‘That’s Creepy’: Mayor Says LAPD Drones Won’t Be ‘Flying Over The City

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Photo Credit: KNXTwo unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) acquired by the LAPD will remain grounded until lawmakers can establish specific policies governing their use, Mayor Eric Garcetti said Tuesday.

During Wednesday’s “Ask The Mayor” call-in segment on KNX 1070 NEWSRADIO, Garcetti said that UAVs – or drones – could be used in hostage standoffs and other similar law enforcement situations, but that their operation should be strictly limited.

“I’ve asked them to be grounded until we have a policy, until we have community input,” Garcetti said. “I don’t want these things up in the air until we know for sure they’re not going to be used against innocent folks.”

The LAPD obtained the drones from the Seattle Police Department in May at no cost to the city after their use was vetoed by former Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn, according to officials.

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Full Crisis Mode: Obama Administration Now Saying the Bergdahl Deal Was Chuck Hagel’s Call

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Photo Credit: AP / Pablo Martinez Monsivais, PoolWhite House officials on Monday attempted to distance President Obama from the decision to exchange five Taliban officers for Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl by claiming that it was Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel’s call, a likely response to recent polls indicating that most Americans disapprove of the deal.

Members of the House of Representatives, who are still furious that the Obama administration failed to give them 30-day notice of the prisoner swap, were told during a closed-door briefing on Monday that the entire exchange hinged on Hagel’s approval.

Following the conclusion of the private meeting, Rep. Buck McKeon, R-Calif., the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, recounted what he learned.

“Now wait a minute, are you saying it was Secretary Hagel that made this decision, or was this the president of the United States?” McKeon told reporters. “It was the president of the United States that came out with the Bergdahls and took all the credit. And now that there’s been a little pushback, he’s moving away from it?”

Indeed, as noted by the Weekly Standard, there’s a major flaw in the White House’s attempt to pin the deal on the defense secretary: Hagel already said during a June 1 interview on “Meet the Press” that the final decision to trade five Taliban officers for Bergdahl came from Obama.

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Fact Check: Hillary Came Up with Benghazi Video Explanation

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Photo Credit: APBy Catherine Herridge.

Hillary Clinton’s newly released memoir leaves little doubt she was the first member of the Obama administration to publicly link an anti-Islam video to the 2012 Benghazi terror attack – though she does not explain what intelligence she relied on to make the faulty connection.

The former secretary of State and potential Democratic presidential candidate discussed the Benghazi attack in her memoir “Hard Choices.” The 33-page Benghazi chapter sheds some light on events, but it leaves plenty of inconvenient details out.

According to the chronology she offers,Clinton issued the statement linking Benghazi to the video before she called President Obama on the night of the attack to provide an update, suggesting she was the originator of the flawed explanation.

The State Department press release, issued in her name, on Sept. 11, 2012 at 10:07 p.m. tied the death of Foreign Service officer Sean Smith to the video. Later that evening, a mortar strike killed former Navy SEALs Ty Woods and Glen Doherty, permanently maimed another CIA contractor and severely injured diplomatic security agent David Ubben – all of whom were defending the CIA annex. U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens also died in the Benghazi assault.

The accuracy of the mortar attack, three out of five rounds on target, from more than a half mile away in the dark of night in under a minute, required military training, and premeditation according to multiple military and intelligence professionals.

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ABC News’s Diane Sawyer destroys Hillary Rodham Clinton on Benghazi

By Erik Wemple.

A standard defense for Hillary Rodham Clinton when facing questions about Benghazi, Libya, has been to cite her commissioning of a report from the State Department’s Accountability Review Board (ARB), which took a deep look at the attacks that claimed the lives of four U.S. personnel on Sept. 11, 2012. In testimony before Congress in January 2013, Clinton said: “I hurried to appoint the Accountability Review Board led by Ambassador Pickering and Admiral Mullen so we could more fully understand from objective, independent examination, what went wrong and how to fix it. I have accepted every one of their recommendations.”

In an interview with Clinton that aired last night on ABC News, anchor Diane Sawyer threw the ARB right back in the face of the former secretary of state. The two tangled over the preparedness of the U.S. diplomatic installation in Benghazi for a terrorist attack. In defending her work on this front, Clinton stressed that she had delegated the particulars of security to the experts in the field. “I’m not equipped to sit and look at blueprints to determine where the blast walls need to be, where the reinforcements need to be. That’s why we hire people who have that expertise,” said Clinton, who did the interview as part of the tour for her book “Hard Choices.”

