The Obama administration is seeking to make it easier for the FBI to compel companies to turn over records of an individual's Internet activity without a court order if agents deem the information relevant to a terrorism or intelligence investigation. (WashPost)
"My point was that fascists had the wherewithal to be truly popular - they offered (racially vetted) people material benefits, that was one of the things Germans and italians liked about them. I don't see american reactionaries making the same offer. that is (one reason) why I don't see them as today's equivalent to the Nazis and Italian fascists. Who were, I guess i need to say this, incomparably evil." [emphasis added for obvious reasons] (Good grief!)
Oh my, spoke too soon again:
"I'd also say that the fascist and National Socialist right had an intellectual heft that the contemporary American right lacks. I'd much rather read Heidegger, Junger, Schmitt, Wyndham Lewis, Ezra Pound etc. than Limbaugh, Coulter, Beck, Mark Steyn, etc."
States are putting hundreds of thousands of people directly into jobs through programs reminiscent of the more ambitious work projects of the Great Depression.
But the new efforts have a twist: While the wages are being paid by the government, most of the participants are working for private companies. (NY Times)
My take: If it's paid for by government, it's just a welfare program not a job.
A federal judge's rejection of the most controversial elements of Arizona's immigration law is unlikely to change the entrenched immigration politics in Washington, where not a single Republican senator supports the overhaul that many experts say is needed to fix what President Obama calls a "fundamentally broken" system. (LA Times)
As the conflict in Afghanistan continues to drag on, it seems each month is deadlier than the last for the armed forces. The AP reports three soldiers died in blasts in Afghanistan bringing the total for the month to 63 US troops, surpassing last months high of 60. Last month had also been the deadliest for international forces with 104 deaths. How many more must die to save face in Afghanistan?
China has overtaken Japan to become the world's second-largest economy, the fruit of three decades of rapid growth that has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. Depending on how fast its exchange rate rises, China is on course to overtake the United States and vault into the No.1 spot sometime around 2025, according to projections by the World Bank, Goldman Sachs and others. (CNBC)
My take: Gotta get that Rosetta Stone for Chinese.
We are all screwed (I thought the motto was "Don't be evil"?):
The investment arms of the CIA and Google are both backing a company that monitors the web in real time - and says it uses that information to predict the future.
The company is called Recorded Future, and it scours tens of thousands of websites, blogs and Twitter accounts to find the relationships between people, organizations, actions and incidents - both present and still-to-come. In a white paper, the company says its temporal analytics engine "goes beyond search" by "looking at the 'invisible links' between documents that talk about the same, or related, entities and events."
The recession was deeper than the government previously thought. The Commerce Department, in revisions issued Friday, estimates the economy shrank 2.6 percent last year -- the steepest drop since 1946. That's worse than the 2.4 percent decline originally estimated. The economy's plunge underscores why the unemployment rate surged to 10.1 percent in October, a 26-year high. (AP)
My take: We already, even if the government didn't.
Three U.S. troops died in blasts in Afghanistan, bringing the death toll for July to at least 63 and surpassing the previous month's record as the deadliest for American forces in the nearly 9-year-old war. (AP)
Democrats may water down or repeal new tax-reporting rules that are supposed to raise $16 billion for health-care legislation, facing a chorus of criticism about the rules. (Wall Street Journal)
Commissioned by Campaign for Liberty and written by former Reagan administration official Bruce Fein, American Empire: Before the Fall chronicles how far our foreign policy has come from the Founders' intentions, details the threat to America's security and prosperity posed by mortgaging our future to support the rest of the world, and lays out a plan to strengthen our nation by restoring a foreign policy that adheres to the Constitution.
As we continue fighting the war of ideas, American Empire: Before the Fall’s vital and powerfully articulated arguments will arm us with the knowledge needed to successfully promote and defend a constitutional, noninterventionist foreign policy.
You can watch the Mises University week-long seminar for free here. Be sure to pass this along to friends and friends who need to hear how and why liberty is the only cure for our economic woes.
There are some ideas whose time never should come... this is certainly one of those. On Thursday, Newt Gingrich suggested America should attack the rest of Bush's "Axis of Evil"...
Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich twice called on the United States to attack North Korea and Iran Thursday because the United States has only attacked "one out of three" of so-called "Axis of Evil" members by invading Iraq. He also claimed that Muslims are trying to install Sharia law on America and said that the "War on Terror" should have been a war on "radical Islamists" instead.
Speaking at an American Enterprise Institute event, Gingrich compared not following through on President George W. Bush's "Axis of Evil" agenda with not fully engaging the Axis power in World War II.
