Documents: Hagel Staffers Met With ‘Front Group’ For Iranian Regime

/2 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: APDocuments obtained by The Daily Caller show that staffers for then-Sen. Chuck Hagel met repeatedly with a controversial pro-Iran lobby group, and some met with the organization’s president.

Hagel is President Barack Obama’s choice to be the next secretary of defense. Arizona Sen. John McCain and other Republicans have conceded that a vote — and likely confirmation — will take place during the week of Feb. 25.

Iranian state-run media have referred to the National Iranian-American Council (NIAC) since at least 2006 as “Iran’s lobby” in the U.S.

It portrays itself in the media as an independent group of Iranian expatriates. But Sam Nunberg, director of the Legal Project at the Middle East Forum project, describes the NIAC as an Iranian “front group.”

And documents released during the discovery phase of a defamation lawsuit NIAC filed against Seid Hassan Daioleslam, editor of the Iranian American Forum and one of the regime’s most public critics, include correspondence with Mohammed Javad Zaif, then Iran’s permanent representative to the United Nations.

Read more from this story HERE.

Murkowski Says She May Not Support GOP Senate Nominee in 2014

/22 Comments/in , /by

photo credit: usarmyalaskaRepublicans who don’t want to witness GOP-on-GOP primary warfare in 2014 may want to keep their eyes trained on the Lower 48. Alaska could be messy.

Joe Miller, the tea party favorite who was backed by Sarah Palin when he roiled GOP politics in the 2010 midterm elections, is seriously considering another bid at an Alaska Senate seat, a campaign that could prompt a bare-knuckled effort against a candidate pushed by the party establishment.

The 45-year-old Miller has been testing the waters in meetings with influential social conservative activists and gun-rights groups in Washington. He’s quietly met with tea party senators, such as Rand Paul of Kentucky and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, as well as former South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint, the leader of The Heritage Foundation. Miller also told Kansas Sen. Jerry Moran — the new head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee — that he was weighing a run in 2014.

The Miller situation provides an early test for Republicans in Washington, who are trying to avoid the internecine battles of the past two elections that damaged GOP chances of taking back the Senate. Karl Rove and his new spinoff group, the Conservative Victory Project, are now trying to defeat GOP candidates in Senate primaries whom they worry will lose in general election battles.

Read more from this story HERE.

8 Arrested In Murder Of Russian Councilman Found In Cement Barrel

/0 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: josef.stuefer Zooming around in a Rolls Royce and boasting of ties to Chechnya’s strongman ruler, Mikhail Pakhomov didn’t live the life of the average provincial Russian lawmaker. He didn’t die the death of one either.

Pakhomov, 37, a councilman from the industrial city of Lipetsk, 215 miles south of Moscow, was found beaten to a pulp at the bottom of a barrel of cement Monday after what investigators say was a business deal gone wrong — and a kidnapping that went even worse.

Evgeny Kharitonov, a former senior official in the Moscow regional government, was arrested at a Moscow airport Monday and charged with organizing Pakhomov’s kidnapping over an $80 million debt. A warrant was issued Tuesday for his business partner, Sergei Krasovsky. Four other men are charged with the murder-kidnapping, and another three with a related theft.

The case has gathered wide public attention. Some Russians have referred to it as a “postcard from the 1990s,” when business, political and criminal interests mixed together and often exploded into violence.

The son of a well-known Lipetsk theatrical couple, Pakhomov ran Liter, a construction and transport company. A former Lipetsk police official was quoted by local media as saying he had been arrested for robbing a shop with a well-known mafia gang in 1995 and on suspicion of kidnapping in 2010, but never charged. After a failed attempt in 2011 to win election to Russia’s parliament as a candidate of the Kremlin-backed United Russia, he became a city councilman last October.

Read more from this story HERE.

McCain Defends Immigration Plan To Angry Residents

/13 Comments/in , /by

Arizona took center stage in the national immigration debate Tuesday as Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano toured the state’s border with Mexico and Sen. John McCain defended his proposed immigration overhaul to an angry crowd in suburban Phoenix.

The presence of the top officials is the latest sign that Arizona will play a prominent role in the immigration debate as President Barack Obama looks to make it a signature issue of his second term.

