Boots on the Ground 05-05-14

82nd Airborne Division brigade commander relieved

The commander of 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division has been relieved of command, officials announced Wednesday.
Col. Patrick Hynes was relieved of command by Maj. Gen. John Nicholson, the commanding general of the division.

The action took place after an investigation into allegations of misconduct; Hynes was relieved due to loss of confidence in his ability to command, according to a statement from the XVIII Airborne Corps at Fort Bragg, N.C.
No further details about the investigation or the nature of the allegations were available Wednesday evening.
Lt. Col. Albert Paquin, the commander of 2nd Battalion, 319th Airborne Field Artillery Regiment, will temporarily take command of 2nd BCT, officials said.
Prior to the investigation, the Army had already selected Col. Joseph Ryan to succeed Hynes as brigade commander. Ryan is scheduled to take command in July, officials said.

Eleven terrorists with links to Al Qaeda have been arrested on suspicion of being involved in the disappearance of MH370

• Suspects were arrested in the capital Kuala Lumpur and the state of Kedah
• Said to members of violent new terror group said to be planning attacks
• Interrogations came after demands from agencies including FBI and MI6
• Manifest revealed presence of consignment but did not reveal its contents
• Airline has admitted 200kg of lithium batteries was among the items
• It refused to say what else, citing 'legal reason' related to 'ongoing' probe

A group of 11 terrorists with links to Al Qaeda were yesterday being interrogated on whether they are behind the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.

The suspects were arrested in the capital Kuala Lumpur and in the state of Kedah last week and are members of a violent new terror group said to be planning bomb attacks in Muslim countries.
The interrogations come after international investigators, including the FBI and MI6, asked for the militants, whose ages range from 22 to 55 and include students, odd-job workers, a young widow and business professionals, to be questioned intensively about Flight MH370.

Nearly two months after the Beijing-bound plane vanished soon after take-off from Kuala Lumpur, no trace has been found despite a huge sea search costing hundreds of millions of pounds. It is thought to have crashed into the Indian Ocean with 239 people on board.
An officer with the Counter Terrorism Division of Malaysian Special Branch said yesterday the arrests had heightened suspicion that the flight’s disappearance may have been an act of terrorism.

Spy Plane Fries Air Traffic Control Computers, Shuts Down LAX

A relic from the Cold War appears to have triggered a software glitch at a major air traffic control center in California Wednesday that led to delays and cancellations of hundreds of flights across the country, sources familiar with the incident told NBC News.

On Wednesday at about 2 p.m., according to sources, a U-2 spy plane, the same type of aircraft that flew high-altitude spy missions over

Russia 50 years ago, passed through the airspace monitored by the L.A. Air Route Traffic Control Center in Palmdale, Calif. The L.A. Center handles landings and departures at the region’s major airports, including Los Angeles International (LAX), San Diego and Las Vegas.

The computers at the L.A. Center are programmed to keep commercial airliners and other aircraft from colliding with each other. The U-2 was flying at 60,000 feet, but the computers were attempting to keep it from colliding with planes that were actually miles beneath it.

Though the exact technical causes are not known, the spy plane’s altitude and route apparently overloaded a computer system called ERAM, which generates display data for air-traffic controllers. Back-up computer systems also failed.

Obama's 'New World Order' appears 'dead in the water


NEW YORK – The Trans-Pacific Partnership, the most sweeping free-trade agreement since NAFTA. appears ready to be added to the growing list of Obama administration second-term setbacks, with Obama’s failure to obtain Japan’s signature during his recent trip to Asia.
The lack of an agreement with Japan on the TPP, a centerpiece of the Obama administration’s free-trade agenda, could doom the12-nation meeting scheduled for Vietnam next month.
Even if progress toward an agreement is made in Vietnam, a coalition of union-supported Democrats in Congress have joined with conservative Republicans to deny the Obama administration the “fast-track authority” needed to push the TPP through Congress.
Fast-track authority would allow the Obama administration to move the pact through Congress with a simple majority vote. The rules would limit debate so that no amendments could be introduced to modify the language of the agreement the Obama administration has negotiated behind closed doors.
The failure of the TPP could mark an end to the “new world order” free trade era that began when the administration of President George H. W. Bush started pushing NAFTA as a strategy to boost the U.S. economy by creating jobs through increasing exports.
The Obama administration appears to have failed to convince not only Congress but also Japan that Pacific Rim trading partners should join with the U.S. to contain China economically as Beijing positions itself bypass the U.S. as the world’s No. 1 economy.

