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News/Politics 6-16-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. This explains a lot.

From TheNYObserver  “All the President’s Muses: Obama and Prosecutorial Misconduct- Chronic bungling by DOJ officials who have the President’s ear.”

“As Ninth Circuit Chief Judge Alex Kozinski has written, prosecutorial misconduct has become “an epidemic.” And evidence has come to light that our president, the nation’s chief law enforcement official, seeks his counsel from the worst.

If ever a picture was worth a thousand words, it is a recently released White House photo of President Obama and his muses—if one only knew the truth behind those muses whispering in the President’s ear as they strategized in the aftermath of the Benghazi tragedy. To understand the (politely-put) “lack of transparency” from the White House, the enormous politicization of the Department of Justice, the release of Taliban leaders from Guantanamo, refusal to cooperate with congressional investigations, the IRS’s harassment of political opponents, and the cover-up of Benghazi, read on.”

“Attorney General Robert H. Jackson once said, “The prosecutor has more control over life, liberty, and reputation than any other person in America. His discretion is tremendous. . . .While the prosecutor at his best is one of the most beneficent forces in our society, when he acts from malice or other base motives, he is one of the worst.” A prosecutor has almost unilateral, unchecked ability to destroy the lives of those he charges. It is beyond troubling that our top law enforcement officer chooses the company of those who repeatedly failed their duty.”

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2. And we can’t forget the enforcer, or lack there of, if that’s their preference.

From NationalReview  “Attorney General Eric Holder’s Justice Department gave bad advice to President Obama and the Pentagon in the controversial Bergdahl prisoner trade that the president could ignore federal law requiring prior notification to Congress. This is just the latest example of how Holder helps the administration ignore the rule of law and crafts his “legal” opinions based on the desired political outcome, not the actual state of the law.

Under Eric Holder, the Justice Department has stood the old Ronald Reagan maxim “trust but verify” on its head and adopted a “trust and we won’t let you verify” approach to its activities.”

Even Jill Abramson, the former executive editor of the New York Times, has said that “the Obama administration has moved beyond protecting government secrets to threatening fundamental freedoms of the press to gather news.”

How much is the Justice Department’s uncooperative and secretive approach the product of Eric Holder’s management style and how much is in response to President Obama’s wishes? We would argue that the most likely explanation is that a president almost always appoints the attorney general he’s most comfortable with, someone who will watch his back on institutional issues and vigorously pursue his enforcement priorities. In Eric Holder, Barack Obama has found both a kindred spirit and a heat shield against criticism that would often be directed at the White House. And Holder has made it clear that he is “part of the president’s team.”

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3. The debacle continues…..

From TheNYTimes  “The Obama administration is contacting hundreds of thousands of people with subsidized health insurance to resolve questions about their eligibility, as consumer advocates express concern that many will be required to repay some or all of the subsidies.

Of the eight million people who signed up for private health plans through insurance exchanges under the new health care law, two million reported personal information that differed from data in government records, according to federal officials and Serco, the company hired to resolve such inconsistencies.

The government is asking consumers for additional documents to verify their income, citizenship, immigration status and Social Security numbers, as well as any health coverage that they may have from employers. People who do not provide the information risk losing their subsidized coverage and may have to repay subsidies next April.

Federal subsidies for the purchase of private insurance are a cornerstone of the Affordable Care Act. More than eight out of 10 people who selected health plans through the exchanges from October through mid-April were eligible for subsidies, including income tax credits. So far this year the federal government has paid out $4.7 billion in subsidies, and the amount is expected to total $900 billion over 10 years.”

Looks like their cornerstone is crumbling.

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4. Arizona is threatening legal action against the feds for dumping illegal immigrants in their state.

From TheWashingtonPost  “Arizona officials are threatening legal action to stop the Obama administration from moving hundreds of undocumented immigrants from Texas to their state after a surge of illegal border crossings swamped immigration officials in the Rio Grande Valley.

The U.S. Border Patrol has acknowledged flying hundreds of migrants from Texas to Tucson and Phoenix, where many have been dropped off at Greyhound bus stations. Last week, immigration agencies began sending hundreds of undocumented minors apprehended while crossing the border to a holding facility in Nogales.

Arizona officials say they were not notified before the transports began.”

““These aliens are not being transported for the purposes of detaining them in a federal facility located in Arizona. Rather, DHS is inexplicably moving them some 1200 miles and simply releasing them here (outdoors in temperatures exceeding 100 degrees) rather than in Texas,” Horne wrote [pdf].”

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News/Politics 6-13-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. Perhaps this is why folks are so concerned about the 5 just released.

From TheTelegraph/UK  “The FBI “most wanted” mugshot shows a tough, swarthy figure, his hair in a jailbird crew-cut. The $10 million price on his head, meanwhile, suggests that whoever released him from US custody four years ago may now be regretting it.

Taken during his years as a detainee at the US-run Camp Bucca in southern Iraq, this is the only known photograph of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the new leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq and Syria. But while he may lack the photogenic qualities of his hero, Osama bin Laden, he is fast becoming the new poster-boy for the global jihadist movement.

Well-organised and utterly ruthless, the ex-preacher is the driving force behind al-Qaeda’s resurgence throughout Syria and Iraq, putting it at the forefront of the war to topple President Bashar al-Assad and starting a fresh campaign of mayhem against the Western-backed government in Baghdad.

On Tuesday, his forces achieved their biggest coup in Iraq to date, seizing control of government buildings in Mosul, the country’s third biggest city. Coming on top of similar operations in January that planted the black jihadi flag in the towns of Fallujah and Ramadi, it gives al-Qaeda control of large swathes of the north and west of the country, and poses the biggest security crisis since the US pull-out two years ago.”

