skpy (CC)

The implication is that the Obama administration is apparently considering the possibility of leveling charges against journalists in general, in it’s relentless search for “leaks”. However, in spite of the recent information that has come out about investigations into the actions of Associated Press journalists, these may be partisan investigations. It has already been stated that the information that Rosen acquired from Kim wasn’t particularly sensitive:

John Bolton, the former undersecretary of state for disarmament, and a noted hard-liner on all matters North Korea, said the disclosures in the Rosen story about North Korean intentions were “neither particularly sensitive nor all that surprising.” It involved the kind of information that could have been gleaned from reading stories in the South Korean press at the time, he noted.

That point is made in contrast with the sensitive and theoretically “classified” information that made its way into Bob Woodward’s book, “Obama’s Wars.”

Brit Hume commented on the situation earlier today on Fox News: [Video]

The Fox News response to the government tracking Rosen’s emails and movements was as follows:

“We are outraged to learn today that James Rosen was named a criminal co-conspirator for simply doing his job as a reporter,” Fox News executive vice president Michael Clemente said in a statement. ”In fact, it is downright chilling. We will unequivocally defend his right to operate as a member of what up until now has always been a free press.”

Read the warrant for the investigation of Rosen here:

1-10-mj-00291-AKwarrant

Also, for bloggers, and anyone else interested in information to prevent attracting this sort of attention from the government, Fox News has offered a page of advice.

When: Saturday, April 27th, 10pm Eastern/7pm Pacific

Where: Saturday Night Cigar Lounge with Taylor on Blog Talk Radio

What: Saturday nights were meant for cigars and politics.

Hear Taylor and his co-host Liz Harrison talk about everything from the past week – from politics, to news, to books, and entertainment. Whatever comes to mind, and of course, sobriety is not likely.

Tonight: Tonight, Taylor’s talking on the Boston Marathon suspected bombers, and their lovely (wacky) family. More analysis, of foreign connections, repercussions of Mirandizing the suspect, and whether or not the FBI dropped the ball.

For years, many of us in the new media have bared the full weight of speaking truth to power – power in this case being not only elected government, many of whom still choose to exist in denial of the facts, but the elites in the mainstream media as well, where fundamentalist Islamic violence is concerned. Many of us have been demonized and marginalized not only by those of a more liberal bent who level charges of bigotry and Islamophobia at us, but by those in the elite Conservative media who stood dedicated to ignore us for not having slapped down the $125,000 to get a “journalism” degree. Many outlets, both mainstream and on the Internet, cowered in the face of the issue, choosing not to run articles about the facts surrounding jihadi violence or ignoring the intellectual credentials of writers who carved out great swathes of their lives to fully understand the issue; autodidactic or otherwise.

It could be said that at this moment, those who have been ignored or rebuked by the “big boys and girls” with million-viewer television and 50,000 watt flamethrower radio shows, will prove their grit; prove their patriotism, by embracing the reality that it is the message, the education of our citizenry that matters, and not whether we gain fame or wealth examining an issue that threatens the very existence of a free world. As for me, I hope to be judged a patriot for the information I have advanced in an unselfish manner; simply asking for organizational support from time to time so that a roof could be maintained overhead and food could be placed on the table. Some answered unselfishly, most did not.

But now, after all of the “al Qaeda is on the run” rhetoric has been laid to waste, and the eyes of many in the Conservative mainstream media have been focused, it must be stated, without reservation, that our nation faces not a singular foe in a foreign ideology that seeks to expunge the American way of life from the face of the Earth, but three very real and very potent threats that, at present, are well on the path to seeing the demise of the United States of America, Islamofascism being only one of the three.

For years, I and others, including my wife Nancy, a dedicated educator and a formally trained constitutional expert, have been explaining the concept of “The Perfect Storm”; the convergence of three potent threats that together present a threat to our way of life in the United States, and through its destruction, the free world. Our non-profit organization, BasicsProject.org, is dedicated to educating the public on this “Perfect Storm.” Yet, for years the elites in the mainstream media have refused to acknowledge the hypothesis; have refused to allow our voices to be heard. So, it was with great happiness I began hearing the likes of Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, and Bill O’Reilly – Beck being the first among them to do so, and going “all in” in his efforts, I might add – identifying the role of political correctness in the advance of Islamofascism. It is my hope of hopes that they are inclusive of the grassroots and autodidacts in their efforts because, quite frankly, without a constant push for the citizenry to learn, this will become just another news story; just another cycle, and everyone will soon return to watching “Desperate Housewives of the Jersey Shore in Gator Country,” or whatever inane garbage is captivating the low- and no-information voters today.

