GOP Votes to Bar CNN, NBC from Hosting Primary Debates

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priebus1BOSTON — The Republican National Committee voted Friday to bar NBC and CNN from sponsoring GOP primary debates in the 2016 election, ramping up pressure to stop the networks from running programs focused on Hillary Rodham Clinton.

RNC chairman Reince Priebus, who is trying to consolidate control over the primary process, said the networks’ programs were likely aid Mrs. Clinton, who is seen as the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination, and he said that’s unfair to the GOP.

“It is the right thing to do for our voters,” Mr. Priebus said. “They are not going to get a real debate of substance if its run by a network who wants to help out Hillary Clinton. We are done with this nonsense, there are plenty of other good networks. CNN and NBC anchors will just have to watch on their competitors networks. The media overplayed their hand this time.”

The vote came on the third and final day of the RNC’s “Making it Happen” summer meeting, where the committee continued to pick up the pieces from the 2012 election and prepare for the 2014 and 2016 elections.

Mr. Priebus capped the event by pushing back against the notion that intra-party battles are tearing apart the GOP.

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Judicial Watch: Feds Give Housing Grant to ACORN Affiliate Despite Federal Ban

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ACORNA spinoff of the scandal-ridden community organizer group ACORN received more than $200,000 in federal housing grants despite a ban on money going to ACORN affiliates, watchdog organization Judicial Watch announced Thursday.

ACORN, which officially folded in 2009 after a string of scandals, rebranded into more than 100 spinoff groups, including Affordable Housing Centers of America — also now defunct — and Mission of Peace, an affordable housing nonprofit.

In February, the Department of Housing and Urban Development transferred $201,222.07 from AHCOA to Mission of Peace “specifically to pay for the activities of former AHCOA affiliates,” according to a memo obtained by Judicial Watch through a Freedom of Information Act request.

HUD approved the transfer despite a federal ban on tax dollars being used to fund any ACORN affiliate.

“None of the funds made available under this Act or any prior Act may be provided to the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), or any of its affiliates, subsidiaries, or allied organizations,” according to the 2010 budget appropriations act.

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Conservative Group Comes Out Against Mitch McConnell

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McConnell_A national conservative group says they are preparing to run negative ads against Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell, accusing him not being supportive of the new conservative strategy to defund Obamacare.

In an email to supporters Friday, Senate Conservatives Fund Executive Director Matt Hoskins said the organization is “preparing to launch a statewide media campaign in Kentucky to expose McConnell’s record on this issue and to persuade him to lead the fight.”

“Mitch McConnell is telling people he opposes Obamacare while he refuses to oppose its funding,” Hoskins said. “We can’t let him have it both ways.”

A group of conservative senators — led by Utah Sen. Mike Lee, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio — are pushing a strategy to not vote for a continuing resolution to keep funding the federal government unless President Barack Obama’s healthcare law is defunded as part of the legislation.

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Democrat Senators Warn That NSA Violations ‘Tip of the Iceberg’

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udall_wydenTwo Democratic senators warned Friday that a new report detailing thousands of instances in which the National Security Agency broke laws while spying was only “the tip of a larger iceberg” of surveillance violations.

“We have previously said that the violations of these laws and rules were more serious than had been acknowledged, and we believe Americans should know that this confirmation is just the tip of a larger iceberg,” said Sens. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Mark Udall, D-Colo., in a prepared statement.

The senators’ comments follow a Washington Post report Friday that detailed the NSA breaking privacy rules or overstepping its legal authority thousands of times each year since Congress granted the agency broad new powers in 2008.

Wyden and Udall said that while Senate rules prohibit them confirming or denying some of the details in media reports, “the American people have a right to know more details about of these violations.”

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Summer Dystopia: 75% of Americans Unhappy with Nation’s Direction

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GALLUP-politics-Obama-Holder(CNSNews.com) – “Three-quarters of Americans are now dissatisfied with the nation’s course, up from 68 percent in July,” an August 12 Gallup poll found.

The Gallup results were echoed by a Rasmussen poll, which found that only 29 percent of likely voters believe “the country is heading in the right direction.”

And Americans don’t trust Congress or the news media to help turn things around.

“Confidence in the country’s direction” peaked the week just before Election Day and has been “gradually decreasing ever since,” Rasmussen reports. But public opinion on the performance of Congress is even more negative, according to the latest polling data.

Pollsters report growing disapproval of President Obama’s handling of economic and national security issues, with only 45 percent of Americans currently approving of his job performance and 47 percent expressing their disapproval.