"Regime Change" was one of the worst (and most dangerous) policy decisions the neoconservatives ever put forth during the Bush administration. The concept was to quickly move from one country to the next, first Iraq, then Iran, and eventually North Korea. After the US toppled Saddam's regime and Bush declared "mission accomplished", it seemed only logical the Pentagon had set their sights on the Iranian regime next. Perhaps it was an act of providence the US military became bogged down fighting a prolonged insurgency in Iraq that thwarted any potential plans for going after the next target.
Newt Gingrich and furthermore neoconservative chickenhawks in general deserve to be ostracized from the Republican party. Like a gangrenous limb, they must be cut off, never to return to power. These people are not conservative, nor do they stand for truly limited government (which you cannot possibly hope to attain with an interventionist foreign policy). President Bush and the neoconservatives almost destroyed the right completely with eight years of their failed policies. A resurgence of these views should be shunned by anyone who is a friend of small government, personal freedom, and a truly strong national DEFENSE.
Yesterday, Ron Paul spoke on the House floor during debate on a privileged resolution to invoke the War Powers Act and remove our troops from Pakistan.
Dr. Paul highlights how many people thought this administration would shrink our foreign wars. Instead, drone attacks have doubled, civilian casualties are high, we sent $7.5 billion in "aid" to Pakistan and instead of spending it on infrastructure, much of the funds went to fund the ISI (Pakistani intelligence service) who it turns out have been funding the Taliban. Rather than declarations of war, Dr. Paul states "we slip into wars" by slowly increasing the amount of our involvement.
We pay for these wars with an enormous amount of blood and treasure and we can't afford to increase either at this point.
UPDATE: The video has been changed to incorporate all of Congressman Paul's portion of the debate.
"The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act...enacts the toughest Wall Street reforms since the Great Depression...establishing unprecedented levels of oversight, transparency and accountability in the financial system." -- Rep. James Clyburn (SC)
On the heals of President Obama signing the Dodd/Frank Wall Street Reform Bill, Tuesday the SEC cited a provision of the new law that exempts them from disclosing information to the public.
Under a little-noticed provision of the recently passed financial-reform legislation, the Securities and Exchange Commission no longer has to comply with virtually all requests for information releases from the public, including those filed under the Freedom of Information Act.
The law, signed last week by President Obama, exempts the SEC from disclosing records or information derived from "surveillance, risk assessments, or other regulatory and oversight activities." Given that the SEC is a regulatory body, the provision covers almost every action by the agency, lawyers say. Congress and federal agencies can request information, but the public cannot.
That argument comes despite the President saying that one of the cornerstones of the sweeping new legislation was more transparent financial markets. Indeed, in touting the new law, Obama specifically said it would "increase transparency in financial dealings."
The article goes on to argue the SEC is using the provision to cover up their own failures.
The SEC cited the new law Tuesday in a FOIA action brought by FOX Business Network. Steven Mintz, founding partner of law firm Mintz & Gold LLC in New York, lamented what he described as "the backroom deal that was cut between Congress and the SEC to keep the SEC's failures secret. The only losers here are the American public."
FOX Business Network sued the SEC in March 2009 over its failure to produce documents related to its failed investigations into alleged investment frauds being perpetrated by Madoff and R. Allen Stanford. Following the Madoff and Stanford arrests it, was revealed that the SEC conducted investigations into both men prior to their arrests but failed to uncover their alleged frauds.
FOX Business made its initial request to the SEC in February 2009 seeking any information related to the agency's response to complaints, tips and inquiries or any potential violations of the securities law or wrongdoing by Stanford.
Fox Business has announced they will challenge the SEC's interpretation of the new law in court.
Republicans serving on the Joint Economic Committee have produced a chart mapping out merely 1/3 of bureaucratic nightmare created by the 2,801 page boondoggle known as Obamacare.
"For Americans, as well as Congressional Democrats who didn't bother to read the bill, this first look at the final health care law confirms what many fear, that reform morphed into a monstrosity of new bureaucracies, mandates, taxes and rationing that will drive up health care costs, hurt seniors and force our most intimate health care choices into the hands of Washington bureaucrats," said Brady, the committee's senior House Republican. "If this is what passes for health care reform in America, then God help us all."
Brownback, the committee's ranking member, added, "This updated chart illustrates the overwhelming expansion of government control over health choices and the bewildering complexity facing everyone affected by this law. It doesn't take long to see how the recently signed health care bill causes a hugely expensive and explosive expansion of federal control over health care. Personal choices that should be between a doctor and a patient will quickly be strangled in a never ending web of bureaucracy."
Well Nancy, Congress passed it and now Americans are beginning to find out what's in it and it isn't pretty.
