IRS Approved Obama’s Brother’s “Shady” Charity in Record Time (+video)

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Photo Credit: Vimeo Lois Lerner, the senior IRS official at the center of the decision to target tea party groups for burdensome tax scrutiny, signed paperwork granting tax-exempt status to the Barack H. Obama Foundation, a shady charity headed by the president’s half-brother that operated illegally for years.

According to the organization’s filings, Lerner approved the foundation’s tax status within a month of filing, an unprecedented timeline that stands in stark contrast to conservative organizations that have been waiting for more than three years, in some cases, for approval.

Lerner also appears to have broken with the norms of tax-exemption approval by granting retroactive tax-exempt status to Malik Obama’s organization.

The National Legal and Policy Center filed an official complaint with the IRS in May 2011 asking why the foundation was being allowed to solicit tax-deductible contributions when it had not even applied for an IRS determination. In a New York Post article dated May 8, 2011, an officer of the foundation admitted, “We haven’t been able to find someone with the expertise” to apply for tax-exempt status.

Nevertheless, a month later, the Barack H. Obama Foundation had flown through the grueling application process. Lerner granted the organization a 501(c) determination and even gave it a retroactive tax exemption dating back to December 2008.

Read more from this story HERE.

Obama Supporters Suggest Holder May Need to Take a Fall to Correct Course of Presidency

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Photo Credit: Daily CallerBy Jeff Poor. President Barack Obama may need to accept the resignation of Attorney General Eric Holder as part of a plan to “get control” of the three scandals hounding the administration, historian Douglas Brinkley advised Tuesday.

Action is more important than rhetoric in times like these, Brinkley told “Hardball” host Chris Matthews on MSNBC.

“I think immediately he’s got to get control over these three issues,” Brinkley said. “I think he might have to look at accepting a resignation from Eric Holder possibly. I think in Benghazi — it’s drug on too long. Just come clean, talk straight about the talking points, what happened and move on. Look, it’s the cover-up that always gets you in problems, and you just don’t need this. It’s not been a good season for Barack Obama, and I think he has an opportunity to just — I’m sure his poll numbers are going to still stay high. People trust him. But he can’t let his integrity get dented and then do some big things. Don’t just talk about it. If you’re going to close Guantanamo, close it. If you want the Keystone pipeline to happen, then say it’s going to happen. There have been too many trial balloons.” Read more from this story HERE.

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Reid slams Obama admin: ‘I have trouble defending what the Justice Department did’

By Alex Pappas. Very rarely do you hear Harry Reid call out the Obama administration, but the Democratic Senate majority leader had tough words for both the scandal-plagued Department of Justice and the Internal Revenue Service on Tuesday.

“I have trouble defending what the Justice Department did,” Reid told reporters during his weekly press availability off the Senate floor, referencing the revelation that the DOJ had secretly obtained two months worth of telephone records of Associated Press employees in 2012.

“I really believe in the First Amendment,” Reid continued. “I think it’s one of the great things we have as a country. And I don’t know who did it or why it was done. But it’s inexcusable. And there’s no way to justify it.” Read more from this story HERE.

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By Mark Memmott. As his Justice Department faces bipartisan outrage for searching phone records of Associated Press reporters and editors, Attorney Gen. Eric Holder says he is not sure how many times such information has been seized by government investigators in the four years he’s led Justice.

During an interview with NPR’s Carrie Johnson on Tuesday, Holder was asked how often his department has obtained such records of journalists’ work.

“I’m not sure how many of those cases … I have actually signed off on,” Holder said. “I take them very seriously. I know that I have refused to sign a few [and] pushed a few back for modifications.”

On Morning Edition, Carrie added that Holder declined to say whether there will be a review of the Justice Department’s policy on searches of reporters’ records.

Tuesday, NPR and other media organizations joined in a letter sent to Holder by the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. In it, the news outlets ask that the Justice Department: — “Immediately return the telephone toll records obtained and destroy all copies, as requested by The Associated Press.” Read more from this story HERE.

Jason Chaffetz: Impeachment Not Off Table

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Photo Credit: APRep. Jason Chaffetz says he’s not taking impeachment off the table when it comes to President Obama’s handling of the attacks in Benghazi.

