Repeatedly during the February 2nd  ”Fast and Furious” hearings led by the Chairman of the House Oversight committee, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) , Democrats were coming out in force praising Holder for his excellent work. Democratic Congresswoman Maloney from California commended Holder for his favorable accomplishments as the acting Attorney General. Even if Holder is not found guilty of a crime, is he not guilty of incompetence over his ineptitude in running the Department of Justice?  But his party members continue to exalt him and one can only wonder for how long.

This was Eric Holder’s sixth time testifying with the investigation and in attendance offering words of support was Rep. Elijah Cummings, a Democratic member of the House Oversight Committee and Congressman Dennis J. Kucinich of Ohio who informed Holder at the hearing “I prayed for you this morning.”

However, an investigative article recently released contains strong accusations of bribery and corruption in Holder’s Justice Department stating prosecutors for the Department of Justice have received ”cash bribes from allegedly corrupt finance executives who were indicted under court seal within the past 13 months, but never arrested or prosecuted”, as reported by Matthew Boyle. If the accusations prove to be valid, will the Democrats then join the growing number of Congressman and Senators calling for Holder’s resignation?

Unfortunately, a hearing that should be about justice and accountability for the deaths of over 300 people from the trafficking of guns to Mexican drug cartels is now reduced to a partisan stand off.

This past November, Congresswoman Maloney was already playing the partisan card in an op-ed piece she wrote for The New York Daily News.  She claims the Holder hearings are nothing more than a “Republican red herring” and that Eric Holder should not be blamed for a program that was not his creation as she refers to the investigation as a game of “gotcha“.

Even more bothersome than the claims that Republicans are simply creating a scandal for their own benefit, are the calls from the Left saying the bothched “Fast and Furious” operation is proof for the need of aggressive gun control.  In that same op-ed piece, Maloney wrote stricter gun laws are necessary and “We cannot continue allowing weapons to end up in the wrong hands”.  If Rep. Maloney truly believes this, then why would she stand by Eric Holder’s Department of Justice for graciously providing the “wrong hands” with the very weapons they need?

“I should not be held accountable for Fast and Furious”, said Holder at the Congressional Hearing.  If he is not accountable for Fast and Furious at the very least he should be held accountable for his incompetence and lack of  leadership and not just by Conservatives, but his compatriots as well.

The White House remains oddly quiet on the matter.  But as Holder is responsible for the Department of Justice, President Obama is responsible for Holder and his actions.  However, Obama has done nothing but offered continued support for Holder.  Even the very appearance of corruption should be investigated to the full lengths of the law regardless of party affiliation.  One would hope the Conservative Right would pursue one of their own just as fervently as they are with Holder.

It all leads to a question of integrity, and not just at the Department of Justice, but at the very steps of the White House as well.

One of the reasons many of us get our news and entertainment from the Net these days is because we find the legacy media lacking. We have turned our backs on old media because it has failed to serve us. We no longer have to tolerate obvious and unceasing news bias, or watch only boxed and packaged melodrama. We are now free to pursue news and entertainment where we like with the click of a mouse or a swipe of the Ipad.

Hollywood, and most of legacy media are unhappy about this and would prefer that we continue to listen to their propaganda and watch their terrible movies. I mean, how many sequels can these guys crank out? SOPA seeks to put we the media consumers back in line.

SOPA is being sold as a way to stop the piracy of movies and music from overseas sites, and this is a problem, but the bill goes much further than just addressing this issue.

For instance if you are the owner of a website and someone posts a bit of copyrighted material in a comments section or in a forum, the owner of the copyright can ask the government to take down your site. You may not even know that someone posted such content, yet you wake up one morning to find your site, and perhaps livelihood, gone from cyberspace with only digital tumble weeds left in its place.

Imagine how this would affect some of your favorite sites, Facebook for instance.

Facebook, Google, AOL, Twitter, and other online companies may go black in protest to raise awareness of SOPA, the so called “nuclear option.” The tech guys know that it’s DEFCON 5 for free speech and their business models and they are willing to forgo days of revenue to fight this bill.

So SOPA has become a fight between Hollywood and Tech. Hollywood has outspent Tech lobbying for SOPA 5 to 1, and the current situation in the House Judiciary Committee reflects this. The Chair, Lamar Smith (R) Texas, and the ranking member John Conyers (D) Michigan, are fully on board along with much of the rest of the House Judiciary Committee. I am sad to say the even Congressman Bob Goodlatte, a guy I have a great deal of respect for is currently supporting this bill.

However there is hope and it comes from northern California Republican congressman (they do exist) Darryl Issa.