Napolitano toured the border near Nogales with the highest-ranking official at U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the incoming chairman of the Senate’s homeland security committee and an Arizona congressman. Napolitano, Arizona’s former governor, said afterward that comprehensive immigration reform will strengthen the nation’s border against criminals and other threats.

Also Tuesday, McCain hosted two town hall meetings in Arizona, during which he defended his immigration plan to upset residents concerned about border security. A bipartisan group of senators — including Arizona Republicans McCain and Jeff Flake — want assurances on border security as Congress weighs what could be the biggest changes to immigration law in nearly 30 years. Arizona is the only state with both of its senators working on immigration reform in Congress, a sign of the state’s widely debated border security issues.

Immigration activists and elected officials say it’s only natural for Arizona to continue to take the forefront in the national conversation on immigration after years of internal debate on the topic.

Read more from this story HERE.

Conservatives Worry Obama Will Classify Christianity As Mental Illness

/6 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: GettyChristian conservatives are worried that President Obama wants Christianity classified as a mental illness.

Conservatives claim the Obama administration is working quietly behind the scenes to have Christianity classified as a mental illness in order to silence and take away the rights of conservative Christians, and even detain them indefinitely if necessary.

The new right-wing conspiracy theory plays on conservatives’ fear of Obama and the medical establishment, in particular, The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.

For example, conservative commentator Erik Rush suspects that President Obama is working with the American Psychiatric Association to classify Christianity as a mental illness in order to silence conservative Christians. Rush argues that the health care reform law will be the mechanism that will enable Obama to begin targeting Christians for persecution.

Read more from this story HERE.

Sandy Aid Shows, Irish Sit In The Back Of The Democrat Party Bus

/5 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Irish CentralPresident Obama cobbled together a new coalition of special interests that he was able to win a 2nd term with. Minorities, single women, gays, union members, government employees, etc., helped put him over the top.

The Irish American coalition used to have great sway in the Democrat party. But some high profile Irish Americans weren’t even invited to a traditional St Patricks special event dinner in Obamas 1st term.

If Irish Americans had clout in the Democrat Party, the Sandy devastation in the Rockaway’s would have been dealt with swiftly and surely.

Democrat luminaries were falling all over themselves for photo ops right after the storm. Wearing hard hats and making promises to the cameras, they scored big in the PR dept.

But today, months after the storm, many residents still have no homes to move into and no power for their homes, if they still have one standing.

These neighborhoods are slowly being relegated to back page status in the media and when that happens, it is as if the problem isn’t there anymore. But it is there.

Federal aid has been slow. Democrats blame the Republicans for holding up an appropriations bill. But Republicans say the reason for the delay is that the bill put forth by Harry Reid and the Democrats, was loaded with billions in pork that had nothing to do with Sandy relief.

If Democrats were serious about protecting and aiding their constituency, they wouldn’t have played political games. Evidently they felt, after the media storm died down, they could relegate Sandy to politics and special interests without fear of media or political blowback.

When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, the din from the media was ear splitting. News teams were on the ground at all times. The damaged city was kept front and center throughout the entire Bush term, as billions upon billions were poured on the city and its residents.

But this disaster in New York is different. The leader in the White house is a Democrat and so are most of those officeholders in this damaged area.

President Bush was blamed incessantly for acting slowly to respond to the disaster that hurricane Katrina caused. But the truth was ineptness by Mayor Nagin and Governor Blanco, both Democrats that caused the lack of preparedness and response to Katrina.

Mayor Nagins “chocolate city” as he referred to it, was showered with billions in federal tax dollars to show the media and the rest of America we cared.

The media microscope was kept focused on New Orleans recovery efforts and any delay in aid was headline news. Charges of racism were raised by civil rights leaders for any perceived lack of aid, real or imagined.

As a side note Mayor Nagin is facing criminal corruption charges for misappropriating federal funds destined for the repair of his city. Did you read that in the headline news?

But President Obama & Democrat leaders are held to a different standard. New York’s Rockaway’s are still a disaster area and federal feet are dragging. The quiet desperation of American citizens needing aid from their government is being ignored in the media.

