Dear colleagues,

The recent news about the FBI’s seizure of the phone and email records of Fox News employees, including James Rosen, calls into question whether the federal government is meeting its constitutional obligation to preserve and protect a free press in the United States.  We reject the government's efforts to criminalize the pursuit of investigative journalism and falsely characterize a Fox News reporter to a Federal judge as a "co-conspirator" in a crime. I know how concerned you are because so many of you have asked me: why should the government make me afraid to use a work phone or email account to gather news or even call a friend or family member? Well, they shouldn’t have done it. The administration’s attempt to intimidate Fox News and its employees will not succeed and their excuses will stand neither the test of law, the test of decency, nor the test of time. We will not allow a climate of press intimidation, unseen since the McCarthy era, to frighten any of us away from the truth.

I am proud of your tireless effort to report the news over the last 17 years. I stand with you, I support you and I thank you for your reporting with courageous optimism. Too many Americans fought and died to protect our unique American right of press freedom. We can’t and we won’t forget that. To be an American journalist is not only a great responsibility, but also a great honor.  To be a Fox journalist is a high honor, not a high crime.  Even this memo of support will cause some to demonize us and try to find irrelevant things to cause us to waver.  We will not waver.

As Fox News employees, we sometimes are forced to stand alone, but even then when we know we are reporting what is true and what is right, we stand proud and fearless.  Thank you for your hard work and all your efforts.

Sincerely,
Roger Ailes

Michael Isikoff reports for NBC News Holder OK'd search warrant for Fox News reporter's private emails, official says

Attorney General Eric Holder signed off on a controversial search warrant that identified Fox News reporter James Rosen as a “possible co-conspirator” in violations of the Espionage Act and authorized seizure of his private emails, a law enforcement official told NBC News on Thursday.

ABC News: Holder to investigate Holder Obama Orders DOJ Review of Leak Investigations

"I have directed the attorney general to report back to me by July 12th.”

Former IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman,…. "The last couple years the Congress has not been funding the IRS sufficiently," 

However, according to the IRS’s own website, "The Administration’s fiscal year (FY) 2013 budget request for the Internal Revenue Service is approximately $12.8 billion, a $944.5 million increase (8%) over the FY 2012 enacted level."

Former Acting IRS Commissioner Steven Miller…what the IRS needs is more agents and "a bigger budget" in order to ensure that the IRS stops harassing and targeting conservatives based on their political beliefs.  

Lois Lerner placed on paid administrative leave

Lois Lerner Directly Involved in IRS Targeting, Letters Show

Lois Lerner at the Federal Elections Commission

“I’ve known Lois since 1985,” says Craig Engle, a Washington, D.C., attorney who from 1986 to 1995 served as the executive assistant to one of the FEC’s commissioners
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Engle describes Lerner as pro-regulation and as somebody seeking to limit the influence of money in politics. The natural companion to those views, he says, is her belief that “Republicans take the other side” and that conservative groups should be subjected to more rigorous investigations. According to Engle, Lerner harbors a “suspicion” that conservative groups are intentionally flouting the law.

General counsel’s reports composed during Lerner’s tenure at the FEC confirm Engle’s recollections of a woman predisposed to back Republicans against the wall while giving Democrats a pass.

The Real Voter Suppression of 2012   Voter ID didn’t reduce turnout, but the IRS may have.

Noonan: A Battering Ram Becomes a Stonewall The IRS's leaders refuse to account for the agency's corruption and abuse.

We learned the people who ran and run the IRS are not going to help Congress find out what happened in the IRS. We know we haven't gotten near the bottom of the political corruption of that agency. We do not know who ordered the targeting of conservative groups and individuals, or why, or exactly when it began. We don't know who executed the orders or directives. We do not know the full scope or extent of the scandal. We don't know, for instance, how many applicants for tax-exempt status were abused.
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With all the talk and the hearings and the news reports, it is important to keep the essentials of this story in mind.

