MADDOG10's Blog

No citizen is immune to the ceaseless dragnet surveillance by Barack Obama’s  administration.

Among the revelations of the president’s boundless surveillance, which also  includes reporters’ phone records, is this report on how We the People thereby  lose access to breaking news affecting our lives:

Pruitt, whose speech at the National Press Club was covered by Politico’s  Weinger, said “the chilling effect is not just at AP, it’s happening at other  news organizations as well. Journalists from other news organizations have  personally told me it has intimidated sources from speaking to them.

“Now, the government may love this. I suspect they do. But beware the  government that loves secrecy too much.”

Meanwhile, more attention is being paid here to increasing anger among our  European allies to the scope and depth of Obama’s spying as revealed by Edward  Snowden to Glenn Greenwald in the Guardian.

For example, Agence France-Presse recently reported: “The EU has warned  President Barack Obama’s administration of ‘grave adverse consequences’ to the  rights of European citizens from a huge U.S. Internet surveillance program,  officials said” (“EU warns U.S. of ‘grave consequences’ from intel scandal,”  June 12).

The EU’s justice commissioner, Viviane Reding, had written to Attorney  General Eric Holder, AFP reported, requesting “‘swift and concrete’ answers  about the spy scheme.”

Basing her concerns on Snowden’s exposures in the Guardian, she sharply  challenged Holder (almost certainly to no avail), writing:

“Programs such as PRISM and the laws on the basis of which such programs are  authorized could have grave adverse consequences for the fundamental rights of  EU citizens.”

Furthermore, AFP reported, Reding asked Holder “whether EU citizens …  targeted by the U.S. programs … would be able to find out whether their data has  been accessed, and whether they would be treated similarly to U.S. nationals in  such cases.”

And dig this: In view of Holder’s chronic non-transparency to such questions,  AFP reported that “the EU official also warned that the European Parliament ‘is  likely to assess the overall transatlantic relationship also in the light of  your responses.’”

But Obama characterizes these incidents of spying as just “modest  encroachments on privacy.”

We Americans know how scarily “modest” they are.

Our next president of whatever party is going to have a lot of explaining to  do when dealing with European citizens’ abhorrence of being secretly classified  in such American databases as those of the National Security Agency and the  FBI.

As for members of the media and advocates of civil liberties, more of them  are trying to pierce Obama and Holder’s spy operations by engaging in powerfully  detailed lawsuits over constitutional abuses by the administration, as I’ll  detail next week.

On June 10, the Obama administration was targeted full-scale, according to  the Electronic Frontier Foundation: “A bipartisan coalition of 86 civil  liberties organizations and Internet companies – including the Electronic  Frontier Foundation, reddit, Mozilla, FreedomWorks and the American Civil  Liberties Union – are demanding swift action from Congress in light of the  recent revelations about unchecked domestic surveillance” (“86 Civil Liberties  Groups and Internet Companies Demand an End to NSA Spying,” Rainey Reitman,  eff.org).

In their open letter to all members of Congress, these 86 angry patriotic  organizations resounded: “This type of blanket data collection by the government  strikes at bedrock American values of freedom and privacy. This dragnet  surveillance violates the First and Fourth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution,  which protect citizens’ right to speak and associate anonymously and guard  against unreasonable searches and seizures.”

The cost of another president leading us as a nation under ever more  surveillance will be a future 9/11 in which the terrorists will have won – even  before all the corpses they amass are counted.

Bear in mind that a majority of us re-elected Obama, our lead betrayer. Shall  we continue betraying ourselves?

As for Edward Snowden, the man who helped cause this large-scale awakening of  the media, he is afraid. Not of his fate, but that authorities “will come after  my family, my friends, my partner,” he said. “Anyone I have a relationship with  … I have to live with that for the rest of my life” (“Edward Snowden, NSA files  source: ‘If they want to get you, in time they will,’” Ewen MacAskill,  guardian.co.uk, June 9).

Do you agree that this should be his reward for telling the truth?

Next week: More congressional rebellions that should lead all presidential  aspirants of both parties to tell us clearly and specifically what each of them  will do to overturn Obama’s betrayal of our Constitution.

When teenage thugs are called “troubled youth” by people on the political  left, that tells us more about the mindset of the left than about these young  hoodlums.

Seldom is there a speck of evidence that the thugs are troubled, and often  there is ample evidence they are in fact enjoying themselves, as they create  trouble and dangers for others.

At least as far back as the 18th century, the left has struggled to avoid  facing the plain fact of evil – that some people simply choose to do things that  they know to be wrong when they do them. Every kind of excuse, from poverty to  an unhappy childhood, is used by the left to explain and excuse evil.

