Sharyl Attkisson Sues Obama Administration For Violating Her Rights

NewsBusters.org:

Fox News's Howard Kurtz reported on Monday that former CBS correspondent Sharyl Attkisson filed a lawsuit against the Justice Department and the U.S. Postal Service over the hacking of her computers. Kurtz noted that Attkisson "alleges that three separate computer forensic exams showed that hackers used sophisticated methods to surreptitiously monitor her work between 2011 and 2013." The journalist seeks $35 million in damages against the federal agencies.

The Fox News host later pointed out that Attkisson and her lawyers claim to "have 'pretty good evidence' that these efforts were 'connected' to the Justice Department." The correspondent asserted that she was "caught in a 'Catch-22,' forcing her to use the lawsuit and an administrative complaint to discover more about the surveillance through the discovery process and to learn the identities of the 'John Does' named in the complaints."

On her own website, Attkisson outlined that she filed "administrative claims under the Federal Tort Claims Act against the U.S. Department of Justice, the U.S. Postal Service, and certain unnamed employees and/or agents of the federal government." She added that she had "filed a lawsuit in the District of Columbia alleging certain violations of her constitutional rights based on information implicating the federal government in illegal electronic monitoring and surveillance of her home and business computers and phones from 2011 to 2013."

Back in May 2013, the then-CBS journalist revealed that her personal and work computers had been hacked, and indicated during an interview with a radio station in Philadelphia that "there could be some relationship between these things and what's happened to James [Rosen]," who also had been investigated by the Department of Justice for his reporting about the CIA's intelligence on North Korea. Three weeks later, CBS News confirmed, via an investigation by an outside cyber security firm, that "Attkisson's computer was accessed by an unauthorized, external, unknown party on multiple occasions in late 2012. Evidence suggests this party performed all access remotely using Attkisson's accounts."

RELATED:  Concha: Chris Hayes’ Attkisson Interview Sums Up MSNBC’s Issues in One Question

Five Ways Barack Obama Can Mess with Republicans in 2015

Bloomberg.com:

President Barack Obama knows how to get under Republicans' skin (in so many ways, but in this case we're talking about going around Congress to get things done), and he ended 2014 with a bang: A climate deal with China. Executive action on immigration. A move to normalize relations with Cuba.

As he makes his New Year's resolutions, the liberated, second-term, post-midterm president's list may well include some new maneuvers to enrage the opposition party. Here are five ways he could do it again in 2015.

Keystone

You already know more than you ever thought you would about oil-sands crude, right? TransCanada Corp. wants to complete an $8 billion, 1,179-mile pipeline starting in the Canadian province of Alberta and running 830,000 barrels of oil per day through Nebraska into a network to refineries in Texas and Louisiana. While Obama cares about the Keystone XL project in the context of foreign policy and maintaining good relations with neighbor, ally and trading partner Canada, in 2012 he blocked it because of concerns in Nebraska and kicked it to the State Department for more study.

Now, incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, said he wants to start the new Congress by taking up a bill by Senator John Hoeven, a North Dakota Republican, to approve Keystone under congressional authority. Environmentalists and major Democratic donor Tom Steyer are fighting the project, saying it will worsen global warming and could trigger toxic spills. Republicans largely back the project, saying it can create jobs and reduce gas prices. Opponents say such benefits are greatly overstated or downright irrelevant, given how low gas prices have fallen lately.

Obama was coy throughout the midterms about which way he'll go, maintaining that it was in the State Department's hands and that he would weigh the pros and cons. But he doesn't want Congress to tell him what to do. And in recent weeks, he's hinted strongly that he's turned against Keystone XL. He told comedian Stephen Colbert that while it would be good for Canada, “it's not going to push down gas prices here in the United States,” and that any economic benefit must be weighed against contributing to the warming of the earth, “which could be disastrous.” In his year-end news conference, the president said that “it’s not even going to be a nominal benefit to U.S. consumers.” Asked whether he was issuing a veto threat, he demurred. “I'll see what they do,” he said of Republicans in Congress. “We'll take that up in the new year.”

