Alaska Makes Obama an Offer He Should, But Won’t Take

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Photo Credit: Human Events

Photo Credit: Human Events

When President Ronald Reagan recommended in 1987 that Congress should reopen a small sliver of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) in Alaska to oil and gas exploration, it started an epic battle between those who believe more U.S. energy supplies make us more energetic and those who argue that we should not use or produce any more oil. Now, in an unexpected but bold move, Alaska Governor Sean Parnell has proposed that the Department of Interior join with the State of Alaska to fund a new, updated assessment of just how much oil and gas might exist under ANWR’s frozen tundra. It is a deal Obama should take, as it could settle once and for all the issue by providing ANWR’s owners — the American public – the information they need to make a decision.

Over almost 30 years, numerous bills to open ANWR have passed either the House or the Senate, and in one case, both bodies passed the bill, only to have it be vetoed by President Clinton. President Obama has stood firmly on the side of the anti-energy environmentalists against opening ANWR – the same ones who forced him to keep studying the Keystone XL pipeline to death – and therefore no one has expected any bill that might pass the House to be given a vote in the Senate, where Majority Leader Harry Reid decides what gets on the Senate calendar after getting his marching orders from President Obama. Part of the argument over ANWR has been over how much oil and gas might exist there.

Over those same 30 years, the information President Reagan based his decision on has gotten older and less relevant, given today’s technology for finding and producing oil. In 1984 and 1985, when the winter government seismic assessment program took place, technology was limited to 2 dimensional images (2D) with very little clarity and interpretative value. The government’s estimate of 10.4 billion barrels of recoverable oil at well below today’s prices, would be worth $1 trillion or more to our economy at today’s oil prices. But the government also estimated that the total oil in ANWR was between 16 and 42 billion barrels. Any of these numbers place ANWR in the highest class of oil reserves in the world. But the story could get much, much better.

In the thirty years since those estimates, the technology in the oil and gas business has gotten spectacularly better. Computers were very limited then, but today, the likelihood of oil and gas is found using 3 dimensional (3D) and even 4 dimensional (4D) analysis which shows what might have happened to hydrocarbons underground over time. When combined with new drilling as well as interpretive computing and materials technologies which would make NASA jealous, these amazing breakthroughs are remaking the United States and North America into the energy supergiant of the world. Governor Parnell’s proposal simply asks the president to join Alaska in the search for more information for the public about what they own, using the best technologies in the world in the dead of winter on some of the most forbidding territory in the world. An area, by the way, where the indigenous Inupiat Eskimo people overwhelming support efforts to find oil and gas in their traditional lands.

The implications of such new information could be staggering. In 1995 – 10 years after the ANWR report — the government estimated that the area around the famous Bakken formation in North Dakota held 151 million barrels of recoverable oil. Their estimate today is that the area holds 7.5 billion barrels, almost 50 times as much! If new information and new technologies had the same effect in ANWR that they have had on the Bakken, that would equate to about 500 billion barrels of oil, worth $50 trillion to our economy over its development.

Read more from this story HERE.

Court Watchers: Justice Roberts, Others, Likely to Decide Homosexual Marriage Case Based Upon Public Opinion

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Photo credit: Guillaume Paumier

Photo credit: Guillaume Paumier

The dramatic shift in public opinion on same-sex marriage is likely to affect the Supreme Court’s historic rulings on the issue later this month, say legal scholars.

The justices often say they do not worry at all about politics or public opinion, and simply do what they believe the law compels them to.

But it will be hard if not impossible for them ignore the enormous transformation in opinion on same sex marriage, court watchers say, especially with two cases that offer them flexibility in how to rule.

“I have to think the justices — and especially the chief — are very cognizant of the shifting public opinion,” said Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond.

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The marriage cases present a challenge for the conservative chief justice. Roberts likely doesn’t want the court to be on the wrong side of history. He might also be able to help limit the reach of an ostensibly liberal decision, as he did last year with President Obama’s healthcare law.



Read more from this story HERE.

