Obama Admin Releases Another Gitmo Detainee Originally Deemed 'Too Dangerous to Release'

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Photo Credit: TownHall

Photo Credit: TownHall

By Leah Barkoukis.

The Obama administration released one of Guantanamo Bay’s longest-serving prisoners on Wednesday. Fawzi al-Odah, who had previously been classified as too dangerous to release, was sent back to Kuwait on the condition that he would serve one year in a militant-rehabilitation center.

In July, the board determined that al-Odah had most likely undergone terrorist training in Afghanistan and may have fought alongside the al-Qaida or the Taliban. The board, however, decided he had only a low level of training, did not have a leadership position in either group and could be released under certain conditions. The board has cleared a handful other detainees but they have not yet been released.

His father, Khalid al-Odah, said in several interviews with The Associated Press over the years that his son was only a teacher in Afghanistan who had been wrongly turned over to the U.S. authorities in exchange for a bounty. […]

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200px-Fouzi_Khalid_Abdullah_al_Awda-300x180Obama continues back-door action with release of suspected terrorist

By Allen West.

Yesterday I watched President Barack Hussein Obama give his one-and-half hour post-election press conference. If I were his advisor, I probably would have recommended against it.

It was a rambling sort of event with no real direction and included countless false statements – such as regarding immigration reform. He said it was a goal of his first term, but Republicans kept him from achieving it. But in the first two years of his first term, President Obama had a filibuster proof majority — which he used to ram through legislation like Obamacare and Dodd-Frank. He could have done the same with immigration reform.

I must admit, there was a part of me who felt bad for Obama — as someone who seems unable to accept responsibility for anything. I even went back and watched Bill Clinton after the 1994 midterm debacle he suffered and even he took immediate responsibility as the president. I’m trying to understand what Obama meant when he said, “The two-thirds of you who did not vote, I hear your voice as well.” I guess Obama wasn’t pleased that droves didn’t come out in support of his fundamental transformation of America.

The problem that President Obama fails to understand is that he is seen as just another politician — no different from any other. Also, it’s amazing that he continues to speak of Washington DC as if it’s an entity completely detached from his existence.

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Border Stat Posted, and Then Removed

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Photo Credit: ERIC GAY / AP

Photo Credit: ERIC GAY / AP

Most of the people the Border Patrol stopped from sneaking into the country last year were from countries other than Mexico, according to agency statistics, a shift that might have provided fodder for politicians leading up to Tuesday’s election.

But they didn’t get much of a chance. The Border Patrol’s annual statistics were posted on the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Web site for about five hours on Oct. 10, then taken down.

Now some are questioning whether that decision was an example of the Obama administration playing politics with public information.

Even before Tuesday, the administration said it was waiting until after the elections to deal with immigration reform so that any losses would not be blamed on the Democrats’ proposal. For some, removing the apprehension statistics — which both parties could use to criticize U.S. immigration laws — was a political move.

“It worries me that they may have been taken down for purely political reasons,” said Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah). “If the information is ready, it should be made available.”

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IRS Admits it Has Not Looked for Lerner’s Missing Emails on IRS Computer Servers

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Photo Credit: AP / Carolyn Kaster

Photo Credit: AP / Carolyn Kaster

Internal Revenue Service (IRS) attorneys have admitted in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia that the IRS failed to search any of its standard computer systems for Lois Lerner’s missing emails, according to the government watchdog group Judicial Watch.

Lerner was the director of the Exempt Organizations Unit at the IRS, responsible for reviewing the tax exemption applications of Tea Party and conservative groups. Many of those applications were delayed for years, allegedly in an effort to prevent those groups from participating fully in the 2010 and 2012 elections. Documents, including emails, have been sought by congressional investigators since May 2013.

In June 2014, the IRS disclosed to Congress that Lerner’s computer had apparently crashed and her emails from January 2009 to April 2011 were lost. Then in August, a Justice Department attorney admitted that the federal government maintains a back-up system for all computer records and the emails potentially could be recovered.

The latest revelations about the IRS not even looking for Lerner’s emails on IRS computer systems came about because of Judicial Watch’s lawsuit to force testimony and document production from the agency regarding the “lost and/or destroyed” records on the targeting of Tea Party groups.

