An interesting, and perhaps bigger, story within a Daily Mail article which outlines previously unknown communication between Secretary of State Colin Powell and the White House regarding British support for specific action in Iraq.

The essence of the Daily Mail article is to query whether or not Prime Minister Tony Blair had agreed to Iraqi intervention a full year prior to the operation to overthrow Saddam Hussein (read the entire article here – including the emails).

While it is certainly a controversy within the U.K. if Prime Minister Blair was willing to provide blanket support for the U.S. engagement therein; the buried lead -for current political contexts- surrounds this paragraph:

[…] The documents, obtained by The Mail on Sunday, are part of a batch of secret emails held on the private server of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton which U.S. courts have forced her to reveal.

[…] Why have these memos come out now?

The U.S. courts have ruled that 30,000 emails received by Hillary Clinton when she was U.S. Secretary of State from 2009 to 2013 should be released.  (link)

Why was Hillary Clinton transferring/extracting data from secure, and monitored, classified State Department data bases, into her non-secure private email server? (more…)

WASHINGTON — Federal agents were still cataloging the classified information from Hillary Rodham Clinton’s personal email server last week when President Obama went on television and played down the matter.

“I don’t think it posed a national security problem,” Mr. Obama said Sunday on CBS’s “60 Minutes.” He said it was a mistake for Mrs. Clinton to use a private email account when she was secretary of state, but his conclusion was unmistakable: “This is not a situation in which America’s national security was endangered.”

Those statements angered F.B.I. agents who have been working for months to determine whether Ms. Clinton’s email setup had in fact put any of the nation’s secrets at risk, according to current and former law enforcement officials. (more…)

Yesterday you might have noticed some media stories about Donald Trump and the possibility of Secret Service protection or lack thereof.

This coincides with a prior day event in Richmond Virginia where race-based activists from the “Black Lives Matter” movement attempted to disrupt the rally. (more…)

I did not see the CBS 60 Minutes interview with President Obama; so I set about going to look for it.  Before going to CBS’s website I stopped by U-Tube to see if there was an encapsulated segment.

Fortuitously I discovered this presentation.  While it is not the entire interview, it is well worth the watch for greater foxhole-morale value.  Not only is the commentary quite funny, it also provides further evidence that there are many people who understand the situation and feel the same way.  (Salty Language Alert)

Reports: WaPo's Jason Rezaian convicted in Iran http://t.co/8H5bVnPY5K | AP Photo pic.twitter.com/D1MH9fICXI

— POLITICO (@politico) October 12, 2015

For people who might not have followed the story as it unfolded there’s an easier explanation for why Iran is holding Jason Rezaian.   The underpinning is Iran knowing the U.S. State Department and CNN collaborate to use media as a tool to advance U.S. foreign policy objectives.

In December 2014 CNN ran and episode of Anthony Bourdain Parts Unknown filmed in Iran. It seemed innocuous at the time, yet as with all things Turner Broadcasting, it also seemed to be another set up for a larger political agenda item. (more…)

What does one shallow dictator do when another delicate dictator visits a land of freedom?

The @WhiteHouse puts up screens to block #Xi's view of protestors during visit. Bad move. Insult to American values. pic.twitter.com/ktz6HERJnz

— Marion Smith (@smithmarion) September 25, 2015

It was September of 2007 when George W Bush sat behind his oval office desk and signed into law the Fiscal Year 2008 Federal Budget. Exactly eight years ago.
It has now been eight consecutive years without a federal budget. Eight consecutive years of debt ceiling increases, continuing resolutions to fund government, threats of shut-downs and the insufferable back-and-forth blame.

But this year is different. You see for this budgetary year (constructed in ’15 for fiscal year 2016) the Republicans hold significant majorities in both the House and the Senate. And for those of you who don’t pay as close attention to these things, the fiscal year starts on October 1st.

Yeah, exactly a week from now !

… and yet we have NO BUDGET. Why?
Well, the honest answer to that question is what scares the hell out of the Professional Republican party. We have no federal budget this year, because, just like the Democrat party, the GOP doesn’t want a federal budget. (more…)

Jill Kelly is a woman who became entangled in the General Petraeus / Paula Broadwell affair story which exploded immediately following the Benghazi attacks in 2012.  Many believe the Petraeus affair was used by the White House to remove the CIA risk.

BACKSTORY BEFORE UPDATE – Jill Kelly was threatened by Paula Broadwell during Broadwell’s affair with Petraeus. Once the affair was exposed, the media outed Jill Kelly as the original source to the FBI who uncovered the sordid affair.
Kelly then filed a lawsuit against the FBI for releasing her identity to the public via the media. The source of that media leak was, in essence, traced to then pentagon attorney Jeh Johnson, who later became DHS Secretary.
Last September (2014) we noted that the lawsuit by Jill Kelly would carry some very interesting possibilities via judicial discovery. In July (2015) a federal judge postponed DHS Head Jeh Johnson being compelled to testify in the ongoing lawsuit. (more…)

Our favorite ideological cabinet member appeared on CBS this morning replete with new linguistic skills.  Listen to question at 01:58, and within the answer: “de-conflict” … it reappears a few minutes later in another retort.
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(more…)

As many people thoroughly anticipated the back-story to the 14-year-old briefcase clockmaker reflects his father is actually a rather controversial Muslim activist.  This lends further credence toward a reasonable belief that his taking a briefcase clock to school was not as innocent as the media would lead everyone to believe.
UPDATE:  In his own words Ahmed Mohamed, 14, an Irving MacArthur High student essentially states he knew taking the device to school was controversial.  Listen at 1:26 video:

“I closed it with a cable, so… because, I didn’t want to lock it to make it seem like a threat so I just used simple cable…. so it won’t look that much suspicious”.

That’s what you call an admission of premeditation and intent.  In his own words, with forethought, he knew the briefcase with wires and “a countdown clock” would be “suspicious”; especially around 9/11.
Update#2 – We are not the only people to pick up on the admitted “intent”. Follow THIS LINK – To see exactly how it was engineered and the kids’ story gets even more sketchy. (more…)