Rand Paul on 2016: It’s About Independents and Moderates

Republican Rand Paul is going to take his politicking to moderate voters, and away from fire-breathing ultra-conservatism that turns off people who favor same-sex marriage and abortion rights, he said in Iowa today.

But he also met for a full hour with deeply conservative Iowa pastors — a team of men who came away impressed, saying they’re certain that Paul has “a Biblical world view” and the Christian values they’re looking for in a presidential candidate.

“Elections are about independents and moderates,” Paul, a U.S. senator from Kentucky who has all but declared a White House bid for 2016, told reporters at a news conference this afternoon.

Paul’s trip was seen as a way to introduce himself as a presidential material in his own right, not just as a surrogate for his father Ron, a three-time presidential candidate. His itinerary seemed like one Iowans might see a month out from the 2015 caucuses. He booked a GOP fundraising dinner, a house party, a breakfast with activists and the private meeting with about 15 pastors who are influential with the GOP’s most faithful caucus-goers.

While Rand Paul, 50, and Ron Paul, 77, share the same limited-government philosophy and many of the same policy positions, their public personas are considered very different. The younger Paul, despite some recent controversies over statements that appeared to backtrack on his policy positions, is generally viewed as smoother and more credible than his father — with a promising strategy for a White House victory.

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Benghazi Talking Points Underwent 12 Revisions, Scrubbed of Terror Reference

Photo Credit: GettyBy Jonathan Karl. When it became clear last fall that the CIA’s now discredited Benghazi talking points were flawed, the White House said repeatedly the documents were put together almost entirely by the intelligence community, but White House documents reviewed by Congress suggest a different story.

ABC News has obtained 12 different versions of the talking points that show they were extensively edited as they evolved from the drafts first written entirely by the CIA to the final version distributed to Congress and to U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice before she appeared on five talk shows the Sunday after that attack.

White House emails reviewed by ABC News suggest the edits were made with extensive input from the State Department. The edits included requests from the State Department that references to the Al Qaeda-affiliated group Ansar al-Sharia be deleted as well references to CIA warnings about terrorist threats in Benghazi in the months preceding the attack.

That would appear to directly contradict what White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said about the talking points in November.

“Those talking points originated from the intelligence community. They reflect the IC’s best assessments of what they thought had happened,” Carney told reporters at the White House press briefing on November 28, 2012. “The White House and the State Department have made clear that the single adjustment that was made to those talking points by either of those two institutions were changing the word ‘consulate’ to ‘diplomatic facility’ because ‘consulate’ was inaccurate.” Read more from this story HERE.

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Benghazi e-mails show clash between State Department, CIA

By Scott Wilson and Karen DeYoung. New details from administration e-mails about last year’s attacks on the U.S. compound in Benghazi, Libya, demonstrate that an intense bureaucratic clash took place between the State Department and the CIA over which agency would get to tell the story of how the tragedy unfolded.

That clash played out in the development of administration talking points that have been at the center of the controversy over the handling of the incident, according to the e-mails that came to light Friday.

Over the five days between the attacks and the now-infamous Sunday show appearance by U.N. Ambassador Susan E. Rice, senior officials from the Central Intelligence Agency and the State Department argued over how much information to disclose about the assault in which four Americans, including Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, were killed.

That internal debate and the changes it produced in the Obama administration’s immediate account of the attack have revived Benghazi as a political issue in Washington six months after the presidential election in which it played a prominent role. Friday’s revelations — ABC News published 12 versions of the talking points — produced the latest round of Benghazi post-mortems in the eight months since the attacks. Senior administration officials said in a briefing for reporters that none of Obama’s political advisers were involved in discussions around the original talking points, only national security staff officials.

According to various drafts of the talking points, shaped before the final editing by the White House and other agencies, State Department officials raised concerns that the CIA-drafted version could be used by members of Congress to criticize diplomatic security preparedness in Benghazi. Read more from this story HERE.

Obamacare Broke: Sebelius Begs for Donations

Photo Credit: Washington PostHealth and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has gone, hat in hand, to health industry officials, asking them to make large financial donations to help with the effort to implement President Obama’s landmark health-care law, two people familiar with the outreach said.

