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In an exclusive interview, Chuck Hagel said the Obama administration micromanaged the Pentagon, stabbed him in the back on the way out -- and still has no strategy for fixing Syria. Jet-lagged from a long overseas trip, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel had just sat down with his wife for a quiet dinner at an upscale Italian restaurant in northern Virginia when his phone rang. It was the White House on the line. President Barack Obama wanted to speak with him. It was Aug. 30, 2013, and the U.S. military was poised for war. Obama had publicly warned Syrian strongman...

Executive Summary The Iranian nuclear deal is a full capitulation to Iran’s terrorist mastermind Mullahs, and the latest in a series of betrayals of the American people and allies by the Obama administration. At the highest level of the administration, Barack Obama’s Senior Advisor, the Iranian-born Valerie Jarrett, prioritized rapprochement with the terror state. Throughout the process and negotiations, she had the backing of billionaire investor (and Obama-backer) George Soros, and his multi-headed network of tax-exempt foundations. Their efforts were driven by deep-rooted anti-Semitism and personal greed. Meanwhile, since the mid-1990s, a small but very connected Iranian lobby (funded, in...

When Republicans complained that Obama refused to talk about Islamic terrorism, he accused them of playing into the hands of ISIS by demanding that he identify the enemy we’re fighting.When they spoke out against his Iranian nuclear sellout, he accused them of “wanting to make common cause with the hardliners in Iran”.Those hardliners would presumably toe a harder line than Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei who responded to Obama’s outreach in his first term by saying, “The Islamic peoples all over the world chant ‘Death to America!’” and who stated last year that “This battle will only end when...

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid helped steer billions of federal tax dollars to companies supporting a green energy group run by two of his former staff members and a current campaign operative.The Nevada Democrat pushed for millions of dollars in grants and billions more in federal loan guarantees for corporations that donated to the Clean Energy Project, a nonprofit founded by a pair of former staffers with close ties to both Reid and to a major Democratic PAC associated with the senator, Lachlan Markay of the Washington Free Beacon reported.One such company, California-based Fulcrum Bioenergy, received a hefty federal grant...

The U.S. Air Force's secret program to develop as many as 100 next-generation bombers that can stealthily strike any target in the world has some experts calling the $550 million per plane price tag laughable. *SNIP* Another critic compared the initiative to the costly B-2 program, which was eventually slashed, and said the cost estimate is "as close to meaningless numbers can be." *SNIP* The Post reported that the Air Force intends on the plane taking its first stealth flight in the mid-2020s. . "I think the long-range strike bomber is absolutely essential to keep our deterrent edge as we...

Dem in Illinois county Published October 22, 2014 watchdog.org Facebook0 Twitter0 Email Print CHICAGO — Early voting in Illinois got off to a rocky start Monday, as votes being cast for Republican candidates were transformed into votes for Democrats

What about the IRS scandal? The State Department lies and misdirects on Benghazi? The NSA spying on everyone? Common sense “Comprehensive Immigration Reform”? The War of Terror? Please people, you’re going to have to try a little harder to keep up. “Hide under here for awhile. I’ll let you know when it’s your turn to come out.” Wait…what? The War on Terror, and everything else, is over? We’ve moving on to Al Gore’s War on American Prosperity? Yes, it is. And now…the war begins. Comparing “global warming” to World War II, former Vice President Al Gore said America should “mobilize”...

Chuck Hagel has been tapped by Obama for Secretary of Defense, which has resulted in a slew of push backs over his troubling record: criticism and lack of support for Israel; coddling of Hezbollah, Hamas, and Iran; and his almost immediate appointment after retiring as a senator to Deutsche Bank’s Americas Advisory Board, the mega bank that has been accused of funneling billions of dollars to Iran’s nuclear program. But the most troubling aspect of Chuck Hagel is the fact that he may have stolen both of his senatorial elections. In 1992, Hagel was CEO of Election Systems & Software,...

20 Amazing Facts About Voting in the USA Did you know.... 1. 80% of all votes in America are counted by only two companies: Diebold and ES&S. http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/042804landes.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diebold 2. There is no federal agency with regulatory authority or oversight of the U.S. voting machine industry. http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0916-04.htm http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/042804landes.html 3. The vice-president of Diebold and the president of ES&S are brothers. http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/private_company.html http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/042804landes.html 4. The chairman and CEO of Diebold is a major Bush campaign organizer and donor who wrote in 2003 that he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year." http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/07/28/sunday/main632436.shtml http://www.wishtv.com/Global/story.asp?S=1647886 5....

NORMAN, Okla. -- Remember the hanging chad problem? Well, we don't have to worry about it any more. The solution? Electronic voting machines. There are, however, a couple new problems. One, the programming code used to count the votes is a secret from everyone outside the company making the machines. Two, these companies aren't exactly impartial. Diebold Inc. is the second-largest maker of touch-screen voting machines in the country. Diebold's CEO is Walley O'Dell, who recently stated that he is "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year." He recently held a $10,000-a-plate Bush fund-raiser...

