Wiretapping program takes hit in Calif ruling.

In a repudiation of the Bush administration's now-defunct terrorist surveillance effort, a federal judge ruled Wednesday that government investigators illegally wiretapped the phone conversations of an Islamic charity and two American lawyers without a search warrant. U.S. District Court Judge Vaughn Walker said the plaintiffs provided enough evidence to show "they were subjected to warrantless electronic surveillance" by the National Security Agency. The judge's 45-page ruling focused narrowly on the case involving the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation, touching vaguely on the larger question of the program's legality. Nonetheless, Al-Haramain lawyer Jon Eisenberg said the ruling had larger implications...Link

1960....was Swell.

Lets do this...........

Decriminalizing pot would devastate cartels.

One step forward: California voters will get a chance in November to decide if the state should legalize marijuana. Two steps backward: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently told authorities in Mexico that the United States was looking at anything that worked to fight the drug cartels killing Mexicans daily -- but responded "no" when asked if anything included legalizing or decriminalizing marijuana. The California vote, however it turns out, constitutes a recognition that millions of Americans see lighting up a joint as no different than sipping a martini. Clinton's rejection of easing U.S. law on recreational weed use reflects a wide opposing belief that allowing marijuana use would violate moral norms and inflict onerous social costs on our society...Link

Avenger.

Obama has sown the seeds.

When historians recount the momentous events of recent weeks, they will note a curious coincidence. On March 15, Moody's Investors Service -- the bond rating agency -- published a paper warning that the exploding U.S. government debt could cause a downgrade of Treasury bonds. Just six days later, the House of Representatives passed President Obama's health-care legislation costing $900 billion or so over a decade and worsening an already-bleak budget outlook. Should the United States someday suffer a budget crisis, it will be hard not to conclude that Obama and his allies sowed the seeds, because they ignored conspicuous warnings. A further irony will not escape historians...Link

Gov't to give $600M in housing aid............

The Obama administration on Monday announced $600 million in financial support for five more states with high unemployment that have been slammed by the housing bust. Ohio got the largest share of funding, at $172 million, followed by North Carolina at $159 million and South Carolina at $138 million. Oregon and Rhode Island are due to receive $88 million and $43 million respectively. The money will be given to state housing finance agencies. They will design mortgage assistance programs that meet broad criteria provided by the Treasury Department...link

Is Social Security doomed?.........

In a sign of a looming retirement crisis, the Congressional Budget Office is forecasting that the Social Security system will pay more in benefits than it collects in payroll taxes this year. This watershed moment wasn't expected for another six years, but the recession has accelerated the timetable by putting millions of Americans out of work — meaning they've stopped paying into the system — and nudging many others into early retirement. What does the program's deficit mean for the financial security of the nation, and for retirees? Here are five key consequences...Link

Waffle House

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The most dangerous Bridge.

Link

Avenger........................

Schooled.........

Jamie Oliver has good intentions, but the U.S. food system needs an overhaul to fix the schools.

New Policy on Industrial Hemp.........

Majority of Leading Farming Organizations Now Support Hemp Farming in the U.S. WASHINGTON, March 22 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The national, single-issue, non-profit advocacy group Vote Hemp applauds the new policy supporting industrial hemp adopted by delegates of the National Farmers Union (NFU) at its 108th annual convention in Rapid City, South Dakota last week. The policy urges the Obama administration and Congress to direct the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to differentiate between non-drug industrial hemp and marijuana and allow states to regulate hemp farming without requiring DEA permits...Link

Headed for a Supreme Court Smackdown?

Now that the House Democrats have rammed ObamaCare down the throats of the nation by a vote of 219-212, the situation is indeed bleak. But Conservatives and Tea Partiers despondent over the fact that liberal Democrats just passed a massive encroachment on our liberties over their massive protests should take hope. James Madison saw this coming, and his forethought will give opponents of ObamaCare one last shot at killing it. In Federalist #10, Madison wrote "Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm." (Boy, did he ever get THAT right.) Knowing that the nation's future leaders would include usurpers and potential tyrants, Madison sought a way to preserve individual liberty despite their efforts. He thus devised the system of the separation of powers. "[E]ssential to the preservation of liberty..." he wrote in Federalist #51, "it is evident that each department should have a will of its own" and "members of each department should be as little dependent as possible" on the other branches...Link

U.S. Risks AAA Rating..............