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2. CONTENT WARNING!!!! Some of the photos at the link are extremely gruesome. Baghdad is their next target.

From TheDailyMail  “The full horror of the jihadists’ savage victories in Iraq emerged yesterday as witnesses told of streets lined with decapitated soldiers and policemen. Blood-soaked bodies and blazing vehicles were left in the wake of the Al Qaeda-inspired ISIS fanatics as they pushed the frontline towards Baghdad.

They boasted about their triumphs in a propaganda video depicting appalling scenes including a businessman being dragged from his car and executed at the roadside with a pistol to the back of his head. The extent of the carnage came as:

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3. Of course they did. This has always been orchestrated by top Democrats from day one.

From PowerLine  “It is just about impossible to keep up with all of the Obama administration scandals, but the corruption of the Internal Revenue Service ranks near the top. Unfortunately, it has gone hand in hand with Barack Obama and Eric Holder’s corruption of the Department of Justice. The perversion of law enforcement agencies for political ends is starkly revealed by the fact that in 2010, as part of its effort to stem the Tea Party movement, the IRS gave the FBI disks containing more than 1.1 million pages of documents on Section 501 non-profits, so that the FBI could selectively prosecute conservative groups and donors.

The facts, as we know them so far, were laid out yesterday in a letter from Congressmen Darrell Issa and Jim Jordan to John Koskinen, Commissioner of the IRS. The letter includes a series of emails that the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform has finally obtained, after more than a year of stonewalling by the Obama administration. The IRS originally told the House committee–falsely–that the disks contained only publicly available filings by the non-profit organizations. But the IRS later admitted that it had illegally transferred confidential taxpayer information to the FBI.

The IRS’s purpose was explicitly political. Sarah Ingram, Lois Lerner’s predecessor in charge of tax-exempt organizations at the IRS, wrote in a September 21, 2010 email, the subject of which was a favorable front-page story in the New York Times:“

Thanks, as always, for the excellent support from Media. I do think it came out pretty well. The “secret donor” theme will continue–see Obama salvo today and Diane Reehm (sp).”

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4. The FBI has finally opened up a criminal probe of the VA scandal.

From CNN  “The FBI says it has opened a criminal investigation of the Veterans Affairs Department, which is grappling with a scandal over long waiting lists to provide care and allegations that paperwork was faked to make delays appear shorter.

FBI Director James Comey told a House hearing on Wednesday the bureau’s Phoenix office has joined an ongoing review by the VA inspector general.

The move at least partly satisfies requests from key members of Congress from both parties who have pressed for a full probe by the Justice Department as the scandal accelerated in recent weeks and led to the resignation of VA Secretary Eric Shinseki in May.

Officials have said the inspector general is sharing findings with federal prosecutors, and the Justice Department could launch a full-blown criminal probe if any of the information meets the standard for doing so.”

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News/Politics 6-12-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. Of course they did. 🙄

They pander at any and all opportunities, and if it steers money toward their donors in the process, even better.

From CNSNews  “A $350 million grant opportunity announced Friday by the Department of Health and Human Services to provide shelter for unaccompanied alien children (UAC) states that recipients providing residential shelter to these children must provide them with “family planning services” and that residential care providers deliver services in a manner that is “sensitive” to sexual orientation and gender identity.

“Residential care providers are required to provide…family planning services,” says an official description of the grant program published by HHS.

“Residential care providers are required to provide or arrange for the program required services in a manner that is sensitive to the…sexual orientation, gender identity, and other important individual needs of each UAC [unaccompanied alien child],” says the official description.”

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2. This proves once again that they Obama admin always knew it was a terrorist attack, and that a video never had anything to do with it. They’ve lied since day one.

From FoxNews  “The terrorists who attacked the U.S. consulate and CIA annex in Benghazi on September 11, 2012 used cell phones, seized from State Department personnel during the attacks, and U.S. spy agencies overheard them contacting more senior terrorist leaders to report on the success of the operation, multiple sources confirmed to Fox News.

The disclosure is important because it adds to the body of evidence establishing that senior U.S. officials in the Obama administration knew early on that Benghazi was a terrorist attack, and not a spontaneous protest over an anti-Islam video that had gone awry, as the administration claimed for several weeks after the attacks.”

“Eric Stahl, who recently retired as a major in the U.S. Air Force, served as commander and pilot of the C-17 aircraft that was used to transport the corpses of the four casualties from the Benghazi attacks – then-U.S. Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens, information officer Sean Smith, and former Navy SEALs Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods – as well as the assault’s survivors from Tripoli to the safety of an American military base in Ramstein, Germany.

In an exclusive interview on Fox News’ “Special Report,” Stahl said members of a CIA-trained Global Response Staff who raced to the scene of the attacks were “confused” by the administration’s repeated implication of the video as a trigger for the attacks, because “they knew during the attack…who was doing the attacking.” Asked how, Stahl told anchor Bret Baier: “Right after they left the consulate in Benghazi and went to the [CIA] safehouse, they were getting reports that cell phones, consulate cell phones, were being used to make calls to the attackers’ higher ups.”

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3. A bad omen for moderates? I’d be more inclined to agree had McConnell lost too.

From TheNYTimes  “The House Republican leadership, so solid in its opposition to President Obama, was torn apart Tuesday by the defeat of its most influential conservative voice, Representative Eric Cantor, the House majority leader. His demise will reverberate all the way to the speaker’s chair, pull the top echelons of the House even further to the right and most likely doom any ambitious legislation, possibly through the next presidential election.

