Wednesday
May152013
Holder On AP Scandal: "I Was Not The Person Involved"
HOLDER PASSES THE BUCK
Attorney General Eric Holder testifies before Congress earlier today.
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AP STORY
Govt obtains unprecedented AP phone records in probe
The Justice Department secretly obtained two months of telephone records of reporters and editors for The Associated Press in what the news cooperative's top executive called a "massive and unprecedented intrusion" into how news organizations gather the news.
Watch the video:
HOLDER: NOTHING WRONG WITH OUR SUBPOENA
May 15, 2013 at 5:29 PM
Reader Comments (81)
(sarcasm intended)
Where I come from there is this thing called lead by example, and if you have no idea what your employees are doing you have no business being the leader.
however this is not the case with most of our leaders
The nations leaders have become a dance company continuously preforming the Washington Two Step. Seems to be the only thing they're really good at.
Where are the politicians with a sense of honesty, such as John Kennedy, when they screwed up on the Bay of Pigs fiasco he said my fault. No body in this administration is responsible for any thing from the president down. I guess we don't need a president and cabinet heads, it looks like the government is running itself.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=UgcxGFmYyPs
www.hark.com/.../stcglgpcfd-i-know-nothing
http://youtu.be/s6EaoPMANQM
And a very special link for DB
http://youtu.be/yipV_pK6HXw
Only in the Country, you can't trust most city folk as far as you can throw them. I was always taught that a mans word is his bond, and also not to trust men with delicate hands...
Both lessons have steered me right so far in this shithole we call life.
http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2013-05-16/master-apprenticecont
I grew up learning the same lessons. Another I've learned, is when the city folk start moving in because it's "such a beautiful little town". It's time to move on. The first order of the day is to create their version of what a small town should be, AKA a high pockets shithole, and they always have the money to pull it off.
http://usabailout.com/content/obama-shredding-declaration-independence
Hopefully DB's surprise springtime hiatus last year doesn't become an annual ritual...
In other news, two grandsons of John Tyler, the 10th U.S. president, are still alive:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2092227/US-president-John-Tylers-grandsons-STILL-ALIVE.html
I like this revolutionary idea:
"The central peg on which such demonstrations could be structured would be an anti-tax protest movement. From the perspective of such a movement, the unfolding IRS scandal is a gift from heaven. I myself don't consider the IRS story a "scandal," because I regard the behavior about which we are now learning as typical of the State's operations (as I discussed briefly here). I also think what we're learning is only the smallest tip of a gigantic iceberg."
http://powerofnarrative.blogspot.com/2013/05/you-say-you-want-peaceful-revolution.html
http://capitolincite.bangordailynews.com/2013/05/17/national-gop-group-tries-to-link-michaud-to-irs-scandal/
[snip]
The National Republican Congressional Committee announced Friday that it would begin running online ads urging U.S. Rep. Mike Michaud to return campaign contributions he received from a political action committee affiliated with the union that represents IRS workers. The committee paid for ads on Facebook and StumbleUpon, Ian Prior, northeast regional press secretary for the NRCC, said in a statement Friday. Michaud is one of several Democrats targeted by NRCC ads that urge constituents to insist that they return contributions from “the scandal ridden IRS’s union.”...
... The ads refer to campaign contributions made between 2002 and 2012 by the National Treasury Employees Political Action Committee.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/18/us-usa-irs-idUSBRE94F10Y20130518
Cheyenne,
Big, big, big berg, about the size of Greenland!!!
http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=220872
Always remember the 3 tools these miscreants have at their disposal: Intimidation...Manipulation...Provocation. 99% of the time you can attribute at least 1 of these tools to their dirty deeds...it's their finger print.
http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?blog=Market-Ticker
Is DB AWOL or just Gone Fishin for a few days?
http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=220872
I got this in the comments of a story that ran in Maine.
1. The sport of choice for the urban poor is BASKETBALL.
2. The sport of choice for maintenance level employees is BOWLING.
3. The sport of choice for front-line workers is FOOTBALL.
4. The sport of choice for supervisors is BASEBALL.
5. The sport of choice for middle management is TENNIS.
And...
6. The sport of choice for corporate executives and officers is GOLF.
THE AMAZING CONCLUSION:
The higher you go in the corporate structure, the smaller your balls become.
I haven't received any post in several days.
You mad at me?
