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POPSObama gives International Police immunity from Constitution and Jurisdiction in US exempted Interpol from disclosure of archived document in response to Freedom of Information Act requests filed by U.S. citizens. Think very carefully about what you just read: Obama has given an international law enforcement organization that is accountable to no other national authority the ability to operate as it pleases within our own borders, and he has freed it from the most basic measure of official transparency and accountability, the FOIA. giving Interpol free rein to act within this country could subject U.S. military, diplomatic, and intelligence personnel to the prospect of being taken into custody and hauled before the International Criminal Court as "war criminals."
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POPSWhy Does Interpol Need Immunity from American Law? Being constrained by the Fourth Amendment, FOIA, and other limitations of the Constitution and federal law that protect the liberty and privacy of Americans is what prevents law-enforcement and its controlling government authority from becoming tyrannical. On Wednesday, however, for no apparent reason, President Obama issued an executive order removing the Reagan limitations. That is, Interpol's property and assets are no longer subject to search and confiscation, and its archives are now considered inviolable. This international police force (whose U.S. headquarters is in the Justice Department in Washington) will be unrestrained by the U.S. Constitution and American law while it operates in the United States and affects both Americans and American interests outside the United States. by Andy McCarthy
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POPSObama Sets Interpol Above US Law
"Interestingly, Interpol's US headquarters is in the Justice Department, run by the same corrupt, pro-terrorist lowlife who quashed an investigation into Black Panther voter intimidation on Obama's behalf. NRO wonders: Why is it suddenly necessary to have, within the Justice Department, a repository for stashing government files which, therefore, will be beyond the ability of Congress, American law-enforcement, the media, and the American people to scrutinize? Interpol works closely with the International Criminal Court, a gang of moonbats who would gladly round up prominent Republicans like Dick Cheney and throw them in jail on charges of insensitivity to terrorists. America has refused to surrender its sovereignty to this ultra-left kangaroo court — a policy Chairman Zero is likely to reverse. In most banana republics, you only have to worry about your own police. But in the dystopia of "Hopey Change," who knows who may soon be dragging you out of bed in the middle of th
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POPSFederal workshop on openness closed to the public Every day I wake up to some new *amazement* that comes out of Washington. Openness indeed. It's easier for party-crashers to get past the SS service than to know what's going on behind closed doors within this WH and Congress.
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POPSClimateGate "Scientist" (Laughingstock Fired) "Steps Down" Climate Depot points us to a news report that Dr. Phil Jones, head laughingstock at the East Anglia Climate Research Unit, has "stepped down." In other words, he was asked to leave, not letting the door hit him on the bum on the way out. That's why Jones and the CRU deleted their data files; evaded FOIA requests; and conspired to shut dissenting views out of peer-reviewed journals. Jones isn't a scientist -- he's a hack. It would appear that between 2000 and 2006 Jones was the recipient (or co-recipient) of nearly $20 million worth of grants. But, remember, he was deleting all that data for the children. http://bit.ly/4wh0fW Linked by: Michelle Malkin. Thanks!
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POPSGlobal Warming Fraud and the Future of Science It is this, and no less, that scientific fraud threatens. This is no trivial matter; it involves one of the basic elements of modern Western life. When scientific figures lie, they lie to all of us. If they foment serious distrust of the scientific endeavor -- as they are doing -- they are creating a schism in the heart of our culture, a wound that in the long run could prove even more deadly than the jihadi terrorists. The apparent success of the climate hustlers has infected all areas of research. Over the past decade, stem-cell studies have proven a hotbed of fraud. Recall Dr. Hwang Woo Suk, the South Korean biologist who claimed to have cloned various higher animals and isolated new stem cell lines to worldwide applause. Suk was discovered to have faked all his research, prompting the South Korean government to ban him from taking part in any further work.
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POPSWorker Advocate Files Lawsuit to Force Disclosure of Administration’s Big Labor Ties The FOIA submission cited concerns about Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis, who previously held a key leadership position at the Big Labor-front group “American Rights at Work,” and Deborah Greenfield, a DOL appointee who previously worked with the AFL-CIO to overturn the same union disclosure guidelines she now oversees. As of today, the DOL has refused to honor President Obama’s widely touted promise of transparency and has failed to follow federal laws requiring the timely disclosure of public information. As a result, Right to Work attorneys concluded that a federal lawsuit was the only way to compel the level of transparency promised by President Obama and guaranteed under the Freedom of Information Act. “It’s absolutely vital that this information is made available to the public to dispel real concerns about conflicts of interest at the Department of Labor,” continued Mix.
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POPSAl Gore Sued By Over 30,000 Scientists For Global Warming Fraud!
