Making his sixth appearance on Leno — his fourth as president — Obama and his host stuck to serious subjects as the president promoted his economic and heath care policies, discussed terrorist threats in the Middle East, and defended National Security Agency surveillance programs.
“We don’t have a domestic spying program,” Obama said, describing the NSA efforts as “mechanisms that can track a phone number or an e-mail address that is connected to a terrorist attack … That information is useful.”
Obama also told Leno he’s disappointed that Russia granted temporary asylum to NSA leaker Edward Snowden, but said the two nations can still work together on other issues.
“There are times when they slip back into Cold War thinking and Cold War mentality,” Obama said. “What I continually say to them and to President (Vladmir) Putin, that’s the past.”
Photo Credit: YouTube Those who were moved by Louisiana State Senator Elbert Guillory’s powerful YouTube video explaining why he left the “government plantation” in favor of the Republican Party recently may be happy to know that he is back not just with another compelling video — but with an influential new position.
It was recently announced that Guillory will be serving as honorary chairman of the Free at Last PAC, which describes itself as being “formed by several leaders as an effort to support Black Republicans who run for federal office and also to educate Blacks about the values of the Republican Party.”
“Liberalism has nearly destroyed black America, and now it’s time for black America to return the favor,” Guillory says with a smile in his new video.
Throughout the video, the state senator argues that the Republican Party is more in line with the values of the black community than the Democrat Party, asking: “After all, what was God’s plan for our people? Is this why God delivered us from the wilderness of slavery, so that able-bodied men could sit on the porch all day sipping liquor? Was it God’s plan that we would trade one plantation for another?”
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-08-07 03:26:052016-04-11 11:17:34Video: State Senator who Slammed ‘Government Plantation’ is Back – and You’ll Want to Hear About His New Role
The trial of the Fort Hood gunman, who is acting as his own attorney, took a surreal turn as the former Army psychiatrist accused of killing 13 in the November 2009 attack grilled witnesses — including his former boss in the military and a fellow Muslim who spoke to him the day of the shooting.
After a short opening statement in which ex-Army Maj. Nidal Hasan called himself a “mujahedeen,” admitted to the rampage and said “the dead bodies will show that war is an ugly thing,” Hasan cross-examined prosecution witnesses, including retired Lt. Col Ben Kirk Phillips, his former boss. When pressed by the defendant, Phillips acknowledged that his officer evaluation report had graded Hasan as “outstanding.”
But he declined to cross-examine one of his shooting victims, Sgt. Alonzo Lunsford, who provided the day’s most damning testimony.
Lunsford – who was shot seven times during the incident – described what happened that day, saying he first saw Hasan sitting in a chair, with his arms on his knees while looking at the floor.
He said Hasan then jumped up and ordered the one civilian in the room to leave before shouting, “Allahu akbar” and opening fire. Panic set in among the soldiers, who crowded toward a rear door, which was jammed.
Three Forgotten Facts About the Fort Hood Massacre
By Michelle Malkin
Finally. Four years after Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan walked into the Soldier Readiness Processing Center at Fort Hood, Texas, and perpetrated the bloodiest massacre ever on an American military base, the self-confessed jihadist’s court martial proceedings began this week. Have you forgotten?
Americans obsessed over the O.J. Simpson, Casey Anthony and Jodi Arias trials. Gun-control lobbyists turned Newtown, Aurora and Tucson into national awareness-raising, fundraising and legislation-promoting campaigns. But where are the celebrity lobbyists and high-profile advocates for the victims of bloodthirsty Muslim vigilante Nidal Hasan?
The White House, which downplayed the terrorist mass murder as “workplace violence,” exacerbated national apathy for his evil acts. Our soldiers deserve better. Here are three facts you’ve probably forgotten — or never knew — about the Fort Hood terror spree.
–Fourteen victims fell on Nov. 5, 2009, not 13. Thirteen of our U.S. military personnel died in cold blood at the deployment center. But the death toll was actually 14. Pvt. Francheska Velez, 21, was pregnant when Hasan shot her during the first round of gunfire. At a military Article 32 hearing in 2010 (analogous to a civilian grand jury hearing), a survivor of the Fort Hood shootings testified that Velez cried out, “My baby! My baby!”
In his opening statement on Tuesday, Hasan (acting as his own lawyer) apologized to his fellow jihadists for not destroying more innocent life.
State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki told Matt Lee of the Associated Press Tuesday that the U.S. had “determined that we do not need to make a determination” over whether or not the ousting of Mohamed Morsi in Egypt was a coup.
Sen. John McCain (R., Ariz.) called it a coup Tuesday, but the Obama administration has deliberately avoided using the word:
LEE: In response to the first question about Senator McCain’s comments, you gave — you said, our position has not changed, as you just did with Morsi. On McCain’s comments, though, our position has not changed — then you said the U.S. government has stated what our position is. Could you remind us all of what your position actually is? Because as I recall, your position was that you don’t have a position, and that’s not quite — is that correct?
PSAKI: Matt, I think you know our position, which is that –
LEE: I — tell me.
PSAKI: There was a determination made that we need to — not need to make a designation.
LEE: So then — so your position is that you do not have a position, correct?..
