Obama Admin. Says its Prior Investigation into Benghazi is Enough, Doesn't Need Congressional Hearings

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Photo Credit: U.S Embassy Kabul AfghanistanThe State Department on Monday defended its decision not to have lower-level employees testify before Congress about last year’s attack in Benghazi, Libya.

House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) is pushing ahead with his investigation of the terrorist assault, and has asked for legal protections for lower-level employees who might be called to testify.

The State Department pushed back on Monday and said the independent probe into the attack “should be enough” for lawmakers.

“We think that we’ve done an independent investigation, that it’s been transparent, thorough, credible, and detailed, and that we’ve shared those findings with the U.S. Congress,” State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell said. “And that should be enough.”

Ventrell said the employees who were present during the attack or were otherwise involved have already provided “extensive testimony” to the FBI and the State Department’s independent review board, which issued a scathing report last year. He said they’re back on duty and at their posts around the world.

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Ted Cruz: GOP Senators Yelled at Me “at the Top of Their Lungs” for Stopping Gun Control

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Photo Credit: Gage SkidmoreSenator Ted Cruz talks about all the “heat” that has been “internally generated in the Republican conference” due to his principled stand on a number of issues, such as gun control.

He talks about five or six lunches that he’s had with his GOP colleagues where they have pointed at Rand Paul, Mike Lee, and himself, and said, “Why did you do this? As a result of what you did, when I go home, my constituents are yelling at me that I got to stand on principle!”

Senator Cruz emphasizes that, “I’m really not making that up. I don’t even bother to argue with them, I just sorta let them yell.”

He concludes, “There are a lot of people that don’t like to be held accountable.”

Congressman: ‘Explosive’ Benghazi Hearings ‘Coming Quickly’

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Photo Credit: Washington TimesRep. Trey Gowdy, appearing on Fox News on Saturday afternoon, promised that “explosive” congressional hearings over the Sept. 11 attacks on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, are “coming quickly.”

“There are more Benghazi hearings coming; I think they’re going to be explosive,” Mr. Gowdy, a South Carolina Republican who is a member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, told Fox’s Uma Pemmaraju.

Mr. Gowdy wasn’t able to give out too many details, but he hinted that the public for the first time might hear from witnesses to the terror attack that left four Americans dead.

“I am bound by certain measures of confidentiality, but I would tell you that you are getting very warm,” Mr. Gowdy said when asked by Ms. Pemmaraju whether witnesses could be coming forward…

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Americans Fear the Federal Government More than Terrorism

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According to a pair of recent polls, for the first time since the 9/11 terrorist hijackings, Americans are more fearful their government will abuse constitutional liberties than fail to keep its citizens safe.

Even in the wake of the April 15 Boston Marathon bombing – in which a pair of Islamic radicals are accused of planting explosives that took the lives of 3 and wounded over 280 – the polls suggest Americans are hesitant to give up any further freedoms in exchange for increased “security.”

A Fox News survey polling a random national sample of 619 registered voters the day after the bombing found despite the tragic event, those interviewed responded very differently than following 9/11.

For the first time since a similar question was asked in May 2001, more Americans answered “no” to the question, “Would you be willing to give up some of your personal freedom in order to reduce the threat of terrorism?”

Of those surveyed on April 16, 2013, 45 percent answered no to the question, compared to 43 percent answering yes.

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‘Gosnell is Not Alone’: Undercover Video Reveals Gruesome Details of Late-Term Abortions at Bronx Clinic

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A pro-life organization Sunday released undercover video of a counselor at a Bronx abortion facility offering graphic details about what happens to a baby who survives an attempted late-term abortion.

In the film, created by the pro-life organization Live Action, an abortion counselor at the Dr. Emily Women’s Health Center in the Bronx explains the gruesome late-term process to an undercover Live Action investigator seeking an abortion at 23 weeks (abortion is legal in New York State until the 24th week.)

In the video the counselor describes how the “fully grown” fetus will be sucked out with a “sucking tool that they hold, and it sucks it in” and how the fetus will come out in pieces because it will “start falling apart.”

If the fetus comes out in one piece, however, they put it “in a jar — a container, with solution,” the counselor explains — adding that everything that comes out in an abortion has “to go to the lab” to be disposed of.

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Rep. Gohmert: AG Holder Has Spent More Time 'Trying to Help Terrorists than Trying to Corral Them'

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Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore[Rep. Louie] Gohmert is a member of the House Judiciary Committee and is vice chair of the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security. He is flabbergasted by the Justice Department’s decision to formally charge and read Miranda rights to Tsarnaev while he was cooperating with the FBI. Tsarnaev stopped talking as soon as his rights were read to him.