An Obama-pushed non-starter?
Curtis Ellis, communications director of the American Jobs Alliance, believes the TPP was not really about free markets.
“The corporatist agriculture and their water carriers in the U.S. Trade Representative’s office are the Commodore Perrys of today, demanding Japan throw open its doors to the gaijin,” he said.
“Japan said no,” Ellis continued. “If that makes the Japanese protectionists, then this is a battle of Japanese protectionists versus American corporatists – this has nothing to do with free markets.”
During Obama’s two-day summit with Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, TPP negotiations fell apart despite aides on both sides pulling all-nighters.

Big Three Newscasts Out to Lunch on Jihadists' Mass Kidnapping of Nigerian Girls

ABC, CBS, and NBC's morning and evening newscasts have yet to set aside any air time to a mass abduction of over 200 schoolgirls from a school in northern Nigeria on April 16, 2014. Islamist terrorist group Boko Haram raided the government-run institution and forced the students into vehicles. On Thursday, the girls' parents and their supporters led a demonstration to pressure the government into action.

The last time the Big Three networks covered the ongoing insurgency in Nigeria was on the April 14, 2014 edition of NBC Nightly News. Anchor Brian Williams gave a 26-second news brief about Boko Haram's bombing in the capital of Abuja, which took place mere hours before the jihadist group kidnapped the students. Nine days later, CNN's Wolf Blitzer devoted a full segment on his Wolf program to the school incident with correspondent Vladimir Duthiers: [MP3 audio available here; video below the jump]

Supreme Court Issues 2nd Amendment Blow

Today the U.S. Supreme Court decided to allow lower courts to continue rubberstamping any and every kind of law that violates the 2nd Amendment.
In a major announcement this morning, the Supreme Court refused to hear Drake v. Jerejian, a case challenging the constitutionality of New Jersey’s arbitrary rules governing the right to carry handguns in public for purposes of self-defense.
The lawyer behind the case is Alan Gura, the civil rights litigator who previously argued and won both Heller and McDonald before the high court. In an interview with me last month, Gura explained his reasons for bringing the Drake case. “We’ve seen courts rubberstamp just about any kind of law that violates the Second Amendment,” he said, describing the legal climate in the wake of Heller and McDonald. “Unless the Supreme Court decides to enforce its pronouncements, the Second Amendment will apply only to the extent that some lower courts are willing to honor Supreme Court precedent.”
It now appears the Supreme Court is content to let the lower courts keep rubberstamping away.
Drake v. Jerejian deserved the high court’s attention. At issue was New Jersey’s Handgun Permit Law, which requires applicants to prove they have a “justifiable need” before local officials will issue a handgun carry permit. Unlike those states that maintain a “shall issue” permit regime, where applicants are required to satisfy a clear list of objective criteria, such as completing a firearms safety course and passing a criminal background check (if you meet the qualifications, the government “shall issue” you a permit), New Jersey grants local officials wide leeway in determining what qualifies as a “justifiable need” in their respective jurisdictions.

Read more at http://janmorganmedia.com/2014/05/supreme-court-issues-2nd-amendment-blow/#yUtruk3RhIXZIHFH.99

Today the U.S. Supreme Court decided to allow lower courts to continue rubberstamping any and every kind of law that violates the 2nd Amendment.
In a major announcement this morning, the Supreme Court refused to hear Drake v. Jerejian, a case challenging the constitutionality of New Jersey’s arbitrary rules governing the right to carry handguns in public for purposes of self-defense.
The lawyer behind the case is Alan Gura, the civil rights litigator who previously argued and won both Heller and McDonald before the high court. In an interview with me last month, Gura explained his reasons for bringing the Drake case. “We’ve seen courts rubberstamp just about any kind of law that violates the Second Amendment,” he said, describing the legal climate in the wake of Heller and McDonald. “Unless the Supreme Court decides to enforce its pronouncements, the Second Amendment will apply only to the extent that some lower courts are willing to honor Supreme Court precedent.”
It now appears the Supreme Court is content to let the lower courts keep rubberstamping away.
Drake v. Jerejian deserved the high court’s attention. At issue was New Jersey’s Handgun Permit Law, which requires applicants to prove they have a “justifiable need” before local officials will issue a handgun carry permit. Unlike those states that maintain a “shall issue” permit regime, where applicants are required to satisfy a clear list of objective criteria, such as completing a firearms safety course and passing a criminal background check (if you meet the qualifications, the government “shall issue” you a permit), New Jersey grants local officials wide leeway in determining what qualifies as a “justifiable need” in their respective jurisdictions.

Release Obama’s Benghazi intelligence briefings

President Obama claims he was only repeating what the intelligence community told him when his administration asserted that the attack in Benghazi began with a spontaneous protest inspired by an Internet video. If that’s the case, there is a simple way to prove it: Give the new congressional select committee investigating Benghazi his daily intelligence briefings that show exactly what he was told.

