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U.S. embassies in a slew of Muslim countries will close on Sunday due to a credible and serious security threat. The embassies will close in response to "a specific threat against a U.S. embassy or consulate," according to a senior U.S. official, who called it a "concerted effort" to target an embassy or consulate in a Muslim country. "We just don't know which one," the official told ABC News. "There could be other targets, not just embassies," another U.S. official said. The threat is considered to be throughout the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia. Some of the biggest...

- FrontPage Magazine - http://frontpagemag.com - John Kerry’s Israel FixationPosted By Ronn Torossian On July 17, 2013 @ 12:25 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 5 Comments A must-read article this month in Esquire Magazine, entitled “Why Are We So Obsessed with Israel? Hint: It’s Not Doing Any Good,” wisely examines the world’s obsession with the Jewish state. As columnist Stephen Marche wisely observes, “The obsession has gone on long enough.”Marche rightfully notes an unfair obsession with Israel.  Some pearls: Israel has made it clear that it will deal with a nuclear Iran itself, and frankly, when all is said and...

Embassy Row: Gay diplomat an ‘insult’ Church leaders in culturally conservative Dominican Republic are outraged that President Obama nominated an openly homosexual activist to serve as ambassador to the Caribbean nation. Cardinal Nicolas de Jesus Lopez, the Roman Catholic archbishop of the Dominican capital of Santo Domingo, Bishop Pablo Cedano and the Rev. Cristobal Cardozo, leader of the Dominican Evangelical Fraternity, are urging President Danilo Medino to reject the nominee, Chicago lawyer James Brewster. “It’s an insult to good Dominican customs,” Father Cardozo said last week. Bishop Cedano denounced the nomination for showing “a lack of respect,” and added cryptically:...

Exclusive: Whistle-blower Says State Department Trying to Bully Her Into SilenceThe State Department investigator who accused colleagues last week of using drugs, soliciting prostitutes, and having sex with minors says that Foggy Bottom is now engaged in an "intimidation" campaign to stop her.

A former senior investigator with the State Department´s criminal investigative unit has turned whistleblower and alleged to both the media and Congress that senior staff within State Department covered up investigations into appalling behavior committed by members of Hillary Clinton´s security staff and our ambassador to Belgium. One of those alleged to have interfered was Cheryl Mills, Hillary´s chief of staff. The case in which Clinton enforcer Mills allegedly intervened centered upon Brett McGurk, Obama’s nominee to be US ambassador to Iraq. McGurk’s expected nomination fell apart after a computer hack exposed

In a video recorded message released on Friday, Secretary of State John Kerry said that U.S. diplomats in every corner of the globe are working to help local lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender organizations. Advancing the LGBT cause, Kerry said, is "central to the United States' commitment to promoting human rights." "I wanted to take a moment to join people around the world in celebrating Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride month," Kerry said.

CARACAS — Two employees of the US embassy in Venezuela were shot and wounded early Tuesday in the capital Caracas, in a murky incident that local media and a police source said took place at a strip club. "We can confirm that two members of the US embassy in Caracas were injured during an incident early this morning," State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell told reporters in Washington. "Medical staff inform us that their injuries are not life-threatening," he added, noting that they were hurt at "some sort of a social spot" but without specifying the venue or nature of their...

To mark the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia (IDAHO), the U.S. Embassy in Tallinn on May 17 will display the rainbow flag on the Embassy building at Kentmanni 20, Tallinn. IDAHO is an annual event celebrated internationally to counter homophobia and raise awareness of the human rights discrimination faced by Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) individuals. “Flying the flag,” Ambassador Levine said, “is a simple statement of our support for the LGBT community and its struggle for equal rights.” Noting the substantial progress being made, Ambassador Levine added that much of the world has come to understand that...

THE spectacle in Washington over the terrorist attack last Sept. 11 in Benghazi, Libya, is focusing on the wrong thing. The biggest American failure wasn’t in the tactical mistakes about security at the diplomatic mission where Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans died. It lay in thinking that an intervention in Libya would be easier or less costly than it has proved to be — a judgment that led the United States to think it could go in light, get out fast and focus on the capital, Tripoli, without paying enough attention to Libya’s eastern provinces, where the...

