Ron Paul on Obama's Syria WMD Claim

Former Congressman Ron Paul has sharply criticized the Obama administration for “escalating” the war in Syria by sending weapons to foreign-backed militants (al-Qaeda) in the country.
“Today we heard from President Obama that the war in Syria will be escalated. He now has agreed to send weaponry in to assist the rebels. It’s escalation, that’s a proper word, because we’ve already been involved for quite a few months. We’ve been supporting the rebels for probably the past two years, supposedly for humanitarian reasons,” he said in a statement posted on YouTube on Friday.
“But now there is going to be a much more aggressive approach and we’re going to send weapons. There is a few problems with this, first off it’s war. Second thing is presidents are not supposed to start war without permission from the people through a congressional declaration of war,” Paul argued.
He also dismissed claims made by the White House that the Syrian government has used chemical weapons against the militants, saying the accusations are ill-founded and resemble the U.S. claims in the run-up to the Iraq war.
“The language is the same. They use the same arguments. Weapons of Mass Destruction, poison gases, hundred people died, [and] the government has done this,” he said. “To me it’s all an excuse.”
President Barack Obama is preparing to impose a no-fly zone inside Syria along with sending weapons to the militants.
The no-fly zone option came one day after White House National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes accused the Syrian government of using chemical weapons against the foreign-backed militants. Damascus denied the allegations.
On Friday, Rhodes said it would be dramatically more difficult and costly to set up a no-fly zone over Syria than it was in Libya.
U.S. officials said that the decision to arm the militants in Syria had been made weeks ago.
Meanwhile, a majority of Americans are against a military attack against Syria. A poll conducted by Gallup last month showed that 68 percent of Americans said the United States should not take any military action in Syria.

“It’s time for the American people to wake up and let their members of Congress and their senators know: stop it. Why should you sit back and let the president do these things?” Paul asked.

Potential for Abuse 'Enormous' With Massive Obamacare Database

Sunday, 21 Jul 2013 08:49 PM

By Greg Richter

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Those worried about how much data the National Security Agency has collected on them won't like what's coming in 2014.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare, is building a giant database of everyone's personal information as part of its effort to run the system. The Department of Health and Human Services assures everyone that the Federal Data Services Hub will be secure, but after the IRS and NSA scandals, not everyone is convinced.

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"The potential for abuse is enormous," notes Rare.com Deputy Editor James S. Robbins. He says that the massive database will include "income and financial data, family size, citizenship and immigration status, incarceration status, social security numbers, and private health information."

It will compile files on everyone in the United States and will get its information from the IRS, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Defense, the Veterans Administration, the Office of Personnel Management, the Social Security Administration, state Medicaid databases, and the Peace Corps.

While the Daily Mail reports that many fear the hub will be a hacker's dream, Robbins says hacking isn't the only threat. Community and consumer-focused nonprofit groups called "Navigators" will have access to the information for the purpose of receiving grants from health exchanges so they can "provide fair and impartial public education" and "refer consumers as appropriate for further assistance," according to the Government Accountability Office.

How Navigators are hired or monitored is unclear, Robbins notes. "Given the slap-dash, incoherent way Obamacare is being implemented the prospect for quality control is low."

Robbins isn't the only one wary of the plan.

"If the plan were simply a Travelocity-style portal for choosing different insurance products across state lines, we would support it," Stephen T. Parente and Paul Howard wrote in a USA Today op-ed in December.

"(T)he potential for abuse is staggering," the op-ed says. "For one thing, the hub will have all the details needed to steal identities and fraudulently access credit."

The reason for collecting much of the data is to fight fraud. The IRS information is used to ensuring that applicants for subsidies are being truthful about their income.

CNN reports that the system will be difficult to scam. Even if a person is successful at underestimating his income, the IRS will correct the error when taxes are filed.

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But that isn't the scam that has Peter Roff of U.S. News & World Report concerned.

"Allowing the federal government to create an unprecedented centralized database could be a back door to greater government control — or even a single payer system."