Tales From Your Police State: DoD Gives Itself the Right to Use Military Force to Support Police

“In Instruction 3025.21, filed 27 February 2013, the Department of Defense decided to give itself the power to assist civilian police authorities militarily during periods of extreme emergency of civil unrest. The memo states that”

Federal military commanders have the authority, in extraordinary emergency circumstances where prior authorization by the President is impossible and duly constituted local authorities are unable to control the situation, to engage temporarily in activities that are necessary…to quell large-scale, unexpected civil disturbances…

“Excuse me, but if the president is indisposed, doesn’t the military have to go through the vice president, the secretary of defense, and — before all of that — doesn’t it require the authorization of the Congress, as per the 1807 Insurrection Act? (Yes…yes, it does.) Furthermore, wasn’t the military barred from military action in support of police due to massive corruption and civil rights violations during Reconstruction? (Yes…yes, it was: Posse Comitatus.)”

Via Scott Rhymer

AP president rips ‘unconstitutional’ Obama administration investigation

“On this weekend’s broadcast of CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Associated Press President and CEO Gary Pruitt ripped the Obama’s administration’s Justice Department for the tactics it used in its investigation into leaks about a foiled terror plot in Yemen and the use of the Stuxnet virus against Iran’s nuclear program.

According to Pruitt, the government investigation overstepped by casting such a broad net under a veil of secrecy.

“Under their own rules, they are required to narrow this request as narrowly as possible so as to not tread upon the First Amendment,” Pruitt said. “And yet they had a broad, sweeping collection, and they did it secretly. Their rules require them to come to us first, but in this case they didn’t, claiming an exception, saying that if they had it would have posed a substantial threat to their investigation. But they have not explained why it would and we can’t understand why it would.””

Via The Daily Caller

At Cincinnati IRS office, surprise over claims of partisan villainy

“The fog of scandal hangs over a boxy, modernist, 10-story building that looks like a monument to paperwork. Shrubs and chain smokers flank its front entrance here on Main Street, in the heart of downtown. Every day, 2,000 employees go to work at various federal agencies in this John F. Kennedy-era structure, whose chief tenant is the Internal Revenue Service — which is having just about the worst week an agency can have.

Up on the fourth floor — with its gray linoleum, low ceilings and fluorescent lights, file carts heaped with manila envelopes, its keypad-coded doors labeled 4-022 (the file room) and 4-034 (the supply room) — the determinations unit of the IRS’s ­exempt-organizations office is at work.”

““We’re not political,’’ said one determinations staffer in khakis as he left work late Tuesday afternoon. “We people on the local level are doing what we are supposed to do. . . . That’s why there are so many people here who are flustered. Everything comes from the top. We don’t have any authority to make those decisions without someone signing off on them. There has to be a directive.”“

Via Washington Post

Top Obama Adviser Dan Pfeiffer: “Law Is Irrelevant” On IRS Scandal…

IRS demanded Facebook posts, book titles, names of donors during politically-motivated targeting of non-profits

“The scandal surrounding the Internal Revenue Service’s illicit, politically-motivated scrutiny of conservative, patriot, Tea Party and pro-Israel groups continues to expand daily, as more information is learned about its depth, breadth and scope.

In addition to delaying tax-exempt status for these organizations, the IRS also demanded donor rolls and printouts of Facebook posts to determine who was contributing to the organizations and what sort of information they were putting out in regards to the current administration, and what books people were reading, according to a Politico review of documents from 11 of the targeted groups.

That review “shows the agency wanted to know everything – in some cases, it even seemed curious what members were thinking,” the website reported. “The review included interviews with groups or their representatives from Hawaii, New Mexico, Ohio, Texas and elsewhere.”"

Via Natural News

Gun control advocates now admit: IRS intimidation scandal proves Second Amendment needed to stop government tyranny

” In the face of the outrageous IRS intimidation scandal now sweeping across America, gun control advocates are changing their tune. All of a sudden, the idea that the federal government could engage in tyranny against the People of America is no longer a “conspiracy theory.” It’s historical fact right in your face thanks to all the recent scandals now bursting onto the scene: IRS intimidation, secret targeting of non-profit groups for possible “thought crimes,” the Department of Justice seizing AP phone records and so on.

