Obama Threatens To Veto Bill That Would Require Administration To Enforce Laws Neil Munro March 13, 2014
President Barack Obama would veto a GOP-drafted bill that would allow legislators to take agency officials to court if they don’t enforce laws, according to a White House statement. The GOP is pushing the bill through the House because Obama has repeatedly declined to enforce laws he doesn’t like, say GOP legislators. “President Obama has refused to enforce those parts of our nation’s immigration laws that are not to his political liking, has waived portions of our welfare laws, has stretched our environmental laws to accommodate his policy objectives, and has waived testing accountability provisions required under the ‘No Child Left Behind’ education law,” according to Rep. Bob Goodlatte, the chairman of the House judiciary committee. For example, in June 2012, Obama created a temporary mini-amnesty for at least 500,000 younger illegal immigrants. The act boosted his election-day support among Hispanics, but made it more difficult for young Americans to find jobs. “Political appointees at the Justice Department have announced that rather than work with Congress to amend the federal criminal code, they will simply stop prosecuting low-level drug offenders under mandatory minimum sentencing laws,” said Goodlatte in a Fox News op-ed. “And now that his signature health care law has not been working and revealed his empty promises, President Obama has changed that law unilaterally over 20 times,” Goodlatte added. The House bill is titled “the Faithful Execution of the Law Act.” The House is expected to pass the bill Wednesday, along with a companion bill, titled “ENFORCE the Law Act.”
The bills are expected to be blocked by the Democrat-controlled Senate. But the veto threat will help minimize the number of Democrats who will support the GOP bills. Without many Democratic votes, the White House and its allies will try to dismiss the bills as partisan. White House officials said they oppose the measure because it creates a paperwork burden for them. “Federal agencies are continually engaged in the process of determining how to concentrate limited enforcement resources most effectively,” said the White House statement. “The vastly expanded reporting scheme required by the bill would be unduly burdensome and would place the Attorney General in the unprecedented position of having to be kept informed of and report on enforcement decisions made by every other Federal agency,” the statement said. “If the President were presented with H.R. 3973, his senior advisers would recommend that he veto the bill.”
FOIA Doc: Homeland Security Monitors Drudge Report Paul Joseph Watson Infowars.com March 13, 2014 Details of DHS’ Media Monitoring Capability program revealed A newly obtained document released under the Freedom of Information Act confirms that the Department of Homeland Security keeps tabs on the Drudge Report as part of its media monitoring program. According to the document, the function of the DHS’ Media
Monitoring Capability (MMC) desk is to track news websites and social media in order to gather critical information, “during normal operations, crises and extraordinary events.” “It is essential to monitor the media’s storylines and integrate their focus into the Department’s situational awareness and operations analytical process,” states the document, adding that such work is necessary in shaping “public statements” made by the DHS. The program also serves to monitor stories about Homeland Security itself, although analysts are directed not to focus on public reaction to DHS policies like long TSA wait lines. “Your tweets and Facebook posts and other social media discussions are being monitored by the Department of Homeland Security,” writes investigative journalist Jason Leopold, who obtained the document. According to the document, the program treats mainstream news sources such as BBC, AP, Reuters and U.S. television networks as “first tier” platforms that do not require additional corroboration. Included on a list of “other sources,” ones that need to be verified by a first tier source before being circulated to DHS fusion centers, is Drudge Report.com, along with NationalTerrorAlert.com, DisasterNews.net, Opensourceintelligence.org, Homelandsecurityleader.com and HomelandSecurityToday.com.
The inclusion of the Drudge Report is interesting due to the site’s well known policy of carrying links to articles that are heavily critical of the federal agency, particularly the TSA, on a regular basis. In 2012, the TSA admitted that at least 9 pages of its internal documents contained references to to the Drudge Report as well as other terms such as “Matt Drudge”, “Alex Jones”, “PrisonPlanet.com”, “John Tyner”, “national opt-out day”, “Opt-Out Alliance” and “domestic extremists.” Former Congressman Bob Barr’s Liberty Guard organization filed a lawsuit against the TSA after the federal agency refused to comply with a Freedom of Information Act request that sought to discover whether or not the TSA temporarily amended its security policies for political reasons during the height of the national opt out day protest in late 2010, a campaign that was afforded significant attention by the Drudge Report. In July last year, the Pentagon announced that it could no longer “hide our bad news stories” precisely because of websites like the Drudge Report. “When bad things happen, the American people should hear it from us, not as a scoop on the Drudge Report,” said George Little, the Secretary of Defense for Public Affair.
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