Video: Liberal Democrat Agrees that Obama’s Benghazi Talking Points Were False

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Photo Credit: YouTubeFox News Chris Wallace: I want to talk to you about a controversy, a continuing controversy, about the talking points that came out afterwards that led, some people say, to a lot of disinformation. These were the talking points the administration put out after the attack. Steve Hayes of The Weekly Standard reports that the first draft by the CIA on September 14th said this: “The crowd almost certainly was a mix of individuals from across many sectors of Libyan society. That being said, we do know that Islamic extremists with ties to al Qaeda participated in the attack.” This was the first draft of talking points from the CIA on September 14th. But after objections from State and after the White House had a meeting, you can see the talking points — and it’s a little hard to see there on the screen — there were lots of lines drawn though them. They were heavily edited. And all mention of the Islamic extremists were taken out. Congressman Lynch, weren’t the talking points the administration put out in advance of Susan Rice’s appearance on those five Sunday shows, weren’t those talking points scrubbed?

Rep. Lynch: They certainly weren’t accurate. I don’t know what the process was there. But absolutely. They were false. They were wrong. There were no protests outside the Benghazi compound there. This was a deliberate and strategic attack on the consulate there. So any statement that this was sort of like the you know the other protests in Cairo and other embassies, this was not that type of attack.

Benghazi Witness: US Military Response Could Have ‘Scared’ Off Attackers, Prevented Mortar Strike

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Photo Credit: TheBusyBrainThe U.S. military could have prevented one wave of the deadly attack on American personnel in Benghazi if fighter jets had been promptly deployed, a top diplomatic official who was in Benghazi during the Sept. 11 assault told congressional investigators.

The account, contained in a transcript obtained by Fox News, was given by Gregory Hicks during an interview last month with the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Hicks, a whistle-blower who is preparing to testify Wednesday before that committee, was deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Libya — after Ambassador Chris Stevens was killed that night, he became the highest-ranking diplomat on the ground.

Hicks, in his interview, argued that after the first wave of attacks on the U.S. consulate, the U.S. military could have prevented additional violence with a quickly scrambled flight — after the first wave, terrorists would go on to launch a pre-dawn mortar assault on the CIA annex.

“And so, in my personal opinion, a fast-mover flying over Benghazi at some point, you know, as soon as possible might very well have prevented some of the bad things that happened that night,” Hicks said, according to the transcript…

“I believe if we had been able to scramble a fighter or aircraft or two over Benghazi as quickly as possible after the attack commenced, I believe there would not have been a mortar attack on the annex in the morning because I believe the Libyans would have split,” he said. “They would have been scared to death that we would have gotten a laser on them and killed them.”

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Harry Reid Whines, “Tea Party Ted Cruz isn’t Playing by the Rules!!!”

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Photo credit: Gage SkidmoreThe Wall Street Journal Editorial Board is upset with Ted Cruz for leading a filibuster against gun control.

John McCain tweeted out the Journal’s editorial in a moment of wackiness.

Bill Richardson, the scandal plagued former Governor of New Mexico, says Ted Cruz can’t be called hispanic despite being hispanic because Ted Cruz isn’t a race baiter like Richardson.

And now Harry Reid calls Ted Cruz a schoolyard bully for Cruz objecting to Harry Reid trying to expand government in a bipartisan fashion.

Most interesting to me is this part of Harry Reid’s statement of frustration:

He pushes everybody around and is losing and instead of playing the game according to the rules, he not only takes the ball home with him, but he changes the rules that way no one wins except the bully who tries to indicate to people that he has won.

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Obama Surrenders in ObamaCare Battle

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Photo Credit: WNDBy Bob Unruh. The Obama administration has surrendered in a key fight with a Christian publisher over the abortion pill mandate in Obamacare, asking a federal court to dismiss an appeal of a ruling that prevented application of the mandate.

The move was confirmed today by the Alliance Defending Freedom, which is representing Tyndale House Publishers.

Tyndale, of Carol Stream, Ill., went to court because it objects to providing abortifacients, as Obamacare requires of every health coverage plan.

Tyndale, the world’s largest privately held Christian publisher of books, Bibles and digital media, won in a lower court, which ordered that the abortifacient requirement not be applied to the publishing company.