Just which liberals are changing their minds on all this? Piers Morgan, for starters. The man who once called Larry Pratt of Gun Owners of America a “very stupid man” on live national television is suddenly reversing course. Here’s what Morgan now says in the wake of the IRS intimidation scandal:

“I’ve had some of the pro-gun lobbyists on here saying to me, well the reason we need to be armed is because of tyranny from our own government, and I’ve always laughed at them. I’ve always said don’t be so ridiculous. Your government won’t turn itself on you. But actually when you look at this [IRS scandal]… actually this is vaguely tyrannical behavior by the American government. I think what the IRS did is bordering on tyrannical behavior, I think what the Department of Justice has done to the Associated Press is bordering on tyrannical behavior.”"

Via Natural News

Storm Clouds Gathering

“Government is bad for personal freedom. That argument is premised upon the truism that everything government does interferes with freedom because it either prohibits or compels. Everything it owns it has taken from others. Much of what it says is divorced from the truth. President Obama, like President George W. Bush, has argued that his first job is to keep America safe, and if he impairs personal freedom in the process, that is a small price to pay for safety. Many of my colleagues in the media on the left and right have bought this argument, notwithstanding its fallacies.

Until now.

This past week, we learned that the IRS has targeted for additional scrutiny the tax exemption applications of groups with whose messages it disagrees. We also learned that the Department of Justice obtained the personal telephone records of hundreds of reporters and editors employed by the Associated Press without a search warrant issued by a judge. And during this past week we learned that the White House, the Department of State and the CIA all engaged in a conspiracy of disinformation so that the official version of events of what caused the murders of four Americans at our consulate in Benghazi, Libya, would not impair Obama’s re-election campaign in 2012.

The common threads in all of this government secrecy and lying are a general rejection of government’s moral obligation to tell the truth, a disturbing yet brazen willingness to evade and avoid the restrictions the Constitution has deliberately built around government, and a glib admission that the government can do as it pleases so long as it can politically get away with it.”

Via Lew Rockwell

MILLER: U.N. threatens to override Second Amendment

“While President Obama lost a round this week on his gun-control agenda in Congress, he’s making up for lost ground by pursuing a broader gun grab at the United Nations.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said there was not enough support to give Sen. Dianne Feinstein the stand-alone vote she demands on the “assault weapon” ban, but the upper chamber may soon be the deciding factor in whether the United States ratifies an international treaty that could strip Americans of their Second Amendment rights. “

Via Washington Times

The trial of Vernon Hershberger, another raw milk farmer facing prison time for producing real food

“Just a few days remain before Amish raw milk farmer Vernon Hershberger of Wisconsin faces a corrupt legal system with an ingrown vendetta against the production and distribution of real food. Beginning on May 20, 2013, at 8 a.m., Vernon, who has been falsely accused of committing numerous food distribution violations in his home state, will stand before both jurors and judge at the Sauk County Courthouse in Baraboo, Wisc. And right across the street at the Al Ringling Theatre, a cohort of food freedom patriots will gather to support him and educate the public about this important issue with an even known as Grow Your Food Freedom.

In case you missed it, Vernon is one of many family-scale farmers that in recent years has been illegally targeted by both the state and federal government for producing clean food and sharing it with his friends and neighbors. Vernon has been operating a private food club that distributes raw, unpasteurized milk and other goods from his farm to local shareholders, a setup that does not require, and actually prohibits, the uninvited involvement and interference of state and local governments.”

Via Natural News

Did the IRS give Mitt Romney’s tax returns to Harry Reid?

“During the 2012 presidential campaign, Harry Reid claimed to have intimate knowledge of what was secretly inside Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s tax returns.

As President Obama’s campaign slammed Romney nearly every day for not releasing more tax returns, the Senate majority leader repeatedly made the unsubstantiated claim that, at one point in his life, Romney hadn’t paid taxes for almost a decade.

He even did so from the floor of the U.S. Senate.”

Via The Daily Caller