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Jeb adviser James Baker to keynote J Street conference Leading talk show host and best-selling author Mark Levin assailed Jeb Bush last night over the revelation that one of his top foreign policy advisers, James Baker, will keynote an anti-Israel conference this weekend. The annual conference of the activist group J Street features an array of anti-Israel speakers, including proponents of the Boycott, Sanctions, and Divest (BDS) movement, which seeks Israel’s destruction, and advocates for the terrorist group Hamas. Jeb Bush’s selection of Baker as a foreign policy adviser has sparked concern among conservatives and in the Jewish and pro-Israel...

The White House has been examining a proposal by James Baker to launch a Middle East peace effort without Israel. The peace effort would begin with a U.S.-organized conference, dubbed Madrid-2, and contain such U.S. adversaries as Iran and Syria. Officials said Madrid-2 would be promoted as a forum to discuss Iraq's future, but actually focus on Arab demands for Israel to withdraw from territories captured in the 1967 war. They said Israel would not be invited to the conference. “As Baker sees this, the conference would provide a unique opportunity for the United States to strike a deal without...

A top White House national security adviser and key proponent of the Obama administration’s diplomacy with Iran is the focus of a congressional inquiry following disclosures the FBI may have denied him top-level security clearances, according to communications exclusively obtained by the Washington Free Beacon. Ben Rhodes, a White House deputy national security adviser who led the administration’s efforts to mislead Congress about the terms of the Iran nuclear agreement, is under scrutiny in the wake of disclosures he was declined interim clearance status by the FBI in 2008, when the administration was moving into the White House. Since that...

President Barack Obama will not allow any further United Nations measures critical of Israel to pass during the remainder of his term, deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes promised on Wednesday. When asked by CNN’s Jake Tapper if secretary of state John Kerry had indicated in his speech earlier Wednesday that the US would veto any other potential UN resolution that may come forward during the rest of Obama’s presidency, Rhodes said “yes.” Since the anti-settlements resolution passed in the Security Council last Friday, Israel has expressed concern that another measure may come up before the international body for a...

Israel’s ambassador to the U.S. on Monday contemptuously dismissed White House deputy national security advisor Ben Rhodes’ denials that the Obama administration played a key behind-the-scenes role in getting a resolution condemning Israel through the U.N. Security Council, describing him as an “expert at fiction.” Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s government says it has “iron-clad” information indicating that the Obama administration had a role in the crafting and passage of the resolution that passed Friday in the absence of a U.S. veto. Ambassador Ron Dermer told MSNBC the Israeli government had proof that it would share that evidence with the incoming...

WASHINGTON (AP) — A group the White House recently identified as a key surrogate in selling the Iran nuclear deal gave National Public Radio $100,000 last year to help it report on the pact and related issues, according to the group's annual report. It also funded reporters and partnerships with other news outlets. The Ploughshares Fund's mission is to "build a safe, secure world by developing and investing in initiatives to reduce and ultimately eliminate the world's nuclear stockpiles," one that dovetails with President Barack Obama's arms control efforts. But its behind-the-scenes role advocating for the Iran agreement got more...

President Obama will not send an official delegation to the funeral of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, but he will send a senior White House official and ambassador, the White House said on Tuesday. "There's a formal process" involved in naming a presidential delegation, spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters. "That will not be taking place this time, but the United States will be represented at the event."

White House spokesman Josh Earnest says a high-ranking presidential adviser and the top diplomat to Cuba will represent the United States at Fidel Castro’s funeral. Earnest is emphasizing that the two are not part of a formal delegation to the service, but the appearance of deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes and Jeffrey DeLaurentis shows a commitment to an “ongoing, future-oriented relationship with the Cuban people.” DeLaurentis is awaiting Senate confirmation to be U.S. ambassador to Cuba. …

TEL AVIV – When she went on five television talk shows to deliver the Obama administration’s response to the Benghazi attacks, UN Ambassador Susan Rice says she did not even know about the existence of the CIA Annex in Benghazi. The startling admission about her lack of knowledge of the events was provided by Rice herself in testimony to the House and was contained in the final report of the House Republicans Select Committee on Benghazi released on Tuesday and reviewed in full by Breitbart Jerusalem. Ben Rhodes, the White House’s Deputy National Security Adviser for Strategic Communications and Speechwriting,...

After two years of investigation, many might be asking if the just released Benghazi report was worth it? The answer is yes. With the publication of the 800-page report by the House Benghazi Select Committee on Tuesday, Americans now have an exhaustive account of the terrorist attack in Benghazi and its aftermath. The administration’s concocted narrative blaming the Benghazi attack on an amateurish anti-Muslim video is a major focus in the report.

