Puppet MastersS


Bad Guys

Former Israel Navy chief questioned at London airport

Anshel Pfeffer
Haaretz
Mon, 14 Oct 2013 16:20 UTC
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© Alon RonThen-Israel Navy chief, Rear-Admiral (ret) Eliezer Marom, June 1, 2010.
Israeli embassy says it is looking into the issue. Under British law, permission to arrest foreign citizens for war crimes is limited.

The former commander of the Israeli navy, Rear-Admiral (ret) Eliezer Marom was detained for questioning Monday morning at London's Heathrow Airport immediately after landing in the United Kingdom.

After brief questioning, Marom was released and allowed to continue his visit. A spokesman for Israel's embassy in London confirmed the details and said "we are looking into the issue right now."

Following initial inquiries, none of the relevant British authorities, the Home Office, which is responsible for border controls, the London Metropolitan Police and the Foreign Office, are aware of Marom having been detained or questioned.

Israel's Foreign Ministry is continuing to look into the incident but at this stage, it seems that Marom was under the mistaken impression that the routine questions he was asked at passport control at Heathrow Airport and the slight delay he experienced were actually an attempt to detain him over war crimes allegations.
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Che Guevara

Patriot Act author prepares bill to put NSA bulk collection 'out of business'

Dan Roberts
Guardian
Thu, 10 Oct 2013 22:52 UTC
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© CHIP SOMODEVILLA/GETTY IMAGESJim Sensenbrenner told the Guardian: 'The disclosure that NSA employees were spying on their spouses … was very chilling.'
Bipartisan bill pulls together existing efforts to dramatically reform the NSA in the wake of Snowden disclosures

The conservative Republican who co-authored America's Patriot Act is preparing to unveil bipartisan legislation that would dramatically curtail the domestic surveillance powers it gives to intelligence agencies.

Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner, who worked with president George W Bush to give more power to US intelligence agencies after the September 11 terrorist attacks, said the intelligence community had misused those powers by collecting telephone records on all Americans, and claimed it was time "to put their metadata program out of business".

His imminent bill in the House of Representatives is expected to be matched by a similar proposal from Senate judiciary committee chair Patrick Leahy, a Democrat. It pulls together existing congressional efforts to reform the National Security Agency in the wake of disclosures by whistleblower Edward Snowden.

Sensenbrenner has called his bill the Uniting and Strengthening America by Fulfilling Rights and Ending Eavesdropping, Dragnet-Collection, and Online Monitoring Act - or USA Freedom Act, and a draft seen by the Guardian has four broad aims.
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Green Light

California's Brown signs bill permitting non-physician abortions

Patrick McGreevy
LA Times
Wed, 09 Oct 2013 22:46 UTC
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California women will have more access to abortion after Gov. Jerry Brown signed a bill Wednesday that allows nurse practitioners and other non-physicians to perform the procedure during the first trimester of pregnancy.

Assemblywoman Toni Atkins (D-San Diego) introduced the measure because of concern that there are not enough physicians, especially in rural areas, to meet the needs of women who desire an abortion.

"Timely access to reproductive health services is critical to women's health," Atkins said in a statement. "AB 154 will ensure that no woman has to travel excessively long distances or wait for long periods in order to obtain an early abortion."

The measure was one of seven bills signed by the governor Wednesday that involved women's health, including legislation to promote breastfeeding.
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Red Flag

Hawaii relaunching Obamacare exchange after not selling any health insurance due to software problems


CBS DC
Thu, 10 Oct 2013 22:42 UTC
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© Andrew Burton/Getty ImagesA pamphlet for the Affordable Care Act, better known as ObamaCare.
Hawaii's health insurance marketplace is hoping to turn around a stalled start by providing plans and pricing to consumers by Oct. 15 - but there are no guarantees, its executive director said Wednesday.

Coral Andrews, executive director of Hawaii Health Connector, told state lawmakers Wednesday that getting the marketplace running properly has been a fluid situation, with circumstances changing every day.

"We want to make sure that we're doing it the right way," Andrews said after testifying for more than an hour before a panel of lawmakers representing three House and three Senate committees.

The insurance exchange - a key component of President Barack Obama's federal health care overhaul - hasn't been able to sell any insurance in Hawaii because of problems with the software at the heart of the marketplace. Consumers can't see plans, even though a variety of options from two insurers have been approved to be sold by the state's insurance division.
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Network

Obamacare website looks "like nobody tested it," programmer says


CBS News
Wed, 09 Oct 2013 22:36 UTC
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Healthcare.gov launched more than a week ago, and while millions of Americans have signed into the site, not many have been able to actually sign up for insurance because of glitches with the website.

Administration officials implementing the new health care law will be on the hot seat Wednesday as the House Oversight Committee hopes to find out what the problems were.

Committee Chairman Darrell Issa told CBS News' Jan Crawford that he plans to ask how the mess surrounding the website could even happen.