National GOP group tries to link Michaud to ‘IRS scandal’
http://capitolincite.bangordailynews.com/2013/05/17/national-gop-group-tries-to-link-michaud-to-irs-scandal/
[snip]
The National Republican Congressional Committee announced Friday that it would begin running online ads urging U.S. Rep. Mike Michaud to return campaign contributions he received from a political action committee affiliated with the union that represents IRS workers. The committee paid for ads on Facebook and StumbleUpon, Ian Prior, northeast regional press secretary for the NRCC, said in a statement Friday. Michaud is one of several Democrats targeted by NRCC ads that urge constituents to insist that they return contributions from “the scandal ridden IRS’s union.”...
... The ads refer to campaign contributions made between 2002 and 2012 by the National Treasury Employees Political Action Committee.
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UPDATE:
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Obama and the IRS: The Smoking Gun? - Scoop: Obama 'Met With Anti-Tea Party IRS Union Chief the Day Before Agency Targeted Tea Party'
http://12160.info/forum/topics/obama-and-the-irs-the-smoking-gun-scoop-obama-met-with-anti-tea-p
Birds of a feather, and all.
They are experienced in covering for each other.
http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=220872
Steve works the damnedest (and long) hours keeping this thing going so once in awhile a break is in order. A little break and some family time works wonders so have a toast to DB with your favorite libation and I will do my best (with apologies). I will try to fix it for you or find a work around. I might suggest entering your e-mail in the author e-mail box when posting.
Just by virtue of seeing the shit (we write about on a daily basis) that keeps happening over and over, non-stop with nothing being done about is frustrating as hell. It has been a long winter so please be patient. Keep an eye on the comments like last time and I will try to keep everyone up on what is going on.
Thanks!
john
Thanks for keeping tabs on things.
At the end of the day (about 7pm eastern) I will put up a summary with links of news items here in the comments section. I was hoping to go do some fly fishing this weekend but better judgement (and pain dammit) dictates otherwise. The fish will get bigger anyway.
I had a small vacation last fall visiting the newborn grand daughter in Texas and to date, Steve has had none so far. Wherever you are Steve, I hope you enjoy!
UNBELIEVABLE: REPORT SUGGESTS IT TOOK BRITISH POLICE 20 MINUTES TO RESPOND TO TERRORISTS WHO KILLED SOLDIER BECAUSE THEY NEEDED TO CALL OFFICERS WHO ACTUALLY CARRIED GUNS.
OBAMA = Bulletproof Suit
INAUGURATION-PARADE = No Bullets
Barack Obama's Bulletproof Inaugural Suit - Gizmodo
http://www.gizmodo.com/5136183/barack-obamas-bulletproof-inaugural-suit
Marines Marching In Inauguration Parade Had Disabled Rifles - ...
http://www.blurbrain.com/marines-marching-in-inauguration-parade-had-disabled-rifles/
Barack Obama’s Scandals Are Merely Exposing His Organized Crime Ring
http://freedomoutpost.com/2013/05/barack-obamas-scandals-are-merely-exposing-his-organized-crime-ring/#ixzz2U3xZFzM4
WHY CARNEY BROUGHT UP THE BIRTH CERTIFICATE (In addition to all excuses)
While American carriers cannot deploy in support of worldwide contingency operations in defense of American interests at home and abroad due to Sequestration, this latest gift to Kenya tells the American people that their President believes that this apparent extra fifty million dollars will be more useful to the people of Kenya than America.
To make matters worse, many critics of this decision are saying that this kind of interference “Could spark the redistribution of political power across the African republic, whose national government is viewed as one of the most notoriously corrupt in the world.”
Furthermore, the Obama Administration is saying that it admits that the decision comes with numerous risks and could backfire, saying, “Efforts to bring about such decentralization, however, may inadvertently create 47 equally corrupt county systems.”
The bottom line here is that the Administration is knowingly and willfully spending fifty million taxpayer dollars on an international experiment which they know could be doomed to failure and could even make Kenya’s already horrendous government situation go from bad to worse.
