The Kingdom Come

As if the Obama administration could not be more blatant than gagging reporters from live-tweets during one of Vice President Joe Biden’s speeches or demanding White House reporters get approval and even correction for their stories before going to press, they called for an off-the-record meeting with handpicked members of the press on Friday to discuss how to help cover-up Benghazi. Wait, sorry that was my imagination getting away from me there. They merely wanted to discuss Benghazi with a few reporters.

Politico reports,

The White House held an off-the-record briefing with reporters on Friday afternoon to discuss recent revelations about the Benghazi investigation, sources familiar with the meeting tell POLITICO.

The meeting began around 12:45 p.m. and postponed the daily, on-the-record White House press briefing to 1:45 p.m. White House press secretary Jay Carney did not respond to a request for confirmation of the meeting.

The off-the-record session was announced to reporters in the wake of an ABC News report showing that White House and State Dept. officials were involved in revising the now-discredited CIA talking points about the attack on Benghazi.

Hey, maybe I did have it right in the opening paragraph! By the way, the article in reference is this one, which caused even the BBC to claim that Benghazi was a big deal.

Some try to cover for Press Secretary and Obama mouthpiece Jay Carney.

Time Magazine reporter Jay Carney would have been the 1st person to object to how the WH is handling the press today.

— Ari Fleischer (@AriFleischer) May 10, 2013

Some have even gone so far as to blame the “far right” for the reason that the media is not any harder on the Obama administration. Cookie (perhaps we should change her name to Kookie now) Roberts appeared on Morning Joe with Joe Scarborough and this is what followed:

Scarborough later jumped in, “This has the DNA of a Clinton scandal more than it does an Obama scandal, does it not?”

“Scandal is a strong word,” Roberts replied, to which Scarborough asked, “What is a couple notches below a scandal? Kerfuffle? Four people are dead.”

“The first ambassador killed since 1979 — it is serious,” he continued. “You talk about overplaying your hand. If a lot of people on the far right hadn’t overplayed their hand on Benghazi and were screaming — before they knew what they were screaming about — I think we would all be much harder on the administration right now.”

All of this is background noise though because more S is about to HTF (Hit the fan) according to Stephen Hayes:

Fox’s @jamesrosenfnc reports that “several more” #Benghazi whistleblowers are considering coming forward, including CIA officials.

— Stephen Hayes (@stephenfhayes) May 10, 2013

Hayes’ reporting on the Benghazi talking points has already been confirmed. We know that the talking points included removing any claims of jihadist involvement in the attacks in Benghazi.

However, Hayes has begun to name names. He’s fingered officials in both the State Department and the White House. He writes:

The CIA’s talking points, the ones that went out that Friday evening, were distributed via email to a group of top Obama administration officials. Forty-five minutes after receiving them, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland expressed concerns about their contents, particularly the likelihood that members of Congress would criticize the State Department for “not paying attention to Agency warnings.” CIA officials responded with a new draft, stripped of all references to Ansar al Sharia. In an email a short time later, Nuland wrote that the changes did not “resolve all my issues or those of my building leadership.” She did not specify whom she meant by State Department “building leadership.” Ben Rhodes, a top Obama foreign policy and national security adviser, responded to the group, explaining that Nuland had raised valid concerns and advising that the issues would be resolved at a meeting of the National Security Council’s Deputies Committee the following morning. The Deputies Committee consists of high-ranking officials at the agencies with responsibility for national security—including State, Defense, and the CIA—as well as senior White House national security staffers.

While Jay Carney has confirmed the meeting took place, he says that it was merely a “background” briefing and was not off the record. I’m sure he’ll be willing to provide that for us then.

With more whistleblowers coming forward, as Hayes’ indicates, it seems the Obama administration is shaking in their boots. Meanwhile, the White House continues their lies as Carney denies that the White House was involved in scrubbing terrorism from Benghazi talking points.

The post WH Holds Off-The-Record Briefing With Reporters On Benghazi appeared first on Freedom Outpost.

(Photo: NASA)

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (TheBlaze/AP) — Astronauts making a rare, hastily planned spacewalk replaced a pump outside the International Space Station on Saturday in hopes of plugging a serious ammonia leak.

The prospects of success grew as the minutes passed and no frozen flecks of ammonia appeared. Mission Control said it appeared as though the leak may have been plugged, although additional monitoring over the coming days, if not weeks, will be needed before declaring a victory.

“No evidence of any ammonia leakage whatsoever. We have an airtight system – at the moment,” Mission Control reported.

