Bill Maher: Ted Cruz Reminds Me of Miley Cyrus

/4 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

Sen. Ted Cruz’s 21-hour Senate floor speech reminded liberal comic Bill Maher of someone else: Miley Cyrus.

“I was thinking the other night, he reminds me of Miley Cyrus, Ted Cruz. Because he is not afraid to incur the wrath of even some of his fans for the greater good of drawing attention to himself,” Maher said Friday on his HBO program “Real Time with Bill Maher.”

In addition to drawing comparisons between controversial performances, Maher said that the filibuster is “the political version of twerking,” but like Cyrus, the Texas Republican will bounce back.

“I really think that a filibuster is the political version of twerking. And for those people who say, ‘Ted Cruz, he hung himself.’ No. Just like Miley Cyrus, she came out the winner in that. Everybody said, ‘oh, she’s ruined her career.’ She’s on the cover of Rolling Stone, her records are outselling anybody else’s. I think Ted Cruz is going to be the winner too,” Maher said.

Read more from this story HERE.

Lawsuit Targets Atheist’s Influence with Pentagon

/3 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: WND

Photo Credit: WND

An anti-Christian activist who has such a close relationship with the Pentagon he had a piece of artwork removed from an Air Force base within 56 minutes of calling is now under scrutiny by a team of legal experts.

The non-profit government-accountability group Judicial Watch filed a Freedom of Information Act suit in federal court in Washington seeking all records in the Department of Defense regarding conversations with Military Religious Freedom Foundation founder Mikey Weinstein.

Weinstein is well known for comparing evangelical Christians to al-Qaida and demanding the courts martial of Christian chaplains.

Further, he recently convinced the Air Force to remove a copy of a famous essay from a chaplain’s section of the website for Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson. It was a copy of the famed World War II essay “No atheists in foxholes: Chaplains gave all in World War II.”

He did, however, taste defeat shortly later when the military re-posted the essay, determining it was within a chaplain’s rights to express his faith.

Read more from this story HERE.

NSA Employee Spied on Nine Women Without Detection, Internal File Shows

/1 Comment/in , /by

Photo Credit: Alex Wong/Getty Images

Photo Credit: Alex Wong/Getty Images

A National Security Agency employee was able to secretly intercept the phone calls of nine foreign women for six years without ever being detected by his managers, the agency’s internal watchdog has revealed.

The unauthorised abuse of the NSA’s surveillance tools only came to light after one of the women, who happened to be a US government employee, told a colleague that she suspected the man – with whom she was having a sexual relationship – was listening to her calls.

The case is among 12 documented in a letter from the NSA’s inspector general to a leading member of Congress, who asked for a breakdown of cases in which the agency’s powerful surveillance apparatus was deliberately abused by staff. One relates to a member of the US military who, on the first day he gained access to the surveillance system, used it to spy on six email addresses belonging to former girlfriends.

The letter, from Dr George Ellard, only lists cases that were investigated and later “substantiated” by his office. But it raises the possibility that there are many more cases that go undetected. In a quarter of the cases, the NSA only found out about the misconduct after the employee confessed.

It also reveals limited disciplinary action taken against NSA staff found to have abused the system. In seven cases, individuals guilty of abusing their powers resigned or retired before disciplinary action could be taken. Two civilian employees kept their jobs – and, it appears, their security clearance – and escaped with only a written warning after they were found to have conducted unauthorised interceptions.

Read more from this story HERE.

US Nuclear Commander Suspended Over Gambling, Officials Say

/0 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

The No 2 officer at the military command in charge of all US nuclear war-fighting forces has been suspended and is under investigation by the naval criminal investigation command for issues related to gambling, officials said on Saturday.

The highly unusual action against a high-ranking officer at US strategic command was made more than three weeks ago but not publicly announced.

Air force general Robert Kehler, who heads Strategic Command, suspended the deputy commander, navy vice admiral Tim Giardina, from his duties on September 3, according to the command’s top spokeswoman, navy captain Pamela Kunze. Giardina is still assigned to the command but is prohibited from performing duties related to nuclear weapons and other issues requiring a security clearance, she said.

Kehler has recommended to defense secretary Chuck Hagel that Giardina be reassigned, Kunze said. Giardina has been the deputy commander of strategic command since December 2011. He is a career submarine officer and prior to starting his assignment there was the deputy commander and chief of staff at US pacific fleet.

Read more from this story HERE.

Exxon to Offer Benefits to Married Same-Sex Couples

/1 Comment/in , /by

Photo Credit: David Duprey/AP

Photo Credit: David Duprey/AP

Exxon Mobil Corp. said on Friday that it will begin offering benefits to legally married same-sex couples in the United States starting next week.

The company says it will recognise “all legal marriages” when it determines eligibility for health care plans for the company’s 77,000 employees and retirees in America.

That means if a gay employee has been married in a state or country where gay marriage is legal, his or her spouse will be eligible for benefits with Exxon in the United States as of 1 October.