First, only conservative groups were targeted in this scandal by the IRS. Liberal or progressive groups were not targeted. The IRS leaked conservative groups' confidential applications and donor lists to liberal groups, never the other way around.

This was a political operation. If it had not been, then the statistics tell us left-wing groups would have been harassed and abused, and seen their applications leaked to the press. There would be a left-wing equivalent to Catherine Engelbrecht.

And all of this apparently took place in the years leading up to the 2012 election. Meaning that before that election, groups that were anti-Obamacare, or pro-life, or pro-Second Amendment or constitutionalist, or had words like 'tea party' or 'patriot' in their name—groups that is that would support Republicans, not Democrats—were suppressed, thwarted, kept from raising money and therefore kept from fully operating.

That is some kind of coincidence. That is some kind of strangely political, strangely partisan, and strangely ideological "poor customer service."
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Again, if what happened at the IRS is not stopped now—if the internal corruption within it is not broken—it will never stop, and never be broken. The American people will never again be able to have the slightest confidence in the revenue-gathering arm of their government.

Strassel: Conservatives Became Targets in 2008  The Obama campaign played a big role in a liberal onslaught that far pre-dated Citizens United.

The left was targeting conservative groups and donors well before the Supreme Court's 2010 ruling on independent political expenditures by corporations.

If the country wants to get to the bottom of the IRS scandal, it must first remember the context for this abuse. That context leads to this White House.

Krauthammer Cues from Above: The White House and the IRS   The scandal might not go all the way up, but the climate of intolerance does.

For years the administration has conducted a concerted campaign to demonize Fox News, delegitimizing it as a news organization and even urging its ostracism. Then (surprise!) its own Justice Department takes the unprecedented step of naming a Fox reporter a co-conspirator in a leak case — when no reporter has ever been prosecuted for merely soliciting information — in order to invade his and Fox’s private and journalistic communications.
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It’s not unlawful to run an ad hominem presidency. It’s merely shameful. The great rhetorical specialty of this president has been his unrelenting attribution of bad faith to those who disagree with him. He acts on principle; they from the basest of instincts.

IRS Morality: Defend Planned Parenthood, Deluge Adoptive Families with Audits

As we get word that the IRS has harassed a number of pro-life groups, including at least one alleged demand that a pro-life group not picket Planned Parenthood, check out this statistic: In 2012, the IRS requested additional information from 90 percent of returns claiming the adoption tax credit and went on to actually audit 69 percent. More details from the Taxpayer Advocate Service:

• Sixty-nine percent of all adoption credit claims during the 2012 filing season were selected for audit.

■ Of the completed adoption tax credit audits, over 55 percent ended with no change in the tax owed or refund due in fiscal year 2012. The median refund amount involved in these audits is over $15,000 and the median adjusted gross income (AGI) of the taxpayers involved is about 64,000. The average adoption credit correspondence audit currently takes 126 days, causing a lengthy delay for taxpayers waiting for refunds.
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So Congress implemented a tax credit to facilitate adoption – a process that is so extraordinarily expensive that it is out of reach for many middle-class families — and the IRS responded by implementing an audit campaign that delayed much-needed tax refunds to the very families that needed them the most. Oh, and the return on its investment in this harassment? Slightly more than 1 percent.

This audit wave got almost no media coverage, but what was the experience like for individual families? In a word, grueling. Huge document requests with short turnaround times were followed by lengthy IRS delays in processing, all with no understanding for the unique documentation challenges of international adoption. Here’s how one adoptive family described the experience:…..
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The IRS is a broken institution. Yet despite its moral and legal corruption, it still wields immense power. As Congress investigates wrongdoing, it’s past time to consider fundamental tax reform. In other words, starve the beast. It has proven it can’t be trusted with power.

A Japanese 80-year-old has become the oldest man to reach the summit of Mount Everest.
Extreme skier Yuichiro Miura (right in above photo) conquered the 29,035ft peak at 9am local time Thursday morning, beating his 81-year-old rival, Nepalese Min Bahadur Sherchan, to the top.

