Pentagon Confirms that Christian Soldiers who Share their Faith may be Court-Martialed

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Religious liberty groups have grave concerns after they learned the Pentagon is vetting its guide on religious tolerance with a group that compared Christian evangelism to “rape” and advocated that military personnel who proselytize should be court martialed.

The Military Religious Freedom Foundation is calling on the Air Force to enforce a regulation that they believe calls for the court martial of any service member caught proselytizing.

President Mikey Weinstein and others from his organization met privately with Pentagon officials on April 23. He said U.S. troops who proselytize are guilty of sedition and treason and should be punished – by the hundreds if necessary – to stave off what he called a “tidal wave of fundamentalists.”

“Someone needs to be punished for this,” Weinstein told Fox News. “Until the Air Force or Army or Navy or Marine Corps punishes a member of the military for unconstitutional religious proselytizing and oppression, we will never have the ability to stop this horrible, horrendous, dehumanizing behavior.”

Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, told Fox News he was stunned that the Pentagon would be taking counsel and advice from the Military Religious Freedom Foundation.

Read more from this story, including the Pentagon’s confirmation to Fox News that Christian soldiers who proselytize violate military regulations, HERE.

To sign a petition opposed to this outrageous policy, click HERE.

IRS Now Using Technology to Track All Credit Card Transactions

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Photo Credit: US NewsThe Internal Revenue Service relies on technology more than ever to sniff out tax cheats using robo-audits and data mining—but so far it has caught lot of minnows, and big fish are still eluding detection.

Even as millions of people’s accounts are screened online and matched against their digital files elsewhere, the IRS’s data-detection tools come nowhere close to collecting the $400 billion in tax dodges estimated to take place each year. The area in which its robo-audits have had the most impact is on tax returns for low-income taxpayers who try to claim the Earned Income Tax Credit. In total, fraudulent claims totaled $2 billion, just 0.01 percent of the total of individual taxes. The EITC was the biggest single compliance problem cited.

That amount is expected to rise in the tax year ahead as the IRS extends the use of data mining to include the personal data of millions more taxpayers. Its sophisticated data-matching and pattern-recognition technology, largely developed by IBM over the past decade, will reach up the income ladder to include more middle-income and small-business filers who itemize deductions, although it is unlikely to have any impact on the complicated filings of high-net-worth taxpayers in the top 5 percent of income earnings, say tax experts who have studied the IRS plans.

“Real time” audits of electronic tax returns. The IRS’s next phase in high-tech tax collection will be to create a “real-time” check of tax returns to “match them to third party information,” said U.S. Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration J. Russell George in testimony before Congress. Starting this year, the IRS tools will be able to track all credit card transactions, for starters. The agency has also instructed agents on using online sources such as social media and e-commerce sites including eBay, as well as the rich data generated by mobile devices. In one controversial disclosure in April, the ACLU showed documents in which the IRS general counsel said the agency could look at emails without warrants, but the IRS has said it will not use this power.

Read more from this story HERE.

The U.S. Has Much, Much More Gas and Oil Than We Thought

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Photo Credit: APThe United States has double the amount of oil and three times the amount of natural gas than previously thought, stored deep under the states of North Dakota, South Dakota, and Montana, according to new data the Obama administration released Tuesday.

In announcing the new data in a conference call, Interior Secretary Sally Jewell also said the administration will release within weeks draft rules to regulate hydraulic fracturing, technology that has come under scrutiny for its environmental impact but that is essential to developing all of this energy.

“These world-class formations contain even more energy-resource potential than previously understood, which is important information as we continue to reduce our nation’s dependence on foreign sources of oil,” Jewell said in a statement.

The formations, called Bakken and Three Forks, span much of western North Dakota, the northern tip of South Dakota and the northeastern tip of Montana. The last time the United States Geological Survey assessed this area for its oil and gas reserves was in 2008. But that assessment did not include the Three Forks formation, which explains the substantial increase in the estimates. USGS estimates that these two formations together hold 7.4 billion barrels of undiscovered—but technically recoverable—oil and 6.7 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

Read more from this story HERE.