Conservatives who have helped fuel some of the most contentious showdowns over the last three years on issues such as immigration and raising the federal debt ceiling are likely to be emboldened by Mr. Cantor’s shocking loss as they seek to replace him with someone even more closely aligned with their views.

Further, House Republicans began to immediately plot a new leadership structure that before Tuesday night had hinged merely on whether Speaker John A. Boehner would seek to keep his post next year.”

“One measure of the extraordinary defeat could be seen in the candidate’s finances. Since the beginning of last year, Mr. Cantor’s campaign had spent about $168,637 at steakhouses compared with the $200,000 his challenger, David Brat, had spent on his entire campaign. With Mr. Cantor out, members from solidly Republican states will almost certainly be vying for one of the top jobs, if not Mr. Boehner’s gavel. The current Republican leadership slate is filled with members from swing states where the pressure to moderate views on topics such as immigration looms.”

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4. Not surprising. I think a lot more people would choose this option given the choice.

From Breitbart  “An upset last night in the Democrat primary for governor of Nevada was almost as stunning as the Brat win in VA-7. 

“None of the Above” won with 29.96% of the vote. Nevada was the first state to institute a “none of the above” line to its ballot in 1975, as a way for voters to protest weak, unqualified candidates.

Senator Harry Reid, who runs the Democrat party in Nevada with an iron fist, told reporters earlier this year, that the candidate to run against the popular Republican Governor Brian Sandoval, would be “a respectable Democrat and someone that people know.”

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5. 20 years ago I’d have said this could never happen here. Now I say it will happen here within the next 20 years. Wedding cakes were just the first step.

From TheTelegraph/UK  “Gay Danish couples win right to marry in church“

Homosexual couples in Denmark have won the right to get married in any church they choose, even though nearly one third of the country’s priests have said they will refuse to carry out the ceremonies.”

“The country’s parliament voted through the new law on same-sex marriage by a large majority, making it mandatory for all churches to conduct gay marriages.”

“Under the law, individual priests can refuse to carry out the ceremony, but the local bishop must arrange a replacement for their church.”

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6. You mean the anti-gun folks lie to push their agenda? Say it isn’t so…..

From NationalReview  “This map, which purports to show that there are have been 74 “shootings at schools” since the abomination at Newtown, is currently doing the rounds.”

“Tuesday’s school shooting in Oregon is at least the 74th instance of shots being fired on school grounds or in school buildings since the late-2012 elementary school shooting in Newtown, Conn., according to a list maintained by the group Everytown for Gun Safety, which advocates for policies it believes limit gun violence.

There have been at least 37 shootings on school grounds this year, which is just barely half over. All told, there has been nearly one shooting per week in the year and a half since Newtown. Everytown identifies a school shooting as any instance in which a firearm was discharged within a school building or on school grounds, sourced to multiple news reports per incident. Therefore, the data isn’t limited to mass shootings like Newtown—it includes assaults, homicides, suicides and even accidental shootings. Of the shootings, 35 took place at a college or university, while 39 took place in K-12 schools.

The Post is admirably clear that the map includes both colleges and schools, that it counts “any instance in which a firearm was discharged within a school building or on school grounds,” and that the data isn’t “limited to mass shootings like Newtown.” This point has also been made forcefully by Charles C. Johnson, who yesterday looked into each of the 74 incidents and noted that not only did some of them not take place on campuses but that “fewer than 7 of the 74 school shootings listed by #Everytown are mass shootings,” that one or more probably didn’t happen at all, that at least one was actually a case of self-defense, and that 32 could be classified as “school shootings” only if we are to twist the meaning of the term beyond all recognition.”

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News/Politics 6-11-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. WOW. Talk about stunning. He was well ahead in most polls.

From NBCNews  “In a stunning upset, Virginia Rep. Eric Cantor, the second-highest ranking Republican in the House, lost his primary challenge to a tea party-backed candidate Tuesday, according to the Associated Press.

Economics professor Dave Brat defeated Cantor to become the GOP nominee for Virginia’s 7th congressional district.

Cantor, who serves as the House majority leader, heavily outspent Brat and was widely expected to survive the challenge from the right.

Brat painted the seven-term congressman as a Washington insider who has become too liberal to represent the Richmond-area district. He accused Cantor of supporting immigration reform that would give “amnesty” to those living in the United State illegally.”

And as a lame duck, will he push even harder?

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GOP leadership is in chaos over it.

From NationalJournal  “Befuddlement hit and lingered within the House GOP leadership ranks as Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s election fate was unwinding on Tuesday. Cantor lost in a major upset to primary challenger Dave Brat.

A senior Republican leadership aide described the mood as “chaos for the leadership ranks.”

“We’re absolutely stunned. Honestly, we really can’t believe it,” said the aide, who likened it to the 2004 election defeat of Tom Daschle of South Dakota, who was Senate minority leader at the time.”

I’d say Boehner’s a little nervous about retaining his leadership post about now.

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So who is this guy?

From ABCNews  “Meet Dave Brat, an economics and ethics professor at Randolph-Macon College in Ashland, Virginia, who launched a long-shot — and ultimately successful — bid to oust House Majority Leader Eric Cantor from his seat representing Virginia’s 7th Congressional District. “

“Brat, who admits that he has supported several Cantor candidacies over the years, says he mounted his improbable primary campaign because the House GOP’s No. 2 leader has lost touch with his constituents, “veering from the Republican creed.”

“Brat calls himself as a “free market guy,” and says he wants to repeal the Affordable Care Act. He also pledged never to increase taxes and to stick to a five-year promise not to vote to increase the debt limit.