Mr Miura climbed Mount Everest five years ago, but just missed out on the record when Mr Serchan, a former Gurkha, accomplished the feat aged 76.

Mr Miura and his son Gota called the support team from the summit to report the news.

‘This is the world's best feeling,’ Mr Miura said. ‘I'm also totally exhausted.’

Because She Hasn’t Suffered Enough… Obama IRS Targeted 83 Year-Old Survivor Of a Japanese Concentration Camp

IRS targeted the Conservative Hispanic Society

Bill Donohue: IRS Targeted Catholic League

Just weeks after Barack Obama was elected president in 2008, I was notified by the IRS that the Catholic League was under investigation for violating the IRS Code on political activities as it relates to 501©(3) organizations. What the IRS did not know was that I had proof who contacted them to launch the investigation: Catholics United, a George Soros-funded Catholic organization.
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Korzen was dumb enough to share with CNN the complaint issued by his group to the IRS. The document, which was leaked to me by someone at CNN, matches up extraordinarily well with the IRS complaint of Nov. 24.

IRS targeted Anne Hendershott, a Catholic writer and professor  who  writes it's now A Safe Time to Tell Your Story

Unlike Mr. Donohue, I have no proof that my audit was politically motivated. I am describing the process not because I want the publicity; rather, I am hoping that now that Bill Donohue has led the way, others from the pro-life community who have been targeted by the IRS will come forward. It seems like a safe time now.

Catholic, Pro-Life and Pro-Marriage Groups Also Targeted by IRS

Catholic writer and professor Anne Hendershott wanted the public to know that Obamacare funds abortions.  So she wrote a series of articles critical of the Affordable Care Act in March of 2010.In May of that year, the IRS called.

Hendershott finds herself among an emerging class of taxpayers who believe they were targets of special scrutiny and intimidation by the Internal Revenue Service for political reasons.
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Sue Martinek told the Register she ran into similar problems with the IRS, which demanded that she and others involved with a pro-life organization pledge to never protest Planned Parenthood — the country’s largest abortion business.
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John Eastman, president of the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) believes one or more IRS employees committed a felony in March 2012 by sharing his organization’s private tax documents with the Human Rights Campaign, an organization that lobbies for same-sex “marriage.” The Human Rights Campaign published the documents on its website, publicly revealing the names of donors to the National Organization for Marriage.

“The Human Rights Campaign was headed by Joseph Solmonese, who at the time had just been named national co-chair of the Obama election campaign,” Eastman told the Register.

Crisis reports IRS Targets Catholic Critics of Obama Regime,

It is not an overreaction to say that these IRS scandals sound like official favoritism of certain organizations and political viewpoints and an attempt to suppress opposition.
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This is the administration that has given us the HHS Mandate, supported the claim in the Hosanna-Tabor case that a religious body could not choose its own ministers, wouldn’t defend the Defense of Marriage Act in court, increased federal financial support for Planned Parenthood, and is trying to stop military personnel from sharing their faith. This all indicates an agenda of hostility to traditional Christian morality and a willingness to share in the repressiveness that has come to characterize the political left.

Jeffrey Lord writes Obama and the IRS: The Smoking Gun?

President met with anti-Tea Party IRS union chief the day before agency targeted Tea Party.

FOR 27 MONTHS the IRS Refused to Approve Tea Party Applications While DOZENS OF LIB GROUPS Were Granted Tax-Exempt Status

Richard Epstein et al on The Real Lesson of the IRS Scandal

Federal agencies from the FDA to the EPA to the FCC threaten the rule of law.

The IRS and the Drive to Stop Free Speech: Such a scandal was bound to happen after the government started trying to rule the expression of political views.

Armed DHS Agents Monitored Multiple Tea Party IRS Protests Today

The DOJ got the records because they claimed James Rosen, a Fox reporter, was a criminal co-conspirator.

