Does he drunk to anyone else?
Via Free Beacon:
While giving the commencement address at the United States Coast Guard Academy, Vice President Joe Biden confused Connecticut Governor Dan Malloy with Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley. This is a particular embarrassing mix-up for Biden, seeing as he recently worked closely with Malloy on gun reform measures.
Via Brian Cates who details how the article was re-written with the lede buried thanks to D.C. bureau chief Jeremy Peters.
Before:
After:
She gets paid to say moronic crap like this.
Via Free Beacon:
During a panel discussion on MSNBC Wednesday, Karen Finney suggested that presidential candidate Mitt Romney should have made a bigger deal about the IRS targeting conservative groups. The only problem with Finney’s remarks is that throughout the 2012 Presidential election the IRS was still denying that this improper targeting was taking place.
Now we’re talking!
Via Politico:
House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa said embattled IRS official Lois Lerner waived her Fifth Amendment rights and will be hauled back to appear before his panel again.
The California Republican said Lerner’s Fifth Amendment right to avoid self-incrimination was voided when she gave an opening statement this morning denying any wrongdoing and professing pride in her government service.
“When I asked her her questions from the very beginning, I did so so she could assert her rights prior to any statement,” Issa told POLITICO. “She chose not to do so — so she waived.”
Lerner’s decision to speak at all immediately triggered a dust-up among lawmakers who were confused about whether she gave up her Fifth Amendment protections when she made an opening statement.
Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), a former federal prosecutor, said Lerner lost her rights the minute she started proclaiming her innocence, and that lawmakers therefore were entitled to question her. But Ranking Democrat Elijah Cummings of Maryland said hearing rules were not like those of a courtroom.
Our bad.
WASHINGTON — One day before President Obama is due to deliver a major speech on national security, his administration on Wednesday formally acknowledged that the United States had killed four American citizens in drone strikes in Yemen and Pakistan.
In a letter to Congressional leaders obtained by The New York Times, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. disclosed that the administration had deliberately killed Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical Muslim cleric who was killed in a drone strike in September 2011 in Yemen.
The American responsibility for Mr. Awlaki’s death has been widely reported, but the administration had until now refused to confirm or deny it.
The letter also said that the United States had killed three other Americans: Samir Khan, who was killed in the same strike; Mr. Awlaki’s son Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, who was also killed in Yemen; and Jude Mohammed, who was killed in a strike in Pakistan.
“These individuals were not specifically targeted by the United States,” Mr. Holder wrote.
Making him probably the only person in America who is worried about the IRS’ well-being.
Via TWS:
“Let me tell you what I’m really concerned about in addition to all the other things that I’ve said. I’m concerned that all of this may have a chilling effect on employees where they say you know, when normally we would look at certain criteria fairly, not targeting anyone but say uh-oh, I’m worried because I’d better let this go.”
Apologize for what? The fact is Rice went on five different Sunday talk shows and lied about Benghazi being the result of a YouTube video.
Via The Hill:
Republicans owe Susan Rice an apology for attacking her over the discredited talking points about the Benghazi attack last year, a Democrat on the House intelligence panel said Wednesday after a lengthy briefing with the CIA’s second-in-command.
Deputy CIA Director Michael Morell gave panel members a “minute-by-minute recitation” of the development of the information that was shared publicly by Rice in the days after the attack in Libya, according to Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.).
Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, was knocked out of the running to be secretary of State after Republicans attacked her statements faslely linking the attack that killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans to a protest gone awry.
The talking points as originally drafted by the CIA said the Benghazi attack was believed to have been “spontaneously inspired” by protests in Cairo blamed on a U.S. made anti-Islam video.
When Rice made her statements, she merely repeated what the intelligence community “said was their best estimate,” according to Schiff.
“I absolutely think she’s owed an apology,” he said.
Mind-blowing to think cops in the UK don’t carry guns.
Via Telegraph:
… “One of the guys had a knife that looked about a foot long and a machete and the other bloke had a gun.
“They started slashing him up with the knife and hitting him in the stomach with the machete.
“I don’t think it took long before he was dead.
“There were people passing by who were screaming and running away. I’ve never seen anything like it.
“I’m still really shaken up.
“When he was dead, they dragged him out into the road and left him there.
“It was strange, they didn’t run off, they just stood there as if they were waiting for the police.
“It must’ve taken about 20 minutes for the police to arrive, I think it must’ve been because they were waiting for armed police.
“The police officers got out of the car and the two black men ran towards them with the gun.
“The police shot them.
“They fell to the ground. Then a helicopter landed.
“Think it must’ve been an air ambulance.
The British government just announced it is likely “terror related.” Gee, ya think?
