Should federal employees on furlough be allowed to collect unemployment benefits? Workers at a Navy engineering station in Philadelphia think so.Wasn't the sequester supposed to reduce expenditures? Doesn't paying furloughed workers unemployment benefits offset those savings?
The local union affiliate of International Federation of Professional & Technical Engineers has signed an agreement with the Navy which would allow their civilian federal workers to group furlough days in one-week blocks. It's a strategy with one key goal: enable those employees to recoup some of their lost wages through unemployment checks.
Smith doesn't deny using the word. But she argues that everyone uses it, when speaking Spanish. She was teaching the Spanish words for different colors, and the color "black" in Spanish is "negro." ... And by the way, Smith, who is from the West Indies, is black.No word from the New York public school system on how they expect a Spanish teacher to tell her students the word for a certain color without using that word.
Since last Sunday, May 19, rioters have taken to the streets of Stockholm’s suburbs every night, torching cars, schools, stores, office buildings and residential complexes. Yesterday, a police station in Rågsved, a suburb four kilometers south of Stockholm, was attacked and set on fire.(Side note: the rioters are overwhelmingly muslim, a fact that is overwhelmingly not mentioned in most media accounts, with this notable exception: "Young Muslims who enjoy tolerance, social institutions and welfare while living in Sweden nevertheless refuse to integrate into the West..." That is pretty stupid by itself, but it gets worse.)
But while the Stockholm riots keep spreading and intensifying, Swedish police have adopted a tactic of non-interference. ”Our ambition is really to do as little as possible,” Stockholm Chief of Police Mats Löfving explained to the Swedish newspaper Expressen on Tuesday.Oh, by all means let the rioters run amok and destroy property, as long as they don't toss a few rocks at the cops. After all, we have to draw the line somewhere.
”We go to the crime scenes, but when we get there we stand and wait,” elaborated Lars Byström, the media relations officer of the Stockholm Police Department. ”If we see a burning car, we let it burn if there is no risk of the fire spreading to other cars or buildings nearby. By doing so we minimize the risk of having rocks thrown at us.”
Swedish parking laws, however, continue to be rigidly enforced despite the increasingly chaotic situation. Early Wednesday, while documenting the destruction after a night of rioting in the Stockholm suburb of Alby, a reporter from Fria Tider observed a parking enforcement officer writing a ticket for a burnt-out Ford.
When questioned, the officer explained that the ticket was issued because the vehicle lacked a tag showing its time of arrival. The fact that the vehicle had been effectively destroyed – its windshield smashed and the interior heavily damaged by fire – was irrelevant according to the meter maid...Can you imagine seeing your car get torched while the cops stand around and watch? And afterwards getting a parking ticket on the burned out hulk? The stupid, it hurts...
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| A meter maid issues a parking ticket for a burnt-out car following a night of riots in Stockholm. |
Why do we love brisket above all other barbecued meats? Is it because of its resonant beefy flavor, its exterior as shiny as black patent leather, its rivulets of fat moistening every mouthful and staining the eater’s shirt? Yes. The very nature of brisket is to be delicious. Yet there’s more to it than that. We love brisket because cooking it is a spiritual path, a quest that, as a wise man once said, begins with a single log. The steps toward enlightenment are threefold. The seeker of Brisket Truth must first embrace mental discipline, immersing himself in the craft of tending the fire and minding the meat. Second, the seeker must practice physical discipline, to be capable of wielding and slicing a twelve-pound brisket after having consumed a six-pack of Shiner Bock. Finally, the seeker must exhibit spiritual discipline, neither napping beside the smoker, nor wandering inside to catch the game on TV, nor sneaking off to update his Facebook page. The person who does these things is granted true knowledge of the brisket’s essence. He who honors this ritual is prepared for life. (Source)I know what I'm having for lunch...
SUMMER BUMMER: Beef Prices Set New Record...I read it as 'BEER prices set new record.'
