Brutally Honest

Do you think there'd be Congressional hearings on this if a Republican were President?

There should be little to no doubt:

CBS News reporter Sharyl Attkisson revealed in May that her computer had been compromised. When asked about the situation, CBS News responded with a statement that it was conducting an investigation.

That investigation has reached the following conclusions, according to CBS News spokeswoman Sonya McNair:

“A cyber security firm hired by CBS News has determined through forensic analysis that Sharyl Attkisson’s computer was accessed by an unauthorized, external, unknown party on multiple occasions late in 2012. Evidence suggests this party performed all access remotely using Attkisson’s accounts. While no malicious code was found, forensic analysis revealed an intruder had executed commands that appeared to involve search and exfiltration of data.

This party also used sophisticated methods to remove all possible indications of unauthorized activity, and alter system times to cause further confusion.

CBS News is taking steps to identify the responsible party and their method of access.”

...

Eugene H. Spafford, a Purdue University professor and specialist in computer security, said that Attkisson’s initial statements about computer intrusions left open a wide field of possibilities, from viruses to botnet activity to acquaintances to criminal gangs to the government. The Erik Wemple Blog asked Spafford for his take after looking over the CBS News statement. “The details given are too sparse to really be able to say anything new,” he responded.

The Justice Department issued this statement not long after Attkisson’s claims:

To our knowledge, the Justice Department has never compromised Ms. Attkisson’s computers, or otherwise sought any information from or concerning any telephone, computer, or other media device she may own or use.

This will likely fade into the background as mere noise but ought to be setting off alarms from sea to shining sea.

If only we'd wake up as a nation.

"... there's a common theme in all of these scandals"

Glenn Reynolds in USA Today articulates what ought to be obvious to anyone with half a brain:

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

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

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

Has it made us safer? Anonymous government sources quoted in news reports say yes, but we know that all that snooping didn't catch the Tsarnaev brothers before they bombed the Boston Marathon -- even though they made extensive use of email and the Internet, and even though Russian security officials had warned us that they were a threat. The snooping didn't catch Major Nidal Hasan before he perpetrated the Fort Hood Massacre, though he should have been spotted easily enough. It didn't, apparently, warn us of the Benghazi attacks -- though perhaps it explains how administration flacks were able to find and scapegoat a YouTube filmmaker so quickly . But in terms of keeping us safe, the snooping doesn't look so great.

As for abuse, well, is it plausible to believe that a government that would abuse the powers of the IRS to attack political enemies, go after journalists who publish unflattering material or scapegoat a filmmaker in the hopes of providing political cover to an election-season claim that al-Qaeda was finished would have any qualms about misusing the massive power of government-run snooping and Big Data? What we've seen here is a pattern of abuse. There's little reason to think that pattern will change, absent a change of administration -- and, quite possibly, not even then. Sooner or later, power granted tends to become power abused. 

We need to wake up.  We need to wake our family, friends, coworkers and neighbors up.

Get busy.

Long live the Queen

And don't you dare argue with her or get in her face:

First lady Michelle Obama experienced a rare face-to-face encounter with a protester late Tuesday – approaching the activist and threatening to leave a fundraiser if the person did not stop interrupting her speech.

Obama was addressing a Democratic Party fundraiser in a private Kalorama home in Northwest Washington when Ellen Sturtz, 56, a lesbian activist, interrupted her remarks to demand that President Obama sign an anti-discrimination executive order.

Obama showed her displeasure – pausing to confront Sturtz eye to eye, according to witnesses.

“One of the things that I don’t do well is this,” she said to applause from most of the guests, according to a White House transcript. “Do you understand?”

A pool report from a reporter in the room said Obama “left the lectern and moved over to the protester.” The pool report quoted Obama as saying: “Listen to me or you can take the mic, but I’m leaving. You all decide. You have one choice.”

Obama’s suggestion that she would leave was not included in the official White House transcript.

The audience responded by asking Obama to remain, according to the pool report, which quoted a woman nearby telling Sturtz, “You need to go.”

Sturtz was escorted out of the room. She said in an interview later she was stunned by Obama’s response.

“She came right down in my face,” Sturtz said. “I was taken aback.”

I love what The Anchoress had to say about the episode:

Was the heckler out of line? Sure. But it’s the heckler’s nature to be out of line, and that’s when a bit of grace or wit puts things aright. Saying “I can’t deal…” that’s a deficiency the office can’t afford.

That line killed me, though: “One of the things that I don’t do well is this. . .Do you understand?”

