WH: Obama Called Hillary at 10PM on Night of Benghazi Attack–About Same Time Clinton First Publicly Linked Attack to YouTube Video

/4 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Evan Vucci President Barack Obama called Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at approximately 10 p.m. on the night of the terrorist attacks on the U.S. facilities in Benghazi, Libya, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney told CNSNews.com.

That was more than six hours after the attacks started, more than an hour before Tryone Woods and Glen Doherty were killed–and about the time that Clinton first released a statement linking the attacks to “inflammatory material posted on the Internet,” a reference to an anti-Muslim video on YouTube.

“Like every president before him, he has a national security adviser and deputy national security adviser,” Carney told CNSNews.com on Tuesday. “He was in regular communication with his national security team directly, through them, and spoke with the secretary of state at approximately 10 p.m. He called her to get an update on the situation.”

Carney was responding to questions from CNSNews.com about who Obama communicated with on the evening of Sept. 11, 2012. Outgoing Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, told the Senate Armed Services Committee they first notified the president of the attack during a Sept. 11, 2012 meeting that began at 5 p.m. and ran for about 30 minutes. They also told the committee they did not talk to Obama or anyone else at the White House after that meeting.

U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens, State Department Information Management Officer Sean Smith, and former Navy SEALs Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty, who worked for CIA, were killed in the Benghazi attacks.

Read more from this story HERE.

Federal Reserve Grappling With When To End Stimulus Program

/0 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: DonkeyHotey New minutes from the Federal Reserve show central bank officials grappling with exactly when and how the Fed should exit from its massive stimulus efforts.

The minutes detailing talks of the Fed’s meeting at the end of January show officials trying to decide whether to continue monthly bond purchases of $85 billion, and with what exactly the Fed should be doing to support a steady but slow economic recovery.

“Several” members of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) argued in January that the Fed should be prepared to vary the speed at which it is buying bonds in response to the trajectory of the economy or the effectiveness of the policy.

Currently, the Fed has committed to buying $85 billion of bonds a month until it sees either substantial improvement in the labor market or a spike in inflation. To be more precise, the FOMC has said its policies would likely remain in place until the unemployment rate fell below 6.5 percent or inflation climbed above two percent.

But the minutes show a number of participants warning that the Fed may be forced to reduce or halt those purchases well below those thresholds if further evaluation of the policy’s effectiveness and risks were to change.

Read more from this story HERE.

Pro-Gay Marriage Ads Feature Obama, Bush, Cheney, Powell (+video)

/1 Comment/in , /by

Photo Credit: Daily Caller The Gay Marriage advocacy partnership Respect for Marriage Coalition launched a $1 million national advertising campaign featuring a bipartisan group of political heavyweights pushing for gay marriage Wednesday.

The campaign features past statements from President Barack Obama, former first lady Laura Bush, former Vice President Dick Cheney and former Secretary of Defense Colin Powell all voicing their support for same-sex couples to wed.

Respect for Marriage Coalition’s message is set to appear in the coalition’s nationwide television, print — including full-page ads in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post — and online ads.

The ads rely on past clips of interviews and speeches from Obama, Bush, Cheney and Powell.

The organization uses a clip of Bush on CNN saying, “When couples are committed to each other and love each other then they ought to have the same sort of rights that everyone has” and Powell, also on CNN, saying, “Allowing them to live together with the protection of law, it seems to me is the way we should be moving in this country.”

See video:

Read more from this story HERE.

Coal Industry Regulations Were A Laughing Matter to the EPA

/2 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: AP Lisa Jackson recently left her job as EPA administrator amid an investigation into her use of alias email accounts. She apparently used those secret accounts to shield official agency business from Freedom of Information Act requests.

In one of those emails, recently obtained by a free-market think tank, an EPA employee mocked proposed coal ash regulations, joking that Jackson “knows which landfill’s leaching, She knows which pond might break, She knows they all lack liners, Close ’em down, for goodness sake!”

The Competitive Enterprise Institute says it has now received thousands of heavily redacted emails sent by or to Jackson and her email alias, Richard Windsor.

(CEI sued the EPA to force compliance with its FOIA requests related to the EPA’s coal policies. The second batch of emails was released three hours after most federal offices had closed on Feb. 15 for the holiday weekend.)

According to CEI, “nearly 95 percent of the correspondence from the administrator and more than 80 percent of the email sent to ‘Richard Windsor’ – excluding news stories available to the public – were redacted (blacked out), despite claims by President Obama his was the most transparent administration ever.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Obama’s Special Thirst for Control (+audio)

/2 Comments/in , /by

Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli led the fight against Obamacare in federal court, and he says he is bringing the same fidelity to the Constitution in his bid to become the next governor of the Commonwealth.

Cuccinelli is also author of the new book “The Last Line of Defense: The New Fight for American Liberty. He told WND a presidential administration striving for more power is typical in both parties, but he believes the Obama team has a special thirst for control.

“What makes this unique, frankly, is the brazenness and frequency of this administration’s willingness to break the law and to trample the Constitution,” Cuccinelli said. “Just last month they lost the constitutional case that came straight from the president about his supposed recess appointments. He claimed the right to essentially declare when the Senate was in recess, which is an egregious violation of the separation of powers, and the court found so unanimously and they threw out his appointment.”

Cuccinelli said his own state is also the victim of federal overreach, a claim that was also validated in a recent federal court ruling involving the Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA.

