WorldNetDaily and Palin, Together At Last
I was surprised that Sarah Palin, who has twice passed on chances to speak at the Conservative Political Action Conference, agreed to keynote the National Tea Party Convention. Undoubtedly the Tea Party event has more to offer her financially–tickets for her speech, as I reported last month, are selling for $349 . But while CPAC is a well-established event with a filter for extremism, the Tea Party event is an unknown quantity. And right on cue, the conspiracy-minded site WorldNetDaily is joining the program , with Editor-in-Chief Joseph Farah getting a plum Friday night speaking slot. To be asked to speak at the first national tea party convention is a great honor for me. I believe the tea party movement is a powerful and righteous social and political force that can help take America back from the grips of out-of-control and tyrannical central government. It’s also a personal privilege for me to be on the same bill with Gov. Sarah Palin and so many other distinguished leaders and friends such as Judge Roy Moore, Rep. Michele Bachmann and Phil Valentine. Two months ago Farah appeared on the same stage as Bachmann and other conservative House Republicans to promote WND’s “pink slip” campaign against Congress, and political reporters pretty much ignored it. And WND has sponsored CPAC in the past. But CPAC has explicitly ruled out a “birther” forum at this year’s event, and some Republican activists have called for conservatives to cut ties with the birth certificate and conspiracy-obsessed WND. And here you’ll have Sarah Palin, giving her first political speech in months, on the same stage as Joseph Farah. Read more here: WorldNetDaily and Palin, Together At Last
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WorldNetDaily and Palin, Together At Last
Intelligence Official: Info From State Department on Abdulmutallab Was ‘Very Thin’
After State Department spokesperson Ian Kelly told reporters yesterday that an interagency process led by the National Counterterrorism Center was responsible for revoking Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s visa into the U.S. — and not the State Department, which issued the visa — perhaps some pushback was inevitable. Indeed, a U.S. intelligence official who requested anonymity to discuss an ongoing case said that the State Department provided that process with “very thin information” and “definitely not enough” to yank Abdulmutallab’s visa and put him on the no-fly list. Recall that in November, Abdulmutallab’s father told officials at the U.S. embassy in Abuja, Nigeria that Abdulmutallab might pose a threat. Embassy officials put Abdulmutallab on a master database of non-specific threat information called TIDE , run by the National Counterterrorist Center. And that’s where the first bureaucratic chokepoint in Abdulmutallab’s saga is found. The NCTC uses a set of criteria agreed upon by the State Department, the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and the intelligence community to determine who goes to a different list, known as the Terrorist Screening Database, run by the FBI. And if someone is on that database, that would prompt visa revocation and placement on the no-fly list. So what’s the standard for moving from TIDE to the Terrorist Screening Database? “Specific derogatory information leading to reasonable suspicion” that someone poses a terrorist threat. And what State got from Abdulmutallab’s father — and disseminated through the TIDE process — didn’t fit the bill, the U.S. intelligence official said. “Realistically, a lot of guys call every day and say their relative or former friend is dangerous,” the official explained. To use that level of information to revoke someone’s visa or stop someone from flying would be “unmanageable. We’d probably shut down air traffic.” It remains to be seen if that’s going to be a compelling explanation to lawmakers furious that Abdulmutallab got on Northwest Airlines Flight 253. But unless Congress weakens the standards for moving from TIDE to the Terrorist Screening Database, that’s the way it is. “If Congress wants us to change the criteria,” the official said, “we will move from there.” But buyer beware. See original here: Intelligence Official: Info From State Department on Abdulmutallab Was ‘Very Thin’
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Intelligence Official: Info From State Department on Abdulmutallab Was ‘Very Thin’
State Department, for All Practical Purposes, Couldn’t Have Revoked Abdulmutallab’s Visa
In his press briefing yesterday, State Department spokesman Ian Kelly took a beating over the fact that department bureaucrats didn’t revoke Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s visa to enter the United States. Kelly, in something of a defensive crouch, said that it was the responsibility of an interagency effort run by the National Counterterrorism Center to order the department to revoke the visa. I’ve contacted NCTC to solicit a response, but no luck yet. In the meantime, I’ve talked to people who’ve directly processed foreigners’ visas. Long story short: It’s even harder for State to revoke a visa than Kelly made it sound. First things first. Like Kelly said, State consular officers need to receive affirmative word from the interagency process that someone is a terror suspect or other security risk before it can revoke a visa on those grounds. Where State does have grounds to revoke a visa unilaterally is if officers catch visa recipients in a lie or violation, such as overstaying a visa’s duration. In those cases, which typically occur when someone reapplies for a visa, officers would have to present the recipient with evidence for why they were revoking his or her visa. Consular officers can tap into the so-called TIDE database of 550,000 names of people who the intelligence community suspects might cause the U.S. harm. But that occurs, typically, when an officer is issuing a visa in the first place. Officers don’t get pinged every time someone gets added to TIDE. Taken together, all that means in practice that State Department officers were not going to revoke Abdulmutallab’s visa. That visa was issued in June 2008, long before anyone had any suspicions about him, and good until June 2010. Making matters more complicated, Abdulmutallab got his visa in London, but it was U.S. embassy officials in Abuja who learned about the threat