Obama Demands Egypt Release Jailed Members of Muslim Brotherhood

-By Warner Todd Huston

Obama’s Ambassador to Egypt is siding with Islamist terrorists in the unrest in that ancient country. Ambassador Ann Patterson has demanded that the Egyptians release all the Muslim brotherhood terrorists they’ve imprisoned during this time of strife.

Isn’t it just like the Obama administration to side with the extremist Islamists?

Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch has the scoop about Obama’s administration:
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Obama Demands Egypt Release Jailed Members of Muslim Brotherhood”


Notorious, Hate-filled Anti-Semite Helen Thomas Dead at 92

-By Warner Todd Huston

No one celebrates at another’s death, but upon some passings it is well and proper to note the evils they perpetrated during their lives and the passing of Helen Thomas presents us with an opportunity to reflect upon the hateful, disgusting, perverted life this woman led. It is instructive to note upon her passing that she presents a great negative example of how a human being should live a life.

Many on the extreme left (by that we mean all “journalists”) today are celebrating Helen Thomas’ life. Granted she achieved quite a lot for a woman in the 50s and 60s becoming a prolific White House journalist. It was quite a feat to break into that “man’s world” of the day.

But succeeding in one area does not erase the hate she evinced during that rise. She was always, always a reliable hater of the Joooos, for sure. She was also a reflexive, unfair, and unthinking hater of everything right of the Stalinist left and used her high perch in the world of journalism to attack every Republican she could.

Naturally her pals in the Old Media establishment are using the mild descriptive “controversial” to describe this odious woman, but let’s just run down some of Thomas’ greatest hits, shall we?
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Notorious, Hate-filled Anti-Semite Helen Thomas Dead at 92″


Chgo. Sun-Times Apologize Over ‘Racist’ Asiana Airlines Crash Headline

-By Warner Todd Huston

The Chicago Sun-Times has apologized for a headline pun reporting on the Asiana 214 airliner crash that seemed racist to some Asians.


The Sunday Sun-Times Front Page

Asiana flight 214 crashed in San Francisco on Saturday, June 6, but in its front page report on the crash, the Chicago Sunday Sun-Times blared a headline that read “FRIGHT 214.”

The Asian American Journalists Association was not amused by the play on words wondering if the Sun-Times understood that changing the “L” in “FLIGHT” to an “R” could easily be perceived as a play on the stereotypical difficulty of some Asians to pronounce the letter “L.”

“While we at the Asian American Journalists Association are willing to give the Sun-Times the benefit of the doubt, the headline used to accompany the paper’s coverage was certainly unfortunate. An editor should have caught the racially tinged wording,” said AAJA’s Bobby Calvan in a public post on the organization’s website.
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Chgo. Sun-Times Apologize Over ‘Racist’ Asiana Airlines Crash Headline”


Scientists: Babies With Three Parents on the Horizon

-By Warner Todd Huston

Science is always pushing the envelope to see what it can create, but babies with three parents? That is what a recent report out of Britain claims. Soon babies born of DNA of one man and the donor eggs of two women might be on the horizon.

A report at the Daily Mail says that a baby with three parents could be born as early as 2105 after a “landmark decision” by British authorities to allow a “controversial genetic treatment.”

While the genetic experiments are quite controversial and raises fears of “designer babies,” others feel that many ailments, diseases, and hereditary genetic disorders could be cured and that babies could be born with a level of assurances that they would be healthy.

The techniques, the Daily Mail reports, would take the egg from one mother, inject it with DNA from a second woman and fertilize it with a man’s sperm. “The resulting healthy child,” the Mail reports “would effectively have two mothers and a father.”