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| Karen Ripley, a resident of the Medina Lake area, investigates a boat left on the bottom by the receding waters of Elm Cove, a portion of Medina Lake, on Wednesday, April 3, 2013 |
"White House officials insist that President Obama knew nothing about the IRS scandal until we all heard about it in the news last week. They said because there was an investigation under way, it would have been inappropriate to tell him. And besides, he was too busy not knowing anything about Benghazi."
"President Obama announced the appointment of a new acting commissioner of the IRS – the other guy was fired. See, they're called 'acting commissioner' because you have to act like the scandal doesn't involve the White House."
"A lot of critics are now comparing President Obama to President Nixon. The good news for Obama? At least he's no longer being compared to President Carter."Even Conan O'Brien snuck in a shot.
"A lot of critics are comparing President Obama to President Richard Nixon, which is unfair. Nixon's unemployment rate was only 5 percent."
"President Obama is in a lot of hot water lately. Despite the scandals, 53 percent of Americans say they approve of the job he's doing. The other 47 percent are being audited."
With Washington state about to embark on a first-of-its-kind legal market for recreational marijuana, the budding ranks of new cannabis growers face a quandary over what to do with the excess stems, roots and leaves from their plants.Pigs with the munchies. No word on whether they fattened up on Oreos or chips...
Susannah Gross, who owns a five-acre farm north of Seattle, is part of a group experimenting with a solution that seems to make the most of marijuana's appetite-enhancing properties - turning weed waste into pig food.
Four pigs whose feed was supplemented with potent plant leavings during the last four months of their lives ended up 20 to 30 pounds heavier than the half-dozen other pigs from the same litter when they were all sent to slaughter in March.
I've heard of a pearl necklace, but this is a new one...
Demi Moore’s latest yoga-teaching boy toy shockingly had a pearl inserted into his man parts as a teenager as part of a family tradition...
Will Hanigan, 30, met the 50-year-old actress through a series of yoga classes after moving from Australia to Los Angeles and the couple have reportedly been dating for a month.
“He had a pearl inserted in his penis when he was in his late teens,” said a source. “It is pearl farming tradition and he would always joke about it in Australia. He’d boast it’d give girls extra stimulation in the bedroom.”
Three members of a Michigan city council have abstained from voting on a measure that would have prevented them from abstaining on future votes.Wouldn't voting "no" have done the same thing?
AnnArbor.com reports that Ypsilanti City Council member Pete Murdock proposed a resolution Tuesday that would have required council members to only vote "yes" or "no" on each issue unless they had a financial or professional conflict.
Mayor Paul Schreiber and council members Susan Moeller and Brian Robb abstained from the vote to show their disapproval of the resolution.
New York State Senator Patrick Gallivan (R-59th District) New York State Assemblyman Robin Schimminger (D-140th District) are sponsoring a bill that would cover bowling shoes...With all the other problems New York has, this is what the state legislature is concerned about?
It would require alley owners to post signs, warning keglers not to wear bowling shoes outside, lest they become wet and increase the likelihood that a bowler could slip and fall when they come inside
Apple Inc. Chief Executive Tim Cook defended the technology giant's tax practices in front of Senate investigators on Tuesday, arguing the company pays all taxes due and that its use of foreign subsidiaries doesn't affect its U.S. tax bill.I won't bore you with the details that only a CPA could love, but to make a long story short Apple has subsidiaries in different countries around the world. Like any rational organization, Apple manages its operations and cash flows in such a manner as to minimize expenses, including taxes. For some reason, certain senators are upset by this.
Sen. Carl Levin (D., Mich.), chairman of the panel, accused Apple of employing "alchemy" and "ghost companies" to escape tax collectors in the U.S. and Ireland, the base of the firm's international operations outside the Americas.Apple, not surprisingly, sees things differently.
Countered Mr. Cook: "There's no shifting going on…We pay all the taxes we owe, every single dollar."What do the facts have to say?
