Boston: FBI Failed to Warn, Could Have Prevented Bombings

/0 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: APBoston authorities could have prevented last month’s deadly Boston Marathon bombings if federal law enforcement agencies had adequately shared information and followed through on warnings about accused bombers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, witnesses told Congress Thursday.

“I believe that though it would not have been easy, it was possible to have prevented the terrorist attacks in Boston,” former Sen. Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., told the House Homeland Security Committee. “In a literal sense, the homeland security system we must acknowledge that we built after 9-11 to protect the American people from terrorist attacks failed to stop the Tsarnaev brothers.”

In the first congressional hearing into the April 15 bombing that killed three and injured more than 200, Lieberman and other witnesses testified about a lack of information sharing between federal agencies and between federal authorities and local police. Republicans and Democrats alike joined in the criticisms.

“We cannot ignore that once again it has taken a tragedy to reveal problems in our vast, varied and numerous federal databases,” said Rep. Bennie Thompson, of Mississippi, the committee’s top Democrat.

Witnesses told the committee that Boston authorities were never told prior to the bombing that Russia had warned the FBI about the older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the bombings’ alleged mastermind who also had posted radical jihadist videos on the internet.

Read more from this story HERE.

Dershowitz: Ted Cruz one of Harvard Law’s Smartest Students

/0 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Grae StaffordFamed Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz ranks Sen. Ted Cruz among the school’s smartest students, adding that the Canada-born Texan can run for president in 2016.

Cruz was a “terrific student,” Dershowitz told The Daily Caller. “He was always very active in class, presenting a libertarian point of view. He didn’t strike me as a social conservative, more of a libertarian.”

“He had brilliant insights and he was clearly among the top students, as revealed by his class responses,” Dershowitz added.

Dershowitz also gave a high estimate of Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren — who has decidedly different political views than Cruz.

Dershowitz says he and Cruz would often debate issues presented in Dershowitz’s criminal law class. “Cruz’s views were always thoughtful and his responses were interesting,” the law professor explained. “I obviously disagreed with them and we had good arguments in class. I would challenge him and he would come up with very good responses.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Prosecutor May Seek Death Penalty Against Alleged Cleveland Kidnapper For Murdering Unborn Children

/0 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: abbybatchelderAriel Castro, the Cleveland man police say kidnapped and held captive three women for a decade, could also face aggravated murder charges for allegedly terminating the pregnancies of his captives.

Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy J. McGinty said Thursday that based on the facts of the case, his office intends to seek charges not only for the sexual assaults endured by the victims, but also “each act of aggravated murder he committed by terminating pregnancies.”

Castro is accused of separately abducting two teenage girls and a young woman and holding them in his home for about 10 years. One of the victims, Amanda Berry, escaped with her 6-year-old daughter. Castro is set to undergo a paternity test to confirm he is the girl’s father. Another victim, Michelle Knight, alleges she became pregnant five times and that each time Castro starved her and punched her in the stomach until she miscarried, according to a police report reviewed by the Wall Street Journal.

McGinty said he may seek the death penalty against Castro.

Castro was arraigned Thursday in Cleveland Municipal Court, where the judge set bail at $8 million.

Read more from this story HERE.

Cher’s Mom Almost Aborted Her

/0 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Michael Lavine[Cher’s Mom, Georgia] Holt, born in rural Arkansas to a 13-year-old mother, first sang in Oklahoma saloons for change (“My pockets were so full of money, they almost pulled my pants off,” she says in the special).

Strikingly beautiful, Holt sought fame in Hollywood as a singer and actress and barreled through six marriages. After wedding truck driver John Sarkisian, she seriously considered abortion. They divorced soon after Cher’s birth. Struggling financially, Holt briefly placed Cher in a Catholic orphanage, where nuns urged her to give up the baby for adoption.

“I heard the abortion story when I was a teenager,” Cher says. “The orphanage story has been a touchy one for my mom her whole life, and she didn’t want to talk about it. I said, ‘Mom, why didn’t you just march in and take me?’ She said, ‘I didn’t have the power. I didn’t have any money or a job, and the church was so strong. I’d go see you every day and you’d be crying. You don’t know what it was like.’ It was harder for women then.”

Cher initially flinched at the rattle of family skeletons in Dear Mom.

“I thought, this could be tricky,” she says. “But what’s anyone going to do to me now? So I come from a poor white trash background. It doesn’t make any difference.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Jodi Arias is Guilty; So Are We

/0 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Bernard GoldbergThere are times, not many thankfully, when I get depressed, brought down by the sorry evidence that we live in a country fixated on shiny objects. This is one of those times.

A jury in Phoenix has found Jodi Arias guilty of first-degree murder. That’s not what gets me down. What I find so depressing is our collective fascination with trivia, with anything that we can follow without having to actually think.

No one ever heard of Jodi Arias until cable TV made her famous. No one ever heard of the boyfriend she killed, you know, what’s his name. The Arias murder trial tells us nothing about anything bigger than Jodi Arias. She wasn’t famous like O.J. Simpson before she was arrested. This wasn’t Bill Clinton’s impeachment trial. Those trials had implications. The Arias trial had none.

When it became known that the jury had reached a verdict, cable news went wall-to-wall with Jodi Arias. It would be 90 minutes before the verdict was announced in court, so anchors and pundits spent the time saying nothing – nothing that mattered anyway. But this is a small point. Saying nothing about Jodi Arias gets you more viewers than saying something about the national debt.