Study: Desperate for Attention, White House Reporters Abandon Tough Questions of Obama

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Photo Credit: Pete SouzaA groundbreaking new study of White House press conferences over the past 23 years reveals that the events are in a death spiral, especially under President Obama. Reporters, desperate to keep the press conferences alive, have switched to asking easy questions in a bid to coax the president to host more of them, the study says.

Noting that the days when reporters like Sam Donaldson and Helen Thomas pestered President Reagan are long gone, the study in the authoritative journal American Politics Research said that adversarial questions have become rare as presidents have rebelled at them.

“The press want to encourage presidents to hold more of these direct exchanges to benefit their own reputations and media’s prestige,” said the study provided to Secrets. “The press will be less adversarial in these rare meetings to encourage more of them.”

The trend started with former President Clinton as he, former President George W. Bush and Obama curtailed press conferences and especially cut back on solo meetings with the press. Joint press conferences generally feature the president with a foreign leader and are considered easier to handle, said the study. In his first term, Obama held 38 joint and 27 solo press conferences, according to the study.

Read more from this story HERE.

Report: Obama Knows Identity of Benghazi Mastermind but Does Nothing

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Photo Credit: Allison HargerBy Adam Housley. The U.S. has identified the mastermind of the Benghazi attack, sources tell Fox News, though the individual apparently is walking free in Libya.

The confirmation from multiple sources comes more than seven months after the assault on two U.S. locations in Benghazi, Libya, where four Americans — including Ambassador Chris Stevens — were killed. President Obama pledged after the attack that “justice will be done.”

But one source told Fox News the government is “sitting on” information.

“We basically don’t want to upset anybody, and the problem is, if Ambassador Stevens’ family knew that we were sitting on information about the people who killed their son, their brother, on and on, then, and we could look them as a government in the face, then we’re messing up. We’re messing up,” the source said.

Fox News spoke exclusively with one special operator who watched the events unfold in real time and has debriefed those who were part of the response. He remains anonymous for his safety and has decided to talk because he says he and others connected with the Sept. 11, 2012, attacks in Benghazi are frustrated with the excuses and lack of a military response since Stevens and three other Americans were killed. Read more from this story HERE.

GOP says Benghazi whistleblowers will ‘expose new facts’

By Jonathan Easley and Julian Pecquet. Eyewitnesses with potentially damaging information on the Obama administration’s handling of last year’s terror attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi will testify at a hearing next week, Republicans said.

The House oversight committee is holding a hearing next week that will “expose new facts and details that the Obama administration has tried to suppress,” oversight chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) said Wednesday.

Two of Issa’s lieutenants said the witnesses at the hearing would include federal employees with direct knowledge of the attack that killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans in Libya.

Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), chairman of the oversight subpanel on national security, said people with “personal firsthand knowledge” would testify about the attack. Asked if any “whistleblowers” would be among the witnesses, Chaffetz said: “I think they will be appearing. Some of them.”

“I think you will see — again I can’t release any names to you yet, but next Wednesday I think those of us who are concerned about this issue … we’re finally going to get some answers,” Chaffetz told Fox News on Wednesday. Read more from this story HERE.

Republican National Committee Picks Karl Rove-Linked Company for $15 Million Project

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Photo Credit: APThe Republican National Committee has chosen a Karl Rove-linked voter data project called Liberty Works to help it compete with Democrats in the digital arena.

Liberty Works will team up with Data Trust, whose chairman of the board is former RNC Chairman Mike Duncan, committee spokeswoman Kirsten Kukowski confirmed to POLITICO.

“Basically, RNC is going to provide the data, and then Liberty Works will build the platform, and Data Trust will manage it all,” Kukowski said. “This is kind of in the beginning stages. There are legal issues that we’re going to iron out.”

