All Videos Tagged Powers (12160 Social Network) - 12160 Social Network

Secret Agenda Fed Email: Maximize Sequester's Impact - Judge Napolitano - Impeachable Offenses?

2013-03-26T07:13:54.886Z

A leaked email from an Agriculture Department field officer adds fuel to claims President Obama's political strategy is to make the billions in recent federal budget cuts as painful as possible to win the public opinion battle against Republicans.

The email, circulated around Capitol Hill, was sent Monday by Charles Brown, a director at the agency’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service office in Raleigh, N.C. He appears to tell his regional team about a response to his recent question on the amount of latitude he has in making cuts.

According to the partially redacted email, the response came from the Agriculture Department’s budget office and in part states: “However you manage that reduction, you need to make sure you are not contradicting what we said the impact would be.”

The response noted that the administration had already told Congress that the APHIS would “eliminate assistance to producers in 24 states in managing wildlife damage to the aquaculture industry” without additional funds.

Arkansas Republican Rep. Tim Griffin said the administration’s response to Brown’s email shows a bid to undermine efforts to replace the cuts, known as sequester, with less onerous ones.

“This email confirms what many Americans have suspected: The Obama administration is doing everything they can to make sure their worst predictions come true and to maximize the pain of the sequester cuts for political gain,” Griffin said in a statement.

Griffin told Fox News on Wednesday that the bosses effectively said, “You can’t do anything that is inconsistent with the negative impact that we’ve told everybody these cuts are going to have.”

An Agriculture Department spokesperson told Fox on Wednesday that the email "has been completely taken out of context. The spokesperson said it references "cuts and impacts communicated to Congress as part of the FY2013 budget, not as part of a sequester plan."

Under the 2011 deal reached by Obama and Congress, the cuts are supposed to be across the board, meaning government officials have limited flexibility in moving around money.

The administration in recent weeks has made doomsday predictions about the impact of the cuts. And the White House so far has appeared unwilling to accept a Republican offer to give the president more autonomy in making the cuts, covering $85 billion this fiscal year, to help reduce the impact on some of the most essential or hardest-hit programs or agencies.

Some political strategists say the president hopes the cuts hurt enough to compel Republican lawmakers seeking re-election next year to end them by agreeing to more tax increases.

On Sunday, Gene Sperling, the White House’s top economic adviser, suggested Republicans would indeed make this decision.

“Our hope is, as more Republicans start to see this pain in their own districts, they will choose bipartisan compromise over this absolutist position,” he said.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, during a House hearing Tuesday, was asked by South Dakota Republican Rep. Kristi Noem about the Brown email.

Vilsack said he was unaware of the email, but denied the administration has a policy of being inflexible and maximizing the cuts’ impact.
“I wouldn’t say that we’ve said no to flexibility,” Vilsack said. “But there are certain circumstances where we don’t have flexibility.”
“I’m hopeful that isn't an agenda that has been put forward," Noem said.

NOTE: Redacted Email may be accessed at - http://griffin.house.gov/sites/griffin.house.gov/files/email.pdf

Shep Smith & Judge Napolitano Rip Obama On Drone Kills

2013-03-26T07:07:59.230Z

After the government killed radical Islamist preacher Anwar Al-Awlaki, an American citizen, with a drone strike in Yemen, his 16-year-old son was also killed. "You know what they said? They said he picked a bad father. Are you kidding me?"

The Drone War And Obama's "Kill List"

2013-03-20T05:03:45.295Z

Chris Hayes and his panel discuss new revelations about the Obama administration's drone program, including a reported "kill list" overseen directly by President Obama. From the June 2nd, 2012 edition of Up with Chris Hayes on MSNBC.

Panelists:

Hina Shamsi from the ACLU's National Security Project
Josh Trevino, Army vet and VP for communications of the Texas Public Policy Foundation
Jack Jacobs, retired Army Colonel and MSNBC Military Analyst
Jeremy Scahill of The Nation Magazine

Rand Paul EXPOSES: Obama Can Kill Americans w/ Drones

2013-03-07T04:22:00.797Z

Senator Rand Paul lashed out at the Obama administration last night following suggestions by Attorney General Eric Holder that the president is within his rights to assassinate Americans on American soil using drone strikes, without oversight.

“The thing about the drone strike program is, we’re not talking about someone’s actively attacking America, we’re not talking about planes flying into the World Trade Center.” Paul said in a Fox News interview.

“What we’re talking about is you’re eating dinner in your house. you’re eating at a cafe or you’re walking down the road. That’s when these drone strikes can occur.” Paul added, calling the development “particularly disturbing”.

“If you’re an American and you’re accused of a crime, one of the basic principles, one of the protections we’ve always had is, you get a trial… You don’t get convicted without a trial.” the Senator added.

“Listen to what his [Obama's] response is.” Paul urged. “His response is, we haven’t killed any Americans yet. We don’t intend to, but we might. And that’s pretty disturbing.”

Paul was speaking in reaction to Eric Holder’s response to his own letter asking if Americans could be targeted with drones.

Holder wrote that it was “possible,” for President Obama to “authorize the military to use lethal force within the territory of the United States,” citing the 9/11 terror attacks as an example.

In a further statement today, Holder told Congress that the federal government has “no intention” of using drones to strike at targets within the U.S., saying it’s easier to capture people here so that tool is not as important.

“The use of drones is from my perspective something that is entirely, entirely hypothetical,” he said.

Senator Paul has called for a pledge from the White House that drone strikes will not be used in America regardless of the circumstances.

“We’re talking about someone eating at a cafe in Boston, or New York, and a Hellfire missile comes raining in on them,” Paul said during a previous appearance on Fox News. “There should be an easy answer from the administration on this. They should say, ‘Absolutely no, we will not kill Americans in America without an accusation, a trial and a jury.’”

“The U.S. Attorney General’s refusal to rule out the possibility of drone strikes on American citizens and on American soil is more than frightening – it is an affront the Constitutional due process rights of all Americans,” Paul wrote in a further statement on his website.

Meanwhile, where domestic drone use for surveillance is concerned, advocacy group the Electronic Privacy and Information Center (EPIC) issued a statement on its website announcing that it is officially petitioning U.S. Customs and Border Protection over revelations that unmanned Predator drones under the agency’s operation can listen in on electronic communications.

EPIC noted that documents it recently obtained under the Freedom of Information Act show that the agency’s drones will be equipped with technology for signals interception and human identification.

The 2010 DHS “performance specification” document EPIC has uncovered states that “communication relay and interception” are preferable operations to use drones for, rather than relying on “sensors mounted in airships, aerostats, towers, and manned aircraft”. The document states that the capability has not yet been tested in the field.

According to the document, the drones are to have a “signals interception receiver,” that would be capable of intercepting cell phone and radio communications transmissions.

The Homeland Security design requirements also specify that the Predator B drones “shall be capable of identifying a standing human being at night as likely armed or not”.

Source: Infowars