Did Koran-Burning Pastor Promote Video that Incited Egyptian & Libyan Violence? (+video)

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The retired Florida pastor who attracted international attention two years ago for threatening to burn the Quran was again in the media spotlight on Wednesday for purportedly promoting a video that may have incited the violent attacks in Egypt and Libya.

But Terry Jones, 60, told reporters from his now-dismantled church here that his organization’s website was hacked and that he had not been able to post the short video mocking the Islamic prophet Muhammad.

Whether he promoted the video or not, U.S. authorities were so concerned about Jones that Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joints Chiefs of Staff, asked him not to post the controversial 14-minute video in fear it could further inflame tensions in Libya or Egypt.

Jones said he told Dempsey in a phone call Wednesday that he would “definitely consider it,” but later told reporters he would ignore the request during a lengthy interview in the building that once housed his congregation.

U.S. State Department officials believe the video, a trailer for a longer movie entitled “Innocence of Muslims,” may have contributed to the violence in Egypt and Libya, where four people, including the U.S. ambassador to Libya, were killed. But Obama administration officials also believe the attacks — which happened on the 11th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks — may have been planned.

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Another Democratic Screw-up: DNC Paid Tribute to US Navy Veterans Using Images of Russian Warships

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DNC, Democrats, Russia Warships

On the last night of the Democratic National Convention, a retired Navy four-star took the stage to pay tribute to veterans. Behind him, on a giant screen, the image of four hulking warships reinforced his patriotic message.

But there was a big mistake in the stirring backdrop: those are Russian warships.

While retired Adm. John Nathman, a former commander of Fleet Forces Command, honored vets as America’s best, the ships from the Russian Federation Navy were arrayed like sentinels on the big screen above.

These were the very Soviet-era combatants that Nathman and Cold Warriors like him had once squared off against.

“The ships are definitely Russian,” said noted naval author Norman Polmar after reviewing hi-resolution photos from the event. “There’s no question of that in my mind.”

Naval experts concluded the background was a photo composite of Russian ships that were overflown by what appear to be U.S. trainer jets. It remains unclear how or why the Democratic Party used what’s believed to be images of the Russian Black Sea Fleet at their convention.

A spokesman for the Democratic National Convention Committee was not able to immediately comment Tuesday, saying he had to track down personnel to find out what had happened.

The veteran who spotted the error and notified Navy Times said he was immediately taken aback.

“I was kind of in shock,” said Rob Barker, 38, a former electronics warfare technician who left the Navy in 2006. Having learned to visually identify foreign ships by their radars, Barker recognized the closest ship as the Kara-class cruiser Kerch.

“An immediate apology [from the committee] would be very nice,” Barker said. “Maybe acknowledge the fact that yes, they screwed up.”

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Obama Set to Meet Muslim Brotherhood While Snubbing Netanyahu

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President Obama invited Muslim Brotherhood-backed Egyptian President Mohammad Morsi to meet him in New York next week, right after publicly snubbing a request from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to meet with him and discuss the escalating crisis over a nuclear Iran. The Egyptian president’s invitation follows upon repeated protests at the U.S. embassy in Cairo.

The initial protest at the Cairo embassy began on the eleven-year anniversary of the September 11th attacks, and led to the compound’s breach. An official U.S. flag was confiscated and burned. Renewed clashes with Egyptian protesters have led to more American flag burnings and the firing of tear gas to disperse the crowd.

Oddly enough, several protesters spotted at the Cairo embassy were wearing Guy Fawkes masks, which are popular with members of anarcho-socialist movements. It should be noted that the Muslim Brotherhood is an organization that can be justifiably described as a blending of socialist and Islamist traditions.

Even though the political situation in Egypt is fluid, President Obama forgave a billion dollars owed to the U.S. by the Egyptian government and guaranteed a billion dollar infrastructure loan for the country. A recent intelligence report disclosing increasingly closer ties between Egypt and Iran is a red flag that all effective military aid to the country should undergo further State Department review.

The reaction of the Cairo embassy has been a cause for concern for the Obama administration, which has separated itself from the besieged embassy’s public relations campaign. The Cairo embassy originally condemned “the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims – as we condemn efforts to offend believers of all religions.”

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Federal Judge Strikes Down ‘Indefinite Detention’ Provision of NDAA

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An anti-terrorism law was struck down Wednesday by a federal judge who said she saw legitimate fears in claims by journalists, scholars and political activists that they could face indefinite detention for exercising First Amendment rights.

U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest in Manhattan ruled that the law, passed as part of the National Defense Authorization Act for 2012, was unconstitutional. She said the government has softened its position toward those who filed suit challenging the law, but she said the “shifting view” could not erase the threat of indefinite military detention. She urged Congress to make the law more specific or consider whether it is needed at all.

“First Amendment rights are guaranteed by the Constitution and cannot be legislated away,” Forrest wrote. “This Court rejects the Government’s suggestion that American citizens can be placed in military detention indefinitely, for acts they could not predict might subject them to detention.”

