Posts Tagged ‘Reuters’

Wynton Hall

FBI Warns of ‘Anti-Government’ Extremists

by Wynton Hall

At a Federal Bureau of Investigation conference on Monday, FBI agents said state and local law enforcement should be on alert for people who consider themselves “sovereign citizens,” individuals who believe they are not subject to any type of government authority.

According to Reuters, these anti-government extremists “may refuse to pay taxes, defy government environmental regulations and believe the United States went bankrupt by going off the gold standard.”

Routine encounters with police can turn violent “at the drop of a hat,” said Stuart McArthur, deputy assistant director in the FBI’s counterterrorism division.

“We thought it was important to increase the visibility of the threat with state and local law enforcement,” he said.

In May 2010, two West Memphis, Arkansas, police officers were shot and killed in an argument that developed after they pulled over a “sovereign citizen” in traffic.

Last year, an extremist in Texas opened fire on a police officer during a traffic stop. The officer was not hit.

The heightened concern against “sovereign citizens” is the result of the rise in legal convictions from 10 such cases in 2009 to 18 cases in 2010 and 2011 respectively.

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Jeff Dunetz

From Now on I Dedicate Myself to Making Barack Obama Happy

by Jeff Dunetz

Some of my friends criticize me because they believe I am too hard on President Obama. They say they can’t believe that there is not one of his policies which I supported wholeheartedly. Even a broken clock is right two times a day they say, isn’t there one policy you can say, “lets help Obama on this one?” And I would reach down to the bottom of my soul and really try to come up with something, but I always failed-until today. I have finally found something we should all help Obama implement, he doesn’t like talking to Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu every day, all of America should be behind our President insuring that he doesn’t have to talk to Bibi every day.

During the G20 meetings, President Barack Obama and French President Sarkozy got caught talking in front of a microphone that was accidentally left on.

The conversation began with President Obama criticizing Sarkozy for not having warned him that France would be voting in favor of the Palestinian membership bid in UNESCO despite Washington’s strong objection to the move. But then the two got personal:

“I cannot bear Netanyahu, he’s a liar,” Sarkozy told Obama. The POTUS replied: “You’re fed up with him, but I have to deal with him every day!”

Nothing leads to good political pundit material  like pair of catty politicians accidently speaking  in front of an open mike.  In true Los Angeles Times fashion  the “journalists” in the room agreed not to report the comments (remember during the 2008 campaign the Los Angeles Times withheld a potentially damaging video tape of Barack Obama toasting his friend and former PLO press spokesman Rashid Khalidi).  Then all of the reporters in the room signed a pledge to withhold the damaging information (although there is no truth to the rumor that Abe Foxman of the ADL insisted on the written pledge).

What happened next is what usually happens in cases like this.

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Tom Stilson

Meet David Prend, RockPort Capital Managing Partner, Energy Dept. Advisor, and Guru of Government Green

by Tom Stilson

Reuters recently offered an apologetic profile on Solyndra figurehead, RockPort Capital Managing Partner, and Solyndra Board Member David Prend.

The article, a fawning exhibition of non-investigative journalism, referred to Prend as the “Guru of Green.” Reuters neglected to question whether Prend’s close government connections had created conflicts of interest as he secured multi-million dollar government loans and grants for his investments.

Prend lobbied the Director of the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy, Carol Browner, for Solyndra’s doomed $535 million DOE loan and presidential endorsement. Prend also visited the White House at least twice and discussed two companies with Browner while lobbying for Solyndra. (The White House refuses to release the second company’s name.)

Prend’s other investments suggest that he is benefiting from taxpayer support for far more than just two companies.

Prend is a board member for scandal-plagued concrete sealant manufacturer Hycrete. Around 2008, Hycrete received a $2 million Corps of Engineers earmark from Rep. Pete Visclosky (D-IN) shortly before company executives donated $20,000 to his campaign and the DCCC. In July 2009, former Hycrete CEO David Rosenberg was invited to a WH Summit on Energy Innovation and Jobs where Obama praised Hycrete as a job creation leader.

Prend was apparently involved in another RockPort Capital investment, Soliant Energy. Soliant went bankrupt even after receiving a $4 million DOE grant. Prend also apparently sits on the board of SustainX, which recently secured a $5.39 million DOE grant. (more…)

The Atrazine Scare Is Just the Beginning

by Robert James Bidinotto

Recently, I reported here on the environmentalists’ trumped-up scare campaign targeting atrazine, a valuable, widely used agricultural herbicide. I quoted a Wall Street Journal editorial that observed, “The environmental lobby also figures that if it can take down atrazine with its long record of clean health, it can get the EPA to prohibit anything.”

