Accountability

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Despite his lies, Donald Trump is a potent truth-teller | The Guardian

fools

By James S. Gordon

Donald Trump evokes a wily and resilient mythic figure: the joker, the trickster, the fool, the one the Lakota people call the Heyoka, the contrary. Had his opponents – such as Hillary Clinton – understood this quality in him, the electoral outcome might have been different. The sooner the rest of us understand this side of him, the better.

In the European tradition, the fool holds up the mirror to the monarch and to all of us, mocking our faults and pretensions. He (the fool is almost always a man) is not constrained by deference or allegiance to truth. The Heyoka, one of the purest forms of fool, pretends to shiver when everyone else is sweating and takes off his clothes in winter.

The fool is a potent truth-teller and commands attention. Shakespeare knew this. Lear’s Fool, a gentle version of the species, skewered the arrogance and pride that were his master’s downfall, even as he comforted him. The “scabrous” Thersites in Troilus and Cressida speaks with relentless, scene-stealing venom. He paints Achilles, the Greeks’ greatest hero, as a petulant adolescent; King Agamemnon is a blowhard, Helen of Troy a hooker.

The fool is always addressing us, his audience, as well as his high-ranking targets. He performs a vital social function, forcing us to examine our own preconceptions, especially our inflated ideas about our own virtue. Trump was telling all of us – women and minorities, progressives, pillars of the establishment, as well as his supporters – that we were just like him.

The appropriate, time-honored response to the fool’s sallies is to take instruction from them. Only after we’ve acknowledged and accepted our own shortcomings do we have the integrity that allows us to keep him in his place. Perhaps if Secretary Clinton had been a more skillful, poised and humble warrior, she could have done this.

Fools serve the collective order by challenging those whose ignorance and blindness threaten it. They are meant to be instruments of awareness, not rulers. Impossible to imagine Lear’s Fool succeeding him or Thersites commanding the Greek army. Trump will not address his own limitations, cannot tolerate criticism, and takes himself dangerously seriously. This makes him a seriously flawed fool. He believes his own hyperbole and threatens democratic order.

In the weeks since his election, Trump has continued to act the fool. Now, however, the underdog’s challenges have become a bully’s beatdowns. His attack on the steelworkers’ union leader, Chuck Jones, exactly the kind of man whom he claimed to champion, was a vicious and painful lie. Unfunny, purely ugly. His more recent rants, including boasts about the crowds at his inaugural and the millions of imaginary illegal Clinton voters, illuminate his own troubled insecurity: the all-powerful winner acting the petulant, powerless loser.

Many of President Trump’s cabinet choices are like the punchlines of jokes, but punchlines with potentially devastating real-world consequences: an education secretary who disparages public education and badly botched her own effort at creating an alternative; men charged with responding to climate change who deny its existence; and a national security adviser who purveys paranoid fantasies.

There are glimmers of hope that the jester might mature to majesty. Gen James Mattis, the defense secretary, inspired a Trumpian epiphany that waterboarding might be counterproductive. Conversations with Al Gore or, more likely, ones with his daughter Ivanka could persuade him to open his eyes to the reality of climate change.

Or perhaps President Trump will implode, brought down by the damage done by perverse cabinet choices, or words and actions so intemperate and ill-advised that Congress and the courts call him to a terminal account. His challenged immigration order could be a harbinger.

Meanwhile, what are the rest of us to do? The fact that this question is even being asked is healthy, a residual benefit of his fool’s vocation. Trump’s grand and vulgar self-absorption is inviting all of us to examine our own selfishness. His ignorance calls us to attend to our own blind spots. The fears that he stokes and the isolation he promotes goad us to be braver, more generous.

Already, people all over the US – Republicans I know as well as Democrats – are beginning to link inner awareness to small and great political action.

The day after Trump’s inauguration, hundreds of thousands of women of all ages, ethnicities and political affiliations affirmed their rights, celebrated their community and slyly poked at the joker: “if I incorporated my uterus,” read one demonstrator’s sign, “would you stop trying to regulate it”.

The joker who is now our president has served an important function, waking us up to what we’ve not yet admitted in ourselves or accomplished in our country. He is, without realizing it, challenging us to grow in self-awareness, to act in ways that respect and fulfill what is best in ourselves and our democracy.

It’s time for us citizens, who’ve watched the performance, to take the stage.

Source: The Guardian

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Court Rules Against Monsanto, Allows California To Put Cancer Warning On Roundup | CBS Sacramento

California can require Monsanto to label its popular weed-killer Roundup as a possible cancer threat despite an insistence from the chemical giant that it poses no risk to people, a judge tentatively ruled Friday.

California would be the first state to order such labeling if it carries out the proposal.

ALSO READ: Cancer Patient Donates Year’s Worth Of Pizza He Won To Food Bank

Monsanto had sued the nation’s leading agricultural state, saying California officials illegally based their decision for carrying the warnings on an international health organization based in France.