March 22 (Bloomberg) -- The bond market is saying that it’s safer to lend to Warren Buffett than Barack Obama. Two-year notes sold by the billionaire’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. in February yield 3.5 basis points less than Treasuries of similar maturity, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Procter & Gamble Co., Johnson & Johnson and Lowe’s Cos. debt also traded at lower yields in recent weeks, a situation former Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. chief fixed-income strategist Jack Malvey calls an “exceedingly rare” event in the history of the bond market...Link

Federal Reserve Must Disclose.....

March 19 (Bloomberg) -- The Federal Reserve Board must disclose documents identifying financial firms that might have collapsed without the largest U.S. government bailout ever, a federal appeals court said. The U.S. Court of Appeals in Manhattan ruled today that the Fed must release records of the unprecedented $2 trillion U.S. loan program launched primarily after the 2008 collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. The ruling upholds a decision of a lower-court judge, who in August ordered that the information be released...Link

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Intro - Progressivism Is Cancer

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The Root Cause of Mexican Drug Violence.

It was less than one year ago when acting U.S. DEA administrator Michelle Leonhart publicly declared that the escalating violence on the U.S.-Mexico border should be viewed as a sign of the "success" of America's drug war strategies. "Our view is that the violence we have been seeing is a signpost of the success our very courageous Mexican counterparts are having," said Leonhart, who was recently nominated by President Obama to be the agency's full time director. "The cartels are acting out like caged animals, because they are caged animals."..Link

The 'Slaughter Solution'.

The Democrats are assaulting the very pillars of our democracy. As the debate on Obamacare reaches the long, painful end, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is confronting a political nightmare. She may not have the 216 votes necessary to pass the Senate's health care bill in the House. Hence, Mrs. Pelosi and her congressional Democratic allies are seriously considering using a procedural ruse to circumvent the traditional constitutional process. Led by Rep. Louise M. Slaughter, New York Democrat and chairman of the House Rules Committee, the new plan - called the "Slaughter Solution" - is not to pass the Senate version on an up-or-down vote. Rather, it is to have the House "deem" that the legislation was passed and then have members vote directly on a series of "sidecar" amendments to fix the things it does not like...Link

The Peace Blimp is coming.

Peace Blimp

End to ‘minimum reserve requirements’

In the footnotes of a speech U.S. Federal Reserve Bank Chairman Ben Bernanke would have given to the House Financial Services Committee on Feb. 10, lies a unique and startling disclosure. Hosted on the Federal Reserve's own servers, the written testimony of the bank's chairman explains in plain text what expanding the Fed's powers will do. "The Federal Reserve believes it is possible that, ultimately, its operating framework will allow the elimination of minimum reserve requirements, which impose costs and distortions on the banking system," footnote number nine, at the bottom of the page, explains without additional qualification...Link

Update - HR 1207 - 319 Co-sponsors!

Title: To amend title 31, United States Code, to reform the manner in which the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System is audited by the Comptroller General of the United States and the manner in which such audits are reported, and for other purposes.

Another Paul nettles GOP.

Senior Republicans in Kentucky and Washington D.C. are deeply concerned about Senate candidate Trey Grayson’s campaign as he struggles to narrow the gap against GOP primary rival Rand Paul...Link

Evil Dead done in 60 seconds with CLAY - 2010 from Lee Hardcastle on Vimeo.

Gaywatch - Peter Vadala & William Phillips

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National Debt Up $2 Trillion on Obama's Watch.

The latest posting from the Treasury Department shows the National Debt has increased over $2 trillion since President Obama took office. The debt now stands at $12.6 trillion. On the day Mr. Obama took office it was $10.6 trillion. President George W. Bush still holds the record for the most debt run up on his watch: $4.9 trillion. But it took him over four years to rack up the first two trillion dollars in debt. It has taken Mr. Obama 421 days. But the Obama Administration routinely blames the Bush Administration for inheriting a budget surplus and turning it into years of record-breaking deficits and debt -- and then leaving it on the doorstep of the new president...Link

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A must Watch........

Obama's illusions of cost-control.

One job of presidents is to educate Americans about crucial national problems. On health care, Barack Obama has failed. Almost everything you think you know about health care is probably wrong or, at least, half wrong. Great simplicities and distortions have been peddled in the name of achieving "universal health coverage." The miseducation has worsened as the debate approaches its climax. There's a parallel here: housing. Most Americans favor homeownership, but uncritical pro-homeownership policies (lax lending standards, puny down payments, hefty housing subsidies) helped cause the financial crisis. The same thing is happening with health care. The appeal of universal insurance -- who, by the way, wants to be uninsured? -- justifies half-truths and dubious policies. That the process is repeating itself suggests that our political leaders don't learn even from proximate calamities...Link

Without voting on it.............

After laying the groundwork for a decisive vote this week on the Senate's health-care bill, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi suggested Monday that she might attempt to pass the measure without having members vote on it. Instead, Pelosi (D-Calif.) would rely on a procedural sleight of hand: The House would vote on a more popular package of fixes to the Senate bill; under the House rule for that vote, passage would signify that lawmakers "deem" the health-care bill to be passed. The tactic -- known as a "self-executing rule" or a "deem and pass" -- has been commonly used, although never to pass legislation as momentous as the $875 billion health-care bill. It is one of three options that Pelosi said she is considering for a late-week House vote, but she added that she prefers it because it would politically protect lawmakers who are reluctant to publicly support the measure...Link

Update - HR 1207 - 318 Co-sponsors!

Title: To amend title 31, United States Code, to reform the manner in which the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System is audited by the Comptroller General of the United States and the manner in which such audits are reported, and for other purposes.

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Fed gets new oversight powers under Dodd bill.

(Reuters) - The Federal Reserve would win sweeping new powers over nonbank financial firms and keep much of its authority over banks, under revised legislation to be unveiled on Monday by the chief architect of financial reform in the Senate...Link

Fed audit inching closer...........

A proposal on which U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, has been working for much of the last decade is getting close to reality: an audit-the-Federal Reserve requirement that has been approved in the U.S. House and is pending in the Senate as an amendment to a piece of financial reform legislation. "They're still negotiating," said a spokeswoman for the congressman's office. "We're very hopeful that it's going to be included, maybe ... by the end of next week." She told WND that Paul would be pleased to have it pass as it stands. The plan, now pending before the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs after being approved by the House at the close of 2009, would provide for "an audit of all actions taken by the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and the Federal reserve banks during the current economic crisis…"...Link

A national ID card in 2010?.....

National identification cards, long feared by privacy advocates, may soon become mandatory for American workers. In a bipartisan effort to curb the hiring of illegal immigrants, Sens. Charles Schumer (D-NY) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) have proposed legislation that, if passed, will require all working Americans to carry biometric ID cards containing fingerprint records and other personal information...Link

Pelosi: Public option ‘not in reconciliation’.

If there was any lingering doubt as to whether the public option would survive the final health care motion, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) ended it on Friday morning. "We had it. We wanted it," Pelosi told reporters at a press briefing. "It's not in reconciliation... We're talking about something that is not going to be part of the legislation." While Pelosi may be the purveyor of the bad news for progressives, she's certainly not the culprit. The House of Representatives passed the provision in its November bill, but it was removed from the Senate version at the last minute...Link

The Great "Inflation or Deflation?" Debate.

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A New York SAlt Ban.....WTF.

MYFOXNY.COM - Some New York City chefs and restaurant owners are taking aim at a bill introduced in the New York Legislature that, if passed, would ban the use of salt in restaurant cooking. "No owner or operator of a restaurant in this state shall use salt in any form in the preparation of any food for consumption by customers of such restaurant, including food prepared to be consumed on the premises of such restaurant or off of such premises," the bill, A. 10129 , states in part. The legislation, which Assemblyman Felix Ortiz , D-Brooklyn, introduced on March 5, would fine restaurants $1,000 for each violation...Link

US budget deficit hits record high........