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Michael Brown's Mother Named As Robbery Attacker

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Photo Credit: Smoking Gun

Photo Credit: Smoking Gun

A police report detailing a fight last month between members of Michael Brown’s family over the sale of commemorative t-shirts identifies the late teenager’s mother as one of the “attackers” who beat and robbed vendors selling the merchandise from a tent in a Ferguson, Missouri parking lot.

A copy of the Ferguson Police Department report was provided yesterday by city attorney Stephanie Karr. When TSG requested the document two weeks ago, Karr noted that Brown’s mother, Lesley McSpadden, was “described in the report” and had “specifically requested that the report be withheld from the media.”

Karr added, “Knowing this, do you still want a copy of the report?”

The violent October 18 ransacking–which police have classified as felony armed robbery–remains under active investigation, said Karr. “No charges have been filed yet and no decision about charges will be made until the investigation is concluded,” the lawyer told TSG yesterday.

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Naval Special Warfare Leadership Responds to ‘The Shooter’ and Mark Owen

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SEAL-nsw-warcom-losey-brianThe senior leadership of the Navy’s SEAL community—the commander and force master chief of Naval Special Warfare Command (NSWC)—have officially, and preemptively, responded to the upcoming Fox News appearance on November 11 and 12 of a former SEAL Team Six member, labeled in an Esquire Magazine article as ‘The Shooter,’ who appeared in the press claiming to have been the operator who shot Usama Bin Ladin in the 2011 raid that killed the Al-Qaeda leader.

In a letter signed by both the senior commander and enlisted man of Naval Special Warfare Command, the SEAL leadership emphasized that the majority of SEALs spend each day living up to the label “quiet professionals.” Unspoken is the implication that the former SEAL, who is in fact, former Red Squadron SEAL Robert O’Neill, is seeking notoriety for his own story.

The two SEAL leaders go on to point out that members of the Naval Special Warfare community not only serve alongside other U.S. military members, but also other U.S. government agencies and foreign allies. “Little individual credit” is ever given, according to the letter, due to the “nature of our profession.” The two also point out the years of hard work that go into operations like the one that targeted Bin Ladin, seemingly defying one or two individual shooters’ claims on the glory and fame that result from the success of such a mission.

The point they make is that it took so much more than the final trigger pull to kill Bin Ladin, so why should one SEAL assume the moniker, “The One Who Killed bin Ladin?”

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DHS: Hackers Infected Nation's Infrastructure With Malware, "Poised to Cause Economic Catastrophe"

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Photo Credit: WND

Photo Credit: WND

A destructive “Trojan Horse” malware program has penetrated the software that runs much of the nation’s critical infrastructure and is poised to cause an economic catastrophe, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

National Security sources told ABC News there is evidence that the malware was inserted by hackers believed to be sponsored by the Russian government, and is a very serious threat.

The hacked software is used to control complex industrial operations like oil and gas pipelines, power transmission grids, water distribution and filtration systems, wind turbines and even some nuclear plants. Shutting down or damaging any of these vital public utilities could severely impact hundreds of thousands of Americans.

DHS said in a bulletin that the hacking campaign has been ongoing since 2011, but no attempt has been made to activate the malware to “damage, modify, or otherwise disrupt” the industrial control process. So while U.S. officials recently became aware the penetration, they don’t know where or when it may be unleashed.

DHS sources told ABC News they think this is no random attack and they fear that the Russians have torn a page from the old, Cold War playbook, and have placed the malware in key U.S. systems as a threat, and/or as a deterrent to a U.S. cyber-attack on Russian systems – mutually assured destruction.

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Marriage Wins Big in Election 2014

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Photo Credit: Brian Hawkins Photography / Creative Commons

Photo Credit: Brian Hawkins Photography / Creative Commons

It was a great night for supporters of marriage Tuesday as support for traditional marriage was a key issue in numerous races across the country. The National Organization for Marriage Victory Fund was active in many of these races and our efforts have been rewarded. This success has strong implications for future electoral contests, including the 2016 presidential race.