Monsanto attorney Trenton Norris argued in court Friday that the labels would have immediate financial consequences for the company. He said many consumers would see the labels and stop buying Roundup.

“It will absolutely be used in ways that will harm Monsanto,” he said.

After the hearing, the firm said in a statement that it will challenge the tentative ruling.

ALSO READ: What Is The EPA And Why Is It In The Hot Seat With Donald Trump?

Critics take issue with Roundup’s main ingredient, glyphosate, which has no color or smell. Monsanto introduced it in 1974 as an effective way of killing weeds while leaving crops and plants intact.

It’s sold in more than 160 countries, and farmers in California use it on 250 types of crops.

The chemical is not restricted by the U.S. Environmental ProtectionAgency, which says it has “low toxicity” and recommends people avoid entering a field for 12 hours after it has been applied.

But the International Agency for Research on Cancer, a Lyon, France-based branch of the U.N. World Health Organization, classified the chemical as a “probable human carcinogen.”

Shortly afterward, the most populated U.S. state took its first step in 2015 to require the warning labels.

St. Louis-based Monsanto contends that California is delegating its authority to an unelected foreign body with no accountability to U.S. or state officials in violation of the California Constitution.

Attorneys for California consider the International Agency for Research on Cancer the “gold standard” for identifying carcinogens, and they rely on its findings along with several states, the federal government and other countries, court papers say.

Fresno County Superior Court Judge Kristi Kapetan still must issue a formal decision, which she said would come soon.

California regulators are waiting for the formal ruling before moving forward with the warnings, said Sam Delson, a spokesman for the state Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment.

Once a chemical is added to a list of probable carcinogens, the manufacturer has a year before it must attach the label, he said.

Teri McCall believes a warning would have saved her husband, Jack, who toted a backpack of Roundup for more than 30 years to spray weeds on their 20-acre avocado and apple farm. He died of cancer in late 2015.

“I just don’t think my husband would have taken that risk if he had known,” said Teri McCall, one of dozens nationwide who are suing Monsanto, claiming the chemical gave them or a loved one cancer.

But farmer Paul Betancourt, who has been using Roundup for more than three decades on his almond and cotton crops, says he does not know anyone who has gotten sick from it.

“You’ve got to treat it with a level of respect, like anything else,” he said. “Gasoline will cause cancer if you bathe in the stuff.”

Source: CBS Sacramento

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Former NSA Officer William Binney: CIA Lying About Russians Hacking DNC | Sputnik News

By Saul Loeb
Former CIA Analyst: Russian Hacking Allegations of US Election Don’t Add Up

Binney, a cryptanalyst-mathematician and a Russia specialist at one point during his 30 years with the NSA, is a signatory of an open letter released Monday from six retired intelligence officials, calling themselves the “Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity,” who assert that the allegations that Russia hacked the Democratic National Committee (DNC) are baseless.

“The evidence that should be there is absent; otherwise, it would surely be brought forward, since this could be done without any danger to sources and methods,” the letter stated. “Thus, we conclude that the emails were leaked by an insider – as was the case with Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning. Such an insider could be anyone in a government department or agency with access to NSA databases, or perhaps someone within the DNC.”

In an in-depth interview on Radio Sputnik’s Loud & Clear, Binney details points clarifying that the WikiLeaks email releases are not hacks at all, but actually insider leaks.

Ex-CIA Officer: No Evidence of Russian Government Involvement in US Election

“In order to get to the servers, they [hackers] would have to come across the network and go into the servers, penetrate them, and then extract data out of the servers and bring it back across the network,” Binney explained. “If it were the Russians, it would then go to Russia, and it would have to go from there across the network again to get to WikiLeaks.”Binney explained that “anything doing that would be picked up by the NSA’s vast surveillance system, both in terms of collecting the data as it transits the fiber optics inside the US, as well as internationally.”

The retired intelligence analyst also noted that traceroute packets are embedded in hundreds of switchers around the world, and that email messages are easily traced.

“With all the billions of dollars we spend on this collection access system that the NSA has, there’s no way that could have missed all the packets being transferred from those servers to the Russians,” Binney said. “I mean, they should know exactly how and when those packets left those servers and went to the Russians, and where specifically in Russia it went. There’s no excuse for not knowing that.”

If it was a hack, Binney reveals, the NSA would know who the sender and recipients of the data are, thanks to mass internet surveillance programs. The intelligence apparatus does not depend on “circumstantial evidence,” as has been reported.

“My point is really pretty simple. There should be no guessing here at all, they should be able to show the traceroutes of all the packets, or some of them anyways, going to the Russians and then from the Russians to WikiLeaks,” Binney explained. “There is no excuse for not being able to do that — and that would be the basic evidence to prove it. Otherwise, it could be any hacker in the world, or any other government in the world, who knows.”

