The Washington Post: Senate panel approves immigration changes requiring fingerprint system at 30 U.S. airports
Every immigrant leaving the United States through one of the 30 biggest airports would have to be fingerprinted by federal authorities under an immigration reform measure that won early committee approval in the Senate on Monday.
The plan approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee is a concession to Republicans and some Democrats who support establishing a nationwide biometric tracking system at all U.S. air, sea and land ports of entry, a key recommendation made by the bipartisan 9/11 Commission after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to track potential terrorists entering or leaving the country.
The committee rejected a similar GOP proposal last week that would have forced the Department of Homeland Security to establish a biometric immigration tracking system at every U.S. air, sea and land port of entry. The committee’s Democrats and the four members of the bipartisan “Gang of Eight” who wrote the immigration bill and sit on the panel said such a plan would be too expensive.
But bipartisan negotiators sought a compromise after Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.) — a key GOP member of the “Gang of Eight” — said he supports the concept of a nationwide biometric system and would fight for the proposal once the immigration bill reaches the full Senate.
Under the new agreement sponsored by Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), DHS would need to establish a fingerprint tracking system at the nation’s 10 largest international airports within two years of the bill’s approval. The program would expand to the next 20 largest international airports within six years.
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San Francisco Chronicle: More Obama aides knew of IRS audit; Obama not told
White House chief of staff Denis McDonough and other senior advisers knew in late April that an impending report was likely to say the IRS had inappropriately targeted conservative groups, President Barack Obama‘s spokesman disclosed Monday, expanding the circle of top officials who knew of the audit beyond those named earlier.
But McDonough and the other advisers did not tell Obama, leaving him to learn about the politically perilous results of the internal investigation from news reports more than two weeks later, officials said.
The Treasury Department also told the White House twice in the weeks leading up to the IRS disclosure that the tax agency planned to make the targeting public, a Treasury official said.
The apparent decision to keep the president in the dark about the matter underscores the White House’s cautious legal approach to controversies and reflects a desire by top advisers to distance Obama from troubles threatening his administration.
Obama spokesman Jay Carney defended keeping the president out of the loop on the Internal Revenue Service audit, saying Obama was comfortable with the fact that “some matters are not appropriate to convey to him, and this is one of them.”
“It is absolutely a cardinal rule as we see it that we do not intervene in ongoing investigations,” Carney said.
Republicans, however, are accusing the president of being unaware of important happenings in the government he oversees.
“It seems to be the answer of the administration whenever they’re caught doing something they shouldn’t be doing is, ‘I didn’t know about it’,” Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, told CBS News. “And it causes me to wonder whether they believe willful ignorance is a defense when it’s your job to know.”
Obama advisers argue that the outcry from Republicans would be far worse had McDonough or White House Counsel Kathryn Ruemmler told the president about the IRS audit before it became public, thereby raising questions about White House interference.
Still, the White House’s own shifting information about who knew what and when is keeping the focus of the IRS controversy on the West Wing.
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Reason.com: Justin Amash, Jared Polis Introduce Bill Requiring a Court Order for Telephone Records
While the White House very lamely attempted to do damage control on the Department of Justice’s grotesque Associated Press surveillance dragnet by unconvincingly re-animating a push for a federal shield law exempting the professional press from most non-national-security-related federal fishing expeditions, some actual civil libertarians in Washington have introduced a bill that would increase protections for all Americans against unchecked federal snooping.
Via InstaPundit, here’s your press release:
Washington, D.C. – Rep. Justin Amash (R-MI), joined by Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-SC), and Rep. Jared Polis (D-CO), today introduced legislation to prevent federal agencies from seizing Americans’ telephone records without a court order.
H.R. 2014, the Telephone Records Protection Act, requires court approval when the government demands telephone records from service providers. Current law allows the government to subpoena such records unilaterally, without any judicial review. The Department of Justice likely used its administrative subpoena authority to seize the Associated Press’s telephone records in its recent investigation of a CIA leak.
“The Justice Department’s seizure of the AP’s phone records—likely without the sign-off of a single judge—raises serious First and Fourth Amendment concerns. Regardless of whether DOJ violates the legitimate privacy expectations of reporters or ordinary Americans, we deserve to know that the federal government can’t seize our records without judicial review,” said Amash.
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The Liberty Report Take: It is refreshing these days to find elected officials committed to upholding the constitution, civil liberties, and actually RESTRAINING the power of the government.