“The Perfect Storm” scenario consists of an external threat (Islamofascism) coupled with and facilitated by an internal threat (Progressivism, whose chief manipulative tenet is political correctness) targeting a constitutionally illiterate American populace (a population who fails to understand the worth and value of their rights). Is this a Right-Left or Democrat-Libertarian-Republican issue? No. This is an American issue and one that extends to the free world, as well.

Islamofascism, rooted in an almost fanatical devotion to Sharia Law, places the theocratic dogma of Islam above the inalienable rights realized and codified in the Charters of Freedom – the Declaration of Independence, US Constitution and Bill of Rights (Nancy would also include the Magna Carta, and she is right to do so). In doing so, the rights to freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of the press; all the rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights and ensuing Amendments, are subjugated to the will of Sharia. A cursory examination of Sharia Law’s compatibility with the freedoms identified in the Charters of Freedom results in the realization of a total incompatibility between the two. One cannot live a life devoted to Islam and Sharia Law, and recognize the US Constitution as the law of the land, ergo; Islamofascism is a direct threat to the US Constitution.

Progressivism, essentially an American Fifth Column, emanates from the ideology of the Marxist/Leninist Era, and presents a menace from within. This ideology was first empowered under the Wilson reign – which advanced the lie of a “living Constitution” so as to expand government beyond the enumerated powers, and then enjoyed resurgence during the counter-culture revolution of the 1960s and 1970s. Today, this ideology, anathema to the Charters of Freedom, is taught at every level of our public education system – from pre-school to graduate school – in the form of “political correctness,” “multiculturalism” and “diversity.” This ideology – embraced by the likes of the “social justice” crowd – has evolved into a unique yet visionless one, and one which holds that our most basic constitutional tenets are the central cause for many of the social ills here in the United States and around the world.

This Secular-Progressive, Democratic-Socialist and/or neo-Marxist American Fifth Column ideology claims that our Constitutional Republic is, in fact, a Democracy, which our Founders and Framers vehemently opposed; understanding that Democracy did and does not protect minority rights. It employs the democratic process to promote moral relativism, multiculturalism and political correctness, doing so in an effort to silence those who would defend the basic foundational American principles, while pursuing an American form of Socialism in their place. This system of beliefs serves not only to grotesquely blur the lines between good and evil, bad behavior and civic responsibility, it goes to great lengths to negate the concepts all together.

The Progressive ideology promotes the utilization of an artificially created sense of self-esteem within our children while striving to denigrate the notion of individualism in deference to the group-think mentality, or the “it takes a village” philosophy, leaving them ill-prepared for the competitive world in which we live, and dependents of a state unable to compete at all.

The precepts of the American Fifth Column work to eliminate the benefits and rewards of a competition based free market society by instituting the notion that absolute socio-economic equality can be attained through government mandated entitlement and control, usurping the freedom of choice and alienating our constitutionally mandated individual liberty to define and pursue happiness. Anyone who dares to challenge the Progressive ideology is castigated as a “bigot,” a “racist,” and/or any litany of “phobes,” all in an effort to execute Rule No. 12 from Progressivism’s bible, Rules for Radicals by Saul Alinsky (who literally dedicated his book to Satan):

Rule No. 12: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions. (This is cruel, but very effective. Direct, personalized criticism and ridicule works.)

With just this very basic understanding of Progressivism – and I urge you to read more on this (DiscoverTheNetworks.org has an indispensable summary of the movement accessible here) – it is obvious to the honest that Progressivism is not only antithetical to Americanism, but a direct threat to the Charters of Freedom.

