In an exclusive interview with an Occupy DC activist this morning from the McPherson Square encampment area, Big Government has learned that at high noon today,–hundreds of activists drawing from a collective of leftist coalitions including union support–will descend upon the Conservative Political Action Conference event taking place at the Woodley Park based Marriott Wardman hotel.

“It’s a coalition of different organizations including Occupy DC,” said James, an occupy protestor who joined the movement in late September from Orlando, Florida and emigrated to Occupy DC. “I think lots of organizations will be there too.”

James said the following of the Occupy CPAC plan:

The plan is for non-violent civil disobedience. We want to disrupt the conference and have our voices heard, have our message of the 99% against the 1% and have that voice take precedence. Things like CPAC have dog and pony shows, media circuses and it’s embarrassing. We’re supposed to be the most advanced democracy in the world and it’s embarrassing to have our political process look like a reality TV show.

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World Net Daily is citing an outdated post-Revolutionary War act repealed by Congress that only recognized “free white persons” as citizens to make its case that Miami born Marco Rubio is not a “natural born citizen.”

WND’s argument comes in the wake of several 2011 articles, which make a birther argument that recently elected U.S. Senator Marco Rubio of Florida is not natural born because his parents were alien residents at the time he was born in Miami in 1971.

WND’s editor Joseph Farah pushed that theory on FOX News with Sean Hannity last week,  an interview that was quickly picked up by The Hill and the Daily Caller. The birther movement’s attention turned to Rubio last year when rumors began surfacing that he was a potential candidate for the vice-presidential position on the 2012 Republican ticket, despite his assertion that he was not interested in the position. Since the 12^th Amendment requires that the vice-president possess all the necessary constitutional requirements to serve as president, Rubio’s citizenship came into play.

Throughout their reporting, WND has relied on three major arguments: the first being the treatise “The Law of Nations” by Swiss philosopher Emer de Vattel, which they argue was an influence on our forefathers. Vattel wrote, “The natives, or natural-born citizens, are those born in the country, of parents who are citizens.” They also cite a U.S. Supreme Court case from 1875, Minor vs. Happersett, alleging that the case only uses the term “natural born citizen” by referring to persons born in the United States of U.S. citizen parents. Finally, they rely on the Naturalization Act of 1790, which defined a natural-born citizen as: “The children of citizens of the United States, that may be born beyond sea, or out of the limits of the United States shall be considered as natural born citizens: Provided, that the right of citizenship shall not descend to persons whose fathers have never been resident in the United States.”

There are significant problems which each one of these three flawed arguments.

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A teacher charged with 23 counts of lewd conduct for allegedly molesting and abusing children in his classroom evaded actual termination from the Los Angeles Unified School District enabling him to retain his lifetime health benefits.

Former Miramonte Elementary School teacher Mark Berndt, 61, was exposed for blindfolding children ages 6 to 10 and molesting them after a film processor reported the existence of a film roll of 40 pictures depicting Berndt blindfolding young girls and taping their mouths shut. Police later found 400 more incriminating photos in Berndt’s home. The charges Berndt currently faces are for acts from 2008-2010.

According to a Los Angeles Times report:

Some photos allegedly showed Berndt with his arm around children or his hand over their mouths. Other photos showed children with live bugs the size of hissing cockroaches on their mouths or faces.

Others depicted girls with what appears to be a spoon up to their mouths as if they were going to ingest a clear-white liquid. Children were fed Berndt’s semen from a spoon or on cookies, investigators said.

Kids reported being fed something distasteful. A blue plastic spoon and container found in the trash in his classroom tested positive for his semen, authorities said.

The kids reportedly told police their teacher said it was a game and the substance was “sugar.”

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Big Government has learned that a new Occupy strategy emerging across the country is to mobilize cross-country marches through mid-size cities where the movement has been absent, and reach out to sympathetic Americans by occupying their homes.

These protests are scheduled to end up in their destination cities on Mayday, May 1–the International Workers’ Day, which was officially celebrated as a holiday in the former Soviet Union.

