CBS Allows A Real Journalist to Resign

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Photo Credit: Newsbusters After months of pressing the CBS News brass to get out of her contract, reporter Sharyl Attkisson was finally granted her request. While that is good for her, it ought to underline how CBS has abandoned hard-hitting reporting in the Obama era.

Politico’s Attkisson headline was “The right loses its hero at CBS,” and liberal blogs tried to guess how long it would take for her to sign up with Fox News Channel. That might happen. Roger Ailes loves scooping up talent from other networks. That’s meant as an insult, of course. Only those dreadful right-wing propagandists challenge Team Obama.

But it’s insulting on a different level altogether. I do not know Ms. Attkisson, but I suspect she’d be insulted to be viewed as any partisan group’s “hero.” She would not have been employed for CBS for more than 20 years if she was a Democrat-wrecking right-winger. She’s merely a “polarizing figure” for failing to do what Dan Rather called “kiss ass, move with the mass.”

Remember this the next time a pompous liberal anchorman like Brian Williams laments that “politics is broken.” Journalism is broken. There is no such thing as journalistic independence. When a veteran reporter stands out like a sore thumb by merely trying to get answers for the American people on how a fiasco like Benghazi happened, she is not the issue. Her network purporting to be in the news business is.

Attkisson had every reason to want out of her contract. According to the Tyndall Report, in 2007,she was the 18th most used reporter in major network nightly news, with 160 minutes on the evening newscast. In 2008, she held steady at 18th, with 145 minutes, and in 2009, she was 19th, with 152 minutes. She hasn’t landed in the top 20 since…Obama scandals bubbled up, and she started covering them.

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Republican Beats Out Dem in Florida Special Election

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Photo Credit: Fox News Republican David Jolly narrowly defeated Democrat Alex Sink on Tuesday in a Tampa-area House race largely seen as a critical test for ObamaCare.

With nearly 100 percent of the vote counted, Jolly had 48.5 percent of the vote to Sink’s 46.7 percent. Libertarian Lucas Overby had 4.8 percent.

The race to replace the late Rep. Bill Young was considered a tossup, and was cast as a political bellwether, and a testing ground for each party’s messaging strategy — which revolves in part around the Affordable Care Act.

Jolly’s election night headquarters in Clearwater Beach erupted into loud cheers as it became clear he was the winner. In his victory speech, Jolly simultaneously struck a conciliatory tone and expressed gratitude for his mentor, Young, and Young’s family. Jolly was introduced by former “Price is Right” game show host Bob Barker, via video. Young’s two adult sons were also onstage with Jolly, and he embraced them at the end of his speech.

Jolly didn’t mention the issue that dominated much of the campaign — the president’s health care package — and instead said that Pinellas County must work together.

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Head of Senate Intelligence Accuses CIA of Spying on the Committee, Violating Constitution

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Photo Credit: AFPA behind-the-scenes battle between the CIA and Congress erupted in public Tuesday as the head of the Senate Intelligence Committee accused the agency of breaking laws and breaching constitutional principles in an alleged effort to undermine the panel’s multi-year investigation of a controversial interrogation program.

Chairman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) accused the CIA of ­secretly removing documents, searching computers used by the committee and attempting to intimidate congressional investigators by requesting an FBI inquiry of their conduct — charges that CIA Director John Brennan disputed within hours of her appearance on the Senate floor.

Feinstein described the escalating conflict as a “defining moment” for Congress’s role in overseeing the nation’s intelligence agencies and cited “grave concerns” that the CIA had “violated the separation-of-powers principles embodied in the United States Constitution.”

Brennan fired back during a previously scheduled speech in Washington, saying that “when the facts come out on this, I think a lot of people who are claiming that there has been this tremendous sort of spying and monitoring and hacking will be proved wrong.”

The dueling claims exposed bitterness and distrust that have soared to new levels as the committee nears completion of a 6,000-page report that is expected to serve as a scathing historical record of the agency’s use of waterboarding and other brutal interrogation methods on terrorism suspects held at secret CIA prisons overseas after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

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Sowell: The Left Versus Minorities

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Photo Credit: Matthew Kenwrick / Creative CommonsIf anyone wanted to pick a time and place where the political left’s avowed concern for minorities was definitively exposed as a fraud, it would be now — and the place would be New York City, where far left Mayor Bill de Blasio has launched an attack on charter schools, cutting their funding, among other things.