The Obama administration appealed the ruling, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia has dismissed the appeal at the request of the famously pro-abortion Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. Read more from this story HERE.

Obama Admin Gives Up Forcing Bible Publisher to Obey HHS Mandate

By Steven Ertelt. In a huge victory for pro-life advocates taking on the controversial HHS mandate, the Obama administration is giving up its effort to force a Bible publisher to obey it.

The mandate has generated massive opposition from pro-life groups because it forces employers, regardless of their religious or moral convictions, to provide insurance coverage for abortion-inducing drugs, sterilization, and contraception under threat of heavy penalties.

The Obama administration opposed an order a judge gave temporarily stopping enforcement, arguing that Tyndale House Publishers isn’t religious enough for an exemption from the mandate, a component of ObamaCare that forces employers, regardless of their religious or moral convictions, to provide insurance coverage for abortion-inducing drugs, sterilization, and contraception under threat of heavy penalties.

Now, at the Obama administration’s request, a federal appellate court Friday dismissed the Obama administration’s appeal of an order that stopped President Barack Obama from enforcing his abortion pill mandate against a Bible publisher. The administration’s retreat marks the first total appellate victory on a preliminary injunction in any abortion pill mandate case.

Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys representing Tyndale House Publishers say the administration is apparently nervous about trying to defend its position that a Bible publisher is not religious enough for a religious exemption to the mandate. Read more from this story HERE.

Drone Wars Hit the States

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Photo Credit: Reuters Drones could soon be entering the airspace above you — and privacy-minded state lawmakers, banding together in an unusual left-right political alliance, are in a dogfight with law enforcement groups across the country as they move to put protections in place for those on the ground.

Sen. Rand Paul, a leading critic of drones, recently helped drive them into the national debate with his 13-hour filibuster on the issue and a later comment that it would be OK if a drone were used by police in the U.S. to kill an armed robber at a liquor store. That comment infuriated some of Paul’s libertarian followers and sent the Kentucky Republican and possible 2016 candidate into full damage control mode.

While Paul brought the issue more mainstream attention, activity had already been under way in legislatures. In more than three-quarters of the states this year, legislators who fear the “surveillance state” are seeking to limit the use of the unmanned, unarmed aircraft in the name of privacy rights, clashing with police and industry organizations that argue the efforts unfairly stigmatize a still-developing, widely misunderstood and potentially useful technology that has an unfortunate link to the killing of terrorists in faraway deserts.

“We want to make sure we don’t create a system where Big Brother is always up there watching us,” Michigan state Rep. Tom McMillin, a Republican sponsoring a bill restricting drones, told POLITICO. “These can be used, but only in certain instances.”

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U.S. Directly Blames China’s Military for Cyberattacks, Espionage

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Photo Credit: Gary LerudeThe Obama administration on Monday explicitly accused China’s military of mounting attacks on American government computer systems and defense contractors, saying one motive could be to map “military capabilities that could be exploited during a crisis.”

While some recent estimates have more than 90 percent of cyberespionage in the United States originating in China, the accusations relayed in the Pentagon’s annual report to Congress on Chinese military capabilities were remarkable in their directness. Until now the administration avoided directly accusing both the Chinese government and the People’s Liberation Army of using cyberweapons against the United States in a deliberate, government-developed strategy to steal intellectual property and gain strategic advantage.

“In 2012, numerous computer systems around the world, including those owned by the U.S. government, continued to be targeted for intrusions, some of which appear to be attributable directly to the Chinese government and military,” the nearly 100-page report said.

The report, released Monday, described China’s primary goal as stealing industrial technology, but said many intrusions also seemed aimed at obtaining insights into American policy makers’ thinking. It warned that the same information-gathering could easily be used for “building a picture of U.S. network defense networks, logistics, and related military capabilities that could be exploited during a crisis.”

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NASA Chief Confident that Manned Mars Mission will Happen Soon

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Photo Credit: Reuters If the prospect of spending a thousand days up to 140 million miles away from the Earth was not enough of a deterrent, killer radiation levels and enforced radio silence would surely deter most volunteers from travelling to Mars. Nasa, however, has revealed that near-record numbers are applying for its astronaut training programme, as renewed enthusiasm for space travel is fueled by growing hopes of a manned Mars mission.

