What’s interesting in the news today?
1. Eric Holder really doesn’t want those F and F documents made public. Gee, I wonder why? 🙄
From TownHall “Back in July after a long FOIA lawsuit from government watchdog Judicial Watch, a federal judge ordered the Department of Justice to produce a detailed list or Vaughn Index of documents being withheld from Congress and the American people under President Obama’s executive privilege claim. A month later in August, a federal judge ordered DOJ to turn over a privilege log of withheld documents to the House Oversight Committee. Both orders were to be completed by October 1.
Now, Attorney General Eric Holder is asking a federal judge to delay (again) an order requiring him to turn over thousands of Fast and Furious documents, not just a detailed list. More from POLITICO:
Attorney General Eric Holder is again asking a federal court to delay the transfer of disputed documents relating to Operation Fast and Furious to a House committee.
In a new court filing Monday night, Justice Department lawyers asked U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson not to require Holder to turn over any of the roughly 64,000 pages of documents to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee until after her rulings can be appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.”
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2. Is Holder really the best person for this job? He cries racism at the drop of a hat. No doubt he finds what he wants to find, which of course will be racial bias.
From FoxNews “Broadening its push to improve police relations with minorities, the Justice Department has enlisted a team of criminal justice researchers to study racial bias in law enforcement in five American cities and recommend strategies to address the problem nationally, Attorney General Eric Holder said Tuesday.
The police shooting last month of an unarmed black 18-year-old in Ferguson, Missouri underscored the need for the long-planned initiative, Holder said in an interview with The Associated Press.
He said the three-year project could be a “silver lining” if it helps ease racial tensions and “pockets of distrust that show up between law enforcement and the communities that they serve.”
“What I saw in Ferguson confirmed for me that the need for such an effort was pretty clear,” Holder said.”
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3. No surprises here.
From HotAir “No surprise to Hot Air readers, of course, but this allegation will come as a bombshell in a House hearing today on the VA scandal. This whistleblower claim will just be one of the issues that the Veteran Affairs committee will probe in the wait-list fraud that permeated the VA. Another will be the fact that the number of veteran deaths connected to those secret wait lists has skyrocketed from 40 to 293:
Our source, who works at VA headquarters and who spoke exclusively to CBS News, said officials inside the agency asked for a revision of the first draft. That’s standard practice, but in this case the source said it amounted to pressure on Inspector General Richard Griffin to add a line to water down the report.
“The organization was worried that the report was going to damn the organization,” the whistle-blower said. “And therefore it was important for them to introduce language that softened that blow.” …
But that conclusion, that no deaths were caused by delays, seemed to conflict with the rest of the report. For example: “28 instances of clinically significant delays” were found, including delays linked to six deaths. And findings indicated either “treatment” or “an appointment for this patient might have changed the outcome.””
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4. I still think this is a bad idea.
From TheHill “The House overwhelmingly voted Wednesday to grant President Obama authority to train and arm moderate Syrian rebels waging war against Islamic extremists.
Despite vocal opposition from both war-weary liberals and defense hawks who feel the Syria plan should include more robust steps, majorities in both conferences voted 273-156 to back Obama’s plan to give military aid to vetted members of the Free Syrian Army.
The “yes” vote was made up of 159 Republicans and 114 Democrats; opposition was just as bipartisan, with 85 Democrats and 71 Republicans voting no. The Syria language was considered as an amendment to a stopgap funding bill to avert a government shutdown on Oct. 1.
A coalition of unusual bedfellows voted against the amendment, including Democratic Reps. Jim McGovern (Mass.) and Barbara Lee (Calif.) and Republican Reps. Michele Bachmann (Minn.) and Steve Stockman (Texas). Members on such opposite sides of the ideological spectrum rarely vote together on major issues.”
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5. Up from 12 to 17. It’s not “rare” anymore.
From KTUU2 “Enterovirus D68 is likely coming — if it hasn’t already — to a state near you.
Since mid-August, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had confirmed 140 cases of respiratory illness caused by Enterovirus D68 in 16 states: Alabama, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New York, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania and Virginia.
New Jersey also has confirmed a case of EV-D68, according to Donna Leusner, director of communications for the New Jersey Department of Health.
