From the Trenches World Report

Politico – by ANNA PALMER and JAKE SHERMAN

Dozens of lawmakers and aides are so afraid that their health insurance premiums will skyrocket next year thanks to Obamacare that they are thinking about retiring early or just quitting.

The fear: Government-subsidized premiums will disappear at the end of the year under a provision in the health care law that nudges aides and lawmakers onto the government health care exchanges, which could make their benefits exorbitantly expensive.   Continue reading “Obamacare? We were just leaving …”

Electronic Frontier Foundation – by Dave Maas

Northeast Intelligence Network – by Doug Hagmann

The question hit me like a lightning bolt as I looked in the mirror upon awaking this morning. Am I a traitor to my country, to my fellow citizens of the United States of America? Have I abandoned all sound reason and logic and lost my moral compass? Have I somehow sold out my ideals and thereby my family, friends and fellow reporters?  Apparently someone in this administration must believe I am a traitor and lost my way, for I am the target of active telephone monitoring by the National Security Agency (NSA), a branch of the Department of Defense and an agency tasked with monitoring foreign intelligence and communications.   Continue reading “Am I a traitor?”

RT News

A chemical plant has exploded in Donaldsonville, Louisiana, less than two days after a deadly blast in the nearby town of Geismar. At least one person was killed Friday evening, and some eight injured.

Sheriff Jeff Wiley told The Baton Rougue Advocate that an 18-wheeler truck was being loaded with product at CF industries when it exploded. CF Industries is the largest producer of nitrogen in North America, shipping out 5 million tons of the combustible chemical for agricultural and industrial use annually.    Continue reading “Louisiana rocked by week’s second chemical plant blast”

Daily Mail – by Daniel Miller

The UN is about to go to war for the first time in its history after the Security Council voted unanimously to intervene to fight rebels in the Congo.

Around 3,000 UN troops wearing the blue insignia, are being deployed to the central African nation which has been wracked by years of civil war and lawlessness.   Continue reading “The UN Prepares To Go To War For The First Time, with a 3,000-strong task force sent to fight rebels in the Congo”

The Blaze – by Becket Adams

An Internal Revenue Service official at the center of the agency’s political targeting scandal has reportedly been fired and has since “dropped off the edge of the world,” according to a new report from National Review Online.

Holly Paz, the director of the agency’s Rulings and Agreements office, was fired last Friday, according to the NRO report, and her agency-issued computer, phone, and Blackberry have shown no activity since.

“As of Thursday, the voice mail on Paz’s work phone remains active and callers are asked to leave a message for Paz, though nobody answered repeated calls placed to that number,” the report notes.   Continue reading “First Head To Roll? New Report Claims Top IRS Official Fired, Has ‘Dropped Off The Edge Of The World’”

Warrior Talk News – by John Chambers

In the course of my military career, I was “blessed” with the opportunity to train with, and serve with, many of our international allies.  Since I was part of a Long Range Surveillance Detachment, the units we trained and worked with tended to be very interesting, and very well equipped with a variety of weapons.  Whether they were German Paras, British Ghurkas, or Japanese Intelligence troops, these soldiers were highly trained and I took every opportunity to become familiar with their weapons, and to learn from their experiences with those weapons.    Continue reading “Advantages of the G3 and the HK System”

AlterNet – by Katherine Paul, Ronnie Cummins

If you think the U.S. government is doing a sub-par job of keeping your food safe, brace yourself. You could soon be eating imported seafood, beef or chicken products that don’t meet even basic U.S. food safety standards. Under two new trade agreements, currently in negotiation, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) could be powerless to shut down imports of unsafe food or food ingredients. And if it tries, multinational corporations will be able to sue the U.S. government for the loss of anticipated future profits.   Continue reading “Secret Trade Agreements Threaten to Undo Our Last Shreds of Food Safety”

Reason – by Mike Riggs

In November 2011, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg told an audience at MIT, “I don’t listen to Washington very much, which is something they’re not thrilled about.” He didn’t listen because he didn’t have to. “I have my own army in the NYPD, which is the seventh biggest army in the world,” Bloomberg bragged.

