02/3/15

Sessions On Amnesty Vote: ‘The Very Integrity Of The Congress Is Under Assault’

“It is an untenable position [to uphold the President’s executive amnesty]—untenable constitutionally, untenable because it is contrary to the will of the Members of the House and Senate who oppose the President’s action—Republicans and Democrats. Perhaps most importantly, it is untenable politically because the American people strongly reject it. So why would any Senator, Democrat or Republican, when the very integrity of the Congress is under assault by an overreaching executive branch, not want to assert congressional authority at this point?”

BACKGROUND:

From 2007–2014, all net job gains have gone to labor brought in from abroad while the number of Americans with jobs declined. Since 2009, the President has issued 5.5 million work permits in excess of the regular flow established by law, according to data just unearthed in a FOIA request. The President’s action would add another 5 million illegal workers to the job market to fill positions that could be filled instead by jobless Americans.

Sessions: Dems Need To Focus On Protecting Americans, Not Party Leaders

“Our Democratic colleagues, seven of whom have openly said they don’t agree with the policy of the President with regard to executive amnesty and providing work permits and Social Security [benefits] to people unlawfully here, at least seven of them have explicitly said that. But they’re now united apparently, we’re told all of them are going to stand together to protect President Obama’s immigration directives. You know, when they were running for office back during the campaign last fall, people were saying they didn’t agree with it. Now when the issue hits the floor and we have an opportunity to do the normal and rational thing and not fund an unlawful policy, they’re all sticking together, like the palace guard around the White House, to protect Obama’s immigration directives.”

02/3/15

The Tea Party: Then and Now

By: Michael Johns

The largest and most impactful political movement, at least since the civil rights movement and perhaps in all of American history, originated in the minds and efforts of less than a dozen American citizens.

It was late February 2009, just weeks after the inauguration of Barack Obama, and there was every reason for conservatives to fear the worst: That we had elected a polarizing, far left and ultimately ineffectual president who would prove a threat to constitutional law, our economy and America’s global standing in the world. Most concerning was that he would gradually or even quickly erode our nation’s two centuries of respect for individual rights and liberties upon which America was founded, “fundamentally transforming” (as he promised) our nation in destructive ways.

On the morning of February 19, 2009, as was often the case, I had the financial media outlet CNBC playing on a distant television in my suburban Philadelphia home. This particular cold February morning, Rick Santelli, a Chicago-based CNBC reporter, was doing his usual stand-up reporting from the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade (COMEX). Santelli began reporting on Washington’s federal subsidies of housing under Obama when mid way through his report his sense of outrage began to escalate passionately.

Santelli accused the Obama administration of “promoting bad behavior” in subsidizing mortgages then at default risk with a $75 billion housing program, known as the Homeowners Affordability and Stability Plan. He then turned and, while still live on CNBC, stated assertively to COMEX floor traders: “We’re thinking of having a Chicago Tea Party!” Santelli’s suggestion of a Tea Party response to the federal government’s overreach was greeted with supportive applause and whistles of approval from COMEX traders. Santelli then said: “What we are doing in this country is making our founders roll over in their graves.”

I found Santelli’s Chicago comments accurate, inspirational and even bold for a mainstream reporter in a media world that really never challenged Obama on much of anything during or since the 2008 campaign. What I did not realize was that his remarks were viewed similarly by several other conservative-leaning Americans, who would go on to inspire a national political movement that would shake the nation.

Just a few days following Santelli’s rant, 12 or so conservative activists, including me, were invited to participate in a strategic organizing Tea Party conference call moderated by Nashville-based, Stanford educated conservative Michael Patrick Leahy. It was Leahy who earlier launched the now famous #tcot (Top Conservatives on Twitter) hashtag, where it remains today one of Twitter’s most commonly used hashtags and a key methodology for conservative communication.

Most on the call, unlike me, were new to political engagement. They had largely never worked in government, public policy or politics. Aside from Leahy and me, the others had never managed an organization either. They had largely never written or spoken on political or public policy themes, even though all of us would soon be called upon to articulate our Tea Party message nationally in the weeks to come. Most had never even worked on a political campaign. But the passion on that call was infectious. The 12 or so of us left it with a feeling that a potentially influential national political movement was emerging—and quickly.

