[VIDEO] Copy of Iran ‘side deal’ backs reports Tehran would have major role in nuke site inspections

A draft document exclusively obtained by Fox News supports reports that Iran would play a major role in inspections at its controversial Parchin nuclear site, by providing U.N. inspectors with crucial materials. 

The so-called side deal, labeled "Separate arrangement II," says Iran will "provide to the [International Atomic Energy Agency]" photos and videos of locations and environmental samples, "taking into account military concerns." 

Details of the arrangement were first reported by the Associated Press. 

CLICK TO READ THE AGREEMENT

The agreement also provides that the agency would ensure the "technical authenticity" of activities -- in other words, ensuring nuclear work was not meant for weapons development -- but the IAEA would use Iran's "authenticated equipment." 

This would be followed by a visit from the IAEA director general. 

The details of the agreement for Parchin, where Iran has long been suspected of trying to build nuclear weapons, have fueled concerns from critics. 

"The agreement looks like Iran calls the shots, vetoing technical inspections when they want, where they want at the Parchin military site," House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce, R-Calif., said in a statement. 

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., told Fox News the side agreement is a "joke" and threatened to withhold millions of taxpayer dollars "until I get to look at this side deal." 

The IAEA, though, has called the original AP report -- which also suggested Iran would be able to self-police inspection of the Parchin site and use its own experts -- a misrepresentation. 

"I am disturbed by statements suggesting that the IAEA has given responsibility for nuclear inspections to Iran. Such statements misrepresent the way in which we will undertake this important verification work," IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano said in a statement. 

A senior Obama administration official also told Fox News, "There is no 'self-inspection' of Iranian facilities, and the IAEA has in no way given responsibility for nuclear inspections to Iran. Not now and certainly not in the future." 

The official called the IAEA-Iran arrangements "technically sound and consistent with the agency's long-established practice." 

Via: Fox News

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[VIDEO] Is Hillary Above the Law?

Hillary Clinton decided when she took the office of Secretary of State that she was above the law.

Hillary knew that she was supposed to use a secure government controlled server for email and other communications, but she believed that she was part of an elite class of people who are not subject to the same laws as average Americans.

The Clintons are the political equivalent of royalty and Bill proved that he was above the law.

The Daily Mail put together an excellent time line of events in this developing scandal. A Romanian hacker named ‘Guccifer’ exposed screen shots of Clinton’s longtime confidant Sidney Blumenthal’s AOL email account in March of 2013 that contained emails from the Secretary of State.

Since that date, evidence is mounting of a Clinton cover up.

According to the Daily Mail time line, in June of 2013, Hillary shifted control of email domain to IT contractor and sent her original server hardware to a data center facility in New Jersey where it was erased. Erasing, or wiping, the hard drive shows that Hillary did not want anybody to second-guessing the way she handled her email that likely contained, what most people would consider, classified information.

The Associated Press reported on June 30, 2015, “senior Obama administration officials knew as early as 2009 that Hillary Rodham Clinton was using a private email address for her government correspondence.” This implicates others like former White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and Obama confidant David Axelrod.

According to the AP “the newly released emails show Clinton sent or received at least 12 messages in 2009 on her private email server that were later classified ‘confidential’ by the U.S. government. Those emails were censored because officials said they contained activities relating to the intelligence community, or had discussed the production and dissemination of U.S. intelligence information. At least two dozen emails were also marked ‘sensitive but unclassified’ at the time they were written, including a December 2009 message from top Clinton aide Huma Abedin about an explosion in Baghdad that killed 90.” This is strong evidence that Hillary is lying about her emailing of sensitive information.

Via: Human Events

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No One Showed Up for California's Green Jobs Rush ...

In 2012, California voters were peppered with grandiose promises, such that they could not resist approving Proposition 39. The measure, created and backed by wealthy environmentalist Tom Steyer, sought to raise taxes on corporations and use the money to fund green energy projects in schools.

He promised it would create 11,000 new jobs each year. What could go wrong?

....

Naturally, it did not work at all. On Monday, the Associated Press reported that the program has "created" just 1,700 jobs in three years — just under 600 jobs per year or roughly five percent of what was promised, at the cost of $175,000 per job. 

Via: Fox News

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Leave the Department of Education Behind

What has happened in the public schools since Jimmy Carter created the Department of Education? (AP File Photo)

Two weeks before the 1980 presidential election, the Associated Press published a story explaining that the two major-party candidates were "poles apart on education issues."

