Biden’s ‘Crass Plea’: Don’t Let Women’s Rights, ‘Collective Agenda’ Fall to Tea Party

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Photo Credit: Cliff OwenPleading for money to help his party win back the House, Vice President Joseph Biden on Friday night took direct aim at tea party conservatives, calling them the biggest impediment to progress in America.

“Everything you worked for and the progress we have made is literally in jeopardy if we lose seats in the Senate and if we don’t gain seats in the House,” Mr. Biden told the Democratic National Committee’s Women’s Leadership Forum, according to a pool reporter traveling with the vice president. “Don’t let anybody tell you we can’t win the House back … That’s the single most important thing, in my view, we can do for our collective agenda, is win back the House.”

He added that his one “crass plea” to the group is to raise more money for the upcoming 2014 congressional elections.

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Michelle Obama’s Princeton Classmate is Executive at Company that Built Obamacare Website

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Photo Credit: Daily Caller First Lady Michelle Obama’s Princeton classmate is a top executive at the company that earned the contract to build the failed Obamacare website.

Toni Townes-Whitley, Princeton class of ’85, is senior vice president at CGI Federal, which earned the no-bid contract to build the $678 million Obamacare enrollment website at Healthcare.gov. CGI Federal is the U.S. arm of a Canadian company.

Townes-Whitley and her Princeton classmate Michelle Obama are both members of the Association of Black Princeton Alumni.

Toni Townes ’85 is a onetime policy analyst with the General Accounting Office and previously served in the Peace Corps in Gabon, West Africa. Her decision to return to work, as an African-American woman, after six years of raising kids was applauded by a Princeton alumni publication in 1998.

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Man Tries Checking Rifles, Handguns and Ammo at JFK Airport- Things Didn’t Go So Well for Him

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Photo Credit: NBC New YorkPolice arrested 23-year-old Keenan Draughon at New York’s Kennedy International Airport Saturday morning after he tried to check two defaced rifles and two handguns.

Both rifles were missing their serial numbers and one had a round in the chamber. Police spokesman Joseph Pentangelo says the Tennessee man also tried to check two magazines capable of holding 15 rounds of 9-millimeter ammunition.

These magazines are illegal in New York.

Draughon was arrested trying to board a flight to Charlotte, N.C., after Port Authority of New York and New Jersey police found the weapons.

Police said the 23-year-old told a United Airlines attendant that he wanted to check two cases containing firearms for his flight to Charlotte, a spokesperson for the Queens County district attorney’s office said in a statement.

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Rubio Now Opposes Going to Conference with Senate Immigration Bill

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Photo Credit: Reuters A spokesman for Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), a member of the Senate’s “Gang of Eight,” told Breitbart News exclusively on Saturday that the House should not pass individual piecemeal immigration bills in a “ruse” to get to a conference committee that would result in a comprehensive immigration bill.

“At this point, the most realistic way to make progress on immigration would be through a series of individual bills,” Rubio spokesman Alex Conant said in an email. “Any effort to use a limited bill as a ruse to trigger a conference that would then produce a comprehensive bill would be counterproductive. Furthermore, any such effort would fail, because any single senator can and will block conference unless such conference is specifically instructed to limit the conference to only the issue dealt with in the underlying bill.”

In taking such a stance, Rubio has now publicly opposed the procedural mechanism through which House GOP leadership and Senate Democratic leadership had planned to try to slip a backdoor amnesty through Congress and save the Senate bill.

Technically speaking, the House could pass any bill or group of bills related to immigration to move to conference. Several immigration bills are ready to be taken up on the House floor, having already made it through their respective committees. If such an immigration bill, or group of bills, passes the House, the Republican leadership could take the bill or group of bills to the Senate and open a conference committee. A conference committee is a formal negotiating body where the House and the Senate will each send key negotiators, or conferees, to argue with each other about both the Senate’s Gang of Eight bill and whatever bill or bills the House brings to the table.

As Breitbart News first reported in July, conservatives have expressed worry about such a committee. Endorsing the House’s piecemeal approach is not enough to stop the Senate’s Gang of Eight bill as congressional leaders in both parties and both chambers of Congress could slip the comprehensive Senate bill past everyone through procedural trickery.

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John Kerry: Damage To U.S. Image Abroad Due To Shutdown; Fails To Mention NSA Spy Scandal (+video)

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Photo Credit: AFPJohn Kerry told a liberal think tank Thursday that the recent government shutdown has hurt America’s image abroad. He failed to mention the NSA spy scandal, which at least 21 countries have condemned.

Ironically, as reported by cnsnews.com, Kerry’s appearance at a Center for American Progress conference came on the same day that German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle summoned the U.S. ambassador to warn friendship was at stake over the alleged bugging of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cell phone.