Our two most prominent efforts to influence Senate contests were in North Carolina and Arkansas. The NOM Victory Fund spent over $200,000 in these races on television ads, direct mail and grassroots outreach to mobilize marriage supporters.

When our TV ad and mailer hit in North Carolina, Thom Tillis trailed Kay Hagan by 2-3 points. Within days, we helped bring the race into a tie, and then working along with NC Values Coalition (which co-sponsored the ads and with whom we worked to pass the state’s marriage amendment in 2012) we helped mobilize grassroots marriage supporters to get to the polls. In what many consider the biggest upset of the night, Thom Tillis defeated Kay Hagan by two points, and marriage helped make the difference.

Arkansas was also a race where marriage made a difference. When our TV ad began airing, marriage champion Tom Cotton led incumbent Mark Pryor by 7 points. Cotton ended up winning by seventeen points! Clearly, our advertising and grassroots efforts in that state helped to boost his margin of victory.

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Arizona Voters Approve Proposition to Reject Federal Acts

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11042014_election-arizona-122[Tuesday], voters in Arizona approved a ballot measure that follows James Madison’s advice to stop federal overreach. With 80% reporting, the tally held steady and increasing at 51-49%.

Approved was Proposition 122, a state constitutional amendment that enshrines the anti-commandeering doctrine in the state constitution. The language amends the state constitution to give Arizona the ability to “exercise its sovereign authority to restrict the actions of its personnel and the use of its financial resources to purposes that are consistent with the Constitution.”

This language is consistent with the advice of James Madison, who wrote in Federalist #46:

Should an unwarrantable measure of the federal government be unpopular in particular States, which would seldom fail to be the case, or even a warrantable measure be so, which may sometimes be the case, the means of opposition to it are powerful and at hand. The disquietude of the people; their repugnance and, perhaps, refusal to co-operate with the officers of the Union; the frowns of the executive magistracy of the State; the embarrassments created by legislative devices, which would often be added on such occasions, would oppose, in any State, difficulties not to be despised; would form, in a large State, very serious impediments; and where the sentiments of several adjoining States happened to be in unison, would present obstructions which the federal government would hardly be willing to encounter. [emphasis added]

The amendment language mirrors the well-established legal doctrine of anti-commandeering. The Supreme Court has consistently held that the federal government cannot force states to help implement or enforce and federal act or program.It rests primarily on four SCOTUS cases – Prigg v. Pennsylvania (1842), New York v. US (1992), Printz v. US (1997) and National Federation of Businesses v. Sebelius (2012).

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Military Service Members Complain About Sex Survey

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Photo Credit: AP / Manuel Balce Ceneta

Photo Credit: AP / Manuel Balce Ceneta

Shocked and offended by explicit questions, some in the U.S. military are complaining about a sexual-assault survey that hundreds of thousands have been asked to complete.

The survey is conducted every two years. But this year’s version, developed by the Rand Corp., is unusually detailed, including graphically personal questions on sexual acts.

Some military members told The Associated Press that they were surprised and upset by the questions; some even said they felt re-victimized by the blunt language. None would speak publicly by name.

Pentagon officials confirmed receiving complaints that the questions were “intrusive” and “invasive.”

The Defense Department said it made the survey much more explicit and detailed this year in order to get more accurate results as the military struggles to reduce sexual assaults while also encouraging victims to come forward to get help.

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Number of People Under "Active Monitoring" for Ebola in NYC Triples

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Photo Credit: NBC New York

Photo Credit: NBC New York

The number of people under “active monitoring” for Ebola symptoms has increased from 117 on Monday to 357 people Wednesday, health officials said.

The vast majority of those being monitored arrived in New York City within the past 21 days from the three Ebola-affected countries, the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation said in a statement.

Others being monitored are the staff caring for Dr. Craig Spencer, the physician being treated for Ebola at Bellevue Hospital, the lab workers who conducted his blood tests and the FDNY EMTs who transported the doctor.
All of those being monitored showed no symptoms but are being checked on out of “an abundance of caution,” the statement said.

One of the people under quarantine for coming into contact with Spencer will now be also subject to active monitoring because “the individual poses no public threat and is showing no symptoms,” health officials said. The person’s movements will not be restricted, but the person will be assessed twice a day by city health workers.

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