Senator Rand Paul lashed out at the Obama administration last night following suggestions by Attorney General Eric Holder that the president is within his rights to assassinate Americans on American soil using drone strikes, without oversight.
“The thing about the drone strike program is, we’re not talking about someone’s actively attacking America, we’re not talking about planes flying into the World Trade Center.” Paul said in a Fox News interview.
“What we’re talking about is you’re eating dinner in your house. you’re eating at a cafe or you’re walking down the road. That’s when these drone strikes can occur.” Paul added, calling the development “particularly disturbing”.
“If you’re an American and you’re accused of a crime, one of the basic principles, one of the protections we’ve always had is, you get a trial… You don’t get convicted without a trial.” the Senator added.
“Listen to what his [Obama's] response is.” Paul urged. “His response is, we haven’t killed any Americans yet. We don’t intend to, but we might. And that’s pretty disturbing.” Read more >>
Michael Isikoff
National Investigative Correspondent, NBC News
A confidential Justice Department memo concludes that the U.S. government can order the killing of American citizens if they are believed to be “senior operational leaders” of al-Qaida or “an associated force” -- even if there is no intelligence indicating they are engaged in an active plot to attack the U.S.
The 16-page memo, a copy of which was obtained by NBC News, provides new details about the legal reasoning behind one of the Obama administration’s most secretive and controversial polices: its dramatically increased use of drone strikes against al-Qaida suspects abroad, including those aimed at American citizens, such as the September 2011 strike in Yemen that killed alleged al-Qaida operatives Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan. Both were U.S. citizens who had never been indicted by the U.S. government nor charged with any crimes.
The secrecy surrounding such strikes is fast emerging as a central issue in this week’s hearing of White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan, a key architect of the drone campaign, to be CIA director. Brennan was the first administration official to publicly acknowledge drone strikes in a speech last year, calling them “consistent with the inherent right of self-defense.” In a separate talk at the Northwestern University Law School in March, Attorney General Eric Holder specifically endorsed the constitutionality of targeted killings of Americans, saying they could be justified if government officials determine the target poses “an imminent threat of violent attack.”
But the confidential Justice Department “white paper” introduces a more expansive definition of self-defense or imminent attack than described by Brennan or Holder in their public speeches. It refers, for example, to what it calls a “broader concept of imminence” than actual intelligence about any ongoing plot against the U.S. homeland. Read more >>
Daily Caller
A new report from the conservative Government Accountability Institute (GAI) finds that President Barack Obama’s and Attorney General Eric Holder’s failure to criminally charge any top Wall Street bankers is likely a result of cronyism inside the Department of Justice and political donations made to Obama’s campaign.
In the wake of the financial disaster in 2008, which is still
unfolding in case you haven’t noticed, federal prosecutions of financial
crimes are at a 20 year low. That is a remarkable stat.
Could the
fact that financial firms dumped piles of $100 bills on Obama’s head in
2008 have anything to do with the lack of prosecutions? No way.
Attorney General Eric Holder says simply that though Wall Street may
have acted stupidly, he just can’t seem to find any fraud.
And
that all the big banks are clients of Holder’s law firm—a law firm that
at least partially specializes in financial crime defense? That has
nothing to do with the lack of prosecutions either. There are just
too many pot dispensaries in California to bust, and Mexican drug lords
to arm, for the American people to expect the enforcement of financial
crimes from their attorney general. More...
The facts and figures presented by CBS's Steve Kroft were disturbing as were the details concerning how shysters bilk the system for an estimated $60 billion a year.
As Kroft warned viewers in the segment's teaser, "We caution you that this story may raise your blood pressure, along with some troubling questions about our government's ability to manage a medical bureaucracy" (video embedded above; here's partial transcript, h/t Marc Sheppard):
STEVE KROFT, CBS: Of all the problems facing the United States right now, none are more important than healthcare. President Obama says rising costs are driving huge federal budget deficits that imperil our future, and that there is enough waste and fraud in the system to pay for health care reform if it was eliminated.
At the center of both issues is Medicare, the government insurance program that provides health care to 46 million elderly and disabled Americans. But it also provides a rich and steady income stream for criminals who are constantly finding new ways to steal a sizable chunk of the half a trillion dollars that are paid out each year in Medicare benefits.
In fact, Medicare fraud - estimated now to total about $60 billion a year - has become one of, if not the most profitable crimes in America.
We caution you that this story may raise your blood pressure, along with some troubling questions about our government's ability to manage a medical bureaucracy.
