An Attempt To Set A Precedent

I heard about this yesterday on the way to Newport News.

My first reaction was:"Maybe they're investigating the Recruiter Station vandalism"

I thought that because IndyMedia is the site that promotes and encourages the SDS and Black Bloc to be pro-active in anti-military activities and allows the posting of articles and follow-up comments from the students.

IndyMedia is the site where I recieved my first threat of physical violence should I decide to exercise my 1st Amendment right to assembly in Washington DC. That threat came from the same commenter who accused me of defacing the Viet Nam Memorial in Washington DC.

Then I thought, "No...no way" This is about setting a precedent for the potential shutdown of conservative blogs and news sites. IndyMedia walks hand in hand with the various nutroots from DU, DailyKos, and several other far-left extremist sites.

Justice Dept. Asked For News Site's Visitor Lists
Posted by Declan McCullagh

(AP / CBS)In a case that raises questions about online journalism and privacy rights, the U.S. Department of Justice sent a formal request to an independent news site ordering it to provide details of all reader visits on a certain day.

The grand jury subpoena also required the Philadelphia-based Indymedia.us Web site "not to disclose the existence of this request" unless authorized by the Justice Department, a gag order that presents an unusual quandary for any news organization.

Kristina Clair, a 34-year old Linux administrator living in Philadelphia who provides free server space for Indymedia.us, said she was shocked to receive the Justice Department's subpoena. (The Independent Media Center is a left-of-center amalgamation of journalists and advocates that – according to their principles of
unity and mission statement – work toward "promoting social and economic justice" and "social change.")

The subpoena (PDF) from U.S. Attorney Tim Morrison in Indianapolis demanded "all IP traffic to and from www.indymedia.us" on June 25, 2008. It instructed Clair to "include IP addresses, times, and any other identifying information," including e-mail addresses, physical addresses, registered accounts, and Indymedia readers' Social Security Numbers, bank account numbers, credit card numbers, and so on.

"I didn't think anything we were doing was worthy of any (federal) attention," Clair said in a telephone interview with CBSNews.com on Monday. After talking to other Indymedia volunteers, Clair ended up calling the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco, which represented her at no cost.

Under long-standing Justice Department guidelines, subpoenas to members of the news media are supposed to receive special treatment. One portion of the guidelines, for instance, says that "no subpoena may be issued to any member of the news media" without "the express authorization of the attorney general" – that would be current attorney general Eric Holder – and subpoenas should be "directed at material information regarding a limited subject matter."

Still unclear is what criminal investigation U.S. Attorney Morrison was pursuing. Last Friday, a spokeswoman initially promised a response, but Morrison sent e-mail on Monday evening saying: "We have no comment."

The Justice Department in Washington, D.C. also declined to respond.

Kevin Bankston, a senior staff attorney at the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation, replied to the Justice Department on behalf of his client in a February 2009 letter (PDF) outlining what he described as a series of problems with the subpoena, including that it was not personally served, that a judge-issued court order would be required for the full logs, and that Indymedia did not store logs in the first place.

Morrison replied in a one-sentence letter saying the subpoena had been withdrawn.

Around the same time, according to the EFF, the group had a series of discussions with assistant U.S. attorneys in Morrison's office who threatened Clair with possible prosecution for obstruction of justice if she disclosed the existence of the already-withdrawn subpoena -- claiming it "may endanger someone's health" and would have a "human cost."

Lucy Dalglish, the executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of The Press, said a gag order to a news organization wouldn't stand up in court: "If you get a subpoena and you're a journalist, they can't gag you." Dalglish said that a subpoena being issued and withdrawn is not unprecedented.

"I have seen any number of these things withdrawn when counsel for someone who is claiming a reporter's privilege says, 'Can you tell me the date you got approval from the attorney general's office'... I'm willing to chalk this up to bad lawyering on the part of the DOJ, or just not thinking."

Making this investigation more mysterious is that Indymedia.us is an aggregation site, meaning articles that appear on it were published somewhere else first, and there's no hint about what sparked the criminal probe.

Clair, the system administrator, says that no IP (Internet Protocol) addresses are recorded for Indymedia.us, and non-IP address logs are kept for a few weeks and then discarded. EFF's Bankston wrote a second letter to the government saying that, if it needed to muzzle Indymedia, it should apply for a gag order under the section of federal law that clearly permits such an order to be issued.

