Photo Credit: APSteady drips of information about a horrific night in Libya are fueling Republican arguments and ads designed to fire up the conservative base and undercut the Democrats’ early favorite for president in 2016.
Strategists in both parties disagree on the issue’s power to influence elections next year and beyond. But after eight months of trying, Democrats are still struggling to move past the terrorist attack on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi last Sept. 11 that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.
Democrats insist that an independent inquiry, the dismissal of several State Department officials, and nine congressional hearings leave little new to say on the matter. But Friday turned up the sort of nuggets that feed conservative activists’ belief that a major scandal may be at hand.
Newly revealed communications show that senior State Department officials pressed for changes in the talking points that U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice used a few days after the Benghazi attacks. These senior officials expressed concerns that Congress might criticize the Obama administration for ignoring warnings of a growing threat in Libya.
The White House has contended it only made stylistic changes to the intelligence agency talking points, in which Rice suggested that spontaneous protests over an anti-Islamic video set off the deadly attack. The new details suggest a greater degree of political sensitivity and involvement by the White House and State Department.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-05-12 01:05:472016-04-11 11:21:32GOP Ready to Push Benghazi Case Into 2014, Beyond
Photo Credit: European Pressphoto AgencyTwo powerful car bombs killed at least 43 people in this town near Turkey’s border with Syria on Saturday, transforming downtown office blocks into smoldering husks in one of the deadliest attacks on Turkish soil in at least a decade.
There were no immediate claims of responsibility for the attacks, which came 15 minutes and barely a mile apart. Hours later, officials with Turkey’s government, which has backed the rebels fighting President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, said they had identified the suspects in the bombing. The attackers, officials said, belonged to an organization linked to Mr. Assad’s intelligence services, though they did not name the organization or the suspects, or provide a detailed explanation of how they reached that conclusion.
Turkey’s swift accusation raised the possibility of an escalating conflict with Syria and the broadening of the war. A senior Turkish Foreign Ministry official said the government had not reached the point where it was considering a military retaliation, but added, “No crime will be left without a response.”
In blaming Mr. Assad’s government, Turkish officials seemed anxious to stave off any possible backlash against thousands of Syrian refugees in Reyhanli or its allies in the Syrian opposition for the bombing. The town is in a region of southern Turkey where some Turks have bristled at their government’s willingness to make Turkey a party to the war, putting it at risk.
After the bombings on Saturday, angry residents smashed the windows of cars from Syria, and a Turkish newspaper reported that protests against Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan later erupted in Reyhanli’s streets.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-05-12 01:03:292016-04-11 11:21:32Car Bombs Kill Dozens in Center of Turkish Town Near the Syrian Border
Photo Credit: BreitbartAn event touting itself as an evening of immigration reform discussion with a “diversity of opinion” turns out to be slanted heavily towards “comprehensive immigration reform.” The BuzzFeed Brews Special Edition: Immigration Summit, sponsored by the Charles Koch Institute, will take place Tuesday, May 14th from 6 PM – 8 PM Eastern Time. The Charles Koch Institute is an educational offshoot of the Charles Koch Foundation.
It’s an unusual pairing: BuzzFeed Editor-in-Chief Ben Smith has a reputation for liberal bias (he recently blamed “the right” for conditions of Kermit Gosnell’s abortion clinic) will be the moderator; Charles Koch, founder of the libertarian CATO Institute, is one of the people most reviled by the left.
The goal of the event is described as follows:
[W]e believe one of the best ways to turn conversations into solutions is through the challenge of assumptions and exchange of ideas. Our event on immigration aims to do just that by bringing together a diversity of opinions for a thoughtful dialogue.
At first glance, the panel appears diverse: the six invitees include a Democrat politician, a Republican politician, two members of conservative organizations, one from a liberal Hispanic/Latino organization, and one from a libertarian think tank.
Photo Credit: WNDThe California State Assembly passed a bill Thursday mandating schools permit boys to play on girls’ athletic teams and utilize the ladies’ locker room if they gender identify as girls – or vice-versa for girls identifying as boys.
