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Commonly used and unregulated internet discussions and videos about guns and ammo could be closed down under rules proposed by the State Department, amounting to a "gag order on firearm-related speech," the National Rifle Association is warning. In updating regulations governing international arms sales, State is demanding that anyone who puts technical details about arms and ammo on the web first get the OK from the federal government — or face a fine of up to $1 million and 20 years in jail.According to the NRA, that would include blogs and web forums discussing technical details of common guns and...

Today’s Short Stories include: • Obama claims rate hikes mean ObamaCare is working • State Department waves Goodbye to Americans stuck in Yemen • Homosexual demands churches stop calling sodomy a sin • DOJ pays Michigan State Univ to spy on “Far Right” groups 1.) White House: Proposed Health Insurance Rate Hikes Is Proof Obamacare Is Working Are you startled by the news that insurance companies are planning health insurance rate hikes of 10 percent or more in 37 states? Well that news, according to the White House, is one of the signs that Obamacare is working. White House Press...

Just months before the most important U.N. climate conference in years, Republican appropriators in the House of Representatives are taking aim at one of the Obama administration’s most cherished priorities—international climate change funding. An appropriations bill for the State Department and foreign operations, released Tuesday, excludes funding for three major climate initiatives—the Green Climate Fund, the Clean Technology Fund, and the Strategic Climate Fund—and also removes funding for the U.N.-backed Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Also in the firing line is funding for the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA), the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and debt relief. …

An ISIS fighter who calls for jihad in a new online video was trained in counterterrorism tactics on American soil, in a program run by the United States, officials tell CNN. The video features a former police commander from Tajikistan named Col. Gulmurod Khalimov. He appears in black ISIS garb with a sniper rifle and a bandolier of ammunition. He says in the video that he participated in programs on U.S. soil three times, at least one of which was in Louisiana. The State Department has confirmed this claim.

While Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is refusing to reveal her position on the massive Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement, other former State Department officials are actively supporting the agreement. They’re just not bothering to reveal their conflicts of interest. More than 30 former State Department officials, envoys, military officers and White House national security advisers who served under both Republican and Democratic presidents signed a letter last month calling the trade agreement “a defining test for American political and economic leadership in the Asia-Pacific region” and urging members of Congress to give President Obama “fast-track” authority to speed its passage.Though the...

US Secretary of State John Kerry has promoted Marie Harf to be one of his top advisers, the Department of State said in a statement, Sputnik reports. [Snip] Kirby said Harf would continue working on communications strategy about the US nuclear talks with Iran, as well as other key issues.

Of 20 nations that donated to the Foundation, 17 had more robust weapons transactions in the three fiscal years that State was led by Hillary than in the last three years of the previous administration. How do you convince a president who got elected in 2008 on an anti-war platform repudiating warmongering cowboy George W. Bush to ramp up arms deals to unsavory regimes in the Middle East? Slipping a fat envelope into the Clinton slush fund’s collection box couldn’t hurt. And evidently didn’t.Personally, I’m pretty excited to have every foreign-policy transaction the United States engages in through 2020,...

Ed Morrisey already highlighted some of the early news coming out of the first round of Hillary Clinton emails released by the State Department and there will no doubt be plenty more to come. But as the media covers these new “revelations” (such as they are) there seems to be a fresh narrative emerging. I noticed a few examples of this in the last 24 hours, one of them being the early morning show on CNN today, where weekend anchor Christie Paul was asking yet another guest for commentary about some of the Benghazi news which was showing up...

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Not that there was ever much doubt. Three days after the Benghazi attack, the White House admitted it had pressured Google and YouTube to yank “Innocence of Muslims” as some sort of terms-of-use violation. Google refused. A week after that, having failed to twist a major corporation’s arm into censoring a politically unhelpful bit of free speech on its behalf, the State Department started running ads in Pakistan denouncing the movie, in hopes that jihadi savages would be appeased by the show of national contrition and not target any more embassies. Also around this time, YouTube did agree to...

To quote Wilford Brimley in Absence of Malice: “Wonderful thing, subpoenas.” Don’t set your DVR just yet, as this subpoena will serve as an “invitation” to a closed-door but transcribed hearing. Still, the move to collar longtime Clintonista Sid Blumenthal qualifies as a major development for the Benghazi Select Committee investigation: Representative Trey Gowdy of South Carolina, a Republican who is leading the congressional committee investigating the 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya, plans to subpoena Mr. Blumenthal, 66, for a private transcribed interview.Mr. Gowdy’s chief interest, according to people briefed on the inquiry, is a series of memos that...

