The National Legal Policy Center has uncovered a plan by the White House New Media operation to hire a technology vendor to conduct a massive, secret effort to harvest personal information on millions of Americans from social networking websites.
The information to be captured includes comments, tag lines, emails, audio, and video. The targeted sites include Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, YouTube, Flickr and others – any space where the White House “maintains a presence.”
While the solicitation specifies a 12-month contract, it allows for seven one-year extensions. It specifies no dollar cap. Other troubling issues include:
extremely broad secrecy terms preventing the vendor from disclosing to the public or the media what information is being captured and archived (page 7, “Restriction Against Disclosure”)
wholesale capturing of comments by non-White House staff on publicly accessible sites
capturing of content of any type (text, graphics, audio, or video)
capturing of comments by both Obama critics and supporters, with no restriction as to how the White House would use the information.
The government is investigating a major insurance company for allegedly trying to scare seniors with a mailer warning they could lose important benefits under health care legislation in Congress.
The Health and Human Services Department launched its investigation of Humana after getting a complaint from Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., a senior lawmaker usually viewed as a reliable ally of the insurance industry.
"It is wholly unacceptable for insurance companies to mislead seniors regarding any subject--particularly on a subject as important to them, and to the nation, as health care reform," Baucus said Monday, disclosing the HHS investigation. . . .
In a warning letter to Humana, HHS said the government is concerned that the mailer "is misleading and confusing" partly because the company's lobbying campaign could be mistaken for an official communication about Medicare benefits.
HHS ordered the company to immediately halt any such mailings, and remove any related materials from its Web site. In the letter, the government also said it may take other action against Humana.
Sort of proves what many of us feared when the White House started their web site to report "untrue" statements about socialized medicine, namely, that the government would go after the people who disagreed with "the One."
Now of course, the government has considerable authority to regulate commercial speech to make sure it is not "misleading and confusing," but the this mailing sounds political. Misleading and confusing political speech (which Zick has claimed is common among politicians, including this president) is protected by the First Amendment.
If the government can start investigating people or organizations that oppose its policies under the guise of saying "they are inaccurate" any president would have carte blanche to target anyone who has a different opinion than that administration.
The federal government resorted to bullying tactics when it ordered an investigation of Humana -- one of the country's biggest private insurers -- for its decision to send customers a letter alerting them about pending health reform legislation, a leading Republican charged Wednesday.
U.S. health officials launched the probe after the Louisville-based company mailed a letter to patients enrolled in its Medicare Advantage plans -- private options that replace standard Medicare -- warning that President Obama's health overhaul could eliminate important benefits of the program.
Humana said in its letter that if Medicare Advantage funding gets cut, "millions of seniors and disabled individuals ... could lose many of the important benefits and services that make Medicare Advantage health plans so valuable."
Republican Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell blasted the investigation of Humana on Wednesday, calling it a "federal gag order" that seeks to silence a health provider that disagrees with the administration. McConnell said he's called for a complete legal justification of the probe.
"This is so clearly an outrage," McConnell said on the Senate floor. "For explaining to seniors how legislation might affect them, the federal government has now issued a gag order on that company, and any other company that communicates with clients on the issue, telling them to shut up -- or else.
"This is precisely the kind of thing Americans are worried about with the administration's health care plan. They're worried that government agencies which were created to enforce violations even-handedly will instead be used against those who voice a different point of view," he said.
The investigation was first suggested by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, whose committee has jurisdiction over Medicare. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) -- which officiates over the Medicare program for seniors and Medicare Advantage options -- ordered a "cease and desist" order on all of Humana's health care mailings until the investigation is concluded.
Baucus has called the Humana letter a "scare tactic" meant to distort the current reforms under consideration. The CMS alleges that Humana's letter may have violated federal regulations, but the information distributed by the health provider was supported by the nonpartisan, independent analysis of the Congressional Budget Office.
Obama has insisted that despite planned cuts to Medicare providers, seniors would not see their benefits reduced under a health care overhaul. But CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf contradicted that Tuesday under questioning by Finance Committee Republicans, saying seniors in the private Medicare Advantage plans could see reduced benefits under Baucus' legislation. Proposed changes "would reduce the extra benefits that would be made available to beneficiaries through Medicare Advantage plans," Elmendorf said.
Humana spokesman Jim Turner said Wednesday that the company is cooperating with CMS in its investigation. But, Turner added, "We also believe Medicare Advantage members deserve to know the impact that funding cuts of the magnitude being discussed would have on benefits and premiums."