Campaign finance reform

So-called dark-money nonprofits, such as those affiliated with the Koch brothers, could find it much harder to muck around in elections. Under current practices, up to half of these groups' money can be spent on politics. Changes to the Internal Revenue Service regulations governing 501(c)(4) social welfare organizations could shrink the percentage they can devote to election activities such as advertising. Overall, the aim would be to make it more difficult for any nonprofit group to engage in campaign politics; in practice, it would likely be perceived as a disproportionate handicap of conservative donor-backed organizations. These are among the reforms that the administration, regulatory groups or Congress could take on if so inclined (which Congress probably is not).

Climate change

Think power plants and methane.

Last year, Obama proposed power-plant standards Republicans oppose to reduce carbon dioxide by 26 percent by 2020 and 30 percent by 2030 from 2005 levels. The standards are set to be issued in June, and then states will have another year to adopt their own plans to carry the standards out. McConnell will make it a top priority to try to stop Obama, either by blocking funding to carry out the policy or by changing provisions of the Clean Air Act, said David Doniger, director of the Natural Resources Defense Council climate and clean air program. “It will be fought over by the Republicans all through the year,” he said. “There will be lots of lawsuits and so on. But the administration's very committed to this.”

RELATED:  Obama readies veto pen and the new paradigm of obstructionism

Federal Judge: Barack Obama's Immigration Move Unconstitutional

CNN.com:

A federal judge in Pennsylvania ruled Tuesday that President Barack Obama's move to halt deportations for millions of undocumented immigrants violates the Constitution -- but it's not clear that the ruling will have any immediate impact.

Pittsburgh-based U.S. District Judge Arthur Schwab, a George W. Bush appointee, became the first judge to rule on the legality of Obama's executive overhaul of immigration rules when he issued his unusual opinion in a criminal case.

The Justice Department shot back that the judge was "flatly wrong" and his ruling wouldn't halt the implementation of Obama's immigration policies.

The decision -- which came in a criminal case against Honduran immigrant Elionardo Juarez-Escobar, who'd been deported before, returned to the United States and faced charges of unlawful re-entry after a drunk driving arrest -- was unexpected, and is unrelated to the legal challenge dozens of states have launched against Obama's move.

Prosecutors in the case argued that Obama's immigration policies were only meant to apply to civil proceedings, and don't have any impact on criminal proceedings like what Juarez-Escobar faced.

Still, Schwab said in his 38-page ruling that Juarez-Escobar could have benefited under Obama's action to halt deportations for some undocumented immigrants.

Obama's action violates the Constitution's separation of powers and its "take care clause," Schwab said.

He wrote that Obama's action "goes beyond prosecutorial discretion because: (a) it provides for a systematic and rigid process by which a broad group of individuals will be treated differently than others based upon arbitrary classifications, rather than case-by-case examination; and (b) it allows undocumented immigrants, who fall within these broad categories, to obtain substantive rights."

The judge also quoted several of Obama's statements, asserting that, prior to issuing his executive action in November, the President personally considered such a move beyond his authority.

Schwab said Juarez-Escobar didn't fall within any of the priority categories Obama identified for deportation, so it's not clear that removing him from the country would be a priority -- potentially blurring the lines between civil and criminal proceedings.

The Justice Department blasted the opinion, with a spokesperson saying it was "unfounded and the court had no basis to issue such an order."

"No party in the case challenged the constitutionality of the immigration-related executive actions and the department's filing made it clear that the executive actions did not apply to the criminal matter before the court," the spokesperson said. "Moreover, the court's analysis of the legality of the executive actions is flatly wrong. We will respond to the court's decision at the appropriate time."

RELATED:  Nearly half of U.S. states now suing President Obama over immigration order

YouGov Poll: Plurality of Americans Oppose Barack Obama’s Executive Order on Amnesty, 38/45

HotAir.com:

Interesting, and encouraging. Now convince me that either the White House or its friends in Congress really care. Immigration for them is about pleasing one particular demographic group long-term even if it ends up irritating other demographic groups short-term. They can probably tolerate a backlash among white working-class if it’s broad but ephemeral or durable but narrow, knowing that the gains they make among Latinos will offset those votes.

But what if the backlash is broad and durable?

This may be a nation of immigrants (and 82% of the public agree that it is), but the President’s plan for executive action on immigration clearly does not sit well with many Americans.  Democrats support the President’s decision to use an executive order to delay deportation proceedings for parents of U.S. citizens, but 51% of independents and 80% of Republicans oppose it.

Most independents and nearly all Republicans say the President should have waited for Congress to act on immigration – even though majorities think it is unlikely Congress will take action soon.

