Month: June 2014

British online grocer Ocado swung to a 1st half profit, putting the firm on track to make its 1st annual pretax profit this year – @Reuters

Breaking news – breakingnews.com
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British online grocer Ocado swung to a 1st half profit, putting the firm on track to make its 1st annual pretax profit this year – @Reuters

New Lows: Americans Fed Up With All Three Federal Branches

Personal Liberty

Americans are losing confidence in all three branches of the Federal government. Fewer than one in 10 citizens have faith in Congress, just 29 percent express confidence in the President and only 30 percent feel the Supreme Court is doing a good job.

The numbers, according to the Gallup polling agency, indicate historical lows in American confidence for both Congress and the Supreme Court, along with the lowest Presidential approval since Barack Obama took office.

“While Gallup recently reported a historically low rating of Congress, Americans have always had less confidence in Congress than in the other two branches of government,” the polling agency noted. “The Supreme Court and the presidency have alternated being the most trusted branch of government since 1991, the first year Gallup began asking regularly about all three branches.”

The dismal confidence numbers, despite what Obama supporters believe, in no way carry over from damage done during the George W. Bush Administration. By the end of Bush’s second term, confidence in the Federal government had fallen sharply. But the initial year of the Obama Presidency served as a rebound period.

Gallup reported in June 2009:

Public confidence in the presidency has risen by 25 points over the past year, exceeding the 11-point increase in confidence in the military. The percentage of Americans saying they have a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in the presidency has in fact doubled since June 2008, from 26% to 51%. This is directly correlated with President George W. Bush’s 30% approval rating at this time a year ago, and Barack Obama’s 58% rating in the mid-June survey. Historically, Gallup has found that confidence ratings for the presidency are closely linked with the job approval ratings of the sitting president.

In the years since, Americans have obviously been less approving of government under Obama’s control.

The Supreme Court’s historically low approval rating is likely tied to Americans lacking faith in Obama, as Gallup pointed out that “since 1991, the [Supreme Court and the Presidency] have been within six or seven points of each other in confidence ratings.”

Interestingly, the two highest instances of Americans approval of the Supreme Court since Gallup began tracking confidence in the judicial branch in 1973 occurred in 1985 and 1988 — both during the Administration of President Ronald Reagan. By 1988, Reagan had made four appointments to the court.

As for Congress, Gallup pointed out that “lawmakers are likely resigned to the fact that they are the most distrusted institution of government, but there should be concern that now fewer than one in 10 Americans have confidence in their legislative body.”

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from http://bit.ly/TyjRqy

Obama’s Supreme Lesson

Personal Liberty

By now, it should be patently obvious that President Barack Obama’s word is almost as ironclad as Wendy Davis’ resume. Heck, in taking his oath of office, the man swore on the Holy Bible — twice — to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” That might placate the dwindling mob of self-titled “progressives” who still grovel slavishly at the altar of Obama, but I’m less confident about how well that’s going to be received by the man upstairs.

At some point, justifying Obama’s Presidency — not to mention the series of crimes and misdemeanors that have defined it — became an exercise in futility. His acolytes simply do not care, beyond blaming each successive scandal on either former President George W. Bush, racism or some combination of the two. Yet last week, a brief glimmer of the “hope” Obama promised (without any intention of delivering) appeared in a particularly unlikely corner of the Nation. According to the U.S. Supreme Court, Obama is going to have to start paying closer attention to the little things — like the Constitution he generally treats with the respect most people reserve for toilet paper, Davis’ “campaign” and The New York Times.

In a landmark ruling, the Court determined that Obama’s appointment of three new members to the National Labor Relations Board violates the Constitution. And when I say “the Court determined,” I don’t mean “the qualified Justices eked out a 5-4 win over the Democratic appointees.” I mean “the Court ruled in a 9-0 decision that Obama violated pretty much every part of the Constitution that deals with the separation of powers.” The court, including Obama’s own appointees, ruled that the President lacks the authority to declare the Senate “in recess.” It’s pretty basic separation of powers stuff. Writing for the unified and unanimous Court, President Bill Clinton appointee Justice Stephen Breyer noted: “The Senate is in session when it says it is.” (Emphasis added.)

Given that the complaints from the regressives center on logic like “But, Bush,” it’s clear that the Democratic Party’s objection is merely another example of their conflation of partisanship and principle. (See also: Obama’s illegal alterations to Obamacare post-passage, deployment of Internal Revenue Service against political opponents, etc.)

But the part that really ought to worry us is the fact that a purported Ivy League graduate, Harvard Law Review editor and former University of Chicago Law professor who claimed in 2007, “I was a Constitutional law professor, which means unlike the current President I actually respect the Constitution,” needed the Supreme Court to remind him of something a first-year law student would have to know in order to become a second-year law student, much less the President of the United States.

–Ben Crystal

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Senators Decry Obama Administration’s Phony Surveillance Transparency Report

Personal Liberty

A surveillance report released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) last week came under heavy fire Monday from two Senators who said the disclosures lack the transparency promised by President Barack Obama last year after Americans learned of the government’s questionable surveillance tactics.

The report revealed that tens of thousands of people were targeted last year by U.S. surveillance orders. The government acknowledged spying on the communications of up to 90,000 foreign targets, including individuals and organizations.

The report also detailed the FBI issuance of an additional 19,000 national security letters containing about 39,000 warrantless requests for communications information in 2013.

Senators Al Franken (D-Minn.) and Dean Heller (R-Nev.) say, however, that what the ODNI left out of the report is more important than what was included.

“The administration’s report is a far cry from the kind of transparency that the American people demand and deserve,” Franken declared in a statement Monday.

The legislative duo has noted that the National Security Agency used 423 “selectors” to sift through telecommunications databases; 248 of those selectors pertained to targets in the U.S.

The National Security Agency scours the telecommunications databases under the authority of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, but the ODNI report failed to include any information about how the Nation’s intelligence agencies interpret that authority with regard to U.S. citizens.

“I recognize that this report is being offered in good faith. But it still leaves Americans in the dark,” Franken said.

“It doesn’t tell the American people enough about what information is being gathered about them and how it’s being used.”

The report also provided little information about the relationship between American intelligence agencies and private telecommunications firms, many of which are legally bound to remain mum about the information they provide the government.

“The American people deserve greater transparency and American companies should be able to disclose more information when it comes to privacy rights and the federal government’s surveillance activities,” Heller said.

The two lawmakers have introduced the “Surveillance Transparency Act” last year in an effort to force disclosure of the very sort of information left out of the ODNI report ordered by Obama. Some provisions of that bill were also incorporated in and later dropped from the USA Freedom Act, which has been largely watered-down throughout the legislative process.

The post Senators Decry Obama Administration’s Phony Surveillance Transparency Report appeared first on Personal Liberty.

from http://bit.ly/1r9TvK0