White House Blows Top CIA Official’s Cover

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Photo Credit: WikimediaIn an embarrassing flub, the Obama administration accidentally revealed the name of the CIA’s top official in Afghanistan in an email to thousands of journalists during the president’s surprise Memorial Day weekend trip to Bagram Air Field.

The officer’s name — identified as “chief of station” in Kabul — was included by U.S. embassy staff on a list of 15 senior American officials who met with President Obama during the Saturday visit. The list was sent to a Washington Post reporter who was representing the news media, who then sent it out to the White House “press pool” list, which contains as many as 6,000 recipients.

The Associated Press is withholding the officer’s name at the request of the Obama administration, who said its publication could put his life and those of his family members in danger. A Google search appears to reveal the name of the officer’s wife and other personal details.

White House officials realized the error after the Post reporter notified them, and sent out a new list without the station chief’s name. Other major news organizations, including the Post, also agreed not to publish the officer’s name.

The reporter who distributes the pool report sends it to the White House to be checked for factual accuracy and then forwarded to the thousands of journalists on the email distribution list, so in this case the White House failed on at least two occasions to recognize that the CIA official’s name was being revealed and circulated so broadly.

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He’s Out: Jay Carney Resigns as White House Press Secretary

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Photo Credit: AP/ Carolyn KasterBy Dave Boyer.

White House press secretary Jay Carney is resigning, to be replaced by deputy press secretary Joshua Earnest, President Obama announced Friday.

“Jay has become one of my closest friends and is a great press secretary,” Mr. Obama said in a surprise announcement during Mr. Carney’s regular briefing at the White House. “I’m going to miss him a lot.”

The president said Mr. Carney, who took over the job in 2011, will spend most of the summer with his children before deciding what job he will take next.

He said Mr. Carney had asked to leave in April. He will leave in mid-June.

“Jay’s had to wrestle with this decision for quite some time,” Mr. Obama said.

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Photo Credit: Truth Revolt 9 Top Lies of Outgoing WH Press Secretary Jay Carney

“When I go stand up at the podium in front of the White House press corps, I never lie. I never say something that I know is untrue. Credibility is enormously important to a press secretary.”

By Jeff Dunetz.

In April of 2002 White House press secretary Jay Carney offered some important insight into his job. Speaking at a scholarship lunch hosted by the White House Correspondents’ Association, he said he never lies in response to reporters’ questions, even when he knows more than he can say: “When I go stand up at the podium in front of the White House press corps, I never lie. I never say something that I know is untrue. Credibility is enormously important to a press secretary.”

Of course when Carney made that statement, he was lying about never lying. In fact this press secretary offered up many a falsehood during his tenure of protecting President Obama from his errors, omissions, and scandals. To honor Mr. Carney on the day his resignation was announced, we offer his top 9 lies as press secretary:

1) Last month when it emerged that deputy national security advisor Ben Rhodes had written an email directing Susan Rice to emphasize the YouTube video story during her Sunday news show appearances, Carney told the press corps the Rhodes email “was explicitly not about Benghazi.”

2) In mid-May 2014, Carney announced that the American Legion had praised the Department of Veterans Affairs for the “resignation” of top VA health official Dr. Robert Petzel. Carney was only off by 100%. The actual American Legion statement was, “the move by VA is not a corrective action, but a continuation of business as usual. Dr. Petzel was already scheduled to retire this year, so his resignation now really won’t make that much of a difference.”

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Photo Credit: IJ Review That Awkward Moment When Obama Bro-Hugged Carney Compared With Other Legendary Bro Hugs in History

By Kyle Becker.

Ater President Obama drained every ounce of prevarication Jay Carney had to offer in front of the White House podium, he gave him perhaps one of the most unexpected and awkward bro-hug send-offs in political history.

The cringe-inducing awkwardness reverberated throughout the blogosphere, as even the left-leaning Mediaite took notice. Here’s how Tina Nguyen aptly describes the bro-hug:

“Look, it’s fine for bros to Hug It Out, but the Obama-Carney bro-hug, at the end of the press conference wherein Jay Carney announced his imminent departure from the White House, looks less like a brotherly man-embrace and more like two men trying to slap the emotions out of each other.”

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Operation Choke Point: Congressman Proposes Cutting Off Funding For DOJ Program Targeting Gun Dealers

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Photo Credit: Daily Caller A Missouri congressman hopes to give the Department of Justice a taste of its own medicine with an amendment to halt an initiative that he says uses “intimidation tactics” and forces banks to sever relationships with legitimate businesses.

Blaine Luetkemeyer wants to choke off funding for “Operation Choke Point.”

“What it does is goes after an entire industry whether it’s obeying the law or not. And that’s just wrong,” Luetkemeyer said of the initiative in an interview with The Daily Caller.

The Republican lawmaker’s amendment was successfully attached to the Commerce, Justice, and Science appropriations bill which passed a vote in the House late Thursday.

The amendment comes on the heels of a staff report issued Thursday by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. The report claims that “Operation Choke Point has forced banks to terminate relationships with a wide variety of entirely lawful and legitimate merchants.”

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US Diplomat Accused of Ties to Muslim Brotherhood, Lies to Congress about PA Support for Terrorism (+video)

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Photo Credit: FrontPageMagYou may remember Anne Patterson as Obama’s US Ambassador to Egypt who was forced to leave her post due to popular outrage in that country over her support for the Muslim Brotherhood.