The President’s immigration actions has helped him at least with one group – one that was clearly disappointed in his previous activity on immigration – the country’s Hispanics.  Two in three Hispanics consistently have supported a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants and approve of the plan President Obama put forth in his speech last week.

By more than two to one, they approve of the President’s executive order. 

Ten months ago, 55 percent of Americans favored a path to citizenship for illegals. As of last month, that number had dropped below majority support and landed at 47 percent. After the summer’s border crisis and O going rogue on executive amnesty, go figure that people would be more skittish about normalizing citizenship for lawbreakers any further.

In fact, there’s another political scenario for Democrats: What if the backlash to O’s order is short-lived … but so is the boost they’ve gotten for it from Latinos? Scrolling through the crosstabs, I was surprised by how equivocal some of the reactions to various immigration policies were among that group. For instance, when given a choice of letting illegals stay and apply for citizenship, stay but not be allowed to apply, and sending illegals home, just 51 percent of Latinos favored the first option. Another 20 percent favored the second and 29 percent favored the third, meaning that even among that demographic, the split on whether a path to citizenship should be offered is just 51/49.

RELATED:  White House: When Obama said he changed the law on immigration, he was speaking “colloquially”

Cornel West: ‘Ferguson Signifies the End of the Age of Barack Obama’

Mediaite.com:

Professor Cornel West appeared on CNN International this afternoon to give his take on Ferguson, and said right at the outset, “Ferguson signifies the end of the age of Obama. It’s a very sad end. We began with tremendous hope and we end with great despair.”

He went on to cite a “Jim Crow criminal justice system” that doesn’t seek justice for young black and brown people, and said adamantly there is both a race and a class war going on against that group in America right now.

CNNI anchor Hala Gorani asked West why he’s “so harsh” on the president over these issues when, she put forth, he’s launched initiatives to help young black men. West said that Obama chose a “Wall Street presidency” and a “drone presidency,” but never gave even “one speech that focuses on the Jim Crow criminal justice system that’s been targeting poor black and brown youth.”

Barack Obama, a man who as POTUS has gone out of his way time and time again to help the gays and illegal immigrants, while ignoring the base that continues to give him unwavering support (and assisted him the most to become Pres.)--Black people, will get a pass on the Ferguson verdict. And that's because black people in this country in this are too ignorant to understand the irony of electing a Godless, half-black, corny, narcissist, white-liberal ass kisser to be in charge on the deal that one day he might actually do them a favor one day. But instead, for black folks in America under the leadership of Obama, things have just gotten worse and worse...with no end in sight.

RELATED: Obama Disappoints the Black Community and the Country

Despite Highest Poverty Numbers in 50 Years, Barack Obama Okays Illegals to Compete for Jobs in U.S.

HotAir.com:

It simply doesn’t make sense in any sort of context that says the job of the President of the United States is to look after the welfare of the country’s citizens:

The official U.S. unemployment rate has indeed fallen steadily during the past few years, but the economic recovery has created the fewest jobs relative to the previous employment peak of any prior recovery. The labor-force participation rate recently touched a 36-year low of 62.7%. The number of Americans not in the labor force set a record high of 92.6 million in September. Part-time work and long-term unemployment are still well above levels from before the financial crisis.

Worse, middle-class incomes continue to fall during the recovery, losing even more ground than during the December 2007 to June 2009 recession. The number in poverty has also continued to soar, to about 50 million Americans. That is the highest level in the more than 50 years that the U.S. Census has been tracking poverty. Income inequality has risen more in the past few years than at any recent time.

The true indicator of the actual unemployment rate is the labor participation rate. It is at a 36 year low. The fudged numbers used by the US government hides the actual depth of joblessness problem. And, frankly, it’s a “buyers market” in the labor market. Lots of labor competition for few jobs. That’s one reason you don’t see incomes rising and you do see underemployed Americans.

So let’s introduce about 5 million illegal workers from other countries and enable them to compete in an already depressed labor market and while we’re at it, let’s agitate for a raise in the minimum wage.

Mind blown.  How do you square that sort of action with your oath of office if you’re the President of the United States?

RELATED:  Immigration amnesty will hurt Obama's most loyal supporters: African-Americans

Sean Hannity: Jon Stewart ‘Has His Head So Far Up Obama’s Ass’

Mediaite.com:

A new Jon Stewart interview out today includes the late night comic going off on Fox News. In particular, Stewart honed in on Sean Hannity as “probably the most loathsome dude over there.”

