The Goat Pen

hedge wrote:"Then they came for the homosexuals and I didn't speak out because I didn't want anyone to know I was one."

FYP...

eCat wrote:that thing at school is going to end badly. Its at the point where she does shit in front of the students but not in front of the cameras. Its just a matter of time before you read about her in the paper.

Saint wrote:he was driving a Forester 92 mph? damn, those things look like they'd tip over if you drove them real fast. they're not as bad as the Cube but still oddly shaped.

back to that Mahoney story, did they ever try to find out why the bus gas tank was punctured? only 10 or 11 would have probably died if the bus garage had done its job. and that probably wouldn't have been bad enough to stir national outrage and I would have been able to drink legally in high school

Bklyn wrote:Darwinism

Anastasia Adair, a 22-year-old Colorado woman, died after she was accidentally shot with an assault rifle she had recently purchased, TV station KMGH reported on Thursday.

Adair's husband, Shane, and other witnesses told police she was drinking with friends in her garage Tuesday night and wanted to show off the weapon. It fired twice, hitting her once in the head as she brought it to the room and passed it to Shane.

Lt. Gary Toldness, of the Federal Heights, Colo., police department, told KMGH initial analysis appeared to be consistent with the reports of an accidental shooting, though the investigation was continuing. He also said Adair purchased the weapon at a gun show in March and described it as an AK-47-type rifle.

KMGH identified Adair as "a new gun enthusiast." A photo posted on her Facebook page in August (left) seemed to show her and Shane using handguns on a shooting range.

The inspector general gave Republicans some fodder Friday when he divulged that he informed the Treasury’s general counsel he was auditing the I.R.S.’s screening of politically active groups seeking tax exemptions on June 4, 2012. He told Deputy Treasury Secretary Neal Wolin “shortly after,” he said. That meant Obama administration officials were aware of the matter during the presidential campaign year.

After first denying that administration officials had engaged in fund-raising, the department confirmed Friday that Ms. Sebelius had made calls soliciting support from the health care industry, including insurance and pharmaceutical executives.

Jason Young, a spokesman for Ms. Sebelius, said she had suggested that health care executives and others support the work of Enroll America, a private nonprofit group that shares the president’s goal of securing coverage for people without insurance. Several people who received solicitations said that current and former administration officials had suggested seven-figure donations.

An insurance executive said that some insurers had been asked for $1 million donations, and that “bigger companies have been asked for a lot more.”

Administration officials said private donations were needed because Congress had provided much less money than Mr. Obama requested to publicize the new law and get people enrolled in health plans subsidized by the government.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/13/us/po ... e-law.html

May 13, 2013
Attorney General Eric Holder
Department of Justice
Washington, D.C.

Dear General Holder:

I am writing to object in the strongest possible terms to a massive and unprecedented
intrusion by the Department of Justice into the newsgathering activities of The Associated
Press.

Last Friday afternoon, AP General Counsel Laura Malone received a letter from the office
of United States Attorney Ronald C. Machen Jr. advising that, at some unidentified time
earlier this year, the Department obtained telephone toll records for more than 20 separate
telephone lines assigned to the AP and its journalists. The records that were secretly
obtained cover a full two-month period in early 2012 and, at least as described in Mr.
Machen’s letter, include all such records for, among other phone lines, an AP general
phone number in New York City as well as AP bureaus in New York City, Washington, D.C.,
Hartford, Connecticut, and at the House of Representatives. This action was taken without
advance notice to AP or to any of the affected journalists, and even after the fact no notice
has been sent to individual journalists whose home phones and cell phone records were
seized by the Department.

There can be no possible justification for such an overbroad collection of the telephone
communications of The Associated Press and its reporters. These records potentially reveal
communications with confidential sources across all of the newsgathering activities
undertaken by the AP during a two-month period, provide a road map to AP’s
newsgathering operations, and disclose information about AP’s activities and operations
that the government has no conceivable right to know.

That the Department undertook this unprecedented step without providing any notice to
the AP, and without taking any steps to narrow the scope of its subpoenas to matters
actually relevant to an ongoing investigation, is particularly troubling.

The sheer volume of records obtained, most of which can have no plausible connection to
any ongoing investigation, indicates, at a minimum, that this effort did not comply with 28
C.F.R. §50.10 and should therefore never have been undertaken in the first place. The
regulations require that, in all cases and without exception, a subpoena for a reporter’s
telephone toll records must be “as narrowly drawn as possible.’’ This plainly did not
happen.

We regard this action by the Department of Justice as a serious interference with AP’s constitutional rights to gather and report the news. While we evaluate our options we urgently request that you immediately return to the AP the telephone toll records that the Department subpoenaed and destroy all copies. At a minimum, we request that you take steps to segregate these records and prohibit any reference to them pending further discussion and, if it proves necessary, guidance from appropriate judicial authorities. We also ask for an immediate explanation as to why this extraordinary action was taken, and a description of the steps the Department will take to mitigate its impact on AP and its reporters.

Given the gravity of this situation, I look forward to your prompt response.

Sincerely,
Gary Pruitt

http://www.ap.org/Images/Letter-to-Eric ... -12896.pdf

“It put the American people at risk, and that is not hyperbole,” he said in an apparent reference to an article on May 7, 2012, that disclosed the foiling of a terrorist plot by Al Qaeda’s branch in Yemen to bomb an airliner. “And trying to determine who was responsible for that, I think, required very aggressive action.”

“We held that story until the government assured us that the national security concerns had passed,” he said. “Indeed, the White House was preparing to publicly announce that the bomb plot had been foiled.” Mr. Pruitt said the article was important in part because it refuted White House claims that there had been no Qaeda plots around the first anniversary of the killing of Osama bin Laden.