Sen. Rand Paul on PATRIOT Act Amendments

Lieberman ‘Will Have Questions’ About Awlaki’s Post-9/11 Pentagon Dinner

Lieberman ‘Will Have Questions’ About Awlaki’s Post-9/11 Pentagon Dinner; Aaron Dykes; InfoWars.com

Leading neocon in Congress, Sen. Joe Lieberman, responded to questions and indicated that he would investigate why al Qaeda’s now #1 operative, Anwar al-Awlaki, was invited to an official Department of Defense meeting in the wake of the September 11 attacks.

The questions were raised by Luke Rudkowski, We Are Change.org founder and contributor for RT’s Adam vs. The Man, who confronted the senator, citing reports in both Fox News and CBS News.

Lieberman initially dismissed the questions, saying he’d be ‘surprised’ by such reports, but later stated that he “will look into that.” However, Sen. Lieberman suggested that the Pentagon likely did not know who he was ‘at the time.’ This notion is debunked, however, as the FBI repeatedly flagged Awlaki for links to at least three hijackers in the first week after 9/11.

“Well, I’m going to have some questions about that,” Lieberman said, extending his impromptu remarks. “He’s a target of interest. We know that he’s been involved in a series of attacks on our homeland. Of course, he communicates in English on his website. So he’s a particular danger in terms of radicalizing people here in the U.S. who are going to jihadist websites.”

Even Darker Days in the US

Supreme Court affirms police action in Kentucky drug case; The Washington Post

The Supreme Court on Monday gave law enforcement officers new authority to enter a home without a warrant when they have reason to believe that drug evidence is being destroyed.


The court ruled 8 to 1 that Kentucky police who smelled marijuana at an apartment door, knocked loudly and announced themselves, and then kicked in the door when they thought the drugs were being destroyed did nothing wrong.


Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., writing for the majority, said the conduct of the police before they entered the apartment was “entirely lawful” and neither violates nor threatens a person’s Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable searches or seizures.


Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg strongly disagreed.


“The court today arms the police with a way routinely to dishonor the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement in drug cases,” Ginsburg wrote. “In lieu of presenting their evidence to a neutral magistrate, police officers may now knock, listen, then break the door down, nevermind that they had ample time to obtain a warrant.”

Comment: I'm not going to engage in the left verses right paradigm argument taking place on other blog sites. The simple fact is this, while it's the Republican's boy Alito slicing the dagger deep into the 4th Amendment, the Left's girl, Bader Ginsburg, has taken her turn before. They all have. There are no Constitutionalists on the Supreme Court.

But if you would like to know how the 17th Amendment caused this decision, read "The Irony of Populism: The Republican Shift and the Inevitability of American Aristocracy," by Zvi S. Rosen. Mr. Rosen explains clearly how the courts became the activist element they are today, which resulted from the aristocratic role that was lost in the Senate in 1913, and in the vacuum was filled by the courts.

Dark Days in Indiana

Court: No right to resist illegal cop entry into home; NWI.Com

Note: I moved away from our 17th Amendment focus and instead am highlighting a very dark ruling coming out of the Indiana Supreme Court.

Overturning a common law dating back to the English Magna Carta of 1215, the Indiana Supreme Court ruled Thursday that Hoosiers have no right to resist unlawful police entry into their homes.


In a 3-2 decision, Justice Steven David writing for the court said if a police officer wants to enter a home for any reason or no reason at all, a homeowner cannot do anything to block the officer's entry.


"We believe ... a right to resist an unlawful police entry into a home is against public policy and is incompatible with modern Fourth Amendment jurisprudence," David said. "We also find that allowing resistance unnecessarily escalates the level of violence and therefore the risk of injuries to all parties involved without preventing the arrest." ...


This is the second major Indiana Supreme Court ruling this week involving police entry into a home.


On Tuesday, the court said police serving a warrant may enter a home without knocking if officers decide circumstances justify it. Prior to that ruling, police serving a warrant would have to obtain a judge's permission to enter without knocking.


Read the whole article here.

