Photo Credit: IJ Review
While the state of New York has not released actual firearms registration numbers, the rumors of registrations in the 3,000-5,000 range mean that 99% of those affected gun owners are refusing to comply with the law.
Furthermore, gun manufacturers are already responding to the law by designing guns that carefully circumvent its specific requirements.
Read more from this story HERE.
Photo Credit: Bebeto Matthews / AP
A deeply politicized CIA acted more to protect the secretary of state than the president when it falsified its Benghazi talking points, according to Halle Dale, the Heritage Foundation’s senior fellow for public diplomacy.
At this week’s extraordinary public hearing by the House Select Committee on Intelligence, former CIA Deputy Director Michael Morell acknowledged being the ultimate editor of the CIA’s infamous talking points memo about the murders of four Americans, including the U.S. ambassador, in Benghazi, Libya, on Sept. 11, 2012.
The memo’s false claims became the Obama administration’s official version, broadcast by former U.N. Ambassador Susan E. Rice on national television as she spread the false message that the deaths resulted from a protest gone bad rather than a terrorist attack.
As a guest on my talk radio show Thursday on The Washington Times Radio Network, Ms. Dale said: “What we learned … is that the CIA is a deeply politicized agency.”
And protecting Hillary Clinton seemed a higher priority than protecting Barack Obama.
Read more from this story HERE.
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LIGNET Got Benghazi Right; Why Didn’t the CIA?
By Fred Fleitz.
In May 2011, I was asked by Christopher Ruddy, Newsmax Media’s President and CEO, to start a commercial intelligence analysis and forecasting service. It was an exciting project and a great opportunity after 25 years working in the national security field.
This project became known as the Langley Intelligence Group Network (LIGNET). Working with other intelligence and national security experts, we launched this project in the fall of 2011. LIGNET produces analysis in the style of the President’s Daily Brief, the classified memo that the U.S. Intelligence Community brings to the president every morning containing analysis of major security issues affecting this country.
Of the over 2,400 analyses we’ve posted since the launch of LIGNET, our work on one subject stands out: the September 2012 terrorist attacks on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi.
I’m compelled to speak out about this after watching the testimony of former CIA acting Director Michael Morell before the House Intelligence Committee this week. Morell is in hot water because of controversial CIA-drafted talking points that said the attacks on the Benghazi consulate were the result of demonstrations over an anti-Muslim video and not a terrorist attack. These talking points, which were coordinated through several government agencies, were submitted to the White House and Congress on Sept. 15, 2012.
The talking points were politically convenient for the Obama administration in the run-up to the 2012 presidential election and were used by U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice to deny that the attacks on the consulate were related to terrorism during five Sunday morning talk show appearances on Sept. 16, 2012.
Read more from this story HERE.
Photo Credit: Frank Polich / Reuters
In Germany, meanwhile, a leading ally of Chancellor Angela Merkel criticised the US for failing to provide sufficient assurances on its spying tactics and said bilateral talks were unlikely to make much progress before the German leader visits Washington next month.
The interior minister, Thomas de Maiziere, one of Merkel’s closest cabinet allies, told the German weekly magazine Der Spiegel: “US intelligence methods may be justified to a large extent by security needs, but the tactics are excessive and over-the-top.”
Last October, reports based on disclosures by Snowden said Washington had monitored Merkel’s mobile phone.
In Chicago, a sympathetic crowd of nearly 1,000 packed a downtown hotel ballroom at Amnesty International USA’s annual human rights meeting and gave Greenwald, who dialled in from Brazil, a raucous welcome before Snowden was patched in 15 minutes later – to a standing ovation.
Read more from this story HERE.
Photo Credit: NEWSCOM
Ukrainians of all backgrounds and from every corner of the country reject Vladimir Putin’s decision to send Russian troops to Ukraine to protect Russian-speaking Ukrainians, with 81 percent of those surveyed expressing opposition to the move and 13 percent in favor. The skepticism is largely explained by the fact that Ukrainians don’t buy Putin’s claim that ethnic Russians need protection at all. Eighty-five percent of Ukrainians said that Russian-speaking citizens are not threatened, an opinion shared by 66 percent of ethnic Russians themselves. Seventy-four percent of Ukrainians living in both the south and the east, regions where Russians claim protection is most needed, responded that Russian-speaking Ukrainians were not under threat because of their language.
The survey of 1,200 Ukrainians from all regions of the country, including Crimea, was conducted March 14-26 by Gallup and Baltic Surveys for the International Republican Institute. IRI—which describes itself as a “nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing democracy worldwide”—has extensive experience polling overseas, and U.S. policymakers often rely on its findings. The interviews were conducted in person at respondents’ homes.
