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Politics : How Quickly Can Obama Totally Destroy the US? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Wayners who wrote (457)	12/15/2012 11:12:34 PM
From: joseffy	Respond to of 16547

State Department preparing for Libya bombshell? December 14, 2012 foxnews.com Susan Rice's abrupt withdrawal from consideration for secretary of state, coupled with suggestions from the State Department that Secretary Hillary Clinton may not testify as scheduled next week, has stirred speculation that something big is brewing in the Libya terror attack investigation. "You're starting to see the State Department squirm a little bit," Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, said. For the better part of the last three months, an independent board has been conducting a review for the State Department of the Sept. 11 terror attack in Benghazi. In anticipation of the report's conclusion, two congressional committees scheduled hearings for next week in which Clinton was set to testify. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland, though, surprised lawmakers and reporters on Thursday when she indicated the report, and the secretary, might not be ready. "The Hill has talked about a planning date on the calendar. That presumes that the (report) is finished," Nuland said. "I don't have any dates, any schedule of the secretary's to announce here." Asked whether Clinton has committed to testify, Nuland said "it's dependent on the work being finished." Further, Nuland rejected the notion that the final report on Libya needed to be shared with Congress at all. She stressed, instead, that the only thing the statute requires is for "the secretary's response" to the report's conclusion to be sent to Congress. The comments were met with surprise on Capitol Hill. A spokesman for House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., who scheduled a hearing for Dec. 20, said this was the first they heard a scheduling issue. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry, D-Mass., said it's still "the plan" for Clinton to testify on his committee next week. But Fox News is told that Rep. Mike Rogers, chairman of the House intelligence committee, believes there was gross negligence on behalf of the State Department for not providing adequate security to Ambassador Chris Stevens. Chaffetz told Fox News that if done accurately, the final report will be a "very difficult thing" for the State Department, the CIA, the Department of Defense and the White House to explain. Chaffetz also speculated that Rice's announcement Thursday that she's withdrawing from consideration for secretary of state is related. "The State Department owes us a report," he told Fox News. "That's why I think Susan Rice made the announcement today, because I think we're on the verge of getting that report." Nuland insisted Thursday that, whatever the timeframe, Clinton will be "transparent and open with Congress." She said Washington needs to wait for the report to be completed, "and we'll go from there." For her part, Rice said she was withdrawing because she did not want to subject the Obama administration to a "lengthy, disruptive and costly" confirmation process. Many Republicans were opposed to the possibility of her nomination over concerns about her Sept. 16 comments in which she described the Libya attack as tied to a "spontaneous" demonstration. They questioned why she was chosen by the administration in the first place to do a round of Sunday show interviews. Rice, though, tried to explain as she bowed out of the running Thursday. In an interview on NBC News, she said Clinton was originally asked to go on the networks, but "she had had an incredibly grueling week dealing with the protests around the Middle East and North Africa," as well as the deaths of department employees, and declined. So Rice stepped in. In a Washington Post column, Rice said her comments were based on intelligence at the time. "It would have been irresponsible for me to substitute any personal judgment for our government's and wrong to reveal classified material," she wrote. Read more: foxnews.com

To: Wayners who wrote (457)	12/16/2012 4:01:42 PM
From: joseffy	1 Recommendation Respond to of 16547

Obama picks Kerry as Secretary of State... Obama picks Kerry as Secretary of State...

To: Wayners who wrote (457)	12/18/2012 9:15:09 PM
From: joseffy	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 16547

A Moranic career: Rep. Jim Moran’s violent political life 12/17/2012 by Jamie Weinstein dailycaller.com The day after Bill Clinton admitted on national television that he had carried on an affair with Monica Lewinsky, Democratic Virginia Rep. Jim Moran lamented the baseness of the national scandal. “This whole sordid mess is just too tawdry and tedious and embarrassing,” he said in 1998. “It’s like a novel that just became too full of juicy parts and bizarre, sleazy characters.” The criticism was stinging, mainly because Moran is a world-renowned expert in sleaze. Last week, another chapter was added to Moran’s tawdry political career when his son was arrested outside of a Washington, D.C. bar for, according to police, grabbing his girlfriend “by the back of the head with his hand and slam[ming] her head” into a “metal trashcan cage.” The report went on to quote a medical technician who said the girl’s nose looked broken and “her right eye socket could possibly be fractured which is actually considered a skull fracture.” Rep. Moran seemed nonplussed by the incident, calling his son and his battered girlfriend “good kids” and saying they “look forward to putting this embarrassing situation behind them.” On that account, Moran can be of great service to his son because few know more about putting embarrassing situations behind them than Jim Moran. His career has led from one embarrassment to the next, including numerous physical confrontations, bombastic accusations against individuals and even an ethnic group, and a history of sketchy financial dealings. A former amateur boxer, Moran has taken the skills he honed in the ring into elective office — literally. In the mid-1980s, he served as mayor of Alexandria, Va., where he reportedly had a history of engaging in physical altercations while in office. “The Mayor was clearly guilty of assault on more than one occasion,” an officer told the online news site Capitol Hill Blue in a 1999 profile of Moran. “But the word came down. The Mayor was off limits. Ordinary citizens go to jail. Not the Mayor.” “He was a bully and a thug … we’d call the cops but they wouldn’t do anything,” added a bartender in Alexandria where Moran caroused. One combatant during that time said when Moran and he got into a confrontation he quickly realized he “was looking into the eyes of a madman.” As a congressman in 1995, Moran got into a scuffle — what’s been described as a “shoving match” — with now-disgraced Republican Rep. Duke Cunningham, on the House floor. In 1999, Moran’s wife called the cops on him, saying he grabbed her in the heat of an argument. He claimed he was just restraining her and no charges were filed, but wife number two filed for divorce the next day. Most bizarrely, in 2000, Moran attacked an 8-year-old boy he claimed threatened to carjack him, though the boy said he simply told Moran he “liked his car.” Moran was accused of grabbing the boy by the neck and screaming profanities at him. “He choked me and cussed at me,” said the boy, whom The Washington Times described as under five feet tall and weighing less than 100 pounds. Moran called the charges “all lies.”