The British Government’s chief medical officer, Professor Dame Sally Davies, claims that the procedure does not materially alter the genetic traits that would be passed on from the original donor egg and likened the introduction of genetic material from the second female egg to a changing of a “battery pack” in some electronic gadget.
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Scientists: Babies With Three Parents on the Horizon”


The Stupid ‘Middle East Peace’ Plot Point of ‘White House Down’

-By Warner Todd Huston

On Saturday I saw the new summer actioner White House Down and found the main conceit of the film laughably stupid, as is all Hollywood fare of this type. Oh, it was a fun flick if you just forget about reality, and I am not just talking about the comic book-like action sequences, either. No, the whole reason why the White House was coming “down,” as it were, was just plain idiotic.

The flick, starring Channing Tatum as a beleaguered Secret Service applicant and Jamie Foxx as the President of the United States, was typical of the over-the-top sort of action flicks that director Roland Emmerich and the those filmmakers like him are so wont to produce. Emmerich was the director of such films as Independence Day (1996) and The Day After Tomorrow (2004), so you know there are going to be big explosions and lots of bullets and car chases.

In fact, there was a sort of inside joke on director Emmerich’s penchant for destroying Washington when one character, a White House tour guide, pointed out that the main section of the White House was destroyed in Independence Day, a film Emmerich directed.


Director Roland Emmericah destroys the White House in “Independence Day” 1996

Still, it was a fun movie with gobs of action spiced with humor and delicious gotcha endings for the bad guys. It is taken from granted that no one human could survive what was thrown at Tatum’s character in the flick. You just have to go with it. And, instead of totally destroying the White House, in this fim Emmerich collapses the dome of the Capitol Building while leaving the White House a scarred, but still standing mess.

But the central premise of why the White House was being attacked was just the sort of empty headed, feelsgoodism that shows exactly why liberals should never be in charge of anything of importance.
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The Stupid ‘Middle East Peace’ Plot Point of ‘White House Down’”


Washington’s ‘Newseum’ to Host Al Jazeera Studios

-By Warner Todd Huston

Media broadcaster Al Jazeera is owned by the Nation of Qatar, a Muslim country whose legislature operates mainly upon Sharia law. Since the mid 19th century Qatar has been entirely controlled by the monarchical Al Thani family. Today, Al Jazeera’s new American cable news network will broadcast out of the “Newseum,” an organization dedicated to freedom, liberty, and the First Amendment situated only blocks from the capitol building in Washington D.C.

“Is there anything wrong with that picture?” asks Claudia Rosett in a recent Weekly Standard piece.

When it opened in 2008 in downtown D.C., the Newseum celebrated its focus on Americanism, the Constitution, the history of journalism, and the First Amendment. Now it is hosting a network from a nation that holds to no such niceties. Al Jazeera, as it happens, is entirely owned by the Qatari state and is not a free media outlet.

Since the oil-rich nation bought out environmental guru Al Gore’s cable TV network to host Al Jazeera’s new American outlet, we have been told it will be “independent” and allowed to follow the news anywhere it take them.

That remains to be seen, of course. We cannot know what the future will hold for the sort of journalism that Al Jazeera will practice.
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Washington’s ‘Newseum’ to Host Al Jazeera Studios”


Ooops! Yahoo News Posts Article Calling Kenya The Land of Obama’s Birth

-By Warner Todd Huston

Yahoo! News raised the ire of liberals with a June 21 article that seems to have accidentally stated that Kenya was the “the country of Obama’s birth.”

The article was quickly changed, of course, but not before people noticed and not before Twitter became filled with outrage.

The piece, written by Rachel Rose Hartman, was headlined “White House doesn’t have ‘figure on costs’ of Africa trip,” and noted in the first paragraph that Obama was visiting Africa. “But he won’t be stopping in the country of his birth,” the paragraph ended.


Screenshot of article in its original form

Obama’s African trip has him visiting South Africa, Senegal, and Tanzania. But he won’t be visiting Kenya. Naturally with that opening line, many assumed that writer Hartman was talking about Kenya, the long rumored land of the President’s birth.
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Ooops! Yahoo News Posts Article Calling Kenya The Land of Obama’s Birth”


‘Color Purple’ Author’s New Virulently Anti-Semitic Book Draws Criticism

-By Warner Todd Huston

Alice Walker is most well known for authoring The Color Purple, a book on the African American experience that in 1985 became an award-winning film staring Oprah Winfrey among others. But Walker is also well known as a major anti-Semite and in her new book, The Cushion in the Road, Walker “sinks to new lows” of anti-Semitism.