“This isn’t a personal race. I’m not running against Eric,” he stressed in the May interview. “I’m just running on the founding principles that Adam Smith and free markets – they made us the greatest nation on the Earth. All right? It’s no mystery. Our rights, tradition, along with free markets and the Judeo-Christian tradition all together made us the greatest nation on the face of the Earth. I think we’re veering off course a little bit there and I want to get us back on that course that brought us to greatness.”

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2. Things are worsening in Iraq.

From HotAir  “Mosul falls to al-Qaeda as US-trained security forces flee”

“And not just Mosul, according to some reports, but the entire northern province of Nineveh has now fallen into al-Qaeda’s control.  Parliamentarians from the region want a declaration of emergency and immediate government intervention, but the forces that had been in Mosul have fled — some of which abandoned their uniforms as well as their posts as the ISIS forces swarmed into the city:

Insurgents seized control early Tuesday of most of the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, including the provincial government headquarters, offering a powerful demonstration of the mounting threat posed by extremists to Iraq’s teetering stability.

Fighters with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), an al-Qaeda offshoot, overran the entire western bank of the city overnight after Iraqi soldiers and police apparently fled their posts, in some instances discarding their uniforms as they sought to escape the advance of the militants.”

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3. And once again, US arms fall into the hands of the bad guys.

From TheNYT  “The insurgent fighters who routed the Iraqi army out of Mosul on Tuesday did not just capture much of Iraq’s second-largest city. They also gained a windfall of arms, munitions and equipment abandoned by the soldiers as they fled — arms that were supplied by the United States and intended to give the troops an edge over the insurgents.

The problem is not a new one, but it looms larger now that the United States is shifting its counterterrorism strategy away from using American armed forces directly, and toward relying on allied or indigenous troops and security forces supplied and trained by the United States. President Obama proposed last week that a $5 billion fund be set up to finance such efforts.

But those proxy forces do not always prove equal to the task, and when they buckle, the United States finds itself having unwittingly armed its enemies — a problem the Obama administration has been trying to avoid in Syria by carefully limiting its aid to the opposition there. The militants who swept into control of Mosul on Tuesday are believed to be connected to the main Islamist militant group fighting in Syria.”

Which is why we shouldn’t be arming them in Syria either.

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4. Gee, maybe this has something to do with the current fiasco.

From CNSNews  “The number of unauthorized migrants apprehended by U.S. Border Patrol along the U.S. Southwest border has decreased by 74.7% since 2000, according to a Congressional Research Service (CRS) report.

According to the U.S. Border Patrol, there were 1,643,679 illegal alien apprehensions, defined as the arrest of a removable alien, along the Southwest border in fiscal year 2000. The southwest border includes Big Bend, Del Rio, El Centro, El Paso, Laredo, Rio Grande Valley, San Diego, Tucson, and Yuma. Since 2000, the number of apprehensions along this border decreased by 74.7%, totaling 420,789 apprehensions in fiscal year 2013.

In the May 2, 2014 CRS report, Apprehensions of Unauthorized Migrants along the Southwest Border: Fact Sheet, it states,  “Southwest border apprehensions began to decline mid-decade, dropping by 8% between FY2005 and FY2006. They fell more rapidly between FY2006 and FY2011, by an average of 14% each year. Since FY2011, apprehensions increased by 26%.”

And the only reason for the increase is they’ve changed how they count, and include those turned away at the border as apprehensions/deportations. The Obama admin numbers here are about as accurate as the unemployment numbers. Just fuzzy math.

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News/Politics 6-10-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. Disgraceful.

From HotAir  “And they’ve been waiting a long time, too. The Associated Press reports on an internal audit from more than 700 VA facilities shows that 57,000 veterans have waited 90 or more days for their initial medical appointment, let alone for any advanced care that might be needed. Another 64,000 have been enrolled in the VA health-care system for more than ten years without ever getting to see a doctor:

The Veterans Affairs Department says more than 57,000 patients are still waiting for initial medical appointments at VA hospitals and clinics 90 days or more after requesting them. An additional 64,000 who enrolled in the VA health care system over the past 10 years have never had appointments.

The audit confirms that 13% of scheduling staff received instruction in how to fraudulently cover up the horrendous wait times and access issues. The rest of the wait-list issue gets chalked up to a “complicated” appointment scheduling process and “confusion” among staff on how to manage it.

Will anyone buy that? It’s important to remember that this is the result of an internal audit run by the VA on orders from Eric Shinseki before he resigned under an avalanche of public pressure on the VA scandal. No one has yet conducted an outside audit, although the Inspector General is conducting an independent investigation of the Phoenix facilities which became the epicenter of the scandal. For an idea of why an internal audit may not produce the whole truth and nothing but the truth, read Lindsay Wise’s McClatchy report on the internal culture of the VA and the complete lack of effort at reform over the last several years:”

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2. The crisis created by the Obama admin’s refusal to enforce border laws is worsening.

From TheDailyMail  “Obama instituted an immigration policy that the GOP says enticed tens of thousands of Central American children to cross America’s southern border illegally without any parents to guide them.

More than 33,000 have been picked up in Texas alone since October. The U.S. border patrol says its forces are overwhelmed, and the courts are bracing for a flood of immigration cases from children held in temporary detention facilities designed to handle a fraction of the numbers. Sanitation problems are beginning to rear their ugly heads.

Obama rolled out a controversial Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program in 2012, allowing many illegal immigrants who came to the U.S. as minors to escape deportation for two years. The White House gave them another two-year window last week.

As a result, say some GOP leaders, America’s system for handling illegal immigration has been strained to the breaking point and is attracting hundreds of new illegal-immigrant children every day. Compared to the year before Obama’s policy took effect, twelve times as many kids are coming north illegally this year.

