By Barry Rubin

What is most important to understand about the revelations of massive message interception by the U.S. government is this:

In counterterrorist terms, it is a farce. Basically the NSA, as one of my readers suggested, is the digital equivalent of the TSA strip-searching an 80 year-old Minnesota grandmothers rather than profiling and focusing on the likely terrorists.

There is a fallacy behind the current intelligence strategy of the United States, the collection of massive amounts of phone calls, emails, and even credit card expenditures, up to 3 billion phone calls a day alone, not to mention the government spying on the mass media. It is this:

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A pregnant Texas actress who told FBI agents her husband had sent ricin-tainted letters to President Barack Obama and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has been arrested for orchestrating the scheme herself, a law enforcement official said Friday. …

So there you have it. All the disparaging remarks about the “dark side of the pro-gun movement” were made by partisans jumping to conclusions, belying their disdain for good citizens who support the Second Amendment of our Constitution guaranteeing that “the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.” Some pathetic has-been actress decided to throw a tantrum and smear her soon-to-be ex-husband, Nathaniel Richardson:

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by Ambassador (ret.) Yoram Ettinger

Secretary of State John Kerry’s contention that a $4BN grant would revitalize the Palestinian Authority (PA), and the peace process, ignores the Palestinian track record, at least, since the 1993 Oslo Accords.

Kerry overlooks the impact of the $400MN in annual US aid which has fueled an all-time high Palestinian corruption (Mahoud Abbas’ nickname is “Mr. 20%”), hate education, terrorism, anti-US incitement, oppression, in general, and discrimination against Christians, in particular, and the Palestinian affinity toward America’s enemies and adversaries: Bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, Russia, China, North Korea, Venezuela, Cuba and Iran. The PA follows in the footsteps of previous Palestinian leaders who sided with the Nazis, the Communist Bloc and Khomeini.

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Looks like the National Security Agency, under the Obama administration, is tracking Americans’ phone calls. The information gathering operation was ordered by the “secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.” But “Cindy Cohn, an attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a civil liberties organization that has long accused the government of operating a secret dragnet surveillance program” says that this action “exceeds even the authority granted by the Patriot Act.”

The Guardian first broke the story, but now it’s being picked up by news outlets like the Washington Post. From the Guardian:

The National Security Agency is currently collecting the telephone records of millions of US customers of Verizon, one of America’s largest telecoms providers, under a top secret court order issued in April.

The order, a copy of which has been obtained by the Guardian, requires Verizon on an “ongoing, daily basis” to give the NSA information on all telephone calls in its systems, both within the US and between the US and other countries.

The document shows for the first time that under the Obama administration the communication records of millions of US citizens are being collected indiscriminately and in bulk — regardless of whether they are suspected of any wrongdoing. …

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By Barry Rubin

Up to now the Obama Administration has faced three big scandals — the IRS, the bugging of AP and Fox, and Benghazi. And now here is scandal Number 4:

For the last four years the Obama Administration has conducted a major “outreach” program to Islamic groups in the United States and in the Middle East. Patrick Poole has been investigating this project and in a comprehensive article now presents the full scoop and scope of what’s been going on. His article, “Blind to Terror: The U.S. Government’s Disastrous Muslim Outreach Efforts and the Impact on U.S. Policy” in the new, summer, issue of MERIA Journal is a game-changer.

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By W.D. Reasoner, CIS.org

[Oppose immigration amnesty in 4 easy steps]

Two dogs share my home; they’re wonderful companions for empty-nesters such as my wife and me. They have worked their way into our hearts in ways we didn’t expect. Our grown children get a big charge out of that. They accuse use of having let the dogs become surrogate kids and suggest half-seriously that they won’t be surprised when we begin calling the dogs by their names.

To inoculate myself in advance against that charge, I have reminded them that my mother, in an astounding display of free-association, frequently commingled the names of children and dogs in her own household, both before and after my siblings and I serially grew up and left home — a hilarious fact my kids know well, having observed it for themselves over the years in their interactions with grandma. I have suggested therefore, that if this happens with me, it’s genetic and I can’t be held accountable.

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by Cinnamon Stillwell and Rima Greene*

The false narrative that “Islamophobia” is a growing threat received a boost at the “Fourth Annual International Conference on the Study of Islamophobia: From Theorizing to Systematic Documentation,” which took place at the University of California, Berkeley on April 19 and 20, 2013 under the chairmanship of its foremost conceptual proponent, Hatem Bazian. A senior lecturer in UC Berkeley’s department of Near Eastern studies, Bazian directs the Islamophobia Research & Documentation Project (IRDP), a program of the school’s Center for Race & Gender, and sits on the editorial board for the Islamophobia Studies Journal. The IRDP is heavily invested in promoting the belief that “Islamophobia” is on the rise globally and its annual conferences (click here and here to read about previous years) never fail to ratchet up the hysteria.

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By David North, CIS.org

[ACT NOW to stop immigration amnesty from destroying the American dream]

The manner in which the Gang of Eight’s S.744 reached the floor of the Senate included a mix of both open democracy and behind-the-doors secrecy.

Regardless of the merits of the omnibus immigration bill (which many find wanting) the procedures used to get the bill to, and through, the Senate Judiciary Committee were both interesting and uneven. I have been following the bill for weeks and watched many hours of the Committee’s mark-up, during which it considered, at least nominally, hundreds of amendments.

You might say that there were three phases of the bill’s history so far.

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by Phyllis Chesler

Lois Lerner, the Director of the IRS Unit responsible for ruling on applications for tax-exempt status has refused to testify. She is taking the Fifth.