Cheney: Snowden a Traitor; Palin: Snowden not the Problem (+videos)

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Photo Credit: Daily Caller

Photo Credit: Daily Caller

‘Snowden is not the problem’ Palin says

By Breanna Deutsch and Sarah Harvard. Sarah Palin energized a group of social conservatives at the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s Road to Majority Conference Saturday, blasting the Obama Administration’s apparent lawlessness, calling the current state of America “Orwellian,” and urging the United States to stay out of Syria’s chaotic and brutal civil war.

In comments to the Daily Caller, the 2008 candidate for vice president also declined to join many of her fellow Republicans in condemning National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden, saying the real problem was the government’s violation of Americans’ rights…

Palin appeared confident and comfortable on stage while inveighing against the NSA tracking American citizens’ phone calls, noting that domestic spying had not prevented the Boston Marathon bombings.

“Our government spied on every one of your phone calls, but they couldn’t find two pot-smoking deadbeat Bostonians with a hotline to terrorist central in Chechnya,” said the Alaska Republican, “And it’s built an apparatus to sneak into all of the good guy’s communications, but whoopsie daisy, it missed the Fort Hood mass murder of our troops despite this Islamic terrorist declaring his ideology in numerous army counseling sessions and even on his own business cards.” Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: Daily Caller

Photo Credit: Daily Caller

Cheney calls Edward Snowden ‘traitor,’ says Rand Paul wrong about surveillance

By Katie McHugh. Former Vice President Dick Cheney declared National Security Agency whistle-blower Edward Snowden ”a traitor” and questioned whether Snowden acted alone or coordinated with the Chinese government as a spy on ‘Fox News Sunday’ this weekend. The prominent hawk also pushed back against Sen. Rand Paul’s concerns about Americans’ constitutional rights.

“I’m deeply suspicious obviously because he went to China,” Cheney told host Chris Wallace. ”That’s not a place where you ordinarily want to go if you’re interested in freedom and liberty and so forth. It raises questions whether or not he had that kind of connection before he did this.”

Cheney feared Snowden would release additional documents that could inflict harm on the U.S. while aiding China. Read more from this story HERE.

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Liberal Media (a/k/a “Establishment Media”) Continues to Hammer Snowden

In the below video, liberal Bob Schieffer on CBS’s Face the Nation strongly criticizes Snowden. Next, listen to reporter Glenn Greenwald – who broke the Snowden story – as he highlights the press’s hypocrisy on this issue.

Expert Warns Terrorists May be Setting Wildfires Across American West

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

Colorado’s Black Forest fire is barely contained at latest reports and has killed at least two people while consuming hundreds of homes and other structures and forcing the evacuation of more than 38,000 people, but a dozen other significant fires are also burning across the country, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.

Colorado has two other active fires besides the Black Forest blaze, while New Mexico has five, California and Oregon each have two, and Idaho has one. The NIFC has counted 19,472 fires through June 14, compared with 24,198 for the same Jan. 1-June 14 period in 2012.

The NIFC’s historical data shows suggests no consistent pattern of increase or decrease of during the past decade, but wildfires can be categorized in a variety of ways and some national security experts warn that terrorists associated with al Qaeda and other radical Muslim outfits view such conflagrations as tools in their war against the U.S., Israel and Europe.

Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld of the New York-based American Center for Democracy’s Economic Warfare Institute warns that last July “al-Qaeda’s English-language online magazine, Inspire, published an article called ‘It Is of Your Freedom to Ignite a Firebomb,’ which featured instructions on how to build an incendiary bomb to light forests on fire.

Read more from this story HERE.

NYU Evicts Chinese Dissident Reportedly Due to Pressure from the Communist Party of China

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

NYU brass grudgingly gave blind Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng an extra two weeks to move off campus — but warned he’ll have to find a hotel if he misses the deadline, The Post has learned.

The school this week told Chen — who came to New York last year after making a dramatic escape to the US Embassy in China — that he and his family must vacate NYU housing by July 15 “at the latest,” according to a source briefed on the situation.

NYU has prodded the human-rights hero to move quickly, according to insiders, telling Chen that another faculty member is slated to move into the Greenwich Village pad where Chen has stayed with his family for more than a year, according to a source.