Several follow-up calls were scheduled, and they led us to devise a now well-known plan for Tea Party protests across the nation on Tax Day, April 15, 2009. The aggressive six-week timeline, like much that the Tea Party movement has undertaken since its creation, was organized hastily, with a sense of urgency, and not without its errors. But April 15, 2009, is now a fairly notable day in American history in the sense that it was the physical manifestation of a national political movement, comprising tens of millions of Americans and quite possibly the largest in American history, that would go on to impact significantly the nation’s political debate.

The day of April 15, 2009, was a busy one. For my part, in the afternoon, on Boston Square in downtown Boston, just blocks from the original Sam Adams-led Tea Party on December 16, 1773, I spoke to a large and passionate crowd furious with Obama and the country’s direction. I then left Boston to speak that evening at one of the nation’s largest tea parties of the day, held in lower Manhattan, not far from the memorialized 9/11 attack location. Three days later, on the grounds of Independence Hall in Philadelphia, I spoke for a third time in just three days to a very large and vibrant Tea Party rally organized by the Independence Hall Tea Party Association, of which I was then an officer.

The years 2009 and 2010 were full of flurry and a sense of urgency for the national Tea Party movement, an urgency that has continued to this day. In 2010, in Quincy, Illinois, where Lincoln held his sixth debate with U.S. Senator Stephen Douglas on October 13, 1858, I joined Leahy and the late media personality Andrew Breitbart in addressing a large Tea Party crowd on the precise location where Lincoln pointedly articulated his anti-slavery message: “We (the Republican Party) also oppose it as an evil so far as it seeks to spread itself,” Lincoln said that day in Quincy.

By this time, the message of our movement was being refined and polished, comprised mostly of three universal themes that were and continue to be broadly popular with the American people: First, the federal government has grown too big and its taxes vastly too excessive. Second, the sovereignty of the United States—in controlling its borders, in developing its national security and foreign policies — must be defended at all costs. And third, that the U.S. Constitution was a document containing absolute truths to which government needed to adhere if it was to avoid lawlessness and chaos.

As I was in Boston and New York City, Leahy and others organized one of the day’s largest and most successful events in Nashville, drawing thousands. In downtown Chicago, just a couple blocks from where the Santelli rant heard round the world took place, another Tea Party founder organized a large and hugely successful Tea Party rally. His name was Eric Odom.

Quickly, the passionate and activism of this small cadre spread to thousands, then tens of thousands, and ultimately to millions of Americans who identified themselves as being supportive of the Tea Party movement. On November 2, 2010, a highly motivated Tea Party movement rocked the nation, sending 65 new Republican House members to Washington and thus forcing then Speaker Nancy Pelosi to surrender her gavel to new Republican John Boehner. Four years later, on November 4, 2014, the Tea Party movement again proved a huge difference maker, further increasing Republican presence in the U.S. House and increasing its U.S. Senate seats by nine, including pulling out wins in hugely contentious races in many states, including Colorado, Georgia, Kansas, Louisiana, and South Dakota.

Meanwhile, in the U.S. House of Representatives, a Tea Party Caucus, chaired by former Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, had been developed with the movement’s input to coordinate the Tea Party agenda in Congress. And the national strategy discussions continued. In Chicago, for instance, Odom and I spent three long days in detailed discussion on the movement’s strategy, messaging and allocation of limited resources.

In the months and years since, along with other Tea Party founders from the February 2009 conference call, we continued tireless efforts of what by then had become a vast, influential, though sometimes chaotically organized movement of political consequence. All the Tea Party movement founders from Leahy’s first conference call are impressive in their own ways, and have their own personal stories about what sparked their leadership in this now historical movement.

In the years that followed, along with other national Tea Party leaders, Leahy, Odom and I crisscrossed the nation articulating the Tea Party message and helped to organize the movement politically in order to prevail in elections.

