Free Republic

----"Plan B" and fiscal cliff vote, redux. Having hammered out a deal to shoot back to the Senate tonight -- with most Republicans reportedly on board -- House GOP leadership has been forced to delay or cancel those votes after support among conservatives collapsed in the early evening hours. The rules committee meeting, which would have formally drawn up the bill and advanced it to the full house, has been postponed indefinitely. The reason is simple. They don't have the votes: What happened? The counter-offer's broad outline, which I've been following all day, seemed to be on track. Then the...

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court has granted the National Security Agency (NSA) permission to continue its collection of records on all U.S. phone calls. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence announced the court's approval in a statement late Friday. The court authorizes the program for only limited time periods and requires that the government submit new requests every several months for re-authorization. The existence of the bulk phone data collection was one of the most controversial revelations from the leaks by Edward Snowden. The NSA uses the program to collect records such as phone numbers, call times and...

"I call upon all of you to wage a second American nonviolent revolution, to use civil disobedience, and to demand that this president leave town, to get up, to put the Quran down, to get up off his knees, and to figuratively come out with his hands up," said Larry Klayman of Freedom Watch, a conservative political advocacy group.

I know way too many folks on the Right that are fighting for “our country” and for “family values”, and yet they don’t “value” their own family. Heck, I know several people that are more well known in Tea Party circles than they are at their own kitchen tables. It’s gross. I know that’s harsh but … someone’s got to say it. Over the last few years my wife and I have spent more time than we’d like listening to haggard tales of marriages that are on the rocks and kids that are jacked up simply because mom or dad...

Did you know that Pres. Lucifer closed the World War II Memorial in D.C., although the memorial had been built with private (not government) funds? Did you know, however, that illegals were allowed to demonstrate in the National Mall just a few feet away from the WWII Memorial, on Tuesday, Oct. 7 — notwithstanding the supposed government shutdown? Illegals at National Mall Here’s an update of the Truckers Ride For the Constitution movement: These are the demands of RideForTheConstitution.org: Our Constitutional demands are simple: We want our legislators to follow the law. Independent truckers are leading this convoy to deliver...

In an interesting twist of irony, one of the Congressman most instrumental in the destruction of civil liberties in these United States due to his authorship of the Patriot Act, Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wisc.), is now leading the charge to rein in NSA abuses. His disgust with the NSA became clear back in early June when he wrote an impassioned letter to Attorney General Eric Holder criticizing the illegal NSA activity happening behind the scenes. The key point here is that Mr. Sensenbrenner strongly believes that these guys are misinterpreting the legislation he wrote to justify everything they are doing. As...

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin announced that she will travel to Washington, D.C. on Sunday to support and honor the veterans who will be arriving for the "Million Vet March" on the memorials. Speaking at a rally for New Jersey Republican Senate candidate Steve Lonegan along with Mark Levin on Saturday, Palin denounced the Obama administration for dishonoring veterans by barricading the World War II Memorial during the federal government shutdown. She said it was "heart-wrenching," "atrocious," and "not right."

People in Ohio, Michigan and several other states found themselves unable to use their food stamp debit cards on Saturday, after a routine check by vendor Xerox Corp. resulted in a system failure. Shoppers from Maine to Oklahoma had to abandon baskets of groceries because they couldn't access their benefits.Ohio's cash and food assistance card payment systems went down at 11 a.m., said Benjamin Johnson, a spokesman for the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services. Ohio's cash system has been fixed, however its electronic benefits transfer card system is still down. All states that use Xerox systems are affected...

Food stamp users across Mississippi and neighboring states were being declined Saturday morning as they tried to use their EBT, or Electronic Benefit Transfer, cards at grocery, dollar and convenience stores. A Sam's Club member services representative, however, said the cards would work if purchases were broken down into smaller increments worth less than $90, but one food stamps user said his card wouldn't work for a $4 purchase.

Bridge Cards reportedly not working EBT Food stamps system experiencing glitches in Michigan, other states Joanne Marie Hoopes Oct 12 2013 01:54:13 PM EDT DETROIT - The Local 4 newsroom has been flooded with calls and emails from people reporting problems with their Michigan EBT Food stamp card. Viewers say they attempted to use their Bridge Card but the system is not working and they are left unable to purchase groceries. Local 4 contacted the Michigan Department of Human Services; a spokesperson says the issue with client cards is not on the DHS end. The spokesperson says the issues are...

