Choosing The Right Lane To Follow

In pursuit of Constitutionally grounded governance, free markets and individual liberty

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Democrats: “The Wealthy Need To Pay a Little More” Do They?   By Frank Camp

Even worse fiscal news is pouring in, and it’s only the Saturday after the election. If this is the direction we are headed less than a week after the election, how much worse can it get? Well, in light of recent comments by Obama about taxing the “rich,” I’d like to talk about what taxing the wealthy really means. In response to his statements, stocks fell even further today, after modest gains on Friday morning. The stocks didn’t fall by a ton, but enough to know that his talks caused the decline. So, what does it mean for the “wealthy to pay a little more?” Walter E. Williams, of Town Hall writes that, “According to IRS 2007 data, the richest 1 percent of Americans earned 22 percent of national personal income but paid 40 percent of all personal income taxes. The top 5 percent earned 37 percent and paid 61 percent of personal income tax. The top 10 percent earned 48 percent and paid 71 percent of all personal income taxes. The bottom 50 percent earned 12 percent of personal income but paid just 3 percent of income tax revenues.” And according to Bob Ewoldt, “Letting the “Bush tax cuts” expire for the people that make over $250,000 will bring in less than $71 billion in federal revenues.  Will that close our budget deficit?  In 2012, President Obama proposed a budget that included $3.729 trillion in spending, with a deficit of $1.327 trillion.  Given that deficit, $71 billion in additional money amounts to 5.3% of the deficit…Let’s say that we tell the quite-a-bit-less-than-rich that they have to share the sacrifice of our budget deficit, too, and raise the tax rates on everyone in the top 25% (anyone making above roughly $71,000).  To take $1.327 trillion from the top 25%, we would need to have their actual tax rate be 25.77%, which means having a marginal tax rate of 43.89% for everyone that makes more than $71,000.” So, what both of these men are saying is that the federal government would have to take absurd amounts of money–about 90% from the top 1%, and 44% from the top 25%–to balance out the deficit amounted by the Obama administration. In addition to this, the “wealthy” already pay a large percentage of the taxes collected in the United States as it stands.

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Florida Says It’s OK That Minorities Don’t Read Well By John DeMayo

Last week the Florida Board of Education decided to institute a new set of standards for grading students reading prowess in their state. Florida’s new student achievement goals are designed to take into account the unique family life and socioeconomic background of different races and there effect on student reading scores. In other words different races will be graded differently because as we all know we are all products of our environment. In an attempt to meet the terms of waivers granted to Florida (and 32 other states) from provisions of the federal “No Child Left Behind Act” (as well as bridging the minority student to non-minority student achievement gap); Florida is lowering reading standards for minority and some poor students. Apparently in Florida kids don’t have to read at the same grade level anymore especially if their black and poor. Oh brother! All across America young people are being short changed by a failing public education system. Now the experts are trying to change the rules to accommodate decades of failed policies and failing families. I’m sure the teachers union is behind this insanity, but when are we going to reach a point where it stops? Minority communities better get their collective act together and start pushing their students to achieve real grades on real subject matter or they will eventually get left behind. Are minority communities so blind that they don’t see the damage they are willingly inflicting on future generations of Americans? If so they have nobody to blame but themselves. They elect these people and they are welcome to the consequences of their voting behavior.

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Administration Rolling Out 68 New Regulations Per Day – 6,125 in 90 days

It’s Friday morning, and so far today, the Obama administration has posted 165 new regulations and notifications on its reguations.gov website. In the past 90 days, it has posted 6,125 regulations and notices – an average of 68 a day. The website allows visitors to find and comment on proposed regulations and related documents published by the U.S. federal government. “Help improve Federal regulations by submitting your comments,” the website says. The thousands of entries run the gamut from meeting notifications to fee schedules to actual rules and proposed rule changes. In recent days, for example, the EPA posted a proposed rule involving volatile organic compound emissions from architectural coatings: “We are approving a local rule that regulates these emission sources under the Clean Air Act (CAA or the Act),” the proposed rule states. “We are taking comments on this proposal and plan to follow with a final action.”

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Did Petraeus Mistress Reveal New Benghazi Details?

