Wednesday, December 24, 2014

Emergency, Call the Mayor Cartoon


US government offering $5M reward for Al Qaeda leader freed from Gitmo

Yet Obama Keeps Letting Them Go!

The Obama administration is scrambling to track down an Al Qaeda terrorist released from Guantanamo Bay years ago, offering a $5 million reward for information on him and placing him on a global terrorist list. 
Ibrahim al-Rubaysh was originally released in 2006 by the George W. Bush administration and put into a Saudi Arabian "rehabilitation" program. However, al-Rubaysh returned to the battlefield and now serves as a top leader with Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula -- one of the most dangerous Al Qaeda affiliates. 
The case underscores the continued risks in transferring detainees from the controversial prison camp -- another four were released over the weekend to Afghanistan. 
The Pentagon, though, insists that it continues to take precautions before releasing prisoners. 
Lt. Col. Myles Caggins, Defense Department spokesman for detainee policy, said more than 90 percent of detainees transferred under the Obama administration "have resumed quiet lives in various countries." 
Al-Rubaysh, he said, was held at Guantanamo from 2002 and transferred in 2006. 
"Since 2009, the Defense Department and five government departments and agencies conduct thorough security and intelligence reviews prior to transferring Guantanamo detainees," Caggins said. 
Recent alerts from the State Department revealed how al-Rubaysh has reestablished himself in militant circles since his release. 
A briefing posting on the department's Rewards for Justice website offers up to $5 million for information that "brings justice" to the former detainee. It says he has served as a senior "sharia official" with AQAP since 2013 and as such, "provides the justification for attacks conducted by AQAP." He also is involved in planning attacks, the posting says. 
A statement released last week by the department putting him on a list of "Specially Designated Global Terrorists" offered more details about his activities. The department said al-Rubaysh has made public statements, including this past August, "where he called on Muslims to wage war against the United States." 
Conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch first reported on the reward offer for the former Gitmo inmate. 
The group criticized the "laughable Saudi rehab program, which started under Bush and continued under Obama." 
Judicial Watch wrote: "It turns out that al-Rubaysh is the poster child for the Saudi rehab's failures. He's a dangerous Al Qaeda operative based in Yemen and now, years after freeing him, the United States wants him captured." 
Detainee transfers have continued at a steady clip, to countries all over the world, since the Bush administration. A total of 23 detainees have been released this year, and more of the 132 detainees left at Guantanamo are expected to be transferred in the coming months. 
GOP lawmakers have raised security concerns, warning that some could return to the battlefield and endanger U.S. troops serving overseas. But the administration says the camp itself undermines national security and should still be shuttered.

Parting Shot: Outgoing Arizona Gov. Brewer calls Obama a ‘failed president’


Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, stepping down after six years in office where she was a perpetual thorn in the side of the Obama administration, is leaving with a parting shot -- calling President Obama a "failed president." 
"He's been a very big disappointment to me," Brewer told Fox News in an interview. "I think he has done things that certainly we would never have expected any president to do -- by executive order and because he says so." 
Brewer has spent the last few years locked in legal battles with the Obama administration and others, largely over provisions in her state's strict immigration bill, SB1070. 
Multiple times, the federal courts have rejected provisions in the bill as unconstitutional. Even this week, just days before leaving office, a federal court rejected Brewer's effort to deny driver's licenses to young undocumented immigrants known as "dreamers." 
Brewer said her biggest disappointment during her tenure was not getting the Arizona-Mexico border secured -- though she tried with SB1070, which would have made it a crime for immigrants to be in Arizona without the proper papers, before that too was struck down. 
Brewer, in the interview, rejected the criticism of those who have called her a racist for supporting the bill. 
"Those of us born and raised in the southwest are not racists," she insisted. "Those people are our neighbors. We go to church with us. Their children go to school. They marry into our families. This has nothing to do with racism. The bottom line is the rule of law and what it is doing to our country." 
As Brewer and her allies struggle to preserve the state's strict immigration measures, Obama is charging ahead with his own immigration policies, via executive action, to suspend deportations and give work permits to potentially millions of illegal immigrants. 
Brewer is not letting up on her criticism of the president. 
The governor made headlines in January 2012, when cameras caught her wagging a finger in the president's face on an airport tarmac. 
Does she regret it? 
"No, not really," she said. "He was not very nice to me that day." 
According to Brewer, the president had objected to her portrayal of him as dismissive and patronizing in her book, "Scorpions for Breakfast." 
"He is very thin-skinned. He was very concerned about how I portrayed him in my book," she said. "It was a truth-telling book and we need our borders secure, and he walked away from me." 
At the time, Obama downplayed the exchange, saying: "I think it's always good publicity for a Republican if they're in an argument with me. ... I think this is a classic example of things getting blown out of proportion." 
Brewer isn't a typical governor. She did not attend college and worked as an apartment building superintendent, pumping toilets and drains to put her husband through school. In 1982, she was elected as a state representative. Later, she moved to the state Senate and then Arizona secretary of state before taking the governorship when Janet Napolitano left to become Obama's secretary of homeland security. 
As for her future, Brewer is a proven fundraiser and a good draw on the speakers' circuit. It's likely some 2016 presidential candidates will seek her support, allowing her to continue her push for states' rights and laws limiting illegal immigration.