Michael Clemente, Fox News' executive vice president of news, defended Rosen in a statement issued Monday afternoon.
"We are outraged to learn today that James Rosen was named a criminal co-conspirator for simply doing his job as a reporter," Clemente said. "In fact, it is downright chilling. We will unequivocally defend his right to operate as a member of what up until now has always been a free press."

Yesterday we learned that the DOJ also seized the phone records of Rosen's parents.

Tonight we learned that the DOJ seized phone records of Fox News at the White House, the Pentagon, the State Department and other operations and phone records of Fox executives.  More Shocking Details about DOJ spying on Fox News.

Watchdog report says DOJ official retaliated against ‘Furious’ whistle-blower, lied about it

The former U.S. Attorney for Arizona could be disbarred, after an investigation found he lied to the Justice Department about his role in trying to discredit the federal whistle-blower who exposed the botched gun-running scheme known as Fast and Furious.

Dennis Burke -- the former chief of staff for Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano appointed as U.S. Attorney for Arizona by President Obama in September 2009 -- lied when asked if he leaked sensitive documents to the press meant to undermine the credibility of ATF whistle-blower John Dodson.
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"We also concluded that Burke's disclosure of the Dodson memorandum was likely motivated by a desire to undermine Dodson's public criticisms of Operation Fast and Furious. Although Burke denied to congressional investigators that he had any retaliatory motive for his actions, we found substantial evidence to the contrary," the IG report, released Monday, said.

Sharyl Attkisson's computers compromised

Sharyl Attkisson, the Emmy-award winning CBS News investigative reporter, says that her personal and work computers have been compromised and are under investigation.
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Attkisson told WPHT that irregular activity on her computer was first identified in Feb. 2011, when she was reporting on the Fast and Furious gun-walking scandal and on the Obama administration's green energy spending, which she said "the administration was very sensitive about." Attkisson has also been a persistent investigator of the events surrounding last year's attack in Benghazi, and its aftermath.

Eugene Robinson, longtime Obama supporter, "Obama administration mistakes journalism for espionage" 

Kirsten Powers, How Hope and Change Gave Way to Spying on the Press

Turns out it’s a fairly swift sojourn from a president pushing to “delegitimize” a news organization to threatening criminal prosecution for journalistic activity by a Fox News reporter, James Rosen, to spying on Associated Press reporters. In between, the Obama administration found time to relentlessly persecute government whistleblowers and publicly harass and condemn a private American citizen for expressing his constitutionally protected speech in the form of an anti-Islam YouTube video.

Where were the media when all this began happening? With a few exceptions, they were acting as quiet enablers.
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Yet only one mainstream media reporter—Jake Tapper, then of ABC News—ever raised a serious objection to the White House’s egregious and chilling behavior.
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Now, the Democratic advocacy group Media Matters—which is always mysteriously in sync with the administration despite ostensibly operating independently—has launched a smear campaign against ABC News reporter Jonathan Karl for his reporting on Benghazi. It’s the kind of character assassination that would make Joseph McCarthy blush.
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What all of us in the media need to remember—whatever our politics—is that we need to hold government actions to the same standard, whether they’re aimed at friends or foes. If not, there’s no one but ourselves to blame when the administration takes aim at us.

Liberal Juan Williams: ‘Journalism Has Been Criminalized’ by DOJ

According to The Washington Post’s original report on the topic, when the DOJ investigated in the leaking of classified information in 2009 about North Korea, it not only obtained Rosen’s phone records, but his personal emails as well. It used security badge records to track Rosen’s visits to the State Department, and the DOJ also traced the timing of his calls to Stephen Jin-Woo Kim, the government adviser suspected of leaking information to Rosen.

In the court documents for the warrant to search Rosen’s personal e-mails – the “SUBJECT ACCOUNT” and “the Reporter” --  the FBI is cited as stating “there is probable cause to believe the Reporter has committed or is committing a violation of section 793(d), as an aider and abettor and/or co-conspirator, to which the materials relate.”