A Republican aide told FOXNews.com that the investigation is a clear breach of First Amendment rights and said the Republican leader is asking the CMS to provide legal justification for its investigation. The aide said CMS's investigation follows a pattern of intimidation put forth by the administration for any kind of dissent in the health care debate.
The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee lashed out at McConnell's charges Wednesday, saying, "If there was ever any doubt who Republicans are looking out for in the health care debate, Mitch McConnell has offered conclusive proof: the insurance companies.
"Republicans jeopardize their own credibility when they choose to defend big insurance companies trying to make false claims about senior citizens," the DSCC said in a press release.
Nine months into Obama's administration, no administrator of the CMS has been named -- leading some Republicans to question whether the White House had a direct hand in silencing Humana.
While the administration referred all questions about the investigation to CMS, White House spokesman Reid Cherlin said the confirmation of a CMS administrator "is a priority for the administration." CMS did not immediately answer requests for comment.
House Ways and Means Committee ranking member Rep. Dave Camp, R-Mich., has called on CMS to provide additional information on the so-called gag order, including the person or persons who authorized the agency to issue it.
"I have never seen anything like this and I question if politics was the deciding factor," Camp said in a press release. "Given that the administration has failed for more than eight months to nominate a director for CMS, I wonder if undue political pressure may have been applied on the CMS staff.
"It is Congress' responsibility to find out the facts and protect the interests of the American people. We need to know who contacted CMS, when they did it and what was said," he said.
In addition to intimidating Humana and similar counter-argument, Obama's thugs are attempting to dissuade any investigation of ACORN and other Obama-wing front groups.
In this case, by launching a harassment lawsuit against Hannah Giles and James O'Keefe, as well as the publisher of their story, Breitbart.
As this article from the conservative WorldNetDaily points out, ACORN's case against Giles and O'Keefe is on pretty weak and shaky ground.
Liberals who bemoan discrimination, intolerance, restraint of Constitutional freedoms, and promotion of hatred toward various abberant minorities, have absolutely no problem with discriminating against, being intolerant of, restricting Constitutional freedoms of, and directing hate-filled scapegoat rhetoric against conservatives.
EXACTLY what they accuse Republicans/conservatives of doing, is EXACTLY what liberals/Democrats do themselves, to those who oppose their beliefs.
COLUMBUS, Ga. – A federal judge in Georgia fined a leader of the movement challenging President Barack Obama's citizenship and warned her against using the legal system to pursue "political rhetoric and insults."
U.S. District Judge Clay D. Land's scathing 43-page order Tuesday said California lawyer and dentist Orly Taitz filed "frivolous" litigation and attempted to misuse the federal courts to push a political agenda.
Taitz, a leader of the so-called birther movement, sued in Georgia federal court on behalf of Army Capt. Connie Rhodes. Rhodes sought to avoid deployment to Iraq by claiming Obama wasn't born in the U.S. and that he was "an illegal usurper, unlawful pretender and unqualified impostor."
Land had already dismissed the lawsuit, but Taitz continued filing motions. He said he fined her $20,000 "as a deterrent to prevent future misconduct and to protect the integrity of the court."
"The absolute absence of any legitimate legal argument, combined with the political diatribe in her motions, demonstrates that Ms. Taitz's purpose is to advance a political agenda and not to pursue a legitimate legal cause of action," Land wrote.
He added that while Taitz's speech is protected by the First Amendment, "the federal courts are reserved for hearing genuine legal disputes, not as a platform for political rhetoric and insults."
Taitz told The Daily Report that Land's order is "an absolute outrage."
"All I can say is that this order is issued with a goal to intimidate me, harass me and retaliate against me for bringing a legitimate action on behalf of my client," she said.
I'm not the biggest Beck fan, but he nailed this one. So far that bitch has tried three different excuses and all have failed. The most recent was to pin the quote on Atwater. Sure, Atwater had quoted Mao, but he never called him his favorite political philosopher. This bitch is a freakin' commie.
whomod said: I generally don't like it when people decide to play by the rules against people who don't play by the rules. It tends to put you immediately at a disadvantage and IMO is a sign of true weakness. This is true both in politics and on the internet."
Have you heard the news? President Obama inherited an economic mess from the Bush administration.