St. Louis County police officer kills man who pulled gun, authorities say


DEVELOPING: Police in St. Louis County, Mo. say a police officer in the town of Berkeley shot and killed a man who pointed a handgun at him late Tuesday. 
County police spokesman Sgt. Brian Schellman says a Berkeley police officer was conducting a routine business check at a gas station around 11:15 p.m. Tuesday when he saw two men and approached them.
Schellman says one of the men pulled a handgun and pointed it at the officer. The officer fired several shots, striking and fatally wounding the man. Schellman says that the second person fled and that the deceased man's handgun has been recovered.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that a group of around 60 people had gathered at the site of the shooting. The paper said that the crowd included local ministers and people who have been involved with protests surrounding the Michael Brown grand jury decision. Berkeley is about two miles from Ferguson, where a white police officer shot and killed Brown, who was black, in August. 
The St. Louis region saw unrest after Brown's killing, and protests were renewed last month when a grand jury chose not to indict Wilson
The Post-Dispatch reported that officers made at least three arrests after protesters confronted them. The paper also reported that explosive flashes were set off. There were no immediate reports of any other injuries.

Protesters flood New York City streets despite mayor's call for moratorium

Mayor Bill de Blasioand and ex-lesbian Wife Chirlane McCray.

Hundreds of protesters took to the streets of New York City Tuesday night, defying a call by Mayor Bill de Blasio for a moratorium on demonstrations until two NYPD officers killed Saturday could be laid to rest. 
The New York Post reported that over a thousand activists marched through one of midtown Manhattan's most prominent shopping districts two nights before Christmas. The march began at 5th and 59th Street and headed south to 53rd Street before turning north. Marchers told the paper they planned to end with a protest at a precinct in East Harlem. 
Some of the activists turned their fury on de Blasio, who was elected mayor last year on a platform of reforming the city's police force, including ending the controversial so-called "stop and frisk" tactic.
"The mayor says stop that, we say [expletive] that!" yelled activists, while jumping in place.
"We're protesting tonight, because the mayor specifically said not to," 25-year-old Tarik Grand, of Brooklyn told the Post. "They asked for a moment of silence for the cops, but not for [Eric] Garner."
Garner died this past July after apparently being placed in a chokehold by NYPD officers on State Island during a confrontation over his selling of so-called "loosies," or untaxed cigarettes. A grand jury's decision to not indict the officer has sparked ongoing protests. 
The tension surrounding the nationwide debate over police tactics and conduct, as well as recent high profile shootings of unarmed black men, was heightened by Saturday's murder of Officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos as they sat in their patrol car in Brooklyn. The killer, 28-year-old Ismaaiyl Brinsley, had previously shot and wounded his ex-girlfriend at her home outside Baltimore, then made threatening posts online, including a vow to put "wings on pigs". After shooting the officers, Brinsley ran into a subway station and committed suicide.
De Blasio, who called for a pause in the protests Monday, faces a widening rift with members a grieving police force who accuse him of creating a climate of mistrust that contributed to the killings of the officers. The mayor's request was summarily rejected by activist groups, one of which called it an attempt to "chill the expression of free speech rights."
New York Police Commissioner William Bratton, speaking Tuesday in Rhode Island, said it was "unfortunate" that some protests continued despite the mayor's plea.
Many of Tuesday's marchers directed inflammatory chants toward police officers, such as "How do you spell murderers? N-Y-P-D!" Another chant went "NYPD, KKK, how many kids did you kill today?"
"Personally, I feel it was horrible what happened to the police officers," Rutgers University student Frangy Pozo (see photo below) told the Post. "We’re not saying we're against them. [But] just because they died shouldn’t slow us down."
Also Tuesday, city landmarks including the Empire State Building and the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree dimmed their lights from 9 p.m. to 9:05 p.m. Tuesday to honor the slain officers.
The mayor and his wife quietly visited the site of the shooting on Tuesday morning, spending several minutes there. De Blasio folded his hands before him and stood with his head bowed. His wife placed flowers among dozens of tributes.
Later, de Blasio observed a moment of silence at 2:47 p.m., the time the officers were shot.

 Frangy Pozo

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