President Obama’s ISIS combat strategy involved training, equipping and mobilizing what the administration called “Syrian Moderates”.   The overall ‘strategy’ has been an abject failure as the U.S. has been unable to assemble more than a few handfuls of forces who are willing to engage in such a tenuous plan.  However, today the plan, as poor in concept as designed, suffered a remarkable set-back. 

BAGHDAD — The commander of a group of Syrian fighters trained by the United States has been kidnapped by Al Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria, his group said in a statement Thursday.

The commander, Nadeem Hassan, and seven of his fighters were taken by the Nusra Front, a rival of the Islamic State in Syria, as they were returning from a meeting in Turkey.

A contingent of 54 fighters from Mr. Hassan’s group, known as Division 30, are the only ones who have graduated from a Pentagon program to train Syrian rebels to fight the Islamic State in Syria. One the fighters taken with Mr. Hassan was his deputy, Farhan Al-Jasem, who commands the fighters who graduated from the American training program. (more…)

You just can’t make this stuff up. Two weeks ago President Obama took fellow Democrat Congressional Representatives with him to Philadelphia where he gave a policy speech outlining a need to reform the criminal justice system.

@vj44 on Air Force One with @POTUS on another history shaping day in the life of the world. pic.twitter.com/Ek3kSHyDgE

— Chaka Fattah (@chakafattah) July 14, 2015

Today Congressman Chaka Fattah was arrested on federal charges. (more…)

Arrogance thy name is.

The President who has spent 7 years dividing Americans and disparaging everyone who disagrees with his policies, is now declaring himself the arbiter of who should be permitted to replace him.

(@2:10) “Certainly, presidential debates deserve better. In 18 months, I’m turning over the keys — I want to make sure I’m turning over the keys to somebody who is serious about the serious problems the country faces and the world faces.”

A rare Sunday senate session provides a remarkable opportunity for the electorate to understand the deception behind the Republican Professional Political Class, the Decepticons.

As you reference the following Politico article, reflect upon the reality that the current House and Senate have larger Republican majorities than the Democrats held when ObamaCare was constructed in ’09 and passed in ’10.

Following Democrat losses in 2010 and 2012, when Harry Reid was the democrat majority leader, Reid changed the rules within the senate to allow his party agendas’ to pass with lower thresholds than traditional Senate Rules.

You might specifically remember the “reconciliation” maneuver which was used to allow ObamaCare to be created with a simple majority (50% +1) instead of 3/5th’s (60) [because Scott Brown won the special election 1/19/10 to stand as the 41st vote against the Dems].

Every legislative and parliamentary trick and strategy was deployed by Harry Reid to advance the agenda of his party.   President Obama defended the machinations by saying the electorate “doesn’t care about the process, they care about the outcome“. (more…)

The intended outcome here is two-fold.  ♦ #1 Any Inspector General will now have to ask a white house appointed cabinet head for approval to access investigative material; obviously this gives an automatic heads’ up to the White House.  ♦ #2 The investigative material is now subject to being hidden from the investigators; obviously this allows unlawful conduct to remain hidden.

WASHINGTON DC – The Obama administration formally announced that inspectors general will have to get permission from their agency heads to gain access to grand jury, wiretap and fair credit information — an action that severely limits the watchdogs’ oversight capabilities, independence and power to uncover fraud.

An opinion, issued by the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel, says the Inspector General Act of 1978 — which was written by Congress to create the government watchdogs in order to help maintain integrity within their agencies — does not have the authority to override nondisclosure provisions in other laws, most notably in regard to grand jury, wiretap or fair credit information. (more…)

WASHINGTON –  Hillary Clinton’s email problem, long on the back-burner, boiled over again this week as two important and related developments turned up the heat.

Late Thursday, The New York Times reported that the inspectors general of the State Department and intelligence agencies are seeking a criminal investigation into the handling of “sensitive government information” on Hillary Clinton’s private email server.

The reason emerged in a Friday report by The Wall Street Journal. Despite denying earlier this year that she sent any “classified documents” over email, the inspectors general found that Clinton had sent at least four emails containing classified information derived from the intelligence community. She did not, obviously, attach “classified documents” to her electronic messages, but she did send messages containing information that remains classified even to this day.[…] (more…)

Oh dear….

(Via Washington Times) Rolling Stone has confirmed for the first time in a court filing that a University of Virginia sexual assault victim advocate, who also served on an Obama administration White House task force, introduced the student who became the centerpiece of the magazine’s now-retracted story about a gang rape on campus.

The move could open the door for the magazine to try to shift blame to the university for a journalism debacle that continues to reverberate across the country. (more…)

Yet somehow it was “out-of-bounds” for the U.S. to throw in the release of U.S. hostages.

This admission by Secretary Kerry is reflective of two things:

#1) The administration was desperate to come away with a deal, any deal; and

#2) Affirming what Obama has stated – the weapons being released (under the lifting of the embargo) will come from China and Russia – and the only way to stop those arms from reaching Hamas will be to engage shipments from Russia and/or China, which opens up another entire can of worms regarding regional stability and U.S. interests…

Unreal.

“So this [deal] focused on getting rid of the principal problem in the region, which is Iran’s threat to Israel, their threat to the region, to have a nuclear capacity.”

(more…)

WASHINGTON DC – Secretary of State John Kerry, in a talking point similar to White House official Ben Rhodes earlier this week, claimed on Fox News Sunday he never seen discussed the idea of “anywhere, anytime” inspections in the Iran nuclear deal.

Host Chris Wallace mentioned the 24-day period Iran can stave off inspections as part of the agreement and how that hardly constituted meeting those standards before Kerry rebuked him.

“Well, that’s not accurate,” Kerry said. “I never, in four years, had a discussion about anywhere, anytime.”

Like Rhodes’ statement, this contradicts earlier statements made by the Obama administration, and it also makes it painfully clear the White House never thought this extremely important verification measure was ever realistic. (Via WFB)