Sensing an opening, Sawyer cited the document that Clinton herself has so often cited: “This is the ARB: the mission was far short of standards; weak perimeter; incomplete fence; video surveillance needed repair. They said it’s a systemic failure.”

Clinton replied, “Well, it was with respect to that compound.”


ABC US News | ABC Celebrity News

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Photo Credit: YouTube Hillary Says She Won’t Turn Over Benghazi Notes

By Chuck Ross.

In an interview during a media tour to promote her latest memoir, Hillary Clinton acknowledged that she kept extensive notes during the attack on the American consulate in Benghazi but said that she won’t turn them over to congressional investigators if asked.

“Did you keep a diary during your time?” NBC News’ Cynthia McFadden asked Clinton in an interview on Tuesday.

“I kept a lot of notes,” said Clinton.

McFadden followed up, asking the former secretary of state what she would do with the notes if they were requested by a House Select Committee appointed to investigate the attack — which left U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.

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Dem Rep Compares Taliban to Soldiers in American Revolution

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Photo Credit: isafmediaA Democratic congressman offered a curious analogy on Monday to explain why the U.S. is dealing with the Taliban — apparently comparing them to soldiers in the American Revolution.

According to sources, Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., made the comparison during a House briefing late Monday with administration officials on the trade of Taliban members for American Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl.

Nadler apparently made the point that the Taliban, as non-state actors, have a status similar to that of American soldiers who fought the British during the Revolutionary War.

This comparison, Fox News is told, was met with a lot of groaning by other lawmakers.

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White House Adviser Valerie Jarrett Met ‘Four Or Five Times’ With Illegal Immigrant Activist Group (+video)

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Photo Credit: REUTERS / Jonathan ErnstBy Patrick Howley.

President Obama’s senior White House adviser Valerie Jarrett held a series of meetings with illegal immigrant activists during Obama’s first term and concluded that “They are the best that we have.”

Jarrett, a Chicago-era mentor to Obama and wife Michelle, is currently fighting to pass immigration reform legislation, in her words, “this summer.”

“I had met, maybe, a year-and-a-half ago, with about Four Dream Act kids,” Jarrett said in a 2012 conversation with Walter Isaacson at the 2012 Aspen Ideas Festival, video of which was posted by The Aspen Institute in 2014.

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Central America Newspapers Tout Open US Door for Illegal Minors

By Todd Beamon.

Newspapers in El Salvador and Honduras are promoting policies by the Obama administration that defer deportation to minors brought to the United States as children by their parents — known as “Dreamers” — and those that are housing illegal children at military bases in the South and West.

“Almost all agree that a child who crossed the border illegally with their parents, or in search of a father or a better life, was not making an adult choice to break our laws, and should be treated differently than adult violators of the law,” Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson is quoted in a story about a new two-year extension of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Act published by Diario El Mundo in El Salvador.

Signed by President Barack Obama in 2012, the law grants temporary legal status to many young illegal immigrants, ending the threat of deportation for at least two years.

The policy, however, does not entitle the immigrants to state services. The law was renewed for two more years.

“With the renewal of DACA, we act according to our values and code of this great nation,” Johnson said. “But the biggest task of comprehensive immigration reform is yet to come.”

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Ted Cruz Renounces Canadian Citizenship

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Photo Credit: APCanada-born U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz has given up his citizenship from his birth country, making good on a promise from last summer.

Spokeswoman Catherine Frazier said the Tea Party favorite formally gave up his citizenship May 14. He received official confirmation of the action at his Houston home Tuesday.

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Holder Impeachment Sought by Ringleader of Resignation Push

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Photo Credit: US NewsEric Holder made history in 2009 as the first African-American U.S. attorney general. If Rep. Paul Gosar has his way, Holder can add another first to his bio: the first sitting cabinet secretary to be impeached.

Gosar, R-Ariz., tells U.S. News he plans to either draft articles of impeachment or co-sponsor existing impeachment legislation introduced in November by Rep. Pete Olson, R-Texas, which has 26 co-sponsors. He anticipates deciding between the two options next week.

Gosar is upset about a slew of issues, ranging from the Obama administration admittedly ignoring a law that requires congressional notification before Guantánamo Bay detainees are transferred, to Holder’s Department of Justice failing to prosecute IRS employees who targeted political groups.

“We’ve seen a wanton disrespect for the rule of law,” he says. “Very, very poor legal counsel is being given to the president by the attorney general.”

