Secret Service Director RESIGNS After Security Failures (+video)

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Photo Credit: WNDBy Fox News.

Secret Service Director Julia Pierson resigned Wednesday, after a security breach at the White House and other high-profile incidents raised widespread concerns about the safety of the president and his family.

Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson announced the resignation in a written statement, and the White House confirmed her decision shortly afterward. President Obama “concluded new leadership of that agency was required,” White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said.

Johnson said: “Today Julia Pierson, the Director of the United States Secret Service, offered her resignation, and I accepted it. I salute her 30 years of distinguished service to the Secret Service and the Nation.”

A source familiar with the situation told Fox News that Johnson told Pierson the resignation would be effective immediately, after she offered.

The resignation comes just days after the Sept. 19 incident where an intruder jumped over the White House fence and darted past several layers of security to enter the White House itself. He was able to make it to the East Room before being apprehended.

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Pierson failed to provide fresh start for Secret Service that administration wanted

By Carol D. Leonnig.

The resignation of Secret Service Director Julia Pierson and the launch of a top-to-bottom review of the agency Wednesday are an acknowledgment by President Obama of what he has long denied: that the force charged with protecting him is in deep turmoil and struggling to fulfill its sacred mission.

The 6,700-member agency, long an elite class of skilled professionals who prized their jobs, now suffers from diminished luster and historically high turnover rates. Officers in charge of protecting the White House say they have grown resentful at being belittled by their bosses and routinely forced to work on off-days. Some agents who have sworn to take a bullet for the president and his family have little faith in the wisdom or direction of their ­senior-most leaders. Those chronic woes have been amplified in recent days by revelations of a string of humiliating security lapses that have raised concerns about the president’s safety and prompted the agency’s biggest crisis since President Ronald Reagan was shot outside the Washington Hilton three decades ago.

Joseph Clancy, a retired agent who served as the head of Obama’s protective detail briefly after the president was first elected, was named to take over on a temporary basis. He will serve as a caretaker while a full review is conducted and until a permanent replacement can be found.

“Replacing the director is a good start in the right direction,” said Dan Emmett, a former ­counterassault team leader and Secret Service agent. But, he added, “replacing the director will not be effective unless the entire upper management is replaced. Otherwise it will just be business as usual.”

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Louisiana VA Hospital Lacks Pajamas and Sheets, but Spends Millions on New Furniture, TVs and Solar

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Photo Credit: Fox NewsVeterans at the Shreveport, La., Veterans Affairs hospital have been going without toothbrushes, toothpaste, pajamas, sheets and blankets while department officials spend money on new Canadian-made furniture, televisions to run public service announcements and solar panels, a Watchdog investigation has revealed.

Sources inside the hospital told Watchdog.org that patients also have had to contend with substandard care, as many nurses spend less time on work than on cell phones, iPods or accessing personal data on hospital computers.

“It shouldn’t be like this. These are our veterans,” one employee said. “When I saw those solar panels out there and they waste money on things like new TVs that just play (public service) announcements, it really made me angry.”

According to the VA, the department spent $74,412 on 24 flat screen TVs for “patient/employee information” — one 50 inches wide and the others 42 inches. The furniture cost $134,082 and the solar project was approximately $3 million.

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Enterovirus D68 Found in 4 Patients Who Have Died

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Photo Credit: APBy Jacque Wilson.

Samples collected from four patients who recently died have tested positive for enterovirus D68, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). It is unclear what role the virus played in their deaths.

Enteroviruses are very common, especially in the late summer and early fall. The CDC estimates 10 to 15 million infections occur in the United States each year. So even though the samples from these four patients tested positive, the virus could have nothing to do with their deaths.

One of the patients, a child with a staph infection and enterovirus D68, was from Rhode Island, the state’s health department announced Wednesday.

The child died last week. Infection by both staph bacteria and an enterovirus is a “rare combination,” health officials say, that can cause very severe illnesses in children and adults.

“Only a very small portion of people who contract EV-D68 will experience problems beyond a runny nose and a low grade fever,” the Rhode Island Department of Health said in a statement. “Most viruses produce mild illnesses from which people are able to recover.”

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Child With Enterovirus 68 Dies in Rhode Island

By Sydney Lupkin.

A child infected with enterovirus 68 has died, the Rhode Island Department of Health said today, marking the first publicly announced enterovirus 68 death since the outbreak began this summer.

After the Rhode Island announcement, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention revealed that three patients who died later tested positive for the virus that’s infecting children across the country. It is not clear what role the virus played in these deaths, but the CDC said state and local health officials are investigating.

The 10-year-old girl from Cumberland, Rhode Island, died last week of a rare combination of bacterial and viral infections, the department said, explaining that she died of Staphylococcus aureus sepsis “associated with” enterovirus 68.