In Dallas, Leahy organized a national Tea Party leadership meeting that included many of the founders from the original February 2009 call participated. “Let’s begin this meeting with a prayer to God for His guidance of this movement,” I suggested privately to Leahy, who agreed. We began the meeting exactly that way. Later, also in Dallas, we organized a two-day training course for regional and other Tea Party leaders on political and public policy activism.

One of those leaders was Chicago-based Eric Odom. In fall 2010, from Las Vegas, we poured ourselves into the campaign of Nevada State Senator Sharron Angle in hopes of replacing the Obama administration’s strongest U.S. Senate ally, Harry Reid. As the movement’s prominence (and the associated strategic questions facing it) evolved, Odom and I spent several days in Chicago asking and discussing those questions and developing our best answers. And there was the day in Philadelphia where I invited Odom to join me in addressing an important pre-election Tea Party rally held on the iconic grounds of Independence Hall in front of the very building where 56 founders of our nation pledged with a “firm reliance of the protection of divine providence,” their “lives, fortunes and sacred honor” to remove imperial British forces and rule and establish a self-governed nation rooted in liberty and the rule of law.

The Tea Party movement’s efforts, as even its detractors would concede, have since proven hugely consequential, ensuring that Obama, at least since 2011, was not given full reign of the legislative and executive branches of government. A Tea Party-influenced Republican House and Senate, along with our extensive grassroots efforts, have held liberal Obama’s agenda at bay, despite the Tea Party’s ultimate inability to defeat Obamacare.

Since that first February 2009 conference call, the founding and ongoing development of the historic Tea Party movement is one of many intriguing personal stories, and a singular collective story. Along the way, we have done many things well (removing Pelosi and then Reid as Speaker and Majority Leader, respectively). We have strengthened the Republican Party as a party that stands more than before for conservative principles expressed (but too often ignored) in the GOP platform. We also quickly obliterated the 2008 progressive political culture that maintained that Obama was a man who singularly held the answers for the nation. Time has proven those ideas were not at all innovative and were actually just a rewording of those from the liberal playbook of more government and more taxes. In all these ways, since those February 2009 planning calls, the national Tea Party movement has exceeded the accomplishments of the effective and well-constructed 2008 Obama for America campaign that ultimately propelled Obama to the presidency.

All this history is important because it reaffirms the veracity of Margaret Mead’s famous statement: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” It’s worth asking: If those first organizing calls had not been launched, would Republicans today control the U.S. Senate and House? If no, that means that Obama’s entire far-left political agenda would have been rubber stamped by an equally liberal Congressional leadership. Has the Tea Party movement saved the nation? I believe it likely has.

Yet, to be truthful about the inner workings of the Tea Party movement, we have done many things well, but failed in others. In 2015, the Tea Party and patriot movement’s top priority must be communicating and impacting public opinion and explaining why and how Tea Party principles can make America great again: creating jobs and economic prosperity, restoring rigid adherence to the U.S. Constitution, and restoring a strong America that can defeat serious national security threats.

With a reliance on divine providence again, let’s roll back this utterly destructive, unconstitutional government and welcome in a century or more of strong liberty leadership. Next step: We must explain our Tea Party vision and solutions for America.

02/3/15

Something Wicked This Way Comes

By: Frank Salvato

As we approach the dreaded tax filing deadline of April 15th, many Americans are ill-prepared for the news they are going to receive from their tax preparers or tax preparation software. Between three and six million people are going to be affected by penalties, an “Individual Shared Responsibility Payment,” associated with the Affordable Care Act. And most of those affected have no idea how much financial pain they are going to feel.

When the Obama Administration was selling Obamacare to the American people – you remember, “It’s not a tax,” “If you like your healthcare plan you can keep it,” “We have to pass the bill to find out what’s in it,” etc. – they alluded to the existence of penalties for those Americans who did not purchase ACA compliant health insurance. The amount for the first year non-compliance penalty was routinely quoted as $95. For many the choice was clear: keep the non-compliant health insurance, pay the $95 penalty (read: non-compliance tax), and hope that a Republican-led Congress would affect relief for the taxpayer as soon as they took control in Washington, DC.