Couple these two major threats to our nation, to our Founding Documents, to our liberty, with the fact that since the Progressives’ capture of the American education system, the importance of studying history has been marginalized, so much so that our nation, but for what can only be described now as an alarmed minority, stands constitutionally illiterate; unable to understand the value of the inalienable rights mandated by our Founding Documents and bequeathed to us by Natural Law, not government.

I liken it to the old adage about two children who have received the same bike, one given the bike, the other made to earn the bike. Invariably, the child who was given the bike was more prone to neglecting it, not understanding its worth, while the child who was made to earn the bike; that understood its worth, maintained it. This basic truth applies to our American Heritage and the continued welfare of our nation.

Without a solid understanding of the basic principles used by our Founds and Framers in establishing our Constitution it is impossible for Americans to recognize the worth of the American ideal. When the full values of freedom and liberty are not realized it becomes easy to incrementally relinquish our rights guaranteed under the Constitution.

Today, we do not have a populace, a citizenry, which is literate in constitutional philosophy; that understands the worth of their rights…and so they cede them. Further, without a basic understanding of the value of our founding principles and the worth of the American ideal, the American public is less inclined to be concerned with an unfettered access to un-manipulated, fact-based information; information needed to address many of the serious issues facing our nation, our nation’s leaders and the world; issues like violent jihad on the streets of Boston, New York, Any Town, USA.

With regard to the Boston Marathon bombings, it is without question that the Progressives among us have blood on their hands. Progressives in the media, in elected office and in leadership positions have consistently and absolutely denied the American public their right to examine the violent tenets of Islam by saying that to do so wouldn’t be “politically correct,” by saying it would be “insensitive to Muslims,” or that those who want to examine the facts surrounding the truth about the dichotomy between Islam and terrorism are “racists,” “bigots,” Islamophobic or otherwise “intolerant.” Progressives are the ones who concocted the politically correct policies that keep law enforcement from even using the word “Middle Eastern” when putting out a BOLO about a suspected terrorist. Progressives are the ones who established political barriers between law enforcement and intelligence agencies, stunting our nation’s ability to defend our citizenry from the savage acts of the hate-filled.

Progressives will undoubtedly call me a “racist,” a “bigot,” and an “intolerant Islamophobe” because I dare to speak the truth; because I have dared, for over a decade, to speak the truth, about Islam, about Progressivism and about our constitutionally illiterate culture, doing so at great personal expense; unrecognized by the now finally engaged elite Conservative media. So be it…if that is the price I must pay to be a good citizen; if that is the price I have to pay to be a good American.

I just pray, in my anonymity, that now the media elites have been born into awareness about “The Perfect Storm,” that they see the story through to its successful resolution; that they don’t drop this issue of national survival for the next “blonde girl goes missing” news item of another Lindsay Lohan DUI-Rehab-Back-to-Spoiled-Brat story. Honestly, all of our lives, all of our freedoms, depend on whether they do or not. That’s why there is freedom of the press…for now.

DesLauriers described the two men as Suspect No. 1 and Suspect No. 2. Suspect No. 1 was wearing a dark hat. Suspect No. 2 was wearing a white hat and that suspect number two was vidoe’d dropping his backpack at bomb location #2.

When questioned by Congress on the same day, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napalitano said there were “individuals” the FBI would like to speak to and that she “wouldn’t characterize them as ‘suspects’ under the technical term. But we need the public’s help in locating these individuals.”

The way things appear, the FBI is making a full-court press while being held back by DHS. Homeland security seems more interested in political appearances than catching the men the FBI suspects in the Boston Marathon bombings.

The explosions near the finish line of the Boston Marathon killed three innocent people and injured at least 170 more.

John Brennan, President Obama’s nominee for Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, converted to Islam while working in Saudi Arabia, states former FBI agent, John Guandolo. John Guandolo wrote the first Muslim Brotherhood training manual for the FBI. Watch the detailed story in this explosive interview.

You can skip ahead to about 11:50 for the introduction of who John Guandolo is. The actual interview starts at about 13:20:

H/T Nice Deb

Some internet “vandals” saw this as an opportunity to deface, in a way, the Wikipedia page of Senator Menendez.

The Screen capture is below, with the “modifications” highlighted in red. The photo of Senator Menendez was changed to one of Mike McQueary, who was a key witness in the Penn State University child sex scandal.