These schools have given thousands of low income minority children their only shot at a decent education, which often means their only shot at a decent life. Last year 82 percent of the students at a charter school called Success Academy passed city-wide mathematics exams, compared to 30 percent of the students in the city as a whole.

Why would anybody who has any concern at all about minority young people — or even common decency — want to destroy what progress has already been made?

One big reason, of course, is the teachers’ union, one of Mayor de Blasio’s biggest supporters. But it may be more than that. For many of the true believers on the left, their ideology overrides any concern about the actual fate of flesh-and-blood human beings.

Something similar happened on the west coast last year. The American Indian Model Schools in Oakland have been ranked among the top schools in the nation, based on their students’ test scores. This is, again, a special achievement for minority students who need all the help they can get.

Read more this story HERE.

Hoyer on Keystone: ‘I’m in Favor of Building It’

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Photo Credit: APDemocratic Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said he supports building the Keystone XL Pipeline and that he agrees with the State Department’s report that not building the pipeline would increase greenhouse gas emissions.

At a pen-and-pad briefing at the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday, CNSNews.com asked Hoyer, “In the State Department’s report, it said that if the Keystone Pipeline is not built, the method of delivering oil would increase greenhouse gases from 28 to 42 percent, are you in favor of not building ….”

Hoyer said, “If it was not built? Sorry, I don’t understand the question.”

CNSNews.com rephrased the question saying, “The State Department’s report, it said that not building the Keystone pipeline, the method of [delivering the] oil would increase greenhouse gases. Are you in favor of not building the pipeline, even if it means greenhouse gases will increase?”

Hoyer then said, “In favor of not building it? I’m in favor of building it. I said about a year ago, I think in this group, that I was for Keystone.”

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Air Force Academy Orders Bible Verse Removed from Cadet’s Whiteboard

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Photo Credit: MRFFThe Air Force Academy removed a Bible verse posted on a cadet’s whiteboard after it determined the posting had offended other cadets, a spokesman for the academy said.

The cadet wrote the passage on the whiteboard posted outside his room. “I have been crucified with Christ therefore I no longer live, but Christ lives in me,” the verse from Galatians read.

Mikey Weinstein, director of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, told me 29 cadets and four faculty and staff members contacted his organization to complain about the Christian passage.

“Had it been in his room – not a problem,” Weinstein told me. “It’s not about the belief. It’s about the time, the place and the manner.”

He said the Bible verse on the cadet’s personal whiteboard created a hostile environment at the academy.

Read more this story HERE.

This State Could Jail U.S. Agents Who Enforce Federal Gun Laws

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Photo Credit: AP/Orlin WagnerA proposal in Missouri to nullify certain federal gun control laws could actually mean jail for federal agents who try to enforce them.

The nullification legislation passed the House General Laws Committee on Thursday, the Associated Press reported, after having passed the full state Senate last month.

The bill says any federal law impeding Missourians’ Second Amendment rights is null and void. Federal agents enforcing such laws could face civil or criminal penalties up to one year in jail with a $1,000 fine.

The effort might be futile, as courts have generally ruled that states can’t nullify federal laws. However, recent court decisions have also been more friendly to the individual right to bear arms. But it’s unlikely that Missouri Democratic Gov. Jay Nixon would sign the bill, after vetoing a similar measure last year.

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Snowden: NSA Leaders Have Harmed Our National Security ‘More Than Anything’ Else

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Photo Credit: Sunshinepress/Getty ImagesBy Dustin Volz.

America’s most high-profile fugitive visited one of the country’s most popular entertainment festivals in Texas on Monday, drawing thunderous applause from a crowded room filled with his adoring fans.

Edward Snowden, appearing from Russia through a live video stream, told attendees of the South by Southwest Interactive conference in Austin that Congress had fundamentally failed to do its job as an overseer of the government’s bulk surveillance programs, declaring that “we need a watchdog that watches Congress.”