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3. And there appears to be no end in sight.

From FoxNews  “Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer said Friday she is “disturbed and outraged” after she was informed by federal officials that not only has the government been shipping illegal immigrants out of Texas and “dumping” them in her state, it has no plans to stop.

Federal officials told Brewer Friday that the practice will continue for the foreseeable future, and this weekend more than 1,000 illegal immigrant children will be “dumped” in Arizona. Adults and family units will also arrive, though Brewer was not told how many, her office said.

Reports first surfaced last week that scores of illegal immigrants in Texas were being flown, bused and then abandoned out of state in Arizona and elsewhere.  After learning of the practice, Brewer sent a scathing letter to the president on Monday posing a string of questions about the policy. Brewer said Friday what little she has learned since then has made her even more concerned.

“This is a crisis of the federal government’s creation, and the fact that the border remains unsecure – now apparently intentionally – while this operation continues full-steam ahead is deplorable,” she said in a statement.”

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4. News of this first leaked from a story on photos taken at the border by agents. So they get the treatment all whistleblowers get nowadays. Threats and intimidation.

From TownHall  “Last week, photos surfaced from Texas and Arizona showing Border Patrol processing centers overwhelmed as thousands of unaccompanied children from Central America continue to need shelter and resources. The photos show hundreds of children sleeping in crowded, chain linked cages. Agents have described the situation as a humanitarian crisis.

In response to the leaked images out of Arizona, Patrol Agent in Charge Leslie Lawson is cracking down on the use of personal technology by agents in the Nogales Border Patrol processing center.

“Due to the recent unauthorized use of a personally owned electronic device in the Nogales Processing Center, the use of such devices will be restricted to locations outside of detention areas,” Lawson wrote in a June 6 memo to all employees at the Nogales station. “Effective immediately, the use of personally owned cellular phones, cameras, or recording devices in the Nogales Detention Facility and the Nogales Processing Center is strictly prohibited. All personnel working or visiting detention facilities at the Nogales Station will be required to turn off these electronic devices and store them in a locker other secure location prior to entering the detention area.”

According to sources, agents have been threatened with firings if found to have leaked the photos to media.”

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5. “America’s rising “progressive clerisy,” and the march toward McCarthyism”

Also from HotAir  “Is there anything more intolerant than the Tolerance Brigade? At the Daily Beast, Joel Kotkin agrees with Bloomberg’s Stephen Carter on the rise of a new McCarthyism, this time imposing penalties for dissent from progressive orthodoxy rather than tolerating debate on a broad range of issues. Both use attempts to silence argument in academia as the flash point that exposes this thought-police mentality. Carter recently wrote about the attempts to intimidate Douglas Laycock, an opponent of same-sex marriage and explicitly invokes McCarthyism as the dynamic in play:

A law student and a recent graduate, spurred on by the advocacy group GetEqual, have filed freedom-of-information requests for his telephone and travel records, in what they describe as an effort at dialogue about what they consider the harmful effects of his views.

This description is implausible. If they wanted to talk to him, they could knock on his door. The effort is aimed at intimidation. They want him to shut up.” But even when a professor holds opinions off at the far margin, to target him or her for intimidation is an affront to the freedom that makes the academy worth cherishing.

Kotkin blames this on a rising “progressive clerisy” that has formed at the highest levels of government bureaucracy, the entertainment industry, and academia:”

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6. And here’s a look at one example of what those 3 groups are accomplishing together. Brainwash kids into compliance. This is much easier than having to deal with differing opinions from free thinking adult folks later on. Best to squash that while they’re young.

From, appropriately, Moonbattery  “hand reports on situations unlikely to be exposed on the evening news. This email from a concerned parent is a prime example:

I am a parent in Oakland, California and I have a kindergartner in public school. My child came home [Thursday] and told me about the MANDATORY assembly for gay “pride” month. Parents had NO idea this was going to happen and I’m totally blindsided by it.

There is a video on the school’s website showing the assembly… It was nothing more than homosexual indoctrination about the meaning of the rainbow flag and “queer” history. On stage was the rainbow flag but NO American flag. And then a “gay men’s chorus” sang songs about homosexual “freedom.”

This is an elementary school and children as young as 5 were present. Like I said, parents were NOT informed in advance. My child brought home a bookmark with the rainbow flag on it and a quote from radical lesbian poet activist, Audre Lorde, whose work includes a book called “Uses of the Erotic.” This is for Elementary School! …

You can watch the assembly yourself and decide if the origin of the rainbow flag and “queer history” are appropriate discussions to have with elementary students, or if it’s even has any educational value to begin with, at the link.

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News/Politics 6-9-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. First up today, we know that fasting accompanied by prayer has spiritual benefits, but now some are saying that it has physical benefits too.

From TheTelegraph/UK  “Fasting for as little as three days can regenerate the entire immune system, even in the elderly, scientists have found in a breakthrough described as “remarkable”.

Although fasting diets have been criticised by nutritionists for being unhealthy, new research suggests starving the body kick-starts stem cells into producing new white blood cells, which fight off infection.

Scientists at the University of Southern California say the discovery could be particularly beneficial for people suffering from damaged immune systems, such as cancer patients on chemotherapy.

It could also help the elderly whose immune system becomes less effective as they age, making it harder for them to fight off even common diseases.”

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2. Next up, he’s not heavy, he’s my brother.

From NBCNews  “A Michigan teenager who wanted to raise awareness about cerebral palsy by walking 40 miles with his younger brother strapped to his back battled heat, rain, fatigue and more to finish the trek Sunday.

