Video: ObamaCare Architect Says ObamaCare Passed Due to "Lack of Transparency" and "the Stupidity of the American Voter"

Amazingly, people who release these kind of pictures are trying to lie and deceive you. Weird, I know. Most people working hard to deify a leader are usually so trustworthy...

Gloating about lying to and deceiving the the American public. These people have no shame-- which should surprise no one, by the way. (Video by way of The Daily Signal h/t Instapundit)

The man in the video is Johnathan Gruber, an economist at MIT, who helped write the Affordable Care Act-- ObamaCare. Have a listen:

So let's see here, Gruber says

(a) that the bill was intentionally written so that the CBO would not score the individual mandate as a tax-- although the Supreme Court would of course rule that the mandate is a tax so that the law could be ruled constitutional. Furthermore, Gruber acknowledges that the bill dies if the CBO scores it as tax, which is undoubtedly true.

(b) the bill was written to intentionally deceive so that people would not understand that healthy people would be paying more to support the ill.

(c) that "lack of transparency is a huge political advantage."

(d) that "the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical for the thing to pass."

Nice. And classic Leftism, by the way.

Does anyone remember when Obama was grating on about how transparent his presidency was going to be? I believe MSNBC still touts that trash.

Of course all of this was pointed out by me and other critics of ObamaCare. We were called "racist" and "delusional" and "conspiracy theorists" for saying this. But then we're all just stupid proles who don't know what's best for us.

Remember, people like Gruber and Obama are your betters. Do not think for yourself. Do not criticize. If you have an opinion, do not voice it. And realize that your betters will lie, deceive, and insult you. But don't worry. It's all for you own good.

Obama's Pet $1.6 Billion Solar Plant Needs $500+ Million Bailout



"I deem this plant profitable and economically sustainable-- even though it needs a gift of more than half-a-billion dollars of your money. You folks can all thank me later."

(pic from DailyTech)

It's Obamanomics in action! Get money from limitless source (such as middle class taxpayers), blow it on some piece of sh*t that doesn't work and/or makes no economic sense, then request or demand more money from said limitless source and/or complain about racism.

Brilliant!

From Fox News (via Gateway Pundit):

After already receiving a controversial $1.6 billion construction loan from U.S. taxpayers, the wealthy investors of a California solar power plant now want a $539 million federal grant to pay off their federal loan.

"This is an attempt by very large cash generating companies that have billions on their balance sheet to get a federal bailout, i.e. a bailout from us - the taxpayer for their pet project," said Reason Foundation VP of Research Julian Morris. "It's actually rather obscene."

The Ivanpah solar electric generating plant is owned by Google and renewable energy giant NRG, which are responsible for paying off their federal loan. If approved by the U.S. Treasury, the two corporations will not use their own money, but taxpayer cash to pay off 30 percent of the cost of their plant, but taxpayers will receive none of the millions in revenues the plant will generate over the next 30 years. [That may not be a big deal, since this thing is economically suspect at best.]

"They're already paying less than the market rate," said Morris, author of a lengthy report detailing alleged cronyism and corruption in the Obama administration's green energy programs. "Now demanding or asking for a subsidy in the form of a grant directly paying off the loan is an egregious abuse."

NRG doesn't see it that way, telling Fox News the money is there for the taking."NRG believes in a clean and sustainable energy future and therefore participates in available government programs to develop and expand the use of clean energy to accelerate America’s energy independence." In 2013, the Obama administration handed out $18.5 billion in renewable energy grants, with $4.4 billion going to solar projects.

Ivanpah is the largest concentrated solar power plant in the world. It was unveiled in February with great fanfare. Dr. Ernest Moniz, the U.S. Secretary of Energy, justified taxpayers' investment at the time, saying, "We want to be technology leaders. It's good for our economy and it’s also good for helping stimulate the global transition to low carbon."

But since then the plant has not lived up to its clean energy promise. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the plant produced only about a quarter of the power it's supposed to, a disappointing 254,263 megawatt-hours of electricity from January through August, not the million megawatt-hours it promised. [emphasis mine]

As an added bonus, the plant also kill birds at an alarming rate due to the fact that the plant's mirrors both attract and roast them alive. It's "speciesism" at its worst. So, that young woman who adopted that rescue chicken "Snow" probably doesn't like it much.

