Court hearing scheduled for next week in ongoing effort by privacy group to expose details of working relationship.

The Department of Justice will ask a federal court to uphold the secrecy that surrounds the working relationship between Google and the National Security Agency in a hearing that is scheduled for next week.

Privacy watchdog group The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) is returning to court once again in an effort to disclose more information regarding the widely publicized partnership between the spy agency and the search engine giant.

EPIC is suing to obtain documents that detail the relationship, and will appeal against the NSA’s so-called “Glomar” response, claiming it “could neither confirm nor deny” the existence of any information about its relations with Google, because “such a response would reveal information about NSA’s functions and activities.”

The NSA’s response stated that the agency “works with a broad range of commercial partners and research associations” in order to oversee the security of important information systems, but did not provide any further detail.

The issue rose to prominencein January 2010 following a highly sophisticated and targeted cyber attack on the corporate infrastructure of Google and some twenty other large US companies.

The attack was blamed on the Chinese government, prompting Google to embrace a collaborationwith the federal agency in charge of global electronic surveillance.

Anonymous sources informed The Washington Post at the time that “the alliance is being designed to allow the two organizations to share critical information”, adding that the agreement will not allow the NSA access to users’ search details or e-mails.

The DOJ is backing NSA’s Glomar response, as The Legal Times reports:

CONTINUED at Prison Planet. Written by Steve Watson.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Planned Parenthood’s relationship with the Girl Scouts of America is “very valuable,” Wednesday, at a congressional reception to commemorate the 100 year anniversary of the organization for young girls.

Rep. Pelosi was featured at the reception with a group of female government leaders to promote the Girl Scout’s new initiative “To Get Her There,” which seeks to create “gender balanced leadership” in one generation.

After the event CNSNews.com asked Pelosi: “The Girl Scouts has had some ties to Planned Parenthood, do you think that’s a valuable relationship to have working together?”

“The Girl Scouts have relationships with many organizations,” Rep. Pelosi replied.

“And, yes, I think they are all very valuable.”

The Girl Scouts have been linked to the nation’s largest abortion provider in the past.  In 2010, a panel sponsored by the Girl Scouts USA at the United Nations Commission featured a Planned Parenthood pamphlet called “Healthy, Happy and Hot,” according to published reports.

A portion of the pamphlet read: “Many people think sex is just about vaginal or anal intercourse. But there are lots of different ways to have sex and lots of different types of sex. Sex can include kissing, touching, licking, tickling, sucking and cuddling. Some people like to have aggressive sex, while others like to have soft sex and slow sex with their partners. There is no right or wrong way to have sex. Just have fun, explore and be yourself!”

A similar pamphlet was distributed at a Waco, Texas Girl Scouts organization in 2008 that included information on masturbation, diagrams of adults having sex and a boy putting on a condom.

That year then-CEO of the Girl Scouts Kathy Cloninger told NBC’s “Today” show, “We have relationships with our church communities, with YWCA’s, and with Planned Parenthood organizations across the country, to bring information-based sex education programs to girls.”

A Girl Scout conference was also co-sponsored by Planned Parenthood in 2004.

Today’s event also featured Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, Sen. Barabara Mikulski (D-Md.), and other members of Congress who praised the organization’s advocacy to increase the number of females in leadership positions in the U.S.

Source: CNS News. Video at link.

Wouldn’t it be great if a Republican presidential candidate could just buy the support of just about every major conservative talk show host in America?  Well, it may not be as far-fetched as you may think.  Clear Channel owns more radio stations (850) than anyone else in the United States.  They also own Premiere Radio Networks, the company that syndicates the radio shows of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Glenn Beck, among others.  Needless to say, Clear Channel basically owns conservative talk radio in the United States.  So who owns Clear Channel?  Well, it turns out that Bain Capital is one of the primary owners of Clear Channel.  Yes, you read that correctly.  The company that Mitt Romney ran for so long is one of the “big bosses” over virtually all conservative talk radio in America.  Of course Mitt Romney is not running Bain Capital anymore.  He is a “retired partner”, but he still has a huge financial stake in Bain Capital.  We’re talking about millions upon millions of dollars.  If you doubt this, just check out page 34 of this public financial disclosure report.  So if you have been wondering why so many conservative talk show hosts are being so incredibly kind to Mitt Romney, this just might be the answer.

