LATEST News You won’t find on CNN or FOX News

Every year, the so-called “war on Christmas” gets more and more absurd. This year, the man who arguably created said “war” is making sure to take the rhetoric to record levels of absurdity.

“How do you sell atheism by running down a baby?” he asked during a Dec. 3, 2009 broadcast, discussing a pro-atheism advertisement taken out by the American Humanist Association.

Joined by fellow Fox News personalities Margaret Hoover and Gretchen Carlson, O’Reilly mocked the association’s ad as “anti-God,” and his guests joined suit.

“This is a direct and deliberate smear against Christianity,” said Carlson. “Do you think they would do this ad in July?”

“Do you think they would do it against Allah on Ramadan?” O’Reilly asked. “I don’t think so! No.”

“They’re only doing this on purpose, in December,” Carlson continued. “And, this is the most sacred time …”

Bill asked, “Why does the American Humanist Society want us to be ‘good for goodness sake’?” then narrowed his eyes. “Why do they loathe the baby Jesus? He’s just a baby.”

“Because they see a movement brewing,” quipped Gretchen. “Have you looked at the polls recently? More and more Americans are atheists or agnostic and they’re seeing that growing movement and they’re getting right on the bandwaggon.”

“You don’t sell atheism by running down a baby, do ya?” O’Reilly asked. “You don’t sell atheism by running down a baby. It’s just a baby.”

This video was broadcast by Fox News on Thursday, Dec.

When Senators Tom Coburn and David Vitter decided to make fun of Democratic efforts to pass health reform, they probably did not see this coming.

By proposing an amendment that would require members of Congress to register for public health care if the so-called public option were to pass, the two Republicans hoped to further deter their colleagues from voting in favor.

The hitch in their plan: several Democrats took them seriously.

Speaking to MSNBC on Friday night, Sen. Sherrod Brown explained why he offered to co-sponsor the amendment.

“[With] Sen. Coburn, nine times we said we wanted to co-sponsor,” he said. “Usually it takes once and they say yes. I’ve always accepted that; so has everybody I know in the Senate. Nine times we asked to co-sponsor and their office either just said we’ll get back to you or ignored our calls and our emails because it was all a sham. … They clearly don’t like the public option. They were making fun of it. Their whole game is to delay and deceive and to play political games. … And so, it’s just a little partisan game they’re playing.”

So far, Senators Dodd, Mikulski and Franken have also added their names as co-sponsors.

This video was broadcast by MSNBC on Friday, Dec. 4, 2009, as clipped by Crooks and Liars.

This video was published to YouTube on Saturday, Dec. 5, 2009.

According to a graduate student’s research into the spying policies of major U.S. telecommunications companies, at a recent security conference a Sprint surveillance manager told a group of onlookers that half of all police requests include the target’s text messages.

Half of millions — including some 8 million automated, web-based requests for GPS location, all in just over a year’s time.

The revelation was made by Indiana University grad Christopher Soghoian, as part of his PhD dissertation published Dec. 1, 2009.

He attributes the stunning number to Paul Taylor, an Electronic Surveillance Manager with Sprint Nextel, who was speaking recently at the Washington, D.C. International Securities Systems conference, otherwise known as ISS World.

“Looking around at the name badges pinned to the suits milling around the refreshment area, it really was a who’s who of the spies and those who enable their spying,” he wrote. “Household name telecom companies and equipment vendors, US government agencies (both law enforcement and intel). Also present were representatives from foreign governments — Columbia, Mexico, Algeria, and Nigeria, who, like many of the US government employees, spent quite a bit of time at the vendor booths, picking up free pens and coffee mugs while they learned about the latest and greatest surveillance products currently on the market.”

According to Soghoian, it was during the telecom service providers roundtable discussion that Taylor dropped the bombs.

“[M]y major concern is the volume of requests. We have a lot of things that are automated but that’s just scratching the surface,” he said in an audio recording that has since been removed due to alleged copyright violation. “One of the things, like with our GPS tool. We turned it on the web interface for law enforcement about one year ago last month, and we just passed 8 million requests. So there is no way on earth my team could have handled 8 million requests from law enforcement, just for GPS alone. So the tool has just really caught on fire with law enforcement.”

“He’s talking about the wonderful automated backend Sprint runs for law enforcement, LSite, which allows investigators to rapidly retrieve information directly, without the burden of having to get a human being to respond to every specific request for data,” added Julian Sanchez at the Cato Institute. “Rather, says Sprint, each of those 8 million requests represents a time when an FBI computer or agent pulled up a target’s location data using their portal or API. (I don’t think you can Tweet subpoenas yet.) For an investigation whose targets are under ongoing realtime surveillance over a period of weeks or months, that could very well add up to hundreds or thousands of requests for a few individuals. So those 8 million data requests, according to a Sprint representative in the comments, actually ‘only’ represent ’several thousand’ discrete cases.”

Taylor continued: “Two or three years ago, we probably had less than 10% of our requests including text messaging. Now, over half of all of our surveillance includes SMS messaging.”

He added that his team, which handles all of Sprint’s police requests, is 110 people strong.

“It’s useful to keep in mind that, as Sprint spokesman Matt Sullivan [said], ‘every wireless carrier has a team and a system’ through which police can access GPS data,” noted a follow-up report by Talking Points Memo. “Sprint is the company unlucky enough to find itself the focus of scrutiny, but it reportedly controls just 18% of the U.S. wireless market, making it the third largest carrier.”

GPS location “likely outnumber[s] all other forms of surveillance request,” Soghoian added.

Sprint has over 47 million customers in the U.S.

In spite of government claims to the contrary, no horny girls are standing by to help your child get health insurance.

It’s a state-sponsored blooper for the ages: for two months, a recording by Florida Governor Charlie Crist played when parents called KidCare to get advice on health policies for their children. In the audio, Crist gave a number to call for more information. As it happened, that number was a little off.

Instead of details on child health care, callers were redirected to this: “Hey there, sexy guy. Welcome to an exciting new way to go live, one on one, with hot, horny girls waiting right now to talk to you.”

The mix-up was first reported by The Palm Beach Post.

The recording is available online.

The Post also found four other pseudo-official phone numbers, in West Palm Beach, Pittsburgh, San Francisco and Virginia, that redirect to the sex chat line.

Florida officials blamed and error in the governor’s script for the sultry misdirection. The KidCare recording has been taken down.

This video is from CNN, broadcast Friday, Dec. 4, 2009.

The Electronic Frontiers Foundation (EFF) has filed a lawsuit against several government agencies hoping to force the revelation of how the U.S. utilizes social networks like Facebook and MySpace to collect intelligence.

“Millions of people use social networking sites like Facebook every day, disclosing lots of information about their private lives,” said James Tucker, a student working with EFF, in a media advisory. “As Congress debates new privacy laws covering sites like Facebook, lawmakers and voters alike need to know how the government is already using this data and what is at stake.”

However, when EFF went looking for that information by filing Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, they ran into a stone wall of silence.

The suit was filed in cooperation with the Samuelson Law, Technology, and Public Policy Clinic at Berkeley. It demands immediate publication of government policies dealing with social networks during an investigation.

“Internet users deserve to know what information is collected, under what circumstances, and who has access to it,” said Shane Witnov, a law student working on the case, according to the EFF’s release. “These agencies need to abide by the law and release their records on social networking surveillance.”

The EFF’s full complaint, which encompasses the Central Intelligence Agency, Departments of Justice, Defense and Homeland Security, the Treasury and Director of National Intelligence, can be read here [PDF link].