Category Archives: U.S. Constitution

Hearing Scheduled on Radical Islam in Combating Terrorism

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In part from Conservative Review: Next Tuesday, June 28, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), who chairs the Judiciary Subcommittee on Oversight, Agency Action, Federal Rights and Federal Courts, will conduct a hearing investigating the willful blindness on the part of the relevant law enforcement agencies to domestic Islamic terror networks.  The subject of the hearing is “Willful Blindness: Consequences of Agency Efforts To Deemphasize Radical Islam in Combating Terrorism.”

Attorney General Loretta Lynch announced at a press conference that the motives of the Orlando jihadist might never be known and that “our most effective response to terror…is unity and love.”  This comes on the heels of the government’s attempt to redact any mention of Islamic rhetoric in the 911 call and DHS releasing another internal document scrubbing all references to Islamic terror. Just this week, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a front group for Hamas, was allowed to sit in on FBI interviews with members of the Fort Pierce mosque. The FBI was supposed to cut ties with CAIR, and DOJ was supposed to prosecute them in 2009 following the Holy Land Foundation trial, in which CAIR was implicated as a co-conspirator, yet they are granted full access to FBI counter-terrorism investigations.

This hearing will likely focus on which figures within the federal government worked to squelch any research connecting the dots between local Muslim Brotherhood officials, these individual terrorists, and foreign terror networks. Senators on the committee now have an opportunity to expose the Muslim Brotherhood influence within DHS and the FBI, their invidious “Countering Violent Extremism” Agenda, and their hand in covering up counter-terrorism investigations.  They can demonstrate how the federal government has hamstrung local law enforcement by refusing to cooperate and share information regarding jihadists living in their communities.

Most importantly, this is the first opportunity to finally change the narrative from the false discussion about guns, which has nothing to do with Islamic Jihad. Hopefully, this committee hearing will be the beginning of a concerted effort for the legislative branch to actually engage in some critical oversight of the perfidious actions within the top echelons of federal law enforcement.  The fact that GOP leaders in the House and Senate are not pushing multiple hearings and legislation dealing with this issue is scandalous, but unfortunately, not unexpected. Full story and audio is found here from Conservative Review.

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“Based on open-source research conducted on a list provided by the Department of Justice, the Subcommittee on Immigration and the National Interest has determined that at least 380 of the 580 individuals convicted of terrorism or terrorism-related offenses between September 11, 2001 and December 31, 2014, were born abroad.” More here.

Further: In June 2016, CIA Director John Brennan testified that ISIS “is probably exploring a variety of means for infiltrating operatives into the West, including in refugee flows, smuggling routes and legitimate methods of travel.”

·           In March 2016, the top U.S. military commander in Europe—Air Force General Philip Breedlove—told a Senate Committee that ISIS is infiltrating the ranks of refugees entering Europe, and that terrorists, returning foreign fighters and criminals are now part of the “daily” refugee flow.

·           In September 2015, when asked if ISIS could infiltrate the refugees, Obama’s former top envoy on the coalition to defeat ISIS, General John Allen told ABC News, “I think we should watch it. We should be conscious of the potential that Daesh (aka ISIS) may attempt to embed agents within that population.”

·           In October 2015, FBI Director James Comey said during a House Committee on Homeland Security hearing that the federal government does not have the ability to conduct thorough background checks on all of the 10,000 Syrian refugees that the Obama administration says will be allowed to come to the U.S.

In September 2015, the US Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper said “We don’t obviously put it past the likes of ISIL to infiltrate operatives among these refugees.”

·           In September 2015, State Department Spokesman John Kirby admitted it’s “possible” for those with ISIS ties to sneak in the US through the refugee program.

·           In February 2015, when asked by Rep. Michael McCaul if bringing in Syrian refugees could pose a risk to Americans, Deputy Director of the National Counterterrorism Center Nicholas Rasmussen said “It’s clearly a population of concern.”