In May, the judge temporarily struck down the law subjecting to indefinite detention anyone who “substantially” or “directly” provides “support” to forces such as al-Qaida or the Taliban. She heard additional arguments last month before issuing the final ruling, likely to be appealed to the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

While calling the law “unconstitutionally overbroad,” Forrest said the government can use another law to indefinitely detain people connected to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks or others picked up on the field of battle. She said the government at some point without additional congressional authorization began interpreting its detention authority more broadly.

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Electoral College Members May Vote Against GOP Nominee

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At least three Republican electors say they may not support their party’s presidential ticket when the Electoral College meets in December to formally elect the new president, escalating tensions within the GOP and adding a fresh layer of intrigue to the final weeks of the White House race.

The electors — all are supporters of former GOP presidential candidate Ron Paul — told The Associated Press they are exploring options should Mitt Romney win their states. They expressed frustration at how Republican leaders have worked to suppress Paul’s conservative movement and his legion of loyal supporters.

“They’ve never given Ron Paul a fair shot, and I’m disgusted with that. I’d like to show them how disgusted I am,” said Melinda Wadsley, an Iowa mother of three who was selected a Republican elector earlier this year. She said she believes Paul is the better choice and noted that the Electoral College was founded with the idea that electors wouldn’t just mimic the popular vote.

The defection of multiple electors would be unprecedented in the last 116 years of U.S. politics. And it would raise the remote possibility that the country could even end up with a president and vice president from different parties.

If Romney prevailed in an extremely close presidential election, for example, defections could deprive him of the Electoral College majority needed to secure the presidency. That would throw the presidential election into the U.S. House for the first time in nearly two centuries. The Senate would elect the vice president if neither running mate got a majority of the electoral votes. If Republicans retained control of the House, and with the each state delegation getting a single vote, Romney probably would prevail. But if the Senate remained in Democratic hands, Vice President Joe Biden would be the favorite.

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Al Qaeda Releases Video of American Hostage Captured in Pakistan (+video)

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By Muhammad Lila. Al Qaeda has released a new video of American hostage Warren Weinstein delivering a personal message to Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu.

In the video, Weinstein, 71, believed to be held in the tribal regions along Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan, appears healthy and calm, speaking in a soft, controlled manner.

“Unfortunately President Obama and the American government have shown no interest in my case,” Weinstein says in the video, seated on a chair with his back slightly slouched, wearing a thin white t-shirt.

“Therefore, as a Jew, I’m appealing to you, Prime Minister Netanyahu, the head of the Jewish state of Israel, one Jew to another, to please intervene on my behalf.”

Weinstein, a former Peace Corps and USAID official, was kidnapped from his home in an upscale neighborhood in Lahore in August 2011 after gunmen tricked his security guard into letting them enter the premises. At the time, Weinstein was working as the country director for J.E. Austin Associates, a consultancy firm whose website states its goal is to “improve productivity, to enhance competitiveness, to strengthen management and strategy implementation, and to facilitate economic development.” According to the website, the company works with government and non-government organizations. Read more from this story HERE.

This ABC News Report includes segments from the Al Qaeda video:

Federal Court of Appeals: Women Have the Constitutional Right to Engage in Self-Abortion – Sort of

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The Ninth Circuit has broken new constitutional ground in its Sept. 11 decision in McCormack v. Hiedeman. According to the court, women have a constitutional right to engage in self-abortion – sort of.

Jennie McCormack, mother of three born children and pregnant with her fourth, reportedly obtained abortion pills over the Internet and self-aborted. Police found out about the abortion from a tip, came to her residence and, according to an Los Angeles Times article, “McCormack eventually took them out to her back porch, where the remains of her fetus were on the barbecue, wrapped up in a plastic bag and a cardboard box. ‘My baby is in the box,’ McCormack said.” The news account added that “[o]fficers uncovered the frozen remains of a 5-month-old fetus [that] had fully formed facial features, tiny fingernails, hair.”

McCormack was prosecuted for an illegal abortion, but a state court dismissed the charges, while leaving open the possibility of charges being refiled. McCormack then sued in federal court, challenging the Idaho law, Idaho Code § 18-606, making it a crime for a woman to submit to an illegal abortion.

The federal district court granted a preliminary injunction against the enforcement of 18-606, and the local prosecutor appealed. The Ninth Circuit issued a decision affirming in part and reversing in part.

The opinion is in some ways a goodie bag for the pro-abortion movement. Judge Pregerson, writing for the three-judge panel, goes out of his way to plug favorite arguments of the abortion apologists. For example, he declares that abortion regulations have historically been adopted to protect women, the unspoken implication being that since abortions are so safe nowadays, there is no reason to prohibit them (p. 10924-25). This account is badly incomplete, as it ignores the legitimate societal concern with protecting the unborn, a motivation that Roe v. Wade itself acknowledged,(pp. 141-142), and which the Supreme Court has repeatedly reaffirmed. Pregerson also laments the “anguish” of a woman contemplating abortion, while pointedly dismissing any notion that a woman could have mental trauma as a result of the abortion (p. 10934 & n.8). He goes on at length reciting the many reasons why abortion should be available, and the difficulty a pregnant woman may encounter in trying to abort her baby (p. 10934-36), while not breathing a word about the documented shoddy practices and deceptive tactics of abortion facilities. Pregerson rules that McCormack cannot validly challenge Idaho’s Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, which was not even in effect when McCormack self-aborted, yet he nevertheless takes gratuitous swipes at that statute (p. 10945 & n.13) and expressly notes that other persons may well challenge that law in a different case (p. 10950 n. 14).