Some grocery and food shoppers who were trying to used government benefit cards to pay got a rude awakening on Saturday morning: their EBT cards were not working. A check here in Central New York, however, showed that grocery chains were apparently unaffected. We are being told that a technical services vendor (Xerox) had a power outage which did affect being able to pay with a benefits card in several states. As of early Saturday afternoon, the debit system was back up and the SNAP program was being rebooted, with expectations that all services would be back up shortly.

"If a dry run is occurring, the attack will shortly follow." That's according to Wolf Koch, a Boeing 767 pilot for Delta Airlines and an official at the Air Line Pilots Association International, who was discussing common terrorist tactics in the run-up to devastating attacks like those on 9/11. That is an extremely worrying thought given a memo leaked this week from the U.S. Airline Pilots Association, which warns of "several cases recently…of what appear to be probes, or dry runs" of such attacks.

One would think reports like this would be more than a worrisome to any reporter who prides themselves on even making a moderate attempt to report the truth. When President Obama first took office, he made the following claim. We were told that his administration would be the most honest and open presidency in modern American history. He made that statement in response to what he felt was far too much secrecy from the Bush administration. During his first four plus years in office, I wonder how Obama is doing with making good on that claim. My impression is not...

Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, the kingpin of the Sinaloa Cartel, owns the Chicago-area drug game. Jesus Vicente Zambada-Niebla, the Sinaloa cartel’s “logistics coordinator” and son of a principal Sinaloa leader, asserted in court documents that Guzman is a U.S. informant and Sinaloa was "given carte blanche to continue to smuggle tons of illicit drugs into Chicago.Niebla also alleged that Operation Fast and Furious was part of an agreement to finance and arm the cartel in exchange for information used to take down its rivals.

Serial abuses of justice by America’s top law enforcement official should be enough to make just about any tinhorn banana republic dictator blush. Yet regarding any embarrassment evidenced by the leader of the free world… not so much. Despite the fact that our attorney general has been indicted for contempt of Congress on both felony and civil charges, has repeatedly lied under oath, and has routinely turned a blind eye to laws that he is duty-bound to enforce, Mr. Holder continues to serve at the behest of his presidential mentor. At least he has so far. Apparently not so very...

(title truncated for length with a minor edit by me for accuracy. Text below is mostly a transcript of the 2 1/2 minute interview snippet with Ginni Thomas. The money statement is at the very end.) Responsibility for the September 11 Benghazi assault and the deaths of four U.S. citizens — including Libyan ambassador Chris Stevens — lies personally at the feet of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, according to California Republican Rep. Darrell Issa. “The investigation really is now not about what we know, but about how we can prevent abuse of security before the fact, how we respond...

Hillary Clinton this weekend cited the human cost of the ongoing government shutdown and the partisan nature of today’s political scene. On Saturday, she received an award from Yale Law School, her alma mater, where she lamented the impacts of the shutdown on Americans, especially women and children. “If you … want to understand the human costs of political brinksmanship and gridlock in Washington, look at the children,” she said. “Because of the government shutdown, nearly nine million women and children will soon be unable to buy healthy food and baby formula through a special supplemental nutrition program for women,...

A senior al-Qaeda leader has been captured near the Libyan city of Tripoli in an operation apparently unrelated to the raid in Somalia, NBC News reports. Anas al Libi, whose real name is Nazih Abdul-Hamed Nabih al-Ruqai'I, has been wanted by the US for more than a decade and has a $5 million reward on his head.

A group of Texas congressmen armed with wire cutters made their way to the World War II Memorial in Washington after they learned the National Park Service had reinforced the barriers blocking the site with wire. “This is Chicago thuggery,” Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) told me. “The president is trying to inflict the most amount of pain and suffering. This is not some bureaucratic mistake. This is Chicago thuggery. You try to make people hurt so they don’t resist what you tell them to do in the future.”