Work on it, Mrs. Obama. Really work on it. Because free citizens are allowed to question, to mock, and even to heckle, as long as they’re not inciting violence. And you’re the First Lady of a nation that, we are told, still honors this idea. Oppressed peoples still come here, because whatever else America has been, it is still the place where even poor presidents, even disliked presidents, have experienced heckling and responded to it by either answering with substance, or grace, or wit, or by reminding the assembly that it’s alright to speak up in America, even to the biggest man or woman in the room.

Do you understand? You don’t really get to say, “I don’t handle this well” as though it’s an option — something you can leave off your First Lady plate. You get to learn how to handle it well, because it is an immense privilege to serve a citizenry that has put you into power. The service begins with listening — and in responding to people in a way that well-may-be better than they seem to deserve specifically because you, yourself, have been placed into a position so honored, so privileged, that you can afford to.

Yes, yes, the peasants are revolting. But in America, they still get to hoist up their slacks and bellow their questions. And you get to answer them like a lady. Like the First Lady.

Not, however, like the queen.

Let's hear it for the peasants.

May the revolt against the ruling class spread.

“But if the president orders them to do something, they have to do it.”

They being the FBI, the doing it being questioning the national director of a chain of crisis pregnancy centers:

The FBI office charged with investigating terrorism has said it intends to question the national director of a chain of crisis pregnancy centers. The development is the latest in what pro-life activists have charged is a pattern of intimidation on the part of the Obama administration against pro-life activists.

Agents of the Joint Domestic Terrorism Task Force told Chris Slattery, national director of Expectant Mother Care (EMC) FrontLine Pregnancy Centers, only that they wanted to meet him “for a mutually beneficial relationship.”

“In other words, if I don't meet with them, it will not be beneficial for me,” Slattery told LifeSiteNews.com. “I'm not sure what I'm going to get out of it,” he joked.

The questioning comes as New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has subpoenaed the groupfor not abiding by the standards of a consent agreement Slattery believed expired more than 20 years ago, as well as in relation to a question of some of its paperwork. (See related story.)

Currently EMC is poised to expand crisis pregnancy centers into 10 states, including Washington, D.C.

Federal agents pressed to meet Slattery last Friday but rescheduled when he insisted that one of his attorneys be present. Jay Sekulow of the American Center for Law and Justice has agreed to represent him at a national level, and Christopher Ferrara of the American Catholic Lawyers Association has agreed to act as his local counsel.

The meeting will probably be held next week, Slattery said.

“I thank God for the FBI,” Slattery said, noting their good work fighting crime and legitimate terrorism. “But if the president orders them to do something, they have to do it.”

“I do know they have been used by attorney generals in the past for surveillance of domestic troublemakers and communists, and now we are the communists of the modern-day, the domestic 'people of interest,'” he said.

This is not surprising to anyone with sense.  

When the IRS is used to squelch opposition, when the administration seizes the phone records of AP reporters, when they target Fox News reporter James Rosen as a co-conspirator in a leak investigation, you can't be surprised that the most pro abortion administration in the history of this country would use the long arm of the law to intimidate crisis pregnancy centers.

We elected a radical who promised to fundamentally transform the country.

He's doing his best to keep that promise.

Widening controversy

A week ago Sunday, as the commencement speaker for Ohio University's 2013 graduating class, President Obama said that graduates, and by extension all Americans, should reject those voices warning that tyranny always lurks around the corner.

Yesterday we learned that the scandal surrounding the IRS's scrutiny of conservative groups was wider than initially thought:

The Internal Revenue Service's scrutiny of conservative groups went beyond those with "tea party" or "patriot" in their names—as the agency admitted Friday—to also include ones worried about government spending, debt or taxes, and even ones that lobbied to "make America a better place to live," according to new details of a government probe.

The investigation also revealed that a high-ranking IRS official knew as early as mid-2011 that conservative groups were being inappropriately targeted—nearly a year before then-IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman told a congressional committee the agency wasn't targeting conservative groups.

The new disclosures are likely to inflame a widening controversy over IRS handling of dozens of applications by tea-party, patriot and other conservative groups for tax-exempt status.

The details emerged from disclosures to congressional investigators by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration. The findings, which were reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, don't make clear who came up with the idea to give extra scrutiny to the conservative groups.

The Internal Revenue Service inappropriately flagged conservative political groups for additional reviews during the 2012 election to see if they were violating their tax exempt status. John McKinnon reports on the News Hub.

The inspector general's office has been conducting an audit of the IRS's handling of the applications process and is expected to release a report this week. The audit follows complaints last year by numerous tea-party and other conservative groups that they had been singled out and subjected to excessive and inappropriate questioning. Many groups say they were asked for lists of their donors and other sensitive information.

