[The Intercept] THE U.S. GOVERNMENT can monitor journalists under a foreign intelligence law that allows invasive spying and operates outside the traditional court system, according to newly released documents. For the media outlets we do not control, our theme must remain... 'we come as friends, the Russians and Donald Trump are your real enemies.'
Targeting members of the press under the law, known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, requires approval from the Justice Department’s highest-ranking officials, the documents show.
In two 2015 memos for the FBI, the attorney general spells out "procedures for processing Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act applications targeting known media entities or known members of the media." The guidelines say the attorney general, the deputy attorney general, or their delegate must sign off before the bureau can bring an application to the secretive panel of judges who approves monitoring under the 1978 act, which governs intelligence-related wiretapping and other surveillance carried out domestically and against U.S. persons abroad.
The high level of supervision points to the controversy around targeting members of the media at all. Prior to the release of these documents, little was known about the use of FISA court orders against journalists. Previous attention had been focused on the use of National Security Letters against members of the press; the letters are administrative orders with which the FBI can obtain certain phone and financial records without a judge’s oversight. FISA court orders can authorize much more invasive searches and collection, including the content of communications, and do so through hearings conducted in secret and outside the sort of adversarial judicial process that allows journalists and other targets of regular criminal warrants to eventually challenge their validity.
"This is a huge surprise," said Victoria Baranetsky, general counsel with the Center for Investigative Reporting, previously of Reporters Committee for the Freedom of the Press. "It makes me wonder, what other rules are out there, and how have these rules been applied? The next step is figuring out how this has been used." "This is a huge surprise." Quite obviously Victory doesn't read the Burg.
The documents were turned over by the Justice Department’s Office of Information Policy to the Freedom of the Press Foundation and the Knight First Amendment Institute as part of an ongoing lawsuit seeking the Trump administration’s rules for when and how the government can spy on journalists, including during leak investigations. Freedom of the Press and Knight shared the documents with The Intercept. (First Look Media, The Intercept’s parent company, provides funding for both organizations, and multiple Intercept staffers serve on the board of Freedom of the Press Foundation.)
The memos discussing FISA are dated in early 2015, and both are directed at the FBI’s National Security Division. The documents are on the same subject and outline some of the same steps for FISA approvals, but one is unclassified and mostly unredacted, while the other is marked secret and largely redacted. The rules apply to media entities or journalists who are thought to be agents of a foreign government, or, in some cases, are of interest under the broader standard that they possess foreign intelligence information.
#1
This is news? The only reason no one objected before was someone else was in the White House. Now they go paranoid? I guess that 'enemy of the people' woke you?
[WSJ] The Salem witch trials turned on what was called "spectral evidence." That was testimony from witnesses‐either malicious or hysterical‐who claimed the accused had assumed the form of a black cat or some other devilish creature and had come visiting in the night in order to torment the witness with bites and scratches, or to rearrange the bedroom furniture, or to send the baby into paroxysms.
Susannah Sheldon, aged about 18, testified that the defendant Sarah Good’s apparition‐not the actual Sarah Good, but her spirit, her specter‐"most violently pulled down my head behind a chest and tied my hands together with a whale band and almost choked me to death." Other witnesses blamed Good for the mysterious deaths of cows or for causing a broom to fly up into an apple tree.
The judge, William Stoughton, admitted this nonsense into evidence. Hysterical fantasies had real consequences: Sarah Good and four other defendants were hanged on July 19, 1692.
Continued on Page 49
[National Review] The progressive street is leading fossilized Democrats into a sort of collective madness.
The dinosaurs of the party desperately seek relevance by sounding crazier than the new unhinged base that disrupts Senate hearings, loudly pronounces a new socialist future, and envisions octogenarian Maxine Waters as more the future of the party than is septuagenarian Nancy Pelosi. The spectacle is right out of Euripides’s Bacchae, as the creaky old guard of the polis, Tiresias and Cadmus, dress up in trendy, ridiculous ritual costumes to stumble along after the racing and frenzied young maenads in their lethal courtship of suicidal Dionysian madness. Whoa, Victor! Some deplorables won't know what you're talking about. Me included.
