Former Ohio Democrat Congressman Dennis Kucinich defended President Donald Trump’s claims about being wiretapped by the Obama administration during the 2016 presidential election.
“It’s important because there are people who are saying about President Trump’s claim, ‘Oh, it could never happen.’ Well, frankly, it happened to me,” Kucinich told Fox News on Friday. Also on Friday, the former congressman penned an article on Fox News describing the incident — a phone call in his congressional office from a foreign leader had been tapped in 2011, and he listened to a recording of it in 2015.
“Members of Congress ought to be aware that my experience was that my phone wasn’t safe in a congressional office,” Kucinich, who served in the House of Representatives from 1997 to 2013, said. “Now, if they can do that to a member of Congress, they can certainly do it to a presidential candidate, and they can do it to private citizens as well.”
The former congressman learned that he had been wiretapped two years after leaving office, when he was approached by The Washington Times. “The newspaper’s investigative reporters called me, saying they had obtained a tape of a sensitive telephone conversation that they wanted me to verify,” Kucinich wrote. “When I met them at a Chinese restaurant in Washington, they played back audio of a call I had taken in my D.C. congressional office four years earlier.”Kucinich recalled that the call had been from Saif el-Islam Qaddafi, a high-ranking official in Libya’s government and a son of the country’s ruler, Moammar Qaddafi. “At the time I was leading efforts in the House to challenge the Obama administration’s war against Libya,” the former congressman recalled. “The Qaddafi government reached out to me because its appeals to the White House and the State Department to forestall the escalating aggression had gone unanswered.”
——————————————————-
Firenze Sage: Â Well so much for the most transparent govt in history.
Need to call 911?  Landline calls pop up instantly to operators with the caller’s name and address.  Cellphone calls only  include a rudimentary location and rarely a name.
On Oct. 25 and 26, 911 centers in a dozen or so U.S. states from California to Texas were overwhelmed by what investigators now believe was the largest ever cyber attack of the country’s emergency response system.
The U.S. emergency system, not a single system, consists of roughly 6,500 separate answering systems run by local authorities with a hodgepodge of technology.
Onky 420 of the 6,500 centers had implemented a cyber security system as of 2015. Â In 38 states no money was spent in 2015 for cybersecurity for 911 centers.
Much of the 911 system relies on copper telephone lines a helpful defense against cyber attacks which usually need an internet connectivity. Â Smart phones pose a new type of risk as each is essentially a web-enabled computer that can be compromised by malicious software.
An 18 year old youth, Meetkumar Desal, successfully hacked into a loophole in the  the Apple  iPhone operating system iOS.  He currently is charged with four felony charges of computer tampering.
Apple says that a forthcoming system update of the iPhone will plug the loophole that made the attack possible.
_____________
Monterey Bay Forum: Â Why not ‘sentence’ that 18 year old iPhone hacker to community service time that will strengthen cyber security. Â Use his skills!
Freedom to travel: Safe travel increases for Americans?   Trump hires 5,000 more Border Patrol and 10,000 more federal enforcement (ICE) and can deputize local law enforcement to enforce immigration laws.  Americans warned about travel around Mexico.   Mexico becomes less safe by the day with gun battles in the streets and warnings where and updates where not to travel.    written by C. Jackson
Remember Kate Steinley shot in the back and  killed  in the sanctuary city of San Francisco by  five time deported illegal felon Lopez, a Mexican natonal  with multiple  convictions?
The man who murdered  Kate Steinley  was released from  jail  by the San Francisco Sheriff’s Department and not turned over to federal authorities.
A recent Harvard-Harris Poll shows  that 80 percent  of voters say  that local authorities should comply with the law by reporting to federal agents the illegal immigrants they come in contact with.
Cities that arrest illegal immigrants for crimes should be required to turn them over to federal authorities
Sanctuary cities receive $2.27 BILLION in federal programs.
A safety issue:  Trump re-framed the issue from a partisan battle to a duty owed to the American people: “When it comes to public safety, there is no place for politics; no Republicans, no Democrats, just citizens, and good citizens,†he said. “We want safe communities. We demand safe communities for everyone.â€Â Voters will want to know why their mayor sides with the illegal alien killer over a victimized American family.
About 300 sanctuary city jurisdictions operate in the U.S. where state or local officials refuse to cooperate with federal law enforcement officers and make it difficult for them to apprehend illegal aliens caught committing a crime.
Santa Cruz CA is a sanctuary city. Law enforcement officials in Santa Cruz claim that the community is safer by not reporting illegal immigrants to federal authorities. Recently 13 members of  M-13 gang were arrested in Santa Cruz by federal  authorities in cooperation with local authorities.
The Trump plan includes an expansion of the “287(g) program†— named for the section of federal immigration law that enables DHS to deputize state and local law-enforcement officers to enforce the laws as if they were federal immigration agents.
Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/445107/trump-immigration-enforcement-guidance-deportation-warranted-any-unlawful-behavior
_______________________
Monterey Bay Forum: Â Jobs! Â
 New jobs:  Trump’s plan calls for adding resources:  10,000  to federal enforcement (ICE)  and 5,000 Border Patrol persons.
The many freedoms Americans enjoy  are dependent upon laws which are enforced.  Let’s take good care of legal, honest immigrants and let’s crack down on felons such as the man who murdered Kate Steinley.  What say you?
Plot a murder? Â Crime? Â Oh, dear — Â it’s complicated. Â All this murder stuff is far too complicated for dear old dad.
Who did it in … with the …in the …
A  recent murder plot devised by a father was exposed.  The person  accidentally texted his former employer instead of his hit man, court documents suggest.
Jeff Lytle, of Monroe, Washington, reportedly intended to text a man named Shayne.