* Yawn *
* Crickets *
* Coverup *
Deploy armed DHS agents.
It's time for the corrupt President to ask the corrupt Justice Department to investigate the corrupt Internal Revenue Service.(H/T The Other McCain)
Catherine Engelbrecht’s tale has all the markings of a classic conspiracy theory: She says she thinks that because of her peaceful political activity, she and her family was targeted for scrutiny by hostile federal agencies.It wasn't just the IRS. The FBI, OSHA, and the ATF -- the friggin' ATF, for God's sake -- all piled on this middle class family trying to run a small business. Aren't those the same folks that obama is always babbling about wanting to help?
Yet as news emerges that the Internal Revenue Service wielded its power to obstruct conservative groups, Catherine’s story becomes credible — and chilling. It also raises questions about whether other federal agencies have used their executive powers to target those deemed political enemies.
Before the Engelbrecht family’s three-year ordeal began, Catherine says, “I had no real expectation or preparation for the blood sport that American politics is.” Sounding weary on the phone, she continues: “It’s all been a through-the-looking-glass experience.”
Cleta Mitchell, a lawyer who specializes in representing conservative organizations, says that the Engelbrecht family’s experience is “just the tip of the iceberg. . . . I think there’s definitely a Chicago-politics-style enemies list in this administration, and I think it permeates this branch of the federal government.”
The Engelbrechts were not, until recently, particularly political. They had been busy running a tiny manufacturing plant in Rosenberg, Texas. After years of working for others, Bryan, a trained machinist, wanted to open his own shop, so he saved his earnings, bought a computerized numerical-control machine, which does precision metal-cutting, and began operating out of his garage. “That was about 20 years ago,” he says. “Now, we’re up to about 30 employees.”
For two decades, Bryan and Catherine drove to work in their big truck. Engelbrecht Manufacturing Inc. now operates out of a 20,000-square-foot metal building on the prairie just outside of Houston, where a “semi-pet coyote lives in the field just behind us,” Bryan says. They went back to their country home each night. Stress was rare, and life was good.
But the 2008 elections left Catherine feeling frustrated about the debates, which seemed to be a string of superficial talking points. So she began attending tea-party meetings, enjoying the political discussion. A spunky woman known for her drive, Catherine soon wanted to do more than just talk. She joined other tea partiers and decided to volunteer at the ballot box. Working as an alternate judge at the polls in 2009 in Fort Bend County, Texas, Catherine says, she was appalled and dismayed to witness everything from administrative snafus to outright voter fraud.
These formative experiences prompted her to found two organizations: King Street Patriots, a local community group that hosts weekly discussions on personal and economic freedoms; and True the Vote, which seeks to prevent voter fraud and trains volunteers to work as election monitors. It also registers voters, attempts to validate voter-registration lists, and pursues fraud reports to push for prosecution if illegal activity has occurred.
Bryan says that when his wife began focusing on politics, working less often at the manufacturing shop, “I told her, ‘You have my undying support.’” He pauses, then adds in his thick Texan drawl: “Little did I know she’d take it this far!”
In July 2010, Catherine filed with the IRS seeking tax-exempt status for her organizations. Shortly after, the troubles began.
That winter, the Federal Bureau of Investigation came knocking with questions about a person who had attended a King Street Patriots event once. Based on sign-in sheets, the organization discovered that the individual in question had attended an event, but “it was a come-and-go thing,” and they had no further information on hand about him. Nevertheless, the FBI also made inquiries about the person to the office manager, who was a volunteer.
The King Street Patriots weren’t the only ones under scrutiny. On January 11, the IRS visited the Engelbrechts’ shop and conducted an on-site audit of both their business and their personal returns, Catherine says.
“What struck us as odd about that,” she adds,“is the lengths to which the auditor went to try to — it seemed like — to try to find some error. . . . She wanted to go out and see [our] farm, she wanted to count the cattle, she wanted to look at the fence line. It was a very curious three days. She was as kind as she could be, and she was doing her job . . . [but] it was strange.”
