(Via Fox News) US Army Reserve Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer (Ret.) said that the Army is pressuring Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl’s defense team “to basically cop a plea, to plead out to something, and that would avoid the embarrassment of the entire long-drawn out legal process” on Wednesday’s “O’Reilly Factor” on the Fox News Channel.

Shaffer, who previously reported that a decision and announcements on charges for Bergdahl would come in mid-March stated that he believes the White House and the Pentagon do not want Bergdahl’s trial going on at the same time the detainees swapped for him are released at the beginning of May. (link)

Very interesting article by Monica Crowley in the Washington Times pondering over the communications and non-official relationship between Hillary Clinton and Sidney Blumenthal. Blumenthal said to be in direct contact with various foreign governments and agencies to backchannel information to Hillary around official U.S. oversight.

Against the backdrop of what we researched -evidenced within The Benghazi Brief– the secret intelligence communication motive does make a lot of sense.

WASHINGTON TIMES – We all know that the only reason you would deliberately and premeditatedly set up a private email address and server is to have total control over your communications — to keep people away from those communications and to retain the ability to edit and delete your content.

In Hillary Clinton’s case, given her long history of concealment and duplicity, total control was the system’s purpose, not to keep track of Chelsea’s bridal gift registry.

A story originally reported in 2013 (and little-noticed at the time) may offer a deeper dimension to the reasons she wanted this control — and it leaves us with many new, unanswered questions. (more…)

After failing in a not very covert effort to defeat Benjamin Netanyahu at the ballot box, President Obama and his ideologically likeminded cohorts change strategy.

Every policy advisor in the White House has the same outlook toward Israel; they view our relationship with the Jewish state as the basis for our needed mid-East interventions.  According to U.N. Ambassador Samantha Power’s belief Israel is an occupying force which should be viewed as adversarial to U.S. policy. 

Power’s opinion is shared by the overall White House foreign policy team.  Now that Benjamin Netanyahu has won re-election, the most damaging thing the administration can do is to threaten removal of our protective relationship – which would signal to Hamas and other terror groups that it’s open season to attack.

(Via Politico) In the wake of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decisive re-election, the Obama administration is revisiting longtime assumptions about America’s role as a shield for Israel against international pressure.

Angered by Netanyahu’s hard-line platform towards the Palestinians, top Obama officials would not rule out the possibility of a change in American posture at the United Nations, where the U.S. has historically fended off resolutions hostile to Israel.

[…] While saying it was “premature” to discuss Washington’s policy response, the official wouldn’t rule out a modified American posture at the United Nations, where the U.S. has long fended off resolutions critical of Israeli settlement activity and demanding its withdrawal from Palestinian territories. (more…)

The AP reports on what is already well known and accepted. The Obama administration is the least transparent administration ever evaluated.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration set a record again for censoring government files or outright denying access to them last year under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act, according to a new analysis of federal data by The Associated Press.

The government took longer to turn over files when it provided any, said more regularly that it couldn’t find documents and refused a record number of times to turn over files quickly that might be especially newsworthy.

It also acknowledged in nearly 1 in 3 cases that its initial decisions to withhold or censor records were improper under the law — but only when it was challenged. (more…)

The form is called an OF-109 and it has become the latest center of a controversy over the Hillary Clinton email scandal. Essentially the legally binding form requires the signature of all exiting State Dept Personnel affirming they have turned over all official documents to the custody of the State Dept.   Update for video:

Hillary left her office at the end of 2012.  However, because she only used a personal email system (including server), for official State Dept business, she did not produce the documents until late-summer 2014.

Megyn Kelly and Fox News submitted FOIA requests for information of the form Hillary was required to sign. (more…)

Because, because, well, George W Bush did it, or something….

WASHINGTON DC – The White House on Tuesday will announce new rules exempting an administrative office from subjection to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), which allows citizens to obtain government documents from federal agencies.

In a Federal Register notice scheduled to publish Tuesday morning, the action to exempt the Office of Administration is listed as a final rule, which means there will be no opportunity for public comment.

The move stems from a lawsuit that began before President Obama took office, but it comes at an odd time – during Sunshine Week, in which government watchdogs promote and push for more transparency. (more…)

Nothing we didn’t already know, yet confirmed by FBI insider.

(CNSNews.com) – Attorney General Eric Holder deliberately “eclipsed” a report exonerating former Ferguson, Missouri Police Officer Darren Wilson in the Aug. 9, 2014 shooting death of Michael Brown by releasing another report the same day accusing the Ferguson Police Department of racism, a former FBI official told CNSNews.com.

“Eric Holder knew in the fall that there was zero evidence to continue pursuing a case against Darren Wilson. He had seven months to make an announcement,” former FBI assistant director Ronald Hosko pointed out.

“But we had nothing but a resounding silence from the attorney general. He was mute all fall and winter while two police officers were gunned down in New York.”

The former FBI official called the attorney general’s delay in clearing Wilson “an appalling lapse not reflective of the intent to pursue justice,” adding that it was no coincidence that Holder released another report on the federal civil rights investigation of the Ferguson Police Department on the same day. (read more)

(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…)

The White House says they have respect for Islamic religious fatwa’s, yet the same White House is suing several Christian organizations who don’t comply with the various constructs of the Obama decrees.  Think about that for a moment.

I saved this picture from an Egyptian news outlet because the look on Jordan’s King Abdullah is priceless….

(Via New York Times) The United States has “great respect for the religious importance of a fatwa,” Mr. Kerry told reporters during a visit to Egypt on Saturday, alluding to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s much publicized edict against the development of nuclear weapons. But negotiators, Mr. Kerry said, needed an agreement that would “guarantee that Iran’s program will be peaceful now and peaceful forever.”

In congressional testimony last week, Mr. Kerry acknowledged what 47 Republicans wrote in a letter to the Iranian leadership last week — that any “executive agreement” like this one, made without a vote in Congress, would not be legally binding on future presidents. But neither are other “executive agreements,” including the diplomatic opening to China and the accord that rid Syria of many of its chemical weapons. The White House and Mr. Kerry argue that any future president is highly unlikely to rescind the accord, particularly if Iran is complying with its terms.  (read 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…)