More Carney Double talk
http://bcove.me/grew2vtu
Trayvon Martin's Final Hour
By Jack Cashill
On the rainy night of February 26, 2012, neighborhood watch captain George Zimmerman shot and killed an unarmed seventeen-year-old named Trayvon Martin. Three months later, a regular at the Conservative Treehouse blog known as Diwataman discovered the raw video of Martin's visit to the 7-11 that fateful night and initiated arguably the best bit of blogging detective work since the busting of Dan Rather's Air National Guard scam eight years earlier.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/05/trayvon_martins_final_hour.html?utm_source=05-22-13&utm_campaign=AT+Newsletter+05-22-13&utm_medium=email#ixzz2U4Aa3O92
"Let me make something real clear right away. I made a statement I guess in a Senate hearing that I think has been misconstrued. I said it was difficult at times to bring cases against large financial institutions because [of] the potential consequences that they would have on the financial system. But let me make it very clear that there is no bank, there's no institution, there's no individual who cannot be investigated and prosecuted by the United States Department of Justice."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/15/eric-holder-too-big-to-jail_n_3280694.html
While that sounds nice, it utterly fails to address the AG's many previous admissions--including the one in March--that the DOJ is outsourcing prosecutorial decisons to anonymous outside experts. The Senate asked for the experts' names, Holder agreed to provide them, but all parties involved have dropped this entire ball of worms. Until we get those names, it is both safe and fair to assume that these "experts" work on behalf of the very banks that the DOJ is systematically and without exception refusing to prosecute.
Holder's patently superficial "clarifying" testimony last week does nothing to undercut that conclusion. In fact, the only thing that is "real clear" from Holder's spew of newly-spun verbiage is that he was specifically dispatched by his real bosses (hint: not Obama) to deliver such happy-sounding nonsense in the first place.
The bottom line is that Obama's executive branch is the subordinate party in its relationship with the criminal banks that are instructing it as to how to discharge its duties--regardless of whether those duties are constitutional or not. It is no accident whatsoever that the open plague of corruption and illegality besetting the Adminstration began after Eric Holder unwittingly proved in March--right out in the open, for all to see--that Obama's executive branch has purported to outsource the country's sovereignty.
Until this problem is corrected at its root, the train of abuses from Obama is only going to continue picking up steam. Book it.
When I saw headline (this morning) I got quite a chuckle.
IRS' Lois Lerner Re-Subpoenaed After Accidentally Waiving Her Right To Plead The Fifth
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-05-22/irs-lois-lerner-re-subpoeaned-after-waiving-her-right-plead-fifth
[snip]
Perhaps, when one gets down to it, there was no actual intent of malice or ill-will on behalf of the IRS to persecute conservative groups (there was of course), and the bottom line is that all of the administration's IRS apparatchicks were just bloody stupid.
Such is the conclusion one derives after watching today's attempt by embattled IRS official Lois Lerner to plead the Fifth before the House Oversight Committee, which blew up spectacularly in her face, after she made an actual statement protesting her innocence, which it appears, was in itself a waiver of the waiver.
As a result, committee Chairman Darrell Issa has ordered Lerner to be hauled back, and to answer the questions she evaded earlier today, after now having effectively waived her Fifth Amendment right in retrospect, or else be charged with contempt!
The farce is becoming so blatant it is almost as if someone is utterly desperate to make a complete mockery of the entire IRS scandal, and in the process shake the administration to the core, which more than anything is being exposed as utterly incompetent to boot. Of course, the real question is what is the public's attention being distracted from.
Analysis: In any scandal, lying to Congress is tough to prove
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/23/us-usa-irs-scandal-analysis-idUSBRE94M05E20130523
[snip]
When embattled Internal Revenue Service official Lois Lerner was called before a congressional committee Wednesday, she declared that she had done nothing wrong - but said she did not intend to testify. Her defiance only turned up the heat from Republicans who have threatened to take her to court for misleading Congress.
Yet whatever political problems Lerner may have escalated for the Obama administration in the scandal over IRS scrutiny of Tea Party and other conservative groups, history suggests neither she nor any other IRS official is likely to face criminal charges related to congressional testimony.
Such charges are rarely filed, and convictions are even rarer. The most high-profile recent case in point is the prosecution of Major League Baseball pitching great Roger Clemens, who was acquitted by a jury in 2012 on charges he lied to Congress when he denied using performance-enhancing drugs.
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CAREFULLY READ THE NEXT PARAGRAPH:
"Almost no one is prosecuted for lying to Congress," lawyer P.J. Meitl asserted in a 2007 Quinnipiac Law Review article. Meitl, who wrote the article while in private practice, is now an assistant U.S. attorney in Dallas. He found only six people who had been convicted of perjury or related charges in relation to Congress, going back to the 1940s.
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DB, Cheyenne and others have posted stories WITH VIDEO here at the DB, on many occasions, where persons were caught RED-HANDED lying to congress... The above paragraph absolutely blew my mind with the fact that only 6 people were charged over the last 70 or so years.