- FrontPage Magazine - http://frontpagemag.com - Blow-by-Blow: How Obama & Hillary Left Americans to DiePosted By Arnold Ahlert On May 9, 2013 @ 12:55 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 7 Comments Wednesday on Capitol Hill, three impeccable witnesses offered the clearest evidence to date that the Obama administration’s response to Benghazi before, during and after the terrorist attack that claimed the lives of Ambassador Christopher Stevens, State Department employee Sean Smith, and former Navy SEALs Glen A. Doherty and Tyrone S. Woods, was a deadly combination of ineptitude, political calculations, and outright lying. Mark Thompson, acting deputy assistant Secretary of State for counterterrorism; Greg...

Is the chief of North Vietnam getting ready to spew more venom against the US?

If you have felt disappointed because Secretary of State John Kerry hasn’t yet joined most of his Obama administration colleagues to offer an ignorant opinion on the gun debate, well, this post is for you. While on a trip to Asia ostensibly to deal with the crisis on the Korean peninsula, Kerry took time out to poll his hosts on their views of gun control: (VIDEO-AT-LINK) It’s difficult to know where to start with this nonsense. First, as we have repeatedly pointed out, gun deaths have declined each year since the expiration of the nonsensical “assault weapons” ban in 2007,...

KABUL, Afghanistan – Anne Smedinghoff had a quiet ambition and displayed a love of global affairs from an early age, joining the U.S. Foreign Service straight out of college and volunteering for missions in perilous locations worldwide. So when the 25-year-old suburban Chicago woman was killed Saturday in southern Afghanistan — the first American diplomat to die on the job since last year's attack in Benghazi, Libya — her family took solace in the fact that she died doing something she loved.

Caroline Kennedy, the daughter of President John F. Kennedy, will be nominated to be the next ambassador to Japan, the Washington Post reports. "Looks like there will be a Camelot East — make that Far East: Caroline Kennedy is heading to Tokyo to be the U.S. ambassador. Kennedy, whose support for President Obama during his 2008 campaign was seen as crucial, had been widely talked about as a candidate for the plum diplomatic post, but now things have apparently been firmed up," reports the Post.

Stipulating that foreign aid can be an important part of American foreign policy, and further that trade is an important component of U.S. foreign policy; Secretary of State John Kerry made two really important mistakes in his maiden speech, delivered to a fawning audience of American university students. The first was in the definition of America's challenges in the second decade of the 21st Century. Mr. Kerry posited: "Our challenge is to tame the worst impulses of globalization even as we harness its ability to spread information and possibility, to offer even the most remote place on Earth the same...

Will the Swift Boat Vets oppose Kerry as Secretary of State? I can't think of a worse choice for the position (Except Hillary Clinton)! Kerry? That's not scraping the bottom of the barrel. It's lifting the barrel and going underneath!

Senate confirms Kerry for State in 94-3 vote By Julian Pecquet and Ramsey Cox - 01/29/13 04:32 PM ET The Senate approved one of its own to become President Obama's second secretary of State in a near-unanimous vote on Tuesday. Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) sailed through the chamber in a 94-to-3 vote, with Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) and Texas Sens. Ted Cruz (R) and John Cornyn (R) casting the only “no” votes. Kerry's approval to replace Hillary Clinton was a foregone conclusion after Republicans urged Obama to nominate him in lieu of his ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice....

"Obama chose Kerry, 69, the son of a diplomat, decorated Vietnam veteran and 2004 Democratic presidential candidate, to succeed Clinton, who is stepping down after four years. The senator had pined for the top diplomatic job that went to Clinton after Obama's 2008 election"

John O’Neill, the founder of the Swift Boat Vets for Truth, told Fox News’ Sean Hannity that the group would resurface and protest the nomination of Senator John Kerry should he be nominated as Secretary of Defense of Secretary of State...... O’Neill said that Kerry wouldn’t be suited for serving as Secretary of Defense, but would be “a much better guy at hauling up the white flag.”

The State Department on Tuesday slammed John Bolton, George W. Bush's controversial ambassador to the United Nations, after he accused Secretary of State Hillary Clinton of faking an illness to avoid testifying this week about the Benghazi attack. Bolton implied on Fox News on Monday night that Clinton lied about her illness to avoid saying anything potentially embarrassing that could come back to haunt her should she choose to run for president in 2016. The State Department put out a statement over the weekend from doctors at Mount Kisco Medical Group and George Washington University saying that Clinton “developed a...