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-08-07 02:17:572016-04-11 11:17:36State Department Spokeswoman: ‘We Have Determined That We Do Not Need to Make a Determination’ on Egypt (+video)
Photo Credit: SkleyAuthorities say a Houston-area man turned the tables on two bank robbery suspects who had abducted him and his wife by pulling a gun on the unsuspecting duo and shooting them both, killing one of them.
The suspects apparently knew that the woman worked at the First National Bank of Eagle Lake in Columbus, and they abducted her and her husband at gunpoint at their residence north of the city on Thursday and drove them back to the bank, Columbus County Sheriff’s Sgt. Andrew Weido told Houston television station KHOU.
The suspects forced the woman to taken an undisclosed amount of money from the bank, then forced the husband to drive them in his truck down Highway 71, Weido said. It was then that the husband grabbed a gun that was in the truck and fired at the suspects, he said.
Officers who responded to a 911 call found both suspects lying on the ground near the truck suffering from gunshot wounds.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-08-06 02:27:102016-04-11 11:17:38Video: Texas Man Shoots His Abductors
PBS NewsHour’s Judy Woodruff talks to two former National Security Agency analysts about what made them reveal information about the NSA’s surveillance programs.
William Binney and Russell Tice were working for the National Security Agency as analysts when they learned about its wiretapping program — the controversial post-9/11 program in which the NSA collected phone and Internet activity without getting warrants first for the purpose of hunting down terrorists.
They disagreed with the agency’s tactics and the program’s scope.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-08-05 03:26:502016-04-11 11:17:41Video: NSA Collects ‘Word for Word’ Every Domestic Communication, Say Former Analysts
Photo Credit: APWeekly Standard editor Bill Kristol remarked on Sunday that President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign rhetoric on foreign policy stood in stark contrast to the turmoil in the Middle East stirred by threats from al-Qaida, pointing out that the U.S. closed 22 embassies throughout the Muslim world.
“Four years ago President Obama gave a much heralded speech as outreach to the Muslim world,” Kristol said. “And now, four years later we are closing embassies throughout the Muslim world. A year ago, the president said al-Qaida is on the run. And now we seem to be on the run.”
“I’m not criticizing the decision to close the embassies. That’s probably the right thing to do for the sake of trying to save American lives and others, but it’s a terrible thing,” he added. “That you know, just a year ago boasting al-Qaida is on the run and Osama bin Laden is dead.”
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-08-05 03:23:482016-04-11 11:17:42Bill Kristol: A year ago Obama Said al-Qaida is on the Run, and Now WE are on the Run (+video)
Photo Credit: Sun TimesA psychology professor at Downstate Millikin University killed his parents and sister 46 years ago when he was a teenager, a revelation that has jolted the bucolic liberal arts college that has employed him for nearly three decades and sparked calls for his resignation.
Described as “an older hippie,” James St. James landed a top teaching award at the small college in Decatur and chairs its psychology department, but he kept the dark secret from his past from Millikin’s administrators and the central Illinois city in which he has lived.
Reached Thursday at his Decatur home — its front porch cluttered with plants, patio furniture and a stack of newspapers — St. James, 61, declined to comment.
“The university has issued a statement and that will, that will have to do,” he said.
Not until the publication of an investigation by a Texas newspaper did it become known that he was at Millikin after shooting his parents and teenage sister to death in Texas in 1967. St. James avoided prison time after being found insane at the time of the slayings.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-08-05 02:42:172016-04-11 11:17:43Video: Longtime Psychology Professor Killed Family 46 Years Ago, Skated on Insanity Defense
Photo Credit: APSen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who’s up for election to a third term next year, talked about his conservative credentials Sunday, one day after he got another challenger from the right in the 2014 Republican primary for his seat.
“I will continue to be Lindsey Graham, a solid fiscal and social conservative who wants to solve problems. I think that’s the future of the Republican Party,” he said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”…
“I’m going to keep being a social and fiscal conservative that focuses on our national security, takes care of interests at home, like the Port of Charleston, working with my state officials, and be a conservative like Ronald Reagan who will sit down with a Tip O’Neill to solve Americans’ problems,” Graham told Candy Crowley, CNN’s chief political correspondent.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-08-05 01:47:432016-04-11 11:17:44Video: Responding to New Challenger, Lindsey Graham Vows to be Like Ronald Reagan
Charges against a Saudi national accused of paying his roommate to kill a Warrensburg bar owner were dropped Friday after information from a critical witness changed, leaving the state with insufficient evidence to prosecute him.
Ziyad Abid was briefly taken into custody Friday by immigration officials then released on his own recognizance hours after Johnson County prosecutors dismissed all charges.
Abid, 24, had been jailed since Sept. 5 on first-degree murder and armed criminal action charges. His case gained national attention when Circuit Judge Michael Wagner refused to release him after the Saudia Arabian government posted $2 million bail.
Abid was arrested after his roommate, Reginald Singletary Jr., told investigators that he killed bar owner Blaine Whitworth last September, and that Abid had paid him to do it.
Circuit Judge Jacqueline Cook set bond at $2 million in November — along with a number of other conditions — but said she was concerned Abid was a flight risk. She also expressed concerns that Abid would be deported because his student visa had lapsed when he could not attend classes at the University of Central Missouri.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-08-05 01:03:462016-04-11 11:17:44There Is “a Stench to this”: Citizens Livid After Saudi’s First Degree Murder Charge Dismissed