“They told him, ‘The sooner, the better.’ ”

The move-out mandate comes as Chen plans a trip to Taiwan later this month, and grapples with worries that members of his family in China are being beaten and denied urgent medical care by authorities.

Read more from this story HERE.

NSA Targeted Russian Premier at London G20 Summit

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

American spies based in the UK intercepted the top-secret communications of the then Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev, during his visit to Britain for the G20 summit in London, leaked documents reveal.

The details of the intercept were set out in a briefing prepared by the National Security Agency (NSA), America’s biggest surveillance and eavesdropping organisation, and shared with high-ranking officials from Britain, Australia, Canada and New Zealand.

The document, leaked by the NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and seen by the Guardian, shows the agency believed it might have discovered “a change in the way Russian leadership signals have been normally transmitted”.

The disclosure underlines the importance of the US spy hub at RAF Menwith Hill in Harrogate, North Yorkshire, where hundreds of NSA analysts are based, working alongside liaison officers from GCHQ…

It has often been described as the biggest surveillance and interception facility in the world, and has 33 distinct white “radomes” that house satellite dishes. A US base in all but name, it has British intelligence analysts seconded to work alongside NSA colleagues, though it is unclear how the two agencies obtain and share intelligence – and under whose legal authority they are working under.

Read more from this story HERE.

House Votes to Exempt Military From D.C. Gun Laws

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Photo Credit: Washington Times

Photo Credit: Washington Times

The House of Representatives unanimously passed a resolution Friday that expresses the sense of Congress that active duty military living or stationed in the District of Columbia should have the right to carry a gun.

The measure sponsored by Rep. Phil Gingrey, Georgia Republican, was passed by voice vote as part of the National Defense Authorization Act, which authorizes the Pentagon’s budget for 2014. Mr. Gingrey has followed my series on active-duty veterans who have been thrown in jail for mere possession of unregistered guns or ammunition.

First Lieutenant Augustine Kim, Sgt. Matthew Corrigan and Spc. Adam Meckler were all arrested in D.C. in the last couple years for inadvertently violating the city’s unique laws, set in place after Heller in order to dissuade legal gun ownership.

“Our servicemen and women are highly-trained, highly-skilled, and the most professional fighting force in the world,” Gingrey said after the vote about those cases. “That this could happen to our veterans is a travesty. I will continue fighting to protect our Second Amendment rights.”

Read more from this story HERE.

FBI Director Should Hand in His Badge Now!

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Photo Credit: Getty Images

Photo Credit: Getty Images

It’s not just that government collects so much data on Americans that bothers me.

It’s what the government does and doesn’t do with the data that makes it worse.

Take, for example, the feisty interchange between Rep. Louis Gohmert, R-Texas, and FBI Director Robert Mueller last week.

Gohmert was grilling Mueller over the FBI’s abject failure at preventing the April 15 Boston Marathon bombing by neglecting to investigate their mosque, founded by Abdurahman Alamoudi, who was convicted of supporting terrorism. He also pointed out the FBI had a tip from Russia that one of the Tsarnaev brothers had been radicalized in a visit to Chechnya prior to the attack…

Mueller accused Gohmert of not having his facts straight, for which he should be cited for contempt of Congress. It is Mueller who didn’t have his facts straight – even admitting he didn’t know about who founded the mosque…

I don’t know what’s scarier – the fact that government collects information from every American surreptitiously or that it uses all the wrong criteria in figuring out who really represents a threat to the safety and security of our country and citizenry.

Read more from this story HERE.

Syrian Powder Keg Getting Ready to Blow: Iran Sends Thousands of Troops, Assad Preps to Hit Israel, and Lawmakers Call for Greater US Involvement (+video)

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Photo Credit: Fox News

Photo Credit: Fox News

By Robert Fisk. Washington’s decision to arm Syria’s Sunni Muslim rebels has plunged America into the great Sunni-Shia conflict of the Islamic Middle East, entering a struggle that now dwarfs the Arab revolutions which overthrew dictatorships across the region.

