Senators Who Think Benghazi Is Worst Scandal Ever Threaten to Turn Every Embassy Into Benghazi

Remember Benghazi? Congressional Republicans have spent the past four years using the 2012 attack on a U.S. diplomatic compound in Libya to go after Hillary Clinton and the Obama administration over their failure to protect American personnel overseas. Sen. Ted Cruz called for a joint select committee to investigate “why our facilities in Benghazi were not secure, why we didn't respond to the reports of terrorist activities, why we didn't have military assets in place to protect our brave men who were serving there.” And Sen. Marco Rubio accused Clinton’s State Department of an “extraordinary failure…to take appropriate action to protect Americans.” But now that Clinton has been defeated, both former presidential candidates are willing to use the safety of American diplomatic personnel as a bargaining chip.

As the Huffington Post reports, the two former presidential candidates, along with Republican Sen. Dean Heller of Nevada, introduced legislation this week aimed at pressuring the incoming Trump administration to make good on its pledge to move the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem by threatening to cut security funding for embassies around the world. To literally make embassies less secure.

entire Slate Article: http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2017/01/06/cruz_and_rubio_threaten_to_turn_every_embassy_into_benghazi.html

Have a verified Twitter account? WikiLeaks might track you

WikiLeaks, the organization that's published US diplomatic communications and purported emails from Hillary Clinton campaign chief John Podesta, has proposed tracking personal details of Twitter users with verified identities.

"We are thinking of making an online database with all 'verified' twitter accounts & their family/job/financial/housing relationships," the WikiLeaks Task Force said on Twitter on Friday. In another tweet it said, "We are looking for clear discrete (father/shareholding/party membership) variables that can be put into our AI software."

In response to a concern that such a move could harm privacy, WikiLeaks responded, "No it is to develop a metric to understand influence networks based on proximity graphs."

Verified accounts sport a blue checkmark to indicate Twitter has checked identification credentials to ensure Twitter users are who they say they are. It's widely used with celebrities, politicians and members of the press, but Twitter has expanded the verification program more widely.

Also on Friday, Twitter's Safety account tweeted that "posting another person's private and confidential information is a violation of the Twitter Rules."

WikiLeaks and Twitter didn't immediately respond to requests for comment.


http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/%E2%80%8Bhave-a-verified-twitter-account-wikileaks-might-track-you/ar-BBxZ9gG?li=AA4Zoy&ocid=spartandhp

Energy executives, secretive nonprofit raise money to back Pruitt

New group warns that EPA nominee's confirmation 'is not a certainty' and millions of dollars are needed for the fight.


Energy companies and their executives have poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into political action committees run by or supporting President-elect Donald Trump's nominee to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt. And now Pruitt is getting extra help from a new nonprofit that doesn't have to disclose its donors.

Pruitt has become a favorite of conservatives as well as oil and coal companies since he has helped lead the legal fight against President Barack Obama's environmental and climate change agenda — policies the White House's opponents see as an overreach of federal power and a threat to fossil fuels.

The new group, Protecting America Now, warns that Pruitt’s confirmation “is not a certainty” and says that millions of dollars are needed for advertising and social media campaigns to counter anti-Pruitt campaigning from "anti-business, environmental extremists,” according to a flier obtained by POLITICO.


entire Politico article at link: http://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/scott-pruitt-epa-nonprofit-backers-233306

Ft. Lauderdale Mass Shooting Shows Need For Guns In Airports, GOP Lawmaker Says

A Florida state Senate committee next week will take up legislation that would allow civilians to openly carry guns in airports, college campuses and other public places.

State Sen. Greg Steube (R-Sarasota) said Friday’s mass shooting at Ft. Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport shows the importance of his bill, SB 140. It would allow Floridians with a concealed weapon permit to have guns with them in non-secure areas of schools, courthouses and airports. That would include airport baggage claim areas, where a lone gunman killed and wounded multiple people during Friday’s attack.

“Law-abiding people who have gone through the background checks, gone through the training … shouldn’t be told that they can’t carry and that they can’t defend themselves,” Steube said in a phone interview shortly after the Ft. Lauderdale shooting.

“It further enforces the point of the whole bill,” he said .

The open-carry bill will go before the Senate judiciary committee on Tuesday as scheduled, he said.

entire article at link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/ft-lauderdale-guns-in-airports_us_586ff3dae4b043ad97e35ba4?bpsecqk9n7cbfyldi

Florida Governor Reached Out to Trump After Fort Lauderdale Shooting But Not Obama

In the aftermath of the deadly mass shooting at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport today, Florida Governor Rick Scott spoke to the press to give an update.

Scott stated that he reached out to President-elect Donald Trump and Vice-President-elect Mike Pence, who let him know they would help him with any assistance from the federal government.

However, he also let it be known that he has not spoken with the current President, saying Barack Obama has not reached out to him yet. When pressed by reporters, he stated that he only reached out to Trump and Pence, but not to Obama, and that it was him who initiated the contact with Trump/Pence.

Scott later bristled when asked why he didn’t try to contact the sitting POTUS, saying it was not a time to be political.

The shooter has been identified as 26-year-old Esteban Santiago. He was taken by police unharmed after the shooting.


http://www.mediaite.com/online/florida-governor-reached-out-to-trump-after-fort-lauderdale-shooting-but-not-obama/

I will be interested in Schumer's take on the Russian hacking & on Trump not releasing his tax

returns. Especially now with what has been released.

How Henry Kissinger Conspired Against a Sitting President Watch out, Donald Trump: This could happen

to you too.


Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who has counseled numerous American presidents and statesmen since he left government in early 1977, is back in the halls of power once again. Since the election, he’s positioned himself close to Donald Trump, advising the president-elect on key appointments and praising him in public. And Kissinger, who has maintained close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin, is now positioning himself as an intermediary between the Kremlin and the incoming Trump administration.

But previously undisclosed documents that I discovered while poring through the archives at Stanford’s Hoover Institution should give us serious pause about Kissinger’s resurgence. The storied former diplomat is not above using his considerable foreign policy credibility to further his private objectives, even to the detriment of the U.S. national interest. Indeed, on at least one occasion since he left public office, Kissinger used his influence with foreign leaders—in this case, the Pinochet regime in Chile—to undermine his domestic political opponents, including a sitting president of the United States.

It all began on September 21, 1976, when, during the final months of the Gerald Ford administration and Kissinger’s tenure as secretary of state, Chilean President Augusto Pinochet ordered the assassination of Orlando Letelier, a prominent Chilean dissident and former ambassador to the United States who was then working at a think tank in Washington, D.C. At 9:30 a.m. on that drizzly Tuesday, a group of Cuban anti-communist extremists allied with Pinochet’s intelligence services detonated a remote-control bomb placed on the underside of Letelier’s Chevrolet while it rounded Sheridan Circle—a 20-minute walk from the White House. Letelier and his American co-worker, Ronnie Moffit, were killed in the explosion. The first known act of state-sponsored terrorism ever to take place in the American capital, the assassination and its aftermath were national front-page news for years. Investigators and prosecutors tried to crack a case that took them across three continents, all while facing significant pushback from elements within the U.S. government who preferred not to rattle Cold War alliances.


entire article @: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/01/henry-kissinger-jimmy-carter-chile-214603

Trump will never be considered a legitimate POTUS he will always have an asterisk after his name.EOM

New Report Claims At Least 50 Trump Voters in Electoral College Were Illegally Seated

A report apparently submitted to Congress says that at least 50 Electoral College voters for President-elect Donald Trump were illegally seated either because they didn’t live in the relevant Congressional District, or because they already held office. Now anti-Trump groups are pushing for those electors and their votes to be disqualified.

“The number could be over a hundred,” the brief reads. “There were also a lesser number of Democratic electoral votes that there not regularly given or lawfully certified. We urged you, our representatives, to prepare written objections for January 6th.” The argument is that if there are enough objections to the electoral votes, Trump might not have the necessary 270 votes required to become President.

Activists, usually liberals, have been trying to keep President-elect Donald Trump from taking office on January 20 because they argue he’s simply unqualified for the job. This brief is getting backed by the anti-Trump group, Americans Take Action. According to the Hamilton Electors group, which has also been promoting the challenge of electors, the report was written by a group of attorneys, but a representative from the organization told LawNewz.com that the attorneys are not affiliated with them. One of the attorneys, Arlaine Rockey, said in an interview conducted by the Hamilton Electors, that 16 Republican electors should not have been eligible because they did not live in the congressional districts that they are representing.

“The other main objection,” Rockey said, “had to do with a person holding a dual office.” Many state constitutions say that if a person is elected to one office, they cannot hold another office. Because electors are elected to their position during the general election, Rockey said, anyone who already holds an office cannot be an elector.

Trump supporter and Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi was a presidential elector despite already holding office. LawNewz.com reached out to her office for a response. Rockey also mentioned that a Florida State Senator was listed as an elector.

Most electors tend to be party loyalists because of the way they’re chosen. They are required by state law to follow their state’s popular vote results. Only two GOPers (Texans, incidentally) refused to vote Trump, while eight electors in other states actually tried to choose people besides Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

In a conversation with LawNewz.com, Rockey said that she has been on the phone with Senators trying to convince them to object to the electors that she and her colleagues believe are ineligible. But, she admits, “I don’t know for sure if it’s going to happen.” Rockey said, “We knew it it was going to be a long shot,” but she hopes that Congress takes this opportunity to stop Trump. If Trump falls short of 270 electoral votes, the House would get to choose the President from the top three electoral vote-getters, who are Trump, Clinton, and Colin Powell, who received three votes despite not even running. Rockey says it’s up to Congress as to whether they want to listen to the report and raise the objections to the electors, allowing for someone other than Trump to take office. “Do they want to continue with Trump, or form a coalition [with Democrats] … and vote for General Powell?” She believes that enough Republicans and Democrats could agree on Powell as an alternative to Trump or Clinton.

The Republican-dominated Congress is scheduled to meet Friday afternoon in a joint session to count and certify the final electoral votes.

Note: This article has been updated to included comments from attorney Arlaine Rockey given to LawNewz.com.


http://lawnewz.com/high-profile/new-report-claims-at-least-50-trump-voter-in-electoral-college-were-illegally-seated/

Florida Legislature Was Set to Consider Bill Allowing Guns in Airports Next Week

In a sad but ironic twist of fate, the Friday mass shooting at the Fort Lauderdale -Hollywood International Airport comes one week before Florida legislators planned to debate a new bill allow the carrying of firearms in airports.

The Tallahassee Democrat reported Tuesday that Republican State Senator Greg Steube had introduced SB 140 to the state senate Judiciary Committee, to be considered sometime next week. The bill would repeal existing gun bans on college campuses, in airport terminals, and in government meetings.

“If you want to kill as many people as possible before the cops arrive then you are likely to go to a place where law-abiding citizens can’t carry,” argued Steube, the committee chairman. “That’s what we’ve seen, time and time again and why I think we shouldn’t have them.”

The bill is of course likely to attract even more controversy and attention in the wake of the shooting and as new information comes to light. You can follow Mediaite’s coverage of this breaking story here.

http://www.mediaite.com/online/florida-legislature-was-set-to-consider-bill-allowing-guns-in-airports-next-week/