But you can’t blame cable TV news, not entirely anyway, because television is a business that gives the people what they want. And if they want Jodi, TV executives will give them Jodi for hours on end. Hell, if she had been found not guilty they might have even given her a show.

Read more from this story HERE.

In Hours, Thieves Took $45 Million in Massive, Internationally Coordinated A.T.M. Scheme

/0 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: NY TimesIt was a brazen bank heist, but a 21st-century version in which the criminals never wore ski masks, threatened a teller or set foot in a vault.

In two precision operations that involved people in more than two dozen countries acting in close coordination and with surgical precision, thieves stole $45 million from thousands of A.T.M.’s in a matter of hours.

In New York City alone, the thieves responsible for A.T.M. withdrawals struck 2,904 machines over 10 hours starting on Feb. 19, withdrawing $2.4 million.

The operation included sophisticated computer experts operating in the shadowy world of Internet hacking, manipulating financial information with the stroke of a few keys, as well as common street criminals, who used that information to loot the automated teller machines.

The first to be caught was a street crew operating in New York, their pictures captured as, prosecutors said, they traveled the city withdrawing money and stuffing backpacks with cash.

Read more from this story HERE.

Coulter: Liberal Media Lying Again About Evangelical Support for Amnesty

/0 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Daily Caller Every few months since at least 2006, The New York Times has taken time out from brow-beating Evangelicals to praise them for supporting amnesty for illegal aliens.

Most of the “Evangelicals” the Times cites are liberal frauds, far from “unlikely allies” in amnesty, as alleged. It is a specialty of the left to pose as something they’re not in order to create the impression of a zeitgeist. The only one I haven’t seen quoted yet is the ACLU’s minister, Barry Lynn.

The Times keeps touting Evangelicals for Amnesty as evidence of a “shift,” a “change of heart” and a “secret weapon.” Breaking the same news story every two months since 2006 isn’t a shift; it’s propaganda.

Any Evangelical promoting the McCain-Rubio amnesty plan has the moral framework of Planned Parenthood. Like the abortion lobby, they have boundless compassion for the people they can see, but none for those they can’t see.

One Evangelical after another told the Times that they no longer believe Americans should have control over who immigrates here on the basis of having met illegal aliens in their pews. The millions harmed by illegal immigration are left out of the equation. They don’t go to church here.

Read more from this story HERE.

Obama Admin. has been Working “for Years” to “Gut Welfare Reform”

/0 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: APThe Obama administration was planning to weaken the welfare work requirements as far back as 2009, GOP lawmakers charge.

An internal Department of Health and Human Service (HHS) memo from 2009 released Tuesday by Senate Finance Committee ranking member Orrin Hatch and House Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp explores the legal justifications to allow the HHS secretary to waive work and other requirements for the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) that were part of the 1996 welfare reform law.

Last summer the Obama administration issued an Information Memorandum allowing states apply to waive the TANF work requirement. At the time, the administration said this was due to requests from some states for more flexibility and was meant as a way to test strategies “to improve employment outcomes for needy families.”

Republicans, including then-presidential candidate Mitt Romney, charged that the action “gut” the 1996 welfare reform.

According to Hatch and Camp, the memo shows that the Obama administration was looking to find ways to get around the work requirement years in advance of receiving requests from states.

Read more from this story HERE.

Obama’s HHS Budgets $150 Million to Teach People How to Enroll in Obamacare (+video)

/0 Comments/in , /by

By Joel Gehrke. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced Thursday that HHS will spend $150 million to teach people how to enroll in the Obamacare exchanges, after a Democratic senator scolded her for running a poor “public information campaign.”

“Investing in health centers for outreach and enrollment assistance provides one more way the Obama administration is helping consumers understand their options and enroll in affordable coverage,” Sebelius said Thursday. HHS promised that the health centers would provide “unbiased information to consumers” about various provisions in the law.

Read more from this story HERE.
________________________________________________

Colorado health insurance exchange seeks another $125 million to implement Obamacare

By Greg Campbell. Conservative members of a nonprofit organization set up to run Colorado’s Affordable Care Act-mandated state health insurance exchange are reeling from sticker shock over the cost of rolling out the program.

Federal grants have already paid $61 million to set up the one-stop health insurance shop, but the board is now being asked to approve another $125 million federal grant request.

Opponents, led by board member Dr. Mike Fallon, said the request is an example of how the spending on the program can easily get out of control.

“Just because federal funds are available doesn’t mean we should ask for them,” the Denver Post quotes Fallon as saying at a meeting earlier this week.

But other board members say the money is needed to advertise what the health exchange will do, as well as hire enough insurance “navigators” to help customers deal with what is expected to be a confusing array of health plan options. Read more from this story HERE.

Education Dept. Eliminates ‘Father,’ ‘Mother’ From Student Aid Forms

/0 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: APThe U.S. Department of Education announced Thursday that beginning with the 2014-2015 federal student aid form, the Department will — for the first time — collect income “from a dependent student’s legal parents regardless of the parents’ marital status or gender, if those parents live together.”

The new FAFSA form will use terms like “Parent 1” and “Parent 2” instead of gender-specific terms like “mother” and “father.”

Read more from this story HERE.