Photo Credit: opposing viewsRock star turned right wing commentator, Ted Nugent, accused celebrities who vowed to boycott Florida over its “Stand Your Ground” law of being drug abusers and said they might as well boycott Chicago, too.
On Andrea Tantaros’ Tuesday radio show, Nugent said celebrities boycotting Florida, like Stevie Wonder, Jay-Z, Madonna, and Kanye West, live in “a fog of denial” because their brains are “fried.”
“When you live in a fog of denial, and usually it is inspired by just a lifetime of substance abuse — you know with all the lies about dope being a ‘victimless crime’ — I think you’re listening to the victims of this dopey crime because their brains are fried,” Nugent said. “They’re either fried on substance abuse, and all of them know who I’m talking about — the guilty can feel guilty and only the guilty should feel guilty. But there’s also a fog of denial when you’re surrounded by yes men all your life, where you’re having people picking up after you and you have people serving you.”
Nugent added that celebrities might as well boycott Chicago while they’re at it, arguing that residents there are “left out of their cages to commit more brutal murders and rape and carjackings and slaughter of innocence.”
One of the most severely wounded survivors of the Benghazi terror attack, Diplomatic Security agent David Ubben, risked his life to help save his fellow Americans, and is still being treated at Walter Reed medical center to this day, Fox News has learned.
Fox News is the first news organization to make direct contact with Ubben — who has had multiple surgeries at Walter Reed to save his right leg, which was badly wounded in the Sept. 11 attack.
Fox News has also learned new details about Ubben’s heroic actions on the night of the attack, including fighting alongside the former Navy SEALs who were later killed.
The Diplomatic Security agent, earlier in the night, helped recover the body of Foreign Service Officer Sean Smith, going back into the smoke and flames at the Benghazi consulate multiple times until he found Smith, whom he believed to be already dead from smoke inhalation.
Fox News is not publishing his photo in full, out of respect for Ubben’s request for privacy as he remains focused on his family and his recovery alongside America’s wounded warriors from Iraq and Afghanistan. Read more from this story HERE.
A highly sought witness in the Benghazi investigation was scheduled to testify Thursday morning behind closed doors in Congress, WND has learned.
No word yet on whether he appeared or what he may have said before a closed session of the House Intelligence Committee.
Marine Col. George Bristol is considered a key witness because he may be able to shed light on why no U.S. military help was sent when the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya, came under attack on Sept. 11, 2012.
The U.S. ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens, and three other Americans died in the attack.
Congressional investigators have been trying to locate Bristol for months. As commander of Joint Special Operations Task Force-Trans Sahara, he knew what military options the U.S. had when the compound in Benghazi came under attack. Read more from this story HERE.
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A brewing Republican versus Republican fight over whether to use a government funding measure to choke off Obamacare is splitting the party ahead of this fall’s budget battles.
A growing number of Republicans are rejecting calls from leading conservatives, including Sens. Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz and Rand Paul, to defund the president’s health care law in the resolution to keep the government running past Sept. 30. The rift exposes an emerging divide over how the GOP can best achieve its No. 1 goal — to repeal Obamacare — while highlighting the spreading fears that Republicans would lose a public relations war if the dispute leads to a government shutdown in the fall.
The debate is happening behind closed doors and over Senate lunches, as well as during a frank meeting Wednesday with House leaders in Speaker John Boehner’s suite where fresh concerns were aired about the party’s strategy. On Thursday, the dispute began to spill into public view, most notably when three Senate Republicans — including Minority Whip John Cornyn — withdrew their signatures from a conservative letter demanding defunding Obamacare as a condition for supporting the government funding measure.
Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) called the push to defund the law through the continuing resolution the “dumbest idea” he had ever heard. Read more from this story HERE.
Photo Credit: Reuters House GOP-ers: Defund Obamacare in CR
By Jake Sherman and John Bresnahan
More than 60 Republicans have signed a letter urging Speaker John Boehner to defund Obamacare when Congress funds the government in September.
The letter, being circulated by the office of freshman Rep. Mark Meadows, doesn’t explicitly say that supporters will vote against a government funding bill if it does not strip funding for Obamacare. But it says that signers of the letter are “urging [Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.)] to defund the implementation and enforcement of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in any relevant appropriations bill brought to the House floor in the 113th Congress, including any continuing appropriations bill.”
“In light of the Administration’s recent delay of the employer mandate and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) scandal, it is imperative, now more than ever, that Congress do everything in its power to halt the implementation of the healthcare law,” Meadows writes. “It is entirely unacceptable that the IRS, a government agency that actively discriminates against Americans, is in charge of implementing a law that Americans do not want.” Read more from this story HERE.
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The obituary of Rep. Justin Amash’s amendment to claw back the sweeping powers of the National Security Agency has largely been written as a victory for the White House and NSA chief Keith Alexander, who lobbied the Hill aggressively in the days and hours ahead of Wednesday’s shockingly close vote. But Hill sources say most of the credit for the amendment’s defeat goes to someone else: House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. It’s an odd turn, considering that Pelosi has been, on many occasions, a vocal surveillance critic.
