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Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) on Friday declared that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) would have murdered the participants of the original 1773 Boston Tea Party and and would have "killed off" half of the Founding Fathers who signed the Declaration of Independence.

In a 30-minute floor speech to express his outrage over a report in The Daily Caller that said the Department of Homeland Security was "protecting the free speech rights of pro-Shariah Muslim supremacists," Gohmert noted that President Barack Obama's administration had a number of other problems like the recent news that the IRS had scrutinized the tax-exempt status of tea party and other conservative groups.

"Homeland Security has had reports warning their employees about the dangers of people that may be involved in such heinous activity as being classified as evangelical Christians or as being concerned about the Constitution and that people should be following the Constitution, and concerned about people who may have tea party in their name," he explained.

"You know, thank goodness that the IRS was not around to have helped the Founders when they founded the country or otherwise they would have probably shot the Boston Tea Party participants, they would have killed off over half of the signers of the Declaration of the Independence," Gohmert added.

"And this country would have never had gotten started if this Department of Homeland Security had been around to be helpful -- so called -- to our founders."

In referencing the Declaration of Independence and the Boston Tea Party, Gohmert seems to be suggesting that the IRS and the Department of Homeland Security do not have legitimate authority -- similar to the claims the American colonists made against the British empire prior to the Revolutionary War.

(h/t: Twitter/Scott Keyes)

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Texas Sen. John Cornyn (R) on Thursday warned his colleagues in the Senate that people who were "wearing some form of turban" were illegally immigrating into the United States by crossing the Southern border.

During a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing to consider amendments to the bipartisan immigration reform bill, Cornyn asserted that he had "anecdotal" evidence that only 25 percent of undocumented immigrants crossing the border were caught by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

"In fact, anecdotally, the border patrol last -- on Sunday and Monday were telling me, they think they maybe catch one out of every four people coming across the border," he declared. "Maybe one out of every three. And that's a problem."

The Texas senator argued that this made the case for an amendment offered by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), which establishes "triggers" that prohibits legalizing undocumented immigrants until the Department of Homeland Security has established "effective control" of the border for six months.

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), however, pointed out that a 2012 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report found that the Border Patrol had a 82 percent effectiveness rate at catching illegal border crossings.

"I would love to see that report because I don't believe that's the case," Cornyn replied. "The problem is the effectiveness rate you referred to doesn't take into account the people that cross illegally and the department is not tracking. In other words, it doesn't take into account the people that get away, which could, according to the anecdotal reports, be two out of every three, three out of every four."

Cornyn added that he had also been told during his recent visit to the southern border in Texas that "we're not just seeing the border penetrated by people from Mexico or Central America."

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Oklahoma Rep. Frank Lucas (R) recently told a conservative radio show that President Barack Obama's administration may be engaged in a "conspiracy" to purchase all available ammunition as a form of gun control.

Last week, Republicans on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee’s National Security Subcommittee caved to conspiracies theories in the conservative media and held a hearing about whether the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was buying a billion rounds of ammunition to use against the American people.

In an interview with NewsMax host Steve Malzberg on Monday, Lucas explained that he had joined with Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) to introduce a bill that would limit the amount of ammunition the federal government can buy.

"What do you think that they think they need this for?" Malzberg wondered.

"You know, it's hard to see into the mind of an Obama-appointed official," Lucas opined. "But this is the administration that's super gun control, that really, really, really doesn't trust people with firearms and obviously they don't trust people with ammunition."

"Is this a conspiracy to buy up all the bullets so they're not available to us? I don't know," he added. "But I suspect, Steve, it's a combination of these big purchases by the non-Defense Department government agencies like Homeland Security and a near-panic buying among my constituents, who are afraid that in some gun control bill there were be a limitation on on their ability to buy ammunition. Or the president will do something by executive order."

Although conspiracies theories about government ammunition purchases have been thoroughly debunked, Republican lawmakers have continued to let conservative sites like Alex Jones' Infowars, Glenn Beck's The Blaze and The Drudge Report drive their agenda.