Bankston's plan: To challenge that law on First Amendment grounds. But the Justice Department never replied. "This is the first time we've seen them try to get the IP address of everyone who visited a particular site," Bankston said.

"That it was a news organization was an additional troubling fact that implicates First Amendment rights."

This is not, however, the first time that the Feds have focused on Indymedia -- a Web site whose authors sometimes blur the line between journalism, advocacy, and on-the-streets activism.

In 2004, the Justice Department sent a grand jury subpoena asking for information about who posted lists of Republican delegates while urging they be given an unwelcome reception at the party's convention in New York City that year.

A Indymedia hosting service in Texas once received a subpoena asking for server logs in relation to an investigation of an attempted murder in Italy. Bankston has written a longer description of the exchange of letters with the Justice Department, which he hopes will raise awareness of how others should respond to similar legal demands for Web logs, customer records, and compulsory silence.

"Our fear is that this kind of bogus gag order is much more common than one would hope, considering they're legally baseless," Bankston says. "We're telling this story in hopes that more providers will press back and go public when the government demands their silence."

Update 1:59pm E.T.: A Justice Department official familiar with this subpoena just told me that the attorney general's office never saw it and that it had not been submitted to the department's headquarters in Washington, D.C. for review. If that's correct, it suggests that U.S. Attorney Tim Morrison and Assistant U.S. Attorney Doris Pryor did not follow department regulations requiring the "express authorization of the attorney general" for media subpoenas -- and it means that neither Attorney General Eric Holder nor Acting Attorney General Mark Filip were involved. I wouldn't be surprised to see an internal investigation by the Office of Professional Responsibility; my source would not confirm or deny that.

For God and Country I Lend You A Life

Baghdad Bob Gibbs Minister of Propaganda

Patriot Post on Liberty

"Can Washington Make You Buy Health Insurance?"

Yes, yes, says White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs.

Congress has the power to make everyone buy health insurance.

'I don't believe there's a lot of case law that would demonstrate the veracity' of comments to the contrary.

Thank you, Mr. Justice Gibbs. We'll see about all that when -- if -- the matter of Congress' power over private commercial judgments of this nature gets to the U.S. Supreme Court. Meanwhile the knock-down, drag-out over health insurance 'reform' shouldn't be allowed to fuzz up another immensely vital question; to wit, how in James Madison's name have we reached the point that Congress can so much as contemplate telling you, and you, and you, and all of us that we'll buy health insurance, like it or not, Buster?

Why do we have to? Because the government says so, isn't that reason enough? For Mr. Justice Gibbs, and the people who employ him, it is. Just about anything Congress decides to do in the name of uplift seems to be constitutional: In other words, in accord with written stipulations as to what the national government may and may not do.

Several problems arise concerning this fine theory:

-- It's nonsense. It contravenes the whole constitutional concept of divided powers: particular functions reserved to particular branches of government. And other powers divided between states and the national government.

-- It threatens liberty. A government that knows no limits to its power can be counted on to step more and more heavily on citizens' rights and privileges. All for the 'general good' naturally!

-- It divides the citizens. On the one hand, those who want particular favors from government; on the other hand, those who deny that government has the right to dispense such favors.

The Obama administration, which desperately wants health care to pass, brushes off such concerns as cranky and relevant mainly to wild-eyed Limbaugh and Palin fans, when in fact concerns about the rightful exercise of government power should inform every legislative debate. Those it doesn't inform are likely to end badly. Majority support of this or that initiative doesn't legitimize the initiative."

--William Murchison, senior fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation

United Conservatives of Virginia: Military.com Article on Asshat Mooozzziee Murderer

United Conservatives of Virginia: Military.com Article on Asshat Mooozzziee Murderer

United Conservatives of Virginia: A Soldier Died Today

United Conservatives of Virginia: A Soldier Died Today

United Conservatives of Virginia: Best Sign From Yesterday's House Call

United Conservatives of Virginia: Best Sign From Yesterday's House Call

PTSD In Ft Hood Shooting??

BEFORE DEPLOYMENT???
The idiot has never been in combat. He should never have been in the Army.

Naw. I ain't buying that for a minute.
PRE-Traumatic Stress Disorder my butt.

Another legal tactic to get this murderer a reduced sentence.

Try him and fry him.

The Useful Idiots Outnumber Us

Zero was elected because he is black. That is the only reason he was elected, because when enough people who don't care about anything but skin color, decide to vote for the "brother", the deal was done and I get it. They wanted to be the ones who put the first black American in office, and nothing else mattered.

