Author: James

The Ridgewood Art Institute Announces the August 2013 Artists of the Month!!

Homeland Security loses track of 1 million foreigners; report could hurt immigration deal
By Stephen Dinan-The Washington Times

The Homeland Security Department has lost track of more than 1 million people who it knows arrived in the U.S. but who it cannot prove left the country, according to an audit Tuesday that also found the department probably won’t meet its own goals for deploying an entry-exit system.

The findings were revealed as Congress debates an immigration bill, and the Government Accountability Office’s report could throw up another hurdle because lawmakers in the House and Senate have said that any final deal must include a workable system to track entries and exits and cut down on so-called visa overstays.

The government does track arrivals, but is years overdue in setting up a system to track departures — a goal set in a 1996 immigration law and reaffirmed in 2004, but which has eluded Republican and Democratic administrations.

Read more: https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/jul/30/homeland-security-loses-track-of-1-million-foreign/#ixzz2ahw9gsUd

Police in Bergen County cheer the rollout of stun guns
Thursday August 1, 2013, 12:04 AM
BY  REBECCA BAKER
STAFF WRITER
The Record

After years of frustration, Tasers are in the hands of the first police officers in Bergen County, a move applauded by both law enforcement and civil rights groups as long overdue and a potential lifesaver.

New Jersey has been behind the rest of the world in adopting stun guns as a law enforcement tool. It was the last state in the country to authorize the devices in 2006, and problems with early restrictions, high costs and unanswered questions about liability and training kept them from being issued to police officers in Bergen and Passaic counties.

The problems were largely resolved when the state Attorney General’s Office clarified some of its stun-gun training requirements this year, Bergen County Police Chief Brian Higgins said at a media event Wednesday announcing the Taser rollout. Two dozen county police officers are authorized to carry Tasers, joining thousands of law enforcement agencies that have used stun guns for decades.

“We were just waiting for all the pieces to fall into place,” Higgins said.

– See more at: https://www.northjersey.com/news/bergen/Police_in_Bergen_County_cheer_the_rollout_of_stun_guns.html#sthash.RLIbqq2T.dpuf

National Security Agency papers released, but concern is growing
Wednesday, July 31, 2013    Last updated: Wednesday July 31, 2013, 10:47 PM
BY  ELLEN NAKASHIMA
THE WASHINGTON POST
The Record

WASHINGTON — Obama administration officials on Wednesday faced deepening political skepticism over a far-reaching counterterrorism program that collects millions of Americans’ phone records, even as they released newly declassified documents in an attempt to spotlight privacy safeguards.

The previously secret material — a court order and reports to Congress — was released by Director of National Intelligence James Clapper as a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing opened Wednesday morning in which lawmakers sharply questioned the efficacy of the collection of bulk phone records. A senior National Security Agency official conceded that the surveillance effort was the primary tool in thwarting only one plot — not the dozens that officials previously suggested.

In recent weeks, political support for such broad collection has sagged, and the House last week narrowly defeated a bipartisan bid to end the program, at least in its current form. On Wednesday, senior Democratic senators voiced equally strong doubts.

“This bulk-collection program has massive privacy implications,” said Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy of Vermont. “The phone records of all of us in this room — all of us in this room — reside in an NSA database. I’ve said repeatedly, just because we have the ability to collect huge amounts of data does not mean that we should be doing so. … If this program is not effective, it has to end. So far, I’m not convinced by what I’ve seen.”

– See more at: https://www.northjersey.com/news/national/Government_braces_for_coming_changes_to_NSA_powers.html#sthash.gVN9OnLl.dpuf

file Photo Boyd Loving

Ho-Ho-Kus VFW hopes to trade property with the borough
Thursday, August 1, 2013
BY  SARAH NOLAN
STAFF WRITER
Town Journal

Discussions of a property exchange between Ho-Ho-Kus and the VFW (Veterans of Foreign Wars) Post 192 have the potential to kill two birds with one stone if they come to fruition, providing more parking in the municipality and giving a new home to the post, something they’ve sought for nearly a decade.

