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Chicago-Style Diplomacy: Obama May Require Carbon Tax of Canada for Approval of Keystone Pipeline

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Photo Credit: Bloomberg Hello Canada! Are you ready — ready for a new national tax on carbon that will ding pocketbooks across the country? My bet is that a new carbon tax is coming, made almost inevitable by Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s full-bore push to secure Washington’s approval of the Keystone XL pipeline.

For early clues on the carbon tax/Keystone trade-off, tune in Tuesday night to President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address. As the president speaks, he will be alert to the chorus of Hollywood stars, environmental activists, editorial writers and industry leaders who are pushing for him to make the biggest climate-change decision he can possibly make: Impose a carbon tax.

It is time Canadians became aware of the giant trap being set in Washington over Keystone. The short version is this: The president approves Keystone, greatly expanding the flow of Canadian oil sands production into the United States. In return, however, Canada has no choice but to accept a carbon tax at home as part of a grand bargain.

I first mentioned the likely Obama pipelines-for-taxes strategy in comments at the annual Financial Post forecast luncheon at the New Year. “I see new taxes coming in the United States, including an energy or carbon tax, to try to cover the deficits. The new energy tax would serve as partial cover for President Obama’s approval of the Keystone XL pipeline.”

That Mr. Obama might offer some kind of carbon tax as a carrot to environmentalists and climate activists opposed to Keystone has since emerged as more than plausible. Wall Street Journal columnist Kimberley Strassel recently outlined how the president might demand a carbon tax in return for approval of energy projects, including Keystone. Getting a carbon tax through Congress looks tricky. But Ms. Strassel reported that California Senator Barbara Boxer outlined how a carbon tax could be imposed administratively through the Environmental Protection Agency.

Read more from this story HERE.

Roger Ailes: Obama Is ‘Trying To Get Everybody To Hate Each Other’

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Photo Credit: BeckyFFox News president Roger Ailes believes President Obama “likes to divide people into groups.” “He’s too busy getting the middle class to hate rich people, blacks to hate whites. He is busy trying to get everybody to hate each other,” Ailes tells The New Republic’s Eliza Gray in an interview for this week’s issue.

But the interview isn’t about Obama. It’s about Ailes, and his hopes to market Fox News to Hispanics, a group alienated by right-wing media and the Republican party, but one that — according to oft-repeated conventional wisdom about Hispanic values — can be brought back into the fold.

“I happen to think that the Latino audience is an essentially traditional audience and will go to Fox News for traditional American values,” Ailes tells Gray. It’s just that “Republicans haven’t used the right language… They keep talking about illegal immigration.”

Of course, Fox News is the principle perpetrator in that regard. Gray cites a recent National Hispanic Media Coalition survey, which found “a consistent pattern whereby Fox News audiences are indeed more likely to hold negative stereotypes about Latinos.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Obama Overstepped Constitutional Authority, Federal Court Rules

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Photo Credit: BreitbartPresident Obama exceeded his constitutional authority by making appointments when the Senate was on a break last year, a federal appeals court ruled Friday. The court’s broad ruling would sharply limit the power that presidents throughout history have used to make recess appointments in the face of Senate opposition and inaction.

A unanimous three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit flatly rejected the Obama administration’s rationale for appointing three members of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) while the Senate was on a holiday break.

Chief Judge David B. Sentelle sharply criticized the administration’s interpretation of when recess appointments may be made, saying it would give the president “free rein to appoint his desired nominees at any time he pleases, whether that time be a weekend, lunch, or even when the Senate is in session and he is merely displeased with its inaction.” He added, “This cannot be the law.”

The Post notes that, due to a number of other similar lawsuits winding their way through the courts, this case is likely to end up in the U.S. Supreme Court. But for now, the court has ruled that the appointments are illicit. You can review the full decision here.

The ruling is an extraordinary slap down of President Obama’s power grab. Next time you hear a liberal tell you that President Obama is a moderate or “pragmatic,” recall the appellate panel’s analysis of Obama’s legal justification for appointing these czars without the advice and consent of the U.S. Senate – Obama’s legal arguments “would demolish the checks and balances inherent in the advice-and-consent requirement.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Source: New Info On Benghazi Is Going To Come Out And Leave People ‘Amazed And Shocked’ (+video)

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Photo Credit: APNoted author and Islamic terrorism expert Brigitte Gabriel during a Saturday appearance on Fox News discussed both President Barack Obama’s controversial use of unmanned drones and the Sept. 11, 2012, attacks on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, that left four Americans dead, including Ambassador Chris Stevens:

And although the discussion involving unmanned drones presented some fascinating points, perhaps the most interesting moment in the segment occurred when Gabriel claimed that there is unreleased information regarding the Benghazi attack that will leave people “amazed and shocked.”

Read more from this story HERE.

House Oversight Panel Opens Bipartisan Probe On FOIA Compliance

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Photo Credit: APHouse Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa and ranking minority member Elijah Cummings have opened what could be the most comprehensive congressional review in three decades of executive branch compliance with the Freedom of Information Act.

Issa is a California Republican, Cummings a Maryland Democrat. Such joint legislative efforts are rare on Capitol Hill, thanks in part to the hyper-partisan atmosphere found in Congress these days.

In a six-page, single-spaced letter dispatched earlier this week, Issa and Cummings posed multiple questions to Melanie Ann Pustay, director of the Department of Justice’s Office of Information Policy.