“That’s just pure cynicism, and it’s horrible,” Stewart said. “Everything is presented in as devious a manner as it could be possibly be presented.”

Well, Hannity fired back in a statement to Politico that mostly just highlighted how bad the economy is under President Obama. He refers to Obama as Stewart’s “beloved president,” and asks, “Do I even need to remind him about keeping our doctors, our health plans and saving money? And how is that healthcare website working out? Or Iraq, Isis, the ‘Russian reset’?”

And then Hannity went for the jugular:

“Jon’s problem is he has his head so far up Obama’s ass he cannot see clearly, he is obviously better suited to reading his joke writers material, and making his clapping seal audience happy.”

He also brings up how Stewart’s Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear featured Cat Stevens, now Yusuf Islam, who made comments many interpreted as support for a fatwa against author Salman Rushdie.

RELATED: Jon Stewart Whacks Bush As Inferior to Jimmy Carter, No Troublesome Facts Allowed

George W Bush: ‘No Regrets’ over Decision to Invade Iraq

Mediaite.com:

Former President George W Bush told Bob Schieffer Sunday morning that he had no regrets over the decision to invade Iraq. 

Bush was on to discuss his new book praising his father (and to honor Face The Nation’ss sixtieth anniversary). 43 insisted he did not invade Iraq to finish what his father started, and said he was surprised when Saddam Hussein called his bluff over the invasion, but didn’t regret the decision to go in.

“I think it was the right decision,” Bush said. “My regret is that a violent group of people has risen up again. This is al Qaeda plus. I put in the book that they need to be defeated. And I hope they are. I hope the strategy works.”

It's funny that idiot liberals think President Bush would ever say anything different about his decision to invade Iraq.Clearly, they never paid attention to the man's resolve.

RELATED: The war over President Obama’s new war in Iraq

Report: Barack Obama Planning to Bring Ebola-infected Foreigners to US for Treatment

Townhall.com:

Despite mounting pressure from lawmakers and the public, President Obama on Saturday said that he would not cave on the issue of imposing travel bans on West African nations.

“We can’t just cut ourselves off from West Africa,” he said in his weekly radio address. “Trying to seal off an entire region of the world—if that were even possible, could actually make the situation worse.” 

If that were true, then why has nearly every African nation—plus a number of other countries (and airlines) around the world—imposed a ban or significant restrictions on the Ebola-stricken countries in West Africa? It’s simple: quarantines work. As Ann Coulter noted in her column this week, “It’s becoming increasingly clear that this is just another platform for Obama to demonstrate that we are citizens of the world.” 

Indeed. Our commander in chief has even sent thousands of U.S. troops with only four hours of training to West Africa to combat the virus. The safety and security of Americans has clearly taken a backseat to wellbeing of those overseas. 

And if all this weren’t enough, a conservative watchdog group is out with a shocking new report that claims the administration is looking to bring Ebola-infected foreigners to the U.S. for treatment. Yes, you read that correctly.

Judicial Watch has learned that the Obama administration is actively formulating plans to admit Ebola-infected non-U.S. citizens into the United States for treatment. Specifically, the goal of the administration is to bring Ebola patients into the United States for treatment within the first days of diagnosis.

It is unclear who would bear the high costs of transporting and treating non-citizen Ebola patients. The plans include special waivers of laws and regulations that ban the admission of non-citizens with a communicable disease as dangerous as Ebola.

One source tells us that the Obama administration is keeping this plan secret from Congress. The source is concerned that the proposal is illegal; endangers the public health and welfare; and should require the approval of Congress.

If this plan comes to fruition, the public outcry will be deafening. The fact that the cost of this would undoubtedly fall on the backs of taxpayers is one thing, the negligence it would show for the American people is quite another. 

RELATED: O’Reilly Rips ‘Pathetic Ideological Loons’ at MSNBC for Ebola ‘Racism’ Attacks

Jon Stewart Criticized Democrat Hypocrisy on Campaign Spending

CanadaFreePress.com:

Previously, we’ve discussed Obama’s belief that the GOP is the ‘party of billionaires.’  He made that proclamation while on his way to attend a $32,000.00-per-plate fundraiser at the home of a billionaire real estate mogul named - again, not a joke -“Rich Richman.” We’ve also talked about the desperate letters which ask people to give Obama five dollars so he can stave off impeachment.  ...And we’ve acknowledged his refusal to skip fundraisers in favor of actually doing his job because, as his administration puts it, schedule changes might “alarm the American people or create a false sense of crisis.”