Christopher Cassidy and Thomas Marshburn installed the new pump after removing the old one suspected of spewing flakes of frozen ammonia coolant two days earlier. They uncovered “no smoking guns” responsible for the leak and consequently kept a sharp lookout for any icy flecks that might appear from the massive frame that holds the solar panels on the left side.

“Let us know if you see anything,” Mission Control urged as the fresh pump was cranked up. Thirty minutes later, all was still well. “No snow,” the astronauts radioed.

“We have our eyes on it and haven’t seen a thing,” Marshburn said.

Watch video of the unscheduled spacewalk below:

The space agency has never before staged such a fast, impromptu spacewalk for a station crew. Even during the shuttle days, unplanned spacewalks were uncommon.  NASA said the leak, while significant, never jeopardized crew safety. But managers wanted to deal with the trouble before it becomes an issue.

The ammonia pump was the chief suspect going into Saturday’s spacewalk. So it was disheartening for NASA, at first, as Cassidy and Marshburn reported nothing amiss on or around the old pump.

“All the pipes look shiny clean, no crud,” Cassidy said as he used a long, dentist-like mirror to peer into tight, deep openings.

“I can’t give you any good data other than nominal, unfortunately. No smoking guns.”

Engineers determined there was nothing to lose by installing a new pump, despite the lack of visible damage to the old one. The entire team – weary and stressed by the frantic pace of the past two days – gained more and more confidence as the 5 1/2-hour spacewalk drew to a close with no flecks of ammonia popping up.

“Gloved fingers crossed,” space station commander Chris Hadfield said in a tweet from inside. “No leaks!” he wrote a half-hour later.

Flight controllers in Houston worked furiously to get ready for Saturday’s operation, completing all the required preparation in under 48 hours. The astronauts trained for just such an emergency scenario before they rocketed into orbit; the repair job is among NASA’s so-called Big 12.

(Photo: NASA)

In this image made from video provided by NASA, astronaut Christopher Cassidy, foreground, holds a power wrench as he stows away a suspect coolant pump on the International Space Station on Saturday, May 11, 2013. Thomas Marshburn is at left. (Photo: AP)

This area on the space station is prone to leaks.

The ammonia coursing through the plumbing is used to cool the space station’s electronic equipment. There are eight of these power channels, and all seven others were operating normally. As a result, life for the six space station residents was pretty much unaffected, aside from the drama unfolding Saturday 255 miles above the planet. The loss of two power channels, however, could threaten science experiments and backup equipment.

“To pull off what this team did yesterday and today, working practically 48 straight hours, it was a remarkable effort on everybody’s behalf,” Cassidy said.

NASA’s space station program manager Mike Suffredini said it’s a mystery as to why the leak erupted. Possibilities include a micrometeorite strike or a flawed seal. Ammonia already had been seeping ever so slightly from the location, but the flow increased dramatically Thursday.

Marshburn has been on the space station since December and is set to return to Earth late Monday. Cassidy is a new arrival, on board for just 1 1/2 months.

By coincidence, the two performed a spacewalk at this troublesome spot before, during a shuttle visit in 2009.

“This type of event is what the years of training were for,” Hadfield said in a tweet Friday. “A happy, busy crew, working hard, loving life in space.”

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CBS Anchor Scolds: ‘We’re Getting the Big Stories Wrong Over and Over Again’

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Robert Gates: I Would Have Made the Same Decisions During Benghazi Attack

Conservative radio talk-show host Rush Limbaugh declared that President Barack Obama will ultimately be held responsible for the Sept. 11, 2012, attack at the U.S. post in Libya — not former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Getty Images

CBS News anchor Scott Pelley on Friday scolded the news media for what he said has been “a bad few months for journalism.”

“Our house is on fire,” Pelley told an audience at Quinnipiac University in Connecticut. “These have been a bad few months for journalism. We’re getting the big stories wrong over and over again.”

“Let me take the first arrow,” he continued. “During our coverage of Newtown, I sat on my set and I reported that Nancy Lanza was a teacher at the school. And that her son had attacked her classroom. It’s a hell of a story, but it was dead wrong. Now I was the managing editor, I made the decision to go ahead with that and I did, and that’s what I said, and I was absolutely wrong. So let me just take the first arrow here.”

Pelley was accepting the university’s Fred Friendly First Amendment Award, named after the former CBS News president. He said that in an age where more information is available to more people than ever before, “never has more bad information been available” either.

He called last month’s Boston terror attack a particularly low point for many in the industry.

