My little brother is going in for long awaited back surgery today, so I won’t be around much today as I will be going to the hospital to be there for him. Hey, it’s a family thing. Prayer’s for everything to go right and a speedy recovery would be much appreciated.
Edit: Ok I just got home from the hospital, my brother is doing fine. He went in to surgery at 7am, got out at 1:30pm, got out of recovery at 3:00pm PST. At the moment he feels like a greyhound bus ran him over, backed up and then ran him over again, then parked on him and off and on loaded passengers. But, then again, it was spinal surgery, so that is to be expected. I would like to thank everyone for their prayers.
The economy has gone off the rails, an entirely predictable course given Barack Obama’s Marxist economic policies, his unprecedented spending, constant tax increases and the indisputably intended impact of Obamacare. (See Cloward-Pivens Strategy)
For the first time in three years, the American economy contracted over the course of a quarter. In the interim report on GDP, the BEA estimates that the US economy shrunk by a full point in 2014 Q1, a downward revision of the advance estimate of 0.1% growth:
Real gross domestic product — the output of goods and services produced by labor and property located in the United States — decreased at an annual rate of 1.0 percent in the first quarter according to the “second” estimate released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. In the fourth quarter, real GDP increased 2.6 percent.
The GDP estimate released today is based on more complete source data than were available for the “advance” estimate issued last month. In the advance estimate, real GDP was estimated to have increased 0.1 percent. With this second estimate for the first quarter, the decline in private inventory investment was larger than previously estimated (see “Revisions” on page 3).
The decrease in real GDP in the first quarter primarily reflected negative contributions from private inventory investment, exports, nonresidential fixed investment, state and local government spending, and residential fixed investment that were partly offset by a positive contribution from personal consumption expenditures. Imports, which are a subtraction in the calculation of GDP, increased.
Don’t blame federal budget cuts for this contraction, or the weather either. Federal government spending rose 0.7% after dropping 12.8% in Q4, although state government spending fell by 1.8%. Exports fell by 6.0%, a sharp drop in any sense and a remarkable reversal from +9.5% in Q4, and real non-residential fixed investment dropped 1.6%.
Not all of the news was bad, though. Real personal consumption expenditures (consumer spending) rose 3.1% in Q1, almost the same level as in Q4 (3.3%). The real final sales of domestic product, which are sales to end-user consumers, rose 0.6% — much lower than Q4′s 2.7%, but still positive. However, growth in real gross domestic purchases was entirely flat (0.0%) after a stagnation reading in Q4 of 1.6%.
What ever happened to “Yes we can” and “We are the people we have been waiting for” Apparently the answer to that is, “oh no you can’t” and “Theirs a sucker born every minute and we’re here to take you for a ride sucker’s”… So, given the dismal if not unexpected economic news, and the VA scandal, one could be forgiven if they expected Obama, the smartest man in the room and worlds greatest orator to go out and give a epic speech filled with the most amazingly soaring rhetoric, right?
Actually, all of those adjectives come from the New York Times — and that’s the most sympathetic take on Barack Obama’s big pivot/comeback speech on foreign policy. The West Point address accomplished a rarity in media and politics by creating a consensus between the editorial boards of the NYT, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal. That consensus, however, is that Obama flopped in his straw-man approach to criticism and his utter incoherence on American policy. When a President can’t convince one of these three on policy, it may be time to find a new approach — or perhaps a new team (via AoSHQ).
The open from the NYT hints at what’s coming:
President Obama and his aides heralded his commencement speech at the United States Military Academy at West Point on Wednesday as a big moment, when he would lay out his foreign policy vision for the remainder of his term and refute his critics. The address did not match the hype, was largely uninspiring, lacked strategic sweep and is unlikely to quiet his detractors, on the right or the left.
Yes, that’s the most sympathetic read. The NYT editorial turns harsh toward the end:
[H]e provided little new insight into how he plans to lead in the next two years, and many still doubt that he fully appreciates the leverage the United States has even in a changing world. Falling back on hackneyed phrases like America is the “indispensable nation” told us little.
The president said he wanted to spend $5 billion to train and support armies in places like Libya, Mali, Yemen and Somalia to combat terrorists. The aim is to avoid having to use American troops, and, in theory, it makes sense. But the United States has a checkered history in such endeavors, and Mr. Obama made only a cursory mention of other factors crucial to success, including responsible governance and education for all. It was disturbing to hear him gloss over the return of military rule in Egypt.
