The New York Times has a lengthy article about the evolution of Obama’s ideology and perspective regarding NSA spying.    However, inside the article there is this admission from White House advisor/campaign director David Plouffe that everyone appears to be overlooking (emphasis mine):

[…]   “When you get the package every morning, it puts steel in your spine,” said David Plouffe, the president’s longtime adviser. “There are people out there every day who are plotting. The notion that we would put down a tool that would protect people here in America is hard to fathom.”

At the same time, aides said Mr. Obama was surprised to learn after leaks by Edward J. Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor, just how far the surveillance had gone. “Things seem to have grown at the N.S.A.,” Mr. Plouffe said, citing specifically the tapping of foreign leaders’ telephones. “I think it was disturbing to most people, and I think he found it disturbing.”

Yet it is hard to express indignation at actions of the government after five years of running it, and some involved in surveillance note that it was Mr. Obama who pushed national security agencies to be aggressive in hunting terrorists.  (read full article)

I have not had the opportunity to review the entire report – this article below is from the Washington Post.  All Senate Committees are chaired by Democrats.

WASHINGTON DC – A long-delayed Senate Intelligence Committee report released Wednesday faulted both the State Department and the intelligence community for not preventing attacks on two outposts in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four Americans, including a U.S. ambassador, about 16 months ago.

The bipartisan report laid out more than a dozen findings regarding the assaults on a diplomatic compound and a CIA annex in the city. It said the State Department failed to increase security at its mission despite warnings, and blamed intelligence agencies for not sharing information about the existence of the CIA outpost with the U.S. military.

The committee determined that the U.S. military command in Africa didn’t know about the CIA annex and that the Pentagon didn’t have the resources in place to defend the State Department compound in an emergency.

“The attacks were preventable, based on extensive intelligence reporting on the terrorist activity in Libya — to include prior threats and attacks against Western targets — and given the known security shortfalls at the U.S. Mission,” the panel said in a statement. (more…)

UPDATE: We have submitted a public records request and received confirmation (see bottom)

TAMPA TRIBUNE  – John Filippidis, silver-haired family man, business owner, employer and taxpayer, is also licensed to carry a concealed firearm.

He’d rather he didn’t feel the need, “but things aren’t like they used to be. The break-ins, the burglaries, all the crime. And I carry cash a lot of the time. I’m constantly going to the bank.

“I wanted to be able to defend my family, my household and the ground I’m standing on. But I’m not looking for any trouble.”

Filippidis keeps his gun — a palm-sized Kel-Tec .38 semiautomatic, barely larger than a smartphone in a protective case — in one of two places, always: in the right-hand pocket of his jeans, or in the safe at home.

“There are kids in the house,” Filippidis says, “and I don’t think they’d ever bother with it, but I don’t want to take any chances.”

He’s not looking for any trouble, after all. (more…)

(Via Washington Free Bacon) Jewish community leaders in South Florida say they are growing frustrated with Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D., Fla.) over her conflicting statements regarding a bipartisan Iran sanctions measure in the House.

Following a Washington Free Beacon report detailing her efforts to block a House resolution backing new sanctions on Iran, Wasserman Schultz has told her hometown press that she is open to new sanctions, while telling D.C. reporters that she opposes them.

The conflicting statements are a sign that Wasserman Schultz is torn between her support for the White House, which opposes the sanctions, and her constituents, who are less convinced of Iran’s good intentions and more supportive of tough congressional action. (more…)

Iran and the White House are aligned in their demand the U.S. congress must not issue any further sanctions against the Iranian nuclear ambitions.   However, the more alarming aspect is that the White House is refusing to let congress review the exact terminology of the previously announced arrangement.

Not passing proverbial sniff test….

WASHINGTON DC –  Iran vowed to maintain its nuclear infrastructure and threatened to boost its uranium enrichment capabilities just hours after announcing that it had agreed to a deal to halt some aspects of its contested nuclear program.

Iran and Western nations announced on Sunday that they had agreed to an interim deal to halt portions of Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for some $7 billion in sanctions relief.

Secretary of State John Kerry celebrated the interim agreement, which will officially begin on Jan. 20.

However, Iranian officials threatened to ramp up nuclear activities should they feel the West is violating the accord.

