Obama on Benghazi: ‘We Revealed What We Knew at the Time’

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Photo Credit: APPresident Obama said the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya occurred because “not all the precautions that should have been taken were taken’ and denied any effort in the immediate aftermath to downplay the role terrorism played.

“That is inaccurate,” Obama said of Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly’s suggestion that the administration sought to sweep under the terrorist-nature of the attack in the final months of his 2012 re-election campaign.

“We revealed to the American people what we knew at the time,” said Obama.

n a contentious pre-Super Bowl interview with O’Reilly, Obama said early on during the attack — when then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta informed him about the assault — that U.S. officials did not tell him exactly who was involved.

“People understood at the time that something very dangerous was happening,” Obama said. “In the aftermath what became clear was the security was lax — not all the precautions that should have been taken were taken.”

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A Super Bowl Commercial Guaranteed to Bring You Chills

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On January 8, Army 1st Lt. Chuck Nadd left his eight-month mission in Afghanistan to come home. He knew he’d be greeted by his girlfriend. But he didn’t know his hometown — and Budweiser cameras — were waiting for him, too.

Thanks to careful coordination with girlfriend Shannon Cantwell, Lt. Nadd thought he was flying to Florida to speak at the VFW. Hidden cameras caught the airport homecoming between Cantwell and Lt. Nadd and followed the couple to the site where an old-fashioned ticker-tape parade awaited.

Viewers get a front-row seat to the surprise parade sponsored by the VFW and Budweiser in the Army officer’s hometown of Winter Park, FL, with marching bands, antique vehicles, the VFW motorcycle club, and the Budweiser Clydesdales.

Check out Lt. Nadd’s reaction when he sees his mom around 0:42. She secretly flew in from Alabama and was waiting to close out the surprise at the end of the parade.

The homecoming provided so much great footage that Budweiser extended the 30-second ad to 60 seconds during the editing process. Budweiser released the spot, titled “A Hero’s Welcome,” exclusively to active and retired military Thursday.

The Super Bowl Sunday premiere will launch a year-long digital campaign by Budweiser to encourage their consumers to honor the military. Lt. Nadd, a 2011 West Point graduate, was honored to help kick it off.

“I think it’s a neat opportunity for America to think about the folks coming home and everything folks have given up to get to this point,” Lt. Nadd said. “So many have given so much more than me. They’re the real heroes. … Those with two, three, four, or more deployments, those seriously injured, and those who made the ultimate sacrifice for our amazing Republic — those are the real heroes.”

In February 2013, Lt. Nadd graduated from flight school in Fort Rucker, AL, where he trained to become a Black Hawk helicopter pilot. He’s been deployed in Afghanistan since.

Budweiser also produced a five-minute web documentary on Lt. Nadd that highlights his background, family, friends, and the campaign details. You can watch it below.

Cantwell works for Alabama Senator Richard Shelby as a legislative correspondent and deputy press secretary. She said she nominated Lt. Nadd in hopes it would inspire communities across America to salute the men and women in uniform who daily give themselves to defend freedom.

“Both Chuck and I feel so blessed to have this opportunity,” Cantwell said.

This article appeared originally at Heritage.com and is re-published in full with the Heritage Foundation’s permission.

US Secretary of State Threatens Israeli Boycott, Warns of ‘Deligitimization’ of Israel

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Photo Credit: CBSIsraeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday brushed off U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s warning that Israel faced a growing boycott threat if peace talks with the Palestinians fail, saying the campaign would not achieve its goal.

In the latest flare-up between the two allies, two of Netanyahu’s Cabinet ministers went even further, lashing out at Kerry and accusing him of undermined the Jewish state’s legitimacy and the chances of reaching a peace agreement.

Israel and the Palestinians launched peace talks in July after a long lull and have thus far shown little signs of progress. Facing an April deadline, Israel is working against a backdrop of increasing international pressure to reach a deal, coupled with a growing call for boycotting Israel over its settlements in areas it captured in the 1967 Middle East war.

A small but growing number of European businesses and pension funds have begun to drop investments or limit trade with Israeli firms involved in the West Bank settlements. At a security conference in Germany this weekend, Kerry warned that a breakdown in Israeli-Palestinian talks would accelerate this trend and could threaten Israel’s economic prosperity and its safety.

“You see for Israel there’s an increasing de-legitimization campaign that has been building up. People are very sensitive to it. There are talk of boycotts and other kinds of things,” Kerry said. “Today’s status quo absolutely, to a certainty, I promise you 100 percent, cannot be maintained. It’s not sustainable. It’s illusionary. There’s a momentary prosperity, there’s a momentary peace.”

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Namath Honors Navy SEAL Chris Kyle at Super Bowl

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Photo Credit: TPNNNFL legend Joe Namath honored fallen soldier Chris Kyle as he did the coin toss at the Super Bowl on Sunday, February 2nd. Namath tweeted a picture of what he would be wearing in honor of Kyle, who died one year ago on February 2, 2013

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Parents Warned: Big Brother Owns Your Children

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Photo Credit: WNDThe U.S. Constitution reserves the power of public education to the states and local governments.

But today in the United States, the long-time aim of many leftists to give the federal government control over the minds of the next generation is nearly a done deal.