New Bill To Strip Senate Of Its Oversight Function

This is horrifying. As HotAir points out,

More than 200 appointed positions would be excused from the advise-and-consent requirement by S. 679. Among them are the following:

The Agriculture Department’s Commodities Credit Board
Agriculture’s Rural Utilities Service Administrator
The Chief Scientist of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
The Commerce Department’s Assistant Secretary for Communications and Information
The Defense Department’s Assistant Secretary for Networks and Information Integration
The Assistant Secretaries of each of the armed services for financial management
The Education Department’s Assistant Secretary for Management
Education’s Commissioner of Education Statistics
All 7 of the Assistant Secretaries of Energy
The Department of Homeland Security’s Director of the Office of Domestic Preparedness
Homeland Security’s Assistant Administrator of FEMA for Grant Programs
The Department of the Treasury’s Assistant Secretary for Management and Chief Financial Officer
The Treasurer of the United States
Director of the US Mint
The Governors and Alternate Governors of the International Monetary Fund and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (amending Section 3 of the Bretton Woods Agreements Act)
Governor and Alternate Governor of the Asian Development Bank (amending Section 3(a) of the Asian Development Bank Act)
Governor and Alternate Governor of the African Development Fund (amending Section 203(a) of the African Development Fund Act)
Managing Director of the Corporation for National and Community Service
The Office of Management and Budget’s Controller, Office of Federal Financial Management
Director of the Community Development Financial Institution Fund

That’s just a sample – and it represents an awful lot of policy, money-handling, and benefit-management, with your tax dollars. The Senate proposes to let the president appoint people to these positions without explicit prior oversight. The sheer possibilities for graft and bribery here are colossal – and that’s before we even get to the possibilities for covert policy implementation.

Of course, it's supported by Republicans and Democrats. The list includes Sen. Schumer (D-NY), Sen. Alexander (R-TN), Sen. Reid (D-NV), Sen. McConnell (R-KY), Sen. Lieberman (I-CT), Sen. Collins (R-ME), Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA), Sen. Bingaman (D-NM), Sen. Blumenthal (D-CT), Sen. Durbin (D-IL), Sen. Johanns (R-NE), Sen. Lugar (R-IN), Sen. Reed (D-RI), Sen. Whitehouse (D-RI), Sen. Carper (D-DE), and Sen. Kyl (R-AZ).

That's sixteen Senators who've signed on to this bill who don't want to do their jobs. We need to repeal the 17th Amendment and get these lunatics out of the Senate before they destroy this country.

Ethics Committee Refers Ensign Case to Justice

Senate Panel and Justice Dept Proceed with Investigating Ex Senator Ensign

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/ethics-committee-to-unveil-ensign-probe-findings-in-senate-speeches/2011/05/12/AFhRvA0G_story.html

http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2011/may/12/senate-ethics-panel-update-john-ensign-investigati/

"These findings are so disturbing that she [special counsel Carol Elder Bruce] believed that Sen. Ensign’s ... wrongdoing would have been substantial enough to warrant the consideration of expulsion, the harshest penalty available to the committee and the Senate," Boxer said. The findings explained why she had released a statement last month calling Ensign's decision to step down as appropriate.

Comment: Throwing around the "E" word well after the fact, are we?

Even in Death, Bin Laden Exacts Multitrillion-Dollar Toll on U.S. Taxpayer

Even in Death, Bin Laden Exacts Multitrillion-Dollar Toll on U.S. Taxpayer; Bloomberg

Even in death, Osama bin Laden will be taking revenge on American taxpayers for years to come.


The U.S. government spent $2 trillion combating bin Laden over the past decade, more than 20 percent of the nation’s $9.68 trillion public debt. That money paid for wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as additional military, intelligence and homeland security spending above pre-Sept. 11 trends, according to a Bloomberg analysis.


This year alone, taxpayers are spending more than $45 billion in interest on the money borrowed to battle al-Qaeda, the analysis shows.


The financial bleeding won’t stop with bin Laden’s demise. One of every four dollars in red ink the U.S. expects to incur in the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1 will result from $285 billion in annual spending triggered by the terrorist scion of a wealthy Saudi family. ...


As the U.S. celebrates the demise of the number-one figure on the FBI’s “Most Wanted Terrorists” list, the future spending that can be attributed to bin Laden far exceeds direct war costs. Gordon Adams, who oversaw national security budgeting at the Office of Management and Budget during the Clinton administration, said roughly $125 billion of the Pentagon’s $553 billion fiscal 2012 budget request represents unnecessary spending justified by claims of war-time need.


“That’s a tax which would not have happened without Osama bin Laden,” Adams, a professor at American University’s School of International Service, said in a telephone interview.


The bin Laden tax has been levied every year for the past decade. Pentagon spending -- excluding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan -- between fiscal 2002 and today was $742 billion higher than the Congressional Budget Office’s January 2001 baseline forecast.