Paula Broadwell, the biographer revealed as the woman having a secret affair with the now-former CIA director, gave a talk at the University of Denver on Oct. 26 in which she appeared to reveal sensitive, maybe even classified, information about the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi. The most interesting revelation is her claim that the CIA was holding several Libyan militia members prisoner, which may have prompted the attack. (Though she also sought to explain the Obama administration's initial view that the attack was linked to the YouTube video Innocence of Muslims, an anti-Islam polemic that sparked riots across the Muslim world.)

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FBI Suppressed Petraeus Scandal to Protect President By Ronald Kessler

FBI agents investigating CIA Director David Petraeus's affair were shocked when told by bureau officials that despite the national security implications, no action would be taken on their findings until after the presidential election: Only then would President Obama ask for Petraeus’ resignation. The White House claims President Obama and his national security advisors were first informed of the Petraeus' affair on Thursday, two days after the election. But the  official timeline strains credulity. Senior FBI officials suppressed disclosure of the highly sensitive case, apparently to avoid embarrassment to Obama during his re-election campaign. On Oct. 10, I was contacted by a longtime FBI source who told me that a bureau investigation had uncovered Petraeus’ affair with a journalist and that it could potentially jeopardize national security. The veteran agent related to me that FBI agents assigned to the case were outraged by what were they were told by senior officials: The FBI was going to hold in limbo their findings until after the election. “The decision was made to delay the resignation apparently to avoid potential embarrassment to the president before the election,” an FBI source told me. “To leave him in such a sensitive position where he was vulnerable to potential blackmail for months compromised our security and is inexcusable.”

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Rep. King: Petraeus Must Answer Questions on Benghazi

Rep. Peter King reiterated Sunday that General David Petraeus, who stepped down as head of the CIA following revelations of an extramarital affair, will very soon have to answer congressional questions about the Obama administration's handling of the Sept. 11 terror attack in Benghazi, Libya. "My strong recommendation is Gen. Petreaus has to testify," the New York congressman told Fox News. "We can’t find out what happened in Benghazi unless David Petreaus testifies. He was at the center of it all. He is an absolutely essential witness." King questioned the timeline of the FBI’s investigation into personal emails of Petraeus, and when high-ranking government officials, including the president, were made aware that the then CIA director was being investigated.

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Military timeline of Benghazi attack begs more questions

After more than nine weeks of trying to reconcile their story line with that of the State Department and the CIA, the Pentagon finally released its timeline of the Libya terror attack during a Friday afternoon, off-camera briefing with an official who could only be quoted anonymously.

THE FIRST DISCREPANCY:
Right from the start, the Pentagon and the CIA timelines do not match. (The CIA timeline, which was released on Nov. 1, states that at 9:40 p.m., “A senior State Department security officer at the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi called the CIA annex and requested assistance.”) AFRICOM commander Gen. Carter Ham, who happens to be visiting Washington and was in the Pentagon that day, redirects an unarmed, unmanned drone to Benghazi.
 PANETTA AND DEMPSEY ARE ALERTED 50 MINUTES AFTER ATTACK:
At 10:32 p.m. (4:32 p.m. in Washington), 50 minutes after the incident began, the National Military Command Center, which is the operations center at the Pentagon where Ham is overseeing the operation,  notifies Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey. That means for nearly an hour, no one told the defense secretary and Joint Chiefs chairman that a U.S. ambassador is in peril and his personal security officer has pressed his “personal distress button” which sends an SMS signal back to the command authority in the U.S. and a U.S. embassy has been overrun by attackers.

PREVIOUSLY SCHEDULED MEETING WITH PRESIDENT: 78 MINUTES AFTER ATTACK
At 5 p.m. in Washington, D.C. (11 p.m. in Libya), nearly an hour and a half after the attack began, according to the Pentagon’s timeline, “Secretary Panetta and General Dempsey attend a previously scheduled meeting with the President at the White House.”  The attack has already been under way for 78 minutes, but no rescue forces from outside Libya have yet been mobilized.
MORE CALLS FOR HELP:
Upon returning to the annex, the CIA team and those that were rescued immediately begin taking fire and at midnight, according to sources on the ground that night, begin making radio calls for help and air support. Almost immediately, they begin taking fire from small arms and rocket-propelled grenades. According to a senior U.S. defense official, “This was not one long continuous fight, but two separate incidents at two separate facilities with some separation of time.” However, British sources who were near the consulate and annex that night tell a different story, saying there was almost continuous fire on the annex after the team fled from the consulate. Sometime over the next two hours, according to the official Pentagon timeline, Panetta gives the “go code” for two Marine FAST (Fleet Anti-terrorism Security) teams to prepare to leave Rota, Spain. It isn’t until 2:53 a.m. (about five hours after the incident began) that those orders are formalized by Panetta and the teams are told they can leave.
TEAM LANDS AT SIGONELLA 20 HOURS LATER:

The Pentagon says that the European-based team of rescuers landed at Sigonella air base at 7:57 p.m. on Sept. 12, more than 20 hours after the attack began and 40 minutes after the last survivor was flown out of Tripoli on a U.S. C-17 transport plane. Fox News has learned more details about the European rescue team. More than 30 Special Operations Forces, part of a Commander’s In Extremis Force, or CIF, which is normally on a short tether, are deployed in the event of a terror attack. They are a counter terror SWAT team.  The group ordered toward Libya was from the Charlie 110 Company, based in Stuttgart, Germany, but had been training in Croatia on an exercise known as “Jackal Stone.” The training involved counterterrorism exercises.
NO PERMISSION TO LAND:
Military sources familiar with the orders given to the CIF team tell Fox News the CIF plane headed to Libya -- not to first stage at Sigonella as the Pentagon timeline suggests. The Pentagon denies this, saying simply that they were ordered to an intermediate staging base. What cannot be confirmed is what time that team could have been outside Libyan air space. The Pentagon won’t say when they took off from Croatia. Multiple defense sources say that the plane did not have permission to enter Libya. That permission would have to be secured from the Libyans by the State Department.
“FEET DRY OVER LIBYA”:
Survivors of the attack at the annex say that they heard over the radio net that night that U.S. military assets were, “feet dry over Libya," which would refer to assets crossing from sea to land and hovering. The Pentagon denies this.  The original story board that shows the CIF movement that night is difficult to find, according to those who saw the original timeline. The official brief, according to those familiar with it, simply says that the plane landed at Sigonella at 7:57 p.m. on Sept. 12 -- 20 hours after the start of the attack, even though they were just a few hours away in Croatia. This raises the question: what time did they get their orders and how long did it take the CIF to scramble?
THE CIA RESCUE TEAM FROM TRIPOLI:
Meanwhile in Libya, two hours and 48 minutes after the attack on the consulate began, a six-man rescue team organized by the CIA in Tripoli that included two Tier One Army Special Operators already in Tripoli on another assignment leave the capital to help. However, they do not have a plane and end up chartering one too small to rescue the entire group in Benghazi and are required to make a round trip. They do not depart Benghazi with the last survivors and Ambassador Chris Stevens’ body until 10 a.m. the next day.
THE AMBASSADOR IS STILL MISSING:
Security personnel at Blue Mountain Group receive a photograph of the ambassador’s body in a morgue at 7:15 a.m. At that point, Stevens’ body had still not been recovered from the hospital where Ansar Al Sharia, the presumed attackers, had surrounded it. By 8:30 a.m., all KIA are accounted for, including the ambassador. The Pentagon’s critics say the president and defense secretary could have ordered more assets into Libya to help sooner.   

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FBI Suppressed Petraeus Scandal to Protect President

Ronald Kessler reporting from Washington, D.C. — FBI agents investigating CIA Director David Petraeus’s affair were shocked when told by bureau officials that despite the national security implications, no action would be taken on their findings until after the presidential election: Only then would President Obama ask for Petraeus’ resignation. The White House claims President Obama and his national security advisors were first informed of the Petraeus’ affair on Thursday, two days after the election. But the official timeline strains credulity. Senior FBI officials suppressed disclosure of the highly sensitive case, apparently to avoid embarrassment to Obama during his re-election campaign.  On Oct. 10, I was contacted by a longtime FBI source who told me that a bureau investigation had uncovered Petraeus’ affair with a journalist and that it could potentially jeopardize national security. The veteran agent related to me that FBI agents assigned to the case were outraged by what were they were told by senior officials: The FBI was going to hold in limbo their findings until after the election.