Six-term senator Dianne Feinstein is running against a far more radical Democrat, Kevin de León, in California’s general election. (He added the accent and the "de" to his name in midlife, thereby enhancing his ethnic authenticity.) Feinstein’s current Senate colleague, the junior senator Kamala Harris, has been interrupting, sermonizing, and shouting at the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings in a fashion that generates the media buzz and attention usually reserved for supposedly sober and judicious old hands like Feinstein.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Bobby ||
09/18/2018 10:25 ||
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Link ||
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#1
Thanks for posting VDH.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
09/18/2018 12:12 Comments ||
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#2
You don't believe me that a bloody civil war is soon upon us? They will burn the house down for power, or whatever is left over.
[Wash Times] Former Vice President Joseph R. Biden assailed President Trump’s supporters during a speech Saturday at the annual Human Rights Campaign dinner in Washington, lamenting that "virulent people" and the "dregs of society" still had a friend in the White House.
Mr. Biden told an enthusiastic crowd of LGBTQ rights advocates that social conservatives at home and abroad who used religion or culture as a "license to discriminate" were committing a "crime" of prejudice.
"Despite losing in the courts and in the court of public opinion, these forces of intolerance remain determined to undermine and roll back the progress you all have made," he argued. "This time they ‐ not you ‐ have an ally in the White House.
"They’re a small percentage of the American people, virulent people," he continued. "Some of them the dregs of society. And instead of using the full might of the executive branch to secure justice, dignity [and] safety for all, the president uses the White House as a literal, literal bully pulpit, callously exerting his power over those who have little or none."
#1
Who did he plagiarize this speech from? Hillary?
Posted by: Frank G ||
09/18/2018 7:32 Comments ||
Top||
#2
Despite losing in the courts and in the court of public opinion,
Last time I checked, the public, in the form of a referendum in CA, blocked gay marriage. Then the unelected sit for life judiciary decided the voice of the people was to be shut down and their fiat, which had no legal basis in the written Constitution, was to take precedent.
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
[Isn't it amazing how some elements of the Constitution expand under 'interpretation' and others disappear altogether]
#4
I haven't been so pleased to be numbered among the "dregs of society" since I also was pleased to belong to the ONLY branch of the US Military Service which was founded in a bar ( Tun's Tavern).
[AMGREATNESS] After days of gossip and innuendo to the effect that the likely next Supreme Court Justice might just be some sort of pervert, Anonymous finally came forward and identified herself as a victim of a then 17-year-old inebriated Brett Kavanaugh who (she says) sexually manhandled her in 1982 when she was 15. More specifically, the woman now alleges that Kavanaugh and another student at a high-school party entered a room inebriated, pinned her to a bed, and then groped her while she was clothed. Young Kavanaugh then allegedly attempted to take her clothes off her while he and his classmate, Mark Judge, both laughed “maniacally.” She adds that she had sought “medical treatment” for her unspecified injuries.
Anonymous identified herself in the Washington Post on Sunday as Christine Blasey Ford, a registered Democrat, Bernie Sanders supporter, and psychology professor at Palo Alto University, who otherwise had no recollection exactly where or when the supposed assault occurred some 36 years ago. Nor did she offer any clear reason why she had never then, or in the more than three decades since, contacted authorities to report the purported assault, other than claiming in 2012 that the incident then 30 years earlier still troubled her and contributed to her own sense of unease.
Or as Ford explained her sudden self-unmasking over the weekend: “Now I feel like my civic responsibility is outweighing my anguish and terror about retaliation.” A cynic might suggest that anonymity was useful in the 11th-hour smearing of Kavanaugh, but had proved not quite enough to derail his nomination, and so the fallback and default position of identification followed.
"There's another bathroom in here," a voice I had just passed said quietly. I turned to find Brett Kavanaugh Mason Crawford and two of his friends leaning against what I imagined was a bedroom door. He wore a smile that I didn't trust. "It's the master," he whispered.
I quickly measured my mistrust of him against the biological need that was growing. "No bull?" I asked, instantly regretting putting words to my doubts.
"Honest," Brett Mason said, raising both his hands, one holding a beer bottle. He showed me what I thought was an innocent expression. One of his friends, Judge Frank I thought his name was, nodded in agreement. Brett Mason opened the door and stood to the side.
