W.H. Sends Out Rice, Who Misled on Benghazi, to Make Case for Syria (+video)

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Photo Credit: The Cable

Photo Credit: The Cable

Susan Rice famously blamed the Benghazi terror attack that took the lives of four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens, on an Internet video. She further said the terror attack occurred after a spontaneous protest over that anti-Muslim film got out of hand, instead of blaming the al Qaeda backed terrorists responsible for the murders.

“The White House has had quite enough of the controversy over ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice, the misleading talking points she used in TV interviews about the jihadist attacks in Benghazi, and the Obama administration’s contradictory narrative about those attacks,” Steve Hayes reported in December.

But today, Rice will be called upon again to make a public case for the White House ..

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Oil Shipments by Rail, Truck, and Barge Up Substantially

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Most oil and petroleum products are moved to refineries and consuming areas by pipeline, which is both the safest and most economical means of transporting them. However, due to a shortage of pipeline capacity, more and more oil and petroleum products are being moved by rail, truck, and barge. Those shipments almost doubled in 2012, and they are continuing to increase to move crude oil from the shale formations in North Dakota and Texas, and oil sands in Canada to U.S. refineries. Between 2011 and 2012, oil delivered to refineries by trucks increased 38 percent, crude moved on barges increased 53 percent and rail deliveries quadrupled. Because the nation’s pipeline infrastructure has not kept pace with growing domestic oil production, the market has had to rely increasingly on alternative transportation options.

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etween 2005 and 2010, 96 percent of crude oil was transported by pipeline and tanker ships to refineries. Inland refineries are generally reached by pipeline since pipeline transport has relatively low costs and high capacity. For imports and offshore production, tanker ships have been the primary form of transportation for crude oil. But in 2011, these two transportation forms began to decline in market share, representing 93 percent of the market in 2012.[ia]

Between 2000 and 2010, truck and rail shipments have averaged just 1 percent of total shipments to refineries because they are less cost-effective options for moving crude. But, beginning in 2011, truck and rail volumes increased, and represented 3 percent of refinery shipments in 2012. Domestic barge shipments also increased, accounting for nearly 3 percent as well.

Because of the lengthy regulatory review process for expanding existing pipelines or building new pipelines, the transportation of crude oil and petroleum products has moved to rail and truck, which provide more flexibility because they can use existing infrastructure. Unless more pipeline capacity is built to deal with the increased domestic crude production, it is likely that these transportation modes will expand.

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Syria Can Shoot Back, Mr. President

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

Syria: As a Chinese warship joins Russian ships in the Mediterranean, we should remember a cruise missile attack on an Israeli warship. President Obama should understand that Syria and Hezbollah have missiles, too.

As the Obama administration continues to deploy its comical weapons, with Secretary of State John Kerry promising America any attack on Syria will be “unbelievably small,” a Chinese warship deploys off the Syrian coast, joining its Russian counterparts in what used to be an “American lake,” the Mediterranean Sea.

The People’s Liberation Army has dispatched the amphibious dock landing ship Jinggangshan, a move that follows the announcement that Russia is sending three more ships — two destroyers and the missile cruiser Moskva — to the eastern Mediterranean to bolster forces that already include three other warships dispatched over the last two weeks.

All are a pointed reminder that we are not the only player that has pieces on the board.

Launched in 2011, the 19,000-metric-ton Jinggangshan is a 689-foot-long warship that can carry 1,000 soldiers, helicopters, armored fighting vehicles, boats and landing craft, according to a report in the China Daily.

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Fisherman Opts to Keep Massive, 231-Pound Halibut

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Photo Credit: DeepStrike Sportfishing

Photo Credit: DeepStrike Sportfishing

Dirk Whitsitt, a construction worker from Kansas, caught a fish of a lifetime only an hour into his first fishing trip in Alaska, and he wasn’t about to release the monster, not even for a $250 voucher for another day of fishing.

You can’t blame him, really. The Pacific halibut he hooked in 370 feet of water in Cook Inlet out of Homer, Alaska, and fought for 45 minutes wound up weighing a whopping 231 pounds.