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Texas ‘Garden of Eden’ Owner Claims SWAT Raided Her Property Under ‘Guise’ of a Drug Bust and Took 20,420 Pounds of Material (+video)

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swat_raidThe owner of sustainable farm in Texas claims a SWAT team came onto her property “under the guise that we were doing a drug trafficking, marijuana-growing operation” and ended up taking more than 20,000 pounds of material and allegedly violated personal rights, according to WFAA-TV.

“There were 15 to 20 blackberry bushes. There were sunflowers for our bees and gifting. Lots of okra, and we had a sweet potato patch that they whacked down with a Weed-Eater. The weeds that we used to shade our crops are also gone,” owner of the Garden of Eden Shellie Smith told WFAA of the scene after authorities came through.

The SWAT team had a probable cause search warrant to come onto the Arlington farm August 2. A code enforcement team also entered the property with an abatement warrant, which allowed them to take nearly “20,420 pounds of nuisance materials” from the property.

WFFA reported these materials including two dozen tires with stagnant water and “compost, wooden pallets and furniture.”

“The purpose was to improve the quality of life, to resolve life safety issues within neighborhoods and to hold the property owner responsible for creating blight conditions on their property,” the City of Arlington’s spokeswoman Sana Syed wrote in a statement of the raid.

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Blowback: Group Planning 9-11 Million Muslim March on DC Blasted (+video)

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million_muslim_marchCritics say a Muslim group picked the wrong day – Sept. 11 – to march on Washington to complain about religious profiling and President Obama’s handling of an investigation into the terror attacks that rocked America 12 years ago.

The mass demonstration, called the “Million Muslim March,” was changed to a more mainstream-sounding event, “Million American March Against Fear,” but the name did not seem to gain much traction and has apparently reverted back to its original title.

American Muslim Political Action Committee (AMPAC), which is organizing the march, claims Muslims nationwide have been the victims of anti-Islamic bigotry in the years following the Sept. 11, 2001, Al Qaeda terrorist attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people on American soil.

“On 9.11.01 our country was forever changed by the horrific events in New York. The entire country was victimized by the acts done on that day,” the group said in a statement. “Muslim and Non Muslim alike were traumatized but we as Muslims continue 12 years later to be victimized by being made the villains. To this day every media outlet and anti Islamic organization has committed slanderous and libel statements against us as Muslims and our religion of Islam.”

“Yet our Government either sits idly by and does nothing to protect our freedoms or it exacerbates the problem with its constant war on terrorism in Islamic countries, congressional hearings on Islam in America, and its changes to the NDAA law,” the statement says.

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Heritage Action CEO Calls Out House GOP

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house_leadershipHeritage Action for America CEO Michael Needham on Thursday cast House Republicans as gutless for backing down on Obamacare and the farm bill.

“Washington loves to play this game of saying something can’t be done,” he said. “Politicians like to set expectations as low as possible so they can’t help but trip over them.”

During a C-SPAN “Newsmakers” interview with CQ Roll Call’s Niels Lesniewski and The Hill’s Bob Cusack, which will air Sunday, Needham said Republicans don’t know what is possible because there are still seven weeks until Sept. 30, when the government will need new spending legislation to avoid a shutdown.

Lawmakers have been asking what Heritage Action’s strategy would be if the government shut down, and they say Heritage doesn’t have an answer.

But Needham shrugged off that concern.

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Government Now Admits There IS an ‘Area 51’

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area_51The last time I visited Area 51, it didn’t exist.

But as of this week it does. Officially.

For reasons unknown, the government finally has admitted that Area 51 — the Shangri-La of alien hunters and a sturdy trope of ­science-fiction movies — is a real place in the Mojave Desert about 100 miles north of Las Vegas.

It presumably does not house hideous squidlike ETs, but at least you can see the place on a map. Area 51 is confirmed in declassified CIA documents posted online Thursday by the National Security Archive at George Washington University. A dogged researcher pried from the CIA a report on the history of the U-2 spy plane, which was tested and operated at Area 51.

The military, which runs the base, always denied that Area 51 was called by its famous moniker, preferring a designation connected to the Groom Lake salt flat, a landing strip for the U-2 and other stealth aircraft.

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DOJ Seeks to Block Bernanke Testimony

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ben-bernanke2WASHINGTON — The government is trying to block questioning of Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke in a lawsuit by the former head of American International Group Inc.

The Justice Department told a federal appeals court Friday that high-ranking officials should not have to testify except in extraordinary circumstances.

Former AIG CEO Hank Greenberg sued the government over the $182 billion bailout of the insurance giant that has since been repaid.

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