TV News LIES

Have you heard about the small U.S. government agency engaged in years of closed-door negotiations that could undermine the Obama administration’s declared goals of creating jobs, reregulating the financial sector and lowering healthcare costs?

With the direct participation of 600 corporations and shocking levels of secrecy, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) is rushing to complete the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Branded as a trade agreement (yawn) by its corporate proponents, TPP largely has evaded public and congressional scrutiny since negotiations were launched in 2008 by the George W. Bush administration.

The United States Justice Department said it will not prosecute Attorney General Eric Holder for contempt of Congress.

"The Department has determined that the Attorney General's response to the subpoena issued by the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform does not constitute a crime, and therefore the Department will not bring the congressional contempt citation before a grand jury or take any other action to prosecute the Attorney General," the Deputy Attorney General told House Speaker John Boehner in a letter.

Conservatives were united in their disappointment over the Supreme Court's upholding of President Barack Obama's health care law on Thursday. But one former GOP spokesman took things a bit further than the near-uniform vows to repeal the law.

Matt Davis, a Michigan attorney who was once the state Republican Party's spokesman, sent out an email that asked whether armed rebellion would be justified in the wake of the court's decision.

In a survey conducted for the National Geographic Channel, 65 percent said they’d pick Obama to deal with an invading alien force over Romney. Obama also took the confidence vote among 68 percent of women surveyed, likely a key voting bloc in this scenario as well as in the November election.

In addition, about 79 percent of those surveyed think the government has kept information about aliens and UFOs a secret from the public. Despite that widespread suspicion, only 36 percent actually think UFOs exist, 17 percent don't, and 48 percent aren't sure.

In the annals of impossible assignments, Dave Voth's ranked high. In 2009 the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives promoted Voth to lead Phoenix Group VII, one of seven new ATF groups along the Southwest border tasked with stopping guns from being trafficked into Mexico's vicious drug war.

Some call it the "parade of ants"; others the "river of iron." The Mexican government has estimated that 2,000 weapons are smuggled daily from the U.S. into Mexico. The ATF is hobbled in its effort to stop this flow. No federal statute outlaws firearms trafficking, so agents must build cases using a patchwork of often toothless laws.

Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren took direct aim at Mitt Romney at an Obama fundraiser on Monday, dredging up his remark that “corporations are people.”

“And Mitt, learn this: we don’t run this country for corporations, we run it for people,” Warren continued, drawing cheers from the crowd at Boston Symphony Hall.