Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, now the host of the Fox News Channel show “Huckabee,” criticized the Obama administration for continuously overlooking global crises.
Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, now the
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1rjZoC4ebc
In her August 23 Opening Statement monologue, Judge Jeanine rips Obama for returning to his vacation after ISIS beheaded American journalist James Foley, and gulfing while Ferguson burns.
In her August 23 Opening Statement monologue,
Senior Western intelligence officials said that 23-year-old London rapper Abdel Majed Abdel Bary is the suspect believed to be James Foley’s executioner.
American and British intelligence officials have identified a British-born rapper as the ISIS executioner who beheaded American journalist James Foley.
Senior Western intelligence officials confirmed that 23-year-old London rapper Abdel Majed Abdel Bary is the suspect believed to be James Foley’s executioner.
U.S. intelligence officials have refused to comment on the reports and the sources’ claims, but another source told Fox News that Bary’s Egyptian-born father had been extradited from London to the United States in 2012 due to his alleged connection to Osama bin Laden, specifically the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in Africa.
Sources say that U.S.-U.K. intelligence agencies were aware that Bary had traveled to Syria in 2013 to fight with ISIS, a time when President Obama had called for U.S. airstrikes to support the so-called rebels after Syrian President Bashar al-Assad crossed Obama’s self-imposed “red line” when he used chemical weapons against ISIS.
The Sunday Times and Sunday People identified Bary as a member of a group that includes at least three British-born ISIS fighters known among former hostages as “The Beatles.” The Sunday Times reported that MI5 and MI6, Britain’s two main intelligence agencies, had almost immediately identified the man, but decided not to make that information public.
Source also confirmed a report from Fox News claiming that the FBI opened a crisis file shortly after Foley was kidnapped in northern Syria back in November 2012.The file includes interviews with former hostages that depict the kidnappers as particularly vicious captors, who regularly beat their prisoners and torture them with Tasers, and worse.
Meanwhile, the Sunday Mirror, citing British intelligence sources, identified two other suspects as 20-year-old Abu Hussain al-Britani, originally from Birmingham, and 23-year-old Abu Abduallah al-Britani (no known relation), from the county of Hampshire. The county is located on England’s southern coast.
According to a Sunday report from the Mail, the three men are known as “John,” “George,” and “Ringo,” and make up a special kidnapping gang that may have been formed with the explicit purpose of targeting Westerners. The paper reported that the “Beatles” were at one point actually barred from guarding hostages due to their extreme cruelty.
U.S. officials at the State Department last week stated that ISIS has been very successful at raising money through kidnappings, because Europe has established a “will negotiate with terrorists” policy. Now, according to The Mail on Sunday, the “Beatles” routinely bragged about the fact they had made millions of dollars from ransoms paid by European countries. As to the amount of money, one hostage told the paper it was enough to “retire to Kuwait or Qatar.”
While the U.S. and Britain have a long-standing policy of refusing to pay ransom to terrorists in exchange for captured citizens, other weaker Western countries do not, which has made their citizens a target. The New York Times reported last month that Al Qaeda and its direct affiliates have received at least $125 million in ransom money since 2008, paid by European countries like France, Spain, Germany, Italy, Austria, and Switzerland. The CEO of GlobalPost, a media organization where Foley had previously worked, confirmed that ISIS had demanded a $132 million ransom for Foley’s release.
Further, The Mail on Sunday reported that France, for instance, paid roughly $13.2 million just this year for the release of four hostages held by ISIS. Italy also paid close to $5 million for the release of an Italian journalist. The kidnapping and ransomed releases of seven other European journalists and aid workers reportedly netted ISIS a total of $26.5 million.
In addition to Foley, ISIS is believed to be holding three other Americans hostage. One of them, journalist Steven Sotloff, is threatened with beheading by the militant known as “John” at the end of the video released last week.
Click for more from The Sunday Times.
American and British intelligence officials have identified
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Protesters cornered Jesse Jackson at a McDonald’s in Ferguson, Missouri, trashing him for what they saw as profiteering over Michael Brown’s death, rather than actually being a leader.
“Hey, Jesse Jackson. How you doing? Are you here to support us?” one protester began, approaching Jackson’s vehicle and recording the interaction.
“You’ve been marching all day long? We haven’t seen you marching all day long,” he said. “Are you going to pay the bond of those brothers that’s been locked up?”
“Are you marching today with us, or are you just going to sit in the car?” the second protester demanded.
“We ain’t seen you!” the first protester said. “When you going to stop selling us out, Jesse? We don’t want you here in St. Louis! When you gonna stop selling us out, Jesse?”