Several data entities — one of which had connections to the Koch brothers — had been competing for the partnership, POLITICO previously reported. Roll Call first reported Wednesday on the selection of Liberty Works and Data Trust.

Rove, who had been working with Liberty Works’ founder Dick Boyce, pitched donors in New York last month for the $15 million-plus data project and also talked it up in March to top GOP insiders at an invitation-only conference in Georgia.

Read more from this story HERE.

Shock Poll: Wealthy, Not Middle Class, Support Obama

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Photo Credit: Washington Examiner President Obama’s approval numbers are starting to mimic Mitt Romney’s.

According to a new Economist/YouGov poll, it’s the rich — not the poor or middle class — who back Obama more despite his 2012 campaign attacking the rich.

The poll found that fewer than half of those with incomes less than $100,000 per year approve of Obama’s performance, while he enjoys a 54 percent approval rating among those with incomes higher than that.

Read more from this story HERE.

Representative: ‘My Constituents Want More Sequestration, Not Less’

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Photo Credit: Getty ImagesNobody is particularly happy about the arbitrary, across-the-board spending cuts taking effect as a result of sequestration. That is, except for maybe Rep. Billy Long (R-Mo.), who said Tuesday that his constituents want even more cuts to kick in.

“The people that I’ve talked to seem to be doing well,” Long told local news affiliate KOLR10 News. “In fact, when I got out in restaurants here in town, people come up to me. They want to see more sequestration, not less.”

Long said people in other parts of the country may be feeling pain as a result of the $85 billion in cuts. But not his community.

“We haven’t seen any measurable effect here at all,” he said.

Read more from this story HERE.

Saudi Arabia Warned the United States IN WRITING about Boston Bomber in 2012

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Photo Credit: APThe Kingdom of Saudi Arabia sent a written warning about accused Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in 2012, long before pressure-cooker blasts killed three and injured hundreds, according to a senior Saudi government official with direct knowledge of the document.

The Saudi warning, the official told MailOnline, was separate from the multiple red flags raised by Russian intelligence in 2011, and was based on human intelligence developed independently in Yemen.

Citing security concerns, the Saudi government also denied an entry visa to the elder Tsarnaev brother in December 2011, when he hoped to make a pilgrimage to Mecca, the source said. Tsarnaev’s plans to visit Saudi Arabia have not been previously disclosed.

The Saudis’ warning to the U.S. government was also shared with the British government. ‘It was very specific’ and warned that ‘something was going to happen in a major U.S. city,’ the Saudi official said during an extensive interview.

It ‘did name Tamerlan specifically,’ he added. The ‘government-to-government’ letter, which he said was sent to the Department of Homeland Security at the highest level, did not name Boston or suggest a date for his planned attack.

Read more from this story HERE.

Chief Justice Roy Moore Making Eligibility Backers Desperate?

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Photo Credit: WNDThe Democratic Party has jumped into a Barack Obama eligibility case before Judge Roy Moore’s Alabama Supreme Court, filing an uninvited brief that even quotes late-night comedian Jimmy Kimmel in an effort to see the case dismissed.

As WND reported, 2012 Constitution Party presidential nominee Virgil Goode and Alabama Republican Party leader Hugh McInnish have filed a case seeking to force Secretary of State Beth Chapman to verify that all candidates on the state’s 2012 ballot were eligible to serve.

The case, dismissed at a lower level, is now being appealed to the Alabama Supreme Court, where Roy Moore was elected chief justice last November. The case becomes all the more intriguing because Moore is on record questioning Obama’s constitutional eligibility to serve as president.

Speculation abounds online that Alabama Democrats have jumped into the case out of concern Moore may not be so quick as other judges to dismiss challenges to Obama’s eligibility.

In a brief of amicus curiae filed last week, the Alabama Democratic Party insists the court is required to dismiss the case.

Read more from this story HERE.