“For decades liberals have tried to seize control of public school curriculum,” author and Eagle Forum founder Phyllis Schlafly warned the attendees of The Constitutional Coalition’s 25th annual Education Policy Conference in St. Louis, Mo., this weekend. “Now [President] Obama’s mighty pen can achieve that goal.”

Schlafly, referring to Obama’s recent boast that his “pen” can bypass Congress via executive orders, explained her warning to hundreds of assembled teachers, school administrators, parents and activists at the Educational Policy Conference, or EPC, this weekend. Piggybacking on what several EPC speakers contended through dozens of shocking examples, Schlafly warned that the federal “Common Core” standards for public education not only blatantly violate the Constitution, but also indoctrinate students in leftist thinking, violate personal privacy and pave the way for a socialist society.

Already 45 states have adopted the federal Common Core standards for English and math, with similar programs in the works for science and social studies, while the content of the Core standards is filtering down into standardized college entrance and advanced placement examinations.

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Philip Seymour Hoffman, Oscar-Winning Actor, Found Dead in NY Apartment

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Photo Credit: The Washington Post Philip Seymour Hoffman, the stage and screen actor who progressed from scene-stealing supporting roles to an Oscar-winning portrayal of writer Truman Capote in “Capote,” has died. He was 46.

Mr. Hoffman was found dead in his apartment in Lower Manhattan shortly before noon Sunday, and his death is being investigated as a possible drug overdose, said Detective James Duffy, a spokesman for the New York Police Department. The New York City medical examiner’s office is expected to perform an autopsy as early as Monday, and that examination will include a toxicology report.

Police said they received a 911 call about 11:36 a.m. Sunday. When they arrived at the apartment, they found Mr. Hoffman unconscious and unresponsive on the floor of a bathroom. According to an unnamed police official who was not authorized to comment publicly, Mr. Hoffman was found with a needle in his arm and several bags of what appeared to be heroin. The official said Mr. Hoffman was supposed to meet a colleague Sunday morning and did not show. An associate went to his home and found him there. Police were still at the scene Sunday afternoon.

In interviews, Mr. Hoffman acknowledged a history of drug abuse.

“I got sober when I was 22 years old” and went into a drug rehabilitation program at the time, Mr. Hoffman told CBS’s “60 Minutes” in 2006. Asked whether he abused drugs or alcohol, Mr. Hoffman said: “It was all that stuff. Yeah. It was anything I could get my hands on. Yeah. I liked it all.”

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Obama Won’t Take Executive Action to Remove Pot from Narcotics List (+video)

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Photo Credit: APPresident Barack Obama in an exclusive interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper said it is up to Congress to decide whether marijuana should continue to be classified as a Schedule I narcotic.

“What is and isn’t a Schedule I narcotic is a job for Congress,” Obama said when Tapper asked if he was “considering not making marijuana a Schedule I narcotic.”

“I think it’s the DEA that decides that,” Tapper interjected.

“It’s not something by ourselves that we start changing. No, there are laws undergirding those determinations,” the president responded.

According to the U.S. Controlled Substances Act, Schedule I drugs are described as having a high potential for abuse, no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the U.S., and lack of accepted safety for use of the drug or other substance under medical supervision.

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Harley Burial: Rider and Bike are Inseparable, Even in Death

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Photo Credit: AP Photo/Columbus Dispatch, Jonathan QuilterA motorcycle-loving man’s family has fulfilled his dying wish — to be buried astride his beloved Harley-Davidson encased in a see-through casket.

But it wasn’t easy. The project required an extra-large cemetery plot to accommodate a Plexiglas casket for Billy Standley and his hulking custom-painted 1967 Electra Glide cruiser. Five embalmers worked to prepare his body with a metal back brace and straps to ensure he’ll never lose his seat.

Standley’s family said he’d been talking about it for years and liked to take people to the garage to show off the unusual casket his two sons had built for him. He told people he didn’t just want to ride off to heaven, he wanted the world to see him do it in the big see-through box.

“He was a quirky man,” daughter Dorothy Brown said. “But when it comes to us kids, he loved us, he raised us well and, of course, we wanted to help him.”

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Fox Sets May 5 Premiere for ‘24: Live Another Day’

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Photo Credit: Variety The clock starts again May 5 for Jack Bauer as Fox unveils its reboot of “24″ with a two-hour premiere episode.

“24: Live Another Day” will settle into its 9 p.m. Monday time period the following week for the rest of its 12-episode run. Fox is mounting a massive promo push for the return of the real-time drama thriller, the session for which will open Fox’s portion of the Television Critics Assn. press tour on Monday.

Fox is giving “American Idol” launchpads to two other midseason series, family comedy “Surviving Jack” and gritty cop drama “Gang Related.”

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Where Does Your State Rank? Gallup’s Most Conservative to Most Liberal

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Photo Credit: APThe percentage of people living in Washington, D.C., who call themselves liberals is far greater than the national percentage, and significantly greater than the percentage in any of the fifty states, according to polling data released today by Gallup.

Nationally, 23 percent of American adults call themselves liberals, according to Gallup, and 38 percent call themselves conservatives.

But in Washington, D.C., 38.1 percent call themselves liberals–65.6 percent more than in the nation as a whole.

After D.C., Vermont is the most liberal jurisdiction, with 32.4 percent of people there calling themselves liberals.

The top five most conservative states are: Wyoming, Mississippi, Idaho, Utah, and Arkansas.

Read more from this story and see the full rankings HERE.