Report: British Soldier Beheaded Outside London Barracks — Bloomberg News
A U.K. lawmaker said he believed that a serving British soldier was killed outside of an army barracks in southeast London and two suspects are in custody.
The London Times reported that one of the attackers shouted “Allahu Akhbar” (“God is Great in Arabic) as they attacked the soldier with meat cleavers.
One of the suspects is injured and in the hospital and no other people are being sought, Nick Raynsford, a lawmaker who represents the Greenwich and Woolwich areas of London, said in an interview on Sky News. The incident may have started because of a traffic accident, he said.
“Sadly one patient, a man, was dead,” London’s Ambulance Service said in a statement. “Staff treated two other patients, both men, who were taken to hospital, one of them in serious condition.”
London police said on Twitter they were responding to a “serious incident” on John Wilson Street in the Woolwich area. More than 30 police officers are still at the scene.
Update: The pair was asking people passing by to take pictures so they obviously wanted this to get as much publicity as possible.
Via Sky News:
Sky sources understand that senior police officers believe the killing was likely to be a politically-motivated Islamist terrorist attack.
Dozens of weapons – including a number of knives – and pools of blood could be seen on the ground, where a man wearing a Help for Heroes T-shirt is said to have been attacked by two men.
Sky sources say that following their attack, witnesses heard the pair chanting “Allahu akbar” – and asking passers-by to take photographs of them.
Armed officers arrived at the scene and opened fire on two men thought to be the attackers. The two are now in hospital with gunshot wounds.
Update: “In our lands women have to see this every day… you people will never be safe.” Note his blood-stained hands.
Update: New video source added.
Update via CNN:
[T]he two suspects in the killing were injured in a confrontation with police and have been taken to two hospitals, where they are being treated.
CNN affiliate ITN aired a video showing a man with bloody hands and holding a meat cleaver, who says, “We swear by almighty Allah we will never stop fighting you.”
The man, who is black and appears to have a London accent, carries on: “The only reasons we killed this man this is because Muslims are dying daily. This British soldier is an eye for an eye a tooth for tooth.
By this time next month Todd will be back to his boot-licking ways.
CHUCK TODD: So they want to criminalize journalism. And that’s what it’s coming down, I mean, if you end up essentially criminalizing journalism or when it comes to reporting on the federal government, particularly on national security, and the only place they can, they think they technically can do that is on the issues of national security. What it’s going to do is the impact that we’ve heard, we heard the AP counsel say this over the weekend. It is going to make whistleblowers, and people that might leak, regular sources. You know, I’ve had different conversations with people over the last week who are sitting there not quite comfortable having certain conversations on the phone. I mean, it just completely, and maybe that’s the intent. I can’t think of any other intent of why they’re going about this in such a broad harassing sort of way.
Probably the only decent part of the bill.
Via lib cesspool ThinkProgress:
Civil rights leaders slammed an amendment added to the Senate’s comprehensive immigration reform bill that would subject immigrants from Muslim countries for extra scrutiny.
The measure, introduced by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and added to the bill with the support of at least two Democrats, would require additional review for undocumented immigrants applying for legal status who are from “a region or country known to pose a threat, or that contains groups or organizations that pose a threat, to the national security of the United States.” Under the underlining bill, all undocumented immigrations are required to undergo three separate background checks before obtaining legal status. In defending his amendment during the Senate Judiciary Committee mark-up on Monday, Graham argued for an additional screening from regions of the world “where terrorists operate.”
“I mean, it’s pretty clear what I’m trying to do,” Graham said. “I’m trying to make sure that in addition to looking at your criminal background, when you adjust status, that if there are certain parts of the world or countries — like Yemen — that you’re adjusting from, I want to know a little more about you, given the world we live in.”
Under the provisions of the amendment, the Secretary of Homeland Security would have the broad authority to target any “alien or alien dependent spouse or child” from any region or country that they deem, in consultation with the Secretary of State, to house threats to the United States for additional scrutiny before becoming citizens. “I’m not dictating that [the Secretaries of Homeland Security and State] have to pick any region or country over the other,” Graham said, attempting to deflect criticisms that the amendment focuses specifically on the Middle East.
He already is.
Via TPM:
First Amendment lawyer James C. Goodale, who represented the New York Times in the Penaton Papers case, wrote in the newspaper on Tuesday that President Barack Obama is poised to surpass former President Richard Nixon “as the worst president ever on issues of national security and press freedom.”
Goodale wrote that the Department of Justice’s subpoena of Associated Press phone records was “bad enough,” but that the search warrant to access Fox News reporter James Rosen’s personal emails was unprecedented.