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Follow me on Twitter: @_TJThompson
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The bills are the re-designed $100 bills slated for release into circulation in 2013 that feature gold “100″‘s on both sides of the bill and the liberty bell on the front.

The spokesman said that the bills went missing from a several million dollar shipment somewhere between landing at the Philadelphia airport and arrival at the Federal Reserve facility in New Jersey.

It is being reported that $20,000 was taken in the robbery and that airport, aircrew and courier personnel are being investigated in the crime.

Anyone offered $100 bills like the images to the right should immediately contact the FBI at (202) 324-3000 or their local field office which can be found here.

“Explosives the suspect allegedly sought to use in connection with the plot had been rendered inoperable by law enforcement and posed no threat to the public,” according to a Justice Department spokesman.

A Capitol Police spokesman claimed that at no point “was the public or congressional community in any danger.”

In the past few years within the DC area there have been undercover operations against suspects planning to carry out terrorist attacks. As it turns out these operations have been closely watched by FBI agents.

At this time, there are no details regarding the suspect or the charges being brought against him.

UPDATE

The suspect, Amine el-Khalifi an illegal immigrant living in Alexandria, VA, was arrested with a non-functional gun and explosive vest. Khalifi thought he was coordinating with the Al Qaeda network but it turned out to be undercover FBI agents. He had been under surveillance for the past year. This was reported by the Washington Post.

Officials said the arrests are just a small portion of the nation’s backlog of immigration violators: about 597,000 total fugitives. The numbers are so large that South Florida’s enforcement teams are set to increase from five to seven later on this month.  When DHS Secretary Janet napolitani says that our southern border is more secure than ever before in history based on the number of phony deportations,she is proven not only to be a mathematically-challenged propagandist but also proven to be a danger to this country. When JNP, (for Janet Napolitano the Propagandist) all you have to do to understand her manipulation is to watch the show  Border Wars on the Nat-Geo channel.

 In that show we see illegals caught trying to sneak into the country, actual convicted felons and drug smugglers, along with human traffickers that are caught near our border simply turned loose back to Mexico in a little known gimmick as "Voluntary Return." JNP then counts these voluntary returns as "deportations" to inflate the DHS statistics. When she claims that deportations are up by a whopping percentage, that is largely due to the fact that before her appointment as the  DHS  Dream-Act- Queen- by Barack Obama, they did NOT count people stopped at the border as being deported. A person caught while illegally entering the United States is not in fact "deported, but she knows this, yet uses it anyway to skew the deportation statistics. According to ICE/DHS statistics,  there are over 500,000 fugitive illegal aliens in America today who simply ignored the Immigration Judge’s deportation order and are running loose in America in violation of federal law. This is also a huge part of the DHS hidden Dream Act fraud being played upon America today. When honorable state ICE and other  law enforcement agencies arrest illegals they turn them over to the FEDS, who more times than not let them go simply if they promise to show up for an immigration hearing.  Which they promptly ignore, so then we have the added cost burdens of filing felony  fugitive warrants on them. Why in the hell not send them back to their host country immediately, as our original laws call for, instead of releasing them for years and then having to track them down?  This appears to be a simple case of ignorance and incompetence from within DHS, UNLESS someone wanted to overload the system in order to collapse it to effect the very same "transformative change,"  as it states in the Rules for Radicals Marxist operators manual written by Saul Alinsky, and stated much-favored reading material of Barack Obama while in college.

 There are currently estimated to be between 15 and 20 million illegal immigrants in America today. Considering that, contrary to the lies and propaganda spewed by the  irresponsible vote-beggars of Congress, these illegals are crushing State’s budgets, especially Medicaid funding.  Who do you think picks up the tab for the millions of illegal anchor babies born in this country  year, after year, after year, Santa Claus?  The Easter Rabbit? The Tooth Fairy? Lets get real here people . One simple example of Illegals costing taxpayers billions of dollars a year, thanks to the Congress critters who refuse to obey the law and deport them immediately upon discovery,  WIC, the program for AMERICAN  Women, Infants, and Children has now become MWIC, for Mexican Women Infants and Children,  and we see the proof every single time we go to the grocery store here in Florida!  There is basically only one requirement to get  WIC coupons from our taxpayer-funded WIC program: Applicants must live in the state in which they apply.  So much for the lies being told that illegals are just hard-working people who increase our revenues and are not a drain on our society there, isn’t it? 