Patterson called on Egyptians not to protest — including by meeting with the Coptic Pope and asking him specifically to urge the nation’s Christian minority not to oppose the Brotherhood,

El Fagr reported that, during their most recent phone conversation, Patterson demanded that Egypt’s recently appointed Supreme Commander of the Egyptian Armed Forces, General Abdul Fatah al-Sisi, release all Muslim Brotherhood members currently being held for questioning: “And when Sisi rejected this order, the American ambassador began threatening him that Egypt will turn into another Syria and live through a civil war, to which Sisi responded violently: ‘Neither you nor your country can overcome Egypt and its people.’”

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Restaurant Is Robbed On Same Day It Adopts Anti-Gun Policy

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Photo Credit: REUTERS / Shannon StapletonOn the same day that Sonic, an Oklahoma City-based fast food chain, issued a statement against customers carrying guns at their restaurants, an employee at the company’s Topeka, Kan. store was robbed.

According to Topeka police, two males robbed a carhop on Friday afternoon, reports the Topeka Capitol-Journal. Sonic is unique among major fast food eateries in that it provides customers the option of having carhops bring orders to their vehicle.

While police said no guns were displayed by the robbers, the crime follows a new policy that the Oklahoma City-based company issued Friday.

“We’ve considered the views and desires of our customers and employees that staff the drive-ins across the country,” the company said, according to USA Today. “Accordingly, we’re asking that customers refrain from bringing guns onto our patios or into our indoor dining areas. With respect to the storage of guns in vehicles, we ask that our customers continue to honor local laws.”

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Trump: ‘Clown’ Obama ‘The Biggest Liar I Know’

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Photo Credit: WNDTeasing his audience, once again, with indications that he might be the man to succeed the president, Donald Trump declared to the Republican Leadership Conference in New Orleans that “Barack Obama is a clown” and the “biggest liar I know,” drawing strong applause.

“We have a man in the White House who doesn’t have a clue,” said the billionaire real estate developer, who toyed with vying for the 2012 Republican Party presidential nomination.

Trump also noted it appears that Obama does not enjoy being president.

“It seems to me that Obama can’t wait to get out of the White House so he can go play golf. He doesn’t have the right instincts to be president. He isn’t tenacious and he isn’t tough,” he said.

Is Trump, then, the man with the instincts and tenacity needed to succeed in the Oval Office?

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‘Undocumented Immigrants’ Will Be Able to ‘Join the Military’

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Photo Credit: D’oh Boy (Mark Holloway)The Huffington Post reports that the “Obama Administration Plans To Let Some Young Undocumented Immigrants Join The Military.” The plans have been approved by the Pentagon.

“Pentagon officials have approved a policy that would allow a limited group of undocumented young people who came to the U.S. as children to enlist in the military, opening up a path for them to eventually become citizens, The Huffington Post has learned,” reports the liberal website.

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Guess How Much the Feds Will Spend Studying How Transgender Women Use Facebook

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Photo Credit: TownHall The National Institutes of Health will spend nearly $200,000 to study how transgender women use social networking sites, the Washington Free Beacon reports.

Head meet desk:

The Friends Research Institute, based in Maryland, received $194,788last month to begin the project operating on the premise that due to “transphobia” transgendered women are forced to use social media as an outlet, often leading to risky sexual behaviors.

“High-risk male-to-female transgender women (hereafter “transwomen”) face numerous concurrent cofactors for HIV acquisition and transmission including substance use, engagement in sex work, unemployment, low educational attainment, homelessness, and hormone misuse,” the grant’sdescription reads. “In Los Angeles County, estimates of HIV prevalence among transwomen are 15 [percent] overall, and 17 [percent] among Latinas, 29 [percent] among Native Americans, and 48 [percent] among African American/black transwomen.”

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Scientists Admit Polar Bear Numbers Were Made Up To ‘Satisfy Public Demand’

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Photo Credit: REUTERS / Heinz-Peter BaderThis may come as a shocker to some, but scientists are not always right — especially when under intense public pressure for answers.

Researchers with the IUCN Polar Bear Specialist Group (PBSG) recently admitted to experienced zoologist and polar bear specialist Susan Crockford that the estimate given for the total number of polar bars in the Arctic was “simply a qualified guess given to satisfy public demand.”

Crockford has been critical of official polar bear population estimates because they fail to include five large subpopulations of polar bears. Due to the uncertainty of the populations in these areas, PBSG did not include them in their official estimate — but the polar bear group did include other subpopulation estimates.

PBSG has for years said that global polar bear populations were between 20,000 and 25,000, but these estimates are likely much lower than how many polar bears are actually living in the world.

“Based on previous PBSG estimates and other research reports, it appears there are probably at least another 6,000 or so bears living in these regions and perhaps as many as 9,000 (or more) that are not included in any PBSG ‘global population estimate,’” Crockford wrote on her blog.

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Shinseki Resigns Over Growing VA Scandal

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Photo Credit: Fox NewsPresident Obama announced Friday that embattled Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki would take the fall for the rapidly growing scandal over veterans’ health care, accepting his resignation under pressure from members of both parties.

The president announced that Shinseki would resign after they met at the White House and he received an update on an internal review of the problems at the VA. The review showed the problems were not limited to just a few facilities, Obama said, adding: “It’s totally unacceptable. Our veterans deserve the best.”

On the heels of those and other findings, Obama said, “Secretary Shinseki offered me his own resignation — with considerable regret, I accepted.”

He said Shinseki told him he did not want to be a distraction. “I agree,” Obama said. “We don’t have time for distractions. We need to fix the problem.”

The president had faced mounting calls from members of both parties to remove Shinseki; those calls accelerated after a damning inspector general report on Wednesday. Shinseki suffered another blow on Friday when Rep. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., a former top VA official, called for her former boss’ resignation.

Read more from this story HERE.