But according to Mueller’s testimony, the lack of policies to protect American citizens’ privacy has not deterred the FBI’s use of drones for domestic surveillance operations.

During a Senate Judiciary Committee oversight hearing, Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) asked Mueller, “Does the FBI use drones for surveillance on U.S. soil?”

Mueller’s answer was a straightforward affirmative, though he added that the FBI only “very seldom” conducted surveillance of American citizens on American soil with the unmanned aircraft.

“It’s very seldom used and generally used in a particular incident where you need the capability,” Mueller responded when Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) prodded him on the matter. “It is very narrowly focused on particularized cases and particularized needs.’’

The director said that he wasn’t sure if the FBI had any “official” agreements with agencies like the National Security Agency, the Department of Homeland Security or the Department of Defense to receive assistance and share information collected in the agency’s use of drones.

“To the extent that it relates to the air space there would be some communication back and forth [between agencies],” Mueller provided as a vague answer to a question about interagency drone activity over U.S. soil.

With regard to providing the public any further information regarding FBI justification for drone use and other domestic spy tactics, Mueller gave the impression that transparency is not high on the government’s list of priorities.

“There is a price to be paid for that transparency,” Mueller said. “I certainly think it would be educating our adversaries as to what our capabilities are.”

• Only three people — all members of Organizing For Action (formerly known as Obama For America) — showed up for a scheduled, weekend gun-control rally in San Bernardino, Calif. The State Legislature is trying to pass a slew of gun-control measures, even as firearms are flying off California store shelves at a historic rate. “It’s three people today, but it will be 23 next time, and we’ll see the time after that,” chirped one of the lonely gun grabbers. Source: San Bernardino Sun…

• National Security Agency Director Keith Alexander and FBI Deputy Director Sean Joyce cakewalked through a House Intelligence Committee hearing on its spy measures yesterday, with the two taking control of each other’s narrative in order to congratulate government on its supposedly effective terror war. Afterward, a hot mic caught Alexander telling Joyce, “Tell your boss I owe him another friggin’ beer.” Source: The Atlantic…

• Guardian reporter Glenn Greenwald’s exposure of the NSA’s massive domestic spy program has revealed the entire caste of current Democratic leaders as a gang of civil liberty opportunists, whose true passion, it seems, was in trolling George W. Bush for eight years on matters of national security. So says a columnist for the generally liberal Buzzfeed, a pop culture website that’s essentially MTV for the Internet. That same columnist, Michael Hastings, died Tuesday in an apparent car accident. Source: Buzzfeed…

• Continuing a decades-long downward trend, fewer than one-fourth of Americans have confidence in newspapers, according to a recent Gallup poll. The percentage of Americans saying they have “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in newspapers dropped to 23 percent this year from 25 percent last year, according to a report on the poll, which was released Monday. Confidence in television news has also been slipping; it’s tied with newspapers this year at 23 percent, which is slightly up from last year’s all-time low of 21 percent. Source: US News… 

• What started as a joke between friends has turned into a social media phenomenon with a serious message about political disenchantment. Morris the cat, really, is running for mayor of the Mexican city of Jalapa. “Morris has become an expression of how fed up people are with all the parties and a political system that does not represent us,” said Sergio Chamorro, the cat’s owner. “Tired of voting for rats? Vote for a cat.” Source: The Guardian… 

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After I read these articles, I found myself in an audit with a client who, ironically, is being questioned about travel expenses. The client moved 100 employees to an out-of-country convention. They all flew coach. They stayed in nice but regular hotel rooms. They ate at restaurants paid for by the company. And then, they went back to their jobs in the 48 States; the client does not do business in Alaska or Hawaii because of the travel expenses and management problems with the large time changes.

The client had negotiated the best rates he could get with the airlines and with the hotels. It was obviously a foreign concept. “Why?” asked the Internal Revenue Service auditor who had never held down a free-market job in her life time. “Yeah!” responded the auditor’s supervisor, who had taken off from whatever supervising he pretends to do in order to harass my client — which was likely why my firm had been hired in the first place.

“Mr. Supervisor,” I replied, “only one questioner to a witness.”

“I do this all the time,” he barked, “and if you don’t like it, we will serve you with a summons.”

I didn’t like it. I shared that feeling with him. He immediately got an IRS lawyer on the phone. To his dismay, he was told to cool off, that one questioner to a witness was enough. I had already told him that, but he accepted it from an “official” IRS lawyer on his side.