“We are all heartbroken to hear about the death of one of Rhode Island’s children,” state Health Department Director Dr. Michael Fine said in a statement. “Many of us will have EV-D68 [enterovirus 68]. Most of us will have very mild symptoms and all but very few will recover quickly and completely.”


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First Maine child tests positive for enterovirus

By AP.

The first Maine child has tested positive for a severe respiratory virus that has been making children sick across the country, health officials said on Wednesday.

The Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention said that a child from York County is the first confirmed case of enterovirus D8 in the state. The child, who was hospitalized, is now back home and doing well, officials said.

The highly contagious illness has been confirmed in more than 470 people in dozens of states, according to the CDC. So far, no deaths have been attributed to the virus.

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Want to Stop ISIS? Secure the Border

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Photo Credit: ISIS videoBy Shawn Moran.

A 25-year-old European male walks north, crossing a painted yellow line just outside an American Port of Entry. He heads towards the inspections area, careful to avoid the canine teams patrolling the pre-inspection areas. He picks a lane at random. He is carrying a larger than average backpack and is sweating, not from the weight, but from the fear that he will be stopped before carrying out his mission. This man is an ISIS jihadist. His mission is to attack America. His actions unleash a wave of terror, destruction and death, but that is just the beginning.

While first responders and Border Patrol Agents tend to the wounded and close the Port of Entry, other terrorist cells take advantage of tragedy. Several miles to the west of attack, a black Ford Suburban winds its way along deserted road, stopping near the north end of now unguarded border fence. Surveillance tapes will later show a group of six men crossing the primary border fence, scaling the secondary fence, and quickly crossing the border. Overwhelmed, understaffed and responding to a national crisis, no dispatcher or Border Patrol agent spots the illegal entry or the vehicle that drives them away. The evidence will later show the vehicle turning north, obeying all traffic laws and disappearing into American society. Otherwise occupied, understaffed Border Patrol agents will be unable to respond as more ISIS terrorist cells begin operations on American soil.

Unfortunately, this scenario is a real possibility today, because our borders are vulnerable and unsecured. But we can’t address the growing crisis through token measures or actions that provide no security. We need real solutions.

The solution is to focus on three simple strategies: (1) enforce our immigration laws; (2) support our Border Patrol Agents with additional training; and (3) give the proper number of hours for agents to effectively patrol and secure the border.

As threats from ISIS increase, the trends on the border are heading in the wrong direction. Even as encounters with illegal aliens increase, there is a decreased presence of agents and a lack of support from Washington for their efforts.

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Photo Credit: AP / Pablo Martinez MonsivaisNetanyahu to Obama: Hope Iran Won’t Get Nuclear Deal It Wants from You

By Patrick Goodenough.

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu praised President Obama Wednesday for leading the effort against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, but described the Iranian nuclear issue as “even more critical” and voiced the hope that negotiations with Iran would not leave it on the threshold of nuclear weapons capability.

“Israel fully supports your effort and your leadership to defeat ISIS,” Netanyahu told the president in the Oval Office during a media appearance before bilateral talks. “We think everybody should support this.”

“And even more critical is our shared goal of preventing Iran from becoming a military nuclear power,” he continued. “As you know, Mr. President, Iran seeks a deal that would lift the tough sanctions that you’ve worked so hard to put in place, and leave it as a threshold nuclear power. I fervently hope that under your leadership that would not happen.”

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WATCH: Colbert Takes on 'Muslims in the Endzone'

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Photo Credit: Comedy Central screenshotLiberals are going to have a field day with this one.

Last night on the Colbert Report, talk show host Stephen Colbert joked about how Kansas City Chief safety Husain Abdullah received a 15-yard unsportsmanlike conduct penalty for getting down on his knees and practicing a Muslim religious prayer in the end zone after making a touchdown against the New England Patriots this past Monday.

“I didn’t even know there were Muslim football players. How can they play if they’re not allowed to touch pigskin?”

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Why Republicans May Not Win the Senate after All

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Photo Credit: Reuters Establishment Republicans should keep the champagne on ice until after the midterm elections. Too many are already popping corks, pronouncing their strategy of “crushing” the Tea Party during the primaries as a crucial step in their successful takeover of the Senate.

There are increasing signs, however, that the GOP might not take control of the Senate and may only make modest gains in the House of Representatives. In states like North Carolina, for example, the GOP candidate hasn’t shown the ability to wage a major-league campaign. In other key battleground states, the establishment GOP is supporting problematic candidates, like Monica Wehby in Oregon, who can alternatively be described as pro-Obamacare and a plagiarist. The National Republican Senatorial Committee handpicked Wehby over a strong conservative in the primary. She is now running 20 points behind.

