POLITICS Two-Month Gap in Hillary Clinton’s Emails Reportedly Coincides with Escalating Violence in Libya

A two-month gap in Hillary Clinton’s released private emails coincide with the escalating violence in Libya, as well as the hiring of close aide Huma Abedin, reports say.

Although the former Secretary of  State released around 2,000 emails from her private account, there are no emails between Clinton and her staff between May and June 2012. During that time, violence escalated in Libya, including a June attack on the Benghazi consulate prior to the fatal September 11 attack.

Abedin, Clinton’s top aide, was also hired during that time period — at both the State Department and the Clinton Foundation.

Speaking to the Daily Beast, a State Department official said that only emails related to the security of the Benghazi consulate or U.S. diplomats in Libya were released to the House committee that is still investigating the attacks on Benghazi. According to Fox News, if that’s true, than neither the Democratic frontrunner nor her staff communicated by email during that period — during which there were three attacks on international outposts in Benghazi, including one on the consulate. 

On May 22, an International Red Cross office was struck by rocket-propelled grenades.

“The attack on the International Red Cross was another attack that also involved us and threats to the compound there in Benghazi,” Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Wood, a senior State Department security chief in Libya, testified before the House Oversight Committee in October 2012.

Another attack, on June 6, prompted the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli to warn of the “fluid security situation in Libya,” after an improvised explosive devise detonated outside of the consulate. It was then that Ambassador Chris Stevens, who was killed a few months later in the September attack, told his superiors that “Islamic extremism appears to be on the rise in eastern Libya,” according to Fox News.

Five days later, two bodyguards were injured after a convoy carrying Britain’s ambassador to Libya was hit with rocket-propelled grenades.

During that time, Abedin was allowed to work both as a staff member for Clinton in the State Department and serve in a private role in Clinton and her husband’s foundation. In 2013, the Associated Press filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the records of how she was able to obtain her special employment status.

The Daily Beast reported that last week a federal judge gave State Department a final deadline of one week to fulfill the news organization’s request. Just before midnight on Tuesday, narrowly making the deadline, lawyer’s for the department submitted a declaration that identified almost 70 pages of “potentially responsive” documents.

According to the Daily Beast, this is the first time the State Department has acknowledged its two-year dispute with the Associated Press.

Via: The Blaze

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MORMON VOLUNTEERS OUTPERFORM GOVERNMENT IN NEW ENGLAND SANDY AID

Many who are still without heat, water, and power following Hurricane Sandy, are looking to the federal government to provide the kind of organized and effective disaster relief that can restore their lives. Can private groups and citizens offer what is needed in this time of crisis?

In Milford, Connecticut, for example, where entire expanses of beach homes have been destroyed by the storm, one family member reports to us that FEMA and the Red Cross were nowhere to be seen. What she did see, however, were “dozens of people in yellow vests helping to gather up all the debris that residents were putting out in the road.” Our observer tells us that these individuals assisted homeowners in clean-up, helping to load town trucks to remove destroyed decks, furniture, siding, and other debris. 

Recalling that she saw the same group of people “in yellow vests” helping out after Hurricane Irene last year, she later discovered that the helpers were Mormon Helping Hands volunteers.

The Mormon volunteers consisted of both adults and older children. Our observer tells us that what she noticed about this group is that they were “friendly, very busy, and, yet, unobtrusive.” She comments, “They didn’t get in the way of us getting our cleanup done, but they really helped the overall effort of getting the streets cleaned up.”

"If anyone wonders how people will survive without big government, they need look no further than our beach in Milford. The residents put their heads down and worked, and the Mormon Helping Hands volunteers chipped in big time,” she states.

Let’s thank and give credit due to all private individuals, church, and community groups that are helping those in need in practical, labor-intensive ways. This is the idea that is America in action.

Breitbart

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Obama Twice Uses MSNBC Slogan ‘Lean Forward’ While Addressing Disaster Relief

President Obama on Tuesday twice used MSNBC’s slogan “lean forward” while addressing Red Cross headquarters in Washington, D.C., about relief for Sandy victims.

First he said this (video follows with transcript and commentary):

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: We are going to continue to push as hard as we can to make sure that power is up throughout the region and obviously this is mostly a local responsibility and the private utilities are going to have to lean forward. But we are doing everything we can to provide them additional resources so that we can expedite getting power up and running in many of these communities. There are places like Newark, New Jersey, for example, where you have 80 percent, 90 percent of the people without power.

Later in his remarks he said this: 

OBAMA: We can't have a situation where that lasts for days on end. And so my instructions to the federal agency has been do not figure out why we can't do something. I want you to figure out how we do something. I want you to cut through red tape, cut through bureaucracy. There is no excuse for inaction at this point. I want every agency to lean forwardand to make sure we are getting the resources where they need -- where they're need as quickly as possible. I want to repeat, my message to the federal government, no bureaucracy, no red tape, get resources where they're needed as fast as possible, as hard as possible.

Via: Newsbusters

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