Yet all across the country, Democrats are regularly outspending their Republican rivals as they desperately cling to control of the Senate, and the “beg letters” continue to pile up. All of this, while Obama and his allies run around moaning about how Republicans love fat cats and how there’s too much money in politics. The hypocrisy is painfully obvious.

Democrats love money in politics, as long as it’s their money in politics.

There’s nothing new about that, but it’s rare to see one of the faithful call them on their fearmongering cash-grab B.S. 

Enter left-wing icon Jon Stewart.  You may know him as the host of the Daily Show. ...Or possibly as the man NBC wanted to install as host of Meet the Press, before settling for non-comedian Chuck Todd:

Et tu, Jon Stewart?

RELATED: Ed Schultz Slams Party Apostate Jon Stewart for Criticizing Dems' Hypocrisy on Campaign Spending

New Poll Shows Barack Obama’s Approval Rating is at the Lowest Level of his Presidency

Politico.com:

President Barack Obama’s approval rating is at the lowest level of his presidency, a new poll says.

According to an ABC News/Washington Post poll released Wednesday, 40 percent of Americans approve of Obama’s job performance, the lowest score the poll has recorded since he took office. His rating is down 1 point from September.

The survey comes less than a month out from the November midterm elections. A large number of Democratic congressional and gubernatorial candidates on the campaign trail have been distancing themselves from the White House.

Among independent voters, Obama’s approval rating stands at 33 percent.

Forty-four percent of Americans approve of the president’s handling of economic issues, compared with 51 percent who disapprove, his lowest disapproval level in more than a year.

But the president’s approval rating on his handling of the conflict with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant has plunged in less than a month. Thirty-five percent of Americans approve of his handling of the threat from ISIL, the terrorist group that the U.S. has conducted airstrikes against in Iraq and Syria. His net negative 16-point rating on ISIL is down 22 points from the end of September, when 50 percent of Americans approved of his handling of ISIL.

RELATED: Surging Georgia Democratic Senate candidate afraid to be associated with toxic Obama

Will Blacks in North Carolina, and Elsewhere, Continue to Buy the Liberal Line?

Townhall.com:

Republicans need to pick up six seats in November to gain control of the Senate. 

Consensus to date points to good prospects of this happening. 

But one state where the picture remains unclear for Republicans is North Carolina. Republican challenger, speaker of the North Carolina House of Representatives Thom Tillis, has failed to pull ahead of Democrat incumbent Senator Kay Hagan and average of latest polling shows him behind 3 to 4 points.

Mitt Romney won North Carolina in 2012 by three points. In the last ten presidential elections, Republicans prevailed in North Carolina eight times.

North Carolina is anything but a boilerplate blue state. And the Hagan-Tillis face-off is as pure liberal vs. conservative as you can get.

Tillis is an experienced legislator and solid conservative. 

So what’s the problem?

One issue is the volatile black vote. Not volatile as to their consistency to vote for Democrats but whether or not they show up to vote.

North Carolina, with a population that is 22 percent black, is a laboratory this November for whether the Republican challenger can successfully point to the dismal record of the Democrat incumbent regarding black progress and convince black voters that they should not vote for more of the same.

The big question in states like North Carolina, and with black voters nationwide, is how long will blacks continue to buy what they have been sold for years by liberals.

Hagan’s story line for black voters is the same as what liberals always tell blacks.

Don’t vote for the conservative because the conservative wants to cut government money. And don’t vote for the conservative because the conservative is “for rich people”, and “they’re racist”, and they, as Joe Biden said, “want to put you back in chains’.”

But will these voters really believe that the black poverty rate in North Carolina stands at 34 percent, versus 13 percent among whites, because taxes are not high enough or because government spending is not expansive enough? 

Or that the graduation rate of black males in North Carolina is, according the Schott Foundation, just 58 percent, because government is not spending enough on public schools?

Maybe blacks will finally grasp that government spending really benefits the political class and not the lower class.