Carter, the story reminded readers, was the Founding Father of the federal Department of Education.

"The fate of the Department of Education, the $14-billion federal agency elevated to Cabinet status less than six months ago, may hang in the balance on Election Day," said the story.

"Republican Ronald Reagan," it said, "hopes to dismantle the agency, which was created following a promise that Jimmy Carter made to the National Education Association in seeking and winning the union's support four years ago."

The story ended with a direct quote from Reagan.

"I think that this Department of Education is hoping to make come true the dream of the National Education Association, which for many years has been that we should have a federal school system, a nationalized school system," said Reagan.

The Washington Post published a similar story in September 1980.

"And only Reagan speaks and writes about ending the public school 'monopoly,' a theme that fits in with his broad philosophical belief that the private sector can do most jobs better than the government," said the Post.

Via:  CNS News

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AP's Rugaber Changed Jobs Report Assessment Again on Thursday, From 'Mixed' to 'Bleaker Picture'

The Associated Press's Christopher Rugaber had a very bad day on Thursday as he covered the government's June jobs report, but it was all self-inflicted.

 I noted much of the problem in a NewsBusters post yesterday, citing how the AP economics writer got badly burned while engaging in the wire service's usual practice of analyzing expected and reported economic results instead of concentrating on relaying the facts. But there's more.

 Ahead of the government's report, Rugaber claimed that it would that it would "likely" show that the job market "is nearing full health."

He stuck to his guns in the first paragraph of the story he filed shortly after the report was released, claiming that the job market is "moving close to full health," despite acknowledging clear weaknesses in two paragraphs which followed. The first paragraph's unsupportable take on things appeared to designed to ensure that "good news" reports would emanate from online outlets, email alerts and AP-subscribing broadcasters across the nation. 

A mere half-hour after his initial post-release report, Rugaber began to reverse field. Now the very same government report which showed that the job market was "moving close to full health" at 8:39 a.m. was "paint(ing) a mixed picture" at 9:12 a.m.

 Thanks to the AP's annoying (and keister-covering) practice of sending older reports down the memory hole once they've been updated or revised, I didn't know until this morning when I stumbled across it at a non-AP site that Rugaber downgraded his evaluation of the results and their potential impact again late Thursday afternoon.

Via MRC Newsbusters

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U.S. Agrees to Let Iran Keep Nuke Secrets

The Obama administration will agree to let Iran bypass questions about its past nuclear military work under any final deal signed in the coming weeks, according to reports.

Western officials were quoted as telling the Associated Press on Friday that the United States has given up a major concession to Iran on the military front.

While senior U.S. officials, including Secretary of State John Kerry, have long insisted that Iran will immediately have to submit to wide-ranging inspections and disclosures regarding its past nuclear work, the new reports indicate that this demand has been cast aside as world powers work to strike a final deal with the Islamic Republic by the end of June.

According to the AP report:

After a November 2013 interim accord, the Obama administration said a comprehensive solution “would include resolution of questions concerning the possible military dimension of Iran’s nuclear program.”

But those questions won’t be answered by the June 30 deadline for a final deal, officials said, echoing an assessment by the U.N. nuclear agency’s top official earlier this week. Nevertheless, the officials said an accord remains possible. One senior Western official on Thursday described diplomats as “more likely to get a deal than not” over the next three weeks.

Via: WFB

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Bill Clinton's Secret Shell Company Exposed

WASHINGTON (AP) — The newly released financial files on Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton's growing fortune omit a company with no apparent employees or assets that the former president has legally used to provide consulting and other services, but which demonstrates the complexity of the family's finances.

Because the company, WJC, LLC, has no financial assets, Hillary Clinton's campaign was not obligated to report its existence in her recent financial disclosure report, officials with Bill Clinton's private office and the Clinton campaign said. They were responding to questions by The Associated Press, which reviewed corporate documents.

The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to provide private details of the former president's finances on the record, said the entity was a "pass-through" company designed to channel payments to the former president.

Under federal ethics disclosure rules, declared candidates do not have to report assets worth less than $1,000. But the company's existence demonstrates the complexity of tracking the Clintons' finances as Hillary Clinton ramps up her presidential bid.

While Bill Clinton's lucrative speeches have provided the bulk of the couple's income, earning as much as $50 million during his wife's four-year term as secretary of state in the Obama administration, the former president has also sought to branch out into other business activities in recent years. Little is known about the exact nature and financial worth of Bill Clinton's non-speech business interests.

