A new batch of emails show how IRS official Lois Lerner intentionally tried to stop inquiry about the IRS Targeting scheme back in April of 2012, and how the IRS was seeking to block congressional inquiry into the activity of the prior two years.
(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch today released a new batch of Internal Revenue Service (IRS) documents, including a series of emails from former IRS official Lois Lerner to then-Tax Exempt and Government Entities (TE/GE) Division Deputy Director Joseph H. Grant strongly objecting to his planned visit to the IRS Cincinnati office “smack dab in the middle” of congressional inquiries into the IRS targeting of conservative groups. Lerner also expresses concerns about a pending investigation by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) into the IRS’s handing of Tea Party applications. (more…)

Credit where credit is due. The messaging from the White House about why they haven’t called the terrorist attacks “Islamic Terrorism” must have been a top priority in the past 48 hours. As noted in this shift expressed by Josh Earnest. The question was posed:

“The leader of France, your ally in this effort, has put a name on this ideology, which he calls radical Islam,” noted NPR’s Mara Liasson. “You have bent over backwards to not ever say that. There must be a reason.”

Josh Earnest Responds: “The first is accuracy. We want to describe exactly what happened. These are individuals who carried out an act of terrorism and they later tried to justify that act of terrorism by invoking the religion of Islam and their own deviant view of it. (more…)

Both President Obama and Francois Hollande have refused to connect the terrorism in the U.S., France, Australia, Canada and North Africa to Islamic Extremism.  This cognitive disconnect they continue to exhibit exists despite the terrorists themselves clearly proclaiming their intents and motives.
(Via Vocativ) A new video released by an official ISIS forum shows Amedy Coulibaly, the 32-year-old terrorist who murdered four men during the Hyper Cacher siege in Paris, declaring his loyalty to the Islamic State.

“I’m a soldier of the Caliphate [ISIS] since the beginning,” Coulibaly says in the video. “Our group was coordinated before the attack. France is a legitimate target because [of] what they are doing to us.”
Coulibaly explains how he helped the Kouachi brothers prepare for the attack: “We did a few things together and a few things separately to maximize the impact. I helped them by giving them a few thousand euros to buy what they needed.” (more…)

People keep asking: why won’t the Obama administration admit the terror threat is specifically from Islamic extremists? The reason is simple.  They won’t admit it because once the problem is defined, they become responsible for an action plan to address it.  The administration does not want to address it, ergo as long as the threat can be obfuscated, no-one will be expected to do anything specific.
Hence, when Kelly File guest host Martha MacCallum confronts State Department deputy spokeswoman Marie Harf about why the White House won’t openly say that radical Islam specifically is a major threat to the world – Harf avoids the specifics.

Harf told MacCallum that Islamic extremism is “not the only kind of extremism we face,” though when pressed to name other examples of troubling extremism, she simply said people all over the world want to kill each other for a “variety of causes.”

WASHINGTON (CNN) — President Barack Obama’s administration admitted it erred by failing to send a higher-ranking representative of the United States to the Paris unity march on Sunday.
He said Obama himself would have liked to attend the march “had the circumstances been a little different.” But planning began Friday night, 36 hours before the event began, and there wasn’t enough time for the “onerous and significant” security work that needed to take place ahead of a presidential visit, Earnest said. He said Obama’s presence also would have meant extra restrictions on the people who were there. (read more)

But, but, no-one from the secret service was ever queried:

…Alan Greenspan’s wife, Andrea Mitchell, is critiquing you on MSNBC.
President Obama spent the day Sunday watching football. Joe Biden also spent the day at home watching the playoffs in Delaware.

January 12th 2015 is the five year anniversary of the Haiti earthquake.

(Via Washington Times) […] In 2010, Haiti was rocked by a deadly earthquake that claimed the lives of between 200,000 and 300,000 people. In response to the tragedy, the international community pledged an estimated nine billion dollars in foreign aid to help Haiti’s recovery efforts.
However, according to Joseph, much of the pledged cash never made it to Haiti. And the money that did make it to Haiti has mysteriously disappeared.

(more…)

Up to 1.5 million people flooded Paris for march today, while 600,000 rally in other towns and cities around France. France’s Interior Ministry said crowds were larger than when country was liberated from the Nazis in WWII.
President Obama sent Eric Holder to represent the United States and show solidarity. Dozens of national heads of state were present, Eric Holder skipped the march.

https://twitter.com/DanaBordeaux/status/554327371982336000
(more…)

After initially doing a spit take at the ridiculousness of the question -contrast against the reality of Obama’s massive ego which would never contemplate taking advice, let alone directions- I decided to read the article. Once you get beyond the rhetorical question, that is not actually rhetorical in presentation, the end of the opinion was quite good.
However, it’s important to remember this is the same administration who tried to hide Mount Rushmore so visitors could not see it; and who put barricades around open air Washington DC monuments to punish Americans for not supporting them financially.
“Will Obama learn from Fatah al-Sisi”?….  LOLOL, how cute; apparently the author thinks that Obama’s pro-Muslim Brotherhood policy is an accident.

Washington Times […] At the core of continuing conflict is an irreconcilable difference between those who see net benefit in freedom under secular law and those who require others to surrender free will and submit to a rigid set of religious precepts.
For years, informed analysts have warned of dangers posed to freedom-loving secular nations by rigid and intolerant humans who claim they are only following instructions set from on high. (more…)