"Thanks," I said and entered the room. I was surprised when Brett Mason then closed the door, staying outside and leaving me in peace. The room was the master. A huge four poster bed with a small sitting area in a window alcove... I opened the first of two doors and found a huge walk in closet. The next door held a magnificent bathroom. Dual sinks and a walk-in shower that could hold ten. The mirror reflected a head of hair that looked like it had been in a convertible for a few hours...
I left the bathroom, and my gratitude to Brett Mason ended as quickly as it began. He stood inside the bedroom between me and the door to the hall. The smirk on his face was anything but friendly.
"Thanks for letting me know about the bathroom," I said in a friendly tone. Brett Mason didn't move as I approached the door. I tried to shove the fear that was growing to the side. He hadn't done anything wrong, but his stance indicated he had ideas.
"You going with the dweeb?" Brett Mason asked. He was like a wall between the door and me. I was forced to slow or attempt to push him out of the way. At six-five and a good two-hundred-plus pounds, it would have been a futile attempt.
"I don't know any dweebs," I responded. I put my hands on my hips and gave him the look my mother gave me when she was upset. If it weren't for my hips holding my hands steady, I was sure they would be shaking.
"McGuire," Brett Mason clarified. His massive arms folded themselves across his chest.
"Caleb and I are just friends," I said, letting some anger fill my tone. It was better than letting the fear escape.
"You turned me down and let that nerd take you to the prom?"Brett Mason asked.
"You never asked," I replied. I thankfully held back the rest of the statement that formed in my mind...
"You obviously don't know what a real man is like,"Brett Mason said. It sounded more like a threat than a statement. He leaned forward and fear made me take a step back. I gritted my teeth and decided to stand firm and not back up anymore...
"No!" I shouted. This time, real anger filled the word... I tried to move around Mason now that there was more space between him and the door. I wasn't quick enough.
Brett's Mason's hand shot out and grabbed my wrist like a vice. An involuntary grunt left my lips as he yanked me against his chest and wrapped his other arm around me. I only got out the first part of a scream when his massive hand covered my mouth. I grabbed his wrist with my free hand, and he chuckled as I tried to pull his hand from my face. Black fear filled my mind as he dragged me deeper into the room. I could do nothing against his strength...
"One night with me and your life will change."
I tried to hit his sides and scratch at his face. It was like a brick wall and only made him laugh. My wrist felt like it was going to break and tears filled my eyes.
"Silence," he ordered as his hand moved from my mouth to my hair. With a fistful of hair, he yanked my head back straining my neck. Pure terror filled me when I saw the intent in his eyes.
I am writing with information relevant in evaluating the current nominee to the Supreme Court. As a constituent, I expect that you will maintain this as confidential until we have further opportunity to speak. Brett Kavanaugh physically and sexually assaulted me during high school in the early 1980’s. He conducted these acts with the assistance of REDACTED.
Both were one to two years older than me and students at a local private school.
The assault occurred in a suburban Maryland area home at a gathering that included me and four others. Kavanaugh physically pushed me into a bedroom as I was headed for a bathroom up a short stair well from the living room. They locked the door and played loud music precluding any successful attempt to yell for help. Kavanaugh was on top of me while laughing with REDACTED, who periodically jumped onto Kavanaugh. They both laughed as Kavanaugh tried to disrobe me in their highly inebriated state. With Kavanaugh’s hand over my mouth I feared he may inadvertently kill me.
From across the room a very drunken REDACTED said mixed words to Kavanaugh ranging from “go for it” to “stop.” At one point when REDACTED jumped onto the bed the weight on me was substantial. The pile toppled, and the two scrapped with each other. After a few attempts to get away, I was able to take this opportune moment to get up and run across to a hallway bathroom. I locked the bathroom door behind me. Both loudly stumbled down the stair well at which point other persons at the house were talking with them. I exited the bathroom, ran outside of the house and went home.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/18/2018 00:00 ||
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Link ||
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#1
Her story has changed again. First it was her and two young men. Then it was her and four young men. Now it's her, another un-named girl, and four young men. Sh doesn't remember where or when. I smell BS.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
09/18/2018 7:42 Comments ||
Top||
#4
The problem here, IMO, that if slander like succeeds - the slanderer is allowed to fade into woodwork (after receiving her reward from hers masters)
How about an NGO who sue these women for defamation afterwards?