But that scenario doesn’t impact this tax cycle. And while three to five million people have received subsidies through the Obamacare marketplaces to offset the cost of ACA compliant health insurance (still many more will qualify for exemptions), the penalty – or Individual Shared Responsibility Payment – for most of the three to six million Americans who opted to pay the fine and go without is going to be substantially more than they think.

Contrary to the commonly referred to fine of $95 for non-compliance, that amount is the least amount that can be imposed on an individual. The calculation used for the overwhelming majority of the non-compliant will be the higher of either one-percent of your household income above your filing threshold or a flat dollar amount up to $285 ($95 per adult, $47.50 per child). The important words to consider here are “household income.”

In the scenario where one spouse is covered by employer-sponsored health insurance but the other spouse is not – where one spouse is non-compliant, the Individual Shared Responsibility Payment is still based on the total of the household income; the compliant spouse is still entered into the penalty equation through the use of the household income as a defining integer. The idea that the ACA compliant individual cannot be adversely affected at tax time is a fallacy.

For example, let’s examine what the penalty (read: tax) would be on a Virginia household consisting of a man and a woman who, combined, made $150,000 for the year 2014. The woman is covered through her employer by ACA compliant health insurance, but the man is an independent contractor and chose to attain what used to be known as catastrophic health insurance, thus acquiescing to what he thought was going to be a $95 penalty. Using the Individual Shared Responsibility Payment calculator from HealthInsurance.org, the assessed penalty would be $1,297. A full $1202 more than the $95 for which they had planned. By contrast, a non-compliant single person making $75,000 in 2014 would have been assessed a $648.50 penalty. This means that the penalty for the “crime” of being from a household earning $150,000 with a single non-compliant spouse is $648.50; the penalty for being married to a non-compliant spouse is $648.50. The irony here is that the non-compliant spouse was still covered in the event of a medical emergency, even if he wasn’t ACA “compliant.”

The reasoning used by the Progressives and Democrats when arguing for the passage of the Affordable Care Act was that relief would be given to the healthcare system by virtue of the fact that everyone would be covered by health insurance; that everyone would be paying into the system. But having “passed the bill” so we can now “see what’s in it,” the reality of the matter is this. Obamacare was never about healthcare. It was never really even about everyone being covered by health insurance. And it wasn’t ever about everyone paying into the system. It was about creating two new revenue streams: one for the health insurance companies who now have a captive client-base, and another for the spendthrift federal government through the extraction of what the US Supreme Court has now identified as a tax.

And a heck of a tax it is…especially for the non-compliant and their compliant spouses.

Frank Salvato is the Executive Director of BasicsProject.org a grassroots, non-partisan, research and education initiative focusing on Constitutional Literacy, and internal and external threats facing Western Civilization; a division of The Archangel Organization, LLC, His writing has been recognized by the US House International Relations Committee and the Japan Center for Conflict Prevention. His opinion and analysis have been published by The American Enterprise Institute, The Washington Times, The Jewish World Review, Accuracy in Media, Human Events, Townhall.com and are syndicated nationally. Mr. Salvato has appeared on The O’Reilly Factor on FOX News Channel, and is the author of six books examining Islamofascism and Progressivism, including “Understanding the Threat of Radical Islam”. Mr. Salvato’s personal writing can be found at FrankJSalvato.com.

02/3/15

The Other Cause of Terrorism

By: Alan Caruba
Warning Signs

I never fail to be astonished by the amount of corruption there is in the world. It is a very human trait whether it was royalty asserting that they ruled by God’s choice until their subjects rose up against them or modern day despots encountering the same fate.

Sarah Chayes has authored “Thieves of State: Why Corruption Threatens Global Security” ($26.95, W.W. Norton) and it is quite timely when you consider that corruption ignited the “Arab Spring”, first in Tunisia when a peddler grew so tired of the police asking for bribes that he set himself afire in protest. Its dictator’s wife openly displayed the nation’s stolen wealth for which they were driven from power. In Egypt there was a similar response when the public tired of the looting of the state treasury by Mubarak’s son. Revolts from Libya to Syria have been generated by the same cause.

