Free Republic

The family of Glen Doherty, one of the two Marine SEAL contractors killed in the 2012 Benghazi attack, are taking matters into their own hands and suing the CIA and the State Department for $1 million each, according to The Washington Times. Three other Americans were killed in the attack, including the U.S. Ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens, Foreign Service Officer Sean Smith, and CIA contractor and former SEAL Tyrone Woods.

President Obama, mired in the worst political stretch of his presidency, can't even get a sure-fire win these days. To say the White House was bullish this winter about the prospects for patent reform would be an understatement. The Republican-controlled House gave Obama a rare victory in December when it overwhelmingly passed a bill to combat patent trolls -- companies that exist mainly to file lawsuits over infringement claims, using vague regulations to score settlements from businesses looking to avoid massive legal costs. Obama then took the rare step of addressing the esoteric issue in his State of the Union...

Former Defense Secretary (and former CIA chief) Leon Panetta has offered his first public comments on the Obama deal in which the US released five top Taliban commanders for one US soldier accused of desertion. Panetta says that he opposed the deal and “assumed that it was never going to happen.” “I don’t fault the administration for wanting to get him back. I do question whether the conditions are in place to make sure these terrorists don’t go back into battle,” former CIA director and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta told a gas industry gathering in Pittsburgh. Panetta, who was...

Not only is this an egregious understatement of her own culpability, it’s horrible politics. Everyone knows that when a political crisis strikes, the surest way to soothe public/media outrage is with a phony, half-hearted “the buck stops here” statement accepting responsibility. Maybe it’s better this way. Why keep up a pretense of accountability at this point? Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius will tell a House committee tomorrow the site’s botched rollout was the result of contractors failing to live up to expectations – not bad management at HHS, as the contractors suggested.

Michelle Obama’s relationship with Princeton classmate Toni McCall Townes-Whitley, whose company earned the no-bid contract to design the disastrous Healthcare.Gov Obamacare website, continued after the Obamas moved into the White House. Townes-Whitley and her husband even enjoyed “Christmas with the Obamas” at the White House in December 2010, according to a Facebook album created by Townes-Whitley. Although neither Michelle Obama nor Townes-Whitley has discussed their relationship, the Christmas event took place just seven months after Townes-Whitley joined CGI Federal as a senior vice president. Townes-Whitley, Princeton class of ’85, leads CGI Federal’s Civilian Agency Programs (CAP) Business Unit, which earned...

**snip** The relations of power in the world are constantly changing. Good managers know this and are always looking for a wave to catch and ebbs to avoid. Timing in statecraft is very important, but it is something the president seems to lack. What has kept Obama from catastrophe is the unexpected success of everything he discounts, from the tactical skill of the US military to the resilience of all sectors he considers back numbers. He proceeds instead from a kind of fixed idea. President Obama’s policies have from the beginning been dogged by a curious kind of obsolescence, as...

When you place power in the hands of inept idiots, then you foster the rule of “ineptocracy.” You give power to the least capable and the least deserving. In the process, you may wonder why there is less and less in society to admire and enjoy. It’s because the idiots given the power they never deserved are not capable of producing anything. I ran across a t-shirt that says everything about the state of our country today: Ineptocracy: A system of government where the least capable to lead are elected by the least capable of producing, and where the members...

Put it this way: President Obama’s Egypt policy is about as effective as his Syria policy. And for the first time Wednesday, with the number of dead and injured mounting, one could almost envision Egypt’s descent into out-and-out civil war. Obama was briefed, said nothing and went back to golf. Secretary of State John Kerry took a break from his fruitless obsession with the nonexistent “peace process” to condemn the violence, but took no questions and had no policy announcement. This, in a nutshell, is the White House’s approach to the Middle East — the absence of any policy and...

“Kerry would have an easier time convincing Greenpeace to dine on whale steak and spotted owl than in brokering peace between Israel and Palestinians,” Michael Rubin, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, told TheDC. What’s more, Rubin said, with all the fires flaring around the world, it makes little sense that Kerry would devote so much time to a problem that isn’t currently in a position to be resolved. “Egypt is imploding, and Turkey is going south fast. Antagonism between Europe and America is at an all-time high. China is bullying U.S. allies in southeast Asia. And what is...