Monday Morning Blues Buster: 05/20/13
Monday Morning Humor for May 20, 2013.
The Motley Fool: How Much GM Truly Stole From American Taxpayers
General Motors (NYSE: GM ) figures its re-entry into the S&P 500 club will be quite soon, even though the company is still in the early stages of its turnaround. There’s no denying that the U.S. automotive recovery is going well for Detroit. It’s only been a few years since the ugly recession, financial collapse, and ensuing bailouts for two of Detroit’s Big Three, the exception being Ford (NYSE: F ) . And all three companies have gained market share this year in the U.S. at the expense of Japanese rivals Toyota (NYSE: TM ) and Honda (NYSE: HMC) . GM just recorded its 13th consecutive profitable quarter, so the nearly $50 billion that taxpayers like you and I funded to save GM was a huge success. Right?
Wrong.
Most people don’t realize how much GM actually took from taxpayers, and how little it’s given back. If I told you GM has repaid only $6.7 billion out of the $49.5 billion in loans it was given, would you be surprised? If I told you the expected loss to the U.S. Treasury of roughly $12 billion isn’t even a fraction of the real cost, would you believe me? If not, you might be in for a nasty surprise.
Bailout by the numbers The Treasury plans to exit its entire holdings of GM by next April. By the end of this past March, the government had reclaimed just over $30 billion of its investment, leaving a substantial loss. While the government says it didn’t anticipate making a profit from saving the auto industry, the other $419 billion in TARP funds were 94% recovered — making GM a big loser. At today’s GM stock price, the Treasury looks to lose between $11 billion and $12 billion, unless the stock price changes drastically.
Yet that number doesn’t tell the whole story.
Consider that the only true loan GM received from the U.S. government was for $6.7 billion at 7% interest, which it has since repaid. The majority of the nearly $50 billion was in stock purchases by the U.S. Treasury at a price that GM didn’t lose money when recently rebuying shares.
Also consider that GM was “gifted” tax losses from the “Old GM” corporation in amounts of $45 billion. What that really means is the “New GM” can write off current profits up to that amount and not pay taxes on it. That’s a complete joke, in my opinion.
Think of it like this: GM took our tax dollars to save its company, and then after turning 13 quarters of profit, it still isn’t paying a single income-tax dollar. Are you kidding me? News flash: My recent taxes cost me and my wallet a bundle, and I didn’t turn billions in profit.
Too often, people assume that since GM received nearly $50 billion in taxpayer funding, and when people hear that GM has fully repaid its obligations, we assume that means it repaid the said $50 billion. That couldn’t be further from the truth. GM has merely paid its initial pure loan of $6.7 billion with interest, and rebought some of its own shares from the Treasury — often at a cheaper price. Most of us taxpayers don’t even realize Ford paid an effective tax rate of 26% in 2012, compared with 0% for GM — a complete joke to Ford, which didn’t take any of our taxpayer dollars.
Bottom line You’ll see in my disclosure that I own stock in both Ford and GM. But I own stock in both for completely different reasons. I believe Ford has excellent management and is way ahead of GM in operating efficiency and global consolidation of platforms — helping it create net income off lower revenue. It’s also way ahead in creating value and quality in segment trends dominated by fuel efficiency — not to mention that its F-Series has been the best-selling truck for 36 years.
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The Washington Times: AP CEO calls Justice Department’s records seizure unconstitutional
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. Mr. 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.
Mr. 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.
In a separate interview with the AP, Mr. Pruitt said the news cooperative had not decided its next move but had not ruled out legal action against the government.
“It’s too early to know if we’ll take legal action, but I can tell you we are positively displeased and we do feel that our constitutional rights have been violated,” he said.
“They’ve been secretive; they’ve been overbroad and abusive — so much so that taken together, they are unconstitutional because they violate our First Amendment rights,” he added.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Kentucky Republican, said the government needs to stop leaks by whatever means necessary.
“This is an investigation that needs to happen because national security leaks, of course, can get our agents overseas killed,” he said.
Sen. John Cornyn, Texas Republican and a member of the Judiciary Committee, said the government should focus on those who leak sensitive national security matters and not on journalists who report on them. Mr. Cornyn said his committee should hold hearings on how the Justice Department obtained phone records from AP reporters and editors.
“What confuses me is the focus on the press, who have a constitutional right here, and we depend on the press to get to the bottom of so many issues that we, as individuals, cannot,” Mr. Cornyn said.
