By Paul Roderick Gregory, Contributor Confidential emails purportedly from former political advisor Sydney Blumenthal to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have been hacked and widely distributed to politicians and news sources. Included in the hacker “Gucifer’s” distribution list are Russian news services such as Pravda, Moscow Times, and RT. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest
Tag Archives: State Hillary Clinton
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announces her support for gay marriage
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announces her support for gay marriage.
In Vogue: First Lady to Wear Krakoff, Kors for Magazine's April Issue
Michelle Obama may not have appeared on the March cover of Vogue as initially suspected, but The Washington Post reports the first lady will be on the magazine’s April cover, and she will be wearing Reed Krakoff.
The Posts‘s Reliable Sources blog cites Robin Givhan as saying that Obama will wear one of Krakoff’s ensembles on the cover, though it’s not known if it came from her own wardrobe or if it was on loan for the shoot. (The first lady wore Krakoff at President Obama‘s swearing-in ceremony, and in her official White House portrait, at left.) Photographer Annie Leibovitz reportedly also captured Obama wearing a sweater and ball gown from Michael Kors.
According to The Washingtonian, a camera crew was seen taking equipment into the White House at the end of January to set up the first lady’s second Vogue cover. Leibovitz also shot Obama in Jason Wu for the March 2009 cover of the magazine, and the cover line on that issue hailed her as “the first lady the world’s been waiting for.”
Vogue has featured a number of women in politics – from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to former First Lady Laura Bush – but none of them has enjoyed being on the cover twice.
Granted, the first lady does have one trump card: President Obama. His public schedule for the day of the shoot was mostly clear, with the exception of a briefing at 10 a.m. Will he be in the picture this time around? Only time will tell.
Photo via The White House.
Clinton aide returns to Morgan Stanley
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. investment bank Morgan Stanley has rehired Tom Nides to a senior position after he served as deputy to U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for two years. Nides, who previously worked for Morgan Stanley from 2005 to 2010, will work with clients and management as vice chairman and report directly to Chief Executive Officer James Gorman, the bank said in a press release. Nides rejoins Morgan Stanley at a time when it is trying to boost returns and Wall Street must implement a raft of new rules to avoid a repeat of the devastating financial crisis. …
Vice President Biden Announces Jake Sullivan as New National Security Advisor
WASHINGTON, DC – The Vice President announced today that Jake Sullivan will serve as his new National Security Advisor, starting this week. He succeeds Tony Blinken, who was appointed by the President to be his Principal Deputy National Security Advisor. Mr. Sullivan comes to the Vice President’s office from the State Department, where he served as the Director of Policy Planning and Deputy Chief of Staff to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
“Jake is the ideal person to serve as my National Security Advisor,” said Vice President Biden. “He is respected across the Administration for his intellect, his dedication to our country, and the perspective he brings to even the most complex issues. He has been part of some of the biggest foreign policy challenges our nation has faced, and he’s always handled himself with incredible skill. I’m glad to welcome Jake to my team, and I look forward to working with him.”
Mr. Sullivan joined the State Department in January 2009 as Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy. He also served as Deputy Policy Director on then-Senator Clinton’s presidential campaign, and was previously Chief Counsel to Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, his home state. Trained as a lawyer, he worked as an associate at the Minneapolis law firm of Faegre & Benson and as an adjunct professor at the University of St. Thomas Law School. Mr. Sullivan served as a clerk for Judge Guido Calabresi of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and for Justice Stephen Breyer of the U.S. Supreme Court.
Mr. Sullivan graduated from Yale College with a degree in Political Science and International Studies. He earned an M.Phil. in International Relations from Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship, where he served as managing editor of the Oxford International Review. He earned a J.D. from Yale Law School, where he was an Articles Editor of the Yale Law Journal.
Mr. Sullivan’s formal title will be Deputy Assistant to the President and National Security Advisor to the Vice President.
…read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at The White House Press Office
SBA head Mills to depart; led through hard times
Karen Mills, the head of the Small Business Administration as it focused on helping small companies recover from the Great Recession, is stepping down.
Under her leadership, the SBA brought more than 1,000 community banks to its lending programs and it won a commitment from 13 big banks to increase their lending to small businesses over three years. The agency also regained its status as a Cabinet-level agency with Mills at the helm — a status is had lost during the Bush administration. Mills says she will remain in her position until a successor is appointed by President Obama. She joins a number of officials — including former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton — to leave the administration. Many high-level officials leave the government after a president’s first term.
