Krauthammer: End to NSA’s Bulk Data Collection ‘A Calculated Risk’

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Photo Credit: Fox News

Photo Credit: Fox News

By Fox News.

Charles Krauthammer told viewers Tuesday on “Special Report with Bret Baier” that “we are taking a calculated risk” when it comes to reports that President Obama is expected to call for an end to the NSA’s bulk data collection program.

“Look, I’m sympathetic to the idea that we have to find a compromise,” the syndicated columnist and Fox News contributor said. “I think it’s probably one you have to have given the mood of the country…but if we get a second attack, we’re going to go violently in the other direction.”

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NSA Chief: I’d Love 15 Minutes Alone With Snowden

By Greg Richter and Cathy Burke.

National Security Agency Director General Keith Alexander says that if he had 15 minutes alone with NSA leaker Edward Snowden, he’d make sure he knew how much damage Snowden has done to the United States and its allies.

“I’m not a violent person. I’m not going to try to beat him up or anything,” Alexander said Tuesday on “Special Report” on the Fox News Channel. “I am hugely disappointed that someone that signed a document that said I can be trusted with top-secret data couldn’t be,” he told host Brett Baier.

Alexander said he would tell Snowden, who is living under temporary political asylum in Russia, that he has been a “huge disappointment,” and might also tell him some of the classified problems he has caused so he knows “the significant damage to our nation and to our allies.”

Snowden has made some “huge mistakes” that “will haunt him for the rest of his life,” Alexander said.

Alexander, who leaves his post at the end of this week, said his agency knows what information Snowden was able to take via computer thumb drive. Some that he has not released would hurt military operations and could endanger lives, he said.

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What Exactly This Hobby Lobby Case Is About

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Today at the Supreme Court, some courageous Americans are standing up to Obamacare’s trampling of religious freedom. But outside the Court, the debate rages over the place of this valuable freedom in our lives.

Planned Parenthood put together a graphic to express one argument—that Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood want to “deny their employees access to birth control.” As Heritage expert Sarah Torre explained in our video, nothing could be further from the truth. The companies actually pay to cover 16 different types of contraceptive drugs.

Check out our version of the infographic, which explains what’s really at stake today.

Photo Credit: The Heritage Foundation

This article originally appeared at Heritage.com and is re-published in full with the Heritage Foundation’s permission.

Michelle: ‘There Were Actually Laws in America that Allowed Discrimination Against Black People Like Me’

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Photo Credit: Carolyn Kaster/APFirst Lady Michelle Obama talked about America as she visited a school today in China. She talked about the American dream:

And my story isn’t unusual in America. Some of our most famous athletes, like LeBron James, and artists, like the singer Janelle Monae, came from struggling families like mine, as do many business leaders — like Howard Schultz. He’s the head of a company called Starbucks, which many of you may have heard of. When Mr. Schultz was a boy his father lost his job, leaving their family destitute. But Mr. Schultz worked hard. He got a scholarship to a university, and eventually built the largest coffeehouse company in the world…

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Harry Reid Blames GOP for Helping Russia Invade Crimea

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Photo Credit: AP / Max VetrovSenate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Monday that Republicans may have helped Russia annex Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in a surprisingly sharp attack ahead of a test vote on a bill authorizing more U.S. sanctions on Russia and $1 billion in loan guarantees to Ukraine.

Outlining the Senate’s agenda after a one-week recess, the Nevada Democrat said the first item would be the Ukraine bill that Republicans blocked just before lawmakers went on break. He urged Republicans to consider “how their obstruction affects United States’ national security as well as the people of Ukraine” and said their delay of any congressional action “sent a dangerous message to Russian leaders.”

“Since a few Republicans blocked these important sanctions last work period, Russian lawmakers voted to annex Crimea and Russian forces have taken over Ukrainian military bases,” Reid said. “It’s impossible to know whether events would have unfolded differently if the United States had responded to Russian aggression with a strong, unified voice.”

Reid’s charge comes despite widespread support among Republicans and Democrats in Congress for providing Ukraine with much-needed economic assistance and hitting Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government with sanctions.

And GOP Senate aides noted the House has passed different legislation, meaning the Senate bill could not have become law before recess anyhow. They blamed Reid and Democrats for blocking the Senate from taking up the House legislation.

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Illinois Democrat Under Investigation for Possession of Child Pornography (+video)

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Photo Credit: downtownelgin / Creative Commons An Illinois lawmaker who recently resigned his seat is under investigation for possession of child pornography.

Authorities from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations seized electronics from Keith Farnham’s state office last week and are seeking child pornography materials, according to the Chicago Tribune.

The warrant states they are searching for “documents in any format or medium pertaining to the possession, receipt, or distribution of child pornography,” the newspaper reported.

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WATCH: ‘Between Two Americas’ – Barack Obama’s Funny or Die Interview Spoofed by 2016 Director Dinesh D’Souza

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Photo Credit: YouTubeDinesh D’Souza, the director of 2016: Obama’s America, confronted his rival on the virtual set of “Between Two Ferns,” the Funny or Die bit hosted by Hollywood comedian Zach Galifianakis. Of course, Obama had taken time out to meet with Galifianakis just a few weeks ago, so why not D’Souza?

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Rumsfeld: U.S. Ties with Karzai ‘Gone Downhill Like a Toboggan’ Under Obama (+video)

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Photo Credit: DOD / Helene C. StikkelDonald Rumsfeld, who served as U.S. Defense Secretary under President George W. Bush, blames poor diplomacy by the Obama administration for the current strained relations with Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

“Our relationship with Karzai and with Afghanistan was absolutely first-rate in the Bush administration,” Rumsfeld told Fox News’s Greta Van Susteren on Monday. “It has gone down hill like a toboggan ever since the Obama administration came in.”

Rumsfeld pointed to the fact that the Obama administration has failed to get Karzai to sign an agreement that would allow some U.S. troops to remain in Afghanistan after 2014, when combat ends.

The U.S. has status of forces agreements with more than a hundred countries, Rumsfeld noted. “A trained ape can get a status of forces agreement,” he said. “It does not take a genius. And we have so mismanaged that relationship.”

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Clinton Is Far from Inevitable in 2016

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Photo Credit: National Review Will Hillary Clinton be elected America’s next president? The polls suggest she will.

Recent polls compiled by Real Clear Politics show her winning 67 percent of the vote in Democratic primaries, with no other candidate above 11 percent. General-election polling shows Clinton with an average lead over various possible Republican nominees of 51 to 39 percent.

But an election isn’t over until it is over, and this one hasn’t started. For one thing, no one is sure whether Clinton will actually run. She turns 69 in 2016 (the same age as Ronald Reagan when he was first elected in 1980) and she may consider that her achievements in eight years as first lady and U.S. senator and four years as secretary of state are enough for one lifetime.

Her achievements in that last office may look less impressive than they did in the first Obama term when majorities expressed approval of the president’s foreign policy. Clinton’s proudly proclaimed “reset” with Russia suddenly looks less like a triumph than a misfire.

She’s also had health scares: a blood clot behind her right knee in 1998 and another in her skull in December 2012.

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Malaysian Airlines Missing Plane Gave Off Unexplained Final ‘Ping’

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Photo Credit: Andrew Winning/ReutersThe crashed Malaysia Airlines flight gave one last unexplained signal eight minutes after its final “ping”, possibly the result of the plane entering its “catastrophic phase” as it plunged into the Indian Ocean, investigators have said.

As families of its 239 passengers demanded “proof” of the plane’s demise, Malaysian authorities presented analysis by Inmarsat, the British telecommunications company, of satellite data to explain its conclusion that the plane crashed into remote waters 18 days ago and left no survivors.

No confirmed wreckage from the plane has been found during a multinational air and sea search in waters about 1,500 miles south-west of Perth, Western Australia. The search was temporarily called off on Tuesday due to adverse weather.

In unprecedented scenes, up to 100 angry relations of flight MH370’s Chinese passengers descended on the Malaysian embassy in Beijing, hurling water bottles and chanting for two hours until a diplomat emerged to accept a letter of protest at the lack of information.

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Read What a School Did to a 9-Year-Old Girl After She Shaved Her Head to Support Her Cancer-Stricken Friend

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Photo Credit: KUSA-TVA Colorado 9-year-old was not allowed in class Monday because she violated the school’s dress code. Her offense? Shaving her head as an act of compassion to support a friend battling cancer.

Kamryn Renfro, who attends Caprock Academy, a public charter school in Grand Junction, told KUSA-TV she “felt it was the right thing to do.”

“I was really excited I would have somebody to support me, and I wouldn’t be alone with people always laughing at me. I would at least have somebody to go through it all,” 11-year-old Delaney Clements, Kamryn’s friend who recently started chemotherapy, told KDVR-TV.

The school said in a statement that its dress code policy was “created to promote safety, uniformity and a non-distracting environment for the school’s students.”

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