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<p>The White House allowed the parents of Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl to take part in a series of secure video conferences with State Department and intelligence officials and senior military commanders, according to a published report.</p>

Building on a long week of anti-coal attacks by the media and the Environmental Protection Agency, ABC’s June 5 “World News” revived another attack on the coal industry. ABC hyped a 2013 investigation that it conducted in partnership with the Soros-funded Center for Public Integrity (CPI). It alleged that the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions had essentially been bought off by coal companies to ignore cases of black lung disease in miners. ABC’s David Muir declared a “victory a long time in the making,” Johns Hopkins’ Dr. Paul Wheeler for allegedly “working for the coal company.” (video after break) On October 30, 2013, ABCNews.com...

Instead of being angered at the muzzling of Bergdahl’s platoon, some of Obama’s more radical lapdogs have opted to attack the brave men who were first-hand witnesses to Bergdahl’s betrayal. While some in the press and the Obama administration have attacked these soldiers directly by opining that they were “long on psychopaths and short on leadership,” or by accusing them of “swift-boating,” for example; others have opted for the more politically safe path of attacking those who have empowered these men to tell their stories. Although the members of Bergdahl’s platoon are clearly the most qualified to tell the tale,...

Afghan presidential frontrunner escapes bomb attack KABUL, Afghanistan -- Two blasts struck the convoy of Afghan presidential candidate Abdullah Abdullah as it left a campaign event at a wedding hall in the capital Kabul on Friday, killing at least six people but leaving the candidate himself unharmed, the Interior Ministry said. Interior Ministry spokesman Sediq Sediqqi told CBS News' Mukhtar Ahmad that 22 more people were wounded in the attack, which saw a suicide bomber detonate his explosives followed by a roadside bomb blast. In a televised statement shortly after the attack, Abdullah, the presidential front runner and former Foreign...

It sickens me that the Obama administration has been justifying ransoming terrorist leaders for a probable deserter by reciting the creed that America never leaves a man behind. The Obama administration frequently leaves men (and even children) to suffer and die, with minimal apparent effort on their behalf. A partial list:

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...

TOPICS: -- Jay Carney Resigns -- President Obama -- Eric Shinseki Resigns -- Illegal Aliens -- NBC's Richard Engel -- Tea Party Candidates -- CIA Chief Outed by White House -- Donald Sterling

The Taliban prisoner swap for Bowe Bergdahl might do some good, but fear and anger are getting in the way of a realistic appraisal.Richard Hofstadter opened his 1968 essay, "The Paranoid Style in American Politics," with this line: "American politics has often been an arena for angry minds." He continues, "Behind this I believe there is a style of mind that is far from new and that is not necessarily right-wing. I call it the paranoid style simply because no other word adequately evokes the sense of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy that I have in mind." One wonders...

The NRA’s strong statement reprimanding a few people for carrying long guns into restaurants was bound to get media attention. Bloomberg’s Moms Demand Action and much of the media quickly jumped in and described various restaurants as “asking customers to leave their guns at home.” But their assertions couldn’t be more misleading. The headline at USA Today saying “No Guns Inside” or at MSNBC and Huffington Post saying “No-Gun Policies” are simply wrong. A big deal has been made of Starbucks, Jack in the Box, Chipotle, Wendy's, Applebee's, Chili’s and Sonic’s supposed bans on guns, with Bloomberg’s groups declaring “victory.”...

For all of the talk about "hope" and "change" — and both were powerful slogans for Obama in 2008 — the core of Obama's appeal to many independents and even some Republicans was the idea that he would restore competence back to the White House after President George W. Bush's eight years, years defined by mistaken intelligence about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and a mishandling of the devastating aftermath of Hurricane Katrina on the Gulf Coast. Obama openly embraced the idea that he was the anti-Bush on nothing much more than his commitment to putting the best people in...