Michelle Obama's Controversial Bangs Rumored to Cover Vogue's March Issue
Karl Lagerfeld declared this week that he’s not a fan of First Lady Michelle Obama‘s much-lauded decision to get bangs, but rumor has it those bangs will appear on the March cover of Vogue.
According to The Washingtonian, a camera crew was seen taking equipment into the White House on Thursday morning. It’s believed the crew was setting up for Annie Leibovitz to photograph the first lady for her second Vogue cover. Leibovitz shot Obama in Jason Wu for the March 2009 cover of the magazine. The cover line on that issue hailed her as “the first lady the world’s been waiting for.”
Vogue has featured a number of women in politics – from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to former First Lady Laura Bush – but none of them has enjoyed being on the cover twice. The Obama cover rumor will go head to head with another possibility. A leaked photo of Beyoncé that was also reportedly taken by Leibovitz suggests she’s in the running for the March cover, too.
But the first lady does have one trump card: President Obama. His public schedule for Thursday was mostly clear, with the exception of a briefing at 10 a.m. Will he be in the picture this time around? Only time will tell.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at fashionologie
Russia pulls out of anti-crime deal with US, says it doesn't need help
Russia pulled out of an anti-crime accord with the United States on Wednesday, the latest sign of rising tensions between Moscow and Washington.
Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has signed an order to scrap the 10-year-old agreement “because it was no longer relevant,” his office said.
The agreement covered fighting terrorism, corruption and cross-border crimes such as drug smuggling and human trafficking.
Alexei Pushkov, head of Russia‘s parliamentary foreign affairs committee, told the Interfax news agency that the decision reflected Russia‘s ability to manage its internal affairs without outside help.
A U.S. embassy spokesman was not immediately available for comment.
The agreement is just one of several bilateral cooperation deals that Moscow has decided to abandon. Last year, Russia expelled the U.S. International Development Agency and also warned it wouldn’t extend the Nunn-Lugar program helping it dismantle nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons stockpiles.
On Friday, the U.S. withdrew from a joint civil society group.
President Barack Obama‘s efforts to “reset” relations with Russia has met a markedly colder wind from the Kremlin since Vladimir Putin returned to the presidency in May. Faced with unprecedented street protests against his 12-year rule, Putin accused the U.S. State Department of staging the protests in order to weaken Russia.
After Putin’s inauguration, the Kremlin-controlled parliament then quickly rubber-stamped a series of laws imposing new restrictions in an apparent bid to curb American influence in Russia. Non-governmental organizations funded from abroad were required to register as “foreign agents,” a term intended to ruin their credibility among Russians for whom the term sounds synonymous to spies. The Russian definition of treason was also expanded to include potentially any contact with a foreign organization.
Two U.S.-based NGOs have closed their Russian offices in response to the new laws. The business daily Kommersant reported Wednesday that the National Democratic Institute and the International Republican Institute, which ran programs championing democratic rights, moved their staff to Lithuania after Russian security officials threatened to prosecute them under the new treason law.
Amnesty International Russia director Sergei Nikitin wrote on his blog Wednesday that the closures “show the stability of the general trend: the pressure on civil society in Russia continues.”
After Congress passed a law introducing sanctions against Russian officials involved in human rights abuses, Russia responded by banning all adoptions of Russian orphans by Americans. The country’s top investigative agency is also investigating a sexual abuse case against American parents already convicted in the U.S. of abusing their adopted Russian child but given suspended sentences.
Lawmakers in the Kremlin-controlled lower house have also rushed to propose such measures as banning English phrases from Russian and limiting marriages between Russian officials and foreigners.
Outgoing U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told NPR on Wednesday that the Russian adoption ban was “tragic” and the decision to expel the USAID “really hurts the Russian people.”
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
Republicans Ask Clinton To Answer Key Questions Left Unanswered On Benghazi
(CNSNews.com) – With just three days to go before her last day at the State Department, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton continues to be dogged by questions about the deadly terror attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi last fall.
In a letter sent late on Monday, three Republican House committee chairmen asked Clinton to provide documentation relating to security at the consulate, video footage of the September 11 attack, and other material, saying the recent Accountability Review Board (ARB) probe into the incident had left key questions unanswered.
Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Rep. Ed Royce (R-Calif.), Oversight and Government Reform Committee chairman Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), and House Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on National Security Chairman Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) noted that the board had not questioned the department’s senior-most officials, including Clinton herself, Deputy Secretary William Burns and Deputy Secretary for Management and Resources Thomas Nides.
They said they believed its failure to do so was “a critical omission from the ARB’s review of the facts leading up to the attack.”
Among questions still unanswered, the lawmakers wrote, were the reasons why Undersecretary of State for Management Patrick Kennedy had apparently withdrawn a security support team (SST) from Libya, “despite multiple warnings from Ambassador Chris Stevens of a deteriorating security situation.”
“This was a key decision that detrimentally affected the security posture of U.S. diplomats in Libya prior to the attack,” Royce, Issa and Chaffetz said.
Read More at CNS News . By Patrick Goodenough.
Photo Credit: US Embassy New Zealand (Creative Commons)
Kerry blasts Iran over imprisonment of American Christian pastor
On the day he was confirmed as Secretary of State, John Kerry went farther than his predecessor had in condemning Iran for imprisoning an American citizen, a Christian pastor who was sentenced this week to eight years in prison for evangelizing in the Islamic Republic.
Kerry, the longtime Democratic senator from Massachusetts, made the statement in response to a written query from fellow Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., who asked if Kerry, as secretary of state, would join the National Security Council‘s call for Saeed Abedini‘s release.
“We remain deeply concerned about the fairness and transparency of Mr. Abedini’s trial,” Kerry told Rubio. “I, along with the U.S. government, condemn Iran‘s continued violation of the universal right of freedom of religion and call on the Iranian authorities to respect Mr. Abedini’s human rights and release him.”
Abedini, a 34-year-old father of two, denied evangelizing in Iran and claims he had only returned to his native land to help establish an orphanage. Authorities pulled him off a bus last August and threw him into the notorious Evin Prison in Tehran.
The exact crimes he is accused of only became public on Monday, when the prosecutor outlined charges that Abedini undermined the Iranian government by creating a network of Christian house churches and that he was attempting to sway Iranian youth away from Islam. Rubio and other supporters of Abedini believe the charges stem from Abedini’s 2000 conversion to Christianity and his involvement several years ago with house churches in Iran.
Although Abedini‘s lawyer is appealing Monday’s sentence, experts following the case think Abedini’s only chance at freedom lies with a grant of clemency from the religious clerics that rule Iran. The State Department under outgoing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was criticized by Abedini’s supporters for not doing more to win his freedom, even though the U.S. has not had diplomatic ties with Iran since the 1979 revolution there.
“It’s encouraging to see Sen. Kerry condemn Iran and call for the release of U.S. citizen Saeed Abedini. His recognition and involvement in Pastor Saeed‘s case would send a very strong message to Iran and to the rest of the world – the imprisonment of a U.S. citizen because of his religious beliefs is simply unacceptable,” Jordan Sekulow, executive director for the American Center for Law and Justice, said in a written statement.
“With his confirmation today and his soon-to-be swearing-in, Sen. Kerry has a unique opportunity to put a global spotlight on this case and come to the aid of an American who is facing years of beatings and torture because of his faith,” Sekulow said. “It is our hope that as secretary of state, Sen. Kerry will engage this issue fully and put the full weight of his office behind efforts to free Pastor Saeed.”
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
The Hillary And Barack Show
By Liza Donnelly, Contributor As I watched the interview with President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton last night on 60 Minutes, I wondered about how this event came about. Here is the telephone call request from the President to Ms. Clinton, as I imagined it:
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest
ABC Gives Sen. Menendez Six Minute Interview With No Questions About FBI’s Hooker Investigation
On Friday it was revealed that the FBI is investigating Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) for allegedly sleeping with underage prostitutes in the Dominican Republic.
Despite this, when Menendez was given a six-minute interview with Martha Raddatz on ABC’s This Week Sunday, he was not asked one question about the investigation or the allegations (commentary follows with full transcript at end of post):
Raddatz began the interview asking Menendez about what Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) had previously said on the program concerning immigration. She followed this up by asking Menendez what he wanted to hear from the President about this issue.
Next, Raddatz asked Menendez about the controversy surrounding the attack on our consulate in Benghazi, Libya, last year – in particular, how he felt Secretary of State Hillary Clinton did during her testimony before Congress last week.
The next subject Raddatz chose was whether Menendez felt Chuck Hagel would be confirmed as Obama’s Secretary of Defense.
Read More at newsbusters.org . By Noel Sheppard.