“Until President Obama came into office, no one thought talking or emailing was not protected by the First Amendment,” Goodale wrote. “President Obama wants to criminalize the reporting of national security information. This will stop reporters from asking for information that might be classified. Leaks will stop and so will the free flow of information to the public.”
Wait, Justin Bieber?
Via Washington Secrets:
The Obama administration has dragged singing bad boy Justin Bieber into its defense of secretly looking into who reporters like Fox News’ James Rosen talk to inside the federal government to get top secret leaks.
An anonymous national security official penned a column on the Brookings Institution blog Lawfare suggesting that when a reporter asks an official to reveal secrets for a story, it’s akin to hiring a thief to break into Bieber’s home to steal his diaries.
“Let’s look at an analogy. If a reporter finds Justin Bieber’s private diary on the street and publishes it, that’s journalism (of a sort). But if she pays someone to break into Bieber’s house to steal the diary, hasn’t she has aided and abetted, or conspired in, a crime, even if her intent is to get material to publish? That’s exactly what the government says happened here — a reporter soliciting, and aiding and abetting criminal activity,” wrote the Obama official.
Yeah, don’t think so.
JournoListers to the rescue!
The three mentioned in the tweet are Talking Point Memo’s Josh Marshall, WaPo columnist Jonathan Capehart and WaPo blogger Ezra Klein.
Update: It’s almost like they got their talking points from the White House.
Via Weekly Standard:
. . . Allahpundit speculated that “tomorrow’s progressive damage-control groupthink is likely to be group-ier than usual.” Sure enough, both Klein and Marshall published similar blog posts within 30 minutes of each other on Wednesday morning.
Klein, who wrote last week that the “scandals are falling apart,” writes today that “heads should roll at the IRS.” Marshall takes direct aim at IRS official Lois Lerner, writing that Lerner’s refusal to testify before Congress means she should be fired. “Whether or not she should be fired for whatever she did in the scandal itself, deciding to take the fifth means she needs to be removed from her position,” Marshall writes. “I was chatting with people yesterday who said that civil service protections may make this extremely difficult or even impossible.”
Cindy Thomas is the manager of the “rogue” agents who received “thousands” of red flag warnings on tea party applications being held up, she is also the person who leaked confidential applications from conservative groups to the liberal publication ProPublica.
CINCINNATI, OH (FOX19) - The claim that the ongoing IRS scandal is limited to low level employees is falling apart.
The six Cincinnati workers we have identified, who sent scrutinizing letters to conservative groups with words including “patriot, liberty, tea party or 9-12″ in their names are Mitchel Steele, Carly Young, Joseph Herr, Stephen Seok, Liz Hofacre and a woman identified only as Ms. Richards.
But was all of this done at the hands of a small group of Cincinnati employees working together? During Friday’s congressional hearing, that appeared to be the theme. Now, that explanation just became less likely.
Thanks to two FOX19 sources connected to the IRS, we now understand the chain of command for these workers.
Mitchel Steele, Carly Young, Joseph Herr and Liz Hofacre are IRS agents. Stephen Seok is a supervisor IRS agent.
But according to the IRS employee directory that FOX19 has obtained exclusively, each of these agents has a different manager and then above them a different territory manager.
That is important because while it may sound reasonable to the average person that these workers began targeting groups on their own, the IRS structure is designed to prevent that.
Here is how that works.
When an application for tax exempt status comes into the IRS, agents have 270 days to work through that application. If the application is not processed within those 270 days it automatically triggers flags in the system. When that happens, individual agents are required to input a status update on that individual case once a month, every month until the case is resolved.
Keep in mind, at least 300 groups were targeted out of Cincinnati alone. Those applications spent anywhere from 18 months to nearly 3 years in the system and some still don’t have their non-profit status. 300 groups multiplied by at least 18 months for each group, means thousands of red flags would have been generated in the system.
So who in the chain of command would have received all these flags? The answer, according to the IRS directory, one woman in Cincinnati, Cindy Thomas, the Program Manager of the Tax Exempt Division. Because all six of our IRS workers have different individual and territory managers, Cindy Thomas is one manager they all have common.
It turns out Cindy Thomas’ name is one we have heard before. The independent journalism group ProPublica says in November of 2012 they had requested information on conservatives groups that had received non-profit status. Along with that information, the IRS released private information on nine conservative groups that had not yet been approved and personal information had not been redacted. The person who signed off on that release, Cindy Thomas.
Hmmm, where have we heard this before?
Via Politico:
Vice President Joe Biden spoke at length Tuesday night about the influence of Judaism on the United States, dating back to the country’s founding and to the present day as Jews helped shape views on gay rights.