In an exclusive interview with Bo Han, an Occupy Wall Street activist and Atlanta native, Big Government uncovered the strategy during a demonstration being held in front of the Martin Luther King Center for Nonviolent Change this past weekend.

Han explained that the new Occupy strategy is to mobilize demonstrators in systematic, planned cross-country marches to build new chapters in new cities while converting sympathizers on the way by staying in their homes. Hahn had just arrived in Atlanta after an 880-mile march from Wall Street that cut through Washington, D.C. and other Southern cities such as Richmond, Chapel Hill and Durham.

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During a White House press conference earlier today, a reporter confronted White House Press Secretary Jay Carney about Occupy Wall Street protestors “taking things too far.”

Carney supported the US Park Police’s (USPP) decision to continue balancing First Amendment concerns with public safety and health concerns.

The exchange was as follows:

Reporter: Occupy Wall Street protestors are making headlines again as you know over the weekend. Four hundred protestors were arrested in Oakland and now today the NPS are expected to clear out protestors potentially as we speak… here in DC. What is your reaction? Is the administration concerned that some of these protestors are taking things too far?

Carney: Well, in regard to Oakland, that’s obviously that’s a local law enforcement matter. Here in Washington uh, I would refer you for specifics to the US National Park Service and the US Park Police. And uh, our position has been and continues to be that we need balance First Amendment concerns of the right to demonstrate, the right to speak freely, and with public safety concerns and public health concerns and we understand that whether that… whether that… local law enforcement as well as in the case, in this case you have the National Park Service and the US Park Police are weighing those considerations and that’s appropriate.

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Martin Luther King’s family asked US Park Police to eject a group of 32 Occupy Wall Street protestors from an Atlanta based memorial center that was named after the civil rights leader on Sunday.

The OWS protestors, who left New York City November 9 to march roughly 880 miles to Atlanta through Washington, and through the south, planned on holding a press conference at the Atlanta based Martin Luther King Center for Nonviolent Social Change “to honor Dr. King.” The press conference was scheduled for 2 p.m., but within minutes, private security for the center asked the demonstrators to leave the outside area that was part of the MLK center.

According to the center’s online page, it was established in 1968 by Coretta Scott King, and is the “official, living memorial dedicated to advancing the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Our programs and partnerships educate the world about his life and his philosophy of nonviolence, inspiring new generations to further his work.”

“The police want us to leave?” an OWS protestor asked.

“The King family is asking you to leave,” the security officer said.

“Why?” the protestor asked.

“They don’t want the center to be used for any kind of outside event or press conference for your group,” the security officer explained.

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As Washington, D.C.’s Democrat-dominated government attempts to evict Occupy protestors from their McPherson Square encampment, only a few blocks from the White House, the protestors have found an unlikely ally: the U.S. Park Police (USPP).

The federal-municipal confrontation has sparked speculation that President Barack Obama is protecting the Occupy protestors from city administrators.

The Occupy activists, however, seem to believe otherwise.

Big Government headed into the heart of the snow-bound encampment for an exclusive on-site interview with an Occupy DC demonstrator who does not believe the USPP is acting on orders from the Obama administration.

The Occupy DC Encampment under Washington, D.C.'s first snowfall

The activists are familiar with the details of the political fight that began when the D.C. Mayor and the District Council wanted the Occupy sites finally shut down for health reasons, but USPP refused to do so in the name of the First Amendment.

The theory that the White House was pressuring USPP not to enforce District of Columbia statutes emerged Tuesday, January 24, during a Congressional hearing, when National Park Service Director Jonathan Jarvis fielded questions from Republican lawmakers.

U.S. Representatives were mystified as to why the USPP has not responded to District requests to finally shut down the encampment, and why the overnight sleeping ban in federal parks had not been enforced.

“Each of our First Amendment demonstrations (is) a little bit unique. And this one is, let’s say, unprecedented. The core of their First Amendment activity is that they occupy the site,” Jarvis told lawmakers. “We felt that going in right away and enforcing the regulations against camping could potentially incite a reaction on their part that would result in possible injury or property damage.”