The rest of the audit took about two hours, and not a single useful question was asked. The supervisor sat there, the IRS lawyer stayed on the phone — saying nothing and doing nothing except using up taxpayer funds — to monitor, and the non-capitalist asked questions about a business she couldn’t even begin to understand. Although it sounds like a long time, the first meeting had lasted an entire day while the IRS auditor, on a surprise visit, asked questions unabated until a frustrated chief financial officer decided to hire counsel — my firm.

So, what was the cost of this audit to the American taxpayer? My guess is a couple grand — not much, in the scheme of things.

But a year ago, a raid by six armed, flak-jacketed agents on one of my clients’ golf courses in the middle of a Saturday cost considerably more. With the armed “officers,” the IRS special agent and a field attorney (for added government “protection”) drove four vehicles to the raid and to the jail, locking up a non-violent, unarmed citizen who is supposedly presumed innocent — causing me to fly from Houston to Phoenix, Ariz., and the IRS lawyer to fly to Phoenix from Washington, D.C. The cost to the American taxpayer was about $30,000 — a whole lot more than a couple grand.

However, considering the elimination of the presumption of innocence (at least until a jury could sort it out) and pieces of the 5th, 6th and 8th amendments, the cost is inestimable. Then add a bond hearing, a pre-bond report and a trial, and it all adds up to “cost” a great deal more. Add putting up the government’s star witness (a lawyer who had agreed to sell out his clients, and violate privileges, in return for his own freedom and some perks) in a hotel for a month-long trial and feeding him, and the price is unconscionable.

I’ll get back now to the current headlines and to our audit.

While this (I will not use the word “idiot” or a word that rhymes with “switch”) dedicated public servant is asking why my client, the CEO of a corporation, would pay $150 per room at a retreat in the Bahamas for his employees and $265 per employee, on average, for a plane ticket, the world-news headlines show that the IRS spent $50 million on their own staff conferences. They didn’t negotiate prices, like my client. And they didn’t settle for the little rooms, like my client’s employees. They had $3,500 suites. They paid the entertainment $135,000, one of whom lectured on “leadership through art” and was paid $17,000 for his “leadership.” In one conference alone, in August 2010, they spent $4 million. That was sort of funny to me (you have to laugh or cry) because 2,600 or so IRS employees spent $4 million at about the same time my client had his 100 employees out of the country in the Bahamas — and he was being quizzed about it. The big difference was he spent only about $50,000 to put on his conference. To be fair to the IRS, we’ll multiply the capitalist’s amount by 26 — the IRS had 26 times the people in attendance at its conference — and that comes to $1.3 million.

When my client was asked why he spent that amount of money, he responded: “It’s the best deal I could get. If you can get me a better deal, I’ll take it.”

I had to chime in, “Actually ma’am, it’s a lot better deal than you got at your seminar.”

I had to ask our friendly IRS auditor if she had been to the government leadership extravaganza and if it was reasonable to spend almost (not quite) 400 percent more on an in-country IRS leadership seminar than an exotic, out-of-country, capitalist-celebration ceremony for successful sales people.

She retorted, “We aren’t here to account to you.”

And, frankly, that’s about the only true statement we heard from the IRS auditor, her supervisor and their lawyer. So, I politely shared my agreement, “That’s for sure.”

Everyone wants to know how to get out of this program we are in, wherein innocent citizens spend time in jail before their trials and IRS employees spend our money like drunken sailors in a whorehouse using their boss’s credit card.

I have the answer; Sammy Lott, a quadriplegic, helped me come up with it.

About 15 years ago, Lott was ordered to appear in a Federal courthouse. It was storming, and Lott was using an electric wheel chair. It was no easy chore for Lott to make it through the puddles, lakes and buckets of rain; but he made it. The IRS lawyer didn’t make it, though.

After Lott and I (and the court) waited for an hour for the IRS lawyer, the court finally called him and he said he was sick. So we were reset.

When we met in court again, we asked for the government to be sanctioned. We were asking for $10,000. The IRS lawyer said it wasn’t the government’s fault. And guess what Lott said? “He’s right, judge. It’s that lawyer’s fault.” The very nice man on the bench thought that was reasonable and asked what we wanted. I asked him not to sanction the government but to sanction the IRS lawyer personally. And the judge did: $1,500.

As the hearing ended, the lawyer ranted and raved and asked the judgment to be changed to the government, not levied on him. He agreed to up it to $2,500 if it was changed. We said “no.” Then, he offered something better. The government was claiming Lott owed $250,000 in back taxes. If we would forgo the $1,500 against the government lawyer, he’d drop the whole $250,000. Such a deal! We took it.

That’s when it hit me: Make them personally responsible.

If government employees had to pay for their own leadership training, the price would drop. They might even call the whole thing off. As it is, the leadership ability of IRS agents is so poor that it costs four times as much to train an IRS agent to be a leader as it does someone in a grocery store.

