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FBI Under Pressure to Explain Drone Use, as Obama Names New Director

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Photo Credit: Fox News

Photo Credit: Fox News

As President Obama nominates a new FBI director, the bureau is coming under rising pressure from lawmakers to explain the limits of its recently disclosed drone fleet.

Civil liberties-minded senators on both sides of the aisle have fired off sharply worded letters and statements in recent days criticizing the FBI for deploying surveillance drones without clear guidance on how to protect privacy rights.

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., was the latest to scrutinize the bureau, sending a letter on Thursday to outgoing Director Robert Mueller asking a string of questions about his agency’s drone use.

“I am disturbed by the revelation that the FBI has unilaterally decided to begin using drone surveillance technology without a governance policy, and thus without the requisite assurances that the constitutional rights of Americans are being protected,” Paul wrote.

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Liberals Can’t Stand Him, Either

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Photo Credit: Townhall

Photo Credit: Townhall

President Obama has gotten his fair share of verbal abuse from conservatives since his re-election. But now, even his own party is turning on him. On Thursday night, at the annual progressive conference Netroots Nation, leftists from across the country expressed their frustration with Obama and his slow progress in office.

Welcome to the U.S. legal system.

Some were disappointed that they hadn’t seen changes or consequences in the banking sector after the housing crisis. Some were upset that he’s failed to create a single job out of the one million he promised by the end of his second term. Some even voiced their distress over the NSA surveillance scandal and the government’s collection of private data.

In fact, CNN reported that it was difficult to find anyone who believed that the president has done enough to live up to the Democratic Party’s expectations for his presidency. CNN reporters found many of their questions about the president were met with shrugs and occasional eye rolls.

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CIA Has Been Secretly Providing Training for Syrian Rebels for Months

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Photo Credit: thenews.com

Photo Credit: thenews.com

The CIA and US special operations forces have been training Syrian rebels for months, since long before President Barack Obama announced plans to arm the opposition, the Los Angeles Times reported Friday.

Training for rebel forces covers the use of anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons and has been carried out at bases in Jordan and Turkey since late last year, the newspaper reported, citing unnamed US officials and rebel commanders.

The two-week courses, for about 20 to 45 fighters at a time, began last November at a new US base in the desert in southwest Jordan, it said.

The report came days after the Obama administration announced it had approved the arming of Syrian rebels, though analysts said the United States likely would avoid providing sophisticated guided anti-tank or anti-aircraft weapons.

The Central Intelligence Agency typically leads covert training and arming of fighters in foreign conflicts, while military special operations forces can be assigned to covert missions overseen by the spy agency.

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Explosive: New NSA Whistle-Blower Claims Obama was – and Most Political/Military Leaders are – Under Surveillance (+video)

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Photo Credit: Wikipedia

Photo Credit: Wikipedia

Russ Tice, a former intelligence analyst and Bush-era NSA whistleblower, claimed Wednesday that the intelligence community has ordered surveillance on a wide range of groups and individuals, including high-ranking military officials, lawmakers and diplomats.

He also made another stunning allegation. He says the NSA had ordered wiretaps on phones connected to then-Senate candidate Barack Obama back in 2004.

“They went after–and I know this because I had my hands literally on the paperwork for these sort of things–they went after high-ranking military officers; they went after members of Congress, both Senate and the House, especially on the intelligence committees and on the armed services committees and some of the–and judicial,” Tice told Peter B. Collins on Boiling Frog Post News.

He went on: “But they went after other ones, too. They went after lawyers and law firms. All kinds of–heaps of lawyers and law firms. They went after judges. One of the judges is now sitting on the Supreme Court that I had his wiretap information in my hand. Two are former FISA court judges. They went after State Department officials. They went after people in the executive service that were part of the White House–their own people.”

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Irish Legislator to Obama: You’re the “Hypocrite of the Century” (+video)

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Photo Credit: YouTube

Photo Credit: YouTube

An Irish Legislator hit Obama hard in her comments this week before the parliament. As shown in the below video, Clare Daly criticized

the “almost unprecedented slobbering” over the Obama family’s visit. “It’s really hard to know which is worst, whether it’s the outpourings of the Obamas themselves or the sycophantic falling over them by sections of the media and the political establishment,” she said.

“We’ve had separate and special news bulletins by the State broadcaster to tell us what Michelle Obama and her daughters had for lunch in Dublin, but very little questioning of the fact that she was having lunch with Mr Tax Exile himself,” she said in reference to U2’s Bono.

She described Mr Obama as a “war criminal”, having “just announced his decision to supply arms to the Syrian opposition, including the jihadists, fuelling the destabilisation of that region, continuing to undermine secularism and knock back conditions for women”.

Ms Daly said: “This is the man who is in essence stalling the Geneva peace talks by trying to broker enhanced leverage for the Syrian opposition by giving them arms – and to hell with the thousands more who’ll lose their lives, or the tens of thousands who will be displaced.

“This is the man who has facilitated a 200 per cent increase in the use of drones which have killed thousands of people, including hundreds of children.”

Obama Commits Embarrassing Gaffes at G8 Summit

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Photo Credit: NDTV

Photo Credit: NDTV

US President Barack Obama repeatedly called British finance minister George Osborne “Jeffrey” at the G8 summit, media reported on Thursday.

The US president said three times that he agreed fully with “Jeffrey” during his presentation on G8 host Britain’s plans to crack down on tax avoidance, leaving Osborne red-faced.