The research and activism arm of BlackBox Voting.com   CONTENTSIntroductionPart 1 - Can the votes be changed?Part 2 - Can the password be bypassed?Part 3 ? Can the audit log be altered? ************* Introduction According to election industry officials, electronic voting systems are absolutely secure, because they are protected by passwords and tamperproof audit logs. But the passwords can easily be bypassed, and in fact the audit logs can be altered. Worse, the votes can be changed without anyone knowing, even the County Election Supervisor who runs the election system. The computer programs that tell electronic voting machines how...

Washington (CNN)White House officials pressured Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel to increase the pace of detainee transfers from the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay, the outgoing secretary acknowledged to CNN's Barbara Starr in an interview Friday. "Not everyone at the White House has agreed with me," said Hagel of his methodology for deciding on detainee releases. Disagreements between Hagel and officials in the President's inner circle have been widely reported during his short tenure as secretary of defense. But in his interview with CNN, Hagel spoke with uncharacteristic candor about friction related to the prisoner release. "We've had a lot...

Chuck Hagel has only about a week to go on his tenure as Secretary of Defense, and CNN’s Barbara Starr finds out that a man on the verge of retirement doesn’t have a lot of reason to keep his mouth shut. Hagel makes it clear, although still with some caution, that the Obama administration put pressure on him to increase the frequency of releases from the detention center at Guantanamo Bay. In doing so, Hagel has handed the new Republican majority on the Senate Armed Services Committee a perfect opening to demand answers on Barack Obama’s efforts to empty...

“You cannot impose your will, you can’t impose your values, you can’t impose your standards, your institutions on other societies and other countries. It has never worked; it never will work, as noble as you believe [the effort] is,” he is quoted as saying. This conclusion is partially based on his experience as an  infantry soldier in the Vietnam War, as he explains: “The violence, the horrors, the suffering that I saw [in Vietnam] conditioned me … I saw the suffering of our own troops; I saw the suffering of the Vietnamese people; I saw terrible things, which war always...

Even as same-sex marriage edges closer to becoming legal nationwide, gay rights advocates face other challenges in 2015 that may not bring quick victories. In Congress, for example, liberal Democrats plan to introduce civil rights bills in the House and Senate that would outlaw a broad range of discrimination against lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgender people. However, Republicans will control both chambers in the new Congress, and there is no sign that GOP leaders will help the bills advance. Absent such a federal law, activists will seek to pass more nondiscrimination laws at the state and local levels, but some...

It has been a busy few weeks in Washington lately, from the president's executive order on immigration to the resignation of Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel. (SNIP) Ayotte said she also believes the president's executive order on immigration last week was a mistake. "Right now, as someone who wants to solve this problem, I think it makes it more difficult to address the underlying immigration problem, and he should not have acted unilaterally," she said.

Defense Secretary Favorite Ash Carter Wanted To Bomb North Korea In 2006 Armin Rosen Dec 2, 2014, 11.25 PM Ashton Carter, President Barack Obama's nominee to succeed Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defense, is largely known as a behind-the-scenes player, a thinker and manager rather than a public agitator. This low profile is arguably one of Carter's top selling points. After Hagel's troubled reign at the Pentagon, which ended in a highly public falling out with the White House over policy in the Middle East and accusations of laziness and dysfunction, it's prudent for the president to want a respected...

What if Barak Obama fired the wrong guy? What if he meant to dump John Kerry, but because of a teleprompter breakdown fired Chuck Hagel instead? Stuff happens, you know. And to a lot of people around Obama, the two men resembled one another -- friends of Obama, decorated Vietnam war veterans, former U.S. senators, well-educated white guys, and so on. So the confusion is understandable. I mean it was Secretary of State John Kerry in Vienna who deserved

Among Democrats, fighting is breaking out all over. The Senate’s third-ranking Democrat, Chuck Schumer (D-NY), is hurling criticisms toward the White House over Barack Obama’s handling of the recession and his myopic and politically ruinous obsession with reforming the nation’s health care system amid that economic downturn.In response, the White House took what Reuters called the “unusual step” of publicly pledging to veto an overdue plan to reform the nation’s tax code which Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has been in the process of negotiating with House Republicans. When Obama announced his intention to extend legal status to...

Editor's Note: This column was coauthored by Bob Morrison. Nearly two years ago, these writers urged President Obama to “Chuck Hagel.” Today, it seems, the hapless Secretary of Defense is on his way out. We wish him no ill. And we certainly don’t rejoice in his forced resignation. The timing of his dismissal could hardly be worse. It comes on the eve of another “deadline” in our dealings with an Iran bent on acquiring nuclear weapons. Secretary Hagel never overcame his stumbling debut. A recent poll of national security personnel gave him an abysmal 26% approval rating. And while we...