For the first time, all of America’s ‘friends’ in the region are Sunni Muslims and all of its enemies are Shiites. Breaking all President Barack Obama’s rules of disengagement, the US is now fully engaged on the side of armed groups which include the most extreme Sunni Islamist movements in the Middle East.

The Independent on Sunday has learned that a military decision has been taken in Iran – even before last week’s presidential election – to send a first contingent of 4,000 Iranian Revolutionary Guards to Syria to support President Bashar al-Assad’s forces against the largely Sunni rebellion that has cost almost 100,000 lives in just over two years. Iran is now fully committed to preserving Assad’s regime, according to pro-Iranian sources which have been deeply involved in the Islamic Republic’s security, even to the extent of proposing to open up a new ‘Syrian’ front on the Golan Heights against Israel.

In years to come, historians will ask how America – after its defeat in Iraq and its humiliating withdrawal from Afghanistan scheduled for 2014 – could have so blithely aligned itself with one side in a titanic Islamic struggle stretching back to the seventh century death of the Prophet Mohamed. The profound effects of this great schism, between Sunnis who believe that the father of Mohamed’s wife was the new caliph of the Muslim world and Shias who regard his son in law Ali as his rightful successor – a seventh century battle swamped in blood around the present-day Iraqi cities of Najaf and Kerbala – continue across the region to this day. A 17th century Archbishop of Canterbury, George Abbott, compared this Muslim conflict to that between “Papists and Protestants”.

America’s alliance now includes the wealthiest states of the Arab Gulf, the vast Sunni territories between Egypt and Morocco, as well as Turkey and the fragile British-created monarchy in Jordan. King Abdullah of Jordan – flooded, like so many neighbouring nations, by hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees – may also now find himself at the fulcrum of the Syrian battle. Up to 3,000 American ‘advisers’ are now believed to be in Jordan, and the creation of a southern Syria ‘no-fly zone’ – opposed by Syrian-controlled anti-aircraft batteries – will turn a crisis into a ‘hot’ war. So much for America’s ‘friends’. Read more from this story HERE.

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Lawmakers press Obama to implement no-fly zone over Syria

By Fox News. Capitol Hill lawmakers pressed President Obama on Sunday to go beyond supplying Syrian rebels with small arms and to consider imposing a no-fly zone over the war-torn country.

South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham said supplying rebels with automatic weapons and ammunition is not enough to stop the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad.

“We need to create a no-fly zone,” Graham told NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “We cannot take air power out of the equation.”

However, such a decision is not without peril.

Obama has not ruled out imposing a no-fly zone in Syria. Read more from this story HERE.


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Syrian forces training to storm Israel’s border

By Aaron Klein. Thousands of Syrians are currently training in Iran to serve as a force ready to storm Israel’s northern Golan Heights, according to informed Middle Eastern security officials.

The officials said between 3,000 and 5,000 Syrian men were being trained in the event Syrian President Bashar al-Assad decides to open a front against the Golan Heights, which borders Syria.

The training is being overseen by the Al Quds Force, the elite unit of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard responsible for the country’s extraterritorial operations, the sources said.

The Syrian forces are slated to return to their country next month, the sources added.

This is not the first report of Iran aiding Syria in preparations for ground attacks against Israel. Read more from this story HERE.

Fight Erupts Over Massive “Jihad” Graffiti Displayed on Florida’s I95 (+video)

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Photo Credit: YouTube

Photo Credit: YouTube

Drivers traveling along Interstate 95 in Delray Beach passed by a shocking message Saturday.

The word “Jihad” was spray painted across a wall south of the Atlantic Avenue exit along the northbound lanes of I-95.

The Muslim word means “holy war.”

Heather Smith traveled past it Saturday, and was very upset by the message. She said, ” If it’s a joke, it’s a sick joke.”

Florida Highway Patrol troopers came out Saturday evening to investigate the graffiti. They found one can of spray paint nearby that may be linked to the crime. They say they talked to nearby residents who told them they didn’t see the person or people behind the graffiti.

Read more from this story HERE.