Election 2014- A Red Tsunami From Sea to Shining Sea

From Maine to American Samoa, Tuesday night was a bad night for the Democrats.

The big story of the night was that the Democrats and Majority Leader Harry Reid lost their majority in the United States Senate on election day after Republicans picked up no fewer than seven seats, with some race still to be decided through a recount or runoff. Although some Democrats had distanced themselves from President Obama while campaigning, the President in an interview said that his policies were on the ballot and he could count on support from Democrat incumbents- even the ones who were keeping him at arm's length on the campaign trail.

Heading into Election Day, the GOP needed a net gain of six seats in the Senate to regain a majority they hadn't held since 2006. It was widely believed that West Virginia, South Dakota and Montana would be fairly easy pickups for the Republicans, with states like Virginia, Iowa, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Kentucky, Minnesota, South Carolina, Alaska, Louisiana, Arkansas and Colorado up for grabs in close races.

For veterans, one of the more noteworthy developments was that Arkansas Republican Tom Cotton became the first-ever Iraq war veteran elected to the US Senate after defeating incumbent Democrat Mark Pryor by a margin of nearly 10 points. Later on in the night, Cotton was joined by Joni Ernst, a fellow Iraq war veteran, Lieutenant Colonel in the Iowa National Guard and state senator who was campaigning against congressman Bruce Braley for Iowa's senate seat that was open after Democrat Tom Harkin announced his retirement.

In South Carolina, former Congressman Tim Scott became the first black US senator from the South since Reconstruction- and the first ever to be elected to both the House of Representatives and US Senate. Scott was technically the incumbent, since governor Nikki Haley appointed him to replace fellow Republican Jim DeMint who retired to become president of conservative think-tank The Heritage Foundation in 2012.

Before Tuesday, Democrats took some solace in the projections out of Kansas that had Independent Greg Orman leading incumbent Republican Pat Roberts before election day. Orman, who declined to state whether he'd caucus with Democrats or Republicans if elected although Orman reportedly received donations from Democrat-supporting PACs and Vice President Biden predicted that Orman would end up caucusing with Democrats and narrowly preserve the party's majority in the Senate.

But perhaps the biggest prize for either party was Colorado. Over the last decade, Democrats had prided themselves on making Colorado a model on turning a red state blue [and boasted they were going to repeat the process in Texas, more on that a little later- NANESB!]. Incumbent Mark Udall ran on a campaign reminiscent of the Democrat's 2012 "War on Women", claiming that GOP challenger Corey Gardner would outlaw contraceptives and earning himself the nickname Mark Uterus.

In Louisiana, that race is heading to a December runoff since incumbent Democrat Mary Landrieu failed to get more than 50% of the total vote. However, the DSCC reportedly yanked a proposed $1.5 million ad buy in certain Louisiana markets, indicating that donors are less than confident about Landrieu's chances against Cassidy in the runoff.

The 'wave' wasn't just limited to a pickup of seven seats in the US Senate for the GOP. In the House of Representatives, not only did beleaguered incumbents such as New York Rep Michael Grimm [R- Staten Island] survive, but the Republicans gained a total of 15 seats [with some races in California and Maryland so close they're awaiting absentee and provisional ballots to decide the campaign- NANESB!]. Some of these included retired Air Force colonel Martha McSally beating Democrat representative Ron Barber in Arizona's 2nd congressional district- which comprised much of former congresswoman Gabby Giffords' district that had been held by Democrats after a 2011 assassination attempt on Giffords and redistricting. In Utah, former Saratoga Springs, UT mayor Mia Love ran as a Republican against Democrat Doug Owens for Representative in Utah's 4th Congressional District for the House seat up for grabs when Democrat Jim Matheson announced his retirement after the 2014 elections. Love- the daughter of Haitian immigrants- is Utah's first female congresswoman and the GOP's first black congresswoman [the NAACP was remarkably silent on the results of her election- NANESB!].

Republican governors favored just as well as the Senate and House races as it turned out. In Wisconsin, incumbent Scott Walker was elected governor for the third time since 2010- after a protracted battle over public sector unions between Democrats and the first-terms governor, the Democrats and unions successfully launched a recall campaign against Walker in 2012. However, Walker ultimately prevailed despite a well-funded campaign from unions and wealthy Democrat donors and PACs.

Democrat state representative Wendy Davis made a name for herself with wealthy liberal donors and the pro-abortion crowd after a lengthy filibuster on the floor of the State House in Austin, TX last year that was meant to hold up legislation that would prohibit abortions after 20 weeks. Shortly after the filibuster made her a rising star with the Democrats, she announced her candidacy for governor against Texas attorney general Greg Abbott. Although Davis wasn't expected to win, her candidacy was a trial balloon by out-of-state liberal Super PACs to try and turn Texas into a blue state. Davis ended up losing to abbot by more than 20 points, which in turned siphoned Democrat donor money away from much more competitive races.

In Maine, incumbent Paul LePage carried all but two of the sixteen counties throughout the state. In Massachusetts, Democrat Martha Coakley- who lost the 2009 Massachusetts' special election for US Senate to challenger Scott Brown- lost to Republican challenger and businessman Charlie Baker on election day. In the Midwest, incumbent Michigan governor Rick Snyder won 51% of the voting after drawing the ire of unions by making the Wolverine state a right-to-work state in his first term as governor. In President Obama's home state of Illinois, incumbent Democrat Pat Quinn lost to republican businessman Bruce Rauner. Although Maryland's Democrat governor Martin O'Malley was term-limited, pundits both left and right believed that his Lieutenant Governor, Anothony G Brown, would coast to an easy election win over Republican challenger and Maryland businessman Larry Hogan but Hogan shocked the pollsters and pundits by getting just over 51% of the vote. Out west, someone forgot to tell incumbent GOP governors Brian Sandoval and Susana Martinez that their party has a problem with Latinos as the governors of Nevada and New Mexico coasted to an easy re-election. Sandoval received more than 70% of the vote just weeks after he had announced a deal that where Tesla Motors [NASDAQ- TSLA] announced they would open up a factory outside of Reno, NV in exchange for substantial tax breaks. Meanwhile, Susana Martinez won 57% of the ballots cast in New Mexico on election day.

UPDATED again: Evolution of state legislative control in the Obama era: pic.twitter.com/DvK4s8eWi9

— David Freddoso (@freddoso) November 6, 2014

It wasn't just the governor's mansions that were going red in 2014. On the state level, Real Clear Politics reports that the Republicans control an unprecedented 68 out of 98 possible partisan legislative chambers on the state level.

Attorney General Eric Holder Announces Resignation

United States Attorney General Eric Holder, who folds the dubious distinction of being the only attorney general held in contempt of Congress, announced that he would be resigning on Thursday.

Holder, one of the few Obama remaining appointments from the first term, is one of the longest-serving AG's in US history and the country's first black attorney general. His five year tenure was marked primarily by cover-ups, politically motivated prosecutions and overreach on the part of the DOJ.

In the summer of 2012, Eric Holder was found in contempt of Congress when the DOJ refused to turn over documents pertaining to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Operation Fast & Furious, in which the agency allowed straw purchasers to buy guns in US border states and take them into Mexico without intervening. In December 2010, one of these guns was recovered from the scene of a shootout south of Tuscon, AZ where Mexican drug traffickers killed US Border Patrol agent Brian Terry and Mexican officials have seized numerous guns traced to the gunwalking program from drug traffickers or recovered them from murder scenes south of the border.