The former National Security Agency contractor, in a conversation with the American Civil Liberties Union’s Christopher Soghoian and Ben Wizner, also charged the current and most recent chief of the NSA as the two people most responsible for jeopardizing the country’s national security due to their preference for aggressive collection of data rather than protection of it after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

“More than anything, there are two officials who have harmed our Internet security and national security,” Snowden said, his image backdropped by an enlarged copy of the U.S. Constitution. “Those two officials are Michael Hayden and Keith Alexander.”

He added: “When you are the one country that has a vault that is more full than anyone else’s, it doesn’t make any sense to be attacking all day and never defending your vault. And it makes even less sense when you’re setting the standards for vaults worldwide and leaving a huge back door open.”

Read more this story HERE.

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Edward Snowden: NSA is ‘setting fire to the future of the Internet’

By Ashe Schow.

Edward Snowden, the man who leaked the National Security Agency data collection programs, said Monday the act of mass surveillance is “setting fire to the future of the Internet.”

Snowden, speaking via satellite feed (in front of a green-screen display of the U.S. Constitution) to a panel at the annual South by Southwest conference, urged attendees to fight back against the spy programs and remember that more countries than the U.S. are involved.

“The NSA, the sort of global mass surveillance that’s occurring in all of these countries, not just the U.S. — and it’s important to remember that this is a global issue — they’re setting fire to the future of the Internet,” Snowden said. “And the people who are in this room now — you guys are all the firefighters. And we need you to help us fix it.”

Read more this story HERE.

Adam Lanza’s Dad Wishes Son Had Never Been Born, says ‘You Can’t Get Any More Evil’

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Photo Credit: Fox News The father of Connecticut school shooter Adam Lanza said in his first interview about the massacre that what his son did couldn’t “get any more evil” and he wishes his son hadn’t been born.

In his most extensive comments since the shooting, Peter Lanza described his struggle to comprehend the actions of his son, who killed his mother then gunned down 20 children and six educators at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown in December 2012.

Lanza also told The New Yorker magazine in a series of interviews last fall that he believes Adam would have killed him, too, if he had the chance. And he often contemplates what he could have done differently in his relationship with Adam, although he believes the killings couldn’t have been predicted.

“Any variation on what I did and how my relationship was had to be good, because no outcome could be worse,” Peter Lanza told the magazine in an article dated March 17. “You can’t get any more evil. … How much do I beat up on myself about the fact that he’s my son? A lot.”

He said he hadn’t seen his son in two years when Adam committed one of the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history. Adam killed himself as police arrived at the scene. He also fatally shot his mother, Nancy, in their Newtown home before going to the school.

Read more this story HERE.

Study: Southern Poverty Center Ignores Liberal Hate

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Photo Credit: Breitbart An academic study has accused the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) of having an anti-Christian bias in its reporting on hate groups in America.

Once considered the “gold standard” in reporting on violent anti-government or racist groups in America, the Southern Poverty Law Center’s reputation has begun to wither as it has started targeting conservative Christian groups including the Family Research Council (FRC) for what SPLC claims is anti-gay animus.

SPLC says FRC gins up hatred and possible violence against gays because it has reported certain ideas that are taboo to SPLC: that hate-crimes laws will be used to stifle preachers; that because of HIV-AIDS and other diseases gays may not live as long as others; that gay parenting is not as good for children as more traditional parenting; that same-sex attraction is not inborn; and that gays can stop being homosexual. Believing or espousing any of these ideas makes you eligible for the SPLC hate list. [Full disclosure: the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute, of which I am president, was just placed on SPLC’s hate list for espousing some of these ideas.]

Professor George Yancey of the University of North Texas says he is not arguing one way or the other about FRC’s inclusion on the list but merely demonstrating SPLC’s outrage is subjective, selective, and never reckons progressive groups guilty of the same things of which it accuses conservative ones.

Yancey looks at the work of a left-wing group called the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), started by Michael Weinstein after he said he experienced discrimination at the hands of Christians in the military.

Read more this story HERE.