Her unusual fundraising push comes after Congress repeatedly rejected the Obama administration’s requests for additional funds to set up the Affordable Care Act, leaving HHS to implement the president’s signature legislative accomplishment on what officials have described as a shoestring budget.

Over the past three months, Sebelius has made multiple phone calls to health industry executives, community organizations and church groups and asked that they contribute whatever they can to nonprofit groups that are working to enroll uninsured Americans and increase awareness of the law, according to an HHS official and an industry person familiar with the secretary’s activities. Both spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk openly about private discussions.

An HHS spokesperson said Sebelius was within the bounds of her authority in asking for help.

But Republicans charged that Sebelius’s outreach was improper because it pressured private companies and other groups to support the Affordable Care Act. The latest controversy has emerged as the law faces a string of challenges from GOP lawmakers in Washington and skepticism from many state officials across the country.

Read more from this story HERE.

Whistle-Blower Attorney: I Have More Benghazi Witnesses Who Want to Testify

Photo Credit: APThe attorney for one of the Benghazi whistleblowers told TheBlaze Radio that he has more people who want to come forward to testify.

Joseph diGenova, attorney for acting Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Counterterrorism Mark Thompson, did not specify how many new witnesses there were, but said they had been “on the ground” and “in the fight” during the September assault that left four Americans dead. Thompson was one of three whistleblowers who went before the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday.

“We’ve been contacted by some people on the ground who were there, who were in the fight, who want to come forward but who fear if they do they will never get contract work with the agency again,” diGenova told TheBlaze Radio host Jay Severin on Thursday. “We are going to test the director of central intelligence’s word [that those who testify will not be penalized]. If these people decide they want to come forward, the first thing we’re going to do is go to the director’s office and say here they are, how are you going to protect them?”

Read more from this story HERE.

DC’s Newseum “Celebrates Freedom” by Promoting Hamas Terrorists

The Washington, D.C.-based Newseum, a journalism museum, is standing by its decision to honor two dead Hamas terrorists who they consider reporters.

“Hussam Salama and Mahmoud al-Kumi were cameramen in a car clearly marked ‘TV,’” Newseum spokesman Scott Williams told the Washington Free Beacon via email on Friday. “The Committee to Protect Journalists, Reporters Without Borders, and the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers all consider these men journalists killed in the line duty.”

Here are six things you need to know about Salama and al-Kumi:

1. They worked as “reporters” for a Hamas-backed television station…

They worked as so-called reporters for the Hamas-backed al-Aqsa Television, which the U.S. Treasury Department designated as a terror group in 2010.

2. Salama and al-Kumi were on Hamas’ payroll…

3. Hamas hailed both Salama and al-Kumi as martyred jihadi fighters…

4. The two were “part of the resistance” against Israel…

5. They posed as television cameraman while carrying out terrorist operations…

Read more from this story HERE.

Republicans Are Refusing To Appoint Members To Obamacare’s Most Notorious Panel

Photo Credit: Business Insider One of the most politically intense fights over the Affordable Care Act was over the creation of the Independent Payment Advisory Board, infamously dubbed a “death panel” by Republicans during the 2010 elections.

On Thursday, Republican House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell signaled that they would keep working to keep opposition alive by doing everything they can to impede the board’s implementation.

The two leaders wrote a letter to President Barack Obama, notifying him that they would not be submitting any recommendations to the panel because of their opposition to it and to the law in general.

Here’s the relevant part of their letter explaining why they aren’t offering any recommendations:

In order to allow supporters to claim that the law’s Medicare cuts would be realized in the future, it tasked IPAB with reducing payments to providers or eliminating payments for certain treatments and procedures altogether. These reduced payments will force providers to stop seeing Medicare patients, the same way an increased number of doctors have stopped taking Medicaid patients. This will lead to access problems, waiting lists and denied care for seniors.

Read more from this story HERE.

Obama Admin. Orders End to 3D Printable Gun Downloads

Charging a violation of an the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), Obama’s State Department sent a threatening letter to the students who set-up the radical pro-Second Amendment website Defense Distributed.