In Walker’s new book 12 essays in a section titled “On Palestine,” a section that forms one quarter of the book, are replete with comparisons of modern-day Israel to Nazi Germany and proclamations that Israel should not be allowed to exist. The book also makes attempts to justify terrorism against Israelis saying Palestinians should not be blamed for terror bombings in Israel.

Abraham H. Foxman, National Director of the Anti Defamation League, slams Walker’s new book saying, “Alice Walker has taken her extreme and hostile views to a shocking new level.”

“Alice Walker has sunk to new lows with essays that remove the gloss of her anti-Israel activism to reveal someone who is unabashedly infected with anti-Semitism,” Foxman said in a press release.
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‘Color Purple’ Author’s New Virulently Anti-Semitic Book Draws Criticism”


Beer Salute: Obama Thanks Germans for ‘Very Important German Immigrants, Anheuser-Busch’

-By Warner Todd Huston

During his visit to Germany on Wednesday, President Obama extended the gratitude of the American people unto the citizens of Germany for giving us “Anheuser Busch,” some of our most important German-American citizens.

As the pool reports noted, the President thanked families like “Chrysler, Hershey, Heinz, Einstein, Steinway, Steinbeck, Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig for prosperity and inspiration” and noted that young Americans “will always be grateful for Levi Strauss for their blue jeans.”

Obama went on to say, “Americans will also be grateful especially for some very important German immigrants Anheuser Busch.”
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Beer Salute: Obama Thanks Germans for ‘Very Important German Immigrants, Anheuser-Busch’”


Angelina Jolie’s Stunt Double Sues News Corp for Phone Hacking

-By Warner Todd Huston

In the first lawsuit filed in the U.S. over the British phone hacking scandal involving Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp media empire, a stuntwoman for actress Angelina Jolie has filed suit alleging that the media company hacked her telephone.

The suit was filed on June 13 by professional stunt double Eunice Huthart who claims that News Corp’s tabloids The Sun and News of the World spied on her phone while she worked on location as Jolie’s stunt double.

The stuntwoman says the hacking occurred over the years 2004 and 2005 as she worked on the movie Mr. and Mrs. Smith.

The suit (Western Division, L.A. case No. 13-04253) alleges that Huthart began to miss messages on her phone, messages that later ended up in stories about the budding relationship between Jolie and actor Brad Pitt, co-stars on the action movie on which the stuntwoman was working.
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Angelina Jolie’s Stunt Double Sues News Corp for Phone Hacking”


National Review Hammers the ‘Gang of Eight’ Immigration Team

-By Warner Todd Huston

In a new editorial, the folks at National Review came out strongly against the immigration plan being sponsored by the so-called “gang of eight” Senators, a group that includes Florida Senator Marco Rubio, calling the bill “Rubio’s Folly.”

NR urges Senator Rubio to vote against the bill he has helped craft, disparaging the proposed legislation as, “an amnesty-first, enforcement-maybe program drawn up mainly to reflect the priorities of 11 million citizens of other countries rather than the concerns of more than 300 million citizens of the United States.”

NR goes on to point out that many of the bill’s “security triggers” are little else but “paper tigers” that are undermined before they even fairly begin. For instance, the requirement that prospective new citizens must have a “clean criminal record” is undermined by the fact that they can actually have two misdemeanors and up to two convictions for drunk driving yet still qualify.
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National Review Hammers the ‘Gang of Eight’ Immigration Team”


Bill Ayers: Obama Should be Tried for War Crimes

-By Warner Todd Huston

Former domestic terrorist and liberal educator Bill Ayers may think Obama is a charming and likable but he still thinks he should be tried for war crimes over his drone program and his military campaigns in Afghanistan and other places.