But let's remember that Obama and cronies didn't fail us all with the solar plant, the sun and the solar plant failed them. Probably because of racism and ungovernable people and such...

Fast & Furious Documents Finally Released to Congress

The Light-bringer sayeth: "When trying to sway public opinion regarding gun control, sometimes a few folks have to die. Also George Bush did it."

Yeah, releasing the papers on Tuesday during the election. The Obama Admin. does everything it can to conceal. Of course, with the abysmal record and the various illegal activities, I suppose that's to be expected.

So let's not overlook this, even in the aftermath of this wave election. This idiotic operation, which was almost certainly a purely political operation to move forward then gun control agenda, is directly linked to the murders of hundreds of Mexicans and the killing of U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry.

From The Washington Times article by Steve Dinan:

The Justice Department sent Congress 64,280 pages of documents it had previously withheld from the botched Fast and Furious gun-walking operation on Tuesday, in a move Republicans said was an admission by President Obama that he overstepped his legal bounds. 

Investigators had sought the documents for years, with the House even suing in federal court to force their release. Mr. Obama had asserted executive privilege, claiming the documents were part of the “deliberative process” of White House decision-making and therefore didn’t need to be divulged, but the court rejected those claims.

So, do you wanna bet that the 64,000+ pages don't show that George W. Bush was behind operation Fast & Furious as Obama publicly claimed.

VA Scandal Far from Over-- VA Spies on People Investigating It

"These are all phony scandals! This country is ungovernable! You're all racist if you don't overlook my plethora of scandals! Now, start recycling those VA hard drives!"

Why is that when a scandal breaks during the Obama Presidency, the people doing the investigations get spied on? It's almost as though Obama behaving like a Leftist Chicago politician.

From The Washington Examiner:

Congressional staffers investigating data falsification and whistleblower retaliation at the Department of Veterans Affairs regional office in Philadelphia were given a workspace there that was wired with activated audio microphones and video cameras, the chairman of the House Committee on Veterans' Affairs said Monday. 

Committee investigators also glimpsed a notebook used by the agency's regional director that bore written instructions to ignore their requests for information, Rep. Jeff Miller, R-Fla., said during a late-night hearing.  

Miller, chairman of the veterans committee, said he is “shocked” by the directives from VA officials to ignore congressional investigators. 

“You will not ignore this committee anymore,” Miller said to Allison Hickey, VA's under secretary for benefits, who testified at the hearing. 

Miller sent two committee staff members to the Philadelphia facility July 2 to determine whether claims-processing data was being falsified to hide long delays and errors that could cost veterans the benefits they deserve because of illnesses or injuries linked to military service. 

Before the meeting began, one of Miller’s staffers, Lauren Rogan, went to the bathroom, where she saw a notebook by the sink that included the phrase “ignore Rory,” a reference to her colleague Rory Riley. 

Circled at the top of the page were the names of two whistleblowers who were cooperating with the committee to expose improper processing of veterans claims in a way that improved agency statistics but did not resolve the cases. 

The notebook belonged to Lucy Filipov, acting director at the regional office. It apparently reflected an earlier conversation with Diana Rubens, who at the time was deputy under secretary for benefits. 

After the meeting, case files and computers were placed in a room where Filipov insisted Rogan and Riley should work. As the two checked the room, they found the sound and video equipment were active, and they insisted on being moved.  

[...]  

The exchange over surveillance and stonewalling was a bizarre twist in the committee's investigation into long backlogs veterans face when seeking disability compensation for service-connected medical conditions. 

Whistleblowers told the committee of “gross mismanagement” and deceptive practices used at regional offices to hide the months-long delays veterans face when they file a disability claim. 

Kristen Ruell, a quality review specialist in Philadelphia, said she faced retaliation after she tried to expose data manipulation, improper payments and other “gross misinterpretations of the law.” 

Ruell was one of the two whistleblowers whose names were circled on the top of Filipov’s notebook.

Just another day in the Obama Administration.

How many scandals in this administration again? And how many times has the White House responded by denial, stonewalling, and domestic espionage?

IG Finds Massive Amounts of Fraud at the EPA

They faithfully do the bidding of the Light-bringer. They shall be left alone.

And here I thought that the EPA was just for bullying.. er, I mean punishing... Obama's political enemies.