Collusion, Corruption, Manipulation and Obstruction Posted by Jeff Id on November 20, 2009 Ok, the little blog is running about 9 times higher volume than my old record. This means there are a lot of new people who are interested in understanding this issue. So one of the things I do is try to explain the issues the best way possible so not everyone has to be a climate scientist to figure this stuff out. It doesn’t always work but here we go. Despite what RC says, there are several glaring problems in these emails which Gavin Schmidt is working feverishly to gloss over. Here are the items I have a problem with. * Discussion of interference with IPCC procedures to block low-warming reasonable and published papers. * Discussion of removal of climate reviewers who are open minded to low-warming papers. The fact that in GRL this apparently occurred after these discussions is a problem. * Discussion with the government about denial of FOIA to any climate audit ....
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POPS And Yet It Cools ..... to where the scientific orthodoxy is running Star Chambers, branding rivals as heretics, trying like Urban VIII to put a thumb on publishing scales, and basically sticking its head in the sand. No little irony, BTW, that the other big news in orthodoxy debunkment yesterday was that Galileo’s fingers had been located and will go on display. Unclear whether those digits are the ones he flipped at the pope, though without doubt among those the pope twisted. Yeah, I can believe it. They’re all only human after all. The problem now, which Galileo would entirely get, is how to get not only the establishment scientists but the pols to catch up with the science. Quick, before they re-engineer our economy back into the middle ages with that bizarre scheme of double-reverse robber baronry they’re working on. forward movement ... Jules Crittenden Read more ... http://tr.im/FsXL
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POPSHacked Emails Show Climate Science Ridden with Rancor Fellow scientists who disagreed with orthodox views on climate change were variously referred to as "prats" and "utter prats." In other exchanges, one climate researcher said he was "very tempted" to "beat the crap out of" a prominent, skeptical U.S. climate scientist. More recent exchanges centered on requests by independent climate researchers for access to data used by British scientists for some of their papers. The hacked folder is labeled "FOIA," a reference to the Freedom of Information Act requests made by other scientists for access to raw data used to reach conclusions about global temperatures. Many of the email exchanges discussed ways to decline such requests for information, on the grounds that the data was confidential or was intellectual property. In other email exchanges related to the FOIA requests, some U.K. researchers asked foreign scientists to delete all emails related to their work for the upcoming IPCC summary. In others, they discussed boycotting ....
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POPSOpen Letter on Climate Legislation November 13, 2009 We feel that climate science is, in the current situation, too important to be kept under wraps. We hereby release a random selection of correspondence, code, and documents. Hopefully it will give some insight into the science and the people behind it. FOIA is the entity with the leaking data hacked from the UK research lab on November 17, 2009 FOIA is commenter #10 at noconsensus,com. http://tr.im/Fpmk
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POPSGates Bars Torture Photos' Release 
The administration first sought to change FOIA in June, shortly after deciding to contest a ruling by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals that ordered the photos' release. The resulting bill, championed by Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.), was specifically designed to nullify the effect of the appeals court's ruling. Since the court had ruled that the photos couldn't be withheld under an existing FOIA exemption, the Obama administration simply asked Congress to carve out a new exemption. Despite objections from liberal members of the House, Congress obliged. The new exemption's requirements are stunningly lax. In order to withhold the photos, Gates simply had to certify, as he did in the court filing, that "public disclosure of these photographs would endanger citizens of the United States, members of the United States Armed Forces, or employees of the United States Government deployed outside the United States." In other words, their release had to endanger someone, somewhere. And i
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POPSA historian's account of Democrats and Bush-era war crimes What made those detainee photographs so important from the start is that they depict brutal abuse well outside of the Abu Ghraib facility and thus reveal to Americans -- and the world -- that America's torture was not, as they've been constantly told, limited to rogue sadists at Abu Ghraib and the waterboarding of three bad guys. Instead, our torture regime was systematic, pervasive, brutal, fatal, and -- becuase it was the by-product of conscious policies set at the highest levels of government -- common across America's "War on Terror" detention regime. These photographs would have documented those vital facts; combated the false denials from torture apologists; fueled the momentum for accountability; and revealed, in graphic and unavoidable terms, what was truly done by America's government. But a Democratic-led Congress, at the urging of a Democratic President, is now taking extraordinary steps -- including a new law which has no purpose other than to suppress evidence of Americ
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POPSLibertarian Group To Sue Administration for Failing to Disclose Global Warming Docs Moreover, Treasury redacted portions of the documents. One internal memo on cap-and-trade said that "given the administration's proposal to auction all emission allowances, a cap-and-trade program could generate federal receipts on the order of $100 to $200 billion annually," but the Department blacked out the $100 billion-$200 billion figure. Horner said Treasury redacted the figure because it was "highly embarrassing" for the administration. Days later, Treasury re-released the same documents without any portions redacted. Treasury said they are currently considering the appeal.