A Gannett company newspaper. Title and link only allowed on FR:http://www.argusleader.com/article/20131004/UPDATES/310040047/Rushmore-blockage-stirs-anger-in-S-D-

Treasury Secretary Jack Lew says that the barricading of parks and monuments is “merely lesson number one in the effort to educate Americans on how their government works. Not being able to visit a park or monument is an inconvenience. Lesson number two, I assure you, will cut closer to home.” “Lesson number two” will apparently entail the withholding of benefit checks for Social Security recipients, persons on welfare, and veterans pensions. “This more painful lesson can be avoided if Congress cooperates in implementing the President’s program for America,” Lew cautioned. “However, the continued insistence that the President negotiate a...

A new rally is forming, “Million Vet March On The Memorials” that will be held 9am October 13, 2013 at the war memorials in Washington D.C. The group is fed up with veterans being used as political pawns and are calling all patriots to attend, via their facebook page: We are all military brats, current and former military spouses and some veterans. We cannot express how utterly disappointed we were that our Greatest Generation were being used as political pawns in the ongoing government shutdown and budget crisis. This should never be the case. We do not care what political...

Another open-air memorial in the Washington area is closed and barricaded off: the Iwo Jima Memorial, just across the bridge from D.C. in Rosslyn, Virginia. A source sends along this picture of the barricade set-up at the memorial, which is also called the U.S. Marine Corps War Memorial: "I took the picture yesterday afternoon. Those barricades had been there at least a day. People can still walk into the Memorial area, but for many elderly and disabled vets, it is important they be driven and park right next to the statue," the person who took this picture emails. "There has...

Normally I take this time to point out some odious person (usually a progressive liberal) who seems hell-bent on destroying this great country to be our Jerk of the Week. However, some events transpired this week that brought a smile to my face, so I decided to recognize those responsible to be our Hero of the Week. While it is very easy to point out things that are going wrong, it behooves us to remember that there are things that show us the way and give us hope, and these items need to be acknowledged. For standing up against Obama,...

When I first saw this story, I assumed that it almost had to be a hoax. After the previous incidents with veterans and the added expenditures involved in closing open spaces to keep veterans from paying their respects to the Honored Dead one would assume that even a novice politician would move to staunch the bleeding. But instead, it seems that the White House is doubling down, as reported at The Weekly Standard. Via William Jacobson, NBC’s affiliate in Washington, D.C. reports that police ordered tourists and Vietnam war veterans who were visiting the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall to leave...

The federal government has been blocking people from pulling off the side of the road to view Mt. Rushmore! This is government arrogance at its worst. [The original article is from a source we cannot link to here on FR (Argus Leader).] This was taken from Kristi Noem's page (R-SD).

Unbelievable! Barack Obama brought out the German Sheperds today to threaten US veterans at the Vietnam Memorial. He’s using attack dogs against our veterans! Vietnam Wall entrance is open to all. Guard dog and guards are solely for intimidation. Go in. God Bless 'em pic.twitter.com/O7XSjOzbtj — Steve King (@SteveKingIA) October 5, 2013

Via William Jacobson, NBC's affiliate in Washington, D.C. reports that police ordered tourists and Vietnam war veterans who were visiting the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall to leave the memorial at one point on Friday. After one group of veterans went around the barricade, "the park ranger told them the wall was closed," NBC's Mark Seagraves reported. "Later another group of vets showed up and moved the barricades. At that point, the memorial filled with vets and tourists. That's when police came and moved everyone out." The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall is a black granite outdoor wall on which the names...

World War II Veterans denied access to their memorial is appalling. But, Catholic priests denied the opportunity to celebrate Mass, even as volunteers, leaves me speechless. Read below from the general counsel of the Archdiocese for Military Services as he explains priests that defy the governments orders may even face arrest. "If the government shutdown continues through the weekend, there will be no Catholic priest to celebrate Mass this Sunday in the chapels at some U.S. military installations where non-active-duty priests serve as government contractors." "Military personnel enjoy, like all Americans, the First Amendment guarantee of the 'Free Exercise' of...

FULL TITLE - "Obama Eviscerates Troops’ 1st Amendment Rights: Threatens Catholic Priests With Arrest If They Minister To Them" Unreal. He’s a monster. The Catholic priests need to come out and challenge this. It’s not enough that Obama is strategically punishing each and every American civilian, he’s going after our troops, too. Obama took the time to make sure Camp David stays open during the shutdown and he had time to pose for a portrait on the third day of the shutdown. Meanwhile, Sunday is near and the military has no priests to perform Sunday service or hear confessions. In...

