The One Line of Communication No One Can Breach

In a world where governments are gobbling the privacy of ordinary citizens, there is something owned by every human being that is completely immune to the interference of the NSA, FBI, IRS or any other earthly agency: a powerful and always available direct line of communication that cannot be tampered with and is impossible to break.

It’s a direct line of communication with your Creator and nobody or no thing can take it away from you should you put it to use.

This direct line of communication can be tapped into from anywhere, at any time.  You don’t have to wait for a Sunday to use it because the cathedral of the human heart, where it originates,  can be put into use, 24-7.

That direct line to the Creator is precious, not least of all because it is the only private one left in a world that continues to rob citizens of privacy and peace of mind.

Having the prayers of others is always a Godsend.  While the prayers of others can keep you buoyed up and even feeling safer in an increasingly hostile and secular world, organized prayer, or Breakfast Prayer meetings are not the only means to get in good with God.

Western governments of the day are proving they can take everything away from you—the privacy you assumed you had, your job, your family’s food, the roof over your head, your very peace of mind.

Via: Canada Free Press

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Another Hate Crimes Report Contradicts Islamist Claims

Hate crimes in the United States decreased in 2012, data released Monday by the FBI shows.

The annual report, compiled through voluntary reporting from law enforcement agencies, further shows that crimes targeting Muslims remains flat and relatively uncommon. This contradicts claims by Islamist groups that hate crimes against Muslims are spiking, fueled in part by what the groups call an organized effort by groups pushing "Islamophobia."

There were 5,796 reported incidents involving hate crimes during 2012, the report shows. Of those, nearly half involved racial animus. More than 1,800 reported incidents targeted black people – by far the largest group attacked.

In bias crimes involving religion, Jews were targeted in 674 incidents – 62 percent of all religiously-motivated crimes. That's five times more than Muslim Americans, who were targeted in 130 incidents – or fewer than 12 percent of all religiously-motivated crimes. Estimates vary, but there are roughly twice as many Jews in the United States as Muslims.

Anti-Muslim crimes represented 13.3 percent of the religious attacks in 2011.

The number of incidents dropped for each group.

Occasionally, incidents originally touted as hate crimes turn out to be something quite different. In April 2012, a Muslim woman was bludgeoned to death in her home near San Diego. A note found near her body made it seem she was attacked because she was a Muslim woman who wore a hijab. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) issued a statement saying the attack showed "the dangers of allowing hateful rhetoric and bigotry to go unpunished, and the fatal consequences that can result."

Shaima Alawadi's husband is scheduled to face trial next year after being charged with her murder.

Via: IPT

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Subcontractor working on Obamacare site under FBI investigation

One of the subcontractors working on the Obamacare website is currently under investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Client Network Services Incorporated (CNSI) became a sub-contractor on the Obamacare website in 2012, working hand in hand with QSSI, according to its website. QSSI was one of several contractors hauled before Congress to address the sites troubled rollout in October.

According to Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) “war room” notes released in October, CNSI was responsible for assisting with electronic data interchange (EDI) — defined as a system to transfer data between computer systems without human interaction.

Among the plethora of problems with the website rollout, insurance companies have complained that data received on their computers has often been inaccurate, suggesting a problem with the EDI.

CNSI is currently under investigation by the FBI, which has alleged that then-Louisiana Health and Hospitals Secretary Bruce Greenstein, a former CNSI employee, exerted undue influence in steering the Medicaid contract to Louisiana.

According to a story in the New Orleans Times Picayne, the FBI also acccused CNSI of witness tampering in another case.

“According to the FBI report in this Court’s possession, one of CNSI’s owners, in front of the other three owners, said if the employee ‘ever disclosed the misconduct at the company they would have him killed.’”

Via: Daily Caller

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Americans’ personal data shared with CIA, IRS, others in security probe BY MARISA TAYLOR

WASHINGTON — U.S. agencies collected and shared the personal information of thousands of Americans in an attempt to root out untrustworthy federal workers that ended up scrutinizing people who had no direct ties to the U.S. government and simply had purchased certain books.

Federal officials gathered the information from the customer records of two men who were under criminal investigation for purportedly teaching people how to pass lie detector tests. The officials then distributed a list of 4,904 people – along with many of their Social Security numbers, addresses and professions – to nearly 30 federal agencies, including the Internal Revenue Service, the CIA, the National Security Agency and the Food and Drug Administration. Although the polygraph-beating techniques are unproven, authorities hoped to find government employees or applicants who might have tried to use them to lie during the tests required for security clearances. Officials with multiple agencies confirmed that they’d checked the names in their databases and planned to retain the list in case any of those named take polygraphs for federal jobs or criminal investigations.

It turned out, however, that many people on the list worked outside the federal government and lived across the country. Among the people whose personal details were collected were nurses, firefighters, police officers and private attorneys, McClatchy learned. Also included: a psychologist, a cancer researcher and employees of Rite Aid, Paramount Pictures, the American Red Cross and Georgetown University.