The identities of several U.S and foreign-based companies and foundations that Bill Clinton worked for have been disclosed in Hillary Clinton's recent financial report as well as in earlier reports during her stint as secretary of state.

Under federal disclosure rules for spouses' earned income, Hillary Clinton was only obligated to identify the source of her spouse's income and confirm that he received more than $1,000. As a result, the precise amounts of Bill Clinton's earned income from consulting have not been disclosed, and it's not known how much was routed through WJC, LLC.

Via: Yahoo! News

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JERRY BROWN PUSHES TRAFFIC DEBT ‘AMNESTY’ FOR POOR: ‘IT’S A HELLHOLE OF DESPERATION’

Gov. Jerry Brown is calling for an amnesty program for poor California residents who cannot afford to pay debts accrued through traffic violations after a blistering report from a nonprofit law firm concluded that the state is profiting off of minorities and low-income residents.

According to the Associated Press, Brown’s plan would see fines issued for minor traffic violations cut in half, while the administrative fees associated with the fines would be dropped from $300 to $50. California has reportedly suspended roughly 4.8 million driver’s licenses since 2006 over failure to pay fines associated with traffic violations.

In an April report titled, “Not Just a Ferguson Problem: How Traffic Courts Drive Inequality in California,” the Western Center on Law and Poverty outlined the ways in which it claims the state’s traffic court system disproportionately affects low-income residents.

“Due to increased fines and fees and reduced access to courts, more than four million Californians have suspended driver’s licenses,” the report states. “These suspensions make it harder for people to get and keep jobs, harm credit ratings and raise public safety concerns. Ultimately they keep people in long cycles of poverty that are difficult if not impossible for many to overcome.”

“California has sadly become a pay-t0-play court system,” WCLP legislative advocate Michael Herald, who helped author the report, told the Associated Press.

According to the AP, the fine for a red-light violation is now a staggering $490, up from $103 twenty years ago. The added fees go toward supporting social services like court construction and medical services. And the hefty fines grow even larger when those ticketed fail to pay.

“The fines and assessments being collected by the courts have increasingly been used not as a penalty for the violation, but as a source of revenue to fund government operations, including the courts,” the WCLP report found.

“How do you expect to pay something when you have no job, and you can’t get a job without your license?” 31-year-old Oakland resident Michael Armas told the AP. Armas said that as a result of failing to pay for minor traffic violations like using a cellphone while driving and failing to properly display his license plate, his fines have reached a total of $4,500.

In a statement, Brown called the traffic court system a “hellhole of desperation” for California’s poor.

“It’s a hellhole of desperation and I think this amnesty can be a very good thing to both bring in money, to give people a chance to kind of pay at a discount,” Brown said.

In February, Sen. Bob Hertzberg (D-Van Nuys) introduced Senate Bill 405, which would allow those with suspended licenses to keep their driving privileges if they agreed to pay reduced fines determined on a sliding scale.

“The whole fee system is out of whack, and for poor people, you make a choice between feeding your family or paying your rent or paying for a $63 parking ticket that turns out to be $300 in 60 days,” Hertzberg told CBS Los Angeles’ KNX 1070 radio station last month.

Brown spokesman Evan Westrup told the AP that the governor’s administration and the Justice Department have held discussions about overhauling California’s traffic court system. It was not immediately clear whether the Justice Department had launched an official investigation into the courts.

Media Blasts Obama: Most Closed, Control Freak Administration

You know things are really bad when the mainstream press corps trashes the Obama administration—on the record!—for its secrecy, aggressive efforts to control information and hostility towards the media when it exposes information viewed as unfavorable to the president.  

This includes an unprecedented number of prosecutions of government sources, seizures of journalists’ records and even criminal investigations of reporters. As a result government sources are afraid to speak to journalists, even if it doesn’t involve sensitive national security issues but rather routine stories that help keep elected officials and government accountable. “There’s no question that sources are looking over their shoulders,” said a senior managing editor at the Associated Press, who added that “sources are more jittery and more standoffish.”

 A veteran chief Washington correspondent for the New York Times, David E. Sanger says “this is the most closed, control freak administration I’ve ever covered.” Consider the source; a journalist at a powerful mainstream newspaper well known for its favorable coverage of everything Obama. The surprising lashing by the mainstream media comes this week via a special report on the Obama administration and the press from the Committee to Protect Journalists.