Jackson, the so-called civil rights leader who has truthfully done little but point Democrat voter registration volunteers in the direction of angry black protestors, who are easy bait for voter registration drives, said nothing in response. Then, his driver chimed in, saying “Wait a minute, brother…”
But he didn’t get much out of his mouth before being interrupted by increasingly agitated protestors.
“Ain’t no, ‘Wait a minute brother,’” the first protester retorted, growing increasingly irate. “This is real! We activists out here! … You’re not a leader. We don’t want you here, brother. Matter of a fact, you’re not even a brother. You can keep moving and get them brothers out of jail. That’s what you can do!”
Protesters cornered Jesse Jackson at a McDonald’s
Dr. Kent Bradley, the 33-year-old Christian doctor and missionary from Texas, thanked God for sparing his life after being cured of the deadly Ebola virus earlier this week.
“God saved my life,” he said at a press conference upon being released from Emory Hospital in Atlanta. “A direct answer to thousands and thousands of prayers.”
Bradley received an experimental serum that witnesses say had a dramatic and almost immediate impact on his grave condition. However, he only received the serum, which was limited on availability, after he first passed on the dose opting instead to give it to another.
Outrageously, as posted by the Twitter aggregator site Twitchy, he was attacked immediately by secular progressives for his faith.
https://twitter.com/TheDudeBlog/statuses/502553522832146432
Disgraceful.
A doctor thanking god, of all people, for his recovery from Ebola makes me laugh #KentBrantly
— Maryam Farahmand (@msladymare) August 21, 2014
Then, there’s this one.
https://twitter.com/WV_FreeThinker/statuses/502565754215358466
It goes on and gets worse, but you get the point. Albert Einstein, the renowned scientist, once explained why he believed vitriol comments on religion blindly spill from the mouths of secularists.
“You may call me an agnostic,” Einstein said. “But I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose fervor is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious indoctrination received in youth.”
Dr. Bradley, of course being a Christian, believes in the existing life and teachings of Jesus Christ, a figure many of these so-called “New Atheists” say is fabricated in large degree by the Gospels. However, Einstein, a man of science would again disagree.
“Unquestionably!,” he said of whether Christ existed. “No one can read the Gospels without feeling the actual presence of Jesus. His personality pulsates in every word. No myth is filled with such life.”
Einstein did not believe in a personal God, but a God outside of our relatively limited human understanding, he did.
According to the logic used by those above, would he be an ignorant man of science, too?
Dr. Kent Bradley, the 33-year-old Christian doctor
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The Pentagon confirmed Friday that a Chinese fighter jet made “several passes” by a U.S. Navy aircraft earlier this week off the coast of China in international airspace. The Chinese Su-27 interceptor conducted a “barrel roll” maneuver over the Navy P-8 Poseidon at a proximity the Pentagon characterized as “very close,” aggressively baring its weapons.
Pentagon Press Secretary Rear Adm. John Kirby said Washington has already protested China through diplomatic channels and called the maneuver “very dangerous.”
“Not only is it unprofessional, it’s unsafe,” Kirby said.
The Chinese have sought a closer military-to-military relationship with the U.S., but have also engaged in several aggressive actions. Last year, in November, China scrambled two fighter jets to patrol their recently announced “air defense identification zone,” after the U.S., Japan, and South Korea had flown military aircraft through in defiance of their East China Sea claim. Beijing said that all planes planning to enter the maritime area between China, Taiwan, South Korea and Japan must first notify Chinese authorities prior, otherwise, unspecified defensive actions would be taken against those nations who do not abide by the new zone’s boundaries.
Rear Admiral Kirby said the Chinese jet made several close passes by the Navy P-8 Poseidon plane, which was not in the air defense zone, coming within 30 feet of it. He said the Chinese jet also passed across the nose of the Navy P-8 Poseidon, exposing the belly of the fighter in a manner designed to intimidate the Navy pilot by showing that it was armed.
Kirby said it happened about 135 miles east of Hainan Island.
“We have registered our strong concerns to the Chinese about the unsafe and unprofessional intercept which posed a risk to the safety and the wellbeing of the air crew and was inconsistent with customary international law,” he said. “Also … this undermines efforts to continue developing military-to-military relations with the Chinese military.”
The Washington Free Beacon first reported on the incident, saying the P-8 was conducting routine surveillance when the Chinese Su-27 interceptor carried out a barrel roll over the U.S. plane.