Mr. Obama’s talk of the need for more transparency about drone strikes and intelligence gathering, including abusive surveillance practices, was ludicrous. His administration had to be dragged into even minimal disclosures on both topics. Just Tuesday, the administration said it wanted to make further deletions from a legal memo on drone strikes that a court ordered it to make public.
The Washington Post’s editors could hardly contain their scorn for the army of straw men Obama attempted to battle:
In his address Wednesday to the graduating cadets at West Point , Mr. Obama marshaled a virtual corps of straw men, dismissing those who “say that every problem has a military solution,” who “think military intervention is the only way for America to avoid looking weak,” who favor putting “American troops into the middle of [Syria’s] increasingly sectarian civil war,” who propose “invading every country that harbors terrorist networks” and who think that “working through international institutions . . . or respecting international law is a sign of weakness.”
Few, if any, of those who question the president’s record hold such views. Instead, they are asking why an arbitrary date should be set for withdrawing all forces from Afghanistan, especially given the baleful results of the “zero option” in Iraq. They are suggesting that military steps short of the deployment of U.S. ground troops could stop the murderous air and chemical attacks by the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad. They are arguing that the United States should not be constrained by Cyprus or Bulgaria in responding to Russia’s invasion and annexation of parts of Ukraine.
To those doubters, the president’s address offered scant comfort. Reiterating and further tightening a doctrine he laid out in a speech to the United Nations last fall, Mr. Obama said the United States should act unilaterally only in defense of a narrow set of “core interests,” such as the free flow of trade. When “crises arise that stir our conscience or push the world in a more dangerous direction,” he said, “we should not go it alone.”
This binding of U.S. power places Mr. Obama at odds with every U.S. president since World War II. In effect, he ruled out interventions to stop genocide or reverse aggression absent a direct threat to the U.S. homeland or a multilateral initiative. Those terms would exclude missions by previous administrations in places such as Somalia and Haiti and Mr. Obama’s own proposal to strike Syria last year — but not the war in Iraq, which was a multilateral campaign.
Well, apparently, it was EPIC in at least one sense, it was the most epic assault on strawmen in living memory given by an American President.
Way back in 2003 Richard Armitage inadvertently leaked the name of a former covert CIA operative, Valerie Plame to the press. Now mind you, Valerie Plame was not a covert operative at the time that Dick leaked her name, she had been taken out of the field because as a covert operative she was so utterly and completely incompetent that she got all of her foreign contacts killed. However, as an example of just how immoral and unethical the Democrats are, they demanded that a special prosecutor be appointed to find out who had leaked her name to the Media under the false pretense that she was still a covert operative.
The investigation was nothing short of a witch hunt and kangaroo court designed exclusively to embarrass President Bush. In January 2004, the Justice Department chose prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald to investigate the leak of Valerie Plame’s identity. From the outset, he was made fully aware that the leaker was Armitage, yet Fitzgerald never went after Armitage whom he knew was the responsible individual, instead he continued trying to find a way to link Armitage’s inadvertent leak to President Bush as though it was an intentional act ordered by Bush in retaliation for an article published by Joe Wilson.
In the end, it was Lewis “Scooter” Libby that Patrick Fitzgerald prosecuted, more importantly, not for leaking Valerie Plame’s identity, but for perjury, obstruction of justice, and making false statements.
Now, contrast the vehement and aggressive position taken by the Democrats in 2003 with events of today.
The White House blew the cover of the top CIA agent in Afghanistan on Sunday, when the person’s name was included on a list given to reporters during a visit to the country by President Barack Obama.
The name was then emailed by the White House press office to a distribution list of more than 6,000 recipients, mostly members of the US media.
The agent in question, listed as chief of station, would be a top manager of CIA activity in Afghanistan, including intelligence collection and a drone-warfare programme under which unmanned aerial vehicles mount cross-border attacks into Pakistan.
The name appeared on a list of attendees requested by White House officials for the president’s visit to Bagram air base to mark Memorial Day, the national day of tribute to fallen service members. The list of 15 people was drawn up by the military, written into a routine press report and sent to Washington. The Obama press office then sent the list, unredacted, to the larger group.
The mistake did not come to light until the reporter who had filed from Afghanistan, the veteran Washington Post correspondent Scott Wilson, looked more closely at what he had sent and noticed the name and title.
“I drew it to their attention before they had noticed what had happened,” Wilson said on Monday, hours after returning from the 33-hour trip overseas.
