Free Republic

EXCLUSIVE: House Intelligence, Foreign Affairs Committee Members Compromised By Rogue IT Staff Three brothers who managed office information technology for members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and other lawmakers were abruptly relieved of their duties on suspicion that they accessed congressional computers without permission. Brothers Abid, Imran, and Jamal Awan were barred from computer networks at the House of Representatives Thursday, The Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group has learned.

The Obama administration may have provided the weapons used by some Islamist extremists to kill four Americans at the United States’ compound in Benghazi on September 11, 2012, according to a Libyan source who told Breitbart News he witnessed the attack first hand. Breitbart News’s Tera Dahl spoke to the witness who was living near the U.S. compound in Benghazi when the attack took place. Libya’s al-Qaeda-linked militia group known as the February 17th Martyrs Brigade was reportedly hired by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s State Department to provide security at the Benghazi compound, but failed to so the whole...

Imagine, pre-9/11/12, that you were responsible for arranging the defense of the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya. Would you have considered American interests and personnel best protected by bringing in a local security outfit called the February 17 Martyrs Brigade?......... Meanwhile, Ansar al Sharia ("Supporters of Islamic Law"), the al-Qaida-linked militia believed to have led the consulate assault in September, is a spinoff of the February 17 Martyrs Brigade, but that didn't scratch the lacquered political surface, either. And even as reports remind us of ties among February 17 Martyrs Brigade leadership, the Muslim Brotherhood and the web of jihad-poison...

The more we learn about what happened in Benghazi, the clearer things become. Two U.S. intelligence officials told The Daily Beast that the intelligence community is currently analyzing an intercept between a Libyan politician whose sympathies are with al Qaeda and the Libyan militia known as the February 17 Brigade—which had been charged with providing local security to the consulate. In the intercept, the Libyan politician apparently asks an officer in the brigade to have his men stand down for a pending attack—another piece of evidence implying the violence was planned in advance.

On Sunday, the White House narrative on the assassination of Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans in Benghazi was that they died in a protest that “spun out of control,” as UN Ambassador Susan Rice insisted on multiple talk shows. That narrative hasn’t even lasted out the week. By Wednesday, officials in the US government began acknowledging that the so-called “riot” at the consulate in Libya had elements of planning and heavy weapons; by yesterday, Barack Obama himself refused to answer questions about the nature of the attack. There may not have even been a protest at the...

President-elect Barack Obama is urging Congress to postpone the Feb. 17 switch from analog to digital television broadcasting. In a letter to key lawmakers, transition team co-chair John Podesta warned today that too many Americans who rely on analog TV sets to pick up over-the-air broadcasts won’t be ready. The incoming administration is pushing for a delay in part because the Commerce Department has run out of money for the coupons that subsidize digital TV converter boxes for consumers. People who don’t have cable or satellite TV or a new TV with a digital tuner will need the converter boxes...

Bush official tells agencies to ignore GAO memo that knocks fake stories. WASHINGTON – The White House, intent on continuing to crank out "video news releases" that look like television news stories, has told government agency heads to ignore a Government Accountability Office memo criticizing the practice as illegal propaganda.

Candidates driving home a few differences EACH HOPES RETOOLED IMAGE WILL SWAY VOTERS By Ryan Alessi HERALD-LEADER FRANKFORT BUREAU When voters in Kentucky's 6th Congressional District go to the polls in less than 10 days, among other things, they'll be judging competing makeovers. Democrat Ben Chandler, stung by a 10-point loss in last fall's governor's race, has been reinventing his image ever since. Republican Alice Forgy Kerr, a low-profile state lawmaker from Lexington, has been equally busy trying to craft an image for strangers scattered across 16 Central Kentucky counties. And both are having their problems--- complicated in no small...