The State Department acknowledged Wednesday that someone in its public affairs bureau made a “deliberate” request that several minutes of tape be cut from the video of a 2013 press briefing in which a reporter asked if the administration had lied about secret talks with Iran. The embarrassing admission by State Department spokesman John Kirby came three weeks after another spokesperson insisted that a “glitch” had caused the gap, discovered only last month by the reporter whose questioning had mysteriously disappeared. “This wasn’t a technical glitch, this was a deliberate step to excise the video,” Kirby told reporters. Kirby said...

Have the Obama White House, the U.S. State Department, and part of the Washington media, press, and TV been engaged in a vast left-wing conspiracy to lie to and deceive the American public about the nuclear deal with Iran? One might think so, since no U.S. official or politician has been held responsible for the tangle of lies, attempt at censorship, and linguistic equivocations on the issue. The great Machiavelli observed that "occasionally, words must veil the facts. But let this happen in a way that no one become aware of it." This seems to have been the objective of...

A former National Security Council official has told the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee that the Obama administration conducted a whisper campaign to smear Prime Minister Netanyahu and get the sellout to a nuclear Iran through Congress. According to the congressional testimony of Michael Doran — Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute and a former senior director in the National Security Council (NSC) in the administration of President George W. Bush — the White House initiated a “whisper campaign” against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to cast him “as the villain of the Middle East peace process, an arch-nationalist with...

The first lesson from how the Iran deal was sold to the public is that it is important to follow the money. Eight hundred eleven op-eds. Three hundred fifty- two letters to the editor. Two hundred twenty-seven editorials. That’s the number of “pro-diplomacy” articles that Ploughshares Fund takes credit for helping support as part of its “proactive” media campaign to support the Iran deal last year. They “were published during critical moments of the Iran campaign,” the website of the fund boasts in its 2015 annual report. The revelations about the work that this one fund did to support the...

Interview with Elli Streit, who works in Israel and the United States in economic development. Interview begins at 41:30. Elli Streit was born and raised in Israel. He has a BA in Economics from the Hebrew University, and an MBA from Wharton Business School at Univ. of Pennsylvania. For over 30 years, Elli was involved in Israel economic development in 3 areas: export development, representing foreign investors engaged in Israeli technology and assisting start ups from Israel mainly in healthcare sector, such as medical devices, to find strategic partners overseas. Elli has served on several boards of public companies and...

Retired USA Today White House reporter Richard Benedetto penned an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal on Friday titled “How Obama Gets Away With It.” He suggested “Usually when an incumbent president is leaving office and a slew of candidates are battling for his job, that departing chief executive’s record is a major campaign issue.” But Obama’s record in office is not an issue. Obviously, one reason is the Republican establishment didn’t want Obama to be an issue, which is why they moved to take any budget fight with Obama off the table for the rest of his presidency. …

J-Street received more than half a million dollars to advocate for the Obama administration’s controversial nuclear deal with Iran, it has been revealed. The liberal Jewish group, which bills itself as “pro-Israel and pro-peace” but which critics say takes solely anti-Israel stances, was paid the money by the White House’s main surrogate organization for selling the deal. The Ploughshares Fund was named in an explosive New York Times profile of Obama aid Ben Rhodes, in which the President’s chief spin doctor listed the central groups responsible for creating an “echo chamber” in order to promote the deal, even when the...

TEL AVIV – A group that advocates a nuclear-free world and was identified earlier this month by the White House as central in helping to market the Iran nuclear deal to the news media has funded National Public Radio since 2005, an Associated Press investigation has revealed. Think tanks funded by the Ploughshares Fund include the Arms Control Association, Brookings Institution, and the Atlantic Council, the AP reported. Unmentioned by the AP is that the Ploughshares Fund is financed by billionaire GEORGE SOROS' OPEN SOCIETY INSTITUTE. The involvement of Ploughshares in selling the Iran agreement to the public was revealed...

Tyler O’Neil gives us a list of the Top Thirteen Incompetent Failures in the Obama Administration. I’m not sure how he narrowed it down, but here it is, presumably starting with the least of the incompetents and counting down to the most incompetent. Ben "The Aspiring Novelist Who Became Obama's Foreign-Policy Guru" Rhodes. Makes sense he would land a gig with "the Aspiring Singer, Basketball Player, Community Organizer Who Became President. Tommy “Dude, that was like 2 years ago” Vietor. The former press van driver who became National Security Council spokesman and special assistant to the president (and beer pong...

Here is a quick pop quiz. What happens if we lie to the government? What happens if the government lies to us? Does it matter who does the lying? Last year, the Obama administration negotiated an agreement with the government of Iran permitting Iran to obtain certain materials for the construction of nuclear facilities. It also permitted the release of tens of billions of dollars in Iranian assets that had been held in U.S. banks and that the courts had frozen, and it lifted trade sanctions. In exchange, certain inspections of Iranian nuclear facilities can occur under certain circumstances. During...