The Benghazi Lie

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Photo Credit: National Review Shortly before last November’s election I took part in a Fox News documentary on Benghazi, whose other participants included the former governor of New Hampshire John Sununu. Making chit-chat while the camera crew were setting up, Governor Sununu said to me that in his view Benghazi mattered because it was “a question of character.” That’s correct. On a question of foreign policy or counterterrorism strategy, men of good faith can make the wrong decisions. But a failure of character corrodes the integrity of the state.

That’s why career diplomat Gregory Hicks’s testimony was so damning — not so much for the new facts as for what those facts revealed about the leaders of this republic. In this space in January, I noted that Hillary Clinton had denied ever seeing Ambassador Stevens’s warnings about deteriorating security in Libya on the grounds that “1.43 million cables come to my office” — and she can’t be expected to see all of them, or any. Once Ambassador Stevens was in his flag-draped coffin listening to her eulogy for him at Andrews Air Force Base, he was her bestest friend in the world — it was all “Chris this” and “Chris that,” as if they’d known each other since third grade. But up till that point he was just one of 1.43 million close personal friends of Hillary trying in vain to get her ear.

Now we know that at 8 p.m. Eastern time on the last night of Stevens’s life, his deputy in Libya spoke to Secretary Clinton and informed her of the attack in Benghazi and the fact that the ambassador was now missing. An hour later, Gregory Hicks received a call from the then–Libyan prime minister, Abdurrahim el-Keib, informing him that Stevens was dead. Hicks immediately called Washington. It was 9 p.m. Eastern time, or 3 a.m. in Libya. Remember the Clinton presidential team’s most famous campaign ad? About how Hillary would be ready to take that 3 a.m. call? Four years later, the phone rings, and Secretary Clinton’s not there. She doesn’t call Hicks back that evening. Or the following day.

Read more from this story HERE.

Jodi Arias is Guilty; So Are We

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Photo Credit: Bernard GoldbergThere are times, not many thankfully, when I get depressed, brought down by the sorry evidence that we live in a country fixated on shiny objects. This is one of those times.

A jury in Phoenix has found Jodi Arias guilty of first-degree murder. That’s not what gets me down. What I find so depressing is our collective fascination with trivia, with anything that we can follow without having to actually think.

No one ever heard of Jodi Arias until cable TV made her famous. No one ever heard of the boyfriend she killed, you know, what’s his name. The Arias murder trial tells us nothing about anything bigger than Jodi Arias. She wasn’t famous like O.J. Simpson before she was arrested. This wasn’t Bill Clinton’s impeachment trial. Those trials had implications. The Arias trial had none.

When it became known that the jury had reached a verdict, cable news went wall-to-wall with Jodi Arias. It would be 90 minutes before the verdict was announced in court, so anchors and pundits spent the time saying nothing – nothing that mattered anyway. But this is a small point. Saying nothing about Jodi Arias gets you more viewers than saying something about the national debt.

But you can’t blame cable TV news, not entirely anyway, because television is a business that gives the people what they want. And if they want Jodi, TV executives will give them Jodi for hours on end. Hell, if she had been found not guilty they might have even given her a show.

Read more from this story HERE.

Coulter: Liberal Media Lying Again About Evangelical Support for Amnesty

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Photo Credit: Daily Caller Every few months since at least 2006, The New York Times has taken time out from brow-beating Evangelicals to praise them for supporting amnesty for illegal aliens.

Most of the “Evangelicals” the Times cites are liberal frauds, far from “unlikely allies” in amnesty, as alleged. It is a specialty of the left to pose as something they’re not in order to create the impression of a zeitgeist. The only one I haven’t seen quoted yet is the ACLU’s minister, Barry Lynn.

The Times keeps touting Evangelicals for Amnesty as evidence of a “shift,” a “change of heart” and a “secret weapon.” Breaking the same news story every two months since 2006 isn’t a shift; it’s propaganda.

Any Evangelical promoting the McCain-Rubio amnesty plan has the moral framework of Planned Parenthood. Like the abortion lobby, they have boundless compassion for the people they can see, but none for those they can’t see.

One Evangelical after another told the Times that they no longer believe Americans should have control over who immigrates here on the basis of having met illegal aliens in their pews. The millions harmed by illegal immigration are left out of the equation. They don’t go to church here.

Read more from this story HERE.