Thank you again Mr. Rozos, and all the brave ICE agents of Florida for trying to enforce immigration laws in Florida and deport them as mandated in said laws. Eventually the DHS Dream Act puppets that are ignoring federal immigration laws and the Congressional refusal to enact The Dream Act, should and hopefully will be brought up on charges one day soon. Just like in the U. S. Military, when a government official orders a subordinate to break the law, said official can be brought up on criminal charges. What say you Congress?

              27-year veteran ICE Chief Anthony Mangione arrested on child porn charges in Broward County Florida.

In related Florida immigration news, we see that the Director of the Florida ICE office in Miami was arrested on child pronography charges last Tuesday according to local media reports. Fighting child pornography was one of the tasks that the Miami ICE office. Another case of the fox being put in charge of guarding the hen-house there. In something that appears to be some kind of cover-up, ICE Chief Anthony Mangione’s arrest was documented in Broward County public records, but specific charges were not listed immediately. The FBI has found child pornography on his home computer after it was confiscated back in April as part of a child porn investigation.Mangione has been with ICE for 27 years and was soon set to retire. Now it appears as if he will be "retiring" to prison for several years, if these charges are proven correct. Federal officials at the Justice Dept and U.S. Marshall’s offices are refusing to comment, pointing to this as still being an ongoing investigation with possible future arrests. If this man is proven guilty, it is good to see him taken off the streets of Florida and away from our children.

Operation Fast and Furious – established in 2009, and Project Gunrunner, established in 2005, were ATF programs aimed at stopping guns from getting into the hands of criminals in Mexico. As with many “projects” that this administration has been involved with have failed – so did this one. The goal was to track the flow of arms and determine how the market functioned, but yet again it has had an unsurprisingly disastrous effect.

This failed program allowed U.S. officials to permit “straw purchasers” to buy guns – hundreds of them at once, sometimes – and then to sell them to Mexican drug cartels while the ATF sat idly by, doing nothing to stop it. Oddly enough the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms (ATF) leads the way in another program that is called “Don’t Lie for the Other Guy.”

This program is aimed at stopping the very same act that the ATF themselves are involved in now – straw purchasing. The term straw purchase – is an illegal firearm purchase where the actual buyer of the gun, being unable to pass the required federal background check or desiring to not have his or her name associated with the transaction, uses a proxy buyer who can pass the required background check to purchase the firearm for him/her. It is highly illegal and punishable by a $250,000 fine and 10 years in prison.

The ATF program failed because they were unable to keep track of “all” the guns that they sold to the Mexican drug cartels. And now some of these guns have shown up in crimes, murders, etc., some of which Americans have been killed.

The Center for Public Integrity, reported that 1,765 guns were knowingly sold as part of “Fast and Furious.” Another 300 or so were sold before the operation started. Of these more than 2,000 guns, fewer than 800 have been recovered. Two of the guns recovered were found at the site of the death of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, in a region known as Peck Canyon, on the U.S. side of the border between Nogales, Mexico, and Tucson, Ariz.

Special Agent John Dodson of the ATF was among many field agents who advised superiors that the covert operation was unwise. Their concerns were not acted on, and the operation continued. After Terry’s murder, Dodson blew the whistle, first to the Justice Department, then to Republican Sen. Charles Grassley. Grassley has questioned Attorney General Eric Holder, and the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, chaired by Republican Darrell Issa, is now engaged in hearings on the case.

So far, Holder has denied any knowledge of the program, but Republicans are wise to look for a smoking gun – literally. They’ve called for numerous documents relating to the operation. A person would think that someone had to know about this project, and if it’s the highest levels of the Justice Department, then heads there should roll.

This ordeal reminds me of a movie in the late 90′s called “Black Dog” a movie about illegal gun shipments. In the movie an ATF agent Tobolowsky really gets on the nerves of the FBI agents he’s working with. After FBI’s Agent Ford has had enough he say’s to ATF agent Tobolowsky “ATF. What does that stand for, anyways? Alcohol, tobacco, and f****-ups?” It’s amazing how the creators of the movie Black Dog, 13 years earlier hit the nail on the head.