From Americans for Tax Reform:

A report released by the Environmental Protection Agency’s Inspector General has found that EPA employees have improperly used federal charge cards to purchase everything from gym memberships to gift cards. The report indicated that over 90 percent of the sampled transactions were for prohibited, improper, or erroneous purchases, all paid for by American taxpayers. Ironically, Senate Democrats Monday night carried on an all-night filibuster in the hopes of generating even more power and funding for the EPA. 

In order to compile the report, the Office of the Inspector General obtained a spreadsheet of 67,000 EPA transactions from Fiscal Year (FY) 2012, and randomly selected 69 transactions. They additionally selected 11 transactions that seemed inappropriate because of the name of the merchant involved. For instance, some transactions were with merchants listed as dance halls, child care organizations, music venues and theatres. Of the 80 transactions sampled, 75 were for prohibited, improper, or erroneous purchases. The 80 transactions sampled totaled $152,602 and $79,254 (52%) of which were for prohibited, improper, or erroneous purchases. 

The report outlined nine specific internal control oversight issues, ranging from the approval of prohibited transactions by EPA officials to the outright failure to maintain transaction records. Of the primary internal control oversight issues, four were particularly outrageous, and the report found that of the transactions sampled: 

1. 35% of cardholders did not verify the receipt of purchases;
2. 30% of cardholders did not obtain required approval prior for purchases;
3. 25% of cardholders did not obtain funding prior to purchases; and
4. 18% of approving officials never reviewed purchase logs.
      

Some specific instances of EPA employee misconduct were so egregious they are worth mentioning. In three instances, cardholders purchased gym memberships totaling $2,867. Two of those purchases were not even for EPA employees but for family members. Cardholders further violated EPA guidelines regarding inappropriate food purchases: 

“Although light refreshments are defined as those that do not include portions of food typical of a meal, in one of our samples, light refreshments included all elements of a meal for an awards ceremony. Four different appetizers, chicken tenderloin, fresh fruit, pasta salad, large cookies, soft drinks and punch were purchased at a cost of $2,900. Meals are not an allowable expense for an awards recognition ceremony.” 

The report also found that the purchase of gift cards by EPA cardholders was also a problem in seven transactions. For example, in one transaction 20 American Express gift cards were purchased totaling $1,588. Additionally, the report highlighted an instance where EPA employees blatantly violated records keeping requirements in that:

“Two transactions totaling $26,152 could not be located despite instructions to maintain supporting documentation. The EPA’s policy requires the retention of documentation for 3 years on a fiscal year basis. Cardholders were not attentive to this basic requirement. In two cases, the cardholders left their positions and no arrangements were made to retain the records. In another transaction the cardholder stated that records were not kept because of privacy concerns. This lack of documentation increases the risk that purchases could be fraudulent, improper or abusive.”

Look, these people at the EPA work very, very hard at saving us all from global warming, uppity conservatives and such, so they deserve a few perks every once in a while. Generally fraud like this is a perk while working in DC. Don't like it? Too bad. You're still paying for it.

Obama's Dept. of Interior Knew World War II Veterans Would Be Locked Out

"Hey, hey! Do you remember when I deliberately locked out WWII veterans from the memorials? Good times..."

Because Obama wanted to make it hurt. And to hurt the right people.

From the NRO article by Jillian Kay Melchior:

 The Department of the Interior knew beforehand that two groups of aging veterans would be visiting the World War II Memorial as the partial government shutdown began on Oct. 1 but decided to barricade the site anyway, according to e-mails obtained by National Review Online. 

The newly released public records also show National Park Service employees busily monitoring the news for any bad publicity and making shutdown exceptions for their co-workers. 

On Sept. 30, staff from the offices of Senator Tom Harkin (D., Iowa) and Representative Steven Palazzo (R., Miss.) contacted the Department of the Interior's Office of Congressional Affairs, as well as the National Park Services Washington Office and at least one regional office. 

Tom Buttry, a legislative correspondent in Harkin's office, wrote on Sept. 30:

While I understand that these memorials have remained accessible to the public during past shutdowns (I'd imagine with the mall being so open, it'd probably [be] more manpower intensive to try to completely close them), I wanted to do my due diligence and make 100 percent sure that people could visit the outdoor memorials on the National Mall in the event of a shutdown.

