What’s interesting out there today?
Open Thread, as always.
Me…. I’m beating that horse again. From Boston.com
“Russian authorities alerted the FBI not once but “multiple’’ times over their concerns about Tamerlan Tsarnaev — including a second time nearly a year after he was first interviewed by FBI agents in Boston — raising new questions about whether the FBI should have focused more attention on the suspected Boston Marathon bomber, according to US senators briefed on the probe Tuesday.”
More on the mosque they attended here. From USAToday
“The mosque attended by the two brothers accused in the Boston Marathon bombing has been associated with other terrorist suspects, has invited radical speakers to a sister mosque in Boston and is affiliated with a Muslim group that critics say nurses grievances that can lead to extremism.
Several people who attended the Islamic Society of Boston mosque in Cambridge, Mass., have been investigated for Islamic terrorism, including a conviction of the mosque’s first president, Abdulrahman Alamoudi, in connection with an assassination plot against a Saudi prince.”
Check out the link. This place has a long list of radicals that have spoken there. And many of them have also been investigated for terrorism ties.
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The Ricin letters suspect has been released. From NBCNews
“Charges were dropped Tuesday against the Mississippi man suspected of mailing ricin-laced letters to President Obama and other public officials — as authorities searched the home of another man hoping to find clues in the expanding investigation.
“I respect President Obama and love my country. I would never do anything to pose a threat to him or any other U.S. official,” Paul Kevin Curtis said at a news conference Tuesday.”
More from FoxNews
“The Mississippi man charged with sending ricin-laced letters to President Obama was released on bond Tuesday, as the FBI searched the Mississippi home of a possible second suspect amid an apparent probe into whether the first suspect might have been framed. ”
“Shortly afterward, FBI searched the home of a possible second suspect. The FBI zeroed in on this individual earlier in the day, a source told Fox News.”
More on another possible Ricin attack, from WaPo
“Federal authorities are investigating another potential ricin attack at Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling in Southeast Washington, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said Tuesday.”
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Some pretty disturbing details are emerging in the Texas plant explosion. If true, arrests and prosecutions need to happen. From TheNYPost
“The fertilizer plant that exploded and wiped out much of a small Texas town last week once stored 1,350 times the amount of ammonium nitrate that typically triggers federal safety oversight, officials said.
Yet a person familiar with Department of Homeland Security operations said the company that owns the plant, West Fertilizer, failed to tell the agency about the potentially explosive fertilizer it stored last year, as required.”
Much more here from HuffPo/Reuters
“Fertilizer plants and depots must report to the DHS when they hold 400 lb (180 kg) or more of the substance. Filings this year with the Texas Department of State Health Services, which weren’t shared with DHS, show the plant had 270 tons of it on hand last year.
A U.S. congressman and several safety experts called into question on Friday whether incomplete disclosure or regulatory gridlock may have contributed to the disaster.
“It seems this manufacturer was willfully off the grid,” Rep. Bennie Thompson, (D-MS), ranking member of the House Committee on Homeland Security, said in a statement. “This facility was known to have chemicals well above the threshold amount to be regulated under the Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards Act (CFATS), yet we understand that DHS did not even know the plant existed until it blew up.””
With a Hat Tip to HRW
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Several charges against Kermit Gosnell have been dropped by the judge. From LifeSiteNews
“A federal judge has dropped nine charges – including three murder charges and one count of infanticide – against Philadelphia abortionist Kermit Gosnell, as his trial resumed this morning.
Local media report the judge has determined Gosnell will not face three counts of murder, one count of infanticide, and five counts of abuse of a corpse. The latter charges related to Gosnell’s keeping the severed feet of aborted babies in jars in his clinic.
Gosnell still faces the remaining four charges of first degree murder in the deaths of newborn babies, and an additional charge of third degree murder over the death of one of his abortion clients.”
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“What difference does it make?”
Well now we know why she wasn’t concerned with the truth getting out and was reluctant to answer questions. It was to protect herself and the White House. The House has issued it’s Benghazi report, which blames Hillary Clinton. From TheWashingtonExaminer
“A critical report drafted by five GOP-led House committees has determined that reduced security at the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi in the days leading up to the Sept. 11, 2012, attack was approved by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
The report also found that White House and high-ranking officials at the State Department changed CIA talking points following the attacks, which killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three others, in order to shield the State Department from “criticism for inadequate security levels” on the ground in Benghazi.
The 46-page report provides a timeline of events leading up to the attacks in Benghazi and investigation that followed.”
A larger view of the report can be viewed here at Scribd.com
And it also appears that like her husband, she has lied under oath. From TheWashingtonExaminer
“House Republicans released their report on the investigation into the Benghazi terrorist attack, having concluded that then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was not telling the truth when she told Congress that she wasn’t aware that officials at the U.S. mission in Benghazi had requested extra security.
“The specific security requests pertaining to Benghazi, you know were handled by the security professionals in the department,” Clinton told Congress in January. “I didn’t see those requests, they didn’t come to me, I didn’t approve them, I didn’t deny them.”
The House report suggests that Clinton received a request for more security from Gene Cretz, who preceded Christopher Stevens as ambassador to Libya.
Not only did she receive and see the request, her signature was on the response cable which denied the request.
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Democrats have been insisting the last few days that we need to pass the immigration/amnesty bill to protect against terrorism. It would do nothing of the sort. It’s what it really does that they are in a hurry to get done. From Politico
“The immigration proposal pending in Congress would transform the nation’s political landscape for a generation or more — pumping as many as 11 million new Hispanic voters into the electorate a decade from now in ways that, if current trends hold, would produce an electoral bonanza for Democrats and cripple Republican prospects in many states they now win easily.
Beneath the philosophical debates about amnesty and border security, there are brass-tacks partisan calculations driving the thinking of lawmakers in both parties over comprehensive immigration reform, which in its current form offers a pathway to citizenship — and full voting rights — for a group of undocumented residents that roughly equals the population of Ohio, the nation’s seventh-largest state.”
“If these people had been on the voting rolls in 2012 and voted along the same lines as other Hispanic voters did last fall, President Barack Obama’s relatively narrow victory last fall would have been considerably wider, a POLITICO analysis showed.”
THIS is the goal. It always has been.
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