Past Post 192 commander Stanley Kober said he approached the borough several months ago with the preliminary idea, which would include the eventual demolition of the current building near the train station, located at 620 Cliff Street to create 12 to 15 additional parking spaces. In exchange for this land, the hope is the borough will provide the post with a new plot of land for a new home.

– See more at: https://www.northjersey.com/news/217870171_Ho-Ho-Kus_VFW_hopes_to_trade_property_with_the_borough.html#sthash.NXXcdF6j.dpuf

NSA scandal shakes Americans’ trust in government
by James S. Robbins | Posted by: jamesrobbins1 on July 31, 2013 4:22 pm

On Wednesday, the Obama administration released several newly declassified intelligence documents in a damage control attempt over the growing NSA snooping scandal. On the same day, the Guardian reported on the NSA tool XKeyscore, which can track everything people do online, including emails, Facebook activity, online chats and browser histories. The White House just can’t keep ahead of the bad news.

The administration maintains that these programs are necessary for the fight against terrorism, but the American people are not convinced. A new survey released by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press finds that 56% of Americans believe that “federal courts fail to provide adequate limits on the telephone and internet data the government is collecting as part of its anti-terrorism efforts.” And for the first time in the 10 year history of this poll, more people (47%) say the government has gone too far in restricting civil liberties than those who say it has not gone far enough to protect the country (35%).

This decisive change in attitude crosses the political spectrum. Republicans, Democrats and Independents have all seen double-digit shifts towards concern for liberty over security between October 2010 and July 2013. The shift is most pronounced among Tea Party members; in 2010 only a fifth of them believed the government had gone too far in restricting liberties, while 63% believed it should do more. In the new survey, the number of Tea Partiers concerned with government intrusion jumped to 55%, while those saying the state should keep ramping things up dropped more than half. The only group that showed no significant change in attitude was moderate to conservative Democrats, though the more interesting question is how the Pew Center located any members of this nearly extinct species.

– See more at: https://rare.us/story/nsa-scandal-shakes-americans-trust-in-government/#sthash.zCcXPfmb.dpuf

What If Obama Can’t Lead?

Why the president’s defenders are wrong when they argue Obama is impotent.

By Ron Fournier

July 31, 2013 | 6:00 a.m.

Two New York Times reporters recently posited for President Obama this grim scenario: Low growth, high unemployment, and growing income inequality become “the new normal” in the nation he leads. “Do you worry,” the journalists asked him, “that that could end up being your legacy simply because of the obstruction … and the gridlock that doesn’t seem to end?”

Obama’s reply was telling. “I think if I’m arguing for entirely different policies and Congress ends up pursuing policies that I think don’t make sense and we get a bad result,” he said, “it’s hard to argue that’d be my legacy.”

Actually, it’s hard to argue that it wouldn’t be his legacy. History judges U.S. presidents based upon what they did and did not accomplish. The obstinacy of their rivals and the severity of their circumstances is little mitigation. Great presidents overcome great hurdles.

In Obama’s case, the modern GOP is an obstructionist, rudderless party often held hostage by extremists. So … get over it. His response to The New York Times is another illustration that Obama and his liberal allies have a limited—and limiting—definition of presidential leadership.

I call it the White Flag Syndrome.

https://www.nationaljournal.com/politics/what-if-obama-can-t-lead-20130731

E-mails Suggest Collusion Between FEC, IRS to Target Conservative Groups
By  Eliana Johnson
July 31, 2013 6:00 AM

Embattled Internal Revenue Service official Lois Lerner and an attorney in the Federal Election Commission’s general counsel’s office appear to have twice colluded to influence the record before the FEC’s vote in the case of a conservative non-profit organization, according to e-mails unearthed by the House Ways and Means Committee and obtained exclusively by National Review Online. The correspondence suggests the discrimination of conservative groups extended beyond the IRS and into the FEC, where an attorney from the agency’s enforcement division in at least one case sought and received tax information about the status of a conservative group, the American Future Fund, before recommending that the commission prosecute it for violations of campaign-finance law. Lerner, the former head of the IRS’s exempt-organizations division, worked at the FEC from 1986 to 1995, and was known for aggressive investigation of conservative groups during her tenure there, too.