What pushed Gosar over the edge is something he calls “illegal alien smuggling.” He says Holder has failed to stop the Department of Homeland Security from releasing in Arizona people detained in Texas for residing in the U.S. without legal permission.

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‘I’ve Had Enough’: When Democrats Quit on Obama

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Photo Credit: GettyThe email hit my in-box at 9:41 p.m. last Wednesday. From one of the most powerful Democrats in Washington, a close adviser to the White House, the missive amounted to an electronic eye roll. “Even I have had enough.”

Another Democrat had quit on President Obama.

The tipping point for this person was the Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl case—not the soldier-for-Taliban swap itself as much as how the White House mishandled its obligation to communicate effectively and honestly to Congress and the public. More than that, Obama’s team had failed once again to acknowledge its mistakes, preferring to cast blame and seek cover behind talking points.

“DC is hard, and depressing,” the Democrat wrote. “I still believe good comes from government (e.g. 8 million in ACA). But that Politico story is a cautionary one: good reminder that you can’t go so in the bunker [and] no longer identify legitimate criticism.” That day, Politico had posted a story channeling the White House communications team’s response to the Bergdahl backlash.

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Not the First Time Obama Risked American Lives after Bypassing Congress

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Photo Credit: EPA; AP; ReutersBy Monte Kuligowski.

The chair of the Select Committee on Intelligence, Senator Diane Feinstein, was visibly upset with Barack Obama upon learning of the president’s secretive Bergdahl deal. It is reasonable that she and all members of Congress should be outraged. But should they be surprised that the president traded five of the most dangerous terrorists in Gitmo for the deserter, Bowe Bergdahl, without consulting Congress per the law passed to prevent exactly what Obama did?

Congress should, of course, be livid. But shocked, I don’t think so.

At this point, it should be hard for anyone could be surprised. The man with a pen and a phone had more than threatened to illegally bypass Congress; he had done so before.

And he had done so in big ways.

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Photo Credit: Facebook Wife of soldier wounded searching for Bergdahl speaks out

By Jazz Shaw / HotAir.

The Bergdahl story continues to go from bad to very bad to really bad to worse. I first saw this story being written about by Rick Moran at PJ Media today. The wife of one of the soldiers who was grievously injured while searching for Bergdahl in Afghanistan has taken to social media to protest the handling of this story.

The wife of a disabled Afghanistan veteran who was injured while searching for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl has posted a scathing message against him this week, adding a personal account to the rising protests against the negotiations with the Taliban that lead to Bergdahl’s freedom.

In a message she posted via Facebook, Shannon Allen, wife of Sgt. 1st Class Mark Allen, wrote ‘Meet my husband, injuries directly brought to you by the actions of this traitor. He can’t give an account of what went down, because he can no longer speak. Now, which guy is a “hero” again?!? Sick.’

Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: AFPKerry defends Bergdahl-for-Taliban exchange

By Elise Labott.

The five Taliban figures who got out of Guantanamo in exchange for U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl’s release would be taking an “enormous risk” if they return to the battlefield, Secretary of State John Kerry told CNN in an interview that aired Sunday.

“I’m not telling you that they don’t have some ability at some point to go back and get involved (in fighting). But they also have an ability to get killed doing that. ” Kerry said in his first public comments on the controversial prisoner exchange.

Kerry defended the swap and told CNN the former detainees will be monitored closely — and not just by officials in Qatar, where they were flown after being released. He wouldn’t say who else will be watching, but he said the United States is confident the conditions of their release will be honored.

“And if they’re violated, then we have the ability to be able to do things,” he said, warning that the United States would do whatever is necessary to protect Americans “if these guys pick a fight with us in the future, or now, or at any time.”

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Widespread US Police Surveillance Is Happening In Total Secrecy

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Photo Credit: REUTERS / Jim YoungData obtained by The Wall Street Journal suggests that “electronic-surveillance orders have increased over the past decade and that the vast majority remain sealed.”

Thousands of government requests for electronic surveillance in connection with criminal investigations remain under seal long after the investiga tions have ended, Jennifer Valentino-Devries of The Wall Street Journal reports.

The practice is unlike nearly all other aspects of American judicial proceedings, where courts have held that search warrants eventually should be made public.

The thing is that getting permission for electronic surveillance techniques — including tracking metadata and gathering all cellphones connected to a cell tower — is easier than getting a search or wiretap warrant.

Read more from this story HERE.