All the people who have come out of poverty or unhappy childhoods, or both,  and become decent and productive human beings are ignored. So are the evils  committed by people raised in wealth and privilege, including kings, conquerors  and slaveowners.

Why has evil been such a hard concept for many on the left to accept? The  basic agenda of the left is to change external conditions. But what if the  problem is internal? What if the real problem is the cussedness of human  beings?

Rousseau denied this in the 18th century, and the left has been denying it  ever since. Why? Self-preservation.

If the things the left wants to control – institutions and government policy  – are not the most important factors in the world’s problems, then what role is  there for the left?

What if it is things like the family, the culture and the traditions that  make a more positive difference than the bright new government “solutions” the  left is constantly coming up with? What if seeking “the root causes of crime” is  not nearly as effective as locking up criminals? The hard facts show that the  murder rate was going down for decades under the old traditional practices so  disdained by the left intelligentsia, before the bright new ideas of the left  went into effect in the 1960s – after which crime and violence skyrocketed.

What happened when old-fashioned ideas about sex were replaced in the 1960s  by the bright new ideas of the left that were introduced into the schools as  “sex education” that was supposed to reduce teenage pregnancy and sexually  transmitted diseases?

Both teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases had been going down  for years. But that trend suddenly reversed in the 1960s and hit new highs.

One of the oldest and most dogmatic of the crusades of the left has been  disarmament, both of individuals and of nations. Again, the focus of the left  has been on the externals – the weapons in this case.

If weapons were the problem, then gun control laws at home and international  disarmament agreements abroad might be the answer. But if evil people who care  no more for laws or treaties than they do for other people’s lives are the  problem, then disarmament means making decent, law-abiding people more  vulnerable to evil people.

Since belief in disarmament has been a major feature of the left since the  18th century, in countries around the world, you might think that by now there  would be lots of evidence to substantiate their beliefs.

But evidence on whether gun control laws actually reduce crime rates in  general, or murder rates in particular, is seldom mentioned by gun control  advocates. It is just assumed in passing that of course tighter gun control laws  will reduce murders.

But the hard facts do not back up that assumption. That is why it is the  critics of gun control who rely heavily on empirical evidence, as in books like  “More  Guns, Less Crime” by John Lott and “Guns and Violence” by Joyce Lee  Malcolm.

National disarmament has an even worse record. Both Britain and America  neglected their military forces between the two World Wars, while Germany and  Japan armed to the teeth. Many British and American soldiers paid with their  lives for their countries’ initially inadequate military equipment in World War  II.

But what are mere facts compared to the heady vision of the left?

1.The  Sound of Wet Grass: Black Racists' War on Black Women

The  Trayvon Martin-George Zimmerman case has come to trial this week and the best  thing that's been said about it is from Thomas Maguire: "I'm proud to say I live  in a country where the show trials look  more like an SNL [Saturday Night Live] skit."

You  probably won't know that if your source of information about the trial is the  mainstream media and if your lifestyle doesn't permit you to sit in front of the  TV for hours watching the trial. Instead, go to Legal Insurrection, a  blog site run by Clinical Law Professor William A. Jacobson, where a defense  counsel, Andrew Branca, has been summarizing the trial day by day with video  snippets to illustrate his points, or Talk Left where Jeralyn Merritt ,  a noted defense counsel, has been dissecting this nothingburger of a  case.

As  the Friday hearing drew to a close, Branca reported the effective end of the prosecution's misbegotten  case:

A  neighbor, John Good, who witnessed the fight between Trayvon Martin and George  Zimmerman has just devastated the State's case, testifying that he saw the fight  between the two, that Trayvon was on top punching Mixed Martial Arts style, and  that the scream must have come from Zimmerman because Zimmerman was on the  bottom and Trayvon was faced away from the  witness.

To  date, the prosecution has put on a number of witnesses who also confirm  Zimmerman's account of events. There's not one shred of evidence that supports  the prosecution's view of the case. "Taps" should have been the background music  for the key prosecution witness "Dee Dee" whose real name turns out to be Rachel  Jeantel. She was on the phone with Trayvon when the incident occurred and her  letter to Trayvon's mother purportedly  describing the events and her deposition by the Martin's attorney, Crump, form  the heart of the prosecution's case. Her testimony was conceded to be false at  several points and the remainder collapsed on cross-examination. Rick Ballard  said in the middle of her testimony that he pictured the prosecution "laying  back in a nice warm bath this evening, straight razor in hand, trying to  remember the exact location of jugular veins and carotid  arteries."