In the media world, there is a clear understanding that you simply do not bite the hand that feeds you.  Some of the most prominent conservative talk radio hosts are earning tens of millions of dollars a year.

If you were making tens of millions of dollars a year, wouldn’t you be very careful to avoid offending your boss?

The deal in which Bain Capital became one of the owners of Clear Channel was initiated just a short time before Mitt Romney’s first run for president.  The following comes from Wikipedia….

On November 16, 2006, Clear Channel announced plans to go private, being bought out by two private-equity firms,Thomas H. Lee Partners and Bain Capital Partners for $18.7 billion, which is just under a 10 percent premium above its closing price of $35.36 a share on November 16 (the deal values Clear Channel at $37.60 per share).

The deal was finalized in 2008.  Today, Bain Capital is still one of the primary owners of Clear Channel.

One of the subsidiaries of Clear Channel is Premiere Radio Networks.

Premiere Radio Networks distributes a whole host of conservative talk radio shows.  Everyone in the conservative world knows names such as Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck.  Clear Channel also controls some other conservative talk radio hosts (such as Michael Savage and Mark Levin) that are not part of the Premiere Radio family.

The power that Premiere Radio Networks has is absolutely staggering.  The following is directly from the official Clear Channel website….

Premiere Radio Networks Inc., a subsidiary of Clear Channel Communications, syndicates 90 radio programs and services to more than 5,000 radio affiliations and reaches over 190 million listeners weekly.  Premiere Radio is the number one radio network in the country and features the following personalities:  Rush Limbaugh, Jim Rome, Casey Kasem, Ryan Seacrest, Glenn Beck, Bob (Kevoian) & Tom (Griswold), Delilah, Steve Harvey, Blair Garner, George Noory, John Boy and Billy, Big Tigger, Dr. Dean Edell, Bob Costas, Sean Hannity and others. Premiere is based in Sherman Oaks, California, with 13 offices nationwide.

So do you think that any of those hosts is going to risk viciously attacking Mitt Romney and Bain Capital during this election season?

Not likely.

One of the controversies that has plagued Premiere Radio Networks in recent years has been the uproar over their use of paid actors to call in to their radio shows.

The following comes from Wikipedia….

Clear Channel, through its subsidiary, Premiere Radio Networks, auditions and hires actors to call in to talk radio shows and pose as listeners in order to provide shows, carried by Clear Channel and other broadcasters, with planned content in the form of stories and opinions. The custom caller service provided by Premiere Radio ensures its clients they won’t hear the same actor’s voice for at least two months in order to appear authentic to listeners who might otherwise catch on.

So perhaps that explains where some of the “Romney callers” come from.

There is nothing illegal about what Romney and Bain Capital have done, but it sure does not pass the “smell test”.

Conservative talk radio has the potential to sway millions of conservative voters in one direction or another, and it is just not proper for Bain Capital and Romney to have such an overpowering financial interest in conservative talk radio.

And yes, Mitt Romney is still bringing in lots of money from Bain Capital.  The following comes from a Wikipedia article about Mitt Romney….

At the time of his departure, Romney negotiated an agreement with Bain Capital that allowed him to receive a passive profit share as a retired partner in some Bain Capital entities, including buyout and investment funds.^[62][57] With the private equity business continuing to thrive, this deal would bring him millions of dollars in income each year.^[57] As a result of his business career, by 2007 Romney and his wife had a net worth of between $190 and $250 million, most of it held in blind trusts.^[62] An additional blind trust existed in the name of the Romneys’ children and grandchildren that was valued at between $70 and $100 million as of 2007.^[63] The couple’s net worth remained in the same range as of 2011, and was still held in blind trusts.

In addition, Bain Capital and Bain & Company continue to pour huge amounts of money into Romney’s campaign coffers.

Just check out the following list of the biggest donors to the Romney campaign.  These numbers come from opensecrets.org….