#5
Keith Ellison's accuser Karen Monahan claims to have video evidence of him physically abusing her and saying some extremely unkind things about women. Double standard? I really don't see any standard at all.
#7
AND the accuser seems to be a grudge Democrat Social Warrior Activist with an Agenda. You won't find that as a fact the MSM will prioritize.
It happened 36 years ago, CAN'T be proven, we are just supposed to take her word for it, and she can't remember the actual day or the year it occurred.
Do you smell Cheese ?
I won't bring up Democratic Party playbook of repeated smears ( i rather liked Herman Caine )when all else fails and double standard Kennedy Cadillac floating bottom up in the Chappaquidick with a dead drowned girl left until morning. But then that might impugn Democratic Party double standards and Values. But it DOES sort of illustrate the sort of people we are dealing with in Feinstein.
Kavanaugh has a PROVEN record as a decent man and a very fine talent at Law. He also has a proven and validated record of over 70 women professional and private who have gone on their record to stand up for his record as a gentleman. And Feinstein is ( in my opinion common and ordinary as that is ) a raving duplicitous Moonbat.
#8
we are just supposed to take her word for it, and she can't remember the actual day or the year it occurred
Because it didn't leave a lasting expression?
p.s. Suppose I believe her - so what, he took no for an answer (otherwise she wouldn't have escaped). The bastards sitting in Supreme now kill thousands (and I don't mean abortions: I don't mind these) and destroy the lives of millions.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[WSJ] The Salem witch trials turned on what was called "spectral evidence." That was testimony from witnesses‐either malicious or hysterical‐who claimed the accused had assumed the form of a black cat or some other devilish creature and had come visiting in the night in order to torment the witness with bites and scratches, or to rearrange the bedroom furniture, or to send the baby into paroxysms.
[AMGREATNESS] After days of gossip and innuendo to the effect that the likely next Supreme Court Justice might just be some sort of pervert, Anonymous finally came forward and identified herself as a victim of a then 17-year-old inebriated Brett Kavanaugh who (she says) sexually manhandled her in 1982 when she was 15. More specifically, the woman now alleges that Kavanaugh and another student at a high-school party entered a room inebriated, pinned her to a bed, and then groped her while she was clothed. Young Kavanaugh then allegedly attempted to take her clothes off her while he and his classmate, Mark Judge, both laughed “maniacally.” She adds that she had sought “medical treatment” for her unspecified injuries.
"There's another bathroom in here," a voice I had just passed said quietly. I turned to find 
"Thanks," I said and entered the room. I was surprised when 
"Caleb and I are just friends," I said, letting some anger fill my tone. It was better than letting the fear escape. 
I am writing with information relevant in evaluating the current nominee to the Supreme Court. As a constituent, I expect that you will maintain this as confidential until we have further opportunity to speak. Brett Kavanaugh physically and sexually assaulted me during high school in the early 1980’s. He conducted these acts with the assistance of REDACTED.
The assault occurred in a suburban Maryland area home at a gathering that included me and four others. Kavanaugh physically pushed me into a bedroom as I was headed for a bathroom up a short stair well from the living room. They locked the door and played loud music precluding any successful attempt to yell for help. Kavanaugh was on top of me while laughing with REDACTED, who periodically jumped onto Kavanaugh. They both laughed as Kavanaugh tried to disrobe me in their highly inebriated state. With Kavanaugh’s hand over my mouth I feared he may inadvertently kill me.
From across the room a very drunken REDACTED said mixed words to Kavanaugh ranging from “go for it” to “stop.” At one point when REDACTED jumped onto the bed the weight on me was substantial. The pile toppled, and the two scrapped with each other. After a few attempts to get away, I was able to take this opportune moment to get up and run across to a hallway bathroom. I locked the bathroom door behind me. Both loudly stumbled down the stair well at which point other persons at the house were talking with them. I exited the bathroom, ran outside of the house and went home.