Without understanding how this plan looked good on anything but the back of a napkin, the ATF’s intentions have to be taken at face value. As does White House spokesman Jay Carney’s remarks as he says that Obama “did not know about or authorize the operation”.

Now who doesn’t remember when Enron CEO Kenneth Lay said those famous words and his lawyers laid out that well-known  defense.

But certainly I didn’t know he was doing anything that was criminal.

Ignorance of your subordinates’ actions does not make you innocent.

Darrell Issa (R-CA) has been leading an inquiry into project GunRunner and while Obama’s Justice department seems to be putting up obstacle after obstacle, ATF employees are acting much differently:

“Over the last few days, Justice has conveniently turned over 200 pages of documents prior to our public hearings,” Issa spokeswoman Becca Glover Watkins said in a statement to TPM. “To date, we’ve still received an exponentially higher number of documents from concerned agency insiders than from the Justice Department itself.”

The administration is using the same “I didn’t know” tactics that Kenneth Lay employed while also trying to stall justice.

Now, according to Fox News,  the Obama administration may be taking a new tact: Operation Scapegoat.

The Justice Department is expected to oust the head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, according to people familiar with the matter, amid a troubled federal antitrafficking operation that has grown into the agency’s biggest scandal in nearly two decades.

Moves toward the replacement of Kenneth Melson, acting ATF director since April 2009, could begin next week, although the precise sequence of events remains to be decided, these people said.

Our founding fathers knew the dangers of letting government officials and the groups that enforce our laws go unchecked. The Federal Bureau of Investigation has recently granted itself an expansion of power. Don’t get me wrong, I fully support our law enforcement officers and hold them in high regards. However, the problem I have is that they can just expand their powers at any given time of their choosing.

According to the new rules and guidelines in which the FBI operates, many of the expanded liberties they have given themselves do not require creating a paper trail or even opening an investigation. Agents can search law enforcement and commercial databases without any evidence of criminal or other wrongdoing. New relaxed guidelines for administering lie-detector tests do not require the opening of a “preliminary investigation” either. The new guidelines heavily relax multiple forms of surveillance.

One of the things that jumped out at me was the fact that investigations involving public officials require “oversight”. It appears to me that they made sure to make rules to use kid gloves on the politicians. For once I would like to see the same rules that apply to the common citizen apply to the politicians.

“For in reason, all government without the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery”.
-Jonathan Swift

The other group that requires “oversight” has been labeled scholars and press. Bloggers are not considered members of the press under these guidelines unless they are “prominent” bloggers, therefore giving them the same status as the regular media.  Bloggers that are less “prominent” will not receive the same treatments that are given to people considered media.

With the implementation of the new guidelines it is easy to see that the FBI wants to make sure they stay in the good graces of the politicians and mainstream media. The FBI presents the new guidelines as ways to better fight terrorism but the fact that they want to save the politicians and media seems strange. If these changes were about better protecting the citizens of the United States, why do the politicians and media get special treatment? Something just doesn’t quite add up right to me!

“Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.”
-Thomas Paine

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For those of you that own firearms, train hard and well and teach those that do not know how. Be good stewards of the right to bear arms, for we are the last line of defense against tyranny.

-Benjamin Wallace

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Sources:

Washington Post Article
Yahoo News

The new rules add to several measures taken over the past decade to give agents more latitude as they search for signs of criminal or terrorist activity.  

 The “more latitude” they refer to there, is generally what are termed illegal fishing expeditions into citizens personal lives without such things as warrants or any reasonable proof of criminal activity. This is what happens when uninformed citizens let the government pass seemingly harmless laws or regulations upon the citizenry and the accompanying “mission creep” that comes with it. Remember the Patriot Act, and its subsequent numerous extensions that have originally passed through congress on a steady basis since 2001 ?  The Patriot Act was started as a tool to fight terrorism. On May 26th 2011 Barack Obama signed a four year extension of key Patriot Act provisions.  Also in the Patriot Act is the clause that allows National Security Letters which allow the F.B.I. to search telephone, e-mail and financial records without a search warrant. Now the F.B.I. wants to  will expand that privacy invasion power to basically let them spy on anyone in America without a valid reason, search through their trash and search any database on the Internet that holds citizen’s personal records and communications without a warrant or reason!  And they are doing it all under the guise of “fine-tuning the F.B.I. manual. Further on in the Times article we see that they have sent us a General Council, Valerie Caproni to spin this into making it appear to be harmless changes:

“Every one of these has been carefully looked at and considered against the backdrop of why do the employees need to be able to do it, what are the possible risks and what are the controls,” she said, portraying the modifications to the rules as “more like fine-tuning than major changes.”

  Maybe Ms. Caproni will answer as to why former F.B.I. agent and current ACLU attorney, one Mr. Michael German replied that ” It was unwise to further ease restrictions on agents’ power to use potentially intrusive techniques, especially if they lacked a firm reason to suspect someone of wrongdoing.” That doesn’t sound like any “fine-tuning”  of the F.B.I. manual, but instead sounds like a huge privacy invading power grab! The F.B.I. is now using cloudy terms to try to hide this unconstitutional action also. Terms like assessment are being used as some sort of justification to spy on American citizens without any justification here.

Some of the most notable changes apply to the lowest category of investigations, called an “assessment.” The category, created in December 2008, allows agents to look into people and organizations “proactively” and without firm evidence for suspecting criminal or terrorist activity.
Under current rules, agents must open such an inquiry before they can search for information about a person in a commercial or law enforcement database. Under the new rules, agents will be allowed to search such databases without making a record about their decision. (emphasis mine) 

 Another added tidbit concerning this privacy invasion of American citizens concerns possible “informants” also known as paid government snitches. One could deduce that if the F.B.I. wants to make someone an informant, having some dirt on them would aid them in persuading said person to become an informant, so lets just change the F.B.I. manual to allow that privacy invasion without a shred of proof of wrong doing by the subject.   And Ms Caproni said not only could that information be used to pressure people to assist the government, but it could also be used to determine whether the subject, ( notice it is not suspect, as there is no crime involved that gives them the authority to do this in the first place) poses a threat to the agents.
Last but certainly not least, the F.B.I. will protect the privacy rights of certain people in this new manual. Just who would that be? How about sensitive investigative matter subjects ?  These are the F.B.I. types of privacy invasions that are being done to public officials. (IE: Corrupt Government officials and politicians) members of the news media, and of course  academic scholars! They need extra protection, which is also at the  discretion of the F.B.I. as to just who gets said protection. With the recent killing of the FCC’s fairness doctrine, we now see the F.B.I. is going to do it anyway, Congress be damned:

The manual clarifies the definition of who qualifies for extra protection as a legitimate member of the news media in the Internet era: prominent bloggers would count, but not people who have low-profile blogs. And it will limit academic protections only to scholars who work for institutions based in the United States.  

So now the F.B.I. will be in fact, censoring and monitoring the internet, and labeling anyone who speaks out against this type of unconstitutional tyranny as some sort of domestic terrorist or person of interest. With the writing of this article, you can bet yours truly qualifies under the new F.B.I. manual, as they now need no proof of wrong doing of any sorts to invade the privacy of  U.S. citizens. This new F.B.I. manual also just happens to come just in time to try to use it to harass anyone who expresses their political views. That’s right, and I am expressing my views right here and right now, and I do not like the F.B.I. granting themselves carte blanche to read American citizen’s email, snoop in their trash, listen to their phone conversations and basically invade their private lives just because they decided to change their damn manual! Note to F.B.I.; You are not elected members of our congress.You have no right to enact what amounts to unconstitutional laws against the very taxpaying citizens that pay your salaries! People had better wake up here and speak up! We are losing our freedoms and rights granted to us as American citizens at a very rapid rate today, all due to an out of control, too powerful government. This is also a great example of why it is wrong to allow our President the power to make appointments without Senate approval. See here. The very same “minor appointments” mentioned in that article are the type of government employees who in fact, wrote this new F.B.I. manual that in fact declares that the F.B.I. has a right to spy on American citizens without so much as a valid reason or proof of wrong-doing!