Once the decision was made to keep it, the prized fish needed to be subdued, which is no easy task with a halibut this size.

“Towards the end of the fight, the fish headed back toward the bottom and we had to release the anchor to follow the fish,” Capt. David Bayes of DeepStrike Sportfishing explained in an email to GrindTV Outdoor. “We shot it three times with a .38 special and used three gaffs to pull it aboard.”

Using a gun to subdue halibut is common practice in Alaska. In fact, it is recommended on any sizable fish over 100 pounds because big halibut are nearly all muscle and can do damage to people and boats if they’re not killed before being brought on board.

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Bill Maher Confesses: ‘Selling Pot Allowed Me to Get Through College’

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Photo Credit: Mediaite

Photo Credit: Mediaite

In an infographic from this week’s edition of Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Bill Maher admits to having been a pot dealer as a means to paying for college and start up his career in comedy.

bill maher confession

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UNC Prof Ignites 4th Amendment Debate After Being Pulled Over by Fire Truck

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Photo Credit: UNC GAZETTE/IVY DAWNED

Photo Credit: UNC GAZETTE/IVY DAWNED

When a North Carolina firefighter switched on the siren atop his Chapel Hill Fire Department truck to get a driver he suspected of being impaired to pull over, he probably didn’t expect to ignite a constitutional debate.

But that’s exactly what has happened. The woman Fire Lt. Gordon Shatley pulled over on his way back from a call was Dorothy Hoogland Verkerk, a professor at the University of North Carolina and former town council member who is arguing use of the fire truck and siren – which are not authorized for law enforcement actions – gave the color of government to what might otherwise have been a lawful citizen’s arrest. And although a lower court upheld Verkerk’s arrest, an appellate court remanded the case with instructions to consider whether it was an illegal search and seizure.

The incident occurred in May, 2011, and led to Verkerk’s arrest and eventual conviction by an Orange County District Court judge for driving while intoxicated. Verkerk, who teaches art history at UNC-Chapel Hill, claimed in her appeal that Shatley violated her rights under the Fourth Amendment when he used the lights and sirens on the fire truck he was driving to pull her over. When she sped away, he called police who later caught and charged her.

Lower court Judge Elaine Bushfan denied Verkerk’s motion claiming that Shatley had conducted a citizen’s arrest, but suspended her sentence and ordered the professor to spend 30 days in jail plus 18 months’ probation, pay a $1,000 fine, and perform 72 hours of community service.

That’s when Verkerk filed with the court of appeals and the three-member panel ordered Bushfan to consider anew the legality of Shatley stopping the driver. In particular, the appellate judges said it must be determined whether or not Shatley acted as a private citizen or as a governmental officer; if Shatley did act as a government officer, whether he followed Fourth Amendment criteria and had reasonable suspicion that a crime was being committed; and finally if the stop was unconstitutional, if that tainted evidence and the subsequent police traffic stop.

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Afghan Interpreter who Saved US Soldier Gets Long-Awaited Visa

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Photo Credit: MATT ZELLER

Photo Credit: MATT ZELLER

The Afghan interpreter credited with saving an Army intelligence officer only to become a target of the Taliban, has been granted a visa and could come to the United States as soon as next month.

Janis Shinwari, whose cause was embraced by Medal of Honor winner and U.S. Marine Dakota Meyer, along with more than 100,000 people who signed a petition at Change.org, saved Army Officer Matt Zeller in a 2008 firefight with insurgents, according to Zeller. The grateful Zeller has been aggressively lobbying for a visa for Shinwari for nearly two years, since Shinwari, 35, began getting death threats. On Monday, the pair spoke by phone after learning the State Department had finally processed the paperwork.

“Janis gave me the news a short while ago via Facebook chat — and then I called him,” Zeller told FoxNews.com. “It was very emotional. I don’t think I’ve ever heard him that happy. He started telling me about how excited he is and that he expects to have flights and housing arranged by IOM (the organization that handles that aspect of it) within 30-40 days.