RELATED: Lefty Rock Critic: Killings of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown Result of ‘Hatred’ for Obama

Barack Obama Hasn't Come Up With One Original Idea Yet

NYPost.com:

Just before Labor Day, controversy erupted over President Obama’s garb at a presidential press conference — should he or should he not have worn a light tan summer suit when talking about ISIS? That was beside the point.

The issue isn’t the weight or color of his suit. The issue is that the suit is empty.

With almost six years of the Obama administration under our collective belts, the time has come to acknowledge a painful truth: This is an astoundingly idea-free presidency.

At that press conference, Obama stunned the world by saying, out loud and openly, that “we don’t have a strategy yet” on how to deal with ISIS. No president before him had ever said such a thing out loud, and for good reason: Having a strategy is the president’s job.

In the parlance of the universities where Obama spent so much of his time before 2004, when it came to a terror army running rampant through Iraq and beheading Americans, Obama was admitting he hadn’t done the reading, needed an extension on the paper, had to take an “incomplete.”

Well, there was no one there to grant him his incomplete — which is why, two weeks later, he found it necessary to give a nationally televised address to inform the American people and the world that, hey, guess what, he’d come up with a strategy at last. It involved sending arms to the very same Syrian rebels, which just happened to be a policy he had derided only a month earlier as “a fantasy.”

This maddening directionlessness was also on display in the American response to Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza in July — which would involve statements of support for Israel, followed by statements of anger about Israel’s conduct, which would be followed by more statements of support for Israel, and then word that the administration had delayed a standard-issue arms replenishment for Israel as punishment for its bad behavior.

This kind of policy and public-relations whiplash also characterizes the White House’s behavior when it comes to the failures of the Secret Service, with Obama press secretary one day saying the USSS’s director had the president’s full confidence and the next day announcing her resignation as though it had been what the president wished for all along.

And, of course, there’s the handling of the Ebola patient in Dallas, with the administration so desirous of not causing a panic that it spent several days misinforming Americans about whom the patient had come in contact with, how many people there had been, how many plane flights he’d been on, and so forth.

This inconstancy is the result of the administration’s elevation of cool and calm above all other qualities — leadership qualities like urgency, firmness, focus and determination.

The hard truth is that the Harvard Law Review editor and University of Chicago professor with two bestselling books to his name can’t formulate a policy to save his life, can’t oversee the implementation of the policies his administration has put in place and can’t adapt or rejigger them in a convincing way to take account of changing conditions.

RELATED:  Panetta: Obama vacillated on Syria

Morning Joe Asks: Was Female Secret Service Director Case of ‘Quota First, Competency Second’?

Mediaite.com:

Morning Joe and Laura Ingraham have found something to agree on. Close the borders! No, actually it’s the suspicion that Secret Service Director Julia Pierson was hired out not for her qualifications but out of a need to “rebrand” the Secret Service following a high-profile incident with prostitutes, aka a desire for political cover via gender diversity.

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“This is a delicate subject,” began MJ-regular Donny Deutsch, never a good start. “We need to be careful, though, that we are never ever throwing the baby out with the bath water as far as: the best person always has to get the job. As we go through her resume, you go: obviously, coming off the prostitute scandal, okay, yeah, women on top, good for the ‘brand,’ if you will. But the brand doesn’t work if it’s not competent. In positions of national security, quota second, competency first. It’s a delicate subject, but we’ve gotta talk about it.”

“I understand what donny is saying. after the prostitute scandal, somebody thought, hey, you know what, it would be really good for the Secret Service brand to have a woman running the place,” Joe Scarborough said. “Maybe she’s still there because of that, I don’t know.”

The panel then did what the MJ panel always does when it’s discussing gender issues: turned to Mika Brzezinski. Brzezinski brought up Pierson’s resume several times to the point that Scarborough asked if she’d found something fishy in it. Brzezinski said no, but added that it would be heavily scrutinized in the days to come. 

“I really don’t know more than that,” Brzezinski said. “I know, though, that we have now like four or five stories surrounding the Secret Service, which has been under a cloud of scandal already, that really don’t bode well for the agency’s strength and our confidence in it as a whole, so we’ll ask these questions.”

See if you can can’t the number of times someone in this segment said “I don’t know” while condemning a civil servant.

Oh, the irony. Radical feminism in addition to Barack Obama's love for putting women in high-powered positions regardless of skills may cost him his life.