Before Holder announced his resignation, a federal judge ordered Holder to hand over all the requested Fast and Furious documents to the House Oversight Committee by October 1st. This has led to some speculation that the withheld documents contain damaging or politically embarrassing details that would've generated bad publicity for the White House and Democrats a month before the midterm elections. Others believe Holder's departure could have been timed to allow President Obama's hand-picked replacement to be confirmed by the Senate in a lame duck session in the event the majority shifts back to the Republicans after the elections.

Early in his tenure, Holder also supported civilian trials for Al Qaeda terrorists captured on the battlefield and detained in Guantanamo Bay, although the administration later backed off of trying suspected 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in Federal court in New York.

As attorney general, Holder seemingly took every opportunity to inject race into the DOJ enforcing federal laws- his DOJ's Civil Rights Commission declined to press charges against members of the New Black Panthers Party who were videotaped clad in paramilitary uniforms and wielding nightsticks in front of a Philadelphia polling station in 2008. Claiming minorities were incapable of obtaining photo ID, Holder's DOJ also unsuccessfully fought newly-passed voter ID laws in Wisconsin, North Carolina and Texas.

Speaking out on the recent unrest in Ferguson, MO, Holder told an audience at New York University this week:

“As an African American man who has been stopped and searched by police in situations where such actions were not warranted, I also carry with me an understanding of the mistrust that some citizens harbor (toward police),"

Under Holder, the DOJ also aggressively went after e-mails reporters from the Associated Press and FOX News and seized the phone records of FOX News reporter James Rosen's parents in the name of national security.

Not surprisingly, holder said that the Department of Justice had no plans to investigate the Veterans Affairs clandestine wait-lists in which the agency deferred treatment to numerous veterans seeking care at VA facilities- with a number of them dying as a result of being denied care.

Veterans Affairs Secretary Shinseki Steps Down Over Ongoing VA Scandal

A day after an internal nationwide audit of Veteran's Affairs facilities presented to President Obama showed widespread dysfunction and putting injured veterans on clandestine waiting lists to mask length wait times, VA secretary Eric Shinseki announced his resignation on Friday.

The president announced that Shinseki would resign after they met at the White House and he received an update on an internal review of the problems at the VA. The review showed the problems were not limited to just a few facilities, Obama said, adding: "It's totally unacceptable. Our veterans deserve the best."

On the heels of those and other findings, Obama said, "Secretary Shinseki offered me his own resignation -- with considerable regret, I accepted."

He said Shinseki told him he did not want to be a distraction. "I agree," Obama said. "We don't have time for distractions. We need to fix the problem."

The president had faced mounting calls from members of both parties to remove Shinseki; those calls accelerated after a damning inspector general report on Wednesday. Shinseki suffered another blow on Friday when Rep. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., a former top VA official, called for her former boss' resignation.

Shinseki's departure is likely to calm the political storm, but only briefly. Congressional critics of VA leadership voiced support for the decision on Friday, but urged the administration to quickly get to the root of the problems with VA workers lying about patient wait times.

As recently as a month ago, press reports of systematic problems at the Phoenix, AZ VA center began circulating and it seemed as though the Obama administration wouldn't part ways Shinseki, who was appointed in January 2009. Despite calls from the American Legion and both Democrat and Republican members of Congress, Senate Veteran's Affairs secretary Bernie Sanders [Socialist- Vermont] blamed the mounting pressure for Shinseki to step down on industrialist brothers Charles and David Koch and said in an interview that he hoped Shinseki would remain as the VA secretary.

The findings of the VA's internal audit indicated that employees had been instructed to intentionally misrepresent wait periods for veterans and that the desired 14-day maximum waiting time for appointments was untenable.

In late April, CNN aired an interview with a whistleblower from the Phoenix, AZ VA Medical Center who claimed that some patients were put on waiting lists for appointments with the intent of delaying any substantive medical care until those patients had died- some waiting more then 20 months for care. The whistleblower said that at least 40 had died as the staff manipulated reports on waiting times to make them look more efficient.

FCC Proposes Putting Monitors in Newrooms Across United States. POSSIBLY UNRELATED STORY- USA Plunges to 46th in Press Freedom in Reporters Without Borders Index

Under the auspices a pilot program called 'Multi-Market Study of Critical Information Needs', the Federal Communications Comission announced a pilot program to insert federal monitors into newsrooms throughout the country.

The stated purpose of this program is to help the agency better understand how reporters and editors select news stories for publication. The Multi-Market Study of Critical Information Needs is supposedly voluntary. However, an FCC commissioner warned in a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed that the survey would be detrimental to press freedoms and ultimately lead to the government dictating to news outlets which stories get coverage and which ones will never see the light of day.

The purpose of the CIN, according to the FCC, is to ferret out information from television and radio broadcasters about "the process by which stories are selected" and how often stations cover "critical information needs," along with "perceived station bias" and "perceived responsiveness to underserved populations."

How does the FCC plan to dig up all that information? First, the agency selected eight categories of "critical information" such as the "environment" and "economic opportunities," that it believes local newscasters should cover. It plans to ask station managers, news directors, journalists, television anchors and on-air reporters to tell the government about their "news philosophy" and how the station ensures that the community gets critical information.

This is not the first time the agency has meddled in news coverage. Before Critical Information Needs, there was the FCC's now-defunct Fairness Doctrine, which began in 1949 and required equal time for contrasting viewpoints on controversial issues. Though the Fairness Doctrine ostensibly aimed to increase the diversity of thought on the airwaves, many stations simply chose to ignore controversial topics altogether, rather than air unwanted content that might cause listeners to change the channel.

The Fairness Doctrine was controversial and led to lawsuits throughout the 1960s and '70s that argued it infringed upon the freedom of the press. The FCC finally stopped enforcing the policy in 1987, acknowledging that it did not serve the public interest. In 2011 the agency officially took it off the books. But the demise of the Fairness Doctrine has not deterred proponents of newsroom policing, and the CIN study is a first step down the same dangerous path.

The 'survey' was reportedly the brainchild of FCC official Mignon Clyburn- daughter of Democrat congressman and Fairness Doctrine supporter Jim Clyburn. In the wake of the 2011 Tuscon shooting that killed six and injured 14- including then-congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords- Clyburn blamed conservative talk radio on Jared Loughner's murder spree and called for the reintroduction of the Fairness Doctorine [even though Loughner was determined to be an irate loner who was fixated on Giffords before the advent of the Tea Party- NANESB!].

Since FOX News and conservative talk radio are one of the few media outlets host pundits and media personalities openly critical of President Obama's policies, the proposed FCC guidelines seem designed more for stifling their editorial process as opposed to MSNBC, which is a de-facto TV network for the ruling Democrat party

The news comes around the same time the advocacy group Reporters Without Borders released an index that listed the United States as 46th- between Romania and Haiti- for press freedom. Previously, the Reporters Without Borders survey had listed the United States as 13th overall in press freedom.

However, in May 2013 it was learned that the Department of Justice had seized phone records from the AP in addition to wiretapping Fox News reporter James Rosen and seizing his parent's phone records.