There is an eerie resonance in America and especially in Hollywood, when someone “takes the fifth.” It harks back to the McCarthy hearings in the early 1950s, when the “good guys” refused to name their friends as communists. We remember how great filmmakers and script writers — “good people” — were cruelly blackballed for refusing to name names; instead, they endured decades of poverty and ostracism. We remember them as heroes. Perhaps they were.

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First we found out that President Obama’s “Justice Department used a secret subpoena to obtain two months of phone records for Associated Press reporters and editors without notifying the news organization,” a move which AP President and CEO Gary Pruitt called a “‘massive and unprecedented intrusion’ into news-gathering operations.” Pruitt also “on Sunday called the Justice Department’s actions ‘unconstitutional’ and said the AP hasn’t ruled out legal action.” The head of the Project on Government Oversight, Danielle Brian, said “The Justice Department’s seizure of the Associated Press’ phone records is Nixonian.” Now we find that this was not the Obama administration’s only instance of menacing actions towards the media — and an attack on the First Amendment. We’ve now learned that the “Obama administration spied on Fox News reporter James Rosen:”

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The war in Afghanistan may be winding down. But the Pentagon’s chief of irregular warfare still sees a war against al-Qaida that will last decades, all over the world — a prospect that prompted astonishment and constitutional debate in the Senate. …

- Wired.com, 5/16/2013

Two Islamist brothers terrorized Boston for days in April. Just a few days ago Fazliddin Kurbanov was charged in Boise, Idaho with “conspiracy to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization and conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists,” according to the Idaho Statesman. The FBI itself said that:

… The Idaho indictment alleges in count one that between August 2012 and May 2013, Kurbanov knowingly conspired with unnamed co-conspirators to provide material support and resources to the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, a designated foreign terrorist organization. The indictment alleges that the material support and resources included himself, computer software and money.

In count two, the indictment further alleges that the defendant conspired to provide material support and resources, including himself, to terrorists knowing that the material support was to be used in preparation for and in carrying out an offense involving the use of a weapon of mass destruction. …

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U.S. Representative Mike Kelly, representing the 3rd congressional district of Pennsylvania, left Acting IRS Commissioner Steven Miller speechless as he testified before the House Ways and Means Committee today. You should watch the exchange between Miller and Kelly below — though Miller sat there with his mouth agape, obviously on the verge of diarrhea, probably realizing the gravity of the words levelled against him by Kelly, who did most of the talking. Kelly spoke the hard cold truth about the egregious nature of the obviously politically-motivated IRS witchhunt. Here’s a great synopsis from the Houston Chronicle of the IRS’s Orwellian and very anti-American activities:

… How would you feel if that scrutiny were being triggered by some wacky word association game made up by the agency and including seemingly harmless words such as “Tea Party” and “Patriot,” “Constitution” and “good government” in a list of suspicious words and phrases?

You’d feel like Big Brother was watching, and you’d be right. What is being revealed about IRS targeting of conservative groups over a period of two years because of words like those mentioned above is Orwellian. For those unfamiliar with the term, it derives from the British writer’s classic work “1984,” in which a character known as “Big Brother” tracked the thought processes of ordinary citizens through a system of omnipresent government surveillance. …

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President Obama is already trying to sweep another one of his scandals under the rug, the IRS debacle, in which that agency “used inappropriate criteria that identified for review tea party and other organizations applying for tax-exempt status based upon their names or policy positions.” This is a huge scandal, with many major ramifications for free speech and other aspects of our constitutional rights. The President stood before the American people for “a mere four minutes” yesterday and fired the acting director of the IRS, a guy who already had decided to step down before the scandal broke, and who is by some accounts “well respected at the agency” and “a very smart, capable guy.” After another of Obama’s scandals, his betrayal of the Associated Press, one would think the media would see right through the President’s obvious attempt to find a quick scapegoat for the IRS debacle. But the Washington Post is already seemingly defending the President. So let’s start with Obama’s attack on the free press:

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The mere thought of granting amnesty to 11 – 20 million illegal immigrants should frighten any common sense American citizen. Amnesty means that wannabe tyrants like Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Michael Bloomberg, and Barack Obama will achieve their “dream of a permanent Democratic majority” in the U.S. The entire political, cultural, social, and economic landscape created by our Founding Fathers will be destroyed by amnesty. Concerned citizens must engage in the democratic process to stop the current immigration “reform” madness. This article provides them with all the tools they need to do so by clicking here. Please take action NOW or read on before doing so. NOW is the time to act as:

… opponents are gearing up to flood Congress with calls condemning any legislation that allows illegal immigrants to gain legal status or citizenship.

The same tactic helped defeat immigration reform the last time lawmakers considered passing bills in 2006 and especially 2007, when a flood of angry calls shut down the switchboard in Congress. …

Most of you are the descendents of immigrants who came to this great nation legally, who built decent lives by living according to decent values, and passed those values unto you. Your ancestors assimilated. Most of you were raised to believe that the American dream is the chance — the opportunity — to achieve your full potential by working hard, being honest, treating people as you would have them treat you, believing in the common sense law of the land (based on the Constitution), having core values, and having faith, all to build a better life for yourself, your family, your friends, your community, your nation, and even the whole world. Your conscientious legal citizenship — your patriotism — is about to be thrown in the trash.

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By Barry Rubin

In his speech at Ohio State University, President Barack Obama used the word “together” four times. Yet each time he defined the collective endeavor of Americans as merely that of promoting more government. Thus, while trying to turn American history and even the Constitution into precedents for his goals and policies, Obama actually reverses reality, undermining not only the conservative vision of America but also the historic liberal one.

Normally, a president would speak of the vast array of efforts made “together” to refer — or at least include — non-government activities. That means the actions of voluntarily formed communities, organizations, corporations, charities, religious groups, and trade unions. It is the freedom, energy, and enthusiasm to form such groups that marks American society as unusual in the world.

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