Kroft spoke with FBI special agent Brian Waterman and Kirk Ogrosky, a top justice department prosecutor:
BRIAN WATERMAN, FBI: There's a healthcare fraud industry where people do nothing but recruit patients, get patient lists, find doctors, look on the Internet, find different scams. There are entire groups and entire organizations of people that are dedicated to nothing but committing fraud, finding a better way to steal from Medicare
KROFT: Is the Medicare fraud business bigger than the drug business in Miami now?
KIRK OGROSKY, JUSTICE DEPARTMENT: I think it's way bigger.
KROFT: What changed?
OGROSKY: The criminals changed...
WATERMAN: Sophistication.
OGROSKY: They've figured out that rather than stealing $100,000 or $200,000, they can steal $100 million. We have seen cases in the last six, eight months that involve a couple of guys that if they weren't stealing from Medicare might be stealing your car.
WATERMAN: You know, we were the king of the drugs in the '80s. We're king of healthcare fraud in the '90s and the 2000's.
Kroft also spoke to Attorney General Eric Holder:
ERIC HOLDER, ATTORNEY GENERAL: We have to understand this is a major fraud area. [...]
KROFT: Why do you think it's been so attractive for the criminals?
HOLDER: Because I think it's been pretty easy. I think that they have found a way in which they have been able to get pretty substantial amounts of money with not a huge amount of effort and at least until now, without the possibility of great detection.
KROFT: With much fewer risks.
HOLDER: Much fewer risks. You'll see some of these people and they'll say "You know there is not a chance that you are going to have some other drug dealer shooting at you." The chances of being incarcerated were lower, the amount of time that you would spend in jail was smaller. All of which is different now.
Kroft then spoke to a man who claimed to have defrauded Medicare out of $20 million, after which Kroft said, "According to the FBI, all you have to do to get into this business is rent a cheap storefront office, find or create a front man to get an occupational license, bribe a doctor or forge a prescription pad, and obtain the names and ID numbers of legitimate Medicare patients you can bill the phony charges to."
WATERMAN: There's a whole industry of people out there that do nothing but provide patients.
Kroft narrated, "Once the crooked companies get hold of the patient lists, usually stolen from doctors' offices or hospitals, they begin running up all sorts of outlandish charges and submit them to Medicare for payment, knowing full well that the agency is required by law to pay the claims within 15 to 30 days, and that it has only enough auditors to check a tiny fraction of the charges to see if they are legitimate."
Later, Kroft asked Waterman, "There's something I don't understand. I mean, you're saying essentially people just fill out the phony paperwork, they send a bill to Medicare and they pay it."
WATERMAN: That's why you have companies that can run for 60, 90 days, and bill for ridiculous things. Because there are very few checks and balances to even determine whether these things a, were medically necessary, b, were ever given, or c, even physically possible for a patient with the kind of conditions they have.
A bit later in the segment, Kroft spoke with Kim Brandt, Medicare's director of program integrity. After he shared with her some of the scams he'd previously witnessed or been told about, he asked how crooks get away with it:
KIM BRANDT, MEDICARE DIRECTOR: We're as frustrated by that as the law enforcement officials that you went out with. And in fact, our primary focus over the past years has been to tighten our enrollment standards to make it so it's much harder for people like that to be able to get in the program, and to be able to commit that kind of fraud.
KROFT: Look, I'm sure that you're aware of these problems. But it doesn't seem like you're doing a very good job. I don't mean you personally, but I mean, the government. This is still like a huge problem, and getting worse, right?
BRANDT: Well, it really does come down to the size and scope of the Medicare program, and the resources that are dedicated to oversight and anti-fraud work. One of our biggest challenges has been that we have a program that pays out over a billion claims a year, over $430 billion, and our oversight budget has been extremely limited.
Just imagine what the fraud will be like if the government is responsible for everyone's healthcare.
As the segment drew to a close, Holder told Kroft something that should scare the heck out of everyone who wants government run insurance for all Americans: "I think people I don't think necessarily thought that something as well intentioned as Medicare and Medicaid would necessarily attract fraudsters. But I think we have to understand that it certainly has."
Yes we do.
Yet, shortly after this marvelous segment came to a close, "60 Minutes" concluded this installment with Andy Rooney telling viewers:
I'm not much interested in hearing anymore talk about health care.
President Obama wants to overhaul what they call the "health care industry." Well good, but I hate that phrase the "heath care Industry." I just don't like to think of my health as an industry.