Bryan adds: “It was kind of funny to us. I mean, we weren’t laughing that much, but we knew we were squeaky clean. Our CPA’s a good guy. And who says God doesn’t have a sense of humor: I got a little bit of a refund.”
Two months later, the IRS initiated the first round of questions for True the Vote. Catherine painstakingly answered them, knowing that nonprofit status would help with the organization’s credibility, donors, and grant applications. In October, the IRS requested additional information. And whenever Catherine followed up with IRS agents about the status of True the Vote’s application, “there was always a delay that our application was going to be up next, and it was just around the corner,” she says,
As this was occurring, the FBI continued to phone King Street Patriots. In May 2011, agents phoned wondering “how they were doing.” The FBI made further inquiries in June, November, and December asking whether there was anything to report.
The situation escalated in 2012. That February, True the Vote received a third request for information from the IRS, which also sent its first questionnaire to King Street Patriots. Catherine says the IRS had “hundreds of questions — hundreds and hundreds of questions.” The IRS requested every Facebook post and Tweet she had ever written. She received questions about her family, whether she’d ever run for political office, and which organizations she had spoken to.
“It’s no great secret that the IRS is considered to be one of the more serious [federal agencies],” Catherine says. “When you get a call from the IRS, you don’t take it lightly. So when you’re asked questions that seem to imply a sense of disapproval, it has a very chilling effect.”
On the same day they received the questions from the IRS, Catherine says, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) launched an unscheduled audit of their machine shop, forcing the Engelbrechts to drop everything planned for that day. Though the Engelbrechts have a Class 7 license, which allows them to make component parts for guns, they do not manufacture firearms. Catherine said that while the ATF had a right to conduct the audit, “it was odd that they did it completely unannounced, and they took five, six hours. . . . It was so extensive. It just felt kind of weird.”
That was in February. In July, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration paid a visit to Engelbrecht Manufacturing while Bryan, Catherine, and their children were out of town. The OSHA inspector talked with the managerial staff and employees, inspecting the premises minutely. But Bryan says the agent found only “little Mickey Mouse stuff, like, ‘You have safety glasses on, but not the right kind; the forklift has a seatbelt, but not the right kind.’” Yet Catherine and Bryan said the OSHA inspector complimented them on their tightly run shop and said she didn’t know why she had been sent to examine it.
Not long after, the tab arrived. OSHA was imposing $25,000 in fines on Engelbrecht Manufacturing. They eventually worked it down to $17,500, and Bryan says they may have tried to contest the fines to drive them even lower, but “we didn’t want to make any more waves, because we don’t know [how much further] OSHA could reach.”
“Bottom line is, it hurt,” he says. Fifteen thousand dollars is “not an insignificant amount to this company. It might be to other companies, but we’re still considered small, and it came at a time when business was slow, so instead of giving an employee a raise or potentially hiring another employee, I’m writing a check to our government.”
A few months later, True the Vote became the subject of congressional scrutiny. In September, Senator Barbara Boxer (D., Calif.) wrote to Thomas Perez, then the assistant attorney general of the civil rights division at the Department of Justice (who has now been nominated for labor secretary). “As you know, an organization called ‘True the Vote,’ which is an offshoot of the Tea Party, is leading a voter suppression campaign in many states,” Boxer wrote, adding that “this type of intimidation must stop. I don’t believe this is ‘True the Vote.’ I believe it’s ‘Stop the Vote.’”
And in October, Representative Elijah Cummings (D., Md.), the ranking minority member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, attacked True the Vote in a letter. He wrote that “some have suggested that your true goal is not voter integrity, but voter suppression against thousands of legitimate voters who traditionally vote for Democratic candidates.” He added that: “If these efforts are intentional, politically motivated, and widespread across multiple states, they could amount to a criminal conspiracy to deny legitimate voters their constitutional rights.” He also decried True the Vote on MSNBC and CNN.
