Intel Committee Chairman Poised to Recall Ex-CIA Chief Morell Over Benghazi Testimony, Weighing Same for Petraeus

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Photo Credit: Fox News Republican allegations that former CIA Acting Director Mike Morell misled Congress over the White House’s role in crafting the flawed Benghazi “talking points” took a dramatic turn Thursday, with the Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee telling Fox News it’s likely Morell will be recalled to testify. Investigators also are reviewing the testimony of former CIA Director David Petraeus, Morell’s old boss, to assess whether he should be recalled as well.

“We are having some transcript reviews. We’ve been continually doing that through the committee,” Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Mich., told Fox News. “We’re looking at Director Petraeus’ transcripts and reviews — looking at what information we have now available. Sometimes that second interview can be equally important and it is likely we will have Director Morell up to testify before the committee.”

The debate continues to focus on why the talking points did not reflect the best available intelligence, and what influence the administration brought to bear on the flawed public narrative of the attack in the days immediately following Sept. 11, 2012 – that narrative initially claimed the attacks sprung out of protests over an anti-Islam film.

Among the allegations, Republicans on the Senate Intelligence Committee said in a January 2014 Benghazi report that Morell insisted the talking points were sent to the White House for informational purposes, and not for their input — but e-mails, later released by the administration, showed otherwise.

In response to Rogers’ comments, Morell said in an email to Fox News, “I sent him a letter this afternoon saying that I would very much welcome an invitation to testify in open session before the Committee on Benghazi.”

Read more this story HERE.

11-Year-Old Girl Shoots and Kills Cougar that Was Stalking her Brother, 13, Outside their House

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Photo Credit: Bill WhiteWhen Tom White spotted a cougar approaching his teenage son outside their home in rural Washington state last week, there was only one thing to do – hand a gun to his 11-year-old daughter.

Without a moment’s hesitation, Shelby White killed the female cougar, and wildlife officials suggested that the animal may have been sick.

The mountain cat was 4 years old and weighed about 50lbs, which is about half of what an animal that age should weigh.

‘This cougar was very, very skinny,’ State Fish and Wildlife Officer Cal Treser said.

The fearless 11-year-old took action when she saw the cougar following her 13-year-old brother as he was walking towards their home in the town of Twisp, population 940.

Read more this story HERE.

Harry Reid Accuses Republicans of Telling ‘Outright Lies’ About Obamacare

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Photo Credit: APBy Susan Jones.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says despite all the “good news” about Obamacare, “there’s plenty of horror stories being told, all of them untrue — but they’re being told all over America.”

In a speech on the Senate floor Wednesday, Reid complained that Republicans, with help from wealthy donors — he named the Koch brothers — are telling “tall tales” and “outright lies” about Obamacare in stump speeches and political advertisements.

“Republicans may need tall tales and outright lies to convince people that Obamacare’s bad for them — but Democrats — we don’t have to make things up,” Reid said.”

To illustrate his point, Reid read a letter from Jane Thomas, one of his Nevada constituents, who was able to quit her job as a school teacher “thanks to Obamacare.”

“This story is true,” Reid said. “For years, Jane was locked into a job as a school teacher because she, (her husband) and her two teenage children needed guaranteed health insurance. And it cost a lot. But Jane was able to quit her teaching job, spend more time with her children, and help her husband with the family’s small business. Jane says the Affordable Care Act has literally changed her life.”

Read more this story HERE.

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‘They’re All Lying?’ GOP Replies to Reid Claim ‘All’ Obamacare Horror Stories Untrue

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said today that despite all the good news on Obamacare, “There’s plenty of horror stories being told. All of them are untrue, but they’re being told all over America.”

It’s a pretty bold claim that all the stories about cancelled policies are false – but Reid goes a step farther, and blames the Koch brothers in a halting speech from the Senate floor.

“The leukemia patient whose insurance policy was canceled [who] would die without her medication, Mr. President, that’s an ad being paid for by two billionaire brothers. It’s absolutely false.”

“Or the woman whose insurance policy went up $700 a month,” Reid continued. “Ads paid for around America by the multibillionaire Koch brothers, and the ad is false.”

“We heard about the evils of Obamacare, about the lives it’s ruining in Republicans’ stump speeches and in ads paid for by oil magnates, the Koch brothers. But in those tales, turned out to be just that: tales, stories made up from whole cloth, lies distorted by the Republicans to grab headlines or make political advertisements.