UPDATE- Heading into the weekend, reports were circulating that the FCC was revising or backing away altogether from their proposed Critical Information Needs survey.

President Obama Orders Yet Another Delay in His Landmark Healthcare Law

So much for the Democrats running on 0bamacare in this year's midterm elections.

For the second time since November, President Obama has unilaterally ordered a delay in the implementation of the Affordable Care Act- his signature law that has been most often derisively referred to as 'Obamacare'. This latest delay is centered around the mandate for companies with between 50 and 99 employees, who reportedly won't have to be in compliance until early 2016.

A similar mandate for larger businesses had been delayed [once again, by Presidential decree- NANESB!] until January 2015. Critics point out that not only do both delays to the Affordable Care Act come after the 2014 midterm elections, but that President Obama changing the law whenever he feels like it is also- in all likelihood- illegal and constitutes a gross overreach of executive power.

In last month's State of the Union address, President Obama promised to go around the Republican-controlled House of Representatives and use 'the phone and pen' if he didn't get his way on a number of issues ranging from immigration to gun control and the federal minimum wage. The White House justified the most recent executive order by saying the delay would assist small and mid-sized businesses by giving them more time to fall into compliance with the 0bamacare employer mandates.

This most recent delay also reportedly comes with some strings attached for the affected businesses- namely signing an affidavit from the IRS that Obamacare would play no factor in any future layoffs or firings at that company.

Interestingly, some of the more watered down demands of the GOP during the October government shutdown included delays in part or all of the mandates attached to 0bamacare were rejected out of hand by President Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

After repeatedly crowing that 0bamacare is the 'Law of the Land', the White House and vulnerable senate Democrats have been taking steps to make sure the full effects of their signature healthcare law is not felt during an election year.

Connecticut Woman Shot to Death Outside of Capitol Hill After Police Chase in Washington DC

A dental hygienist from Connecticut was shot and killed by Capitol police after leading officers from several departments on a wild chase across the District of Columbia on Thursday.

Miriam Carey, 34, was killed after attempting to ram the barrier along House of Representatives after some sort of incident near the barriers along Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House earlier. After Carey reportedly tried running over police officers and federal agents, she was forced off the road and anywhere from 10 to 15 shots were fired at her by pursuing officers.

The shooting triggered a brief lockdown in the House of Representatives and led to a number of erroneous reports that some of the shots were fired from inside the House building. Carey was later pronounced dead at the scene. It was later determined that Carey had no gun on her person, but her one year old daughter was in the vehicle with her throughout the ordeal and escaped unharmed.

A camera crew from Iraq's al Hurra News was in the area and managed to catch some of the dramatic chase on video:



Carey's neighbors and co-workers in Stamford, CT described her as good-natured and dedicated, but behaving erratically after a recent head injury and had also treated for post-partum depression. One neighbor said the only time they saw Carey visibly upset was when she discovered the tires had been stolen off of her car one night in the apartment parking lot.

However, the New York Daily News reports that her boyfriend had called the police on her more than once, she was taking anti-psychotic medication and she claimed at one point that President Obama had her apartment under elaborate electronic surveillance and was broadcasting her life in a manner similar to the premise of the 1998 film The Truman Show.

Meanwhile, liberal pundits and supposedly objective journalists took to social networking sites to call for more gun control laws as the situation was still unfolding.

At Least 12 Killed After Gunman Opens Fire in Washington DC Naval Facility

A former Naval reservist who was recently working as a defense contractor shot and killed 12 people after using his pass to gain entry to the Washington Naval yard on Monday.

The gunman was identified by authorities as 34 year old Aaron Alexis after numerous conflicting reports about the weapons used, number of shooters and identity of the shooters from the media, the Department of Defense and the Washington DC Metropolitan Police. Alexis reportedly had a history of misconduct and mental health problems, although neither apparently prevented him from legally purchasing a Remington 870 shotgun in Virginia or obtaining top secret clearance at a sensitive Naval facility. Originally from Brooklyn, Alexis served in the US Navy reserves from 2004 to 2011.

While in the Navy, Alexis had a number of incidents including unauthorized absences, insubordination and disorderly conduct on his record. After a 2008 incident in which he was thrown out of an Atlanta nightclub after damaging some of the furnishings, the Navy reportedly sought a general discharge against Alexis. While not carrying the same stigma as a dishonorable discharge, it still would've made it more difficult for Alexis to find work as a civilian. Instead, Alexis received an honorable discharge from the Navy and eventually found work as a civilian contractor.

Alexis was allegedly involved in two prior incidents involving guns- while living in Seattle, he allegedly shot out the tires of a construction worker's car in 2004. In 2010, he fired a shot into the apartment above his while living in Ft Worth, TX in what he claimed was an accident.

More disturbingly, Alexis told Newport, RI police six weeks prior to Monday's shooting that he was hearing voices while he had checked into a hotel in town and claimed that three people were following him and using some sort of microwave machine to keep him awake by sending vibrations into his body. The Newport police officer contacted Naval police who assured him that they would follow up on it.

Alexis reportedly had his security credentials renewed over the summer and is believed to have used them to gain access to the building on Monday where he shot and killed a security guard before taking the guard's sidearm and continuing his rampage, firing on a cafeteria area where some workers were having breakfast. Police and security took anywhere from five to seven minutes to respond, with some eyewitnesses reportedly directing them to a different building. Numerous media outlets erroneously reported that Alexis had used an AR-15 in his rampage, with the New York Daily News proclaiming 'Same Gun, Different Slay' on their front page. There were also reports from a police spokesman of additional gunmen which later turned out to be erroneous. Alexis was reportedly shot and killed by Washington DC police officers from the SWAT team.

Authorities are retracing Alexis' steps and searching for a motive. Alexis reportedly told some friends that he felt cheated out of some benefits he felt the Navy still owed him after his discharge.

Obama Warns Disabled Veterans That Sequester Cuts Could Endanger Their Benefits Before Having His Dog Flown to Martha's Vineyard

Before flying off to Martha's Vineyard for vacation, President Obama addressed the Disabled American Veteran's convention in Orlando, FL this weekend and warned attendees that veteran's benefits would be jeopardized by a prolonged fight between the White House and GOP led House of Representatives over budget sequestration.

President Obama took his case for ending the sequester to hundreds of disabled veterans Saturday, saying he protected their benefits from the “reckless” cuts to the federal budget but suggesting next year might be different.

“It’s hurting our military. I made it clear that your veteran’s benefits are exempt from this year’s sequester,” the president said to the applause of hundreds at the Disabled American Veterans' convention in Orlando, Fla. “But I want to tell you going forward the best way to protect the VA care you have earned is to get rid of this sequester altogether.”

The president but the blame squarely on Congress, which returns in about four weeks to work on a new federal budget and increasing the federal debt limit.

“We’ve got these reckless, across-the-board budget cuts called the sequester that are hitting a lot of folks hard,” Obama said. “Congress needs to come together and agree on a responsible plan that reduces our deficit and keeps our promises to our veterans and keeps our promises to future generations.”

The cuts went into effect in March after Congress and the White House failed to agree on a more balanced plan to cut government spending.

Some Republicans have meanwhile said the president shares in the responsibility, considering he signed the 2011 Budget Control Act that raised the debt ceiling and led to sequester.