Former CIA analyst Ray McGovern also signed the letter, and has been outspoken about his disbelief that the information came from a Russian hack — or that the breach was, indeed, a hack.

Spy vs. Spy: DNI Refuses to Support CIA ‘Russian Hack’ Claim, Citing Lack of Proof

“Today they are talking about having ‘overwhelming circumstantial evidence.’ Now we have overwhelming technical evidence. We have the former technical director of the National Security Agency that tells us that this is really just drivel,” McGovern previously told Radio Sputnik. “This is really just an operation to blacken the Russians and to blame the defeat of Hillary Clinton on the Russians.”

On Monday, Sputnik reported that former CIA officer and current executive director of the Council for the National Interest, Philip Giraldi, has come to the same conclusion as Binney and McGovern.

“If the intelligence community is nevertheless claiming that they know enough to conclude that it was directed from the top levels of the Russian government, then they should be able to produce documentary or other evidence of officials’ ordering the operation to take place,” Giraldi wrote. “Do they have that kind of information? It is clear that they do not, in spite of their assertion of ‘high confidence,’ and there is a suggestion by Republican Rep. Devin Nunes, a persistent critic of Russian spying who is on the House Intelligence Committee, that the information they do have consists of innuendo and is largely circumstantial.”

Source: Sputnik News

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Democracy And Corruption: European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights Files War Crimes Charges Against Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld And Other CIA Officials | Liberal America

By Tiffany Willis

BushRumsfeldCheneyThe European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights has filed a criminal complaint against U.S. torture program architects and members of the Bush Administration. The organization has accused CIA director George Tenet and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld of war crimes and they’ve called for a German prosecutor to conduct an immediate investigation.

This move follows the release of the damning Senate report on CIA torture that includes the case of German citizen Khalid El-Masri, who was captured in 2004 by CIA agents in a case of mistaken identity. The report revealed the shocking contrast of democracy and corruption.

Bizarrely, the only person involved with the CIA torture program who has been charged with a crime is the man who exposed the war crimes — whistleblower John Kiriakou.

The relevant parties in this case have given an extensive interview to Democracy Now. Some of the important points are below.

Wolfgang Kaleck, the general secretary of the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights and the author of International Prosecution of Human Rights Crimes said this:

“By investigating members of the Bush administration, Germany can help to ensure that those responsible for abduction, abuse and illegal detention do not go unpunished.”

Michael Ratner, president emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights and chairman of the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights said this:

“I strongly disagree that Bush, Cheney, et al., would have a defense. This wasn’t like these memos just appeared independently from the Justice Department. These memos were facilitated by the very people — Cheney, etc. — who we believe should be indicted. This was part of a conspiracy so they could get away with torture. But that’s not the subject here now.”

“Secondly, whatever we think of those memos, they’re of uselessness in Europe. Europe doesn’t accept this, quote, ‘golden shield’ of a legal defense. Either it’s torture or it’s not. Either you did it or you didn’t. And that’s one of the reasons, among others, why we’re going to Europe and why we went to Europe to bring these cases through the European Center.”

Ratner is the author of The Trial of Donald Rumsfeld: A Prosecution by Book.

Ratner also said this:

“But, of course, you know, Cheney just showed us exactly why you have to — have to prosecute torture. Because if you don’t prosecute it, the next guy down the line is going to torture again. And that’s what Cheney said: ‘I would do it again.’”

From Addicting Info‘s Ryan Denson:

Khalid El-Masri was on vacation in Skopje, in Macedonia, when he was pulled off of a bus by government agents, sodomized with a drug, and taken to the secret base that was identified only as Cobalt in the CIA torture report. After four months, and after the United States learned of the mistaken identity, they left him there and continued to torture him. They held him further because the U.S. realized they had been torturing the wrong man. Afterwards, they released him, dropping him off somewhere to resume his life.

El-Masri’s comments to Democracy Now highlight the contrast of democracy and corruption:

[translated] I was the only one in this prison in Kabul who was actually treated slightly better than the other inmates. But it was known among the prisoners that other prisoners were constantly tortured with blasts of loud music, exposed to constant onslaughts of loud music. And they were—for up to five days, they were just sort of left hanging from the ceiling, completely naked in ice-cold conditions. The man from Tanzania, whom I mentioned before, had his arm broken in three places. He had injuries, trauma to the head, and his teeth had been damaged. They also locked him up in a suitcase for long periods of time, foul-smelling suitcase that made him vomit all the time. Other people experienced forms of torture whereby their heads were being pushed down and held under water.

“And let me just say, Germany — whatever happened before, between the NSA spying on Germany and the fact that their citizen has now been revealed to have been kept in a torture place, when it was known that he was innocent, I’m pretty sure that Germany is going to take this very seriously.“

We need to throw our full support behind this investigation and our government and the Obama administration needs to not impede it in any way. This is a harsh indictment of our hypocrisy as a nation when it comes to democracy and corruption.