7 Things We Learned from the Benghazi Whistleblowers’ Hearing

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Photo Credit: شبكة برق | B.R.QThe Republicans mishandled the Benghazi whistleblowers’ hearing. What should have been stretched across several days to give the nation time to digest it all, was instead packed into a single day filled with an overwhelming amount of information. The media’s attention span is not that long. The verdict in the Jodi Arias trial came along in the afternoon and blew Benghazi off the networks, most of which didn’t want to cover it at all. Even Fox joined the drive-by media, taking Benghazi off the air in favor of the irrelevant Arias trial. Following the announcement of the Arias verdict, charges were read in the Cleveland kidnapping case. Those were aired live as well, relegating Benghazi again.

Nevertheless, for those who slogged through the entire day of hearings and ignored local crime stories, new information was there to be learned.

1. There were multiple stand-down orders, not just one. Special operations forces were told, twice, by their chain of command not to board aircraft to Benghazi to rescue the Americans then under attack. The U.S. deputy diplomat, Greg Hicks, testified that the military commander, Lt. Col. Gibson, had his team ready to go twice. They were on the runway about to board a flight to Benghazi in the middle of the attack. They were ordered to stand down and remain in Tripoli to receive wounded who would be coming out of Benghazi. One of the orders came in the middle of the attack, the other came toward the end after Hicks’ team had traveled from Tripoli to Benghazi. The fact that Hicks’ team was able get to Benghazi before the end of the assault strongly suggests that the special operations team could have made a real difference.

At the same time, the State Department’s commander on the scene, Hicks, ordered his personnel into Benghazi and went there himself. Hicks testified that Gibson never told him who issued the stand-down orders. He commented that Gibson told him that the military stand-down was a shock: “This is the first time in my career that a diplomat has more balls than someone in the military.”

Hicks also testified that the U.S. government never even requested military overflight to support the Americans in Benghazi. The U.S. had an unarmed drone overhead and could have gotten permission to fly fighters over the scene, at least, but never asked.

Read more from this story HERE including discussion of these additional six points:

2. Ambassador SteveDemocrats were uninterested in getting at most of the facts, but were very interested in destroying Mark Thompsons’ reason for going to Benghazi has been cleared up.

3. Clinton was briefed at 2 am on the night of the attack, was never told that a movie had anything to do with the attack by those on the ground in Libya, yet blamed the movie anyway.

4. Whistleblowers were intimidated into silence.

5. “The YouTube movie was a non-event in Libya.”

6. Democrats were uninterested in getting at most of the facts, but were very interested in destroying Mark Thompson.

7. House hearings are a poor way to determine who did what and why during and after the attack.

Benghazi vs Watergate: What Difference Does it Make?

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Photo Credit: Irish CentralOver 40 years ago the country came to a standstill as revelations of lying and a cover-up by the President of the United States were exposed. Watergate became a name synonymous with a scandal of proportions that could topple a president.

Days of televised Congressional hearings with the often repeated phrase: “what did the President know and when did he know it?”— held the nation spellbound as politicians from both parties asked tough questions of the presidents staff.

The media coverage was unrivaled as details of a bungled petty burglary turned into a major scandal and efforts to hide the president’s involvement came to light.

But no one died as a result of Watergate.

Today’s congressional hearing on the events leading up, during and after the attack on our consulate in Benghazi, are revealing disturbing differences between what the Obama administration told the American public and what actual witnesses to the events are testifying to.

It is becoming clear; a purposeful decision was made to reduce the security presence in Libya which could have protected our personnel from attack. If normal security procedures would have been followed in Benghazi, our ambassador and three other Americans would not have been killed on September 11-12.

During the attack on our consulate and annex, contrary to what President Obama has claimed, not all measures were taken to send help to our besieged Americans. They were left outgunned and outnumbered to be killed, mutilated and wounded.

For weeks after the attack, a deliberate false narrative was put out by the Whitehouse and the State Department to cover up the real instigators in the attack: violent Islamic extremists who were closely allied with Al Qaeda.

At the critical moment in the presidential campaign, President Obama and Vice President Biden’s main theme had been they killed Osama Bin Laden and had defeated Al Qaeda. To admit that an Al Qaeda element had attacked our consulate and killed our ambassador would have been an admission of failure of one of the few successes the administration could lay claim to.