RELATED: Dem Rep. Cummings Demands Secret Service Director ‘Has to Go’

Pew Poll: More and More Americans Think Barack Obama Is Hostile To Religion

HotAir.com:

This seems counterintuitive in an environment where many secularists believe that “separation of church and state” is a quote from the Constitution, but Pew’s results make sense when considering the broader context of American public life. In the same survey that found the general public split on whether businesses should be forced to participate in same-sex marriages, Pew also finds that Americans want more faith-based input on political matters:

Nearly three-quarters of the public (72%) now thinks religion is losing influence in American life, up 5 percentage points from 2010 to the highest level in Pew Research polling over the past decade. And most people who say religion’s influence is waning see this as a bad thing.

Perhaps as a consequence, a growing share of the American public wants religion to play a role in U.S. politics. The share of Americans who say churches and other houses of worship should express their views on social and political issues is up 6 points since the 2010 midterm elections (from 43% to 49%). The share who say there has been “too little” expression of religious faith and prayer from political leaders is up modestly over the same period (from 37% to 41%). And a growing minority of Americans (32%) think churches should endorse candidates for political office, though most continue to oppose such direct involvement by churches in electoral politics.

This is being driven by those of religious faith, of course:

The findings reflect a widening divide between religiously affiliated Americans and the rising share of the population that is not affiliated with any religion (sometimes called the “nones”). The public’s appetite for religious influence in politics is increasing in part because those who continue to identify with a religion (e.g., Protestants, Catholics and others) have become significantly more supportive of churches and other houses of worship speaking out about political issues and political leaders talking more often about religion. The “nones” are much more likely to oppose the intermingling of religion and politics.

Overall, though, Pew finds that 56% of Americans think the waning influence of religion on politics is a problem rather than a solution, with only 12% believing it to be a good development. That assessment hits above 60% in almost every demographic in the Pew data. The difference between voters of faith and the others is especially stark on this point. A narrow plurality of unaffiliated Americans (the “nones”) mildly endorse this trend, 34/30. No other demo in the poll has double digits in the “good thing” category. The weakest demo other than the nones is Hispanic Catholics, where it gets a 9/50. Nor is it limited to the traditional conservative demos, either. White evangelicals predictably give it a 2/77, but black Protestants massively disapprove of the trend too, 5/65.

RELATED:  Why is religion losing influence in America?

AZ Sheriff: Barack Obama Flat-Out Lying About Releasing Criminal Illegal Immigrants

Breitbart.com:

Friday on "Newsmax TV's "MidPoint," Pinal Co., AZ Sheriff Paul Babeu said President Barack Obama has flat out "lied" to the American public because not only is he not doing anything to secure the border, he is releasing dangerous criminal illegals over and over again.

Babeu first gave the example of a Mexican drug cartel member who his officers have arrested 17 times and then said of Obama and former White House spokesman Jay Carney, "You have to drag these people into the light of day and show them for who they are," with FOIA requests to prove they are releasing illegal criminal immigrants back into the public.

RELATED: Poll: More Hispanics name immigration as top problem

Charles Krauthammer: Barack Obama Is a Narcissist ‘Surrounded by Sycophants’

Mediaite.com:

Columnist Charles Krauthammer joined radio host Hugh Hewitt today to diagnose what he believes the problem is with President Obama: he’s a narcissist who surrounds himself with yes-men. He said, “Obama is clearly a narcissist in the non-scientific use of the word. He is so self-involved, you see it from his rise.”

Krauthammer argued that Obama views himself “in very world historical terms” which makes him amateurish. He also picked up on the repeated usage of first-person pronouns in the president’s announcement of Osama bin Laden‘s death, “as if he’d pulled the trigger.”

Hewitt asked whether outside pressure from people like David Petraeus is moving Obama at all. Krauthammer doubted it, because, he said, Obama “lives in a cocoon surrounded by sycophants”:

There’s not anyone of independent stature around him. There was in the first term, because he needed them to prop him up. But now that he entered a second term, he’s the master of the universe, so there’s nobody around him. He is impervious to outside advice, real advice that he takes.

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Tavis Smiley: ‘Black People Lost Ground’ During Obama’s Presidency

Mediaite.com:

Tavis Smiley has written a new book on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., but on HuffPost Live today, he also weighed in on the current state of black America under President Obama. And while Smiley had no interest in “demonizing” Obama, he did say that black people have to start demanding more of the president because as a whole, African-Americans have not fared well economically in the past few years.

