Supreme Court Declines Case Of Reporter Seeking to Protect Confidential Source (+video)

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Photo Credit: Columbia University / APThe US Supreme Court declined Monday to take up the case of a New York Times reporter who is seeking to avoid being forced to reveal a confidential source in testimony in a criminal trial.

The reporter, James Risen, was subpoenaed to testify at the trial of a former Central Intelligence Agency officer accused of disclosing secret intelligence information without authorization to Mr. Risen.

Risen had sought to block his compelled testimony at the trial.

The high court turned down Risen’s petition without comment. The action lets stand a federal appeals court’s decision requiring Risen to testify at the trial. The appeals court rejected Risen’s argument that the courts should recognize a reporter’s privilege against being forced to reveal the identity of a confidential source.

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Police Arrest Man Wanted in FBI Explosives Case

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Photo Credit: AP / FBIA San Francisco social media maven and former political consultant who was wanted on suspicion of possessing explosives has been taken into custody after a three-day manhunt.

Federal agents and the San Francisco police said they captured Ryan Kelly Chamberlain II, 42, on Monday afternoon shortly after announcing that they had found his car near Crissy Field, just south of the Golden Gate Bridge.

Though Chamberlain was considered armed and dangerous, FBI spokesman Peter Lee said Monday that he did not seem to pose an immediate threat to public safety.

“Anyone who has the means, methods and access to make a bomb should be considered armed and dangerous,” Lee said before the arrest.

A law enforcement official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter said Chamberlain was spotted in his white car around 6:22 p.m. Monday.

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Hillary’s Failed Benghazi Spin

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Photo Credit: Weekly Standard Hillary Clinton is right about Benghazi—or at least she’s right about one thing.

According to a story by Maggie Haberman about the Benghazi chapter in Clinton’s forthcoming book Hard Choices, the former secretary of state contends that some of her critics have badly mischaracterized the now infamous question she asked at a January 23, 2012, congressional hearing: “What difference, at this point, does it make?”

She’s right, they have. The question, which came in the middle of a heated back-and-forth with U.S. senator Ron Johnson, was not so much a declaration of indifference as it was an attempt to redirect the questioning from its focus on the hours before the attacks to preventing similar attacks in the future.

But beginning with her bizarre analogy to explain that question, Clinton’s attempt to spin Benghazi—at least as insofar as the Politico piece represents it—is highly misleading.

Clinton writes: “My point was simple: If someone breaks into your home and takes your family hostage, how much time are you going to spend focused on how the intruder spent his day as opposed to how best to rescue your loved ones and then prevent it from happening again?”

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Photo Credit: APTed Cruz: Hillary more obsessed with ‘right-wing-conspiracy’ than Benghazi terrorists

By Tony Lee.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) criticized former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for obsessing about the so-called “right-wing conspiracy” more than the terrorists who murdered four Americans in Benghazi in 2012.

In the Benghazi chapter of her new book, Clinton still blames the YouTube video for the terrorist attacks and dismisses Americans who want answers about what may have been her lowest moment as Secretary of State.

“She’s more focused on blaming the so-called vast right-wing conspiracy than on the terrorists,” Cruz said on ABC’s This Week. “The truth shouldn’t be partisan, and there’s a pattern in this administration.”

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EPA to Seek to Cut Power Plant Carbon by One-Third

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Photo Credit: AP / Matthew BrownThe Obama administration on Monday will roll out a plan to cut earth-warming pollution from power plants by 30 percent by 2030, setting in motion one of the most significant actions to address global warming in U.S. history.

The rule, which is expected to be final next year, will set the first national limits on carbon dioxide, the chief gas linked to global warming from the nation’s power plants. They are the largest source of greenhouse gases in the U.S., accounting for about a third of the annual emissions that make the U.S. the second largest contributor to global warming on the planet.

The regulation is a centerpiece of President Barack Obama’s plans to reduce the pollution linked to global warming, a step that the administration hopes will get other countries to act when negotiations on a new international treaty resume next year.

Despite concluding in 2009 that greenhouse gases endanger human health and welfare, a finding that triggered their regulation under the 1970 Clean Air Act, it has taken years for the administration to take on the nation’s fleet of power plants. In December 2010, the Obama administration announced a “modest pace” for setting greenhouse gas standards for power plants, setting a May 2012 deadline.

Obama put them on the fast track last summer when he announced his climate action plan and a renewed commitment to climate change after the issue went dormant during his re-election campaign.

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NSA Steps Up Digital Image Harvesting

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Photo Credit: Fox News The National Security Agency is, through its global surveillance program, increasingly gathering electronic images for its facial-recognition program, according to documents obtained by The New York Times.

The spy agency has relied more on facial-recognition technology in the past four years as a result of new software that can process the flood of digital communications such as emails, text messages and even video conferences, according to the documents obtained from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

NSA officials think the new technology will revolutionize how they find intelligence targets around the world, the newspaper reports.

