"We have a wartime vice president, and a peacetime president."...
Behind the Scenes: 13 Hours--The Inside Story I wanted to share a few photos from my 4.5 hour interview with the men behind our special--13 Hours: The Inside Story. For the documentary, Fox News was granted exclusive access to the yet to be published book "13 HOURS: The Inside Account of What Really Happened in Benghazi" by New York Times bestselling author Mitchell Zuckoff with the Annex Security Team. The book is available September 9th-- It was a pleasure getting to know these men and to hear their story--this is a firsthand account of what the annex security team witnessed and experienced in Benghazi, Libya on September 11, 2012. Their story is one you won't want to miss--they have been through a lot and say they are now as close as brothers.Here's a promo video:
The IRS told lawmakers Friday that five staffers connected to the agency’s Tea Party controversy besides Lois Lerner probably lost emails due to computer problems. Those five staffers include officials key to the various investigations into the IRS’s improper scrutiny of Tea Party groups – including Judith Kindell, who was a senior adviser to Lerner, the former agency official at the center of the controversy.... Issa said Friday's letter showed once more that the IRS wasn't being straight with Congress, and pushed again for the Obama administration to appoint a special prosecutor. "The so-called 'most transparent administration in history' has given Congress inconsistent information since the beginning of the targeting scandal," Issa said. "The IRS's ever-changing story is practically impossible to follow at this point, as they modify it each time to accommodate new facts." Treasury’s inspector general for tax administration is currently investigating the missing emails, while conservative groups are suing the IRS in federal court over Lerner’s emails as well. As Lerner’s senior adviser, Kindell was a key figure in dealing with tax-exempt applications. In a February 2011 email, Lerner insisted that Kindell be looped in on Tea Party cases, calling them “very dangerous.”Sharyl Attkisson reports that the IRS has not been straightforward as to missing emails, Missing emails: What is the IRS not telling Congress?:
Your weekly report from the revisionist world of higher education....
China is now Israel's second- largest trading partner, with exports of US$2.88 billion and imports of US$7.99 billion last year. Chinese companies are eyeing several high-profile investment deals in Israel. These include tendering for construction of a railway linking Eilat on the Red Sea and Ashdod on the Mediterranean, and purchasing a more than US$1 billion controlling stake in Tnuva, Israel's dairy giant.Peter Cai at the China Spectator writes on September 2, How Israel is winning the social media war in China:
Texas Democratic gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis reveals in a new campaign memoir that she terminated two pregnancies for medical reasons in the 1990s, including one where the fetus had developed a severe brain abnormality. Davis writes in "Forgetting to be Afraid" that she had an abortion in 1996 after an exam revealed that the brain of the fetus had developed in complete separation on the right and left sides. She also describes ending an earlier ectopic pregnancy, in which an embryo implants outside the uterus. Davis disclosed the terminated pregnancies for the first time since her nearly 13-hour filibuster last year over a tough new Texas abortion law. Both pregnancies happened before Davis, a state senator from Fort Worth, began her political career and after she was already a mother to two young girls.
Biden on Wednesday delivered what was probably the toughest statement to date from the administration, declaring, after another U.S. journalist was beheaded by the Islamic State, "we will follow them to the gates of Hell until they are brought to justice." But his tough talk was at odds with a message delivered earlier in the day by President Obama, who said that while his administration's goal is to "destroy" ISIS -- it also is to "shrink" it to a "manageable problem." Amid the mixed messages, a source in contact with special operators in Iraq told Fox News that "frustration and confusion reign" among Americans on the ground there. The source relayed the complaint of an unnamed special operator: "Chase them to the Gates of Hell? How the [f---] are we going to do that when we can't even leave the front gate of our base!?"President Obama recently agreed to send 350 additional troops to Baghdad to protect our diplomatic mission, bringing our troop total on the ground to just over 1200. According to the White House, those troops were meant to relieve previously deployed units while "providing a more robust, sustainable security force for our personnel and facilities in Baghdad.” Now, it seems even the President and the Vice President can't get their messaging straight.
