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State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki issued a press release denouncing the "enemies of Islam " following car bombings in Baghdad that appear to have been timed to target Shi'ite "festivities marking the end of Ramadan." Reuters reported that the bombings consisted of "twelve separate blasts targeting markets, busy shopping streets, and parks." The explosions killed almost 80 people. The August 10 press release on the State Department website reads: The United States condemns in the strongest possible terms the cowardly attacks... in Baghdad. These attacks were aimed at families celebrating the Eid al-Fitr holiday that marks the end of the...

The State Department on Tuesday ordered non-essential personnel at the U.S. Embassy in Yemen to leave the country following the threat by al-Qaida that has triggered temporary shutdowns of 19 American diplomatic posts across the Middle East and Africa. The department said in a travel warning that it had ordered the departure of non-emergency U.S. government personnel from Yemen "due to the continued potential for terrorist attacks" and said U.S. citizens in Yemen should leave immediately because of an "extremely high" security threat level. "As staff levels at the Embassy are restricted, our ability to assist U.S. citizens in an...

The Muslim Brotherhood announced that it held a meeting with an American delegation on Saturday, including the U.S. ambassador reviled among the Tamarod movement for cozying up with the Islamists. “At the invitation of the Assistant Secretary of State William Burns, and in the presence of the U.S. Ambassador in Egypt and the European Union special representative Bernardino León, a meeting with the Anti-Coup, Pro-Democracy National Alliance was held in the Four Seasons Hotel, Cairo, at 11AM on Saturday, August 3, 2013,” Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood said on its official website. “We strongly reject foreign interference in Egypt’s internal affairs, and

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The 95-year-old resident of a Park Forest senior living community who died after a Friday confrontation with police was killed by the bean-bag rounds police fired at him, the Cook County medical examiner's office determined following an autopsy today. The Cook County medical examiner's office said that the cause of death of John Warna was hemoperitoneum – bleeding in the stomach area from blunt force trauma of the abdomen after he was shot with a bean bag gun.

<p>A proposal backed by several Colorado counties to form a new state called North Colorado is getting public support.</p> <p>More than four dozen people showed up Thursday at the first public meeting to discuss a proposal to form a 51st state. Nearly all of them said they support secession. The Greeley Tribune reports people from Weld, Morgan, Logan, Sedgwick, Phillips, Washington, Yuma and Kit Carson counties are included in the discussion.</p>

(CNSNews.com) – The State Department through its Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs is planning to spend $95,000 to provide vocational training to Haitian inmates in textile production and assembly. “The applicant should demonstrate an ability to conduct job training on clothing production (including skills such as sewing, tailoring, and/or clothing assembly) within individual prisons in Haiti’s Ouest Department. This training should be hands-on and allow prisoners to get real practice working with textile materials,” the grant said. The International Narcotics and Law Enforcement (INL) specifically targeted the textile industry, “which is projected to grow in Haiti as...

<p>SANFORD -- After five weeks of trial and 56 witnesses, few legal observers believed prosecutors came close to proving Sanford neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman committed second-degree murder when he shot and killed Trayvon Martin in February 2012.</p> <p>So for many legal analysts, it was no surprise that jurors rejected even a lesser “compromise” verdict of manslaughter, acquitting Zimmerman outright of all criminal charges and deciding he acted in a reasonable way to protect his own life.</p>

This past Friday's jobs report showed continued strength in jobs numbers for state and local governments, led by the latter. This year, local governments have added 45,000 jobs, which may not sound like much, but municipalities had lost jobs in nearly every preceding month going back to the summer of 2008. (Total US nonfarm employment, by contrast, has been growing since February 2010).   But just as stability has returned to the state and local employment picture, borrowing costs have started to climb.  Ben Bernanke's June speech that the Fed is considering taking its thumb off the scales of...

International agreements to lower greenhouse gases like the Kyoto Protocol have proven to be unenforceable, but zoning laws have real teeth. Thus global warming activists have begun to work on the municipal and state level to pass zoning laws that mandate "net-zero" greenhouse gas emissions in new construction, referred to as Net-Zero or "Zero Energy Building" (ZEB) or "Zero Net Energy" (ZNE).