The US government registered a record budget deficit in February, the 17th consecutive month of running in the red, the Treasury said Wednesday. The February budget shortfall was 220.909 billion dollars, a 14 percent rise from a year ago and the biggest monthly gap on record. The reading, however, was slightly better than the consensus analyst forecast of a deficit of 222 billion dollars. The deepening budget gap was led by a 17 percent jump in government spending, which hit 328.429 billion dollars, a record for the month of February. The record monthly number came after two consecutive months of shrinking gaps that had left the January gap at 42.6 billion dollars...Link

House to vote on pullout from Afghanistan.

(Reuters) - In a test of congressional support for President Barack Obama's new Afghanistan strategy, lawmakers are set to vote on Wednesday on a resolution that would direct him to pull U.S. forces out of the war. The resolution by liberal Democratic Representative Dennis Kucinich is not expected to pass. But it could be an important indicator of how Obama's Democrats feel about the war, particularly ahead of November congressional elections in which Republicans are expected to make gains. It is the first legislative challenge by the Democratic majority Congress to U.S. involvement in the conflict since Obama ordered 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan and an offensive began last month to retake the Taliban stronghold of Marjah in Helmand province...Link

The Same Mistakes as Bush.

Who would have thought that one of Barack Obama's biggest missteps as President would be repeating some of the bad habits of George W. Bush? No single factor was more instrumental in Obama's 2008 victory than his pledge to completely reverse the nation's course once in the White House. Instead, over the past year, Obama has mimicked some of Bush's most egregious blunders, leading to much of the political predicament in which the present decider finds himself today. Who would have thought that one of Barack Obama's biggest missteps as President would be repeating some of the bad habits of George W. Bush? No single factor was more instrumental in Obama's 2008 victory than his pledge to completely reverse the nation's course once in the White House. Instead, over the past year, Obama has mimicked some of Bush's most egregious blunders, leading to much of the political predicament in which the present decider finds himself today...Link

Creepy crawlies.........

Link

Change or more of the same?....

The American Civil Liberties Union has never treated the Obama administration with kid gloves, but with their latest ad buy it's become increasingly clear that their patience for the continuance of some Bush-era policies has run quite thin. "What will it be Mr. President?" the ACLU asks in a full-page New York Times advertisement published Sunday. "Change or more of the Same?" The ad also features a portrait of Obama that morphs into Bush...Link

"Ten Most Wanted Corrupt Politicians" for 2009.

Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, today released its 2009 list of Washington's "Ten Most Wanted Corrupt Politicians." The list, in alphabetical order, includes:..Link

The Beer Party.

Stimulus money goes overseas.............

Senate Democrats are furious that the vast majority of grants from the clean-energy program from last year’s stimulus have been awarded to foreign companies. Democratic Sens. Chuck Schumer of New York, Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Jon Tester of Montana announced Wednesday a new initiative to require the "Buy America" provision of the stimulus to all programs, not just the government ones. A study done by the Investigative Reporting Workshop found that 79 percent of the $2 billion in clean-energy grants allocated since Sept. 1, 2009, has gone to foreign wind companies...Link

Frank Asks Bernanke to Probe Fed.

March 3 (Bloomberg) -- House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank asked Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke to investigate allegations of Fed involvement in the Watergate scandal and Iraqi weapons purchases in the 1970s and 1980s. Frank, 69, said the Fed must address the charges because “continued concern about political interference” with the Fed and “allegations about a lack of transparency.” Bernanke and other Fed officials are trying to fend off a measure offered by Paul, which passed the House in December, that would open the Fed to audits of interest-rate decisions...Link

Open letter to the voters...............

America was founded by free individuals; individuals like you who have the right to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of happiness. For the first time in human history, the individual took precedence over the state. Brave American men and women have shed blood ever since to preserve this principle. Yet, today, it is apparent that our government has forgotten this sacrosanct principle. From bailouts to mandates, every day Washington imposes increasing legislation designed to transfer more control of your life to bureaucrats. Why should one hundred senators in DC have so much power in dictating the lives of more than 100 million working Americans?..Link