In a continuing video series called the RCP Morning Commute, where well-known Chicagoans and folks in the news take a “morning commute” drive with the Charlie Stone and Tom Bevan of Real Clear Politics, Bill Ayers made his assessment of the Obama presidency. And he wasn’t wholly complimentary.

When asked to grade the President’s term in office, the infamous educator proclaimed Obama’s presidency a failure. “I’d give him a failing grade,” Ayers said.

Ayers went on to say he feels that Obama is a “moderate” and that he campaigned that way so no one should be surprised by the President’s actions in office.
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Bill Ayers: Obama Should be Tried for War Crimes”


White House: Obama’s $100 Million Africa Trip is ‘Great Bang for our Buck’

-By Warner Todd Huston

After questions arose over the $100 million price tag of the President’s trip to Africa, the White House defended the costs claiming that the expenditure offers the nation “great bang for our buck.”

After saying that the White House doesn’t determine the costs of travel and security, deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes said that the visits to these little noticed parts of the world would be good exposure for the United States.

“Frankly, there will be a great bang for our buck for being in Africa, because when you travel to regions like Africa that don’t get a lot of presidential attention, you can have very long-standing and long-running impact from the visit,” Rhodes said in The Hill newspaper.

Rhodes said that ignoring Africa is ceding leadership to others in the region.
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White House: Obama’s $100 Million Africa Trip is ‘Great Bang for our Buck’”


CNN Criticized for Celebrating Palestinian Terrorist

-By Warner Todd Huston

CNN is drawing criticism for a feature story on a Palestinian soccer player who is in the news for boycotting Israel. The cable network is being criticized because its glowing treatment of the Palestinian protester neglects to mention that he is a member of the terror group Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ). In fact, the piece seems to reject any claim that he is a member of the group.

CNN’s fawning treatment of Palestinian soccer player Mahmoud Sarsak begins with sympathetic descriptions of his hunger strike against Israeli authorities.

The piece then goes on to give Sarsak the space to complain about how the professional soccer league, the UEFA, has decided to hold its latest tournament in Israel, allowed him to discuss his (failed) boycotting efforts, and then went into a long, one-sided description of the “abuse” Sarsak claims he suffered at the hands of the Israelis while under arrest for suspicion of links to terror groups.

The long CNN piece is reported entirely from the soccer player’s perspective and readers would be excused for going away from the piece imagining that Sarsak is innocent of Israel’s charges that he is a member of any terror group. The piece paints Sarak as a victim.
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CNN Criticized for Celebrating Palestinian Terrorist”


PC Beauty: Miss World Ditches Bikinis for Less Revealing Sarongs

-By Warner Todd Huston

Bowing to pressure from its Muslim host country, the Miss World beauty pageant has announced that it will axe its famous bikinis and replace them with the traditional Indonesian sarong.

In this year’s contest the more than 130 contestants will be sporting the traditional longer sarongs worn in Bali instead of the revealing, sexy bikinis that have always been part of the competition, pageant officials have decided.

The contest will be held on September 28 on the resort island of Bali and in Sentul, areas near the Indonesian capital of Jakarta. Indonesia is the world’s most populous Muslin nation.

“There will no bikini in this year’s Miss World pageant to respect our traditional customs and values,” Adjie S. Soeratmadjie of the RCTI, the official broadcaster and local organizer, told media outlets.
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PC Beauty: Miss World Ditches Bikinis for Less Revealing Sarongs”


Gitmo Offering Creative Writing Classes and More to Inmates?

-By Warner Todd Huston

The166 detainees that are still at the Guantanamo Bay’s Camp 6 apparently have some interesting activities to keep them occupied. Among other activities the terrorists enjoy training classes in “interviewing and resume writing” as well as “writing success.”

The creative writing classes are part of instructions in art, literacy, and English as a second language.