The remarks to the DAV were made the same day President Obama flew to Martha's Vineyard. The First Family will be staying at a $7.6 million property owned by Chicago corporate financier and Democrat donor David Schulte until Aug 18th.

However, not everybody in the First Family was able to make it up on the same Air Force One flight. Bo, the President's dog, was apparently flown up from Washington DC separately on a V-22 Osprey along with equipment and additional White House staff. According to the UK's Telegraph this is the first time that the Osprey's have been used for a Presidential vacation of any kind.

Apparently the progressive blogosphere has been patting themselves on the back over how they 'debunked' the Telegraph's story about Bo being flown up when in fact Bo WAS flown up to Martha's Vineyard along with equipment and personnel. Still, the defenders of this Administration seem all to willing to overlook the fact that the President basically told a convention hall full of disabled US veterans that they'll lose their benefits if he doesn't get his way with the upcoming budget before jetting off to Martha's Vineyard where his wealthy donors will roll out the red carpet for him.

Report: Head of Liberal Super PAC Accused of Bugging Sen McConnell's Campaign Office Visited White House

Shortly before a liberal Kentucky political action committee launched a social media campaign against incumbent Republican Senator Mitch McConnell (as well as his Taiwanese wife), the group's head had visited the White House and met with President Obama's chief fundraiser.
According to both White House visitor logs and the twitter account of one of the men accused of illegally recording a staff meeting at McConnell's newly opened campaign headquarters, Progress Kentucky head Shawn Reilly met with White House officials and a leftist think tank in Washington DC.

Reilly and Curtis Morrison are currently under investigation by the FBI for illicitly taping a campaign conversation between McConnell and a handful of his advisors. During the conversation McConnell and his aides discussed the potential candidacy of actress Ashley Judd — including using her mental health problems against her.

For days, Democrats in the state and nationally have sought to cast the duo as a pair of bungling amateurs who simply got in over their heads and made a series of bad decisions. But the White House visit suggests the distance from Reilly to his party's leaders may not have been quite that far.

The White House visitors log, showing Reilly met with administration officials Dec. 5th, appears to have been signed in by Victoria McCullough, a staff assistant to Obama confidante Valerie Jarrett.

According to Reilly's Twitter feed, his trip to Washington included stops at the White House to discuss the fiscal cliff and a meeting at the Center for American Progress.

Although its fairly unlikely the White House was coordinating the wiretapping of McConnell's office with Progress Kentucky from inside the beltway, Reilly's visit to the White House in and of itself undercuts any claims from the Democrats that Progress Kentucky was a pair of bungling amateurs who were in over their head.

According to the White House visitor logs, visitors that day also included Obama fundraiser Matthew Barzun and retired Louisville Courier-Journal editor Keith Runyon. Reilly was also a delegate for Kentucky to the 2012 Democrat National Convention in Charlotte, NC and has rubbed elbows with every major Democrat officeholder in the Bluegrass State.

Ricin Son- Mississippi Man In Custody After Allegedly Mailing Ricin to President Obama and US Senator

You know it's been a hell of a week when an Elvis-impersonating conspiracy theorist tries to poison the President of the United States and a US Senator was maybe the fourth or fifth most newsworthy item of the week.

An envelope addressed to Sen Ron Wicker (R- Mississippi) tested positive for the lethal poison ricin twice on Tuesday, according to the FBI. The fact that it came so soon after the Boston Marathon bombings heightened concerns over terrorism.

"This matter is part of an ongoing investigation by the United States Capitol Police and FBI," Wicker said. "I want to thank our law enforcement officials for their hard work and diligence in keeping those of us who work in the Capitol complex safe."

Terrance W. Gainer, the Senate sergeant-at-arms, said in an emailed message to Senate offices that the envelope to Wicker, a Republican, had no obviously suspicious outside markings and lacked a return address. It bore a postmark from Memphis, Tenn.

Mail from a broad swath of northern Mississippi, including the Memphis suburbs of DeSoto County, Miss., Tupelo, Oxford and the northern part of the Mississippi Delta region is processed and postmarked in Memphis, according to a Postal Service map. The Memphis center also processes mail for residents of western parts of Tennessee and eastern Arkansas.

Preliminary tests on a letter mailed to President Obama that was intercepted at an off-site facility later that day had also indicated traces of ricin. At a press conference in Tupelo, MS on Wednesday night, the Lee County Sherriff said that a local judge had also recieved a similar suspicious letter.

Authorities reportedly traced back the letters to a 45 year old Corinth, MS man named Paul Kevin Curtis who was arrested at his home by federal agents.

The letters to Obama and Wicker said: "To see a wrong and not expose it, is to become a silent partner to its continuance." Both were signed, "I am KC and I approve this message."

Ricky Curtis, who said he was Kevin Curtis' cousin, said the family was shocked by the news of the arrest. He described his cousin as a "super entertainer" who impersonated Elvis and numerous other singers.

"We're all in shock. I don't think anybody had a clue that this kind of stuff was weighing on his mind," Ricky Curtis said in a telephone interview.

Ricky Curtis said his cousin had written about problems he had with a cleaning business and that he felt the government had not treated him well, but he said nobody in the family would have expected this. He said the writings were titled, "Missing Pieces."

In 2000, Curtis was fired from the North Mississippi Medical Center and since then has claimed that he had uncovered a conspiracy by the hospital to harvest organs and body parts and sell them on the black market. Not surprisingly, NMMC denies the allegations made by the suspected ricin mailer.

According to The Hill Curtis once performed at a party attended by Wicker [who represented the district in the House at the time- NANESB!] and when Curtis' activites were less threatening.

Curtis- a registered Democrat- could face up to 15 years on charges of sending mail threatening the President and sending mail "containing threats to injure the person of others".

Internal E-Mails Tell Feds to Make Sequester Cutbacks Painful to the General Public

According to an Animal & Plant Inspection Service internal e-mail, an agency official was specifically instructed not to do anything that would lessen or minimize impact to the public ahead of the sequester cuts this month.

In the internal email, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service official Charles Brown said he asked if he could try to spread out the sequester cuts in his region to minimize the impact, and he said he was told not to do anything that would lessen the dire impacts Congress had been warned of.

“We have gone on record with a notification to Congress and whoever else that ‘APHIS would eliminate assistance to producers in 24 states in managing wildlife damage to the aquaculture industry, unless they provide funding to cover the costs.’ So it is our opinion that however you manage that reduction, you need to make sure you are not contradicting what we said the impact would be,” Mr. Brown, in the internal email, said his superiors told him.

Neither Mr. Brown nor the main APHIS office in Washington returned calls seeking comment, but Agriculture Secretary Thomas J. Vilsack, who oversees the agency, told Congress he is trying to give flexibility where he can.

“If we have flexibility, we’re going to try to use it to make sure we use sequester in the most equitable and least disruptive way,” the secretary told Rep. Kristi L. Noem, a South Dakota Republican who grilled Mr. Vilsack about the email. “There are some circumstances, and we’ve talked a lot about the meat inspection, where we do not have that flexibility because there are so few accounts.”

Ms. Noem told Mr. Vilsack that the email made it sound like the administration was sacrificing flexibility in order to justify its earlier dire predictions.

“I’m hopeful that isn’t an agenda that’s been put forward,” the congresswoman told Mr. Vilsack.

