New Poll Shows GOP Shifting in Fascinating New Direction

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

Republicans in record numbers moving toward the ideals and principles of libertarianism, according to a new poll by released by the grassroots group FreedomWorks.

The survey of all registered voters, which was conducted last month, found that a full 78 percent of Republican and GOP-leaning voters self-identify as being fiscally conservative and socially moderate

The results of the survey were first shared with POLITICO.

The poll found that its Republican and independent-leaning respondents aren’t suddenly advocating legalized marijuana and instructing people to read “The Fountainhead.” Rather, as POLITICO’s James Hohman notes, many self-identified Republicans are simply falling in line with traditional libertarian views on limited government.

This comes after years of GOP domination by “defense hawks” and “social conservatives.”

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Sources: US Weapons Stolen in Libya Raids, Fueling Special Forces Pull-Out

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Photo Credit: Fox News

Photo Credit: Fox News

Highly sensitive U.S. military equipment stored in Libya was stolen over the summer by groups likely aligned and working with terrorist organizations, State Department sources told Fox News — in raids that contributed to the decision to pull Special Forces personnel from the country.

The stolen equipment had been used by U.S. Special Forces stationed in the country. Lost in the raids in late July and early August were dozens of M4 rifles, night-vision technology and lasers used as aiming devices that are mounted on guns and can only be seen with night-vision equipment.

“This stuff is how we win wars. The enemy doesn’t have that,” one source said.

The overnight raids happened at a military training camp run by American Special Forces on the outskirts of Tripoli, in the weeks before the team was pulled from the country in August.

That U.S. team was funded by the Department of Defense Section 1208, which provides support to assist and stand up foreign counterterrorism forces in other countries. And in the case of Libya, the trainers were also tasked with hunting down the Benghazi attack suspects that killed four Americans one year ago. As Fox News previously reported, members of that team are leaving Libya.

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‘Allah is a Lie!’ “Muhammad is a Pedophile!’: ‘Million Muslim March’ Met with Counter-Protest (+videos)

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Photo Credit: YouTube

Photo Credit: YouTube

Demonstrators at the “Million Muslim March” in Washington, D.C. Wednesday were met with counter-protesters who shouted “Allah is a lie!” and other charges on the 12th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

“Why is there so much security at the airport? Thank a Muslim. Why are there so many wars in the Middle East? Thank a Muslim,” one counter-protester shouted into a bullhorn.

“Muhammad was a pedophile!” the same counter-protester shouted at the pro-Muslim demonstrators. “Muhammad curse be his name married a seven year old girl. If Muhammad was alive today that prophet Muhammad would be on the Jerry Springer show.”

The counter-protesters also lashed out at individuals participating in the “2 Million Bikers to DC” rally.


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Hillary Clinton Heckled on Benghazi During Award Ceremony

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Photo Credit: Matt Rourke

Photo Credit: Matt Rourke

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton fielded hecklers who hounded her on Benghazi at the tail end of an award acceptance speech she delivered at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia on Tuesday evening.

Mrs. Clinton was accepting the 2013 Liberty Medal, an honor to recognize her career in public service and advocacy for women’s rights, CBS reported. She told the crowd of hundreds of the U.S. need to balance national security with human rights issues in Syria, and called for American politicians to cross party aisles and strike a chord of unity.

“When we fail to make progress on the challenges facing our people at home, our standing in the world suffers,” she said, Breitbart.com reported.

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Sen. Lee: GOP Scheme to Both Defund AND Fund Obamacare ‘Disgraceful’ (+audio)

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photo credit: gage skidmore

photo credit: gage skidmore

In an interview on the nationally syndicated Mark Levin Show yesterday, Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah) slammed the Republican-led initiative to simultaneously propose legislation to fund and defund Obamacare.

Lee rhetorically asked Levin, “With Republicans like these, who needs Democrats?”

Lee explained that Republican leadership in the House of Representatives is putting forward two different legislative proposals in one single vote.

One would defund Obamacare. The other would be a continuing resolution that would fund everything in government, including Obamacare.

This would allow House Republicans to vote both to fund and defund the president’s signature health law simultaneously, according to Lee.

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Tea Party Increasingly Unhappy with GOP Leadership

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Photo Credit: Pew Research

Photo Credit: Pew Research

As lawmakers return for what promises to be a busy fall session, GOP congressional leaders face mounting disapproval among Tea Party Republicans. Just 27% of Republicans and GOP leaners who agree with the Tea Party approve of the job Republican leaders in Congress are doing, compared with 71% who disapprove.

The job rating of GOP leaders among Tea Party Republicans has fallen 15 points since February, from 42% to 27%. Disapproval has risen from 54% to 71% over this period. There has been no similar decline among Republicans who do not agree with the Tea Party. Currently, 42% of non-Tea Party Republicans and Republican leaners approve of how GOP leaders in Congress are handling their job, which is little changed over the past year.

