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Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl's hometown in Idaho on Wednesday canceled an event to celebrate his release after city officials were bombarded with angry phone calls and emails. *SNIP* The city said the June 28 event was canceled "in the interest of public safety."

A public welcome home celebration featuring Grammy-winning singer Carole King in honor of freed POW Bowe Bergdahl in the tiny town of Hailey, Idaho was abruptly cancelled today. The official reason given was a concern for public safety, but MailOnline has learned that it was not the only reason the party was scrubbed. Today's decision follows a row that erupted in Hailey between Mayor Fritz Haemmerle and US Army Platoon Commander Jonathan Kennedy, who lives in Hailey. And Kennedy wasn't the only towns person who voiced disapproval of a celebration for the soldier under fire. Mayor Haemmerle wanted to throw...

The hometown of U.S. Army Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl has canceled a rally planned for later this month celebrating his release from five years of Taliban captivity, a municipal official told Reuters on Wednesday, amid allegations that he was a deserter.

Just when it seemed like the outrage on the political right over Benghazi had subsided to the point where only the announcement of House hearings put it back in the headlines, the exchange of captive U.S. soldier Bowe Bergdahl for five senior Taliban fighters at Guantanamo Bay came along. Now President Obama finds himself amid another foreign policy and national security controversy with fresh legs that even features Susan Rice — the White House official who played a prominent early role in the Benghazi controversy — making an encore. While it's still too soon to know whether the trade for...

Bergdahl's hometown is carrying on with a celebration for the returned sergeant at the end of the month, despite a rising backlash A rally in U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl’s Idaho hometown celebrating his release after nearly five years of captivity will go on as planned, despite growing questions about the circumstances of the soldier’s capture. The joy over the soldier’s return among residents of the small mountain community of Hailey, Idaho has been dampened by claims that he abandoned his post. Some have also claimed that the subsequent search for Bergdahl cost the lives of up to six soldiers,...

Acting as a stenographer on Wednesday's NBC Today, chief White House correspondent Chuck Todd parroted the Obama administration's new attack against critics of the Bowe Bergdahl prisoner exchange: "They did not expect this backlash on Bergdahl himself. I've had a few aides describe it to me as, 'We didn't know that they were going to swift boat Bergdahl'.... MSNBC quickly seized on the "swift boat" line, with Last Word fill-in host Ari Melber declaring Tuesday night: "We're gonna look at the right-wing play book for the newly released American POW, a wounded man who isn’t even out of the hospital...

Congratulations, Mr. President! And identical congrats to your sorcerer’s apprentice, National Security Adviser Susan Rice. By trying to sell him as an American hero, you’ve turned a deserter already despised by soldiers in the know into quite possibly the most-hated individual soldier in the history of our military. I have never witnessed such outrage from our troops. Exhibit A: Ms. Rice. In one of the most tone-deaf statements in White House history (we’re making a lot of history here), the national-security advisor, on a Sunday talk show, described Bergdahl as having served “with honor and distinction.” Those serving in uniform...

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.”

State Department deputy spokeswoman Marie Harf engaged in a heated exchange Tuesday with a reporter over the circumstances surrounding Army Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl’s capture five years ago, saying she does not think his squad mates have the best idea of what happened when he disappeared. When Fox News reporter Lucas Tomlinson asked, “Does the State Department consider Sergeant Bergdahl to be a deserter?” Harf replied, “The State Department — no, Lucas. Look, what we’ve said is we are going to learn the facts about what happened here.” “He’s been in captivity, Lucas. I think he’s probably the person who knows...

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...

If America's newly free POW really was a deserter, the White House is in deep trouble.On Sunday, National Security Advisor Susan Rice said former American prisoner of war Bowe Bergdahl served with "honor and distinction" before he was captured by the Taliban in Afghanistan. Two days later, the secretary of the Army said the branch will investigate whether Bergdahl deserted his fellow soldiers -- an allegation that if true would transform the public perception of the POW and drastically complicate the White House's attempts to defend its prisoner exchange, which involved the release of five Taliban operatives from Guantanamo Bay....