Issa said recently at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas that, “SOPA was ill-conceived, written in Hollywood, and included all kinds of things that physically can’t be done, including the DNS blocking.”

He also called SOPA “Unconstitutional.”

Issa, who is also pursuing Attorney General Holder for the bungling of the “Fast and Furious” program, should know. He is a former, and very successful tech CEO.

Unsurprisingly the SOPA story has gotten little attention from the mainstream press. It is after all the mainstream which wants to regain (as much as it can) “only-stream” status.

I don’t know about you, but I like my internet free and wide open. It’s the last place that is.

This article was originally  published at AgainstCronyCapitalism.org

Of the top 25 wealthiest members of Congress, 13 were Republicans and 12 were Democrats.

As for the “poorest” members of Congress, 10 were Republicans and 15 were Democrats.

The findings, which were based on the lawmakers’ 2010 financial disclosures, list Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-FL) as having a net worth of – $4,732,002, making him the poorest member of Congress.

At the opposite end of the financial spectrum is Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) whose listed net worth of $448,125,017 puts him at the top of the Congressional wealth chart.

Recent studies have shown that the wealth gap between elected officials and average Americans has widened considerably in recent years.

Earlier this month the Washington Post reported that:

Between 1984 and 2009, the median net worth of a member of the House more than doubled, according to the analysis of financial disclosures, from $280,000 to $725,000 in inflation-adjusted 2009 dollars, excluding home ­equity.

Over the same period, the wealth of an American family has declined slightly, with the comparable median figure sliding from $20,600 to $20,500, according to the Panel Study of Income Dynamics from the University of Michigan.

The growing wealth gap between voters and members of Congress has placed renewed interest on ensuring that members of Congress are not using their access to private information to enrich themselves personally.

The congressional wealth rankings revealed that the author of the recently introduced RESTRICT (Restoring Ethical Standards, Transparency, and Responsibility in Congressional Trading) Act to ban congressional insider trading, Rep. Sean Duffy (R-WI), is listed among the 25 poorest members of Congress.

“I want to keep members of Congress honest,” Rep. Duffy told Breitbart News.

The RESTRICT Act would require members of Congress to place all their assets in a blind trust or submit to a three day public disclosure requirement for any and all investments.

Congress is expected to take up anti-insider trading legislation in the early part of 2012.

At a recent hearing before a House oversight panel, three Obama administration witnesses — National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) Administrator David Strickland, EPA Assistant Air Administrator Gina McCarthy, and EPA Transportation and Air Quality Director Margo Oge – denied under oath that motor vehicle greenhouse gas emission standards are “related to” fuel economy standards. In so doing, they denied plain facts they must know to be true. They lied to Congress.

House Government Oversight and Reform Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) put it more diplomatically: “Your statements under oath misrepresented the relationship between regulating greenhouse gases and regulating fuel economy.” By “obstinately insisting” that regulating greenhouse gases and fuel economy are “separate and unrelated endeavors,” the officials “impede the Committee’s important oversight work.”

Why did they “misrepresent” and “impede”? Had the officials answered truthfully, they would have to admit that California’s greenhouse gas motor vehicle emissions law, AB 1493, which EPA approved in June 2009, violates the Energy Policy Conservation Act’s (EPCA) express preemption of state laws or regulations “related to” fuel economy. The officials would also have to admit that EPA is effectively regulating fuel economy, a function outside the scope of its statutory authority.

Strongly Related

That greenhouse gas emission standards implicitly regulate fuel economy is evident from the agencies’ own documents. As EPA and NHTSA acknowledge in their joint May 2010 Greenhouse Gas/Fuel Economy Tailpipe Rule (pp. 25424, 25327), no commercially available technologies exist to capture or filter out carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from motor vehicles. Consequently, the only way to decrease grams of CO2 per mile is to reduce fuel consumption per mile — that is, increase fuel economy. Carbon dioxide constitutes 94.9% of vehicular greenhouse gas emissions, and “there is a single pool of technologies… that reduce fuel consumption and thereby CO2 emissions as well.”

That EPA and California are regulating fuel economy is also apparent from EPA, NHTSA, and the California Air Resources Board’s (CARB’s) Interim Joint Technical Assessment Report (pp. viii-ix), the framework document for President Obama’s plan to boost average fuel economy to 54.5 miles per gallon by Model Year 2025. The document considers four fuel economy standards, ranging from 47 mpg to 62 mpg; each is the simple reciprocal of an associated CO2 emission reduction scenario. The 54.5 mpg standard is a negotiated compromise between the 4% (51 mpg) and 5% (56 mpg) CO2 reduction scenarios.