In The New Yorker, The Justice Department and Fox New's Phone Records

Yesterday, the Washington Post reported that, as part of the investigation of the Kim leak, Obama’s Department of Justice seized e-mails from Rosen’s personal Gmail account. In the search warrant for that request, the government described Rosen as “an aider, and abettor, and / or co-conspirator” in violating the Espionage Act, noting that the crime can be punished by ten years in prison. Rosen was not indicted in the case, but the suggestion in a government document that a reporter could be guilty of espionage for engaging in routine reporting is unprecedented and has alarmed many journalists and civil libertarians.

Suppress the press: The Obama administration’s history of targeting the media

Investor's Business Daily: The Obama Objective: To Control The News

For awhile, it looked like the White House wanted just to control "the narrative." But its seizure of AP phone records and surveillance of Fox employees now show its real aim: to control the news.

The Obama political team at the White House has always prided itself on its media savvy. After all, they got a candidate with an otherwise unsalable socialist past elected on a campaign that sold his personality, not his platform.
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But it turns out their mastery of the press went a lot deeper than just the political arts. The latest news that the Justice Department investigated Fox News reporter James Rosen and two other newsmen in the normal course of their investigative reporting on a national security matter — coming on the heels of their seizure of Associated Press phone records — suggests an administration obsessed with controlling the news itself with a heavy hand reminiscent of totalitarian regimes.

In the Guardian, Glenn Greenwald

This week, the New Republic's Molly Redden describes what I've heard many times over the past several years: national security reporters have had their ability to engage in journalism severely impeded by the Obama DOJ's unprecedented attacks, and are operating in a climate of fear for both their sources and themselves. Redden quotes one of the nation's best reporters, the New Yorker's Jane Mayer, this way:

It's a huge impediment to reporting, and so chilling isn't quite strong enough, it's more like freezing the whole process into a standstill."

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That, of course, is precisely the point of the unprecedented Obama war on whistleblowers and press freedoms: to ensure that the only information the public can get is information that the Obama administration wants it to have. That's why Obama's one-side games with secrecy - we'll prolifically leak when it glorifies the president and severely punish all other kinds - is designed to construct the classic propaganda model. And it's good to see journalists finally speaking out in genuine outrage and concern about all of this.

Breitbart News, A Culture of Intimidation   it is now more obvious than ever that this administration has, in the words of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), created a “culture of intimidation” that stretches from the White House down to myriad agencies of the executive branch.

Department of Justice: …
State Department: ….
Internal Revenue Service: ….
Department of Health and Human Services: ….
Department of the Treasury: …..
Federal Bureau of Investigation: ……
Department of the Interior: …….
Department of Homeland Security: ….
Environmental Protection Agency: ……

The intimidation comes from the top down in the Obama administration. And it is pervasive.

It is impossible for me to imagine the scale of the tragedy in Oklahoma.  At least 24 confirmed dead with 50 reported dead among them 20 children in an elementary school reduced to rubble by the tornado packing winds of up to 200 mph.

So many parents searching for their children in desperation with communications down. So many homes destroyed and buildings and businesses.

What can we do right now but pray for them all.

I could see nothing but tragedy until I read about Operation BBQ Relief via Instapundit.

Born in the aftermath of the terrific tornadoes that hit Joplin, Mo, Operation BBQ Relief served and delivered over 120,000 barbecue meals to residents in two weeks.   

Headed off now to the ravaged areas of Oklahoma, OPeration BBQ relief is a 501© 3 charitable organization.  From its website:

The mission of Operation BBQ Relief is to provide compassion and to offer hope and friendship to those whose lives have been affected by natural disasters across the United States through our expertise in cooking and catering barbecue meals and our ability to quickly mobilize our teams into any area where nature disrupts and tears apart the lives of Americans.

Research published yesterday in the top journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, which showed that people in the trial who got the B vitamins were almost entirely protected from the brain shrinkage suffered by those who only got a placebo pill.