The Department of the Interior and National Park Service decided instead to fully shut down the site, e-mails show 

The aftermath was widely reported: The visiting veterans defied the barricades, crossing to visit the site as bagpipes played and onlookers cheered.

Bravo Department of Interior! Punish those wicked enemies of the state! And then blame it all on Congress!

I think that there isn't a a depth that the Obama Administration is unwilling to sink to. Three more years of deliberate harm from our executive branch! I can't wait for what else they're going to come up with...

Emails Show Obama's EPA and Left-Wing Political Groups Coordinated Political Attacks on Energy Companies

"Let me tell you folks, I've got all sorts of government agencies to attack you with. It's like a dream come true!"

Corruption and political thuggery-- it's the Obama way.

From The Washington Free Beacon (via Ace of Spades):

Internal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) emails show extensive collaboration between top agency officials and leading environmentalist groups, including overt efforts to coordinate messaging and pressure the fossil fuel industry. 

The emails, obtained by the Energy and Environment Legal Institute (EELI) through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, could fuel an ongoing controversy over EPA policies that critics say are biased against traditional sources of energy. 

Emails show EPA used official events to help environmentalist groups gather signatures for petitions on agency rulemaking, incorporated advance copies of letters drafted by those groups into official statements, and worked with environmentalists to publicly pressure executives of at least one energy company. 

Nancy Grantham, director of public affairs for EPA Region 1, which covers New England, asked an organizer for the Sierra Club’s New Hampshire chapter to share the group’s agenda so EPA could adjust its messaging accordingly in an email dated March 12, 2012. 

“If you could, it would great [sic] if you can send me an email describing what you would like to do in early April in NH–that way I can coordinate messaging with our air offices here and at HQ,” Grantham wrote. 

Critics of the agency and its nonprofit allies were surprised by the cooperation. 

“The level of coordination in these documents is shocking,” EELI said in a statement. 

Rep. Mike Pompeo (R., Kan.), a member of the Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy and Power, said the emails suggest that the EPA is straying from its mission by working hand-in-hand with hardline green groups. 

“It’s unfortunate that EPA has spent more of its resources promoting and coordinating a political agenda with environmentalists instead of doing its job,” Pompeo said in an emailed statement. 

“In Kansas, we expect public officials to serve the public interest, not the interests of radical environmentalist groups.” 

The documents also reveal some of the internal deliberations behind recent controversial EPA decisions, such as the locations of public hearings on an agency rule imposing stringent emissions limits for power plants.  

The agency came under fire from legislators representing coal-producing states for holding those hearings far from regions where most of the nation’s coal is produced. 

“Instead of the EPA holding a coal hearing in the heart of Coal Country, Kentucky, he has chosen locations such as San Francisco and Washington, D.C.,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) said at the time. 

McConnell accused EPA of “once again showing its contempt for Kentucky’s coal miners and their families.” 

Emails released by EELI show that EPA decided on the locations for those hearings after consulting with leading environmentalist groups that advocate the complete phase-out of coal power.

Read the whole article at the above link. It's very detailed.

It's all just one more day in the Era of Obama... Leftist thuggery coordinated with Obama's federal agencies. And the more we let the Left get away with, the more they're going to do it.

Issa Demands Info from Census Bureau Regarding Faked Jobless Data Before 2012 Election

"No, it was not the Census doctoring their numbers that caused a fortuitous drop in the unemployment rate immediately before the 2012 election. It was providence and my own super powers that caused it."

And he will be stonewalled. Well, at least Issa's putting forth the effort.

From the article in the Washington Examiner:

The House Oversight and Reform Committee is demanding answers from the director of the Census Bureau after a news outlet reported that Census employees may have fabricated data for a jobs report that showed a significant drop in unemployment under President Obama just a month from Election Day 2012. 

Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., wrote Tuesday to Census Bureau Director John Thompson calling the allegations in the New York Post "shocking." Issa requested information about Julius Buckmon, the employee the Post said fabricated data after being unable to reach the people who had the information he needed. 

The jobs report, released in October 2012 just ahead of Election Day, showed that the unemployment rate had dropped under Obama from 8.1 percent to 7.8 percent even though the economy had added only 114,000 jobs. 

