Al Qaeda Wasn’t ‘on the Run’

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Photo Credit: Weekly Standard In the early morning hours of May 2, 2011, an elite team of 25 American military and intelligence professionals landed inside the walls of a compound just outside the Pakistani city of Abbottabad. CIA analysts had painstakingly tracked a courier to the compound and spent months monitoring the activity inside the walls. They’d concluded, with varying levels of confidence, that the expansive white building at the center of the lot was the hideout of Osama bin Laden.

They were correct. And minutes after the team landed, the search for bin Laden ended with a shot to his head.

The primary objective of Operation Neptune Spear was to capture or kill the leader of al Qaeda. But a handful of those on the ground that night were part of a “Sensitive Site Exploitation” team that had a secondary mission: to gather as much intelligence from the compound as they could.

With bin Laden dead and the building secure, they got to work. Moving quickly—as locals began to gather outside the compound and before the Pakistani military, which had not been notified of the raid in advance, could scramble its response—they shoved armload after armload of bin Laden’s belongings into large canvas bags. The entire operation took less than 40 minutes.

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IRS: Five More Employees Lost Emails In Computer Crashes

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Photo Credit: Daily CallerThe Internal Revenue Service (IRS) lost emails from five more employees due to computer crashes, likely bringing the total number of computer crash victims tied to the IRS targeting scandal to more than 20.

The IRS added five more employees to its computer crash list Friday, the Associated Press reported. The new computer crash victims are linked to congressional investigations into the IRS scandal and include two more Cincinnati-based tax exempt agents who worked under Lois Lerner.

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WATCH: Is the White House’s Benghazi Narrative Falling Apart?

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As the fallout from Benghazi intensifies, Washington officials are continuing to hide information and are intentionally deceiving the public…

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FBI: Cuban Intelligence Aggressively Recruiting Leftist American Academics as Spies, Influence Agents

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Photo Credit: APCuba’s communist-led intelligence services are aggressively recruiting leftist American academics and university professors as spies and influence agents, according to an internal FBI report published this week.

Cuban intelligence services “have perfected the work of placing agents, that includes aggressively targeting U.S. universities under the assumption that a percentage of students will eventually move on to positions within the U.S. government that can provide access to information of use to the [Cuban intelligence service],” the five-page unclassified FBI report says. It notes that the Cubans “devote a significant amount of resources to targeting and exploiting U.S. academia.”

“Academia has been and remains a key target of foreign intelligence services, including the [Cuban intelligence service],” the report concludes.

One recruitment method used by the Cubans is to appeal to American leftists’ ideology. “For instance, someone who is allied with communist or leftist ideology may assist the [Cuban intelligence service] because of his/her personal beliefs,” the FBI report, dated Sept. 2, said.

Others are offered lucrative business deals in Cuba in a future post-U.S. embargo environment, and are treated to extravagant, all-expense paid visits to the island.

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California Drought: El Niño Chances Fall Again

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Photo Credit: Brian MurphyHopes of an almighty El Niño bringing rain to a drought-stricken California – with its fallow fields, depleted streams and parched lawns – were further dashed Thursday. The National Weather Service, in its monthly El Niño report, again downgraded the chances of the influential weather pattern occurring in the fall or winter.

The odds were 80 percent in May, but were placed between 60 and 65 percent this week.

Meanwhile, the agency also announced that the much-needed weather event is likely to be weak instead of moderate in strength – another retreat from the more robust projections made earlier this year that fueled speculation that California’s three-year dry spell might be snapped.

El Niños, defined by warming Pacific Ocean waters that release enough energy to shape worldwide weather, have been associated with wet winters in the Golden State. The strong 1997-98 event correlated with San Francisco’s biggest recorded rain year: a whopping 47.2 inches of rain.

But the correlation doesn’t always hold up. While El Niños carry the potential to bring quenching showers, this week’s climate report doesn’t necessarily doom the state to another year of drought.

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An Ugly Word That Hurts Thousands of Children is Called Out by Beautiful Little Girl Who Has a Name

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Photo Credit: IJ Review In this photo, a little girl named Isabella wants people to know that she is a person, with a name, like anyone else. She is not defined by any word, especially not one that tries to belittle or degrade others.

Please don’t use the word retarded. I am a beautiful person. I am Isabella!

The website R-word.org, whose aim is to end the use of the term ‘retarded,’ explains how the word “retardation” went from a clinical description to a word of derision.

“When they were originally introduced, the terms ‘mental retardation’ or ‘mentally retarded’ were medical terms with a specifically clinical connotation, however, the pejorative forms… have been used widely in today’s society to degrade and insult people with intellectual disabilities…

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Alaska Leads Nation with Welfare Recipients

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Photo Credit: blmiers2 / Creative CommonsBy Associated Press.