·           In February 2015 assistant director for the FBI, Michael Steinbeck said in a House Homeland Security hearing that he was “concerned” that bringing in Syrian refugees could pose a greater risk to Americans.

·           In April 2015 House Homeland Security Committee Chairman, Rep. Michael McCaul said, “The intelligence community has briefed me that [terrorists] want to exploit the refugees — [that] terrorists want to exploit the refugee program to infiltrate and get in.”

 

WH: Ben Rhodes is to Iran Deal ~ Valerie Jarrett is to Gun Control

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Ban the AR-15….heh….right Val Gal…. This is a White House full of ahem….experts that think AR stands for Automatic Rifle…sheesh…The Federal ‘Assault’ Weapons ban happened in 1994.

   

Valerie Jarrett’s war on guns

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Politico: Valerie Jarrett is increasingly asserting control of the administration’s campaign to curtail gun violence — and she’s not afraid of burning White House bridges with firearm manufacturers as she does it.

Even before the latest massacre in Orlando, it was Jarrett who used her influence with President Barack Obama to resurrect the push for new regulations, gun control advocates say. But since that shooting, she’s employed a more aggressive strategy than did Vice President Joe Biden, whose consensus-building efforts failed to produce new laws three years ago.

Take a recent White House bid to collaborate with weapons manufactures on so-called “smart guns,” which make it impossible for anyone other than an authorized user to fire a weapon — and should be fertile ground for a relatively non-controversial compromise.

But after 30 industry executives refused to show up for a meeting last Friday, Jarrett decided to mobilize nearly 200,000 supporters behind a new assault weapons ban, which industry vehemently opposes and would take a bestseller off the shelves. While it didn’t slam the door on further negotiations, it’s the kind of move that would make any future talks much more difficult.

With Biden dispatched in search of a cure for cancer, and Obama demanding an end to the bloodshed, Jarrett — Obama’s closest friend and conscience in the West Wing — is not just focused on measures like background checks that are much easier to sell to Congress, at least compared to an assault weapons ban. Instead, Jarrett is executing Obama’s call to “politicize” the issue during his last year in office and crank up the pressure on reluctant lawmakers.

“Please keep making your voices heard. Raise them over and over and over and over and over again,” Jarrett said on Monday in an unusual conference call, which was intended for the people who signed a “We the People” petition to ban the AR-15, but was broadcast live on YouTube for anyone to listen.

“I’ve had people say to me, ‘Well I enjoy gong to the firing range and using the assault weapons,’” Jarrett said. “But the pleasure derived from that compared to the horrendous damage that it can do, we believe that the damage warrants banning assault weapons.”

In the wake of the Orlando massacre, which involved a Sig Sauer MCX semiautomatic rifle, both Obama and Biden have made clear that, as Biden put it in his written response to the AR-15 petition, assault weapons “should be banned from civilian ownership.” But Biden focused his message to Congress on passing the background check and terror watch list bills that failed in the Senate on Monday.

Jarrett went further: “There’s no reason why Congress could not reauthorize legislation that would call for that ban.” And stoking support for the assault weapons ban with activists will likely intensify the political fight ahead of the 2016 elections.

Previously, Obama put Biden in charge of crafting the administration’s response to the December 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary shootings, and the vice president still serves a prominent role as sympathizer-in-chief. But since his effort ran aground, gun control advocates say, it’s been Jarrett who’s pushed for action over the last year despite congressional gridlock.

“As the months went by and ideas were discussed and priorities came and went, she was a constant source of influence in the building making sure that the process was moving forward,” said Peter Ambler, director at Americans for Responsible Solutions. When the group’s co-founders, former Rep. Gabby Giffords and Mark Kelly, proposed new executive actions during a January 2015 meeting with Obama and Jarrett in Phoenix, Ambler recalled, the president turned to his senior adviser to make them happen. He announced new directives to expand background checks a year later.

“I don’t think that there is an individual at the White House except for the president who can claim more responsibility for the successes of the executive actions than Valerie Jarrett,” Ambler said.