As reported by the Free Beacon, this is the second such encounter this year with a U.S. surveillance aircraft – following an incident in April involving a Russian Su-27 flying close to a U.S. Air Force aircraft north of Japan.
The Pentagon confirmed Friday that a Chinese
According to a new federal report from the GAO, the federal watchdog agency charged with investigating food stamp fraud, the misuse and fraudulent obtainment of benefits has exploded. Americans receiving food stamps were caught selling and trading their benefits online for art, cash and other non-food products.
One of the biggest drivers of fraud is the lack of accountability or oversight, as neither states nor the federal government are able to track appropriate use. Many proponents of increasing funding for the SNAP program, or Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program, argue that prosecuting food stamp fraud is difficult due to the rapidly-rising number of food stamp recipients, though there have been successful prosecutions in the past.
Last year, a food stamp fraud investigation targeting Butler County, Ohio, which received shocking increases in food assistance dollars, suggested nationwide reform was badly needed. From July 2012 to June 2013, the relatively small-scope investigation led to the arrest of 116 people, as well as another 100 caught from July 2013 to December 2013.
Under SNAP, 47 million people have been given a total of $76 billion in benefits, which are doled out through state agencies. These same agencies are responsible for addressing SNAP fraud under the guidance and monitoring of the Food and Nutrition Service, but they have neither the will nor political pressure motivating them to do so. As the budgets increase, enforcement and oversight have received a smaller and small share of federal taxpayer dollars. This has led to many states developing different thresholds that must be met prior to even prosecuting fraud.
In Tennessee, a conservative state no less, just $100 in benefits must be fraudulently obtained or used before state officials will consider prosecuting. However, in Texas, another conservative state, officials must prove $5,000 in fraudulent benefits have been obtained or misused before they will consider prosecution.
“Such rapid program growth can increase the potential for fraud unless appropriate agency controls are in place to help minimize these risks,” the GAO investigators said.
The GAO report reviewed 11 state and federal efforts to fight food stamp fraud, the effectiveness of various fraud detection techniques and how the Food and Nutrition Service oversees state anti-fraud efforts. The GAO says that “most of the selected states reported difficulties in conducting fraud investigations due to either reduced or maintained staff levels while SNAP recipient numbers greatly increased from fiscal year 2009 through 2013.”
In the report, state officials interviewed said that it would help if the federal government was open to “changing the financial incentives structure to help support the costs of investigating potential SNAP fraud.”
Meanwhile, as the Butler County investigation also found, many recipients are selling their food stamps for cash, which is then used to purchase other products, often of a luxury and drug-use nature. And it isn’t that hard to find a buyer. The GAO report said investigators easily found “28 postings from one popular e-commerce websites that advertised the potential sale of food stamp benefits in exchange for cash.”
The GAO also found limitations on the effectiveness of recommended replacement card data and website monitoring tools for fraud detection.
According to a new federal report from
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9MdVVJX7gg
DON LEMON: Larry, I have to say this, I thought this was very interesting. You said not even an O.J. [Simpson] jury would convict Officer Wilson. I mean, should he at least be charged?
LARRY ELDER: Well, I think he will be charged. I think Van is right. I think the politics will compel a charge, but I think the law and the facts will compel an acquittal. You have witnesses that appear to be unreliable. You already have witnesses that are altering their testimony. The key witness is this guy, Dorian Johnson, who is with him, he’s already now conceded that he didn’t tell the investigators about the robbery at the convenience store ten minutes earlier. Oops, I just forgot that. He said that the shots were all in the back. Their own experts they hired, Dr. [Michael] Boden said the shots were consistent with someone coming forward. He didn’t say that’s what happened, but said it is consistent with somebody coming forward. When that guy says that on the jury stand and I’m doing that cross-examination, the case has now gone supernova. It’s over. When you have your own witness saying that the forensic evidence is consistent with a guy charging him, it is done. But I think the pressure will be to file but it’s over and the jury will find him not guilty.
Larry Elder appeared on with Don Lemon
Incumbent Democrat Jeanne Shaheen (left) and her likely Republican challenger and former MA senator Scott Brown (right) will face off in the New Hampshire race. (Photo: Getty Images)
Former Massachusetts Sen. and now-New Hampshire Republican Senate candidate Scott Brown has erased what was a double-digit lead held by Jeanne Shaheen. The poll results are a welcomed piece of news both for national Republicans who hope to retake the U.S. Senate and, Brown himself, who needed to to tighten the race in order to attract national money.