It  turns out the letter the prosecution relied on was written by someone else, and  while Jeantel signed it she cannot even read the cursive in which it was  written. The Martins' counsel choreographed her account of  the events and he misled the Court about the circumstances.

The  prosecution also was exceedingly unprofessional, while taking pretrial testimony  from her, in having her make her statement in the presence of Trayvon's mother  whom she was manipulated into "helping" by tailoring her testimony to make it  possible for the state to come up with this factually unsubstantiated murder  charge. The prosecution was forced to concede at trial that the witness lied  numerous times and if you watch her in this exchange -- just one example of her  performance -- you can see why the statements of a not very smart witness  coached and manipulated to say things that are untrue rarely survive decent  cross examination: She had said that she could hear the sound of "wet grass"  when the tussle began. She was asked to describe what wet grass sounds like and was  dumbfounded.

But  more important than her lies and incoherence was her admission  that she didn't know who threw the first punch, and if she didn't, with  what did the prosecutors hope to prove the shot wasn't fired in self-defense? As  the week ends there is not a shred of credible evidence from the state of  Florida to counter Zimmerman's self-defense assertion. Not one shred of  evidence. For this a perfectly innocent man 's life has been ruined and he and  his family impoverished. Let that sink in.

The  prosecution deserves to be tarred forever with this unjust prosecution. So  should the Department of Justice, the race baiters who promoted it to keep the  black voters stirred up in time for Obama's reelection. Recall Obama himself  saying if he had a son he'd have looked like Trayvon, and the hundreds of  marchers in hoodies carrying signs demanding this prosecution and carrying signs  with angelic pictures of Trayvon as a kid, not as he was on the night of the  murder -- a large man with a drug habit and a record of  thuggery.

No  one mentions that like Tawana Brawley and Crystal Mangnum, Rachel Jeantel was  exploited by her own people -- Crump and Sharpton and Jackson, who so tarnish  the legacy of the civil rights movement by manipulating limited black women to  lie for their own political and economic ends, despite the humiliation they  bring upon these women when the facts finally are made clear. And after  perfectly innocent people have suffered.

2.Throwing Stones and Race Hustler Justice

Jeantel's  testimony hurt the case and the race baiters' drumbeating in other ways as  well.

In  contrast to the claim that Zimmerman (ludicrously dubbed the "white Hispanic" by  the press) was motivated by race -- something even Crump has now tiptoed  away from -- the only evidence of racism is Trayvon's.

Jeantel  testified that Trayvon called Zimmerman what we so ludicrously in an age of  widespread profanity call "the n-word" and characterized him as a "creepy ass  cracker." She made it clear that both terms were regularly used in "her  culture."

At  the very same time that Paula Deen was being vilified for being a racist and her  endorsements and TV show being stripped from her, people rushed in to defend Jeantel's racism.

This  kind of double standard is not helping race relations. It engenders contempt for  those who employ it. As proof I point to the fact that Deen's latest book, not  yet on the shelves, has raced to Number 1 on Amazon. It's the public's way of  saying to the elites they are not buying this story line of innocent blacks in a  racist society. But the race hustlers and their political beneficiaries have  profited so long from this foolishness that there are substantial fears of  nationwide rioting if the lynching in Florida is cancelled -- and it surely will  because no sane jury will convict. Will the Department of Justice, which  also stirred the Trayvon pot,  now act to protect the innocent when the case fails and the riots it had a role  in take place, hurting even more innocent victims? J.  Christian Adams writes:

Right  now, hanging on the door of a federal  employee's office in the Department of Justice Voting Section is a sign  expressing racial solidarity with Trayvon Martin. What this has to do with the  Department of Justice is perhaps a mystery, but not to me.

One  might ponder why the Justice Department Civil Rights Division rushedto Florida in the first place and took sides once  the racial furnace was sufficiently stoked. When Eric Holder's old pal from D.C.  (and a Philadelphia court case), New Black Panther chieftain Malik Zulu Shabazz,  called for a 10,000 strong black-male mob to seize George  Zimmerman, we knew what was in store.

It  wasn't going to be justice.

But  Justice came to Florida anyhow, in the form of the Community Relations Service  of Eric Holder's DOJ. Instead of calming the racial tensions, the DOJ took  sides. Instead of calming the mob, the DOJ joined it -- providing training for the mob and even arranging  a police escort.

This  is justice, race-hustler style. When Malik Zulu Shabazz demands blood, Eric  Holder arrives to deliver a more moderate face to mob anger.

