Free Republic

On paper, it was a promotion. But Central Intelligence Agency Director Leon Panetta turned down a White House offer to become the next director of national intelligence anyway. President Barack Obama last week fired his intelligence chief, Dennis Blair, without an immediate successor teed up. People familiar with the matter said the White House had expected Mr. Blair would stick around until a replacement was found. Mr Blair declined. The struggle to find a successor has highlighted the challenges of filling an ill-defined job fraught with political tripwires. Mr. Panetta is one of a number of people who have turned...

Sen. Christopher "Kit" Bond isn't going quietly. In his final days as a U.S. senator before retiring, Bond marched repeatedly to the Senate floor to deliver policy addresses on matters ranging from energy to national security to global trade. He even made a speech entitled "Rare Earth," a lesson on the strategic value of metallic elements in Missouri's soil. He recently introduced a bill to spend $50 million to secure a rare earth supply chain — even though he won't be in the Senate to shepherd it. On Dec. 14, Bond, R-Mo., stood to deliver his farewell address, a panoramic...

The Obama administration has quietly forged ahead with its proposal to sell $60 billion worth of fighter jets and attack helicopters to Saudi Arabia unhampered by Congress, despite questions raised in legislative inquiries and in an internal congressional report about the wisdom of the deal. The massive arms deal would be the single largest sale of weapons to a foreign nation in the history of the U.S., outfitting Saudi Arabia with a fully modernized, potent new air force. "Our six-decade-long security relationship with Saudi Arabia is a primary security pillar in the region," Defense Sec. Robert M. Gates and Secretary...

WASHINGTON (AFP) – A top US lawmaker on Monday blasted the source of a huge cache of leaked military documents on the Afghan war and said such leakers belong in the "orange jump suits" of jailed criminals. "It is shocking that any American, much less someone in the Pentagon, would betray his country and possibly put our soldiers at risk by leaking information on the ongoing war in Afghanistan," said the senior Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Kit Bond. "The damage to our national security caused by leaks like this won't stop until we see more perpetrators in orange...

Republicans were up in arms last week — and rightly so — over the outrageous accusation by John Brennan, President Obama’s top anti-terrorism advisor, that his critics “only serve the goals of al Qaeda.” Sen. Christopher Bond (R-Mo.), vice chairman of the Intelligence Committee, said Brennan “needs to go” because he’s no longer “credible” on security matters. That’s putting it mildly. Indeed, there are several reasons — apart from his shamefully partisan name-calling — to question Brennan’s effectiveness. Start with the near-tragedy of the Christmas would-be airline bomber — who was foiled only by alert passengers: Brennan has admitted that...

Here is video of Missouri GOP Sen. Kit Bond talking to Greta Van Susteren, where he said the Obama Administration is "going back to a pre-9/11 mentality": "But what my real beef is with the administration that seems to be going back to a pre-9/11 mentality, where they treat terrorists as ordinary criminals. That was deadly in the past, and I'm afraid it will be again." Bond has been very critical of the way the Obama Administration has handled the "Underwear Bomber," in reading him his "Miranda Rights" instead of getting all the information possible out of him about other...

Little has changed this month in Missouri's race for the seat being vacated by retiring Republican Senator Kit Bond. The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of likely voters in the state shows Republican Roy Blunt leading Democrat Robin Carnahan 49% to 42%. Just three percent (3%) of Missouri voters would opt for some other candidate, while six percent (6%) are undecided at this point. In January, Blunt held a 49% to 43% lead over Carnahan, who is currently Missouri's secretary of state. That survey marked a shift in Blunt’s favor from a poll conducted in December, when Carnahan held a...

Sen. Kit Bond (R-Mo.) called for the removal of the White House's top counterterrorism official Tuesday, intensifying Republican criticism of the administration's handling of the attempted terrorist attack on Christmas Day. Bond said John Brennan, a special assistant to the president for counterterrorism, needs to resign because of the politcal role he has played. Brennan "needs to go," Bond told the National Review Online, a position spokeswoman Shana Marchio confirmed. "Our problem now is that we have to wonder whether we can trust Brennan after he has been a mouthpiece for the political arm that I thought only came out...

Holder's decision to Mirandize the Christmas bomber was bad enough. Telling the world he was talking again waseven worse Security: The administration says the Christmas bomber is now cooperating with authorities. We thought they got all the information he had in a 50-minute chat. So just why are we letting our enemies know he's talking? In any war, it's vitally important that you know what your enemy is planning and doing, just as it's important that your actions and plans remain secret. And when you know about your enemy's plans it's important they don't know that you know. We were...

The ranking Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo., dismissed the White House’s call for him to apologize for alleging that the administration leaked information about Umar Farouk Abdulmuttalab for political reasons. "After telling me to keep my mouth shut, the White House discloses sensitive information in an effort to defend a dangerous and unpopular decision to Mirandize Abdulmutallab and I’m supposed to apologize?" Sen. Bond said in a paper statement today. Bond’s statement followed White House press secretary Robert Gibbs’ strongly-worded suggestion today that the Senator owed an apology to the law enforcement community and those...