“I asked the press official that was with us on the trip if they knew that the station chief had been identified in the list. That person said that they did not know that, but that because the list was provided by military, they assumed it was OK. By this time the list was out.
“Soon after, I think that they talked to their bosses, and realised that it was not OK. And they tried to figure out what to do about this, if there was a way to kind of un-ring the bell.”
The name was left off of a subsequent report filed from Bagram.
The White House declined to comment on Monday on the disclosure.
Will we hear once again from Hillary Clinton, who thus far is known for her accomplishment, that she conspired with the Whitehouse to have Ambassador Christopher Stevens kidnapped so that they could exchange him for the Blind Sheik, and instead got him and three other American citizens killed, that, “At this point, what difference does it make”? Or perhaps the hosts of MSLSD will start daily demanding that a special prosecutor like Patrick Fitzgerald be appointed to determine who leaked what?
Given that the Whitehouse has so tenaciously perused the prosecution of those responsible for election tampering in the Joe Sestak case, for those who authorized the illegal weapons transfers in the Fast and Furious scandal, those responsible for the Benghazi scandal, those rouge IRS agent’s and the those responsible for the NSA Fourth Amendment violations of American citizens, I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that, ummm, nope. there will be no special prosecutor, no investigation and just like every single other Obamanation Administration scandal, absolutely no one held accountable.
Democratic Florida Rep. Joe Garcia has come out of the closet, he is a full on open and in your face Communist. Which, no doubt must be incredibly comforting to Florida’s Cuban Ex-pat community. I guess all Joe needs to do now is start parading around in his Che tee shirt and beret.
Democratic Florida Rep. Joe Garcia — fresh off being caught eating his own earwax on camera — was caught red-handed (or is it yellow-fingered?) in another gaffe this week, claiming that low crime rates in border cities with lots of federal immigration workers is proof that “Communism works.”
Garcia made the comment during a Google hangout he convened last week to talk about comprehensive immigration reform with supporters. The Democrat attempted to point out how, for all their talk about limited government, many Republicans are fine spending loads of government money on border security.
“Let me give you an example, the kind of money we’ve poured in,” he said. “So the most dangerous — sorry, the safest city in America is El Paso, Texas. It happens to be across the border from the most dangerous city in the Americas, which is Juarez. Right?”
“And two of the safest cities in America, two of them are on the border with Mexico,” Garcia continued. “And of course, the reason is we’ve proved that Communism works. If you give everybody a good government job, there’s no crime.”
“But that isn’t what we should be doing on the border,” he continued. “The kind of money we’ve poured into it, and we’re having diminishing returns.”
The video was uploaded to YouTube by the America Rising PAC, a Republican PAC founded in 2013 and dedicated to opposition research. It’s also the same group that originally uploaded Garcia’s earwax snafu.
Garcia, who is of Cuban descent along with many of his south Florida constituents, told the Miami Herald he never meant to espouse Communism — and was instead taking a tongue-in-cheek shot at his GOP opponents.
“This is an absurdity, accusing the son of Cuban immigrants of believing in Communism is just ridiculous,” he declared.
But Garcia’s district is already rated a toss-up by the Cook Political Report, and with their second attack on the congressman in a week America Rising clearly senses an opening in the south Florida district.
Coupling the “ew” factor of the earwax video with Garcia’s chirpy endorsement of Communism, Republicans now have a rather robust chest of opposition material to deploy in Florida this fall.
Yes, once he realized that he had let the mask slip, Joe tried his best to walk his statement back, but we will see if the Cuban’s in his district are gullible enough to fall for that bullshit come November.
Fascist Totalitarianism is on the rise in America, it ugly head clamoring ceaselessly to put it’s jackboot’s on the very real necks of those who resist it’s intolerant ideologies.
At a fundraiser for Colorado Congressional candidate Andrew Romanoff last week, former Democrat Party Chairman Howard Dean had a message for people who aren’t Democrats: Get out!
“They are not American. They would be more comfortable in the Ukraine, or Russia, but stay away from our country,” yelled the bombastic Dean to a wildly cheering and supportive crowd.
During President Obama’s time in office, eliminationist rhetoric on the part of the left has been deemed acceptable and is rapidly on the rise. Vitriol reaches the highest levels, and the lip service paid to “working together” is belied by the true nature of Democrat politics, which is to exclude, isolate, ridicule, and destroy. From MSNBC hosts speechless at the idea of even speaking to Tea Party supporters to Howard Dean endorsing kicking out half the population, the new tone of the left increasingly means “burn the heretics.”