The content of the e-mail is similar to what US Park Ranger who chose to remain anonymous told Fox News. According to a March 9th article, the National Parks Service had overruled plans to deal with the sequester that would've had marginal impact on the public and was told instead to axe special events, talks, tours and other educational or information services.

"Apparently, they want the public to feel the pain," the ranger said.

The National Park Service is among many federal agencies warning of a major impact from the sequester cuts, which took effect last Friday. The agency has warned of delayed access to portions of Yellowstone and Yosemite national parks, closed campgrounds at Great Smoky Mountains National Park, reduced hours at the Grand Canyon visitor center and other ramifications.

The Obama administration says these cuts must be made in order to make the $85 billion in cuts from Congress' failure to avert the sequester. At the NPS, the agency was dealing with an across-the-board 5 percent cut.

At the Park Service, the alleged incident occurred in one region and it's unclear whether other divisions were given similar guidance.

Last week the White House announced that tours were being cancelled until further notice, blaming cuts related to the sequester, even though the tours cost an estimated $74,000 per week- a fraction of the cost of President Obama's recent trip to Hawaii and golf vacation in Florida.

Even before the March 1st Sequester went into effect, the Department of Homeland Security released illegal immigrants from detention centers across the country in late February.

Gillian Christensen, an ICE spokeswoman, said ICE has reviewed "several hundred cases" of immigrants being held in jails around the country and released them in the last week. They have been "placed on an appropriate, more cost-effective form of supervised release," she said.

Christensen said the agency's "priority for detention remains on serious criminal offenders and other individuals who pose a significant threat to public safety." She did not say how released immigrants were selected or what jails they were released from.

The release of thousands of illegal immigrants ahead of the sequester led to accusations that the Obama Administration and DHS was playing politics with public safety ahead of the sequestration deadline. Homeland security chief Napolitano claimed that the relase of such a large number of inmates wasn't out of the ordinary and that the decision was left to her subordinates in Homeland Security, not the White House.

Napolitano also claimed that lines at airports were "150% to 200% as long as what we wound normally expect" due to sequestration cuts to the TSA and US Customs, but media inquiries to the airports that Napolitano mentioned (Los Angeles, Atlanta and Chicago's O'Hare) found there were no significant delays.

Mr Paul Goes To Washington- Sen Rand Paul (R-KY) Launches 12 Hour Filibuster to Hold Up Nomination of Brennan to CIA

Aided by colleagues in the US Senate, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul ended a nearly 13 hour filibuster in an attempt to hold up the nomination of John Brennan to the CIA Director's post in the early morning hours of Thursday. At issue was limits to the President's authority to use drone strikes to kill Americans. Earlier in the day, Attorney General Eric Holder did not rule out using aerial drone strikes to kill American citizens on US soil during questioning before the Senate judiciary committee on Wednesday.

After Holder's testimony, Sen Paul vowed that he would do what we could to hold up Brennan's nomination until the Committee recieved clarity from the White House on their policy on using drone strikes against American nationals.

Business in the Senate ground to a halt Wednesday as Paul -- aided by colleagues from both parties -- launched into the filibuster as he tried to hold up the nomination over concerns about the president’s authority to kill Americans with drones.

Paul's filibuster was at least two hours longer than most in U.S. history, as most flame out around 10 hours. Paul finished speaking around 12:40 a.m. local time, and his filibuster lasted 12 hours and 52 minutes.

"My legs hurt. My feet hurt. Everything hurts right now," Paul told Fox News shortly after stepping off the Senate floor, saying he believes "we did the best that we could."

"I would be surprised if we didn’t hear back from the White House," Paul said.

In a show of support, Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell came to the Senate floor and congratulated Paul for his "tenacity and for his conviction." McConnell also called Obama's choice of Brennan a "controversial nominee."

Paul is one of several lawmakers -- on both sides of the aisle -- who has raised concerns about the legal justification for launching drone strikes against Americans overseas. But Paul took to the floor after receiving a statement from Attorney General Eric Holder that creaked open the door to the possibility of using a drone to kill an American inside the United States.

“To allow one man to accuse you in secret -- you never get notified you've been accused,” Paul said on the floor. “Your notification is the buzz of propellers on the drone as it flies overhead in the seconds before you're killed. Is that what we really want from our government?”

Paul said he’d be raising the same complaints under a Republican president.

“No one politician should be allowed to judge the guilt, to charge an individual, to judge the guilt of an individual and to execute an individual. It goes against everything that we fundamentally believe in our country,” he said.

Neither Holder or Brennan would explicitly rule out drone strikes against American nationals on US soil in earlier questioning on the matter. Paul was eventually aided by other Senate colleagues including Ted Cruz, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Sen Marco Rubio (R-FL), Sen Tim Scott (R-SC), Sen Ron Johnson (R-WI), Sen Jeff Flake (R-AZ) and Sen Ron Wyden (D-OR). At one point, Cruz was reading aloud tweets in support of the Kentucky Senator. Paul offered to end the filibuster in exchange for a nonbinding resolution regarding drone strikes on US citizens on American soil, but Sen Dick Durbin (D-IL) objected to allowing a vote, so Paul continued. He eventually finished speaking at 12:40 ET on Thursday morning, with the filibuster lasting 12 hours and 52 minutes.

Rand Paul's filibuster was the first significant challenge to Obama by Senate Republicans since the president was being sworn in back in January 2009

The concerns over using drones against American civilians comes as the Department of Homeland Security announced the purchase of more than 21 million hollowpoint rounds on top of 2 billion rounds purchased in the last year. The government explained the purchase by saying that- like many other commodities- they got a better deal when they purchased ammunition in bulk [however, keep in mind that one doesn't merely target shoot with hollowpoints- NANESB!]. However, in addition to the bulk ammunition purchases the DHS also announced the acquisition of more than 2700 armored MRAP (Mine Resistant Ambush Protected) vehicles over the weekend.

Also on Wednesday, the Southern Poverty Law Center released a report cautioning that membership in 'extremist' anti-government groups is approaching an all time high. However, like the Department of Homeland Security, the SPLC has a fairly broad definition of 'extremists', lumping pro-life groups, veterans, Tea Party chapters or pro-gun organizations in the same category as neo-nazis and Ku Klux Klan while omitting militant organizations like the New Black Panther Party from their dire warnings about domestic terrorism.

White House Staff Clashes With Veteran Washington Post Reporter Bob Woodward

Interesting how liberals claim to be all about "speaking truth to power" right up until the liberals are the ones in power.

Bob Woodward, the Washington Post investigative journalist who (along with colleague Carl Bernstein) was credited with bringing down the Nixon Administration over the Watergate break-in and cover-up, claims that he's been harassed by senior White House officials over the upcoming sequester deadline. Mr. Woodward, a Washington Post editor who detailed the 2011 deal that led to the imminent spending cuts in his book "The Price of Politics," has said the Obama administration shifted its position by insisting that new tax revenue be part of any agreement to replace the cuts.

President Barack Obama's demand for new revenue is a central reason the two political parties haven't come to agreement on a strategy for replacing the cuts.

The dispute has drawn media attention in large part due to Mr. Woodward's status as one of the nation's best-known journalists, and because he said the White House pushed back aggressively when he questioned the administration's statement about the cuts.

