Our @danabashCNN reports Senator Landrieu says she has the 60 votes needed on the Keystone XL pipeline. Senate vote is Tuesday evening.
— Steve Brusk (@stevebruskCNN) November 17, 2014
Cassidy statement: "Landrieu’s failure to pass" the bill "is a perfect snapshot of her time as Chair of the Energy Committee – a failure"
— Steve Brusk (@stevebruskCNN) November 18, 2014
Protesters in Ferguson, Missouri, are prepping full-time for the moment the St. Louis County Grand Jury renders a decision whether Ferguson police office Darren Wilson will be charged in the death of 18 year Michael Brown back in early August. The announcement could come at any time. Authorities have indicated they will not announce in advance when the decision will come down. I suspect that authorities are brainstorming on the best time of day or night to make the announcement in order to throw off what will surely be wide spread protests of varying intensities in and around Ferguson and St. Louis County.
Missouri Governor Jay Nixon (D) activated the Missouri National Guard on Monday to back up local police in Ferguson, St. Louis and Missouri State Police for expected protests breaking out when the Grand Jury decision is made public.
Protesters aren't interested in real justice. They are interested in vigilante justice. They are demanding that Darren Wilson be charged with first degree murder. Anything less will be unacceptable to this mob of domestic terrorists. The protest activists have said it's time for white people to feel uncomfortable and they will take it upon themselves to teach whites what the feeling of being uncomfortable is all about. If this isn't domestic terrorism, I'm not certain what the definition of domestic terrorism might be.
The activists have come up with a long list of targets they plan to include in their protests. The vast majority of these targets are completely unrelated to the incident in Ferguson, which raises the question of the protesters motives. Targeting Boeing, Anheuser-Busch, Emerson Electric, and the St. Louis Art Museum, etc., doesn't make any rational sense, unless the protesters want to start some kind of rebellion between whites and blacks.
The protesters claim they do not want to see violence, but their planning seems to belie their real motives and intentions, which appear to be to set a series of events in motion that will do little to contain violence and everything that will lead to inciting violence among the masses of people in Ferguson and the surrounding area of St. Louis County.
Barack Obama just keeps stepping in it. He's never missed an opportunity to make a situation worse by lying about it. Whenever something leaks out, his response is predictable: "I just learned about this".
Whenever something Obama is doing comes to light, his first reaction has never been to address the actual problem. The only problem he perceives is the potential for political fallout. Predictably, he waits to see what he needs to do to make sure no responsibility sticks to him. What happened in Benghazi, what's going on in the VA, the ongoing saga of the Obamacare farce, Biden's latest gaffe, what the IRS is doing, etc., all news to him when and if it reaches the public' s awareness.
This time, with the recent revelations about Obamacare, it looks like he's got some gruber on his shoe. Lucky for him, he lives in a country where the entreprenuerial spirit is still strong. Anytime there's an opportunity to capitalize on something, somebody will step up. Private citizens do that in this country, Mr. Obama. This time it's a little boutique in DC that specializes in shoe scrapers. As long as Obama keeps it up, they're sure to make a fortune.
"If the White House press corps wants to keep government honest, here's a question to ask as President Obama prepares to legalize millions of undocumented immigrants by executive order: Has he sought, and does he have, any written legal justification from the Attorney General and the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) for his actions?
This would be standard operating procedure in any normal Presidency....
It's possible Messrs. Obama and Holder haven't sought an immigration opinion because they suspect there's little chance that even a pliant Office of Legal Counsel could find a legal justification. Prosecutorial discretion is a vital legal concept, but it is supposed to be exercised in individual cases, not to justify a refusal to follow the law against entire classes of people." — The Editors, The Wall Street Journal
"In a 17-minute audio message, purportedly from its elusive leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the group sets its sights firmly on Saudi Arabia, birthplace of Islam and the world's largest oil producer and exporter.
The speaker does not refer to it as Saudi Arabia, since this is a name derived from the ruling tribe, the al-Saud, whose authority ISIS does not accept. Instead he calls it "the land of Haramayn", the land of the two holy places, meaning Mecca and Medina.
Reaching out to ISIS's growing number of Saudi followers, he sets out a target list for attack, starting with the Shia who make up a minority of Saudi nationals, living mostly in the oil-rich Eastern Province, and whom hardline Salafi radicals view as heretics. So deep are the sectarian divisions opened up in the Middle East by the insurgency in Iraq that many Saudis view ISIS not as a marauding band of terrorists but as brave defenders of Sunni Islam against the encroaching forces of Iran and its Shia allies.
Saudi officials have long been warning that their country is the primary target of ISIS.
Having declared itself a caliphate this summer, it was inevitable that sooner or later the group would turn its attention to the largest and most important country in the region. Saudi Arabia's supreme religious authority, the grand mufti, has branded IS as the "greatest enemy of Islam".
A recent op-ed written in the New York Times by Saudis close to the government said: "Saudi Arabia is the only authority in the region with the power and legitimacy to bring IS down."
Today the Saudis find themselves in an extremely uncomfortable position. Their air force has joined the US-led coalition in conducting numerous air strikes against IS positions in Syria, yet this is deeply unpopular with many Saudis. A prince who has flown sorties against IS in an F15 jet has reportedly received death threats.
More than 2,000 Saudi nationals are estimated to have joined the ranks of ISIS, bringing with them an extreme brand of "takfiri" ideology that views large portions of the population with suspicion and intolerance."