Catherine now says that she “absolutely” thinks that because she worked against voter fraud, the Left was irked and decided to target her.
The next month, in November 2012, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, the state’s environmental agency, showed up for an unscheduled audit at Engelbrecht Manufacturing. Catherine says the inspector told her the agency had received a complaint but couldn’t provide any more details. After the inspection, the agency notified the Engelbrechts that they needed to pay for an additional mechanical permit, which cost about $2,000 per year.
Since then, the IRS has sent two further rounds of questions to Catherine for her organizations. And last month, the ATF conducted a second unscheduled audit at Engelbrecht Manufacturing.
Catherine says she still hasn’t received IRS approval for her nonprofits, though she filed nearly three years ago. And “the way all of these personal instances interweave with what was going on on the nonprofit side . . . it amounts to something. You can’t help but think that statistically, this has to be coordinated on some level.”
On behalf of the True the Vote and King Street Patriots, Representative Ted Poe (R., Texas) sent a Freedom of Information Act request to the FBI, OSHA, and the ATF, inquiring whether the organizations were under criminal investigation. A statement on Poe’s website states that “the reply from these agencies was that none of these individuals were under criminal investigation. Well, if they’re not, why are they being treated like criminals? Just because they question government.”
Catherine says she knows of at least one other group that received government inquiries about its relationship with True the Vote, and she suspects more did, too. And other Tea Party groups decided not to form nonprofits at all after learning about her experience, she says. “They were scared,” she explains, “and you shouldn’t be scared of your government.”
Meanwhile, Catherine says the harassment has forced her to seriously reconsider whether her political activity is worth the government harassment she’s faced.
“I left a thriving family business with my husband that I loved, to do something I didn’t necessarily love, but [which] I thought had to be done,” she says. “But I really think if we don’t do this, if we don’t stand up and speak now, there might not [always] be that chance.”
Her husband offers an additional observation: “If you knew my wife, you’d know she doesn’t back down from anybody. They picked on the wrong person when they started picking on her.”
President Obama used his weekly radio address on Saturday to reassure the American people that he has “played no role whatsoever” in the U.S. government over the past four years.In case you haven't figured it out yet, the above is a spoof article written by Andy Borowitz of the New Yorker. But it certainly rings true at times, doesn't it?
“Right now, many of you are angry at the government, and no one is angrier than I am,” he said. “Quite frankly, I am glad that I have had no involvement in such an organization.”
The President’s outrage only increased, he said, when he “recently became aware of a part of that government called the Department of Justice.”
“The more I learn about the activities of these individuals, the more certain I am that I would not want to be associated with them,” he said. “They sound like bad news.”
Mr. Obama closed his address by indicating that beginning next week he would enforce what he called a “zero tolerance policy on governing.”
“If I find that any members of my Administration have had any intimate knowledge of, or involvement in, the workings of the United States government, they will be dealt with accordingly,” he said.
The remarks came from Dan Pfeiffer, a member of the president’s inner circle, as he appeared on all five major Sunday morning talk shows in an effort to move the administration past what commentators have described as a “hell week” of controversy and missteps. He pointedly rejected Republican criticisms of the president’s actions and leadership style as “offensive” and “absurd,” and he said the administration would not be distracted from doing the nation’s business.In the same article we get some insight into how seriously the administration is taking the scandals.
...White House chief of staff, Denis R. McDonough...told The New York Times that he instructed staff not to spend more than 10 percent of their time on the three controversies.I guess they're spending the other 90% of their time in the continuing campaignn that is the obama administration.
Was the White House involved in the IRS's targeting of conservatives? No investigation needed to answer that one. Of course it was.It's called leading from behind...
President Obama and Co. are in full deniability mode, noting that the IRS is an "independent" agency and that they knew nothing about its abuse. The media and Congress are sleuthing for some hint that Mr. Obama picked up the phone and sicced the tax dogs on his enemies.