Exxon, which is facing a same-sex discrimination complaint in Illinois, said it was following the lead of the US government. In June, the US supreme court struck down the Defense of Marriage Act, which had allowed states to refuse to recognize same-sex marriages granted in other states. In recent months, federal agencies have begun to offer benefits to legally married same-sex couples.

“We haven’t changed our eligibility criteria. It has always been to follow the federal definition and it will continue to follow the federal definition,” said an Exxon spokesman, Alan Jeffers, in an interview.

Read more from this story HERE.

A Small President on the World Stage

/1 Comment/in , /by

Photo Credit: Chad Crowe

Photo Credit: Chad Crowe

The world misses the old America, the one before the crash—the crashes—of the past dozen years.

That is the takeaway from conversations the past week in New York, where world leaders gathered for the annual U.N. General Assembly session. Our friends, and we have many, speak almost poignantly of the dynamism, excellence, exuberance and leadership of the nation they had, for so many years, judged themselves against, been inspired by, attempted to emulate, resented.

As for those who are not America’s friends, some seem still confused, even concussed, by the new power shift. What is their exact place in it? Will it last? Will America come roaring back? Can she? Does she have the political will, the human capital, the old capability?

It is a world in a new kind of flux, one that doesn’t know what to make of America anymore. In part because of our president.

“We want American leadership,” said a member of a diplomatic delegation of a major U.S. ally. He said it softly, as if confiding he missed an old friend.

Read more from this story HERE.

Photo: Ted Cruz Kneels in Prayer Outside the White House

/8 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: CBN News

Photo Credit: CBN News

Here’s a shot of Sen. Ted Cruz praying in front of The White House yesterday.

No, he’s not praying that Barack Obama will overturn Obamacare and no, he’s not praying that he will occupy the presidency one day. Instead, he’s alongside Rev. Rob Schenck (from Faith and Action) and Rev. Frazier White (a Democrat and Obama supporter) praying for Saeed Abedini, who has been in an Iranian prison for one year. He is being persecuted for his faith to Jesus Christ.

Who says Ted Cruz isn’t bipartisan?

I have not only interviewed Ted Cruz many times, but I have spent time with him and his family. He is true Bible-believing Christian who is not ashamed of the Gospel. Of course the liberals don’t want to hear that nonsense. They’ll now be busy trying to figure out how to distort this picture in Adobe Photoshop.

Read more from this story HERE.

DHS Adviser to Persecuted Christians: You Incited Muslims

/15 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: WND

Photo Credit: WND

An adviser to the Department of Homeland Security has used his Twitter profile to defend the Muslim Brotherhood while accusing Egypt’s persecuted Christian minority of inciting against Islam.

Earlier this month, Mohamed Elibiary, who was appointed to the Department of Homeland Security Advisory Council by then-secretary Janet Napolitano in 2010, tweeted that he was reappointed and even promoted.

The Investigative Project on Terrorism reported Elibiary’s tweets about Egypt’s Coptic Christians.

“For decade since 9/11 attack extremist American #Coptic activists have nurtured anti #Islam & anti #Muslim sentiments among AM RT wing,” Elibiary wrote.

Earlier, Elibiary attacked the U.S. Coptic community for its protests against a wave of Muslim attacks on their relatives in Egypt.

Read more from this story HERE.

Healing: White House Compares Republicans to Terrorists, Kidnappers, Arsonists (+video)

/4 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: TownHall

Photo Credit: TownHall

If you’re surprised by this administration’s poisonous rhetoric, you haven’t been paying attention. And once again, the self-appointed civility policy are strangely off duty. Go figure. Which brings us to Dan Pfeiffer, one of our beloved Post-Partisan Prince’s spokesmen. Pfeiffer’s name may sound familiar; he’s the brilliant messaging guru who informed the country that “the law is irrelevant” in regards to the ongoing IRS scandal. Now this jackass wants Americans to know precisely how his boss views his political opposition in the current budget disputes:

White House senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer likened House Republicans to suicide bombers, kidnappers and arsonists in a single interview on Thursday. “What we’re not for is negotiating with people with a bomb strapped to their chest,” Pfeiffer told CNN’s Jake Tapper in laying out the president’s refusal to compromise with the GOP to win an increase in the nation’s debt limit…

Read more from this story HERE.

Obama: Republicans Would Own Government Shutdown

/2 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

President Obama on Friday pushed Republicans to pass a spending bill and warned that he would not give in to their demands to defund Obamacare as Washington careened closer to a shutdown.

“If Congress chooses not to pass a budget by Monday, they will shut down the government,” Obama told reporters at a hastily-arranged press conference from the White House briefing room.

Obama said blame for a shutdown would rest solely on Republicans whom he accused of undermining the recovery because they “can’t get their way.”

The White House and Congress are facing an Oct. 1 deadline to keep the government funded and have achieved scant progress on a compromise thus far. In addition to the government-shutdown fight, leaders are up against an Oct. 17 deadline to increase the nation’s borrowing limit.

Conservatives are using the fiscal fights to try to block Obama’s healthcare reform law. Last week the House GOP passed a short-term spending bill that defunded Obamacare.

Read more from this story HERE.