Amid a wartime atmosphere, military spending requests faced less scrutiny both within the Pentagon and in Congress, Adams said. Programs launched with modest initial funding often live on, their costs ballooning with the years. ....




Read the rest here.

Comment: Without a place at the table the states have no voice or power to turn this around. Special interests groups will continue to lobby Congress and get what they want even if it means ruining our economy and our actual defense. Unless the 17th is repealed and the states' place is restored the forces President Eisenhower warned us about will continue to win over the American people.

Spineless Parasites

Spineless Parasites; The Patriot Post; By Michael Oberndorf

If there is anyone left out there who still doesn't get why the Tea Parties are pretty much done with the Republican Party, a recent Senate vote should finally bring on the Great Epiphany. In a cloture vote this week, 11 senators voted with Democrats, allowing the Marxist/neo-fascist Democrats to approve the nomination by Obama-Soetoro of a former director of Planned Parenthood to a federal district court judgeship (http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/11-republican-senators-permit-former-pla). It seems giving the president the prerogative of an up-or-down vote on his judicial nominees -- something that Democrats feel no compunction to do for Republicans -- is more important to these 11 than keeping an activist, leftist abortionist off the federal bench. And then, to add insult to injury, these arrogant drains on the treasury had the nerve to, after voting for cloture, and thus knowingly allowing the Democrat majority to win the nomination vote, all vote against the nomination, so they could tell the rubes back home, "See, I really am a conservative!"


Just so you can vote against these spineless parasites come next election time, they are: Lamar Alexander (R-TN), Scott Brown (R-MA), Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe both (R-ME), Saxby Chambliss and Johnny Isakson both (R-GA), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Mark Kirk (R-IL), John McCain (R-AZ), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) and John Thune (R-SD).


Unfortunately, Republicans have not been so concerned with their role in advise and consent on other nominees, like the 39 so-called "czars," outrageous radicals, unconstitutionally appointed by Obama-Soetoro, without even a nod to the Senate. An occasional mumbled complaint from Senate Republicans about being blatantly ignored surfaces, but is played by the media to make the Senate Republicans look like the ineffectual, bumbling morons far too many of them actually are. One could feel real compassion for these intellectually challenged oafs, if not for the fact that they are allowing our country to be taken apart, piece by piece, right in front of our eyes.

Read the rest here.

Comment: I have come to the belief that in 1913 the US Senate became the legislative arm of the Executive Branch, and the actions described above only reconfirm this belief.

SEN Schumer's NO WALK LIST

AbsurbNewsNetwork.con:

WASHINGTON: SEN Chuck Schumer (D-NY) will announce this week in conjunction with officials at the Office of Homelessland Security a new plan to keep America safe called the NO WALK LIST.  Would-be terrorists, such as libertarians and conservatives, will be prevented from using government sidewalks, crosswalks and running trails.

Schumer said, "I think Americans need to know that terrorists walk all the time and preventing them from doing this will dramatically help the War on Panic."

S.350 - Environmental Crimes Enforcement Act of 2011

S.350 - Environmental Crimes Enforcement Act of 2011; Senator Patrick Leahy D-VT

Environmental Crimes Enforcement Act of 2011 - Directs the United States Sentencing Commission to review and amend the Federal Sentencing Guidelines and policy statements applicable to persons convicted of offenses under the Federal Water Pollution Control Act (commonly known as the Clean Water Act) to reflect the intent of Congress that penalties for such offenses be increased to appropriately account for the actual harm to the public and the environment from such offenses. Amends the federal criminal code to require mandatory restitution to victims of crimes under such Act.

Read the complete bill here.

Comment: This bill should be opposed. This bill will make the lawyers even richer, cause more businesses to leave the United States, further offshore mega corporate consolidation, and in the end make Americans poorer.

One other thing, it should put more campaign contributions in the back pocket of the Democrat Party from the lawyers too, who already give record donations to their number one party. Leahy is too transparent in his actions.

When are Americans going to wake up to this sort of manipulation of legislation? This will not help the environment or the citizen, only ambulance chasing lawyers and the Environmental Defense Fund and World Wildlife Fund who make their money in courts!

Yes! We need to repeal the 17th Amendment!

I found this comment posted on the Huffington Post by commenter BoudiccaBlanc:

“Yes!

We need to repeal the 17th Amendment (direct election of US Senators)

Back in 1910, it seemed like a "democrati ­c" idea but the Senators are "owned" by the lobbyists who fund their campaigns. "The people" have little or no power over them.