In Kansas, the GOP Senate nominee, incumbent Senator Pat Roberts, seems to consider Virginia his home because that is his only permanent residence. A sizable number of Virginia Republican voters, meanwhile, aren’t going for Ed Gillespie, former Republican National Committee chairman, who is the GOP nominee there, either.

National polls show the GOP to be about as popular as the heartbreak of psoriasis. The Democrats, for all their faults (and they are many) remain more popular. Republicans are not for anything. They are defined as simply being against President Barack Obama and certainly not for any form of federalism.

Since the 1950s, beginning with the rise of Senator Barry Goldwater and William F. Buckley’s National Review, there has been a war for the soul of the GOP. But this time is different. The establishment Republicans loath the conservative-Reaganite-Tea Party-reformer-populists, viewing them as a serious threat. They stand as an indictment against the entire GOP insider culture.

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Wait, You Can Have Ebola and Still Board a Plane?

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Photo Credit: Luc Gnago / ReutersA man who flew from Liberia to Dallas has become the first Ebola case to be diagnosed within the U.S., the CDC reported Tuesday, and he is currently in isolation at Dallas’s Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital.

Americans have been warned not to travel to Liberia, Guinea, or Sierra Leone, but they obviously can—and do.

So how are countries keeping suspected Ebola patients (well, most of them, anyway) contained within their borders?

Thermometers, mostly.

People are screened for elevated temperatures before they’re allowed to board planes departing from the countries where Ebola is raging. Fever is one of the earliest symptoms of Ebola, but people can be infected for between two and 21 days without showing signs of illness.

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'Khorasan Group' is New Name Coined by Obama for Old Foe

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Photo Credit: FrontPageMagThe Obama administration is being accused of coining a new name for an old nemesis by dubbing an Al Qaeda offshoot “The Khorasan Group.”

From Rush Limbaugh to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, critics are dubious of the corporate-sounding name rooted in an old term that describes an area on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border and are charging that it may have been introduced last month as a way to avoid invoking the name Al Qaeda, the terror group President Obama once claimed had been “decimated.”

Middle East experts were long familiar with the term “Khorasan,” but its use as part of a terrorist organization’s formal name does not appear in recent online searches prior to Sept. 13, when The Associated Press characterized the militants as a “cadre of veteran Al Qaeda fighters” from Afghanistan and Pakistan who traveled to Syria to connect with the Al Qaeda affiliate there, the Nusra Front.

Ten days later, in a Sept. 23 article, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s Aron Lund also questioned the term’s legitimacy, saying the term “gained currency only” within the past two weeks.

“The sudden flurry of revelations about the ‘Khorasan Group’ in the past two weeks smacks of strategic leaks and political spin,” Lund wrote. “Even if the information provided is entirely correct, which it may well be, the timing can hardly be coincidental — within two weeks of the first press reports, attacks had started against [Khorasan Group leader Muhsin] Fadhli and his allies in Syria.”

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Obama Stands Aloof from America's Four Foreign Policy Traditions

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Photo Credit: LifeNews President Obama’s speech at the United Nations last week was “an important turning point in American foreign policy — and in his presidency.” That’s the verdict of Brookings Institution scholar and former Clinton White House aide William Galston, a Democrat who has not been an unqualified admirer of this Democratic president’s foreign policy.

Whether Obama’s decision to launch air strikes against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria and Khorasan terrorists is a turning point, it was at least a move in the direction of a tradition in American foreign policy that has been conspicuously lacking in his administration.

That tradition was christened by Walter Russell Mead in his 2001 book Special Providence as the Jacksonian Impulse, one of four that have together shaped American foreign policy since the founding of the republic. The others, named after American leaders, are the Hamiltonian, Wilsonian and Jeffersonian traditions.

Jacksonians, like their namesake Andrew Jackson, are generally not much interested in foreign policy. But when Americans are attacked, the respond with righteous fury and a determination to utterly destroy the enemy.

Franklin Roosevelt invoked that tradition when in his Pearl Harbor speech he said, in a line that drew not just applause but whoops and hollers, “The American people, in their righteous might, will win through to absolute victory.”

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Walrus Invasion: 35,000 Come Ashore in Alaska

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Photo Credit: APPacific walrus that can’t find sea ice for resting in Arctic waters are coming ashore in record numbers on a beach in northwest Alaska.

An estimated 35,000 walrus were photographed about 8km north of Point Lay, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Point Lay is an Inupiat Eskimo village 482 km southwest of Barrow and 1,126 km northwest of Anchorage.

The enormous gathering was spotted during NOAA’s annual arctic marine mammal aerial survey, spokeswoman Julie Speegle said by email.

The survey is conducted with the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, the agency that oversees offshore lease sales.

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