And “in the upcoming weeks, more states will have confirmed cases of EV-D68 infection,” the CDC said in a statement Wednesday.”
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6. Anybody shocked? Didn’t think so….
From TheFreeBeacon “Federal taxpayer funds continue to flow to a slew of U.S. universities that are spending the cash on programs that promote anti-Israel, anti-Semitic, and anti-American viewpoints, according to a large group of Jewish and civil rights organizations that are now pushing Congress to rectify what they call a systemic problem.
Taxpayer funds have been allocated to universities under Title VI of the Higher Education Act (HEA) since 1965. However, Congress and the Education Department have exerted little oversight, leading these funds to be spent on biased educational programs that promote radical views about Israel and even America, according to the groups.
Funding for anti-Israel programs at U.S. universities has fostered a culture of fear among the Jewish state’s supporters on campus and fueled a growing number of anti-Semitic incidents at many schools, the groups warned.”
“Title VI of the Higher Education Act directs federal dollars to support the intellectually corrupt field of Middle East studies, among the most politicized academic disciplines, filled with professors hostile to America, Israel, and the West,” Daniel Pipes, president of the Middle East Forum, said in a statement. “American taxpayers should not fund programs that aim to weaken resolve and thwart policy.”
The University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) has been among the top abusers of federal funds, according to AMCHA, which published an in-depth study on the university’s federally funded anti-Israel programs.”
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Wandering Views 
Holder is the best man for Obama to have on the job.
#4. I agree. A terrible idea. All the weapons that are being used against us are weapons we gave to “our allies” in the Middle East. Some interesting stuff on the BBC channel. The Australians are coming down hard on those who fight for ISIS and return. Seems they aren’t afraid of being Islamaphobes.
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Except for the fact he never mentions the genocide going on as a reason to be concerned, Thomas Friedman makes some interesting points on war and ISIS:
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2. i’m wondering if Holder is doing this because it is becoming clear that they don’t have a case in the Michael Brown shooting but they need to do something to appease the protesters..
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Friedman is correct as far as it goes. However he misses an essential point. Islam, though they fight among themselves, have one single goal. I’m reading a book, The Looming Tower: al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11. In it, Lawrence Wright describes the war we have been in for decades, Beirut bombing, Cole bombing, WTC in ’93, etc.
p. 97. The main object of Islamists’ struggle was to impose Islamic law – Sharia. They believe that the five hundred Quranic verses that constitute the basis of sharia are the immutable commandments of God, offering a road back to the perfected era of the Prophet and his immediate successors – although the legal code actually evolved several centuries after the Prophet’s death. These verses comment upon behaviour as precise and various as how to respond to someone who sneezes and the permissibility of wearing gold jewelry. They also prescribe specific punishments for some crimes, such as adultery and drinking, but not for others, including homicide. Islamists say the Sharia cannot be imporved upn, despite fifteen centuries of social change, because it arised directlyfrom the mind of God.
They have an obligation to spread sharia throughout the entire world, by whatever means. They have identified two main adversaries. The Great Satan, that is us, and Little Satan, Israel.
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Again, from Wright’s book. p. 216.
“In May 1988, the Soviets began a staged withdrawal from Afghanistan, signaling the end of the war. Slowly, Peshawar shrank back into its shabby former self, and the Afghan mujahideen leaders started stockpiling weapons, preparing to confront their inevitable enemies – each other.’
That’s about to happen when we leave. And al-Qaida will be back.
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And the beat goes on.
Another journalist, another orange jumpsuit, another video.
“John Cantlie is a British war photographer and correspondent who was kidnapped by British Islamic extremists while crossing into Syria on July 19, 2012, near Bab al Hawa. As of 2014 Cantlie’s whereabouts are unknown. He has not appeared in print or on social media since late 2012 and the trial against one of his alleged captors collapsed in 2013 when he could not be summoned as a witness. His website Fastfeatures.com is a dead link. Today John Cantlie was filmed in captivity in a video released by Isis and titled ‘Lend me your ears’.”
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2014/09/breaking-isis-releases-video-of-captured-british-photographer-john-cantlie-video/
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Minnesota has that virus, too. It was suspected before, but now confirmed.
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