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Report: Eric Holder Knew About Petraeus Probe Months Ago By Todd Beamon

Attorney General Eric Holder knew as early as late summer that former CIA Director David Petraeus was the subject of an FBI investigation that eventually uncovered an affair that Petraeus was having with his biographer, Fox News reported on Monday.The revelation raises questions of whether Holder, already under fire for the botched “Operation Fast and Furious” gun-running scheme, should have – or even would have – told President Barack Obama once he was notified about the FBI investigation. "The idea that the White House didn't learn of this potential problem until Election Day, I just find incomprehensible,” John Bolton, former U.S. ambassador to the U.N. under George W. Bush, told Fox. “Did the attorney general sit on this information for two months?"

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Benghazi: Don’t Fall for the Misdirection

For the Washington Post, David Ignatius has obtained a CIA timeline of the September 11 attack. He begins:

A detailed CIA timeline of the assault on U.S. facilities in Benghazi paints an anguishing picture of embattled Americans waiting for Libyan security forces who didn’t come and courageous CIA officers who died on a rooftop without the heavy weapons they needed, trying to protect their colleagues below.  It’s a story of individual bravery, but also of a CIA misjudgment in relying on Libyan militias and a newly formed Libyan intelligence organization to keep Americans safe in Benghazi.  That much we already knew.  The courage of the few defenders has been well documented (and can’t be praised enough). Equally well documented is the abysmal decision-making that left them out-gunned, out-manned, and vulnerable in the midst of a veritable hornet’s nest of terrorism.  But then Ignatius says this:

While there were multiple errors that led to the final tragedy, there’s no evidence that the White House or CIA leadership deliberately delayed or impeded rescue efforts. Yet the timeline he then reports is wholly irrelevant to deciding that crucial question. In that timeline, we learn that a band of six men raced to rescue Ambassador Stevens, our Libyan militia “allies” (with isolated exceptions) not only were ineffective, they apparently denied the six-man team the use of their .50 caliber machine guns, and a Predator drone did arrive but was unarmed. Unable to find the ambassador, the team retreated to the security “annex” where they are attacked for more than an hour. Four hours later, the attack is renewed, and while the mortars aren’t “painted” with lasers, some of the attackers are — as “warnings not to fire.” Three mortar shells then hit the roof, killing Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods.

What is missing from this account? Any details at all about the military or White House’s situational awareness and decision-making. As I detailed on Monday, the White House and Department of Defense no doubt already have a timeline that includes the following information:  (a) when the military learned of the attack; (b) the military’s state of situational awareness hour-by-hour; (c) whether it received any requests for help; (d) what assets — if any — were available to render aid in time; (e) what recommendations were made; (f) whether any definitive orders were given; and (g) who gave them. More than six hours passed between the arrival of the Predator drone overhead and the final, deadly attack on the annex. That is more than enough time to make a decision and bring military assets into the fight. Why were they not deployed? The Daily Beast says that the State Department “never requested military backup,” but that hardly answers the question. That’s typically the responsibility of the ambassador, who was at that very moment cut off, alone, and dying. Interestingly, in that same report the Daily Beast wasn’t able to confirm or deny whether CIA officers made requests for air support.  The bottom line is that the president of the United States has the inherent authority to order immediate military assistance, regardless of whether a request comes from the State Department, CIA officials on the ground, or — in the confusion of battle — from no one at all. Why did you fail to give that order, Mr. President? And if you did, why was it not carried out?

The CIA timeline confirms only what we already knew: A small band of courageous Americans fought a desperate battle with insufficient resources and no effective help from the most powerful military in the world. In other words, we left men behind.

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Feinstein Says She Had to Call Petraeus Directly to Learn What the FBI Never Told Her By Susan Jones

News of Gen. David Petraeus' extramarital affair came as a "lightning bolt" to Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Dianne Feinstein, because the FBI never told her about its four-month investigation of Petraeus' biographer, Paula Broadwell. "The way I found out, I came back to Washington, Thursday night, Friday morning -- the director (CIA Director Petraeus) told me there were a number of calls from press about this. I called David Petraeus. And as a matter of fact, I had had an appointment with him, at 3:00 that afternoon, and that was canceled. And so, then, when these questions came up, I obviously took the action myself, to try to find out and then, informed my vice chairman (Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss), and I talked to the director twice. This is very hard stuff."