Via: McClatchy

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Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/11/14/208438/americans-personal-data-shared.html#storylink=cpy

In California and Washington, scandal spreads, government stumbles on

President Obama pauses while speaking at the SelectUSA 2013 Investment Summit in Washington on Thursday. (Andrew Harrer / Bloomberg / October 31, 2013)

A little tour of political news:

In Los Angeles, a former aide to City Councilman Jose Huizar filed a lawsuit alleging that he had harassed and punished her when she refused to provide sexual favors. (Not true, the married councilman said; it was a consensual affair.) Another former council aide has filed a lawsuit alleging that a second councilmember, Mitch Englander, not only allowed a harassing environment to exist in his office but also took part with inappropriate remarks. (He denied it.)

In Sacramento, an FBI affidavit was said to claim that state Sen. Ronald Calderon (D-Montebello) had accepted more than $60,000 in bribes from undercover FBI agents, allegations first reported Wednesday by the Al Jazeeratelevision network.

By Thursday morning, as Calderon’s attorney was pleading his innocence, other legislators were scrambling to avoid being sucked into the quicksand. State Senate leader Darrell Steinberg of Sacramento took issue with Calderon’s claim that as a favor he had hired an unqualified woman onto the Senate staff. (The woman, unbeknown to any legislator, was an undercover FBI agent.)

In Washington, Republicans and Democrats showed no signs of abating their partisan tit-for-tat, most recently at a congressional hearing Wednesday where Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius was raked over the coals for the balky opening of the federal healthcare.gov website. The meeting was replete with multiple references to Kansas—Sebelius is a former governor of the state, which means she deals with mentions of Dorothy and Toto and not being in Kansas anymore the way Californians bear the cross of flakiness, blond hair and surfers.

Via: Chicago Tribune

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TSA employee dead, at least 6 injured in LAX shooting; gunman wounded and in custody, officials say

A gunman with an assault rifle opened fire in a crowded terminal at Los Angeles International Airport Friday, killing a TSA employee and injuring at least six before being wounded and taken into custody.

The suspect was identified by federal authorities late Friday as Paul Ciancia, 23, a Los Angeles resident, Fox News reported.

The FBI said it had not interviewed him because he was hospitalized but expected to speak to him as soon as possible.

A note was recovered from a bag he dropped at a security checkpoint. It was described to Fox News as containing threatening language directed at the TSA and anti-government rants.

The shooting incident, which sent passengers in the airport scrambling for cover, disrupted flights nationwide as planes headed for Los Angeles were temporarily grounded.

"I am deeply saddened to inform you that a TSA employee was shot and killed today on duty at Los Angeles International Airport," said TSA administrator John Pistole in a message to employees. "Other TSA employees also were injured in the shooting."

Via: Fox News

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Justice and State departments blocking access to survivors of Benghazi attack

The Justice and State departments are now citing a year-old FBI investigation and a future criminal prosecution to block access to survivors of last year’s Benghazi terror attack.

In an Oct. 28 letter to Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.,the State Department’s Assistant Secretary for Legislative Affairs, Julia Frifield, refers to "significant risks" and "serious concerns about having the survivors of the attack submit to additional interviews."

Graham has been asking since last year for the FBI’s transcripts of interviews with State Department and CIA survivors who were evacuated to Germany after the Sep.11 attack on the U.S. consulate.

He and other Republicans believe the transcripts will show the survivors told the FBI it was a terrorist attack and made no mention of a video or anti-U.S. demonstration at the consulate.

This intelligence was  likely available to the president, his national security team and U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, who five days after the assault blamed it on an anti-U.S. demonstration and inflammatory video.

"You can't hide behind a criminal investigation," Graham told reporters during a news conference on Capitol Hill.  "That's not a good reason to deny the Congress witness statements 48 hours after the attack."

Via: Fox News

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Court Lets FBI Keep Authorized Racial Profiling Secret

The U.S. has been side-swiped by a robust wave of political correctness, so it may be tough to believe that the nation’s Attorney General actually authorizes federal agents to engage in “limited racial and ethnic profiling” when conducting assessments of criminal and terrorist threats.

It’s probably something the Obama administration would prefer to keep quiet so as not to upset or alienate the president’s liberal base, but evidently it’s considered a valuable homeland security tool. Otherwise, why would this, the most leftist and politically correct administration of modern times, allow it to continue? Furthermore, why would the Obama Justice Department engage in a legal battle to make sure details of the “FBI’s use of ethnic and racial data” are kept secret?

The authorized racial and ethnic profiling began after the 9/11 Commission report determined that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) should be restructured to be the domestic equivalent of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). That included overhauling the FBI and revising its internal manual, known as the Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide (DIOG). Among the manual’s revisions was permission for FBI agents to engage in limited racial and ethnic profiling when conducting proactive assessments of criminal and terrorist threats.