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Kathleen Willey, the former White House volunteer who accused President Clinton in 1998 of sexually harassing her in 1993, is trying to expose potential robo-signing foreclosure fraud from her home state of Virginia–and she’s already gone on national television to get the word out to her fellow Americans.

Foreclosure proceedings were commenced against Willey in 2010, but Willey was able to stop the expedited 14-day foreclosure process by filing a fraud suit against her lender, One West Bank. In an exclusive telephone interview with Big Government from her Richmond based home, Willey told me the following:

I applied for a modification back in 2009. My bank was IndyMac, which was the very first bank the feds seized in 2008. Then they turned it around and sold it to George Soros and Larry Dell for a song. So, the two of them–big Obama contributors–they bought that bank.

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Americans aren’t the only ones shocked by U.S. Congressman Ron Paul’s assertion that international sanctions against Iran qualify as an “act of war.”

The Texas Congressman has made the assertion several times during the past few years, and reiterated it last night during the Republican debates in Florida when he argued that the U.S. had committed an act of war by “blockading” Iran (which the U.S. is not doing).

“We’re blockading them,” Paul said to a Tampa audience. “Can you imagine what we would do if someone blockaded the Gulf of Mexico? That would be an act of war–so the act of war has already been committed and this is retaliation.”

But Amir Fakhravar, a pro-democracy freedom fighter who was imprisoned and tortured by the Islamic Republic, disagrees.

Fakhravar, who spoke to Big Government today, says: “Sanctions weaken the government so much it will eventually empower the people of Iran to change their own regime without war,” and added that ”Ron Paul’s foreign policy toward the Islamic Republic is wrong. If we don’t have hard sanctions against the regime they will have more money to buy weapons, and then we will definitely have war.”

Fakhravar was imprisoned in 2002 for calling to rescind the powers of the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, and the Council of Guardians. During part of his sentence he was taken to a military detention camp where he underwent the first known example of “white torture.” He escaped in 2006 and came to the United States. Fakhravar is now a Research Fellow and Visiting Lecturer at the Center for the Study of Culture and Security at The Institute of World Politics in Washington, D.C.

“If the United States lifts sanctions and Iran eventually gets the bomb, that means war,” he added.

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Nevadans are probably wondering why their own Attorney General, Catherine Cortez Masto is prosecuting corrupt lenders for the fraudulent act of robo-signing, but U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder is not.

In fact, millions of Americans, particularly those who are being foreclosed upon are probably wondering the same thing since the Obama administration decided in October to forego criminal charges against Bank of America, JPMorgan, Chase, Citigroup, Wells Fargo and Ally Financial in exchange for a $25 billion civil settlement.

But new information reported by Reuters today implies that Holder and other top Justice Department officials may be restraining themselves because their former Washington, D.C. white-shoe employer, Covington & Burling, which represented many of the big banks getting a break.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and Lanny Breuer, head of the Justice Department’s criminal division, were partners for years at a Washington law firm that represented a Who’s Who of big banks and other companies at the center of alleged foreclosure fraud, a Reuters inquiry shows.

The firm, Covington & Burling, is one of Washington’s biggest white shoe law firms. Law professors and other federal ethics experts said that federal conflict of interest rules required Holder and Breuer to recuse themselves from any Justice Department decisions relating to law firm clients they personally had done work for.

Holder has resisted calls for a criminal investigation since October 2010, when evidence of widespread “robo-signing” first surfaced. That involved mortgage servicer employees falsely signing and swearing to massive numbers of affidavits and other foreclosure documents that they had never read or checked for accuracy.

Covington has maintained a suspicious reputation within the District of Columbia for several years because of its close relationship with former Mayor Adrian Fenty, and his controversial appointment of a top Covington lawyer to the position of D.C. Attorney General.

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Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi tried distancing herself from the Occupy movement this week after OWS protestors disrupted Capitol Hill and even assaulted a police officer.

That’s a far cry from her original comments to ABC anchor Christiane Amanpour in October in which she expressed veiled support for the movement.

But what are the former speaker’s real positions on unlawful protestors who stir up trouble on the Hill and is she alone in her demonstrator-sympathetic views?