You say that's hardly news? But it's been the message sounded over and over by the White House. Top Obama adviser David Axelrod said on one of the Sunday news shows, "He walked in the door, we had the worst economy since the Great Depression." In San Francisco, Obama talked of being "busy with our mop." White House heavy hitter Rahm Emanuel used the worst-economy-since-the-Depression line on a public TV news show.
You'd think it's October 2008, the final month in the Obama presidential candidacy, rather than October 2009, nine months into the Obama presidency. Yet the Obama White House is in full campaign mode -- maybe because it needs to mask the shortcomings of the Obama presidency.
Take, for example, all the talk of inheriting the worst economy since the 1930s crisis. That came in response to the news that the federal deficit hit $1.4 trillion.
Yet just a few months ago, the Obama camp was singing a little different tune. It was under criticism for the $787 billion stimulus package it bulldozed through Congress on grounds that massive spending was needed to keep the unemployment rate from breaching 8 percent. When joblessness hit 9.5 percent in June, Vice President Joe Biden said, "We misread how bad the economy was."
They inherited the worst economy since the Great Depression, or the economy turned out to be worse than they thought. Which is it? It can't be both -- unless your brain is completely addled by the Obama charisma.
Obama is still popular, but polls show the public losing faith in his policies. Another indicator was a ''Saturday Night Live'' skit lampooning Obama for the major accomplishments of his administration -- "jack and squat." If the honeymoon is ending with the American voter, it isn't for obsequious elements of the mainstream media. CNN prostrated itself by fact-checking the ''SNL'' comedy skit.
But that's harmless compared to the virulent campaign against Obama critics carried out by the denizens of MSNBC. Its Obama acolytes seek to demonize opponents of Obama's policies by focusing on most marginal corners of right-wing politics like, for example, the "birthers" who deny Obama is a natural born citizen. The larger scheme is to imply Obama critics are racists.
That's the backdrop to the story of Rush Limbaugh getting booted from a group bidding to buy the St. Louis Rams. He was smeared on CNN and MSNBC with false accusations of making two racist comments. He is an abrasive critic of Obama, so he must be racist, or so goes the left-wing story line. I wouldn't defend everything Limbaugh has ever said, but lies were used to blacklist him from professional football for his political views.
Recently an MSNBC personality accused the U.S. Chamber of Commerce of lobbying for policies that amount to being "treasonous to this country." Remember how liberals roared in outrage at any hint of their patriotism being questioned for criticizing the Iraq War? Well, it's the left that doesn't shy from attacking the patriotism of those it dislikes. Recall the repulsive Moveon.org "General Betray-us" ad against Iraq commander Gen. David Petraeus. Recent opposition to Chicago's Olympic bid was cast as a sign of a lack of patriotism among Obama critics.
The MSNBC blast against the chamber appears to dovetail with what the Politico newspaper reports is a White House and Democratic effort "to marginalize" the business organization. That echoes the administration assault on the Fox News Channel: It says Fox isn't a news organization.
The White House trying to dictate who's a news organization. Democrats out to gut a business group. Obama media allies damning Americans as racist, unpatriotic and treasonous. Is this the America Obama promised when he campaigned to end the cynical and divisive politics of the past?
An official at a Democratic-leaning organization sends on a memo the group Media Matters is circulating today to progressive groups, calling Fox "a lethal 24/7 partisan political operation" and rallying a coalition of groups to join the White House assault on the network.
"The danger to progressive causes and the institution of journalism has become too significant to ignore," says the introduction to a memo by Media Matters founder David Brock. "At Media Matters, we believe it is of paramount importance that progressive leaders have the information necessary to understand exactly what Fox News has become. We hope this brief memorandum will assist you in reaching your own decision on how best to engage this threat."
One of the group's conclusions: Progressive groups should join the White House's effective boycott of the network, and failing that, "any progressive who chooses to go on Fox News should understand that they will be debating the political opposition, not conducting a news interview."
Amazing. A "news" organization calling for censoring a TV network because their politics differ.
However, it looks as if the Soros/Brock/Obama plan isn't taking hold.
White House Loses Bid to Exclude Fox News From Pay Czar Interview: The Obama administration on Thursday tried to make "pay czar" Kenneth Feinberg available for interviews to every member of the White House pool except Fox News. But the Washington bureau chiefs of the five TV networks decided that none of their reporters would interview Feinberg unless Fox News was included.