Mr. Woodward has said Gene Sperling, the president's National Economic Council director, went too far by suggesting the journalist would "regret" reporting that the president had changed his position. "It makes me very uncomfortable to have the White House telling reporters you're going to 'regret' doing something that you believe in," Mr. Woodward said on CNN. "It's Mickey Mouse."

Hardly anybody's idea of a right-wing firebrand and bomb-thrower, Woodward has been a vocal critic of Obama's lack of leadership during the 2011 debt ceiling negotiations with the Republican-held House of Representatives, accusing the Administration of "moving the goalposts" on the terms of any budget or continuing resolution deal.

Woodward said he spoke out because he felt certain that this conduct from was limited to him and was likely used to control the conduct and writing of much younger and inexperienced journalists

Woodward is not alone- on Thursday, former Clinton aide and Washington Times columnist Lanny Davis said in a radio interview on WMAL that a senior White House official called his editor at the Times and threatened to revoke the White House press credentials of reporters from the newspaper if Davis continued writing columns critical of the President [pretty interesting considering that Davis' criticisms of this Administration has been much more mild and subdued compared to Woodward's- NANESB!].

To hardly anybody's surprise, Barack Obama's media cheerleaders have decided that despite his distinguished career, Woodward clearly didn't know what he was talking about and was in the wrong.

This would not be the first time the Obama Administration has attempted to deny access to reporters or media outlets that they deem hostile. In May 2011, the White House Press Office denied the Boston Herald access to a Massachusetts fundraiser after the newspaper published an op-ed on the economy and misery index authored by eventual Republican challenger Mitt Romney. A month prior, the White House had allegedly threatened to exclude the San Francisco Chronicle from covering any presidential events in the newspaper's coverage area after a Chronicle reporter videotaped a group of women who demanded the release of Wikileaks suspect Bradley Manning interrupting one of the President's speeches at a Bay Area fundraiser. During the 2008 campaign, Obama also had reporters from three newspapers that endorsed Sen John McCain kicked out of his campaign's press pool, claiming there was no longer any room for them on the campaign's aircraft. Yet shortly after the reporters from the Washington Post, Dallas Morning News and New York Post were kicked off, the campaign reportedly made room for reporters from Ebony and Essence magazines.

Blue State Graft Watch Update- Feds Lay Out Case Against Former Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr

Federal prosecutors detailed their charges against former Illinois Democrat Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr late last week as he was charged with conspiracy to commit false statements, mail fraud and wire fraud as he allegedly misappropriated more than $750,000 in campaign funds. The money was reportedly used to buy high-end merchandise for himself and his wife and renovations on their Chicago home.

The court filing was a clear signal that Jackson, who was first elected to the House of Representatives in the mid-1990s, intended to plead guilty to the charge, which has a maximum penalty of five years in prison. No court date has been set.

Jackson’s expected plea would be another mile marker in his slow political and personal collapse, which began shortly after President Obama’s 2008 election. That had seemed to open up possibilities for Jackson, considered a likely successor to Obama in the Senate.

Instead, FBI agents arrested then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich (D) and charged him with trying to sell the interim appointment to the Senate seat from Illinois to the highest bidder, and Jackson was implicated in the scandal. Though not charged, he would never recover politically.

According to the documents released Friday, Jackson used campaign funds to buy a $43,350 gold Rolex watch along with almost $10,000 in children’s furniture that he had delivered to his home in the District.

Among other allegations, prosecutors say Jackson made direct expenditures of about $57,793 from the campaign’s accounts for personal expenses. The documents say he and a co-conspirator used a campaign credit card to make $582,773 worth of purchases for their own use.

Jackson’s wife, former Chicago alderman Sandra Stevens Jackson, was not named or charged in that case, but the description makes clear that she was the co-conspirator.

Jackson’s wife was charged with filing false income-tax returns from 2006 through 2011, according to a separate criminal information in her case. That charge has a maximum sentence of three years in prison.

The criminal documents outline a series of illegal expenditures from the former congressman’s campaign account, including more than a dozen purchases of pop-culture artifacts that firmly establish him as someone who came of age in the 1970s and ’80s:

●$10,105 worth of Bruce Lee memorabilia, including four separate purchases of items associated with the late martial-arts film hero.

●$14,200 in random Michael Jackson memorabilia.

●$4,000 for a “Michael Jackson and Eddie Van Halen” guitar.

●$4,600 for a Michael Jackson fedora.

In mid-November, when he announced his resignation from the House, Jackson signaled that he was in plea negotiations.

“I have made my share of mistakes. I am aware of the ongoing federal investigation into my activities and I am doing my best to address the situation responsibly, cooperate with the investigators,” he wrote in his resignation letter.

In the Blagojevich case, Raghuveer Nayak, who worked as a fundraiser for [convicted former Illinois governor Rod] Blagojevich and Jackson, told investigators that Jackson instructed him to raise as much as $6 million for the governor’s campaign.

If found guilty, Jackson will also lose his federal pension. Observers also indicate that prison time would an increasingly likely outcome for the 10-term congressman [no word on whether or not it will be at that nearly vacant prison outside of Rock Island, IL that President Obama, Gov Quinn and Sen Durbin were so keen on using to house Al Qeada detainees- NANESB!]. Despite checking himself into the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota back in June, Jackson Jr won re-election by a 63% margin in November before announcing his resignation a few weeks later.

On Friday, Jackson Jr's wife- former Chicago alderman Sandi Jackson- pleaded guilty to one count of tax fraud as part of a plea deal with federal prosecutors.

Quick Blog Note- Gone Canvassin'

Just wanted to post a quick update that I will be travelling to my nearest friendly neighborhood swing state on the day leading up to the November 6th Presidential election, volunteering for the Romney/Ryan campaign.

While I figured my vote for Romeny/Ryan in my perpetually bankrupt and dysfuntional dark blue state wouldn't make much of a difference, I thought that I could perhaps offset that by spending time with other volunteers at the Romeny/Ryan campaign offices in a much more competitive state up the road. This was a last minute decision on my part, as I was uncertain about the roadworthyness of my car, not to mention the best route and travel time to the aforementioned swing state as well as my work schedule for the remainder of this week.

I will likely be doing alot of travelling on Election Day itself, but I have already voted by absentee ballot last week. As I'm writing this, the first polls are getting set to open in the tiny village of Dixville Notch, NH in about an hour.

Right now, there isn't a whole lot to do but encourage the few who are still sitting on the fence to go out and vote tommorrow and hope for nothing short of a Romney win beyond what columnist Mark Steyn referred to as 'The Margin of Lawyer'- a reference to the razor thin margin of the 2000 Presidential election.

Clear Eyes, Full Heart, Can't Lose.

Busy Beltway Thursday- Supreme Court Upholds Key Obamacare Provision; House Finds Holder in Contempt

In a surprise ruling, the Supreme Court upheld President Obama's signature healthcare law on Thursday morning by a 5-4 margin. Chief Justice Roberts had ruled that the individual mandate in Obamacare was unconstitutional under the Commerce Clause. However, he ruled that the mandate could be considered a tax despite Obama and the Democrat's insistence that the mandate wasn't a tax when they were trying to sell the public on it back in 2009.