I was not surprised last year when Pelosi came out in defense of the OWS movement because she had secretly sympathized and aligned herself with the unlawful protestors demonstrating against the war during the Bush administration—and inappropriately asked U.S. Capitol Police not to arrest unlawful protestors who invaded her office or any other area of the Hill.

During my time as a Washington, D.C. prosecutor from 2007-2009, I was charged with the task of prosecuting all unlawful protests that took place in the District especially those at the U.S. Capitol White House and national monuments.

In fact, I investigated and prosecuted so many protestors that Code Pink nicknamed me the “protestor prosecutor,” in the wake of successfully convicting Desiree Ali-Fairooz, the woman who accosted former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

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The gist of a recently released opposition research document from Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney is that the former Massachusetts governor is not a real Republican because some of his centrist positions and alliances with Democrats. Researchers working for Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) reportedly authored the file during the 2008 Republican primary.

But some of the claims may simply illustrate a man who is committed to his own ideals, loyal to those around him and perhaps trying to do what is morally right–maybe even by hiring advisers to offer him objective perspectives so that he doesn’t just have people around him who mimic his own views. Among some of the exacerbated criticisms are the following with an alternative counter-point below each allegation:

1. “Romney voted for Paul Tsongas in the 1992 Democratic presidential primary”

Tsongas was a Senator from Massachusetts, Romney’s own state.

2. “Romney was an independent until deciding to run for the Senate in 1994.”

Mitt Romney’s 1994 bid for U.S. Senate was his first attempt at running for political office. It should be no surprise that he was independent before then since independents make up the majority of Massachusetts voters–some of whom remain non-party affiliated or “unenrolled” so that they can opt to vote in either primary in each election. According to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Elections Division online records, in February 1994  there were 418, 298 registered Republicans, 1,283,986 registered Democrats, but 3,174,759 total voters, which leaves 1,471,500 unenrolled voters. Romney was no different than the largest class of Massachusetts voters.

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Facebook may give Barack Obama a slight edge this coming presidential election while creating a wide misperception about who’s actually pulling ahead in the Republican Party. A new partnership between Facebook and Politico announced last week will reveal users’ private messages if and when they relate to their feelings about a political candidate.

Liz Gannes of All Things D enlightens us about the new dual effort, reporting that:

It will consist of sentiment analysis reports and voting-age user surveys, accompanied by stories by Politico reporters. Most notably, the Facebook-Politico data set will include Facebook users’ private status messages and comments. While that may alarm some people, Facebook and Politico say the entire process is automated and no Facebook employees read the posts.

Rather, every post and comment — both public and private — by a U.S. user that mentions a presidential candidate’s name will be fed through a sentiment analysis tool that spits out anonymized measures of the general U.S. Facebook population.

Apparently, the fact that “no Facebook employees read the posts” is supposed to assure us that the quotes are not being hand picked to prefer one candidate over another. After all, since the posts will be published worldwide it can’t possibly be referring to privacy (plus, the quotes are “anonymized” so they can’t be attributed to any particular Facebook user).

But here’s the thing.

Whether or not the quotes are actually being hand picked or being “fed through a sentiment analysis tool” (whatever that means) isn’t really that relevant because we all know that more young people than old use Facebook. That means that in all likelihood those candidates that appeal to younger voters (namely Barack Obama–surprise, surprise, Mark Zuckerberg’s apparent favorite) will be getting lots of play on the pages of Politico as the national favorite.

And here’s something else: Don’t be surprised if the Republican Party’s quirkiest candidate, Ron Paul, also comes out the GOP front runner. After all, it’s no secret that Paul’s young followers have been passionate about vocalizing their support perhaps hoping to convince Americans that Paul really is the front runner.

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Big Government has obtained exclusive excerpts of a book scheduled to be released next month, which outline problems with the federal government’s handling of the drug war.

The book, The Border Challenge, authored by T. Michael Andrews, a former adviser at the Dept. of Homeland Security’s counternarcotics office, is scheduled to be released in bookstores in early February.