But  notice Holder never condemned the calls for vigilantism. Why would he? We've  learned Holder's sense of justice depends on what the parties look like. He  never has a discouraging word for certain agitators, including Malik Zulu  Shabazz.

3.  Obama and his Friends Still Playing the White Guilt  Card

To  illustrate the effect of sloppy media thinking and the double standard in  reporting you need go no further than to look at this Friday's Washington  Post, where Melinda Henneberger, who quite obviously knows nothing  about affirmative action or the Supreme Court's decision on the Voting Rights  Act, penned this sentence notably illogical, wishy-washy, and  baseless:

we're  also clicking on the Deen-athon because the "Oprah of food," as one of the  cook's 2.7 million Facebook fans callsher, is a symbol and a symptom -- a walking,  talking, crying and deep-frying reminder of how much we still need both  affirmative action and a fully functional Voting Rights Act.

At  the same time her colleague at the paper, Eugene Robinson, to whom everything is  still always Selma and whites always racist and blacks always innocent, writes  to keep the race wars alive. He accuses Deen of being stuck in the past on race while missing  the log in his own eye -- here he is on the Trayvon Martin case:

For  every black man in America, from the millionaire in the corner office to the  mechanic in the local garage, the Trayvon Martin tragedy is personal. It could have been me or one of my sons.  It could have been any of us.

How  many George Zimmermans are out there cruising the streets? How many guys with  chips on their shoulders and itchy fingers on the triggers of loaded handguns?  How many self-imagined guardians of the peace who say the words "black male"  with a sneer?

Meanwhile,  the Obamas are on a hundred-million dollar trip to Africa, with Friday's  papers featuring them looking out of the Goree Island Historical Museum in  Senegal which is likely not what it is said to be  -- an old slave transport facility. Fitting that they  should pick this pretend site to further stir racism and encourage a continuation  of the white guilt -- in most cases utterly unwarranted and in any event not  productive -- that saw Barack win two elections. Michelle  Obama's Mirror:

Only  in America

...could  a man whose African forebears sold blacks into slavery and whose American  forebears owned slaves marry a woman whose lineage includes both slaves and  slave owners. 

I just got back from South Sudan. Most of the country has no access to  electricity, let alone the Internet. For those lucky enough to have a cell  phone, it is usually charged in the market where smart shopkeepers use a  generator to charge the cell phones. Privacy concerns are not huge in a country  that uses cell phones sparingly.

I came back and reviewed my mountain of email and was shocked at the email  from a list serve I subscribe to. It is like the frog in the crock pot. When the  heat is turned up a bit at a time, the frog doesn’t notice he is being  cooked.

Biometrics  databases:

“[The Electronic Frontier Foundation] has been closely following the FBI’s  work to build out its Next Generation Identification (NGI) biometrics database,  which would replace and expand upon the Integrated Automated Fingerprint  Identification System (IAFAS). The new program will include multiple biometric  identifiers, such as iris scans, palm prints, face-recognition-ready photos and  voice data, and that information will be shared with other agencies at the  local, state, federal and international levels. The face recognition component  is set to launch in 2014.

“‘[Next Generation Identification] will result in a massive expansion of  government data collection for both criminal and noncriminal purposes,’ says EFF  staff attorney Jennifer Lynch, who testified before the U.S. Senate on the  privacy implications of facial recognition technology in July of last year.  ‘Biometrics programs present critical threats to civil liberties and privacy.  Face-recognition technology is among the most alarming new developments, because  Americans cannot easily take precautions against the covert, remote, and mass  capture of their images.’”

From Netcraft via Dave Farber on encrypted data:

“Millions of websites and billions of people rely on SSL to protect the  transmission of sensitive information such as passwords, credit card details and  personal information with the expectation that encryption guarantees privacy.  However, recently leaked documents appear to reveal that the NSA, the United  States National Security Agency, logs very high volumes of Internet traffic and  retains captured encrypted communication for later cryptanalysis. The United  States is far from the only government wishing to monitor encrypted internet  traffic: Saudi Arabia has asked for help decrypting SSL traffic, China has been  accused of performing a MITM attack against SSL-only GitHub, and Iran has been  reported to be engaged in deep packet inspection and more, to name but a  few.

“The reason that governments might consider going to great lengths to log and  store high volumes of encrypted traffic is that if the SSL private key to the  encrypted traffic later becomes available – perhaps through court order, social  engineering, successful attack against the website, or through cryptanalysis –  all of the affected site’s historical traffic may then be decrypted at once.  This really would open Pandora’s Box, as on a busy site a single key would  decrypt all of the past encrypted traffic for millions of people.”

