Indiana's Congressional Delegation Votes Against Curtailing NSA Surveillance Powers, Demand Their Resignations

Indiana's congressional delegation had an opportunity to cast a key vote yesterday in the House of Representatives to curtail the powers of the NSA to spy on American citizens. Unfortunately, a lot of them stood on the side of violating your constitutional rights. An amendment offered by U.S. Rep. Justin Amash (R-MI) that would have required a showing to the FISA court that reasonable grounds existed for gathering information about a particular person or group, rather than the indiscriminate gathering of sensitive personal information on every single American as the NSA is currently doing, was defeated in the House yesterday. Only one member of Indiana's congressional delegation, Andre Carson (D), voted in favor of the Amash amendment. All other members of the delegation voted against it, except U.S. Rep. Todd Rokita (R), who missed the vote. Those voting against the amendment included:

Susan Brooks (R)
Larry Buschon (R)
Luke Messer (R)
Marlin Stutzman (R)
Pete Visclosky (D)
Todd Young (R)
Jackie Walorski (R)

If you are represented by one of these members who voted against this amendment, you should demand their resignation from Congress. By their actions, they have demonstrated their unwillingness to uphold the oath they took to uphold the Constitution of the United States. The NSA surveillance program drives a fork through your fundamental rights to First Amendment free speech rights and your right to be secure from unreasonable searches and seizures under the Fourth Amendment. Their vote on this amendment demonstrates that they believe in a totalitarian state that would make Adolf Hitler proud. There were 94 Republicans and 111 Democrats who supported the Amash amendment, while 134 Republicans and 83 Democrats voted against it. The final vote was 205-217.

False Flag Operation In Indiana's Second Congressional District?

There's a rather odd report of a mailbox bombing at the home of a Democratic congressional candidate in Indiana's second congressional district, Brendan Mullen, who is running well behind Republican Jackie Walorski in the race to succeed U.S. Rep. Joe Donnelly.

A small explosion of some kind occurred Monday afternoon in a mailbox outside the home of Indiana Democratic congressional candidate Brendan Mullen.

A law enforcement official told TPM on Tuesday that authorities are investigating a spate of incidents involving similar explosions. Four such explosions have occurred in and around Granger, Ind., where Mullen lives, in the last 24 hours, according to David Coulson, a spokesperson for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF).

Coulson said the St. Joseph’s County Sheriff’s Department is leading the investigation.

“We’re assisting in any way we can,” Coulson said, referring to ATF.

Mullen is running in Indiana’s 2nd congressional district. His spokesperson Andy Reynolds told TPM the incident occurred between 4:45 p.m. and 5 p.m. on Monday. Mullen, his campaign finance director, and an intern heard the explosion, and went outside to see what had happened. Several neighbors also left their homes in response to the noise. According to Reynolds, both Mullen and his financer director spotted a black car driving away “out of corner of their eye[s].”

Reynolds said that Mullen then “spoke with the police, they came and checked it out,” and that local authorities later contacted the ATF and the FBI. But he noted that at “this point it’s more of a precautionary measure.”

“We certainly hope that it’s not a politically motivated thing,” Reynolds said.

Calls to the St. Joseph County Sheriff’s Office and the FBI were not immediately returned.
 

Mullen's opponent is, of course, a Tea Party-backed candidate and her opponent has sought to characterize her a "Tea Party extremist." Is this simply another effort by rogue forces within the U.S. intelligence community to rescue the candidacy of their faltering chosen candidate by making it appear that Walorski is backed by a bunch of wild-eyed, right wing extremists? Mullen, a West Point graduate who served in the DMZ of South Korea and several tours of duty in Iraq, lived and worked in Washington with his wife in some obscure role as a military contractor after leaving the military. He and his wife owned three homes in Washington and only moved back to Indiana so he could run for Donnelly's open congressional seat. When Walorski recently made an issue of her opponent's three D.C. homes, the campaign used left-wing media outlets to suggest that she was trying to put Mullen at personal risk by publicizing the address of his homes and attacking his military service to his country. In a story headlined, "Rep. Walorski publicizes home addresses of Democratic challenger in campaign ad," the Huffington Post wrote:

Rep. Jackie Walorski's (R-Ind.) latest campaign ad goes after her Democratic challenger, Brendan Mullen, as a Washington, D.C. insider who doesn't share Hoosier values. To underscore the point, the ad publicizes Mullen's home addresses . . .

