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Jay McKinnon, a self-described Department of Homeland Security-trained document specialist, has implicated himself in the production of fraudulent Hawaii birth certificate images similar to the one endorsed as genuine by the Barack Obama campaign, and appearing on the same blog entry where the supposedly authentic document appears. The evidence of forgery and manipulation of images of official documents, triggered by Israel Insider's revelation of the collection of Hawaii birth certificate images on the Photobucket site and the detective work of independent investigative journalists and imaging professionals in the three weeks since the publication of the images, implicate the Daily Kos,...

U.S. and allied forces in Afghanistan “are not winning yet, but we are going to win,” Gen. Stanley McChrystal, commander of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force, told Stars and Stripes in an interview Friday. But the general said it was not possible to say how long it will take to achieve victory, which he defined as a situation where “the insurgency is not an existential threat to the government or the people” of Afghanistan. He added that protecting civilians remains the goal of the allied counterinsurgency strategy. “There’s no way to put an exact timeline on it, because as...

When members of the U.S. Senate finally head home this week, they will be leaving the future of 50 individual and business tax breaks in limbo. All expire at the end of 2009. Among the disappearing breaks are the research tax credit and an annual alternative minimum tax "patch," which keeps 23 million additional middle-income Americans from being forced into calculating and paying the dreaded AMT. (For 2009, with the patch in place, 4 million upper-middle- and high-income families will pay AMT.)

African-Americans are extremely supportive of President Obama, but their enthusiasm appears to have dramatically dropped from earlier this year, according to a new national poll. The CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey, released Tuesday, also indicates that Obama's presidency appears to have made blacks more optimistic about race relations, but less than one in five believe the new president has ushered in a new era of race relations in the country. More than nine in 10 blacks questioned in the poll approve of the job Obama's doing in the White House, far higher than 42 percent of whites who approve of...

The coming year could bring an enormous electoral shift in the U.S. Anti-incumbent fever is sweeping the nation. People are furious at the federal government's takeover over the health care, banking and auto industries, as well as massive spending and a sputtering economy. The system failures with Flight 253 brought national security back to the forefront. The tide is turning and it will not bode well for Democrats in 2010. Here are my predictions for key races across the nation for the coming year....

Iran regime has lost touch with people Iran’s regime has definitively lost touch with the aspirations of its people but it is still far from certain that the protest movement confronting it is ready and able to seize power, experts say. The street battles that rocked Tehran and other major cities over the Ashoura holiday show that the demonstrations have entered a new phase with increased state repression and more violent incidents. But, unlike the 1979 revolution that overthrew the Shah, Iran’s latest uprising is not led by a well- organized opposition in exile. The largely spontaneous protest movement does...

Kerry Reportedly Files Request to Visit Iran Sen. John Kerry has filed a formal request to visit Iran, Iranian news agencies reported Tuesday -- news made public in the middle of the government's bloody crackdown on dissidents that has left more than a dozen dead. Sen. John Kerry has filed a formal request to visit Iran, Iranian news agencies reported Tuesday -- news made public in the middle of the government's bloody crackdown on dissidents that has left more than a dozen dead. While representatives for Kerry have so far not confirmed whether he intends to travel to Tehran, a...

SANAA: Yemeni forces raided an al-Qa'ida hideout and set off a battle yesterday as the government vowed to eliminate the group claiming it was behind the Christmas bombing attempt on a US airliner. The fighting took place in an al-Qa'ida stronghold in western Yemen, haven for a group that attacked the US embassy in the country in 2008, killing 10 Yemeni guards and four civilians. A government statement said at least one suspected militant was arrested. "The (Interior) Ministry will continue tracking down al-Qa'ida terrorists and will continue its strikes against the group until it is totally eliminated," Deputy Interior...

First of all my apologies for being so late to post the monthly Sanity Island. I got started late and and that put me behindIt’s almost 11 month since President Bush has left office. There goes no day by that I wished he were still in the White House. No matter though he is still my President and will always be as long as I live. Today I will post photos from December 2001 and 2002, and tomorrow from 2003 and 2004 For the quote of the day I have chosen the address President Bush gave to the Marines at...

HONOLULU -- Conservative radio talk host Rush Limbaugh was rushed to a Honolulu hospital on Wednesday afternoon with chest pains, sources told KITV. Paramedics responded to the call at 2:41 p.m. at the Kahala Hotel and Resort. Limbaugh suffered from chest pains, sources said. Paramedics treated him and took him to Queen's Medical Center in serious condition. He was seen golfing at Waialae Country Club earlier this week. The country club is next to the Kahala Hotel and Resort. The radio show host had been in the islands during the holidays. Coincidentally, his visit comes at a time when two...