Does Andrew Romanoff think Republicans should leave America? More importantly, do the voters of Colorado’s sixth district feel that way? Someone should ask him.. And them.
Howard Dean is one of those Democrats who want to ensure that illegal aliens can vote in America, but even more importantly, that Democrats can vote as many times as it take for the Democrat candidates to win. While Republicans innocently and naively think that only American Citizens should be allowed to vote in American elections and that every citizen should have exactly one vote per item on each ballot.
As if it isn’t bad enough that America has totalitarian fascists like Howard Dean, now we even have to contend with imbeciles from Canada trying to push their totalitarian agenda on America.
Canadian geneticist David Suzuki urged Western governments to lock up politicians who question man-made climate change, telling PBS’ Bill Moyers “our politicians should be thrown in the slammer for willful blindness!”
Suzuki appeared on “Moyers and Company” earlier this month to express his abject frustration over politicians, in both Canada and the United States, who refuse to accept the “settled science” on man-made global warming.
“Our politicians should be thrown in the slammer for willful blindness!” he asserted. “If we are in a position of being able to act, and we see something going on and we refuse to acknowledge the threat or act on it, we can be taken to court for willful blindness.”
“I think that we are being willfully blind to the consequences to our children and grandchildren,” Suzuki continued. “It’s an intergenerational crime.”
Moyers, a well-known climate alarmist, didn’t push back a bit — instead gently tabling the idea as impractical.
“The problem is, if that should happen — if politicians were to be convicted to willful blindness to the fate of the Earth and future generations — there would have to be mass arrests, and lots more funding for new prisons,” he noted. “We’re not talking about a mere handful of culprits. It’s hard to know where to start.”
Willful blindness is a legitimate legal reference in the United States (and, presumably, Canada) used to describe the intentional failure of an individual to become aware of facts pointing to criminal liability.
But arresting politicians for “being willfully blind” to facts on climate change would mean criminalizing not only those industries and individuals that emit carbon, but also anyone who dares take an opinion contrary to the “settled science.”
I think it would be safe to say that what ever paper mill gave David Suzuki a degree, should be sued, more importantly though, I would really love to see David Suzuki enter a darkened ally, and find Nicolaus Copernicus and Galileo Galilei waiting there for him. Three scientist enter, two scientists and one bloody piece of road kill exit. Talk about a video that would go viral. David Suzuki seems to be cut from the same disgusting vomit covered cloth as Bill Ayer’s, who infamously called for the execution of 25 million American citizens for the crime that they would refuse to accept a Marxist America.
And then of course, we have the rankest of hypocrisy coming to you courtesy of Hollyweid California.
The Cannes launch got the attention of The Hollywood Reporter:
Muhammad, accompanied by a man pretending to be an ad executive, seemingly has the two actors agreeing to participate in the scheme, even after he acknowledges that his goal is to keep America from becoming energy independent. The meeting, which appears to have been secretly recorded, took place a few months ago at the Beverly Hills Hotel.
But the real target of the sting operation appears to be Josh and Rebecca Tickell, a husband and wife team known for their environmental movies, such as 2008′s Fuel, which won an award at Sundance and was later screened at the White House for members of President Obama‘s administration.
Begley tells THR that if it looks like he’s agreeing with faux Muhammad about anything, it’s because the Tickells asked him to be polite so that they’d get their funding for a movie they’re making called Fracked, a film that will argue a technique for extracting natural gas called fracking is bad for the environment. Also, Begley says that he is hard of hearing and couldn’t understand everything Muhammad was saying.
The video also includes some audio from phone conversations between the fake Muhammad’s representatives and the Tickells. “We’re confident that we can keep this zip-locked. You know, tight. Tight. Air-tight forever,” Josh Tickell is heard saying. “If we don’t protect who is kind of funding this thing … if we have to disclose that or that becomes a necessary part of it, the whole enterprise will not work.”
Rebecca Tickell adds: “Because if people think the film is funded by Middle Eastern oil it will, it will not have that credibility,” and Josh Tickell says, “It’s money, so in that sense we have no moral issue.”
Yeah, I suspect that last statement won’t be much of a surprise to anyone who’s worked in Hollywood, either.