If IRS agents, police officers and the people involved in the pre-trial arrest had to spend a weekend in jail every time they imprisoned for the weekend a presumably innocent person in prison who was subsequently found not guilty and who was clearly not a flight risk or a danger to the community, there would be a lot fewer innocent people in pre-trial incarceration.

And $50 million wouldn’t make headlines anymore, because we’d save $50 billion or more — perhaps this year, perhaps sooner.

One final thought: What would happen if everyone in government was personally held responsible for his wrongdoing? How much would we save then?

–Michael Minns

They can stop trying, because those alerts are “supposed” to be there; and there’s nothing you can do about it — seriously.

AT&T released this bulletin on its consumer blog earlier this week, advising people whose iPhones run iOS 6.1 and higher that they have no choice about declining an automatic, “mandatory” software update that enables push notifications for government-issued safety alerts and Presidential alerts. But, it advises, customers at least can turn off all the government alerts by switching off the “Notifications” option in their phones’ settings menu… except for Presidential alerts.

There’s no declining a message from the President, as the company’s bulletin unceremoniously makes clear:

These are government-issued safety messages that include AMBER Alerts, emergency alerts – such as man-made or natural disasters, and Presidential alerts.

Wireless Emergency Alerts are part of the FCC’s CMAS program. You may turn off alerts (except for Presidential alerts) if you choose.  Go to Settings >Notifications>Turn On/Off.

CMAS is the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) Commercial Mobile Telephone Alerts system, adopted in 2008 for the “facilitating [of] the ability of consumers to receive emergency alerts through their wireless phones” from Federal, State, tribal and local governments.

While the FCC’s website describes recipients of these text-based messages as “subscribers,” it dutifully notes: “Subscribers would automatically receive these alerts if they have a CMAS-compatible handset. There would be no subscriber opt-in requirements.” If you can’t opt in, then guess what? You can’t opt out.

In other words, your phone company is the “subscriber.” As a customer, all you’re good for is funding, to pay for the use of a phone that’s surveilled, taxed and enabled to receive one-way instructions from the elected class and its enforcers.

If only the phone in President Barack Obama’s hands had no option for declining “mandatory” messages from the people…

To combat crime, neighborhoods in Oakland, Calif., Atlanta and Detroit, to name just a few, have hired private firms to patrol their neighborhoods. But residents of Clackamas County, Ore., are an independent lot. They think they have a better way.

Frustrated by an increase in petty crime, they’ve decided to forgo calling police and have taken to arming themselves. But so criminals won’t be surprised, they’ve put flyers out advertising their new policy.

“We’re starting a new group,” Coy Toloman told The Daily Mail. “We don’t feel neighborhood watch is sufficient, and we don’t feel the Clackamas County Sheriff’s Office is sufficient.”

Toloman and some of her neighbors have taken classes and obtained concealed carry permits and formed what they’re calling a Glock Block. Their flyer reads, “This is a Glock Block. We don’t call 911.”

Toloman, who joined the group after a thief stole a prized statue off her front porch while she was home, says she hopes criminals will see the flyer and go somewhere else. But if not, “I will defend my home,” she said.

Criminals beware.

After the past few months, nothing President Barack Obama and his Chicago troika (first lady Michelle Obama, senior adviser Valerie Jarrett and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder) says shocks me. Their ideology is based on their African-American heritage and their Islamic sympathies. What should shock us is that we are allowing the Obama Administration to do what it wants with nary an objection — not from the people, not from the press and not even from our Republican representatives in Congress.

Our latest engagement in Syria will only make that nation a breeding ground for future terrorists. The consequences of that will be arguments by the Obama Administration for even greater authority. That will mean Americans will have fewer liberties.  Don’t count on public outrage.

In a recent poll from the Pew Research Center and The Washington Post, 56 percent of those surveyed said the National Security Agency’s (NSA) program to track phone records is acceptable. Only 41 percent said it was unacceptable. When asked about anti-terrorism efforts, 62 percent of respondents said it was more important for the government to investigate possible terror threats, even if the price was personal privacy.

I cannot comprehend how almost two out of every three Americans are perfectly willing to let Obama shred the 4th Amendment. It gets worse. Some Republicans in Congress are suggesting that journalists should be subject to arrest if their articles put the Nation at risk. Risk is how the Obama Administration defines it. If this happens, there goes the 1st Amendment. All of this begs the question: If we are willing to give up these Constitutional rights, are we willing to give up everything in the Constitution? Will America sacrifice the right to bear arms and even the 22nd Amendment, the only instrument that limits the President to two terms?