White House Loses Bid to Exclude Fox News From Pay Czar Interview: The Obama administration on Thursday tried to make "pay czar" Kenneth Feinberg available for interviews to every member of the White House pool except Fox News. But the Washington bureau chiefs of the five TV networks decided that none of their reporters would interview Feinberg unless Fox News was included.
I think the mainstream press is starting to get tired of the way Obama's Admin. has been walking all over them taking the good will from the election for granted.
whomod said: I generally don't like it when people decide to play by the rules against people who don't play by the rules. It tends to put you immediately at a disadvantage and IMO is a sign of true weakness. This is true both in politics and on the internet."
Donald Sensing has a fascinating analysis of President Obama's war against Fox News. He describes the effort as "directly out of the Saul Alinsky playbook."
Alinsky was the author of "Rules for Radicals," bible of left-wing community organizers. One of his rules, or "power tactics": "Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it." Sensing analyzes how Obama is carrying out this advice:
Pick the target. Do not make the mistake of thinking that FoxNews Channel is the actual target. The bullseye target of this campaign is all the public media. FNC's role in this much broader attack is the next two precepts.
Freeze it. This does not mean to shock the target into inactivity, but to fix a certain perception about the target in the minds of the broader community, in this case the media figures in general and the minds of the community (in this case, the whole nation is the community) as a whole.
The White House strategy here is twofold. First, to freeze FNC away from being thought of as just one of the universe of media outlets. White House Communications Director Anita Dunn opened this volley by declaring that FNC is not really a news organization, but the propaganda arm of the Republican party. . . .
Personalize it. Attacking FNC puts a face, a personal identity on the White House's enemy, but also serves to obscure the larger identity of the enemy. FNC is separated from the rest of the "real" media and personalized as a partisan, ideological arm of the president's political opposition. The White House wants the other media to think that its fight is with FoxNews exclusively, hoping they won't see that the real fight is with all media.
The other media may expect to be flattered as "real" reporters and news organizations who are actually the ones being "fair and balanced." The more a [sic] White House reporters and editors toe the White House line, the greater access they will be granted, especially to power figures such as Rahm Emmanuel, David Axelrod and, ultimately, Barack Obama himself, whom we may expect to give a one-on-one interview with the biggest suckup reporter gaining Dunn's favor. Reporters who don't fall into place will discover they are being frozen out of access and will have to rely exclusively on press briefer Robert Gibbs, which is the kiss of death to a White House reporter.
Polarize it. The White House wants to set up an us-v-them dynamic among the White House press pool. Hence, "White House Urges Other Networks to Disregard Fox News."
White House Loses Bid to Exclude Fox News From Pay Czar Interview: The Obama administration on Thursday tried to make "pay czar" Kenneth Feinberg available for interviews to every member of the White House pool except Fox News. But the Washington bureau chiefs of the five TV networks decided that none of their reporters would interview Feinberg unless Fox News was included.
Wow, good for them.
Yeah I agree. FOX may be right leaning but it wouldn't be good for anyone if they were frozen out. The political strategy the WH is employing is really dumb and it's costing them support.
(CBS) After months of taking incoming fire from the prime-time stars of Fox News, the Obama White House is firing back, charging that FOX News is different from all other news.
"FOX News often operates almost as either the research arm or the communications arm of the Republican party," said Anita Dunn, White House communications director.
"If media is operating basically as a talk radio format, then that's one thing, and if it's operating as a news outlet, then that's another," Mr. Obama said.
And the White House has gone beyond words, reports CBS News senior political correspondent Jeff Greenfield. Last Sept. 20, the president went on every Sunday news show - except Chris Wallace's show on FOX. And on Thursday, the Treasury Department tried to exclude FOX News from pool coverage of interviews with a key official. It backed down after strong protests from the press.
"All the networks said, that's it, you've crossed the line," said CBS News White House correspondent Chip Reid.
Tension between presidents and the press is as old as the Republic. FDR was so incensed by the war reporting of one New York Daily News correspondent he tried to present him with an Iron Cross from Nazi Germany. John Kennedy tried to get New York Timesman David Halberstam pulled out of Vietnam; and Vice-President Spiro Agnew's assaults on the network press is legendary.
"We have more than our share of nattering nabobs of negativism," Agnew said.
What gives this dust-up special irony is that FOX News success comes in no small part from its ability to convince its viewers that the "mainstream" media are slanted to the left. Now, the White House is arguing that the network is not a real news organization at all, and that has brought some mainstream media voices to its defense.