“Our nation was attacked by terrorists,” Pelley said. “I cannot think of a time when the public that we serve needs accurate, timely information more than in those moments when our country is under attack.”

CNN was widely maligned for being the first to incorrectly report that authorities had a suspect in custody, as was The New York Post for publishing photos of two men it incorrectly said were being sought by police.

“That fire that started on the Internet spread to our more established newsrooms,” Pelley said. “In a world where everyone is a publisher, no one is an editor. And that is the danger we face today.”

​Watch Pelley’s full remarks below, starting at the 10:15 mark.

(h/t Weekly Standard)

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Read more stories from TheBlaze

CBS Anchor Scolds: ‘We’re Getting the Big Stories Wrong Over and Over Again’

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Shock: At Least 19 Injured as Gunmen Open Fire at New Orleans Mother’s Day Parade

MSNBC Anchor’s ‘Easy’ Solution to Ending Poverty: ‘Giving People Money’

Robert Gates: I Would Have Made the Same Decisions During Benghazi Attack

You can tell a lot about a politician’s character when they don’t realize that the microphone has been left on. A few air-headed New Jersey State Senators proved that claim on Thursday when they had their own unknown “open-mic” moment. Though this may never compare to King Obama’s intimate moment with Medvedev, it has to rank as one of the top ten open-mic moments in the history of communist America.

The Examiner Reports:

A microphone left on after the gavel fell at a New Jersey Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee hearing Thursday shows the “true view” of some of the senators toward gun owners, and provides proof that gun confiscation is a goal on which they agree, the Association of New Jersey Rifle and Pistol Clubs revealed in an email to members and supporters today. The group is the official NRA state association.

“The discussion that was caught, apparently among several senators and staff, is outrageous, and reveals legislators’ true view of gun owners,” ANJRPC reports.

“The discussion appears to be among Senator Loretta Weinberg (D37), Senator Sandra Cunningham (D31), Senator Linda Greenstein (D14), and at least one member of Senate Democratic staff,” the gun group’s email explains.

Interesting lines allegedly coming from Weinberg, Cunningham, Greenstein and company include the following:

“We needed a bill that was going to confiscate, confiscate, confiscate.”

“They want to keep the guns out of the hands of the bad guys, but they don’t have any regulations to do it.”

“They don’t care about the bad guys.  All they want to do is have their little guns and do whatever they want with them.”

“That’s the line they’ve developed.”

I personally don’t care about personal attacks toward gun owners and pro-2nd amendment Senators. Sticks and stones, as they say…

What should concern the people of the great State of New Jersey and Americans all across the land is this “confiscate, confiscate, confiscate” garbage.

It is unclear which of the Senators uttered these remarks but I have a message for her and all of her sexually retarded, emotionally immature friends.

MOLON LABE! Yeah I’m talking to you princess…

“A fear of weapons is a sign of retarded sexual and emotional maturity.” -Sigmund Freud, General Introduction to Psychoanalysis. (1920)

Come on. You didn’t think I would throw those insults without a solid psychological basis for doing so. Did you? I’m no Sigmund Freud but when she repeats the word three times I feel like she must be triply-troubled. We had better get her on that confiscation list for the mentally unstable as soon as possible. She might be a left-wing terrorist in the making. Just saying.

The post NJ State Senator’s Hot Mic On Guns: “Confiscate, Confiscate, Confiscate” appeared first on Freedom Outpost.

(Wall Street Journal) Russia withheld a crucial piece of information from the U.S. before the Boston bombings, U.S. officials say, bolstering a concern that distrust between the two governments erased an opportunity to avert the disaster.

In 2011, Russia sent an alert to the Federal Bureau of Investigation about alleged bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev, prompted in part by text messages between his mother and a Russian relative. The texts suggested Tsarnaev was interested in joining militant groups that Russia blames for attacks in the Caucasus region, according to U.S. officials briefed on the investigations.

U.S. officials call these text messages the most important in a series of missed signals between the two countries. One U.S. official characterized at least one of the text messages as generally discussing jihad, but without any specific mention of terrorism plans.

Is it any wonder that Petreaus’s private life suddenly exploded?

The Weekly Standard reported new details today describing how then-CIA Director David Petraeus voiced surprise when he learned the Saturday after the attack that officials had deleted all prior references to Al Qaeda and jihadists, leaving only the word “extremists.” US. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice would use the final version of the talking points to say on several Sunday shows that the attack was triggered by protests over an anti-Islam film. The maker of that film is the person arrested and currently serving time for events surrounding the jihadi attack on the US consulate and the slaughter of our countrymen.