Smiley said that black people, frankly, have “been at the back of the bus” when it comes to petitioning the president. He noted while the Hispanic community and other demographics and interest groups have made demands of the president (not all of which have come to fruition), the black community has made no demands of Obama.

And to Smiley, that’s a problem because of the serious problems facing the black community under Obama:

“I don’t celebrate this. I don’t say it as a way of demonizing the president or casting an aspersion on him––but the data is going to indicate… that black people lost ground in every single leading economic category during the Obama years.”

And for telling the truth about Black American life under Barack Obama, Tavis Smiley has pretty much been ostracized by the black community. But hey, truth hurts.

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Chuck Todd: Barack Obama about to do Carter-like Damage to Democrats on Foreign Policy

HotAir.com:

There’s plenty of evidence to support Chuck Todd’s conclusion, and not just on foreign policy, either. The new host of Meet the Press told the Morning Joe panel today that the new NBC/WSJ polling on issues shows that Obama really may be the second coming of Jimmy Carter … and that’s bad news for the Democrats:

Earlier, I wrote about the latest in the series of cratering poll numbers for Barack Obama and how it would impact his ability to restore confidence in his leadership. The NBC/WSJ poll numbers have more interesting data on domestic issues, especially in the context of the upcoming midterms. Obama’s leadership and popularity have become a boat anchor on Democrats’ hopes to avoid a GOP wave this November, but those aren’t the only problems facing the President’s allies in the midterms.

First, the generic ballot question looks better for the GOP than it has since the last election, but only marginally. Republicans have a 45/43 lead, about the same as last month’s 44/43, and the numbers for both parties are within the narrow range we have seen in this series all year. That doesn’t take into account likely voters, though, only registered voters. This poll doesn’t have any explicit enthusiasm tests, and for some reason NBC/WSJ isn’t testing for voting likelihood on these questions, even though the midterms are less than two months away.

The big problem for Democrats is on the issues. Democrats have wide lead on their traditional issues, including environmentalism (+27, but the lowest since 1992), abortion (+15), and health care — which is only at +8, when it was a +36 in January 2008. Republicans lead on their traditional issues too, such as national defense (+38) and the federal deficit (+18), both highs for this series — but those issues are more relevant in polling. Even more relevant than those are the economy, for which Republicans have a +10 advantage. In the 2006 midterms, Democrats had a +13 advantage. On taxes, Republicans have a narrow edge at +4. On the issues that matter most to voters in this cycle — the economy, taxes, national security — Republicans are peaking while Democrats are fading.

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Illegal Immigration Activists Angry At Barack Obama For Delaying Reform Until After Midterm Elections

FOXNews.com:

Immigration-reform advocates expressed their objections Saturday to President Obama’s delaying executive action to fix U.S. immigration policy, including cries of  bitter disappointment and accusations that the president has caved to election-year politics.

“We are bitterly disappointed in the president,” said Frank Sharry, executive director of the group America’s Voice. “The president and Senate Democrats have chosen politics over people.”

In an interview taped for NBC's "Meet the Press," Obama rejected the charge that the delay was meant to protect Democratic candidates worried that his actions would hurt their prospects in tough Senate races.

However, Obama did concede that politics played a role, claiming that a partisan fight in July over how to address an influx of unaccompanied minors at the border had created the impression that there was an immigration crisis and thus a volatile climate for taking the measures he had promised to take.

"The truth of the matter is -- is that the politics did shift midsummer because of that problem," he said. "I want to spend some time, even as we're getting all our ducks in a row for the executive action, I also want to make sure that the public understands why we're doing this, why it's the right thing for the American people, why it's the right thing for the American economy."

However, the delay resulted in widespread reaction from across the country and the political spectrum.
Obama said June 30 that he would take matters into his own hands before the end of summer, amid the GOP-led House stalling reform legislation and thousands of unaccompanied Central American youths trying to illegally cross the southern U.S. border.

“Justice delayed is justice denied,” said Arturo Rodriguez, United Farm Workers president. “He broke his promise to the millions of immigrants and Latinos who are looking for him to lead on this issue in the wake of Republicans’ dysfunction and obstruction.”

As the concept of coming in the right way becomes more and more lost on liberals, they just get more bold and bolder in their outright ruthlessness.

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