Mark down Connecticut’s Christopher Dodd as another senator who is not looking out for the best interests of the United States.
Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd opposes including a provision to audit the Federal Reserve in the Senate’s regulatory reform package, the retiring Connecticut Democrat told the Huffington Post Thursday.
“In my own life, in my own small way, I have tried to give back to this country that has given me so much,” she said. “See, that’s why I left a job at a big law firm for a career in public service,”— Michelle Obama.
We were wrong.
Michelle Obama, as we reported on July 7, is not served by twenty-two attendants who stand by to cater to her every whim.
She is served by twenty-six attendants, including a hair dresser and make-up artist.
The annual cost to taxpayers for such unprecedented attention is approximately $1,750,000 without taking into account the expense of the lavish benefit packages afforded to every attendant.
http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/13827
photo credit: AlexJohnson
The Pentagon has approached Congress to grant the Secretary of Defense the authority to post almost 400,000 military personnel throughout the United States in times of emergency or a major disaster.
This request has already occasioned a dispute with the nation’s governors. And it raises the prospect of U.S. military personnel patrolling the streets of the United States, in conflict with the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878.
In June, the U.S. Northern Command distributed a “Congressional Fact Sheet” entitled “Legislative Proposal for Activation of Federal Reserve Forces for Disasters.” That proposal would amend current law, thereby “authorizing the Secretary of Defense to order any unit or member of the Army Reserve, Air Force Reserve, Navy Reserve, and the Marine Corps Reserve, to active duty for a major disaster or emergency.”
Taken together, these reserve units would amount to “more than 379,000 military personnel in thousands of communities across the United States,” explained Paul Stockton, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense and America’s Security Affairs, in a letter to the National Governors Association, dated July 20.
http://www.progressive.org/wx081209b.html
photo credit: gregwest98
A Briton fighting extradition to the US for hacking into top-secret computers claims he was morally justified in breaking the law.
Gary McKinnon, 43, from Wood Green, north London, admits hacking into 97 US government computers, including Nasa’s and Pentagon’s, during 2001 and 2002.
He told the BBC he was on a “moral crusade” to prove US intelligence had found an alien craft run on clean fuel.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8172842.stm
photo credit: new_illuminati1
In an address to the Council on Foreign Relations on July 15th, 2009, Hillary Clinton said the following:
“Thank you very much, Richard, and I am delighted to be here in these new headquarters. I have been often to, I guess, the mother ship in New York City, but it’s good to have an outpost of the Council right here down the street from the State Department. We get a lot of advice from the Council, so this will mean I won’t have as far to go to be told what we should be doing and how we should think about the future.”
http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2009a/july/126071.htm
photo credit: U.S. Department of State
The Obama administration is considering expanding the United States army in order to ease the strain from wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Robert Gates, the Pentagon chief, has been discussing the idea, proposed by Senator Joe Lieberman, a hawkish independent, with senior military officers.
Geoff Morrell, the Pentagon press secretary, said that the mooted expansion for the current strength of 547,000 to 577,000 would be designed “to get them through what is still a stressful period as we draw down in Iraq and continue to plus-up in Afghanistan.”
Antiterrorism training materials used by the Department of Defense teach that public protests should be regarded as “low level terrorism,” according to a letter of complaint sent to the department today by the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California.
“Teaching employees that dissent on issues of public concern is something to be feared, rather than encouraged, is a dangerously counterproductive use of scarce security resources, making us less safe as a democracy,” Northern California ACLU Staff Attorney Ann Brick and ACLU Washington National Security Policy Council Michael German wrote in the letter to Gail McGinn, Acting Undersecretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness.
“DoD employees cannot accomplish their mission of protecting our nation and its values unless they understand that those values encompass the right to criticize our government through protest activities,” they wrote. “It is imperative that they are taught the difference between political, religious or social activism and terrorism.”
Among the multiple-choice questions included in its Level 1 Antiterrorism Awareness training course – an annual training requirement for all DoD personnel that is fulfilled through web-based instruction – the DoD asks the following: “Which of the following is an example of low-level terrorist activity?” To answer correctly, the examinee must select “protests.” The ACLU wants that changed immediately, and wants corrective information sent to all DoD employees who received the training.
http://www.ibabuzz.com/politics/2009/06/10/defense-department-sees-protests-as-terrorism/
Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor last year accepted an invitation to join the Belizean Grove, an elite but little-known women’s-only group.
Founded nearly 10 years ago as the female answer to the Bohemian Grove — a secretive all-male club whose members have included former U.S. presidents and top business leaders — the Belizean Grove has about 125 members, including Army generals, Wall Street executives and former ambassadors.
Sotomayor’s membership in the New York-based group became public Thursday afternoon in a questionnaire submitted to the Senate Judiciary Committee.
The former head of MI6 has hit out at what he called ’striking and disturbing’ invasions of privacy by the Big Brother state - claiming some are an ‘abuse’ of the law.
Sir Richard Dearlove, who led the Secret Intelligence Service from 1999 to 2004, publicly attacked the ‘loss of liberties’ caused by expanding surveillance powers, and described some police operations as ‘mind-boggling.’
The former spy chief added his voice to a growing number of high-profile critics warning that individual freedom and privacy are being seriously eroded by the British Government’s disproportionate efforts to guard against terrorism.
photo credit: Alex France
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to deduce that the banking and financial services industry has an outsized influence in Congress.
Wells Fargo, Citigroup and JP Morgan Chase each got bailouts of $25 billion in government bailouts last year. Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs got $10 billion apiece. And AIG, the mammoth insurer that lost billions in bad derivatives bets, has sucked in more than $170 billion.
Meanwhile, President Barack Obama is reticent about bailing out an American state — California.
Collin Peterson, Democratic Chairman of the Agriculture Committee, says he knows who to blame.
“The banks run the place,” Peterson told the New York Times in Monday’s editions. “I will tell you what the problem is — they give three times more money than the next biggest group. It’s huge the amount of money they put into politics.”
Peterson has introduced a bill to regulate derivatives trading — the pesky financial instruments that nearly brought down the US financial system. Derivatives involve writing insurance on various complex financial transactions, such as providing insurance to investors in the event of massive defaults on home mortgages.
But he says that Republicans have watered down his bill. He wants derivatives trading to take place on public exchanges — much like the New York Stock Exchange — rather than through private clearinghouses, which are managed by banks.
http://www.prisonplanet.com/banks-run-congress-top-democrat-says.html
photo credit: dianaoctavius
President Barack Obama announced Tuesday he is combining White House staffs dealing with international and homeland security, predicting the change will make Americans safer.
Obama also is creating a new office intended to communicate more effectively with other countries about U.S. security policy.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hDx-A4I_3ZmQfkH09Gt0svkaMdKwD98E60580
(c) 2009 Breaking Truth.
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