“We will in no way, never, dismantle our [nuclear] centrifuges,” Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi told the country’s state-run television station on Sunday, according to New York Times reporter Thomas Erdbrink. (more…)

Last week House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa and subcommittee Chairman Jim Jordan said they’ve discovered the assigned head of the IRS probe was Barbara Kay Bosserman. Bosserman is a DOJ trial lawyer in the Justice Department who donated more than $6,000 to Mr. Obama’s 2008 and 2012 campaigns, as well as several hundred dollars to the national Democratic Party.

Now this week: WASHINGTON DC – The Federal Bureau of Investigation doesn’t plan to file criminal charges over the Internal Revenue Service’s heightened scrutiny of conservative groups, according to law-enforcement officials, a move that likely will only intensify debate over the politically charged scandal.

The officials said investigators didn’t find the kind of political bias or “enemy hunting” that would amount to a violation of criminal law. Instead, what emerged during the probe was evidence of a mismanaged bureaucracy enforcing rules about tax-exemption applications it didn’t understand, according to the law-enforcement officials. (more…)

Armed Services Chairman Howard “Buck” McKeon, (R-CA) has downloaded pdf’s of testimony from last June. They are available HERE and we are in the process of going through line by-painstaking line. Why? Because since late September 2012 we have found a litany of dots which add up to a very specific pattern – and tell a very specific story. We feel, and this current new release confirms, the thread to pull this cover shroud apart is tied to AFRICOM – General Carter Ham.

Here is James Rosen’s initial take on his review, and at the bottom we’ll expand on what we feel is going to come to light.

WASHINGTON DC (VIA JAMES ROSEN) Minutes after the American consulate in Benghazi came under assault on Sept. 11, 2012, the nation’s top civilian and uniformed defense officials — headed for a previously scheduled Oval Office session with President Obama — were informed that the event was a “terrorist attack,” declassified documents show. The new evidence raises the question of why the top military men, one of whom was a member of the president’s Cabinet, allowed him and other senior Obama administration officials to press a false narrative of the Benghazi attacks for two weeks afterward.

Gen. Carter Ham, who at the time was head of AFRICOM, the Defense Department combatant command with jurisdiction over Libya, told the House in classified testimony last year that it was him who broke the news about the unfolding situation in Benghazi to then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The tense briefing — in which it was already known that U.S. Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens had been targeted and had gone missing — occurred just before the two senior officials departed the Pentagon for their session with the commander in chief.

(more…)

Bill Clinton desperately pleaded with Sen. Kennedy over the phone in 2008 to not endorse Obama, even reminding the senior senator that Clinton as president in  1999 kept the Coast Guard looking for John F. Kennedy Jr.’s missing plane days longer than usual, according to the 2008 campaign tell-all book “Game Change.” (LINK)

Congressman Chris Van Hollen just can’t belive the report (link)

WASHINGTON DC – Those Democrats who crossed Bill and Hillary Clinton in 2008 must answer for their sins. And the Clinton camp has been keeping a tally.

That’s at least according to a new book by The Hill’s Amie Parnes and Politico’s Jonathan Martin. They’ve co-authored a book together on Hillary Clinton called “HRC: State Secrets and the Rebirth of Hillary Clinton.” And a story cross-published on the websites of both The Hill and Politico has an interesting angle and title: “Hillary’s Hit List.”

After Hillary had officially dropped out of the race in 2008, her campaign still had some work to do — work that involved keeping a detailed record of who had supported, and turned on, the Clintons. (more…)

The stupid is thick with this propaganda spin.   Of course most of the enrollees to the ObamaCare exchange would get a subsidy – because ObamaCare itself is more expensive than private plans for people who don’t qualify for subsidy.

The only reason you would use the ObamaCare Exchange is if your income level qualified for subsidy.   If your income level exceedes the subsidy limit a person is going to get a better price in a private exchange. 

WASHINGTON DC – More than 2.1 million Americans selected private health plans through healthcare.gov and state-run websites through Dec. 28, the Obama administration announced today. Another 1.6 million were judged eligible for Medicaid, the federal-state insurance program for the poor. Most of the new enrollees in private health plans—1.8 million—signed up in December, after the White House relaunched the Affordable Care Act’s stuttering website on Dec. 1. […]

(more…)

In the excerpt below you see exactly why political progs, like Jake Tapper, don’t understand the military and disrespect the soldier.

Tappers’ inherent issue is with the command decision – the politics and subsequent political arguments of war. But in typical prog fashion, reflecting a profound disrespect for the military members who carry out orders, he questions the tip of the spear for the decision of the spear thrower.

(more…)