Biden isn’t completely out of the picture, though he’s increasingly turned his attention to his “Cancer Moonshot.” As the architect of the now-expired 1994 assault weapons ban and original background check bill, he’s got substantial credibility with activists, especially those driven by grief.

“I refuse to give up, we refuse to give up,” Biden said on Wednesday at a Washington fundraiser for Sandy Hook Promise, a gun violence prevention group founded by parents of the first-graders gunned down at the elementary school.

“It took me seven years to get the first ban put in place,” said Biden, who had argued that the administration should prioritize guns even before the Newtown shooting. “We should not stop.”

But as the audience waited for Biden to come to the podium, Jarrett was in the back of the room, deep in conversation, as her top aides — Paulette Aniskoff, Bess Evans and Yohannes Abraham — circulated through the crowd. It was those aides, in Jarrett’s Office of Public Engagement, who have gradually taken on the bulk of the gun portfolio over the past three years, even as they continue to collaborate with Biden’s staff.

The portfolio has been something of an orphan in the Obama administration, with no obvious point person, particularly after the legislation Biden was working on failed in April 2013, and Bruce Reed, who had run an exhaustive series of outreach and strategy sessions with gun control advocates in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, stepped down as Biden’s chief of staff in late 2013.

Jarrett brought it back into the West Wing — and out to the statehouses, advocates said, by making it a priority for the Office of Intergovernmental Affairs. In May, for example, Jarrett presided over a White House strategy session on enacting local laws to expand background checks and promote gun safety technology with elected officials from 48 states.

In his search for progress after Newtown, Biden and his staff famously met with, as he put it, “every possible stakeholder in this debate; 229 separate groups,” in just a few months. They settled on expanding background checks, a measure that’s hovered above 80 percent public approval since 2013. The bill failed in the Senate then, and an updated version failed on Monday, 56 to 44.

Meeting with ‘stakeholders’ is also a raison d’etre of Jarrett’s office.

“Part of the Valerie Jarrett portfolio is working with the many constituencies that have a stake in the issues that matter most, and one of those has become the family members of victims of shootings,” said Arkadi Gerney, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress who works on gun policy.

Jarrett herself is in that category: she’s recounted how her grandfather was killed with his own gun when burglars broke into his office.

She was trying the outreach approach before a gunman killed 49 people in Orlando, when her focus was on smart guns. The administration is working to get buy-in from police for the technology, in hopes of creating a new market; earlier this month, the Department of Justice hosted law enforcement officials to talk about how smart guns might work for their departments.

Manufacturers have expressed some openness to smart guns — they could be a whole new sales category, after all — but they fear any sort of government mandate, as well as backlash from gun rights groups.

So weeks before the Orlando shooting, Jarrett and Chief of Staff Denis McDonough invited executives from about 30 gun-makers to the White House. They declined, according to an industry executive, because they perceived the invitation as “disingenuous.”

Jarrett lashed out at the gun lobby in her call.

“The NRA over the past seven and a half years has never been willing to come to the table and work with us,” she said. (Incidentally, both the industry and the NRA met with Biden and his staff in 2013, but there was no detente.)

And there’s some appetite for action on the Democratic side of the campaign trail: Hillary Clinton wants to take “weapons of war” off the streets.

But despite Jarrett’s call to resurrect a bill banning assault weapons, there’s little appetite for it in Congress. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who wrote the White House’s preferred version in 2013, hasn’t even decided to reintroduce it.

 

 

 

 

U.S. Supreme Court Sotormayor’s Dissent, Focus on Color

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Sotomayor Dissent Reads Like ‘A Black Lives Matter Manifesto’

   

Kevin Daley/DailyCaller: U.S. . Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor submitted a racially-charged dissent in a Fourth Amendment case on Monday, which commentators hailed as a “Brown/Black Lives Matter manifesto.”