That boast–crude and alarming as it was–sort of just hung in the air, slowly losing its stench. Yesterday, Bloomberg revived it, this time while announcing that he didn’t want the Justice Department overseeing the NYPD in the event a federal judge deems stop-and-frisk unconstitutional.   Continue reading “Constitutionally Illiterate Michael Bloomberg Doesn’t Want the DOJ Monitoring His Stop-and-Frisk “Military””

Examiner – by David Codrea

Marking “the sixth month anniversary of the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary,” Michael Bloomberg’s Mayors Against Illegal Guns launches a 25-state 100-day “No More Names: The National Drive to Reduce Gun Violence” bus tour today from Newtown, Conn., with the stated purpose of ginning up support for new federal “gun control” laws.

“All day, family members, faith leaders, elected officials and the Newtown community are coming together to read the names of those murdered by guns and call on Congress to act,” MAIG states on the project’s website.   Continue reading “Bloomberg bus tour coy with locations and dates for a reason”

Washington Times – by Dave Boyer

The White House Friday defended the first family’s upcoming weeklong trip to Africa, which could cost taxpayers up to $100 million, as “great bang for our buck.”

“There will be a great bang for our buck for being in Africa because when you travel to regions like Africa that don’t get a lot of presidential attention, you tend to have very longstanding and long-running impact from the visit,” said Ben Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser to President Obama.   Continue reading “White House defends high bills for Africa trip”

SOTT Net – by Naomi Wolf, NaomiWolf.org

I hate to do this but I feel obligated to share, as the story unfolds, my creeping concern that the NSA leaker is not who he purports to be, and that the motivations involved in the story may be more complex than they appear to be. This is in no way to detract from the great courage of Glenn Greenwald in reporting the story, and the gutsiness of the Guardian in showcasing this kind of reporting, which is a service to America that US media is not performing at all. It is just to raise some cautions as the story unfolds, and to raise some questions about how it is unfolding, based on my experience with high-level political messaging.    Continue reading “My creeping concern that the NSA leaker is not who he purports to be…”

LivingLies – by Neil Garfield

CHASE-WAMU MERGER CONSIDERED IN MICHIGAN COURT OF APPEALS AS NOT AN ASSIGNMENT.  BOA FORECLOSURE DISMISSED AND REMANDED FOR LACK OF STANDING.

And next is an interesting favorable decision in the State of Michigan entered June 6, 2013 but not yet published. Sobh-v-Bof-A, Chase et al   Continue reading “Michigan Appellate Court Dismisses BOA Foreclosure for Lack of Standing — but for the wrong reason?”

Lest we forget.

Daily Mail – by DAMIEN GAYLE and MAIL FOREIGN SERVICE 

Published May 6, 2013

A senior United Nations official has claimed that Syrian rebels may have used chemical weapons against government forces.

Carla Del Ponte said evidence from casualties and medical staff indicated that rebel forces in the civil war had used the deadly nerve agent sarin.   Continue reading “UN accuses Syrian rebels of carrying out sarin gas attacks which had been blamed on Assad’s troops”

A Public Defender

If you see something, say something. Edward Snowden did and now apparently the country’s atwitter about whether Big Brother is so in the Orwellian sense or in the run of the mill older brother who knows better and looks out for you so the other kids don’t pick on you sense.

Many of you – a full 37% according to one survey – are quite okay with Uncle Sam having a complete record of your lives. Some of you even go beyond that; so far as to say that you’d be okay with giving your Government your DNA.   Continue reading “J’Accuse, or: why you really shouldn’t trust the government”

The Guardian – by Glenn Greenwald

I haven’t been able to write this week here because I’ve been participating in the debate over the fallout from last week’s NSA stories, and because we are very busy working on and writing the next series of stories that will begin appearing very shortly. I did, though, want to note a few points, and particularly highlight what Democratic Rep. Loretta Sanchez said after Congress on Wednesday was given a classified briefing by NSA officials on the agency’s previously secret surveillance activities:   Continue reading “On PRISM, partisanship and propaganda”

The New American – by Bob Adelmann