According to reports, other classes offered are “Life Skills” class, “Computer Familiarity,” “Personal Health and Wellness,” and “Personal Finance and Business.”

The detainees are also allowed to take art classes, and language classes like Pashtu or Arabic to English translation.

Joint Task Force Guantanamo (JTF-GTMO) also recently spent $750,000 for a new soccer field for Camp 6.
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Gitmo Offering Creative Writing Classes and More to Inmates?”


D-Day Anniversary VIDEO: Remembering D-Day With Ike and Reagan

-By Paul Kengor

[Ed note: I posted this last year and it still gets a lot of traffic so on this anniversary of D-Day, I thought I’d post it again. In fact, I’ll post it every D-Day anniversary…]

For me, Memorial Day happens twice within a week. The first, the official holiday at the end of May, is quickly reinforced a week later, every June 6: D-Day.

Of all the wartime anniversaries, none strike me quite like D-Day — the invasion of Normandy, the liberation of France, the final push to defeat Nazi Germany. It was June 6, 1944, a date that sticks like December 7, like July 4, like September 11. The mix of extreme sorrow and triumph has been unforgettably replicated on film by Steven Spielberg in the stunning opening of Saving Private Ryan.

What must it have been like to be among those first waves at the beaches? Indescribable, simply indescribable.
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D-Day Anniversary VIDEO: Remembering D-Day With Ike and Reagan”


Wikipedia’s Top Hits: In America, George W. Bush’s Entry Most Controversial

-By Warner Todd Huston

A new study of the most controversial entries on Wikipedia, the crowd sourced, online encyclopedia, shows that in the English language entry the most fought over is the biography of George W. Bush.

The authors of The most controversial topics in Wikipedia, a study that looked at the most controversial pages by language group, finds some topics stir passions in all cultures–such as matters of religion, God, Jesus, and Muhammad–while others are dependent on more localized matters–such as ages old ethnic conflicts and local politics.

The study looked at the pages that are fought over the most by constant behind the scenes editing by users. The most debated pages undergo what the study terms “edit wars,” which is the back and forth of “reverts,” the action of undoing what another editor added. The goal of the study was to find what subjects were most controversial by language, but also to see what topics straddled cultures.

Maybe unsurprisingly, in the English language Wiki, which is visited most heavily in the United States, the bio of George W. Bush still elicits hot controversy. Bush’s entry appears at the very top among the top ten most edited pages in English. Anarchism comes in second and Muhammad third.
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Wikipedia’s Top Hits: In America, George W. Bush’s Entry Most Controversial”


152 New Sex Abuse Allegations in BBC Jimmy Savile Scandal

-By Warner Todd Huston

152 new sex abuse allegations have been made against dozens of BBC employees as well as its most famous TV presenter. The new allegations have been brought in the Jimmy Savile sex scandal that erupted last year. About 40 of the accused BBC employees still work for the broadcasting giant.

Early in 2013, four years after he died at age 84, hundreds of allegations of sexual abuse of teens and young people were lodged against one of the BBC’s most famous and long-standing TV and radio presenters, Jimmy Savile. The scandal rocked the British Isles, as Savile was a popular entertainer, radio disc jockey, charity representative, and TV personality from the 1960s up until his death in 2009.

The scandal roiled for months as steady stream of new people came forward claiming that Savile and his cohorts at the British Broadcasting Corporation had abused them when they were young.
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152 New Sex Abuse Allegations in BBC Jimmy Savile Scandal”


Congressmen Urge AG Holder to Grant Asylum to Homeschooling German Family

-By Warner Todd Huston

A coalition of 27 Congressmen have joined together to sign a letter urging the Department of Justice and Attorney General Eric Holder to rescind an order to deport a German family whose only crime was to homeschool their children.

In 2008 German citizen Uwe Romeike, his wife, and five young children fled Germany and took up residence in Tennessee because in their homeland, homeschooling children is a crime. The penalties are so stiff that the Romeikes faced having the government take away their children.

