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

Jeb 2016 Cartoon

Hey, ill-tempered atheist, hands off the baby Jesus, step away from the manger

My atheist readers should prepare to have their egg nog curdled because I’m about to reveal something that’s politically incorrect.
I believe that Jesus is the reason for the season and that makes me about as politically incorrect as they come – especially among our nation’s ill-tempered atheists.
I made that revelation in my upcoming Fox News Radio special, “The Todd Starnes All-American Christmas” set to air on Christmas Eve. 

I believe that Jesus is the reason for the season and that makes me about as politically incorrect as they come – especially among our nation’s ill-tempered atheists.

I’ve often wondered why folks like the Freedom From Religion Foundation get their Christmas stockings in a twist at the mere mention of the baby wrapped in swaddling clothes.
Maybe all they got for Christmas one year was a package of underwear and a can of Aunt Edna’s fruit cake?
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What’s even more bizarre is how they get so worked up over something they don’t even believe is real. I’m no psychologist – but I’m sure there’s a clinical term for such a condition.
Nevertheless, the atheists have sworn some sort of oath to push Christmas celebrations underground. “Away with the Manger” seems to be their battle cry.
Their modus operandi has traditionally been to target small towns and bully City Hall and the public school system. They mail nasty letters and threaten them with lawsuits.
Sarah Palin talked about the assault on Christmas during my upcoming Fox Radio Christmas special.  
“There are crazy things going on in society,” she said. “They are trying to take Christ out of Christmas.”
And unfortunately, many Americans are letting the atheists do just that.
“Today unfortunately, they feel they have to be so politically correct – that the joy of Christmas is diminishing,” she said.
Gov. Palin is correct. Many of communities have thrown in the towel. The excuses vary from town to town – but most folks worry about spending tax dollars on lengthy court battles. So instead of standing up for their constitutional rights, they shove the Baby Jesus into storage and take down their “Merry Christmas” signs.
The atheists have been allowed to wage their yuletide warfare for the most part without so much as a fight. But that’s not the case this year. This year, the town folks are fighting back and they are ready to deck somebody’s halls and jingle somebody’s bells.
One of my new heroes is Terry Calhoun. He’s the mayor of Rainbow City, Alabama. The FFRF sent him a terse letter demanding that the town remove its Nativity. 
Mayor Calhoun told the Wisconsin atheists to go back to where they came from.
“As long as I am mayor, I’m going to do what I think is right and I’m not moving that manger scene,” he told television station KTRK.
The FFRF also tried to bully a fire station in Utica, New York. It was a strategic error.
The firefighters posted a holiday sign outside Fire Station 4 declaring “Happy Birthday Jesus. We Love You.”
An FFRF lawyer fired off a letter complaining about out it’s “bad policy” for a government agency to celebrate the birth of Jesus. Syracuse.com reported the FFRF fretted that the message excluded – among other people – Muslims. 
Well, there’s a good reason for that. We aren’t celebrating the birthday of Mohammed on December 25.
Fire Chief Russell Brooks decided to stand his ground. He told television station WKTV that the firefighters erected the sign after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
“9/11 brought a lot of the guys closer to God, and they just wanted to show their faith in Jesus,” Brooks said. “They had no idea a controversy would arise.”
The FFRF bunch nearly had a win in Piedmont, Alabama after they demanded the town drop the “Keep Christ in Christmas” theme for the annual holiday parade.
The town complied – but with a slight caveat. They allowed all the parade entrants to post the theme on their floats and trucks and tractors. On the night of the parade, virtually every parade float was promoting the reason for the season.
The FFRF should know better than to mess with folks in Alabama. They don’t take too kindly to out-of-town atheists trying to stir up trouble.
So let not your heart be troubled, my friends. The atheists are on the losing side of this battle.
Sarah Palin told me during our Christmas special that it’s not too late to return to the true meaning of Christmas.
“We can get that back and work together to put the joy back into Christmas – by putting Christ back into Christmas,” she said.
So let me reaffirm what I shared with our audience in the “Todd Starnes All-American Christmas” – Jesus is the reason for the season.  
And that, my friends, is what Christmas is all about.

