Shenanigans!

From CNS News:

The Treasury Department's Financial Management Service (FMS), which publishes both the federal government's official Daily Treasury Statement and its official Monthly Treasury Statement, is reporting that in July the federal government ran a deficit of $98 billion but that the federal government's debt remained exactly $16,699,396,000,000 for the entire month.

The FMS said that the deficit went up $98 billion ($97,594,000,000) in the Monthly Treasury Statment for July, which it released on Monday.

At the same time, the FMS said the debt stayed at exactly $16,699,396,000,000 in its Daily Treasury Statements, which are published every business day. The Daily Treasury Statements show the daily value of the federal government debt that is subject to a legal limit set by Congress.

At the static $16,699,396,000,000 level that the Treasury reported for every day of July, the debt was just $25 million below the legal limit of $16,699,421,000,000 that was set in a law passed by Congress and signed by President Barack Obama.

If Treasury's daily statements were to declare that the government had borrowed an additional net $98 billion to cover the $98 billion deficit the Treasury declared in its monthly statement for July, the Treasury would be conceding that the government had already surpassed the legal limit on the debt--and has been violating the law by continuing to borrowing additional money.

Noting to see here. Move along...

No, Mr. Culberson, We Want ALL of the Spying to Stop

From The Blaze:

While the most talked-about news out of the U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday was the defeat of the so-called Amash amendment that would have defunded the NSA’s massive data collection program, another amendment related to NSA spying was quietly passed overwhelmingly by lawmakers.

The amendment that passed is reportedly intended to “ensure none of the funds may be used by the NSA to target a U.S. person or acquire and store the content of a U.S. person’s communications, including phone calls and e-mails.” 

Culberson told TheBlaze in a phone interview why he supported the Pompeo amendment over the more sweeping amendment authored by Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.).
He argued the amendment properly requires that no funds can be used by the NSA to collect or store the content of American citizens’ communications data. This includes phone calls and emails. The amendment; however, does not seem to restrict the NSA’s ability to continue collecting and storing massive amounts metadata. 

The Amash amendment would have prevented the NSA from using any funds to collect any data on persons that are not under investigation.

Then, this:

The Pompeo amendment may not fully address privacy advocates’ concerns about NSA spying, but those like Culberson feel it’s a step in the right direction.

Damn it, man.  I don't want a step in the right direction! I want to get to the destination! If you have a roach problem in your house, squashing one of the bugs is a step in the right direction.  But it doesn't solve the problem!

Solve the problem already!!! Quit playing games with our rights, our privacy and our civil liberties!!!!

The Government Wants Your Passwords Now, Too

From CNet:

The U.S. government has demanded that major Internet companies divulge users' stored passwords, according to two industry sources familiar with these orders, which represent an escalation in surveillance techniques that has not previously been disclosed. 

Some of the government orders demand not only a user's password but also the encryption algorithm and the so-called salt, according to a person familiar with the requests. A salt is a random string of letters or numbers used to make it more difficult to reverse the encryption process and determine the original password. Other orders demand the secret question codes often associated with user accounts.

This, the day after the House (including my own Representative, Michael McCaul) killed an amendment that would defund the NSA's unconstitutional spying programs.

What Orwellian hell has this country become?

Secret Government E-mails

From AP News:

Some of President Barack Obama's political appointees, including the Cabinet secretary for the Health and Human Services Department, are using secret government email accounts they say are necessary to prevent their inboxes from being overwhelmed with unwanted messages, according to a review by The Associated Press. 

The secret email accounts complicate an agency's legal responsibilities to find and turn over emails in response to congressional or internal investigations, civil lawsuits or public records requests because employees assigned to compile such responses would necessarily need to know about the accounts to search them. Secret accounts also drive perceptions that government officials are trying to hide actions or decisions. 

"What happens when that person doesn't work there anymore? He leaves and someone makes a request (to review emails) in two years," said Kel McClanahan, executive director of National Security Counselors, an open government group. "Who's going to know to search the other accounts? You would hope that agencies doing this would keep a list of aliases in a desk drawer, but you know that isn't happening."

It's getting harder and harder to not become a conspiracy nut.

Who's the Patsy - Steven Miller... or the American Public?

I'm seeing all kinds of gushing on TV this morning about how the president acted so decisively last night.  Um...

From the LA Times:

President Obama forced out the head of the IRS on Wednesday, seeking to restore the public's faith in the tax agency while asserting a measure of control over a rapidly growing political problem.

That's all great and all, but... um... Mr. President... but exactly how stupid do you think we are? Oh, wait... You've gotten away with damn near everything up to this point, so I retract my question.

But you know it's getting a real-like up in here when Salon Magazine starts saying things like this:

The only thing that would appease the Washington scandal gods was human sacrifice, so Wednesday evening, President Obama announced that he had requested and accepted the resignation of IRS Acting Commissioner Steven Miller. “It is important to institute new leadership that can help restore confidence going forward,” the president said. 

But Miller is a scapegoat in the most pure and classic sense. The acting commissioner was not running the IRS at the time employees improperly targeted Tea Party groups — that would be Bush-appointee Doug Shulman, who resigned as commissioner last year — and Miller’s name isn’t mentioned a single time in the Treasury Department inspector general’s report. Indeed, there is no evidence that Miller was in any way responsible, involved or even aware of the inappropriate targeting of conservative groups by underlings. He is falling on his sword for something he did not do.

And then there's also this:

But in an email to IRS employees, Miller claimed he would only be leaving next month because his assignment would be over. 

'It is with regret that I will be departing from the IRS as my acting assignment ends in early June,' Miller wrote. 'This has been an incredibly difficult time for the IRS given the events of the past few days, and there is a strong and immediate need to restore public trust in the nation’s tax agency.

So the president "fired" the acting director of the IRS - who had nothing to do with this thing - a guy who was going to step down in June anyway? And he's not actually being "fired" immediately - he's actually still staying on until June, anyway (when his appointment was due to be up.)

Yeah, Mr. President.  That's some really decisive stuff there.

Well, Isn't That Convenient?

From the Wall Street Journal:

The Obama administration pressed Congress to revive legislation that would give stronger protections to reporters, responding to widespread criticism over the Justice Department's broad seizure of Associated Press phone records. 

In the wake of the AP controversy, President Barack Obama's chief spokesman, Jay Carney, said the White House talked to Sen. Charles Schumer (D., N.Y.) about reviving "media shield" legislation that would protect journalists from revealing sources as part of an investigation. Mr. Schumer has been a chief proponent of such a law, though an effort to pass it in Mr. Obama's first year in office failed.

What a racket. Violate the privacy of the press, then offer up legislation to give them protection from just such violation.

Ah... the Chicago way.

Wait... Wasn't Nixon Impeached For Something Like This?

This is going to get really ugly really quickly.

IRS officials in Washington were involved in targeting of conservative groups

From the Washington Post:

Internal Revenue Service officials in Washington and at least two other offices were involved with investigating conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status, making clear that the effort reached well beyond the branch in Cincinnati that was initially blamed... 

“For the IRS to say it was some low-level group in Cincinnati is simply false,” said Cleta Mitchell, a partner in the law firm Foley & Lardner who sought to communicate with IRS headquarters about the delay in granting tax-exempt status to True the Vote. 

Moreover, details of the IRS’s efforts to target conservative groups reached the highest levels of the agency in May 2012, far earlier than has been disclosed, according to Republican congressional aides briefed by the IRS and the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration ­(TIGTA) on the details of their reviews.

Ask yourself: "does this sound like a government that is using its power responsibly?"