The Right Lane update 5.22.13

The pursuit of Constitutionally grounded governance, free markets and individual liberty

"There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily." --George Washington

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Survey Rates Obama Administration’s Benghazi Response As Poor

The Obama administration is wrestling with several high-profile controversies these days, but voter concern about events surrounding the death last year of the U.S. ambassador in Benghazi, Libya remains little changed. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 81% of Likely U.S. Voters still think it is at least somewhat important to find out what happened in the events surrounding the death of Ambassador Christopher Stevens. This includes 55% who say it is Very Important. Only 13% feel it’s not very or Not At All Important to get to the bottom of the events last September in Benghazi.

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Associated Press CEO Calls Seizure of Phone Records Unconstitutional By PHILIP ELLIOTT

The president and chief executive officer of The Associated Press on Sunday called the government's secret seizure of two months of reporters' phone records "unconstitutional" and said the news cooperative had not ruled out legal action against the Justice Department. Gary Pruitt, in his first television interviews since it was revealed the Justice Department subpoenaed phone records of AP reporters and editors, said the move already has had a chilling effect on journalism. Pruitt said the seizure has made sources less willing to talk to AP journalists and, in the long term, could limit Americans' information from all news outlets. Pruitt told CBS' "Face the Nation" that the government has no business monitoring the AP's newsgathering activities. "And if they restrict that apparatus ... the people of the United States will only know what the government wants them to know and that's not what the framers of the Constitution had in mind when they wrote the First Amendment," he said.

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Veteran reporter: Nobody's data safe from feds  'Telecom routinely supply hundreds of thousands of records annually'  - Bob Unruh
A veteran reporter is warning that members of the news media aren’t the only Americans who should be concerned about the privacy of their telephone conversations. Gregory J. Millman of the Wall Street Journal, who says his telephone records were targeted by the IRS many years ago, writes that the communications of citizens could come to the attention of the government in a number of ways, including by getting a call from someone in whom the government has interest. The issue has arisen because of the admission by the Department of Justice that it obtained records of Associated Press telephone lines in the House Gallery at the U.S. Capitol over a period of months. The Obama administration said it pursued AP’s records because a double agent in the war on terror was compromised by a story. However, the news wire’s reporting on the issue didn’t mention the agent. It was CIA Director John Brennan, who then was President Obama’s terror adviser, who told members of Congress that the U.S. had “inside control” of the situation. Media then reported on the use of a double agent, according to  a profile of the government’s justification for pursuing the reporters’ telephone records published in the Los Angeles Times.  See the list of news media members under Washington’s watch. Millman writes that his records were targeted in 1991 when he wrote a story citing an Internal Revenue Service memo. However, he pointed out that when his records were taken by the IRS, he wasn’t the only one:

“That’s how they happened to scoop up the phone records of a home builder, a trade association of corporate finance officers, an old friend who happened to live in Washington, D.C., and the Alicia Patterson Foundation, which supports investigative journalism and which I had called to discuss a fellowship.”

Millman says none of those people or organizations “had anything to do with the story at issue, and none learned until long afterward that IRS investigators had been secretly riffling through records of all their phone calls.” Millman explains he learned only by accident that the records had been given to the government. “In what may be another good example of government waste and duplication, several months after the IRS had started going through the phone records, the Department of Justice launched its own investigation,:” he writes. “In keeping with the DOJ’s policy, in mid-January of 1992 I got a notice that it wanted my records. … In the course of our fight, my attorney learned from my phone company that it had already turned the records over to the IRS months before.” Millman reported Michael Altschul, a lawyer for the CTYIA-The Wireless Association, estimated industry-wide, companies respond to up to 2 million requests for phone records per year. The DOJ net for records also is widening. The Washington Post noted the latest scandal for the White House is the Justice Department’s use of security badge access records and other information to monitor three Fox News journalists. They were identified as reporters William La Jeunesse and James Rosen and producer Mike Levine. The report said court documents reveal how they were was monitored. “Search warrants like these have a severe chilling effect on the free flow of important information to the public,” First Amendment lawyer Charles Tobin told the Post. Reports say their emails showed up in an inspector’s general report regarding the Fast and Furious gun-tracing scandal. Breitbart reported: “What we have here is a case of the Obama administration criminalizing reporting. In June of 2009, James Rosen of Fox News reported that North Korea might respond to an increase in United Nations sanctions with even more nuclear tests. Rosen added that the CIA had learned this information from their sources within North Korea. According to the Washington Post, upon hearing … of Rosen’s report, the White House launched what many believe is an unprecedented leak probe that went so far as to criminalize standard newsgathering.”

Shockingly, the report continues, “FBI agent Regineld Reyes claimed there was evidence Rosen had broken the law, ‘at the very least, either as an aider, abettor and/or co-conspirator.’” Rosen said the Obama administration never contacted him. “It is called everyday journalism; and the Obama administration is attempting to criminalize everyday journalism,” the report says.