Mr. Cornyn said the Justice Department’s actions were part of a pattern for President Obama’s administration to quiet its critics.
“It’s a culture of cover-ups and intimidation that is giving the administration so much trouble,” Mr. Cornyn said.
He also renewed his call for Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. to resign, citing the contempt citation the House of Representatives voted against him last year for refusing to turn over documents in a failed government gun-smuggling sting.
White House senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer said the president “has complete faith in Attorney General Holder.” He also insisted the White House was not involved in the decision to seek AP phone records.
“A cardinal rule is we don’t get involved in independent investigations — and this is one of those,” Mr. Pfeiffer said.
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Dallas Voice: Judge says lesbian mom’s partner must go; Enforces ‘morality clause’
Page Price and Carolyn Compton have been together for almost three years, but a Collin County judge is forcing them apart.
Judge John Roach Jr., a Republican who presides over the 296th District Court, enforced the “morality clause” in Compton’s divorce papers on Tuesday, May 7. Under the clause, someone who has a “dating or intimate relationship” with the person or is not related “by blood or marriage” is not allowed after 9 p.m. when the children are present. Price was given 30 days to move out of the home because the children live with the couple.
Price posted about the judge’s ruling on Facebook last week, writing that the judge placed the clause in the divorce papers because he didn’t like Compton’s “lifestyle.”
“Our children are all happy and well adjusted. By his enforcement, being that we cannot marry in this state, I have been ordered to move out of my home,” Price wrote.
Price also mentions that Compton’s ex-husband rarely sees their two children and was once charged with stalking Compton. She said he also hired a private investigator in order to bring the case before the judge. Court records show the ex-husband, Joshua Compton, was charged with third-degree felony stalking in 2011 but pleaded to a misdemeanor charge of criminal trespassing.
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http://www.dallasvoice.com/judge-lesbian-moms-partner-10147997.html
Reason.com: The IRS Abuse Scandal Keeps Growing; An audit of the agency’s behavior unearths disturbing new information.
Reading the highly critical report by the Internal Revenue Service’s auditor, you get the sense that rogue, lower-level agents ran amok, writing up watch lists, targeting conservative agencies, and stalling their applications for tax-exempt status.
At least IRS management has painted a picture of misguided underlings who acted “inappropriately,” finally offering a mea culpa a couple years after claims that Tea Party groups being hung up, even harassed, by tax agents began filtering in.
Lois Lerner, director of the IRS’ exempt organizations unit, apologized a week ago for front-line employees who inappropriately flagged for further review organizations with the descriptors, “tea party” or “patriot.”
“We had a shortcut in the process. It wasn’t appropriate. We learned about it and we fixed it,” Lerner said, emphatically denying that the segregation of applications and the lengthy delays in processing them merely based on conservative-sounding names had absolutely nothing to do with partisan politics.
But a report released late Tuesday by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, the independent overseer of the IRS, points to lax management and at least ignorance of federal code governing tax-exemption review. And while TIGTA may not employ the term “targeted” in its scathing review, the auditor blasts the IRS for singling out conservative groups, asking them a host of unnecessary questions and, in many cases, grinding the application process to a halt.
More than anything, the IRS’ “inappropriate” measures threaten public confidence, the report notes.
“The mission of the IRS is to provide America’s taxpayers top quality service by helping them understand and meet their tax responsibilities and by applying the tax law with integrity and fairness to all. According to IRS Policy Statement 1-1, IRS employees accomplish this mission by being impartial and handling tax matters in a manner that will promote public confidence,” the audit states.
“However, the criteria developed by the (IRS) Determinations Unit gives the appearance that the IRS is not impartial in conducting its mission. The criteria focused narrowly on the names and policy positions of organizations instead of tax-exempt laws and Treasury Regulations.”
BOLO List
The audit depicts agents in 2010, earlier than IRS brass previously had stated, pulling out 501(c)(4) applications with “Tea Party, Patriots, or 9/12 in the organizations name,” as well as “political-sounding names.” In May 2010, the Determinations Unit began developing a spreadsheet that would become known as the “Be On the Look Out” list, according to the audit. By August, the unit began distributing the first formal BOLO list.
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Click below for the full article.
http://reason.com/archives/2013/05/18/the-irs-abuse-scandal-keeps-growing
American Congressman, Republican Lindsey Graham: It’s okay to kill American citizens with drones
One must wonder what he would say if the Commander in Chief decided to drone bomb his children.