Issa wants all of Buckmon's emails, his list of supervisors and any material related to a government investigation of Buckmon's actions, which according to the Post took place in 2010 and escalated in the months leading up to the election. Issa gave the bureau until Dec. 3 to produce the information. 

[...] 

The Post reported that the Census Bureau never reported the faked data to the Department of Labor, which computes the unemployment numbers, and that the fabrication may have been ordered by Census supervisors. 

"Since the Bureau relies on the American public for its data, it is important that the Census Bureau cooperate with all investigations into this matter," Issa wrote. "Any erosion of trust by the Census Bureau would have an immediate impact on other important Census surveys such as the American Community Survey or the planning and implementation of the 2020 Decennial Census." 

The Census Bureau is part of the Commerce Department. In January 2009, however, Obama changed the bureau's command structure so that the director also reports to the White House, prompting objections from Republicans who feared the move would politicize the independent agency.

Baseless fears and objections from the GOP, of course. I mean Obama never lies nor uses government agencies to promote his b.s. agendas. *cough* IRS scandal *cough* Never.

White House Controlled Census Faked 2012 Election Jobs Report

"Now look, this is old news that continues to just divide folks. Why don't we just focus our attention on my stirring successes in the form of ObamaCare and selling out Israel and Egypt?"

Gee, it almost seems like they were manipulating data to make Obama look better during a bitterly contested election.

Adding even further questions to Obama's 2012 win. I guess he proved political thuggery (as in the IRS intimidation of conservative groups) combined with outright lies from government agencies can sway elections. How progressive.

From John Crudele at The New York Post (via Instapundit):

In the home stretch of the 2012 presidential campaign, from August to September, the unemployment rate fell sharply — raising eyebrows from Wall Street to Washington.
The decline — from 8.1 percent in August to 7.8 percent in September — might not have been all it seemed. The numbers, according to a reliable source, were manipulated. 

And the Census Bureau, which does the unemployment survey, knew it. 

Just two years before the presidential election, the Census Bureau had caught an employee fabricating data that went into the unemployment report, which is one of the most closely watched measures of the economy. 

And a knowledgeable source says the deception went beyond that one employee — that it escalated at the time President Obama was seeking reelection in 2012 and continues today.  

“He’s not the only one,” said the source, who asked to remain anonymous for now but is willing to talk with the Labor Department and Congress if asked. 

The Census employee caught faking the results is Julius Buckmon, according to confidential Census documents obtained by The Post. Buckmon told me in an interview this

As Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit pointed Obama moved census control to the White House early in his first term.

DC Police Chief Shuffles and Covers Up Giving Feinstein Illegal ‘Assault Weapons’

"Laws are for little people who don't have friends high up in the police department..."

And you wonder where Obama gets his thugs, conspirators and collaborators out of the rank and file. They're right there in the capitol working to break the law for the Democrats' agendas. Unreasonable laws being applied unequally-- often times due to political affiliation. This seems to always be the  result of the Democrats' sweeping agendas.


From the Op-ed piece by Emily Miller: (h/t Instapundit)

Washington Metropolitan Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier seems to think that gun-control laws don’t apply to the liberal elite. The police chief helped Sen. Dianne Feinstein acquire “assault weapons,” which are illegal to possess in the District, for a news conference early this year to promote a ban on these firearms, then tried to cover up the police involvement. 

Now, a response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request reveals Chief Lanier’s shocking willingness to bend the rules for partisan and ideological purposes.  

[...]  

Chief Lanier wanted to help Mrs. Feinstein, but didn’t want the media to know.
Cmdr. Williams emailed Mr. Mentzer to put a “bug” in his ear that the police would “prefer that no mention of the fact that the weapons came from D.C. or were recovered by MPDC in the official language or speeches.” Mr. Mentzer replied, “By not mentioning where the weapons came from, we open ourselves up to the same charge against David Gregory.” 

He was referring to the anchor of NBC’s “Meet the Press,” who knowingly procured an illegal 30-round magazine in the District as a stunt for his TV show, but was not charged.
The office of Senate Sergeant at Arms Terrance W. Gainer coordinated bringing the illegal weapons onto Capitol Hill for Mrs. Feinstein’s dramatic Jan. 24 news conference introducing her new “assault weapons” ban. 

