Issa: White House Warned YouTube Over Anti-Islam Video During Benghazi Attack

/2 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: APRepublican Rep. Darrell Issa claimed that an email he’s reviewed shows the White House decided to reach out to YouTube within hours of the Benghazi terror attack, to warn the website about the consequences of posting an anti-Islam video.

The email would suggest the White House was connecting the attack to the video almost from the outset — though their initial claim that the attack sprung out of protests over the film would later be proven false.

According to Issa, who discussed excerpts from the otherwise classified emails on Wednesday, the email was sent at 9:11 p.m. ET on Sept. 11 to the Diplomatic Security Command Center.

According to Issa, the email said: “White House is reaching out to UTube to advise ramifications of the posting of the Pastor Jon Video.”

Issa said this email is “troubling” because it “contradicts” White House claims that the faulty storyline on the video was drawn from the intelligence community’s talking points.

Read more from this story HERE.

Air Force Security Team Botched Drill Simulating Attack On Nuke Missile Silo, Report Reveals

/0 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: APA blistering internal review has revealed that an Air Force security team botched a training exercise last summer that simulated an attack on a nuclear missile silo, prompting expanded training to prepare for the possibility of a real attack.

A senior U.S. defense official confirmed the details of the report to Fox News. The report was first obtained by the Associated Press through a Freedom of Information Act request.

The review said the security forces were unable to speedily regain control of the captured silo during the exercise at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana, calling the failure a “critical deficiency.”

Air Force spokeswoman Ann Stefanek told Fox News that this misstep was the reason the 341st Missile Wing failed a safety and security inspection, which was widely reported last year.

Stefanek said the Air Force did not share the exact reason for the failure because doing so could have compromised security. However, she said since then the unit has improved.

Read more from this story HERE.

Russia May Build Eight Nuclear Reactors for Iran

/2 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Adam JonesRussia plans to sign a contract with Iran this year to build two more nuclear reactors at its Bushehr power plant as part of a broader deal for up to eight reactors in the Islamic state, a source close to the negotiations told Reuters on Thursday.

It was not immediately clear how this might affect six global powers’ talks with Iran addressing disputed aspects of its nuclear program. Iran has resisted demands for cuts in its uranium enrichment capacity, pointing to plans for a future network of nuclear power stations.

Western powers want any lasting agreement with Iran to put to rest suspicions that it could develop nuclear weapons-making ability through enrichment. Iran denies any such intent.

The talks ended last week with little progress; they are to resume in Vienna in June.

Russia, one of the six powers, built Iran’s only operating nuclear power reactor, at Bushehr.

Read more from this story HERE.

Rise of the ‘Obama Republicans’

/2 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: AP…By 1972, many conservative Democrats supported Nixon over George McGovern so at least in presidential campaigns, culturally conservative Democrats were already moving away from their historic home. Only the election of Jimmy Carter in 1976, a southern populist reformer–and Watergate–and Betty Ford’s liberalism–forestalled the inevitable.

The Gipper’s massive victory in 1980 was fueled by more that 30 percent of Democrats nationwide, who took a powder on Carter after he moved to the left. Reagan received the same amount in the 1984 election in part because he’d done nothing to disappoint them and the liberal establishment nominated Walter Mondale, a good man who was trapped in a New Deal past.

Reagan ran again as the anti-establishment candidate of the future and swamped the lifetime Democrat, ironically with the help of Democrats. Yet the Establishment Republicans simply could not abide by the realigning elections of 1980, 1984, and 1994.

By the final years of the last century, some inside the GOP wanted the Reagan Revolution to be over, thus the phrase “compassionate conservative.” George W. Bush ran and lost the popular vote in 2000 without once ever calling for a spending cut or the elimination of one single wasteful federal program. After that, the GOP would continue to embrace the persona of Reagan–they had little choice–but no longer would they embrace the American conservative philosophy of the Gipper.

Hence, the stirrings of the Obama Republicans.

Read more from this story HERE.

Poll: Nearly Half Of Unemployed Have Stopped Looking For Work

/0 Comments/in , , /by

Photo Credit: REUTERS / Jonathan ErnstA poll released Wednesday shows that 47 percent of unemployed Americans have given up looking for work.

Conducted on behalf of Express Employment Professionals last month, Harris Poll asked 1,500 unemployed adults whether they agreed with the statement “I’ve completely given up looking for a job.”

Seven percent said they “agree completely” with the statement; another seven percent said they “agree a lot”; 15 percent “agree somewhat”; 18 percent “agree a little”.

Eighty-two percent of those polled agreed that they were “becoming more discouraged the longer I am unemployed”.

A large majority of those polled indicated that unemployment benefits were keeping them from searching harder for a job. Politicians have divided largely along party lines over whether to extend unemployment benefits, with Republicans arguing that the benefits provide an incentive to remain unemployed.

Read more from this story HERE.

World’s Worst Employee Makes Dozens of Bomb Threats to Get Out of Work

/1 Comment/in , /by

Photo Credit: Twitter The next time you find yourself crammed into your cubicle and fuming over all the god-awful people in your office, just be thankful you’ll never have to work with James Allen Bea.