So, the Romeikes moved to Tennessee to escape this oppression and in 2010 were awarded political asylum by a federal judge in the Volunteer State.

But this wasn’t good enough for Barack Obama’s Department of Justice. Eric Holder and his DOJ fought the awarding of political asylum for the Romeikes and took the case back to court.
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Congressmen Urge AG Holder to Grant Asylum to Homeschooling German Family”


THIS Is What American Troops Are Made Of…

-By Warner Todd Huston

To honor our troops for this year, I am going to share this story about their mettle. What follows are excerpts from remarks by Marine Lt. Gen. John F. Kelly made to the Semper Fi Society of St. Louis on November 13, 2010. While leading his platoon on a combat patrol, Kelly’s son, Marine 1st Lt. Robert Michael Kelly, had been killed in action four days earlier in Sangin, in southern Afghanistan. Lt. Kelly was only 29-years-old.

Giving Thanks for Our Warriors

“Those with less of a sense of service to the nation never understand it when men and women of character step forward to look danger and adversity straight in the eye, refusing to blink, or give ground, even to their own deaths… No, they are not victims but are warriors, your warriors, and warriors are never victims regardless of how and where they fall. Death, or fear of death, has no power over them. Their paths are paved by sacrifice, sacrifices they gladly make… for you….

“Two years ago when I was the commander of all U.S. and Iraqi forces, in fact, the 22nd of April 2008, two Marine infantry battalions, 1/9 ‘The Walking Dead,’ and 2/8 were switching out in Ramadi… Two Marines, Corporal Jonathan Yale and Lance Corporal Jordan Haerter, 22 and 20 years old respectively, one from each battalion, were assuming the watch together at the entrance gate of an outpost that contained a makeshift barracks housing 50 Marines… Yale was a dirt poor mixed-race kid from Virginia with a wife and daughter, and a mother and sister who lived with him and he supported as well. He did this on a yearly salary of less than $23,000. Haerter, on the other hand, was a middle-class white kid from Long Island. They were from two completely different worlds… But they were Marines, combat Marines, forged in the same crucible of Marine training, and because of this bond they were brothers as close, or closer, than if they were born of the same woman.
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THIS Is What American Troops Are Made Of…”


CBS Reporter Sharyl Attkisson Reports She’s Been Shut Out By White House

-By Warner Todd Huston

The intrepid Sharyl Attkisson of CBS News has been one of the few reporters attempting to dig deep into controversial stories–and by controversial we mean stories that Obama would rather see go away. But after her work on Fast & Furious and Benghazi, she is now reporting that she’s been shut out of the information loop by the White House.

Attkisson was one of the few members of the progressive media establishment interested in covering the Fast & Furious scandal and has lately also been a bulldog looking into the Benghazi cover-up. She has been so far reaching in her work that she was dubbed a “persistent voice of media skepticism” by The Washington Post.

Her work got her praise and rumors that her boss, David Rhodes, may fire her for being too effective. Naturally, CBS boss Rhodes has a brother that is a close Obama adviser. Ben Rhodes, the CBS executive’s brother, also happens to be one of the operatives in the Obama administration directly involved in the Benghazi cover-up.
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CBS Reporter Sharyl Attkisson Reports She’s Been Shut Out By White House”


WaPo/ABC Poll: Obama Lying About Benghazi, IRS Targeting ‘Inappropriate,’ Media Still Distrusted

-By Warner Todd Huston

A new poll conducted jointly by The Washington Post and ABC News revealed some interesting trends. Among other findings, more Americans feel that Obama and his administration are lying about Benghazi, a majority feel that the IRS acted inappropriately by targeting conservative groups, and the media is still distrusted with a majority feeling that the Justice Department’s seizure of the AP’s phone records was justified. Despite all this disapproval, Obama’s approval rating is still just over 50 percent positive.

