Tag: tracking

Holder Refuses to Replace Obama Donor IRS Scandal Investigator. Inadvertent Transparency Reigns.

On By kingsjesterIn Politics1 Comment

obamaholderAnd, you thought President Nixon was a crook…

Chron.com reports that…

A request by Sen. Ted Cruz to have a special prosecutor appointed to probe allegations the Internal Revenue Service has been targeting conservative groups was denied by the Department of Justice.

The IRS has been accused of targeting conservative groups and denying them tax-exempt status based on political views.

The Texas freshman Republican senator sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder on Jan 22 saying the investigation was currently being led by a “partisan Democrat” selected from “the most politically charged division of DOJ.”

Cruz asked that a special prosecutor “with meaningful independence” be appointed and pointed out the current lead investigator, Barbara Kay Bosserman, had contributed around $6,500 to President Obama’s two presidential campaigns.

The Department of Justice said the authority to create a special prosecutor has “rarely been exercised” and was “not warranted” in the IRS matter.

The letter went on to say “the Department remains committed to integrity and fairness in all of its law enforcement efforts without regard to politics,” rebutting Cruz’s accusations of bias.

Senator Cruz issued the following statement after the judge’s ruling:

It is the height of hypocrisy for the Obama Administration to claim that the investigator leading the investigation into the IRS’s illegal program has no conflict of interest. The investigator is a partisan Democrat who has donated over six thousand dollars to President Obama and Democrat causes. Just as nobody would trust John Mitchell to investigate Richard Nixon, nobody should trust a partisan Obama donor to investigate the IRS’s political targeting of President Obama’s enemies. Sadly, “in the discretion of the Attorney General,” Eric Holder has chosen to reject the bipartisan tradition of the Department of Justice of putting rule of law above political allegiance.

Both Nixon Administration Attorney General Elliot Richardson and Clinton Administration Attorney General Janet Reno appointed special prosecutors whose integrity was beyond reproach; Eric Holder should do likewise. To date, nine months after a damning Inspector General report, nobody has been indicted, many of the victims have not even been interviewed, and Lois Lerner has twice pleaded the Fifth. And yet the Attorney General refuses to allow a genuine–and impartial–investigation.

The integrity of the Department of Justice deserves better. The American people deserve better.

Back on January 12th, the Washington Times gave us the details, concerning the hand-picked “investigator”…

Barbara Kay Bosserman is a trial lawyer at Justice who likes nothing better than stuffing envelopes with a contribution to Obama for America or the Obama Victory Fund. She has done this on 13 occasions, and counting.

She sent an additional $650 to the Democratic National Committee. She’s to be in charge of the “impartial inquiry” into the IRS harassment of conservatives.

This outrages the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, as it should. The committee has been trying for months to get to the bottom of what happened, only to be obstructed by repeated stonewalling from the administration.

Rep. Darrell E. Issa, the committee chairman, and Rep. Jim Jordan, a subcommittee chairman, demand that Ms. Bosserman be removed from the case at once.

“It is unbelievable that the department would choose such an individual to examine the federal government’s systematic targeting and harassment of organizations oppose to the President’s policies,” the Republican members wrote.

Messrs. Issa and Jordan are engaging in only a mild bit of hyperbole. This turn of events is in fact entirely believable. This is the most partisan Department of Justice in a generation.

For months, the administration has dismissed the revelations of abuse as a “phony scandal.” Those who suffered IRS harassment feel otherwise, and they’re rightly furious with this attempt to rig the outcome.

The American Center for Law and Justice represents 41 targeted Tea Party and conservative organizations.

“Appointing an avowed political supporter of President Obama to head up the Justice Department probe,” says Jay Sekulow, the group’s chief counsel, “is not only disturbing, but puts politics right in the middle of what is supposed to be an independent investigation to determine who is responsible for the Obama administration’s unlawful targeting of conservative and Tea Party groups.”

The administration and its media acolytes want all eyes on Chris Christie’s traffic-cone scandal. Shutting down a lane on the George Washington Bridge to create gridlock to pay back a small-town Democratic mayor was dumb, foolish and petty, and Mr. Christie was rightly humiliated because it happened in his administration.

But it pales as scandal next to using the IRS, the most feared and abusive government agency, as the instrument of payback to conservative and religious groups for opposing Barack Obama.

The media acolytes that have been consumed by the traffic scandal should allot a few lines of type to a scandal of epic proportions.

Mr. Holder and his minions refuse to acknowledge anything wrong with the selection of Ms. Bosserman, delivering the standard-issue denial that they do not take into account the “political affiliation of career employees” when making personnel decisions.

Yeah, right. And,Mooch, Mudear, and the girls are in China on a “fact-finding mission”.

As Barack Hussein Obama was assuming office in January of 2009, his minions posted the following promise on whitehouse.gov:

My Administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government. We will work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration. Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government.

Government should be transparent. Transparency promotes accountability and provides information for citizens about what their Government is doing. Information maintained by the Federal Government is a national asset. My Administration will take appropriate action, consistent with law and policy, to disclose information rapidly in forms that the public can readily find and use. Executive departments and agencies should harness new technologies to put information about their operations and decisions online and readily available to the public. Executive departments and agencies should also solicit public feedback to identify information of greatest use to the public.