This knowledge would have made a huge difference in the election and could have been the difference between having a President Obama or a President Romney….It also would have been devastating for President Obama to defend in the debates with Romney….But it was an opportunity denied to Romney.

But today’s Benghazi hearing, no matter how riveting, and the news coverage leading up to it, is dramatically showing how our country has changed since the Watergate scandal.

Perhaps Americans have become hardened to scandal and no longer expect honesty from their President.

Perhaps if this was a Republican administration, there would be dozens of reporters assigned to get to the bottom of this story and 24/7 coverage would continue until all of the facts were exposed.

Unlike Watergate, where Democrats and Republicans joined together to find the truth, the Benghazi scandal has magnified the meanness of partisan politics. Any attempt to get to the truth by congress is labeled partisan politics by democrats. There is little if any cooperation by house democrats in this investigation.

The truth, if it is ever to be known by the American public will have to be uncovered by patriotic Americans, who put their country first.

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Ed Farnan is the conservative columnist at IrishCentral, where he has been writing on the need for energy independence, strong self defense, secure borders, 2nd amendment, smaller government and many other issues. His articles appear in many publications throughout the USA and world. He has been a guest on Fox News and a regular guest on radio stations in the US and Europe.

Another Financial Crisis Coming, Much Worse Than Last

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Photo Credit: Getty Images The bond markets will crash once global central banks stop buying debt, triggering a financial crisis much worse than the one seen in 2008, strategist David Roche told CNBC.

Roche, who has previously warned that “safe haven” government bonds are the most dangerous place for investors to be in, said Wednesday: “Yes it [a financial crisis] will happen and yes, it will be bigger [than the credit crisis]. Once you re-price the burden of the world’s debt… the ugly truth will be revealed.”

According to Roche, president of Independent Strategy, once the expansive quantitative easing programs initiated by Western central banks come to an end, sovereign bond yields, including U.S. Treasurys, German Bunds and U.K. Gilts, will spike significantly prompting a crash.

Yields on U.S. 10-year Treasurys have fallen more than 200 basis points over the past five years and are now around 1.8 percent. Meanwhile, U.K. 10-year Gilts and German 10-year Bunds were also trading near record lows on Wednesday at 1.8 percent and 1.29 percent, respectively.

“As long as the central bankers print money, the only way to have to distribute it is [for governments] to buy 70 percent of new bond issuance in these safe haven bond markets. As long as they go on doing that, the yields won’t go up, and the day they stop, the yields will go up by so much we will have a financial crisis on our hands,” he said.

Read more from this story HERE.

Harry Reid Whines, “Tea Party Ted Cruz isn’t Playing by the Rules!!!”

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Photo credit: Gage SkidmoreThe Wall Street Journal Editorial Board is upset with Ted Cruz for leading a filibuster against gun control.

John McCain tweeted out the Journal’s editorial in a moment of wackiness.

Bill Richardson, the scandal plagued former Governor of New Mexico, says Ted Cruz can’t be called hispanic despite being hispanic because Ted Cruz isn’t a race baiter like Richardson.

And now Harry Reid calls Ted Cruz a schoolyard bully for Cruz objecting to Harry Reid trying to expand government in a bipartisan fashion.

Most interesting to me is this part of Harry Reid’s statement of frustration:

He pushes everybody around and is losing and instead of playing the game according to the rules, he not only takes the ball home with him, but he changes the rules that way no one wins except the bully who tries to indicate to people that he has won.

Read more from this story HERE.

Why Liberals Hate Men Who Won’t Give Up Their Guns

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Photo Credit: Western Journalism I don’t know why many Americans on the political left are embracing a system that has persistently failed throughout history. They love to cradle this system in words that sound warm and fuzzy and very appealing: cooperation, collective effort, common ownership, and mutualism. It reminds one of a quote often attributed to Albert Einstein: “Insanity is repeating the same mistakes and expecting different results.” Why are they convinced that they (modern progressives) can finally make this failed system work? They are in a collective stupor because they have overdosed on a drug called arrogance.

Their movement is full of contradictions. They vehemently oppose the western tradition of supporting “rugged individualism” and wish for all to join the herd and allow the government to shepherd us toward ‘greener’ pastures. The independent ones who choose to paddle upstream rather than go with the flow are ostracized and hated. However, they will compromise their own collective principles if an individual or minority group can bring political benefit to the progressives.

