RUTHFULLY YOURS

President Obama scoffed at CNN host Anderson Cooper for questioning whether it was “fair” for him to brand pro-gun opponents as conspiracy theorists for fearing firearm registration or confiscation.

Obama was surrounded by people on both sides of the gun-control issue at a CNN townhall held at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va.

Mark Kelly, husband of former Rep. Gabby Giffords, asked the president “to explain, with 350 million guns in 65 million places, households from Key West to Alaska — 350 million objects in 65 million places — if the federal government wanted to confiscate those objects, how would they do that?”

Obama noted “this notion of a conspiracy out there, and it gets wrapped up in concerns about the federal government.”

“Now, there’s a long history of that. That’s in our DNA. The United States was born suspicious of some distant authority,” he said.

Cooper jumped in, “Is it fair to call it a conspiracy? I mean, there’s a lot of people who really believe this deeply — that they just don’t trust you.”

The New York Police Department must strengthen oversight of its surveillance practices as part of a settlement of two civil-rights lawsuits accusing the force of unfairly monitoring Muslims after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

Under the settlement, filed in federal court Thursday, the police department agreed to changes that include reinstating an independent attorney to monitor surveillance by the NYPD’s intelligence unit—a role that was eliminated after 9/11.

The NYPD also agreed to several other changes in the surveillance rules, known as the Handschu guidelines, a set of policies initially put in place more than 30 years ago to make sure First Amendment rights aren’t violated during criminal probes.

The new guidelines include setting time limits for active investigations and putting in writing an existing NYPD policy that it is illegal to profile anyone solely on the basis of race or religion. The agreement also requires the NYPD to remove a controversial report on radicalization that has been on its website since 2007.
The long-running controversy illustrates the tension between law-enforcement agencies that say they must take steps to remain vigilant in an age of global terrorism, and civil-rights and other groups that say civil liberties shouldn’t be violated in the name of security.

Both the police department and plaintiffs lauded the settlement for protecting the religious and political rights of people in the city without hampering the ability of authorities to conduct terrorism investigations.

“We hope the NYPD’s reforms help make clear that effective policing can and must be achieved without unconstitutional religious profiling of Muslims or any other communities,” said Hina Shamsi of the American Civil Liberties Union, one of the plaintiffs in the case.

Two refugees from Iraq were arrested Thursday on separate charges that they lied to U.S. authorities about their alleged affiliations and activities with terror suspects.

Aws Mohammed Younis Al-Jayab, 23, of Sacramento, Calif., was charged with making a false statement involving terrorism. He is due in court Friday, officials said.

“While he represented a potential safety threat, there is no indication that he planned any acts of terrorism in this country,’’ said Benjamin Wagner, the U.S. Attorney in Sacramento.

According to court filings, Mr. Al-Jayab is a Palestinian born in Iraq who came to the U.S. as an Iraqi refugee in 2012. Between October 2012 and November 2013, while living in Arizona and Wisconsin, he allegedly told others in online discussions that he planned to travel to Syria to fight for terror groups.

Then, in November 2013, he allegedly traveled to Syria and, according to his social media posts, said he was fighting in that country alongside terror organizations, including Ansar al-Islam. Authorities say he returned to the U.S. in early 2014 and has been living in Sacramento.

It’s not every day we can celebrate a less intrusive Internal Revenue Service. But charities and the people who support them will be happy to learn that the IRS has withdrawn its proposal to collect more donor information, including Social Security numbers.

In September the IRS and Treasury Department proposed to give charities the “option” of filing detailed reports on everyone who contributes more than $250 to a charity. The IRS was calling it “voluntary,” which in government means the agency hasn’t gotten around to requiring it yet. We reported on the legitimate fear that new reporting would be required of every nonprofit—including the conservative organizations that the IRS helped muzzle in the 2012 presidential election.

Amazingly enough, in this case the IRS appears to have listened to concerns from the taxpayers who pay their salaries. On Thursday the IRS said it is withdrawing its proposal after receiving “a substantial number of public comments.” Many of the comments “questioned the need for donee reporting, and many comments expressed significant concerns about donee organizations collecting and maintaining taxpayer identification numbers for purposes of the specific-use information return,” said the IRS. The legitimate anger of average citizens was amplified by stalwart IRS watchdogs like Rep. Jim Jordan (R., Ohio) on Capitol Hill.

I’ve written a number of novels in which I give the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) the benefit of the doubt. I cast the agency in the role of an ally for justice and as a defender of individual rights and the sanctity of property. FBI agents befriend my heroes, or my heroes befriend them.

Were I pen another novel today and involve the FBI in the plot, the agency would be cast in a villainous role, because it has become a tool and instrument of authoritarian political correctness and enforcement. It would have no more moral or Constitutional legitimacy than does the IRS, the EPA, the DEA, the FDA, or the HHS.

Nominally, as a federal enforcement agency that reports to the Department of Justice, the FBI exists to:

… protect and defend the United States, to uphold and enforce the criminal laws of the United States, and to provide leadership and criminal justice services to federal, state, municipal, and international agencies and partners

Currently, the FBI’s top priorities are:

Protect the United States from terrorist attacks
Protect the United States against foreign intelligence operations and espionage
Protect the United States against cyber-based attacks and high-technology crimes
Combat public corruption at all levels
Protect civil rights
Combat transnational/national criminal organizations and enterprises
Combat major white-collar crime
Combat significant violent crime
Support federal, state, local and international partners
Upgrade technology to successfully perform the FBI’s mission

By the time Obama gets through with “transforming” America, there won’t be anything exceptional about it.

“We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.” — Barack Obama, October 30, 2008 “We are going to have to change our conversation; we’re going to have to change our traditions, our history; we’re going to have to move into a different place as a nation.” — Michelle Obama, May 14, 2008

Quoting from a Canada Free Press column on Obama’s plans to spy on bloggers, I opened my October 2010 Rule of Reason column, “Obama’s Malice Aforethought” with:

The President Barack Obama’s feelings are hurt.

For most of his time in the White House, Obama has been critical of information about him and his administration posted on the Internet. He’s frequently denigrated bloggers and Internet conservative news & commentary web sites for their efforts to cover stories the so-called mainstream news media refuse to cover, according to critics of his plans to control the “Information Highway.”