Corruption in the Middle East has a long history, but it is worldwide and, depending on the nation, is either tolerated as part of the way the culture does business or resisted by governments who understand that it undermines their legitimacy. Throw a dart at the map of the world and you are likely to hit a nation where corruption is influencing current events. As Chayes notes, “Time and again U.S. officials are blindsided by major developments in countries where they work. Too often they are insensible to the perspectives and aspirations of population.”

A classic example is Afghanistan where both the Soviet Union and the U.S. ran into such ingrained corruption that it undermined their objectives, the former to turn it into a satellite and the latter to turn it into a modern, democratic government. Chayes cites Afghanistan as a classic example of why the Taliban emerged as a jihadist movement. Corruption in the form of bribes, kick-backs, cronyism, is so deeply engrained in Afghanistan that it generated a movement to replace it with sharia law by Islamists.

“If the very Afghan officials by whose sides they planned to combat extremists were generating those extremists themselves—by having men shake down travelers and taking a cut, or leaving bills unpaid, or by providing judiciously selected ‘intelligence’ to engineer a night-raid against a rival trafficking network—it was too big a paradox to take in. NATO officers,” said Chayes, “did not want to know.”

“The corruption networks” in Afghanistan, writes Chayes, “were just too vertically integrated: any move against any official, no matter how lowly, would reverberate all the way up the chain to Karzai.”

In the 1960s and 1970s, Afghanistan had been a constitutional monarchy with a national assembly and local elders affording a check on executive power. “Citizens expected a decent education from their government, health care, even employment in state-owned industries.” That changed when Hamid Karzai took over. At that point government became a criminal enterprise.

The 9/11 attack prompted the U.S. to invade to drive out al Qaeda, but it also led to its staying on to fight the perceived enemies of Afghanistan. They—otherwise known as the Taliban—were being generated in part by the desire to drive out the corrupt Karzai administration.

What we tend to forget about the “Arab Spring” was that “millions of Arabs chose a constructive way to force change. They chose political revolution—a peaceful, civic, inclusive, and responsible form of revolt—directed square at their own leaderships, not at Western countries, not even those seen as regime allies.”

This is not to suggest that Islamism hasn’t degraded from its opposition to widespread corruption into organizations seeking to take control over the nations where it has spread. It has and this is most evidence in the incredibly corrupt nation of Nigeria where since 2009 Boko Haram has developed terrorism to new heights of barbarity—if that is possible.

An oil-rich nation, the billions that it generates have gone missing thanks to the administration of Nigerian president, Goodluck Jonathan. The police in Nigeria are hated as much as Boko Haram and, as we have seen, have not demonstrated any ability to eliminate the terrorist organization.

Why would any police officer or member of the armed forces want to die for a corrupt, kleptocratic administration? This was true back in the days when the U.S. was fighting in Vietnam, true when the Iraqi armed forces fled from those of the Islamic State, and it explains why even the active participation of U.S. forces does not result in victory against the terrorist organizations.

Why then should we be surprised that many throughout the Middle East have turned to Islam to address the problems they encounter from the corruption of their governments? “Lured by militant advocates of a religious ordering of human affairs, they will seek to roll back four hundred years of political history.”

In the West, we regard those regions of the world where corruption is rampant as backward. We can be forgiven for forgetting that our ancestors in England, the Netherlands, and parts of France laid the groundwork for modern democracy by their efforts to curb the corruption of the monarchies that enjoyed the good life at the expense of their subjects.

By the time the Founders came together to create the U.S. Constitution, they had been well-schooled and experienced in what it would require to keep corruption at bay with a government whose powers were limited and divided among executive, legislative, and judicial branches.

We are their beneficiaries, but that does not mean we have defeated corruption. The vast entitlement programs are just one example of the way millions are secured illegally by deception and disbursement. Other forms of corruption are addressed in the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act that forbids the use of bribery by corporations doing business in foreign nations.

The U.S. is not alone, however. Just as occurred in 2008, the too close relationship of the banking community and government led to financial crises in Ireland and Iceland. The public’s rejection of corruption in Ukraine led to its current civil unrest.

The role of corruption in the nations experiencing Islamic terrorism cannot be underestimated. Its role in the conduct of the world’s affairs is huge and a constant threat whose many forms must be understood, addressed, and eliminated to the greatest degree possible.