“The truth is that Jewish heritage, Jewish culture, Jewish values are such an essential part of who we are that it’s fair to say that Jewish heritage is American heritage,” he said. “The Jewish people have contributed greatly to America. No group has had such an outsized influence per capita as all of you standing before you, and all of those who went before me and all of those who went before you.”
Update: Shocker! Note: I’m not going to link to Stormfront, if you want to see for yourself click here and they have a link to it.
• So biden admits jews create tv shows that will help shape society in their favor
• Biden named the Jew! Oops! Doesn’t he know he’s not supposed to do that? The Pharisee behind the curtain has just been exposed by the VP. lol
• It is stuff like this man. Joe Biden, ABC. Once I have become aware of the ZOG, that it is not a paranoia… I can never look at things the same way again, like an innocence has been lost. I can’t tell myself there is no such thing as ZOG anymore.
• Believe it or not, he might have done that intentially. He probably said it with a smile, as if he were complimenting them, but he exposed a damning fact none-the-less.
• Listening to a speech by ol’ Uncle Joe is like a box of chocolates…. You never know what you’re gonna get!! I keep waiting for him to be giving a speech, and see a handler launch from off stage to tackle him, before he does any more damage.
Actually, buying billions of dollars of oil from the jihadist-funding Wahhabi regime in Saudi Arabia threatens our national security.
Biden: Offshore oil drilling threatens national security – Politico
The nation’s need for oil and the changing environment are enduring dangers, Vice President Joe Biden told graduates of the United States Coast Guard Academy Wednesday.
Speaking at the New London, Conn., commencement, Biden said offshore drilling and the need to protect high-seas oil tankers threaten both the nation’s shorelines and environmental security.
“You graduated in a world where our environmental security, our shorelines, our fisheries all are threatened by this country’s need to drill in deep seas and transport hundreds of billions of gallons of oil on the high seas,” Biden said.
Updates to follow.
ORLANDO, Fla. — An FBI agent shot and killed a man overnight in Orlando who had ties to one of the suspects in the Boston Marathon bombings, NBC News has confirmed.
According to NBC News, a special agent was interviewing the suspect regarding his connections to bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev and other extremists. The suspect, who was not immediately identified by officials, was originally cooperative, but he was shot after attacking the agent.
A friend of the suspect, Khusn Taramiv, said his friend, 27-year-old Ibragim Todashev, was being investigated as part of the Boston bombings and knew Tsarnaev because both were MMA fighters.
Taramiv claims he and Todashev were interviewed by the FBI for nearly three hours on Tuesday.
Update: Hmmm.
(TPM) — The Florida man questioned by authorities for his connection to alleged Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev allegedly confessed to being involved with a 2011 triple murder before being fatally shot Tuesday by an FBI agent, NBC News reported.
Ibragim Todashev, 27, confessed to being involved in the grisly homicide that took place in the Boston area two years ago and has gone unsolved. Tsarnaev, who was killed in a shootout with police last month, was the roommate of one of the three victims in that murder and authorities began investigating his role in the slaying following the marathon bombings.
Next stop… special prosecutor.
Via Fox News:
Before Lois Lerner, director of the IRS division that singled out conservative group, was dismissed from the hearing by committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) objected, saying since Lerner testified by making an opening statement, she would have to stay and answer the lawmakers’ questions.
“You don’t get to tell your side of the story and then not be subjected to cross-examination. That’s not the way it works. She waived her right to Fifth Amendment privilege by issuing an opening statement. She ought to stand here and answer our questions,” said Gowdy to some applause in the crowd
That’s a lot of eggs.
Update: Over a span of 104 weeks.
Note to Lew: If Lerner’s pleading the Fifth then you can assume she did something wrong.
According to the Detroit Free Press, Conyers was seen “nodding in agreement” during Farrakhan’s remarks.
Via The Blaze:
The Anti-Defamation League is criticizing Louis Farrakhan for delivering blatantly anti-Semitic statements, using terms such as “Satanic Jews” and the “Synagogue of Satan,” during a speech at a Detroit church last week. The Jewish group is also asking why public figures who attended the Nation of Islam leader’s event have remained silent.
According to the ADL and the Detroit Free Press, those present at the May 17th Fellowship Chapel event included the church’s leader, Rev. Wendell Anthony, who also serves as President of the Detroit branch of the NAACP, Rep. John Conyers (D-Michigan) and Detroit City Councilwoman JoAnn Watson. According to the Detroit Free Press, “Conyers and Watson nodded in agreement during some of Farrakhan’s remarks”; however, the paper did not specify during which parts of the speech they nodded.
Feel a bit weird cheering on a Massachusetts Democrat.
Dem Congressman: If IRS Continues To Dodge Questions, Will Lead to Special Prosecutor (May 22, 2013)