GOP report: Top IRS official considered admitting targeting before 2012 election -- but didn’t

A top IRS official considered going public with the agency’s targeting of conservative groups at a hearing just months before the 2012 presidential election but ultimately decided against revealing the bombshell news, according to a new report from a GOP-led House committee.
Then-Deputy Commissioner Steven Miller wrote in an email in June 2012, about a month before a House Ways and Means subcommittee hearing, that he was weighing whether to testify to “put a stake” in the “c4” issue -- apparently a reference to allegations about politics playing a role in the agency’s denial of tax-exempt, 501(c)(4) status to conservative-leaning groups.
“I am beginning to wonder whether I should do [the hearing] and affirmatively use it to put a stake in politics and c4,” Miller told his chief of staff, Nikole Flax, in a June 2012 email obtained by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
Miller ultimately testified at the July 25 hearing but never revealed his knowledge of the misconduct.
“Because he did not, he did a great disservice to the American taxpayers,” the House oversight committee report states.
The detail is one of many findings and allegations in the 226-page Republican-authored report, obtained by Fox News in advance of its release on Tuesday. The report highlights numerous examples of what House Republicans say is agency officials misleading congressional investigators and trying to slow their investigations.
Miller testified before Congress on at least six occasions as deputy commissioner and later as acting commissioner, from May 2012 until May 2013, when he was forced to resign.
During a final hearing, Miller apologized for the agency’s “poor service” but maintained the targeting was not motivated by politics.
The report states: “Though Miller was never asked as directly as [Commissioner Doug] Shulman about the targeting … Miller likewise never told Congress about the IRS misconduct. Miller’s multiple missed opportunities to tell Congress about the targeting continued the IRS’s pattern of failing to inform Congress.”
Now-retired IRS official Lois Lerner, in charge of the agency’s tax-exempt division during the 2010-2012 targeting, eventually revealed the scandal at an American Bar Association event in May 2013 -- roughly six months after President Obama won re-election and just days before an inspector general report on the allegations was scheduled for release.
“They used names like Tea Party or Patriots and they selected cases simply because the applications had those names in the title,” she said at the time. “That was wrong, that was absolutely incorrect, insensitive and inappropriate.”
Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings, the top Democrat on the House oversight committee, on Monday accused the authors of the GOP-generated report of taking information out of context and selectively releasing information.
“It is revealing that the Republicans -- yet again -- are leaking cherry-picked excerpts of documents to support their preconceived political narrative without allowing committee members to even see their conclusions or vote on them first,” he said in a statement. “By leaking information to reporters on condition that they not disclose it to Democrats, Republicans are intentionally bypassing the normal congressional vetting process designed to distinguish fact from fiction.”
The report follows a recent congressional budget agreement for fiscal 2015 that cuts IRS funding to roughly fiscal 2000 levels, which agency officials argue will make oversight and other jobs even more difficult.
Other conclusions in the report, including several already made public, are that the Obama administration appears so far to have done an incomplete investigation and at times has been uncooperative.
“Only a month after Attorney General (Eric) Holder announced the administration’s investigation, then-FBI Director Robert Mueller was unable to answer basic questions about the status,” the report states. “Even as recently as July 2014, after the IRS informed Congress that it had destroyed two years of Lerner’s e-mails, the FBI continued its refusal to provide any information about its investigation.”
In addition, the Justice Department at one point was willing to pursue criminal prosecutions against the tax-exempt groups, based on information obtained by the IRS, according to documents obtained by House GOP investigators.
And the IRS failed to provide sufficient internal oversight, the report concludes.
“Congress created administrative oversight entities within the Executive Branch to ensure the IRS carries out its mission efficiently and responsibly,” the report states. “These entities -- specifically, the IRS Oversight Board and the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration -- exist to ensure that IRS misconduct does not occur and, if it does, to identify and address it immediately. In the case of the IRS’s targeting of conservative tax-exempt applicants, these administrative oversight entities failed in their missions.”