Goldman Sachs $367,200
Credit Suisse Group $203,750
Morgan Stanley $199,800
HIG Capital $186,500
Barclays $157,750
Kirkland & Ellis $132,100
Bank of America $126,500
PriceWaterhouseCoopers $118,250
EMC Corp $117,300
JPMorgan Chase & Co $112,250
The Villages $97,500
Vivint Inc $80,750
Marriott International $79,837
Sullivan & Cromwell $79,250
Bain Capital $74,500
UBS AG $73,750
Wells Fargo $61,500
Blackstone Group $59,800
Citigroup Inc $57,050
Bain & Co $52,500

As with anything, whenever you want to get to the real truth you just need to follow the money.

Earlier this week, Sean Hannity told Rick Perry that his attacks on Mitt Romney’s time at Bain Capital sounded like something that “Occupy Wall Street” would say.

Just the other day, Rush Limbaugh compared Rick Perry to Fidel Castro and rabidly defended Mitt Romney on his radio program….

“There’s no way you can try to dress that up,” Limbaugh fumed. “I don’t understand it. Well, politically I understand it, but that’s just absurd. It’s sad. ‘Cause I really, really, really like Rick Perry! I really do. I had such hopes! I did. I’ll tell you, I did, but all of this talk about “corporate raiders,” and as I listen to politicians start talking about capitalism, lights are going off in my head. “Maybe they don’t really know what it is. Maybe they’re under some misconception about what capitalism is, because this characterization of it? A distinction with venture capitalism and vulture capitalism? This bite from Perry doesn’t compute.”

So why are these conservative talk show hosts defending Mitt Romney so furiously?

I think now we know.

It is all about the money.

When you have enough money, you can get conservative talk show hosts to promote an extremely liberal candidate.

Yes, of course Bain Capital does not “control” what these talk show hosts say.

Yes, of course some of the talk show hosts toss some light criticism at Romney from time to time.

But they simply do not go after Romney like they should be.

The truth is that Mitt Romney is really a Democrat that is masquerading as a Republican.  When you closely examine his record, he is very similar to Obama.

There is no way in the world that any self-respecting conservative should ever cast a single vote for him.

But right now Mitt Romney is running away with the race for the Republican nomination.

If Republicans can be fooled this badly, is there any hope for the future of the Republican Party?

Source: The American Dream.

NBC has reached an agreement to broadcast news content provided by a media organisation run by a team that has ploughed millions of dollars into campaigning for Barack Obama and donated large cash amounts to organisations such as the George Soros affiliated MoveOn.org and the now defunct ACORN.

The LA Times reports that NBC has opened up the newsrooms of all its affiliates across the country to ProPublica, which describes itself as an “independent, non-profit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest.”

NBC affiliated and Comcast owned radio stations will also broadcast ProPublica content under the agreement.

“The arrangement comes as Comcast moves to fulfill its commitment to federal regulators to strengthen local, public-interest programming in the wake of its purchase of NBCUniversal earlier this year.” the Times report states.

NBC stations will also produce their own stories based upon ProPublica’s output.

“We put the reporting at their fingertips and they can do terrific local stories with it,” said Richard Tofel, general manager for ProPublica.

The development represents yet another infiltration of corporate news media by special interests with their own political agenda.

ProPublica already delivers content to more than 50 different news organizations, including 60 Minutes, CNN, ABC World News, USA Today, the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Huffington Post, Politico, Salon.com, Slate, MSN Money, MSNBC.com, Newsweek, Reader’s Digest, Business Week, This American Life, and NPR among many others.

The organisation operates with a bounty of $10 million per year from married billionaires Herbert and Marion Sandler, who are the former chief executives of the Golden West Financial Corporation, formerly one of the largest mortgage lenders in the US.

CONTINUED at Prison Planet.

*Taken from Prison Planet. Written by Jason Douglass.

Talaya Soria, a pastor’s wife living in California and an ex-employee of Wal-Mart shared some interesting information regarding a phone call placed to Wal-Mart’s corporate offices about the mega-giant’s ‘if you see something, say something’ partnership between Wal-Mart and The Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

In response to the new policy, this concerned citizen called corporate to ask some pointed questions and got more than she bargained.