Incumbent Democratic Senator Jeanne Shaheen still leads her other potential Republican challengers by large double-digit margins, and remains relatively popular, 48 – 36 favorable. However, President Obama, who currently has an abysmal approval rating is dragging Shaheen down with him.
Only 37 percent of likely voters approve of the job Obama is doing as president and Brown holds a 71 – 17 percent lead among the 59 percent who disapprove of Obama. There can be little doubt that ObamaCare is also a contributing factor, which Brown has once again chosen to make the centerpiece of his campaign.
The president’s signature health care law remains deeply unpopular in the state and nationwide. However, New Hampshire voters have seen their networks narrow and their costs skyrocket, something they are all too familiar with.
As Brown so often points out on the campaign trail, as state senator, Shaheen sponsored a bill that had similarly devastating effects on access to coverage, which were largely reversed in the following years.
Still, Shaheen remains a slight favorite to hold the seat on the PPD 2014 Senate Map Predictions model. However, as the pollster noted, the state has along history of moving with the national mood and breaking late. If the national environment continues to deteriorate for Democrats, the race will move back to a “Toss-Up.”
Former Massachusetts Sen. and now-New Hampshire Republican
Attorney General Eric Holder said Thursday that the Justice Department has opened a criminal investigation into the cowardly execution of journalist James Foley by the terrorist group ISIS.
Attorney General Eric Holder said Thursday that the Justice Department has opened a criminal investigation into the brutal execution of American journalist James Foley by the terrorist group ISIS. The announcement represents the latest move by the administration to use the criminal justice system to pursue terrorists, which continues the administration’s long-standing policy to resist labeling radical islamic groups terrorists.
Holder confirmed the “open criminal investigation” into Foley’s beheading while discussing the $16.5 billion settlement with the Bank of America Corporation.
“Those who would perpetrate such acts need to understand something — this Justice Department, this Department of Defense, this nation, we have long memories and our reach is very wide,” Holder said. “We will not forget what happened, and people will be held accountable, one way or the other.”
The pursuit of a criminal investigation raises questions about the scope and reach the U.S. is contemplating in their efforts to pursue ISIS. The Obama administration has openly practiced a policy of treating terrorists as criminals, rather than enemy combatants. All mention of Islamic terrorism and the religion component innate to their ideology has been removed from FBI manuals, as well as other terms used under the Bush administration, and replaced with words like militants. Any mention of Islamic extremism was also removed.
“This is more nonsense,” Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA) said in a statement. “What’s most aggravating is that either in Foley’s situation, or the other Americans in captivity, the Defense Department is being forced to take a backseat to the FBI and DOJ.”
Hunter is a veteran of the Iraq war.
The Benghazi terror suspect, Ahmed Abu Khatallah, was the most recent example of the administration’s policy to grant enemy combatants constitutional rights. Abu Khatallah was captured by U.S. forces in June and brought to the U.S. for a civilian court prosecution.
This wouldn’t be the first time the administration attempted to try a terrorist in the U.S. justice system who beheaded an American journalist. An investigation into the killing of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in Pakistan 12 years ago concluded that the evidence pointed to none other than Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-described mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Mohammed is being held at the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, but President Obama directed Attorney General Holder to begin the process of trying him in U.S. federal court — in New York City no less.
The public went ballistic.
Public opinion polls have consistently shown that the idea of granting terrorists constitutional rights and a trial in the U.S. criminal justice system is widely unpopular among the American people. Further, during the most recent push to close Guantanamo Bay detention center, which was the predominant debate during the Bergdahl prisoner exchange that resulted in the release of the Taliban Five, rounds of polling found the administration was on the far left of the political spectrum on this issue.
A June 13 Gallup poll shows just 29 percent of Americans support closing the terrorist detention camp and moving its prisoners to U.S. prisons, while 66 percent oppose doing so. Ideology is the most predictive factor when determining a respondent’s answer, not party.
Holder and President Obama remain resolute in their belief and policy of using the American criminal justice system as a means to try terrorists. However, U.S. investigators reportedly hit roadblocks when attempting to gain certain access in the Libya investigation. If they attempt to gain access in Syria, which is an active warzone, or even Iraq where vast amounts of territory are controlled by ISIS terrorists, then access issues will only worsen.
Rep. Hunter said the U.S. military has a “deep network” that can “exceed whatever the FBI or DOJ can do.”
However, FBI Director James Comey, who obviously heads up a department within Justice, reportedly said the “full force” of the government would be brought to the case.
“I’m very, very, sorry to say that these savages have turned it into a homicide investigation,” Comey reportedly said in Denver.
Attorney General Eric Holder said Thursday that