02/3/15

Benghazi Hearings Provide a Glimmer of Hope

By: Roger Aronoff
Accuracy in Media

Last week, the Democrat Members of the Select Committee on Benghazi virtually declared war on the majority members, criticizing their pace, rules, and committee scope.

Representative Linda Sanchez (D-CA) claimed that the Select Committee was on a wild goose chase for a nonexistent “unicorn” and “nefarious conspiracy,” and Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) falsely called the stand down order a “myth.”

But in what may be a turning point for the Select Committee, Republican Chairman Trey Gowdy emphasized at the January 27th hearing that “we’re gonna pick up the pace…. I have no interest in prolonging” the investigation into Benghazi.

“Letters haven’t worked. Southern politeness hasn’t worked. We’re going to ratchet it up,” he said at what members of the mainstream media, such as U.S. News and World Report, characterized as a “partisan grudge match.”

The next day Chairman Gowdy issued a statement that defied Democrats outright, arguing he “will continue to move the investigation forward in a fair and impartial manner, but…will not allow the minority’s political games and unreasonable demands to interfere with the investigation.” Rep. Gowdy said he will continue operating under the scope originally set by the House of Representatives.

This, the media preferred to coin as political failure or “out of control” politics. “The House Select Committee on Benghazi, which began with dignity last year, spun out of control Tuesday as Democrats complained that Republicans were abusing their authority and Republicans threatened to spray the Obama administration with subpoenas,” wrote Dana Milbank for The Washington Post. Milbank specializes in snarky columns criticizing and marginalizing conservatives, and even took aim at the Citizens’ Commission on Benghazi for a conference held on Benghazi in 2013.

Regarding the hearing last week, the Associated Press in turn, remarked, “The partisan tone marked a sharp turnaround for a panel that had won praise for a bipartisan approach through its first two public hearings.”

The subject of the first two slow-rolling hearings was the current state of embassy security, a topic suggested by the committee’s Democratic members which had little to do with the administration’s response to the attack—and which conveniently glosses over the security failures of 2012 to emphasize present solutions instead of accountability.

MSNBC focused largely on political angles instead of substance. For Alex Seitz-Wald, it was all about Hillary Clinton. “Gowdy and Republicans had been hoping to preserve and grow the credibility of their inquiry, which is part of the reason for their assiduous avoidance of taking pot shots at Clinton Tuesday,” wrote Seitz-Wald. “But Democrats are seeking to undermine the credibility of the panel, in the hopes that it will be viewed as a partisan witch hunt if it ever demands testimony from Clinton.”

New bombshell reporting by The Washington Times shows that Clinton was the strong voice pushing to intervene in Libya in 2011 in the first place, which set the stage for the attacks. Ultimately, however, President Obama was the “Decider-in-Chief” and bears at least equal culpability.

Chairman Gowdy told Megyn Kelly of Fox News last May that he plans to subpoena Mrs. Clinton, and repeated that in December. We now learn that the Select Committee has requested Clinton and other top State Department officials’ emails, and that Rep. Gowdy is willing to bring Clinton before the Committee just 30 days after receiving “all the [State Department] documents,” according to CNN.

Select Committee Members would also like to interview 22 persons with firsthand knowledge of Benghazi whom Congress has never spoken to before. The Associated Press reported on January 28, the day after the hearing, that State Department officials said they were ready to “commit” to interview dates for these persons.

But the press doesn’t seem interested in holding the administration accountable for the fact that the State Department waited from the December 4 request until January 28 to issue such a guarantee.

The State Department representative, Joel Rubin, said at the January hearing that a part of the committee’s relationship with the department is indicating priorities for requests—as if more resources could not be allocated to provide such information to the committee more swiftly.

Rubin, formerly of the Ploughshares Fund, also said at the hearing that he was a friend of Ambassador Chris Stevens, who died in 2012 at the U.S. Special Mission Compound in Benghazi. Rubin wrote the following for ThinkProgress that year:

“Instead of getting that support, their deaths are being used as a partisan attack on President Obama, part of a false narrative that the president failed them. What has failed them is our political system. Rather than supporting a serious, nonpartisan investigation into what took place and what went wrong, waiting to get all the facts out, conservatives are trying to affix blame for their deaths for political advantage. This is how some conservatives use terrorist attacks against America.”