An important metric in the ABC/WashPost poll was the question of whether or not government is doing more to protect or threaten our rights. 54% felt that the government had become a threat to our rights while only 34% said that the government was acting properly to protect our rights. The American people’s faith in government is at low ebb.

This distrust is echoed when the poll turned to the specific cases of Benghazi and the IRS.

55% said that they feel that Obama is trying to cover up what happened during the terror attacks on our facilities in Benghazi, Libya on Sept. 11, 2012. Only 33% felt he was honestly disclosing what he knew.
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WaPo/ABC Poll: Obama Lying About Benghazi, IRS Targeting ‘Inappropriate,’ Media Still Distrusted”


VIDEO: White House Spins Obama’s Role in Benghazi: From Competence to Irrelevance

-By Helle Dale, The Heritage Foundation

With the weekend’s grand slam appearance on the Sunday talk shows by yet another official unqualified to talk about Benghazi, the Obama Administration has again shot itself in the foot.

White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer attempted to defend U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice’s mischaracterization of the Benghazi terrorist attack, which she blamed on the now infamous anti-Islam video. It was a poor show.

All of this stands in stark contrast with White House’s handling of the Navy SEAL Team Six raid that killed Osama bin Laden on May 2, 2011. We have all seen the images of President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton huddled in the White House situation room with the national security staff, riveted to live images of the nighttime raid. It was hardly over before President Obama, speaking proudly as commander in chief, went on national television to announce the death of the enemy of the American people. The Administration even cooperated with the producers of the movie Zero Dark Thirty about the mission to kill bin Laden.

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VIDEO: White House Spins Obama’s Role in Benghazi: From Competence to Irrelevance”


Gov’t Memo Proves CBS’s Sharyl Attkisson Got Benghazi Email Story Right

-By Warner Todd Huston

One of the earliest reporters revealing the internal emails about Benghazi exchanged between the U.S. Department of State and the intel community was CBS’ Sharyl Attkisson. Her original report was based on “written notes” and, as she said from the beginning, was not derived directly from the emails themselves. Despite this disclaimer, some called her reckless for her reporting. But in the end her reports are still quite close to the actual emails and shows she did not get the story wrong.

Attkisson was accused of not disclosing that her report was written from congressional insiders that gave her access to notes taken after they had been given access in Committee to the actual emails. To put to rest the accusations against Attkisson, Mediaite obtained an internal CBS memo that shows that she never claimed that her report was derived directly from the emails themselves.

When Attkisson handed in her original report on the email exchange, she clearly noted that her work was based on notes taken by her sources.

Note: *Emails were provided by the Administration to certain Congressional Committees for limited review. The Committees were not permitted to copy the emails, so they made handwritten notes. Therefore, parts of the quoted emails may be paraphrased.

This notation, however, did not make it to the May 10 story CBS posted to the web, nor was it pointed out on any of the CBS TV reports on the story.

No explanation was given for that lapse.
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Gov’t Memo Proves CBS’s Sharyl Attkisson Got Benghazi Email Story Right”


CNN’s Crowley Admits Obama Didn’t Call Benghazi a Terror Attack

-By Warner Todd Huston

On the May 19 broadcast of CNN’s State of the Union, host Candy Crowley said that Obama was late in identifying the attacks in Benghazi as terrorism quite contrary to what she said during the Presidential debates late last year.

As Crowley questioned White House spokesman Dan Pfeiffer, she pressed him on whether or not the President was aware of the Benghazi talking points being written and re-written by the Department of State and the intel community, re-writes that eventually eliminated any mention that the attacks were perpetrated by terrorists.

In reply, Pfeiffer blithely told Crowley that “no president” would get involved in writing talking points like that.

Crowley went on to point out that Obama was late in calling it terror saying, “in an interview on CBS–which we later learned after the election–but a week and a half after Susan Rice was on [the Sunday shows calling the attack a reaction to a Youtube video] he did say he wasn’t sure if it was a terrorist attack.”