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Rep. John Tierney (D-MA), the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee's National Security Subcommittee, slammed Republicans on Thursday for conducting a hearing that he said was driven by Internet conspiracy theories suggesting that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was buying a billion rounds of ammunition to use against the American people.

In his opening statement on Thursday, subcommittee Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) cited "recent news reports" about the "federal government's massive procurement of ammunition."

"The question is, what is an appropriate use of this ammunition, where is it stored, how much are they paying for it and what are they doing with it?" the Utah Republican asked.

Although Chaffetz mentioned media outlets like The Associated Press and USA Today, much of the hype about DHS ammunition purchases have been driven by conservative websites like Alex Jones' Infowars and Glenn Beck's The Blaze. And the theories have been kept alive by the Fox News Channel, the Fox Business Network and even televangelist Pat Robertson.

"To the extent that we're responding to conspiracy theories or whatever, I think we're really wasting everybody's time on that," Tierney said in his opening statement. "It might have been predictable that Sarah Palin would have taken opportunity to feed these conspiracy theories with statements that the government was preparing for civil unrest, but it was a little more disturbing that Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) would seize the opportunity to accuse the government cornering the market on ammunition to drive up prices."

"Unsubstantiated false conspiracy theories have no place in this committee room -- hopefully," he continued. "Federal ammunition purchases are a fraction of the total ammunition market and they've been decreasing in recent years. Even the National Rifle Association distances itself from these conspiracy theories."

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Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer was terribly upset with the news that this sequester battle is going to end up cutting into the profits of her buddies in the private prison industry: Jan Brewer: Freeing Immigrant Detainees Is ‘Height Of Absurdity’:

Arizona Governor Jan Brewer (R) is not at all happy with immigration officials for releasing hundreds of detainees in anticipation of coming sequester cuts.

“I’m appalled to learn the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has begun to release hundreds of illegal aliens from custody, the first of potentially thousands to soon be freed under the guise of federal budget cuts,” Brewer told the Arizona Republic in a statement. “This is pure political posturing and the height of absurdity given that the releases are being granted before the federal sequestration cuts have even gone into effect.”

In an interview with FOX News' Neil Cavuto on Wednesday, Brewer also attacked the White House over their claim that they had no involvement with the decision, saying they were in "duck and cover mode."

Maggie's Farm at Kos has more on what really has Brewer upset: Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer 'appalled' DHS is releasing immigrants. Blow to prison industry profits:

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer's quest to imprison as many aliens as possible was steered in part by the state's powerful private prison lobby, since the "papers please" law and other tough anti-immigrant policies bring more customers to their jails. Most stories about the Department of Homeland Security releasing inmates this week have overlooked the blow to the prison industry's bottom line. It costs, for instance, about $164 a day to incarcerate one immigrant. Multiply that by tens of thousands. Day after day. [...]

Jan Brewer's been an esteemed member of the Crazy Republican Governors Club—joining lugheads like Scott Walker, Sam Brownback and Rick Scott who've embraced the tea party's "cut the deficit" gibberish, seemingly unaware of the effects in their state. Now Brewer and her looney tunes ideologues are getting a taste of Norquist's bathtub politics. She's finding out what GOP obstructionism is going to cost Arizona, and it began this week with her state's former governor, Janet Napolitano, releasing immigrants.

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer says she's appalled to hear that the Department of Homeland Security has begun releasing hundreds of illegal immigrants from custody. It's the first of potentially thousands of immigrants to soon be freed before mandatory federal budget cuts go into effect.

The reality chicken has come home to roost in the guise of nearly 31,000 immigrants held in jails nationwide. That's an expensive undertaking, and the sequester will wallop DHS upside the head, necessitating huge cuts. Rather than $164 a day to incarcerate one inmate, the "supervised release" planned for prisoners who pose no serious threat costs less than $14 per day—a blow to prison profits, even if only some inmates are held in private facilities.