Andy Reynolds, Mullen's campaign manager, called Walorski's charges "laughable," saying the candidate lives in Indiana with his wife and two daughters. He added that the D.C. addresses are of rental properties.

"Brendan is proud to have served his country honorably as an officer in the United States Army, and was stationed in Washington D.C. -- along with being stationed at the DMZ in Korea and near Mosul, Iraq in combat as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom," he said in a statement. "Brendan is proud of his South Bend roots, being born and raised here. That’s why he and his wife are raising their two daughters here in Indiana, and why Brendan runs a small business here helping Hoosier veterans and their families."

Republicans have lately been decrying Democratic trackers who have filmed the homes of GOP candidates and posted the raw footage on the Internet. They have argued that it's an invasion of privacy and puts their families at risk . . .

Mullen's campaign put out an ad on Wednesday responding to Walorski's spot, featuring Army veteran Chad Gibson, who served in Iraq with Mullen.

"So when I see Jackie Walorski smear Brendan, who has spent his life defending our country and working for veterans -- while Walorski spent her's as a career politician -- that's downright un-American," Gibson says in the ad.

To show you how out-of-touch Mullen is with Indiana, when he sought to distance himself from Obama and the liberal national Democratic Party, he described himself to a reporter as a "common sense centrist"- a "Birch Bayh Democrat. "I'm not a national Democrat," he told the South Bend Tribune. "I'm not an Obama Democrat. I'm a Birch Bayh Democrat." Uh, Birch was as liberal as Ted Kennedy, Brendan. It was Evan Bayh who was considered the centrist Democrat.

UPDATE: Just caught this pointed headline that ran on Soros-funded Daily Kos blog: "4 bombs, One in Indiana Dem Brendan Mullen's mailbox, He's running against a Tea Party candidate."  "Now, I'm not suggesting that Jackie Walorski had anything to do with the 4 bombs detonated in Brendan Mullen's district," War on Error writes. "However, there is a video showing that some of her followers are a tad unruly."

Residency Issues Will Sink 2nd District Democratic Candidate

Republican Jackie Walorski's election as Indiana's new 2nd District congresswoman replacing U.S. Rep. Joe Donnelly is in the bag, which means two Republican women will be representing Indiana in Congress after this year's November election. So much for the GOP's supposed war on women. The Democrats have nominated a candidate with worse residency problems than those faced by former U.S. Rep. David McIntosh in his narrow loss in Indiana's 5th District primary race to Susan Brooks.

Second District Democratic congressional candidate Brendan Mullen's residency issues have been no secret for the past year. Politico mentioned his problem way back in July, 2011, noting that he had only recently claimed a residence in South Bend after working for years in Washington as a military consultant. Mullen's wife, curiously, has also worked as a top lawyer for Republican House Speaker John Boehner until recently earning $12,000 a month. The Indiana Legislative Insight's Ed Feigenbaum highlights the seriousness of Mullen's problem, except it's a third party candidate who is making the strongest waves about his residency problem. Feigenbaum notes that Green Party candidate Andrew Straw is now turning up the heat on Mullen.

"Until running for Congress, Democrat Brendan Mullen has not lived or worked in Indiana since he was 18. He owns several houses in DC, where he has earned no income from his DC business in 2010 and 2011."  Attorney Straw adds that "Mullen's wife has worked for Speaker John Boehner in Washington up to December 31, 2011. She earned hundreds of thousands in DC, where they lived until Mullen ran for Congress .... Half of his campaign, his wife was working for the leader of the opposition. That's why compromise is his main promise. He'll sell Democrats down river." Straw also reveals that Mullen's voter registration is from a single-family residence in South Bend across from the Morris Park Country Club owned by Katie Humphreys and her husband. Humphreys is a former Family and Social Services Administration secretary and commissioner of the Department of Administration who was also the 1994 Democratic nominee for state treasurer.

If his residency problem wasn't bad enough, Mullen and his wife were also tripped up last year when it was revealed that they were claiming separate homestead exemptions on their two Washington, D.C. homes.