I have a feeling they would have a different disposition if they were discussing a secret communication network of George Bush or Dick Cheney.

(Via Washington Free Beacon) The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) tried to hide an email about its fear of upsetting the White House from Freedom of Information Act requests by the Associated Press, the AP reported Friday.

Associated Press president Gary Pruitt reported in an op-ed on government transparency that, during the course of an AP investigation into Michelle Obama’s dresses, NARA used a privacy exemption to redact a line in an email that was actually about the agency’s fear of the White House:

As the president said, the United States should not withhold or censor government files merely because they might be embarrassing.

But it happens anyway.

(more…)

(Via New York Post) It’s the vast left-wing conspiracy.

Obama senior adviser Valerie Jarrett leaked to the press details of Hillary Clinton’s use of a private e-mail address during her time as secretary of state, sources tell me.

But she did so through people outside the ­administration, so the story couldn’t be traced to her or the White House.

In addition, at Jarrett’s behest, the State Department was ordered to launch a series of investigations into Hillary’s conduct at Foggy Bottom, including the use of her expense account, the disbursement of funds, her contact with foreign leaders and her possible collusion with the Clinton Foundation.

Six separate probes into Hillary’s performance have been ­going on at the State Department. I’m told that the e-mail scandal was timed to come out just as Hillary was on the verge of formally announcing that she was running for president — and that there’s more to come.

Members of Bill Clinton’s camp say the former president suspects the White House is the source of the leak and is furious. (more…)

Immigrant students paid to have false enrollment in order to have visa extensions granted for schools and classes they never attended.

(Via LA Times) Authorities arrested the operators of four Los Angeles-area trade schools for allegedly running an elaborate “pay-to-stay” scam in which foreign nationals used student visas to stay in the United States without actually going to school..

The schools appear to have tapped the booming Asian immigration population in Koreatown and the San Gabriel Valley. Authorities say the suspects took in $6 million a year in tuition payments.

[…] The arrests were the culmination of a four-year probe by Homeland Security Investigations. (more…)

Stunning New Dot Connections – Methinks the White House doth protest too much. I would love to see Josh Earnest try to square the circle of this recent revelation.

The facts of this story have existed in discussion since last year, yet failed to capture traction until the recent protestations of VP Joe Biden, and Secretary of State John Kerry.

From a radio interview in October of 2014 Mark Levin discusses with Michael Leeden the details of a secret message sent by candidate Senator Barack Obama to Iran in 2008 via a former Ambassador, William G Miller.

In essence the content of the communique was Senator Obama telling the Iranian government not to negotiate with the outgoing George Bush administration because Obama was more friendly toward the position of Iran and he would work to structure a more favorable outcome to the Iranian people.

Here’s audio of the 2014 conversation between Levin and Leeden:

It is a remarkable revelation given the level of apoplectic response recently from the White House and State Dept. to a rather innocuous “open letter” from 47 Senators. (more…)

(Via New York Times) A federal judge on Friday ruled on behalf of Citizens United, a conservative advocacy group, in its lawsuit against the State Department for documents related to Hillary Rodham Clinton’s tenure there.

Judge Gladys Kessler of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia ordered the State Department to produce passenger manifests from 47 overseas trips that Mrs. Clinton made as secretary of state. Citizens United requested the manifests last July through a Freedom of Information Act Request.

The State Department, the judge wrote, must release the first batch of records by April 3, with more being released every two weeks; all the documents must be given to the group no later than Aug. 1.

The group requested the flight manifests to examine whether Clinton Foundation donors had accompanied Mrs. Clinton on State Department trips. (more…)

HatTip Gateway Pundit:

Within a rather extensive article in Time Magazine of Hillary Clinton’s disposition toward political truth and fact-finding the following paragraph strikes a rather disconcerting message:

TIME – […] All this once made sense to Clinton. As a candidate for President in 2008, she included “secret White House email accounts” as part of her critique of the Bush Administration’s “stunning record of secrecy and corruption.” Now, however, Clinton is leaning heavily on “Trust me.”

For more than a year after she left office in 2013, she did not transfer work-related email from her private account to the State Department. She commissioned a review of the 62,320 messages in her account only after the department–spurred by the congressional investigation–asked her to do so. And this review did not involve opening and reading each email; instead, Clinton’s lawyers created a list of names and keywords related to her work and searched for those. Slightly more than half the total cache–31,830 emails–did not contain any of the search terms, according to Clinton’s staff, so they were deemed to be “private, personal records.” (read more)

I’ve tried three times to write this… but the knot in my throat keeps blocking the keystrokes.  There’s a couple of pictures that everyone needs to see today.

Especially today.

The first picture to see is 6-year-old Marcus Johnson. Marcus was a kindergartner at Highland Elementary in the Riverview Gardens School District.

[…] The shooting happened about 7:30 p.m. [last night] as the family was leaving O’Fallon Park, just south of Interstate 70 in north St. Louis. Inside the van were three adults and five children.

The family said that a black vehicle pulled alongside their minivan on West Florissant Avenue and someone inside opened fire, Green said. The father of the child was driving the minivan grabbed a firearm and returned fire, police said.

After realizing three people in the minivan had been shot, the driver called police.

A 15-year-old boy and a 69-year-old man in the minivan were also hit. Both were being treated at a hospital. Police would not give their conditions, but said they were stable.

The child’s mother and three other children, ages 7, 10, and 11, were also in the minivan, police said. They were not hurt. (link)

Marcus was rushed by police to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

Which brings me to the second picture. (more…)