This internal dissent contributes to the lower job ratings Republican leaders receive from the public when compared with Democratic congressional leaders. The latest national survey by the Pew Research Center, conducted Sept. 4-8 among 1,506 adults, finds that just 24% of the public approves of Republican leaders’ job performance, while somewhat more (33%) approve of the job of Democratic congressional leaders.

This modest advantage for Democratic leaders stems from the substantially more positive job ratings they receive from their own base: 57% of Democrats and Democratic leaners approve of how Democratic congressional leaders are handling their job. That compares with just 36% of Republicans and Republican leaners who approve of the job their party leaders are doing. Democratic and Republican leaders get similarly low job ratings from members of the opposition party.

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Iraq War Vet, now Democratic Congresswoman Strongly Opposes Military Strikes Against Syria

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Picture Tulsi GabbardDemocratic congresswoman and Iraq War veteran Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii stated her opposition earlier this week to punitive military strikes against Syria, underscoring the Obama Administration’s struggle in trying to rally even members of his own party to back the use of force.

After participating in public and private sessions on Capitol Hill, Gabbard stated a U.S. military strike would be a serious mistake.

“As a soldier, I understand that before taking any military action, our nation must have a clear tactical objective, a realistic strategy, the necessary resources to execute that strategy, including the support of the American people, and an exit plan,” Gabbard said in a statement. “The proposed military action against Syria fails to meet any of these criteria.”

Gabbard, who served near Baghdad for a year and was a medical operations specialist, is a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

The congresswoman joins other Democrats from Obama’s native state, including Sen. Brian Schatz and Rep. Colleen Hanabusa, in opposing aggressive U.S. military intervention in the Syrian civil war.

Rep. Gabbard explains her opposition to Greta Van Susteran “On the Record.”

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Trader Joe’s To Drop Health Coverage For Part-Time Workers Under Obamacare (+video)

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Photo Credit: goodiesfirst

Photo Credit: goodiesfirst

After extending health care coverage to many of its part-time employees for years, Trader Joe’s has told workers who log fewer than 30 hours a week that they will need to find insurance on the Obamacare exchanges next year, according to a confidential memo from the grocer’s chief executive.

In the memo to staff dated Aug. 30, Trader Joe’s CEO Dan Bane said the company will cut part-timers a check for $500 in January and help guide them toward finding a new plan under the Affordable Care Act. The company will continue to offer health coverage to workers who carry 30 hours or more on average.

The law mandates that companies with 50 employees or more offer coverage to such full-time employees, though the Obama administration has chosen to delay that rule for a year.

Trader Joe’s has won kudos for offering its health care, dental and vision plans to part-time workers at a reasonable price — a rarity in an industry known for low pay and scant benefits. But with low-wage workers eligible for tax subsidies to buy health insurance next year, the company has apparently calculated that offering medical coverage to part-timers who work 18 hours or more is no longer worth the cost.

“Depending on income you may earn outside of Trader Joe’s” — i.e., another job — “we believe that with the $500 from Trader Joe’s and the tax credits available under the ACA, many of you should be able to obtain health care coverage at very little if any net cost to you,” Bane wrote in the memo.


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NSA Shares Raw Data on Americans with Israeli Spy Agency

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

The Obama administration shares with Israeli intelligence the vast data dumps the National Security Agency vacuums up from the Internet without removing private information about Americans, even though Israel is one of the nations that spy most aggressively on the United States, according to leaked documents.

A copy of a top-secret deal inked in 2009 between the NSA and the Israeli Signals-intelligence National Unit (ISNU) was provided by NSA leaker Edward J. Snowden to the Guardian newspaper, which posted it Wednesday.

It reveals that the NSA “routinely” passed to its Israeli counterpart “raw” signals intelligence, referred to as “Sigint,” including the vast swathes of digital data traffic that the agency gathers under secret court authority from U.S. Internet providers.

So sensitive is this data that even before being disseminated to other U.S. agencies, the NSA has to subject it to a court-mandated process called minimization, under which the names of any Americans are removed unless they are essential for foreign intelligence interest.

But the U.S.-Israeli agreement states that the data shared with Israel “includes, but is not limited to, unevaluated and unminimized transcripts, gists, facsimiles, telex, voice and Digital Network Intelligence metadata and content.”

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Arctic Sea Ice Up 60 Percent in 2013

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Photo Credit: NASA Goddard Photo and Video

Photo Credit: NASA Goddard Photo and Video

An unusually cold Arctic summer has resulted in almost a million more square miles of ocean covered with ice compared to the same time last year, bucking predictions that global warming would result in the disappearance of the ice cap by 2013.

According to the MailOnline, Arctic sea ice averaged 2.35 million square miles in August 2013 compared to the low point of 1.32 million square miles recorded in September 2012.

“We are already in a cooling trend, which I think will continue for the next 15 years at least. There is no doubt the warming of the 1980s and 1990s has stopped,” Anastasios Tsonis of the University of Wisconsin told the Mail.

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