“We started talking about how our kids (I have a daughter about the same age as his youngest) will grow up together and be friends,” Zeller added. “I still can’t quite wrap my head around the fact that in a few weeks I’ll be able to talk to him in person.

Shinwari applied to move to the U.S. in 2011 under a special immigration program begun in 2009 for people who helped U.S. forces in Afghanistan and Iraq. The program, designated to help interpreters and other allies from the Iraq war, expires at the end of this month absent an extension. The Afghan version would go away in September 2014 without a new law.

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CBO: Obamacare Individual Mandate Delay Would Save $35 Billion

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Photo Credit: Daily Caller

Photo Credit: Daily Caller

The House bill to delay Obamacare’s individual mandate would save $35 billion dollars, according to a Congressional Budget Office analysis.

After the Obama administration revealed it would not enforce the employer mandate — a requirement that large companies provide their employees health insurance — until January 2015, the House quickly passed a measure that would not only codify that delay, but put off the individual mandate by one year as well.

The CBO found that just a one-year delay of the individual mandate would save $35 billion over ten years. But the basic cost structure of the Affordable Care Act would remain intact.

“I never thought I’d see the day when the White House, this president, came down on the side of big business, but left the American people out in the cold as far as this health care mandate is concerned,” House Majority Leader Eric Cantor said.

Cantor’s message carried over even to some in the President’s own party. The “Fairness for American Families Act” is one of many Republican-dominated efforts to delay certain aspects of Obamacare, but this time it received bipartisan support: 22 House Democrats bucked their own party and voted for the bill, which President Obama vowed to veto.

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Can Public Shaming Be Good Criminal Punishment?

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Photo Credit: BBC Screen Grab

Photo Credit: BBC Screen Grab

For a few hours every day last week, a 58-year-old man in Cleveland with a gray goatee, a ratty AC/DC T-shirt, and a backwards hat wore a sign around his neck that clearly labeled him as an idiot. “I apologize to officer Simone & all police officers for being an idiot calling 911 threatening to kill you,” it read. “I’m sorry and it will never happen again.”

The man, Richard Dameron, didn’t wear the sign by choice: It was part of his punishment—along with 180 days in jail—ordered by municipal Judge Pinkey Carr.

The practice is called public shaming, and it’s the kind of creative punishment that is being ordered by judges around the country, from court-mandated dinners at Red Lobster to wearing a chicken suit on the side of a road. And it could actually work to not only cut down on low-level crime, but to help slash ballooning state and local budgets as well.

Jessica Eaglin, the counsel for the justice program at New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice, sees public shaming as forward-looking compared with more retributive punishments. Forward-looking public shaming is more deterrence-based, says Eaglin, and can have an impact on an entire community instead of just one person. For low-level crimes in small towns, “that’s where the public shaming comes in,” Eaglin says. “It’s reflecting on your life, people are watching you, and that’s going to affect your behavior more than just paying a fine.”

Not everyone agrees. “This kind of public shaming has no record of efficacy in turning someone away from crime,” Peggy McGarry, director of the Center on Sentencing and Corrections at the Vera Institute of Justice, said in an e-mail. McGarry thinks this is especially true for small-town, low-level offenders…

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President Obama’s Over-the-Top Lobbying Push

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Photo Credit: Reuters

Photo Credit: Reuters

President Barack Obama’s putting the full powers of the presidency on display — and on the line — in a way he’s never done before.

In the past, critics have argued that Obama’s priorities, from gun control to climate change, have suffered for his unwillingness to fully engage Congress and the American public with all of the tools of his office. The standard arc: Obama makes a speech or two, sends the issue to Capitol Hill and then keeps his distance. If it passes, he takes credit. If it fails, he blames Congress.

Not this time.

The reason is simple: The path to a win in Congress, if it exists at all, is through lawmakers who now say they’re likely to vote no.

Already, the White House has ceded ground on its original use-of-force authorization language, settling for the reality that only a more narrow version could possibly pass. The White House whip count is bad enough that senior administration officials won’t share it publicly to make the case that they could win in either the Senate or the House right now.

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