Also on Thursday, European Union leaders meeting in Brussels discussed allegations of widespread NSA spying, and said afterwards that “a lack of trust [between the U.S. and E.U.] would prejudice the necessary cooperation in the field of intelligence gathering.”

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Protestors Swarm Capitol to Rally Against NSA’s Mass Surveillance

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Photo Credit: Daily Caller Nearly a thousand protestors, sponsored by one hundred public advocacy groups, marched on the Capitol in Washington, D.C. to rally against the National Security Agency’s mass surveillance sweeps on Saturday.

“Why are we here?” former NSA executive and whistleblower Thomas Drake asked the gathered crowd. “We’re against mass surveillance!”

Drake, who was prosecuted by the Department of Justice under the Espionage Act for leaking unclassified information to a Baltimore Sun reporter, declared that the government “tried to bankrupt me, silence me and imprison me,” and that he was fortunate not to end up in prison.

“We cannot let this happen to future whistleblowers,” he said, adding that reform efforts must include whistleblower protection and not rely on an “NSA honor system” that was dependent on the agency admitting to rights violations.

“The NSA does not have an honorable track record of telling the truth when tracking us without our consent,” he said.

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Massive Barge On San Francisco Bay Likely Secret Google Facility (+video)

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Photo Credit: CBSThe U.S. Navy had its share of secrets on Treasure Island, but few were better kept than what’s taking place on a mysterious barge just off the island.

The barge, with a four-story stack of shipping containers, is out in the open for all to see. But the project’s purpose has been kept under wraps, and virtually no one wants to talk about it for the record, from the harbor office at Clipper Cove to the Treasure Island Development Authority to the U.S. Coast Guard.

“I don’t know anything about it, honestly I don’t,” a voice on the intercom at the Clipper Cove told KPIX 5. “It’s a complete mystery to me.”

There has, of course, been speculation about the barge’s purpose, much of it centering on the belief that it’s a water-based data center for Google.

KPIX 5 has learned that Google is actually building a floating marketing center, a kind of giant Apple store, if you will — but for Google Glass, the cutting-edge wearable computer the company has under development.

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Adelson: US Should Drop Atomic Bomb on Iran (+video)

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Photo Credit: ReutersDuring a panel at Yeshiva University on Tuesday evening, Sheldon Adelson, noted businessman and owner of the newspaper Israel Hayom, suggested that the US should use nuclear weapons on Iran to impose its demands from a position of strength.

Asked by moderator Rabbi Shmuley Boteach whether the US should negotiate with Iran if it were to cease its uranium enrichment program, Adelson retorted, “What are we going to negotiate about?”

Adelson then imagined what might happen if an American official were to call up an Iranian official, say “watch this,” and subsequently drop a nuclear bomb in the middle of the Iranian desert.

“Then you say, ‘See! The next one is in the middle of Tehran. So, we mean business. You want to be wiped out? Go ahead and take a tough position and continue with your nuclear development. You want to be peaceful? Just reverse it all, and we will guarantee you that you can have a nuclear power plant for electricity purposes, energy purposes’,” Adelson said.

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Marine Who Emailed Threat Warning Now Getting Bipartisan Hill Support

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Photo Credit: BREZLER FAMILYA Marine facing military discharge for mistakenly sending a threat warning from an unclassified email account is now getting bipartisan support on Capitol Hill from members who say he used the fastest and only method available to respond.

New York Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand is among the most recent congressional lawmakers to support Maj. Jason Brezler, a Marine Corps reservist, who faces a military hearing for his actions.

Gillbrand, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, sent a letter earlier this week to a Marine general arguing Brezler was responding to an “urgent” request from fellow soldiers in Afghanistan concerned about a senior Afghan police official and that he immediately reported the potential security breach.

Brezler told his fellow Marines the official was a security risk, in part because of allegations he sexually abused minors on U.S. bases in Afghanistan.

Days later, one of the official’s assistants and purported victims opened fire and killed three U.S. Marines.

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Germany Outraged Over Bugging of Merkel’s Phone

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Photo Credit: Medienmagazin proThe United States may have bugged Angela Merkel’s phone for more than 10 years, according to a news report on Saturday that also said President Barack Obama told the German leader he would have stopped it happening had he known about it.

Germany’s outrage over reports of bugging of Merkel’s phone by the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) prompted it to summon the U.S. ambassador this week for the first time in living memory, an unprecedented post-war diplomatic rift.

Der Spiegel said Merkel’s mobile telephone had been listed by the NSA’s Special Collection Service (SCS) since 2002 — marked as “GE Chancellor Merkel” — and was still on the list weeks before Obama visited Berlin in June.

In an SCS document cited by the magazine, the agency said it had a “not legally registered spying branch” in the U.S. embassy in Berlin, the exposure of which would lead to “grave damage for the relations of the United States to another government”.

From there, NSA and CIA staff were tapping communication in the Berlin’s government district with high-tech surveillance.

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