I try not to be too pessimistic, but it seems that we are at a tipping point — something Malcolm Gladwell studied and wrote about in his acclaimed book The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference. In it, he states, “Change happens not gradually but at one dramatic moment.”

Flying Blind And Blind Trust

My own personal experiences have demonstrated that Gladwell is correct. I almost had a life-ending moment, and I wasn’t aware of it until it was upon me.

It was 20 years ago when my uncle, Dick Myers, flew me to Billings, Mont., in his Cessna 172. We took the trip to see Little Bighorn Battlefield, the site of Gen. George Custer’s last stand.

Dick had let me handle the controls from the co-pilots seat many times before in mid-flight, but only on perfectly clear days. Dick had flown for decades, with 2,000 hours as first in command. When he asked me if I wanted to take control over the middle of Montana, I said, “You bet.”

We were cruising at 120 mph at an altitude of 8,000 feet. Dick was taking a rest in the left seat, eyes closed.

A cloudbank overcame us with me at the controls. I understood only two gauges: the altimeter and the airspeed indicator. In pilot jargon, I was flying VFR, or visual flight rules. Given my inexperience, it was necessary for me to be able to see the horizon just to keep the plane flying straight and level. But I was blissfully ignorant as the clouds came upon us. Everything seemed fine when Dick became startled, saying, “I have the controls!”

I didn’t know what all the excitement was about, but certainly Dick was plenty excited. He grabbed the yoke and rammed the throttle forward. The small Cessna’s single engine roared. We momentarily broke through the clouds. It was then that I was able to see I had not been flying straight. Our plane was listing to the right, and the nose of the plane was pointed toward the prairie below.

It couldn’t have been much more than a minute; but in that time, I had lost all ability to tell up from down. It is called spatial disorientation. It is what happened to John F. Kennedy Jr. when he crashed his Piper Saratoga into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard, Mass., in 1999. All Dick had to do was give the instruments a quick check to stabilize the plane as we flew back into cloud cover.

“That was close,” Dick exclaimed. I could tell he was angry at himself for not being alert as I flew into the clouds. He had trusted the weather report before we departed which said there would be an unlimited ceiling. After we landed (and over a much-needed beverage), he told me that when flying, things can go bad in the blink of an eye. As Gladwell explained in his book, a great many things reach a tipping point.

It is easy to blame the loss of liberties on Obama because of his disregard for the Constitution. Yet millions of Americans implicitly trust Obama to do the right thing — even after the Benghazi, Libya, cover-up; abuses by the Internal Revenue Service; the seizure of telephone records of reporters; and the all-encompassing NSA spy program.

How can you blindly trust someone you have never met and don’t know? Even the people who have written about Obama and support his policies admit that nobody — with the exception of his wife, Michelle — knows who Obama is.

Let me tell you about trust. That same summer I was flying the airplane, there was a front-page story in our hometown newspaper. Our family doctor of 15 years was arrested (he was later convicted) for having a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old male patient. The news was crushing because he was a good doctor and, I thought, a sensible man. He delivered our babies and even made house-calls if anyone in the family was ill. He had a wife and child. He was the kind of man that women wanted to be with and men wanted to be like. He had a thriving practice. And I thought I knew him well.

All these years later, I still ask: How could I have been so wrong? Who do we really know?

I have known my wife for 40 years. I believe I know what is in her heart, and she knows what is in mine. But beyond my wife, I really can’t make blanket statements about anyone. And I certainly wouldn’t make one about someone I have never met who is also a politician.

When millions of Americans feel they can trust Obama, we are near a tipping point. I just hope that America can save itself before it’s too late.

Yours in good times and bad,

–John Myers   

NSA chief Gen. Keith Alexander answered questions on Capitol Hill Tuesday alongside top dogs from the FBI and the National Director Of Intelligence’s office. Alexander promised last week to present a public list of the dozens of terror attacks NSA alleges it stopped at the hearing, but told lawmakers on the Permanent Select Committee On Intelligence that the agency was still working on the document and would have it no sooner than Wednesday.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) said that lawmakers want NSA officials to provide Americans with more information about the now public spy programs.

“General Alexander, you and I have talked over the past week about the need to be able to publicly elaborate on the success stories these authorities have contributed to without jeopardizing ongoing operations,” he said, according to prepared remarks. “I place the utmost value in protecting sources and methods, but I also recognize that when we are forced into the position of having to publicly discuss intelligence programs due to irresponsible, criminal behavior that we also have to carefully balance the need for secrecy with educating the public.”