Source: Liberal America

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Edward Snowden, after months of NSA revelations, says his mission’s accomplished | The Washington Post

By Barton Gellman

Snowden1MOSCOW — The familiar voice on the hotel room phone did not waste words.

“What time does your clock say, exactly?” he asked. He checked the reply against his watch and described a place to meet. “I’ll see you there,” he said.

Edward Joseph Snowden emerged at the appointed hour, alone, blending into a light crowd of locals and tourists. He cocked his arm for a handshake, then turned his shoulder to indicate a path. Before long he had guided his visitor to a secure space out of public view.

During more than 14 hours of interviews, the first he has conducted in person since arriving here in June, Snowden did not part the curtains or step outside. Russia granted him temporary asylum on Aug. 1, but Snowden remains a target of surpassing interest to the intelligence services whose secrets he spilled on an epic scale.

Late this spring, Snowden supplied three journalists, including this one, with caches of top-secret documents from the National Security Agency, where he worked as a contractor. Dozens of revelations followed, and then hundreds, as news organizations around the world picked up the story. Congress pressed for explanations, new evidence revived old lawsuits and the Obama administration was obliged to declassify thousands of pages it had fought for years to conceal.

Taken together, the revelations have brought to light a global surveillance system that cast off many of its historical restraints after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Secret legal authorities empowered the NSA to sweep in the telephone, Internet and location records of whole populations. One of the leaked presentation slides described the agency’s “collection philosophy” as “Order one of everything off the menu.”

Six months after the first revelations appeared in The Washington Post and Britain’s Guardian newspaper, Snowden agreed to reflect at length on the roots and repercussions of his choice. He was relaxed and animated over two days of nearly unbroken conversation, fueled by burgers, pasta, ice cream and Russian pastry. Read more…

Source: The Washington Post

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Saudi-Sized Cracks in the 9/11 Wall of Silence | WhoWhatWhy.com

By Russ Baker

123President Obama is apparently thinking about his presidential library. So now might be a good time to ponder whether anyone will want to visit it.

If he cared about revivifying his brief reputation as a good-guy outsider ready to shine light on the hidden recesses of our governing apparatus (remember his election-night victory speech that brought tears and rare hope to America?), Obama could certainly start at this late date by taking a stand for transparency.

Here’s how: Two Congressmen, a Democrat and a Republican, are asking Obama to declassify the congressional report on 9/11, which the Bush administration heavily redacted.

The two members of the House of Representatives have read the blacked-out portions, including 28 totally blank pages that deal largely with Saudi government ties to the alleged 9/11 hijackers.

This is apparently major connect-the-dots stuff—much more significant than what one may remember from Michael Moore’s film Fahrenheit 911, about Saudi royals and other Saudis studying and living in the US, who were allowed to go home without being interviewed in the aftermath of the attacks. This is about actual financial and logistical support of terrorism against the United States—by its ally, the Saudi government.

As a Hoover Institution media scholar wrote in the New York Post (normally no bastion of deep investigative inquiry):

The Saudis deny any role in 9/11, but the CIA in one memo reportedly found “incontrovertible evidence” that Saudi government officials — not just wealthy Saudi hardliners, but high-level diplomats and intelligence officers employed by the kingdom — helped the hijackers both financially and logistically. The intelligence files cited in the report directly implicate the Saudi embassy in Washington and consulate in Los Angeles in the attacks, making 9/11 not just an act of terrorism, but an act of war.

Congressmen “absolutely shocked”

The two outspoken Representatives, Walter Jones (R-NC) and Stephen Lynch (D-Mass) would be violating federal law if they offered any specifics about what they know, or even named any countries mentioned—but did say they were  “absolutely shocked” by revelations of foreign state involvement in the attacks. Now, they want a resolution requesting Obama declassify the entire document.

If the media were to do its job and create the kind of wall-to-wall coverage it bestows upon, say, inter-spousal murder trials, Obama might feel he had to release the full 9/11 report. He’d have to concede there is a public right to know, or at least explain in detail why he doesn’t think so. Either way, there would be major fireworks. But we’re not betting on either the president or the media doing the right thing.

Mainstream Media: out to lunch, so far

How much publicity is this enormously significant story getting? Very, very little. A search of the Nexis-Lexis database turned up just 13 articles or transcripts. One was a very short, cautious piece from the Boston Globe. One was a transcript of TV commentator Lou Dobbs on Fox News. All of the others were specialty or ideological publications or blogs—Investor’s Business Daily, the Blaze, Prairie Pundit, Right Wing News, etc. (CNN’s Piers Morgan did interview Rep. Lynch). Nothing showed up from the New York Times, Washington Post, Politico, MSNBC or the broadcast networks.

