Maine Liberty Journal

The Majlis (via What Really Happened):

Matt Duss flagged this video of Rep. Mike Pence (R-Indiana), a senior member of the Republican leadership in the U.S. House of Representatives, talking to the Christian Broadcasting Network about why he unquestioningly supports Israel.

Pence is literally saying, Israeli officials should tell us what they want us to do, and we’ll support it. That’s an insane premise, and if you replace “Israel” with any other country, no U.S. politician would accept it.

I’m pretty pessimistic about Obama’s Middle East policies — but it’s worth remembering that Obama has to work within the confines of the U.S. political system, and there’s broad bipartisan consensus for Pence’s views on Israel (as he notes in the video).

Tags: News-national by Editor
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Via Bangor Daily News (February 6, 2010):

Despite gallons of newspaper ink, hours of air time and untold clicks in the blogosphere, the effect of the tea party movement in local and national politics remains to be seen.

Even as supporters gathered Friday in Nashville, Tenn., for a National Tea Party Convention, some question whether it’s a movement at all, or rather a collection of isolated protests, just like similar events for any of a million other causes. Tea party organizers in Maine, though, say the influence of the events is not only enduring. It’s building.

“I have seen more people at political functions than have ever been there before,” said Lois Bloomer of Hermon, who ran two tea parties in Maine last year and has organized today’s Penobscot County Republican Caucus.

“There’s something definitely in the wind,” she said on Thursday. “People are stirred up.”

The establishment is trying hard to convince the masses that this “movement” is some fringe element of one far wing of the political spectrum. Certainly the last thing they want is for the “moderates” and the “mainstream” to get the impression that they have good reasons to be angry about the lies and fraud they’ve been getting from the Democans and Republicrats all these years. The harder the corporate media organs try to marginalize the disaffected segment of the population, the more I’m convinced that a genuine revolution might just be taking place.

Tags: News-national, News-state by Editor
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Via Washington Times (February 2, 2010):

The era of big government has returned with a vengeance, in the form of the largest federal work force in modern history.

The Obama administration says the government will grow to 2.15 million employees this year, topping 2 million for the first time since President Clinton declared that “the era of big government is over” and joined forces with a Republican-led Congress in the 1990s to pare back the federal work force.

Most of the increases are on the civilian side, which will grow by 153,000 workers, to 1.43 million people, in fiscal 2010.

The expansion could provide more ammunition to those arguing that the government is trying to do too much under President Obama.

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Electronic Frontier Foundation Press Release (January 23, 2010):

A federal judge has dismissed Jewel v. NSA, a case from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) on behalf of AT&T customers challenging the National Security Agency’s mass surveillance of millions of ordinary Americans’ phone calls and emails.

“We’re deeply disappointed in the judge’s ruling,” said EFF Legal Director Cindy Cohn. “This ruling robs innocent telecom customers of their privacy rights without due process of law. Setting limits on Executive power is one of the most important elements of America’s system of government, and judicial oversight is a critical part of that.”

In the ruling, issued late Thursday, U.S. District Court Chief Judge Vaughn Walker held that the privacy harm to millions of Americans from the illegal spying dragnet was not a “particularized injury” but instead a “generalized grievance” because almost everyone in the United States has a phone and Internet service.

“The alarming upshot of the court’s decision is that so long as the government spies on all Americans, the courts have no power to review or halt such mass surveillance even when it is flatly illegal and unconstitutional,” said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Kevin Bankston. “With new revelations of illegal spying being reported practically every other week — just this week, we learned that the FBI has been unlawfully obtaining Americans’ phone records using Post-It notes rather than proper legal process — the need for judicial oversight when it comes to government surveillance has never been clearer.”

Jewel v. NSA is aimed at ending the NSA’s dragnet surveillance of millions of ordinary Americans and holding accountable the government officials who illegally authorized it. Evidence in the case includes undisputed documents provided by former AT&T telecommunications technician Mark Klein showing AT&T has routed copies of Internet traffic to a secret room in San Francisco controlled by the NSA. That same evidence is central to Hepting v. AT&T, a class-action lawsuit that’s currently under appeal in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit.

Tags: Law, News-national by Editor
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This guy was on track at one time to run DHS?

Via NY Daily News (10/21/2009):

Bernard Kerik – former NYPD police commissioner, one-time Homeland Security Secretary nominee, national Sept. 11 hero – has a new label. Inmate No. 210-717.

Kerik got his assigned number at the Westchester County jail after becoming the first NYPD commissioner to wind up behind bars when a judge revoked his bail Tuesday for trying to taint the jury pool in his upcoming corruption trial.

Officials at the Westchester County Jail in Valhalla refused to say if Kerik was put in isolation.

Kerik declined requests for media interviews while his lawyers vowed a prompt appeal to try to get him out.

A furious Judge Stephen Robinson threw Kerik in the clink after prosecutors said the former top cop and the head of his legal defense fund engaged in a subversive campaign to sway potential jurors.

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Glenn Greenwald asks a series of great questions in his recent column.

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AP (via MyWay & Drudge):

This would be a fantastic development, hopefully leading to mass resignations and a dramatic reduction in the size of the California state government.

Unfortunately, “[e]mployees would receive their full salary retroactively once a budget is signed”. At least there is the chance they would quit in the meantime…

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A month or so old, but I never saw this mentioned in any news outlet at the time. From TSA:

Is it a police state yet?

Tags: News-national, Police state by Editor
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