The Salt Lake Tribune reported Monday that the Utah Republican had called the handling of Benghazi an “impeachable offense,” and that he had vowed to keep searching for answers from the White House.

Asked Tuesday on CNN what he meant by the comments, Chaffetz said it wasn’t what he was hoping for, but that impeachment was in the “realm of possibility.”

“It’s not something I’m seeking, it’s not the endgame, it’s not what we’re playing for,” he said. “I was simply asked if it was within the realm of possibilities, and I’d say ‘yes.’”

Chaffetz said that the version of events that he had heard from witnesses on the ground versus what the White House released were “two totally different things.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Backlash Against Common Core

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Photo Credit: James SarmientoCommon Core means government agencies will gather and store all sorts of private information on every schoolchild into a longitudinal database from birth through all levels of schooling, plus giving government the right to share and exchange this nosy information with other government and private agencies, thus negating the federal law that now prohibits that. This type of surveillance and control of individuals is the mark of a totalitarian government.

Common Core reminds us of how Communist China gathered nosy information on all its schoolchildren, stored it in manila folders called dangans and then turned the file over to the kid’s employer when he left school.

The New York Times once published a picture of a giant Chinese warehouse containing hundreds of thousands of these folders. That was in the pre-Internet era when information was stored on paper; now data collection and storage are efficiently managed on computers in a greater invasion of privacy.

Common Core is encrusted with lies. It is not, as advertised, “state” written; it is a national project created in secret without any input from teachers or state legislatures. It is not “internationally benchmarked”; that never happened.

The readings assigned in the CC English standards are 50 percent “informational” texts instead of great American and English literature and classics. The result is that CC standards are very political.

Read more from this story HERE.

NAACP’s Julian Bond: It’s OK for IRS to Target ‘Racist’ Tea Party

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Photo Credit: Associated PressJulian Bond, with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said during a Tuesday interview on MSNBC that it’s only right and just that the federal government and the IRS target tea party groups.

Tea party groups are, after all, “overtly racist” and the “Taliban wing of American politics,” Mr. Bond said, Mediaite reported. The IRS ought to look over these groups’ shoulders, he said — at the same time condemning former President Bush, for what he alleged was that administration’s biased push for the IRS to investigate the NAACP.

The NAACP was investigated for improper political activities in 2004 after Mr. Bond made a speech that was highly critical of Mr. Bush, Mediaite reported. The group was later cleared of any wrongdoing. But Mr. Bond hasn’t forgotten, and said his group was “unfairly targeted,” Mediaite said.

Read more from this story HERE.

Outrage at Syrian Rebel Shown ‘Eating Soldier’s Heart’

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Photo Credit: Fox NewsThe video, which cannot be independently authenticated, seems to show [Abu Sakkar] cutting out the heart.

“I swear to God we will eat your hearts and your livers, you soldiers of Bashar the dog,” the man says, referring to President Bashar al-Assad as he stands over the soldier’s corpse…

“The desecration and mutilation of a killed person is definitely a war crime,” Peter Bouckaert, emergencies director of Human Rights Watch, told the BBC. “This one particularly disturbing because of the sectarian nature of the language used by Abu Sakkar.”

HRW said those committing war crimes on either side had to know that there was no impunity and that they would be brought to account.

The human rights group said Abu Sakkar had been filmed before, firing rockets into Shia areas of Lebanon and posing with the bodies of guerrillas from the Lebanese Hezbollah movement killed fighting alongside Syrian government forces.

Read more from this story HERE.

Rush Limbaugh Offers to Sit Down With Obama

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Photo Credit: WNDBy Joe Kovacs. In the wake of news reports that President Obama is blaming Rush Limbaugh for the political gridlock in Washington, the radio powerhouse is now offering to sit down with the commander in chief to hold face-to-face discussions.

“In the spirit of doing whatever I can to move things forward in this country,” Limbaugh said Tuesday afternoon, “I would like to make myself available to the president of the United States to sit down and talk with him at a place of his choosing and discuss the problems facing the country, and maybe working together, since I am the opposition, since I am the obstacle, since I am the reason he can’t get things done.”