Read more this story HERE.

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Kansas Senators SLAM Harry Reid

By Chuck Ross.

Photo Credit: REUTERS/Jonathan ErnstBoth Kansas senators took to the Senate floor Thursday to hit back against Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid for saying that the Kansas-based Koch brothers are “un-American.”

“Yesterday two prominent citizens were called unpatriotic merely because they have engaged, legally I must say, in their First Amendment right to participate in the political process,” said Kansas Republican Sen. Pat Roberts.

“I was saddened, I was dismayed, I was discouraged to see the floor of the Senate used as a venue for such campaign-related attacks”, said Roberts, who called Democrats’ focus on the Kochs’ political spending “all part of a coordinated plan” and an “abuse of power.”

In two Senate floor speeches on Wednesday, Reid lashed out at Charles and David Koch, the primary owners of Koch Industries, which is based in Wichita, Kansas.

“Despite all that good news [of Obamacare], there’s plenty of horror stories being told. All are untrue, but they’re being told all over America,” said Reid in his first floor speech on Wednesday.

Read more this story HERE.

University Removes ‘God’ from Plaque

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Photo Credit: Boston Public LibraryPurdue University, which once defended the right of a private speaker to blaspheme Jesus, has banned an alumni donor from using the word “God” on a plaque because it might offend someone.

Dr. Michael McCracken and his wife made a $12,500 pledge to the university’s school of mechanical engineering. In return, Purdue, a large public university in Indiana, offered the McCrackens the opportunity to name a small conference room in a lab building. They were also invited to supply language for a plaque that would be installed in the room.

McCracken chose to name the room after his father, Dr. William McCracken, who graduated from Purdue with a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering, and his mother Glenda, who died recently.

The plaque was inscribed with the following message:

“To those who seek to better the world through the understanding of God’s physical laws and innovation of practical solutions. In honor of Dr. William ‘Ed’ and Glenda McCracken.”

Read more this story HERE.

Restaurant Chain Adds Obamacare Surcharge to Customers’ Bills

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Photo Credit: REUTERS/Larry DowningA chain of Florida restaurants are making customers pick up the tab for the company’s mandatory participation in the Affordable Care Act — with a surcharge to every bill to help cover the cost of providing healthcare to their employees.

Eight Gator’s Dockside restaurants have started putting an “ACA Surchar” on every customer’s bill. The new charge adds one percent to the total check, which would mean 15 cents for an average $15 lunch according to a CNN report.

“The costs associated with ACA compliance could ultimately close our doors,” a sign outside one restaurant reads. “Instead of raising prices on our products to generate the additional revenue needed to cover the costs of ACA compliance, certain Gator’s Dockside locations have implemented a 1 percent surcharge on all food and beverage purchases only.”

Read more this story HERE.

D.C. Health Plans to Include Gender-Reassignment Surgeries

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Photo Credit: ASTRID RIECKEND.C. Mayor Vincent C. Gray on Thursday announced that the city will recognize gender dysphoria as a medical condition, forcing insurance companies to cover treatments such as gender-reassignment surgery for transgender people.

The coverage extends to all D.C. residents with group or individual health insurance — including the roughly one-third of city residents receiving Medicaid benefits — whose doctors diagnose the condition and for whom treatment is deemed medically necessary.

“This action places the District at the forefront of advancing the rights of transgender individuals,” Mr. Gray said at his ceremonial office at City Hall. The District joins California, Colorado, Connecticut, Oregon and Vermont in requiring the coverage, which the federal government will not be made to offer to its employees.

Transgender activists applauded the move, saying it guarantees coverage for treatments such as gender reassignment surgery that can cost tens of thousands of dollars and which have been denied by insurance companies that deemed the procedures cosmetic.

“This isn’t about who’s paying for things. This is about whether or not it’s medical care and who gets to decide that,” said Mara Keisling, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality. “Nobody in America wants their health care decisions made by the insurance companies.”

Read more this story HERE.

Commander: U.S. Military Not Ready for Cyber Warfare

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Photo Credit: Gen. Keith Alexander / APThe U.S. military is ill-prepared for waging cyber warfare and needs to bolster defenses against the growing threat of cyber attacks against both military systems and private infrastructure, the commander of U.S. Cyber Command told Congress on Thursday.

“Those attacks are coming and I think those are near term and we’re not ready for them,” said Army Gen. Keith Alexander, head of Cyber Command and also outgoing director of the National Security Agency.