Ahead of the razor-thin 205-217 vote, which would have severely limited the NSA’s ability to collect data on Americans’ telephone records if passed, Pelosi privately and aggressively lobbied wayward Democrats to torpedo the amendment, a Democratic committee aid with knowledge of the deliberations tells The Cable.
“Pelosi had meetings and made a plea to vote against the amendment and that had a much bigger effect on swing Democratic votes against the amendment than anything Alexander had to say,” said the source, keeping in mind concerted White House efforts to influence Congress by Alexander and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. “Had Pelosi not been as forceful as she had been, it’s unlikely there would’ve been more Democrats for the amendment.”
With 111 liberal-to-moderate Democrats voting for the amendment alongside 94 Republicans, the vote in no way fell along predictable ideological fault lines. And for a particular breed of Democrat, Pelosi’s overtures proved decisive, multiple sources said.
“Pelosi had a big effect on more middle-of-the road hawkish Democrats who didn’t want to be identified with a bunch of lefties [voting for the amendment],” said the aide. “As for the Alexander briefings: Did they hurt? No, but that was not the central force, at least among House Democrats. Nancy Pelosi’s political power far outshines that of Keith Alexander’s.” Read more from this story HERE.
Photo Credit: The BlazeA different amendment restricting NSA spying was passed overwhelmingly by the House – but ‘no one is talking about it’
By Jason Howerton
While the most talked-about news out of the U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday was the defeat of the so-called Amash amendment that would have defunded the NSA’s massive data collection program, another amendment related to NSA spying was quietly passed overwhelmingly by lawmakers.
The Pompeo amendment (championed by Rep. Mike Pompeo of Kansas) passed the House with a bipartisan vote of 409-12. However, “no one is talking about it,” Rep. John Culberson (R-Texas) told TheBlaze on Thursday.
The amendment that passed is reportedly intended to “ensure none of the funds may be used by the NSA to target a U.S. person or acquire and store the content of a U.S. person’s communications, including phone calls and e-mails.”
In contrast, the Amash amendment sought to “end authority for the blanket collection of records under the Patriot Act. It would also bar the NSA and other agencies from using Section 215 of the Patriot Act to collect records, including telephone call records, that pertain to persons who are not subject to an investigation under Section 215.”
Culberson told TheBlaze in a phone interview why he supported the Pompeo amendment over the more sweeping amendment authored by Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.). Read more from this story HERE.
Photo Credit: Fox NewsFox News Poll: Voters concerned NSA can’t keep a secret
By Dana Blanton
Voters think the National Security Agency surveillance program is more likely to hurt than protect law-abiding Americans. They are also concerned the agency can’t keep its own secrets secret.
That’s according to a Fox News poll released Thursday — a day after the U.S. House voted down legislation that would have stopped the NSA from collecting the phone records of millions of Americans.
By a 47-41 percent margin, more voters think the government’s electronic surveillance program does more to hurt Americans by using their private info improperly than it does to help track down terrorists and protect Americans.
The number of Democrats who believe the NSA’s efforts are more likely to help catch terrorists (52 percent) is matched by the number of Republicans who think it will hurt everyday Americans (52 percent). More than 7 in 10 voters who are part of the Tea Party movement say the tracking is more likely to hurt Americans (72 percent). Read more from this story HERE.
Photo Credit: J Scott ApplewhiteNSA amendment’s narrow defeat spurs privacy advocates for surveillance fight
By Spencer Ackerman and Paul Lewis
The razor-thin defeat of a congressional measure to rein in domestic surveillance galvanized civil libertarians on Thursday for what they expect to be a drawn-out political and legal struggle to clip the wings of the intelligence apparatus in the US.
While a measure by Representative Justin Amash, a Michigan Republican, failed in the House on Wednesday night, the tight vote was the closest that privacy advocates have come since 9/11 to stopping the National Security Agency from collecting Americans’ data in bulk.
Members of Congress, liberties groups and former surveillance officials pointed to a variety of measures, from new legislation in both the Senate and House to court cases, as means to reset the much-contested balance between liberty and security in the US over the coming weeks and months.
“There are many voices concerned in the Senate about this same issue,” said J Kirk Wiebe, a former senior NSA analyst turned whistleblower. “It doesn’t mean it’s the end of it. It’s the beginning.”
Aides to congressman James Sensenbrenner, the Wisconsin Republican who wrote the Patriot Act, told the Guardian on Thursday that he plans to introduce legislation through the House judiciary committee that would restrict the NSA’s bulk surveillance of Americans’ phone records.
“Yesterday’s amendment was only a first step in what will be a long debate,” said Sensenbrenner spokesman Ben Miller. Read more from this story HERE.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00newseditorhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngnewseditor2013-07-26 01:51:182016-04-11 11:18:21How Nancy Pelosi Saved the NSA Surveillance Program (+video)
Photo Credit: The Daily CallerFederal Bureau of Investigation officials ignored warnings about the radical origins and nature of the mosque frequented by the Tsarnaev brothers for years before this April’s deadly Boston Marathon bombings.