Pustay’s office is tasked with enforcing compliance among executive branch departments and agencies with the FOIA.

President Obama issued an FOIA memorandum on his first day in office in which he directed federal officials that the law “should be administered with a clear presumption: In the face of doubt, openness prevails.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Dick Cheney Blasts Obama’s ‘Second-Rate’ National Security Team

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Photo Credit: APFormer Vice President Dick Cheney said Saturday night that President Obama has jeopardized U.S. national security by nominating substandard candidates for key Cabinet posts and by degrading the U.S. military.

“The performance now of Barack Obama as he staffs up the national security team for the second term is dismal,” Mr. Cheney said in comments to about 300 members of the Wyoming Republican Party.

Mr. Cheney, a Wyoming native, said it was vital to the nation’s national security that “good folks” hold the positions of secretary of state, CIA director and secretary of defense.

“Frankly, what he has appointed are second-rate people,” he said.

John F. Kerry, the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee, has been confirmed as secretary of state. CIA-designate John Brennan and Defense Secretary-nominee Chuck Hagel are still awaiting U.S. Senate confirmation.

Read more from this story HERE.

Shocking New Claim: Obama CIA Nominee John Brennan Convert To Islam (+video)

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The man making this claim is former FBI agent John Guandolo. There is no secondary confirmation on this claim. It can’t be confirmed. But here’s what we know so far:

Shoebat.com – John Guandolo is not just some guy with an opinion; he’s a guy with sources who have access to the highest levels of government; he’s a guy who has a resume that is beyond impressive; and he’s a guy who claims to know people with firsthand accounts who say they witnessed John Brennan – Barack Obama’s nominee for CIA Director – convert to Islam while in Saudi Arabia.

Guandolo was also one of the people who worked on the Team B II Report.

See video beginning about 12:40-52:00:

Read more from this story HERE.

The Problems Of The White Paper

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My, how the worm has turned.

Seems like only yesterday that Eric Holder was inveighing against sweeping executive war powers. These were the Bush years, when Holder could readily be found caviling about such odious practices as “secret electronic surveillance against American citizens” and “detain[ing] American citizens without due process of law.” Back then, Holder declared these Bush war crimes so “needlessly abusive and unlawful” that the American people (translation: the Bush-deranged Left) were owed “a reckoning” against the officials who conjured them up.

But once he became attorney general in a Democratic administration, the ever-malleable Mr. Holder decided there was actually no problem killing American citizens without due process of law, based on intelligence gleaned from secret surveillance.

The breathtaking hypocrisy of the Obama Democrats is what screams off the pages of the “white paper” Holder’s Justice Department has served up to support the president’s use of lethal force against U.S. nationals who align with our foreign terrorist enemies. It bears remembering that Holder, like his Gitmo Bar soul mates, once volunteered his services to the enemy. At the time, he was a senior partner at a firm that was among the Lawyer Left’s most eager to provide free legal help to al-Qaeda enemy combatants in their lawsuits against the American people. Holder filed an amicus brief on behalf of Jose Padilla, an American citizen turned al-Qaeda operative who was sent to the United States by Khalid Sheikh Mohamed in 2002 to attempt a post-9/11 “second wave” of mass-murder attacks.

Just so you get the gist of where Holder was coming from, an amicus (or “friend of the court”) brief is not something a lawyer has to file on behalf of a client. Padilla already had other counsel. Holder was a party crasher, gratuitously intervening — exploiting his status as a former Clinton deputy attorney general — to steer the court toward his desired policy.

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Video: Eric Holder – ‘Obama Decides Who’s ‘Entitled’ To Second Amendment Rights’

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Attorney General Eric Holder discusses gun violence at Clark Atlanta University in Georgia.

Consonant with Holder’s past statement’s regarding the second amendment, the Attorney General states clearly that gun rights can be qualified and restricted.

But it appears the AG is going further, intimating that he believes the second amendment is an entitlement that the President can extend to some and withhold from others.

While no new explicit groundbreaking statements were made, the language the AG chose to use is instructive of to his attitude and approach to the issue.

Read more from this story HERE.

Conservative Doc Reveals Why He Spoke Out Against Obama’s Policies At Prayer Breakfast- Plus, Would He Ever Run For President?

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Photo Credit: Getty ImagesWith President Barack Obama sitting just feet away, Dr. Benjamin Carson stood up for conservative principles in his speech at Thursday’s National Prayer Breakfast, discussing the national debt, political correctness and even healthcare. Readers loved his speech so much that TheBlaze’s story on it went viral.

On Friday, Carson appeared on Fox News’ “Hannity” to explain why he felt compelled to speak out against the big government policies endorsed by Obama, in front of Obama.

Carson, a renown neurosurgeon, said the response to his speech has been “overwhelmingly” positive. However, he argued he didn’t make a conservative argument, but rather a “logical” and “common-sense” one.

“I don’t know where we left our brains,” he told host Sean Hannity.

Carson went on to talk about his life story, saying he grew up in a single parent home in a poverty-stricken area. He said his mother “refused to be a victim” and “never felt sorry for herself,” despite only having a third grade education.

Regarding his comments on political correctness, the neurosurgeon emphasized the importance of “freedom of speech and freedom of expression” in the United States.

Read more from this story HERE.