he posed after his father warned them in November. They entered him into TIDE. The issuing consular office might very well not have known about it. Absent a determination from NCTC that didn’t occur, no one in the State Department was going to yank the visa. And if some clever consular officers decided to skirt the rules, they would still have to alert Abdulmutallab to the revocation — and hope they didn’t tip him off to the fact that U.S. authorities were monitoring him. I don’t know exactly what the procedure is for the State Department to have known that the U.K. actually denied him a visa in May. Given that Abdulmutallab wasn’t a U.S. citizen, there may not have been a procedure mandating notification. The U.K. didn’t turn him down for terrorism suspicions; the Brits turned him down because his academic pretext for staying in Britain was dubious. None of this should be interpreted as an argument for the merits of the current system. It’s just an explanation of how the system currently works, and one that underscores the difficulty of changing it. See the original post: State Department, for All Practical Purposes, Couldn’t Have Revoked Abdulmutallab’s Visa
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State Department, for All Practical Purposes, Couldn’t Have Revoked Abdulmutallab’s Visa
Readers are closely split on climate change issue – Rochester Business Journal
Reuters Readers are closely split on climate change issue Rochester Business Journal But the damage that will be done to this country economically if CAP and Trade is enacted can be measured. It may turn the US back into a third world … Climate storm rages in Denmark Times LIVE Adrian macnair: Let the Copenhagen wealth transfer begin National Post all 7,409 news articles
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Readers are closely split on climate change issue – Rochester Business Journal
Thoughts about the GWOT and Domestic Politics
3 December 2009: Thoughts about the GWOT and Domestic Politics WarriorPatriot 3 December, 2009, Thoughts about upcoming Reflection on National Values Today and as always, at least lately, I am See the original post: Thoughts about the GWOT and Domestic Politics
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Thoughts about the GWOT and Domestic Politics
SEC Hits Former Merriman General Counsel and CEO for Fraud on Their Watch – The National Law Journal
SEC Hits Former Merriman General Counsel and CEO for Fraud on Their Watch The National Law Journal The government is making the former general counsel and CEO of San Francisco investment bank Merriman Curhan Ford pay for the sins of a rogue banker. … and more
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SEC Hits Former Merriman General Counsel and CEO for Fraud on Their Watch – The National Law Journal
EPA Whistleblowers Try to Derail Waxman-Markey [William Tucker] – National Review Online (blog)
EPA Whistleblowers Try to Derail Waxman-Markey [William Tucker] National Review Online (blog) Although European regulators have spotted the scam , they have found it impossible to change anything because of pressure from the manufacturers and their … and more
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EPA Whistleblowers Try to Derail Waxman-Markey [William Tucker] – National Review Online (blog)
The Wall Street Journal Prime Rate
People are always interested in the national and, increasingly, the world economy. This is especially true in the midst of a recession such as the one we’re currently experiencing, searching for clues as to how long the downturn will last, when we may turn the corner and how long we can expect a recovery to Read more: The Wall Street Journal Prime Rate
Conrad Black: The Obama fiasco – National Post
National Post Conrad Black: The Obama fiasco National Post The cap-and-trade bill is so loaded with rebates and exemptions that the administration's own spokesmen acknowledge that while it would sharply raise … and more
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DHS Immigration Detention Reforms Don’t Satisfy Critics
The Department of Homeland Security Secretary on Tuesday released a report on the immigrant detention system and announced plans to improve detention conditions for the approximately 30,000 immigrants being held on immigration violations. The report finds that although many immigrants have not committed crimes, they’re held in secure facilities designed for criminals and often in far more restrictive conditions than necessary. They also often don’t have sufficient access to medical and legal assistance while in custody. The reforms announced today by DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano and Immigration and Customs Enforcement Assistant Secretary John Morton involve primarily centralizing control of the detention facilities under ICE headquarters’ supervision; classifying immigrant detainees according to their risk level and housing them accordingly; improving detainees’ access to medical and legal services; and increasing supervision of the facilities by federal employees rather than by private contractors. Longtime critics of the agency’s detention practices are not completely satisfied, however, noting that DHS’s proposals fail to include a way to ensure that the agency complies with improved standards, that immigrants aren’t unnecessarily locked up, and that innocent people aren’t harassed by local authorities empowered to enforce federal immigration law. As Judy Rabinovitz, deputy director of the American Civil Liberties Union Immigrants’ Rights Project, put it in a statement released yesterday, “Meaningful reform of the system must focus not only on the conditions under which immigrants are being detained, but on why they are being detained in the first place — often for prolonged periods of time — when other forms of supervised release would be sufficient to address the government’s concerns, as well as the need for basic due process.” Linton Joaquin, general counsel for the National Immigration Law Center, called the proposal “a step in the right direction” but said that “as long as these standards are not enforceable, the rights violations faced by the men and women in these systems will persist.” Read the original post: DHS Immigration Detention Reforms Don’t Satisfy Critics
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DHS Immigration Detention Reforms Don’t Satisfy Critics