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Author: Mary Chastain

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Mary Chastain

Mary is the resident libertarian. She covers stories in every vertical, but her favorite thing to do is take on the media. She saw its bias against the right when she was a socialist.

Mary loves the Chicago Cubs, Chicago Blackhawks, tennis, cats, Oxford comma, Diet Coke, and needlework.

Posted by Mary Chastain on July 06, 2016 17 Comments
German activist Selin Gören said she lied to the police about her attackers because she did not want racists to use her story as an excuse to keep out refugees. The men attacked the spokeswoman for Linksjugend Solid, a left-wing German youth organization, at a playground late at night in Mannheim. She immediately called the police, but told them German speaking men robbed her. Her boyfriend, though, became mad at Gören for lying and encouraged her to tell the truth.

Posted by Mary Chastain on July 06, 2016 6 Comments
The 2016 Summer Olympics begin in Rio next month and everything that can go wrong has gone wrong. The police have told tourists they cannot protect them, scientists found a superbug in the water, and no one can find a missing Gitmo prisoner in Brazil. The police put out a "Welcome to Hell" sign outside of Rio's main airport. https://twitter.com/Deadspin/status/750392561836097537

Posted by Mary Chastain on July 05, 2016 5 Comments
A family found a letter from Thomas Jefferson from 1815 to the U.S. Ambassador to France about the victory in the War of 1812:
“As in the Revolutionary War, [the British] conquests were never more than of the spot on which their army stood, never extended beyond the range of their cannon shot,” Jefferson wrote in the letter, penned at his Monticello home on Valentine's Day, 1815. "We owe to their past follies and wrong the incalculable advantage of being made independent of them. . . ”

Posted by Mary Chastain on July 05, 2016 12 Comments
The Swedish police face over 40 reports of rape and sexual assault at two music festivals over the weekend in Karlstad and Norrköping. The police have identified seven suspects described as "foreign young men." The victims are mostly under 18-years-old with three under 15. The youngest victim is only 12-years-old.

Posted by Mary Chastain on July 03, 2016 8 Comments
The Islamic State (ISIS) has claimed responsibility for a massive bomb that killed over 120 in Baghdad, their third attack in three countries in a week. The bomb exploded after midnight in Karrada, a neighborhood filled with shops and restaurants filled with people making plans before the end of Ramadan. The dead included 25 children and 10 women. Officials have said many people are still missing.

Posted by Mary Chastain on July 02, 2016 7 Comments
Austria's highest court ruled for a do-over of the presidential election runoff after it found discrepancies in the mail ballots. The mail-in ballots made former Green Party chief Alexander Van der Bellen president with 50.3% of the vote over Freedom Party candidate Norbert Hofer. Constitutional Court head Gerhart Holzinger said the court noted "that the irregularities affected nearly 78,000 votes — more than twice the margin separating the two candidates." From Reuters:

Posted by Mary Chastain on July 01, 2016 2 Comments
A Palestinian shot and murdered Michael "Miki" Mark, an Israeli father of 10, as he drove near Hebron. His wife and two of their children sustained injuries in the attack. From The Jerusalem Post:
In Friday’s incident, the rain of bullets against the vehicle caused it to overturn. Paramedics who arrived at the scene found Mark in the upside down vehicle, while the other passengers had been managed to exit the car.

Posted by Mary Chastain on July 01, 2016 9 Comments
The State Department has asked for a 27 month delay to release emails from Hillary Clinton when she served as secretary of state. That means the department would not release the emails until October 2018, over a year into Clinton's presidency if she should win in November.

Posted by Mary Chastain on June 30, 2016 4 Comments
Turkish officials have said the three Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) terrorists who attacked Atatürk Airport came from Russia, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan. They also identified the mastermind as Akhmed Chatayev from Chechnya. From Fox News:
Akhmed Chatayev was identified by the pro-government Yeni Safak newspaper as the organizer of the coordinated assault, which killed 44 and wounded more than 200 others at Turkey’s Ataturk Airport. Turkish officials did not immediately confirm he was involved in the attack, and it was unclear if Chatayev was one of the airport bombers, in custody or on the run.

Posted by Mary Chastain on June 30, 2016 4 Comments
Huma Abedin, Hillary Clinton's top aide, stated that Clinton's private email server during her tenure as secretary of state frustrated the entire staff. It caused her to miss a phone call from the French foreign minister:
“She missed the call because . . . I never got the email giving us the signoff to do it [the meeting]. So she wasn’t able to do her job, do what she needed to do,” Huma Abedin testified Tuesday during a deposition in a lawsuit filed by a government watchdog.

Posted by Mary Chastain on June 29, 2016 6 Comments
The terrorist attack at Istanbul's Atatürk Airport left 41 dead, including 10 foreign nationals, and 239 injured. Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım has said that the evidence they have points to the Islamic State as the culprits.

Posted by Mary Chastain on June 29, 2016 12 Comments
British Prime Minister David Cameron told Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn to leave his post, a day after his party passed a no confidence motion against him. "It might be my party's interest for him to sit there, it's not in the national interest and I would say, for heaven's sake, man, go!" he said at the House of Commons. (Video after the jump)

Posted by Mary Chastain on June 29, 2016 14 Comments
United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) leader Nigel Farage, who also led the Brexit campaign, told off the European Union parliament with much glee on Tuesday. Britain voted to leave the EU in a historic vote last Thursday. He said:
"Isn't it funny. When I came here 17 years ago and I said I wanted to lead a campaign to get Britain to leave the EU, you all laughed at me but you are not laughing now," Mr Farage told Members of the European Parliament (MEPs).

Posted by Mary Chastain on June 28, 2016 12 Comments
The Select Committee on Benghazi has released their final report on the 2012 terrorist attacks in Libya that killed four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens. Instead of rescuing personnel, the Obama administration "huddled to craft their public response while military assets waited hours to deploy to Libya." Evidence also showed that security forces under ex-dictator Qaddafi actually helped move out the U.S. personnel from the annex.

Posted by Mary Chastain on June 28, 2016 21 Comments
Turkish officials have confirmed a terrorist attack has killed 36 people and injured 147 others at Istanbul's main airport in the international terminal. Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim blamed Islamic State for the attack. https://twitter.com/AFP/status/747978224563433472 One of the suicide bombers "first opened fire with a Kalashnikov then detonated himself" near the entrance. Istanbul Ataturk is the third largest airport in Europe and a major hub for international travel.

Posted by Mary Chastain on June 28, 2016 11 Comments
Secretary of State John Kerry spoke to Russian President Vladimir Putin about alleged harassment from Russian officers towards U.S. diplomats across Europe. From The Washington Post:
In Moscow, where the harassment is most pervasive, diplomats reported slashed tires and regular harassment by traffic police. Former ambassador Michael McFaul was hounded by government-paid protesters, and intelligence personnel followed his children to school. The harassment is not new; in the first term of the Obama administration, Russian intelligence personnel broke into the house of the U.S. defense attache in Moscow and killed his dog, according to multiple former officials who read the intelligence reports.

Posted by Mary Chastain on June 28, 2016 8 Comments
Judicial watch received more emails from then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, including one that showed concern about how the State Department treated her records. She wrote on March 22, 2009, to Huma Abedin and Lauren Jiloty, her former special assistant:
I have just realized I have no idea how my papers are treated at State. Who manages both my personal and official files?
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