Now, the following addendum has been added to the bottom of the page:

We’re updating the White House privacy policy. The new policy will go into effect on April 18, 2014. See the existing privacy policy here.

The White House is committed to protecting individual privacy and securing the personal information made available to us when you visit WhiteHouse.gov, use our mobile app, or visit White House pages hosted by other sites (such as our official profiles on social networking sites). This Privacy Policy describes what information is made available to the White House and how that information is used and retained, and provides information on:

  • Information we receive (when you provide it, visit WhiteHouse.gov, use the WhiteHouse.gov mobile app, receive email updates, or interact with official White House presences on third-party sites)
  • How this information is used
  • Sharing of this information
  • Data retention
  • Third-party tools and sites
  • Children and privacy
  • Security

If you have questions about this policy or suggestions for its improvement, please let us know at WhiteHouse.gov/Privacy/Feedback.

Yep. This Administration is transparent, alright. But, not in the way they claim.

Until He Comes,

KJ

Biochips: Safety or Subjugation?

On By kingsjesterIn Christianity, Entertainment, Politics2 Comments

16 Also it causes all, both small and great, both rich and poor, both free and slave, to be marked on the right hand or the forehead, (17)so that no one can buy or sell unless he has the mark, that is, the name of the beast or the number of its name.

Revelation 13: 16-17

Are we on our way to having to wear a “mark” for identification?

The New York Daily News has the story.

Would you barcode your baby?

Microchip implants have become standard practice for our pets, but have been a tougher sell when it comes to the idea of putting them in people.

Science fiction author Elizabeth Moon last week rekindled the debate on whether it’s a good idea to “barcode” infants at birth in an interview on a BBC radio program.

“I would insist on every individual having a unique ID permanently attached — a barcode if you will — an implanted chip to provide an easy, fast inexpensive way to identify individuals,” she said on The Forum, a weekly show that features “a global thinking” discussing a “radical, inspiring or controversial idea” for 60 seconds .Moon believes the tools most commonly used for surveillance and identification — like video cameras and DNA testing — are slow, costly and often ineffective.

In her opinion, human barcoding would save a lot of time and money.

The proposal isn’t too far-fetched – it is already technically possible to “barcode” a human – but does it violate our rights to privacy?

Opponents argue that giving up anonymity would cultivate an “Orwellian” society where all citizens can be tracked.

“To have a record of everywhere you go and everything you do would be a frightening thing,” Stanley, senior policy analyst at the American Civil Liberties Union, told the Daily News.

He warned of a “check-point society” where everyone carries an internal passport and has to show their papers at every turn, he said.

“Once we let the government and businesses go down the road of nosing around in our lives…we’re going to quickly lose all our privacy,” said Stanley.

There are already, and increasingly, ways to electronically track people. Since 2006, new U.S. passports include radio frequency identification tags (RFID) that store all the information in the passport, plus a digital picture of the owner.

In 2002, an implantable ID chip called VeriChip was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The chip could be implanted in a person’s arm, and when scanned, could pull up a 16 digit ID number containing information about the user.

It was discontinued in 2010 amid concerns about privacy and safety.

Still scientists and engineers have not given up on the idea.

A handful of enterprising companies have stepped into the void left by VeriChip, and are developing ways to integrate technology and man.

Biotech company MicroCHIPS has developed an implantable chip to deliver medicine to people on schedule and without injection. And technology company BIOPTid has patented a noninvasive method of identification called the “human barcode.”

Advocates say electronic verification could help parents or caregivers keep track of children and the elderly. Chips could be used to easily access medical information, and would make going through security points more convenient, reports say.

But there are also concerns about security breaches by hackers. If computers and social networks are already vulnerable to hacking and identify theft, imagine if someone could get access to your personal ID chip?

Stanley cautioned against throwing the baby out with the bathwater each time someone invents a new gadget.

“We can have security, we can have convenience, and we can have privacy,” he said. “We can have our cake and eat it too.”

Back on 11/25/10, SiliconIndia.com made this point about biochip implantation in humans:

When it comes to the use of biochips on humans, it works a little bit differently. The chip is implanted in a way where it is able to bind with your DNA. Many government agencies have been working with biochips which can be used for identification purposes. When we think of this as an invasion of privacy, we should also look at the positive side of the technology. This would be a great use to find missing children, if this technology goes as far as an implant at birth, those who have been kidnapped or missing, can be easily found. This type of implantable chip is being researched by defense departments in India and abroad in hopes to be used for soldiers, to monitor their location and relay health information if the soldier gets wounded in battle. This would be a great way to get medical data relayed of what the doctors may be dealing with before the patient ever gets to the hospital. Not only that, a biochip will make it easier to find that wounded soldier.

But there are certain areas which always lack definite explanations. You can’t value human life and you can limit his identity. It questions our morality when it comes to cloning humans and similarly we find it weird when we get ‘tagged’ by some minute chip. Whatever lies in the future for biochips, its implantation in humans still pricks our conscience.

And why is that?  Simple.  It’s that still small voice inside of us, that Divine Spark that makes us all individuals.  The thought of being tagged like an animal goes against the grain of our human spirits.

It disturbs our souls.