The Tickells, Begley, and Hemingway are crying foul now. In comments to THR, they claim that O’Keefe’s editing made things look worse than they are, and are demanding the release of all the video. That didn’t do much to help ACORN, or for that matter, Planned Parenthood when dealing with Live Action’s exposés. The Tickells say that no deal was actually consummated, and that they would have done “due diligence” at that point, but O’Keefe wouldn’t have had $9 million anyway. The point of O’Keefe’s sting is to expose Hollywood enviro eagerness to accept oil-baron money from the Middle East to attack American energy production, and this video certainly does that much. Not that people couldn’t figure that much out from Promised Land‘s Abu Dhabi funding, if they wanted.
The Tickells have decided to keep trying to fund Fracked anyway:
Update: Late Tuesday, the Tickells created a video response that also serves as a pitch to raise $72,000 via an IndieGoGo crowdfunding campaign to make Fracked. “I’m about to tell you a story of the lengths that some people will go to discourage the transition to green energy,” Josh Tickell says in the video. “If it wasn’t so serious it might even be kind of funny. Recently, my wife and I were royally punked.”
Actually, the story is about how some Hollywood enviros will sell out to the worst offenders in order to build their soapboxes. And hey, why do they need to go on IndieGoGo anyway? Doesn’t Mark Ruffalo and Woody Harrelson have $72 grand between them?
That Ed Begley is such a arrogant self sanctimonious narcissistic asshole comes as no surprise to anyone who has ever watched a single interview with him, nor should such a revelation about the Tickells be surprising. Hollyweird is overflowing with hypocrites of this nature. Frankly, and I say this as a 40 plus year resident of California, Hollyweird has become nothing less than an open latrine blighting the California countryside. A gangrenous puckering wound on America that refuses to heal, crawling with maggots and stinking to high hell.
Edit: The best description of Ed Begley and his Hollyweird hypocrite crowd ever…
Ok… So yesterday I went a BBQ’s with family members… After mucho carne asada and grande cerveza, my relatives informed me that the Hilda Beast was going to be the next President of the United States of America. so, as you can imagine, there was much gnashing of teeth and wailing on my part… mostly because it hurts me to think my brothers are so damned dumb, and also because deep in the pit of my stomach I know they are not, that they just see the Hilda Beast as inevitable, I decided that today was a good day to think about something other than politics…
So…
I give you lecture 4 part 1 of my favorite Physics Professor… Cerveza… oh… wait, my other favorite physics professor… Leonard Susskind… Leonard is probably a bat shiite crazy barking moonbat when it comes to politics, (not that I know this for a fact, I just suspect it since he teaches at Stanford) But when it comes to Quantum Physics, Leonard is a absolute genus’s.
Sometimes you really do have to retreat to some place comfortable, for me, it’s Physics.
Seldom does one see a more indisputable example of a systemic culture of corruption than is currently being exposed within the Veterans Administration right now. At this point, no less than 7 VA Hospitals have been proven to have secret wait lists which in effect deny medical services to American Veterans. What one must understand though, is that this is not corruption exclusive to the Veterans Administration, but both systemic and endemic to the entire Federal Government and fostered in large part by no less than the Obamanation Administration itself.
Yesterday, VA Secretary Eric Shinseki declared himself “mad as hell” over the allegations of wait-list fraud in Phoenix, where 40 veterans passed away before accessing medical assistance while the office falsified records. Shinseki also pronounced himself saddened by the consequences of the VA’s failures, and pledged to get to the bottom of them — and allegations at five other offices that arose from other whistleblowers:
At nearly the same time as Shinseki testified yesterday, the Ocala News (Florida) reported that a seventh VA office in Gainesville had discovered a secret wait list that had 200 veterans waiting for medical care:
Three mental health administrators at the Malcom Randall VA Medical Center in Gainesville have been placed on administrative leave after U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs officials found a “secret” waiting list of more than 200 patients, a local union president said Thursday. …
News recently surfaced of alleged secret waiting lists and falsified records at VA hospitals around the country, including reports of allegations that some veterans on such a list at the Veterans Affairs Health Care system in Phoenix had died while waiting for appointments. Reports have said the secret waiting lists were meant to hide delays and could have been used so management executives could get bonuses related to shorter wait times.
Muriel Newman, union president for the local chapter of the American Federation of Government Employees, told The Sun that the VA administration had placed chief psychiatrist Dr. Rajiv Tandon, administrative officer Karen Chin and Peter Durand, the chief of the mental health service call line, on administrative leave after the discovery of the list at the Gainesville VA hospital.
Wisnieski confirmed those three employees have been placed on paid administrative leave while a review is conducted into the list and the circumstances surrounding it.