In a stunning development, some military priests are facing arrest if they celebrate mass or practice their faith on military bases during the federal government shutdown. “With the government shutdown, many [government service] and contract priests who minister to Catholics on military bases worldwide are not permitted to work – not even to volunteer,” wrote John Schlageter, the general counsel for the Archdiocese for the Military Services USA, in an op-ed this week. “During the shutdown, it is illegal for them to minister on base and they risk being arrested if they attempt to do so.” According to its website,...

Senate leaders alleged the government freeze could stretch for several weeks, but some countries have weathered even longer deadlocks — take Belgium for instance. Between 2010-11 the democratic country of Belgium was run with no elected government official. While the United States shutdown was caused by dissent over Obamacare funding between the House and Senate, a rift between the Dutch-speaking North and the French-speaking South caused Belgium to go rogue. Given the fact, it seems rather ironic the country’s motto is "Unity Makes Strength.”

Valerie Plame warns the "CBS This Morning" co-hosts that the NSA surveillance program should not just worry terrorists, but all of us.

Al-Qaeda has now welcomed al-Shabab--the group responsible for the Kenya mall attack--into its ranks. Despite the targeted US killing of al-Qaeda leaders, more and more terrorist groups are joining the al-Qaeda network and expanding membership - what led former Australian intelligence analyst Leah Farrell to say, "al-Qaeda's bigger now than it ever has been." Both Osama bin Laden's death and the Arab Spring unrest allowed the al-Qaeda network to grow much stronger.

IRS Abuse: It doesn't take a brain surgeon to know that the IRS audit of Dr. Ben Carson can't be a mere coincidence. In any powerful syndicate, the capos know who to whack without the godfather ordering it. The only way the FBI could put Gambino crime family boss John Gotti in prison was to bug an old lady's apartment in New York's Little Italy and record him giving orders to kill. But until the FBI bugs the West Wing of the White House, or the Treasury building next door, or the Internal Revenue Service's headquarters a few blocks to...

While the nation’s political class has been fixated on the government shutdown in Washington this week, the National Security Agency (NSA) has continued to spy on all Americans and, by its ambiguity and shrewd silence, seems to be acknowledging slowly that the scope of its spying is truly breathtaking. The Obama administration is of the view that the NSA can spy on anyone, anywhere. The president thinks that federal statutes enable the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court to authorize the NSA to capture any information it desires about any persons without identifying the persons and without a showing...

Dr. Ben S. Carson went years without ever having a run-in with the Internal Revenue Service. But his good fortune changed after his speech at the National Prayer Breakfast in February, the former Johns Hopkins neurosurgeon said Monday night at an event with business leaders and elected officials in Alabama. Alabama’s Yellow Hammer News tweeted Dr. Carson’s remarks from the annual Business Council of Alabama Chairman’s Dinner: “I had my first encounter with the IRS this year, unsurprisingly after the Prayer Breakfast.”

WASHINGTON — After a public backlash to government spying, President Barack Obama called for an independent group to review the vast surveillance programs that allow the collections of phone and email records. Now, weeks before the group’s first report is due, some lawmakers, technology organizations and civil liberties groups are concerned that the panel’s members are too close to the Obama administration and its mission too vague to provide a thorough scrubbing of the National Security Agency technologies that have guided intelligence gathering since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------snip---------------------------- The members of the review group are Richard Clarke,...

In less than two weeks, thousands of truckers will descend on Washington, D.C., driving their big-rigs and calling for the restoration of a constitutional republic – but now their plan has taken a new twist: Their friends and families will simultaneously join other Americans rallying on overpasses across the nation for Obama’s impeachment. The Truckers’ Ride for the Constitution movement has a new ally in their protest against what organizers say is corruption in government and a trashing of the Constitution. The group is teaming up with Overpasses for Obama’s Impeachment to line the routes into Washington with flags during...

The NSA has been graphing American’s social networks and plotting them as they do organized crime since at least 2010, according to the latest published Edward Snowden leak. The highly secretive intelligence agency has been mapping out American citizens’ social connections – identifying associates, determining locations, and logging who they talk to – by taking advantage of loosened rules previously meant to restrict surveillance actions. As far back as November, 2010, the agency authorized spies to conduct ‘large-scale graph analysis on very large sets of communications metadata without having to check foreignness,’ the New York Times revealed Saturday. Mapped out:...

