The Duties of American Citizens is to Protect Their Freedom from the Government

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The Duties of American Citizens is to Protect Their Freedom from the Government

If 2nd Amendment Doesn"t Protect AK-47s, 1st Amendment Doesn"t Protect Modern Media

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If 2nd Amendment Doesn"t Protect AK-47s, 1st Amendment Doesn"t Protect Modern Media

U.S. Media Desperately Trying To Protect Image Of Obama as Putin Outmaneuvers White House….

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U.S. Media Desperately Trying To Protect Image Of Obama as Putin Outmaneuvers White House….

Lawmaker says bill would protect Idahoans from gun confiscation

Michael Locklear
KBOI2
February 11, 2014

A Republican state lawmaker, worried the Obama administration might try to take away some guns, has put forward a bill that would punish Idaho officers for confiscating firearms.

“The supervisors would be penalized if they gave an order to confiscate firearms or ammunition,” said Sen. Marv Hagedorn of Meridian.

The measure calls for a $ 1,000 fine for officers who instruct their subordinates to seize guns based on a federal order. The second offense would slap officers with a misdemeanor and they’d lose their jobs. The penalties are meant to protect Idahoans from having their guns confiscated.

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This article was posted: Tuesday, February 11, 2014 at 1:31 pm

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Lawmaker says bill would protect Idahoans from gun confiscation

California Lawmakers Want To Protect Rape Victims By Updating The State’s Definition Of ‘Consent’

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California Lawmakers Want To Protect Rape Victims By Updating The State’s Definition Of ‘Consent’

Turmeric and myrhh protect against lead toxicity

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Turmeric and myrhh protect against lead toxicity

VIDEO: Nest"s Tony Fadell Intros New Smoke Detector

Kara Swisher interviews Tony Fadell, who debuts Nest’s second product — a smoke detector called Protect — to join its interactive thermostat cousin in digitizing the home.

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Snowden urges EU parliament to protect whistleblowers

Published time: October 01, 2013 14:30

Edward Snowden (RIA Novosti / Pavel Lisitsyn)

Former NSA agent, Edward Snowden, has called on an EU Parliament committee to provide protection for whistleblowers and “create better channels” for them to inform. The committee is currently holding an inquiry into the ‘Prism scandal’.

The inquiry involves a series of special hearings looking at specific aspects. On September 30 it heard evidence from the whistleblowers, including the UK’s Annie Machon, who revealed an MI6 plot to assassinate Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi, in February 1996 – and Edward Snowden. However, the latter was not able to attend in person.  

As US fugitive NSA-leaker, Snowden submitted testimony to the European Parliament’s civil liberties committee (LIBE), saying “the surveillance of whole populations rather than individuals threatens to be the greatest human rights challenge of our time.”

“I thank the European parliament and the LIBE committee for taking up the challenge of mass surveillance,” Snowden wrote in a statement read by Jesselyn Radack of the Government Accountability Project before the European Parliament’s Committee.

In “returning public knowledge to public hands” Snowden has made a plea not to rely on “individual sacrifice”, which in his case resulted in “persecution and exile.”

“We must create better channels for people of conscience to inform not only trusted agents of government but independent representatives of the public outside government,” Snowden, who now lives in Moscow, wrote.

Snowden blamed “a culture of secrecy” for removing from society “the opportunity to determine the appropriate balance between the fundamental right of privacy” and “governmental interest in investigation.” He says that such decisions should be made by people, only “after full, informed and fearless debate.”

Snowden explained his reasons in the statement for leaking documents, saying he did it “with the sole intention of making possible” a debate about changes in governments’ surveillance programs.

“We see emboldened courts that are no longer afraid to consider critical questions of national security,” he writes. “We see brave executives remembering that if the public is prevented from knowing how they are being governed, the necessary result is that they are no longer self-governing. And we see the public reclaiming an equal seat at the table of government.”

Meanwhile, Edward Snowden has been nominated for this year’s Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought. Snowden is wanted in the US on espionage charges, after leaking secret documents revealing the US surveillance program PRISM used to gather private data. In August, he was granted temporary asylum in Russia, where he currently resides.

RT – News

Snowden urges EU parliament to protect whistleblowers

W.H. to Congress: Help protect Israel

Israel’s enemies could be emboldened by a lack of action, administration officials say. | AP Photo

The Obama administration is using a time-tested pitch to get Congress to back military strikes in Syria: It will help protect Israel.