Flashback: A reminder about Bowe Bergdahl’s desertion problem By Michelle Malkin • May 31, 2014 08:51 PM While many people jumped aboard the Bowe Bergdahl bandwagon, I was not one of them. His release today in exchange for five Taliban commanders who had been in custody at Gitmo underscores troubling questions that have persisted since his alleged abduction. Longtime readers will recall questions raised here about the circumstances of Bergdahl’s disappearance. Here’s a flashback from my July 20, 2009 blog post:

One great big GOP/Fox News rebuke. That’s the early word on Hillary Clinton’s Benghazi explanation in her new book, “Hard Choices,” out on June 10. She’s “defiant,” not “defensive.” She blames her Ben-ghazi critics for exploiting the “tragedy over and over as a political tool” against her that has nothing to do with justice for the four Americans who died there. Since that’s an accurate summation of Republicans’ cynical agenda on Benghazi — and since an awful lot of Americans can see that clearly — I’d say those who think Ben-ghazi will sink Clinton in 2016, well, they better think...

Starting August 1, the left-wing Ohio newspaper, The Toledo Blade, intends to lay off about 130 of its unionized employees due to a permanent shutdown of its Toledo production center that handles printing and inserting. ... In 2013, The Blade lost $8.5 million and has been losing millions for years. As of now there are no plans that will affect the advertising and news-gathering departments. In 2012, The Toledo Blade urged it readers to re-elect President Obama, arguing in part that "He has dealt effectively with economic recession at home

Since Monday, April 14, ABC's Claire Shipman has been touring the network and cable news networks to promote her new book that she co-wrote with Katty Kay entitled "The Confidence Code: The Science and Art of Self Assurance-What Women Should Know." Despite the eight television appearances Shipman has made since last Monday, only two interviews openly acknowledged her marriage to White House Press Secretary Jay Carney.

Have you noticed all the talk about so-called white privilege over the last couple months? All of a sudden, out of nowhere, white privilege has become the latest cause for the progressive left. Our moral betters on the left are telling white people to “check your privilege.” All this phrase really means is shut up and go away. The whole point of telling people to check their privilege is to stifle debate and silence criticism of progressive race baiting. This includes Jewish Holocaust survivors, who were told by faux intellectual Toure Neblett to “check their privilege.” Apparently in Neblett’s world...

On May 26 the New York Daily News launched a series about the Santa Barbara tragedy titled "America in Denial." It is a perfect demonstration of how the left plans to deny or downplay many facts in the horrid Santa Barbara attacks while perverting others so they can push gun control.

According to the AP, a CIA agent’s name was leaked by the White House . The AP calls it an “embarrassing flub” even though it was a crime when an aide in the Bush administration leaked the name of part-time agent Valerie Plame. What’s given little attention in the story is the fact that the Washington Post reporter who wrote the story sent his copy to the White House to be checked for “accuracy.” ... First of all, any reporter worth his salt would not depend on the subject he’s reporting on to verify accuracy. That’s just crazy. He’d make...

HARRIS-PERRY: "All right so let's review the whole story. Wealthy owners? Check. Profit made from the sale of black bodies? Check. Racial angst? Mmm, check. We're going to have more on the case for reparations after this." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osKA0bvELq0 For the record, NBA players are the highest paid professional athletes in America, easily surpassing all other major team sports. According to Forbes, the average salary in the NBA in 2012 was $5.15 million a year. With the average career lasting 4.8 years, that equates to $24.7 million in total compensation — this is the “average.” The NBA’s top player, Kobe Bryant,...

It's not just Republicans saying President Barack Obama is out of touch as the VA scandal continues to grow. CNN's John King on Sunday's "Inside Politics," noted that "More and more Democrats in key 2014 races are calling for the president to get a spine, they say, and fire his Veterans Affairs secretary" Eric Shinseki. "And what more and more Democrats are saying privately is scathing, calling the president and his team detached, flat-footed, even incompetent."