That’s a remarkable oversight, given that the media did cover similar concerns expressed by former senators Bob Kerrey and Bob Graham almost two years ago. In an affidavit for a lawsuit by the families of 9/11 victims, Graham, head of the joint 2002 congressional 9/11 inquiry, said, “I am convinced that there was a direct line between at least some of the terrorists who carried out the September 11th attacks and the government of Saudi Arabia.” Kerrey, who served on the non-congressional 9/11 Commission, said in his own affidavit, “Evidence relating to the plausible involvement of possible Saudi government agents in the September 11th attacks has never been fully pursued.”

But two House members, one a Democrat, one a Republican, explicitly calling for the President to make the full report available? That’s certainly news.

What Will Obama Do?

If President Obama does declassify the records, that would be surprising, if not outright shocking.

Although he has belatedly (and under heavy pressure from his base) begun to shift more toward at least the rhetoric of openness, Obama failed to stand up for release of still-classified documents related to the John F. Kennedy assassination (a half century after that tragedy), and he has presided over myriad actions that take us further than ever from transparency. Meanwhile, the media has all but abdicated its responsibility to hold the administration’s feet to the fire on these and related matters.

At WhoWhatWhy, we understand how hard it is to get this kind of material into the hands of the American people. Our groundbreaking reporting on ties between prominent and powerful Saudis and the men said to have been on the planes attacking on September 11 (via a house in Sarasota, Florida) was almost entirely ignored by the establishment media, including many so-called “alternative” and “progressive” outlets, though it has nonetheless spread widely thanks to the Internet and social media. Even the above-mentioned New York Post only now has acknowledged our reporting on the Saudi-Sarasota connection, without mentioning our name or linking to us.

No matter. The significance is that others have come forward to ask tough questions about the daunting reach and self-protective reflexes of our government’s ever-expanding “secret sector.” With a related meta-issue—NSA surveillance—odd bedfellows like “leftie” Glenn Greenwald and “rightie” Larry Klayman (with a Bush appointed judge ruling in his favor) are going at the surveillance state simultaneously, mightily aided by former intelligence analyst Edward Snowden.

Whatever one thinks of the 9/11 story—and one needn’t buy the more extreme theories to be open to examining new, documented facts—there’s clearly more to that trauma than we have been allowed to know; and we suspect there are many more establishment figures with a hunger for the truth. And once more “respectable” Washington insiders like House (and Senate) members start saying shocking things—well, that’s a man-bites-dog story few news organizations can turn down.

As for the executive branch, representatives of the State Department, Department of Justice and FBI have repeatedly denied knowing anything about the Saudi angle. If those documents are ever declassified, the denials themselves—and those issuing those denials—should also be news.

Source: WhoWhatWhy.com

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Sen. Warren and Prof. Lessig: Constitutional Accountability Center | Bill Moyers

In an event sponsored by the Constitutional Accountability Center, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Professor Lawrence Lessig, director of Harvard’s Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics, discuss why they believe the founding fathers would disagree with the way in which the Supreme Court interpreted the term “corruption” in its ruling on Citizens United v. FEC, the decision that allowed outside groups like super PACs to pour unlimited money into the political process.

A new case before the Court this term, McCutcheon v. FEC, could mean the repeal of limits on the amount individuals can give to candidates — basically, Citizens United 2.0.

“The Framers had a very specific conception of the term ‘corruption’ in mind, one at odds with McCutcheon’s more modern understanding of that term,” Lessig wrote in an amicus brief for the case. “For the Framers, ‘corruption’ predicated of institutions as well as individuals, and when predicated of institutions, was often constituted by an ‘improper dependence.’

“…The aggregate limits, which permit an individual to make a total of $123,200 in contributions in each two-year election cycle ($48,600 to candidates and $74,600 to political parties and non-party political committees), play a necessary role in securing a government free from corrupting dependence on high-dollar donors. By preventing massive hard money contributions to candidates and their political parties, the aggregate limits aim to prevent the very sort of improper dependence on outside forces that the Framers wrote the Constitution to check.”

Source: Bill Moyers

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Fact Check: So who’s checking the fact-finders? | The Florida Times-Union & Jacksonville Times

Journalists have always been fact-checkers. Now, thanks to the Internet and social media, everyone has a soapbox, and everyone can send truths and untruths to hundreds of people with the push of a button. Spoofs and satires become gospel. Unpopular viewpoints and people are targeted.

To get at the truth, many news organizations now include fact-checking columns, like this one.

But the fact-checkers themselves are not free from criticism. More often than not, the criticism comes from the right because, with a Democrat in the White House, that’s where most of the viral criticism comes from. So most of the fact-checking is of those allegations. Fact-finding sources that appear in the Times-Union, however, pride themselves on being accurate – using original reporting, source-checking, corroborating research and well-documented reports from other fact-finding groups to get at the truth.

So how do we know if we’re getting the straight skinny?

When we use other sources, we corroborate results. If we can’t be certain about something, we say so. But we do rely on some fact-finders that repeatedly have come under fire.