“If they never gave the Miranda warnings ever, the result would be that anything that he said after he was taken into custody might be subject to being excluded from evidence at the trial. If a prosecutor could not prove this guy guilty of numerous crimes that would put him behind bars for the rest of his life, then they’re just not competent. So the concern was not about gathering evidence to use against him after he was picked up. The concern should have been to get more information about the threat against America,” Gohmert said.

“I guess with our attorney general having spent more time before being AG trying to help terrorists than trying to corral them, the first impulse was let’s get him to stop talking because they filed charges they didn’t have to file that quickly. Somebody made sure the judge shows up with lawyers and gives him his rights and shuts him up, while he is in the process of giving invaluable information. It is unbelievable. If it’s not bad enough that they bungled getting this guy picked up and his brother picked up and questioned before they blew up people in Boston, then now to get him to shut up when he has invaluable information potentially is just really egregious,” he said.

Gohmert said Attorney General Eric Holder had to know that issuing Tsarnaev his Miranda rights at that point would only result in the defendant ending his cooperation with interrogators. He said it’s just the latest head-scratcher from Holder and the Obama administration as a whole.

“Between the Department of Justice actions that resulted in people being killed in Fast & Furious, the result of this administration’s backing al-Qaida-backed rebels to run out Ghaddafi so that then they end up killing our people there and then the people being killed in Algeria. I mean, one after another we’ve had incidents where this administration has shown incompetence. So it seems to be a real pattern,” he said.

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Report: Obama Spent Twice as Much Time on Vacation/Golf as Economy

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Photo Credit: Breitbart According to a new report by the nonpartisan Government Accountability Institute (GAI), President Barack Obama has spent over twice as many hours on vacation and golf (976 hours) as he has in economic meetings of any kind (474.4 hours)…

GAI’s findings may actually understate Obama’s recreational hours.

Last year, Obama told CBS News that playing golf is “the only time that for six hours, I’m outside.” But instead of six hours, GAI counted a round of golf as taking just four hours. Likewise, for presidential vacation hours, researchers attributed just six hours of any day of vacation to leisure activity.

“Like most people, presidents still do work while on vacation,” said GAI President Peter Schweizer. “So we really went out of our way to fairly and accurately reflect how the president spends his time.”

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Rampant American Bribery in Afghanistan: CIA Pays Bags of Cash in Failed Effort to Buy Friends

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Photo Credit: APFor more than a decade, wads of American dollars packed into suitcases, backpacks and, on occasion, plastic shopping bags have been dropped off every month or so at the offices of Afghanistan’s president — courtesy of the Central Intelligence Agency.

All told, tens of millions of dollars have flowed from the C.I.A. to the office of President Hamid Karzai, according to current and former advisers to the Afghan leader.

“We called it ‘ghost money,’ ” said Khalil Roman, who served as Mr. Karzai’s deputy chief of staff from 2002 until 2005. “It came in secret, and it left in secret.”

The C.I.A., which declined to comment for this article, has long been known to support some relatives and close aides of Mr. Karzai. But the new accounts of off-the-books cash delivered directly to his office show payments on a vaster scale, and with a far greater impact on everyday governing.

Moreover, there is little evidence that the payments bought the influence the C.I.A. sought. Instead, some American officials said, the cash has fueled corruption and empowered warlords, undermining Washington’s exit strategy from Afghanistan.

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Rep. Chaffetz: I Don’t Want Government ‘Searching my Facebook Page’

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Photo Credit: Poster Boy NYCRep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) warned that the government’s search for information online is approaching a “dangerous line” of infringing on people’s liberties.

Speaking on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Chaffetz said that there has to be a balance between liberty and security, even as the government works to hunt down potential terrorists.

“We have a very dangerous line — I don’t want my federal government going in and searching my Facebook page,” Chaffetz said.

The way the federal government tracks potential terrorism suspects has come under scrutiny in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombings, after it was revealed that the older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, was placed on a watch list.

Chaffetz raised the concerns about the government searching for information online after Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), another panelist, had discussed investigators’ data mining in the Boston case.

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Congressman: Boston Bombing Suspects Had Help

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Photo Credit: APThe chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee says evidence suggests the two brothers accused of the Boston bombings had help planning the attack — and he says he has concerns about a possible “wider conspiracy” stretching overseas.

U.S. officials investigating the bombings have told The Associated Press that so far there is no evidence of a wider plot.

But Rep. Michael T. McCaul, Texas Republican, told “Fox News Sunday” that the “level of sophistication” of the two improvised bombs made from pressure cookers that killed three and injured more than 260 “leads me to believe there was a trainer.”

He added that pressure cooker-bombs are a “signature device” used in the al Qaeda hotbeds of Pakistan and Afghanistan.

“The question is, where is that trainer or trainers? Are they overseas in the Chechen region or are they in the United States?” Mr. McCaul said. “In my conversations with the FBI, that’s the big question.”

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