Newly freed Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl is not being asked about the circumstances of his “capture” by the Taliban, though a note he left at his base back in 2009 could help tell the story, a senior defense official told ABC News today. The official, who spoke about the sensitive details of Bergdahl’s case on the condition of anonymity, said that Bergdahl is not being interrogated at the American military medical facility in Germany, to which he was brought this weekend after being released from five-year captivity by the Taliban. The official said there are legitimate concerns about Bergdahl’s physical...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK) Todd: White House was 'caught off guard' MSNBC’S Chuck Todd observed Tuesday that the White House was “caught off guard” by the disastrous public roll out of their prisoner exchange for Army Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl. Todd and Andrea Mitchell agreed that the White House had likely thought there would be “some euphoria around this, the only POW that was remaining in Afghanistan, that there would be a rally around the flag. That didn’t happen.” “They were expecting criticisms of Gitmo, criticisms of the detainees that were chosen,” Todd said. “They did not expect this criticism of the attempt to...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Go to the sound bites coming next and you'll hear them: They think they've turned the corner. Like on April 15th, everybody's gonna file their taxes. Is Obama gonna do a Rose Garden ceremony to talk about how persuasive he's been and how many people love the income tax? "My God, look at this, folks! Look at how many have complied this year. Look how many people love the income tax, and the income tax is making our country and a transfer of wealth possible. Look at how many millions and millions and millions of people file...

January 9, 2014 Iraq: The New Liberal Killing Field Allen West As President Obama returned from a well deserved two-week vacation in Hawaii – ok, being quite facetious here – I wonder if he did any reflection between rounds of golf?Regardless, I have been reflecting upon the words of George Santayana, “Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it” because as President Obama returns to Washington DC he is playing his part in a repeat of history. After the fall of South Vietnam came the rise of Southeast Asian communism. Cambodia was embroiled in a five-year...

The new and improved Obamacare website struggled under heavy traffic loads on Monday, but still appeared to operate pretty much as the Obama administration has promised: Okay, but not perfect. After a weekend of final, intensive fixes, officials unveiled a somewhat repaired HealthCare.gov on Sunday and promised that it will work well enough to serve the Americans who want insurance exchange coverage by New Year’s.

Well, I guess it beats explaining why the Obama administration failed to meet yet another of its deadlines in getting a 42-month web-portal project to work. According to the Washington Post, the White House will announce tomorrow that the Healthcare.gov site has been fixed, even though the site won’t actually be fixed — not even by the administration’s own metrics: Administration officials are preparing to announce Sunday that they have met their Saturday deadline for improving HealthCare.gov, according to government officials, in part by expanding the site’s capacity so that it can handle 50,000 users at once. But they have...

An explosion of violence in Iraq risks turning the troubled country into a political liability for President Obama. During last year's reelection campaign, the president managed to both earn credit for withdrawing all U.S. troops and avoid blame for the deteriorating security situation. But a surge in terror attacks this year that has left more than 7,000 people dead has drawn bipartisan concerns about Obama's Middle East policies -- concerns that broke out into the open during Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's visit to the White House this week. “By nearly every indicator, security conditions in Iraq have dramatically worsened over...

After over a year of waiting for the liberal media to finally assign blame and announce who was responsible for the brutal murders of four Americans, [Leslie] Marshall finally stepped to the plate to announce that if we are to blame someone, we should blame the victim.

First official acknowledgment that the Benghazi attacks last year involve at least two suspects who are members of “Al-Qaeda core”, which is based in Pakistan and led by Ayman al-Zawahiri. ... reports of recorded phone conversations that took place between then Egyptian president Mohammed Mursi and al-Qaeda number one, Ayman al-Zawahiri, who sits at the top of “Al-Qaeda core”. These conversations reportedly include discussions about releasing al-Qaeda terrorists into Egypt, to form terrorist camps. These camps were formed in the Sinai and along Egypt’s border with Libya. These developments may constitute the strongest evidence yet that the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood,...