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In fact, the attack on atrazine is just part of the total war against man-made chemicals that is waged today by environmentalists inside and outside of government.

On May 6, the President’s Cancer Panel fired the latest salvo in this battle, in the form of its annual report, Reducing Environmental Cancer Risk: What We Can Do Now. The report follows in the scare-mongering tradition established by the Natural Resources Defense Council, a major green lobby. As I noted earlier, the NRDC’s 1989 pesticide report—citing bogus rodent experiments—fomented a nationwide panic over the chemical alar, abetted by media sympathizers. Last year, the group issued a similar faux “study” to gin up alarm over atrazine.

The presidential panel’s report similarly relies on “junk science” to reach alarmist conclusions, and was pre-released to reliably green journalists to maximize its visibility. Columnist Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times was one. In “New Alarm Bells About Chemicals and Cancer,” Kristof proclaimed that “the mission control of scientific and medical thinking, the President’s Cancer Panel” was “poised to join ranks with the organic food movement and declare: chemicals threaten our bodies.” Reuters likewise reported the story under the scary title, “Americans ‘Bombarded’ with Cancer Sources: Report.”

Yet, jarringly, the first sentence in the report’s cover letter to President Obama begins: “Though overall cancer incidence and mortality have continued to decline in recent years . . .”

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Capitol Confidential

Google ISP Initiative Raises Eyebrows, Privacy Concerns

by Capitol Confidential

In a surprise move yesterday, Google announced via its blog that it intends to enter the internet service provider space, promising to develop experimental “ultra high-speed broadband networks in a small number of trial locations” across the nation.

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The move quickly grabbed the attention of some observers of the net neutrality debate, in view of Google’s longstanding backing of the controversial policy. Internet service providers are among the most high-profile opponents of net neutrality, a position that has seen them along with the Communications Workers of America union, many minority and civil rights groups and others pitted on the opposite side of the debate from Google, President Obama, Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Julius Genachowski and far-left groups like Free Press. One telecoms policy expert quipped with tongue-in-cheek that if Google was “serious” about the move, those tracking the net neutrality debate could fairly assume that a shift in the company’s views regarding net neutrality would also be forthcoming. “Last I checked, Google was a big company that likes making money. If net neutrality were instituted, internet service provision—including by Google— could end up looking like a loss-making enterprise,” the expert told Capitol Confidential.

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Larry O'Connor

Breaking: Dutch Authorities Claim No Accomplice in Airport; Contradicts Eye-Witness Account

by Larry O'Connor

According to Reuters, Dutch authorities have announced that Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab, the terrorist who penetrated the Dutch security system on Christmas Day on Flight 253 to Detroit, acted alone with no accomplices at the Amsterdam airport.

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This directly contradicts the first-hand, eye-witness account from Kurt Haskell, a lawyer from Taylor, Michigan who was on board Flight 253.  We have reported Mr. Haskell’s account here at Big Government as well as his interview with Andrew Breitbart on The Dennis Miller Show, the nationally syndicated radio program on Westwood One.

Mr. Haskell tells us he is sticking to his story.  “I’m not surprised, we expected this.  They are trying to discredit me without actually PROVING me wrong.  But, I’m not going to shut-up about this.“

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Andrew Breitbart

Two Fish, One Barrel: Deconstructing Andrew Sullivan’s ‘The Breitbart Standard,’ Demolishing Conor Friedersdorf’s ‘The Right’s Lesser Media’

by Andrew Breitbart

To which I respond to my unofficial biographer Conor Friedersdorf’s Daily Beast criticism of your’s truly and bigger fish Andrew Sullivan’s two-thumbs-up to it:                             

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Andrew Sullivan (left) and Conor Friedersdorf

In the piece you link to and affirm in the Daily Beast, “The Right’s Lesser Press,” Conor Friedersdorf refuses to interview me as he continues to be my unofficial biographer. (I’m VERY reachable, Conor.) He writes opinion pieces on me purporting to be journalism. He doesn’t quote or cite me, he simply assumes and pushes the point of view he thinks I have and makes an argument based on these alleged positions. It’s sloppy and you, of all people, should know better.

Breitbart.com is MOSTLY a news aggregator. It carries the Associated Press, Reuters, even, Agence France Presse, from those dreaded croissant eaters!!!

It even carries the New York Times on its front page — a benefit that even Big Government and Big Hollywood don’t receive.

Big Hollywood is what it is: a counter-voice to the virtually monolithic Hollywood left. How dare I grant a platform, and a means for the defense of those in Hollywood who would dare go against the strident and intolerant Hollywood left.

Big Government, too, is providing an outlet for voices and ideas that are not proportionally represented in the traditional and mostly biased mainstream media.

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