Gillian Christensen, an [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] spokeswoman, said ICE has reviewed "several hundred cases" of immigrants being held in jails around the country and released them in the last week. They have been "placed on an appropriate, more cost-effective form of supervised release," she said.

Of course if you watch the clip above with Brewer on Cavuto's show, you'd get the impression the opposite was true and that it was more expensive to monitor the prisoners than jail them.

Democracy Now did a follow up this Friday on their previous segment I posted here -- James Bamford: NSA is Building the World's Largest Spy Center. This story of course is being ignored again by our corporate media and is terrifying quite frankly as to the amount of data they're collecting and the abuses and potential abuses that are inevitable when you allow anyone access to this much personal information about their fellow citizens.

Exclusive: National Security Agency Whistleblower William Binney on Growing State Surveillance:

In his first television interview since he resigned from the National Security Agency over its domestic surveillance program, William Binney discusses the NSA’s massive power to spy on Americans and why the FBI raided his home after he became a whistleblower. Binney was a key source for investigative journalist James Bamford’s recent exposé in Wired Magazine about how the NSA is quietly building the largest spy center in the country in Bluffdale, Utah. The Utah spy center will contain near-bottomless databases to store all forms of communication collected by the agency, including private emails, cell phone calls, Google searches and other personal data.

Binney served in the NSA for over 30 years, including a time as technical director of the NSA’s World Geopolitical and Military Analysis Reporting Group. Since retiring from the NSA in 2001, he has warned that the NSA’s data-mining program has become so vast that it could "create an Orwellian state." Today marks the first time Binney has spoken on national television about NSA surveillance. This interview is part of a 4-part special. Click here to see segment 2, 3, and 4.

You can read the full transcript which is way too long to post here at the link above along with links to and descriptions of the three other segments that followed this one, from Friday's show on the same topic.

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What was slightly surprising about this week's Fox News Sunday is that Dana Priest, who's done some pretty extensive reporting on the United States', as Chris Wallace actually pretty aptly described it, "terrorism industrial complex" for the Washington Post was allowed on the show to say anything critical at all about the intrusion into our daily lives in the name of "national security" or the fact that the industry has pretty well grown out of control.

What's not surprising is war monger Bill Kristol was there to downplay the terrible costs we've paid for these excesses, and naturally to cheer on the military industrial complex.

KRISTOL: Well, you compare it to the military, the industrial complex from the Cold War. The military industrial complex helped win the Cold War. And if we pay a little price, a little waste and a little bit of excessive stuff at the airports to help win this war, which I think is comparable to the Cold War in the sense that we don't need to just defeat Al Qaida or a few leaders of Al Qaida, we need to change the character of the Middle East otherwise the 20 percent is going to be unmanageable. There will be other Al Qaedas, there will be other state sponsored terrorism. There will be nuclear weapons next time. And we'll be back where we were on 9/11 and in a way even worse.

So I think the effort -- I don't really believe we can cut back any more than we could have cut back 10 years into the Cold War in the mid-1950s before saying, oh well now we've -- Korea was very difficult, it's been divisive at home, General McCarthy. We surely need to get out of this war mentality.

In fact, we stayed with it with bipartisan leadership. And the Soviet Union collapsed. And I think we're in a similar moment today.

Yeah, just what harm can there be from paying "a little price" or for "a little waste" or a little bit of "excessive stuff?" I guess those prices do appear small to someone like Kristol who's never served in the military, who doesn't live in one of those countries we decided to invade, and who is making a nice salary constantly cheerleading on the next military invasion and isn't worried he might starve to death, say if he loses his Social Security benefits because, you know, we're supposedly "broke" and need some "shared sacrifice."

Full transcript below the fold.

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While discussing whether our so-called national security apparatus has grown too large and unwieldy in the aftermath of 9-11 on Fox News Sunday, Chris Wallace asks Brit Hume if he thinks Americans' civil liberties are in jeopardy. Naturally, Hume says he's not concerned and actually goes so far as to say that we've responded really reasonably to the attacks on 9-11 because hey, at least we're not locking people up in Japanese internment camps like we did during World War II.