A Rally and Lobby Day at the Missouri Capital will be held on January 27th, 2010 to support legislation introduced into the Missouri House and the Missouri Senate supporting Missouri Tax Reform. The rally and lobby event is in support of (HJR-56) and companion Senate Bill (SJR--29) which will, if passed, go to a vote of the people to change the Missouri Constitution to ABOLISH the State Income Tax, and replace the income tax with just under a one cent sales tax increase. Studies conducted by the Show Me Institute have proven that Missouri is losing substantial economic development opportunity...

Here is video of Missouri Sen. Christopher "Kit" Bond reading his takeoff on "The Night Before Christmas" - "Twas the Congress before Christmas." . . . (VIDEO)

WASHINGTON (AFP) – US Senate Republicans on Friday pulled out of a bipartisan investigation into controversial "war on terror" detentions and interrogations, including tactics widely condemned as torture. The move by the opposition party dealt a sharp blow to the Senate Intelligence Committee's efforts to find out exactly what methods were used when and whether they paid off -- without prosecuting witnesses or agents thought to have committed abuses. Senator Kit Bond, the panel's top Republican, blamed Attorney General Eric Holder's investigation into alleged CIA abuse of detainees, which he said made it impossible for current or former CIA officials...

Here is a video report saying Missouri Sen. Kit Bond has sent a letter to the head of the "Senate Green Jobs Committee" calling for an investigation into the appointment of Van Jones. The report contains some video of Jones making his outrageous attacks on President Bush, and then talks to Jeff Birnbaum of the Washington Times. Birnbaum says his sources say Jones is "not gone yet," but he feels it may be close since White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs did not really "back Jones," but instead only pointed out Jones "still works in this administration." . . ....

This isn't going to quiet any time soon. Now Sen. Kit Bond (R-Mo.), a top member of the subcommittee that oversees green jobs, wants a congressional hearing on Van Jones, the Obama environmental czar who's under fire for his past affiliation with the 9/11 conspiracy "truthers" and for calling Republicans "a**holes" in a video before he was appointed to the Obama administration. Bond just released a letter he wrote to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), the chairman of the Green Jobs and New Economy Subcommittee, saying Jones "is becoming increasingly erratic and unstable as reflected by incendiary comments and repugnant associations...

KANSAS CITY, MO - Three Republican senators came to Children's Mercy Hospital Monday to meet with health care professionals. Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell said we should focus on only the problems that need fixing and not revamp the whole thing. Senator McConnell joined Senators John McCain and Kit Bond before an invited crowd of mostly health professionals on Monday. "We have committed an act of generational death by laying on our children, grandchildren these multi-trillions of dollars," Sen. McCain said. "All of it, it strikes me argues once again for a much more targeted, incremental approach to health care...

Sen. Kit Bond (Mo.), the senior Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, ripped the Obama administration Monday over its proposal to create an enforcement team to question suspected terrorists. The program, known as the High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group (HIG), would operate out of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), under direct White House oversight. It will be overseen by the National Security Council. President Barack Obama approved the elite unit last week, which will be made up of intelligence and law enforcement officials. Traditionally the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has taken the lead interrogating suspected terrorists, but its practices have...

Rep. Roy Blunt (R-MO), the likely 2010 GOP nominee for Senate in this perennial swing state, says he doesn't want to talk anymore about whether President Obama was born in the United States, the Springfield News-Leader reports. But Blunt still doesn't seem to be giving up on it as a legitimate issue, either. Blunt said last week that "I don't have any reason not to believe" that Obama is a natural-born citizen -- but at the same time he said the Birthers had a "legitimate question" about Obama's birth certificate. Well, the local media in Missouri is now asking him...

Senator Christopher S. Bond of Missouri, a Republican who is retiring after four terms in the Senate, said on Wednesday that he would vote to confirm Judge Sonia Sotomayor, President Obama’s nominee for the Supreme Court, despite some disagreements with some of her rulings and public statements. “I do agree that Judge Sotomayor has proven herself a well-qualified jurist,” Mr. Bond said on the Senate floor. “I do agree that she has proven herself as a talented and accomplished student, federal prosecutor, corporate litigator, federal trial judge, and federal appeals court judge.”

Demonstrations in the wake of Iran's presidential election are a sign that country's dissidents want the U.S. to get involved in the disputed contest, Sen. Kit Bond (R-Mo.) asserted Monday. Bond, the ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, pushed back against President Obama's claim that the election is not a U.S. issue, and urged the administration to speak out more forcefully in favor of Iranian dissidents."We didn't have anything to do with this uprising; we're not trying to tell them who they should select," Bond said on CNBC Monday morning. "But when they have such obvious election fraud and...