CARB’s 2004 Staff Report presenting the agency’s plan to implement AB 1493 is another smoking gun. Nearly all of CARB’s recommended technologies for reducing greenhouse gas emissions (Table 5.2-3) were previously recommended in a 2002 National Research Council study on fuel economy (Tables 3-1, 3-2). CARB proposes a few additional options, but each is a fuel-saving technology, not an emissions-control technology.

Even the text of AB 1493 implies that CARB is to regulate fuel economy. CARB’s greenhouse gas standards are to be “cost-effective,” defined as “Economical to an owner or operator of a vehicle, taking into account the full life-cycle costs of the vehicle.” CARB reasonably interprets this to mean that the reduction in “operating expenses” over the average life of the vehicle must exceed the expected increase in vehicle cost (Staff Report, p. 148). Virtually all such “operating expenses” are expenditures for fuel. The CARB program cannot be “cost-effective” unless CARB regulates fuel economy.

Power Grab

The falsehood that greenhouse gas emission standards are not related to fuel economy standards does more than mask EPA and CARB’s poaching of NHTSA’s statutory authority. It also protects EPA’s efforts to legislate climate policy under the guise of implementing the Clean Air Act (CAA).

To begin with, the falsehood facilitated an extortion strategy enabling Team Obama to convert the auto industry from opponent to ally in any congressional debate over EPA’s greenhouse gas regulations. Although we may never know the details of these machinations, the basic thrust and outcome are clear.

In February 2009, EPA Administrator Jackson decided to reconsider Bush EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson’s denial of California’s request for a waiver to implement AB 1493. Because greenhouse gas emissions standards implicitly regulate fuel economy, because the waiver would allow other states to follow suit, and because auto makers would have to reshuffle the mix of vehicles sold in each “California” state to achieve the same average fuel economy, Jackson confronted the financially-distressed auto industry with the prospect of a market-balkanizing fuel-economy “patchwork.”

Then, in May 2009, in backdoor negotiations conducted under a vow of silence (“We put nothing in writing, ever,” CARB Chairman Mary Nichols told the New York Times), the White House offered to protect auto makers from the patchwork threat if, but only if, they agreed to support EPA and CARB’s newfound careers as greenhouse gas/fuel economy regulators. Specifically, under what President Obama dubbed the “Historic Agreement,” California and other states agreed to deem compliance with EPA’s greenhouse gas standards as compliance with their own in return for auto makers’ pledge not to challenge either the Tailpipe Rule or the California waiver.

The political payoff for Team Obama was not long in coming. In 2010, Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski introduced a resolution to overturn EPA’s greenhouse gas Endangerment Rule, the prerequisite for the Tailpipe Rule and all other EPA greenhouse gas regulations. The auto industry lobbied against the resolution, warning that it would undo the “Historic Agreement” and, thus, expose auto makers to a “multitude” of conflicting state and federal standards.

Of course, the threat of a patchwork exists only because Jackson granted the waiver, but to do so she needed the legal cover provided by the fiction that greenhouse gas emission standards are not “related to” fuel economy standards. A patchwork is exactly what the EPCA preemption of state fuel economy regulation was designed to prevent.

EPA then parlayed its new role as de-facto fuel economy regulator into a mandate to regulate greenhouse gases from stationary sources. The Tailpipe Rule – at least as EPA reads the CAA – compels the agency to regulate greenhouse gases from “major emitting facilities.” EPA is now applying CAA preconstruction and operating permit requirements to large CO2 emitters such as coal-fired power plants, petroleum refineries, cement production facilities, steel mills, and pulp and paper factories. EPA is also developing greenhouse gas “performance standards” for power plants and refineries, with greenhouse gas performance standards for other industrial categories sure to follow.

Constitutional Common Sense

EPA contends that its greenhouse gas regulations derive from the CAA as interpreted by Supreme Court in Massachusetts v. EPA (April 2007). The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals is now reviewing arguments regarding that claim in Coalition for Responsible Regulation v. EPA.

But however that case is decided, Congress has an independent responsibility to assess whether an agency’s agenda comports with the statutory schemes it has created. Whether or not EPA correctly interprets Mass. v. EPA, it should be obvious that the agency has gone rogue.

Congress declined to give EPA explicit authority to regulate greenhouse gases only last year, when Senate leaders pulled the plug on companion legislation to the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACESA) – the House-passed cap-and-trade bill sponsored by Reps. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Ed Markey (D-Mass.).

One of ACESA’s selling points was precisely that it would preempt regulation of greenhouse gases under several CAA programs. If instead of proposing cap-and-trade, Waxman and Markey had introduced legislation authorizing EPA to do exactly what it is doing now – regulating greenhouse gases via the CAA as it sees fit – their bill would have been dead on arrival.