Thomas Jefferson defended the rights of the individual in the Declaration of Independence. He diligently studied the great British political philosopher John Locke. He practically quoted Locke word for word in his original version of the Declaration when he wrote that all individuals have a right to “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of property.” This comes from John Locke’s writings on natural law. Perhaps Jefferson was wishing to paint with a broader stroke when he chose to edit Locke’s statement when he penned the words “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

The primary property John Locke was referring to was a man’s right to his own person. “Though the Earth…be common to all Men, yet every Man has a Property in his own Person. This no Body has any Right to but himself.” (First Treatise on Government) Some of Locke’s contemporary philosophers (Hume, Hobbes, and Rousseau) believed that property was created by the state and that therefore the state has sovereignty over the individual. Modern progressives embrace the idea of sovereign government over the natural rights of the individual.

The modern anti-individualism movement is clearly on display in the left’s hatred for guns. An individual in possession of a gun expresses an independence that drives leftists nearly insane. The gun owner is expressing his individual right to protect himself, not only from other individuals of ill intent but also from a power-mongering government. The liberal senses an attitude in the “bitter clinger” that declares himself to be owner and defender of his own self. The gun control freaks are frosted when an individual refuses to call on and trust a collective government to protect him.

Read more from this story HERE.

Obama: From King of the World to Paralysis in 6 Months

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Photo Credit: VisitOSLOFate is fickle, power cyclical, and nothing is new under the sun. Especially in Washington, where after every election the losing party is sagely instructed to confess sin, rend garments and rethink its principles lest it go the way of the Whigs. And where the victor is hailed as the new Caesar, facing an open road to domination.

And where Barack Obama, already naturally inclined to believe his own loftiness, graciously accepted the kingly crown and proceeded to ride his reelection success to a crushing victory over the GOP at the fiscal cliff, leaving a humiliated John Boehner & Co. with nothing but naked tax hikes.

Thus emboldened, Obama turned his inaugural and State of the Union addresses into a left-wing dream factory, from his declaration of war on global warming (on a planet where temperatures are the same as 16 years ago and in a country whose CO2 emissions are at a 20-year low) to the invention of new entitlements — e.g., universal preschool for 5-year-olds— for a country already drowning in debt.

To realize his dreams, Obama sought to fracture and neutralize the congressional GOP as a prelude to reclaiming the House in 2014. This would enable him to fully enact his agenda in the final two years of his presidency, usually a time of lame-duck paralysis. Hail the Obama juggernaut.

Well, that story — excuse me, narrative — lasted exactly six months. The Big Mo is gone. It began with the sequester. Obama never believed the Republicans would call his bluff and let it go into effect. They did.

Read more from this story HERE.

Will the Last Religious Politician Please Turn Out the Lights?

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Photo Credit: istolethetvIf at one time being a member of a church was almost a requirement for anyone running for office, that time has long since passed. These days, portraying a candidate as a “fine, upstanding Christian” is enough to send any potential office seeker to the political graveyard. Due to constant stereotyping by liberals, such a description now conjures an image that is a combination of Boss Hogg, Huey Long, and Elmer Gantry.

The result, among others, is that the openly Christian candidate is out of favor with the political establishment here and abroad.

Across the pond in England, antagonism toward those who are churched and who openly express their religious beliefs has long prevailed. According to “Erasmus” a columnist for The Economist, Margaret Thatcher may well have been the “last British prime minister openly and emphatically to acknowledge the influence of Christianity on her thinking, in particular terms not fuzzy ones. […] In her religious origins, she was informed by a passion that was foreign to the English establishment.”
Erasmus goes on to explain that openly professed religious sensibilities evoke such revulsion from the British establishment that former Prime Minister Tony Blair experienced a great deal of pressure to keep his faith to himself: “Tony Blair is passionately religious but was famously discouraged by his advisors from ‘doing God’ in public because of the fear he might sound nutty. ”

The feelings of revulsion toward “nutty” people of faith certainly have not been confined to Britain. Most Western establishments, political or otherwise, are hostile toward openly Christian politicians, reserving their most vicious attacks for those who frankly profess their faith in Christ. In America, the vice presidential candidacy of Sarah Palin, to whom liberals assigned the perspicacity of Elmer Fudd, was a prime example of how worked up leftist wolf PACs become at the prospect of a conservative Christian running for high office.

When did the political tide turn against Christians and other people of faith?

Read more from this story HERE.