Tyranny is defined as the arbitrary or unrestrained exercise of power.  The IRS, the agency tasked with enforcing Obamacare, is admitting to arbitrary abuse of its power.

It's not lurking around the corner.

It's here.

It makes the following graphic making its rounds on social media more than simply revealing.

The President's grape-fruit sized 'nads

When I heard about this yesterday, I was incredulous:

President Obama used a speech at Mexico’s Museo Nacional de Antropología – the National Anthropology Museum – to claim that ‘most of the guns used to commit violence here in Mexico come from the United States.’

‘I think many of you know that in America, our Constitution guarantees our individual right to bear arms,’ Obama said. ‘And as president, I swore an oath to uphold that right, and I always will.’

‘But at the same time, as I’ve said in the United States, I will continue to do everything in my power to pass common-sense reforms that keep guns out of the hands of criminals and dangerous people.’

‘That can save lives here in Mexico and back home in the United States,’ Obama added. ‘It’s the right thing to do.’

'So we'll keep increasing the pressure on gun traffickers who bring illegal guns into Mexico. We'll keep putting these criminals where they belong: behind bars.'

It's ballsy, to say the least, that this guy would in essence blame America for Mexico's violent culture while ignoring his administration's own culpability in the Fast and Furious scandal. 

Obama also did not mention the more than 2,000 firearms that his Department of Justice ‘walked’ across the Mexican border as part of Operation Fast and Furious, a federal law enforcement project that aimed to track weapons to drug traffickers.

Those guns have been connected to the deaths of at least 300 Mexican citizens. And U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry died in December 2010 when a so-called ‘Fast and Furious gun’ was recovered at the scene of his murder during a routine patrol in Arizona.

An ensuing Congressional investigation led to the first-ever citation of a sitting cabinet member – Attorney General Eric Holder – for contempt of Congress. Holder declined to provide most of the more than 140,000 documents subpoenaed by a House committee, although the Department of Justice did selectively turn over thousands of others.

The term gun ‘walking’ referred to the administration-approved practice of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) of instructing legal gun dealers to sell firearms to so-called ‘straw buyers’ who intended to pass them on to others.

Once sold, the guns would be ‘walked’ across the U.S.-Mexico border with the permission of federal authorities. While their intention was to follow more than 2,000 guns to their destinations inside the illicit Mexican drug trade, barely one-third of them – principally the weapons used in murders and then discarded at the scene, as is common in Mexico – were ever recovered.

Some gun rights groups have argued that Operation Fast and Furious was intentionally devised as a way to promote gun control, citing emails between senior ATF officials that discussed whether the Fast and Furious guns in one region ‘were all purchased from the same [dealer] and at one time.’

‘We are looking at anecdotal cases to support a demand letter on long gun multiple sales,’ one email read.

In another, one ATF leader wrote to another that Fast and Furious ‘could be a strong supporting factor if we can determine how many multiple sales of long guns occurred during the course of this case.’

ATF’s intention, ultimately scrapped under political pressure, was to increase reporting requirements on licensed gun dealers when they sell more than one weapon in a single transaction.

A White House spokesman did not respond to a request for comment about whether President Obama was referring to Fast and Furious weapons in his speech.

It's glaringly revealing that this report comes not from a stateside media outlet but from abroad.

More revealing is that half the country knows not a thing about Obama's blatant hypocrisy.

We are as a country in deep kimchee.

“Everyone has to hold hands on this and jump, or nothing is going to get done.”

If only they were talking about jumping the hell off a cliff:

Congressional leaders in both parties are engaged in high-level, confidential talks about exempting lawmakers and Capitol Hill aides from the insurance exchanges they are mandated to join as part of President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul, sources in both parties said.

The talks — which involve Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), the Obama administration and other top lawmakers — are extraordinarily sensitive, with both sides acutely aware of the potential for political fallout from giving carve-outs from the hugely controversial law to 535 lawmakers and thousands of their aides. Discussions have stretched out for months, sources said.

A source close to the talks says: “Everyone has to hold hands on this and jump, or nothing is going to get done.”

Yet if Capitol Hill leaders move forward with the plan, they risk being dubbed hypocrites by their political rivals and the American public. By removing themselves from a key Obamacare component, lawmakers and aides would be held to a different standard than the people who put them in office.

And speaking of different standards:

The chief of the FAA told Congress today that Washington-area airports will largely escape the effects of the air traffic controller furloughs — a blessing for lawmakers who fly out of the nation’s capitol.