Now Rubin helps guard the gates for that same President who would like this simply dismissed as a phony scandal.

Although the media, along with the Democrats, may accuse Chairman Gowdy of partisan politics as he attempts to more aggressively investigate the Benghazi attacks and the resulting cover-up, I am cautiously optimistic about his new tone.

“The letter exchanges between Gowdy and Cummings [prior to the hearing], as well as Tuesday’s hearings, should put to rest forever the fiction that this type of investigation can be conducted in some Nirvana-zone of bipartisan comity,” Kenneth Timmerman astutely wrote for Front Page Magazine.

With this new focus on government stonewalling the Committee brought the possibility of embarrassing the administration to the fore, and the backlash was palpable.

Accuracy in Media and the Citizens’ Commission on Benghazi have long been critical of the Mike Rogers’ House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence report, which contains a number of factual errors and glosses over the intelligence failures leading up to the attacks. Apparently the Select Committee asked to examine the HPSCI’s research in October—and had been asking the Central Intelligence Agency for these files ever since. These files were only produced by the agency after learning that a hearing on them was scheduled.

Similarly, the State Department has produced 40,000 pages related to Benghazi, but Rubin wouldn’t answer as to whether the information provided to the Accountability Review Board was provided fully within those documents.

He also refused to say whether he thought the Select Committee was frivolous.

“If Gowdy is proceeding as a good prosecutor should, he is lining up all his ducks before he goes public with anything,” CCB member, and former CIA officer, Clare Lopez told WorldNetDaily’s Jerome Corsi last week as part of a series of articles about the CCB’s own investigations. “I think it’s premature to jump to a condemnation of the process or the committee leadership when the truth is that we don’t know,” she said.

“Delays by Gowdy are unnecessary at this time,” CCB Member and Retired General Paul Valley told Corsi after the Times’ bombshell dropped. “Gowdy can press forward now as he does have sufficient intelligence and documents to call all witnesses and issue subpoenas as necessary.”

“Additional delays will only give the obstructionists in the Obama White House, the State Department and the Democrats in Congress time to thwart the efforts of the select committee,” Vallely said.

While the administration continues to stonewall the Select Committee whenever possible, and Democrats continue to complain that the investigation isn’t bipartisan enough, the CCB will continue to search for the truth in its own citizen-led investigation.

We have already dug up some disturbing facts in our 2014 interim report, such as:

the administration decision to dismiss the possibility of truce talks with Moammar Qaddafi;
helping arm al-Qaeda-linked rebels in Libya; and
the inadequate military response that night.

“I don’t know if the decision came from the White House or from Hillary Clinton at the State Department,” Retired Rear Admiral Chuck Kubic told Corsi about those failed truce talks. However, Admiral Kubic said, “…the advice for me from AFRICOM was to basically just leave everything alone, to simply stand down.” Who, exactly, at the White House decided it was unnecessary to pursue truce talks with Qaddafi?

The CCB and Accuracy in Media are continuing the search for the truth with our own Freedom of Information Act initiative. Currently, the Department of Defense is withholding 12 pages of maps from us regarding the position of military forces during the attacks.

As we await our day in court, we will not stop digging for the truth through whatever means are available to us. I am encouraged by the possibility that the Select Committee might likewise now use all the powers at its disposal to force the administration to reveal what happened that night and in the aftermath, not only to its Congressional investigators, but to the public as well. America deserves answers, not more stonewalling.

02/3/15

Our Weasel Of The Week Nominees! – 02/03/15

The Watcher’s Council

It’s time once again for the Watcher’s Council’s ‘Weasel Of The Week’ nominations, where we pick our choices to compete for the award of the famed Golden Weasel to a public figure who particularly deserves to be slimed and mocked for his or her dastardly deeds during the week. Every Tuesday morning, tune in for the Weasel of the Week nominations!

Here are this week’s nominees…

CBS ’60 Minutes’ TV Personality, Wascally Wacist and Sleazeball Steve Kroft!!