Greg Hicks, former deputy chief of mission in Libya,  said the anti-Islam film was actually a “nonevent” in Libya, and his “jaw dropped” when he heard Rice’s comments. 

Petraeus was frustrated with Benghazi talking points that removed all mention of jihadist involvement according to Jihadwatch.

What a coincidence: almost immediately after this, Petraeus’ private life exploded all over the headlines, and he had to resign as director of the CIA. Surely Barack Obama wouldn’t have been trying to get him out of the way for what he knew about jihadist involvement in the Benghazi massacres, and Obama’s coverup of that involvement — Barack Obama wouldn’t stoop so low, now, would he?

“The Benghazi Scandal Grows,” by Stephen F. Hayes for the Weekly Standard, May 20 (thanks to Anne Crockett):

CIA director David Petraeus was surprised when he read the freshly rewritten talking points an aide had emailed him in the early afternoon of Saturday, September 15. One day earlier, analysts with the CIA’s Office of Terrorism Analysis had drafted a set of unclassified talking points policymakers could use to discuss the attacks in Benghazi, Libya. But this new version​—​produced with input from senior Obama administration policymakers​—​was a shadow of the original.

The original CIA talking points had been blunt: The assault on U.S. facilities in Benghazi was a terrorist attack conducted by a large group of Islamic extremists, including some with ties to al Qaeda.

These were strong claims. The CIA usually qualifies its assessments, providing policymakers a sense of whether the conclusions of its analysis are offered with “high confidence,” “moderate confidence,” or “low confidence.” That first draft signaled confidence, even certainty: “We do know that Islamic extremists with ties to al Qaeda participated in the attack.”

There was good reason for this conviction. Within 24 hours of the attack, the U.S. government had intercepted communications between two al Qaeda-linked terrorists discussing the attacks in Benghazi. One of the jihadists, a member of Ansar al Sharia, reported to the other that he had participated in the assault on the U.S. diplomatic post. Solid evidence. And there was more. Later that same day, the CIA station chief in Libya had sent a memo back to Washington, reporting that eyewitnesses to the attack said the participants were known jihadists, with ties to al Qaeda.

Before circulating the talking points to administration policymakers in the early evening of Friday, September 14, CIA officials changed “Islamic extremists with ties to al Qaeda” to simply “Islamic extremists.” But elsewhere, they added new contextual references to radical Islamists. They noted that initial press reports pointed to Ansar al Sharia involvement and added a bullet point highlighting the fact that the agency had warned about another potential attack on U.S. diplomatic facilities in the region. “On 10 September we warned of social media reports calling for a demonstration in front of the [Cairo] Embassy and that jihadists were threatening to break into the Embassy.” All told, the draft of the CIA talking points that was sent to top Obama administration officials that Friday evening included more than a half-dozen references to the enemy​—​al Qaeda, Ansar al Sharia, jihadists, Islamic extremists, and so on.

The version Petraeus received in his inbox Saturday, however, had none. The only remaining allusion to the bad guys noted that “extremists” might have participated in “violent demonstrations.”

In an email at 2:44 p.m. to Chip Walter, head of the CIA’s legislative affairs office, Petraeus expressed frustration at the new, scrubbed talking points, noting that they had been stripped of much of the content his agency had provided. Petraeus noted with evident disappointment that the policymakers had even taken out the line about the CIA’s warning on Cairo. The CIA director, long regarded as a team player, declined to pick a fight with the White House and seemed resigned to the propagation of the administration’s preferred narrative. The final decisions about what to tell the American people rest with the national security staff, he reminded Walter, and not with the CIA.

This candid, real-time assessment from then-CIA director Petraeus offers a glimpse of what many intelligence officials were saying privately as top Obama officials set aside the truth about Benghazi and spun a fanciful tale about a movie that never mattered and a demonstration that never happened.

“The YouTube video was a nonevent in Libya,” said Gregory Hicks, a 22-year veteran diplomat and deputy chief of mission at the U.S. embassy in Tripoli at the time of the attacks, in testimony before the House Oversight and Reform Committee on May 8. “The only report that our mission made through every channel was that there had been an attack on a consulate . . . no protest.”

So how did Jay Carney, Susan Rice, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and others come to sell the country a spurious narrative about a movie and a protest?