“Several months ago . . . I spoke with you about the American Future Fund, a 501(c)(4) organization that had submitted an exemption application the IRS [sic],” the FEC attorney wrote Lerner in February 2009. The FEC, which polices violations of campaign-finance laws, is not exempted under Rule 6103, which prohibits the IRS from sharing confidential taxpayer information, but the e-mail indicates Lerner may have provided that information nonetheless: “When we spoke last July, you had told us that the American Future Fund had not received an exemption letter from the IRS,” the FEC attorney wrote.

The timing of the correspondence between Lerner and the FEC suggests the FEC attorney sought information from the IRS in order to influence an upcoming vote by the six FEC commissioners. The FEC received a complaint in March 2008 from the Minnesota Democratic Farmer Labor Party alleging that the American Future Fund had violated campaign-finance law by engaging in political advocacy without registering as a political-action committee. The American Future Fund responded to that complaint in June 2008, telling the commission that it had applied for tax exemption in March of that year and was a “501(c)(4) social-welfare organization that was organized to provide Americans with a conservative and free-market viewpoint and mechanism to communicate and advocate on the issues that most interest and concern them.” According to the e-mail correspondence, a month after receiving the American Future Fund’s response, the FEC general counsel’s office — which is prohibited under law from conducting an investigation into an organization before the FEC’s six commissioners have voted to do so — contacted Lerner to investigate the agency’s tax-exempt status.

https://nationalreview.com/corner/354801/e-mails-suggest-collusion-between-fec-irs-target-conservative-groups-eliana-johnson

Obamacare: It Pays Not to Work

Look out below! Work more, get less in Obamacare ‘cliff”

Be careful you don’t fall off the Obamacare “cliff” when the boss asks you to put in some overtime.

Working more could ultimately mean thousands of dollars less for you under a quirk in the new health-care law going into effect this fall. This could prompt some people to cut back on their hours to avoid losing money.

“Working more can actually leave you worse off,” the price-comparison site ValuePenguin.com notes in a new analysis.

“It’s sort of an absurd scenario,” said Jonathan Wu, ValuePenguin.com’s co-founder. “It’s something for people to be aware of.”

In that scenario, an individual or family whose annual income surpasses maximums set by the federal government—if only by $1—will totally lose subsidies available to buy health insurance under the Affordable Care Act.

https://www.cnbc.com/id/100921864

Issa accuses IRS of obstruction, warns of consequences
By Alan Silverleib, CNN Congressional Producer
updated 7:27 PM EDT, Tue July 30, 2013

Washington (CNN) — The Republican congressman spearheading a House probe of alleged Internal Revenue Service targeting of conservative political groups accused the head of the IRS on Tuesday of obstructing his panel’s investigation.

California GOP Rep. Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, warned acting IRS chief Daniel Werfel that if “the IRS continues to hinder the committee’s investigation in any manner, the committee will be forced to consider use of compulsory process.”

Issa did not elaborate on exactly what steps his panel’s Republican majority may be prepared to take, though he noted that impeding congressional investigators could result in a prison term of up to five years.

“Obstructing a congressional investigation is a crime,” Issa stressed in a letter co-signed by Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio.

https://www.cnn.com/2013/07/30/politics/issa-irs-scandal/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

XKeyscore: NSA tool collects ‘nearly everything a user does on the internet’
Glenn Greenwald
theguardian.com, Wednesday 31 July 2013 08.56 EDT

• XKeyscore gives ‘widest-reaching’ collection of online data
• NSA analysts require no prior authorization for searches
• Sweeps up emails, social media activity and browsing history
• NSA’s XKeyscore program – read one of the presentations

A top secret National Security Agency program allows analysts to search with no prior authorization through vast databases containing emails, online chats and the browsing histories of millions of individuals, according to documents provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden.

The NSA boasts in training materials that the program, called XKeyscore, is its “widest-reaching” system for developing intelligence from the internet.

The latest revelations will add to the intense public and congressional debate around the extent of NSA surveillance programs. They come as senior intelligence officials testify to the Senate judiciary committee on Wednesday, releasing classified documents in response to the Guardian’s earlier stories on bulk collection of phone records and Fisa surveillance court oversight.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/31/nsa-top-secret-program-online-data