Via Scotusblog and Legal Insurrection:

“In Plain English: The Affordable Care Act, including its individual mandate that virtually all Americans buy health insurance, is constitutional. There were not five votes to uphold it on the ground that Congress could use its power to regulate commerce between the states to require everyone to buy health insurance. However, five Justices agreed that the penalty that someone must pay if he refuses to buy insurance is a kind of tax that Congress can impose using its taxing power. That is all that matters. Because the mandate survives, the Court did not need to decide what other parts of the statute were constitutional, except for a provision that required states to comply with new eligibility requirements for Medicaid or risk losing their funding. On that question, the Court held that the provision is constitutional as long as states would only lose new funds if they didn’t comply with the new requirements, rather than all of their funding.”

In even simpler terms, it's a tax for existing, basically. Using this ruling as precedent, there really would be nothing from stopping Congress from imposing a recurring annual 'Not Buying a Chevy Volt' surtax on any new vehicle purchased in the USA- including a Chevy Volt because only Volts with a certain VIN number are exempt.

While the decison may seem to vindicate Obama and the Democrats who supported it at first, the estimated $1.75 trillion pricetag means that the Democrats have passed the largest tax increase in American history durin a timeframe when the national unemployment rate was never less than 8.1%. The [rather tortured- NANESB!] definition of the mandate as a tax means that it can be struck down or eliminated in Congress with a simple majority instead of a supermajority. This also makes one wonder if the numerous Obamacare waivers the Administration passed out could be considered 'tax cuts for the rich'? Also, will any of the 800,000 or so illegal immigrants that he just gave totally-not-amnesty-amnesty to this month recieve waivers?

Reaction from both sides was immediate, with Obama taking the opportunity to hawk campaign t-shirts and reassure Americans how awesome his new tax was while reading from a prepared statement earlier today. At the same time, Presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney's campaign raised nearly $2 million dollars from online donations within hours of the Supreme Court's decision.

Meanwhile, the House of Representatives went ahead with a scheduled vote to find Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress over the ATF Fast & Furious gunwalking scandal on Thursday afternoon.

The vote follows a roughly 16-month investigation by the chamber’s House Oversight and Government Reform Committee into the failed gun-running sting known as Fast and Furious -- run by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, a division of the Justice Department led by Holder.

Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., filed two subpoenas over that period requesting additional information. But he has more recently focused on information related to a February 2011 letter to Congress that falsely claimed the ATF was unaware the operation involved the underground sale of the assault weapons.

“Today, a bipartisan majority of the House of Representatives voted to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt for his continued refusal to produce relevant documents,” Issa said after the vote. “This was not the outcome I had sought and it could have been avoided had Attorney General Holder actually produced the subpoenaed documents he said he could provide.”

In December 2010, US Border Patrol agent Brian Terry was killed by heavily armed smugglers in a shootout near the US/Mexico border in Arizona- two of the weapons recovered at the scene were traced back to Fast & Furious. Attorney General Holder originally testified that no gunwalking took place under Fast & Furious before later admitting that ATF Field agents were ordered to allow more than 2000 firearms to be smuggled into Mexico by straw purchasers, losing track of all of them. In addition to Brian Terry's death, numerous guns from Fast and Furious have been turning up at hundreds of crime scenes in Mexico. Many on the House Government Oversight Panel requested more documents from Holder regarding gunwalking during often-contentious hearings, but in a move many saw as designed to shield Holder from further oversight scrutiny, President Obama invoked executive privelege on certain DOJ documents and correspondence.

One school of thought out there is that the sole purpose of Fast & Furious was to create more anti-gun sentiment and pass additional gun control laws after saturating an already volatile Mexico with weapons that could be traced back to the USA. This was dismissed by some in the media as being the stuff off kooky black helicopter conspiracy tinfoil hat brigades. Yet nearly every Democrat on that spoke on the House floor Thursday took the opportunity to call for additional punitive gun control laws here in the USA, despite the fact that the DOJ orchestrated arms trafficking already violated several laws on the books.

After a lengthy and incoherent diatribe by former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and a walkout by the Congressional Black Caucus, the measure to find Holder in contempt passed on the House floor by a 255-67 margin, with at least 17 Democrats breaking from their party to vote on their contempt vote.

Last week's vote in the House oversight committee to bring the contempt vote to the floor of the house passed along

House Oversight Committee Votes Attorney General Eric Holder in Contempt Over DOJ's Fast & Furious Gunwalking

Despite a last-minute move by President Obama to invoke executive privilege over certain documents requested by the House Oversight Committee regarding a 'gunwalking' program from the ATF, the committee chairman went ahead with a vote to find Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress.

The oversight committee, chaired by Congressman Darrel Issa [R-CA 49], had been investigating the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Operations Fast & Furious where field agents were ordered to stand down as illegally purchased guns in Arizona made their way across the border to Mexico. In December 2010, US Border Patrol agent Brian Terry was killed by a gang of heavily armed smugglers along the Arizona border. Two guns from Fast & Furious were recovered from the crime scene. Hundreds of guns from Fast & Furious have also been recovered at crime scenes across Mexico and by Holder's own admission, there are more than 1700 unaccounted for weapons from the ATF gunwalking program. These firearms will likely continue to surface at crime scenes in both the USA and Mexico.

Obama's 11th hour invocation of executive privilege on Wednesday came before the Oversight Committee was supposed to rule on whether or not to move forward with contempt of congress proceedings against Eric Holder.

While Attorney General Holder insists he's turned over all the documents that the committee has requested over the last 15 months, a number of the documents were heavily redacted and Holder has contradicted himself while appearing before Congress- Fast & Furious began in 2009 and Mexican officials weren't even alerted by the DOJ to the weapons being smuggled into the country.

On Wednesday afternoon, the panel voted 23-17 in favor of holding the Attorney General in contempt of Congress- with the vote being split along party lines. Democrats on the Oversight Committee claimed that the hearings are a politically motivated witchunt and that the Fast & Furious gunwalking happened under the Bush Administration as well- a claim that Holder himself eventually retracted.

However, Wednesday's vote does not mean that Holder is automatically in contempt of Congress- but rather a contempt motion goes before the rest of the House of Representatives. Speaker of the House John Boehner [R-OH8] and majority leader Eric Cantor [R- VA7] have indicated the contempt of congress vote is scheduled for sometime next week.

As Random Person Offered Attorney General Holder's Ballot in Washington DC Polling Station, DOJ Insists There is No Voter Fraud Problem

In another hidden camera video released by former Andrew Breitbart protege James O'Keefe, a man is shown walking into a Washington DC polling station and is offered Attorney General Eric Holder's ballot by a poll worker after checking the name off of a ledger during- presumably last week's primary elections in the District of Columbia.

The Justice Department fired back on Monday afternoon, claiming that the stung was 'manufactured' [which is technically true- O'Keefe claims he orchestrated this to demonstrate how easy it was to commit voter fraud- NANESB!] while Holder himself insists that there “is a misperception that there is a vast amount of vote fraud out there.”

An unnamed DOJ official was quoted in a brief article from the Talking Points Memo blog on Monday as saying

“It’s no coincidence that these so-called examples of rampant voter fraud consistently turn out to be manufactured ones.”

. Previously, O'Keefe had released videos showing operatives entering polling stations in Vermont and New Hampshire earlier this year and obtaining ballots by using the names of dead or nonexistent voters.

Even without the O'Keefe hidden camera videos, there have been a number of ballot fraud cases that have been prosecuted across the country.