The extreme left in this country, the really dangerous ultra-liberal extremists, knew this would happen. They knew they could put this man in office, because they knew that most of the people who would be voting for him do not read newspapers, do not listen to news program, or understand the concept of socialism and how evil it is, and the ones who do read, listen and pay attention, didn't care, because it was more important to put a black Amercian in the White House.

The Brushfires of Freedom

In November 2008, it was difficult to accept that a majority of our countrymen had fallen into such a stupor that they could be lulled by the dullard droll of "hope 'n' change"; that they could be conned into electing an inexperienced charlatan, an unapologetic socialist, to the office of president.

At the time, Obama's politically moderate supporters scoffed at the charges of socialism, but unlike Bill Clinton, who ran to the center after being elected, Obama has run as fast and far to the left as possible, just short of publicly declaring our Constitution null and void.

Too many Americans have been complacent about liberty, believing it to be their birthright and the birthright of generations to come. They have enjoyed the fruit of liberty defended by others, taking rights for granted and knowing nothing of the obligations for maintaining that blessing. Most Americans have never had to fight for liberty and, thus, have little concept of its value or any sense of gratitude for its
accumulated cost -- a cost paid by generations of Patriots who have pledged their Lives, their Fortunes and their Sacred Honor.

I encourage you to take heart, though, because change is coming, and not the variety proffered by Obama and his ilk.

There is a groundswell of conservative activism rising up across our great nation, as citizens are awakening to this ominous threat of constitutional adulteration and tyranny. Citizens are speaking out for liberty at public forums, attending grassroots "Tea Parties," making a stand for Liberty.

The first real political results of that uprising were manifest in the elections of Bob McDonnell and Chris Christie to the executive branches of the states of Virginia and New Jersey, respectively. Each of these men vanquished a Democrat opponent for whom Barack Obama had extensively campaigned, and each had done so in a state that Obama had easily carried a year earlier. McDonnell's 18-point victory in Virginia, for example, represented a 25-point turnabout from Obama's 7-point margin in 2008.

Lets get a few things out of the way:
It is not conservative Americans who want to control your life...its liberals.
It is not conservative Americans who want to come into your bedroom...its liberals.
It is not conservative Americans who want to run every aspect of government and the economy...its liberals.

I am a consevative American. I don't care what you do or where you do it, as long as you extend me the same courtesey, and don't force me to accept or acknowledge that what you're doing is any more correct than what I'm doing, because that is not the way I think.

Like I said, I DON'T CARE!!! unless you restrict what I can do. That is when we will have issues.

Once you accept that it is conservative Americans that want everyone to be free to succeed or fail, you will be more inclined to understand that liberals are the problem.

Heritage Morning Bell - Cap and Tax

Cap And Trade’s Mandates And Subsidies Are Wrong
Following major defeats at the ballot box on Tuesday, the left’s legislative agenda suffered another huge setback yesterday when once wavering Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Judd Gregg (R-NH), Olympia Snowe (R-ME), and Susan Collins (R-ME) all signed a letter supporting Sen. George Voinovich’s (R-OH) demand that the Environmental Protection Agency provide a thorough analysis of how the Kerry-Boxer cap and trade legislation will impact the U.S. economy. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) had been pressing for swift passage of her cap and tax legislation, but conservatives on the Environment and Public Works Committee thwarted her efforts by boycotting a vote on the legislation Tuesday.

An EPA analysis on the economic costs of cap and trade is no small issue. If Tuesday’s elections proved anything, it is that jobs and economic growth are the top concern on Americans’ minds. The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Data Analysis has found that cap and tax legislation would cost the average family-of-four almost $3,000 per year, cause 2.5 million net job losses by 2035, and a produce a cumulative gross domestic product (GDP) loss of $9.4 trillion between 2012 and 2035. The EPA has issued preliminary reports reaching different conclusions; including an October 23 report on Kerry-Boxer that found it would only cost the average American family $80 to $111 dollars per year.