The case, Utah v. Strieff, was occasioned when police stopped Salt Lake City man Edward Strieff on leaving a house suspected to quarter drug activity. The state of Utah concedes the initial stop was illegal, as the officers in question had no probable cause to seize and search Strieff.

During the course of the stop, officers discovered Strieff had an outstanding warrant for a small traffic violation, and methamphetamine in his pocket. The Court was asked to decide whether the exclusionary rule — which prohibits police and prosecutors from using evidence obtained illegally — applies when an officer learns during an illegal stop that there is a warrant for an individual’s arrest, and finds additional contraband while executing the arrest on said warrant.

The High Court ruled 5-3 that the arrest, and the evidence obtained during the arrest, were legitimate, even if the initial stop was not. Justice Thomas wrote the majority opinion, joined by the Chief Justice, and Justices Kennedy, Breyer, and Alito.

Sotomayor filed a peppery dissent, joined in part by Justice Ginsburg.

“The white defendant in this case shows that anyone’s dignity can be violated in this manner,” she wrote. “But it is no secret that people of color are disproportionate victims of this type of scrutiny. For generations, black and brown parents have given their children ‘the talk’— instructing them never to run down the street; always keep your hands where they can be seen; do not even think of talking back to a stranger—all out of fear of how an officer with a gun will react to them.”

“We must not pretend that the countless people who are routinely targeted by police are ‘isolated,’” she continued. “They are the canaries in the coal mine whose deaths, civil and literal, warn us that no one can breathe in this atmosphere.”

Elsewhere in the dissent, she characterizes the United States as a “carceral state,” and pillories the “civil death” endured by those subject to arrest, a process she describes in vivid terms. She also accuses the Court of treating minority communities as “second class citizens.”

The dissent’s citations are as interesting as the text itself, which read like a survey of the American black literary tradition. At various points, she cites “The Souls of Black Folk,” by W. E. B. Du Bois, Michelle Alexander, a law professor who has written extensively on over incarceration, and the more radical works of James Baldwin and Ta-Nehisi Coates.

Sotomayor has written passionately on racial issues before. Liberal commentators were effusive in their praise of her dissent in Schuette v. Coalition To Defend Affirmative Action, among the most widely read of the Court’s opinions in recent years.

“Race matters to a young woman’s sense of self when she states her hometown, and then is pressed, ‘No, where are you really from?’, regardless of how many generations her family has been in the country,” she wrote. “Race matters to a young person addressed by a stranger in a foreign language, which he does not understand because only English was spoken at home. Race matters because of the slights, the snickers, the silent judgments that reinforce that most crippling of thoughts: ‘I do not belong here.’”

Liberals observers lionized the dissent within minutes of its publication. Lawyer and journalist Glenn Greenwald said the opinion is a “perfect illustration of why diversity matters.” Adam Bonin, a Philadelphia attorney and DailyKos blogger, called it “epic and important.” “It’s a Brown/Black Lives Matter manifesto,” he added.

 

 

 

States Complying with DOJ/FBI Facial Recognition Database

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GAO: The Department of Justice’s (DOJ) Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) operates the Next Generation Identification-Interstate Photo System (NGI-IPS)— a face recognition service that allows law enforcement agencies to search a database of over 30 million photos to support criminal investigations. NGI-IPS users include the FBI and selected state and local law enforcement agencies, which can submit search requests to help identify an unknown person using, for example, a photo from a surveillance camera. When a state or local agency submits such a photo, NGI-IPS uses an automated process to return a list of 2 to 50 possible candidate photos from the database, depending on the user’s specification. As of December 2015, the FBI has agreements with 7 states to search NGI-IPS, and is working with more states to grant access. In addition to the NGI-IPS, the FBI has an internal unit called Facial Analysis, Comparison and Evaluation (FACE) Services that provides face recognition capabilities, among other things, to support active FBI investigations. FACE Services not only has access to NGI-IPS, but can search or request to search databases owned by the Departments of State and Defense and 16 states, which use their own face recognition systems. Biometric analysts manually review photos before returning at most the top 1 or 2 photos as investigative leads to FBI agents.