The notion that Congress gave EPA such expansive authority when it enacted the CAA in 1970, years before global warming was even gleam in Al Gore’s eye, is preposterous.

* In the interests of full disclosure, I testified on the private sector witness panel at the hearing where the three Obama officials denied that greenhouse gas emission standards are “related to” fuel economy standards. My organization, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, is a petitioner in Coalition for Responsible Regulation v. EPA.

On September 23, 2011, at a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., attorney Faya Rose Toure (a.k.a. Rose Sanders) described a conspiracy to defraud the federal government, involving claimants, attorneys, and members of the clergy.

The original Pigford plaintiffs were black farmers who sued the U.S. Department of Agriculture for racial discrimination.

Sanders related how class-action lawyers later recruited claimants by sending representatives to black churches, where they allegedly told congregants that they were eligible for “reparations,” even if they had never farmed.

Sanders’s claims were at least partially corroborated at the press conference by Gary Grant, President of the Black Farmers and Agriculturalists Association, who indicated that he knew of the involvement of preachers in Pigford-related fraud.

What Sanders reveals in the clip below ought to be enough to cause the supervising judge, Paul Friedman of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, to suspend the settlement process.

It ought to be enough to prompt the FBI to re-open investigations into the lawyers and organizations involved.

It ought to be enough to encourage Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) to fire up his magic investigation machine, and start issuing subpoenas–not just regarding the Pigford settlement, but also the Obama-created settlements for women, Native American, and Hispanic/Latino famers who are alleging discrimination.

Watch the clip, then I’ll take you through some of the points that Pigford attorney Sanders is making.

And so after all of that, they are now accusing the farmers of fraud. There is a problem. There are people who are out there hustling, and taking advantage of black farmers. And some of them are our people. They are the ones that are misleading the people, making them believe they are in the lawsuit, making them believe they are eligible. I actually went to a meeting in Alabama, where these white lawyers from Texas had hired–you were there [“Yes, maʼam. And they're still calling me and trying to get me to fraud.”]–hired black people, hired black people to go into all these black churches and they literally told black people: “Oh, you didn’t have to farm. It doesn’t matter if your grandfather never farmed. If you ever thought about farming, youʼre eligible for this lawsuit.” So these people are thinking this is more of a like reparations-type lawsuit. They donʼt know any better. So when they sign up, they just donʼt know. But the government is determined to prosecute [them], and to limit this process, and that is something I think we need to be outraged about. I think we need to somehow get to the NAACP, and I have talked to the NAACP–we’ve got to have a coalition. We–frankly speaking, we’ve got to get away from some of our differences, because our needs are greater than our differences…

Let’s start at the beginning.

• And so after all of that, they are now accusing the farmers of fraud.

Here Sanders is incorrect. Nobody is accusing the farmers of fraud–certainly nobody at Big Government. Quite the opposite, the black farmers are doing the accusing. They have repeatedly said they know about fraud in Pigford, but can’t get anyone to listen. In fact, when the farmers told Rep. Sanford Bishop (D-GA) about the fraud, he told them to be quiet–a story that should have been a national scandal, though the press ignored it.

The idea that people are “accusing the farmers” is just a way of deflecting scrutiny of the organizations supporting Pigford. But since no mainstream journalists showed up to the press conference–which, incidentally, included the New Black Panther Party and the Nation of Islam–Sanders decided to continue, and to open up about what she knew about corruption in Pigford.

• There is a problem. There are people who are out there hustling, and taking advantage of black farmers. And some of them are our people. They are the ones that are misleading the people, making them believe they are in the lawsuit, making them believe they are eligible. I actually went to a meeting in Alabama, where these white lawyers from Texas had hired–you were there [“Yes, maʼam.  And they're still calling me and trying to get me to fraud.”]–hired black people, hired black people to go into all these black churches and they literally told black people: “Oh, you didn’t have to farm. It doesn’t matter if your grandfather never farmed. If you ever thought about farming, you’re eligible for this lawsuit.”

There it is: an officer of the court and a claimant attorney–representing Charles and Shirley Sherrod, whose farming collective was the largest beneficiary of the settlement–stating clearly that she is aware that there is organized, deliberate, large-scale fraud in Pigford.

It should be noted that when these exact same charges were made by people like Rep. Steve King (R-IA) and Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), they were called delusional racists.

It’s also worth mentioning that we’ve had another attorney admit on camera that there was fraud in Pigford, as well: Othello Cross from Pine Bluff, Arkansas.

Sanders’s revelation demands an immediate investigation–not to determine whether fraud exists, but to delve into the details.