Specifically, the letter alleged that the students were possibly in violation of ITAR because thousands of downloads of their 3D printable gun had come from outside the United States.

The State Department apparently considered a free download by a foreign user from a US-based Internet provider to be an “export” and that the plans being downloaded qualified as “controlled defense articles and related technical data.” ITAR provides that such “exports” first require the Department of State’s approval.

In addition to the 3D printable gun, the State Department also had Defense Distributed remove the 3D plans for a muzzle brake, sound moderator (for an air rifle), a gun sight, a .22 sub-caliber insert for a 12 gauge shotgun shell, and other plans.

Unfortunately for the Obama Administration, the plans have now sprung up everywhere else on the Internet, since the State Department’s objections arrived only after 100,000 downloads had already occurred.

Did Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Lie to Congress?

Photo Credit: APSen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., issued a sharp and unusual challenge to the truthfulness of the nation’s top uniformed military commander on Thursday, demanding that U.S. Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, return to Capitol Hill to provide fresh testimony on the Benghazi attacks.

The point of contention involved whether any military officers issued an order to U.S. armed forces personnel on the night of Sept. 11, when the U.S. consulate and a nearby annex came under terrorist attack, to “stand down” from providing assistance.

“I asked [Gen. Dempsey] directly,” Graham said in an exclusive interview with Fox News. “Were there any military assets in motion, to help folks in Benghazi, [that were] told to stand down? And what did [State Department whistleblower] Greg Hicks say? That Lt. Col. [Steve] Gibson — a DOD employee, a member of the Army — was in Tripoli, ready and willing to go to Benghazi, preparing to go to Benghazi, and was told to stand down.”

“Clearly,” Graham added, “our chairman of the Joint Chiefs’ rendition that no one was told to stand down is now in question.”

What’s more, Graham lumped the chairman into a group of prominent Democrats whom the Senate Republican said he would like to see summoned, or recalled, to the witness chair to testify on Benghazi. These included former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Cheryl Mills, Clinton’s former chief of staff.

Read more from this story HERE.

Missouri Passes Nation’s Most Extreme Gun Protection Bill

The Republican-controlled Missouri Legislature passed the nation’s most extreme gun protection bill, along with bans on Islamic law and the United Nations sustainability agenda, during a late-night session Wednesday.

Under the gun measure, lawmakers overwhelmingly voted to nullify all federal gun laws in the state, while allowing some teachers to carry guns in schools. The bill also says some teachers who do not carry guns can be fired, while providing them with limited arrest powers.

The gun bill’s passage followed passage of the sustainability and Sharia, or Islamic law, bans. All three bills now move to Gov. Jay Nixon (D) for his consideration. A Nixon spokesman said he did not have a comment until the governor reviewed the bills.

Senate Majority Whip Brian Nieves (R-Washington) trumpeted the bills on Facebooklate Wednesday night, describing the gun bill as the “most hard core piece of Second Amendment legislation in the nation.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Texas Congressman’s Reelection Campaign Giving Away a Free Bushmaster AR15

Photo Credit: US CongressWhile congressional gun control advocates and gun-rights supporters duke it out with words and parliamentary tactics, Texas Republican Rep. Steve Stockman is showing off his Second Amendment fervor by doing what some consider unthinkable: giving away a Bushmaster AR-15rifle, the same weapon crazed murderer Adam Lanza carried to a Connecticut elementary school where he massacred nearly two dozen children.

Stockman, a congressional freshman whose campaign boasts on Twitter that he is ‘the most conservative Congressman in Texas,’ is angling for a second term.

His campaign – not his government office, spokesman Donny Ferguson told MailOnline – is offering the unusual prize to entrants who join his online mailing list.

Twitter erupted late Wednesday after the congressman announced the prize giveaway by tweeting: ‘Want to win a FREE AR-15? Congressman Steve Stockman is giving one away! … Grab this gun before Obama does!’

‘Here in the congressional office the response has been overwhelmingly positive,’ he said. ‘What Democrats have called in have been universally violent and mentally unstable.’

Read more from this story HERE.