Big week in Washington stoked talk of Clinton, Biden running in 2016
Two of Washington’s biggest events last week — the presidential inauguration and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s testimony on Benghazi — also turned out to be early-but-critical moments for two toppotential 2016 Democratic presidential candidates.
Clinton pushes for more broadcasting of pro-US message, raising questions about agency's mission
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton says the country must do a better job of transmitting a pro-Democracy message around the world to counteract the “extremist jihad narrative.”
What Difference, At This Point, Does It Make?
By Jim Emerson
“What difference,at this point, does it make?”
In the throes of her faux outrage, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made this phrase famous. She uttered it while being questioned about the lies this administration told after four Americans were killed in Benghazi. She acted like a child who was caught in a lie trying to find a way out of any consequences. Whether she realizes it or not, this will register with the low information voter and thus will become her legacy. If you don’t think of this being her legacy, what is the first thing you think when someone mentions her husband Bill?
Why does it matter?
During the months leading up to the murders at Benghazi, Chris Stevens and the Ambassador in Libya were begging for the increased security that was denied by all levels of the State Department; and no one was held responsible. The White House pressured Twitter to pull the Libyan embassy tweets during the murder spree and forced CNN to surrender the Ambassador’s diary they found at Benghazi murder scene. Hillary’s minions hid the survivors of Benghazi from the public and Congress. They denied the existence of any real-time audio and video feed from the compound. This White House ordered military commanders to stand down from launching a rescue mission. The administration blamed a video when the world knew that it had nothing to do with the pre-planned attack. Now she is lying to Congress when she said she always said that it was a terrorist attack. But why should that matter?
Why does it matter?
With no fear of retribution from America, al Qaeda forces raided a natural gas plant in Algeria to capture Westerners and most likely was planning to take them to Libya before the Algerian security forces could react to their presence. The Algerians did manage to contain and kill the terrorist, but not before the hostages were killed. Why does it matter? Terrorist organizations affiliated with Al Qaeda will continue to target Americans whereever they are. They want something, and this White House knows what it is.
What do they have in common?
The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt made it clear to Barack Obama that they wanted the release of the Blind Sheikh, Omar Abdel-Rahman. Most likely, the attack on Benghazi was part of al Qaeda’s efforts to kidnap Americans as an exchange for the Blind Sheikh. The Algerian kidnapping attempt was most likely a secondary consideration to punishing the French for their involvement in Mali. The Congressional Democrats’ and their lap dog media’s response is “What difference at this point does it make?” We can’t make the President look bad, even when he ignores the obvious.
Photo credit: terrellaftermath
State Department says Clinton wearing new glasses for health reasons
Anyone who’s been watching the Libya hearings on Capitol Hill may have noticed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has a new look — she’s worn glasses in each of her public appearances since suffering illness last month.
Video: Rand Paul Doubles Down: Benghazi May Have Been Cover-up
By Daniel Noe
Wednesday afternoon, Senator Rand Paul blasted Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for her ineptness during the Benghazi massacre. Paul said he would have fired her for not reading her emails from the Benghazi Ambassador before he was slaughtered by Islamists.
Clinton calls for change in law she says blocked discipline of employees over Libya
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton confirmed this week that several employees who were “removed” from their positions in the wake of the Libya terror attack are still being paid and have not actually left.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox Most Popular
Clinton Takes One For Her Team
Yesterday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the House Foreign Affairs Committee on the September 11 terrorist attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya. There were more questions than answers.
Rather than provide new insight into the attack, Secretary Clinton simply reiterated what previous Administration witnesses had testified to in previous hearings. She highlighted the findings made by the Accountability and Review Board and took responsibility for the failings of the State Department to prevent the deaths of the four Americans killed in the attack, including the U.S. Ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens.
Yet despite being asked repeatedly about the rapid deterioration of security in North Africa and the Sahel, and the implications for U.S. national security, Clinton defended the Obama Administration’s narrative that al-Qaeda is “on the run,” with one caveat, that international terrorists are broadening their focus to targets outside of Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Read More at heritage.org . By Morgan Lorraine Roach.
Republicans challenge Clinton claims on budget cuts, Benghazi cable
Republicans are challenging a host of statements made by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Democratic allies during Wednesday’s heated Libya testimony — claiming that complaints about a lack of funding are bogus and questioning the secretary’s insistence she never saw urgent cables warning about the danger of an attack.