There are still more questions than answers. But one previously opaque aspect of the Obama administration’s efforts is becoming somewhat clearer. An email sent to Susan Rice following a key White House meeting where officials coordinated their public story lays out what happened in that meeting and offers more clues about who might have rewritten the talking points….

The post Former CIA Director Petraeus Was Frustrated With Removal Of Jihadist Involvement From Benghazi Talking Points appeared first on Freedom Outpost.

Cody Wilson, 25, a law student at the University of Texas and founder of the non-profit group Defense Distributed, had produced a 3-D printed handgun made entirely of ABS plastic with only a metal firing pin has had the information, on how to build the gun, removed from public access at the request of the United States Department of Defense Trade Controls According to Wilson, they have seized control of the information.

I first reported that 3-D guns were for real back in July of 2012, when an internet gunsmith by the name of “Have Blue” produced an AR style pistol that fired both .22 and .223 caliber bullets.

On the heels of that, Wilson had set up to manufacture his own weapon and then make the CAD blueprints of it available to the public so people could produce their own. However, once he leased a 3-D printer and it arrived, the company immediately picked it back up, claiming that Wilson’s company, DefenseDistributed.com, were violating the law in what they were doing.

Clearly they were not violating the law, as they were able to secure another means of 3-D printing, an $8,000 Stratasys Dimension SST 3-D printer, and not only produced the gun, but tested it. It passed.

Wilson aptly named the gun the “Liberator.

Once the gun was tested and passed, the blueprints were made available on his site, DefCAD.org. However, on May 9, 2013, Defense Distributed tweet out the following:

#DEFCAD has gone dark at the request of the Department of Defense Trade Controls. Take it up with the Secretary of State.

— Defense Distributed (@DefDist) May 9, 2013

The top of the website communicated a similar, though more ominous message.

“DEFCAD files are being removed from public access at the request of the US Department of Defense Trade Controls. Until further notice, the United States government claims control of the information.”

The United States government claims control of the information? Huh? Did they create it? Do they do that with other gun manufacturers? I don’t think so. They are scared and as Defense Distributed’s tweet indicates, it seems that Secretary of State John Kerry is the one to blame.

Gun control freaks like New York Senator Chuck Schumer believes 3-D guns should be banned. “Guns are made out of plastic, so they would not be detectable by a metal detector at any airport or sporting event,” said Schumer. “Only metal part of the gun is the little firing pin and that is too small to be detected by metal detectors, for instance, when you go through an airport.”

Wilson has 9mm and .22 barrels in the works, but it looks like he may have to fight some legal battles to implement his project. How the United States government can claim control of this is beyond me. While Wilson did not have a federal firearm manufacturer’s license at the beginning of their project, they did obtain one after the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE) sought him out. See what government regulation on a matter they have no constitutional authority in gets you?

UPDATE: You can get the entire package of instructions and blueprints by downloading here.

The post Feds Seize Control Of 3-D Gun Printing Information From Entrepreneur appeared first on Freedom Outpost.

Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Commissioner Douglas Shulman testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, Aug. 2, 2012, before the House Oversight Committee. Credit: AP

WASHINGTON (TheBlaze/AP) — Senior Internal Revenue Service officials knew agents were targeting Tea Party groups as early as 2011, according to a draft of an inspector general’s report obtained by The Associated Press that contradicts public statements by the IRS commissioner.

On Friday, the IRS apologized for the “inappropriate” targeting of conservative political groups during the 2012 election, singling out about 75 organizations that included the words ‘‘Tea Party’’ or ‘‘patriot’’ in their exemption applications.

Lois Lerner, who heads the IRS division that oversees tax-exempt groups, said the practice was initiated by “low-level” workers in Cincinnati and that no high-level officials were aware.  She also said it was not motivated by political bias.

But the report claims that Lerner was aware of the targeting as early as June 29, 2011, where she was told at a meeting that groups with “Tea Party,” “Patriot” or “9/12 Project” in their names were being flagged for additional and often burdensome scrutiny.  The government agency even sought information about their family members, details of their postings on social media, and the identities of their donors.

Lerner instructed agents to change the criteria for flagging groups “immediately,” the report adds.

On Jan, 25, 2012, the criteria for flagging suspect groups was changed to “political action type organizations involved in limiting/expanding Government, educating on the Constitution and Bill of Rights, social economic reform/movement,” the report says.

The new disclosure also contradicts public statements by former IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman, who repeatedly and unequivocally assured Congress that conservative groups were not being targeted.

‘‘There’s absolutely no targeting. This is the kind of back and forth that happens to people’’ who apply for tax-exempt status, he told a House Ways and Means subcommittee in March.