The crony in question is Sid Blumenthal, former White House advisor to Bill and longtime hatchet man for the pair. We already knew Blumenthal was running his own off-the-books intelligence operation for the Secretary of State. We also knew that he’d put a friend representing a pro-Putin pol in Georgia in touch with Hillary to lobby her on behalf of the Georgian opposition. And the reason we knew those things isn’t because Hillary Clinton voluntarily turned over Blumenthal’s communications to State as part of routine recordkeeping protocols. We know it because a hacker infiltrated Blumenthal’s e-mail account a few years...

Judicial Watch announced today that it obtained more than 100 pages of previously classified “Secret” documents from the Department of Defense (DOD)and the Department of State revealing that DOD almost immediately reported that the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi was committed by the al Qaeda and Muslim Brotherhood-linked “Brigades of the Captive Omar Abdul Rahman” (BCOAR), and had been planned at least 10 days in advance. Rahman is known as the Blind Sheikh, and is serving life in prison for his involvement in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and other terrorist acts. The new documents also provide...

Full title: Judicial Watch: Defense, State Department Documents Reveal Obama Administration Knew that al Qaeda Terrorists Had Planned Benghazi Attack 10 Days in Advance Administration knew three months before the November 2012 presidential election of ISIS plans to establish a caliphate in Iraq Administration knew of arms being shipped from Benghazi to Syria (Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that it obtained more than 100 pages of previously classified “Secret” documents from theDepartment of Defense (DOD)and the Department of State revealing that DOD almost immediately reported that the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi was committed by the...

State Department apparently reverses course on controversial decision. The Iraqi nun who was denied entry to the United States because, apparently, the State Department feared she would illiciltly overstay her visa has finally been granted one. Dominican Sister Diana Momeka will be joining a delegation that includes Yazidi and Turkmen Shia in mid-May. Nina Shea, a religious freedom advocate with the Hudson Institute, confirmed to National Review that Sister Diana will receive a visa. The nun is expected to testify before a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee, Nicholas Frankovich reported. Other details of her itinerary have not yet been set: Last week, American advocates...

Who can blame them? It took months just for Hillary Clinton to cough up the e-mails that should have gone through their system in the first place, and that happened only because of the probe by the House Select Committee on Benghazi. Investigating the confluence of money and connections at the Clinton Foundation might take too much work, and the only evidence would have to come from the Clintons themselves. Besides, what difference at this point does it make, or something? The State Department said Thursday it has no plans to review previously undisclosed donations to a branch of...

Cody Wilson had a vision to forward the digital revolution by creating the nation’s first firearm on a 3-D printer, and, taking a page from WikiLeaks, share the blueprints with the world via the Internet in what he called the “Wiki Weapons project.” Now he is suing the federal government in hopes of keeping his dream on target - and staying out of prison. Wilson was so taken with the idea, he dropped out of law school and designed "The Liberator," the nation’s first pistol built exclusively on a 3-D printer, consisting of 12 separate parts made from plastic and...

Hillary Clinton: We knew her as a grim, charmless harridan; a pear-shaped harpy. Now, after reading Peter Schweizer's new book, Clinton Cash (HarperCollins, New York, May 2015), we see the ultimate Hillary, one of the world's truly scary women. Think Lady Macbeth, Messalina, Evita. Add Bill to the sordid picture and you have Bonnie and Clyde -- elected to high office, and lionized all over the world. We know about Hillary's thousands of missing e-mails and unaccountable donors. What may be less known is how the Clinton double-scam works. Take, first of all, the so-called Clinton Foundation, whose stated purpose...

A State Department assistant secretary said Wednesday it's "not acceptable" for any agency employee to conduct government business on a private email server as former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton did. Joyce Barr, the agency's chief freedom of information officer, made the comment under questioning from Republican senators who used a Senate Judiciary hearing on open records laws to attack Clinton over her email practices. Sen. John Cornyn of Texas said that Clinton's approach amounted to a "premeditated and deliberate" attempt to avoid open records requirements.

oday in Djibouti, Secretary Kerry announced the United States is providing more than $68 million to help humanitarian organizations meet the needs of nearly 16 million people in need of assistance in Yemen, including 300,000 newly internally displaced persons. The funds will support the activities of the World Food Program, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, the UN Children’s Fund, and other organizations, providing food, water, shelter, medical care, protection, and other assistance. With this announcement, U.S. funding for humanitarian assistance for Yemen in Fiscal Years 2014 and 2015 now totals more than $188 million.