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A senator asks Attorney General Holder if the Obama administration has spied on Congress with its access to Verizon phone records and Holder refuses to answer.

The KGB comes to America: A senator asks Attorney General Holder if the Obama administration has spied on Congress with its access to Verizon phone records and Holder refuses to answer.

Video below the fold.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


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"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

20 comments

  • Pzatchok

    Holder didn’t even give the standard answer, “I don’t know”, or ” I’ll have to look into that and get back to you.”

    He only said “I can’t discus that in public.”

    So he knows that Washington politicians were monitored. He just didn’t want to make another public lie. He probably figured the evidence would be coming out soon that he did authorize it and knows all about it.

    How many politicians have Verizon phones?
    I wonder if Verizon is the choice of phone the government gives every senator and congressman for free?
    Just handing out those bugged phones.

  • Wall Street Journal confirms suspicions: Not just Verizon. NSA got phone records from AT&T & Sprint too. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324299104578529112289298922.html

  • wodun

    Considering that Holder has perjured himself before congress, IRS officials lied about targeting conservative groups to congress, and Clapper lied about this very program during testimony, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwiUVUJmGjs&feature=player_embedded , how can we trust anything that comes out of this administration?

    It calls into question the ethics of every single government agency and administration program.

  • Publius 2

    Entirely correct and on point. The PRISM program might have had a justifiable origin in the fight against Islamic terror groups, but given this administration’s history and current behavior, nothing they do can be trusted. Did you get that, Holder and Napolitano?

  • D. K. Williams

    Given that the NSA has all phone records, they spy on Congress by default. DOJ is yet another agency spying on us. Congressmen must be wondering if Holder is holding info on their mistresses.

  • Pzatchok

    They did all this just by using a small line in the whole of the Patriot act.

    One small line gives them the right to ask for business records.

    It was originally included to see if terrorists were hiding funds or credit card purchases but they just asked for different records and found they could use it to have access to everyones communication records.

    And they know they can not use any of this information in an investigation or as evidence in a crime. They need a warrant to first gather it and then use it. And they need specific targeted evidence in order to get the warrant.

    They are gathering everyones evidence/information now in order to use it against them later. Which is against the intent of ALL us law and the constitution.

    This is the same argument that gun proponents use against any federal data base on gun transfers and ownership.
    They might be able to keep a data base of my crimes but they can not keep a data base of my non crimes, my personal private legal activities.

  • lino

    There is no such thing as a “modest encroachment on privacy.” There is either privacy or no privacy. It’s like saying that someone can put a peephole on a toilet stall that can only spy on you sometimes. This just isn’t right.

  • It seems to me that Obama has revealed himself very clearly with some of his public statements about this most recent scandal, such as the quote above. A second quote, which is remarkable for its vagueness and the implications one can take from that vagueness, is also chilling:

    “If people can’t trust not only the executive branch but also don’t trust Congress, and don’t trust federal judges, to make sure that we’re abiding by the Constitution with due process and rule of law, then we’re going to have some problems here.” [emphasis mine]

    Who exactly is going to have those “problems”? Obama, or the citizens who don’t trust the government? Based on the IRS scandal, I would assume Obama is referring to the problems the government will cause those dissenting citizens.

  • JGL

    Can the people engage and rectify what needs to be rectified or are they captured by the machine and are no longer able to rectify what they need to rectify?

  • joe

    Considering that the federal government controls the IRS, NSA, EPA, and all the other alphabet bureaucracy’s, I would say we are in deep trouble, this administration is walking all over the constitution and the GOP does nothing, really makes one wonder where this is going and how much Teflon is this president wearing!

  • Maybe those in power could convince the UN to make Obama Secretary-General a couple years early. He gets kicked upstairs, his base is ecstatic, and he has the illusion of power without the substance. Meanwhile, Biden inherits the Presidency, and is universally ignored as the White House is forced to limit his public appearances because no one respects him.

    Hey, it’s not any worse than what we have now, and might be better. On our current course, the country becomes ever more the tinderbox.

  • I don’t want any deals like this, nor do I want impeachment. In both cases, the Democrats get off scott free. I want them to have to deal with this at the voting booth come 2014, just as the Republicans had to in 1974 following the Watergate scandal. There has to be real consequences for this misbehavior.

  • Pzatchok

    The GOP does not have the power.
    They are in the minority basically.

    If the WH does not tell them of something or tells the different agencies to hide information then how are they to find out.

    And even when the GOP finds out about something without the MSM putting pressure on the WH and in most cases even covering for them and backing them up the GOP is even more powerless to do anything but what is exactly written into the word of law. And without public pressure visibly placed on the WH (protests in Washington) the WH just needs to drag things out until the next election and then things are forgotten thanks to their ever present friends the MSM.

    We should be walking on Washington. We should be getting arrested on the WH lawn. We need to push them until they pull the trigger and kill someone right on the WH steps.

  • Publius 2

    Be careful what you wish for. So far, this coup d’état has been free of direct assassination — though this administration has shown no reluctance to allow hundreds of Mexicans and two U.S. Border Patrol agencies to suffer mortal consequences from the operation known as Fast and Furious, or to sacrifice four Americans during the attack on the facility in Benghazi. But William Ayers, the principal mentor of this president, once famously said that in order for the left to achieve its goals in the United States, it might be necessary to “eliminate” perhaps 25 million of its citizens. We remain in the early stages of this takeover. If it continues unchecked, America’s fate will grow far, far worse.

  • JGL

    I love your choice of the word “misbehavior” , your in a generous and forgiving mood today?

  • If you are civilized, you do not escalate the emotion, you escalate the action.

  • JGL

    First we eat, then ethics.

  • The results from the 2012 election don’t inspire a lot of optimism about American’s willingness or ability to hold politicians accountable.

  • I agree. However, 2014 will be an off year election. The “low information voters”, whom I call the television crowd, don’t generally vote in off year elections. Thus, we had the result from 2010. We could see the same phenomenon again in 2014, but with greater effect because of these scandals.

    I waffle between deep pessimism and cautious optimism. We shall see.

  • JGL

    The real measure of success IMO for the Obama movement and by extension the Bush (sr. & jr.) and Clinton agenda (this goes beyond party affiliation) is for the Constitution to be the Constitution in name only. Think of where this all winds up in 5, 10 and 20 plus years if the people don’t step back, put party affiliation aside and reassert their birth right as it is laid out in the document.

    Think of where Obamacare really gets us if it is not flushed as it should be with the IRS administering such an insult to free people. The people who frequent this site are generally on the same page and see the perils that lie ahead, how many of similar thinking people will it take to turn this ship?

    Is it too late?

    Is this assault on America our future and we just can’t see it yet?

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