Pfeiffer the somewhat quixotically replied that, “no one was sure at that point.”

Crowley countered that saying “well, no the president, first of all in Libya they were sure of it and the CIA seemed pretty sure of it!”
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CNN’s Crowley Admits Obama Didn’t Call Benghazi a Terror Attack”


Was the 2013 ‘Photo of the Year’ a Photoshopped Fake?

-By Warner Todd Huston

At the beginning of the year the World Press Photo of the year was awarded to Swedish photog Paul Hansen whose photo “Gaza Burial” took top honors. But only weeks passed before some in the industry began to wonder if the photo had been manipulated in photoshop. Some even said that it was a composite image. If this were so, critics said, that would violate the spirit of the contest. (Seen above with my little “helping” notation)

The photo shows a gut-wrenching scene of a two dead Palestinian children wrapped in burial robes and being carried by distressed family members to be laid to rest.

One skeptic, computer scientist Dr. Neal Krawetz, did an extensive exploration of what he says is the manipulation of the prize winning photo. “Hansen’s picture is a composite,” he concludes.
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Was the 2013 ‘Photo of the Year’ a Photoshopped Fake?”


New State Dept. Spokesperson Gets Slammed Over Benghazi

-By Warner Todd Huston

It has been 8 months since the terrorist attacks on our facilities in Benghazi, Libya, attacks that ended up killing four Americans including our ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens. Still we haven’t had a concrete explanation about this incident and new State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki didn’t do anything to alleviate that state of affairs as reporters peppered her with uncomfortable questions in her May 13 press briefing.

One exchange during the briefing between Psaki and a reporter named Brad (perhaps the AP’s Brad Klapper) was particularly sharp.

At one point, Psaki avers that the State Department was not privy to the 12-times re-written Benghazi talking points until after all the re-writes were done. The reporter was a bit incredulous at that noting that there is no proof for her blithe claim because her office is refusing to release the records to prove it.

What was Psaki’s reply? “All right. Well, you’ll have to take my word for it…”
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New State Dept. Spokesperson Gets Slammed Over Benghazi”


Mom of Slain Son Bids Hillary Clinton a Happy Mother’s Day

-By Warner Todd Huston

Pat Smith’s son, Sean, was murdered by terrorists in Benghazi, Libya (9/11/12) thanks to Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama’s negligence. On Sunday, she has a message for Obama and Hillary.

“I want to wish Hillary a Happy Mother’s Day,” Smith said. “She has her child. I don’t have mine because of her.”

Mrs. Smith appeared on the Mike Huckabee show on Sunday, May 12, to deliver her message.

Huckabee asked Smith if she was comforted at all by the Congressional hearings about the attacks.

“Absolutely not. I am still waiting to answers to just about everything,” she said.

Happy Mother’s Day, indeed.
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Mom of Slain Son Bids Hillary Clinton a Happy Mother’s Day”


AP Claims Official House Benghazi Hearings Just ‘GOP Hearing’

-By Warner Todd Huston

The Associated Press on Wednesday mischaracterized the Benghazi hearings as merely a Republican event even though it is an official House investigation.

In the headline of its report, the Associated Press downplayed the official hearings of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee–that has both Democrats and Republicans on it–into the failures surrounding the 2012 attacks on our embassy personnel in Benghazi, Libya. The AP characterized the official hearings as “GOP hearings” making the proceedings seem like a mere political witch-hunt.

The piece written by Donna Cassata was headlined, “GOP Benghazi hearing stokes political controversy.”

The hearing on Benghazi is not a “GOP hearing,” but is instead an official hearing of the House with representatives of both parties sitting at the head of the proceedings.

The bias in the piece doesn’t begin and end in the headline, either. Cassata does not report the hearings straight but goes on to put her opinion into the description of the day’s events.

Her fourth paragraph is a perfect example of that bias (my bold).
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AP Claims Official House Benghazi Hearings Just ‘GOP Hearing’”