I think Hume might feel a bit differently if he were say, a member of a Muslim mosque, an ACLU lawyer representing a terrorism suspect, someone who found themselves placed on the no-fly list for no good reason, or perhaps one of the people who were unfortunate enough to find themselves swooped up without a trial and thrown into Gitmo and tortured. But Hume is no Maher Arar. As a resident hack at Fox "News", he doesn't feel he's got anything to worry about, so it's all good, people. Just go about your business and don't worry about that pesky data mining they're doing or how much of your personal information they're collecting. Nothing to see here. Move along.

WALLACE: Brit, in the wake of 9-11 with some of the legal structure, the counter-terrorism architecture that was created with warrantless wiretaps and Patriot Act, there were critics who said that our civil liberties were in jeopardy. Do you see any sign of that's happened?

HUME: Well, I think there's always... you have to be vigilant about that, but what I think is striking about it is how... you know, I don't think any, very many Americans to speak of have any worry about their civil liberties. I mean we're... speech is as free as it's ever been, except for political correctness and that's not a function of the war on terror. Debates are as robust as ever.

I have no worries about my multitudeness (sic) communications on the Internet or anywhere else being supervised by some government official somewhere. I just don't worry about that very much and I don't think most Americans do. I think vigilance is reasonable about such things, but what's striking about this is how little we've done.

When you think about World War II and we were, you know, we locked up Japanese in prison camps. Nothing like that has happened. Nothing on that scale, nothing of that kind.

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Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Janet Napolitano Tuesday laughed off attacks on her by the Drudge Report, saying that the conservative website was "just wrong" to suggest the government was overreaching in its efforts to keep Americans safe.

"I have my own nickname," Napolitano told Politico's Mike Allen. "It's kind of a deal. You know that you've made it when you get your own nickname."

"I think my nickname is 'Big Sis.' And I don't think [Matt Drudge] means it kindly, actually," she added. "I think what he means is we are watching too much -- kind of an Orwellian view. And he's just wrong -- he's just wrong."

The DHS secretary explained that her department's privacy office took great care to prevent government overreaching.

"Madam Secretary, what I thought you were going to say -- and why I really perked up -- I thought you had a nickname for him," Allen noted.

"Maybe," Napolitano replied, laughing. "No, I think we should try to keep our discussion at a high level."

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Jason Linkens hit the nail on the head with the description of this interview... "All right! Bring on the bedwetters, Joe Lieberman and Peter King!" After both of these clowns endorsed a bill to strip terrorism suspects of their U.S. citizenship, neither of these two should be allowed to go on television ever again. Unfortunately I know our media is going to keep bringing them back on to do some more fear mongering at every opportunity.

I've got to wonder if we'd have the unfortunate circumstance of these two polluting the airways with this garbage if that Times Square bomber had turned out to be a home grown American right wing militia member. Somehow, I doubt it.

WALLACE: Senator Lieberman, you just heard Mr. Brennan, the White House counterterrorism adviser. Your reaction to his discussion of the way that the case of the Times Square bomber was handled?

LIEBERMAN: Well, after the fact of the attempted bombing attack last Saturday night, the reaction was not just excellent, it was almost miraculous -- 53 hours and we've apprehended him. Great cooperation. Just the kind of work that we all hoped would happen when we set up the Department of Homeland Security post-9/11.

But the fact is that we were lucky. We did not prevent the attempted attack. And that's the -- in some sense, the fourth break through our defenses. Last spring in Arkansas, Hasan, the Detroit bomber and this one.

Look, we're in a big open society. And if people are fanatical enough to put their own lives on the line -- "I want to kill other innocent human beings" -- it's hard to stop them every time, but that has to be our goal. So I'd say in terms of prevention, the system failed.

And what we've got to do now is to go back, put all the facts together and look at every point. Was there something the U.S. government, our allies, could have done to stop Faisal Shahzad before he parked that car in Times Square?

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