Alaska has the highest number of families on public assistance in the nation, and the state’s rate is more than twice the national average of 2.9 percent, according to new figures from the U.S. Census Bureau.

A state-by-state tally of public assistance rates shows nearly 7 percent of Alaska families receive government help, the Alaska Dispatch News reported (https://is.gd/K6hRAZ). The figures are from 2012, the most recent data available.

Health department spokesman Clay Butcher said seasonal tourism and fishing jobs play a role, as do 140 villages in the state that are exempt from public assistance time limits because of few job opportunities. Most people are limited to receiving public assistance for 60 months.

“We also have a lot of transient types, people who come up in tourism jobs or oil jobs,” Butcher said.

Besides Alaska, 17 states saw an increase in the number of residents who receive public assistance. However, none have a higher percentage of recipients than Alaska, a trend that has held steady since at least 2000, the newspaper reported.

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Photo Credit: iStockAlaska, West Coast lead U.S. in receiving welfare

By Joseph Lawler.

Alaska has the highest rate of residents receiving welfare of any state.

The Census Bureau reported Tuesday that almost 7 percent of people in the Frontier State receive public assistance from the federal or state government, more than a percentage point more than the state with the next highest rate.

West Coast states lead the rest of the country in the share of residents receiving welfare. More than half a million people got public benefits in California in 2012, the most recent year for which welfare data from the Census’ American Community Survey is available.

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City Mandates Free Medical Marijuana for Low-Income Residents

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Photo Credit: My Fox NYWeed welfare?

That’s what the Berkeley City Council in California has unanimously approved, ordering medical marijuana dispensaries to donate 2 percent of their stash to patients making less than $32,000 a year.

The new welfare program in the liberal-leaning city is set to launch in August 2015.

The ordinance, which passed in August and is the first of its kind in the country, comes at a time when several states are debating how to handle a growing movement to legalize marijuana for both medical and recreational use.

But Berkeley’s decision to effectively order weed redistribution is prompting a vocal backlash.

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Top CIA Officer in Benghazi Delayed Response to Terrorist Attack, US Security Team Members Claim

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Photo Credit: Fox NewsA U.S. security team in Benghazi was held back from immediately responding to the attack on the American diplomatic mission on orders of the top CIA officer there, three of those involved told Fox News’ Bret Baier.

Their account gives a dramatic new turn to what the Obama administration and its allies would like to dismiss as an “old story” – the September 11, 2012 Benghazi attacks that killed U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans.

Speaking out publicly for the first time, the three were security operators at the secret CIA annex in Benghazi – in effect, the first-responders to any attack on the diplomatic compound. Their first-hand account will be told in a Fox News special, airing Friday night at 10 p.m. (EDT).

Based on the new book “13 Hours: The Inside Account of What Really Happened in Benghazi” by Mitchell Zuckoff with the Annex Security Team, the special sets aside the political spin that has freighted the Benghazi issue for the last two years, presenting a vivid, compelling narrative of events from the perspective of the men who wore the “boots on the ground.”

The security contractors — Kris (“Tanto”) Paronto, Mark (“Oz”) Geist, and John (“Tig”) Tiegen — spoke exclusively, and at length, to Fox News about what they saw and did that night. Baier, Fox News’ Chief Political Anchor, asked them about one of the most controversial questions arising from the events in Benghazi: Was help delayed?

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Hacker Breached HealthCare.gov Insurance Site

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By Danny Yadron.

A hacker broke into part of the HealthCare.gov insurance enrollment website in July and uploaded malicious software, according to federal officials.

Investigators found no evidence that consumers’ personal data was taken in the breach, federal officials said. The hacker appears only to have accessed a server used to test code for HealthCare.gov. The Department of Health and Human Services discovered the attack last week.

An HHS official said the attack appears to mark the first successful intrusion into the website, where millions of Americans bought insurance starting last year under the Affordable Care Act. It raised concerns among federal officials because of how easily the intruder gained access and how much damage could have occurred.

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Photo Credit: TownHallTrainwreck, Continued: Eight New Pieces of Bad Obamacare News

By Guy Benson.

Who’s up for the latest batch of bad Obamacare-related news?

(1) Consumers brace for the second full year of Obamacare implementation, as the average individual market premium hike clocks in at eight percent — with some rates spiking by as much as 30 percent.

(2) “Wide swings in prices,” with some experiencing “double digit increases.”(Remember what we were promised):

Insurance executives and managers of the online marketplaces are already girding for the coming open enrollment period, saying they fear it could be even more difficult than the last. One challenge facing consumers will be wide swings in prices. Some insurers are seeking double-digit price increases…

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