Here's ABC's Jake Tapper at a recent White House briefing:
"You made it sound like that was evidence of them not being a news organization," Tapper said.
There's no question that FOX's prime-time voices come from the right. Moreover, its owner, Rupert Murdoch is a staunch conservative, and its first and only CEO, Roger Ailes, is a veteran of Republican media wars.
But MSNBC in prime-time has its own lineup of commentators - all of whom are on the left side of the spectrum, some of whom met with the president the White House this week.
So why is the White House out to "de-legitimize" FOX? Not because it has opinions, but because its opinion voices are so hostile to Mr. Obama - and because FOX News is, as it has been for a decade, by far the most watched of the cable news networks. In fact, its ratings have increased 13 percent this summer. So if FOX is feeling any pain from the White House's stance, it's crying all the way to the bank.
The White House has berated Fox News for days now for purportedly pushing an agenda and calling it news. So Americans may have been surprised when, as reported by Noel Sheppard, Obama invited two of MSNBC's most divisive liberal pundits--Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow--to the White House for an off-the-record briefing.
As it turns out, Maddow and Olbermann were only two of the left's heavyweights at the briefing. Yesterday, TVNewser received from the White House a complete list of names. Virtually all of them have their histories of shilling for the administration or Democrats generally, and of bashing conservatives.
Let us review the colorful histories of these pundits, and the reader can decide whether they "have a perspective," in the words of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel (in the context of a Fox News attack).
New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd hears racism everywhere. She somehow managed to draw racial motivations from Joe Wilson's 'you lie!' outburst last month. That the comment may have been a valid--if poorly timed--objection to disingenuousness on the President's part was of course out of the question. Because, you know, Wilson's from South Carolina.
E.J. Dionne of the Washington Post wanted Democrats to "make the world safe for tax increases." He notably accused President Bush of using "the post-Sept. 11 mood to do all he could to intimidate Democrats from raising questions more of them should have raised."
Another WaPo columnist, Eugene Robinson, suggested in 2005 that fears of a conspiracy in New Orleans to "save the French Quarter and the Garden District at the expense of the Lower Ninth Ward, which is almost all black" were not that crazy, and that the people muttering these theories were "reasonable" and "sober."
New York Times columnist Frank Rich has compared Joy Behar to Edward R. Murrow. He also attributed a large portion of the opposition to Obama to conservatives who are "irrationally fearful of the fast-moving generational, cultural and racial turnover Obama embodies."
PBS anchor Gwen Ifill penned a book about the Obama campaign that contained these glowing words about inauguration day: "the romance and achievement of 1960s civil rights marches bearing fruit, as the lions of the movement mingled with the up and comers. Some had been slow to embrace Barack Obama. Some had been quick. But, this night, all wanted to bear witness..."
New York Times columnist Bob Herbert claimed that an ad attacking Barack Obama during the campaign was racist because it showed Paris Hilton and Britney Spears (in the context of criticizing Obama's celebrity) and contained the phallic (in Herbert's words) images of the Washington Monument and the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
These pundits have certainly shown their willingness to shill for Obama and liberals and to decry opposition as somehow illegitimate. They all have "perspectives," and push their agendas through the media for which they report. If that makes Fox News an enemy, why are these commentators being invited to the White House?
Fox Network's numbers speaks for themselves. In the first quarter Fox was the second-most-watched network in primetime. It bagged the top spot among nine out of ten cable shows. It made CNN and MSNBC look like amateurish high school student broadcast facilities. In the second quarter Fox did even better with an astonishing ratings jump more than thirty percent higher than the first quarter. Their runaway number one audience, ad, and ratings recruiter is President Obama. Yet, Obama keeps pitching Fox. First he publicty tried to shoo everyone away from the network. Then he blocked its request to interview so-called pay czar Kenneth Feinberg. This got the dander of even some moderate Democrats up. They recognize that he's making a cardinal blunder in propping up Fox through the backdoor with his attacks.
It also ticked off the major TV networks. Free Speech, First Amendment, the right to broadcast, and accessibility were the issues that made them see red about Obama's ham handed effort to punish Fox. Hey, it's Fox today it could be us tomorrow the president dumps on. Obama just can't seem to help himself with his obsessive need to bash Fox and gorge its ratings binge. Fox, of course, giddily loves every swipe that he takes at it. It should. Having the president attack you is the best advertising in the world without having to spend a nickle on it.
