What’s interesting in the news today?
1. The fighting between the CIA and Senate Intelligence Committee is getting interesting.
From TheWaPost “A behind-the-scenes battle between the CIA and Congress erupted in public Tuesday as the head of the Senate Intelligence Committee accused the agency of breaking laws and breaching constitutional principles in an alleged effort to undermine the panel’s multi-year investigation of a controversial interrogation program.
Chairman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) accused the CIA of secretly removing documents, searching computers used by the committee and attempting to intimidate congressional investigators by requesting an FBI inquiry of their conduct — charges that CIA Director John Brennan disputed within hours of her appearance on the Senate floor.”
“Feinstein described the escalating conflict as a “defining moment” for Congress’s role in overseeing the nation’s intelligence agencies and cited “grave concerns” that the CIA had “violated the separation-of-powers principles embodied in the United States Constitution.”
“Over a period of years, investigators pored over more than 6.2 million classified records furnished by the CIA, using a search tool that agency technical experts agreed to install. But U.S. officials said the committee gained access to a set of documents that the agency never intended to share, files that were generated at the direction of former director Leon E. Panetta as part of an effort to take an inventory of the records being turned over to Feinstein’s panel.”
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2. Obama to Dems: It’s time to worry.
From TheHill “The election is coming, the election is coming!
That’s the message coming from President Obama as he tries desperately to rouse Democrats out of a midterm election stupor that could cost his party control of the Senate — and bury his agenda once and for all.”
“In 2014, the worry is that Democrats will lose the Senate if the base doesn’t come out, and it’s an outcome that political observers and Democratic strategists say is more and more plausible.”
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3. A sign of things to come?
From NBCNews “Republican David Jolly was declared the winner Tuesday of a closely watched Florida Congressional race both parties viewed as testing grounds to hone strategies for the 2014 midterm elections.
Jolly defeated Democrat Alex Sink in a tight race to fill the Tampa Bay-area seat of the late GOP Rep. Bill Young, according to the Associated Press.
The pricey campaign was waged heavily on President Barack Obama’s healthcare overhaul. Sink, who ran for governor of the Sunshine State in 2010, fought back a litany of attacks for her support of Obamacare in the first Congressional election since the law’s troubled rollout last fall. Jolly was portrayed as a former lobbyist beholden to special interests and whose calls for repeal of the health care law would move the country backward.”
““Tonight, one of Nancy Pelosi’s most prized candidates was ultimately brought down because of her unwavering support for ObamaCare, and that should be a loud warning for other Democrats running coast to coast,” Rep. Greg Walden, chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee said in a statement.”
Let’s hope so.
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4. Not surprising. It’s one of the reasons she took the 5th.
From TheWashingtonExaminer “A GOP-led House panel Tuesday released an extensive report that attempts to show former top Internal Revenue Service official Lois Lerner lied to Congress about her involvement in the targeting of conservative groups seeking tax exempt status.
Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., said the 141-page report “offers detailed evidence about steps she took to crack down on organizations that exercised their Constitutional rights to free political speech.”
“The report does not include any of the Lerner emails the IRS recently promised to turn over to the House Ways and Means Committee, but Oversight apparently had enough material to determine, according to Issa, that Lerner “misled Congress about targeting and her own conduct.”
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5. This story just gets weirder as time goes by.
From TheWaPost “There were conspiracy theories and morbid calculation of survival odds, which grew ever darker as the days dragged on.
One of the most eerie rumors came after a few relatives said they were able to call the cellphones of their loved ones or find them on a Chinese instant messenger service called QQ that indicated that their phones were still somehow online.
A migrant worker in the room said that several other workers from his company were on the plane, including his brother-in-law. Among them, the QQ accounts of three still showed that they were online, he said Sunday afternoon.
Adding to the mystery, other relatives in the room said that when they dialed some passengers’ numbers, they seemed to get ringing tones on the other side even though the calls were not picked up.
The phantom calls triggered a new level of desperation and anger for some. They tried repeatedly Sunday and Monday to ask airline and police officials about the ringing calls and QQ accounts. However unlikely it was, many thought the phones might still be on, and that if authorities just tracked them down, their relatives might be found. But they were largely ignored.”
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6. Washington D.C. is trying to outdo Chicago in the public corruption department.
From DCCrimeStories “D.C. businessman and political donor Jeffrey E. Thompson pleaded guilty Monday to a wide-ranging campaign finance conspiracy that helped elect Mayor Vincent Gray and others to office.
Now, his efforts may help derail Gray’s re-election.
Thompson, whose companies received hundreds of millions of dollars in city and federal contracts, admitted to pumping hundreds of thousands of dollars in illegal campaign contributions to various candidates since 2006.
His role in the shadow campaign has been a critical focus of the ongoing criminal probe for three years, and on Monday he admitted to funneling $3.3 million in illegal contributions to 28 candidates, including candidates running for mayor and President of the United States.”
Gee…….. I wonder which presidential candidate?…… 🙄
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Wandering Views 
The presidential candidate to whom Thompson made illegal donations was Hillary Clinton
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hI Didymus, It’s good to see you again, it’s been a while.
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The Malaysian flight disappearance really is odd. It makes you think one of James Bond’s villains must be out there someone, plucking a plane from the sky to do what? Well, world dominance, I suppose.
And you’re right, eerie about the phones . . .
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I guess it is like the tax code; if you make it so confusing, no one will understand anything. Apparently the WH is not implementing the core of the health care mandate,
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304250204579433312607325596?mod=Opinion_newsreel_1
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The only thing we can be sure of now is that someone is involved in this Malaysian plane’s disappearance.
I
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“They” know more about that plane than they’re telling us, me thinks.
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Hi Chas,
Thanks for the greeting. I continue to lurk here pretty much every day, but seldom take the time to comment.
Blessings
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An Air France plane once dropped into the Atlantic off the coast of Brazil and it took 5 days to locate it.. My guess is something similar occurred here … a sudden drop, sharp uncontrollable turn, instrument or equipment malfunction, etc. No explosion or there would be debris rather a complete failure.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_447
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Didymus is correct.
http://freebeacon.com/feds-say-nonprofit-org-secretly-aided-hillary-campaign/
“A nonprofit group believed to be the League of United Latino American Citizens (LULAC) used illegal corporate contributions to secretly aid Hillary Clinton’s 2008 campaign, according to federal court documents.
Democratic donor and District of Columbia businessman Jeffrey Thompson pleaded guilty on Monday to funneling millions in illegal donations to local and federal candidates, including Clinton in 2008.
Thompson said in his plea agreement that he financed a $600,000 “shadow campaign” for Clinton using funds from his D.C.-based for-profit corporation D.C. Healthcare Systems Inc.”
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