A rapidly shrinking brain is one of the signs of a raised risk for Alzheimer’s. Those taking the B vitamins had 90 per cent less shrinkage in their brains.

And the research showed the areas of the brain that were protected from damage are almost exactly the same Alzheimer’s typically destroys. This ‘Alzheimer’s footprint’ includes areas that control how we learn, remember and organise our thoughts, precisely those that gradually atrophy as the ghastly disease progresses.

‘I’ve never seen results from brain scans showing this level of protection,’ says Paul Thompson, professor of neurology and head of the Imaging Genetics Center at UCLA School of Medicine, California.

He’s a leading expert in brain imaging, and his centre has the largest database of brain scans in the world. ‘We study the brain effects of all sorts of lifestyle changes — alcohol reduction, exercising more, learning to handle stress, weight loss — and a good result would be a 25 per cent reduction in shrinkage,’ he says.

In other words, the 90 per cent reduction seems really impressive. So, could the simple answer to memory problems be to take B vitamins?

The health warnings written on your face: From overdoing it at the gym to eating spicy food, how your looks reveal your lifestyle

New CPR technology breathes life into patients dead 40 to 60 minutes

New CPR technology put to the test at an Australian hospital has passed with flying colors after a man — clinically dead for 40 minutes — was brought back to life. And he later was discharged with a clean bill of health, absent any disability…..The machinery, called AutoPulse, performs constant chest compressions while sending a nonstop flow of oxygen and blood to the patient’s brain and vital organs,

New Cancer Drugs Harness Power of  Immune System

Two early-stage drug studies from Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. and Roche Holding provided fresh evidence that harnessing the power of the immune system is emerging as a promising weapon against cancer.
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Patients with advanced lung, kidney and skin cancer were among those who responded favorably, said Roy Herbst, an oncologist at Yale University, who headed the Roche study. That suggests immunotherapy, as the strategy is called, may have broad application across many types of tumors.

The three drugs in the studies essentially work by releasing the brakes on the immune system to allow it to recognize and go after tumor cells.

Blame your parents for those bunions, NOT high heels! How foot deformities are actually 'highly hereditary'

new research suggests that the painful and unsightly bulges that develop at the base of the big toe are nothing to do with fancy footwear, and are in fact hereditary.

The Framingham Foot Study led by a team from Harvard Medical School looked at genetic data and foot examination results from 1,370 participants. They concluded that the condition is 'highly heritable.'

Camomile tea 'fights cancer': Chemical contained in drink takes away 'superpowers' in disease's cells

The tea contains a chemical, apigenin, which takes away some of the ‘superpowers’ of cancer cells.

Scientists at Ohio State University found apigenin can block the ability of breast cancer cells to live far longer than normal cells, halting their spread and making them more sensitive to drug therapy.

Camomile tea, parsley and celery are the most abundant sources of apigenin but it is also found in many fruit and vegetables common in a Mediterranean diet.

Huma Abedin maintained her title as Secretary of State Clinton's deputy chief of staff even though she spent her time in New York taking care of her new baby and her husband, the disgraced former Congressman Anthony Weiner who tweeted himself naked to teenage girls.  Huma was permitted to moonlight as a "special government employee" who was paid $135,000/year who didn't have to disclose her other sources of income on the federal financial disclosure forms, income received as a  "strategic consultant" to Teneo, a global consulting firm as well as income received as a consultant to  the William Jefferson Clinton Foundation.

Ms. Abedin began her long professional association with Mrs. Clinton in 1996, as an intern to the first lady in the Clinton White House. In the years that followed, she remained a Clinton staffer from the White House to the Senate, and eventually to the State Department. At the same time, she also served from 1996 through 2008 as assistant editor of the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, a publication founded by Abdullah Omar Naseef, a major financier of al Qaeda whose Islamic “charity,” the Rabita Trust, is a designated terrorist organization (on which Naseef colluded with Wael Hamza Jalaidan, an Osama bin Laden intimate who is one of al Qaeda’s founders).