From Cironline on the ability to read license plates and feed them to data “fusion  centers”:

“The paperback-size device, installed on the outside of police cars, can log  thousands of license plates in an eight-hour patrol shift. Katz-Lacabe said it  had photographed his two cars on 112 occasions, including one image from 2009  that shows him and his daughters stepping out of his Toyota Prius in their  driveway.

“That photograph, Katz-Lacabe said, made him ‘frightened and concerned about  the magnitude of police surveillance and data collection.’ The single patrol car  in San Leandro equipped with a plate reader had logged his car once a week on  average, photographing his license plate and documenting the time and  location.”

On the ability for the NSA to keep and later listen to a billion phone calls  a day:

“The NSA has a ‘brand new’ technology that enables one billion cell phone  calls to be redirected into its data hoards, according to the Guardian’s Glen  Greenwald, who told a Chicago conference that a new leak of Snowden’s documents  was ‘coming soon.’

“Calling it part of a ‘globalized system to destroy all privacy,’ and the  enduring creation of a climate of fear, Greenwald outlined the capabilities of  the NSA to store every single call while having ‘the capability to listen to  them at any time.’”

From IntelliHub on taking a photo of a police station:

“Randall Thomas told Photography is Not a Crime he was taking photos to  prepare for an upcoming trial stemming from a January arrest in which police  deleted his footage after he had recorded them making an abusive arrest.

“Not that any of that was the cop’s business who harassed him Saturday for  taking photos outside the Police Service Area 3 Housing Bureau in Brooklyn.

“Thomas was placed in a cell and held for almost an hour before he was  released with two citations for disorderly conduct, one for blocking traffic,  the other for obscene language – as if that is not protected by the First  Amendment.

“Regardless, the video Thomas recorded with his smartphone shows he did not  block traffic nor use obscene language in his interaction with Officer Soto,  which begins at 4:30.”

All of these reports are from less than one week’s collection made by Dave  Farber’s list serve.

We are frogs, and we are being cooked by our government.

It’s time to jump out of that pot and organize the good, old-fashioned way we  did in the 1960s.

We need our government to hear us, not though cell phone data collection or  facial recognition software, but from our protests on the streets.

We’d better do this before they know when we are leaving our houses to go to  that demonstration.

Several other eyewitnesses have already testified, as artfully steered by the  defense attorneys, that Good was the only eyewitness to step outside. The  confrontation ended right at his door. His was the only light on.

O’Mara then read from Good’s statement given an hour after the incident: “So  I open my door. It was a black man with a black hoodie on top of the other,  either a white guy or now I found out I think it was a Hispanic guy with a red  sweatshirt on the ground yelling out help! And I tried to tell them, get out of  here, you know, stop or whatever, and then one guy on top in the black hoodie  was pretty much just throwing down blows on the guy kind of MMA-style.”

“MMA-style” means mixed martial arts. Although Good was a prosecution witness  – if they didn’t call him, the defense surely would have – he confirmed that the  report O’Mara read was accurate. So doing, he all but validated Zimmerman’s  version of the event and established beyond any doubt that it was Zimmerman who  was yelling out for help.

The State had hoped to have “expert” witnesses testify that it was Martin  calling for help, but they have known from day one about Good’s immediate  testimony and have persisted just the same.

The media had no excuse for not anticipating Good’s testimony. Good had  talked to an Orlando TV station the day after the shooting. “The guy on bottom  who I believe had a red sweater on was yelling to me, ‘help, help,’” Good told  the reporter. “I told them to stop and I was calling 911.”

ABC’s Matt Gutman took the lead in misinforming America. On March 13, Gutman,  two weeks after the shooting, violated just about all canons of good journalism,  tweeting that Zimmerman “shot 17yr old teen bc he was black, wore hoodie walking  slowly.”

Late on March 16, Gutman posted a piece on  the ABC News website that helped set the tone of the coverage to come.

Gutman based its inflammatory headline, “Trayvon Martin Neighborhood Watch  Shooting: 911 Tapes Send Mom Crying From Room,” fully on the word of the  family’s PR hack, Ryan Julison, and admitted as much.

The article implied, although it did not say so specifically, that Sybrina  Fulton left the room in tears because she heard her son scream for help on the  911 calls.

Attorney Natalie Jackson was busy making this point. “You hear a shot, a  clear shot, then you hear a 17-year-old boy begging for his life,” she was  widely quoted as saying. “Then you hear a second shot.” This remains accepted  wisdom in some of America’s more volatile quarters.

