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We usually think of distractions or interruptions as coming form the world around us. But is that really the most common source? Consider the following parable drawn from the stories of the early Desert Fathers and from monastic experience: Sometimes there would be a rush of noisy visitors and the silence of the monastery would be shattered.This would upset the disciples; not the Master, who seemed just as content with the noise as with the silence.To his protesting disciples he said one day, “Silence is not the absence of sound, but the absence of self.” The fact is, our greatest...

Eye and head tracking sensors will make it harder to text while driving General Motors is reportedly installing sensors in its next generation of cars that will detect drivers’ eye and head motions and alert drivers to prolonged moments of distraction...

Eric Holder is instituting the same process in Ferguson Missouri he used in Sanford Florida. The civil rights wing of the DOJ is dispatched into Ferguson. They are officially called the “Community Relations Service” (CRS), and historically -in previous administrations- have been called upon when racial animus is a concern amid a local municipality. However, under the Eric Holder tenure, and as a specific mandate of the current administration, the CRS has been given a different mandate. The CRS is a statutorily protected secret entity within the DOJ, and is now the official racial advocacy network for the professional black...

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- King James has reclaimed his throne in Cleveland. LeBron James stunned the NBA on Friday when he announced his long-awaited free agency decision, choosing to return to the Cleveland Cavaliers and leaving the Miami Heat.

WASHINGTON (AP) — A Libyan militant charged in the 2012 Benghazi attacks was in federal law enforcement custody, the U.S. attorney's office said Saturday. Security at the city's federal courthouse was heightened.

One evening in March, during a visit to Italy, President Obama asked the U.S. ambassador to round up a bunch of—and I quote—“interesting Italians” for a dinner at the ambassadorial residence. The history of the property, the Villa Taverna, goes as far back as the tenth century. Its art collection includes Roman sarcophagi and centuries-old imperial busts. The menu that evening included a variety of pastas, and wines from Tuscany and the regions around Venice. Dinner lasted four hours. In this sumptuous and Baroque setting, amid these beautiful artifacts of long-gone civilizations, enjoying the finest foods and most delicate wines,...

Administration officials showed senators video of Bergdahl to support claims that his health was failing. The Obama administration gave senators a classified briefing Wednesday night on just what thinking went into the prisoner trade to recover Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl from Afghanistan. But that won't end questions from Congress. "This gentleman needs to be looked into, quite extensively," said Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., following the briefing, referring to questions about whether Bergdahl deserted the military. During the classified briefing, senators were shown a roughly minute-and-a-half-long "proof of life" video of Bergdahl, which the Taliban had provided, in which the soldier "didn't...

Just when it seemed like the outrage on the political right over Benghazi had subsided to the point where only the announcement of House hearings put it back in the headlines, the exchange of captive U.S. soldier Bowe Bergdahl for five senior Taliban fighters at Guantanamo Bay came along. Now President Obama finds himself amid another foreign policy and national security controversy with fresh legs that even features Susan Rice — the White House official who played a prominent early role in the Benghazi controversy — making an encore. While it's still too soon to know whether the trade for...

Congratulations, Mr. President! And identical congrats to your sorcerer’s apprentice, National Security Adviser Susan Rice. By trying to sell him as an American hero, you’ve turned a deserter already despised by soldiers in the know into quite possibly the most-hated individual soldier in the history of our military. I have never witnessed such outrage from our troops. Exhibit A: Ms. Rice. In one of the most tone-deaf statements in White House history (we’re making a lot of history here), the national-security advisor, on a Sunday talk show, described Bergdahl as having served “with honor and distinction.” Those serving in uniform...

Chuck Todd told Matt Lauer on Wednesday that the White House was “caught flat-footed” on the backlash against the prisoner swap for Sergeant Bergdahl. “I’ve had a few aides describe it to me as ‘we didn’t know that they were going to Swift Boat Bergdahl’,” Todd said, “And Matt, of course, that’s a reference to that political fight back in 2004 over John Kerry’s military service which became so controversial in that campaign. So there’s some fighting words there.”

WASHINGTON (CBSDC/AP) — White House aides are accusing soldiers who served with Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl are “swift boating” him following his release over the weekend after five years in captivity. NBC News’ Chuck Todd reported Monday that the White House did not expect this sort of vitriolic backlash exchanging five high-level Taliban members held at Guantanamo Bay for Bergdahl, who left his Army post in 2009 in Afghanistan and was subsequently taken captive. “They did not expect this backlash on Bergdahl himself,” Todd reported on NBC’s “Today.” I’ve had a few aides describe it to me as we didn’t...