“We beat the EPA in Virginia, which I refer to as the Employment Prevention Agency because they’re so good at that, with Fairfax County as our co-plaintiff,” Cuiccinelli said. “It is a very partisan, Democrat board of supervisors, and yet they joined me as the co-plaintiff in that suit because they knew that the federal government had broken the law in how it was attempting to regulate water just like it would regulate a pollutant. It sounds crazy and it is, which is probably part of why we won so convincingly. That was worth over $300 million to the people of Virginia.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Missouri House Bill Makes Proposing Gun Control Illegal

/3 Comments/in , , /by

Photo Credit: CBS St. Louis A Missouri lawmaker is proposing to send colleagues to prison for introducing gun control legislation — a plan that even its sponsor acknowledges has no chance of passage but nonetheless highlights the increasingly strident tone of gun measures in Missouri’s generally pro-gun Legislature.

Rep. Mike Leara said Tuesday that he considers his bill a statement of principle. It would make lawmakers guilty of a felony punishable by up to four years in prison if they introduce legislation restricting gun rights.

“I have no illusions about the bill making it through the legislative process, but I want it to be clear that the Missouri House will stand in defense of the people’s constitutional right to keep and bear arms,” Leara, a Republican from suburban St. Louis, said in a written statement. He declined further comment.

Read more from this story HERE.

Documents: Hagel Staffers Met With ‘Front Group’ For Iranian Regime

/2 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: APDocuments obtained by The Daily Caller show that staffers for then-Sen. Chuck Hagel met repeatedly with a controversial pro-Iran lobby group, and some met with the organization’s president.

Hagel is President Barack Obama’s choice to be the next secretary of defense. Arizona Sen. John McCain and other Republicans have conceded that a vote — and likely confirmation — will take place during the week of Feb. 25.

Iranian state-run media have referred to the National Iranian-American Council (NIAC) since at least 2006 as “Iran’s lobby” in the U.S.

It portrays itself in the media as an independent group of Iranian expatriates. But Sam Nunberg, director of the Legal Project at the Middle East Forum project, describes the NIAC as an Iranian “front group.”

And documents released during the discovery phase of a defamation lawsuit NIAC filed against Seid Hassan Daioleslam, editor of the Iranian American Forum and one of the regime’s most public critics, include correspondence with Mohammed Javad Zaif, then Iran’s permanent representative to the United Nations.

Read more from this story HERE.

McCain Defends Immigration Plan To Angry Residents

/13 Comments/in , /by

Arizona took center stage in the national immigration debate Tuesday as Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano toured the state’s border with Mexico and Sen. John McCain defended his proposed immigration overhaul to an angry crowd in suburban Phoenix.

The presence of the top officials is the latest sign that Arizona will play a prominent role in the immigration debate as President Barack Obama looks to make it a signature issue of his second term.

Napolitano toured the border near Nogales with the highest-ranking official at U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the incoming chairman of the Senate’s homeland security committee and an Arizona congressman. Napolitano, Arizona’s former governor, said afterward that comprehensive immigration reform will strengthen the nation’s border against criminals and other threats.

Also Tuesday, McCain hosted two town hall meetings in Arizona, during which he defended his immigration plan to upset residents concerned about border security. A bipartisan group of senators — including Arizona Republicans McCain and Jeff Flake — want assurances on border security as Congress weighs what could be the biggest changes to immigration law in nearly 30 years. Arizona is the only state with both of its senators working on immigration reform in Congress, a sign of the state’s widely debated border security issues.

Immigration activists and elected officials say it’s only natural for Arizona to continue to take the forefront in the national conversation on immigration after years of internal debate on the topic.

Read more from this story HERE.

Gen. John Allen To Retire, Won’t Seek NATO Post

/2 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: APGen. John Allen is retiring from the military instead of enduring what likely would have been a messy Senate confirmation process to be NATO supreme commander.

The general, who previously served as top commander in Afghanistan, was on track for the prestigious NATO post until his name surfaced in the adultery scandal that toppled former CIA chief David Petraeus.

Gen. Allen was officially cleared of misconduct by the Pentagon in January after a probe into his exchange of e-mails with a socialite in Tampa, Fla., who had clashed with Paula Broadwell, Mr. Petraeus’s biographer and mistress. But it was likely the incident would be revived in any congressional confirmation hearing.

In a statement Tuesday, President Obama said Gen. Allen cited health issues within his family in making his decision to take his name out of consideration for the role of supreme allied commander in Europe.

Read more from this story HERE.

Did Obama Supporter Vote 6 Times In 2012? Ohio Poll Worker Target Of Investigation (+video)

/2 Comments/in , , /by

Photo Credit: Fox NewsThe Obama/Biden lawn sign remains proudly planted in front of Melowese Richardson’s Cincinnati home, three months after the presidential election. It seems that President Obama has an especially ardent supporter in the veteran Ohio poll worker.

Richardson told a local television station this month that she voted twice last November. She cast an absentee ballot and then voted at the polls as well.

“Yes, I voted twice,” Richardson told WCPO-TV. “I, after registering thousands of people, certainly wanted my vote to count, so I voted. I voted at the polls.”

Authorities also are investigating if she voted in the names of four other people, too, for a total of six votes in the 2012 presidential election.

“I’ll fight it for Mr. Obama and for Mr. Obama’s right to sit as president of the United States,” Richardson vowed when asked about the voter fraud investigation that is now under way.

Read more from this story HERE.