In the accompanying video piece for “Good Morning America” Gutman reinforced  this insinuation. In the process, he may have set a new national record for most  mistakes of consequence in a two-minute news bite:

GUTMAN: It was February 25TH.

TRUTH: It was February 26th.

GUTMAN: Trayvon was staying at his stepmother’s.

TRUTH: Martin was a staying with Brandy Green, a girlfriend of his father’s.  His mother and stepmother lived in greater Miami.

GUTMAN: He left for the store at half-time of the NBA All-Star Game.

TRUTH: He left hours earlier. He was dead before the game started.

GUTMAN: The “gunshots” are triggering outrage.

TRUTH: There was only one gunshot, and it was the media coverage that was  triggering outrage.

GUTMAN: Trayvon was “100 pounds lighter.”

TRUTH: He was less than 50 pounds lighter. The autopsy recorded Trayvon as  weighing 158 pounds. Zimmerman weighed in at the police station at 207, fully  clothed.

GUTMAN: “You can hear him stalk Martin.”

TRUTH: He did not stalk Martin. When the dispatcher said to Zimmerman, who  was following Martin, “OK. We don’t need you to do that,” Zimmerman said “OK”  and stopped. Gutman edited out Zimmerman’s “OK” and followed immediately with  his own comment, “But then came the gunshots.”

GUTMAN: Zimmerman had a record – “battery on a police officer and resisting  arrest.”

TRUTH: The charges had been dropped. Gutman did not mention that fact.

GUTMAN: Police have been accused of “correcting one eyewitness, while  ignoring another.”

TRUTH: Yes, but the Sanford PD did so for good reason. They knew that John  Good was the only fully reliable witness. The  others had seen only shadows.

Whether Gutman and pals can walk back this inflammatory disinformation  campaign when Zimmerman is acquitted remains to be seen. If not, they will have  a whole lot of exciting news to cover.

No warrants and no probable cause have been no problem for the Obama  administration in its work to collect detailed financial information on millions  of Americans, according to a new report.

Wait, you say, wasn’t the Obama administration already collecting details  about phone calls? Yup. And the content of prayers of Christian groups?  Affirmative. And how about the phone records of reporters? Yes, again.

The documents confirming the effort were released today by Judicial  Watch, the Washington watchdog organization that tracks down, investigates  and presses for prosecution of federal crimes.

“The Obama administration’s warrantless collection of the private financial  information of millions of Americans is mind-blowing. Is there anything that  this administration thinks it can’t do?” said Judicial Watch President Tom  Fitton.

“These documents show that the Consumer Financial Protection Board is an  out-of-control government agency that threatens the fundamental privacy and  financial security of Americans. This is every bit as serious as the controversy  over the NSA’s activities.”

It was the National Security Agency that was revealed to have been collecting  data without warrants on the phone calls of millions of Americans.

Judicial Watch said it acquired through a Freedom of Information Act  procedure records revealing some of the government’s recent work.

The report said the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has spent millions  of dollars for “the warrantless collection and analysis of Americans’ financial  transactions.”

It explains the fine print also calls for CFPB contractors, who may have that  information, “may be required to share the information with ‘additional  government entities.’”

The watchdog organization began its search for the records following CFPB  chief Richard Cordray’s appearance before the Senate Banking Committee in  April.

Among other things, it found that the board, authorized by the 2010  Dodd-Frank financial reform plan, wants large amounts of credit information from  millions of consumers, reportedly for a number of “policy research  projects.”

The broad outline states: “The panel shall include 5 million consumers, and  joint borrowers, co-signers, and authorized users. The initial panel shall  contain 10 years of historical data on a quarterly basis.”

The documents claim that the identities will be “masked,” but ages, birth  dates and census block numbers are to be included.

Fitton told U.S. News that the government plans are a “more direct assault on  American citizens’ reasonable [expectation] of privacy than the gathering of  general phone records.”

Judicial Watch also said it found contracts  that overlapped, so that several credit reporting agencies and accounting  firms would gather, store and share credit card data. Those companies included  Deloitte Consulting, Experian and others.

It found an  $8.4 million deal with Experian was “to track daily consumer habits of  select individuals without their awareness or consent.”

The government admitted that the contractors would, “in performing this  requirement … obtain access to non-public, confidential information, Personally  Identifiable Information (PII), or proprietary information.”

The government documents themselves say: “The initial sample shall be drawn  from current records and historical data appended for that sample as well as  additional samples during the intervening years to make the combines sample  representative at each point in time.”