The bill’s author, openly homosexual San Francisco Democrat Tom Ammiano, has been an activist for lesbian, “gay,” bisexual and transgender, or LGBT, issues for decades and reportedly became in 1975 the first San Francisco public school teacher to make his homosexuality public. Ammiano later co-founded an LGBT organization with Harvey Milk, the homosexual activist about whom Hollywood made a recent feature film and California schools celebrate an annual day of remembrance.
Ammiano told the Los Angeles Times some parents may be uncomfortable with their children sharing bathrooms with students of a different sex, but he said, “It’s also important to protect our children from prejudice.”
“There’s no trampling of other people’s rights,” he said. “There’s a recognition that other people have the same rights that you do.”
Ammiano cited the case of Eli Erlick, a high school student in Mendocino County who was born male but identifies as female. Ammiano said Erlick was prohibited from participating in girls’ gym classes while in middle school and noted that Erlick’s parents testified in favor of the bill.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-05-12 00:56:542016-04-11 11:21:33State Ordering Girls’ Locker Rooms Open to Boys
Photo Credit: Barry ChinCardinal Sean P. O’Malley, the archbishop of the Boston Archdiocese, said today he would not attend Boston College’s commencement because the scheduled speaker, Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny, supports controversial abortion-rights legislation in his country.
In a statement released this afternoon, O’Malley said the Catholic Bishops of the United States have urged Catholic institutions not to honor government officials whose views on the issue are inconsistent with the teachings of the Catholic church.
The Irish legislation would permit abortions if there is a real and substantial threat to the mother’s life, including from suicide.
“Since the university has not withdrawn the invitation and because the Taoiseach [prime minister] has not seen fit to decline, I shall not attend the graduation,’’ O’Malley said in a statement. “It is my ardent hope that Boston College will work to redress the confusion, disappointment and harm caused by not adhering to the Bishops’ directives.’’
He added, “although I shall not be present to impart the final benediction, I assure the graduates that they are in my prayers on this important day in their lives, and I pray that their studies will prepare them to be heralds of the Church’s Social Gospel and ‘men and women for others,’ especially for the most vulnerable in our midst.’’
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-05-12 00:51:202016-04-11 11:21:33Cardinal Boycotting Boston College Commencement to Protest Irish Prime Minister’s Support for Abortion
Photo Credit: APBy BYRON TAU, LAUREN FRENCH and TARINI PARTI. The Internal Revenue Service apologized Friday to conservative political groups for giving their tax documents extra scrutiny — validating the worst fears of Republican activists who have long accused the Obama administration of politicizing the process.
Roughly 75 groups were singled out using words like “tea party” or “patriot” in tax documents, Lois Lerner, who is responsible for overseeing tax-exempt groups, said on a hastily arranged conference call Friday afternoon.
The White House said Friday that the IRS inspector general is investigating the matter.
“What we know about this is of concern,” White House press secretary Jay Carney said, emphasizing that the IRS is an independent agency with only two political appointees. The agency is technically a division of the Treasury Department.
“It certainly does seem to be based on what we’ve seen to be inappropriate action that we would want to see thoroughly investigated,” Carney said. Read more from this story HERE.
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Obama’s spokesperson actually had the gall to blame the illegal targeting on a Bush IRS appointee:
GOP blitzes Obama administration after IRS admits targeting tea party groups during election
By Alexis Levinson. Republican lawmakers are calling for a full investigation into the Internal Revenue Service after a top official revealed Friday that the agency specifically flagged tea party and conservative groups for review to see if they were violating their tax-exempt status.
Several Republicans voiced suspicion last year that the IRS was unduly focused on conservative groups, after several groups reported that they had been asked to fill out extensive amounts of paper work and go to great lengths to prove they were not violating their tax-exempt status.
Earlier today, ahead of a report by the inspector general for tax administration, the IRS admitted that it had targeted conservative groups for additional reviews, with an eye toward catching violations of tax-exempt status. Groups were singled out based on keywords such as “patriot” and “tea party” in their tax-exempt status applications, according to Lois G. Lerner, the IRS’s director of tax-exempt organizations.
House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa and Rep. Jim Jordan sent a letter to the inspector general in June 2012 asking that the committee be provided with “periodic updates” on the investigation into whether the IRS was applying an inappropriate level of scrutiny to such groups.