Kathryn Stillman, the campus-access coordinator for Mr. Gainer, emailed Cmdr. Williams and Mrs. Feinstein’s staff to recommend the firearms be mounted on a board with zip ties so that Mrs. Feinstein could “point or even touch, but no need for any particular handling.” This was to ensure that it could be argued later that the senator never had “possession” of the illegal guns. 

[...]  

After seeing the weapons on display at the press event, I asked Mr. Gainer’s office about the legality and was told that the firearms were the property of the D.C. and Philadelphia police departments. A spokesman for Mrs. Feinstein, Brian Weiss, told me that his office ”coordinated” with the police and that “the weapons were under Washington MPD possession the entire time.” 

But when I asked Chief Lanier’s spokesman, Gwendolyn Crump, about the guns, she refused to confirm they belonged to MPD. I followed up the next day with several more questions to Ms. Crump. 

From the FOIA documents, I now know that she sent my second email to Chief Lanier, who then forwarded it to three people with notes. 

Chief Lanier wrote to Philadelphia Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey, “I am really disappointed in Terry [Gainer]. This is exactly why I didn’t want to participate.” She said to Mr. Gainer, “This is completely contrary to our agreement to participate in this event. We will not participate again.”  

The chief wrote to lobbyist Mr. DeWitt, “So much for our agreement.” Mr. DeWitt replied: “Well, Ramsey and Feinstein followed our script, but who would have guessed that [Gainer] would burn us.” He drafted a response for the police to send to me and added in a note, “I don’t know how you put up with people like Emily … .” Chief
Lanier replied, “Thanks, Chuck, unfortunately this will be the next tail wagging our dog for weeks.” 

No special favors for Republicans 

A week after Mrs. Feinstein’s publicity stunt, Republican Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina were refused permission to bring a hunting rifle and an AR-style rifle to the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Mrs. Feinstein’s “assault weapon” ban. 

The Republican senators sent a letter of complaint to committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy, but were still forced to use just a photo of a standard wooden hunting rifle with a plastic pistol grip at the hearing in order to demonstrate that simply adding the ergonomic feature transformed the gun into one that would be illegal under her ban.  

Mrs. Feinstein’s staff gloated: “I was gratified to hear Sens. Cruz and Graham complaining that getting weapons into their hearing today was ‘unworkable,’” Mr. Mentzer emailed Cmdr. Williams and another officer with a news story about the Republicans not being able bring in even a legal rifle. “I find you guys ENTIRELY practical, for the record.” 

The police have yet to turn over a majority of the documents I requested. The FOIA officer wrote that she was “still searching” and “will release them, if any are located.” 

The police stonewalling and cover-up are so that the public doesn’t find out that Chief Lanier enforces laws differently in the District, depending on whether you are a powerful liberal who opposes Second Amendment rights, like Mr. Gregory and Mrs. Feinstein, or an average American.

It's another reason why the Democrats push so hard for gun control against the public's beliefs. They know that the laws won't be applied to them... just to the little people, whom Dems routinely refer to as crazy, stupid, Nazis, racists, and terrorists.

But, hey keep on voting these petty would be dictators into office, because they'll give you ObamaCare and stuff...

Obama Reversed NSA Restrictions in 2011

"Now look, I didn't ask for the courts to once again expand the NSA surveillance. The world did! And the American people did. And Congress did! And it's all Bush's fault anyway! And besides you should be really upset about me directing the IRS to intimidate political opponents..."

Hope and change, baby!

From The Washington Post article by Ellen Nakashima:

The Obama administration secretly won permission from a surveillance court in 2011 to reverse restrictions on the National Security Agency’s use of intercepted phone calls and e-mails, permitting the agency to search deliberately for Americans’ communications in its massive databases, according to interviews with government officials and recently declassified material. 

In addition, the court extended the length of time that the NSA is allowed to retain intercepted U.S. communications from five years to six years — and more under special circumstances, according to the documents, which include a recently released 2011 opinion by U.S. District Judge John D. Bates, then chief judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.   

What had not been previously acknowledged is that the court in 2008 imposed an explicit ban — at the government’s request — on those kinds of searches, that officials in 2011 got the court to lift the bar and that the search authority has been used.
Together the permission to search and to keep data longer expanded the NSA’s authority in significant ways without public debate or any specific authority from Congress. The administration’s assurances rely on legalistic definitions of the term “target” that can be at odds with ordinary English usage. The enlarged authority is part of a fundamental shift in the government’s approach to surveillance: collecting first, and protecting Americans’ privacy later. 