The fact is though being sick is often the least of our health problem. Even if you're insured, what hospitals charge now is ridiculous. I had what they call "an outpatient procedure" recently and it cost my insurance company $9,361. I say it cost my insurance company but let's face it. In the end, I'm the one who pays.
The U.S. spends more than any other country on Earth on its health: $2.5 trillion. And what do we get for $2.5 trillion? Well, we're 50th in the world for life expectancy, below the Polynesian French Island Territory of Wallis and Futuna, wherever Wallis and Futuna are.
As Steve Kroft said earlier on 60 Minutes, we are losing billions of dollars on health care fraud. Not on healthcare - on healthcare fraud.
Everyone cheats - companies, hospitals, patients, doctors, drug companies, and government agencies. Cheating goes on everywhere in the get well business.
During my recent outpatient procedure a doctor came into my room, asked how I was doing and said, "By the way I love your work on television." He left without touching me and a couple of weeks later when the bill came, it turned out his visit cost my insurance company $250.00.
I mean who knows what he would have charged if he didn't like my work.
There's just no doubt we need healthcare reform because the way it is now, makes me sick.
Makes you wonder if he even watched Kroft's segment, doesn't it?
SS stands for Schutzstaffel, which translated literally means Protective Squad. “The zeal which begins with hypocrisy must conclude in treachery; at first it deceives, at last it betrays” -- Francis Bacon
Nat Hentoff In the last weeks of the Bush-Cheney administration, FBI Director Robert Mueller and then-Attorney General Michael Mukasey rushed into law such unbounded expansions of the FBI's domestic surveillance powers that I was stunned. Years ago, I had often and critically reported on J. Edgar Hoover's ravenous invasions of Americans' personal privacy rights, including mine; but these new FBI guidelines, taking effect last Dec. 1, are unsparingly un-American.
As described by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an ever-watchful guardian of the Constitution, these Attorney General's Guidelines for Domestic FBI Operations authorize the FBI — without going to a court — "to open investigative 'assessments' of any American without any factual predicate or suspicion. Such 'assessments' allow the use of intrusive techniques to surreptitiously collect information on people suspected of no wrongdoing and no connection with any foreign entity. These inquiries may include the collection of information from online sources and commercial databases."
The press has largely been uninterested in this suspension of the Bill of Rights — but we know a lot about David Letterman.
President Barack Obama has expressed no objections to these radical revisions of the Constitution, a founding document he used to educate students about at the University of Chicago. His attorney general, Eric Holder, said calmly during his Senate confirmation hearing: "The guidelines are necessary because the FBI is changing its mission ... from a pure investigating agency to one that deals with national security."
It was the same Eric Holder who said, while George W. Bush was president: "I never thought that I would see the day when a president would act in direct defiance of federal law by authorizing warrantless NSA (National Security Agency) surveillance of American citizens."
But then-Sen., and now President, Obama approves of the all-seeing NSA — in keeping with his lack of interest in reforming the perilous health of our founding values as they are being systematically infected by the FBI.
It was only on Sept. 29 that we citizen civilians were able to actually, though partially, look inside the 258-page "FBI Domestic Investigations and Operations Guidelines (DIOG)." For months, the Electronic Frontier Foundation had been trying, through the Freedom of Information Act, to find out if we'll have any privacy left. At last, the lurking report came heavily censored.
According to the Associated Press (Oct. 1), Electronic Frontier Foundation attorney David Sobel is "more concerned with what the FBI removed from its guidelines for public consumption than what it disclosed." He added that this heavily "edited version blacked out descriptions of how the FBI pursues investigative 'assessments' of Americans without any evidence of wrongdoing — and how it uses informants in political, civil and religious organizations …"
I ask again: Is this America?
The Electronic Frontier Foundation is going back to court to get the Obama administration to remember why we — and they — are Americans …
On "Inside the FBI" (www.fbi.gov/inside/archive/inside011609.htm) on Jan. 16, the FBI's leading attorney, General Counsel Valerie Caproni, talks about surveilling college students interning at technology businesses for links to terrorists. "Are they a bunch of English majors and music majors? If so, they're probably not stealing high technology. On the other hand, if they're engineering or computer science people, then you might be more interested in them."
It's "enough to open an investigation," she continued. For example, "if someone comes in (to the FBI) and says 'Charlie seems to be acting really hinky, and he's staying in labs after hours and I saw him taking papers home.'"
This "hinky" student, Charlie, could be a grind, obsessively trying to get to the top of his class. But according to the FBI's Caproni, why not see what his contacts are? What sites does he visit a lot on the Web?
