Department of Justice

There's one big reason why the administration, James Clapper and the NSA should probably just keep their mouths shut: with every incremental attempt to refute some previously unknown facet of the US Big Brother state, a new piece of previously unleaked information from the same intelligence organization now scrambling for damage control, emerges and exposes the brand new narrative as yet another lie, forcing even more lies, more retribution against sources, more journalist persecution and so on. The latest piece of news once again comes from the Guardian's Glenn Greenwald who this time exposes the NSA's datamining tool "Boundless Informant" which according to leaked documents collected 97 billion pieces of intelligence from computer networks worldwide in March 2013 alone, and "3 billion pieces of intelligence from US computer networks over a 30-day period."

From 2006:

And Other Stunning Facts I Learned Last Night ...

The US Attorney General's New Normal Watergate fiasco gets more surreal by the day. Eric Holder, currently being investigated for lying under oath, has been in hot water ever since the break of the AP scandal. But it has been his "handling" of the spillover that has raised eyebrows. The latest update is sure to raise them even more. Because it turns out that during Thursday's "off the record" meeting which the majority of the press boycotted for the simple reason that the reporting press probably can't go off the record when the topic is the US government's precedence over the first amendment or it will lose what little credibility it has left, Holder's message was simple: "trust me, I am the government, and I will stop spying on you." The farce just goes downhill from there.

There are countless examples of rampant criminality and corruption as well as blatant evidence of a two-tier system of justice in America today.  Too many to note or write about, but in this case we want to focus on this concept of “money laundering” in light of the recent shutdown of Liberty Reserve.  The crackdown on Liberty Reserve has nothing to do with “money laundering.”  It’s about a cartel of “too big to jail” banks and the fraud financial system they operate eliminating any players that try to encroach on their turf.  That isn’t capitalism, or socialism and it certainly isn’t anything close to freedom.  It is a parasitic, oligarch created feudalistic structure that must be done away with.  We often hear people say “we never learn from our mistakes.”  Incorrect.  People learn from their mistakes when there are consequences to their actions.  Of course criminals don’t learn from their mistakes when there are no serious consequences to their crimes.

With the euphoric market once again serving as a much needed distraction from far bigger geopolitical issues, many have forgotten the plethora of scandals the Obama administration has recently found itself engulfed in. This may change shortly, following news that the head of the US Department of Justice, Eric Holder himself, is now being investigated for lying under oath. Will he too receive an extended absence of leave (with pay) after pleading the fifth, or will the circle of lies slowly but surely start to unwind? Of course, in the New Normal it is probably not only expected, but given, that the chief legal enforcer is just a little more equal when it comes to the same justice he is tasked to enforce.

It has just been released that the UK came within 6 hours of seeing itself deprived of its eggs and bacon as gas supplies across the entire country depleted to danger levels on March 22nd.

The old idiom “you can lead a horse to water, but not make him drink” has proven itself true in the course of human learning. Or rather, it would be more accurate to label it man’s inability to learn from mistakes. You can hold a mirror up to grotesque instances of hypocrisy, but most men will remain mules – stubborn in their prejudice and beliefs. The ability to heed lessons from blunders is, often times, a skill unable to be mastered by the mass populace. The mule, being a universal symbol for stubbornness, has become indistinguishable from the average news and politics ingester. Toeing the carefully-planned ideological path of media personalities, divergence from party line is a hurdle most pedestrians are incapable of clearing. What’s not done is a forthright attempt to continually rectify our wrongs and pursue truth – even when it conflicts with inner bias. It’s far less painful to not acknowledge faulty logic.

Through most of the 20th century, America led something of a charmed life, at least when compared with the disasters endured by almost every other major country. We became the richest and most powerful nation on earth, partly due to our own achievements and partly due to the mistakes of others. The public interpreted these decades of American power and prosperity as validation of our system of government and national leadership, and the technological effectiveness of our domestic propaganda machinery - our own American Pravda - has heightened this effect. Author James Bovard has described our society as an “attention deficit democracy,” and the speed with which important events are forgotten once the media loses interest might surprise George Orwell.

One can read "The Lethal Presidency of Barack Obama" to get a true sense of Obama's "the best defense is a relentless drone everyone offense, ignore collateral damage and take out a few Americans in the process" policy. Or one can stare at rising stawks and enjoy their Obamaphones. Obe can't have both.

For an affair that numerous media outlets will have you believe has been spun out of all proportion, and that it really is the conservatives fault that the IRS was targeting them, it is somewhat ironic that the IRS official who opened up the entire Pandora's box with her targeted apology two weeks ago, and who learned in 2011 about the improper targeting of political groups yet lied under oath to Congress to the contrary, has decided to plead the Fifth and will invoke her right not to testify on Wednesday for fear of self-incrimination, according to her lawyer. But this would mean that... she may have something to hide? And that would be rather problematic for the media's spin cycle, although we are confident it will take just a few minutes of deep though in the proper channels, before this all too overt admission of guilt is somehow spun as the IRS being the unwitting targets of an aggressive McCarthyesque campaign seeking to discredit the government's impartial tax collector whose only noble purpose is to enable the government to get even bigger.

Use It or Lose It Time for the Constitution and Bill of Rights ...

Obviously with Buffett a major shareholder of Moody's, the only place where a downgrade of Berkshire could come from was S&P. Moments ago, the rating agency that dared to downgrade the US for which it is being targeted by Eric Holder's Department of "Justice", did just that.

Objective Analysis: Obama Versus Nixon

Today at 1pm the real circus starts. From the House Committee on the Judiciary: "On Wednesday, May 15 at 1:00 p.m., Attorney General Eric Holder will testify before the House Judiciary Committee for an oversight hearing on the U.S. Department of Justice.  The hearing will focus on the Justice Department obtaining two months of telephone records of reporters and editors for The Associated Press, the unwarranted targeting of conservative groups by the IRS, the recent bombings in Boston, wasteful spending at the Justice Department, and troubling allegations of the politicization of the Justice Department under Attorney General Holder’s leadership."