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POPSJudicial Watch Files Lawsuit Against HUD to Obtain ACORN Documents (These states are California, Texas, Washington, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Arkansas, and Louisiana.) By law, HUD had 20 days to respond to Judicial Watch's request. Judicial Watch filed its lawsuit on September 23, 2009. Judicial Watch seeks the following records: 1. Any and all documents concerning money given to the ACORN and/or any of its affiliates (since January, 2000). 2. Any and all documents concerning any actions and/or disbarments against ACORN, for reasons including but not limited to abuse of grant money, misconduct, etc. (since January, 2000). Over the last two weeks, the U.S. Senate has voted to deny ACORN access to housing funds, while the House of Representatives voted to deny ACORN all federal funds. The U.S. Census Bureau, meanwhile, has severed its partnership with the organization for the 2010 U.S. Census. The IRS also just severed a program relationship with ACORN.
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POPSAdministration Privately Admits Cap-And-Trade Could Cost Families $1,761 A Year: FOIA Documents So there you have it, from an internal Treasury Department document that cap-and-trade could generate federal receipts, i.e. tax revenue, in the range of $100 to $200 billion a year. Does that cost sound familiar to you? The Heritage Foundation has long predicted that: "The annual cost of emissions permits to energy users will be at least $100 billion by 2012 and could exceed $390 billion by 2035." This raises a whole other issue, that the $100 to $200 billion estimate by Treasury has no date or timeline of any kind. While Heritage follows the trajectory through to 2035, and even to 2050, the Treasury Department doesn't provide any further analysis or calculations. In a different memo, prepared by President Obama's transition team after the election, they throw this out there: "Economic costs will likely be on the order of 1% of GDP, making them equal in scale to all existing environmental regulation." That's another prediction offered up without any details as to . . .
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POPSLawsuit to Obtain Treasury's Documents on Bailout of Freddie & Fannie Treasury Department officials requested a 10-day extension to conduct a document review. However, since that time, Treasury has provided no documents and no indication when documents will be forthcoming. On his first day in office, President Obama promised that "transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency." The president further declared that "the Freedom of Information Act is perhaps the most powerful instrument we have for making our government honest and transparent, and of holding it accountable." Earlier this year, Judicial Watch had to sue the Obama Treasury Department in order to obtain documents regarding an historic meeting held by former Treasury Secretary Henry "Hank" Paulson with top bank executives. The documents show that Paulson and other officials, including then-NY Fed Reserve head and current Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner forced the executives to take the government's $250 billion "investment" (and resulting control).
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POPSJudicial Watch Obtains Obama Documents Detailing ACORN Partnership for 2010 Census * Overall, 8% of the applicants, or over 300,000 people, were considered risks for hire. According to the U.S. Census documents, among other things, census data is used to allocate $300 billion in federal funds. Census data also "determines how many seats each state will have in the House of Representatives as well as the redistricting of state legislatures, county and city councils, and voting districts." "Given its history of illegal activity and fraud, ACORN should be nowhere near the 2010 Census," said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. "And shame on the Obama Commerce Department for continuing to demonize conservatives by lumping together law enforcement and anti-immigration groups with 'hate groups.' This discriminatory policy raises First Amendment concerns. Indeed, these documents provide further evidence that the Obama administration is politicizing the 2010 Census." Census Bureau refuses to partner with "Hate Groups, Law Enforcement, Anti-Immigrant
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POPSDocuments Detail Historic Treasury/Bankers Meeting # "CEO Talking Points" used by former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson confirming that the nine bank CEOs present at the October 13 meeting had no choice but to accede to the government's demands for equity stakes and the resulting government control. # "Major Financial Institution Participation Commitments" signed by the nine bankers on October 13. The CEOs not only hand wrote their institution's names but also hand wrote multi-billion dollar amounts of "preferred shares" to be issued to the government. # Email documenting that, on the very day of the meeting, the Chief of Staff to the Treasury Secretary and other top Treasury staff did not know the names of any of the banks that would be in attendance. # Email showing Treasury officials wanted to use the Secret Service to help keep the press away from the CEOs arriving at the meeting. # Email showing a public relations effort, run in part out of the Bush White House, to tamp down public concerns about "nationalizing the banks."
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POPS Truth? They Can’t Handle the Truth Americans will only be getting the pre-selected slice of the picture of the interrogation story from this administration. I realize the mainstream media is obsessed with the “Cheney — Is he hurting the GOP?” storyline. But that’s silliness on stilts. Cheney’s not running for anything. (And I suspect some ad campaign eighteen months from now harping on the former vice president would bring looks of incredulity from average voters, who unlike the MSM, have “moved on.”) Cheney is however doing real and material damage to the Obama administration and Congressional Democrats – revealing their craven politicization of national security, half-truths, and hypocrisy. Now the American people have a glimpse of what’s going on and it is not pretty. The vendetta against the Bush administration has turned into a series of revelations about the gamesmanship and lack of candor by those who would rather the American people not learn why we did what we did . . . . . .
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POPSNYT Sues Fed and Treasury The Times accuses the government of violating FOIA by requiring an upfront agreement on fees and by not abiding by the time limits set under the Act.
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