Hunter Gandee, 14, had been planning for weeks to pull off the walk, hoping to put a face on the muscular disorder that prevents his 7-year-old sibling, Braden, from being able to walk without help. But all his organizing couldn’t prepare him for the conditions he faced as he packed the 50-pound boy over two days.”

“Honestly, yes, there was a point that we did consider stopping,” Hunter said. “Braden’s legs — the chafing was getting pretty bad. We did have to consider stopping. It was at about the 30-mile point.” A phone call changed all that.

Hunter reached out to a friend, who said a prayer for the brothers. That, combined with some rest and a change in how Braden was positioned on his brother’s back, helped the boys make it the final 10 miles.”

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3. As in football, politics requires a strong ground game.

From Politico  “Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) is helping open a “GOP engagement office” on Saturday in an African-American area of Louisville, part of a frenetic summer schedule aimed at reaching beyond the party’s traditional base, with explicit appeals to minorities and young people.

In late summer or early fall, Paul plans a major foreign policy address that will give him a prime chance to close a gap with establishment Republicans that has been perhaps the biggest hurdle to acceptance of Paul by party elites.

The itinerary will bolster the widespread view among Republican leaders that Paul is doing the most visible spadework of the party’s potential presidential candidates. As a sign of his advanced planning, the senator told AP that he would consider running for reelection and president at the same time, and that a Kentucky ballot law against dual candidacies would not be an obstacle.”

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4. This is the problem with arming the bad guys. Sooner or later, they turn their weapons on you.

From TheNYPost  “In his new book, “Dark Forces: The Truth About What Happened in Ben­ghazi” (Broadside Books), writer Kenneth R. Timmerman explains how the US government’s efforts to arm the Libyan rebels backfired, flooding weapons into Syria, and as he ­reveals here, Afghanistan: The Obama administration isn’t only giving the Taliban back its commanders — it’s giving them weapons.

“The next day, an explosive ordnance disposal team arrived to pick through the wreckage and found unexploded pieces of a missile casing that could only belong to a Stinger missile.

Lodged in the right nacelle, they found one fragment that contained an entire serial number.

The investigation took time. Arms were twisted, noses put out of joint. But when the results came back, they were stunning: The Stinger tracked back to a lot that had been signed out by the CIA recently, not during the anti-Soviet ­jihad.

“My sources in the US Special Operations community believe the Stinger fired against the Chinook was part of the same lot the CIA turned over to the ­Qataris in early 2011, weapons Hillary Rodham Clinton’s State Department intended for anti-Khadafy forces in Libya.”

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5. As usual, nothing is as they advertised it.

From TheCourier-Journal  “It wasn’t supposed to work this way, but since the Affordable Care Act took effect in January, Norton Hospital has seen its packed emergency room become even more crowded, with about 100 more patients a month.

That 12 percent spike in the number of patients — many of whom aren’t actually facing true emergencies — is spurring the hospital to convert a waiting room into more exam rooms.

“We’re seeing patients who probably should be seen at our (immediate-care centers),” said Lewis Perkins, the hospital’s vice president of patient care and chief nursing officer. “And we’re seeing this across the system.”

That’s just the opposite of what many people expected under Obamacare, particularly because one of the goals of health reform was to reduce pressure on emergency rooms by expanding Medicaid and giving poor people better access to primary care.”

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by

News/Politics 6-6-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. Not shocking, but still troubling.

From Time  “A Taliban commander close to the negotiations over the release of U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl told TIME Thursday that the deal made to secure Bergdahl’s release has made it more appealing for fighters to capture American soldiers and other high-value targets.

“It’s better to kidnap one person like Bergdahl than kidnapping hundreds of useless people,” the commander said, speaking by telephone on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the media. “It has encouraged our people. Now everybody will work hard to capture such an important bird.”

The commander has been known to TIME for several years and has consistently supplied reliable information about Bergdahl’s captivity.”

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2. Meanwhile, the more that comes out, the worse the story gets. I’d like to think it’s a case of Stockholm Syndrome, but his statements prior to leaving his unit make me doubt it.

From FoxNews  “U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl at one point during his captivity converted to Islam, fraternized openly with his captors and declared himself a “mujahid,” or warrior for Islam, according to secret documents prepared on the basis of a purported eyewitness account and obtained by Fox News.

The reports indicate that Bergdahl’s relations with his Haqqani captors morphed over time, from periods of hostility, where he was treated very much like a hostage, to periods where, as one source told Fox News, “he became much more of an accepted fellow” than is popularly understood. He even reportedly was allowed to carry a gun at times.

The documents show that Bergdahl at one point escaped his captors for five days and was kept, upon his re-capture, in a metal cage, like an animal. In addition, the reports detail discussions of prisoner swaps and other attempts at a negotiated resolution to the case that appear to have commenced as early as the fall of 2009.

The reports are rich in on-the-ground detail — including the names and locations of the Haqqani commanders who ran the 200-man rotation used to guard the Idaho native — and present the most detailed view yet of what Bergdahl’s life over the past five years has been like. These real-time dispatches were generated by the Eclipse Group, a shadowy private firm of former intelligence officers and operatives that has subcontracted with the Defense Department and prominent corporations to deliver granular intelligence on terrorist activities and other security-related topics, often from challenging environments in far-flung corners of the globe.”

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3. Like I said, worse.

From TheDailyMail  “The Obama administration passed up multiple opportunities to rescue Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl because the president was dead-set on finding a reason to begin emptying Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, according to a Pentagon official.

‘JSOC went to the White House with several specific rescue-op scenarios,’ the official with knowledge of interagency negotiations underway since at least November 2013 told MailOnline, referring to the Joint Special Operations Command. ‘But no one ever got traction.’