“The government says, ‘We’re not targeting U.S. persons,’ ” said Gregory T. Nojeim, senior counsel at the Center for Democracy and Technology. “But then they never say, ‘We turn around and deliberately search for Americans’ records in what we took from the wire.’ That, to me, is not so different from targeting Americans at the outset.”
The court decision allowed the NSA “to query the vast majority” of its e-mail and phone call databases using the e-mail addresses and phone numbers of Americans and legal residents without a warrant, according to Bates’s opinion.  

[...]  

The court in 2008 imposed a wholesale ban on such searches at the government’s request, said Alex Joel, civil liberties protection officer at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI). The government included this restriction “to remain consistent with NSA policies and procedures that NSA applied to other authorized collection activities,” he said. 

But in 2011, to more rapidly and effectively identify relevant foreign intelligence communications, “we did ask the court” to lift the ban, ODNI general counsel Robert S. Litt said in an interview. “We wanted to be able to do it,” he said, referring to the searching of Americans’ communications without a warrant.

Lies, half-truths, presidential legislating in the form of executive orders and selective law enforcement, bribes, graft, and blaming Emmanuel Goldstein Bush for it all. Welcome to the Obama Age of Hope and Change. 3+ more years of this crud. Own it!

Obama's HUD Sends $200,000+ to ACORN Spin-Off Despite Federal Ban

"It is my mission to increase poverty and to spread misery and crime over the largest portions possible of these United States. ACORN is an important step in realizing this goal."

You know, I'm beginning to think that Obama doesn't have a whole lot of respect for the law.

From the Judicial Watch (h/t Mara Zebest at Gateway Pundit):

Judicial Watch, announced today that it has obtained documents from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) revealing that on February 12, 2013, HUD Assistant Secretary for Office of Housing Counseling Sarah Gerecke may have violated federal law by requesting that $201,222.07 be transferred from the account of the defunct Affordable Housing Centers of America (AHCOA), an ACORN spin-off, to HUD intermediary Mission for Peace “to specifically pay for the activities of former AHCOA affiliates.” 

According to the documents, obtained pursuant to a Judicial Watch Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed on May 16, 2013, the Gerecke memo requesting the transfer appears to have been in violation of the first continuing resolution of FY 13. That resolution continued funding levels under the FY 2012 appropriations bills, which provided that no HUD funds “made available under this Act may be distributed to the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) or its subsidiaries.”  

The Gerecke memo sent to Assistant Secretary for Housing-Federal Housing Commissioner Carol J. Galante, an Obama appointee, through Acting General Deputy Assistant Secretary of Housing Laura M. Marin stated: 

In March 2012, HUD’s Program Support Division (PSD) received notice that Affordable Housing Centers of American (AHCOA) had closed and would no longer participate in the HUD Housing Counseling Program. Upon closing, AHCOA had a balance of $201,222.07 in its account. 

The Office of Housing Counseling (OHC) is requesting to transfer, under the ‘replacement grant” rule, the AHCOA balance of $201,222.07 to MOP to specifically pay for the activities of the former AHCOA affiliates. PSD met with the Office of the General Counsel and the Office of Budget and Field Resources to confirm transfer was allowable. 

According to records obtained by Judicial Watch dated February 19, 2013, the funds were to be transferred to Mission of Peace President and CEO Reverend Elmira Smith-Vincent in Flint, Michigan. A Line of Credit Control System Treasury Detail memo obtained by Judicial Watch confirmed that the transfer had been made on February 25, 2013.  

[...]  

“Barack Obama is truly the president from ACORN – as this illegal funding by his administration of these ACORN fronts shows,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “And at the same time we learn that the Obama administration is unleashing a vast new federal program to force ‘low-income’ housing into every single community in America, we find out that HUD is continuing illegally to fund ACORN spin-offs committed to carrying out Obama’s dictums. This is not a coincidence.”

 

Do you expect more from a Chicago machine politician? Do you expect more from a community organizer?