• So these people are thinking this is more of a like reparations-type lawsuit. They donʼt know any better. So when they sign up, they just donʼt know.

Again, the slander against Rep. King and Rep. Bachmann can’t be overstated: when they used the term “reparations” to describe how Pigford was being advertised, they were called racists and race-baiters. Andrew Breitbart has been called the same thing for using the word “reparations,” and so have I.

Sanders just vindicated all of us.

• But the government is determined to prosecute [them], and to limit this process, and that is something I think we need to be outraged about. I think we need to somehow get to the NAACP, and I have talked to the NAACP–we’ve got to have a coalition. We–frankly speaking, we’ve got to get away from some of our differences, because our needs are greater than our differences…”

Now, this statement is totally bizarre. I’ve seen no evidence that the government is determined to prosecute anyone. In fact, there’s plenty of evidence of a cover-up.

If a coalition with the NAACP would root out fraud, it would be welcome. But that is not what Sanders has in mind. She doesn’t want investigations and prosecutions; she wants the NAACP to take the heat off Pigford by protesting that black farmers are under greater scrutiny than other minority farmers.

Unfortunately for Sanders–and fortunately for the black farmers still waiting for justice–she cannot take back her public admission.

It is no longer possible to deny the urgent need for a federal investigation of fraud in the Pigford settlement. Those who stand in the way of that investigation should know that they are helping to cover up crime on a potentially massive scale.

$2.7 billion is worth more than five Solyndras. That’s not counting the potential billions in the pending copycat lawsuits in Pigford’s wake.

And there are more revelations to come.

Questions have arisen about the involvement of Attorney General Eric Holder, as new evidence has arisen that Justice Department officials may have wanted not only to target Mexican druglords but also to create anecdotal evidence to support tighter gun control rules.

A look back at the early days of the Obama administration suggests that responsibility for Operation Fast and Furious. may go even higher.

Source: AP http://tinyurl.com/cj4lz3

In the spring of 2009, both President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton blamed American gun-running for violence in Mexico’s drug wars.

On March 25, 2009, for example, Clinton stated in Mexico City: “Our inability to prevent weapons from being illegally smuggled across the border to arm these criminals causes the deaths of police officers, soldiers and civilians.” She also announced new efforts to stop gun-running.

On April 16, 2009, also in Mexico City, Obama made similar remarks: “This war is being waged with guns purchased not here, but in the United States. More than 90 percent of the guns recovered in Mexico come from the United States, many from gun shops that line our shared border.”

Both Obama and Clinton called at the time for bolder gun regulation and legislation–legislation that congressional Democrats may be about to introduce. Operation Fast and Furious was launched later in 2009.

Both Obama and Clinton acknowledged openly that gun control legislation would struggle to pass even a Demcorat-dominated Congress. Furthermore, Obama’s claim that “90 percent” of guns recovered by Mexican police from gangs were American in origin was shown to be based on false and misleading statistics.

They knew they needed to make a more convincing case. Internal justice department memos indicating strong pressure to link guns from Operation Fast and Furious to gun control efforts raise the possibility that the White House and the State Department may have asked the Justice Department for the evidence they sought.

That is why, in addition to requesting copies of internal Justice Department emails, Sen. Grassley and Rep. Issa should also request all relevant communications between the White House, the State Department, and the Justice Deoartment.

What we know thus far raises legitimate concerns that Operation Fast and furious was not simply a case of overzealous ATF officials, but possibly of criminal misconduct ordered at the highest level.

It’s no secret that Google was one of corporate America’s biggest Obama backers donating over $800,000 to his presidential campaign. Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt actively promoted his candidacy and helped pay for the Obama inauguration.

And what has Google got for its “investment” and relationship in the Administration? In Washington, there is an old saying – “Personnel equals policy.” In the case of Google, it’s clear the tail is wagging the dog. Former Google policy maker Andrew McLaughlin, was named White House deputy chief technology officer in June where he’ll be in a position to shape policy that affects Google’s rivals creating a disadvantage for Google’s competitors.

But that is just the tip of the iceberg.

Google’s Street View operations have collected photos, videos and sensitive personal information from WiFi connections. As Ken Boehm reported the Federal Trade Commission abruptly ended its investigation of “Street View” – a decision that came on the heels not only of Google’s admission that its surveillance was much more serious than previously disclosed but only days after a $30,000-a-head fundraiser for President Obama at the home of a Google executive. The FTC’s decision came only four days after Google admitted a key fact it had long denied: that “Street View” did capture URLs, e-mails and passwords.

It will be up to the Congress to determine why the investigation was dropped. Did the Administration weigh in to protect their piggybank? Time will tell.