Since the successful landing of the Curiosity rover in August, the scientific community has begun to take more seriously a promise from President Obama, made in 2010, to land humans on the surface of Mars within 20 years or so. Some privately-backed rival ventures are even forecasting that they will get to Mars orbit as early as 2018; Nasa plans a deep-space practice mission, to rendezvous with a captured asteroid, by 2025.

“Interest in sending humans to Mars has never been higher,” Nasa’s chief administrator, the former astronaut Charles Bolden, told a conference in Washington on Monday. “‘We now stand on the precipice of a second opportunity to press forward with what I think is man’s destiny, and that is to go forward to another planet.”

Within the next few weeks, Nasa plans to announce which 20 trainee astronauts it has chosen from 6,300 recent candidates – its second-highest application total since the agency was established, in 1958. “These astronauts will be among the first trained specifically for long-duration space flights,” said Bolden.

Despite sweeping US budget cuts under the sequestration, Nasa still hopes for an annual budget of $17.7bn – which will be increasingly targeted on the Mars mission. The agency is seeking congressional approval to outsource to private contractors all future rocket missions to low earth orbit, so it can concentrate on deep space instead.

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China’s H7N9 Killer Bird Flu Virus Has Now Spread to Dozens, 24% Mortality Rate

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Photo Credit: anthrovikHealth officials in China reported two new H7N9 infections, both from Fujian province, and four more deaths, boosting the outbreak’s total to 130 cases, 31 of them (24%) fatal.

One of the patients is a 9-year-old boy whose infection was detected during routine flu surveillance, according to official and media reports today. He has been discharged from the hospital, according to a statement Hong Kong’s Centre for Health Protection (CHP).

The other patient is a 69-year-old man who is hospitalized, according to a separate statement yesterday from the CHP. So far none of the man’s nine close contacts have shown any symptoms.

China’s National Health and Family Commission today put the number of deaths at 31, an increase of four since the group’s last update, Xinhua, China’s state news agency, reported today. The report did not include any other details about the deaths. The report also said 42 patients have recovered from their H7N9 infections.

In other developments, China’s agriculture ministry yesterday announced five more poultry and market environmental samples that tested positive for H7N9, according to a report from the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE)…

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Cops Arrest 3 Brothers After 3 Ohio Women Missing for a Decade Found Alive

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Photo Credit: Reuters Authorities say three brothers have been arrested after three women who vanished about a decade ago in separate cases were found alive Monday in a residential area just south of downtown Cleveland, just a few miles from where they disappeared.

Police said one of the brothers, a 52-year-old, lived at the home, and the others, ages 50 and 54, lived elsewhere. Authorities released no names and gave no details about them or what charges they might face. Earlier, authorities described one of the suspects as a Hispanic male but said they planned to provide more information at a news conference Tuesday.

Cheering crowds gathered Monday night on the street near the home where police said Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight were found earlier in the day. Police said a 6-year-old also was found in the home, but the child’s identity or relationship to anyone in the home wasn’t revealed.

Police didn’t immediately provide any details of how the women were found but said they appeared to be in good health and had been taken to a hospital for evaluation, where they would be reunited with their relatives.

Cleveland’s police chief says he thinks three women were tied up in the house where they were found and had been there since they disappeared.

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Head of Air Force Sexual-Assault Prevention Busted for Allegedly Groping Woman

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Photo Credit: Arlington PDThe Air Force’s top man in charge of sexual-assault prevention was busted for allegedly groping a woman in suburban Washington D.C., police said today.

A drunken Lt. Col. Jeff Krusinski “approached a female victim in a parking lot and grabbed her breasts and buttocks,” according to a report by the Arlington County police.

The alleged groping happened in the 500 block of 23rd Street in Crystal City at 12:35 a.m. yesterday, cops said.

“The victim fought the suspect off as he attempted to touch her again and alerted police,” according to Arlington County cops.

Krusinski, 41, of Arlington, Va., was removed from his position as head of the branch’s Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office, Air Force spokeswoman Natasha Waggoner said.

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