SNOPES.COM

Snopes.com is at the top of that list. An email circulating since 2008 warns not to use Snopes.com because of its political leanings: “I have recently discovered that Snopes.com is owned by a flaming liberal and this man is in the tank for Obama. …”

Snopes.com is the oldest fact-finder on the Internet. It was well-respected for years when it fact-checked urban legends, such as whether more domestic abuse occurs on Super Bowl Sunday than on any other day. But when Snopes.com starting debunking rumors about candidate-then-President Barack Obama, it was roundly criticized.

Snopes.com is owned and run by David and Barbara Mikkelson of California, who have not hidden their identities as one of the viral email claims. Check out the list that shows this at www.snopes.com/info/articles.asp.

As far as being liberal, other fact-checkers, such as Truthorfiction.com; David Emery, who researches urban legends for the information website About.com; and FactCheck.org have researched Snopes.com and none has found any instance where the Mikkelsons have stated a political preference or affiliation.

Barbara Mikkelson is a Canadian citizen, so she can’t contribute to a political campaign or vote in U.S. elections. David Mikkelson provided his voter registration papers to FactCheck.org that show he registered as a Republican in 2000, and had no party affiliation in 2008.

A check of the donor list at the Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks campaign contributions (1990-2012), shows no contributions by Mikkelson to any candidate from any party. You can check yourself at www.opensecrets.org.

If there is proof that refutes this, or shows that the Mikkelsons are “flaming liberals,” no one has come up with it.

Truth be told, there are emails that present what they say is verifiable proof that Snopes.com is biased.

One viral email suggested that Elena Kagan was nominated to the Supreme Court because as solicitor general she fended off all the lawsuits challenging Obama’s eligibility to be president. Snopes.com was castigated for debunking the rumor, but all it did was look at the docket items cited by the email and found that not a single one was about Obama’s eligibility. A check of those dockets at www.supremecourt.gov confirms that.

Emery, who said he has looked at the texts about Obama forwarded to Snopes.com, states that he “has found no any evidence of advocacy for or against. To the contrary, I see a consistent effort to provide even-handed analyses. …”

FactCheck.org also fact-checked Snopes.com: “We reviewed a sampling of their political offerings, including some on rumors about George W. Bush, Sarah Palin and Barack Obama, and we found them [Snopes.com] to be utterly poker-faced.”

There have also been viral emails charging that Snopes.com is financed by business magnate and philanthropist George Soros. There have been no verifiable reports of a Soros connection, but Snopes.com’s books are not open for all to see, so we can’t say for absolutely certain.

Some of the emails disparaging Snopes.com cite that TruthorFiction.com is a much more reliable site. TruthorFiction.com lauds Snopes.com as an “excellent” and “authoritative” resource (www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/s/snopes.htm).

Although Snopes.com could do a better job of linking to sources within its stories, it does list its sources, so it is easy to confirm accuracy.

FACTCHECK.ORG

FactCheck.org is a nonpartisan fact-finding project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania. It has been attacked as a leftist group in an email that says that Wallis Annenberg, president and CEO of the Annenberg Foundation, contributed $25,000 to the Democratic National Committee.

In March 2007, Wallis Annenberg did personally donate $25,000 to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. This had nothing to do with FactCheck.org. And, according to the Federal Election Commission campaign contribution database (www.fec.gov), she has also given to numerous Republican campaigns.

Brooks Jackson, a journalist who launched FactCheck.org, told the Times-Union that the group’s charter stipulates nonpartisanship.

It is ironic that the viral emails charge FactCheck.org as being a leftist organization when philanthropist Walter Annenberg was a fervid Republican, as was his wife Leonore. But even so, the foundation has never influenced FactCheck.org one way or the other, Jackson said.

TRUTHORFICTION.COM

TruthorFiction.com was founded in 1999 by the late Rich Buhler, a Christian radio broadcaster, speaker, author and producer who researched and wrote about urban legends for more than 30 years, according to various media reports. Its staff researches the rumors; original sources are usually listed or linked, so it is a good site to corroborate facts.

POLITIFACT.COM

PolitiFact.com is a fact-finding project of the Tampa Bay Times (formerly The St. Petersburg Times) and has been assailed as a partisan member of the “liberal media.”

PolitiFact.com, which was awarded a Pulitzer Prize, examines statements by politicians and pundits and rates what they say on its Truth-O-Meter. The website also tracks promises by Obama and Republican leaders.

It is true that some of its reporters work for the Tampa Bay Times, a fact not lost on a website called PolitiFactbias.com, which exposes what it calls liberal bias by PolitiFact.com.

But PolitiFact.com uses strict journalistic standards, according to its mandate. Its reporters and researchers use original reports rather than news stories. When possible, PolitiFact.com uses original sources to verify the claims and interviews impartial experts.

These fact-finders all help to arrive at the truth. But we believe that confirming accuracy through multiple sources and original reporting is the best guarantee. And as Emery says:

“In the thorny search for truth, there’s no substitute for doing one’s own research and applying one’s own considered judgment before thinking oneself informed.”