There is precedent for doing so. In 2004, at the request of the 9/11 Commission, President George W. Bush declassified and publicly released the President’s Daily Brief (PDB) delivered to him before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. No sitting president had ever declassified a PDB while still in office. But Bush did it anyway, releasing the report titled “Bin Laden determined to attack inside the U.S.” It warned that the FBI had detected “patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings” but contained no actionable intelligence that could have stopped the 9/11 attacks from happening.

What’s good enough for Bush should be good enough for Obama. Congress should ask the president to follow precedent and release the PDBs he received in the days after the Benghazi attack.
There is no good reason for Obama to refuse such a request. If Obama is right that the intelligence community told him the attack was the result of a protest over the Internet video, releasing the PDBs will demonstrate that he is telling the truth — and put the Benghazi debate to rest once and for all.
Of course, it is highly unlikely that is what the Benghazi PDBs would show. That’s because when the intelligence community presents judgments to the president, it always does two things: First, it attaches a level of confidence (low, medium or high) to its judgments. And second, it includes dissenting views, if there are any.

Doing A Little Blow? : Where was Obama the night of Benghazi??

There have been many different theories about where B . Hussein Obama was on Sept 11, 2012? President Obama didn’t make any phone calls the night of the Sept. 11 attacks on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, the White House said in a letter to Congress.
“During the entire attack, the president of the United States never

picked up the phone to put the weight of his office in the mix,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham. Our four Americans were denied help and left to die.
It’s been hard to get anyone on the White House inside to tell the American people where B. Hussein Obama was while the events were unfolding in Benghazi. It’s obvious. Obama is hiding where he was and what he was doing.
Repeated attempts and repeated failures to ascertain specifics as to his  location and activities while the attacks were ongoing are not privacy issues. He gave that right up when he took his oath of office.
The hour by hour schedule of Obama’s movements was provided as he was supposedly watching the Bin Laden Raid. Isn’t the same information just as important in a situation where American citizens died?
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FL Senate Dems Vote against Bill to Protect Women from Sharia Law


With the huge influx of Muslims into America, we are starting to see their Islamic influence on American culture and law. Schools are starting to teach about Islam where they don’t teach anything about Christianity or Judaism. Our president is obviously much more sympathetic to his Muslim friends than to America’s Christians.
Islamic or sharia law treats women as nothing more than disposable property. Under sharia law, a Muslim father, brother, uncle, husband or son can beat, rape, torture and even kill a female relative if he believes that she has done anything wrong or caused shame on the family.

I just reported the case of an Arizona Muslim who held his wife against her will, raped and beat her and then threatened to kill her. He told her that Islamic law allows him to kill her because he suspected she might be having an affair.
A number of states have been trying to take steps from allowing sharia law to enter the courtrooms in their states. Several of the laws that were passed early on were overturned in courts because they specifically mentioned sharia or Islamic law. So state legislators got wise and began drafting bills that referred to international and foreign laws instead on mentioning sharia or Islamic laws. The states that have passed laws to restrict the use of international or foreign laws in their courts include Arizona, Kansas, Louisiana, North Carolina, South Dakota and Tennessee.
Florida is now working to pass a similar law. State Sen. Alan Hays (R-Umatilla) introduced SB 386 which would restrict any foreign or international law from being used in any Florida court in matters of divorce, alimony, division of marital assets, child support and custody.

Dem Sen. Manchin signals bill to build Keystone could have the votes

A Democratic senator suggested Sunday that the Senate might have enough votes to pass a bill compelling the Obama administration to approve the Keystone XL pipeline. 
Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., noting that 62 senators voted in favor of a Keystone measure last year, said: "I still think that vote is there. I really do." 

Manchin discussed the prospects just days after his Senate colleagues introduced a bill to build the Canada-to-Texas pipeline. The difference between the measure approved last year and this one is that last year's was a nonbinding resolution with no real teeth to it. 
The new Senate bill would require approval of Keystone. Getting a filibuster-proof, 60-vote majority on board with such a bill is a heavier lift for sponsors. 
But Manchin said he "would hope" that a few more Democrats would be willing to support it, and even suggested it could be a positive step for the White House. 
"We don't want to usurp anyone's power, but if it gives the White House some protection from the environmental community coming after them, sooner or later you've got to give to the will of the people," Manchin said. 
Democrats and Republicans are moving forward with a Senate bill to compel approval after the State Department once again delayed the consideration process, possibly until after the midterm elections. 
The proposed pipeline would carry oil from Canada to the United States, where it eventually would reach Gulf Coast refineries. Supporters say it would create thousands of jobs and help the United States get closer to a goal of energy independence. Opponents include environmentalists who say the project wouldn't create much permanent employment once it was finished, and say it would reinforce the nation's use of an energy source that worsens climate change.