Obama: ‘I Don’t Want These Individuals to Die,’ Seeks Closure of Guantanamo

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Photo Credit: IndyDina with Mr. WonderfulPresident Barack Obama on Tuesday renewed his pledge to close the prison for terrorist suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, but the impediments that have thwarted him thus far remain.

At a White House news conference, Obama said he would try to persuade Congress to end restrictions that have prevented him from closing the facility. The president’s comments followed the arrival Monday of medical reinforcements at the U.S. naval prison to help deal with a hunger strike by about 100 of the 166 detainees there. The forced feeding of detainees has refocused human rights concerns on the issue.

“I don’t want these individuals to die,” Obama told reporters.

He added that the situation was “not sustainable” and that he had asked advisers to review it. He also said he would press the issue with lawmakers.

“I’m going to re-engage with Congress to try to make the case that this is not something that’s in the best interest of the American people,” he said.

Read more from this story HERE.

Obama Claims Ignorance of Admin. Pressure on Benghazi Survivors Not to Testify (+video)

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During the President’s press conference today, a Fox News reporter directly ask Obama about his knowledge of the administration’s ongoing efforts to block the testimony of Benghazi’s survivors:

“… there are people in your own State Department saying they have been blocked from coming forward, that they survived the terror attack and they want to tell their story. Will you help them come forward and say it once and for all?”

Obama responded that, although he was “not familiar with this notion that anybody has been blocked from testifying,” he would “find out what exactly you’re referring to.”

The President continued, “What I’ve been very clear about from the start is that our job, with respect to Benghazi has been to find out exactly what happened, to make sure that U.S. embassies, not just in the Middle East but around the world, are safe and secure, and to bring those who carried it out to justice. But I’ll find out, what exactly you’re referring to.”

The Fox News reporter then pointed out that the Benghazi whistle-blowers “hired an attorney because they say they’ve been blocked from coming forward.”

Obama insisted that he was “not familiar with it.”

First Brown Bear Attack of the Season

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Photo Credit: __Wichid__A brown bear attacked a well-known area biologist and birder while he was watching birds at the Kasilof River beach on Sunday afternoon with his family.

Alaska State Troopers said the bear first attacked a vehicle and a telephone pole before attacking Toby Burke, 48, a biological technician at the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge.

Burke did not do anything to provoke the bear and suffered bruising on his arm from the brief attack, said Megan Peters, Alaska State Troopers spokesperson. Emergency medical services examined Burke’s arm and said he was fine. Burke declined further medical attention, Peters said.

“The man was very lucky,” Peters said. “… He was able to walk away and go home.”

Multiple residents called troopers about the oddly behaving bear on the beach. One trooper and two Alaska Wildlife Troopers responded. Troopers shot and killed the bear after it charged them from beyond the tree line where they were patrolling and where the bear had last been seen.

Read more from this story HERE.

Coming Out Courage? NBA Star Who Admitted He Was Homosexual Lied to Girlfriend, Put Her at Risk For AIDS

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By Debbie Schlussel. What’s more “courageous”–telling the world you are gay when your NBA career is dying and you need some buzz to revive it and get picked up by a new team? Or telling your girlfriend that you are gay before you have sex with her, put her at risk for AIDS, and then ask her to marry you?

Well, Jason Collins–whom the media and the unelected conventional wisdom purveyors of the world have declared “courageous!” for telling us he has sex with men–chose not to do the latter. He repeatedly lied to, had sex with, and then asked his girlfriend, Carolyn Moos, to marry him, and she accepted. They were together for EIGHT years. EIGHT. And this fraud never once told her he’s gay.

It ain’t like we’re in the age of “The Brady Bunch,” and Robert Reed has to pretend he’s hetero, get married, and father a daughter to keep his starring role as Mike Brady. No, we’re in an age in America–and have been for at least a decade or two–in which Jason Collins could have done the right thing and not led a woman on, possibly exposing her to AIDS–because he probably went on the “down-low” and also had sex with men while he was with her. (“The down-low” is the slang term in the Black community for men who are secretly gay and have gay sex but date or marry women.)

Eight years of deception. Eight years of lying to this chick. And this is “courage”? Hilarious. Read more from this story HERE.

Football preparing the ground for first gay players

By Simon Evans. They’re big, they’re tough, and, presumably, some of them are gay, but so far not a single active NFL player has come out and said so. After NBA player Jason Collins broke that barrier this week, the National Football League is making sure it will be ready for any coming out party.

Earlier this year, at least three college football players said they had been asked about their sexual orientation during NFL recruitment interviews, sparking calls for the NFL to do more to fight discrimination.

Just hours before Collins’ coming out statement was published by Sports Illustrated on Tuesday, the NFL – America’s most popular sport, with $9 billion a year in revenue – released a ‘workplace conduct statement’ regarding sexual orientation.

“The NFL has a long history of valuing diversity and inclusion. Discrimination and harassment based on sexual orientation is not consistent with our values and is unacceptable in the National Football League,” league commissioner Roger Goodell says in the document.

League spokesman Greg Aiello told Reuters that the timing of the release was purely coincidental and that the document had been worked on for several weeks with no advance notice given to the NFL about Collins’s impending statement. Read more from this story HERE.

FDA Lowers Age for Buyers of Plan B Pill to 15

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Photo Credit: APIn a surprise twist to the decade-plus effort to ease access to morning-after pills, the government is lowering the age limit to 15 for one brand – Plan B One-Step – and will let it be sold over the counter.

Today, Plan B and its generic competition are sold behind pharmacy counters, and people must prove they’re 17 or older to buy the emergency contraception without a prescription. A federal judge had ordered an end to those sales restrictions by next Monday.

