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On the eve of U.S. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.’s appearance before Congress, a senior Justice Department official said the agency cannot meet the deadline Republican lawmakers have set to turn over more documents on the “Fast and Furious” gun operation or be held in contempt of Congress. Deputy Attorney General James M. Cole said that the Feb. 9 deadline to submit all documents on the botched gun operation set this week by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), chairman of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, was “impossible to meet.”

MEXICO CITY (AP) — A Mexican anti-poverty official has been fired after posting a comment on social media sites suggesting that poor people smell bad. Mexico's anti-poverty agency says Carlos Talavera has been fired as director of outreach brigades in the western city of Uruapan after a Facebook posting of his was re-tweeted on social media sites. The original comment appears to describe an event attended by poor people and reads roughly "truth is this smells impressively bad, poor things."

When comparing and contrasting Biblical Christianity with Mormonism, should one limit consideration of “Mormonism” to what minimalists deem “official” and “binding”? I answer “NO” for a number of reasons: Mormons, even minimalist Mormons, disagree amongst themselves over what constitutes “official” and “binding” doctrine. Some restrict it to recently emphasized teaching via institutional channels (regardless of whether it is in the Standard Works). Some restrict it to the Standard Works alone. Some restrict it to what is recently emphasized by the Church which is ALSO in the Standard Works. Some restrict it to what a particular individual has an emotionally epiphanous...

<p>"I don't really care about the economy. I couldn't care two f*cks about what happens if, you know, we have another Great Depression."</p>

In "An Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal for the Brotherhood in North America," by Mohamed Akram, May 19, 1991, Muslim Brotherhood operatives in the U.S. are told that they "must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and "sabotaging" its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God's religion is made victorious over all other religions." In "Virginia Senate Candidate Honors Hamas Associate" at FrontPage, October 25, Ryan Mauro discusses yet another American politician...

Palestinian Authority’s envoy to Canada was told to leave the country after she tweeted a link to a video urging a “war" to destroy Jews.” The Palestinian Authority envoy to Canada was told to leave the country after she tweeted a link to a video of an Arab girl calling for a “war to raze oppression and injustice to destroy Jews.” The PA official, Linda Sobeh Ali, told Canadian media that she had not seen the video which she sent on Twitter with the notation, ”Check this out.” She apologized but charged that the incident was "intentionally magnified and misinterpreted...

MONROE, Mich. — A blast that turned a vehicle along a Michigan street into a blackened shell and seriously injured an attorney and his two sons was the result of a car bomb, police said Wednesday. Emergency responders rushed to the site of the Tuesday evening explosion near a highway underpass in Monroe, about 35 miles southwest of Detroit, the Monroe Police Department said. The vehicle's three occupants were taken to St. Vincent Medical Center in Toledo, Ohio, about 20 miles south of Monroe. They were listed in serious condition Wednesday. The blast came from a car bomb, Donald Dawkins,...

Senior Palestinian negotiator Nabil Shaath said Wednesday that the Palestinians' statehood bid at the United Nations is the only alternative to violence, stressing that the UN move will give the Palestinians the change to promote their rights. "The UN is the only alternative to violence," Shaath said during a press conference on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly."It will be very costly to us and the Israelis. Our new heroes are Gandhi, Mandela and Martin Luther King."

Officially, China does not wage acts of cyber-warfare against the United States. Unofficially, mounting evidence points to Chinese entities attacking multiple entities in the U.S., from government agencies to private corporations and nonprofits. Now comes a more tangible, damning piece of evidence. Buried in an official military documentary, a six-second clip aired on Chinese TV shows a custom-built computer program launching a cyber-attack from a compromised U.S. IP address. (RELATED TECH: Federal push for cloud technology faces skepticism) The Epoch Times broke the story early this morning, revealing that a Chinese military university uses software to launch attacks against websites...