Among the goals, according to the government, was to “maintain” detailed  “credit information” on Americans.

“The central mission of the CFPB is to make markets for consumer financial  products and services work for Americans – whether they are applying for a  mortgage, choosing among credit cards, or using any number of other consumer  financial products,” the government said.

While the government agency said data collecting procedures are authorized by  the Dodd-Frank law, it does use “anonymized industry data.”

“The bureau is not receiving data about individual purchase transactions nor  are we receiving any personally identifiable information,” the agency told U.S.  News.

Which is more dangerous to personal liberty in a free society: a renegade who  tells an inconvenient truth about government lawbreaking, or government  officials who lie about what the renegade revealed? That’s the core issue in the  great public debate this summer, as Americans come to the realization that their  government has concocted a system of laws violative of the natural law,  profoundly repugnant to the Constitution and shrouded in secrecy.

The liberty of which I write is the right to privacy: the right to be left  alone. The framers jealously and zealously guarded this right by imposing upon  government agents intentionally onerous burdens before letting them invade it.  They did so in the Fourth Amendment, using language that permits the government  to invade that right only in the narrowest of circumstances.

Congress is the chief culprit here, because it has enacted laws that have  lowered the constitutional bar the feds must meet for judges to issue search  warrants. And it has commanded that this be done in secret.

And I mean secret.

The judges of the FISA court – the court empowered by Congress to issue  search warrants on far less than probable cause, and without describing the  places to be searched or the persons or things to be seized – are not permitted  to retain any records of their work. They cannot use their own writing materials  or carry BlackBerries or iPhones in their own courtrooms, chambers or conference  rooms. They cannot retain copies of any documents they’ve signed. Only National  Security Agency staffers can keep these records.

Indeed, when Edward Snowden revealed a copy of an order signed by FISA court  Judge Roger Vinson – directing Verizon to turn over phone records of all of its  113,000,000 U.S. customers in direct and profound violation of the  individualized probable cause commanded by the Constitution – Vinson himself did  not have a copy of that order. Truly, this is the only court in the country in  which the judges keep no records of their rulings.

Judge  Napolitano’s brand new book explains how the government is taking your  constitutional freedoms and how you can fight back: “The Freedom Answer  Book”

At the same time Vinson signed that order, NSA staffers, in compliance with  their statutory obligations, told select members of Congress about it, and they,  too, were sworn to secrecy. Oregon Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden was so troubled  when he learned this – a terrible truth that he agreed not to reveal – that he  mused aloud that the Obama administration had a radical and terrifying  interpretation of certain national security statutes.

But he did more than muse about it. He asked Gen. James Clapper, the director  of national intelligence, who was under oath and at a public congressional  hearing, whether his spies were gathering data on millions of Americans. Clapper  said no. The general later acknowledged that his answer was untruthful, but he  claimed it was the “least untruthful” reply he could have given. This “least  untruthful” nonsense is not a recognized defense to the crime of perjury.

After we learned that the feds are spying on nearly all Americans, that they  possess our texts and emails and have access to our phone conversations, Gen.  Keith Alexander, who runs the NSA, was asked under oath whether his spies have  the ability to read emails and listen to telephone calls. He answered,  “No, we don’t have that authority.” Since the questioner – FBI agent  turned Rep. Mike Rogers – was in cahoots with the general in keeping Americans  in the dark about unconstitutional search warrants, there was no follow-up  question. In a serious public interrogation, a committee chair interested in the  truth would have directed the general to answer the question that was asked. 

Since that deft and misleading act, former NSA staffers have told Fox News  that the feds can read any email and listen to any phone call, and Alexander and  Rogers know that. So Alexander’s “no,” just like his boss’s “no,” was a lie at  worst and seriously misleading at best.

This is not an academic argument. The oath to tell the truth – “the whole  truth and nothing but the truth” – also makes those who intentionally mislead  Congress subject to prosecution for perjury.

President Obama is smarter than his generals. He smoothly told a friendly  interviewer and while not under oath that the feds are not listening to our  phone calls or reading our emails. He, of course, could not claim that they lack  the ability to do so, because we all now know that he knows they can.

These Snowden revelations continue to cast light on the feds when they prefer  darkness. Whatever one thinks of Snowden’s world-traveling odyssey to avoid the  inhumane treatment the feds visited upon Bradley Manning, another whistleblower  who exposed government treachery, he has awakened a giant. The giant is a public  that has had enough of violations of the Constitution and lies to cover them up.  The giant is fed up with menial politicians and their media allies demonizing  the messenger because his message embarrasses the government by revealing that  it is unworthy of caring for the Constitution.