The Noisy Room: My nominee this week is 60 Minute’s Steve Kroft for not only being a cheating slime bucket, but for also being uber paranoid of right-wing zealots catching him and being dumb enough to actually get caught. Let’s also not forget he’s racist – he didn’t want to be seen with Harvard educated Lisan Goines, because she was black and the differences between them would be too ‘noticeable.’ Good enough to dance with between the sheets, but not good enough for public appearances.

An absolute Obama suck up, Kroft bragged of being best buds with Obama and how Obama actually hates Eric Holder. Now that’s journalism for ya!

Oh yeah, baby:

The Manhattan mistress of married ’60 Minutes’ newsman Steve Kroft sent him sexy lingerie photos during their affair, but he insisted she dress low-key ‘like Laura Bush’ with him in public to keep things hush-hush, according to newly revealed texts.

A source close to Kroft’s lover told The Post that the TV hotshot was ‘really paranoid about right-wing zealots finding out about
their affair’ and using the tawdry details to try to destroy his career and CBS.

The sexts between Kroft and Lisan Goines (obtained exclusively by The Post)include a nude selfie of the lusty lawyer that she sent to her much-older lover. Other photos show her wearing a red thong and busting out of a black bra.

But “dress in Washington is Either professional or Laura Bush,” Kroft messaged his illicit squeeze in advance of their September
2011 play date at the Park Hyatt on 24th and M streets in DC. “Don’t dress like Beyonce,” Kroft warned the Harvard-educated
beauty, according to the source.

In addition to fearing the zealots, Kroft, 69, was “beyond terrified” that his wife of 23 years, fellow journalist Jennet Conant, would find out about the affair, the source added.

Kroft needed absolutely no help in destroying himself. He excelled at it. You’d think a 69 year-old would know better. His wife is going to literally kill him and it serves the weasel right. Now, I have to go bleach my eyes and knock myself unconscious hoping I can forget this slug’s sexcapades.

Hack Writer And Rebel Without A Clue Sheldon Richman!!

The Independent Sentinel: Reason writer Sheldon Richman has some stellar weasel qualities.

First he compared American hero Chris Kyle with the mad shooter of Sandy Hook, Adam Lanza, saying Kyle ‘went to a place he had no right to be, heavily armed, and murdered people who never threatened him at home.’ He added that the victims were ‘defenseless like Lanza’s victims’.

Not satisfied with this idiocy, he out-weasled even himself with several responses to tweets. He was asked in a tweet, ‘So, to be clear. You are saying that if it came down to an Iraqi or #ChrisKyle, you would rather Kyle have been killed?’

He tweeted back, several times, “If that’s the only choice, yes. He invaded, trespassed.”

He followed up by tweeting he was ‘no kind of capitalist’.

No surprises there!

Seattle Seahawks Coach Pete Carroll!

Bookworm Room: He presides over what may be the most boorish team in the league, he’s probably a Truther, and he made the worst call in Super Bowl history. None of that will change the course of the world, but he sure is weaselly.

Obama Consigliere snd Puppet Master Valerie Jarrett!

Virginia Right!: Valerie Jarrett for being the driver of hate behind Obama’s animosity towards Israel and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Western Journalism wrote:

The real questions are: Who is pushing this agenda? Who is pushing for Iran to go nuclear? And, who is so scared of Netanyahu briefing Congress and the American people on what Iran is up to?

The answer is Valerie Jarrett, Obama’s Rasputin. This is where the anger from the White House is coming from.

Most people know she was born in Iran. This in itself does not disqualify her from advising the president, but it does open her agenda to scrutiny. There have been reports that she has been secretly negotiating with Iran on the nuclear issue, but the White House has vehemently denied it.

I, for one, don’t trust a thing this administration says.

Now, the Jerusalem Post is reporting that the Obama administration has already given Iran eighty percent of what it has demanded in the negotiations. The “deal” to be reached will leave Iran within months of going nuclear if they decide to move forward. All of the centrifuges will remain under their control.

Well, there it is. What a despicable group of Weasels… ANY OF THEM COULD WIN! Check back Thursday to see which Weasel walks off with the statuette of shame!

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