Democrat Irish Americans should take note of the shabby treatment they are getting from the very politicians they help put in office. Notice what it is like to be relegated to old news by the lap dog media.

Read more from this story HERE.

Gen. John Allen To Retire, Won’t Seek NATO Post

/2 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: APGen. John Allen is retiring from the military instead of enduring what likely would have been a messy Senate confirmation process to be NATO supreme commander.

The general, who previously served as top commander in Afghanistan, was on track for the prestigious NATO post until his name surfaced in the adultery scandal that toppled former CIA chief David Petraeus.

Gen. Allen was officially cleared of misconduct by the Pentagon in January after a probe into his exchange of e-mails with a socialite in Tampa, Fla., who had clashed with Paula Broadwell, Mr. Petraeus’s biographer and mistress. But it was likely the incident would be revived in any congressional confirmation hearing.

In a statement Tuesday, President Obama said Gen. Allen cited health issues within his family in making his decision to take his name out of consideration for the role of supreme allied commander in Europe.

Read more from this story HERE.

Anti-Austerity Strike To Bring Greece To A Standstill

/1 Comment/in , /by

Photo Credit: John Kolesidis Greek workers walk off the job on Wednesday in a nationwide anti-austerity strike that will disrupt transport, shut public schools and tax offices and leave hospitals working with emergency staff.

Greece’s two biggest labor unions plan to bring much of the near-bankrupt country to a standstill during a 24-hour strike over the cuts, which they say only deepen the plight of a people struggling to get through the country’s worst peacetime downturn.

Representing about 2.5 million workers, the unions have gone on strike repeatedly since Europe’s debt crisis erupted in late 2009, testing the government’s will to implement necessary reforms in the face of growing public anger.

“The (strike) is our answer to the dead-end policies that have squeezed the life out of workers, impoverished society and plunged the economy into recession and crisis,” said the private sector union GSEE, which is organizing the walkout with its public sector sister union ADEDY.

“Our struggle will continue for as long as these policies are implemented,” it said. Prime Minister Antonis Samaras’s eight-month-old coalition government has been eager to show it will implement reforms it promised the European Union and International Monetary Fund, which have bailed Athens out twice with over 200 billion euros.

Read more from this story HERE.

Video: USDA Whistleblower Speaks Out About Controversial ‘Culteral Sensitivity Training’ Seminar

/2 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: TheBlazeTVA whistleblower from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) joined Glenn Beck on TheBlaze TV Tuesday to discuss a disturbing “Cultural Sensitivity Training” program that encouraged federal workers in attendance to chant racially-charged and controversial phrases. The training was reportedly part of “a broader effort towards cultural transformation at USDA.”

As TheBlaze previously reported, video of the sensitivity training session, conducted by the USDA, was published last week by Judicial Watch after the group was tipped by a whistleblower. Critics have accused the USDA of allowing their workers to be indoctrinated.

Beck began Tuesday’s show by recapping some of the most outrageous statements made by the seminar’s diversity awareness trainer Dr. Samuel Betances. Here’s your refresher course:

“I want you to say, America was founded by outsiders. Say that. Who are today’s insiders, who get very nervous about today’s outsiders. I want you to say, the pilgrims were illegal aliens. Say the pilgrims never gave their passports to the Indians.”

Many of the federal employees at the “diversity” sessions chanted back at him. Watch the shocking footage below:

Read more from this story HERE.

Four Missionaries Arrested in Benghazi May Face Libya Death Penalty

/4 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Ryk Neethling Four foreign missionaries were arrested in Benghazi, Libya, last week on charges of printing and distributing materials that promote Christianity. One is an American citizen.

The Associated Press, which broke the news, reports that Benghazi police claim to have “found 45,000 books in [the missionaries’] possession and that another 25,000 have already been distributed.”

“They were arrested on Tuesday at a publishing house where they were printing thousands of books that called for conversion to Christianity,” Hussein Bin Hmeid, spokesman for Libya’s Preventative Security, told Reuters. “Proselytizing is forbidden in Libya. We are a 100 percent Muslim country and this kind of action affects our national security.”

Read more from this story HERE.