It would appear that what is needed most in the Obama White House is adult supervision. In the wake of the latest terror incident was the Administration's top priority finding the weakness in our security systems that allowed a Muslim terrorist to come so close to destroying an American airplane full of Christmas travelers? Well, no, according to an unnamed staffer who is quoted at American Spectator: "The idea was that we'd show that the Bush Administration had had far worse missteps than we ever could," says a staffer in the counsel's office. "We were told that classified material involving...

South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster is leading the charge to challenge the constitutionality of part of the federal health care bill. He and 12 other Attorneys General sent a letter Wednesday to U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. In the letter they warn congressional leaders that legal action may result if they do not remove a provision that gives Nebraska a break on Medicaid payments.  The group says the “Cornhusker Kickback” is unconstitutional and was added to secure the vote of Nebraska U.S. Senator Ben Nelson. Republican U.S. SE Lindsey Graham and Jim...

There's a massive conflict of interest -- along with ideological problems -- in Barack Obama's questionable pick to head the review of the failing watch-list "system" that carelessly allowed terrorist Abdulmutallab to get on board the flight to Detroit to try and blow it up. The questionable pick is one John Brennan, and here are his two biggest flaws as they relate to his ability to be able to conduct a competent and ethical review of the watch-list "system."

Since President Obama has now come out and blamed the security breach that resulted in a near successful attack by underwear bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab on "systemic failures," the question becomes: How do we go about fixing that? For some answers, The Cable turned to Jim Locher, the president and CEO of the Project on National Security Reform, a nongovernmental organization with ties to National Security Advisor Jim Jones that has been sounding the alarm about America's dysfunctional national security infrastructure for years. "While President Obama said there were systemic failures, our problem has been that we haven't done systemic...

Gen. David Petraeus, former U.S. commander in Iraq, reportedly is “absolutely certain” that British hostage Peter Moore was held secretly in Iran for part of his 31-month ordeal. Petraeus’s claim is likely to intensify the bitter diplomatic relationship between London and Tehran. Moore, an IT consultant, was set free Wednesday after the United States handed over an Iraqi insurgent suspected of planning the deaths of five American servicemen. He was released by the League of the Righteous, or Asaib al-Haq (AAH) – an extremist Shia group allied to Iran – and his first night of freedom was spent at the...

With the signing of an under-publicized amendment to Executive Order 12425, Barack Obama has fundamentally altered your constitutional rights. His actions are undermining your rights to protect personal privacy from a foreign internationalist police agency named Interpol. A one-paragraph executive order may seem inconsequential to many, but this action has far-reaching implications and threatens the sovereignty of America. Obama's secretive executive order amended an order issued by President Reagan in 1983. Reagan's order recognized Interpol as an international organization and gave it privileges and immunities commonly extended to foreign diplomats. Reagan opened the door to allow Interpol to operate in...

The TSA announced Thursday evening that subpoenas issued against bloggers for information they published are no longer in effect. From the TSA: "TSA takes any breach in security very seriously. In light of the posting of sensitive security information on the web, TSA sought to identify where the information came from. The investigation is nearing a successful conclusion and the subpoenas are no longer in effect." Earlier: A Florida based travel-writer, Chris Elliott, is readying a legal challenge to the Transportation Security Administration's efforts to force him to disclose his source for a TSA directive he published on his blog....

<p>On December 26, two days after Nigerian Omar Abdulmutallab allegedly attempted to use underwear packed with plastic explosives to blow up the Amsterdam-to-Detroit flight he was on, and as it became clear internally that the Administration had suffered perhaps its most embarrassing failure in the area of national security, senior Obama White House aides, including chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, David Axelrod and new White House counsel Robert Bauer, ordered staff to begin researching similar breakdowns -- if any -- from the Bush Administration.</p>

Bowing to Chinese law, Apple is reportedly blocking iPhone users in China from downloading applications about two figures Beijing considers "separatists": the Dalai Lama and exiled Uighur leader Rebiya Kadeer. IDG News Service said at least five iPhone software programs related to the Tibetan spiritual leader are unavailable in Apple's China App Store along with one related to Kadeer. IDG, publisher of Macworld, Computerworld, PC World and other magazines, said the move would make Apple the latest US technology giant to censor its services in China. Asked for comment on Thursday by AFP, Trudy Muller, an Apple spokeswoman, repeated a...

It is business as usual in relations between the West and the Islamic Republic of Iran. A US official explained this indifference to a US daily by saying that Obama was engaged in a difficult balancing act: "The aim of any sanctions is to force the Tehran government to the negotiating table, rather than to punish it for either its apparent push to develop a nuclear weapon or its treatment of its people." In Tehran, this attitude is taken as a free hand to carry on as before, our Iranian sources report.