Israel’s enemies, including Iran and the terrorist group Hezbollah, could be emboldened if Congress fails to approve action against the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad, senior administration officials said Saturday.

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And for the second day in a row, President Barack Obama publicly cited the threat against Israel if Assad’s reported use of chemical weapons goes unchecked. “It endangers our friends and our partners along Syria’s borders, including Israel, Jordan, Turkey, Lebanon and Iraq,” Obama said Saturday in the Rose Garden. “It could lead to escalating use of chemical weapons, or their proliferation to terrorist groups who would do our people harm.”

(PHOTOS: Syria: Where politicians stand)

The White House will need every vote it can get on the Syria resolution, and the senior administration officials left little doubt that Israel would be a point of emphasis in private discussions with members of Congress.

The Capitol is filled with strong supporters of Israel who understand the argument, one of the officials said.

But Israel’s security is a political razor blade that could cut both ways.

As Obama has weighed potential military action, the politics of Israel’s interests have become more delicate. The prospect of strikes against Syria triggering reprisals from Iran and Hezbollah is real enough to bolster the case against authorizing the president to use force, too, congressional insiders say.

(PHOTOS: International response to Syria)

“You’re going to see people arguing the exact opposite” of Obama, said Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), a member of the House Intelligence Committee, who has spent time in the region. An Israel play “could really backfire.”

Even a persuasive case that Israel’s security depends on American intervention in Syria might not be enough to overcome what Capitol Hill sources say is significant opposition to the president’s proposal for using military force against Assad.

Washington’s pro-Israel lobby, typically highly critical of the Syrian regime, has been publicly silent in recent days, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has asked officials in his government not to speak about possible American intervention in Syria.

(PHOTOS: Scenes from Syria)

“Everyone is in a wait-and-see mode about where this is all leading,” former Israeli Deputy Ambassador to the United States Dan Arbel told POLITICO earlier this week. “The fact is, right now, the picture is not so clear.”

Indeed, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the most prominent pro-Israel lobbying group, wrote on its website Thursday that the Syrian crisis underscored the need to thwart Iran’s nuclear ambitions, delicately sidestepping the question of whether Obama should strike Assad.

The administration’s case that intervening benefits Israel will turn on what lawmakers hear from pro-Israel groups in their communities and from the reactions of leading Jewish lawmakers, said a senior House Democratic aide.

(Also on POLITICO: Obama sends Syria resolution to Hill)

The Israel angle “only has a major impact if it’s getting validated from others,” the aide said. “Doesn’t have to be AIPAC writ large, but the local AIPAC lay leaders that the members have personal relationships [with] need to be validating.”

House leaders are likely to use prominent Jewish members who are hawkish on Israel as a bellwether. That group includes Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.), Ted Deutch (D-Fla.), Brad Schneider (D-Ill.), Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) and Steve Israel (D-N.Y.). Engel announced on Friday that the administration had convinced him it was appropriate to make punitive strikes against Assad, though he had been pretty clearly in the camp favoring action before that.

“We cannot stand idly by,” Engel said on NBC’s “Today” show. “If we stand idly by, then every despot in the world thinks they can commit war crimes and no one will do anything.”

Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), a leader in the progressive caucus who is Jewish, released a statement Saturday night praising Obama for seeking congressional approval for the use of force in Syria. But she stopped short of endorsing his authorization measure.

(Also on POLITICO: Obama’s slow-strike strategy)

“We need to determine the best way to respond to the heinous use of chemical weapons in Syria and how we can act effectively to protect civilians from further massacres,” she said.

The true test, congressional sources said, may have much less to do with the politics of Israel than district-by-district domestic politics for lawmakers who are both weary and wary of war.

“At this point, it seems to be fairly far-fetched that there would be even close to enough votes to authorize,” said Nunes, who opposes the use-of-force resolution because he believes Obama has not articulated a clear military objective.

Or, as the Democratic aide put it, “Members are going to get the s—- kicked out of them at home this week. This is going to be a really hard vote for people.”

POLITICO – Congress

W.H. to Congress: Help protect Israel

Celebrity moms back California anti-paparazzi bill to protect kids

Actress Jennifer Garner poses in a custom Gucci at the 85th Academy Awards in Hollywood, California February 24, 2013.