Prosecutors say he’d hired the man to kill his wife and four-year-old daughter for their $1.5 million life insurance payout.
His wife has been identified on social media as Rhoda Mee Funtanilla Lydle.
Instead, the text message about the sinister plan was sent to his ex-boss, who brought the message to the police, leading to Lytle’s arrest on Wednesday.
The text allegedly said: ‘Hey Shayne hows it going. You remember you said that you would help me kill my wife. I’m going to take you up on that offer,’Â KIROÂ
———————————————–
Firenze Sage: Â If you plot a murder, Â please be as stupid as this moron.
Illegal immigration:  The travel plans of over 700 were disrupted  this last week by ICE.
In LA, bad dudes — largely felons —  from 12 countries  were arrested by federal government on immigration violations.
These are bad men, largely felons:  Of the 160 arrested in Los Angeles, CA about 150 had criminal histories, while five more had either been previously deported or had “final orders of removalâ€. Many of those arrested had prior felony convictions for “serious or violent offenses†including child sex crimes and assault.
The arrestees in the LA area  – which were 95 percent male – included nationals from a dozen countries, according to ICE.
We don’t enforce immigration laws says Santa Cruz County sheriff Sgt. Clark because “that enhances a victim’s willingness to report crime and for us to keep our community safe.”
The TRUTH act effective Jan. 1, 2017 requires that local law enforcement get written voluntary release from detainees before the federal government (ICE) can interview them while they are in custody in jail.
So how many of the 8,700 booked during 2016 have no legal documentation? Â Law enforcement does not keep track.
What say?  Is it time that local  government keeps track of the legal and / or illegal status of those booked into jail?
Federal Laws trump state & local laws on immigration. Â Will sanctuary cities comply?
Immigration and terrorism were top issues in the USA elections. Â Identifying and deporting illegal felons from the USA is a federal government prerogative.
So — if sanctuary cities don’t want to comply with federal laws — yes it’s time to cut off funding. Â Simple. Â The federal government is not telling the sanctuary cities to do anything specific except comply with existing federal laws regarding immigration. Sensible? What do you think? Â This is from the WSJ Monday, Jan. 30, 2017:
 “A thicket of U.S. Supreme Court rulings could limit the reach of the executive order issued by President Donald Trump last week meant to prod “sanctuary cities†into helping the federal government enforce immigration law.
Some local and state officials, including in New York, have promised to fight the order, which says cities that fail to turn over information about illegal immigrants “are not eligible to receive federal grants.â€
Legal experts said the Supreme Court has given them many tools for resistance.
The court has ruled that the U.S. Constitution bars the federal government from commandeering state officials or using federal funds to “coerce†states into doing the bidding of Washington.
As recently as 2012, the court held that the federal government couldn’t expel states from Medicaid if they refused to expand eligibility for the federal-state health program, curtailing a key provision of the Affordable Care Act.
“If the denial of Medicaid funding alone was coercive, the denial of all federal funding of any kind for refusing to cooperate in enforcement of immigration law must be coercive,†said Dale Carpenter, a constitutional law professor at Southern Methodist University.
The federal government can withhold a grant from a city or state, but it must do so for reasons related to that grant’s purpose, legal experts said. For example, the Trump administration likely couldn’t deny grants for highways to a city for defying Mr. Trump’s executive order on immigration, because the two are unconnected, said Michael McConnell, a former federal appeals judge who now teaches at Stanford Law School.
Related Video
0:00 / 0:00
An executive order to strip federal grant money from sanctuary cities has put the Trump administration on a collision course with Mayor Bill de Blasio and other city mayors. Photo: Reuters
The rules have some flexibility, legal experts said. The U.S. Supreme Court said in a 1987 case that the federal government could withhold highway funding from states that refused to raise their minimum drinking age to 21 years, reasoning that the funding and the condition both promoted highway safety.
Jonathan Adler, a professor at Case Western Reserve University School of Law, said the Constitution permits the U.S. government to ensure that “federal money is not undermining the purposes for which that money is allocated in the first place.â€
The Supreme Court has also likened federal-state grant laws to contracts: They are valid only if the state knowingly and voluntarily accepts the terms. Some legal experts interpret that to mean that conditions on federal grants have to be spelled out in the text of a law passed by Congress, while others say cities and states could be put on notice with federal regulations.
Regardless, said Ilya Somin, a constitutional law professor at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School, “the president can’t impose additional conditions on its own.â€
Other experts, however, said Mr. Trump’s order bypasses trip wires set down by the Supreme Court, because it demands only information from cities in return for federal money, not action.
David Rivkin, a lawyer at law firm BakerHosteler who served in the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations, pointed to a 2000 U.S. Supreme Court case involving a federal law that imposed restrictions on the disclosure by states of drivers’ personal information.
In upholding the law, the court noted approvingly that it didn’t “require state officials to assist in the enforcement of federal statutes regulating private individuals.â€
Mr. Rivkin said Mr. Trump’s order, likewise, passes muster because “it’s not telling city officials to carry out any particular actions.â€
Black on black crime today  is due to slavery says wide receiver Doug Baldwin.   The wide receiver enjoys a $13 million  contract.
He  recently blamed crime in the African American community on “slaveryâ€. So he said  in a conversation with Dan Leberfeld of Breitbart Sports.
In fact, Baldwin excused away crime in black communities because slavery was “only†eliminated 150 years ago.
Telling people not to get too worried about crime, Baldwin excused it away, saying, “Two-hundred-and-fifty-six years Africans were enslaved, it’s only been 150 years since slavery was abolished. It’s going to take some time.
————————————
Firenze Sage:  Why not share for us how you make $13 million  dollars instead of being in chains. What was black crime like in 1948?  Look it up.