Also, the 17th Amendment upset the balance of power between the people, the states and the executive. Too much power is flowing to the executive at the expense of the people and the states.”

Comment: I see more comments on the Huffington Post calling for the repeal of the 17th than any other online publication. While I know that many of these folks might be (small L) libertarians that are commenting, I am beginning to believe word is spreading to the left. Let's keep on keepin' on folks and get the word out there. Repealing the 17th is a win for every American.

Opportunities multiply as they are seized.
Sun Tzu

TSA looking for poop bombs?

From Infowars.com:

Comment: The stupidity flows from this picture like water going over Niagara Falls!

Schumer Calls for Train Station Gestapo Zones

Schumer Calls for Train Station Gestapo Zones; Kurt Nimmo; InfoWars

New York senator Charles Schumer is calling for no ride lists for Amtrak similar to the no fly lists currently used in the nation’s airports.

“Anyone, even a member of al-Qaida could purchase a train ticket and board an Amtrak train without so much as a question asked,” Schumer said. “So that’s why I’m calling for the creation of an Amtrak no ride list. That would take the secure flight program and apply it to Amtrak trains.”

Schumer issued his demand after the Pentagon supposedly gleaned information about terrorists attacks from Osama bin Laden’s home in Pakistan. The Department of Homeland Security sent an advisory to law enforcement officials around the country stating al-Qaeda discussed tampering with an unspecified U.S. rail track so that a train would fall off the track at a valley or a bridge.

Protecting the rail system in the United States would be virtually impossible. There is 140,000 miles of freight and passenger track in the country, not counting subway systems and light rail. In addition, there are 3,100 train and transit stations. There were over four billion passenger rail trips last year.

Last year Amtrak police doubled their bomb-sniffing dog teams, randomly screened thousands of bags and periodically sent “surges” of militarized cops into train stations, Amtrak police chief John O’Connor told Newsday.

In October of 2002, the Electronic Privacy Information Center filed a FOIA to obtain information about the then secret no-fly list compiled by the Transportation Security Administration under the Department of Homeland Security. When the TSA failed to respond to EPIC’s request, EPIC filed suit in December 2002.

Read the rest here.

Comment: How long are we going to sit back as this macabre theater continues to play out?

Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex... It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.
Albert Einstein

Former Senators to Get Academy Award Nomination For Acting

It was announced today by the Hollywood movie elite that three former US Senators are going to be nominated for the Academy Award for acting. Can you point out the former US Senators?

U.S. Senate: Vote Coming on Far Left McConnell to Federal Court

Liberty Alerts, Gun Owners of America

– Vote May Come as Early as Wednesday


Any doubt that President Obama is more anti-Second Amendment than perhaps any president in history can be laid to rest in the light of the characters he has nominated to the federal judiciary.


Obama’s latest nominee for a U.S. District Court post is John McConnell, a Providence, Rhode Island trial lawyer. In terms of being an activist for the far left, McConnell is right in line with Obama’s Supreme Court picks—Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.


It comes as no surprise that leading gun control proponents in the Senate support McConnell: he has contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to liberal, anti-gun candidates over the years, including Obama and Rhode Island’s two senators.


In fact, it appears that McConnell’s chief qualifications for this post are his generous contributions to liberal candidates and his long relationship with former Rhode Island attorney general and current Senator, Sheldon Whitehouse.


However, even in a world where political backers are often selected to fill openings for judgeships and other federal jobs, the size of McConnell’s contributions sets him apart from other nominees. In 2008 alone, for example, McConnell gave over $120,000 to Democrat candidates.

U.S. SEC, Justice Department Probe Goldman Findings After Senate Referral

U.S. SEC, Justice Department Probe Goldman Findings After Senate Referral; Bloomberg

U.S. senators formally referred to the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission an investigative report that found Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) misled clients about mortgage-linked securities.


Senators Carl Levin of Michigan, the Democratic chairman of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, the senior Republican, signed a letter asking the agencies to examine the panel’s report, Levin said in an interview yesterday. The results of the investigation, made public by the committee April 13, lay much of the blame for the credit crisis on Wall Street banks that earned billions by enticing clients to buy the risky bond deals.


“If something comes up that needs to be reviewed by some agency, it gets referred,” said Levin. “That’s the way we do it.”


The scrutiny is a setback for Goldman Sachs, which hired lawyers, lobbyists and public relations specialists to monitor the two-year Senate probe and tamp down any controversy that arose from the subcommittee’s conclusions. ...


Read the rest here.