A leading contender for the world’s worst colleague, the 21-year-old is facing felony charges for relentlessly terrorizing his fellow employees at a financial services firm in Seattle.

During his short-lived tenure at Jack Henry and Associates, Bea allegedly sent dozens of bomb threats to co-workers in texts and emails, usually filled with unsettling details about their personal lives. Prosecutors also allege that the disgruntled employee-from-hell circulated photographs of his deceased brother splayed out in a coffin. His campaign began just days after he started his job, and in what appears to be an elaborate ruse to avoid going to work (or to just provide himself cover), Bea also cast himself as one of the bomber’s primary targets.

“The defendant orchestrated a sophisticated, calculated scheme that delivered waves of terror for weeks, permeating a multi-state company and leaving many people fearful to come to work,” wrote King County deputy prosecutor Ian D. Ith in court papers.

Read more from this story HERE.

McConnell Foe Calls on Shinseki to Resign

/1 Comment/in , /by

Photo Credit: Getty Kentucky Democratic Senate candidate Alison Lundergan Grimes is calling for Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki to resign, putting her out ahead of Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who hasn’t explicitly called for him to step down.

“We owe a solemn obligation to our veterans and our government defaulted on that contract. I don’t see how that breach of trust with our veterans can be repaired if the current leadership stays in place,” she said in a statement, after confirming she wants to see him step down.

Grimes, battling the Senate minority leader in one of this cycle’s top Senate fights, is the first major Democratic Senate candidate to call for the embattled VA chief’s resignation, and her request is a break with the majority of congressional Democrats.

Read more from this story HERE.

Everyone Should Know Just How Much the Government Lied to Defend the NSA

/2 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Philippe Lopez / AFP / Getty If you blinked this week, you might have missed the news: two Senators accused the Justice Department of lying about NSA warrantless surveillance to the US supreme court last year, and those falsehoods all but ensured that mass spying on Americans would continue. But hardly anyone seems to care – least of all those who lied and who should have already come forward with the truth.

Here’s what happened: just before Edward Snowden became a household name, the ACLU argued before the supreme court that the Fisa Amendments Act – one of the two main laws used by the NSA to conduct mass surveillance – was unconstitutional.

In a sharply divided opinion, the supreme court ruled, 5-4, that the case should be dismissed because the plaintiffs didn’t have “standing” – in other words, that the ACLU couldn’t prove with near-certainty that their clients, which included journalists and human rights advocates, were targets of surveillance, so they couldn’t challenge the law. As the New York Times noted this week, the court relied on two claims by the Justice Department to support their ruling: 1) that the NSA would only get the content of Americans’ communications without a warrant when they are targeting a foreigner abroad for surveillance, and 2) that the Justice Department would notify criminal defendants who have been spied on under the Fisa Amendments Act, so there exists some way to challenge the law in court.

It turns out that neither of those statements were true – but it took Snowden’s historic whistleblowing to prove it.

One of the most explosive Snowden revelations exposed a then-secret technique known as “about” surveillance. As the New York Times first reported, the NSA “is searching the contents of vast amounts of Americans’ e-mail and text communications into and out of the country, hunting for people who mention information about foreigners under surveillance.” In other words, the NSA doesn’t just target a contact overseas – it sweeps up everyone’s international communications into a dragnet and searches them for keywords.

Read more from this story HERE.

FBI Chief: ‘Be Suspicious’ of Government Power (+video)

/2 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Getty ImagesThe head of the FBI says he understands why people worry about the scope of the government’s powers, and in fact, he agrees with them.

“I believe people should be suspicious of government power. I am,” Director James Comey told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday morning.

“I think this country was founded by people who were worried about government power so they divided it among three branches,” he added.

In the months since Edward Snowden leaked documents detailing the country’s intelligence programs, Comey said that “it’s hard for me, sometimes, to find the space and time to talk about what I do and why I do it.”

Though the controversial surveillance raised privacy concerns and made people fret that the government was snooping on their behavior, Comey said that the FBIs programs are run responsibly. He added that those operations had also helped to track down kidnappers and save children.

Read more from this story HERE.

Charles Plosser Thinks There’s a Ticking Time Bomb at the Fed

/0 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Bloomberg The way Charles Plosser sees it, the Federal Reserve is sitting on a ticking time bomb that could severely damage the economy unless the central bank reacts quickly to defuse the looming threat.

The Philadelphia Fed president, viewed as one of the bank’s leading hawks, is worried about some $2.5 trillion in “excess” reserves. That is, loanable funds available to individual or corporate borrowers through the nation’s banks.

The Fed has created these reserves through unpredented purchases of U.S. Treasurys and mortgage-backed securities, a strategy known as quantatative easing.

These reserves are just sitting in the bank system, basically doing nothing. That’s because demand for loans has been unusually weak amid an economic recovery that’s the slowest on record since the Great Depression.

“These reserves are not inflationary right now,” Plosser said in a meeting Tuesday with reporters in Washington.

Read more from this story HERE.