Attorney General Eric Holder said Friday that the Justice Department will continue its efforts to protect voting rights in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision which gutted the Voting Rights Act earlier this summer. During remarks to the Congressional Black Caucus, Holder explained that the lawsuits filed to stop Texas’s discriminatory redistricting and voter ID laws are “just the beginning.” “Thanks to the hard work of our Civil Rights Division, we are continuing to refine and re-focus current enforcement efforts across the country,” he said. “And while the suits we’ve filed in Texas mark the first voting rights enforcement...

Fox News reports that the special team of investigators sent to Benghazi to track down suspects in last year's Benghazi attack, are being pulled out Libya for good. Special operators in the area told Fox News that the suspects had been identified months ago and after the reports were vetted by both the State Department and the Dept of Defense, were sent on to the White House, who has refused to pull the trigger on the arrests. One recommended action was delivered to the president on August 7th. The investigators spent months taking video, audio, and photos of the Benghazi...

The Libyan government will not allow the FBI into Benghazi to arrest suspects for last year's deadly terror attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission, a top State Department official told a House panel on Wednesday. Federal authorities have filed charges against suspects in connection with the September 11 attack on the mission and nearby CIA annex that killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans. But Republicans on the House Foreign Affairs Committee said they were shocked nobody has been brought to justice. "Not one terrorist perpetrator has been captured or killed, despite the president saying that this was his...

Charles Woods is the father of Tyrone Woods, one of the Navy SEALS who disobeyed orders and heroically rushed to the rescue of the Benghazi mission personnel and was abandoned without support. Under Bush, the media turned Cindy Sheehan into an icon. But none of the Benghazi family members can get airtime outside of FOX to discuss the sense of pain and abandonment that they feel. When asked about Obama, Charles Woods, father of Ty Woods who was killed in Benghazi, said: It’s a little late for that. I wish he had taken the time the night of September 11,...

Rep. Elijah Cummings is pushing back on a new report released Monday by House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa about last year’s Benghazi attack. The report criticizes the review board that looked into the attack that killed four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens, and called it a flawed investigation. “This Republican report is not an official Committee report, but rather a completely partisan staff report that the Chairman apparently didn’t want Committee Members to see before he leaked it to the press,” Cummings, the ranking member of the Oversight Committee, said in a statement Monday night.

After ARB testifies, only 2 @OversightDems decide to stay & hear testimony from family members on 2nd panel PHOTO:

The only real accountability for the Benghazi scandal will have to come in 2016. Reading through the competing partisan reports and listening to the congressional testimony of various officials this week, it seems fair to say that no actual crimes were committed (though you never know what you don't know). There were, in at least a figurative sense, criminal lapses in judgment by senior officials. Many of those lapses are recounted in the Accountability Review Board report. It found "systemic failures and leadership and management deficiencies at senior levels within two bureaus of the State Department" that "resulted in a...

(Rep. Gowdy questions Adm. Mullen on the Accountability Review Board's limited scope and failure to interview key individuals, such as Secretary Clinton.) Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofDh5TNI9xI

The leaders of the Administrative Review Board that investigated the attacks on US facilities in Benghazi, Libya, appeared before the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee Thursday, and offered testimony that further undermined the already-tattered credibility of their own probe. In descriptions that emphasized their friendly, even collaborative dealings with the top State Department officials who were ostensibly among the subjects of their investigation, Ambassador Thomas Pickering and Admiral Mike Mullen defended their work and shrugged off criticism from Republicans on the panel. But the substance of the responses from Pickering and Mullen, respectively chairman and vice chairman of the...

The State Department said Thursday that Republican subpoenas to interview witnesses to the Benghazi terror attack could “jeopardize” the FBI's investigation. House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) announced Thursday that he has subpoenaed John Martinec, the top security adviser to slain U.S. Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens, who was killed in the attack. Issa has also subpoenaed Alec Henderson, the regional security officer in Benghazi. “We understand that the Diplomatic Security law enforcement agents who performed heroically on September 11 are likely witnesses at any criminal proceedings relating to the Benghazi attacks, and that additional interviews of them outside...