But that's not how things work in post-Watergate Washington. Mr. Obama didn't need to pick up the phone. All he needed to do was exactly what he did do, in full view, for three years: Publicly suggest that conservative political groups were engaged in nefarious deeds; publicly call out by name political opponents whom he'd like to see harassed; and publicly have his party pressure the IRS to take action.
People came in Air Force buses and in their own vehicles, lining 36th Street leading to the gate at the Kelly Field Flight Line where the chartered plane landed with the remains of Capt. Mark Tyler Voss of Boerne.
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| More than 1,000 members of the military from Joint Base San Antonio turn out to salute Capt. Mark Voss as his remains were returned to San Antonio. |
Voss, who was assigned to the 93rd Aerial Refueling Wing, died in the crash of a KC-135 Stratotanker in Kyrgyzstan two weeks ago on May 3, but on Thursday he was returned home.
Capt. Casey Miller of the 318th Operation Support Squadron said his squadron was joined by the hundreds of other fellow officers and airmen from JBSA:From Kelly Field in San Antonio, Captain Voss was transported to his home town of Boerne.
"Obviously - especially in the San Antonio community - our airmen and our military men and women are very important to us, so when we lose one of them, it touches all of us. So we're just here to support not only the family and friends of our fallen airman, but also the people that work with him and the people who wear the uniform," Miller said.
Boerne residents have been honoring their local hero since news of his crash, with flags lowered to half staff and a memorial gathering at Veterans Park.
Cars began lining the streets surrounding St. John Lutheran Church in Boerne hours before the service for Air Force Capt. Mark “Tyler” Voss on Friday.
People pulled their cars halfway into front yards before making lengthy treks to the church or flagging down a golf cart shuttle.
Those who could not find a seat in the sanctuary, or the room across the hall in which the service was projected, lined the streets to pay homage to Voss, whose body was returned to Texas from the Afghan war.
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| Pallbearers carry the casket of Capt. Mark Voss during a military funeral at St. John Lutheran Church in Boerne. |
Capt. Eric Hakos, who attended the U.S. Air Force Academy with Voss, said the 27-year-old was a stranger to no one, but to the nearly 1,000 people who attended his funeral, he was a hero.
After the ceremony, people lined the streets in silence, flinching as three volleys were fired to salute the fallen soldier, and the flag draped over the coffin on which his dog tags hung was folded and delivered to his family.
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| Marcy and Wayne Voss receive the U.S. flag that draped their son's casket. |
The Internal Revenue Service scandal would be bad enough if the IRS just handled issues like collecting income taxes and granting nonprofit status. But the immensely powerful federal agency is about to become even more powerful with the arrival of national health care, and that makes the still-unfolding scandal even more troubling.
A look at the text of the health care law reveals that much of it consists of amending the Internal Revenue Code to give the IRS more power. When Obamacare goes fully into effect in January, every American will have to prove to the IRS that he or she has "qualifying" health coverage, meaning coverage with a list of features approved by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. That will be done by submitting a document to the IRS, something like a W-2, to confirm coverage.
The IRS will also decide who is, and who is not, eligible for Obamacare's subsidies. The law authorizes the IRS to share confidential taxpayer information with the Department of Health and Human Services for the purpose of determining those subsidies. And since subsidies don't just apply to a relatively small number of the nation's poorest citizens -- under the law, they can go to a family of four with a household income of nearly $90,000 -- they will affect a huge segment of the population.
In addition, the IRS will keep track of even the smallest changes in Americans' financial condition. Did you get a raise recently? You'll need to notify the IRS; it might affect your subsidy status. Have your hours been reduced at work? Notify the IRS. Change jobs? Same.
If Americans don't keep the IRS up to date on their financial status, they might incur penalties, which the IRS will collect by withholding income tax refunds.That's bad enough, but here's the really scary part.