“I’ll be glad to sit down with him, any time, any place that he wants. Perhaps we can hash this out and come to a … mutual understanding or agreement of how to get things off the dime and to move things forward.”

On Monday, Obama reportedly met with top-name fundraisers including entertainer Justin Timberlake and his wife, actress Jessica Biel, as well as designer Tommy Hilfiger at the Greenwich Village home of producer Harvey Weinstein.

Obama complained about the lack of progress on his agenda, specifically blaming Limbaugh. Read more from this story HERE.
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Rush Limbaugh: I live in Obama’s head

By KEVIN CIRILLI. Rush Limbaugh taunted President Barack Obama on Tuesday, saying he lives “rent free” in the president’s head less than a day after Obama criticized the conservative radio host at a fundraiser hosted by Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein.

“He simply cannot get me off his mind. I live rent free in his head. And he is using me as his convenient excuse for not being able to get anything done. He really thinks the Republicans would work with him if it weren’t for me,” the conservative radio host said on his program Tuesday, according to a show transcript.

Monday night Obama was in New York at a fundraiser that Weinstein hosted and celebrities like Justin Timberlake and Jessica Biel attended. During Obama’s remarks at the fundraiser, Obama took a jab at Limbaugh. Read more from this story HERE.

Another Obama Scandal: IRS Illegally Leaked Info About Conservative Groups to Liberal Website

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Photo Credit: Daily Caller The Internal Revenue Service gave confidential documents from conservative groups to the investigative website ProPublica, the website reports.

ProPublica says after the 2012 election it requested documents from 67 organizations, and the IRS sent them information on 31 groups. Nine of groups had not yet been approved for nonprofit status. Releasing information on unapproved applicants is against IRS rules.

“Deeming that they were newsworthy,” Propublica made six of those applications public after redacting financial information, a story on Propublica’s website said Monday.

All the groups the IRS sent information on were for conservative groups, ProPublica said. None were for liberal groups, even though ProPublica requested information on liberal and centrist groups.

“We requested applications from the IRS for all groups that didn’t report their donors for political spending to the [Federal Election Commission],” ProPublica reporter Kim Barker said in an email to Newsmax.

Read more from this story HERE.

‘Spirit of the Cold War’: Russia Says US Diplomat was Trying to Recruit for CIA (+video)

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Photo Credit: aussiegallEvoking the spy games of the Cold War, Russia said Tuesday that it had detained an American diplomat who was carrying cash, two wigs and technical equipment and was trying to recruit a Russian intelligence official to work for the CIA.

Russia ordered the expulsion of the American diplomat, whom it identified as Ryan Christopher Fogle, third secretary of the political division of the U.S. Embassy. The State Department said only that an officer at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow had been detained and released.

American officials said they did not expect a rift in U.S.-Russian relations. U.S. officials are trying to improve those relations, and to persuade Russia to help resolve a civil war in Syria.

Russia used stronger language, calling the matter provocative and in the spirit of the Cold War.

A statement by the Russian Federal Security Service, the successor agency to the Soviet-era KGB, said that Fogle was taken to the service’s headquarters and then to the U.S. embassy after his arrest Monday night.

Read more from this story HERE.

Navy Launches First Ever Drone From Carrier (+videos)

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Photo Credit: defensetech.The U.S. Navy for the first time launched a drone from an aircraft carrier in what officials hailed as a historic milestone in naval aviation.

The batwing-shaped craft, known as the X-47B Unmanned Combat Air System, or UCAS, on May 14 was catapulted 11:18 a.m. local time from the deck of the USS George H.W. Bush in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Virginia Beach, Va., according to the service.

The drone, made by Northrop Grumman Corp., was controlled by an operator aboard the ship but flew largely autonomously. After multiple approaches to the nuclear-powered carrier, it crossed the Chesapeake Bay and landed at Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Md., about an hour later. (The vehicle is set to attempt a landing aboard a carrier at sea this summer after completing a shore-based arrested landing earlier this month.)

Read more from this story HERE.