There are many fundamental problems with that EPA report, none more glaring than their fanciful assumption that nuclear power generation will nearly double in the next 25 years. This is the equivalent of about 100 additional nuclear power plants. The reality is that in the past 30 years, not one new nuclear power plant has been licensed. More importantly, the Kerry-Boxer approach to reviving the nuclear energy relies on the same failed policies that have crippled the U.S. nuclear energy for the past 30 years. Heritage fellows Jack Spencer and Nick Loris explain:

Washington has a role to play in reducing financial barriers, but not by funding projects with taxpayer dollars. The regulatory costs and uncertainty posed by the federal bureaucracy represent significant risk to the success of the nuclear industry, just as regulatory uncertainty significantly affected the timing and budget of past nuclear plant construction. Indeed, this risk and uncertainty results in the higher prices that are most often used to justify government subsidies for nuclear projects. Efforts to reduce that risk by reforming the most obvious areas, such as the regulatory process and waste management, are nowhere to be found in the bill.

Instead, the bill attempts to reduce the financial risk caused by regulatory delays and technological development by expanding the federal government’s responsibility — and authority — on the technical side. It promotes government intervention into areas that are either unnecessary or that should reside solely in the private sector. For example, the Boxer-Kerry bill creates a research and development program to assess plant aging, improve plant performance, engineer safer fuels, and lower overall costs. These are all areas currently being addressed by the private sector and already supported by public institutions and funds.

Instead of handing out more government subsidies to compensate for increased government regulation, Congress should be heading in the exact opposite direction. What the nuclear industry really needs is an end to market distorting loan guarantees, a streamlined permit process for new plants and reactor designs, market reforms for nuclear waste management, and the ability to recycle spent fuel. America can create thousands of new jobs through an expansion of the energy sector. But just as with oil, coal, and natural gas, the less government intervention in the market, the better.

White House Behind Dede's Endorsement of Dhimmi

No big surprise. The ballerina told her to dance and she did the two-step.

'Republican' Scozzafava endorses Democrat against Conservative Party's Hoffman
UPDATED!
By: Mark Tapscott
Editorial Page Editor
11/01/09 2:49 PM EST

Only hours after suspending her campaign for the good of the Republican Party, liberal Assemblywoman Dede Scozzafava has now endorsed Democrat Bill Owens for in Tuesday's special election to fill the upstate New York congressional seat vacated by Rep. John McHugh, R-NY.

In a statement published by the Watertown Daily Times and linked at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee web site, Scozzafava encouraged voters to support her former Democratic opponent instead of Conservative Party of New York nominee Doug Hoffman, who is in a dead heat with Owens, according to polls.

"I am supporting Bill Owens for Congress and urge you to do the same," Scozzafava said. "In Bill Owens, I see a sense of duty and integrity that will guide him beyond political partisanship. He will be an independent voice devoted to doing what is right for New York. Bill understands this district and its people, and when he represents us in Congress he will put our interests first."

In her statement Friday announcing suspension of her campaign Scozzafava said "I am and have always been a proud Republican. It is my hope that with my actions today, my party will emerge stronger ..."

UPDATE: No surprise, says CP head Mike Long, chairman of the Conservative Party of New York is not surprised to hear of Scozzafava's endorsement of Democrat Bill Owens: "We always said Assemblywoman Scozzafava and Bill Owens were a pair of liberals. Doug Hoffman remains the only alternative to giving Nancy Pelosi another vote for her liberal agenda in Congress."

Similarly, Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List, which has been among the most aggressive and effective national organizations working for Hoffman, had this to say about Scozzafava's latest decision:

“By her actions today Dede Scozzafava has confirmed why it was so important for conservatives and people who care about the GOP to get involved in this race." Doug Hoffman's candidacy is based upon the core principles of limited government, lower taxes and strong family values."

When a GOP candidacy is not based on fundamental conservative values, the party and the principles are inevitably betrayed at critical moments."In this race and in future races, we will stand for the candidates who firmly believe in these fundamental American ideals. These principles are not only right, they are the path to electoral victory."

UPDATE II: Why can't moderates play nice with conservatives?
RedState.com's Erick Erickson notes multiple examples of moderate GOPers losing primary battles with more conservative challengers, then either endorsing the Democrat or doing little or nothing to help the Republican candidate.

Playing nice has to go both ways, Erickson writes: "All the time we hear conservatives can’t win the general' and 'conservatives should play nice with moderates.' The record shows that the moderates cannot take losing and conservatives don’t win the general because the moderate GOP stabs them in the back. If we are a team, it can’t just be the conservative players in trouble for not passing the ball."

UPDATE III: White House, Schumer moved Scozzafava
White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel and Sen. Charles Schumer, D-NY, lobbied Scozzafava to endorse Owens, according to the Watertown Daily News, quoting Schumer's spokesman.