State Department officials spent $630,000 to get more Facebook "likes," prompting employees to complain to a government watchdog that the bureau was "buying fans" in social media, the agency´s inspector general says. The department´s Bureau of International Information Programs spent the money to increase its "likes" count between 2011 and March 2013. "Many in the bureau criticize the advertising campaigns as ´buying fans´ who may have once clicked on an ad or ´liked´ a photo but have no real interest in the topic and have never engaged further," the inspector general reported. The spending increased the bureau´s

From massive NSA spying, to IRS targeting of the administration's political opponents, to collection and sharing of our health care information as part of Obamacare, it seems every day we learn of another assault on our privacy. Sadly, this week the Senate took another significant, if little-noticed, step toward creating an authoritarian surveillance state. Buried in the immigration bill is a national identification system called mandatory E-Verify. The Senate did not spend much time discussing E-Verify, and what little discussion took place was mostly bipartisan praise for its effectiveness as a tool for preventing illegal immigrants from obtaining employment. It...

A landmark Supreme Court ruling that struck down a key part of the Voting Rights Act has set up a stand-off between Republican-led states and the Obama administration over controversial voting laws that until now had been stalled. The 5-4 ruling on Tuesday addressed a 1960s-era provision that largely singled out states and districts in the South -- those with a history of discrimination -- and required them to seek federal permission to change their voting laws. The court ruled that the formula determining which states are affected was unconstitutional. ********************** Attorney General Eric Holder warned states against going too...

Are the one-man diplomatic stylings of newly-appointed Secretary of State John Kerry perhaps getting a little too grandiose, even for the White House’s liking? So reports the Associated Press, and it is certainly true that, in just the first four months of his tenure, John Kerry has made for himself a schedule that keeps him all kinds of busy traveling hither and yon. Kerry’s long-term ambitions for the top job at State were hardly ever a secret, and it sounds like he might be taking himself just a bit too seriously in some White House officials’ estimation: Since succeeding Hillary...

Benjamin Wiker is a senior fellow at the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology, a contributor to Catholic World Report, and the author of several books, including the recently published Worshipping the State: How Liberalism Became Our State Religion (Regnery, 2013). He spoke with CWR about his book. CWR: Isn’t the title of your book hyperbolic and simply meant to stir up interest? Can it really be argued that anyone, at least in the United States, really worships the state? Whatever do you mean by that?  Wiker: Well, it’s certainly meant to stir up interest! Do people in the...

A professor at a community college in Tennessee allegedly ordered students in her general psychology class to wear “Rainbow Coalition” ribbons for an entire day to advertise support for the advancement of gay and lesbian political causes. The professor, Linda Brunton, informed her students at Columbia State Community College that opponents of gay marriage are “uneducated bigots” who “attack homosexuals with hate,” reports Fox News Radio. Travis Barham, an attorney with Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative Christian legal organization, has sent a letter to Columbia State’s president on behalf of several students in Brunton’s class. The letter seeks an apology...

State Dept. spokeswoman Jen Psaki, the paid liar from the Obama campaign, refused to answer the question of whether the higher-ups in the State Dept. stopped the investigation into one of their ambassadors regarding prostitution:

Uncovered documents show the U.S. State Department may have covered up allegations of illegal behavior ranging from sexual assaults to an underground drug ring. CBS News reports that is has unearthed documents from the Diplomatic Security Service (DSS), an internal watchdog agency, that implicate the State Department in a series of misconducts worldwide. The memo, reported by CBS News’ John Miller, cited eight specific examples, including allegations that a State Department security official in Beirut “engaged in sexual assaults” with foreign nationals hired as embassy guards ...

The State Department May Have Covered Up Incidents Of Sexual Assault And Engaging With Prostitutes Brett LoGiurato June 10, 2013, 11:49 AM The State Department might have covered up damning incidents involving sexual assault and engaging with prostitutes, according to a report from CBS' John Miller. Miller cited an internal State Department Inspector General's memo in which "several recent investigations were influenced, manipulated, or simply called off" to protect careers and avoid scandal. The memo revealed eight specific incidents, including alleged sexual assaults and engagement with prostitutes by employees as low-ranked as security officers and as highly ranked as...

With apologies to Sheriff John* and “The Birthday Party Polka,” it’s time to sing the Scandal Song: Put another candle on the scandal cake … another week starts today. CBS News reports that the State Department has interfered in internal investigations into criminal conduct and wrongdoing by high-ranking officials, including one ambassador who prowled public parks for prostitutes. A very familiar name appears in this exposé, too: