Email Shows White House Planned Benghazi Video Deception

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Photo Credit: Reuters

Photo Credit: Reuters

By Neil Munro.

White House officials consciously planned to spin the successful 2012 jihadi attack on the Benghazi diplomatic compound as a spontaneous protest against an anti-Islam video, according to a new email exposed by the public-interest law firm Judicial Watch.

The Sept. 14 email by Ben Rhodes, President Obama’s chief foreign policy spokesman, described the public relations goals for a planned briefing of a top official — Susan Rice — who was scheduled to appear Sept. 16 on five Sunday talk-shows.

She was invited on the shows to explain the September 11 attack, which killed the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans. The subject of the email was “PREP CALL with Susan.”

The goal of the appearances, said Rhodes, is “to convey that the United States is doing everything that we can to protect our people and facilities abroad; [and] to underscore that these protests are rooted in an Internet video, not a broader failure of policy.”

In her Sunday appearances, Rice implemented the White House’s spin. ”Our current best assessment, based on the information that we have at present, is that, in fact, what this began as, it was a spontaneous — not a premeditated — response to what had transpired in Cairo,” she claimed on ABC.

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Krauthammer: New Benghazi Email A ‘Classic Cover-Up Of A Cover-Up’

By Brendan Bordelon.

Conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer declared the new email showing White House involvement in the Benghazi talking points “a classic cover-up of a cover-up,” calling it “a serious offense.”

Krauthammer appeared on a Fox News panel along with The Washington Post’s Charles Lane and Fox News host and former White House press secretary Dana Perino.

The panel discussed new Benghazi emails released by government watchdog Judicial Watch, which reveal an intense interest and involvement by top White House staff in then-U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice’s September 2012 claim that the Benghazi attacks were caused by a Youtube video.

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Comedian Louis C.K. Goes Off On Common Core In Spectacular Twitter Rampage

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In an epic rant on Twitter Monday night, Comedian Louis C.K. joined the legions of parents against the Common Core education standards. Here is what he had to say:

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He shared some of the baffling homework problems plaguing his two daughters:

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George Will: “Global Warming Is Socialism By The Back Door”

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Photo Credit: The New American

Photo Credit: The New American

George Will sits down with The Daily Caller’s Jamie Weinstein.

GEORGE WILL: Global warming is socialism by the back door. The whole point of global warming is that it’s a rationalization for progressives to do what progressives want to do, which is concentrate more and more power in Washington, more and more Washington power in the executive branch, more and more executive branch power in independent czars and agencies to micromanage the lives of the American people — our shower heads, our toilets, our bathtubs, our garden hoses. Everything becomes involved in the exigencies of rescuing the planet.

Second, global warming is a religion in the sense that it’s a series of propositions that can’t be refuted. It’s very ironic that the global warming alarmists say, “We are the real defenders of science,” and then they adopt the absolute reverse of the scientific attitude, which is openness to evidence. You cannot refute what they say.

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EPA Lied To Congress About Delaying Major Climate Rule

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Photo Credit: REUTERS

Photo Credit: REUTERS

Documents reveal that Environmental Protection Agency chief Gina McCarthy may not have told lawmakers the truth when she said new climate rules were published in a timely manner.

The EPA published its so-called New Source Performance Standard (NSPS) for power plants in early January, more than two months after it was submitted to the Federal Register. Furthermore, the EPA announced the standard, which would effectively ban coal-fired power plants, in late September.

Republicans have alleged that the delay in publishing NSPS was politically motivated, arguing that the Obama administration’s actions will push the finalizing of the costly rule until after the elections this fall.

“Based on this sequence of events, it appears that the delay in the proposal’s publication may have been motivated by a desire to lessen the impact of the President’s harmful environmental policies on this year’s mid-term elections,” Oklahoma Republican Sen. Jim Inhofe wrote in a letter to McCarthy.

Inhofe wants to know why there was a delay. Did it originate within the EPA or within the White House’s Office of Management and Budget?

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Sources Saying Sebelius Now Refusing To Testify Before Senate Panel

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Photo Credit: REUTERS / Larry Downing

Photo Credit: REUTERS / Larry Downing

Outgoing Health and Human Services Sec. Kathleen Sebelius is now refusing to testify before the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies, a Senate aide told The Daily Caller Tuesday.

Sebelius had originally been set to testify before the subcommittee about the department’s 2015 $70 billion budget request on April 2.

According to another aide, however, several weeks after confirming the hearing date, she requested a date switch with the National Institutes of Health budget hearing on May 7. The committee accommodated her request.

Now, after announcing her resignation on April 11, she is refusing to testify according to the two aides, even though she is still the sitting secretary — remaining at the post until her successor, OMB Director Sylvia Mathews Burwell is confirmed.

“It appears that Sec. Sebelius has unilaterally decided that she is no longer accountable to Congress,” the first aide said.

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Kerry: I Didn’t Call Israel an “Apartheid State” But If I Did I Should Have Chosen Different Words

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Photo Credit: Townhall

Photo Credit: Townhall

In case you missed it yesterday, the Daily Beast’s Josh Rogin reported on comments made by Secretary of State John Kerry saying that if Israel doesn’t come to a two-state agreement with the Palestinians, it will become an apartheid state. Kerry also said Israel needed a change in leadership.

The secretary of state said that if Israel doesn’t make peace soon, it could become ‘an apartheid state,’ like the old South Africa. Jewish leaders are fuming over the comparison.

If there’s no two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict soon, Israel risks becoming “an apartheid state,” Secretary of State John Kerry told a room of influential world leaders in a closed-door meeting Friday…

Now Kerry is walking back his comments and even flat out denying he even made the “apartheid” comment in a statement released last night by the State Department. In the same statement denying the comments, Kerry said he should have used different words to describe the situation. He also berated critics for daring to question his support for the Jewish State.

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Contraception Mandate Turning into Abortion Mandate?

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Photo Credit: Evan Vucci, AP

Photo Credit: Evan Vucci, AP

During a recent Supreme Court argument over the Affordable Care Act’s contraceptives mandate, Justice Anthony Kennedy cut to the heart of the government’s argument. “Under your view,” he told Solicitor General Donald Verrilli, “a for-profit corporation could be forced to pay for abortions.” After some verbal fumbling, Verrilli conceded: “you’re right.” But, he quickly added, there is nothing to fear because there “is no law like that on the books.”

Not yet.

Earlier this year, Washington State tried to be the first. HB 2148, Washington’s Reproductive Parity Act, would require any health plan that covers maternity care to cover elective, surgical abortions also. The bill is supported by a majority of the Washington legislature and the governor. It is stalled — for now — in the Senate Health Care Committee.

The reach of this abortion mandate would be extensive, because current federal laws require almost all insurance plans to cover maternity services. Washington State stands ready to require almost every business in the state to cover elective abortions.

Although HB 2148 cites an existing conscience clause in Washington law, it is immediately followed by another clause that seems to nullify it. How the two can be reconciled is unclear.

What is clear is that the federal government believes no for-profit corporation has an enforceable – or even cognizable – conscience objection to such a law. In his argument, Solicitor General Verrilli made it clear, repeatedly, that the government believes for-profit corporations do not have constitutional or statutory rights to protection of their religious exercise. The government seems to believe the same regarding religious nonprofit corporations. While grudgingly recognizing that churches are entitled to an “exemption” from the contraceptives mandate, HHS granted religious nonprofit corporations an “accommodation” instead.

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Hot Trailer: Dinesh D’Souza’s ‘America’

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Having made the second-highest-grossing political documentary of all time, the team behind 2016: Obama’s America is now, as promised, following up with America. Sending up some fireworks of his own to rival the ones 2016 generated, producer-writer and kind-of host Dinesh D’Souza says of his new docu, “We answer the central moral challenge of America’s critics, which is that America’s greatness is based on theft, plunder and oppression.”

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Palin: If I Were President, ‘Waterboarding is How We’d Baptize Terrorists’

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Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore

Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore

Sarah Palin would like all terrorists to know that if she were in charge, waterboarding is how the United States would baptize them.

At least that’s what the former Alaskan governor and ex-vice presidential nominee told thousands of attendees this weekend at the National Rifle Association’s annual convention in Indianapolis.

“If I were in charge,” Palin said Saturday during a Stand And Fight rally at Lucas Oil Stadium, “[our enemies] would know that waterboarding is how we’d baptize terrorists.”

Palin mocked what she called the Obama administration’s coddling of suspected terrorists.

“Enemies, who would utterly annihilate America, they who’d obviously have information on plots, to carry out jihad,” Palin said. “Oh, but you can’t offend them, can’t make them feel uncomfortable, not even a smidgen.” The White House, she said, has failed to put “the fear of God in our enemies.”

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Lois Lerner’s Attorney: It Would Be ‘Un-American’ to Hold Her in Contempt

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Photo Credit: Townhall

Photo Credit: Townhall

Earlier this month, the House Oversight Committee voted to hold former head of tax exempt groups at the IRS Lois Lerner in contempt of Congress. The full House is set to vote on contempt charges for Lerner in May.

[A] memo from House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., said the contempt vote would proceed unless Lerner agrees to testify before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee about the targeting scandal.

“Thorough investigations by the Oversight and Government Reform Committee as well as the Ways and Means Committee have revealed findings that indicate that Ms. Lerner played a central role in the illegal targeting of conservative groups by the IRS,” the memo reads.

Now her attorney, William W. Taylor III, is asking for the opportunity to defend her in front of Congress before the vote is taken. Taylor is arguing it would be unfair and “un-American” to hold Lerner in contempt.

“Holding Ms. Lerner in contempt would not only be unfair and, indeed, un-American, it would be flatly inconsistent with the Fifth Amendment as interpreted by the Supreme Court,” Lerner’s lawyer, William W. Taylor III, wrote in a letter to House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio.

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