“The Committee will aggressively follow up on the IG report and hold responsible officials accountable for this political retaliation,” reads a new statement on the oversight committee’s web site. A representative from the committee confirmed to The Daily Caller that this would include hearings, but did not give a time or schedule. Read more from this story HERE.
‘I’m not good at math’: The IRS’ public relations disaster
By Aaron Blake. About a half-hour into a conference call with reporters Friday afternoon, senior Internal Revenue Service official Lois Lerner said something she will regret.
“I’m not good at math,” she confessed as she tried to summon a statistic.
Lerner clarified that she is a lawyer and not an accountant (a fair defense) but the remark instantly blew up on Twitter — an IRS official being bad at math!? — and wound up punctuating what was a torturous response to the IRS’ admission that it inappropriately targeted tea party groups.
A skeptical press corps peppered Lerner with questions, many of which she and her staff were unable or unwilling to answer. Read more from this story HERE.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-05-11 04:23:522016-04-11 11:21:33IRS Targeted Tea Party Groups in 2012 Election, Now Apologizes (+video)
Photo Credit: Daily CallerConservative radio talker Mark Levin appears to have touched off the investigation into Internal Revenue Service targeting of conservative political groups back in March 2012.
In a letter last year on behalf of the Landmark Legal Foundation, an organization he heads, Levin requested an investigation into what he called “misconduct.”
On Friday, the Internal Revenue Service revealed that it had improperly targeted conservative groups for audits during the 2012 election. During a conference call, Lois Lerner, the IRS’s director of exempt organizations, explained that IRS staffers selected groups that included the words “tea party” or “patriot” in their applications for tax exempt status.
Levin told The Daily Caller Friday afternoon his organization had litigated similar complaints of political audits during the Clinton administration and specifically referenced the Heritage Foundation as one of the tax collector’s targets at the time.
More recently, Levin said, conservative and Tea Party groups approached him complaining of harassment by the IRS, which prompted his organization to petition Treasury Department Inspector General for Tax Administration J. Russell George.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-05-11 04:23:442016-04-11 11:21:33Mark Levin May Have Prompted IRS-Conservative Group Revelations
Photo Credit: nickstone333A mystery in Quincy continues to deepen: Who is flying around the city from dusk to dawn, for the past ten days or so?
“It’s frightening, not just weird, but frightening,” said one resident of the Wollaston section.
Every night for nearly the last two weeks, residents have spotted a low-flying aircraft doing loops over the city. WBZ has learned the FAA knows what’s going on, but the agency isn’t telling.
“I mean it is strange. I don’t know if they’re looking for somebody, I have no idea,” one resident told WBZ.
It’s not the state or local police doing the flying, and the FAA is giving out little information, even to city officials.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-05-11 04:22:082016-04-11 11:21:33Mystery Plane Flying Over Metropolitan Boston; Is it Sampling for WMD’s?
Obama celebrates Mother’s Day by promoting the federal government’s policy of providing free contraception. Here’s the tweet sent out by the White House:
Of course, no DC observers should be surprised at this. During his Mexican press conference last week, Obama made it clear that he was OK with girls as young as 15 years of age having sex and using the infamous Plan B:
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-05-11 04:18:022016-04-11 11:21:34Obama Celebrates Mother’s Day With Free Birth Control (+video)
Photo Credit: ABC NewsThe mother of Gina DeJesus, whom Ariel Castro allegedly abducted and kept as a sex slave in his Cleveland home for a decade, had a surprising answer when asked what she would say to Castro.
“I would hug him and I would say, ‘God bless you.’ I would say, ‘God bless you,’ and I’d hug him. I did not hate him. I forgave him years ago. I said it: I forgive whoever done it, just let her go,” Nancy Ruiz told “20/20” anchor David Muir in an exclusive interview Thursday.
“Because you know what?” Ruiz added. “When you start to hate a person, that eats you up. I don’t have time for that. I have to be, you know, I want to be happy, like I am now.”
Ariel Castro’s cousin, Maria Castro Montes, had a different answer when Muir asked her the same question.
“I wouldn’t be able to look at him. I couldn’t say anything to him. Why? Shame on you? How could you do this? I don’t even want to ask him those questions. I don’t even want to look at him,” Montes said in an exclusive interview Thursday.
