http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31373407/ns/politics-white_house/

The Obama administration is fighting to block access to names of visitors to the White House, taking up the Bush administration argument that a president doesn’t have to reveal who comes calling to influence policy decisions.

Despite President Barack Obama’s pledge to introduce a new era of transparency to Washington, and despite two rulings by a federal judge that the records are public, the Secret Service has denied msnbc.com’s request for the names of all White House visitors from Jan. 20 to the present. It also denied a narrower request by the nonpartisan watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which sought logs of visits by executives of coal companies.

CREW says it will file a lawsuit Tuesday against the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the Secret Service.

What he meant was that he’d be totally transparent about what he’s hiding from everyone. See… now everything makes sense.

http://sentinelsource.com/…

Iused to say that a libertarian is just a Republican who wants to smoke pot and watch porn. That was before I attended a Bob Dylan concert in Laconia some years ago. Shortly after the concert began, a young woman two rows in front of me stood up. She continued to stand throughout the concert. Never mind that everyone around her was seated.

I asked the man sitting in front of me to ask the woman to kindly sit because she was blocking people’s views. She continued to stand. I asked an usher to ask her to sit. He spoke to her and walked away, the offending woman still standing. I called the usher over and he told me the woman said she will stand if she wants to because it is her right; there was nothing the usher could do about it.

Apparently this phenomenon is fairly common, because around that time it was lampooned on “Saturday Night Live.” At that concert, she was one of perhaps 10 scattered audience members standing. When I regularly attended concerts in the 1960s and ’70s the audience would either collectively stand or sit. That’s when I realized my original assessment of libertarians was wrong, since even the staunchest Republican I know would have the courtesy to sit down.

Libertarians say they espouse the rights of the individual, which always seemed to me to be just a political way of saying me first, second and third and the hell with everyone else.
Read More…

http://www.infowars.com/…

It took corporate media swine flu hysteria to ram through a martial law bill in Massachusetts. S18 gives the Governor the power to authorize the deployment and use of force to distribute supplies and materials and local authorities will be allowed to enter private residences for investigation and to quarantine individuals.
us news Swine Flu Martial Law Bill Clears Massachusetts Senate

The Associated Press reports:

The Massachusetts Senate has unanimously passed a pandemic flu preparation bill that has languished in the Legislature before the recent swine flu outbreak.The 36-0 vote today sends the measure to the House. Both branches have taken it up in past years, but have not been able to agree on the details.

The new Senate version would allow the public health commissioner — in a public health emergency — to close or evacuate buildings, enter private property for investigations, and quarantine individuals.

The bill specifically mandates the following:

(1) to require the owner or occupier of premises to permit entry into and investigation of the premises;
(2) to close, direct, and compel the evacuation of, or to decontaminate or cause to be decontaminated any building or facility, and to allow the reopening of the building or facility when the danger has ended;
(3) to decontaminate or cause to be decontaminated, or to destroy any material;
(4) to restrict or prohibit assemblages of persons;
(5) to require a health care facility to provide services or the use of its facility, or to transfer the management and supervision of the health care facility to the department or to a local public health authority;
(6) to control ingress to and egress from any stricken or threatened public area, and the movement of persons and materials within the area;
(7) to adopt and enforce measures to provide for the safe disposal of infectious waste and human remains, provided that religious, cultural, family, and individual beliefs of the deceased person shall be followed to the extent possible when disposing of human remains, whenever that may be done without endangering the public health;
(8) to procure, take immediate possession from any source, store, or distribute any anti-toxins, serums, vaccines, immunizing agents, antibiotics, and other pharmaceutical agents or medical supplies located within the commonwealth as may be necessary to respond to the emergency;
(9) to require in-state health care providers to assist in the performance of vaccination, treatment, examination, or testing of any individual as a condition of licensure, authorization, or the ability to continue to function as a health care provider in the commonwealth

Any person who knowingly violates an order of the commissioner or his or her designee, or of a local public health authority or its designee, given to effectuate the purposes of this subsection shall be punished by imprisonment for not more than 6 months, or by a fine of note more than one thousand dollars, or both.