Keep these other examples of this culture of corruption in mind when thinking about what is transpiring within the VA. Erick Holder’s Department of Injustice engaged in the illegal sales and trafficking of Arms to Mexican drug Cartels, then stonewalled congress about it eventually resulting in Erick Holder being convicted of Contempt of Congress.
The Whitehouse violated the War Powers Act in order to use military force to overthrow the Libyan Government, then when Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other American’s were murdered both the Whitehouse and the State Department conspired to lie to and deceive the American people regarding what Ambassador Stevens was doing in Benghazi on 9/11/12, and the exact reason for the attack on the Embassy facility.
Then there is that pesky little problem with the IRS being used to crush Obama’s political opponents.
Ted Cruz has compiled a list of 76 incident where Barack Obama ordered his minions to engage in illegal acts.
A short example of what is on that list…
1. “Obama implemented portions of the DREAM Act by executive action”
2. “Ended some terror asylum restrictions”
3. “Recognized same sex marriage in Utah despite a Supreme Court stay on a court order allowing the institution”
4. “Illegally revealed the existence of sealed indictments in the Benghazi investigation”
5. “Illegally delayed Obamacare verification of eligibility for healthcare subsidies”
6. “Ordered Boeing to fire 1,000 employees in South Carolina and shut down a new factory because it was non-union”
7. “Terminated the pensions of 20,000 non-union Delphi employees in the GM bankruptcy.”
8. “Government agencies are engaging in ‘Operation Choke Point,’ where the government asks banks to ‘choke off’ access to financial services for customers engaging in conduct the Administration does not like—such as ‘ammunition sales.’”
This is a pattern of corruption that honestly can only be characterized as institutional, systemic and endemic.
Daily is seems we are seeing story after story where one branch of the Federal government after another decides that this or that section of the United States Constitution is a hindrance to their ability to fulfill their mandate. The EPA now has the authority to dictate what a States geographic boundaries are while the BLM is free to use military force to decided who can do what on “Federal” Land. The IRS is now used as a weapon to curtail political opposition while the Whitehouse and the Department of Injustice decide which laws they will ignore.
The United States constitution could not have possibly been more crystal clear with regards to the ownership of firearms.
Amendment II
A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.
Yet we live in a nation where, despite such indisputably clear language, the state and federal government require every citizen to obtain permission before they purchase and own a firearm.
The Fourth amendment is likewise painfully crystal clear in what it demands be the legal standard.
Amendment IV
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.
Yet because these mandatory minimum legal requirements hinder the State and Federal Government from controlling every single aspect of the Citizens of the United States of America’s lives, the Judiciary routinely overrides the US Constitution while claiming that their doing so does not harm or alter the minimum standards set in the United States Constitution.
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) – A recent ruling from Pennsylvania’s highest court could have a big impact on your privacy rights during a car stop.
Pennsylvania traditionally provided broader privacy protection than the US Constitution. For decades, police in the Commonwealth had to get obtain warrant from a judge before they could do a car search unless time was of the essence or the evidence could be lost or destroyed. But now, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s 4 to 2 decision in Commonwealth v. Gary changes the rule.
“There’ll be lesser protection of privacy in Pennsylvania,” says Dave Rudovsky, a professor at Penn Law school and a civil rights attorney.
Rudovsky says Article I, Section 2 of the Pennsylvania Constitution had been interpreted to provide broader protection that the Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution. Police had to contact a judge during a stop, either via phone or radio, for permission to conduct a car search. Rudovsky says the new ruling means police, not a judge can decide whether to search.
“Now if police officers have probable cause– a good faith belief that a crime has been committed, they can search your car without having to first obtain a warrant,” he says.
“The district attorneys offices will say this is about drugs and guns and that is true, but it does not end there,” says James Funt, an attorney with Greenblatt, Pierce, Engle, Funt & Flores.
“Whatever is in the car can be searched,” he says, “it’s a slippery slope.”
Funt says the ruling severely erodes Pennsylvania’s privacy protections by essentially concluding that citizens have less privacy in their cars than in their homes. He says people carry cell phones and other electronic devices in their cars and the court’s ruling means these items could be vulnerable as well.
“Where does it stop? It doesn’t,” says Funt, “It will not end with guns and drugs.”
For years, Philadelphia police have been taken to task over the abnormally high number of stop and frisks of minorities. (see related story) Funt says groups targeted for such stops, could be targeted for these searches.
“Officers will likely try to abuse this new found power,” he says, “They’ve tried to do it before and this is simply a check and balance that has been removed.”