Because BBM, which rioters are using to communicate, is not traceable by cops, PM David Lammy says it’s “one of reasons why unsophisticated criminals are outfoxing an otherwise sophisticated police force.” LONDON – What, you might wonder, is the modern urban guerilla’s rioting weapon of choice? A machete? You might think so. But for most of the youngsters looting and ransacking the streets of London for the past three nights, cement blocks, iron bars and supermarket trolleys seemed to do the job of smashing in shop windows just as well. A balaclava? Perhaps. Per the multiple videos posted on Twitter...

In a response filed yesterday to a federal judge’s order May 11, an FBI official offered no denials about the existence of video images captured by more than 20 surveillance cameras operating prior to 9:02 a.m. on April 19, 1995, in the vicinity of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City. Instead, he explained that officials at the bureau merely cannot find the tapes and raised the possibility that they “might have been misfiled and thus could be located somewhere other than in the OKBOMB file (though it would be impossible to know where).”

A top official from the U.S. Black Chamber, Inc. – the Obama-backed, rival upstart to Harry Alford’s National Black Chamber of Commerce – has a checkered past and faces criminal charges from allegations he exploited a Hurricane Katrina victim. According to Raleigh, N.C.-based WRAL, which broke the story, Brandon Trainer, who led the North Carolina Regional Black Chamber of Commerce and served as treasurer for the U.S. Black Chamber, skipped town in 2006 when he was charged with defrauding a Hurricane Katrina victim out of $1500.

Comments follow statements by Donald Trump questioning legitimacy of president's birth record The Hawaiian state health official who personally reviewed Barack Obama's original birth certificate has affirmed again that the document is "real" and denounced "conspiracy theorists" in the so-called "birther" movement for continuing to spread bogus claims about the issue. Other political news of note Ryan defends plan for Medicare redesign House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan defended his plan to redesign the government’s biggest health insurance plans on NBC’s Meet the Press Sunday, saying it was necessary to avert a sovereign debt crisis. Hawaii official denounces 'ludicrous' birther...

I mean, yes, they feel that way, but you're just not supposed to say it. While I love the ClimateWire headline -- "U.S. vows continuing effort toward a 17% emission cut" (subscription required), sort of like I vow to continue my effort toward hitting fewer pedestrians when I drive...not to hit fewer pedestrians when I drive...ah, J-school -- the following excerpt from the piece is simply beyond belief. Speaking to a U.N ‘Kyoto II' negotiating group in Bangkok, U.S. Deputy Special Envoy for Climate Change Jonathan Pershing "noted in a series of slides that U.S. emissions have declined about 8.7...

(CNSNews.com) –Jamie Gorelick, a former Clinton administration official who has reportedly made the Obama administration's to become considering the next director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), was paid more than $26 million in total compensation as a top executive at Fannie Mae--before taxpayers had to bail out the mortgage giant. Gorelick, who left the Clinton Justice Department in 1997 to work for Fannie Mae CEO Franklin Raines, was paid $26,466,834 in salary, bonuses, performance pay and stock options from 1998 to 2003, according to the Report of the Special Examination of Fannie Mae (2006), conducted by the Office...

A key U.S. official landed in Cairo on Monday to meet with military leaders and discuss the extra aid promised by Washington to help Egypt with its democratic transition. Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs William Burns arrived days after Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton announced Egypt would be receiving an extra $150 million to help with the political transition. The $1.5 billion in foreign aid the U.S. gives annually to Egypt, which is unchanged in the State Department's budget.

An Obama administration official on Wednesday confirmed that four states -- including Florida, Tennessee and Ohio -- have been granted waivers from the regulatory requirements of the national health care law. Steve Larsen, director of the Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight (CCIIO) at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, confirmed the news under questioning from Rep. Cliff Stearns at an oversight hearing for the House Energy and Commerce committee.

President Obama will offer three plans to phase out the troubled home lending agencies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, an administration official said Tuesday night. The plans range from a full government guarantee of the housing market to removing nearly all federal backstops for housing loans, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The plans were first reported Tuesday night by The Wall Street Journal.