Unsurprising the states are looking to take advantage of the self induced panic by increasing their power.

http://www.cbsnews.com/…

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has sent a memo to some health care providers noting procedures to be followed if the swine flu outbreak eventually makes quarantines necessary.

DHS Assistant Secretary Bridger McGaw circulated the swine flu memo, which was obtained by CBSNews.com, on Monday night. It says: “The Department of Justice has established legal federal authorities pertaining to the implementation of a quarantine and enforcement. Under approval from HHS, the Surgeon General has the authority to issue quarantines.”

McGaw appears to have been referring to the section of federal law that allows the Surgeon General to detain and quarantine Americans “reasonably believed to be infected” with a communicable disease. A Centers for Disease Control official said on Tuesday that swine flu deaths in the U.S. are likely.

Federal quarantine authority is limited to diseases listed in presidential executive orders; President Bush added “novel” forms of influenza with the potential to create pandemics in Executive Order 13375. Anyone violating a quarantine order can be punished by a $250,000 fine and a one-year prison term.

http://www.cnn.com/…

The Obama administration will ask Congress for another $83.4 billion to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan through the end of September, Democratic congressional sources said Thursday.

The request is expected to pay for those conflicts for the rest of the 2009 budget year, two Democratic congressional sources said.

The money would bring the running tab for both conflicts to about $947 billion, according to figures from the Congressional Research Service.

More than three-quarters of the $864 billion appropriated so far has gone to the war in Iraq, where most of the U.S. troops involved in those conflicts have been deployed, the agency estimated.

Since taking office in January, President Obama has announced plans to shift troops out of Iraq and beef up U.S. forces in Afghanistan, where American troops have been battling al Qaeda and Taliban fighters since al Qaeda’s 2001 attacks.

The additional money is needed “to fund the new strategy in Afghanistan and fund the process in Iraq that will lead to a drawdown of all of our combat troops,” White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said.

About $75 billion of the requested funds would pay for military operations, with the rest going to diplomatic programs and development aid.

The measure is likely to be the last supplemental request submitted to Congress to pay for the wars.

Likely the last supplemental request? Is it the last just like the DEA raids in California were to stop?

http://www.npr.org/…

Forget University of North Carolina and Michigan State.

The real drama, excitement, emotion and tension came in our first annual March Madness pool — to determine (yeah right) the 2012 Republican presidential nominee.

And today, just hours after the NCAA tourney, we announce OUR winner, as voted by you. And it’s Rep. Ron Paul of Texas.

Paul defeated Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina in the finals by 13 points, 56-43 percent, with 963,719 total votes cast.

The names of 32 prospective (and yes, some unlikely) candidates were in the brackets when we began this madness on March 19.

Millions (literally!) of votes were cast. Hundreds of comments were sent in. Some of them, I should add, were not that civil.

Part of it is because of my picks. My brackets showed not necessarily whom I would have voted for — that is of nobody’s concern — but how I saw it playing out if GOP voters around the country actually had these choices in the primaries and caucuses. My Final Four were Romney, Sanford, Ryan and Huckabee. I had Romney beating Sanford and Huckabee toppling Ryan, and for the championship (oops, the nomination) I had Romney over Huckabee.

You wouldn’t believe the kind of emails I got for that. Or maybe you would.

But that’s not the point. This was about how YOU voted. And, judging from the response and the emotions it caused, it was a success. People paid attention to it.

Congratulations to Congressman Paul. And whatever this means, or doesn’t, regarding 2012, it does prove one thing — that his supporters are committed and passionate.

Indeed they are. I’d love to see Paul run again in 2012. It’s a long way off though and a younger Paul may come out of the woodwork which could carry Dr. Paul’s torch in a more aggressive and politically articulate fashion.