Credit: Reuters/Lucy Nicholson

SACRAMENTO, California | Tue Aug 13, 2013 11:57pm EDT

SACRAMENTO, California (Reuters) – Hollywood moms Halle Berry and Jennifer Garner continued their campaign to keep paparazzi away from the children of celebrities on Tuesday, appearing at a legislative hearing in California to urge passage of a bill that would increase state penalties for harassing children.

In emotional testimony, Garner told members of a California Assembly committee that she and her children are followed wherever they go.

“How often do we see a tragedy unfold and say, ‘Oh, there were so many warning signs – why didn’t anybody pay attention?’” said Garner, who has three children with actor Ben Affleck. “I am asking you as a parent to pay attention.”

The bill, which already has passed the state Senate, focuses on people who target children based on their parents’ occupations. The idea originated with a 1990s-era law protecting children of health clinic workers from harassment by anti-abortion activists.

It would increase penalties for doing so from a maximum of six months in jail to a maximum of one year, and increase the potential fine for doing so to $ 10,000, from the current $ 1,000.

“I don’t want a gang of shouting, arguing, lawbreaking photographers who camp out everywhere we are all day every day to continue traumatizing my kids,” Garner told the Assembly Public Safety Committee, which voted to support the bill on Tuesday.

“What this bill would do is give us our rights back so that we can protect our children,” Berry said in testimony shown on KCAL-TV in Los Angeles.

Berry had a daughter with model Gabriel Aubrey and is expecting another child with her husband, actor Olivier Martinez.

The bill has been opposed by some news organizations, who say it will restrict their news-gathering abilities.

But state Senator Kevin De Leon, the Los Angeles Democrat who sponsored the bill, said it was important to protect children from unwanted harassment and dangerous situations.

“No child, regardless of his or her parent’s occupation, should be subjected to such unwarranted and harmful persecution,” Leon said in a statement on his website.

“By increasing penalties and authorizing civil actions, (the bill) will have a significant deterrent effect on those who would consider tormenting the most vulnerable and defenseless members of our society,” he said.

(Reporting by Sharon Bernstein; Editing by Cynthia Johnston and Bill Trott)

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Celebrity moms back California anti-paparazzi bill to protect kids

How the Texas GOP Is Moving Swiftly to Protect the Political Power of White Conservatives

The Texas GOP proudly defends its right to white political power.

After the U.S. Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act, Republican majorities and politicians in many Southern states quickly went to work to revive segregationist Jim Crow voting laws. 

North Carolina’s legislature passed an astounding package of bills destroying 20 years of inclusive reforms. Alabama and Mississippi began enforcing new tougher ID laws. Florida’s Tea Party Gov. Rick Scott resurrected a 2012 witch-hunt for hundreds of thousands of non-citizens—code for non-whites—on voter rolls.

And then there’s Texas, where Republican Attorney General and gubernatorial candidate Gregg Abbott, is leading the most brazenly racist effort of all.

Texas and the U.S. Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division have been fighting over the state redrawing election district lines to intentionally dilute the possibility of non-white voting blocks electing candidates in state and federal races. Before the Supreme Court gutted the VRA in June, Abbott would not acknowledge the race-based political implications of his state’s GOP-led redistricting.

But his latest legal filing asserts the Texas GOP’s rights to keep their state as a bastion of white Republican power.

The man who would be governor is arguing that Texas can change voting rules to discriminate against Democrats because it has a Republican majority. And if those steps undermine minority voting rights, so what, they say, because what Texas is doing it won’t be as bad as what its minorities faced in 1965—when the VRA was adopted, which is the Supreme Court’s new legal standard.

Here’s how he’s saying with a straight poker face that the Texas GOP can harm voters who are presumed to be Democrats:

“DOJ’s accusations of racial discrimination are baseless. In 2011, both houses of the Texas Legislature were controlled by large Republican majorities, and their redistricting decisions were designed to increase the Republican Party’s electoral prospects at the expense of the Democrats. It is perfectly constitutional for a Republican-controlled legislature to make partisan districting decisions, even if there are incidental effects on minority voters who support Democratic candidates.”

And here’s how he’s saying that as long as the harm done to non-white voters is not as bad as anything Texas did in 1965, that perfectly legal in 2013.  

Even if violations occurred, they bear no resemblance to the “pervasive,” “flagrant,” “widespread,” and “rampant” discrimination that originally justified preclearance in 1965. See Shelby County, 133 S.Ct at 2629. Under Shelby County, bail-in could be a congruent and proportional remedy for intentional discrimination, but only in response to the kind ofever-changing discriminatory machinations that gave rise to the preclearance regime in the first place. Because nothing remotely like that has occurred in modern-day Texas, this Court cannot impose preclearance on Texas while remaining faithful to Shelby County and the constitutional principles on which it relies.”