In upstate New York, Troy City Councilman Michael LoPorto and Rensselaer County Board of Elections Commissioner Ed McDonough [both Democrats- NANESB!] are awaiting separate trials after investigators determined they and forging signatures on absentee ballots during a 2009 Working Families Party primary. The two were tried together by prosecutors when the presiding judge declared a mistrial after contentious deliberations by the jurors last month. Jury selection for LoPorto's trial is set to begin on June 4th.

Over in the Hoosier State, prosecutors in South Bend, IN have charged four St Joseph County Democrat Party officials and their subordinates with forging signatures on primary petitions during the 2008 Presidential election.

Among those charged is the former long-time chairman of the St. Joseph County Democratic Party, Butch Morgan, who allegedly ordered the forgeries. He was forced to resign when the allegations were first made public last October, even though his lawyer, Shaw Friedman, told Fox News at the time that Morgan did not do anything wrong.

The St. Joseph County Board of Voter Registration's Democratic board member, Pam Brunette, Board of Voter Registration worker Beverly Shelton and Democratic volunteer and former board worker Dustin Blythe also face charges.

According to affidavits, St. Joseph County Voter Registration Office worker Lucas Burkett told investigators that he was part of the plan that started in January 2008 "to forge signatures on presidential candidate petitions instead of collecting actual signatures from citizens."

The documents state that Burkett told investigators that “he was heavily involved in St. Joseph County political activities with the local Democratic party," and that "he had, in fact, personally forged several such signatures," and had attended meetings at the local Democratic party headquarters, where it was agreed to forge the petitions. Morgan, the County Democratic Chairman, allegedly "instructed Mr. Burkett, Pamela Brunette, Beverly Shelton, and Dustin Blythe to forge ballot petitions for presidential candidates," and that "all of them agreed to follow these instructions" by copying names and signatures from old election petitions.

According to affidavits, Burkett told investigators it was his job to "forge petitions for candidate Barack Obama," Shelton "was assigned to forge petitions for candidate Hillary Clinton" and Blythe "was assigned to forge petitions for candidate John Edwards." When Edwards dropped out of the race at the end of January 2008 and Burkett refused to continue the forgeries, Morgan allegedly ordered Blythe to then forge petitions for Barack Obama.

Indiana State Police investigators identified a total of 22 petitions that appeared to be faked, yet sailed through the Voter Registration Board as legitimate documents. The signature of the board's Republican supervisor, Linda Silcott, which is required for legal certification, appeared to be rubber stamped on the documents. She told investigators that she did not remember signing or authorizing her rubber stamp to be used.

The developments in Indiana and upstate New York come less than a month after the DOJ struck down voter ID laws in Wisconsin and Texas- in December 2011, the Justice Department struck down similar legislation in South Carolina.

Feds Arrest Moroccan Citizen For Allegdly Attempt to Carry Out Suicide Bombing at US Capitol

Federal officers arrested a 29 year old man reportedly on his way to the Capitol building in Washington D.C. to carry out a suicide bombing on Friday afternoon in an apparent 'lone-wolf' style attempt.

The federal criminal complaint against the suspect identifies him as Amine El Khalifi,

He was nabbed following a lengthy investigation by the FBI, initiated after he allegedly expressed interest in conducting an attack. Court documents say he came onto the radar screen in early December after he told an undercover agent about an earlier plan to bomb a northern Virginia building.

Khalifi was charged Friday in U.S. District Court in northern Virginia with attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction.

The suspect allegedly weighed hitting various targets ranging from a military installation to synagogues to a Washington restaurant before settling on the Capitol.

The man thought undercover FBI agents assisting him in his plot were associates of Al Qaeda.He purchased bomb materials including jackets, nails and glue in preparation for an attack

When he was arrested Friday in Washington, he was carrying with him a vest that he had been led to believe was packed with explosives, but the material inside was not actually dangerous,

A short time earlier, Khalifi had been praying at a mosque in the Washington area. His destination was Capitol Hill.

The public was never in danger, as he had been under constant surveillance for some time, officials said. The FBI provided the suspect with a disabled gun during their ongoing operation

The U.S. Capitol Police, in a statement that confirmed the arrest but provided few details, said the suspect had been "closely and carefully monitored."

A senior source involved with law enforcement at the Capitol also told Fox News the investigation was "all very controlled." The source said the U.S. Capitol Police was involved with the FBI and other agencies in tracking the suspect "not more than a year."

Khalifi had reportedly set off explosives in a remote quarry in West Virginia while accompanied undercover agents as part a test before carrying out his attack.

Khalifi was been staying in the country illegally after overstaying a tourist visa that he entered the USA on in 1999. While living in northern Virginia, the Moroccan had a run-ins with his Arlington landlord who had called local police.

Frank Dynda said Friday that a woman who leased an apartment in his Arlington building apparently married Amine El Khalifi and then moved out. He says when Dynda told El Khalifi to leave, he said he had a right to stay and threatened to beat Dynda up.

Dynda says he thought El Khalifi was making bombs, but police told him to leave the man alone. Dynda had El Khalifi evicted in 2010.

Agents from FBI counterterrorism task force and Arlington County police officers searched a residence in Douglas Park, VA in relation to Khalidi's arrest.

Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords Announces Retirement A Year After Surviving Near-Fatal Gunshot Wound To Head

Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords [D: AZ-8] announced over the weekend that she would be stepping down to focus on her recovery a little over a year after she was shot in the head by a schizophrenic loner who opened fire at a 'Congress in Your Corner' event her office was hosting.

On January 8, 2011, 22 year old Jared Lee Lougner opened fire with a 9mm pistol on the Congresswoman and attendees as the meeting was being held outdoors in a Tucson, AZ shopping plaza. Besides the near-fatal injury to the Congresswoman, 6 people were killed- including a 9 year old girl, a federal judge and one of Gifford's staffers- before spectators wrestled Loughner to the ground and disarmed him.

Loughner remains in custody, although it appears a trial is increasingly unlikely for him anytime soon as he's being forcibly medicated in an attempt to make him psychologically fit to stand trial. In the hours immediately after the shootings, Loughner's rampage was blamed on public figures like Sarah Palin, the Tea Party and conservative talk radio hosts although it was determined that Loughner was a schizophrenic loner who had a disturbing fixation with the Congresswoman for years.

After being treated by a specialist in Houston and months of therapy, Congresswoman Giffords returned to Congress in late July in time to vote on the debt ceiling increase.

On Sunday, Giffords office released a video informing her constituents that she was going to resign effective this week [See above].

On Monday, Giffords' office hosted one final 'Congress in your corner' event before drafting a letter of resignation that she will turn in to Arizona governor Jan Brewer and Speaker of the House of Representatives John Boeher [R: OH-8].

Gov. Brewer has called for a special election to take place in April for a replacement for Giffords who will serve out the remainder of her term. Like many other states, Arizona is in the midst of redistricting and after the 2010 Census will add another Congressional district. During the 2010 midterms, Giffords narrowly held off Tea Party-backed GOP challenger Jesse Kelly.

Giffords herself reportedly has not ruled out running for office again at some point in the future, but she has determined her recovery is her main priority.

Personally, I'm amazed at the pace of Giffords' recovery so far as well as her determination to return after undergoing therapy. I wish Giffords and her husband the best of luck in their future endeavors up to and including another run for public office.