I had to shake my head on that one. Did she not consult a lawyer AT ALL?
Whenever you assert a privilege or immunity as to certain subject matter, you just make the assertion and leave it at that. You can't have it both ways, using your legal privilege as both a sword ("I didn't do it, I'm innocent") and a shield ("I'm not gonna answer your question under the 5th amendment"). And that's exactly what happened here.
Just unbelievable that ANYONE, much less a high-ranking official, would make such a basic blunder. This is like getting a free throw in basketball, but rather than shooting from 15' you drive the lane and throw down a ramburger expecting to get 2 points.
Wow. Just wow.
The DOJ has stated on numerous occasions that it has relied on outside experts in determining not to prosecuted large banks. Senators Sherrod Brown and Charles Grassley sent Eric Holder a letter in January asking for the names of these experts. In March, Eric Holder agreed to supply the names of these experts. We still don't have their names.
We know from earlier hearings with Senator Elizabeth Warren that the experts are NOT in the government. An entire panel of financial regulators uniformly testified that THEY deferred to DOJ on the issue of prosecutions, not the other way around.
So why, pray tell, are we now reading stores that profess surprise over the fact that the DOJ is not in possession of ANY analyses or studies relating to the economic consequences of criminally prosecuting large banks? Is the following really all that surprising?
"The U.S. Department of Justice appears to have neither conducted nor received any analyses that would show whether criminal charges against large financial institutions would harm the economy, potentially undermining a key DOJ argument for why the world’s biggest banks have escaped indictment."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/22/too-big-to-jail-obama-justice_n_3322824.html?utm_hp_ref=tw
The HuffPo piece maintains the absurd pretense that the issue with the DOJ's refusal to prosecute banks is over documents, rather than experts, for over 1200 words.
If Congress and the press were really concerned about the fact that large banks control Eric Holder and the DOJ like marionettes, they would simply hold Holder's feet to the fire by demanding that he disclose the names of the outside experts, which Holder promised to do on March 6.
But that's not going to happen because both Congress and the popular press are part of the bank-run puppet show.
The DOJ has stated on numerous occasions that it has relied on outside experts in determining not to prosecute large banks. Senators Sherrod Brown and Charles Grassley sent Eric Holder a letter in January asking for the names of these experts. In March, Eric Holder agreed to supply the names of these experts. We still don't have their names.
We know from earlier hearings with Senator Elizabeth Warren that the experts are NOT in the government. An entire panel of financial regulators uniformly testified that THEY deferred to DOJ on the issue of prosecutions, not the other way around.
So why, pray tell, are we now reading stores that profess surprise over the fact that the DOJ is not in possession of ANY analyses or studies relating to the economic consequences of criminally prosecuting large banks? Is the following really all that surprising?
"The U.S. Department of Justice appears to have neither conducted nor received any analyses that would show whether criminal charges against large financial institutions would harm the economy, potentially undermining a key DOJ argument for why the world’s biggest banks have escaped indictment."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/22/too-big-to-jail-obama-justice_n_3322824.html?utm_hp_ref=tw
The HuffPo piece maintains the absurd pretense that the issue with the DOJ's refusal to prosecute banks is over documents, rather than experts, for over 1200 words.
If Congress and the press were really concerned about the fact that large banks control Eric Holder and the DOJ like marionettes, they would simply hold Holder's feet to the fire by demanding that he disclose the names of the outside experts, which Holder promised to do on March 6.
But that's not going to happen because both Congress and the popular press are part of the bank-run puppet show.
http://openchannel.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/05/23/18451142-holder-okd-search-warrant-for-fox-news-reporters-private-emails-official-says?lite
If I had to guess, the DOJ will successfully refute the story, and then the Washington press corps will throw a gala in honor of Pete Williams to perpetuate the biggest fraud in TV journalism instead of pointing out that Master Petey has fobbed off yet another yarn from the FBI as news.
Otherwise, this story is an exit sign over Eric Holder's head at the DOJ. That would leave Covington & Burling with no representation at the DOJ, and I just don't see that happening.
We'll see.
"Conspiracy to commit journalism"
Not only did the DoJ label James a co-conspirator for soliciting info from a state dept contractor for a story, but fox news is now reporting that the DoJ even seized the phone records of Rosen's parents and of at least of 5 other phone lines of Fox news.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtIhZp1i9qs
http://www.infowars.com/will-lois-lerner-be-obamas-scapegoat/
You are missed. Starting to get worried that Janet Napolitano has you tied up in her basement.