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Ted Cruz Wins Presidential Straw Poll at Republican Leadership Conference

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Photo Credit: CNNTed Cruz, R-Texas, has won another straw poll, boosting his national profile and elevating his name among potential 2016 presidential contenders.

The firebrand freshman senator and tea party favorite was among a handful of 2016 hopefuls speaking at the Republican Leadership Conference in New Orleans this week.

Cruz finished in first place in the annual conference’s presidential straw poll at 30.33%. Dr. Ben Carson, a Fox News commentator and conservative activist, finished in second with 29.38% while Sen. Rand Paul, R-Kentucky, was third with 10.43%.

Fox News host and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and Texas Governor Rick Perry rounded out the top five, at 5.06% and 4.90%, respectively.

Neither Carson nor Paul spoke at the conference, but their support was a show of confidence by the traditionally more conservative crowd. The annual meeting of activists features of who’s who of big-name Republican politicians. It is an important appearance for potential presidential candidates to make.

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WATCH: Good Samaritan Puts Car Chase To An End

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Photo Credit: Fox News Police were involved in a pursuit of a car Saturday, and dramatic video from a FOX 13 News viewer shows the car speeding across the grass of Founders Park as children frantically move out of the way.

The chase ended around 6:12 p.m. at 1500 S. Banbury Drive in Syracuse, and police officials said a minor had taken the vehicle without permission and officers sought the vehicle on a breach of trust.

The 14-year-old male driving the car is from Sunset and had taken the vehicle from his grandfather in Duchesne County, and the grandfather reported the car stolen, according to a press release from the Syracuse Police Department. Police put out an attempt to locate, and police responded after a tipster spotted the car in Syracuse. The tipster heard the attempt to locate while using a police scanner app on a smart phone.

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White House Aides Define Obama Doctrine: ‘Don’t Do Stupid S**t’

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Photo Credit: Getty Images Still trying to figure out what President Barack Obama’s foreign policy doctrine is? Search no more. The White House has got you covered.

“For those pining for an Obama Doctrine victory for the president, here it is: ‘Don’t Do Stupid Shit,’” Politico’s Mike Allen wrote in his daily tip sheet, the Politico Playbook, Saturday. “Playbook rarely prints a four-letter word — our nephews are loyal readers. But we are, in this case, because that is the precise phrase President Obama and his aides are using in their off-the-record chats with journalists.”

Allen went on to point out all the places the phrase has popped up in recent days and weeks.

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Christian on Death Row for Apostasy: Sudan Shoots Down Hopes of Imminent Release

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Photo Credit: The TimesA day after a senior Sudanese official told media outlets that Meriam Ibrahim, the Christian woman sentenced to death for apostasy, would be freed within days, Khartoum’s foreign ministry on Sunday clarified that that would happen only if an appeal court rules in her favor.

The conflicting statements were the latest twist in the case of Ibrahim, the wife of an American citizen, who was sentenced to death last month after refused to recant her Christian faith.

Based on its ruling that Ibrahim was a Muslim because her father was a Muslim, the court also determined that her 2011 marriage – to Daniel Wani, a Sudanese Christian and U.S. citizen – was invalid and consequently sentenced her to 100 lashes for “adultery.”

Pregnant at the time of her conviction and sentence, Ibrahim has since given birth in prison to a baby girl, Maya, who is now incarcerated together with her and their son, Martin, a toddler just under two years old. The court said she would be allowed to nurse her baby for two years before the sentence was carried out.

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Sudan Set To Free Woman Sentenced To Death For Refusing To Renounce Her Christian Faith

By Caroline Schaeffer.

Meriam Ibrahim, who gave birth to a daughter while in custody this week, is set to be free, according to foreign ministry officials. Sudanese officials had sentenced the woman to 100 lashings and had given her the death sentence for having abandoned the Islamic faith, the BBC reports.

Ibrahim, 27, was raised as an Orthodox Christian and married an American. A Sudanese judge ruled in May that she should be a Muslim, because it was her father’s faith. The court ruled her marriage void. In the face of all this, she refused to renounce her Christian faith and was sentenced to death by hanging.

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Don’t Argue With Liberals – It Only Encourages Them

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Photo Credit: TownHall Non-lawyers often ask me, “What is the best way to argue with a liberal?” This is silly, because there is no best way to argue with a liberal. They’re beyond argument. You might as well argue with your terrier. Take it from someone who argues with his hideous terrier all the time.

But if you do choose to argue with a liberal, understand that your purpose should never be to change the liberal’s mind. You’re not going to change the liberal’s mind. Instead, if you choose to argue with a liberal, you should do it for one of two reasons – to either win over people who have not yet made up their minds, or to support people who already have begun to understand the truth.

The truth is that conservatism is an ideology that is in accord with natural law and basic human decency, while liberalism is merely the summit of a slippery slope leading down to the hellish depths of collectivist misery.

Liberals aren’t going to like to hear this manifest and demonstrable truth. So you’re going to get called “racist,” “sexist” and “homophobic,” even if you’re a conservative black lesbian.

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