The Internal Revenue Service official in charge of the tax-exempt organizations at the time when the unit targeted tea party groups now runs the IRS office responsible for the health care legislation.
Sarah Hall Ingram served as commissioner of the office responsible for tax-exempt organizations between 2009 and 2012. But Ingram has since left that part of the IRS and is now the director of the IRS’ Affordable Care Act office, the IRS confirmed to ABC News today.
...a growing number of journalists and politicians have called for the resignation of U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder over the Justice Department's largely unprecedented acquisition of hundreds of reporters' call logs.Okay, it's stretching things a bit to call olbermann a journalist, but the point is still valid.
Republican National Chairman Reince Priebus was one of the first people to call for Holder to quit, along with former Current TV hosts Keith Olbermann and David Shuster.Of course he did. After all, olbermann isn't on the air anymore. Nobody can stomach watching that loser.
Olbermann called for Holder to resign via Twitter...
"Just remember that anything offensive that I say, it's because of him." Obama then pointed out that Rhodes' brother, David, runs CBS News and has a "proud Jewish mother."
Netanyahu quipped, "It sounds like a very incestuous relationship,"Benjamin Netanyahu is a very perceptive man. There's a world of truth in his observation and obama's reply.
"Not if you watch CBS News," Obama retorted.
Surveys over the past 30 years have consistently found that journalists — especially those at the highest ranks of their profession — are much more liberal than rest of America. They are more likely to vote liberal, more likely to describe themselves as liberal, and more likely to agree with the liberal position on policy matters than members of the general public.But it's now becoming obvious that in obama's case there's more in play than just the 'normal' liberalism of the media. For example: (Hat tips to Day by Day and A Nod to the Gods for the heads-up on the following.)
Barack Obama's "Tower of Fabrications," as Peter Wehner describes the Benghazi scandal, is beginning to crack. And that crack will soon reveal a central figure behind the cover-up, a man close to Barack Obama for years but generally unknown to the public: Ben Rhodes.Rhodes has absolutely no foreign policy or military experience. So what makes him qualified to be a top NSC adviser to the President of the United States?
Coincidentally (or not) Ben Rhodes's brother, David Rhodes, is the head of CBS News. One of the most dogged journalists trying to peel away the covers behind the Benghazi scandal has been CBS journalist Sharyl Atkinson. She has had to endure pressure from liberal journalistic colleagues to stop digging. Politico reports that "network sources" say that she "can't get some of her stories on the air."As if that's not enough:
The coercion may be going into overdrive as the investigations gets closer to fingering Ben Rhodes as the key player behind the Benghazi cover-up. According to Patrick Howley of the Daily Caller, CBS News may be on the verge of firing Atkinson.
Furthermore, Ben Rhodes is married to Ann Norris, senior foreign and defense advisor to Senator Barbara Boxer (D-California).
ABC President Ben Sherwood's sister, Dr. Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, is a Special Assistant to Barack Obama on national security affairs.Not convinced yet? Here's one more example. Jay Carney, obama's spokesweasel, is married to ABC senior national correspondent Claire Shipman. Doesn't that seem to present just a teeny little conflict of interest for Shipman?
CNN's deputy bureau chief, Virginia Moseley, is the wife of Tom Nides, who until February was Hillary Clinton's deputy.
Shipman ... has a reputation as an activist liberal. In 2008, she hailed Barack Obama, the now-boss of her husband, as "brave" for a speech disassociating himself with radical preacher Jeremiah Wright. In 2007, she fawned over Obama's "fluid poetry."Maybe in her universe, but not in the one the rest of us inhabit.
In 2000, she lauded Al Gore as a "pretty conservative Democrat."
In 2004, discussing former Communist leader Mikhail Gorbachev, she touted him as "generally regarded" for being "the man who broke down the ‘Iron Curtain.'"I guess she never heard of Ronald Reagan.
Oscar Mayer on Monday introduced five new hot dogs, one of which has bacon cooked right into it.
