can no longer receive treatment from the VA for their wounds or illnesses and they can’t receive any other benefits.

Reporter Dave Philipps stated in his article that: “It doesn’t take serious misconduct to be discharged and lose a lifetime of benefits. The Gazette found troops cut loose for small offenses that the Army acknowledges can be symptoms of TBI and PTSD. Some soldiers missed formation a handful of times or smoked marijuana once. Some were discharged for showing up late or missing appointments. Some tested positive once for drugs, then were deployed to combat zones because the Army needed the troops, only to be discharged for the drug offense when they returned.”

In other words, wounded soldiers who have problems because of their injuries are rewarded for their combat service by getting kicked out of the military so the government will not have to fulfill its obligation to treat them.

Last, but certainly not least is the horrendous treatment the 32 members of the army who were wounded in the terrorist attack at Fort Hood, Texas on November 5, 2009. Since the Pentagon was ordered to be politically correct and label the attack by jihadist Nidal Milak Hasan as workplace violence instead of the obvious terrorist attack it was the soldiers who survived have been denied the Purple Heart medal for the wounds they received and denied the financial benefits that come with it.

According to a report on the NBC affiliate in Dallas some soldiers can barely afford to feed their families, yet Hasan has received his regular military pay since he was arrested and awaiting trial. The total pay so far is $268,000. His family has access to this money so our government is taking good care of the family of an Islamic terrorist and ignoring the families of our wounded soldiers. By the way, I join with the families of the 13 soldiers who died in the attack in asking why this man has not yet been tried for his crimes.

I am outraged by these actions of our government that dishonor our veterans and the debt we owe to them. This is developing into an additional scandal for the Obama administration yet many people are unaware that this is even happening. Please help me spread the word.

To my fellow veterans on this Memorial Day I can only say thank you for your service and I believe the American people will not let you be forgotten.

Michael Connelly

mrobertc@hotmail.com

Michael Connelly blog