‘What we learned along the way was that the president wanted a diplomatic scenario that would establish a precedent for repatriating detainees from Gitmo,’ he said. The official said a State Department liaison described the lay of the land to him in February, shortly after the Taliban sent the U.S. government a month-old video of Bergdahl in January, looking sickly and haggard, in an effort to create a sense of urgency about his health and effect a quick prisoner trade.

‘He basically told me that no matter what JSOC put on the table, it was never going to fly because the president isn’t going to leave office with Gitmo intact, and this was the best opportunity to see that through.’

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4. Lawmakers have announced a bi-partisan deal to reform VA medical care.

From TheWashingtonExaminer  “Senate lawmakers announced a bipartisan agreement on reforming the Department of Veterans Affairs, but the bill could face opposition from Republican lawmakers who want to amend it.

Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee Chairman Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., announced the deal on the Senate floor Thursday afternoon.

The bill would provide veterans “choice cards” to allow them to obtain private medical care if they face long wait times at VA hospitals. It would also give the VA secretary expanded power to quickly fire or transfer poorly performing senior executives.

The bill appears to be a hybrid of a GOP bill announced earlier this week and legislation unveiled Sunday by Sanders.”

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5. Meanwhile there appears to be retaliation against whistleblowers who broke the VA scandal.

From TheDailyCaller  “The U.S. Office of Special Counsel (OSC) is currently investigating allegations of whistleblower reprisal from 37 different Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) employees in 19 states, The Daily Caller has learned.

OSC is investigating allegations that VA retaliated against whistleblowers on cases involving “improper” health-care scheduling. VA is currently under fire after it was revealed that a secret waiting list kept at a Phoenix, Arizona VA medical facility led to preventable veteran deaths.

A VA employee in one of the cases alleged that he/she was slapped with a proposed seven-day suspension, a lowered performance evaluation and reassignment after reporting scheduling impropriety to the VA Inspector General.”

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6. Boko Haram has struck again.

From TheNYPost  “When men wearing military fatigues and carrying weapons showed up in pickup trucks, villagers thought Nigerian soldiers had finally come to protect them from Boko Haram.

But it was a disguise. The gunmen rounded up everyone in the village center and then started shooting.

Altogether, Boko Haram militants slaughtered hundreds of people in three villages in the far northeast corner of Nigeria, witnesses said Thursday, describing the latest attack by the Islamic extremist group that drew international attention for the kidnapping of more than 300 schoolgirls.

A community leader who witnessed the killings on Monday said residents had pleaded for the military to send soldiers to protect the area after they heard that militants were about to attack.”

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7. This is what happens when you refuse to enforce the borders. Obama’s policies are now encouraging even more to come. 

From KRGV.com  “Central Americans say news reports in their countries are encouraging them to make the journey north to the United States.

A mother and child told CHANNEL 5 NEWS that the message being disseminated in their country is, “go to America with your child, you won’t be turned away.”

The woman, Nora Griselda Bercian Diaz, from Guatemala, said she endured threats from the Zetas and extortion from corrupt Mexican police. She eventually crossed the Rio Grande with her 6-year-old Delmi Griselda Paul Bercian by her side.”

“Agents eventually arrived and ushered the mother and daughter into a van. The agents didn’t have time to turn around before another group came walking up the same road.”

They’re turning them loose in the US and creating even more problems.

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by

News/Politics 6-5-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

I went a little crazy this morning.

1. The next prisoner swap?

From TheAP/MSN  “The family of a pregnant American woman who went missing in Afghanistan in late 2012 with her Canadian husband received two videos last year in which the couple asked the U.S. government to help free them from Taliban captors, The Associated Press has learned.”

“I would ask that my family and my government do everything that they can to bring my husband, child and I to safety and freedom,” the 28-year-old says in the other recording, talking into a wobbly camera while seated beside her husband, whose beard is long and untrimmed.

The families decided to make the videos public now, in light of the publicity surrounding the weekend rescue of Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who was freed from Taliban custody in exchange for the release of five high-level Taliban suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The families say they are disappointed that their children and grandchild were not freed as part of the same deal but are still holding out hope for the U.S. and Canadian governments to secure their release on humanitarian grounds.

“It would be no more appropriate to have our government turn their backs on their citizens than to turn their backs on those who serve,” Patrick Boyle, a Canadian judge and the father of Joshua Boyle, said in a telephone interview.”

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2. The other swap continues to draw fire.

From Mediaite  “In an appearance on Fox & Friends on Wednesday, retired Army Spc. Josh Fuller, a soldier who served with Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl since 2008, said that the military informed him and other soldiers that the “narrative” they should maintain is that Bergdahl was captured by the Taliban rather than that he intentionally left his base. When asked if he believed he was told not to “tell the truth” about Bergdahl by military authorities, Fuller said that he did.

“The sentiment that everybody knew was that he walked off the base in the middle of the night, left all his gear there, and went – just walked off the post,” Fuller said. “So, we had all known that it was — that he had deserted his post, and there was never anything about him getting captured or POW until a little while later whenever it came down from the chain of command that we needed to keep quiet and not say anything.”

“We’re going with the narrative that he was captured,” Fuller said of the military’s position on Bergdahl’s alleged desertion.

“So, they basically told you not to tell the truth,” Fox host Brian Kilmeade said. “Yes, sir,” Fuller replied.”

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3. Senate Democrats have gone AWOL too.