Outgoing FBI Director Robert Mueller has also said that although the FBI visited the mosque in the past — as part of its “outreach” to the Muslim community — he was unaware of the Islamist leanings of the Islamic Society of Boston (ISB), which runs the Boston bombers’ house of worship.
But the FBI was warned nearly four years prior to the bombings that the ISB was a nest of Islamic radicalism.
On May 1, 2009 our organization, Americans for Peace and Tolerance (APT), briefed representatives of the Boston FBI office on the ISB mosques’ affiliation with Islamic extremism. Nevertheless, the FBI continues to claim it was surprised by the background of the ISB.
In a June appearance before the House Judiciary Committee, Mueller described how it took four days after the Boston Marathon bombings for his agency to canvass the Tsarnaev brothers’ controversial mosque.
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Photo Credit: YouTubeOne of the nation’s most prominent evangelical leaders wants to know why President Obama has remained silent as Iran tortures an American pastor held captive in one of the Islamic republic’s most notorious prisons.
Franklin Graham, the president of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and Samaritan’s Purse, told Fox News the imprisonment and torture of Pastor Saeed Abedini is a blatant example of “religious intolerance.”
“Many in the international community are expressing outrage over this blatant example of religious intolerance,” Graham said. “I ask that our government do the same and demand that Pastor Saeed Abedini be released and allowed to return home to his wife and family in the United States.”
Graham said Abedini’s wife, Naghmeh, is terrified to hear reports of her husband’s physical condition.
“Naghmeh worries that she and her two young children may never see Saeed again,” he told Fox News.
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Photo Credit: CorbisGeorge Washington believed honesty was the most enviable quality in a human being, but the residents of the city that bears his name clearly don’t agree.
People in Washington D.C. are by far the most dishonest in America, according to a new study, while their cousins in Hawaii and Alabama are basically saints.
Beverage company Honest Tea went to every U.S. state earlier this month and set up 61 unmanned kiosks offering tea for $1. Tea drinkers were instructed to place their buck in a box nearby.
But only eight in 10 beverage guzzlers in the nation’s capital paid for their tea, while the other 20 per cent of people skipped out on the minimal amount.
The other states where you should hold on to your purse were West Virginia where only 85 per cent of participants paid for their tea, followed by Texas and Kentucky at 87 per cent.
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Photo Credit: WNDWith the news media now profiling New York City mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner’s wife, there is a glaring part of Huma Abedin’s personal story that is not being told – her ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamic supremacists.
The connections not only extend to her mother and father, who are both deeply tied to al-Qaida fronts, but to Abedin herself, as WND previously reported in a series of exposes.
Abedin’s purported forgiveness of Weiner’s extramarital sexting is regarded as central to the politician’s continued candidacy.
The New York Times claimed Abedin was “eager to end a difficult period of social exile” and “a main architect of her husband’s rehabilitative journey, shaping his calculated comeback.”
Abedin has played a visible role in Weiner’s campaign and has been instrumental the effort to portray her husband as rehabilitated, leading to significant backlash from critics.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00newseditorhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngnewseditor2013-07-26 01:47:522016-04-11 11:18:22The Explosive Secret Huma is Hiding
Photo Credit: William Widmer The long enrollment boom that swelled American colleges — and helped drive up their prices — is over, with grim implications for many schools.
College enrollment fell 2 percent in 2012-13, the first significant decline since the 1990s, but nearly all of that drop hit for-profit and community colleges; now, signs point to 2013-14 being the year when traditional four-year, nonprofit colleges begin a contraction that will last for several years. The college-age population is dropping after more than a decade of sharp growth, and many adults who opted out of a forbidding job market and went back to school during the recession have been drawn back to work by the economic recovery.
Hardest hit are likely to be colleges that do not rank among the wealthiest or most prestigious, and are heavily dependent on tuition revenue, raising questions about their financial health — even their survival.
“There are many institutions that are on the margin, economically, and are very concerned about keeping their doors open if they can’t hit their enrollment numbers,” said David A. Hawkins, the director of public policy and research at the National Association for College Admission Counseling, which has more than 1,000 member colleges.
The most competitive colleges remain unaffected, but gaining admission to middle-tier institutions will most likely get easier.
Photo Credit: Reuters Documents obtained from the Health and Human Services Department through a Freedom of Information Act request show that on the day the Affordable Care Act became law, the agency received fast-track authority to hire 1,814 new high-level employees to put Obamacare into practice, at a likely cost of more than $159 million per year.
It’s unclear whether those employees were ever hired. HHS did not respond to a request for comment.
But the hiring request was approved by the Obama administration’s Office of Personnel Management despite a government-wide hiring freeze.
Judicial Watch, a nonprofit that has told MailOnline it files ‘hundreds’ of such FOIA requests, showed MailOnline the documents on Thursday. They show that HHS designated the hiring as a project worthy of ‘direct-hire appointing authority,’ a mechanism designed to sidestep normal restrictions on how much federal agencies can spend on personnel.
An analysis by MailOnline indicates that the annual base pay for those 1,814 employees, many of them slated for hiring at the highest salary levels available, would exceed $127.7 million.
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