Realising his blunder afterwards, Obama joked that he had mistaken Britain’s chancellor for the US soul singer Jeffrey Osborne, The Sun and the Financial Times reported.

“I’m sorry, man. I must have confused you with my favourite R and B singer,” Obama was quoted as saying.

The chancellor, 42, bears little resemblance to Jeffrey Osborne, a 65-year-old African-American hit singer-songwriter known for his 1982 classic “On the Wings of Love”.

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Abuse of Power and Deceit: Obama Imposed Rules as Early as 2009 to Defeat Government Transparency

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

Even as the freshly minted Obama administration was pledging a “new era of open government” in 2009, officials were quietly adding new rules that had the potential to slow down public requests for documents.

Those rules, detailed in memos reviewed by FoxNews.com, could even trip up present-day efforts to dig into the IRS’ practice of targeting conservative groups. The rules detailed in the memos largely emanated from the Treasury Department and, specifically, the IRS.

“It would seem to repudiate this notion that this is going to be the most transparent government in history,” said Dan Epstein, executive director of Cause of Action, the group that first obtained the memos.

The memos follow reports about the administration’s use of private email accounts, and coincide with ongoing debate about government transparency — particularly with recent disclosures about widespread surveillance programs.

Epstein said the document request procedures are “troubling” since the media are “really concerned about the limits of government power.”

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Rush on Obama’s Failed Berlin Speech: Why the President Has to Have a Teleprompter (+video)

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Photo Credit: YouTube

Photo Credit: YouTube

A number of commentators, not just on the right but also liberal pundits like Chris Matthews, all agreed that Obama’s speech in Berlin fell flat.

Rush Limbaugh contends that the President’s lackluster performance was due to the fact that he wasn’t using a teleprompter (apparently the sun interfered with its use). Rush explains why the teleprompter is so important to Obama:

Obama, if you’ve noticed, he’s lost without that prompter. And I know why. I know why he’s always on the prompter. And that is to make sure he doesn’t slip up and portray what he really thinks and what his plans really are. It’s so Obama stays confined in the way that he has been marketed and presented, and he participates in that of course, and the way they manage, ’cause it’s all about the Limbaugh Theorem. It’s all about Obama appearing detached, unattached.

It’s all about Obama disguising what his real intentions are. With no prompter and no discipline, he might actually let it slip what his real plans are, and that would be devastating. The fact of the matter is that most liberals cannot be honest with you about what they really hope happens or what they really want to happen or what they really intend to do, because if that ever happens — and it has — they don’t win much. They’re resoundingly defeated, particularly in national elections. So that’s the primary reason for the prompter, is to keep Obama on message and disciplined so that he doesn’t wander off and give up the game.

..[T]he end of the Obama’s speech today at the Brandenburg Gate kind of fizzled. It had no pizzazz, and Chris Matthews — the sycophantic thrill-up-the-leg Obamaite — said that it was because of the sun, the setting sun was obscuring Obama’s prompter, and he wasn’t able to see the words on the prompter, and without the prompter we he doesn’t know what he’s saying, apparently. What else is there to conclude? Well, we know the real reason he’s on prompter.

They gotta make sure he doesn’t drift off and reveal what’s really on his mind.

Here the President’s Berlin speech:

Obama Compares Protestant, Catholic Schools to Racial Segregation

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

Likening religious schools to segregation–a racist system that forced blacks to attend different schools and use different facilities than whites in the American South–President Barack Obama told a town hall meeting for youth in Belfast, Northern Ireland on Monday that there should not be Catholic and Protestant schools because such schools cause division.

“Because issues like segregated schools and housing, lack of jobs and opportunity–symbols of history that are a source of pride for some and pain for others–these are not tangential to peace; they’re essential to it,” said Obama. “If towns remain divided–if Catholics have their schools and buildings, and Protestants have theirs–if we can’t see ourselves in one another, if fear or resentment are allowed to harden, that encourages division. It discourages cooperation.

“Ultimately, peace is just not about politics,” he said. “It’s about attitudes; about a sense of empathy; about breaking down the divisions that we create for ourselves in our own minds and our own hearts that don’t exist in any objective reality, but that we carry with us generation after generation.

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Obama in Berlin, Calls for Huge Cuts in US Nuclear Arsenal

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

President Barack Obama used a speech in Berlin on Wednesday to call on Russia to revive the push for a world without nuclear arms by agreeing to target further reductions of up to one third of deployed nuclear weapons.

Speaking in Berlin where John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan gave rousing Cold War speeches, Obama urged Russia to help build on the “New START” treaty that requires both countries to cut stockpiles of deployed nuclear weapons to 1,550 each by 2018.

“After a comprehensive review I have determined that we can ensure the security of America and our allies, and maintain a strong and credible strategic deterrent, while reducing our deployed strategic nuclear weapons by up to one third,” he said.

“I intend to seek negotiated cuts with Russia to move beyond Cold War nuclear postures,” Obama said at the Brandenburg Gate, which once stood alongside the Berlin Wall that divided the communist east and the capitalist west.

But Republicans quickly warned that the cuts Obama is contemplating would put the United States at greater risk as rogue nations like North Korea and Iran seek to build larger arsenals. Moreover, allies like Japan may move to build their own arsenals as they determine they can no longer depend on the U.S. nuclear umbrella.

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