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Bombshell: Govt Official Says Hillary Spearheaded Benghazi Review, Not Independent Board by Tim Brown

One of the four State Department employees, who was recently disciplined by their former boss Hillary Clinton, has broken his silence concerning Benghazi and has leveled some very big charges at the former Secretary of State. He is now indicating that the former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her staff were the ones that led the review of the Benghazi attacks by perpetrating the flaws in the process of the review, not an independent board.

Raymond Maxwell was placed on forced “administrative leave” after the State Department’s own internal investigation, conducted by an Administrative Review Board (ARB) led by former State Department official Tom Pickering. Five months after he was told to clean out his desk and leave the building, Maxwell remains in professional and legal limbo, having been associated publicly with the death of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other American for reasons that remain unclear. Maxwell, who served as deputy assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs from August 2011 until his removal last December, following tours in Iraq and Syria, spoke publicly for the first time in an exclusive interview with The Daily Beast. “The overall goal is to restore my honor,” said Maxwell, who has filed grievances regarding his treatment with the State Department’s Human Resources Bureau and the American Foreign Service Association, which represents the interests of foreign-service officers. The other three officials placed on leave were in the Diplomatic Security Bureau, leaving Maxwell as the only official in the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs (NEA), which had responsibility for Libya, to lose his job. “I had no involvement to any degree with decisions on security and the funding of security at our diplomatic mission in Benghazi,” he said.  While he was removed from his position on December 18, 2012, the day following the ARB’s report, no reason was given him and the others being place on administrative leave. Jne Psaki, the State Department spokeswoman, said, “”As a matter of policy, we don’t speak to specific personnel matters.”

 “They just wanted me to go away but I wouldn’t just go away,” he said. “I knew Chris [Stevens]. Chris was a friend of mine.”  The Daily Beast continued to report that “He is seeking a restoration of his previous position, a public statement of apology from State, reimbursement for his legal fees, and an extension of his time in service to equal the time he has spent at home on administrative leave.”

“For any FSO being at work is the essence of everything and being deprived of that and being cast out was devastating,” he said. Maxwell even said that a State Department official came to his home, following his removal and wanted him to sign a letter that acknowledged his removal and forfeiting his right to enter the State Department building. He refused, claiming that it would have been an admission of guilt.   However, the question lingers; who put Maxwell and the others on leave? “The decision to place Maxwell on administrative leave was made by Clinton’s chief of staff Cheryl Mills, according to three State Department officials with direct knowledge of the events,” according to the report. “On the day after the unclassified version of the ARB’s report was released in December, Mills called Acting Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Beth Jones and directed her to have Maxwell leave his job immediately.”

Josh Rogin then points out why Mr. Maxwell, of all people, was removed following the release of the ARB report. He writes, “One person who reviewed the classified portion of the ARB report told The Daily Beast that it called out Maxwell for the specific infraction of not reading his daily classified briefings, something that person said Maxwell admitted to the ARB panel during his interview.”

The person spoken of went on to say, “The crime that he is being punished for is not reading his intel.”  Maxwell denies that charge stating that he has not been “officially counseled” about any wrongdoing on his part. However, he lands a serious blow to Clinton and her staff claiming that they were the ones heading the review of the Benghazi attack, not an independent review board.

“He believes that Clinton’s staff, not the ARB, was in charge of the review of the attack that took place during her watch,” the report said. Maxwell said, “The flaws in the process were perpetrated by the political leadership at State with the complicity of the senior career leadership. They should be called to account.”  Is anyone surprised by this? I’m not. I’m just wondering how Hillary and company are planning on silencing this guy now.

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IRS Misses Deadline: Fails to Comply With Congressional Demand for All Communications With WH About Targeting Conservatives By Terence P. Jeffrey

What did the White House know about the IRS targeting conservative groups and when did it know it? Crucial evidence needed to develop an accurate answer to that question would include the records of any communications that went back and forth between the IRS and the White House on the topic. In a May 14 letter signed by Chairman Dave Camp and Ranking Member Sander Levin, the House Ways and Means Committee demanded precisely those records from the IRS. In the same letter, the committee also demanded the records of any communications between IRS and the Treasury on the matter, plus other information and records that would help the committee understand the facts about IRS actions that subjected to heightened scrutiny conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status. Chairman Camp and Ranking Member Levin gave the IRS a deadline of Tuesday, May 21 to comply with their committee’s demand for the information and records. The IRS--which requires working Americans to file their tax returns by an April 15 deadline each year or else face penalties--did not comply with this deadline imposed by the congressional committee that has oversight over its activities.

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Unions Turn Against Obamacare Fearing Lost Coverage By Lisa Barron

The White House is losing support for Obamacare from some leading labor unions that are concerned their members could lose healthcare coverage once the program is fully implemented. The United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW) said it is worried that its members will actually lose healthcare coverage they have now once the Affordable Care Act is fully implemented early next year, reports The Hill. Joe Hansen, president of the UFCW, a 1.3 million-member group that endorsed Barack Obama in the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections, wrote in an editorial published in The Hill that Obama's claim at the 2009 AFL-CIO convention that union members could keep their current insurance under the new law “is simply not true for millions of workers.”