Civil rights advocates say beware.
“Be ware of what you put in you pocket or what you put in your car,” says Funt, “you no longer have any safeguard from the government coming into your car– their right to intrude had exponentially increased.”
This is utterly insane. But just wait it get’s crazier still.
A May 7th solicitation by the U.S. Department of Agriculture seeks “the commercial acquisition of submachine guns [in] .40 Cal. S&W.”
According to the solicitation, the Dept. of Agriculture wants the guns to have an “ambidextrous safety, semiautomatic or 2 round [bursts] trigger group, Tritium night sights front and rear, rails for attachment of flashlight (front under fore group) and scope (top rear), stock collapsible or folding,” and a “30 rd. capacity” magazine.
They also want the submachine guns to have a “sling,” be “lightweight,” and have an “oversized trigger guard for gloved operation.”
The solicitation directs “all responsible and/or interested sources…[to] submit their company name, point of contact, and telephone.” Companies that submit information in a “timely” fashion “shall be considered by the agency for contact to determine weapon suitability.”
What in the fuck does the Department of Agriculture need with armed agents, let alone agents armed with machine guns? Have American potatoes suddenly taken to bombing schools? Have Cucumbers and squash formed a radical terrorist cell? Are milk cows randomly stampeding the local strip malls?
I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.
For the supporters of Barack Obama, nothing that Obama does is wrong or worthy of criticism. For the Democrat’s the end justifies the means, and the end is that the democrats remain in power because only then can they create their prefect Marxist Utopia. The United States Constitution and oaths of office be damned, they are merely tools or obstacles to be employed in the process of obtaining and maintaining absolute power.
So when Barack Obama ignores the United States Constitution or his oath of office, it is nothing to notice, because ultimately, every Liberal/Progressive/Democrat knows deep down in his heart that as long as Barack Obama keeps moving them forward towards the promise land of Marxist Utopia, it really honestly does not matter what he does or how he does it, because after all, the end genuinely does justify the means.
Enforcing immigration law “isn’t smart,” President Barack Obama told law enforcement officials Tuesday, just one day after the public learned he had released 36,007 illegal-immigrant murderers, rapists, thieves and other criminals into the nation’s communities.
Cops should be going after major criminals, not the many illegal immigrants that are quietly living in their districts, said Obama, who has twice sworn to uphold the nation’s laws.
“You’ve got to spend time dealing with somebody who is not causing any other trouble other than the fact that they were trying to make a living for their families,” Obama said.
“That’s just not a good use of our resources. It’s not smart. It doesn’t make sense,” said Obama, who has already directed immigration police to minimize enforcement of illegal living far from the border.
The statement will likely spur concerns among Republicans and the public that Obama can’t be trusted to implement the enforcement features of any immigration compromise.
A March 2013 Gallup poll showed that 138 million foreigners would like to settle in the United States. The total included an estimated 18 million people in China, 13 million people in Nigeria and three million people in Kenya.
Polls consistently show the public favors a stronger crackdown on employment of illegal immigrants.
This isn’t the first time that Barack Obama has instructed officials in his administration to not enforce US Law. In fact, it is becoming quiet the habit for him. If he doesn’t like a law, it doesn’t get enforced.
I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.
How in the name of God almighty can anyone suggest, without lying to everyone God Included, that they believe that anyone who would openly advocate ignoring or breaking any law that they did not agree with, could be trusted to uphold any oath they took? Huh? It utterly and completely defies rational logic and common sense to believe that any individual who makes public their contempt for and willingness to ignore and break laws that they do not like or agree with would abide by the terms of an oath they might not actually agree with.
Texas Republican Rep. Lamar Smith reacted harshly to a new report detailing the crimes committed by 36,007 criminal immigrants that Immigration and Customs Enforcement released last year.
“This would be considered the worst prison break in American history, except it was sanctioned by the President and perpetrated by our own immigration officials. These criminal immigrants should have been deported to ensure that they could never commit crimes on U.S. soil. But instead, ICE officials chose not to detain them and instead released them back onto American streets,” Smith said in a statement Monday.
An internal Department of Homeland Security document obtained by the Center for Immigration Studies, a limited immigration group, and shared with Breitbart News Monday revealed that last year ICE released 36,007 criminal immigrants who had nearly 88,000 convictions.
The document further broke down the crimes and number of convictions – including 193 homicide convictions, 426 sexual assault convictions, 303 kidnapping convictions, and 1,075 aggravated assault convictions.