Shelby County v. Holder is the name of the 2013 Supreme Court case where the decision authored by Chief Justice John Roberts said that because Congress did not update the enforcement formula for when the DOJ could overrule changes in state voting laws, the VRA’s “preclearance” formula was unconstitutional.

Gutting the law’s standards that gave the federal government power to reject any change in voting rules in states covered by the law created the opening for North Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi and Florida to erect new barriers to voting that target likely Democrats. But officials in these states have not gone as far as Texas to openly admit that race-based politics are at play.

As University of California Law School’s Rick Hasen noted on his respected ElectionLaw blog, “Texas defends itself against claims it discriminated against minority voters by claiming it discriminated against Democrats.”

His headline for that blog post was, “Only in America.” 

 

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Holder: Despite ruling, DOJ will protect voters

The Justice Department will continue to protect Americans’ voting rights by all legal means, Attorney General Eric Holder said Tuesday, responding to the Supreme Court’s ruling striking down a key piece of the Voting Rights Act.

By overturning the formula that forces certain states and localities to seek advance permission for changes to voting procedures, the high court has ”invalidated an essential part of the Voting Rights Act, a cornerstone of American civil rights law,” Holder told reporters.

But the Obama administration will keep pushing to protect voters, he said.

“Let me be very clear: We will not hesitate to take swift enforcement action using every legal tool that remains available to us against any jurisdiction that seeks to take advantage of the Supreme Court’s ruling by hindering eligible citizens full and free exercise of the franchise,” Holder said, not long after President Barack Obama said he was “deeply disappointed” by the ruling—a phrase Holder echoed twice.

Problems with voting “have not been consigned to history,” he said, and the Voting Rights Act has proven key in defending voters. In 2012, lower courts ruling on preclearance requests blocked a South Carolina voter ID law and a Texas congressional redistricting map, the attorney general noted. “Without the Section 4 coverage formula, neither of these discriminatory voting changes would have been subject to review, and both could have been implemented immediately,” Holder said.

Again echoing Obama, Holder called on Congress to take action to counter the ruling, and said he is “hopeful that new protections can and will pass in this session of Congress.”

The last reauthorization of the act, in 2006, got nearly unanimous support in Congress and was signed by President George W. Bush, and previous reauthorizations have been signed by other Republican president, because it was “in accordance with core nonpartisan American values,” the attorney general added.

Read more about: Supreme Court, Eric Holder, Department Of Justice, Voting Rights, Voting Rights Act

POLITICO – TOP Stories

Holder: Despite ruling, DOJ will protect voters

Google buys Israel"s Waze to protect mobile maps lead

Published June 11, 2013

Reuters

SAN FRANCISCO –  Google Inc bought Israeli mapping startup Waze on Tuesday for an undisclosed sum, acquiring an online real-time mapping service to safeguard its own lead in one of the most crucial aspects of smartphone usage.

A source close to the matter told Reuters on Monday that the Internet search leader was putting the finishing touches on a deal to take over the company for $ 1.3 billion. Google said in a Tuesday blog post that it had closed the deal and now planned on using Waze’s service to enhance its own Maps product, but did not say how much it paid.

Maps and navigation services have become vital for technology companies as consumers adopt smartphones and other mobile devices. Waze uses satellite signals from members’ smartphones to generate maps and traffic data, which it then shares with other users, offering real-time traffic info.

Waze’s product development team will remain in Israel and operate separately for now, Google said. Eventually, its service will enhance the U.S. company’s Maps app, while the core Waze product itself will benefit from integrating Google-search capabilities.

“Imagine if you could see real-time traffic updates from friends and fellow travelers ahead of you, calling out ‘fender bender…totally stuck in left lane! and showing faster routes that others are taking,” Google Geo Vice President Brian McClendon wrote in his blogpost.

Four-year-old Waze, which has 47 million users, has raised $ 67 million in funding to date from firms including: Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Blue Run Ventures and semiconductor company Qualcomm Inc. Facebook Inc was, at one point, an interested buyer, according to media reports.

(Reporting by Edwin Chan; Editing by Gerald E. McCormick and Leslie Gevirtz)

FOXBusiness.com

Google buys Israel"s Waze to protect mobile maps lead