The puzzle is not so much that Obama hasn't figured out that he's the best pitch man for Fox. But that he hasn't learned that bad mouthing the right side media gabbers only makes them bigger than life. Take Limbaugh. In January, Obama took the ill-fated step and made him his momentary punching bag. The predictable happened. The Media Research Center found that Limbaugh's ratings soared through the roof. Radio affiliates that carried Limbaugh's syndicated show floated on Cloud Nine with the listener stampede to his show. Limbaugh quickly saw the goldmine, mined it for all it was worth, and hasn't missed a beat since.
It further coronated him as the de facto mouthpiece for the GOP. It set in stone GOP opposition to anything that Obama and the Democrats come up with, and gave the legion of Obama baiters and loathers more ammunition to blast him on the airwaves, in chat rooms, websites, and even more despicably in race baiting cartoons, emails, Facebook and twitter posts.
Obama, it seemed at one point, knew enough not to be a salesman for his critics. During the campaign when Republican rival John McCain dredged up Sarah Palin some Team Obama members foolishly saw this as a chance to go dirty with him and her. Obama quickly saw the folly of this. He publicly congratulated her for being the VP pick and then said not another mumbling word about her. He understood that he was running against McCain not Palin. Despite her mind boggling incompetence and unfittness she was a woman, a mother, had an afflicted child, and was the darling of the rabid right. Beating up on her would simply rally the hordes of christian fundamentalist and ultra conservative troops and inflate her (and the politically moribund McCain) to colossal proportions in the media. The lesson from ignoring Palin obviously didn't last.
Obama's pummel of Fox won't do anything to shove down the Network's huge ratings numbers. It will only boost them. You'd think the president would figure out by now he's their star unpaid pitchman.
A gunshot was fired at the New Jersey home of CNN's Lou Dobbs after a series of threatening phone calls earlier this month, the host told listeners on his nationally syndicated radio show.
Dobbs, a fervent proponent of U.S. border enforcement, told listeners of "The Lou Dobbs Show" on Monday that the incident is part of an ongoing assault against anyone who opposes amnesty or leniency toward illegal immigrants.
"They've created an atmosphere and they've been unrelenting in their propaganda," Dobbs said in reference to pro-immigration groups like the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), the National Council of La Raza and America's Voice. "Three weeks ago this morning, a shot was fired at my house where I live. My wife was standing out and that followed weeks and weeks of threatening phone calls."
Dobbs continued, "But this shot was fired with my wife not, I don't know, 15 feet away, and we had threatening phone calls that I decided not to report because I get threatening phone calls."
Reached early Thursday at her home, Dobbs' wife, Debi Lee Segura, told Foxnews.com that she was outside the house when the shot was fired in her direction. She declined to elaborate, referring calls to Dobbs, who could not be immediately reached for comment.
A spokeswoman for CNN declined to comment Thursday.
New Jersey State Police Sgt. Steve Jones said troopers were called to the Dobbs' estate in rural Wantage, N.J., at about 10:30 a.m. on Oct. 5. The investigators who responded to the call were told that Dobbs and his wife were outside their home when they heard a gunshot, and a bullet struck their attic.
"It struck the siding and then fell to the ground," Jones said.
A search of the vicinity was unsuccessful; the bullet was taken for analysis.
"It's a shot fired that struck the house," Jones continued. "We're not sure what the intended target was. It's still under investigation."
No injuries were reported.
William Gheen, president of Americans for Legal Immigration (ALIPAC), said it's very likely Dobbs' outspokenness on illegal immigration led to the shooting.
"That shot, that attack on the Dobbs family is an attack on every American that values First Amendment rights," Gheen told Foxnews.com. "The chances are greatest that it was political, because pro-amnesty groups have tried to dehumanize Lou Dobbs and lie about him."
Dobbs, who claimed the "national liberal media" has in part created a hostile environment regarding immigration, said enduring such incidents has become a "way of life" for him.
"It's become a way of life — the anger, the hate, the vitriol — but it's taken a different tone where they've threatened my wife," he said Monday. "They've now fired a shot at my house while my wife was standing next to the car.
"It's become something else. And if anybody thinks we're not engaged in a battle for the soul of this country right now, you're sorely mistaken."
Sure, Atwater had quoted Mao, but he never called him his favorite political philosopher. This bitch is a freakin' commie.
