The Real Scandal: Why are the Benghazi Killers Still at Large?

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Photo Credit: NEWSCOM

Photo Credit: NEWSCOM

Months and months ago, when Barack Obama could be bothered to say anything at all about the attacks in Benghazi, Libya, on September 11, 2012, the president promised to bring the perpetrators to justice. That was before White House spokesman Jay Carney dismissed the attacks as something that “happened a long time ago.”

It’s been 16 months. The U.S. government has neither captured nor killed a single participant in those attacks, which left Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans dead.

Why? A new report on the attacks from the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, along with more than 400 pages of newly declassified congressional testimony from senior military officials, provides fresh insight. The explanation for this failure—a lack of will, combined with a shameless mischaracterization of intelligence—is almost as outrageous as the failure itself.

Since the attack in Benghazi, the Obama administration has refused to publicly identify the parties responsible. But the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report confirms that the U.S. government’s investigation has turned up more and more ties to al Qaeda.

“Individuals affiliated with terrorist groups, including AQIM [Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb], Ansar al-Sharia, AQAP [Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula], and the Mohammad Jamal Network, participated in the September 11, 2012, attacks,” according to the Senate Benghazi report, prepared under the supervision of Chairman Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat, and signed by every Democrat on the panel.

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Benghazi Guards Refused to Protect Fleeing Americans

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Photo Credit: WND

Photo Credit: WND

The Senate’s 88-page report on the Benghazi assault provides a new detail about the role of an al-Qaida-linked organization that provided external security to the fated U.S. special mission.

According to the report, the Libyan 17th of February Brigade militia refused to “provide cover” for the U.S. security team that was trapped inside the compound.

The detail was not mentioned in the State Department-sanctioned Accountability Review Board, or ARB, investigating the Benghazi attack. The ARB paints a picture of the 17th of February Brigade as largely aiding in the evacuation of the U.S. personnel at the mission.

The 17th of February Brigade, which was hired by the State Department to protect the U.S. facility in Benghazi, operates under the Ansar-Al-Sharia banner.

Ansar al-Sharia, tied to al-Qaida, has been implicated in carrying out the attack.

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When a Democrat Lies, it’s Never an Actual Lie

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Photo Credit: Daily Caller

Photo Credit: Daily Caller

Ever notice that? When a Dem gets caught red-handed telling a lie, it’s very, very rare for the media to actually call it a lie. Even Obama’s monumental whopper — “If you like your plan, you can keep your plan” — still has its diehard defenders.

This week’s example is Texas state senator, gubernatorial candidate, and heroine of abortion enthusiasts across the country: Wendy Davis. As it turns out, she’s said a bunch of stuff about her past that isn’t true.

Well, she’s a politician. It’s to be expected. But she’s also a Democrat who’s championing one of the left’s most treasured policy goals, abortion on demand, so she must be protected.

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Obama Takes Phony Route Once Again

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Photo Credit: WND

Photo Credit: WND

In the New Yorker interview published over the weekend, President Obama misrepresented his actions when he stated he vetoed a plan for the U.S. to intervene militarily on behalf of the rebel forces in Syria fighting President Bashar al-Assad.

Interviewer David Remnick failed to challenge Obama with evidence the United States is supplying the rebels in Syria with arms after pressing Congress to approve military intervention. The congressional lobbying effort failed after the United Nations was unable to corroborate Obama administration claims that the Assad regime was responsible for chemical attacks against Syrian civilians.

“I am not haunted by my decision not to engage in another Middle Eastern War,” Obama told Remnick.

“It is very difficult to imagine a scenario in which our involvement in Syria would have led to a better outcome, short of us being willing to undertake an effort in size and scope similar to what we did in Iraq.”

Obama, however, went on to affirm that the U.S. was financing and arming the opposition to Assad.

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White House Drug Czar Contradicts Obama on Impact of Marijuana Use

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Photo Credit: Washington Times

Photo Credit: AP

President Obama’s latest claims about marijuana are contradicted by research and official positions of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, which is part of the White House. And Mr. Obama’s words have anti-drug leaders worried about negative repercussions among youth.

Mr. Obama claimed to The New Yorker magazine that marijuana is no worse than cigarettes or alcohol and he promoted state efforts by Colorado and Washington to legalize marijuana, which remains illegal under federal law.

The National Drug Control Policy’s official stance, posted on the whitehouse.gov website, says the opposite of Mr. Obama on all counts.

For example, as documented in agency reports, marijuana smoke has significantly more carcinogens than tobacco smoke.

And as reported by the government’s National Institute on Drug Abuse, adolescent use of marijuana does something that alcohol does not; it causes permanent brain damage, including lowering of I.Q.

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UN: Global Prosperity is Causing Global Warming

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Photo Credit: REUTERS/Ali al-Saadi/Pool

Photo Credit: REUTERS/Ali al-Saadi/Pool

Growing global economies through expanded trade between rich and poor countries is driving global warming, according to a draft report from the United Nation’s climate bureaucracy. The international agency said that rich countries are “outsourcing” carbon dioxide emissions to poor countries through increasing international trade.

The draft report, obtained by the U.K.’s Guardian, argues that these “outsourced” emissions come “in the form of electronic devices such as smartphones, cheap clothes and other goods manufactured in China and other rising economies but consumed in the U.S. and Europe.”

Much of those increased emissions came from coal plants in China and other developing economies that are used to power factories that produce goods for U.S. and European consumers, the U.N. report says.

“A growing share of CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion in developing countries is released in the production of goods and services exported, notably from upper-middle-income countries to high-income countries,” the draft report reads. “A growing share of global emissions is released in the manufacture of products that are traded across international borders.”

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Wendy Davis Slams Pro-Life Paraplegic Opponent: He’s “Never Walked In My Shoes”

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Photo Credit: LifeNews

Photo Credit: LifeNews

It’s just getting worse and worse for abortion activist Wendy Davis, who is falling on her own sword in the Texas gubernatorial race.

First, Davis was caught by a Dallas newspaper lying about her story of being a single mom who overcame adversity. Then, she sought to blame her problems on pro-life candidate for governor Greg Abbott. Now, in attacking Abbot, she’s stuck her foot in her mouth saying he’s “never walked a mile in my shoes.”

Problem is, Abbott can’t. He’s a paraplegic who is confined to a wheelchair. As a conservative blog notes:

There’s a lot in the Wendy Davis story besides Davis and her constructed and false “narrative.” Here is one of Davis’ most recent official statements on the matter, a little masterpiece of accusing the accusers:

We’re not surprised by Greg Abbott’s [her Texas governorship opponent] campaign attacks on the personal story of my life as a single mother who worked hard to get ahead. But they won’t work, because my story is the story of millions of Texas women who know the strength it takes when you’re young, alone and a mother. I’ve always been open about my life not because my story is unique, but because it isn’t.

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NSA Ops ‘Walk in Park’ Next to Plans to Track Kids

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Photo Credit: WND

Photo Credit: WND

The spying on Americans by the National Security Agency and the Internal Revenue Service’s attacks on conservative groups are “like a walk in the park” compared to government plans to track school children, says a prominent national education researcher, analyst and Johns Hopkins-trained pediatrician.

Dr. Karen Effrem, president of the national watchdog group, Education Liberty Watch, is sounding an alarm about Common Core, the federal education standards that almost all states are adopting by accepting federal “Race to the Top” funding.

Under Common Core, Effrem said, students’ personal information increasingly is being collected, measured and assessed while the standards shift the focus away from academics and toward psychological training and testing of personal attitudes and behaviors.

Jane Robbins, senior fellow with the American Principles Project and a Common Core expert, shares Effrem’s concerns.

She said an agreement between a group that develops the Common Core tests and the DOE requires the consortium to give the DOE “complete access to any and all data collected at the state level.”

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Ex-Vatican Accountant Hit with New Money Laundering Charge

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Photo Credit: Yahoo

Photo Credit: Yahoo

A former Vatican accountant already under house arrest and on trial for alleged corruption and attempted money laundering has been notified of fresh charges against him, Italy’s financial police said on Tuesday.

The police said in a statement that they had seized Monsignor Nunzio Scarano’s luxury 17-room apartment and blocked nearly 9.0 million euros ($12 million) on current accounts linked to the senior Italian cleric.

The Vatican in July last year said it had already frozen assets belonging to Scarano and the police on Tuesday said these funds amounted to 2.2 million euros.

“This is very significant,” the police said in a statement, a reference to unprecedented levels of cooperation between Vatican and Italian judicial authorities on a high-profile financial crime case.

Vatican bank spokesman Max Hohenberg told AFP: “All activity on his accounts over the past 10 years has been extracted, analysed and submitted to authorities.

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How the IRS Scandal Goes Beyond the Agency

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Photo Credit: Win McNamee, Getty Images

Photo Credit: Win McNamee, Getty Images

At a tax symposium at Pepperdine Law School last week, former IRS chief counsel Donald Korb was asked, “On a scale of 1-10 … how damaging is the current IRS scandal?”

His answer: 9.5. Other tax experts on the panel called it “awful,” and said that it has done “tremendous damage.”

I think that’s right. And I think that the damage extends well beyond the Internal Revenue Service. In fact, I think that the government agency suffering the most damage isn’t the IRS, but the National Security Agency. Because the NSA, even more than the IRS, depends on public trust. And now that the IRS has been revealed to be a political weapon, it’s much harder for people to have faith in the NSA.

As I warned President Obama back in 2009 after he “joked” about having his enemies audited, the IRS depends on trust:

Should the IRS come to be seen as just a bunch of enforcers for whoever is in political power, the result would be an enormous loss of legitimacy for the tax system. Our income-tax system is based on voluntary compliance and honest reporting by citizens. It couldn’t possibly function if most people decided to cheat. Sure, the system is backed up by the dreaded IRS audit. But the threat is, while not exactly hollow, limited: The IRS can’t audit more than a tiny fraction of taxpayers. If Americans started acting like Italians, who famously see tax evasion as a national pastime, the system would collapse.

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