Think about that: The very people in whose hands we have reposed the  Constitution for preservation, protection, defense and enforcement have  subverted it.

Snowden spoke the truth. Knowing what would likely befall him for his  truthful revelations and making them nevertheless was an act of heroism and  patriotism. Thomas Paine once reminded the framers that the highest duty of a  patriot is to protect his countrymen from their government. We need patriots to  do that now more than ever.

Saint Patrick may have been recognized for driving the snakes out of Ireland,  but this past week one of them slithered back in.  Obama is the personification  of an elapid that is now without the appendages some believe the serpent that  beguiled Eve in the Garden had possessed before it was made to slither upon the  ground.  That said, he has not shed the character of the personage incarnate in  that first serpent.

Obama took time out from his attendance at the G8 Summit in Enniskillen to  attack the Catholic Church and to deliberately attempt to undermine the  authority of Archbishop Gerhard Muller, prefect of the Congregation of the  Doctrine of the Faith.

But Obama sees Catholic schools as the bane to social stability and  antagonistic toward his worldview and social order.  He said, “If towns remain  divided – if Catholics have their schools and Protestants have theirs, if we  can’t see ourselves in one another and fear or resentment are allowed to harden  – that too encourages division and discourages cooperation.”

I am convinced that his words were carefully chosen and intended to undermine  the authority of the Catholic Church while providing him a thin veneer of  deniability. 

Obama is deeply resentful of the stand the Catholic Church has taken against  his health-care legislation.  And true to his petulant, narcissistic sociopathy,  he chose to lash out at the Catholic Church before the audience he did.

Obama had his educational purview shaped by the Marxist pedophile Frank  Marshall Davis, Saul Alinsky and Jeremiah Wright. That does not mean we should  allow his views to corrupt ours.

Catholic-school education remains one of the finest educations children can  receive.  I applaud the verbiage of the archbishop when he said, “Catholic  education provides young people with a wonderful opportunity to grow up with  Jesus.”   Obama would rather have children from grades K through 5 to grow up  with instruction about homosexuality.  He would rather have children grow up as  his daughters (according to the words from his mouth), learning about abortion  and birth control devices.  He wants children to grow up in failing schools with  poorly educated teachers providing even less instruction than they themselves  had received.

But for those of us who believe that the Word of God is final and that  Christ-centered education is critical, the words of the Apostle Paul in 1  Corinthians 15:33 are undeniable truth.  Paul wrote, “Be not deceived: evil  company corrupts good morals.”  Having children brainwashed into believing  they’re homosexuals and lesbians, emulating street thugs and graduating from  high school with minimal reading, math and comprehension skills is not what we  want for our progeny.

When it comes to education, more than ever the Word of God as written by the  Apostle Paul is not an option – it is a mandate for Godly living.  “Wherefore,  come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord. …” (2 Corinthians  6:17).

There is something else troubling about Obama.  He has made great pretense  pursuant to his Irish ancestry.  “The Trinity heritage company Eneclann …  [claims] that Obama’s Irish heritage is better documented than that of other  U.S. presidents including Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and even John F. Kennedy.”  (“Michelle Obama and daughters trace their Irish roots at Trinity College during  stay,” irishcentral.com, June 18, 2013)

It’s interesting that the Obamas would boast such heritage when – as  I wrote in a recent column – he believes, “If [black] nationalism could  create a strong and effective insularity, deliver on its promise of self  respect, then the hurt it might cause well-meaning whites, of the inner turmoil  it caused people like me, would be of little consequence.” (“Dreams From My  Father: A Story of Race And Inheritance,” page 284)  For those who miss the  exact point he was making, he was saying that he would sacrifice his white  mother and white grandparents on the altar of Black Nationalism.

I also wrote in the same article, “There resides within Obama a hatred of  white people that explains in part why he is so conflicted.  In his book  ‘Dreams,’ he opines that, as was the case with Malcolm X, if he were able ‘he  would purge the white blood from my veins’” (ppg. 101-102 paperback edition).   Obama by his own admission, referred to blacks who dated whites and blacks who  spoke without slang as ‘Uncle Toms.’  He by his own admission called black  students who associated with white students ‘half-breeds.’”

Two observations remain.  If blacks associating with whites make them  “half-breeds” what does his ancestry make him?  And if he, again by his own  admission, abhors his “white blood,” why does he feel the need to boast about  his Irish ancestry?

I must note that the Irish papers refused to call him the president, opting  instead to refer to him as “the American politician.”  Touché.