“These results show that east and west Ukraine are not as divided as Moscow would like you to think,” says Ambassador Mark Green, president and CEO of IRI. “Ukrainians across the country, including Russian speakers, believe in democracy and want closer ties to Europe.”
Read more from this story HERE.
Photo Credit: Breitbart
Initially, I received criticism from political pundits for speaking to non-traditional audiences. I was told it was a waste of time to reach out to these audiences, specifically students from both Howard University and University of California, Berkeley.
My response is this: I have never been one to watch the world go by without participating. I wake up each day hoping to make a difference.
You might be a Republican, Democrat or Independent. I speak before these audiences, not to preach or prescribe some special formula.
My intention is not to tell you what to be. You are more important than any political party or partisan pleadings. My intention is to motivate all Americans and defend their rights.
Read more from this story HERE.
Photo Credit: AP / J. Scott Applewhite
At the same time, a solid majority of Americans express great concern about a number of other environmental issues. It’s just global warming that doesn’t bother them much.
On the question of global warming, 34 percent say they worry about it a great deal. That is in contrast to the 60 percent who say they worry a great deal about pollution of America’s drinking water; 53 percent who say they worry a great deal about contamination of soil and water by toxic waste; and 53 percent who say they worry a great deal about pollution of rivers, lakes and reservoirs. Slightly smaller numbers of Americans are deeply concerned about other issues: 46 percent say they worry a great deal about air pollution; 41 percent say they worry a great deal about the extinction of plant and animal species; and 41 percent say they worry a great deal about the loss of tropical rain forests. Only after all those other concerns comes global warming, at 34 percent. (When Gallup asked about concern over “climate change,” the number was 35 percent, suggesting the name doesn’t make much difference.)
Read more from this story HERE.
Photo Credit: Telegraph
In an episode that underlines the fierce and long-standing friction between China’s officially atheist Communist Party and its rapidly growing Christian congregation, Bible-carrying believers this week flocked to the Sanjiang church in Wenzhou hoping to protect it from the bulldozers.
Their 24-hour guard began earlier this week when a demolition notice was plastered onto the newly-constructed church which worshippers say cost around 30 million yuan (£2.91 million) and almost six years to build.
Officials claimed the church had been built illegally and used red paint to daub the words: “Demolish” and “Illegal construction” onto its towering facade.
The threat triggered a furious reaction in Wenzhou, a booming port city known for its vibrant Christian community, said to be China’s largest.
Read more from this story HERE.
Several Democrats — including some lawmakers whose re-election bids are seen as vulnerable in this year’s midterm races — are joining Republicans in calling for the Obama administration to stop proposed cuts to the Medicare Advantage program.
Administration officials plan to announce the 2015 rates for the program on Monday, reports The Hill, and could prove a sensitive issue as both parties are courting the senior citizens who tend to turn out in high numbers to vote in midterms.
Republicans say the program is a valid private alternative to Medicare, as it allows seniors to enroll in plans offered by private insurers, who are then directly paid by the federal government.
Until now, Democrats have complained that the plan receives a disportionate amount of money compared to the Medicare program, and Obamacare was partially funded through $200 billion in cuts over 10 years.
Opponents include Sens. Mark Pryor of Arkansas and Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, considered two of the Democratic Party’s most vulnerable senators seeking re-election. But some powerful Democrats are also speaking out, including Sens. Charles Schumer and Michael Bennett.
Read more from this story HERE.
Photo Credit: Fox News
Hayden zeroed in on Feinstein recently saying that declassifying the report would “ensure that an un-American, brutal program of detention and interrogation will never again be considered or permitted.”
Hayden told “Fox News Sunday”: “That sentence, that motivation for the report, may show deep, emotional feeling on the part of the senator. But I don’t think it leads you to an objective report.”
Feinstein, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, which led the probe, responded sharply to Hayden’s remarks, saying the report is “objective, based on fact, thoroughly footnoted.”
“I am certain it will stand on its own merits,” she said, according to The Washington Post.
Read more from this story HERE.
Photo Credit: AP
“We do not want a death factory in our back yard,” one resident said at a Tuesday city commission meeting, which attracted hundreds of citizens to protest the facility’s planned May opening.
Another begged, “Do not let one of our attractions be baby-killing.”
But Kissimmee Mayor Jim Swan told residents that local zoning laws leave the city with no option but to let the facility open as planned. “The folks moving in there are providing medical services, just like the person who just left, so there’s no rezoning. There’s no [change of] land use,” Swan told WFTV-9. “We had no authority. I know most folks don’t understand that.”
The majority of city officials told residents they were personally against allowing the abortion facility to open, and that they hoped to take the issue to the state legislature, at a minimum to address whether the facility will receive state funding.
Read more from this story HERE.