The outcome doesn't matter, what matters is you brought the entire world to its knees. #UCLAdivest
— TSJP (@TSJPalestine) February 26, 2014
Today, the Department of Defense confirmed that Ahmed Godane, the leader of al-Shabaab, is dead as a result of a U.S. military targeted airstrike in Somalia undertaken over the weekend. Godane’s removal is a major symbolic and operational loss to the largest al-Qaida affiliate in Africa and reflects years of painstaking work by our intelligence, military and law enforcement professionals. Even as this is an important step forward in the fight against al-Shabaab, the United States will continue to use the tools at our disposal – financial, diplomatic, intelligence and military –to address the threat that al-Shabaab and other terrorist groups pose to the United States and the American people. We will also continue to support our international partners, particularly the African Union Mission in Somalia, that are working to support the Federal Government of Somalia build a secure and stable future for the Somali people.The strike took out five other members of the Islamic militant group who recently took responsibility for an attack on a Mogadishu prison that occurred just prior to the drone strikes. The prison is believed to house some of the region's most dangerous militants. According to analysts, Godane was the glue holding the al-Shabaab together. Acting as al-Shabaab's spiritual leader, he was instrumental in forging the group's relationship with al Qaeda, and played a large part in helping the group focus its efforts via a better organized secret police force. Although experts disagree as to whether or not the death of Godane will mean the end of a well-organized movement, the evolution and dynamics of al-Shabaab are proving to be a sobering reminder of just how difficult it is to oust entrenched paramilitary movements, and how long it may take to control and eliminate the influence of ISIS in the Middle East:
He can write himself a check for ten million dollars but it only votes once. We have tens of thousands of donors, many of which are within the district in Maryland… Those are people who I know are not only going to show up, but they’re gonna get 10 friends as well. If you look at individual donors — take out the PAC stuff — we are just wiping the floor with him in fundraising… At one point we even quadrupled what he was bringing in, in individual donations. He’s in a lot of trouble, and he knows it now.Bongino has drawn national attention to a race that might have been considered a lock for the Democrats had anyone else's name been next the (R) on the ballot. But Bongino, a former Secret Service Agent and NYPD Officer with a background in boxing and mixed-martial arts (MMA), brings a fighter’s mentality to the race, along with a profile that is refreshingly unique when compared with his wealthy Democrat opponent.
"I've been trying to say that for the last four years of public life that I'm I'm neither an isolationist nor an interventionist. I'm someone who believes in the Constitution and believes America should have a strong national defense and believes that we should defend ourselves. But when we do it, we should do it the way the Constitution intended. That's the President should come before Congress and make the case for war." "There's a big difference between that and between doing it unilaterally. And I think the example of Libya, with both Hillary's support and President Obama's support shows all the unintended consequences when they around the Constitution."I don't disagree we should respect Constitutional channels, but objectively speaking, this is just political posturing and an attempt to define his position as diametrically opposed to that of both Mrs. Clinton and the administration. Which is smart. But his argument seems to hinge on the fact that we would not be in this nightmare of a foreign policy situation had President Obama gone to Congress. Perhaps he's right. He continued:
“The protesters who were sitting on Mack Avenue and refusing to move had a bit of a negotiating session between the police department and the organizers — that didn’t go anywhere,” Szumanski said. “So, police have now swooped in and what they have done is arrested at least 20, maybe 30 people. They’re leading them away in handcuffs to the back of the squad cars.”
In addition, local WETN and Capital Tonight News, have covered the story.
Now WENY is on the case:
Bishop Ron Allen, a former addict and head of the International Faith Based Coalition, told Fox News he doesn't understand why the California city would want to dump pot on the impoverished. “It's ludicrous, over-the-top madness,” Allen said. “Why would Berkeley City Council want to keep their poverty-stricken under-served high, in poverty and lethargic?” John Lovell, a lobbyist for the California Narcotic Officers' Association, agrees. “Instead of taking steps to help the most economically vulnerable residents get out of that state, the city has said, ‘Let's just get everybody high,'” Lovell told The New York Times. But others, like Mason Tvert, director of communications at the Marijuana Policy Project, say it's a community program. Tvert told Fox News that the decision to provide the drug to some of its low-income residents is up to the community. “So it's a matter of the democratic process, people following the state's laws, and this law appears to accommodate both of those,” he said.California dispensaries are prohibited by law from turning a profit, and some proprietors have already embraced the new program in one way or another. California legalized medical marijuana 20 years ago, and some dispensaries made the choice years ago to willingly donate portions of their product.