DOJ developed a privacy impact assessment (PIA) of NGI-IPS in 2008, as required under the E-Government Act whenever agencies develop technologies that collect personal information. However, the FBI did not update the NGI-IPS PIA in a timely manner when the system underwent significant changes or publish a PIA for FACE Services before that unit began supporting FBI agents. DOJ ultimately approved PIAs for NGI-IPS and FACE Services in September and May 2015, respectively. The timely publishing of PIAs would provide the public with greater assurance that the FBI is evaluating risks to privacy when implementing systems. Similarly, NGI-IPS has been in place since 2011, but DOJ did not publish a System of Records Notice (SORN) that addresses the FBI’s use of face recognition capabilities, as required by law, until May 5, 2016, after completion of GAO’s review. The timely publishing of a SORN would improve the public’s understanding of how NGI uses and protects personal information.

Prior to deploying NGI-IPS, the FBI conducted limited testing to evaluate whether face recognition searches returned matches to persons in the database (the detection rate) within a candidate list of 50, but has not assessed how often errors occur. FBI officials stated that they do not know, and have not tested, the detection rate for candidate list sizes smaller than 50, which users sometimes request from the FBI. By conducting tests to verify that NGI-IPS is accurate for all allowable candidate list sizes, the FBI would have more reasonable assurance that NGI-IPS provides leads that help enhance, rather than hinder, criminal investigations. Additionally, the FBI has not taken steps to determine whether the face recognition systems used by external partners, such as states and federal agencies, are sufficiently accurate for use by FACE Services to support FBI investigations. By taking such steps, the FBI could better ensure the data received from external partners is sufficiently accurate and do not unnecessarily include photos of innocent people as investigative leads.

*** The Privacy Act of 1974 places limitations on agencies’ collection, disclosure, and use of personal information maintained in systems of records.3 The Privacy Act requires agencies to publish a notice—known as a System of Records Notice (SORN)—in the Federal Register identifying, among other things, the categories of individuals whose information is in the system of records, and the type of data collected.4 Also, the E-Government Act of 2002 requires agencies to conduct Privacy Impact Assessments (PIA) that analyze how personal information is collected, stored, shared, and managed in a federal system.5 Agencies are required to make their PIAs publicly available if practicable.  See the entire report here from the General Accounting Office.

 

Militant Islam, Obama Admin Forbidden Terms

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A distinction needs to be made. Radical extremists are for the force multipliers, those like Anwar al Awlaki. The militants like Mohammed Emwazi are born from the radicals and they are the deadly enforcers of the Islamic doctrine and Sharia.

Don’t blame the FBI for failures, with particular regard to the worst terror attack in American by a gunman, Orlando. Blame the White House. All the Q&A sessions, congressional testimony and press briefings by FBI Director James Comey have had an underlying message, a cry for help, attention and support.

Don’t blame the intelligence community including CENTCOM and the Pentagon for battlefield or rules of engagement failures. That belongs to the entire White House national security team. The Office of National Intelligence has also been affected.

This is not political correctness at all, it is a Barak Obama edict, sensitivity to Islam across our homeland and across the globe. Obama has had a strident mission since he assumed the Oval Office to create a Muslim protective shield. This is beyond dispute.

While not in any chronological order, there are some very key decisions that were made and continue to be made by the Obama administration that affect our national security and this generational war titled the Overseas Contingency Operation.

In April of 2009, Barak Obama delivered ‘The New Beginnings’ speech. In this presentation he spelled out his full agenda in what was to become the long-term mission to elevate Muslims and their organizations at home and globally. The White House objectives have been successful and consequential.

With the new beginning announced, Obama extended his same purpose throughout government agencies, law enforcement and policies as a mandatory doctrine.