No one knows how many people have managed to enroll because the administration refuses to release those numbers, but the website's launch has been rocky.
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Vader

Obama's efforts to control leaks 'most aggressive since Nixon', report finds

Karen McVeigh
Guardian
Thu, 10 Oct 2013 22:31 UTC
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© Saul Loeb/AFP/GettyUnder Obama, the Espionage Act has been used to mount felony prosecutions against six government employees and two contractors.
Administration's tactics, which include using Espionage Act to pursue leakers, have had chilling effect on accountability - study

Barack Obama has pursued the most aggressive "war on leaks" since the Nixon administration, according to a report published on Thursday that says the administration's attempts to control the flow of information is hampering the ability of journalists to do their jobs.

The author of the study, the former Washington Post executive editor Leonard Downie, says the administration's actions have severely hindered the release of information that could be used to hold it to account.

Downie, an editor during the Post's investigations of Watergate, acknowledged that Obama had inherited a culture of secrecy that had built up since 9/11. But despite promising to be more open, Obama had become "more aggressive", stepping up the Espionage Act to pursue those accused of leaking classified information.

"The war on leaks and other efforts to control information are the most aggressive I've seen since the Nixon administration," Downie said in the report, which was commissioned by the Committee to Protect Journalists.
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Eye 2

Report: Obama brings chilling effect on journalism

Brett Zongker
Associated Press
Thu, 10 Oct 2013 22:26 UTC
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© J. Scott Applewhite, APIn this June 6, 2013, file photo, Attorney General Eric Holder testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, June 6, 2013. The U.S. government's aggressive prosecution of leaks and efforts to control information are having a chilling effect on journalists and government whistle-blowers, according to a report released Thursday, Oct. 10, 2013, on U.S. press freedoms under the Obama administration.
The U.S. government's aggressive prosecution of leaks and efforts to control information are having a chilling effect on journalists and government whistle-blowers, according to a report released Thursday on U.S. press freedoms under the Obama administration.

The Committee to Protect Journalists conducted its first examination of U.S. press freedoms amid the Obama administration's unprecedented number of prosecutions of government sources and seizures of journalists' records. Usually the group focuses on advocating for press freedoms abroad.

Leonard Downie Jr., a former executive editor of The Washington Post, wrote the 30-page analysis entitled "The Obama Administration and the Press." The report notes President Barack Obama came into office pledging an open, transparent government after criticizing the Bush administration's secrecy, "but he has fallen short of his promise."

"In the Obama administration's Washington, government officials are increasingly afraid to talk to the press," wrote Downie, now a journalism professor at Arizona State University. "The administration's war on leaks and other efforts to control information are the most aggressive I've seen since the Nixon administration, when I was one of the editors involved in The Washington Post's investigation of Watergate."
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Road Cone

We paid over $500 million for the Obamacare sites and all we got was this lousy 404 Error

Andrew Couts
Digital Trends
Tue, 08 Oct 2013 22:14 UTC
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It's been one full week since the flagship technology portion of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) went live. And since that time, the befuddled beast that is Healthcare.gov has shutdown, crapped out, stalled, and mis-loaded so consistently that its track record for failure is challenged only by Congress.

The site itself, which apparently underwent major code renovations over the weekend, still rejects user logins, fails to load drop-down menus and other crucial components for users that successfully gain entrance, and otherwise prevents uninsured Americans in the 36 states it serves from purchasing healthcare at competitive rates - Healthcare.gov's primary purpose. The site is so busted that, as of a couple days ago, the number of people that successfully purchased healthcare through it was in the "single digits," according to the Washington Post

The reason for this nationwide headache apparently stems from poorly written code, which buckled under the heavy influx of traffic that its engineers and administrators should have seen coming. But the fact that Healthcare.gov can't do the one job it was built to do isn't the most infuriating part of this debacle - it's that we, the taxpayers, seem to have forked up more than $500 million of the federal purse to build the digital equivalent of a rock..
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Vader

Is Obama locked in a victim mentality?

Dr. Keith Ablow
Fox News
Thu, 10 Oct 2013 22:10 UTC
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© AP PHOTO/PABLO MARTINEZ MONSIVAIS President Obama speaks about the budget and the partial government shutdown in the Brady Press Room of the White House in Washington.
President Obama's rhetoric is finally coming closer to what appears to be his psychological truth: Because America victimized him and countless millions of others, any person or party or movement that opposes his views and does not yield to him is not just his adversary, but abusive, predatory and even threatening.

Again and again, President Obama has described members of Congress who insist on fiscal responsibility as having taken "hostages," "demanding a ransom," using "extortion," and threatening to "blow up" the government.

On Tuesday, in fact, the president used these exact words when speaking to the press, "What you haven't seen before, I think from the vantage point of a lot of world leaders, is the notion that one party in Congress might blow the whole thing up if they don't get their way," he said. Later he added, "you do not hold people hostage or engage in ransom taking to get 100 percent of your way."
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Dollar

Feds to let states pay to open parks

Matthew Daly
breitbart.com
Thu, 10 Oct 2013 22:05 UTC
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The Obama administration said Thursday it will allow states to use their own money to reopen some national parks that have been closed because of the government shutdown.

Governors in at least four states have asked for authority to reopen national parks within their borders because of the economic impacts caused by the park closures.

Interior Secretary Sally Jewell said the government will consider offers to pay for park operations, but will not surrender control of national parks or monuments to the states.

Utah Gov. Gary Herbert said his state would accept the federal offer to reopen Utah's five national parks.
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