But Tuesday, the Food and Drug Administration approved a different approach: Plan B could sit on drugstore shelves next to condoms, spermicides or other women’s health products – but to make the purchase, buyers must prove they’re 15 or older at the cash register.

Manufacturer Teva Women’s Health, which had applied for the compromise path, said it planned to make the switch in a few months.

The question is whether Tuesday’s action settles the larger court fight. Earlier this month, U.S. District Judge Edward Korman of New York blasted the Obama administration for imposing the age-17 limit, saying it had let election-year politics trump science and were making it hard for women of any age to obtain emergency contraception in time for it to work.

Read more from this story HERE.

Legal Group Launches Domestic Drone Information Center

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Photo Credit: APOn Tuesday, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) announced the launch of its Domestic Drone Information Center to act as a hub for its effort to aggregate public data on unmanned aircraft systems.

The impending deadline of the Federal Aviation Administration’s integration of domestic unmanned aircraft systems — more popularly known as drones — into U.S. national airspace continues to hold the public imagination and raise questions about the technology’s privacy implications.

“Domestic drones have many potential positive applications – e.g., traffic mapping, monitoring agriculture, weather forecasting — but it is vital that their use be regulated,” reads the statement from NACDL.

Read more from this story HERE.

Changing With the Times: Paul Ryan Now Backs Gay Adoption

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Photo Credit: APGOP Rep. Paul Ryan reportedly has changed his views and now says he believes gay couples should be able to adopt children.

Asked at a town-hall-style meeting Monday in Wisconsin about the issue, Ryan said he would “vote differently these days” and still opposes gay marriage. In 1999, the congressman voted in favor of banning same-sex couples in the District of Columbia from adopting.

“I do believe that if there are children who are orphans who do not have a loving person or couple … I think if a person wants to love and raise a child, they ought to be able to do that. Period. I would vote that way,” Ryan says, according to video posted on the liberal Think Progress website.

Read more from this story HERE.

GAO now Investigating DHS Ammo Purchases (+video)

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Photo Credit: US NewsThe Government Accountability Office tells Whispers it is now investigating large ammunition purchases made by the Department of Homeland Security. Chuck Young, a spokesman for GAO, says the investigation of the purchases is “just getting underway.”

The congressional investigative agency is jumping into the fray just as legislation was introduced in both the Senate and the House to restrict the purchase of ammo by some government agencies (except the Department of Defense). The AMMO Act, introduced Friday, would prevent agencies from buying more ammunition if “stockpiles” are greater than what they were in previous administrations.

Donelle Harder, a spokeswoman for Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., who introduced the legislation in the Senate, tells Whispers the bill would also require GAO to share the findings of its report on DHS purchases with Congress.

Read more from this story HERE.

Must Watch Video: Judge Jeanine Pirro Hammers 'Terrorist Family' that Brought US Boston Bombings

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In this seven minute monologue (worth watching every minute), Fox’s Judge Jeanine Pirro lets the Chechen mother of the alleged Boston Bombers have it.

First, Judge Pirro goes through a collage of interviews with the “mother of jihadists,” showing her ranting about the U.S. and her children.

Pirro then talks about the welfare, protections of the US Constitution, and other benefits showered on the Chechen mom and her children by Americans.

She then concludes that the terrorist family should have its citizenship stripped and be subjected to military tribunals.

The final four minutes of the video is a discussion between Pirro and former CIA agent, Mike Baker.

Syria: Al-Qaeda's Battle for Control of Assad's Chemical Weapons Plant

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Photo Credit: Getty Images By Colin Freeman. Set amid the rolling plains outside Aleppo, the town of al-Safira looks just like another vicious battleground in Syria’s civil war. On one side are lightly-armed rebels, on the other are government troops, and in between is a hotly-contested no-man’s land of bombed-out homes and burned-out military vehicles.

The fight for al-Safira is no ordinary turf war, however, and the prize can be found behind the perimeter walls of the heavily-guarded military base on the edge of town. Inside what looks like a drab industrial estate is one of Syria’s main facilities for producing chemical weapons – and among its products is sarin, the lethal nerve gas that the regime is now feared to be deploying in its bid to cling to power.

Last week, Washington said for the first time that it had evidence of Sarin being used in “small” amounts during combat operations in Syria, a move that President Barack Obama has long warned is a “red line” that President Bashar al-Assad must not cross.

But as the West now ponders its response, the fear is not just that President Assad might start using his chemical arsenal in much greater quantities. Of equal concern is the prospect of it falling into even less benign hands – a risk that the stand-off at al Safira illustrates clearly.

For among the rebel lines in al-Safira flutters the black flag of the al-Nusra Brigade, the jihadist group that recently declared its allegiance to al-Qaeda. Known for their fighting prowess honed in Iraq, they are now taking the lead in nearly every frontline in the Syrian war, and earlier this month, pushed to within just over a mile of al-Safira, only to for the Syrian troops to regain the ground last week. Read more from this story HERE.

Report: The Israeli Air Force Flew Into Syria And Bombed A Chemical Weapons Plant

By Robert Johnson. The Free Syrian Army (FSA) reports that Israeli fighter jets slipped into Damascus over the weekend and bombed a chemical weapons depot outside the city.

Neither Damascus nor Jerusalem have yet confirmed the attack, according to UPI.

According to The Jewish Press (JP) “many” reports came in over the weekend confirming the mission. Sources told the JP Israeli jets arrived over Damascus early Saturday morning and circled Assad’s presidential compound before moving on to target the weapons site.

The Israeli jets reportedly received fire but returned to base unscathed.

The Lebanese Daily Star confirms heavy FSA fighting occurred near the plant, the Scientific Studies and Research Center, but troops lacked the resources to breach the heavily fortified site. Read more from this story HERE.