Michael Huerta, head of the Federal Aviation Administration, told a congressional panel that the Washington region’s airports are spaced out enough and have enough spare capacity that furloughs to air traffic controllers won’t hurt as much here.

Imagine for a moment if Republicans held the White House and the Senate and this was going on.  There'd be an uproar of historic proportions.  But it's hardly causing a ripple right now.

Couple media silence with electorate ignorance and apathy and you have the recipe for a ruling elite who can do whatever they want to do.

I'm disgusted.

Biden takes third vacation of year, Obama's girls head to Sun Valley

It's Good Friday for faithful believers but it's been a great year for some in this administration.

Let's first hear about the Bidens:

Vice President Biden today is enjoying his third vacation of the year, a five day sojourn on South Carolina’s luxurious Kiawah Island, where he will no doubt partake of his favorite pastime, golf.

Biden and his wife Jill arrived on the island – known as a golf mecca – Thursday night and are not scheduled to depart before Monday.

...

Biden should feel especially refreshed when he returns given that he just had a vacation last month in Snowmass, Colorado, where he spent several days over President’s Day weekend. Close by in a neighboring section of Colorado’s ski country was First Lady Michelle Obama, who was taking her second vacation of the year in Aspen.

Over the same President’s Day weekend, President Obama was roving the fairways at an exclusive golf resort in Florida where he got pointers both from Tiger Woods and Tiger’s famous former coach. He and Mrs. Obama had already spent part of late December and early January in Hawaii.

Biden’s first trip this year was a sun worshiping exercise in the U.S. Virgin Islands, where he stayed with his family from Friday, January 4 until Tuesday, January 8.

But wait... there's more:

"Sun Valley is known to be a getaway for celebrities and the First Family is no different," reports KMVT.

"In an exclusive photo obtained by Idaho's First News, you can see the First Daughters, Malia and Sasha Obama skiing at River Run Thursday. The Sun Valley Ski Patrol confirms the girls were enjoying the wonders of the mountain. We also received unconfirmed reports the daughters were staying at Thunder Spring in Sun Valley."

Earlier, it was reported that the Obama daughters were at a resort in the Bahamas for Spring Break.

Both reports could be true: The Obama daughters could have spent the first half of the week in the Bahamas, before leaving the sun for the Idaho snow.

No comments from officials in charge of White House tours or from those on furlough due to sequestration cuts.

Raise your hand if you're one who voted for this and who continues to think you did the right thing.

"That amount would cover 2-6 weeks of White House tours"

Breitbart:

A few weeks ago, the Obama Administration announced it was suspending public, self-guided tours of the White House as a result of the automatic sequester cuts that the administration proposed in 2011. While America's students stand outside the White House fence, the First Daughters, Sasha and Malia, are enjoying spring break with friends at the Atlantis Resort on Paradise Island in the Bahamas. 

Breitbart News' Matt Boyle broke the news Monday morning that numerous sources have reported seeing the First Daughters in the Bahamas this weekend. Presumably, the Obamas are paying the costs of the resort out of their own pockets. The robust Secret Service detail that must accompany the First Daughters, however, is funded by taxpayers. 

The principal reason the White House canceled public tours was to save money on Secret Service staff. The White House reported that suspending the tours would save $74,000 a week. Other reports have put the savings at just $18,000 a week. 

Whichever the true amount, the Secret Service detail necessary to protect the First Daughters on their spring break could likely have been used to keep the White House open to the rest of America's school children. Judicial Watch reported that Malia Obama's Spring Break in Mexico last year cost taxpayers over $115,000. That amount would cover 2-6 weeks of White House tours. 

He promised he would fundamentally trasform the country... and he has.

We're now a monarchy.

Hope and change some of you idiots the gullible completely fell for.

Meet NY Governor, Andrew Cuomo; idiot extraordinaire

Guest posted by tim, The Godless Heathen (and NY State resident)

From Gateway Pundit (where there's video if you can stomach it) - 

Gov. Andrew Cuomo dismissed the latest lawsuit against the state’s new gun control law, the SAFE Act, as “propaganda” that the New York State Rifle and Pistol Association is using to keep its members in line.

(…)

“What the extremists do is spread fear and unrealistic theories of conspiracies and the citizenry that needs to be armed because the government is possibly tyrannical, and they need their arms to defend themselves against the tyrannical government,” Cuomo continued. This is true: at gun rallies, I’ve heard this “slippery slope” line of argument from multiple attendees. They view the right to bear arms as a kind of check against government power. 

Here reads the "slippery slope", the "a kind of check", brought to us by "extremists" -

'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.'

Hey Andy, google 'District of Columbia v. Heller' for some more “propaganda”.