North America

James Bopp, the Christian Coalition’s lawyer, said he was “shocked and appalled” by that.

“Both political activity and religious activity are specifically protected by the First Amendment,” he said.

When Bopp learned years later that Lerner had been promoted to an IRS position, he became concerned.

“She was in effect being promoted for what she had done at the Federal Election Commission and now was going to be expected … to replicate that at the IRS and now we know that’s exactly what happened,” he said.

 

Fox News has the full article


The Justice Department did more than seize a Fox News reporter’s emails while suggesting he was a criminal “co-conspirator” in a leak case — it did so under one of the most serious wartime laws in America, the Espionage Act.

It’s the same law used by the Nixon administration to go after The New York Times and Daniel Ellsberg over the leak of the Pentagon Papers. It’s the law used to charge the Rosenbergs, American communists, for allegedly passing secret information to the Soviet Union — they were executed for the offense in 1953.

 

Fox News has the full article

(Photo: AFP)

AFP Photo / Dimitar Dilkoff

A US Senate committee had passed a bill that would allow, if signed for the Obama administration to supply arms to Syrian opposition — a move that could threaten the entire region if these weapons end up in terrorist cells operating on the ground.

The Senate Committee on Foreign Relations 15-3 vote showed bipartisan support among US politicians for arming the rebels.

It remains uncertain if the full Senate will vote on the legislation that calls to “provide defense articles, defense services, and military training” directly to the opposition on the ground Syria who “have been properly and fully vetted and share common values and interests with the United States.”

“I don’t think that this resolution, this bill will gain traction in the House of Representatives, and if it does we will have to wait and see if Mr. Obama signs this bill,” historian Gerald Horne told RT.

Horne believes that the Israeli lobby in Washington might sway US politicians including President Obama.

“The Israeli lobby in particular has been quite energetic and quite active in regard of lobbying for aid to the rebels, which is quite curious since if these rebels come to power, I dare say that Israel will have many sleepless nights,” Horne says.

The language of the proposed legislature is vague but it suggests the sale of small arms but specifies that “no anti-aircraft defensive systems” would be provided.

Despite fear that sending arms to the rebels might backfire if al-Qaeda linked cells get a hold of them, US lawmakers are adamant that weapons will be supplied to those groups “committed to rejecting terrorism and extremist ideologies.”

Senator Rand Paul from Kentucky has voted against the bill, warning “You will be funding today the allies of al Qaeda,” Paul said adding “It is an irony you cannot overcome,” quotes the Washington Times.

New Jersey democrat and co-author of the bill, Senator Robert Menenedez addressed such concerns and stressed that the proposed bill has in place a “tough vetting mechanism” to prevent terrorist from obtaining US arms. “Vital national interests are at stake and we cannot watch from the sidelines,”Menenedez concluded.

In the meantime, US Secretary of State John Kerry is on a mission to Jordan to meet with representatives from 11 nations, as part of a US-Russian roadmap to end Syria’s violence.

If the bill is to be adopted it Russia in the past has argued that arming the rebels would contradict international law.

 

RT has the full article

Report: Justice Department has seized phone records of numbers tassociated White House staffers and Fox News reporters besides James Rosen.

Vitamin C kills drug-resistant TB in lab tests

Published by on May 22, 2013

Vitamin C can kill multidrug-resistant TB in the lab, scientists have found. The surprise discovery may point to a new way of tackling this increasingly hard-to-treat infection, the US study authors from Yeshiva University say in Nature Communications. An estimated 650,000 people worldwide have multidrug-resistant TB. Studies are now needed to see if a treatment that works using the same action… Read more →

FCC proposing to allow more sex and profanity during kids’ television viewing hours

FCC proposing to allow more sex and profanity during kids’ television viewing hours

Published by on May 21, 2013

(Photo: Wikipedia) If you thought that our television channels were already saturated with enough sex, vulgarity and profanity, you may want to brace yourself – the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is proposing changes to its guidelines that would allow more racy content to infiltrate the small screen during hours when kids could tune in. A public notice posted on the… Read more →

CULTURE OF INTIMIDATION

CULTURE OF INTIMIDATION

Published by on May 21, 2013

(Photo: Wikipedia) With new reports today that the Obama Department of Justice leaked documents intended to smear a whistle blower in the Fast and Furious gun walking scandal, it is now more obvious than ever that this administration has, in the words of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), created a “culture of intimidation” that stretches from the White House down to… Read more →

Senior WH aides knew about IRS probe, Carney says

Published by on May 20, 2013

White House spokesman Jay Carney said Denis McDonough, President Obama’s chief of staff, was among a handful of senior aides informed of the Treasury inspector general’s findings that the IRS was targeting conservative groups for heightened scrutiny in their tax-exempt application process – but insisted he did not intervene in the “ongoing” investigation, or tell the president.

Fact check rips IRS official over Tea Party targeting claims

Published by on May 20, 2013

A detailed fact-check published Monday tore into an IRS official’s claim that the agency’s scrutiny of conservative groups started in response to an influx of nonprofit applications, showing the practice started well before the forms started flooding in. The piece in The Washington Post disputed a central claim that Lois Lerner, head of the exempt organizations division, and other IRS officials made… Read more →