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BREAKING. President in the briefing room around 12:30P ET for statement on Iraq.Steve Brusk, CNN: The president's meeting with the national security team will be in the WH Situation Room beginning in about ten minutes

According to a report published late last night in POLITICO, the hard drive belonging to Lois Lerner where the IRS claims her emails to outside agencies and groups like the White House, Department of Justice, FEC, Democrat members of Congress, etc. were stored has been...destroyed. Ex-IRS official Lois Lerner’s crashed hard drive has been recycled, making it likely the lost emails of the lightening rod in the tea party targeting controversy will never be found, according to multiple sources. “We’ve been informed that the hard drive has been thrown away,” Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, the top Republican on the...

Toppling tyrants is ineffective in the long term without years of unpopular occupation. Two and a half years ago, the U.S. pulled every soldier out of a mostly quiet Iraq. In the void thus created, formerly al-Qaeda-affiliated terrorists calling themselves “The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria” are now tearing apart the country, leaving medieval savagery in their wake. Obama partisans are blaming the Bush administration for going into Iraq in the first place. But critics counter that Obama wanted out of Iraq before the 2012 election at all costs. The result of that reckless skedaddle is that we have...

Supporters of the Keystone XL pipeline have found a new talking point: Iraq Violence exploding in one of the world's largest oil-producing nations is ricocheting in the debate over U.S. energy policy. Backers of the pipeline, which would run from Alberta, Canada, to Texas, are pointing to the crisis in Iraq as a rationale for pushing the project forward. Often billed as a possible component for supplying the U.S.'s voracious energy markets with crude oil, TransCanada's long-delayed $5.3 billion pipeline has been mired in delays for six years. On Wednesday, the Senate Energy and Natural Resources committee voted 12-10 to...

The US is reported to have demanded the resignation of Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki as a condition for US military intervention. The Wall Street Journal says the US has signalled its desire for unity government in Iraq without Maliki. Maliki's government has rejected calls for the prime minister to quit. His spokesman, Zuhair al-Nahar, said the west should focus instead on providing immediate military help to the Iraqi government.

Four former Environmental Protection Agency administrators who served under Republican presidents on Wednesday said climate change should not be a partisan issue. The former EPA chiefs told reporters that Republican lawmakers who believe the climate is changing should speak out because voters will be on their side. "This should not be a partisan issue," said William Ruckelshaus, the nation's first EPA administrator under President Richard Nixon and again under President Ronald Reagan. "And public demand for doing something may be able to break it apart." The problem, the four former EPA administrators said, is looking at climate change through a...

President Obama's approval rating has dropped to 41 percent, a majority of Americans disapprove of his handling of foreign policy issues, he has lost support from the Hispanic community and Americans actually think his administration is less competent than the Bush White House post-Hurricane Katrina, according to a new survey from the Wall Street Journal and NBC News. In short, the poll is nothing but bad news for the president. The survey would appear to be so bad, in fact, that NBC News' Chuck Todd said Tuesday that the poll basically means the public has declared the Obama presidency to...

Obama to sign executive order protecting job rights for gay employees Order would ban federal contractors from discriminating against employees on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity Suren Gambino 16 June 2014 After years of pressure from gay rights groups, President Obama is set to sign an executive order that would ban federal contractors from discriminating against employees on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, a White House official has told the Associated Press. The Obama administration has said it would prefer Congress to pass legislation that broadly extends workplace protections to all US employees. Such...

Secretary of State John Kerry “should be on a plane right now for Baghdad,” former U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker said Tuesday. Crocker served as ambassador to Iraq under President George W. Bush from 2007 until 2009, and ambassador to Afghanistan under President Obama until July 2012. The Obama administration should have had more high-level diplomatic engagement with Iraq, he argued Tuesday, and emphasized the U.S. must now respond with urgency. “We are hard-wired into their political system. We helped create it. We can’t walk away from it,” Crocker said. “I would have preferred since 2011 to see us...

Lawmakers from both parties and even some non-partisan analysts say the Obama administration should have better anticipated the rise of Sunni militants, who captured Iraq’s second-largest city last week and could pose a terrorism threat both within and outside the country’s borders. With U.S. officials now scrambling to respond to the advances by The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, the insurgent group that seized Mosul last week, some critics say there was either a failure by U.S. intelligence officials in assessing the strength of ISIS or Obama and his policy team didn’t react quickly enough. “It was very clear...