For years, many Americans have dismissed the battle between Mexico's government and drug cartels. * * * But this problem, funded largely by U.S. drug users, has rapidly transformed into a battle against a terrorist insurgency, and victory is every bit as important to Mexico's security as is America's battle against al-Qaeda. Defeat for Mexico means nothing less than a descent into chaos. This might sound alarmist, but the tactics being employed by Mexico's drug gangs, not to mention their spread into U.S. border cities, is truly cause for alarm. * * * Drug gangs are challenging the government for...

Following up on a visit from FBI officials about an eyewitness account first described to MLive.com, Michigan attorney Kurt Haskell described the visit in comment sections across MLive on Wednesday. Haskell and his wife, Lori, were aboard Flight 253 when Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab allegedly tried to destroy the plane. They say another man tried to help Abdulmutallab board the plane in Amsterdam. "Today is the second worst day of my life after 12-25-09. Today is the day that I realized that my own country is lying to me and all of my fellow Americans. Let me explain. Ever since I...

It's showtime, folks! Today's the deadline President Obama imposed on Iran's leaders to give up their nuclear ambitions and be nice. Not sure if the deadline expires at midnight in Tehran or on Washington time, but the mullahs and President Mahmoud "Mighty Mouse" Ahmadinejad aren't scrambling to give Obama a New Year's Eve smooch. Rather than cave in to our president's mighty rhetoric, the Tehran tyrants took a break from killing protesters in the streets to attempt to import more than 1,300 tons of make-a-nuke uranium ore from Kazakhstan. They've also increased their nuke-cooker centrifuge count, tested new long-range missiles...

Obama summons intel chiefs for Washington talks Photo 8:32pm EST By Jeff Mason KANEOHE, Hawaii (Reuters) - President Barack Obama on Thursday summoned U.S. intelligence chiefs to a meeting next week to discuss how to prevent a repeat of the attempted bombing of a Detroit-bound airliner on December 25. Seeking to quell criticism of his administration over an intelligence breakdown, Obama said he was briefed by his top advisers and would get assessments from intelligence agencies later on Thursday and study them over the weekend before returning to Washington from Hawaii. Obama had ordered an immediate review of what he...

The finger-pointing began in earnest on Wednesday over who in the alphabet soup of American security agencies knew what and when about the Nigerian man charged with trying to blow up an airliner. But the harshest spotlight fell on the very agency created to make sure intelligence dots were always connected: the National Counterterrorism Center. The crown jewel of intelligence reform after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the center was the hub whose mission was to unite every scrap of data on threats and suspects, to make sure an extremist like Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the would-be bomber, would never penetrate...

This afternoon, on arguably one of the slowest news day of the year, the Obama White House released another document dump of “visitor records.” According to the White House, today’s batch total more than 25,000 records, covering meetings between September 16-September 30th. You can scroll through the list of records on the White House site OR you can download the raw data. Interestingly, the full download uncovers almost 30,000 records, including many from outside the mid-September time-frame detailed on the White House site. In other words, only the records from the specific two week time period are viewable on the...

US President Barack Obama's hopes of sparking rapid political transformation in 2009 fell short, yet his bruised administration still dreams of forging historic change in the year to come. After 11 months in power, Obama is greyer, drained by Washington's acrimony and no longer an untested source of hope for millions, but a commander-in-chief who agonised, then escalated the Afghan war. Once soaring approval ratings are now under 50 per cent in some polls - dangerous territory for any president. Obama endured a chastening learning curve abroad, and saw an ambitious domestic agenda slow in Congress. But if lawmakers soon...

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Associated Press has learned that the suicide bomber who killed seven CIA employees at a remote outpost in southeastern Afghanistan had been invited onto the base and was not searched. A former senior intelligence official says the man was being courted as an informant and that it was the first time he had been brought inside the camp.

Al Qaeda’s Yemen Connection, America and the Global Islamic Jihad December 30, 2009 — The attempt to destroy Northwest Airlines flight 253 en route from Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas Day underscores the growing ambition of al Qaeda's Yemen franchise, which has grown from a largely Yemeni agenda to become a player in the global Islamic jihad in the last year. Since merging with the al Qaeda franchise in Saudi Arabia last January and renaming itself Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), it has stepped up operations in Yemen itself, struck into Saudi Arabia, and now operates on...

WASHINGTON (BP)--Delivering a more forthright speech than is often seen from politicians on the issue, U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer -- the third ranking member of the Senate -- told a homosexual group last week that "gay marriage" supporters "must not rest" until it is legalized in all 50 states. Schumer's comments came as Maine prepares for Tuesday's vote that will decide the future of "gay marriage" there. If Question 1 passes it would overturn a new state law that legalized "marriage" for same-sex couples. But if it fails it would be the first time any state will have approved "gay...