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Iran Has Obama in a Headlock

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Photo credit: indigoprime

Iran’s Armageddon cult now has Obama at its mercy. After appeasing the sadistic regime in Tehran for almost four years Obama only has to make it through the next two months without the Middle East blowing up, and he’s set for life. This is the last electoral test of his career, and maybe also the first real election he’s ever had to endure.

Obama’s political bind puts the mullahs in charge for the next two months, rushing to an irreversible grab for nuclear weapons. Obama will not do anything to stop them, because that would mean taking a career risk. He has never taken a risk that might endanger his political career. Never.

As a result, the United States has all the capability for destroying Iranian nuclear weapons before they break out, but we won’t use our might, because Obama cares about himself more than the safety of the world. Israel is a pawn in this game, but the real stakes are the Muslim Ascendancy — world power for the rising nuclear caliphates of the Muslim Middle East: Egypt, Turkey and Iran.

Israel is the scapegoat for a rising great power struggle, in which the left has taken sides against civilization. If that seems harsh, read Paul Johnson’s life of Winston Churchill or Niall Ferguson’s fine book Civilization: The West and the Rest — and you see it happening again, right in front of our eyes. The Russians, the Muslims and the Chinese read history. Liberals don’t read history, because they prefer to live in delusion. It’s a choice.

I once played a chess game with an Israeli military guy, who only used his pawns to beat me in a dozen moves. I’m a middling chess player, and he put me in a Zugzwang, a double bind, where I could not use my strong pieces, the queen, bishops and knights. It was clever and fast. He had counted all the pawn moves and I was caught unawares. The mullahs practice chess moves on each other, with real human lives at stake. They are not “spiritual leaders” — they are medieval Popes, bloody-handed thug politicians who kill in the name of God.

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Rush Limbaugh Predicts End of GOP, Rise of 3rd Party, Destruction of US if Obama Wins (+video)

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In this excerpt from Rush’s program this week, he hammers the GOP for Romney’s failure to run a conservative campaign and predicts that if Obama is reelected, the GOP is dead, a third party will emerge, and the US will face total economic collapse within eighteen months:

Andrew Kirell also reports:

On his syndicated radio show Monday afternoon, conservative host Rush Limbaugh predicted that if President Barack Obama wins re-election, it will mean an end to the Republican Party and the triggering of economic collapse within 18 months.

“How long does this country have if Obama wins?” Limbaugh asked. “We’re headed toward an economic collapse and we are the leader of the world. And when it happens to us, there are reverberations all over the world […] How long is it going to take? I’m asking a serious question. 18 months? You throw ObamaCare onto what we know what we are going to get from Obama — more debt, more spending, the expansion of the welfare state. How long can this go on?” he continued.

He went on to refer to MSNBC host Chris Matthews saying last week that an Obama re-election would mean the end of conservatism. “Nope,” Limbaugh disagreed, “if Obama wins, it’s the end of the Republican Party.”

“There’s going to be a third party that’s going to be orientated towards conservatism — or Rand Paul thinks libertarianism,” he continued. “If Obama wins, the Republican Party will try to maneuver things so conservatives get blamed. The only problem is right now, Romney is not running a conservative campaign.”

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Laura Ingraham: “If You Can’t Beat Obama With His Record, Shutdown GOP”

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On her Monday program, conservative radio host Laura Ingraham ripped into Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s campaign for its lackluster performance, citing unfavorable polling data showing Romney trailing President Barack Obama, despite the bad economy and high unemployment numbers.

Given that the economy is bad, Ingraham argued Romney should be shoo-in and blamed the Republican Party’s leadership for that not being the case.

“If you can’t beat Barack Obama with this record, then shut down the party,” Ingraham said. “Shut it down, start new, with new people because this is a give-me election, or at least it should be. And the millions of dollars — I keep going back to the million and millions and millions of dollars that are paid to these political consultants election after election. We hire people who have lost previous campaigns, that run campaigns that have failed, who have message campaigns where the message fell flat — and they keep getting rehired. I don’t understand that. I don’t know why those are the people you hire.”

Ingraham singled out branding as one of the Romney campaign’s primary flaws.

“If I’m hiring messaging people — I’m finding out for instance who did the original GEICO gecko commercial?” she said. “Because that guy or gal who did actually knows how to brand something. So I’m going for the best branders and the people who have been successful against the Alinsky crowd in the past. That’s it. And if you’re Mitt Romney with all of your expertise and all of your knowledge about how the economy works and you’re in this — you have one shot. This is going to be the first line of your obituary. You won, or you lost. It’s all on the line for the country and it’s all on the line for you. You know saying that, ‘Well the numbers are disappointing’ — yeah the numbers are disappointing.”

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