When asked how many stores would be adopting the new policy, the Wal-Mart associate grimly responded, “All of them”. Disgusted by the fascist new policy, Mrs. Soria began to list the problems with a program with this type of focus stating “This policy isn’t aimed at the terrorists but at the populace — to control what we say!”.

Patiently listening to the concerns, the Wal-Mart Associate responded in hushed voice, “yes, I agree with you” the paranoia felt by the employee was completely palpable. Talaya continued, “If I say something someone doesn’t agree with – they can just turn me in!”. The operator once again timidly responded, “Yeah, I know where you are coming from. You’re right!”.

Ending the call, Talaya summed up her argument, “This is a very un-American policy and I will be telling all my friends, family, church members and everyone to boycott Wal-Mart”. The silence on the other end of the line spoke volumes. Obviously, Talaya was preaching to the choir. The associate was in complete, even if silent, agreement.

After Talaya got off the phone, she immediately called her local Wal-Mart to let them know about the new program and express her intention to boycott the store if the policy was officially adopted. When she got off the phone and attempted to make another call a strange clicking sound was clearly audible on the line.

Talaya phoned her husband to let him know about the conversation and she continued to hear the clicking. Her husband did not hear anything on his end of the line and when she hung up, the phone immediately started ringing again. Caller ID showed an unfamiliar number with a (925) area code. When she picked up the phone no one answered.

Again hanging up, the phone began to ring with the same unrecognized caller ID; still no answer at the other end.

Talaya decided to call the number shown on caller ID but the call would not initiate. After several failed attempts the line began to make a high pitched tone with no ringing beforehand.

In an earlier time, one could dismiss such experiences and the fear they impart as paranoia and laugh off those ideas with a chuckle. But thanks to legislation like The Patriot Act and software like Echelon, it is completely within the realm of possibility that the phone call was monitored, threatening language identified and a wiretap immediately placed on the line. No hard to justify warrant needed, Talaya is now being monitored.

A sign of the times, we have traded freedom for the illusion of security.

The perfect storm has arrived. A failing economy and a climate of fear have locked us all into survival mode. The majority of people remain asleep because reality is so grim and our options so limited; surrender is the only viable tactic for most. And so with our silent consent we get comfortable in the control grid erected to ‘protect’ us. Engineered to consolidate power and our complacency plays right into the hands of our wardens.

They came first for the Communists,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew.

Then they came for me
and by that time no one was left to speak up.

- Pastor Martin Niemöller

*Taken from Reason. Written by Shikha Dalmia.

China bashing has become a bipartisan sport this election season. But if the bashers won’t heed the economic case for not knocking down America’s second largest trading partner, they ought to consider the political one: Even if they get into office by peddling false economic theories, in order to stay there they will have to produce the right results. This protectionism never has—and never will—deliver.

Every election needs a foreign villain, and with the public ODed on the A-rab threat, our political class has turned its sights further East. And, truth be told, China’s autocracy is not helping itself by choosing this moment to halt shipments of rare metals used in wind mills, solar panels and the like. Still, slashing trade with China will do as much to stimulate America’s moribund economy as a bitch in heat would to stimulate my neutered dog’s libido.

That, however, is not preventing Democrats from pounding the issue. Virg Bernero, the Democratic gubernatorial candidate in Michigan, where I live, has dubbed his opponent, Rick Snyder, Chief Executive Outsourcer (ha, ha). Mr. Snyder’s crime is that he is a successful businessman who invested in a semiconductor company that once employed five—five!—people in Shenzen to sell its products in China. In other words, it is no longer a sin to buy from China. It is also a sin to sell to China! (Where did Bernero get his views on trade theory, anyway? The Kim Jong Il School of Autarky?)

Nor is Bernero alone in the Democratic Party: California Sen. Barbara Boxer is accusing her opponent Carly Fiorina, former CEO of Hewlett Packard, of outsourcing thousands of jobs to “Shanghai instead of San Jose”; Senate Speaker Harry Reid is calling Sharron Angle “a foreign worker’s best friend”; and Richard Blumenthal, Connecticut Attorney General running for Senate, who lied about serving in Vietnam, has the temerity to attack his opponent, the former CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment, for “outsourcing” American jobs because her company got toy action figures manufactured in China instead of America.