Bacon lovers were overjoyed.Count me among them.
Conservative groups seeking information from the Environmental Protection Agency have been routinely hindered by fees normally waived for media and watchdog groups, while fees for more than 90 percent of requests from green groups were waived, according to requests reviewed by the Competitive Enterprise Institute.It's the Chicago way...
“This is as clear an example of disparate treatment as the IRS’ hurdles selectively imposed upon groups with names ominously reflecting an interest in, say, a less intrusive or biased federal government,” said CEI fellow Chris Horner.
How -- and why-- did the account of what happened at Benghazi (i.e. the infamous talking points) go through a dozen iterations, beginning with a fairly detailed description of the potential involvement of al Qaeda that morphed over the course of a day into a simple, gauzy, bland (and false) theory?A meaningful issue, to be sure. There is no doubt that the obama administration intentionally mislead and lied to congress (no big deal - congress lies to us all the time) and the American public (a much more serious act). That by itself richly deserves condemnation and quite possibly legal action.
A report by an independent panel led by former top diplomat Thomas Pickering and retired Gen. Mike Mullen has already concluded that there was "grossly" inadequate security at the mission as a result of managerial and leadership failures at the State Department...Yeah, but ... who turned down the requests for additional security? At some point someone in the bowels of the State Department said "no." That decision was likely reviewed and approved by senior officials, quite possibly including the then-Secretary of State, hillary clinton.
The deputy of slain U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens has told congressional investigators that a team of Special Forces prepared to fly from Tripoli to Benghazi during the Sept. 11, 2012 attacks was forbidden from doing so by U.S. Special Operations Command Africa.That leads to the obvious follow-up question. Who issued the order to stand down? And by "who" I mean which individual, not which command.
The account from Gregory Hicks is in stark contrast to assertions from the Obama administration, which insisted that nobody was ever told to stand down and that all available resources were utilized...
According to excerpts released Monday, Hicks told investigators that SOCAFRICA commander Lt. Col. Gibson and his team were on their way to board a C-130 from Tripoli for Benghazi prior to an attack on a second U.S. compound "when [Col. Gibson] got a phone call from SOCAFRICA which said, 'you can't go now, you don't have the authority to go now.'
Mr. Hicks testified this morning that the stand down order for the rescue team in Tripoli came from either AFRICOM or SOCAFRICA.Did the military heads of those commands issue the stand-down order on their own, or were they passing on orders from above? Keep in mind that the only two people in the chain of command above the AFRICOM commander were then-SECDEF Leon Panetta and CINC barack obama.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., issued a sharp and unusual challenge to the truthfulness of the nation’s top uniformed military commander on Thursday, demanding that U.S. Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, return to Capitol Hill to provide fresh testimony on the Benghazi attacks.Fortunately, DoD has trained professionals ready to help clear up confusing issues like this.
The point of contention involved whether any military officers issued an order to U.S. armed forces personnel on the night of Sept. 11, when the U.S. consulate and a nearby annex came under terrorist attack, to “stand down” from providing assistance.
“I asked [Gen. Dempsey] directly,” Graham said in an exclusive interview with Fox News. “Were there any military assets in motion, to help folks in Benghazi, [that were] told to stand down? And what did [State Department whistleblower] Greg Hicks say? That Lt. Col. [Steve] Gibson -- a DOD employee, a member of the Army -- was in Tripoli, ready and willing to go to Benghazi, preparing to go to Benghazi, and was told to stand down.”
“Clearly,” Graham added, “our chairman of the Joint Chiefs' rendition that no one was told to stand down is now in question.”
Asked to comment on Graham’s challenge to the chairman’s veracity, Pentagon spokesman Maj. Rob Firman told Fox News: “They weren’t told to stand down. They were simply told not to go to Benghazi..."Sounds like Maj. Firman is being groomed as a replacement for spokesweasel Jay Carney.