Alexander spent much of the hearing saying that American citizens should not be concerned by the information leaked by Snowden, asserting that the conversation surrounding the data-collection efforts are rife with misinformation and half-truths. Furthermore, according to the official, there is concrete evidence the program is making Americans safer.

“As Americans, we value our privacy and our civil liberties,” Alexander said. “As Americans, we also value our security and our safety. In the 12 years since the attacks on Sept. 11, we have lived in relative safety and security as a nation. That security is a direct result of the intelligence community’s quiet efforts to better connect the dots and learn from the mistakes that permitted those attacks to occur in 9/11.”

The detailed list of terror plots set to be released today will add to declassified government documents NSA pointed to as examples of terror plots that were shut down via data-collection efforts. The examples involved a planned attack on New York City’s subway system and a plot to bomb a Danish newspaper over cartoon depictions of the Prophet Muhammad.

The intelligence official told lawmakers that the NSA was unwilling to release a complete list of thwarted attacks because it would endanger the United States and its allies.

Some NSA critics have pointed out that proof of the Constitutionally questionable data-collection effort’s effectiveness will likely not be made evident by a list of alleged successes in stopping terror. The argument is not a faulty one; it has been demonstrated in the past that government agencies are fond of creating, then stopping, terror plots and using the publicity to justify civil liberties restrictions.

Author David Shipler pointed out in the pages of The New York Times in April 2012 that 14 of 22 major terror attempts on U.S. soil since 9/11 were nurtured by the government.

From the piece:

The United States has been narrowly saved from lethal terrorist plots in recent years — or so it has seemed. A would-be suicide bomber was intercepted on his way to the Capitol; a scheme to bomb synagogues and shoot Stinger missiles at military aircraft was developed by men in Newburgh, N.Y.; and a fanciful idea to fly explosive-laden model planes into the Pentagon and the Capitol was hatched in Massachusetts.

But all these dramas were facilitated by the F.B.I., whose undercover agents and informers posed as terrorists offering a dummy missile, fake C-4 explosives, a disarmed suicide vest and rudimentary training. Suspects naïvely played their parts until they were arrested.

Stay tuned for analysis of the information included on the NSA’s forthcoming list.

But if the GOP hedges on its nominee for the 2016 Presidential election by picking the candidate with the broadest cross-party appeal, conservatives could find themselves enduring another four-year wait until the White House has another chance to be free of liberals.

That’s because, at least at the moment, the potential candidate who stands to glean the greatest number of crossover votes nationwide is none other than corpulent New Jersey Governor Chris Christie.

A new Gallup poll shows what many conservatives have known for a long time: Christie is more beloved outside his own party than within it.

Of five Republicans (Christie, Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Marco Rubio and Paul Ryan) whose names Gallup ran past a random sampling of 1,529 Americans, Christie’s actually played better with Democrats than with Republicans. In fact, he was the only Republican for whom Democrats, on balance, held a favorable opinion.

Presumably on the strength of his national exposure following Superstorm Sandy, Christie scored a higher “net favorable” number (37) among Democrats than he did with his 28 rating among Republicans. As a result of all that love from the left, Christie took the poll’s top spot for the GOP candidate with the highest approval rating among Americans as a whole, regardless of party affiliation.

Republicans, on the other hand, preferred both Ryan and Rubio to Christie, with Ryan receiving a 69 percent favorable rating among GOP members.

In terms of name recognition, Christie scored high across political lines. But the Republican whose name was recognized the least — even among members of his own party — is, perhaps, the least “Republican” of the bunch.

That’s Senator Ted Cruz of Texas. Only half the Republicans surveyed even knew who he was.

Reason No. 1: It will add up to a net 8.4 million anti-gun voters in the next 13 years or so. This could make comprehensive gun control and confiscation inevitable within our lifetimes.

Reason No. 2: Victory feeds on itself, but so does defeat. If anti-gun Senator Chuck Schumer passes this bill out of the Senate with a strong bipartisan majority, he has already said he intends to bring back gun control by the end of the summer. Obama would emerge from the fight re-energized to take away your guns.

Reason No. 3: If people get used to having to have the government’s permission to get a job (even to clean your house or mow your lawn), it will be a lot harder to fight universal background checks and gun registries.

Reason No. 4: There is the concern that the bill will create a de facto national ID card. A Saturday article in The New York Times, titled “Fears of National ID with Immigration Bill,” reports that some in Congress have worried openly about the “potential for another sprawling data network that could ultimately be the equivalent of a national ID system.” Gun Owners of America has long opposed anything that smacks of this because of the danger that such data collection poses to gun owners’ privacy.

I gave more reasons the amnesty bill needs to fail here.