The report does not specify whether Shulman was informed of the targeting, but it is standard procedure for agency heads to consult with staff before responding to congressional inquiries.

Shulman’s 6-year term ended in November, and President Barack Obama has yet to nominate a successor. The agency is now run by an acting commissioner, Steven Miller.

The IRS released a statement Saturday saying the report’s timeline is correct,​ but​ that it doesn’t contradict the commissioner’s testimony.

“IRS senior leadership was not aware of this level of specific details at the time of the March 2012 hearing,” the statement explains. “The timeline does not contradict the commissioner’s testimony. While exempt organizations officials knew of the situation earlier, the timeline reflects that IRS senior leadership did not have this level of detail.”

Lerner’s position is three levels below the commissioner.

“The timeline supports what the IRS acknowledged on Friday that mistakes were made,” the statement continues. “There were not partisan reasons behind this.”

The Treasury Department’s inspector general for tax administration is expected to release the results of a nearly yearlong investigation in the coming week. The AP obtained part of the draft report, which has been shared with congressional aides.

The IRS is an independent agency within the Treasury Department that enforces the nation’s tax laws. Revelations that the agency was targeting political groups because they were affiliated with a movement that is critical of President Barack Obama will likely become a new headache for the White House.

Rep. Charles Boustany, R-La., chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee’s oversight subcommittee, said the report “raises serious questions as to who at IRS, Treasury and in the administration knew about this, why this practice was allowed to continue for as long as it did, and how widespread it was.”

“This timeline reveals at least two extremely unethical actions by the IRS. One, as early as 2010, they targeted groups for political purposes. Two, they willfully and knowingly lied to Congress for years despite being aware that Congress was investigating this practice,” Boustany said.

“This is an outrageous abuse of power. Going after organizations for referencing the Bill of Rights or expressing the intent to make this country a better place is repugnant,” Boustany added. “There is no excuse for this behavior.”

​This post has been updated to include the IRS’ response.

–

Related:

• SHOCK: IRS Admits to Targeting Conservative Groups During 2012 Election, Apologizes

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CBS Anchor Scolds: ‘We’re Getting the Big Stories Wrong Over and Over Again’

Dianne Feinstein Says Benghazi Hearing Was Really About Discrediting Hillary Clinton

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Robert Gates: I Would Have Made the Same Decisions During Benghazi Attack

Authorities have developed “mounting evidence,” from “forensic hits,” that may tie Tamerlan Tsarnaev and his younger brother Dzhokhar in a gruesome, unsolved triple homicide in Massachusetts in 2011, law-enforcement officials said this week.

The amount of climate-warming carbon dioxide in the atmosphere topped 400 parts per million at a key observing station in Hawaii for the first time since measurement began in 1958, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said on Friday. Earth's atmosphere hasn't had this much carbon dioxide in it for at least 800,000 years, and possibly for as long as 5 million years. During the last 800,000 years, the level of atmospheric carbon dioxide fluctuated between 180 ppm and 280 ppm.

Though federal law makes it illegal for gun shops to sell or give a firearm to anyone who "has been adjudicated as a mental defective or has been committed to any mental institution," incomplete data in the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NCIS) sometimes allows mentally ill people to pass the check. Most states fail to pass on mental health records to the federal system, allowing the mentally ill to easily buy guns. As of October 2011, 23 states had submitted fewer than 100 mental health care records, 17 states fewer than 10 and four states not a single record to the federal background check system, according to a Government Accountability Office investigation.

Deceased Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s burial in Virginia “appears to be legal,” officials in Caroline County said on Saturday.

I told you yesterday that CBS’ Sharyl Attkisson has been receiving a lot of pushback from the Obama White House. She has been one of the few that have been pursuing the Benghazi story as a real journalist, seeking to get the truth of the story out. I have speculated that White House deputy national security advisor Ben Rhodes may be the culprit in coming up with the story that would be the attempt to cover-up the Benghazi story, namely that a YouTube video brought about protests which led to the attack in Benghazi, Libya on September 11, 2012. However, now there is a serious question about the ties between the White House and CBS. Sources have confirmed that CBS President David Rhodes is the brother of Ben Rhodes.