Source: The Florida Times-Union & Jacksonville Times

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The 28th Amendment: Fact or Fiction? | Snopes

Proposed 28th Amendment to the United States Constitution:

“Congress shall make no law that applies to the citizens of the United States that does not apply equally to the Senators and Representatives; and, Congress shall make no law that applies to the Senators and Representatives that does not apply equally to the citizens of the United States.”Q: Does this text represent the actual 28th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution?

A: No. The U.S. Constitution has only 27 amendments, the last of which (a limit on Congressional pay increases) was ratified in 1992.

Q: Does this text represent a proposed 28th Amendment?

A: This item is a “proposed 28th amendment” only in the very loose sense that any change to the U.S. Constitution suggested since the ratification of the 27th Amendment is a “proposed 28th Amendment.” However, when this piece hit the Internet back in 2009 it was just a bit of online politicking, not something that had been introduced or proposed as a potential amendment by any member of Congress.

In August 2013, nearly four years after this item began making the rounds on the Internet, two Congressmen (Ron DeSantis of Florida and Matt Salmon of Arizona) did introduce a joint resolution (H.J.RES.55) similar to one of its elements, proposing an amendment to the Constitution stating that “Congress shall make no law respecting the citizens of the United States that does not also apply to the Senators and Representatives.” That bill died in committee, and it is exceedingly unlikely that any such broadly worded amendment could ever pass muster in Congress without the underlying idea being subject to a good many qualifications.

Q: Could this amendment be passed without Congress’ voting on it?

A: Possibly, not not likely. Article 5 of the U.S. Constitution specifies two procedures for amendments. One method is for two-thirds of states legislatures to call for a constitutional convention at which new amendments may be proposed, subject to ratification by three-fourths of the states. The constitutional convention method allows for the Constitution to be amended by the actions of states alone and cuts Congress out of the equation — no Congressional vote or approval is required. However, not once in the history of the United States have the states ever called a convention for the purpose of proposing new constitutional amendments.

The other method for amending the Constitution (the one employed with every amendment so far proposed or enacted) requires that the proposed amendment be approved by both houses of Congress (i.e., the Senate and the House of Representatives) by a two-thirds majority in each, and then ratified by three-fourths of the states. It’s probably safe to speculate that the odds that a supermajority of both houses of Congress would pass an amendment which placed such restrictions upon them are very low indeed.

Q: Can members of Congress retire with full pay after serving only a single term?

A: No. This is a long-standing erroneous rumor which we have covered in detail in a separate article.

Q: Are members of Congress exempt from paying into Social Security?

A: No. As noted in our article about Congressional pensions, although Congress initially participated in the Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS) rather than Social Security, since 1984 all members of Congress have been required to pay into the Social Security fund.

Q: Are members of Congress exempt from prosecution for sexual harassment?

A: No. The passage of Public Law 104-1 (the Congressional Accountability Act of 1995, also known as CAA) made a variety of laws related to civil rights and workplace regulations applicable to the legislative branch of the federal government. Section 1311(a) of the CAA specifically prohibits sexual harassment (as well as harassment on the basis of race, color, religion, or national origin).

Q: Are members of Congress exempt from the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (i.e., “Obamacare”) health care legislation?

A: No. One of the provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act passed by Congress is a requirement that lawmakers give up the insurance coverage previously provided to them through the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program and instead purchase health insurance through the online exchanges that the law created:

An August 2013 ruling by the federal Office of Personnel Management (OPM) was widely and inaccurately reported as exempting members of Congress from the requirement that they give up their Federal Employees Health Benefits Program coverage and instead purchase health insurance through online exchanges. That reporting was incorrect: Lawmakers are still required to purchase health insurance through government-created exchanges; what the OPM’s ruling actually declared was that members of Congress and their staffs did not have to give up the federal subsidies covering part of the costs of their insurance premiums which they had previously been receiving (and which are afforded to millions of other federal workers).

An October 2011 variant of this item is prefaced by a statement made by Warren Buffett: “‘I could end the deficit in 5 minutes. You just pass a law that says that anytime there is a deficit of more than 3% of GDP, all sitting members of Congress are ineligible for re-election.’” This quote came from a 7 July 2011 CNBC interview in which the Oracle of Omaha addressed the then-current issue of raising the debt limit. The rest of the message however, has nothing to do with Warren Buffett.

Some versions of this item include a statement asserting that the children and staffers of U.S. Congressmen are exempt from paying back student loan obligations. That statement is false.

Later versions of this item have been prefaced with the statement that “Governors of 35 states have filed suit against the Federal Government for imposing unlawful burdens upon them. It only takes 38 (of the 50) States to convene a Constitutional Convention.” Actually, only 34 states are required to convene such a convention.