Hostility to trade is par for the course for Democrats perennially beholden to Big Labor, but what is the excuse of Republicans—the alleged believers in free markets? In race after race, they too are hitting China to beat Democrats. In West Virginia, Spike Maynard, a Republican running for the House is airing ads against his opponent, complete with Asian music in the background, castigating him for giving stimulus money to a Texas company that happens to be buying windmills from China. Meanwhile, in Virginia Republican Robert Hurt is accusing Rep. Tom Perriell of supporting tax breaks for foreign companies “creating jobs in China.”

But perhaps the blame doesn’t lie with these minions who are, after all, only capitalizing on the frenzy whipped up by this White House: For over a year, it has been accusing China of deliberately depressing the yuan against the dollar and threatening to brand it as a currency manipulator. Some might regard an artificially low yuan as a gift to American taxpayers given that it lowers their cost of financing America’s massive debt from China. But not this administration. It blames the low yuan for widening America’s trade deficit with China, costing export jobs.

This claim is no doubt calculated to deflect attention from the administration’s failure to make even a small dent in America’s unemployment rate after over $1 trillion in stimulus spending. The fact of the matter is that there is no good evidence that a higher yuan necessarily equals a lower trade deficit. Between 2005 and 2008, notes Dan Ikenson, Cato Institute’s trade policy analyst, the yuan rose 21 percent. But the trade deficit, instead of going down, went up by $66 billion. Why? Because while a stronger yuan increases the dollar price of Chinese goods, it also lowers the yuan price of foreign raw material, allowing Chinese manufacturers to keep a lid on the price of their finished goods.

But the idea that selling abroad creates jobs at home and buying abroad destroys jobs at home is an old mercantilist fallacy that Adam Smith handily refuted more than 200 years ago. Back then it at least had intuitive plausibility, but today it is obviously false given that the manufacturing chain spans the whole globe. Indeed, under the intricate global division of labor that currently exists, the whole idea of  “Made in China” is largely a bureaucratic fiction.

Think about the IPod, for instance. It is designed in America and its 451 parts are made in dozens of different countries. But just because it is finally assembled in China, it officially counts as a Chinese import and therefore a contributor to America’s trade deficit—never mind that the Chinese add only $4 to the IPod’s $150 final value. Imposing duties on IPods to slash the deficit, then, won’t just cost Chinese jobs in Beijing assembly plants, but American jobs in Cupertino (Apple’s headquarters) computer labs.

But if raising the barricades against Chinese products will hurt highly-paid techies in America, it will hurt working class folks even more.

Consider the research by University of Chicago economist Christian Broda. Contrary to conventional wisdom, he found that inequality in this country has gone down—not up—thanks to trade with China. Between 1994 and 2005, he found, any rise in income inequality was offset by a decline in prices of goods consumed by poorer households. Indeed, inflation for the richest 10 percent of U.S. households, which tend to spend more on services, was 6 percent higher than the poorest 10 percent, who spend more of their income on household goods supplied by China. “In sectors where there is no Chinese presence,” Broda has pointed out, “inflation has been more than 20%.” In short, China has likely done more to help America’s poor than the stimulus, TARP or any other program invented by Uncle Sam.

This brings us to the political folly of China bashing: There is no doubt that the notion that China should be stopped from taking away “American” jobs has a powerful appeal for many voters. But what candidates need to consider is this: Voters are utterly fickle. They might share your bad ideas and even elect you because of them. But, ultimately, if these ideas don’t produce the desired results, they won’t blame themselves or their support for these policies, they’ll blame you. In a democracy, voters are ruthlessly and irrationally results oriented.

Republicans and Democrats are sowing the seeds for their own destruction by running on an anti-China platform. Rather than vilifying China, they would do themselves—and the American economy—a world of good by trumpeting the benefits of trade with it. There is not just a very good economic—but also a very good political—argument for taking a more enlightened approach to China.