Alexander, in prepared testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee, sounded the alarm on the need for better cyber attack and defense capabilities. He said the command’s priorities include setting up a secure “defensible” telecommunications architecture, training cyber warfare personnel, increasing intelligence data on global cyber threats, and clarifying lines of authority for conducting cyber attacks and defending government and private networks.

Cyber Command, currently staffed by 1,100 people, is making progress in all areas, said Alexander, who retires next month. However, he warned that cyber threats are increasing, shifting from temporarily disruptive attacks, to extremely damaging cyber strikes that can destroy data and machines, and potentially threaten the U.S. economy and endanger American lives.

“Despite our progress at U.S. [Cyber Command], I worry that we might not be ready in time,” he said. “Threats to our nation in cyberspace are growing.”

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SC Officer Shoots Man Reaching for Cane

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A police officer in South Carolina shot a 70-year-old motorist who was reaching for a cane during a traffic stop because he thought the man was grabbing a rifle from the bed of his pickup truck, investigators said. The man was expected to survive.

The York County deputy, Terrence Knox, pulled over Bobby Canipe (kah-NYP’) of Lincolnton, N.C., for an expired license tag about 7:30 p.m. Tuesday north of Clover, S.C., York County sheriff’s spokesman Trent Faris said.

After stopping, Canipe got out of his pickup truck and reached into the bed, pulling out what Knox thought was a long-barreled rifle, Faris said. It was Canipe’s walking cane. The officer fired several times, hitting Canipe once, Faris said.

Read more this story HERE.

Ted Cruz Blasts Obama for Failing Venezuela: ‘Negotiating with Tyrants and Bullies Never Works’

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Photo Credit: AP Photo/Fernando LlanoSen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, spoke out strongly in support of the political uprising in Venezuela and criticized President Obama for his history of “negotiating with tyrants and bullies” in the country.

Cruz criticized a State Department spokeswoman who explained Tuesday that the United States was open to closer engagement with the regime of President Nicolas Maduro.

“Negotiating with tyrants and bullies never works,” Cruz said, calling for the United States to demand the tyrannical government to stop oppressing its people and censoring the media.

Read more this story HERE.

Brewer’s Foolish Veto

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By Rich Lowry.

It was jarring to read the coverage of the new “anti-gay bill” passed by the Arizona Legislature and then look up the text of the instantly notorious SB 1062. The bill was roughly 998 pages shorter than much of legislation that passes in Washington, so reading it didn’t take much of a commitment. Clocking in at barely two pages, it was easy to scan for disparaging references to homosexuality, for veiled references to homosexuality, for any references to homosexuality at all.

They weren’t there. A headline from The Week declared, “There is nothing Christian about Arizona’s anti-gay bill.” It would be more accurate to say that there was nothing anti-gay about Arizona’s anti-gay bill.

The legislation consisted of minor clarifications of the state’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which has been on the books for 15 years and is modeled on the federal act that passed with big bipartisan majorities in the 1990s and was signed into law by President Bill Clinton…

Eleven legal experts on religious freedom statutes — who represent a variety of views on gay marriage — wrote a letter to Gov. Brewer prior to her veto explaining how the bill “has been egregiously misrepresented by many of its critics.”

In addition to the federal government, 18 states have such statutes and about a dozen other states interpret their state constitutions as extending the same protections, according to the letter. The statutes, the scholars write, “say that before government can burden a person’s religious exercise, the government has to show a compelling justification.”

Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: AP Photo/Ross D. FranklinBy Bob Christie.

Gov. Jan Brewer on Wednesday vetoed a Republican bill that set off a national debate over gay rights, religion and discrimination and subjected Arizona to blistering criticism from major corporations and political leaders from both parties.

Loud cheers erupted outside the Capitol building immediately after Brewer made her announcement.

“My agenda is to sign into law legislation that advances Arizona,” Brewer said at a news conference. “I call them like I see them despite the cheers or the boos from the crowd. After weighing all the arguments, I have vetoed Senate Bill 1062 moments ago.”

The Republican governor said she gave the legislation careful deliberation in talking to her lawyers, citizens, businesses and lawmakers on both sides of the debate. Her office said it received more than 40,000 calls and emails on the legislation, with most of them urging a veto.

Brewer said the bill “could divide Arizona in ways we could not even imagine and no one would ever want.” The bill was broadly worded and could result in unintended negative consequences, she added.

Read more this story HERE.