I’m telling ya, this is de-ja-vu all over again…. As expected, the golfer-in-chief looks into his political 8-ball and says about Syria – pick the course of action that makes me look strong, makes me look good enough, not wanting to be mocked……   Nuf said.    He knows he’s turning this into a win for al-Qaeda, but he needs it to look like he’s magnanimous or something…. 
Remember in Libya, the Golfer even defied his own Office of Legal Council advice, and violated the central restrictions on his own executive power… 

Jeh C. Johnson, the Pentagon general counsel, and Caroline D. Krass, the acting head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, had told the White House that they believed that the United States military’s activities in the NATO-led air war amounted to “hostilities.” Under the War Powers Resolution, that would have required Mr. Obama to terminate or scale back the mission after May 20.  [2012 link]

President Obama ignored them, dispatched them for other advisors who would agree with his own pre-conceived Power/Rice/Clinton/Jarrett agenda.  So essentially, anything goes in his own mind – so long as the politics of it can be steered in his favor…
(Via LA Times)  The apparent poison gas attack that killed hundreds of Syrian civilians last week is testing President Obama’s views on military intervention, international law and the United Nations as no previous crisis has done. (more…)

Side Question:  How come the media has stopped using the word WMD now that President Obama is in office?   Oh well,…..

Some things are more reflective than others.   A famous person once said: those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it, or something similar.   Well, this is one Obama Administration repetition worth highlighting.

On Wednesday of last week the United Nations Security Council held an emergency meeting to discuss the recent chemical attacks being witnessed in Syria.   Those chemical and/or biological attacks have been a great source of international attention and concern.
However, our U.N. Ambassador, Samantha Power, was conspicuously absent from the Security Council meeting.   The Administration was questioned, and the White House mysteriously avoided answering where she was.   Why was the United States not present during the meeting?   Where was Samantha Power?
Today it is reported she missed the meeting in order to attend a Charlie Chaplin Film Festival.   No joke, this is the real reason.   It sure explains why the White House was dodging the question and refused to answer.
But here comes the historical context. (more…)

Major Nidal Hasan has been convicted of premeditated murder for the 2009 terrorist rampage shooting at Fort Hood.    He’s now eligible for the death penalty (link)

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) figures are total baloney – so perhaps this Gallup report is beginning to bring some accuracy back to incredibly manipulated statistics. However, I highly doubt it. The employment and inflation numbers have manipulated by the administration since 2009; and its gotten worse. Now we know the federal deficit has intentionally stopped being recorded so that spending limits and statutorially required debt ceilings can be avoided.
All economic Key Performance Indicators are just fuzzy math and manipulated propaganda now.
(Via Breitbart)  Outside of the federal government’s Bureau of Labor statistics, the Gallup polling organization also tracks the nation’s unemployment rate. While the BLS and Gallup findings might not always perfectly align, the trends almost always do and the small statistical differences just haven’t been worthy of note. But now Gallup is showing a sizable 30 day jump in the unemployment rate, from 7.7% on July 21 to 8.9% today.
This is an 18-month high. (more…)

Regardless of what you think of him – REMINDER:  We would never know, nor be having this conversation, were it not for Snowden.
WASHINGTON DC – The National Security Agency’s (NSA) reach covers about 75 percent of all U.S. Internet traffic through a slew of partnerships with some of the largest telecom companies in the country, according to a Wall Street Journal report released late Tuesday.
According to the report, gathered from interviews with current and former government officials and telecom industry workers, telecom companies like AT&T filter the data for the NSA, but in looking for communications that begin or end outside of the country, often sweep up unrelated domestic communications.
In addition, the surveillance network at times retains the content of emails and phone calls sent between U.S. citizens as part of a dragnet meant to capture correspondences between foreign targets.
The NSA defended the practice, telling the Journal that if domestic communications are “incidentally collected during NSA’s lawful signals intelligence activities,” that the agency follows “minimization procedures that are approved by the U.S. attorney general and designed to protect the privacy of United States persons.” (read more)
(more…)

Via WeaselZippers who says:

“So it’s official, absolutely no one has been punished over Benghazi”.

Last December, Clinton’s staff told four mid-level officials to clean out their desks and hand in their badges after the release of the report of its own internal investigation into the Benghazi attack, compiled by the Administrative Review Board led by former State Department official Tom Pickering and former Joint Chiefs Chairman Ret. Adm. Mike Mullen. Those four officials have been in legal and professional limbo, not fired but unable to return to their jobs, for eight months… until today. (more…)

We know of only two certainties within the White House timeline during the night of 9/11/12:
1. That both Obama and Biden were on the phone with Benjamin Netanyahu between 6:30 and 7:28pm DC time.
2. That President Obama and Hillary Clinton talked around 10:00pm DC time about the event.
That’s it. The time between the call with Netanyahu ending at 7:30pm (1:30am Benghazi) and Hillary at 10:00pm (4am Benghazi), is a void. What happens after 10:00pm DC time is also a void.
Sharyl Attkisson, the only journalist with any intellectual credibility on the issue, has been trying to use FOIA requests to find out the rest:
https://twitter.com/SharylAttkisson/statuses/368480804633985024
https://twitter.com/SharylAttkisson/statuses/368480910217203712
(more…)

Additionally the FISA court admits today it has to rely on the information presented to it when it determines legal authority. Also, the court has no mechanism to check the claims brought to it by the NSA or Justice Dept. One example is outlined in the Washington Post article.
(WASHINGTON POST)  The National Security Agency has broken privacy rules or overstepped its legal authority thousands of times each year since Congress granted the agency broad new powers in 2008, according to an internal audit and other top-secret documents.
Most of the infractions involve unauthorized surveillance of Americans or foreign intelligence targets in the United States, both of which are restricted by law and executive order. They range from significant violations of law to typographical errors that resulted in unintended interception of U.S. e-mails and telephone calls.
The documents, provided earlier this summer to The Washington Post by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, include a level of detail and analysis that is not routinely shared with Congress or the special court that oversees surveillance. In one of the documents, agency personnel are instructed to remove details and substitute more generic language in reports to the Justice Department and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. (more…)

By Kimberly Dvorak – This week Elise Jordan, wife of famed journalist Michael Hastings, who recently died under suspicious circumstances, corroborated this reporter’s sources that CIA Director, John Brennan was Hastings next exposé project (CNN clip).

Last month a source provided San Diego 6 News with an alarming email hacked from super secret CIA contractor Stratfor’s President Fred Burton. The email (link here) was posted on WikiLeaks and alleged that then Obama counter-terrorism Czar Brennan, was in charge of the government’s continued crackdown or witch-hunt on investigative journalists.
After providing the Stratfor email to the CIA for comment, the spymaster’s spokesperson responded in lightning speed. (more…)

The trial of Fort Hood Shooter, Nidal Hasan, continues.    The entire complex where the trial is taking place is like a military war camp outpost in Eastern Afghanistan.

The building is surrounded with Hesco Barriers and Metalith perimeter blast protection containers.    Hundreds of them.

All of this for the consideration of “workplace violence“?
Why are they so worried about a terrorist attack if the trial is not of a “terrorist”?
But what’s worse is this latest revelation shared by Dana Losech and posted on RedState: (more…)