Andrews has suggestions for how federal drug enforcement agencies can reshape their strategies along America’s northern and southern borders, and he explains how government bureaucracy and shifting goals have made winning the drug war impossible thus far.

“One of the problems with having so many offices in the federal government directed at a common cause is direction and leadership,” Andrews wrote. “The scope of bureaucracy can be overwhelming. If one department wants to take a different policy direction from another, this could lead to an immediate bureaucratic tie-up and in some cases pushback among the many agencies.”

According to Andrews, bureaucracy comes from partisan politics, lack of consistent focus, and jurisdictional conflicts within competing law enforcement agencies that are not working together.

“One of the problems we always had–even today, I’m sad to say, are that there are still problems between the DEA (Drug Enforcement Agency) and ICE (Immigration Customs Enforcement),” he said during an exclusive interview conducted from his home in northern Virginia.

“Those are really the two agencies that have drug enforcement power. ICE is charged with stopping any and all contraband coming into the United States under Title 18, and the DEA is charged with both domestic and international drug enforcement under Title 21.”

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This week the United States Supreme Court made a landmark unanimous decision that protected the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment. The decision, Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. EEOC, rejected an argument made by the Obama Justice Department, which sought to eliminate the “ministerial exception” in employment discrimination law.

The ministerial exception allows religious organizations to terminate employees who perform religious responsibilities. The Hosanna-Tabor decision reinforces the First Amendment principle that religious organizations can continue to choose their own leaders.

The majority opinion, authored by Chief Justice Roberts stated that although protecting employee rights against discrimination are important, the First Amendment dictates that the right to exercise ones religion freely is more important.

“The interest of society in the enforcement of employment discrimination statutes is undoubtedly important,” Roberts opined.

“But so too is the interest of religious groups in choosing who will preach their beliefs, teach their faith, and carry out their mission.” When those principles are in conflict, the First Amendment has struck the balance for us.”

The case involved Cheryl Perich, a Redford, Michigan teacher at the Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School who was fired in 2005 after she was diagnosed with narcolepsy, which would typically be considered a violation of the American Disabilities Act.

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Earlier this week, Big Government broke an exclusive that Corporal Jesse Thorsen, 28–the soldier who supported presidential candidate Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) while in uniform during the Iowa caucuses–was being probed by his Army Reserve unit for violation of Department of Defense Regulations.

Late last week, the Associated Press reported that Thorsen may also have an arrest record from Florida, and that his service record may not be as he originally portrayed it when he was originally interviewed by CNN at the caucus:

According to the military, Thorsen had deployed once to Afghanistan in 2009 after first joining the Florida National Guard in July 2001 and the Army Reserve in 2009. The military said he is with an engineer company out of Des Moines, and his unit falls under the 416th Theater Engineer Command out of Darien, Ill.

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Congressman Sanford Bishop’s wife, Vivian Bishop, who is the Municipal County Clerk of Muscogee County in Georgia may be involved in a fraudulent check-writing scheme against both her office and the Black Congressional Caucus Foundation Scholarship Fund, Big Government has learned.

Last year, the Atlanta Journal Constitution reported that Congressman Bishop gave “privately-funded scholarships to his stepdaughter and his wife’s niece,” through the Black Congressional Caucus Scholarship Foundation fund, and according to sources, a co-worker—Joanne Flantroy–witnessed Vivian Bishop deposit at least one of those checks into her own bank account.

Some of that evidence along with copies of 19 municipal checks will be presented today at 10 a.m. EST during a hearing in Muscogee Superior Court by Flantroy, whom Vivian Bishop is now seeking a protective order against.

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Big Government has learned that Corporal Jesse Thorsen, 28, who promoted presidential candidate Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) while in uniform during yesterday’s Iowa caucuses, is being probed by his Army Reserve unit for violation of Department of Defense Regulations.

Members of the U.S. armed forces are prohibited by Department of Defense Directive 1344.10 from campaigning or participating in public political activities while in uniform. The purpose of the directive is to preserve the political independence of the military.

Big Government has confirmed through defense sources that Cpl. Thorsen is a combat engineer in the 402nd Engineer Company of the 372nd Engineer Brigade, which is a U.S. Army Reserve brigade.

CNN has reported that Cpl. Thorsen is “active duty,” but defense sources indicated that he apparently is not.

Pentagon spokesperson George Wright spoke to Big Government:

I can share with you the Army uniform is not in keeping with the letter or spirit of the DOD instruction on political activities. It’s a policy violation. Investigation is an extreme word, I believe the unit is looking into it, they’re aware and they’re considering the next step, but it would be speculative to discuss the potential action of where we are right now. We’re aware that he appeared at that rally and spoke on stage–I mean we’ve seen the tape. He’s a member of the 402^nd engineer company of the 372^nd engineer brigade of the U.S. Army Reserve in Des Moines, Iowa. I don’t know what his MOS–military occupational specialty–is. I don’t know if he had a break in service or been an active reservist or what.

U.S. Army Reserve Major Angel Wallace confirmed that Cpl. Thorsen is not on active duty:

He is not active, he has been confirmed in reserve status as of this afternoon. We got that information, he was not in an active status as of yesterday when he did those interviews. He was in a reserve status all along and the last time he’s been on orders was back in October so he was in his traditional reserve status. There is a potential violation. It depends on your MOS because some MOS’s have a larger ability for upward promotion so on that you’d have to draw your own conclusion. He was with the National Guard prior to joining the national reserve. He works with an engineer unit. We have him in a currently combat engineer position, it would be groundwork level. We’re trying to give the command their time necessary to figure out how they want to manage the issue, giving them the time to have dialogue.

Cpl. Thorsen first attempted to speak in favor of Ron Paul on CNN during live coverage of the Iowa caucus. He was introduced by reporter Dana Bash as “active duty U.S. military” as he tried to explain–while in uniform–why he supported Ron Paul and his foreign policy.

(The interview was cut off halfway through, fueling conspiracy theories among Paul supporters and their allies in the press.)

Later, Ron Paul brought Cpl. Thorsen to the podium at his campaign headquarters to deliver a rousing speech–again in uniform, and again in violation of regulations.

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An anti-Islam blog that failed to remove inflammatory comments from a few of its readers will be permanently taken down by its hosting company, WordPress, on January 6 as the result of a number of complaints filed by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).

The site, “Bare Naked Islam: It isn’t Islamophobia when they really ARE trying to kill you” (www.barenakedislam.com) will be taken down in two weeks by WordPress according to the website’s owner, Bonnie (*last name withheld).

Bonnie, in an exclusive interview, told Big Government that WordPress suddenly blocked her site “around Thanksgiving” and sent her a message to contact them because the company had some questions about comments that had been left on her site.

“There were some not so nice comments in responses to stories about Muslims killing people and raping little girls,” she said. The comments, she said, “are always a reaction to the stories,” that are posted, “although I do moderate the comments. I sometimes skim through the ones from people I know, and I mistakenly let some go through that were threatening. One was about burning a mosque, one said ‘nuke the Middle East…’.”

Bonnie says that one of the concerns WordPress had was a comment in which someone mentioned a specific mosque in Virginia and another reader responded that they walked by that mosque every day. According to WordPress, the language of the post could have been inciting violence or suggesting an attack on a particular place at a specific time.

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Alexandra Pelosi, daughter of House Minority Leader and former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, told Big Government this week that her mother wants to leave Congress–and that she remains in Washington only at the behest of her campaign donors.

During a telephone interview, Ms. Pelosi–speaking from a friend’s home in New York City–described her mother’s predicament:

She would retire right now, if the donors she has didn’t want her to stay so badly. They know she wants to leave, though. They think she’s destined for the wilderness. She has very few days left. She’s 71, she wants to have a life, she’s done. It’s obligation, that’s all I’m saying.

Pelosi’s revelation is significant, given that her mother pushed to serve as Minority Leader after the Democrats’ historic losses in the 2010 midterm elections, and that many Democrats–including President Barack Obama–are campaigning on the expectation that she will be restored as Speaker if they can retake the House in 2012.

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