From TheWeeklyStandard  “On Sunday, Senator Claire McCaskill gave a full-throated defense of the president’s decision to release five Taliban commanders from the Guantanamo prison in exchange for Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl. “We saved this man’s life. The commander-in-chief acted within his constitutional authority, which he should have done,” McCaskill, a Democrat from Missouri, told Fox News host Chris Wallace. “I’m very proud that we have no POWs left in Afghanistan and the president should be proud of it also.”

But following multiple reports that Bergdahl deserted his post and soldiers died searching for him, McCaskill will no longer say she still supports the deal she was “very proud” of just 48 hours ago. “I’m not going to comment until I look at the brief,” an annoyed McCaskill told THE WEEKLY STANDARD. “I’m not going to comment until I look at the brief,” she repeated, referring to a classified briefing senators will receive tomorrow.

McCaskill was not alone in her reluctance to support the deal. More than a dozen Democratic senators questioned by TWS Tuesday afternoon declined to defend it. “I just don’t know enough about it. I really don’t,” said Dick Durbin of Illinois, the second-ranking Democrat in the Senate. “

Ah yes……. the Sgt. Schultz defense….. 🙄

There’s a whole lot of Dems that were for it before they were against it.

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4. Military and intelligence sources are saying that he may have conspired with the enemy, and that further allegations will surface.

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5. Meanwhile the threat grows, and now they have 5 more seasoned leaders back in the fight. Not good.

From TheWallStJournal  “The threat to the U.S. from global jihadist groups has escalated in the past three years, with the number of groups increasing by more than 50% and the estimated number of militants doubling, according to a report to be released on Thursday.

The report by the Rand Corp. think tank, which used public data to take a kind of global census of al Qaeda and related groups, will say the civil war in Syria has been the largest driver of the growth of jihadist activity. Syria is the location that has seen the greatest growth in number of groups and numbers of militants, which now make up more than half of the number of al Qaeda-sympathizing jihadists world-wide. “It’s become a breeding ground for jihadist activity,” said the report’s author, Seth Jones, associate director of Rand’s International Security and Defense Policy Center.

In the past few months, militants there have shown growing interest in tapping Western resources and mounting attacks outside Syria, he said, noting last week’s suicide attack by an American in Syria, in addition to recent arrests of alleged Syrian-trained fighters in France and Spain, as well as one allegedly involved in a deadly shooting last month in Belgium.

The Rand findings also cast doubt on the Obama administration’s efforts to end the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan by 2016 and keep Syria at arm’s length. A complete withdrawal from Afghanistan, the report said, “could seriously jeopardize U.S. security interests,” because of the continuing terrorist presence in Afghanistan and Pakistan. It also calls for a “more aggressive strategy” in Syria, either clandestinely or working with locals.”

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6. Looks like Dirty Harry has some company. Good. Everyone knows this came from high up in Congress and the White House. This will help show that.

From TheHill  “A conservative group is calling on the Senate ethics committee to examine nine top Democrats, accusing them of pushing the IRS to investigate specific groups.

The Center for Competitive Politics announced their complaint Tuesday, in which they charge that lawmakers tried to get the tax agency to probe outside conservative groups.

These senators improperly attempted to use the IRS to suppress the free speech of American citizens for their party’s electoral gain,” said Brad Smith, chairman of the Center and a former Chairman of the Federal Election Commission. “We will fight this type of abuse of power and work to ensure that those who have violated Senate Ethics rules are held to account.”

The group wants the ethics panel to look at Sens. Dick Durbin (Ill.), Chuck Schumer (N.Y.), Carl Levin (Mich.), Michael Bennet (Colo.), Sheldon Whitehouse (R.I.), Jeanne Shaheen (N.H.), Al Franken (Minn.), Jeff Merkley (Ore.), and Tom Udall (N.M.).”

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7. I guess all those folks who showed up to support Cliven Bundy will now be added to the new watch list.

From NBCNews  “Attorney General Eric Holder, citing an “escalating danger from self-radicalized individuals within our own borders,” said Tuesday that the Justice Department will revive a domestic terrorism task force.

The task force was established after the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 to share information about domestic threats. It was set to meet the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, after which the country turned its focus to terror overseas.

“But now, as the nature of the threat we face evolves to including the possibility of individual radicalization via the Internet, it is critical that we return our focus to potential extremists here at home,” Holder said in a weekly video.

The attorney general cited no specific domestic threat. But he said that the deadly shootings at Fort Hood, Texas, and the Boston Marathon bombings demonstrate the danger of homegrown terror.”

That’s strange. Why mention Ft. Hood? Both he and his boss have insisted that it was workplace violence and not terrorism. They denied benefits to the survivors and families saying it wasn’t, but now when it suits their purposes, it suddenly is?

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8. See, stuff like this is why we make fun of you California.

From Twitchy  “Let this sink in: 287,000+ Californians voted for indicted Democrat Leland Yee. Yes, that Leeland Yee. Charges related to arms trafficking? No biggie, apparently.

Yee dropped his bid for secretary of state, but his name remained on the ballot.

Nearly 10 percent of the vote? Bless your low-information hearts.”

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9. Baseball has lost one of the best.

From FoxSports  “Don Zimmer wasn’t a fixture in baseball forever. It just seemed that way.

He played alongside Jackie Robinson on the only Brooklyn Dodgers team to win the World Series. He coached Derek Jeter on the New York Yankees‘ latest dynasty. And his manager once was the illustrious Casey Stengel.

For 66 years, Zimmer was a most popular presence at ballparks all over, a huge chaw often filling his cheek. Everyone in the game seemed to know him, and love him.

Zimmer was still working for the Tampa Bay Rays as a senior adviser when he died Wednesday at 83 in a hospital in nearby Dunedin. He had been in a rehabilitation center since having seven hours of heart surgery in mid-April.”

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