The Daily Caller made the connection:

The brother of a top Obama administration official is also the president of CBS News, and the network may be days away from dropping one of its top investigative reporters for covering the administration’s scandals too aggressively. CBS News executives have reportedly expressed frustration with their own reporter, Sharyl Attkisson, who has steadily covered the Obama administration’s handling of the Benghazi terrorist attack in Libya since late last year

…

On Friday, ABC News reported that the Benghazi talking points went through 12 revisions before they were used on the public. The White House was intimately involved in that process, ABC reported, and the talking points were scrubbed free of their original references to a terror attack. That reporting revealed that President Obama’s deputy national security advisor, Ben Rhodes — brother of CBS News president David Rhodes — was instrumental in changing the talking points in September 2012. ABC’s reporting revealed that Ben Rhodes, who has a masters in fiction from NYU, called a meeting to discuss the talking points at the White House on September 15, 2012.

Consider that Attkisson can’t even get some of her stories on the air and feels marginalized because of it. According to Politico:

But from where Attkisson is sitting, there are actually two Goliaths, one of which is almost entirely absent from the Post profile. The second Goliath is CBS News, which has grown increasingly frustrated with Attkisson’s Benghazi campaign. CBS News executives see Attkisson wading dangerously close to advocacy on the issue, network sources have told POLITICO. Attkisson can’t get some of her stories on the air, and is thus left feeling marginalized and underutilized. That, in part, is why Attkisson is in talks to leave CBS ahead of contract, as POLITICO reported in April. Farhi mentions “internal conflicts” in the final paragraph, though he seems to dismiss them. The “internal conflicts” are indeed real — Attkisson is still eyeing an exit, according to sources — and provide important context for today’s piece. 

Dangerously close to advocacy? Seriously? Perhaps it’s dangerously close to the truth about Benghazi. I’d say CBS is dangerously close, no wait, they have crossed the line as far as having a serious conflict of interest here.

Rhodes was the one who seems to have orchestrated the talking points for his colleagues in the Obama administration. “We must make sure that the talking points reflect all agency equities, including those of the State Department, and we don’t want to undermine the FBI investigation. We thus will work through the talking points tomorrow morning at the Deputies Committee meeting.”

This is not necessarily new information, as the New York Times put out a piece back in March about Rhodes, which indicated that David was his brother. However, now that Attkisson is being sidelined and her stories are being buried by CBS, perhaps it’s time we know what really is going on behind the scenes between the CBS propaganda machine and the White House. If Ms. Attkisson happens to read this, we’ll be happy to put out the stories you have that CBS doesn’t want to divulge.

 

The post Benghazi Cover-Up: WH Official Tied To Benghazi Scandal & CBS News President Are Brothers appeared first on Freedom Outpost.

AP

Vice President Joe Biden met with faith leaders this week and asked them to tell their congregations that passing gun control is the moral thing to do.

Here’s what some of you had to say about it:

Crosswalk777

I’m a pastor and I say Biden is a dm wit and a danger to freedom. How bout that!

theblack5

I agree……Hey Joe! Stay out of the Church. This is what Thomas Jefferson was referring to in his letter to the Banbury Baptist’s in 1802 — when he penned the phrase “separation of church and state” — you know, the phrase the left likes to throw around. Government, stay out of the church!

Witness1974

I guess “separation of church and state” is a one way street.

rangerskippy

Uncle Joey will be miffed to know that my church brings in people to teach church members the conceal carry class, and that the pastor and church leaders are all NRA members, and staunch 2nd Amendment supporters.

RaydocX

OK, Joe… where do you stand on abortion?
same sex marriage?
birth control?

Sorry, Joe, I’m not even saying I have opposing views on some of your positions, but you cannot pick and choose when you are going to be religious, and you cannot ignore the teachings of those religions… especially that which you espouse to believe… and then turn around and try to use them to influence the citizenry on another topic….

that’s called hypocrisy.l

SocialDeviant

Sure, Joe.

How about asking them to promote faith, responsibility, charity, good will towards all, morality, life, patriotism, the Constitution, free will, the Bible!

Remember separation of church and state, Joe?

I really don’t understand how immigration reform is the #1 priority right now. It should have always been about fixing our economy and creating jobs, not regulating everything out of existence except for the government expansion you guys have created.
Get out of OUR lives! Stop telling us what is best for our own safety. Stupid people do stupid things and die. It’s called “evolution”.

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances”

It’s really a rational equation when you think about it. Someone goes crazy and shoots people + controversy + fear + debate + witness testimony + scare tactics + another shooting + fear + more controversy + arguing over laws + more scare tactics = Getting what you want because YOU are afraid of WE THE PEOPLE.