Four Scandals in Obama's EPA-- Add Them to the the List of Obama's Abuses of Power

"Look, I told folks that voting was the best revenge. What did you all think I meant by that? It meant I'm going to use my executive powers to attack and punish conservatives. How else could you interpret this?"

It's amazing how many scandals are shooting out of the Obama Administration (oops.. can I say "shooting out of the administration" without getting red-flagged, audited, or being attacked by the EPA or its hard-Left environmentalist allies?). It's what would've been happening four years ago if the press had been doing their job.

Now Hot Air reports on four more scandals, these coming out of Obama's EPA. Hope and change!

From Mary Katharine Ham at Hot Air:

1) The EPA gave an ethics award to fake employee, “Richard Windsor,” who was already just an unethically created e-mail alias for the agency’s former head, Lisa P. Jackson. 

HotAir’s covered this story several times, but it really escalated to a point I don’t think I would have even concocted for a fictional account of government stupidity for fear it might feel like a reach. But government stupidity, undaunted by such a challenge and unbound by the limits of my imagination indeed awarded the “scholar of ethical behavior” award, among other professional recognitions, to a dude who does not exist and was created merely to unethically circumvent FOIA requests.  

[...]  

2) The EPA makes conservatives pay a fortune for FOIAs to be granted while waiving fees for liberal groups. 

According to research from the Competitive Enterprise Institute, whose fellow Chris Horner uncovered “Richard Windsor:”

Specifically, CEI asserts that the EPA is waiving FOIA fees for what it describes as left-wing groups – like the Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and EarthJustice – while it “systematically denies waivers for groups on the right,” according to CEI Senior Fellow Christopher Horner. 

Horner said his research shows that from January 2012 to Spring 2013 the fees for “green” groups were waived in 75 out of 82 cases. Meanwhile, the EPA effectively or expressly denied his request for fee waivers in 14 of 15 FOIA instances over this same time period. Horner’s appeals of the EPA decisions to deny his fee waivers were rejected. 

Further review, Horner said, established that “green” groups proved successful in getting their fees waived 92 percent of the time.

As Gabe notes, the EPA is kindly “considering” an investigation into this matter. Most transparent administration evah. More pressure, please, Congress!  

3) EPA contractors are basically Gym, Tan, Laundrying in new, swanky rec rooms thanks to your tax money.  

Aww, yeah:

In a huge Environmental Protection Agency warehouse in Landover, enterprising workers made sure that they had all the comforts of home. They created personal rec rooms with televisions, radios, chairs and couches. On the walls were photos, calendars and pinups. For entertainment, they had books, magazines and videos. If they got hungry, they could grab something from a refrigerator and pop it into a microwave. 

The crown jewel of their hideaway — which stored EPA office furnishings — was a 30-by-45-foot athletic center, cobbled together from “surplus” EPA gym equipment and decked out with a music system provided via “other agency inventory items,” according to a recently released inspector general’s report. 

All of it was carefully hidden from security cameras by partitions and piles of boxes set up by the workers, employees of Apex Logistics, the contractor that ran the warehouse until the EPA severed ties after learning of the situation last month.

4) The EPA leaked confidential information on farmers and cattle facilities to environmental groups. No bigs. 

For your NOM-IRS analogy, this one’s perfect:

According to a letter from a group of Senators to Acting EPA Administrator Bob Perciasepe, the EPA “released farm information for 80,000 livestock facilities in 30 states as the result of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request from national environmental organizations. It is our understanding that the initial release of data contained personal information that was not required by the FOIA request for ten states including Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio and Utah. This release included names and personal addresses.”  

The Senators sent the letter Friday to express concern over the sensitivity of the data that was released to groups like Earth Justice, Pew Charitable Trust and Natural Resources Defense Council and to ask how the EPA plans to protect the data of farms and ranches that are also homes to families.

I actually did a post on #4 back in late March.

As Prof. Glenn Reynolds, aka Instapundit wrote in USA Today, the common theme in the Obama administration ifs the abuse of power.

From Reynolds:

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. [...] 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. Then there's the risk that information gathered might leak, of course, as recent events demonstrate.  

[...]  

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. Then there's the risk that information gathered might leak, of course, as recent events demonstrate.

Of course when you elect a petty little grievance mongerer who enriches himself by the suffering of others-- I mean, a community organizer-- this is pretty much what you can expect.