This story is developing – more will follow later – but I wanted to point out the IRS legal position in front of Judge Reggie Walton:

The IRS lawyers are claiming True The Vote cannot “prove” any Lerner emails were lost, therefore legally the IRS cannot be compelled to explain “why” the emails were lost.

You getting this ?

WASHINGTON DC –  A second federal judge has now ordered the IRS to explain under oath how the agency lost emails from former division director Lois Lerner, the woman at the heart of the Tea Party targeting scandal.
U.S. District Court Judge Reggie Walton told Obama administration lawyers on Friday he wants to see an affidavit explaining what happened with Lerner’s hard drive. The IRS claims her computer suffered a crash in 2011 that wiped her email records at the time clean.  (more…)

Headline reflects the “Cliff Notes” Version:

…”Well, as the constitutional lawyer who sits in the Oval Office would tell you is, he would read the entire decision before he passed judgment in terms of his own legal analysis. What we have been able to assess so far … is that there is a problem that has been exposed, which is that there are now a group of women of an indeterminate size who no longer have access to free contraceptive coverage simply because of some religious views held, not by them necessarily, but by their bosses… We disagree and the constitutional lawyer in the Oval Office disagrees with that conclusion from the Supreme Court. And that’s why we–primarily, because he is concerned about the impact it could have on the health of those women”….

Finally someone, actually Howard Kurtz, asks the question that many people want to know the answer to.

BACKSTORY – For those who might not have paid attention over the past two years, Sharyl Attkisson was doing some great investigative reporting on the DOJ, Eric Holder and Fast n Furious gun running scandal. Her reporting then shifted to look into what actions were taken by the DOJ *AFTER* the scandal broke, and the wagon circling around the White House began.
Then, in the fall and winter of 2012 and 2013 Sharyl began looking closely at the Benghazi fiasco.
In the midst of her investigative reporting (May 2013) a mysterious series of hacks began into her computers both at home and at work, in addition her phone was tracked and hacked.
CBS publically admitted in June of 2013 something nefarious was going on.   Sharyl reported after several weeks of looking at the issue she knew ‘what’ and/or ‘who’ was to blame.
Howard Kurtz asks what was the outcome of all of this ?

(more…)

(Via Moonbattery) For the liberal agenda to succeed, individual conscience must be eliminated, so that only the State and its affiliates determine what is right and wrong. That won’t happen so long as Christianity exists in a meaningful form.
Unfortunately for our liberal rulers, they do not yet have the political leverage to repeal the First Amendment, which explicitly prohibits restrictions on the free exercise of religion.
No worries; they simply twist the establishment clause of this same amendment to mean there can be no Christianity where there is government. In a country where government has bloated to the point of crowding out almost everything that is not coercion-based, that is virtually the same as a ban.
For example, colleges are heavily subsidized by the government; therefore, Christianity can be purged from college football teams. (more…)

NEVADA […]  “I counted, they had 11 vehicles all with at least two agents in each one, maybe more,” he said. “They also had four snipers on the hill above us all trained on us. We were doing nothing besides filming the area.”

None of the occupants in the four family vehicles were carrying any fire arms, Bundy said.

Over their vehicle loudspeakers, the BLM officers ordered the family to leave the area, Bundy said.

“They said that we had no first amendment rights except for up by the bridge where they had established an area for that,” Bundy said.

The BLM has established two fenced areas near the City of Mesquite, that they have designated as free speech areas for members of the public to express their opinions.

This is a big one folks.   Mr. Cliven Bundy is well positioned to be the next “Randy Weaver”.  If the federal snipers take him out, we meet at the “Old Mill”, and ride at dawn !

The cattle were being rounded up by BLM officers as part of a crackdown on Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, who has refused to pay “grazing fees” demanded by the feds as a result of a re-classification of 600,000 acres of federal land in northeastern Clark County which Bundy claims has been in his family for generations.
FULL STORY – NEVADA – A man was arrested on Sunday afternoon in connection with the cattle roundup currently ongoing by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) on nearly 600,000 acres of public land in northeastern Clark County. (more…)

Muslim print shop stores will now be open to litigation if they refuse to depict their prophet Mohammed on customer T-Shirts.  Muslim restaurant owners are now open to litigation if they refuse to make Bacon, Lettuce and Tomato sandwiches….. oh yeah, and Catholics business owners are now open to civil rights litigation if they refuse to participate in same sex marriage activities…..