Comment: It's highly unlikely anything will be done to correct the questionable and illegal activities of Goldman Sachs because both the Legislative and Executive Branches are too closely tied to its money and executives, and this is why there has been no debate surrounding this issue. Moreover, the average American citizen neither has the basic understanding of the issues nor desire to examine the truth surrounding the financial corruption, particularly since 2008, because the media is partially protecting this sector failing to fulfill its "democratic role" to inform the public. The media is also as equally ignorant of the situation as the American citizen because they have not taken the time to investigate the issues any deeper than what they are fed by the banking sector or the political class.

Yet when we look at the roots of the problem our investigation leads right to one significant point in US History, the year of 1913. In that year our Congress, our elected officials, handed over our wealth, sovereign power and government to the banking elites. They made it possible to take our wealth through our labor, they divorced the Senate from Congress making it an extension of the ruling Executive Branch and in doing so laid the ground work for the Executive Branch to become despotic and at the same time making the people's "house" impotent, and gave control of our money supply to private corporations that print our money which they then charge us interest to use through a centralized fascist banking system.

So what should be done to correct the ills of the last 100 years and particularly the current financial problems that are causing gas to go over $4.00 a gallon and a housing mortgage crisis of epic proportion, just to name a few? Well certainly tinkering with the financial system by creating useless consumer protection departments in the US Government or adding layers of new regulations that further insulates the banking sector won't do any good. Only something as radical as what took place in 1913 will, and that is the repeal of the three insidious acts (16th and 17th Amendments and Federal Reserve Act) that have brought America to its knees.

By repealing these three acts, the 16th and 17th Amendments and Federal Reserve Act, America's wealth, citizen sovereignty, and the Legislative and Executive Branches are restored, and at the same time the fascist influence of the banking industry will be eliminated.

The time has come for the ignorance to end. We need to rise up and demand our government was restored by repealing these acts. If not we will only be chained to more debt, corruption and a very bleak future.

"History records that the money changers have used every form of abuse, intrigue, deceit, and violent means possible to maintain their control over governments by controlling money and it's issuance."
— James Madison

Ron Paul Money Bomb Today!

I'm breaking away from my normal blog focus to ask our readers to consider supporting this money bomb today. Ron Paul is the only candidate that will get the authentic message of liberty, freedom and limited government out to America. Please consider supporting this noble effort. (Click here for more information.)

Podcast: Duffy on the Senate Republican’s Job Plan

Duffy on the Senate Republican’s Job Plan; Repeal the 17th Amendment Radio

Host Brian Duffy discussed the Senate Republicans latest plan titled “Jobs Plan; An outline for creating American jobs and prosperity,” which was recently unveiled by Senator Rob Portman of Ohio.

The podcast.


Readings and Links related to this podcast:

• Senate Republican Jobs Plan; An outline for creating American jobs and prosperity
• Portman unveils U.S. Senate Republican 'Jobs Plan' 
• US Senate Republicans
•  Senator Rob Portman (R-OH)

Portman Unveils the “More is Less Plan”

I took some time last evening to look over the US Senate Republican’s paper titled, “Jobs Plan; An outline for creating American jobs and prosperity,” unveiled by Senator Rob Portman, and it can be summed up as “more is less.” The plan is a tinkering and retuning of the very things that have gotten our country into deep trouble in the first place; too much government intervention. This is not a way out of the hole but rather it digs us in deeper. Essentially it is a collection of words on the screen that will never be enacted, and hopefully not.

Portman like most of his colleagues in the US Senate miss a couple of simple points; nothing is going to change our current downward spiral until the Federal Reserve is eliminated and Congress takes their constitutional responsibility for the printing of our money, two the income tax is eliminated and we return to the means of taxation proscribed by the founders that would support the national and federal governments “limited” operations, and three, make disciplined spending part of the legislative process rather than something to discuss in front of the camera.

However, the single biggest thing that can be done to change our current downward spiral does not lie in Congress, but with the American people. We need to change and become responsible citizens. We need to bury the old statist beliefs that somehow big centralized governments can take care of all of our needs. Americans must finally realize this is a huge lie.

Also, and most important, we must become responsible about who we select to manage our governmental affairs. We have elected a group of people, and Portman is one of them, who believes it is their birthright to tell us what we can and cannot do, who knows best how to run our lives, and who can take any amount of our money that we create through our labor and spend it anyway they see fit, all the while spinning this “us verses them” mentality that is promoted by the corrupt two party system trap. We have the power to change our government and create our own prosperity, not through some “bought and paid for” political class actors, but through the selection of people the will carry out our will, not some special interest group’s. The power rest in us; it’s only for us now to realize that we have it.