A former executive editor at the Washington Post wrote the analysis, which includes scary details of the Obama administration’s efforts to control and even silence the media. It also offers a forum for some of the nation’s best known journalists and editors to vent about the unprecedented animosity towards the press. The Obama administration is “squeezing the flow of information at several pressure points,” says a former CNN Washington bureau chief who directs the School of Media and Public Affairs at a university. This includes limitations on everyday access necessary for the administration to explain itself and be held accountable.

How bad is it? “The Obama administration is far worse than the Bush administration,” in trying to thwart accountability reporting about government agencies, according to Ellen Weiss, Washington bureau chief for E.W. Scripps newspapers and stations. ABC News White House correspondent Ann Compton, who has been covering presidents since Gerald Ford, reveals in the report that “there is no access to the daily business in the Oval Office, who the president meets with, who he gets advice from.”  In fact, Compton said many of Obama’s important meetings with outside figures on issues like health care, immigration, or the economy are not even listed on his public schedule which makes media coverage difficult.

“I think we have a real problem,” said New York Times national security reporter Scott Shane. “Most people are deterred by those leaks prosecutions. They’re scared to death. There’s a gray zone between classified and unclassified information, and most sources were in that gray zone. Sources are now afraid to enter that gray zone. It’s having a deterrent effect. If we consider aggressive press coverage of government activities being at the core of American democracy, this tips the balance heavily in favor of the government.”

Via: Judicial Watch

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AP Reporter to State Department: Did Everyone At The White House Have A 'Spine-Removal Procedure This Weekend?'

Associated Press reporter Matt Lee grilled State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki on Thursday, repeatedly asking her how Secretary of State John Kerry found it "courageous" for President Barack Obama to seek Congressional authorization of military force in Syria.

Lee's argument came from this premise: How is it "courageous" for Obama to ask for Congress to approve something that he believes he has the right to do, anyway?

 


Via: Fox News

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LANDMARK FEDERAL STUDY: NO INDICATION FRACKING CONTAMINATES DRINKING WATER

PITTSBURGH (TheBlaze/AP) — A landmark federal study on hydraulic fracturing, frequently referred to as fracking, shows no evidence that chemicals from the natural gas drilling process moved up to contaminate drinking water aquifers at a western Pennsylvania drilling site, the Department of Energy told The Associated Press.

After a year of monitoring, the researchers found that the chemical-laced fluids used to free gas trapped deep below the surface stayed thousands of feet below the shallower areas that supply drinking water, geologist Richard Hammack said.

Although the results are preliminary – the study is still ongoing – they are a boost to a natural gas industry that has fought complaints from environmental groups and property owners who call fracking dangerous.

Drilling fluids tagged with unique markers were injected more than 8,000 feet below the surface, but were not detected in a monitoring zone 3,000 feet higher. That means the potentially dangerous substances stayed about a mile away from drinking water supplies.

“This is good news,” said Duke University scientist Rob Jackson, who was not involved with the study. He called it a “useful and important approach” to monitoring fracking, but cautioned that the single study doesn’t prove that fracking can’t pollute, since geology and industry practices vary widely in Pennsylvania and across the nation.

The boom in gas drilling has led to tens of thousands of new wells being drilled in recent years, many in the Marcellus Shale formation that lies under parts of Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio and West Virginia. That’s led to major economic benefits but also fears that the chemicals used in the drilling process could spread to water supplies.

Via: The Blaze

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Black pastor uses lynching photo to help get out the vote

A pastor in Indiana has put up a sign that uses a historical image of the 1930 lynching of two black teenagers in an effort to recharge the black vote. Rev. Joy Thornton, the senior pastor of Greater St. Mark Missionary Baptist Church in Indianapolis, said he’s concerned that African-Americans have grown complacent about voting, and he wants to urge people to exercise the right he says was hard won, the Associated Press reported.

The sign, which has stood for nearly a week along the street in front of the church, shows, on one side, a white mob gathered around the teens to watch the lynching in Marion, Ind. Atop the photo is the word “VOTE!!!” Beneath it is the question: “Is this a reason to vote?” The other side of the sign shows an image of slaves in chains, with wording beneath it that reads, “Lest we forget.”

“[The sign] is to let people know there’s been a price paid for the privilege of voting,” Thornton, a black pastor of what he describes as a multiracial congregation, told Indianapolis' WISH TV. “Oftentimes people get complacent and don’t realize that people made a sacrifice, matter of fact, the ultimate sacrifice for such a privilege.”

Via: NBC News

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