Source: Snopes

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Top Mafia Figure, Tony Gambino Implicates Vatican and Bush in Prior Knowledge and Complicity in 911 Mass Murder |

By Greg Szymanski
VaticanArmsTony Gambino of the infamous Gambino New York crime family said besides Mob Bosses, the outfits that benefit most from organized crime are the corrupt Vatican and U.S. government.

The grandson of Lucky Luciano, Gambino made a guest appearance Tuesday on Greg Szymanski’s radio show, The Investigative Journal on Liberty Radio at www.libertyradiolive.com The entire interview can be heard at www.arcticbeacon.com as well as Liberty Radio.

The high-level former mobster talked openly for an hour, indicting top Vatican and U.S. government officials with complicity in high crimes, treason and assassinations as they worked together “like a tight-knit happy family” with the Gambino and other Mafia families.

With America’s fascination of the Mafia, Gambino’s statements should shake the halls of St. Peter’s Basilica, as well as Capitol Hill, since he talked about his first hand knowledge of George Bush, the Pope and other high level Jesuits complicity and knowledge of 9/11.

“When you grow up in “The Family” like I did, you learn right off the bat that protection comes from everywhere, including the CIA, FBI and blessings from the Vatican who are at the top of the ladder when it comes to benefiting from Mafia street crime,” said Gambino, who became a “Made Man” at the age of five, a Mafia term used for their top street captains.

“The Vatican officials, federal judges, top politicians all used to get regular pay-offs from the Gambino Family and, in fact, the Vatican and U.S. government make more money off the illegal drug trade then we did.

“That is why I am talking after just getting out of jail after 20 years. I am talking because people need to know the U.S. government and the Vatican are more dangerous and corrupt then the Mafia ever was.

“For example, I know for a fact the Cardinal in Palermo runs the Sicilian mob and former Cardinal Spellman of New York was considered the Vatican’s American Godfather since he pulled the strings and had his hands deep into organized crime.

“I know for a fact Bush, the Pope and other top Vatican and U.S. government leaders had prior knowledge and help organize 9/11. They did it for many obvious reason, one being instigating the war in Iraq. But they also did it to get their hands on all the gold that was hidden below in the Twin Towers.

“My grandfather’s construction company built the Twin Towers and after it was completed, I know they went in and put in big underground vaults to house an enormous amount of gold which is now in Bush’s and Vatican hands in order to fund the war.”

Besides implicating the Vatican and Bush in 9/11, Gambino set the record straight about the JFK assassination, saying he was in Dallas when Kennedy was shot and the fatal bullet came from a shooter located in an underground storm drain.

“I was there when he was shot and I know for a fact Rosselli was in the storm drain doing the shooting and Frank Sturgiss was also part of the hit team,” said Gambino. “The same group of guys we have talked about in the Vatican and U.S. government gave the orders and asked the Mafia families for help in taking down Kennedy.”

Growing up on the streets of New York in one of the top crime families, Gambino recalls getting his first lesson of Mafia life at the age of 13.

“My grandfather was Lucky Luciano so I had it made,” said Gambino, now 63 and living on the East Coast with a probation stipulation that he can’t associate or talk with any organized crime figures. “Lucky had all the politicians and even the Vatican heads in his pocket. He was making $55 to $100 million a week and when Vegas opened the money really started to roll in.

“He got Frank Sinatra and many others like Marylin Monroe, Tony Bennett, Dean Martin, Clint Eastwood, Sammy Davis started in Hollywood. He then would take a percentage of their earnings and this went on for their entire careers.

“Remember, the horse’s head being cut-off in Godfather I and then put in the Hollywood producer’s bed? That really happened and it had to do with forcing a Hollywood producer to star Sinatra in one of his movies.”

Gambino also had inside information about how union boss Jimmy Hoffa was really killed, saying his time ran out when a huge Mafia debt wasn’t repaid.

“Hoffa was working behind the scenes with crack head and truck hi-jacker, John Gotti,” recalls Gambino. “That’s all Gotti was good at and when they brought in a $5 million drug truckload, Hoffa got deeper in debt to the other Mafia bosses.

“He never gave his courtesy calls to the bosses for repayment and finally his time ran out so he was killed. They picked him up, put him in a body bag alive and then dumped his body in one of the concrete abutments at the George Washington Bridge while the concrete was being poured. All they did was pay the concrete man $150,000 and the whole thing has been covered up. But that is where Hoffa’s body is today and I know that for a fact.”

Although Gambino knows he’s crossing a sensitive line for going public about the inner-workings of the Mafia and its complicity with the Vatican and U.S. government, he added that it’s important for Americans to finally understand how things “really work on the streets” and how Church, State and big business are working together to destroy America.

And if there remains any doubters that the Vatican and Jesuit Order have had its dirty hands in organized crime in order to destroy the moral and financial fabric of the U.S., Gambino’s confessions should lay that to rest.

Source: 911justicehalifax