‘Just before that Christmas Day attack, in early November 2009, I was ordered by my superiors at the Department of Homeland Security to delete or modify several hundred records of individuals tied to designated Islamist terror groups like Hamas from the important federal database, the Treasury Enforcement Communications System (TECS). These types of records are the basis for any ability to “connect dots.”  Every day, DHS Customs and Border Protection officers watch entering and exiting many individuals associated with known terrorist affiliations, then look for patterns. Enforcing a political scrubbing of records of Muslims greatly affected our ability to do that. Even worse, going forward, my colleagues and I were prohibited from entering pertinent information into the database.’ Philip Haney, The Hill.

Directly after the 9/11 attack, the Bush administration did reach out to the Muslim communities to determine who was with peace and national security and who perhaps gave clues of a larger and hidden condition that could be festering that would prove clues to more domestic security challenges.

Then came the Holyland Foundation trial in 2007/2008. The material facts and conditions of the domestic threat, people, money, collaboration and global consequence all converged in a courtroom in Texas.

During the Holy Land trial, FBI Agent Lara Burns testified in court that CAIR was a front for HAMAS. One trial exhibit submitted by federal prosecutors – and stipulated to by the defense in the case – explained that these organizations were dedicated to a “civilizational-jihadist process” to destroy America from within and replace the Constitution with sharia (Islamic law):

The Ikhwah [Muslim Brotherhood] must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and “sabotaging” its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God’s religion [Islam] is made victorious over all other religions. (p. 21)

Federal prosecutors specifically cited this internal Muslim Brotherhood planning document as the strategic goal of these U.S.-based Islamic groups – the very same group advising the Obama Administration. The federal judge in the Holy Foundation case agreed with the case presented by the federal prosecutors had made regarding these organizations, stating in one ruling that “the Government has produced ample evidence to establish the associations with CAIR, ISNA and NAIT with HLF…and with HAMAS.” (p. 14-15) More important details here from the CounterjihadReport.

The Department of Justice under Eric Holder was included in the full protection of the terror networks and associated people. Congressman Gohmert of Texas challenged AG Holder to no avail in a chilling exchange.

Here is where the ‘words matter’ material documentation began. The Obama administration took this agenda to new standard.

In 2009, DHS published via the Office of Intelligence and Analysis Assessment a ‘Rightwing Extremism’ document, pinpointing those that may challenge the Obama Muslim doctrine. Additionally, DHS posted The Department of Homeland Security launched a ‘Do’s and Dont’s bulletin.

The entire complexion of the Department of Homeland Security began to change with new personnel and outreach under Secretary Janet Napolitano. The outreach extended to law enforcement agencies of which LAPD demonstrates.

The order to purge documents, training materials and database was made. The proof is here.

Barak Obama was not finished. In 2015, the White House introduced a strategy for CVE, Counter Violent Extremism.

Then comes the foreign policy of Obama. All deference to Iran began before Obama assumed the White House in 2009 and continues today. Secret back channels to Iran using Ambassador Burns began in 2008. Further, there is Iraq and Syria with Islamic State. Documents here on ISIS prove the intelligence and forecasts were known, available and delivered.

This would not be complete without mentioning China, Russia or North Korea where policies are non-existent.

The Paris attack was a slaughter and Obama found it wise to snub the solidarity march with other world leaders.

Obama touted Yemen as one of his successes but the country collapsed. Finally, the Obama policy doctrine crumbled and the cause was fully explained here. Obama wilfully recoiled as he and Hillary did on Benghazi.

It really no longer matters that Barak Obama, Hillary Clinton or John Kerry refuse to use key terms to describe militant Islam, the entire well verse and informed world have defined it for them. What does matter beyond the words are the policies and refusals of missions, strategies and conditions to keep America, her interests and allies safe.

It is no wonder there is no global respect for the Obama administration and there is much less to fear from her.

In summary, Obama owns this terror, owns this jihad and owns the death as well as the genocide. This is his legacy, he owns it as his own scarlet letter.