(Raw Story) – After days of protests and criticism levied against her state, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer (R) said on Wednesday that she vetoed SB 1062, which would have effectively legalized discrimination based on religious grounds.

Brewer said she had not heard of one example of religious freedoms being attacked without the bill, considered it broadly worded, and did not address any specific concerns.

She further said that SB 1062 “has the potential to create more problems than it purports to solve” and would be divisive “to a degree that no one would ever want.” (read more)

“Reporters Without Borders”,  a watchdog organization headquartered in Paris, France and known by its French acronym, “RSF”, has published its annual “World Press Freedom Index”.

Liberty Blitzkrieg brings to our attention that in the great march FORWARD!, the US was a front runner in the stakes for greatest loss of press freedom in year over year results – slipping an impressive 13 slots  from #33 last year to #46 on the 2014 world ranking, after Romania but before Haiti.

There were some “non-surprises”, such as North Korea and Eritrea remaining at the back of the pack, but also some pleasant surprises with tiny Belize clocking in at an impressive #29, hanging out in the “free press” band with Australia at #28.

Clearly, much work remains to be done before the US can be satisfied that the people’s work is completed and it can comfortably hang in the 100’s with its pals in the middle east and Africa.  Maybe that will provide the necessary incentive to Dirty Harry in the Senate to get working on that innertubes kill switch.  In the meantime, those pesky bloggers keep bringing up stuff like Benghazi, or Warrantless Wiretaps, or the ever expanding use of technology to spy on and monitor its own citizens.

The 2014 World Press Freedom Index spotlights the negative impact of conflicts on freedom of information and its protagonists. The ranking of some countries has also been affected by a tendency to interpret national security needs in an overly broad and abusive manner to the detriment of the right to inform and be informed. This trend constitutes a growing threat worldwide and is even endangering freedom of information in countries regarded as democracies. Finland tops the index for the fourth year running, closely followed by Netherlands and Norway, like last year. At the other end of the index, the last three positions are again held by Turkmenistan, North Korea and Eritrea, three countries where freedom of information is non-existent.

Shortly after a congressional hearing yesterday morning, True the Vote founder Catherine Engelbrecht filed an ethics complaint against Rep. Elijah Cummings. The complaint alleges the Congressman intimidated her and and her group. The Congressman had done some cable news shows alleging incorrect facts about True the Vote. In the hearing yesterday, Cummings accused True the Vote of racism saying that they were trying to suppress the vote.

“Franky, Megyn, the thought of having to sit before my accuser and be silent in the face of what he did was unconscionable. He [Cummings] filed over a period of months in 2012, he filed three letters that he sent to me asserting that he was opening an investigation. He sent this on House Oversight and Government Reform letterhead.”

“It is not an easy task to unring a bell, nor to remove from the mind an impression once firmly imprinted there*”

“I’m not anti-government …. I’m just pro Freedom”.

-Ladar Levison, (the founder of secure email provider Lavabit, facing a court case because he closed his company rather than hand over encryption keys) interviewed in the interactive UK Guardian piece published November, 2013

Whether or not you think Snowden was a traitor or a hero; the fact remains that “the bell can not be unrung”.

(more…)

Jacob Appelbaum is a US citizen and core member of TOR project (funded originally to provide internet communication security).  He writes open source software, is an independent security software developer, activist hacker and passionate resister to tyranny.
He has stated in past interviews that he believes “personal privacy and institutional transparency are complementary ideas that help to create a free and open society …..Tor is part of an ecosystem of software that helps people regain and reclaim their autonomy. It helps to enable people to have agency of all kinds; it helps others to help each other and it helps you to help yourself. It runs, it is open and it is supported by a large community spread across all walks of life.”
Appelbaum eloquently discusses warrantless or “open writ” dragnet surveillance as “turnkey tyranny” and posits that the black budget agencies that engage in such surveillance are violating the 3rd Amendment Rights of US Citizens, likening the actions of the NSA to de facto “digital soldiers” being quartered in our homes without our knowledge or permission. (more…)