CNSNews.com) – Taxpayers will pay almost $900 million over the next 10 years to extend federal employee benefits to homosexual couples, according to an analysis of “domestic partners” legislation by the Congressional Budget Office. However, supporters of the bill say the costs will be offset in other areas. President Barack Obama has voiced support for the measure. The Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee approved the measure last Wednesday, while the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee approved a measure last month.

About 3,000 Medicare patients who’ve been getting care at a Mayo Clinic facility in Arizona will have to pay out of their own pocket or find another doctor. Starting in 2010 (i.e., next week), the five primary care docs at a Mayo outpost in Glendale, Ariz. will stop accepting Medicare. Patients in the program who choose to stick around will be on the hook for about $1,500 per year, Mayo spokesman Michael Yardley told the Health Blog. The clinic expects that most of the patients will find another place to get their primary care. “We know it’s been incredibly difficult...

PARIS – The son of the deposed shah of Iran urged nations worldwide on Thursday to withdraw their ambassadors from Tehran to protest a relentless government crackdown on opposition demonstrators that resulted in at least eight deaths this week alone.

PESHAWAR, Pakistan – A suicide bomber set off an explosives-laden vehicle on a field during a volleyball tournament Friday in northwest Pakistan, killing at least 25 people, police said.

Iran: opposition leader Mirhossein Mousavi 'ready to die' for the cause Iran's opposition leader Mirhossein Mousavi said the country is in 'serious crisis' and he is 'not afraid to die' for his cause. Published: 9:28AM GMT 01 Jan 2010 In a statement posted on his website on Friday , Mr Mousavi called for the immediate release of his supporters arrested after the disputed presidential vote in June and during protests earlier this week. "Arresting or killing Mousavi, [and another opposition leader Mehdi] Karoubi ... will not calm the situation," he said. "I am not afraid to die for people's demands...

The Obama administration is scurrying to implement new procedures to find and keep potential terrorists off U.S.-bound planes, as results of a preliminary intelligence review flow into the White House. Emerging as a central focus are deficiencies in the U.S.'s network of watch lists, a system designed after the Sept. 11 attacks to keep tabs on potential terrorists and prevent them from boarding planes, according to a senior U.S. counterterrorism official. The official noted that government audits turned up problems in recent years, including gaps that kept suspected terrorists from being added to the U.S.'s no-fly list. President Barack Obama...

A woman called police on Monday and said a man was forcing his way into her apartment in the 5300 block of Elm Street. When officers went inside, they found something that made them concerned enough to call the bomb squad. They found an AT-4 shoulder-mounted rocket launcher. It can shoot a missile nearly 1,000 feet through buildings and tanks. "It gives infantrymen the advantage with an ultra-light weapon that can stop vehicles, armored vehicles as well as main battle tanks and fortifications," said Oscar Saldivar of Top Brass Military and Tactical on the North Freeway. That type of rocket...

“We hope the Egyptians get so annoyed they just want to get rid of us.” Jodie Evans, Cairo, December 29, 2009 Top President Barack Obama funder Jodie Evans and her terrorist sympathizing group Code Pink have provoked a violent crisis in Egypt over an attempt to deliver ‘humanitarian aid’ to Hamas-run Gaza to mark the one-year anniversary of Israel’s response to repeated provocations by Hamas terrorists. Evans was joined in Cairo by Obama pals Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dorhn, both former terrorists with the Weather Underground. nye131-150x150 Jodie Evans appealed to Egypt’s First Lady Suzanne Mubarak for help after the...

Tennessee State Guard commander Richard Hamblen said it's his Second Amendment right as part of a militia to convert assault rifles into fully automatic weapons. The Sixth US Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed. A former commander in the Tennessee State Guard has lost an appeal to overturn his conviction for trying to provide his soldiers with homemade machine guns for possible use in defending the state. On Wednesday, a federal appeals court in Cincinnati threw the case out of court. “Whatever the individual right to keep and bear arms might entail, it does not authorize an unlicensed individual to possess...

KANEOHE, Hawaii — The attempted bombing of an American passenger plane on Christmas Day could greatly complicate President Obama’s efforts to close the detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, as lawmakers in both parties call on the administration to rethink its approach. The task of determining what to do with the detainees held at Guantánamo has already proved so daunting that Mr. Obama is poised to miss his self-imposed one-year deadline for shuttering the prison by Jan. 22. But evidence that Al Qaeda’s branch in Yemen was behind last week’s failed plane attack will make closing the center even harder...

Democrats Join Calls for Napolitano to Step Down Following Failed Attack Democrats have joined the ranks of those calling for Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to step down following the attempted bombing of a Northwest Airlines flight a week ago. Some Democrats have joined in calling for Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to step down following the attempted bombing of a Northwest Airlines flight a week ago. Though the CIA and an agency under the Director of National Intelligence have been under particular scrutiny in the preliminary review of possible missteps, Napolitano so far has taken the most heat from...