Dismayed Veteran

As a Roman Catholic, I do not support anything Biden is involved in. He advocates abortion which is a mortal sin and against the teachings of my church. The Catholic Church has no prohibition against gun ownership. If fact, the Church believes we all have the duty to protect our life and the lives of innocents. This idiot may call himself a Catholic but he is not.

bhowerton

I am a pastor and I always teach people to do the moral thing, and 99.9% of them do not agree with Biden. If he is going to ask pastors to do the moral thing, then shouldn’t Biden have some idea of what the moral thing is? No sign of it yet that I can think of.

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Private-sector workers entitled to overtime pay could choose comp time instead under legislation passed by the House on a party-line 223-204 vote Wednesday. House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D) labeled the bill the "Pay Working Families Less" bill. "There will be those who will volunteer who can afford to do comp time. Others will not," he said. "So they will not be able to earn overtime, because the employer ... will invariably go to the person that will in fact do it for free. I understand it's comp time, but they won't get paid."

Congressional Republicans are using their Benghazi investigation to distract from other issues, House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Saturday in an MSNBC interview. "The obsession that some of my Republican colleagues have in the House doesn't look like it's on the path to really finding a solution, but just to keeping an issue alive," she said. "We want to find out what did happen, but ... then it becomes an issue that is subterfuge: 'Let's talk about Benghazi forever, so we don't have to talk about what the American people want us to talk about,' They want us to talk about jobs, they want us to talk about economic security, economic growth."

AP

House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi on Saturday blasted the Republican “obsession” with Benghazi, accusing the GOP of exploiting the attack to avoid talking about anything else.

“The obsession that some of my Republican colleagues have in the House doesn’t look like it’s on the path to really finding a solution, but just to keeping an issue alive,” Pelosi (D-Calif.) told MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry.

She dismissed the ABC News report about the CIA’s now-discredited talking points being edited 12 times, saying it’s an opportunity for critics to merely “wrangle about some wording” when it was really the “intelligence consensus” process coming together.

“It was a terrible tragedy in Benghazi…we want to find out what did happen,” Pelosi said. Noting that the State Department already instituted its own investigation into the Sept. 2012 assault, she said pressing the issue becomes “subterfuge.”

“It becomes an issue that is subterfuge: ‘let’s talk about Benghazi forever so that we don’t have to talk about really what the American people want us to talk about,’” Pelosi said. “They want us to talk about jobs, they want to talk about economic security, economic growth, they want to talk about the education of their children, they want to talk about their future.”

“We certainly have to give the full attention that Benghazi deserves, but we cannot let it soak up all of the congressional attention,” she said. “What would be the purpose of that?”

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Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) is promoting a right-wing Sept. 11 National Day of Prayer and Fasting, telling an audience at a Capitol Hill event Thursday that such actions are necessary because "judgment" had been passed down by God on that day in both 2001 and 2012. "Our nation has seen judgment not once but twice on September 11 and that's why we're going to have '9-11 Pray' on that day," she said, according to Right Wing Watch. "Is there anything better that we can do on that day rather than to humble ourselves and to pray to an almighty God?"

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky. , has his photo taken with Linda Stikle, of Anamosa, Iowa, after speaking at the Iowa GOP Lincoln Dinner event, Friday, May 10, 2013, at the Hotel at Kirkwood Center, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. AP)

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said Friday that the Republican Party needs to reach out to minority voters to have any hope of keeping up with an increasingly diverse electorate.

In an unmistakeable sign that he’s already gearing up for the 2016 presidential race, Paul told attendees at the Iowa Republican Party’s annual Lincoln Day dinner that the GOP needs to broaden its appeal, particularly to black and Latino voters.

“As a party we need to grow bigger and…attract the Latino vote,” Paul said. “This is a very practical thing and I’m not ashamed to admit it. We need to attract the Latino vote, we need to attract the African-American vote. It is somewhat of a gateway issue and we have to change the way we are talking about it and who we are if we are going to attract the Latino vote.”

Paul, who has previously spoken about the need for immigration reform, said he could potentially vote for the current pending legislation as long as stronger border security was added.

He said illegal immigrants already living in the U.S. have “de-facto amnesty” anyway, and that Republicans “need to treat immigrants with dignity and respect.”

“Their kids will be voting and if their kids think we’re hostile, they’re never going to vote for us,” Paul said.

He added, “We’re an increasingly diverse nation and I think we do need to reach out to other people that don’t look like us, don’t wear the same clothes, that aren’t exactly who we are. We need to reach out, we’re going to have to do something.”

Follow Madeleine Morgenstern on Twitter

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