“You can’t have the same quality health care that you had before, despite what the president said,” Hansen asserted, adding: “Now what’s going to happen is everybody is going to have to go to private for-profit insurance companies. We just don’t think that’s right. … We just want to keep what we already have and what we bought at tremendous cost.” At issue is the fact that many UFCW members have multi-employer Taft-Hartley plans, and the law apparently does not provide tax subsidies for the approximately 20 million people covered by them. Hansen said in The Hill editorial that his members normally negotiate with their employers to receive better healthcare services in lieu of higher wages, and that the bargaining chip could be eliminated because some employers won’t have the incentive to keep their workers’ multi-employer plans without tax subsidies.  Hansen’s concerns are shared by other labor groups. Last month, the president of the United Union of Roofers, Waterproofers and Allied Workers issued a statement calling “for repeal or complete reform of the Affordable Care Act.”  Unite Here, a prominent hotel workers’ union, and the International brotherhood of Teamsters are also calling for changes, according to The Hill.

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News from the Patriot front

Hi Bill,

Just to give you a quick update on some IRS information.  I’m the treasurer of the Kentucky 9/12 Project (www.ky912.com) and we were one of the groups targeted when we applied for our 501(c)4 status.  Our group, along with 26 others, will be filing a class action suit against the IRS.  Not expecting much to come out of it, and none of us are looking for any monetary gain from the suit, but just wanted to give you a heads up and let you know that there are patriots out there who are unwilling to give up.  I believe this reaches far higher than just the IRS but don’t know that it will ever be proven.  We can’t let this overshadow the travesty of Benghazi though.  There is a lot more to that story that must come out.

Lisa

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King and Queen Obama to Host Another White House Concert Despite Sequester and Scandals

Amid sequester and scandal in Washington, the White House announced Friday that the president and first lady will be hosting another concert as part of their “In Performance at the White House” series later this month. The event will be held in the East Room of the White House and honor singer and songwriter Carole King, who will be awarded the 2013 Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song. King will be the first woman to receive the award, the White House noted in their announcement. The program — to be streamed on the White House website and broadcast on PBS stations the evening of May 28 — will also feature performances by Gloria Estefan, Billy Joel, Jesse McCartney, Emeli Sandé, James Taylor, Trisha Yearwood and King herself. In 2002, Carole King sang “You’ve Got a Friend” for Cuban dictator Fidel Castro at a warming-relations dinner in Havana.

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Scientist Stumped by Actual Dinosaur Skin  by Brian Thomas, M.S.

Being the first ever to examine a dinosaur fossil long buried in sedimentary rock is thrilling enough for a field researcher. But a team working in Canada found an exhilarating bonus on a hadrosaur fossil fragment—it had actual skin still attached. They found the duck-bill dinosaur fossil near Grand Prairie, Alberta. University of Regina physicist Mauricio Barbi operates state-of-the art synchrotron equipment that can detect and identify chemical signatures without destroying samples. He plans to use the technology to investigate the special fossil and its skin. He told Canadian Light Source (CLS), which houses the synchrotron device, “As we excavated the fossil, I thought that we were looking at a skin impression. Then I noticed a piece came off and I realized this is not ordinary—this is real skin.” What do they plan to do with this “real skin?” Barbi said, “Everyone involved with the excavation was incredibly excited and we started discussing research projects right away.” Each project will examine a different question. For example, they plan to sort out what color the dinosaur skin may have been by investigating the skin’s pigment-containing melanosomes. Researchers in China performed a similar analysis on a Sinosauropteryx dinosaur in 2010. Which research question carries the most mystery? “But perhaps the greatest question Barbi is trying to answer at the CLS is how the fossil remained intact for around 70-million years.” Barbi declared, “There is something special about this fossil and the area where it was found, and I am going to find out what it is.”

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Slap My Head Alert! Outgoing IRS Chief: Taxes Voluntary

On Friday, former acting IRS Commissioner Steve Miller, testifying before the House Ways and Means Committee, said that America’s tax system is “voluntary.” During the hearing, Rep. Devin Nunes (D-CA) said in passing that the U.S. tax code is a “voluntary system.” Miller simply responded, “Agreed.”  This line has been used before by none other than Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Interviewed by Jan Helfeld in 2008, this is how the conversation went:

Helfeld: If the government is in the business of forcefully taking money from some people in order to provide welfare benefits to others, how will the people whose money is being taken feel about the government?

Reid: Well, I don’t accept your phraseology. I don’t think we force people-

Helfeld: Taxation is not forceful?

Reid: Well, no ..

Cannot make this stuff up folks!

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"The propriety of a law, in a constitutional light, must always be deteremined by the nature of the powers upon which it is founded." --Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 33, 1788

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