Since the reports of Secretary of State John Kerry allegedly spending time on his yacht yesterday—the same day Egypt’s former president was ousted from office—there’s been a flurry of denials and explanations. Still, the CBS reporter who first noted the story refuses to retract it — and there could be evidence that backs up his claims.

... a suspected suicide bomber detonated an explosive device in Ankara, Turkey right outside the U.S. embassy, killing himself and an embassy guard. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said the attack happened at 1:13 p.m. local time, and that they were “working closely with the Turkish national police to make a full assessment of the damage and the casualties, and to begin an investigation.”

Gravitas? Nope. Stability? Nope. Respect? Nope. Judgment? Nope. Policy understanding? (mystery) Someone whose finger we want on the button? Three letters, N.O. When assessing a Republican vice-presidential nominee? Fitness to be president is the first and necessary qualification. If Biden were the Republican vice-presidential nominee? Media outrage and indignation at the poor judgment of the presidential nominee, which would call into question the presidential nominee’s fitness for office. Since Biden is the Democratic vice-presidential nominee? Why hasn’t Romney released more tax returns.

Bill Clinton thought so little of President Obama — mocking him as an “amateur” — that he pressed his wife last summer to quit her job as secretary of state and challenge him in the primaries, a new book claims,

There was little drama on GOP Primary night this week in general; a little before 10 p.m. NBC News declared Willard Mitt Romney the winner in Wisconsin the state with the most delegates up for grabs. It was also the state that was supposed to be the most hotly contested between Romney and former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum. But, in Maryland and Washington D.C. the night was downright anticlimactic. Moments after the polls closed at 8 p.m. in Maryland, Romney was declared the winner followed shortly by a declaration of victory for the former Massachusetts governor in D.C. Romney actually...

Ineptocracy (in-ep-toc'-ra-cy): A system of government (currently prevalent in such places as South Africa, Venezuela, and the United States) where the least capable to lead are elected by those least capable of producing anything (except for babies), and where the members of society least likely to sustain themselves/succeed are rewarded with goods and services paid for by the confiscated wealth of a diminishing number of effective producers...

UPDATED: COLUMBUS, Ohio — Even if Rick Santorum wins Ohio on Super Tuesday, he won’t be able to claim all of its delegates. In fact, he is at risk of forfeiting more than one-quarter of them. In three of the state’s 16 congressional districts, including two that are near Ohio’s border with Pennsylvania, Santorum will lose any delegates he might have won because his campaign failed to meet the state’s eligibility requirements months ago. Those three districts alone take 9 delegates out of a total of 66 off the table for Santorum. But it gets worse: Nine more Ohio delegates...

With his Florida victory in hand, Mitt Romney (R-1 percent) did a series of round-robin interviews with the television morning shows. But he skittered way off course during his interview on CNN. I kid you not, the man who looks like he fired your spouse, foreclosed on your house and shipped your kid’s job overseas told anchor Soledad O’Brien, “I’m not concerned about the very poor.” .................VIDEO Poor Mitt. Perhaps I’m being overly charitable, but I see what he was trying to get at. The super rich are coddled by the tax code and the very poor have the safety...

He doesn’t think it’s too much to ask of a job seeker. A resume, a statement of salary expectations and a single written paragraph that answers a question like, “What do you believe a good customer service representative’s attitude should be?” (snip) Stories are legion of inept or half-hearted applicants who submit resumes marred by misspellings, show up at interviews dressed for a beach party, make inappropriate jokes, fail to learn basic details about the job and company in question, and otherwise leave hiring managers aghast. (snip) “Who the hell is going to hire these people?” asks Heinemeier Hansson. “Who...

Issa: Holder so 'inept he is dangerous'By Justin Sink - 09/12/11 11:10 AM ET Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) said that Attorney General Eric Holder is so "inept that he is dangerous to have as the Attorney General" and that President Obama should consider removing him from office. Issa made the comments on the Laura Ingraham show while commenting about the controversial "Fast and Furious" gun-tracking program. "He doesn't want to admit that it was felony-stupid," Issa said of the operation, which was run by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), which allowed assault-type weapons to be illegally...

Hinds County Democratic Party officials say they'll do their best to wrap up absentee and affidavit ballot counts today, giving answers to several candidates whose races are up in the air. "We are trying to conclude this. I'm hoping we can conclude a lot of things Friday," Hinds County Democratic Executive Committee Chairman Claude McInnis said Thursday night.