What’s interesting in the news today?

1. Good question.

From PowerLine  “What Happened to the 1.1 Million Pages of Data on Nonprofits that IRS Gave the FBI? “

“We wrote here and here about the IRS’s transfer of 1.1 million pages of documents about 501(c)(4) organizations to the FBI in October 2010. We now know that the documents included confidential taxpayer information, which means that it was a criminal offense for Lois Lerner to transmit them to the FBI. Presumably this is one reason (not necessarily the only one) why Lerner sought refuge in the privilege against self-incrimination.

Within a few days of transmitting the documents, Lerner met with Department of Justice officials to encourage them to prosecute 501(c)(4) groups and individuals associated with them. In view of these events, an obvious question is: what did the FBI do with the materials it got from the IRS?

On June 11, FBI Director James Comey testified before a House oversight committee and was asked that question. His answer was: nothing. Comey didn’t have first-hand knowledge, but based on discussions with others at the Bureau, a single FBI employee looked at the index to the documents and then did nothing, waiting for instructions from DOJ that never came. On this account, the documents sat in FBI headquarters for more than 3 1/2 years without anyone looking at them. Comey said that within the past week, the Bureau had sent them to DOJ.”

This is what happens when you ask the fox to investigate crimes at the chicken house.

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2. It’s about time states take the matter up on their own. After all, the White House will do nothing to stop it since it’s their plan that’s causing it.

From Time  “Texas can’t afford to wait for Washington to act on this crisis and we will not sit idly by while the safety and security of our citizens are threatened”

Texas Gov. Rick Perry and other state leaders called Wednesday evening for a “surge” in law enforcement along the border, announcing plans to inject $1.3 million more into the effort every week in response to a recent influx of illegal crossings.”

““Until the federal government fulfills its duty, it falls on the State of Texas to address those obligations,” the state leaders said in the joint letter to the director of the Texas DPS.”

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3. So they knew it was a disaster, but Obama’s legacy was more important than a working website.

From TheWashingtonExaminer  “Under pressure from the White House, healthcare.gov was launched despite a wave of previously unknown warnings from consultants that the Obamacare website was insecure, untested and prone to crashing after just 500 people got on, according to a damaging new Senate report.

“The White House continually meddled in technical decisions and put pressure on [Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services] officials to launch the website on time, regardless of operability and security concerns. As a result, officials ignored countless red flags to launch a website with thousands of defects. In the end, the launch failed miserably, crashing on takeoff,” said the report from Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee.”

“”Both metaphorically and factually, the website was designed to be the public face of President Obama’s signature achievement,” said the report. As a result, it added, “No one wanted to be the messenger that told the White House that its signature piece of legislation was going to crash at takeoff. The administration prioritized political success over protecting taxpayers,” charges the report, provided to Secrets in advance of its Thursday morning release.”

Nobody wanted to tell the Emperor he had no clothes I guess.

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4. Has the Middle East’s own 30 Year War begun?

From TheSpectator  “Syria has fallen apart. Major cities in Iraq have fallen to al-Qa’eda. Egypt may have stabilised slightly after a counter-coup. But Lebanon is starting once again to fragment. Beneath all these facts — beneath all the explosions, exhortations and blood — certain themes are emerging.

Some years ago, before the Arab ‘Spring’ ever sprung, I remember asking one top security official about the region. What, I wondered, was their single biggest fear? The answer was striking and precise: ‘That the region will clarify.’ That is a fear which now appears to be coming true.

The Middle East is not simply falling apart. It is taking a different shape, along very clear lines — far older ones than those the western powers rudely imposed on the region nearly a century ago. Across the whole continent those borders are in the process of cracking and breaking. But while that happens the region’s two most ambitious centres of power — the house of Saud and the Ayatollahs in Iran — find themselves fighting each other not just for influence but even, perhaps, for survival.”

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5. More on the Obama/Muslim Brotherhood connections.

From GulfNews  “Dubai: For the past decade, two successive US administrations have maintained close ties to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Tunisia, Syria and Libya, to name just the most prominent cases.

The Obama administration conducted an assessment of the Muslim Brotherhood in 2010 and 2011, beginning even before the events known as the “Arab Spring” erupted in Tunisia and in Egypt. The President personally issued Presidential Study Directive 11 (PSD-11) in 2010, ordering an assessment of the Muslim Brotherhood and other “political Islamist” movements, including the ruling AKP in Turkey, ultimately concluding that the United States should shift from its longstanding policy of supporting “stability” in the Middle East and North Africa (that is, support for “stable regimes” even if they were authoritarian), to a policy of backing “moderate” Islamic political movements.