Naseef is a former secretary general of the Muslim World League, which Osama bin Laden described as one of al Qaeda’s primary funding sources. In the late seventies, he retained Abedin’s parents to run his newly formed Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs and edit its journal, which has been an Abedin family affair ever since. For seven years, Naseef overlapped with Huma Abedin at the journal, as a member of its advisory editorial board. He withdrew after 2003 — right around the time he was named as a defendant in the civil case brought by the victims of the 9/11 atrocities (a suit from which he was dropped in 2010 because a court found it lacked jurisdiction over him). The journal is still edited by Ms. Abedin’s mother, Dr. Saleha Abedin, who took over when Ms. Abedin’s father passed away. Both parents have had deep Muslim Brotherhood ties. In fact, Saleha Abedin runs an organization, the International Islamic Committee for Woman and Child, which is a part of the Union of Good — a major Hamas supporter and, yes, a designated terrorist organization run by Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the top Muslim Brotherhood sharia jurist.

I quote so extensively because Huma Abedin is Hillary's foremost Mideast adviser.  I wonder what role she played in advising Hilary Clinton on the night of the attack.    After all, women played big roles before and after the attack in Libya.  The Benghazi scandal’s female factor

So what was discussed in The 10 PM Phone Call between Clinton and Obama?  Andrew McCarthy again.

Obama and Clinton had been the architects of American foreign policy. As Election Day 2012 loomed, each of them had a powerful motive to promote the impressions (a) that al-Qaeda had been decimated; (b) that the administration’s deft handling of the Arab Spring — by empowering Islamists — had been a boon for democracy, regional stability, and American national security; and © that our real security problem was “Islamophobia” and the “violent extremism” it allegedly causes — which was why Obama and Clinton had worked for years with Islamists, both overseas and at home, to promote international resolutions that would make it illegal to incite hostility to Islam, the First Amendment be damned.
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There is good reason to believe that while Americans were still fighting for their lives in Benghazi, while no military efforts were being made to rescue them, and while those desperately trying to rescue them were being told to stand down, the president was busy shaping the “blame the video” narrative to which his administration clung in the aftermath.
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We do not have a recording of this call, and neither Clinton nor the White House has described it beyond noting that it happened. But we do know that, just a few minutes after Obama called Clinton, the Washington press began reporting that the State Department had issued a statement by Clinton regarding the Benghazi attack. In it, she asserted:

Some have sought to justify this vicious behavior as a response to inflammatory material posted on the Internet. The United States deplores any intentional effort to denigrate the religious beliefs of others. Our commitment to religious tolerance goes back to the very beginning of our nation.
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CNS News asked Carney whether, in that 10 p.m. phone call, the president and Secretary Clinton discussed the statement that Clinton was about to issue, and, specifically, whether they discussed “the issue of inflammatory material posted on the Internet.”

Carney declined to answer.

UPDATE: The Difference it Makes: Hillary's Fingerprints on the Benghazi Video Narrative

Hillary Clinton was the first senior Obama Administration official to publicly blame the video for the Benghazi attack.  ….We can tell where the video narrative did not come from: the career Foreign Service.
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By September 13, Mrs. Clinton blamed the video for the Benghazi assault explicitly. Speaking at a State Department meeting with the Moroccan President, she pinned not only the Benghazi attack, but the violent outbursts spreading across the Arab Middle East, on Muslim popular outrage triggered by the “disgusting and reprehensible,” “deeply cynical” video. 
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On September 14, Mrs. Clinton went all in. Speaking at Joint Base Andrews, in front of cameras, flag-draped caskets, and the families of four murdered Americans, she said, “[w]e’ve seen rage and violence directed at American embassies over an awful internet video that we had nothing to do with.” According to the parents of the former Navy SEALs at the ceremony, Clinton also privately blamed the video for their sons’ deaths, promising to “make sure that the person who made that film is arrested and prosecuted.” 
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the video narrative predates the draft talking points, but was never included in them. This is key to identifying the source of the phony “video” narrative.