Specifically, the DIOG allows FBI agents to identify and map “locations of concentrated ethnic communities” if doing so would “reasonably aid the analysis of potential threats and vulnerabilities” and “assist domain awareness for the purpose of performing intelligence analysis.” The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) asserted this would encourage unlawful racial profiling and took the administration to court to obtain internal documents about the FBI’s use of ethnic and racial data.

As is often the case when a group or individual seeks government records, the FBI turned over some files, would neither confirm nor deny having a portion of the records and refused to provide a large stash. A federal judge ruled in favor of the government’s right to withhold hundreds of pages of documents and the ACLU appealed, determined to expose the administration’s racial profiling initiative.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit rejected the ACLU’s argument, ruling last week that the FBI has the right to protect the information. In its 21-page decision the court also rebuffs the ACLU’s claim that release of the limited public source information it seeks would not tip off targets or impede investigations. “This argument misses the obvious point that while the demographic data itself may be public, its use by the FBI is certainly not,” the court writes.

Via: Judicial Watch

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Feds, cops: Tsarnaev brothers not ID’d until after shootout

Federal authorities and local cops are vehemently denying that they knew the identities of alleged Boston Marathon bombers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev before releasing their images to the public, in response to a pointed letter from an Iowa senator that questions whether the FBI had a bead on the terror suspects before their desperate and deadly attempt to flee.

“To be absolutely clear: No one was surveilling the Tsarnaevs and they were not identified until after the shootout,” the FBI, Boston police and Massachusetts State Police said in a joint statement this afternoon, in reference to the wild April 19 gunfight that left Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, dead. “Any claims to the contrary are false.”

Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley asked FBI Director James Comey Jr. in a letter what feds did to attempt to ID the Tsarnaevs before publishing their photos, and why FBI agents were spotted conducting surveillance near Central Square on April 18 — just hours before authorities say the brothers ambushed and murdered MIT campus cop Sean Collier. The letter also notes that the Joint Terrorism Task Force, which has been chided for failure to share information with local authorities in the past, never told Cambridge cops about the surveillance operation. Grassley is the ranking member on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Authorities said the Joint Terrorism Task Force “was at M.I.T., located in Cambridge, MA, on April 18, 2013, on a matter unrelated to the Tsarnaev brothers.”

Grassley’s letter also asks whether the FBI, whose Joint Terrorism Task Force investigated Tamerlan Tsarnaev in 2011, ever attempted to recruit the brothers as informants or sources. Authorities said today they did not.

“The Tsarnaev brothers were never sources for the FBI nor did the FBI attempt to recruit them as source,” the statement said.

Grassley’s office says he has not received a response from the FBI.

Via: Boston Herald....

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U.S. Has Cash to Close Memorials, Can’t Afford Enforcing FOIA

The U.S. government can spend money shutting down and barricading memorials around Washington D.C., but it won’t dedicate the necessary resources to obey transparency laws, using the shutdown as an opportunity to ignore the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

Without the accountability and transparency that FOIA is meant to provide, the government will essentially operate in secrecy. Nothing, not even a temporary, partisan impasse among lawmakers, should justify a furlough in the enforcement of government transparency laws. But that’s exactly what’s happening, according to the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, a decades-old nonprofit that works to protect journalists’ FOIA rights.

“Parts of the federal government have declared transparency non-essential, deciding requests under the Freedom of Information Act will go unprocessed during the shutdown,” the group says in an announcement posted on its website this week. “Some agencies have indicated they won’t even accept FOIA requests until everything is back to normal and have suspended their websites.”  Additionally, those seeking information from federal agencies should be “prepared for longer than usual delays in receiving the requested records,” the group says.

Among the federal agencies that have officially announced they won’t process FOIA requests during the shutdown are the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Others—like the Agriculture, Interior and Transportation departments—have simply disabled their FOIA websites without notifying the public. Some have confirmed “reduced FOIA operations.” They include the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the Government Information Services and the National Security Administration (NSA).

Even when FOIA is supposedly in full force, stonewalling and unnecessary delays are the norm when requesting public records from the government. Judicial Watch knows this firsthand because FOIA is a valuable tool in our work and JW files dozens of requests with a number of federal agencies every year. Generally the government must respond to a FOIA request within 20 days, though that rarely occurs and JW must take legal action to force compliance.

Just this week JW filed a FOIA request with the Department of the Interior for information related to blocking public access to national monuments in Washington D.C. due to the federal government shutdown. JW also seeks all records related to the cancellation of planned visits by veterans’ groups to the National World War II Memorial due to the shutdown. In the official request JW reminds the agency of a 2009 memorandum issued by President Obama. It states: “All agencies should adopt a presumption in favor of disclosure in order to renew their commitment to the principles embodied in FOIA…The presumption of disclosure should be applied to all decisions involving FOIA.”

Via: Judicial Watch

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