If America's newly free POW really was a deserter, the White House is in deep trouble.On Sunday, National Security Advisor Susan Rice said former American prisoner of war Bowe Bergdahl served with "honor and distinction" before he was captured by the Taliban in Afghanistan. Two days later, the secretary of the Army said the branch will investigate whether Bergdahl deserted his fellow soldiers -- an allegation that if true would transform the public perception of the POW and drastically complicate the White House's attempts to defend its prisoner exchange, which involved the release of five Taliban operatives from Guantanamo Bay....

(VIDEO-AT-LINK) Todd: White House was 'caught off guard' MSNBC’S Chuck Todd observed Tuesday that the White House was “caught off guard” by the disastrous public roll out of their prisoner exchange for Army Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl. Todd and Andrea Mitchell agreed that the White House had likely thought there would be “some euphoria around this, the only POW that was remaining in Afghanistan, that there would be a rally around the flag. That didn’t happen.” “They were expecting criticisms of Gitmo, criticisms of the detainees that were chosen,” Todd said. “They did not expect this criticism of the attempt to...

INDIANAPOLIS — Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin fired up a crowd of thousands inside Lucas Oil Stadium Saturday night to kick off the National Rifle Association’s “Stand and Fight Rally,” saying Americans’ constitutional rights as envisioned by the founding fathers are under attack and policies like gun-free zones constitute “stupid on steroids.” “They knew that if the Second Amendment goes, the rest of the constitution is not far behind,” she said of the country’s founders. In her approximately 12-minute address, Mrs. Palin also derided what she argued is akin to a ‘blame the messenger’ attitude on gun violence many Americans...

House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Darrell Issa has teamed up with Sen. Lamar Alexander to demand that the Obama administration turn over documents related to the deeply troubled HealthCare.gov. In a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, Issa and Alexander warn that if documents related to the health insurance exchange website are not turned over to both chambers by Oct. 28, the House may move to subpoena them. “If you do not comply with the Committees’ requests by 5:00 pm on October 28, 2013, the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform will be forced to consider...

In a stealthy seaside assault in Somalia, U.S. special forces on Saturday struck out against Islamic extremists who have carried out terrorist attacks in East Africa, before eventually aborting the mission to capture a leading terrorist suspect linked to last month's Nairobi shopping mall attack after a fierce firefight. A U.S. Navy SEAL team swam ashore near a town in southern Somalia before militants of the al-Qaeda-linked terrorist group al-Shabab rose for dawn prayers. The raid on a house in the town of Barawe targeted a specific al-Qaeda suspect related to the mall attack, but the operation did not get...

Two Republican senators who are among President Barack Obama's sharpest foreign policy critics on Saturday blasted a Syrian chemical weapons agreement as "an act of provocative weakness" by America that will embolden enemies such as Iran as it continues its push for a nuclear weapon. The House Democratic leader said the deal, under which Syria will be expected to put its stockpile of chemical weapons under international control before they ultimately are destroyed, represented "significant progress" in efforts by the U.S. to prevent the use of weapons of mass destruction. "What concerns us most is that our friends and enemies...

The US will drop its insistence that a UN resolution on Syria must be backed by military force, officials say, after strong objections from Russia. US and Russian diplomats say the two sides are edging closer to a deal on Syria's chemical arsenal, as talks in Geneva enter a third day. They are thrashing out the technical details of the disarmament process.

Back in 2004, when a NYFD chief reminded the 9/11 Commission that it was never in "anyone's consciousness" that the Twin Towers would fall, he underscored a terrible truth. After 9/11, we entered the Age of the Unthinkable. Seared into our collective consciousness is that the Twin Towers could and did fall. So could the U.S. Capitol, the Golden Gate Bridge and the Superdome. Our children know that which we as children never before imagined -- passenger planes may become guided missiles, and skyscrapers may turn into smoking, twisted rubble. This age of Islamic jihad against the West has indeed...

WASHINGTON — President Obama will not insist on a United Nations resolution threatening to use force to ensure that Syria lives up to its commitment to turn over chemical weapons, but will seek other tangible consequences for Syria if it does not comply, senior administration officials said Friday. Although Mr. Obama reserves the right to order a punitive military strike on his own without United Nations backing if Syria reneges, the officials said he understood that Russia, because of its veto power in the Security Council, would never allow a resolution that authorized such a use of force. France, which...