CIS detailed the document’s findings in a report Monday morning, explaining that ICE prepared the document in response to congressional inquiries seeking additional information about the number of criminal aliens released into the United States and the crimes for which they were convicted.
Smith was one of the members of Congress who pressed DHS for these answers.
The congressman actually did receive a response from DHS earlier this year explaining that ICE did release 36,007 criminal aliens. DHS also included a breakdown of the kinds of offenses but did not include the number of offenses per type of crime.
“Obama administration officials want the American people to think these individuals were guilty of minor, petty offenses,” Smith said. “But the convictions tell a chilling story. Among those released were criminal immigrants convicted of murder, rape, kidnapping, drunk driving, and aggravated assault.”
The Texas congressman added that immigration reform should be off the table until laws currently on the books are enforced.
“There should be no discussion of reforming our nation’s immigration laws until the President enforces the laws currently on the books. The safety of the American people should be the President’s top priority. We need a President who follows the law and deports criminal immigrants who violate our laws and endanger our lives.”
Lamar Smith… Sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up. If you actually believed even a fraction of what you are claiming in this article, then why in the name of God haven’t you filed articles of Impeachment against Barack Obama? I’ll tell you why, because the are just trying to look and sound tough to your Texas constitutes, beyond that, your words are pure 100 percent Texas horseshit and hyperbolic rhetoric.
Prepping whopping lies for Sunday news shows is par for the course for the Obama White House.
In a memoir released Monday, former Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner recounts his view of the financial crisis and how administration officials chose to deal with the public. One telling paragraph, among excerpts published by Politico, shows how seriously President Obama’s political operation takes its responsibility to tell the truth to the American people.
Not surprisingly, they don’t take it that seriously at all. Here’s how Geithner describes the lying process:
“I remember during one Roosevelt Room prep session before I appeared on the Sunday shows, I objected when Dan Pfeiffer wanted me to say Social Security didn’t contribute to the deficit. It wasn’t a main driver of our future deficits, but it did contribute. Pfeiffer said the line was a ‘dog whistle’ to the left, a phrase I had never heard before. He had to explain that the phrase was code to the Democratic base, signaling that we intended to protect Social Security.”
It’s refreshing to hear leftists using “dog whistles” to describe what they’re up to for a change, since it’s a phrase they generally use to accuse Republicans of being secret racists. But it’s disheartening to get such crystal clear evidence of how politically charged White House appearances on Sunday news shows are.
It’s the line of thinking that directed former U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice to go on five news shows days after the Sept. 11, 2012, attacks on the U.S. outpost in Benghazi and lie about the deaths of four Americans.
Rice’s marching orders were to convince viewers that the havoc that killed an American ambassador and three other men had nothing to do with the Obama administration’s failures.
Geithner was told his job was to convince viewers the Democrat lodestone of Social Security wasn’t a burden on the nation’s deficit.
Both positions are premeditated lies, but at least we know how and why Obama officials are prepped to lie to the American public on Sunday mornings.
The Mainstream Media, aka The Fifth Column Treasonous Media has been so utterly and totally complaisant in advancing the lies, distortion obfuscations and deceptions of the Obamanation Administration that were the Department of Injustice not completely corrupt they would by now no doubt have filed RICO Statute charges against CBS, the New York Times and the Washington Post for their nearly unending string of lies that they knowingly and with a full forethought of Malice pushed on the American People.
Is it any wonder that the vast majority of the American people distrust the Mainstream Media?
(CBS News) U.S. distrust of the mass media is at an all-time high, according to a new poll from Gallup, which indicates that six in ten Americans have little or no trust in mass media to report the news fully, accurately, and fairly.
The survey, conducted from Sept. 6-9, shows that faith in the media is down in recent years, with 40 percent of Americans saying they have a great deal of or some faith in the media to comprehensively and fairly report the news, and 60 percent expressing the opposite perspective.
According to Gallup, the public has become increasingly negative about the media in election years over time.
Eventually historians will weigh in on the Obama Administration, and the verdict that they render will be noticeably absent of the protective coverage that the Fifth Column Treasonous Media has thus far given it. There is no real doubt that when that verdict is finally rendered, it will be, that the Obama Administration was the most corrupt and dishonest presidential administration in American History. What now seems like ridiculously over the top hyperbole will become the iconic description of the Obama Administration, or, as it will no doubt be come to be known to future generations, The Obamanation Administration.
The Wilderness of Mirrors 
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