On Monday, despite House Majority Leader Eric Cantor's (R-VA) shocking primary loss last week that was viewed as a referendum against amnesty legislation, former Mississippi Governor and lobbyist Haley Barbour said the House could still pass amnesty legislation this year. "I don't think Eric's loss should have anything to do with it," Barbour said at the New York Meeting before pushing for a bill that would give a pathway to citizenship to "everybody's who's here illegally" so long as they confess they are in America illegally, pay fines and back taxes, and are put on probation. Barbour said the House...

Who is ISIS or Isis? Quite a coincidence is this acronym. During the Egyptian Spring I drew many conclusions that indicated the muslims of this southern kingdom would play an important role in the nearing end times. I submit to this group that the many interpretations of just who the Great Harlot or Whore are may be grossly incorrect and we have been looking in the wrong places. It is not America, nor is it Rome or the Catholic Church. But this harlot who is clothed in red & purple, riding the beast is the caliphate we see forming in...

William Devane (IMDb page), who plays “President James Heller” on Fox’s prime time 24: Live Another Day, told USA Today that “obviously I’m a big fan of Obama, as a guy who’s smart and articulate” and, in his acting, “I say to myself, ‘what has got to be going on in the private side of this guy’s brain’ – the pressure, the racism that is thrown out — and he handles it with such dignity.’”

For We the People, Obama’s time in office has thus far been tantamount to a march through hell with the complete deconstruction of America strapped to our backs and with despair and immiseration clinched in our teeth. And for the privilege of being unwilling participants in this death march, Obama believes we should be grateful. Obama has usurped and overrun congressional authority in less time than it took for the Kudzu vine to overrun the South. Some years back I wrote: “Many in America wanted to be proud when the first person of color was elected president, but instead, they...

Who Lost Iraq?Posted By Arnold Ahlert On June 13, 2014 @ 12:58 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 339 Comments Iraq’s disintegration may be imminent, as the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki appears incapable of stopping the advance of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS). The terrorist offshoot of al Qaeda now has its sights set on the capital city of Baghdad. Adding to the chaos, the city of Kirkuk was overtaken by Kurdish soldiers absent any resistance by government forces. After having ignored the prescient warnings of Iraq’s fragility post-U.S. abandonment, the Obama administration and Democratic Party’s determination...

The Department of State warns U.S. citizens against all but essential travel to Iraq. Travel within Iraq remains dangerous given the security situation. On June 16, the Department of State began relocating some staff members from the Embassy to the Consulates General in Basrah and Erbil and Iraq Support Unit in Amman. The Embassy remains open and is operating. This Travel Warning supersedes the Travel Warning dated June 11, 2014, to update information on security incidents and to remind U.S. citizens of ongoing security concerns in Iraq, including kidnapping and terrorist violence. The ability of the Embassy to respond to...

President Barack Obama will sign an order banning federal government contractors from discriminating against gay and transgender workers, officials have said. The executive order follows years of pressure from gay rights groups. Mr Obama cannot extend the protection to all American workers, however. The order comes after far broader anti-discrimination legislation stalled in the Republican-led House of Representatives. The executive order will apply only to federal contractors, which employ nearly one-quarter of the US workforce.

There are a couple of significant news items in Ukraine today, and both of them will hike tensions in the region. Earlier today Pro-Russia Rebels Down Ukraine Jet as Fighting Escalates. Pro-Russian rebels shot down a transport plane in eastern Ukraine, killing 49 servicemen and threatening to ratchet up east-west tensions over suspicions President Vladimir Putin is backing the uprising. The killing of the 40 soldiers and nine crew was the deadliest strike on Ukrainian forces since separatists seized government buildings on April 6. The IL-76 aircraft went down as it approached Luhansk airport at 1:10 a.m. local time under...

President Barack Obama spent last weekend on the golf course and on vacation in Palm Springs, California while his National Security team took charge of monitoring the increasing unrest in Iraq, it was revealed on Monday. According to reports filed by journalists on the trip of the president's comings and goings, President Barack Obama spent Saturday afternoon and most of Sunday at exclusive resorts playing golf with White House aides. Meanwhile, National Security Adviser Susan Rice and her team were tasked with coming up with a plan to stop al Qaeda linked terrorist group Islamic State in Iraq and the...

**SNIP** Indeed, when the question of using military force against Iraq was put before the U.S. Congress, 110 Democrats supported the 2002 Joint Resolution, which authorized President Bush to act as he ultimately did. Further, some very outspoken Democrats during that time said these sort of things including President Clinton, Vice President Al Gore, and Senator John F. Kerry. "[W]e urge you, after consulting with Congress, and consistent with the U.S. Constitution and laws, to take necessary actions (including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspect Iraqi sites) to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq's refusal to...