Rand vs. Rubio

Rand vs. Rubio; The American Spectator

The Tea Party scored its two biggest triumphs last year with the election of Sens. Marco Rubio and Rand Paul. Both were discouraged from running by leaders of their own party. Both had to overcome the determined opposition of the Republican establishment to make it through their primaries in the first place.


Paul and Rubio were both uncharacteristically honest about the need for entitlement reform, going so far as to contemplate means-testing Social Security even though they needed the votes of senior citizens. Paul was running in Kentucky, where about 60 percent of the registered voters are Democrats. Rubio stood for election in Florida, a retirement mecca.


Both won in November by double-digit margins and have pressured Republican leaders from the right on spending now that they are in office. Rubio has railed against increasing the federal government's debt ceiling. Paul has proposed his own five-year plan to balance the budget and has chastised Paul Ryan for not going far enough. Both senators voted against the budget deal struck by President Obama and House Republicans.


Their similarities stop at the water's edge. True, when Obama decided to wage "kinetic military action" against Libya, both senators recognized it for what it was -- war -- and demanded that Congress authorize the intervention. But Paul and Rubio diverged sharply from there. ...


Read the rest there.

Moronic Sen. Nelson (D-FL) Ties Bin Laden Operation to Voting Bill

Nelson ties bin Laden operation to voting bill; Politico

Florida Sen. Bill Nelson tied the U.S. operation killing Osama bin Laden to his opposition to a controversial election legislative package in Florida.

Nelson had a previously scheduled presser to rail against a state bill that he says would make it more difficult to cast ballots early in the Sunshine State.

But he leveraged the news about bin Laden and the "fight for democracy" to pivot to his original point.

“Now in an effort of 10 years, ever since Sept. 11, 2001, protecting our democracy, protecting us from those that would do harm and who provide this protection because our democracy is unique, we find ourselves gathered in our Capitol city of this state again here to protect our democracy,” he said. “Now we are here for another reason of protecting our democracy and that is to keep the right to vote. Don’t make it harder to vote. Don’t make it harder to register to vote and don’t make it harder to try to count your vote. And that’s what we have in front of the legislature right now.”

Comment: There's no sense in posting any other comment than this: Nelson is one of hundred reasons to repeal the 17th Amendment.

Senator: US borrowing a 'Ponzi scheme'

Senator: US borrowing a 'Ponzi scheme;' The Hill

Sen. Jim Risch (R-Idaho) on Thursday called the way the U.S. borrows money a “Ponzi scheme” that could soon throw the country into financial turmoil.

And he said the U.S. is no longer in control of its own future as a result.

"It took time for this to set in," said Risch, according to northern Idaho’s Coeur d'Alene Press. "What I realized was this country is no longer the master of its own destiny."

Risch described in detail how the Bureau of Public Debt, through the U.S. Department of Treasury, goes about borrowing the $4 billion to $5 billion a day needed to keep the federal government running.

"There's no money," said Risch. "It's a Ponzi scheme."

Read the rest here.

Comment: Baaaa baaaa... but we got Bin Laden... baaa baaa...

McCain Silent on Torture Techniques That Supposedly Led To OBL Operation

Enhanced Interrogations Led to Bin Laden Kill: Senator: CNBC

A member of the US Senate Intelligence Committee has told CNBC that the death of Osama Bin Laden was a direct result of enhanced interrogations.

“The information that eventually led us to this compound was the direct result of enhanced interrogations; one can conclude if we had not used enhanced interrogations, we would not have come to yesterday's action,” US Senator Richard Burr in a telephone interview with CNBC.

Comment: Where is Senator McCain to decry torture now? Well there's no need to denounce something that isn't real to begin with, right.

Really...Bin Laden buried at sea...I'm a Believer!

Bin Laden buried at sea; AP

A U.S. official says Osama bin Laden has been buried at sea.

After bin Laden was killed in a raid by U.S. forces in Pakistan, senior administration officials said the body would be handled according to Islamic practice and tradition. That practice calls for the body to be buried within 24 hours, the official said. Finding a country willing to accept the remains of the world's most wanted terrorist would have been difficult, the official said. So the U.S. decided to bury him at sea.

The official, who spoke Monday on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive national security matters, did not immediately say where that occurred.

Comment: There's nothing going on here, keep moving folks, nothing going here...

Comment 2: Emmanuel Goldstein